Commons Sitting of 16 March 1875

MINUTES.
SELECT COMMITTEE—New Forest, appointed; Acts of Parliament, nominated.
PUBLIC BILLS—Resolution in Committee—Ordered—First Reading—Tonnage Admeasurement* [98].
Second Reading—Convention (Ireland) Act Repeal* [85], put off.
Second Reading—Referred to Select Committee—Metropolis Local Management Acts Amendment * [38]
Committee—Report—Regimental Exchanges [3]; Consolidated Fund (£7,000,000) *.
Considered as amended—Building Societies Act (1874) Amendment* [72].
Third Reading—(£882,661 8s. 11 d) Consolidated Fund* [New Title], and passed.
The House met at Two of the clock.

INDIA—MASSACRE OF MR. MARGARY AT MANWINE.—QUESTION.
MR. WAITasked the First Lord of the Treasury, Whether it is the intention of Her Majesty's Government to demand the punishment of the perpetrators

1879
of the treacherous massacre of Mr. Margary and his five servants at Manwine while engaged in Her Majesty's Consular service; and, whether he has any objection to state what directions, if any, have been given on the subject?
MR. DISRAELI: Sir, we sent instructions to Mr. Wade, Her Majesty's Minister at Pekin; and Her Majesty's most able Minister at Pekin—for it would be impossible to speak too highly of his qualifications—to call upon the Chinese Government to make a strict investigation into all the circumstances connected with this deplorable affair; and, until we receive his Report, it will, of course, be out of our power to decide upon the steps we will take. The death of Mr. Margary is a public calamity. He was the son of a general officer in Her Majesty's service, and he was a young man of great promise and ability, who had displayed all those qualities which were suitable to the eminent career which I have no doubt awaited him had his life been spared. With regard to the circumstances which are known to Her Majesty's Government, this unhappy event occurred in a district scarcely within the boundary of the Chinese Empire, a district in which it is doubtful whether the power of the Imperial Government was clearly established, and which is inhabited by a mixed population of Shangs and Chinese. The moment the Government receive from Mr. Wade the result of his appeal to the Imperial Government, I shall have, I hope, to make a further communication to the House.

LOCAL TAXATION—COLLECTION OF RATES.—QUESTION.
COLONEL BRISEasked the President of the Local Government Board, Whether, in the event of there being no comprehensive measure of legislation upon Local Government in the present Session, he would endeavour to carry out one of the resolutions in the Report of the Poor Rates Assessment Committee of 1868, as well as in the Report of the Local Taxation Committee of 1870, in reference to the method in which rates are now collected, the resolution being as follows:—
"That a demand note shall be left at, the premises rated for each ratepayer on the rate
1880
being made, stating the amount of the requisition; the rate in the pound for each purpose for which the rate is made; the rateable value of the premises; and the amount of the rate thereon?"
MR. SCLATER-BOOTH, in reply, said, that by the General Order of Accounts issued in 1867, it was provided that the overseers of the different parishes might, if they thought fit, cause a demand note to be left with each ratepayer, specifying the particulars of the claim upon him, and showing also the purposes for which the rate was made. That power had been availed of in the metropolis to a considerable extent, and also in many other towns, and there was no doubt it would be competent for overseers and parish officers to avail themselves of it much more largely. It was impossible, however, at present, to make this salutary regulation compulsory on all overseers, because, as his hon. and gallant Friend was aware, the recommendation of the Local Taxation Committee of 1870 proceeded upon the assumption that there would be a consolidation rate for all purposes collected by one authority, and that was yet far from being the case.

IMPRISONMENT FOR CONTEMPT OF COURT.—QUESTION.
MR. CHARLES LEWISasked the Secretary of State for the Home Department, Whether his attention has been called to the report in the "Herts Guardian" of the 6th instant of the committal, by one of the Judges of Assize, of William Craddock to prison for twelve calendar months for contempt of court, the fact being that Craddock, after his acquittal by the jury of the offence charged against him, addressed to his fellow prisoner, who had attempted to incriminate him, Craddock, the words "I'll give it you for splitting on me; "whether, under such order of imprisonment for contempt of court, Craddock is now suffering imprisonment and is put to hard labour of the second class; and, whether he has any power to arrest the carrying out of such order of imprisonment; and, if so, whether he will take steps to secure the release of Craddock?
MR. ASSHETON CROSS, in reply, said, his attention had not been called to the statement referred by the hon. Member, but he believed it to be true

1881
that this man was committed for 12 months by Mr. Justice Denman for contempt of Court. The facts, however, as he was informed by that learned Judge, were scarcely in accord with the statements made in the Question. The two men were indicted for uttering base coin, Craddock, the elder, after two former convictions. The other man, who was much younger, pleaded "Guilty," and stood aside while the jury were being sworn to try Craddock.
"At that time," says the learned Judge, "I observed that Craddock stepped up to the other in a hasty way and spoke to him, and that the turnkey stepped between them and drew the other man aside."
Craddock was tried, and, although the case was one of strong suspicion, he was acquitted. The learned Judge was then informed by the turnkey that just before the trial began, upon the other man's pleading "Guilty," Craddock had gone up to the other man and threatened that he would "give it him" or "do for him "when he (Craddock) came out for "splitting upon him." The learned Judge added—
"I had, and have, no doubt whatever that what he meant was to threaten the other man if he gave evidence on the trial against him. This I looked upon, and still look upon, as a very gross contempt of Court, which, having occurred under the eyes of the jury and in the dock just at the commencement of the trial, it was my duty summarily to punish if not erroneously imputed."
That was the statement of the learned Judge, and in his (the Judge's) opinion the punishment was not too severe.
MR. CHARLES LEWISgave Notice that early after Easter he would bring under the consideration of the House the general subject of the power vested in the Judges without any appeal or reference to a jury to inflict fine and imprisonment, for so-called contempt of Court, upon Her Majesty's subjects.

CRIMINAL LAW—VIOLENT ASSAULTS—LEGISLATION.—QUESTION.
COLONEL EGERTON LEIGHasked the Secretary of State for the Home Department, When the measure mentioned in Her Majesty's Speech for preventing violent assaults will be introduced?
MR. ASSHETON CROSS, in reply, said, that the measure had long ago been prepared, and would be introduced as soon as there was any reasonable chance of passing it through that
1882
"Temple Bar" which at the present moment was so crowded.

INDIAN FINANCES.—QUESTION.
MR. ONSLOWasked the Under Secretary of State for India, Whether Her Majesty's Government has received a telegram corroborating the intelligence in to-day's "Times" regarding the state of the Indian finances?
LORD GEORGE HAMILTON, in reply, said, a telegram had been received at the India Office similar to that published in the daily papers, and Her Majesty's Government had no reason to believe that the figures thus transmitted were less accurate that those which they had received in former years.

BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE—THE MORNING SITTING.

  OBSERVATIONS.
  MR. NEWDEGATErose to call attention to the circumstances under which the House had met at 2 o'clock, and, if necessary, he would conclude with a Motion. It might be his own fault that he did not look at the Notices and at the newspapers earlier; but certainly it was not until an hour ago he was aware that the House would not meet at the usual time—a quarter to 4. He might take blame to himself for not being in his place last night; but it was impossible that all Members could always be in their places. He opposed the late Prime Minister when he attempted to alter the time at which the House was appointed to meet, and to change an afternoon into a Morning Sitting, late at night to a Sitting for the following day, without previous Notice, and he was supported in several divisions. Since 1869, the House had been in the habit of adopting a Resolution under which Morning Sittings began from a certain date, and the House had always required the usual Notice of the intention to submit that Resolution; but on this occasion no such Notice had been given. Taken by surprise, he had been unable to look for precedents; but, so far as his memory served him, he believed there was no instance of a Morning Sitting earlier than the 27th of May. He could easily allow that the Prime Minister had taken the course now adopted for the convenience of the

  1883
  House, but the precedent he had inadvertently set was a dangerous one; because the adoption of the Resolution of 1869 without Notice would unfairly deprive hon. Members who might chance to be out of London, or who might not look very closely at the Notices, of opportunity to take part in the Business of the House. He hoped the right hon. Gentleman at the head of the Government would give the House an assurance that what happened last night would not be repeated. In conclusion, the hon. Member moved the adjournment of the House.
  Motion made, and Question proposed, "That this House do now adjourn."—(Mr. Newdegate.)
  MR. DISRAELI: I am not aware, Sir, that I committed any breach of Order in the course which I proposed, and which the House consented yesterday to take; and I am not aware that my hon. Friend has himself personally been subjected to any extraordinary inconvenience, or been deprived of that information as to the meeting of the House which, of course, is convenient to all its Members. The House, when I made the Motion last night, was very full—unhappily, my hon. Friend was absent—but the House was otherwise extremely well attended, as the Division List shows. An opportunity was then given to any hon. Member to object to the course I recommended, but no objection was made. I proposed that the House should continue the Business it was then engaged upon at 2 o'clock today. I did not suddenly propose any new Business, and as to giving a Notice of the Motion of meeting to-day at 2 o'clock previous to the debate, that was perfectly impossible; because I could not foresee the circumstances which justified my making that proposition to the House. I do not wish to cavil with the ultimate course of the proceedings and the result; but I think there was a general understanding in the House on both sides that we should have concluded the Committee on the Regimental Exchanges Bill last night, and upon our concluding that Committee last night the general arrangements for future Public Business very much depended. I therefore made a proposition which allowed the House the adjournment upon the subject which they desired consistently
  1884
  with the Forms of the House, which have now been established some years, and which I myself originally proposed with regard to the Morning Sittings, and it was unanimously acceded to by the House; therefore, the great majority of hon. Members certainly can have no reason to complain. My hon. Friend unquestionably has been inconvenienced, but who could have contemplated that? The announcement was made in the House before midnight; and as I have not the advantage of seeing my Friends who sit behind me so well as my courteous opponents who sit opposite to me, I concluded that my hon. Friend, who rarely is absent from this House, and who is well known as a model and the pink of perfection in the matter of attendance at and fulfilment of his Parliamentary duties, was in his place. But if he had not been in his place, who could have supposed that my hon. Friend would not have examined his Papers in the morning—I will not say the first thing in the morning, but after prayers? My hon. Friend, when examining them, would see in a moment that in two places it was stated that the House would meet at 2 o'clock. While I deeply regret that my hon. Friend has been put to some inconvenience, I do not collect from his complaint that it has been greater than being somewhat hurried at a period of the day when one is disposed to restore exhausted nature by morning studies. As regards the House, I do not admit that I have taken any other but a strictly Parliamentary course; indeed, you, Mr. Speaker, would have corrected me if I had done so. Many even of my own Friends, if I had taken a course which was not Parliamentary, would, I feel sure, have interposed. The House will perceive that it was quite impossible for me to give any Notice, because I could not contemplate what would occur. I appealed to the House, and the House responded to the appeal. I think it would be most inconvenient that Notice should be required of such a Motion. I think that, under the circumstances, it is a power which the House ought to exercise. When the Business is unnecessarily disturbed, its convenience should be consulted as to the time when hon. Members may wish the Business to be concluded. I think it is a power which is highly

  1885
  beneficial; and I therefore cannot agree to the proposition of my hon. Friend that Notice should necessarily be given of a Motion which may be required by circumstances which, anterior to the Motion, could not have been anticipated by those who have to conduct the Business of the House.
  MR. DILLWYN: The right hon. Gentleman has alluded to the fact that no objection was taken to the course proposed by him when the House adjourned. I felt a very strong objection to that course, and an inclination to disagree to the very unusual course of adjourning without previous Notice having been given. Indeed, I never remember a case in which the House adjourned without Notice at any time of the evening that such adjournment would be moved. Although I felt an objection to the course taken I did not choose to raise the objection. I had before interfered, and I felt that it would be utterly useless to object to anything that might be proposed by the Government with respect to this Bill, seeing that there was a majority in the House who were determined, whether right or wrong, to pass it. They said so more than once, and we were taunted by them that we were in a minority. More than that, there were Amendments which had been placed on the Paper by some hon. Gentlemen opposite which would have improved the Bill, but which had disappeared. I considered that a sufficient reason why it would be useless to make any objection to the unprecedented course pursued by the Prime Minister.
  MR. J. S. HARDYpointed out that when the right hon. Gentleman at the head of the Government made a statement the other day as to the course of Public Business, he said that if the Committee on the Regimental Exchanges Bill was not got through on Monday night it might be necessary for him to make some changes in the arrangement of the Public Business. He (Mr. Hardy) might say for himself, and, he believed, for several hon. Members sitting near him, that they entertained the opinion that a Morning Sitting would be proposed, and he believed that was also the understanding on the other side of the House. ["No, no!"] If they had not received some such Notice as to what might be the intention of the Government they might have pursued a different course.
  MR. WHALLEYsaid, he was surprised that the hon. Member for Swansea (Mr. Dillwyn) did not rise to protest against a course which he considered inexpedient because he would have been overborne by a majority. That was the very reason why the hon. Member should have protested, even if he had stood alone. He (Mr. Whalley) thanked the right hon. Gentleman at the head of the Government for having given them the opportunity of considering the subject at a Morning Sitting.
  THE MARQUESS OF HARTINGTONsaid, he did not rise to controvert the proposition of the right hon. Gentleman opposite, as the course he had taken was within the Rules of Order. Nevertheless, he believed it was an unusual course to take a Morning Sitting without Notice at so early a period of the Session. He could not agree with the hon. Member for Rye (Mr. J. S. Hardy) that sufficient Notice was given to the House, for the statement of the Prime Minister that, in the event of the Committee on the Regimental Exchanges Bill not being concluded some other arrangement would have to be made, did not necessarily imply a Morning Sitting. He might, for instance, have put the Order on the Paper for this evening, and have tried to induce private Members to postpone their Motions. On the whole, however, he was free to admit that, as regarded the discussion on the Bill, the course which the right hon. Gentleman had taken, although perhaps it might be inconvenient to some individual Members, was, generally speaking, the most convenient for the majority of the House. He wished now to call the attention of the Government to the course which it was proposed to take with respect to other Business. The Chancellor of the Exchequer had placed the Committee on the Friendly Societies Bill next to the Order of the Day for the Regimental Exchanges Bill. He did not think it would be fair to a numerous class of hon. Members who took an interest in the Friendly Societies Bill that the discussion on it should be proceeded with today. It was understood yesterday that if the Committee on the Regimental Exchanges Bill did not terminate at an early hour, the Friendly Societies Bill would not be proceeded with until after Easter. It was quite possible that many hon. Members might have left London

  1887
  under the impression that there was not the slightest possibility of the discussion on the Friendly Societies Bill being proceeded with; and he trusted if the discussion on the Regimental Exchanges Bill should not terminate shortly, the Friendly Societies Bill would not be proceeded with. He thought it would be for the convenience of the House, when there was a probability of a Morning Sitting being asked for, that some notice of it should be given to the House.
  MR. NEWDEGATE, in withdrawing the Motion for adjournment, said, he had called attention to the Rules of the House because those Rules were, as Lord Eversley on quitting the Chair warned the House, all founded on good sense. He must say, in answer to the remarks of the hon. Member for Swansea (Mr. Dillwyn), whom he very much respected—that it would appear from their silence last night as if the Liberal Party had been so long in a majority that they had to learn afresh their duty as a minority.
  THE CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUERsaid, he wished, before the Motion was withdrawn, to answer the question put by the noble Marquess. Before the House broke up last night the right hon. Member for Bradford (Mr. W. E. Forster) put a question to him on the subject of the Friendly Societies Bill, and his reply, which he begged to repeat now was, that it was not at all his idea that the House would be able to proceed with the Bill in Committee to-day; but it appeared possible that there might be an hour or two to spare for discussion in the course of the afternoon. The position of the Bill was this—it had been read a second time; there was no Notice of any opposition to its going into Committee, and he did not apprehend that there was any intention of opposing that Motion; but, on the other hand, there were several hon. Gentlemen who had not yet taken part in the general discussion, and who wished to make some observations on the principle of the Bill. Under these circumstances he did not think any harm could come from a discussion being brought on at any time when hon. Members who wished to express their views on the subject were present. He had told the right hon. Gentleman last night that he would not attempt to bring on the Bill at any time which might be inconvenient to hon. Members. The subject was one which
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  very much interested persons connected with the societies throughout the country, and when there was a suggestion that the Bill was coming on a large number of them came up to London. There was no use, however, in their attending a debate on the Motion that the Speaker do leave the Chair; when they wished to be present was when the clauses were being taken. It would therefore be desirable that it should be known generally when the Committee was coming on. If he found, in the course of the day, that there was no desire to take the Bill, he would not persevere in bringing it on.
  MR. W. E. FORSTERsaid, he was sure it would have weighed with the Chancellor of the Exchequer if he had known that hon. Members who had a desire to address the House on the principle of the Bill would not have an opportunity of doing so in consequence of the impression produced by the right hon. Gentleman himself. He hoped, therefore, the right hon. Gentleman would not bring on the Bill to-day.
  COLONEL BERESFORDsaid, he wished, before the discussion closed, to put the saddle on the right horse. Any inconvenience arising from the present meeting of the House was owing to the noble Marquess (the Marquess of Hartington.) The Prime Minister last night wanted to proceed with the Regimental Exchanges Bill until the Committee was finished, and it was not until the noble Marquess refused to go on that the Prime Minister proposed as an alternative that there should be a Morning Sitting.
  MR. DODDSsaid, there were many persons in town who wished to know when the Bill was likely to go into Committee, and it would be a great convenience to them if some time could be fixed.
  MR. P. A. TAYLORappealed to the Judge Advocate not to proceed with the Mutiny Bill on Thursday next, on the ground that Members had not time to consider the Amendments, and that there were several matters connected with this Bill which they wished to discuss.
  MR. WAITsuggested that it might be convenient for hon. Members to have a Morning instead of an Evening Sitting on the Thursday before Easter.
  MR. STEPHEN CAVEsaid, that the Amendments on the Mutiny Bill had

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  been delivered to hon. Members that morning; they were few and simple, and the questions which the hon. Gentleman wished to discuss did not come within their scope. He therefore thought that Thursday would be a convenient day for proceeding with the Bill.
  Motion, by leave, withdrawn.

REGIMENTAL EXCHANGES BILL.
(Mr. Gathorne Hardy, Mr. Stanley.)
REGIMENTAL EXCHANGES BILL.

  [BILL 3.] COMMITTEE.
  Motion, by leave, withdrawn.
  Bill considered in Committee.
  (In the Committee.)
  Clause 2 (Authorized exchanges exempted from Army Brokerage Acts).
  MR. TREVELYAN, in rising to move, at the end of the Clause, to add—
  "Provided, That the provisions of this Act shall not apply to any officer who has entered Her Majesty's service on any day subsequent to the 1st day of November, 1871,"
  said: Sir, I have trespassed so largely and so recently on the kind indulgence of hon. Members that I feel bound to preface my remarks to-night by promising that they shall be brief; that they shall relate to a new and a special matter; and that in making those remarks I will not lose sight of the distinction which within these walls always is—or, at any rate, always should be—observed between a speech on the second reading of a Bill and a speech made when that Bill has passed into Committee. We are no longer concerned with the general controversy as to whether exchanges of commissions involving the payment of a sum of money representing the difference in the market value of those commissions should or should not be permitted in the British Army. That controversy is over and done with, and to recur to it would be to adopt a proceeding which hon. Gentlemen opposite might justly resent as vexatious. Our business at the present moment is not to protest against exchanges of this nature being permitted, but to define the limits within which their operation should be confined; and I hope to be able to show that the limit laid down in the Amendment which I have placed on the Paper in consonant with reason, distinctly indicated by the circumstances which have given rise to the introduction of this Bill, and strictly in accordance both with the
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  claims of the public and with the private interests of the officers. In the course of the debates upon this Bill there have been many subjects on which opinions have differed; but there is one subject on which there has been no dispute whatever—one statement which Members of the Government have uniformly made with exultation, and which we have uniformly admitted with regret—the statement that this measure is based upon a recommendation contained in the Report of a Royal Commission, and, what is more, of a Royal Commission appointed by the late Ministry. The First Lord of the Admiralty, speaking on the second reading, represented me as having questioned the right of himself and his brother Commissioners to make that recommendation. I did not interrupt the right hon. Gentleman, as not wishing to exercise the invidious privilege of correcting a speaker in possession of the House; but, as a matter of fact, whatever my thoughts on the subject might be, I never disputed the right of himself and his Colleagues to recommend anything that bore in any degree—and the question of exchanges bears in a very high degree—upon the pecuniary grievances of officers. But what I did say then, and what now I emphatically repeat, was, that the Commissioners were appointed to inquire into pecuniary grievances, and into pecuniary grievances alone; and that the right hon. Gentleman the Secretary of State for War, responsible as he is to Parliament and the nation for the discipline and spirit of the Army, was not justified in sheltering himself behind the dictum of Commissioners who, in their capacity of Commissioners, are no more authorities on the question of Army government and administration than are the Commissioners of Lunacy or the Commissioners of Inland Revenue. But the right hon. Gentleman has chosen so to shelter himself, and the House of Commons by enormous and repeated majorities has approved his course. He has told us that he holds before him as a shield the Report of the Commission; and with regard to the officers who were already in our Army before 1871, that Report must now be acknowledged to have been a very efficient protection; but in dealing with the case of their juniors I will undertake to show, if the Committee will give meits attention for not very many minutes, that

  1891
  this redoubtable shield is one which the feeblest weapons of logic can pierce; or, to drop a metaphor which has already served too long a turn, I assert that, for the purpose of making an alteration in the existing system of exchanges with regard to officers who have been appointed since Purchase was abolished in November, 1871, the Report of the Commission affords no reason, excuse, or justification whatsoever. For under what circumstances was that Commission appointed, and for what end? A great multitude of officers had memoralized the Commander-in-Chief on the subject of the changes for the worse that had been effected in their position by the Royal Warrant of 1871. The Duke of Richmond brought these memorials to the notice of the House of Lords, and a debate ensued in which every speech, and every word of every speech, was directed exclusively to the discontent which existed among the officers who had memorialized the Horse Guards, everyone of whom had been in the Army previous to the time when Purchase was abolished. The Duke of Richmond moved an Address to the Crown, praying Her Majesty to issue a Royal Commission to inquire into the allegations of officers in Her Majesty's Army as to the grievances which they state that they suffer consequent on the abolition of Purchase, and this Address, in spite of the opposition of the late Government, was carried by a majority of nearly three to one. The answer to that Address was the appointment of the Commission presided over by Lord Penzance. The terms of Reference of the Commissioners are as explicit and as clearly defined as those of any Commissioners whoever were nominated. They are expressly charged to examine into and report on the complaints of officers who were in the Army before November, 1871, and of those officers alone. Among those complaints, one very frequently insisted on was, the loss of the privilege of exchanging for money. Officers were permitted to appear before the Commission who explained very clearly and in great, but not unnecessary detail, how they had paid large sums of money, under the express or implied sanction of the State, to purchase commissions, in the full expectation that they would be able to recoup themselves by effecting a profitable exchange. But the Royal Warrant of
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  1871 deprived them of that resource. One gentleman estimated his loss from this source at £2,500 on a single bargain, and another at £2,200, spread over his whole career. A third had actually bought an exchange for £750, "in full faith and confidence, "to use his own words," that I should receive the same again by an exchange to some regiment in India." Sir, these are hard cases; very hard cases indeed; and if, in order to meet these cases, the Commissioners had recommended that the privilege of exchanging for money should be restored to those officers who had entered the Army in the full belief that to the end of their term of service they would be allowed to exchange for whatever sum they could obtain, I should have said that, though they had overstepped the letter, they had not violated the spirit of their terms of Reference. But now we are asked to extend the effect of their recommendation to a fresh class of officers—to those young men who have entered the Army voluntarily, and with their eyes open, under the new set of conditions laid down by the Royal Warrant of 1871; one of which conditions is, that exchanges shall not henceforward be bought and sold at their market price—a class of officers about whose status, if there be any force and meaning in the English language, in which the terms of Reference are written, the Commissioners had no instructions to inquire, and no authority to pronounce. Sir, if the Committee does not accept this Amendment, we violate the terms of an express contract, under which the Crown engaged the services of all the young men who have entered the Army since November, 1871, and in so doing we commit an injustice to the nation, and a still greater injustice to the officers. It is an injustice to the nation, because we are allowing a number of its servants to settle among themselves the locality of their service by private arrangement, and, what is worse, by private bargain; because we are striking out one of the most important provisions from the ruling clause of the Royal Warrant—a clause which has cost the taxpayer hard upon £1,000,000 a line. And this in the case of men who have not, and do not profess to have, the shadow of a ground of complaint; who entered the Service with no more notion that they would, at any future time, be allowed to barter their commissions,

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  than the officers in our Departments at Whitehall believe that at some future time they will be allowed to barter their clerkships. And if you extend the operation of this Bill to recently-appointed officers, you will give rise to an abuse which appears to me to be the most flagrant with which the discipline, and I will venture to say the honour, of the Service was ever threatened. Officers complained before the Commission that they were unable to sell "the intrinsic value of the prestige of commissions in the more privileged regiments;" and there was no reason why they should not so complain, for acting strictly according to the old rules of their profession they had purchased that prestige for large sums of money. An officer who has given £8,000 or £9,000 for a commission of major in the Guards, when he might have bought a majority in the Line for little more than half the money, suffers under a grievance which is great in my eyes, and enormous in his own, unless he is allowed at will to exchange that commission, and receive the £3,000 or £4,000 of difference. But we have changed all this. An officer now receives a commission in the brigade of Guards by favour, and not by purchase; and henceforward if a gentleman who, without expending a farthing, has been honoured with the privilege of guarding Her Majesty's person is to sell that privilege, not to pay his tailor's bill—for Beau Brummell himself would hardly in the course of 10 years run up a tailor's bill within one half of the amount—but in order to purchase the freehold of a house in Onslow Square, or to make a settlement on his wife, all I can say is, that Mr. Cox's head clerk himself would call such a transaction a scandal to the Army and an outrage on the Crown. If we do not take care what we are about we shall violate the terms under which all our younger officers have given us the benefit of their services, and shall violate them to their immense disadvantage. The great majority of these gentlemen have obtained their commissions by their own industry and ability; not by private interest, or by having money at their command. Many of them belong to the class which Sir Charles Napier described as providing the best officers in the world, the class of gentlemen who have their bread to earn. They joined our Army on the
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  express understanding, that if their health would not allow them to support the influences of a tropical climate they should, on application to the military authorities, have their claims to exchange with an officer in a battalion at home fairly and equitably considered. But, if this Bill passes without the addition of the words that I have placed upon the Paper, the less wealthy among them will find all the exchanges bought up by their richer comrades; and they will have absolutely no choice but to ask for sick leave, and, when that sick leave is out, to retire on half-pay, because they cannot live in the climate to which their regiment is attached on account of their health; or, it may be, in consequence of the very wounds which they have received in defence of a nation whose Representatives have had so little regard for the terms of the agreements which they make with the officers whom they employ. And, again, what will be the effect upon the mind of these officers when they become the victims of a transaction similar to that described by the hon. and gallant Member for Sunderland (Sir Henry Havelock) in his admirable speech; where a major or a colonel in their own regiment, whose five years are nearly out, and for whose vacancy they were anxiously looking, is suddenly, in consequence of an exchange, transferred to another and luckier, because wealthier, regiment, and replaced by an officer who has still four of his five years to run, and who blocks the prospect of advancement which had once been so fair. Already these gentlemen are overweighted in the race of promotion. They find themselves passed at every step by officers who enter through the Militia, and who begin their Army career in a higher rank than themselves. But if you give to these officers from the Militia, who for the most part belong to a wealthy class, the additional facilities for rapid promotion which this Bill affords to men of means, you intensify into a gross injustice that which is at present a serious inequality. These gentlemen chose their profession under the belief that they would be encouraged to devote their entire attention to their studies, to their drill, to the welfare of their men, and to the administrative work of their regiment. In the Royal Warrant of 1871, they had an absolute pledge that the cares and occupations of a military

  1895
  career would be exclusively of this honourable and interesting nature. And now we come to tell them, with all the authority of Parliament, that their business will henceforward be to watch the market, to calculate like so many actuaries the chances of promotion in a battalion at the Mauritius as opposed to a battalion at Aldershot, and to worry themselves with speculations whether or not it is worth their while to sell the prestige of a famous and ancient regiment, to which they have perhaps been appointed as a reward for proficiency in military knowledge, or transferred as an acknowledgment for distinguished service in the field. It is to rescue them from such a prospect as this, so contrary to the anticipations which at the time when they donned their uniforms these officers had reason to entertain, that I earnestly entreat the Committee and the Government favourably to consider the Amendment that is now before them. And I venture humbly to express a hope that those Gentlemen from the Sister Isle who sit around me will not on this occasion resort to a neutrality which both sides of the House alike lament, but will record their votes either for or against a proposal of such high import to the future well-being of that Army, the past history of which is the common pride of every one of the Three Kingdoms. And, Sir, we must not too readily come to the conclusion that the wishes of these, the younger officers of our Army, are in favour of this Bill. It will be said that they have not proclaimed their objections to it; but no one who knows the British Army, with its spirit of strict and graduated discipline, and its deeply-rooted respect for seniority, could possibly expect that officers, the oldest of whom is of three years' standing, should indulge in any manifestations against a measure which is popular with the majority of his seniors among company officers, with a great majority of field officers and generals, and which is ardently promoted by those who are in the confidence of the Commander-in-Chief, and by the Secretary of State for War. It is not in Memorials and Petitions, and letters to the newspapers, that you must look for the opinions of these young men. You have an indirect, but most significant test of their feeling in the matter. If the abolition of the purchase of exchanges had, indeed, made
  1896
  the Service less attractive to men of birth and high spirit, hon. Members who have sons or nephews would not have been obliged to resort to statistics in order to ascertain that the Army was less popular than of yore. But as it is, every avenue to military service, whether through the Militia, the Universities, or the open list, is crowded with a throng of candidates exactly of the same class as we have always been proud to see at the head of our soldiers, who prove, by their numbers and their eagerness, how highly they appreciate a service, one of the first conditions of which still is that exchanges can no longer be bought or sold. It so happens, Sir, that, from circumstances to which it is unnecessary to allude, I have a pretty extensive acquaintance among the junior, and, without unduly boasting, I may say, the rising officers of our Army; and I know, as well as perhaps most other hon. Gentlemen know, the objects on which their hearts are set. They wish to have the rules of retirement definitely laid down on a regular and not too illiberal scale. They wish to be able to look forward to a certain pension when they leave the Army, and while they are in the Army to a reasonable flow of promotion. They wish to have their obligatory and customary expenses decreased and their pay increased, until they may be able to earn, by the devotion of their lives, a modest, but a secure subsistence. By the abolition of Purchase, the late Secretary of State made the Army a profession in which men must work. It is for the present Secretary of State to make it a profession in which men can live. And let him undo that lamentable General Order, by which those prizes in the Army which had been solemnly promised to officers who had passed the Staff College were wantonly taken away, just as they were rising to the rank at which they could enjoy them. Let him give once more a fair field to merit, and no favour to wealth or patronage, and he will do much more to win the gratitude of the gentlemen in whose behalf this Amendment is moved than if he includes them wholesale in a measure whose justification is the Report of a Commission which, as I have shown by arguments that I believe to be absolutely unanswerable, has no more to do with the officers appointed to our Army during

  1897
  the last three years than with the lieutenants in the Prussian Guard. The hon. Gentleman concluded by moving his Amendment.
  Amendment proposed,
  At the end of the Clause, to add the words "Provided, That the provisions of this Act shall not apply to any officer who has entered Her Majesty's service on any day subsequent to the first day of November 1871."—(Mr. Trevelyan.)
  MR. FORSYTHconsidered that the Amendment rested upon a basis which was entirely fallacious. The hon. Member asked the House by this Amendment to decide that the free exchanges permitted by the Bill were a necessary evil, which ought to be restricted as much as possible, and ought not to be allowed at all whenever they could be prevented. But the principle of this Bill was the very reverse. Its object was to facilitate free exchanges. The hon. Member (Mr. Trevelyan) wanted the House to draw a hard-and-fast line at a certain year, and to say it would allow this necessary evil up to 1871; but that as regarded officers who had entered the service since that time, and in future, no free exchanges should be permitted. If the Members on the Ministerial side of the House accepted that Amendment they would stultify themselves. Exchanges were permitted by the law as it at present stood, and money was also allowed to pass. In the year 1871, when the late Government abolished Purchase, they were so satisfied that the system of exchanges should continue that they made special regulations recognizing it, and also for allowing money to pass. Three-fourths of the arguments on the other side were based upon the ground that this Bill ought not to pass, because thereby officers would be enabled to escape foreign service. Now, he held in his hand a Return relative to exchanges during the last few years, which was in more than one respect significant. Since exchanges had been regulated by the late Government there had been 106 exchanges in regiments of the Line, 75 of which were effected in order to escape going to India, which showed that the officer now escaped going to India, and did not face the jungle and the malaria. In the Artillery, which was a non-purchase corps, there had been 129 exchanges within the last seven years, 71
  1898
  of which had been effected to escape foreign service. In the Engineers only 17 had exchanged, 14 of which were effected to escape foreign service. These figures proved that the declamation against this Bill on the ground that under it there would be exchanges injurious to the service and derogatory to the character of the British officer was all moonshine, because the very thing was happening under existing regulations. The same remark applied to money. Money was allowed to pass under the regulations of the late Government just as it was to be allowed under the present Bill. But the War Secretary very wisely and very judiciously declared he would not take any cognizance of these money transactions. His position in the matter was simply this—that exchanges must be regulated by military considerations, and military considerations alone. That was surely not a point to be controverted by hon. Gentlemen opposite. He must credit the Leaders of the Opposition with sincerity of purpose—else, having achieved unpopularity with the British electors, they could not be so determined to alienate the affections of British officers. He believed there were no military officers on the front Opposition bench; but he could not think that right hon. Gentlemen would run their heads against a wall unless impelled by countervailing considerations. They must be constrained by the highest and purest motives to increase their unpopularity in standing forth as the opponents of the wishes of the officers of the whole British Army. He should certainly vote against the Amendment.
  MR. LOWEsaid, the hon. and learned Member (Mr. Forsyth) had taunted the Leaders of the Opposition with not being military officers, and he presumed that taunt would not have been levelled at them if the hon. and learned Member had not acquired his knowledge in the corps of Volunteers over which a peculiar potentate was popularly supposed to preside. Whatever might be the merits of the hon. and learned Member from a military point of view, he had not done justice to his other profession of the law, because he had done that which lawyers seldom did—he had carefully avoided touching in the most remote manner upon the question now before the Committee. The question was not

  1899
  that of exchange, but it was the passing of money—whether money was to pass or not, and whether money should pass as an inducement to effect these exchanges. How, then, could the hon. and learned Member think he had proved his point by adducing a large number of instances of exchange which had been effected without this consideration? The points made against them by hon. Gentlemen opposite might be stated in a very few words. They said—" You appointed a Commission to inquire into the grievances of the Army "—occasioned by the abolition of Purchase—" and you are bound by what your Commission reports. It is the same as if you had done it yourselves; we take it from you and carry it out." Now, was that a fair statement of the case? He thought it was not. The late Government did appoint a Commission to look into the grievances occasioned by Purchase, and there was some force in the argument so far as it applied to what had been done by the Commission, with the view of remedying the hardships occasioned by the abolition of Purchase. For the purposes of this discussion he admitted the argument, and was ready to concede what the Commission recommended in that sense. But the Commission being appointed for one purpose went beyond what was entrusted to them, and made recommendations which were not apparently intended to remedy the evils of purchase at all, but merely to please the Army by letting them traffic in exchanges, and there he thought they strained the matter too far. Let them look at the matter plainly, and as men of the world. Why, this officers' grievance question had come as a god-send to right hon. Gentlemen opposite. They were looking out for something to do to please the Army, and they got hold of this aberration of the Commission and jumped upon it with both feet, receiving it like manna or dew from Heaven, so welcome was it to them. For the purposes of this Motion he was ready to be bound by the Commissioners so far as their authority extended; but when the Commissioners went beyond the scope of their inquiry, it was open to right hon. Gentlemen opposite to say that they chose to follow them in that erratic course, but not that the founders of the Commission were responsible for it. The chief thing which struck
  1900
  him in connection with the question before the Committee was the extreme hardship and unfairness that would be imposed upon young officers who had joined the service since the abolition of Purchase. When the latter fact was accomplished the country practically said to these young officers,—"We are going to introduce a new kind of service; by diligence and studious devotion to your profession you may rise in it without any pecuniary means whatever; the element of money is banished, and you may look forward to anything that is to be got in your profession." That was the sort of temptation and prospect we had held out to them if they would look at their profession as gentlemen ought to look at it, as a noble pursuit to be followed as a matter of duty and honour, and if they would not look at everything simply in the light of the amount of money to be got out of it. He really did not envy the feelings of any man who preferred to educate our young officers in the old school of the Army, subject as it was to all its low and mean pecuniary considerations, instead of inculcating upon them the nobility of a service free from such degrading influences. Another point upon which he desired to lay stress was this. He could not conceive how a system of promotion by merit could be reconciled with the principle of the Bill which the House was asked by Her Majesty's Government to pass. When a man was promoted for merit he did not perhaps gain much in material advantages, but had conferred upon him a high and distinguished honour, and this distinction was a means of delivering the Army from mere pecuniary fetters. But how would such a system work when a young man was placed in such a distinguished position and was then afterwards allowed to sell it? Surely the two systems of selection and purchase could not work together. If they favoured the system of promotion by merit they must give up these pecuniary transactions; but if they maintained the latter they must abandon the former. He was concerned to see that the whole argument had changed since they had first begun to discuss the Bill. Then the House was told that it was only desired to legalize these exchanges in order to promote the convenience of officers, who by reason of ill health, large families, or other causes, found it necessary

  1901
  to change their places of residence. As the discussion had advanced it had turned upon considerations more and more mean and sordid, and it was now clear that the only point upon which officers and their friends were thoroughly agreed was that they had in their commissions vendible commodities, and that they did not mean to be deprived of the power of disposing of them. During the past few days he had been engaged in a Committee upstairs inquiring as to certain matters affecting the Stock Exchange, and he found it difficult to distinguish between the proceedings in the Committee on this Bill and those in the other Committee to which he referred as far as their tone was concerned. He had in the course of the debate heard declarations which were anything but re-assuring. The Secretary of State for War had been very difficult to be "drawn" in reference to the matter. The declaration of the Secretary of State merely amounted to this—that the Guards were not entitled to sell the intrinsic value of their corps. But that was just the very point that was doubted. It was asserted by the Opposition, that an officer might look over the roll of such a regiment's achievements inscribed upon its colours, from Blenheim to Waterloo, and Waterloo to Inkermann, and then consider how much money he could get for an exchange. That was the thing called prestige. A band of brave, gallant, and noble men had served their country in every part of the world; they had shed their blood, and brought upon themselves immortal honour; and it was left for another set of men to make money out of these exploits of their predecessors by selling their positions. That point had been made abundantly clear by the admissions of the Secretary of State for War himself. Another serious blot in the Bill was that which his right hon. Friend the Member for Pontefract (Mr. Childers) endeavoured to meet by moving an Amendment to the effect that a number of officers in a regiment should not be allowed to make up a purse to be presented to a senior officer in order that he might, by retiring from the regiment, give them each a step. The Secretary of State for War, in opposition to this Amendment, held that the state, of things against which it was proposed to guard would not arise, but this statement did not
  1902
  get over the fact that what had happened in the past was likely to occur again.
  MR. CHARLES LEWISrose to Order. The right hon. Gentleman was in Committee making a speech which would have alone been appropriate on the Motion for the second reading of the Bill.
  THE CHAIRMANruled that the right hon. Gentleman was perfectly in Order.
  MR. LOWEsaid, it was clear that the hon. and learned Gentleman who interrupted him did not understand the question, which was, whether Parliament should or should not exclude from the operation of the present Bill certain officers who were not affected in any way by the abolition of Purchase. This was an entirely new question, and its discussion necessitated the examination of certain general considerations connected with the measure. Under the existing law, transactions such as those referred to by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Pontefract were punishable by expulsion from the Service, and the Secretary of State for War proposed to legalize such proceedings, meeting the objections made on the score that it would re-enact Purchase with the observation that the state of things so strongly feared would not arise. Let them not force this iniquity upon young men, who were free from the system of Purchase, who never had anything to do with it, and who, unless the House insisted upon breaking down this salutary bulwark, would never have anything to do with it. He was told that the promotions for merit in the Army amounted to some 2 per cent—so small an amount that, as a mathematician would say, it might be neglected altogether; and therefore, after paying an enormous sum to get rid of Purchase, we had not got what we paid for, and meant to have, we had got not a service of promotion, but a service of seniority, and now this vagary of the Commission was taken advantage of in order to bring back in its full effect and integrity the system of buying officers out by bonus and by contributions. Although we had got a seniority service, that service was encumbered and disgraced by a great many of the incidents of the Purchase system. How long it would be before we came to Purchase pure and simple

  1903
  no one could say; if things remained in the present train come it would; so he thought they were justified in asking the Secretary for War to have a little mercy upon the young officers who had been trained up to look to other and better things, and not to insist upon bringing back upon them all the old incidents of buying, selling, dealing, trucking, and huckstering in commissions.
  MR. J. S. HARDYopposed the Amendment, remarking that it seemed to have been assumed as a fact that the present system of exchanges in the Army was satisfactory. He, on the other hand, thought it utterly indefensible. It was a thoroughly weak system, and acted unjustly. Under it the middle-class man with £100 or £200 at his banker's, might be relieved from the competition of the richer man bidding against him; but the really poor man might be left to rot in India or to submit to any misfortune that might happen. It seemed to him that there were only two courses to be adopted—either they must allow unrestricted exchanges, or prohibit them altogether, leaving any arrangement of the kind which might be absolutely necessary to be made by means of a payment by the War Office, and not by the officer. The latter plan would involve a charge upon the country which hon. Gentlemen opposite were not likely to approve, while it would also greatly interfere with the convenience of the officers, and, for his own part, he should support the Bill.
  MR. PERCY WYNDHAMremarked that it was too late for hon. and right hon. Gentlemen opposite to bring forward such arguments against the Bill as they now advanced, considering the manner in which they dealt with this question when they were in power. Did they say that exchanges were beneficial to the service, and that therefore they ought to be made at the expense of the country? No; their economy prevented them from taking this course, and they threw the cost of an exchange on one of the parties making the exchange, reserving a right to limit the amount given. The whole of their objections to the Bill and their reasons for supporting the Amendment, arose from their opinion that an exchange for 5s. was a moral transaction, but that one for which 7s. 6d. was paid must be condemned.
  MR. A. H. BROWNdeprecated legislation in favour of the rich only, adding that no money would ever be required to induce British officers to encounter danger.
  MR. GLADSTONE: Mr. Raikes—I have not, Sir, been eager to take a part in the discussions on this Bill; on the contrary, I have been exceedingly desirous to avoid it. I have a great dread of reactionary measures in general, and I was in hopes that the experience of last year upon another measure would have conveyed a warning to the minds of Her Majesty's Government. But on this occasion my hon. Friend the Member for the Border Burghs (Mr. Trevelyan) has given us an opportunity, for which I, for one, feel much indebted to him, of meeting the Government and doing all we can to procure what would be, upon the whole, a not unreasonable, and what would almost promise to be a reasonable, settlement of this question. Sir, I must here refer to words I have heard. A sentiment has been expressed by a Gentleman who has had the benefit, I think, of a few months' experience in this House, and who announced, on the part of the majority of this House, that they were determined to carry through this Bill exactly as it stood. Well, Sir, I trust the very last thing for which a Liberal Opposition will be known in future times will be a resort to factious resistance; and there cannot be the smallest doubt of the power of the majority to carry out their threat, and, as the field of discussion is a limited field, of their power to carry out their threat within a very moderate time. But a settlement such as this, in so far as it is a settlement at all, is a settlement due to the humour of the day. It is founded, not upon an appeal to the general reason, but upon the possession of a majority, which, as it came into existence upon a certain occasion, may upon some other occasion in the future cease to exist. So far as all reasonable concessions are intended and are desired, in order to meet the grievances of individuals, there is every disposition on our part to be parties to them, even if we do not take the same view of those grievances as has been taken by hon. Gentlemen opposite. But this I must say, that if, after the enormous sacrifices the country has been called upon to make with a view to the abolition of

  1905
  Purchase, practices are to be introduced which rest upon essentially the same foundation, which differ in principle though not in name from Purchase, which the Secretary for War disapproves, and the re-introduction of which I feel perfectly confident he will do his best to resist, and practices which, as we believe, will infallibly draw after them, probably by a series of changes, according to the insidious nature of the motives you are now asked to bring into action all that is essentially contained in the system of Purchase—I must say, for one, it is impossible to regard such a settlement as that as a permanent settlement; and those who avail themselves of the majority of the moment for the purpose of pushing on a measure so remarkable in distinct, although only partial, derogation of the great measure of 1871, must not be surprised if, at some future time, the measure with which they measure is meted out to them. I am not going to refer, in the name of boon and privilege, to that which I believe it to be, the bane and mischief of the future of the officers of the Army; but hon. Members must not be surprised if, upon public grounds, it shall be hereafter disavowed and withdrawn, even as upon grounds, I think not public, it is commended to this House. I give the fullest credit to the right hon. Gentleman the Secretary for War for his intentions in this matter. I give him the same credit as I gave to those from whom I may have differed in opinion, and who were my Colleagues in the service of the Crown. It is not, however, integrity and uprightness of intention which will suffice to counteract and neutralize the subtle, vigilant, incessant action of those personal motives besetting him in every form and at every point which we are now going to set in motion. Well, Sir, what did the right hon. Gentleman tell us? I wish to show how completely my hon. Friend the Member for the Border Burghs meets the reasonable—the not unreasonable—demands of this case. The right hon. Gentleman has stated it is behind the shield of the Commission he seeks shelter. Now, how far does the shield of the Commission avail him? For what purpose was the Commission appointed? It was appointed to inquire into grievances, and into grievances entirely of a personal and pecuniary character. So
  1906
  far as the Commission recommends to us measures affecting the future policy of this country with respect to the Army, the Commission consists of three respectable, amiable, and distinguished individuals, and it consists of nothing more; because as soon as it goes into a question of future policy, it is acting entirely beyond the grounds on which it was appointed to act; and it is impossible to quote the authority of this or any Commission, except for the purpose to which it was instructed by the Crown to direct its attention. What was that purpose? It was the relief of officers from what were considered their pecuniary or their personal grievances; and all the Commissioners have said with respect to the policy of the case is this—that they are not satisfied that there will be any detriment to the Service from the re-introduction of exchanges in the manner of Purchase. That may be all very well; but it is not the question they were appointed to settle. That was not the question which the Commissioners were appointed to inquire into, and any one sitting here is as much entitled to give a judgment, and with as much authority, as these Commissioners, respecting what is detrimental to the Service. I have a great respect for the Commissioners, within the lines in which they were appointed to act. They were appointed to consider the relief and advantage of officers who were in the service at the time the Warrant for the Abolition of Purchase was issued, and who had formed certain expectations founded on long-continued practice—expectations which it has always been the habit of Parliament, even in its greatest energy of reform, to respect, and which I trust it always will be the habit of Parliament to respect. The Amendment of my hon. Friend the Member for the Border Burghs, accordingly meets the whole of the purpose for which the Commission was appointed. He grants to every officer who had obtained his commission before the 1st of November, 1871, all that is asked for in this Bill. I must say I was in hopes that upon this ground we should have been met. I am sorry to see the nature of the policy which has been pursued on the other side of the House. In every shape in which mitigation of this Bill could be suggested, it has been or it is intended to be opposed. The Government were asked to exclude field officers

  1907
  from the provisions of the Bill. This has been refused. Then the Government were asked to prohibit by statute what is called the making of purses—that is to say, to prohibit it by the only means which can be effectual. That, too, has been refused. The Government were also asked to limit these transactions within the pecuniary amount of £500, and we had an expectation of arguing that question under a shield—to use a favourite word—and under the authority of the hon. and gallant Gentleman opposite (Colonel Loyd-Lindsay), who proved last night to be somewhat less gallant than he has been on all previous occasions; but we were obliged to argue that matter on the shield of our own responsibility. That also was refused. Another proposal will be made for giving publicity to these transactions. I have a strong opinion on the subject; but I am afraid that that also is to be refused. And now my hon. Friend comes forward with this proposition and says—"Take for your officers who have a grievance everything that they demand." And if I may form a judgment from the voices which have been heard on the Government side of the House I conclude that this also is to be refused. I must here point out, as I did some eight or nine months ago, when speaking on another subject, that this is not the way to secure the stability of legislation, and that proposals so conceived and so pushed, without mitigation, with no justification practically of the grounds on which they are made, are not according to the habits, the temper in which Parliament usually acts, or according to the principles and modes of action by which the legislation of this country has become so famous. Let it be remembered how serious are the difficulties which will be set in operation by this Bill. The hon. Gentleman the Member for Eye (Mr. J. S. Hardy) who has spoken this evening in that manner which always pleases the House, and with a talent which all are glad to acknowledge, says with truth that it will be a difficult thing for the Secretary of State to determine between what regiments exchange shall be allowed, and between what regiments it shall not be allowed—whether the credit and fame of a regiment be such that an officer shall be allowed to part with it, or whether it be such that he may not be allowed to part with it. Is not that the very
  1908
  strongest reason which can possibly be conceived against a measure which allows you to bring into the field motives not in themselves legitimate—motives which will create desire for such things—motives which do not now exist, and which will place the Secretary of State in difficulties he is not placed in, and need not be placed in now? But the right hon. Gentleman has felt that he was obliged to make his choice between them. After the pressure of the questions addressed to the right hon. Gentleman last night we now clearly understand, as far as negatives can make a thing clear, that although he has told us exchanges are not to be free, the circumstance that the credit and reputation of a particular regiment enter into the price to be paid is not to be a reason for refusing an exchange. If I am wrong I hope I shall be contradicted at once; but I have no doubt I am right. Indeed, it was impossible to listen to the right hon. Gentleman last night, and not to perceive that he felt the difficulty which the hon. Member for Rye has now explained to us, and that he would not undertake to lay down distinctions in principle between one regiment and another. Consequently, those regiments which are famous, and which in other respects possess the greatest advantages, are to have those advantages, whether they consist in fame and glory or not, put up to sale whenever the process of exchange can be made conducive to the transaction of such a sale. The hon. and learned Member for Marylebone (Mr. Forsyth) says all these evils already exist, and that at the present moment exchanges are made for the purpose of avoiding service in India. But nobody denies for a moment that there may be perfectly legitimate causes for desiring to avoid service in India. Causes of health, of family, and many other personal considerations may give a just personal ground for desiring to avoid service in India. And the merits of the present system is, that it affords that degree of scope and enables the Secretary of State for War and the military authorities to meet these reasonable demands. But is it because there are sometimes just reasons for wishing to avoid service in India that we are to recognize those reasons which are unjust? What we contend to be an unjust reason is this—that the possession of wealth ought not to be a ground for the

  1909
  avoidance of irksome service. Let us well understand what is this question. Nobody supposes that any officer in the British Army will ever be misled by any amount of money, or by any secondary motive whatever, in a case where honour or where danger is in question. It is not a question of dangerous service; it is not a question of flinching from the calls of honour; it is a question of the avoidance of irksome service. But that service is the greatest difficulty of a standing Army in time of peace, and most of all the difficulty of a standing Army like ours, which has to serve all over the world; and the difficulty is greatly aggravated by the constant and rapid growth of wealth in the country, and the incessantly more and more luxurious habits of society. It is idle to tell me that young men, whether in the Army or not, entertain considerable repugnance to the undertaking of irksome service if they can avoid it, and we contend that they ought not to be enabled to avoid it by means of wealth. We are not, however, urging this objection against those who have claims growing out of former expectations. Look at the evidence adduced before the Commission, and at the Report of the Commissioners. Everything they have heard and everything they have said carries up the question to this very point—that it is proposed to allow men by force of money to obtain the privilege of relief from irksome service. Now, it has been shown over and over again how hardly this will operate on those men who now, having legitimate reasons for desiring to exchange home from India or elsewhere, and having now nothing to bar their arriving at such exchanges, will be debarred in future by the competition of the wealth they do not possess. But, Sir, apart from hardship to individuals, I ask the House of Commons whether, at this time of day, it is wise, whether it is patriotic, I would almost say whether it is decent, that we should be busying ourselves with legislation to place wealth in a position of advantage as compared with talent, with character, and with service? Is, then, wealth so poor and so oppressed a thing; is it a commodity so little in request that it is totally destitute of the means of getting fair play for itself in the different ranks of life? Is this an age which is honourably
  1910
  distinguished for its indifference to the mere claims of wealth? I love not excessive privilege, whether for wealth or for anything else; but if privilege were to be introduced in favour of rank, birth, and ancient name and family, I should infinitely prefer it to the invidious, I must say the odious, task of deliberately and with our eyes open making for the service of the Queen Regulations, so that, by means of wealth apart from merit and service, a particular officer is to have an advantage over another in choosing the place where he shall serve. All this is most serious matter. These discussions, I think, need not be greatly prolonged, yet I very greatly doubt whether the question can end with discussions of a Bill conceived in such a spirit as this. The right hon. Gentleman referred to one point which I must notice. Of course, I am sorry to be compelled to touch upon topics of a general character; but as the question is whether officers of the future shall be included in the Bill, it is necessary for me to touch briefly on the leading points of the measure. If the right hon. Gentleman the Secretary of State for War were omnipotent in the case, I should not be in the slightest degree afraid of leaving the honour of the service of the country in his hands; but he has said very frankly, that by declaration he proposes to take what he thinks is a security against the practice of what is called making purses. My right hon. Friend near me proposed to deal effectually with this question by making it penal on the part of officers to concur in any arrangement contravening the law now in existence. The right hon. Gentleman rejected this suggestion, and proposes in lieu of it to proceed by way of declaration. Now, a man's declaration is only valuable with reference to what is done by himself. For example, an exchange is going to be made between two officers, A and B, who are to make a certain declaration. Such a declaration may be perfectly good as far as A and B are concerned; but this is not the point at issue. The allegation is that C, D, E, and a number of other officers will have direct inducements in many of these cases to subscribe money and enter into what will be peculiarly a pecuniary transaction, and the right hon. Gentleman proposes to prevent that proceeding, not by asking these officers—which, indeed, might be absurd—whether

  1911
  they have done so, but by asking A and B what C, D, E, and half the other letters of the Alphabet have been about. This seems like an unquestionable leaving open of the door for the introduction of the process of Purchase. There is no doubt about the nature of the objects the Commissioners have had in view. It is quite evident to those who read this portion of the Report that the adjustment of matters of pecuniary and personal grievance has been that to which they had addressed their minds. I greatly regret that they did not take into view the distinction between the officer of the past and the officer of the future. But as they have not done so, and as when they were called upon to make recommendations they made a declaration deeply involving the policy of the future, I maintain that the claim of the right hon. Gentleman to be covered by their authority entirely fails, and that the whole measure remains open to the force of these remarks which have been made from this side of the House in so many forms and with so much weight and clearness—that this is a measure tending to give undue advantage to the possession of wealth as compared with other and far higher claims upon the notice and attention of authority. Such a measure has no claim upon our respect and attention, and can promise no good either for the present or for the future of that gallant service whose honour and distinction we are always so desirous of maintaining.
  MR. GATHORNE HARDY: I rejoice, in common, I am quite sure, with the whole Committee, in hearing again the eloquent voice and the arguments of the right hon. Gentleman who has just addressed us; and before proceeding to remark upon those arguments, I must be allowed to thank him for his courtesy towards myself, and the fairness with which he admitted that I had no intention to bring about the evils we all so greatly deplore. Passing from this personal matter, I think, from what we have heard during this debate, it might be supposed we were forcing this Bill upon the House in some unheard-of manner; whereas, in the case of no Bill ever brought before the House of the same length and importance, have there been opportunities for such full discussion. The right hon. Gentleman says we have used our majority in opposing
  1912
  the various Amendments which have been proposed from the opposite side of the House? Why did we do so? Because these Amendments were every one of them in flat contradiction to the Bill I had brought forward. They were strenuously directed against the main object for which this Bill has been introduced, and against the definite terms which were introduced to meet the difficulties which were the cause of complaint. In my first statement I forestalled the objections upon many of the subjects since alluded to, and I said then, as distinctly as I said last night, that my object was that exchanges should be as free as they were in former times, though then they were illegal; that I would render that legal which was formerly illegal; but, as regards money transactions, I should make no inquiry at all. I said this at first; I repeated it afterwards. The right hon. Gentleman (Mr. Goschen), rather in the catechizing manner of a schoolmaster than that of one Member of Parliament addressing another, put a question to me in a leading form, which, if answered in the same form would have rendered me liable to misconstruction of the grossest kind, while I had really answered the question frequently in the course of these debates in a general and true form. Was it never the case in former days that all the Amendments proposed on our side of the House were rejected by an overwhelming majority? Have there not been occasions when attempts were made, not by the ordinary constitutional means, but by that force which can never be exercised constitutionally in this House, by observing perfect silence, and by refusing to discuss the arguments urged on one side, and hasten on the adoption of a particular measure? No one can say that speakers have been wanted on this side of the House to meet the arguments addressed to us on the other side. Much has been said by the right hon. Gentleman about what I said about our being under the shield of the Royal Commission. Now, nobody knows better than the right hon. Gentleman that a shield is not a complete protection to the body, and that it is not supposed to render unnecessary every other kind of armour. It is true I have adopted the arguments of the Commissioners, and believe that the system they have recommended

  1913
  would be beneficial to the exchangers, and not disadvantageous, but in many cases even beneficial to the service. But I have not only advanced under this shield, I have also in my defence used such weapons as I had a right to use, and have relied upon other arguments, as well as upon the authority of the Commission. We had been told that no great authority is due to the Commission, though they may have reported that this system would be beneficial to the Service. I should have thought men like Lord Penzance, Lord Justice James, and my right hon. Friend (Mr. Hunt) were peculiarly qualified to sit on such a Commission. They had sat on other Commissions which had considered the question, and Lord Justice James had himself been in the service. All the Commissioners were, in fact, well acquainted with it; and how was it that my Predecessor, Lord Cardwell, selected them for the purpose? At least we can claim the authority which is due to them, and I ask no more. The right hon. Gentleman says that abuse must necessarily arise from the existence of declarations. Now, the whole of our present system rests upon declarations. With respect to the Artillery and the double battalions, the Act of 49 Geo. III. does not apply, and therefore you must prosecute, not under that statute, but under the declarations. And what are these declarations? Do you suppose we shall allow them to be violated as the law was allowed to be violated in former times? Do you think we shall allow an officer to make false declarations, to violate honour and truth, and that he will not be prosecuted as he would have been under the statute of Geo. III.? The right hon. Gentleman says the declaration may be good as regards the two officers who exchange, but that other officers may be concerned by making up a purse to bring about the exchange. But does not the right hon. Gentleman see how the purse will be used? It must be made for the purpose of being paid to A or B, or else it is of no use at all. I say, therefore, if A can come forward and say—"I have received no money from my juniors in the regiment to exchange," and if B can say—" I am not cognizant of any money passing in this transaction, except the money paid by myself," such a declaration will be just as efficacious as the declaration
  1914
  made in the present instance. Is it not remarkable that the right hon. Gentleman should now support a proposal which would divide the Army into two classes of officers, and should tell us that this would not be an unreasonable solution of the question? What! Not an unreasonable solution of the question if it leads to the evil consequences which the right hon. Gentleman apprehends, and if we are putting the great majority of the Army into a position in which abuses must spring up which will bring back Purchase? Now, if this thing were not right in itself—if it were not as right for both parts of the Army as it is for one part—I should not advocate it; and I do not envy the feelings of hon. Members opposite who, having opposed every part of this Bill at every stage as a thing so horrible in itself that they would never assent to it, now say it would not be an unreasonable solution of the question to divide the officers of the Army into two classes. I pass now from the right hon. Gentleman (Mr. Gladstone) and come to the right hon. Member for the University of London (Mr. Lowe). What shall I say of the way in which that right hon. Gentleman has spoken of men who availed themselves of this system of exchanges in former days? He spoke of bartering and huckstering and trafficking in the prestige of a regiment. Let the right hon. Gentleman turn to the hon. and gallant Member for Sunderland (Sir Henry Havelock), and ask him who had huckstered and bartered and trafficked in the prestige of their regiment. Who are the brokers, and traffickers, and tricksters to whom the right hon. Gentleman referred? I think I see another hon. and gallant Gentleman opposite who in his time has been an exchanger, and who no doubt has paid or been paid for exchanging. Is he one of the barterers and tricksters—[An hon. MEMBER: Hucksters!]—whom the right hon. Gentleman is so anxious to exclude from the Army? I must leave those who make such charges to settle the matter with this gallant and distinguished profession, and to justify the taunts and sneers which are levelled against it in so unceremonious a manner. The right hon. Gentleman seemed to represent that among the officers of the Army there was no sense of faith, or truth, or honour; that they were ready to part

  1915
  with the honour of their regiments. Let the right hon. Gentleman settle that with the Army and with the Commissioners. The right hon. Gentleman has intimated that there were officers in the Army who sought to excuse themselves from participation in irksome and dangerous duty by resorting to money payments. An argument on the other side was founded upon the assumption that there was a right on the part of the officers to exchange, and that we were going to make it an absolute right, without any control whatever. What I said to the right hon. Gentleman (Mr. Goschen) was—"You know as well as I do there is no such 'right.' "I avoided the trap which seemed to be laid that I might fall into an expression used by the right hon. Gentleman, and afterwards find it perverted into an expression to be used against myself. We have heard a great deal during the debate of money which would pass in these transactions, and the supposed degrading element of money has been much dwelt upon. From which side of the House did these expressions proceed? The right hon. Gentleman (Mr. Goschen) began his speech with money, the middle of it was money, and the conclusion money. It was from that side of the House, not from this, that these constant controversies about money arose. I ask, in what do we differ from our Predecessors? What was the ground upon which Lord Cardwell sanctioned exchanges in the future? Upon the ground of personal convenience. Yet this is the thing which has been condemned over and over again by the right hon. Gentleman. It was on the ground of personal convenience that exchanges have been made; it is on that ground that they are to be continued. Now, I listened to the speech of the hon. Member for the Border Burghs (Mr. Trevelyan) with the greatest pleasure, because it was a speech addressed calmly and coolly to our understanding and our reason, and did not fall under the head of appeals to that prejudice and passion which have been so characteristic of the speeches from the other side. The hon. Member for the Border Burghs seemed to say I had a very pleasant task before me—the task left me by my Predecessor. He says that my Predecessor made the officers' profession a profession of work, and that it will be for me to teach them how to
  1916
  live. I would like to know what particular act of my Predecessor has made the profession a profession of work more than it was a profession of work before. I would like to know what is that particular thing done by my Predecessor, on which the hon. Member for the Border Burghs can lay his finger, which has exalted the profession of arms from the slough of idleness and uselessness to the noble position of a profession of work. I say that no distinction of that kind can be made between the Army as it was before and as it is now. But as for the other point, I quite admit there are many difficulties in the way of making officers live by their profession, and I must say it is not from below the Gangway opposite that I look for assistance whereby they may be enabled to live. There has been no great desire hitherto on the part of hon. Gentlemen opposite to pay British officers excessively; but I am sure the hon. Member for the Border Burghs will be glad that they should be paid, not an excessive, but a reasonable remuneration. When the hon. Gentleman tells me that I shall have to reduce their expenses and increase their pay, I hope if I live long enough I may be able to do something in that way; but I should tremble if I were to depend for my success on what was done by my Predecessor, for if my Predecessor has left me that work to do he has left me nothing wherewith to do it. Then there is another argument, and one of wider scope, which has been used by the hon. Gentleman. He says that by this Bill we have violated the understanding on which officers have entered the service under the Royal Warrant of 1871. Well, is it to be contended that Royal Warrants are not to be changed, no matter what may be the pressure of circumstances? And, if they are to be changed, is it to be admitted that this is to be done without giving officers any compensation? If the hon. Member means that, he broaches a very dangerous doctrine, because the moment you touch a Royal Warrant you touch a question of contract under which every officer in the Army entered. And now I have to say I am not prepared to accept this Amendment. I am not prepared to divide the officers of the Army into two classes—one class enjoying a freedom of exchange from which the other shall be debarred. The hon.

  1917
  and learned Member for Oxford (Sir William Harcourt) would debar from exchange all those officers who have come in since 1871. Well, that is an intelligible proposition. I have always said so. On the other hand, I assume that the hon. Member for the Border Burghs means them to come in under the present system of exchanges—that is, under the Warrant made since they came in. I have been told to distinguish between the condition of things under the existing Warrant and that which I am about to produce; but I cannot consent to make so invidious a distinction. It is perfectly true the rich man has an advantage, because a large sum may have to be paid; but in cases where there are children and governesses to be taken into account I do not see how that is to be avoided. But when the right hon. Gentleman opposite speaks with contempt of the declarations which may be made hereafter he throws considerable doubt on the declarations made at present. For my part, I am not inclined to throw doubt on those declarations. I trust in the integrity and honour of British officers. I am aware of the responsibility I undertake, but I will say this—trusting as I do to the integrity and honour of the British officer, if I find that integrity and that honour violated, I will then be as severe as I am now disposed to be generous.
  THE MARQUESS OF HARTINGTON: I am not disposed to prolong the debate on this Amendment after the very eloquent speeches of my right hon. Friend near me (Mr. Gladstone), and the right hon. Gentleman opposite (Mr. G. Hardy); but there were one or two things stated by the Secretary for War which I cannot altogether pass over. The right hon. Gentleman stated at the beginning of his speech that every Amendment proposed from this side of the House was hostile to the principle of the measure. The right hon. Gentleman must have forgotten the Amendment of my right hon. Friend the Member for Pontefract (Mr. Childers), which was not in the slightest degree hostile to the principle of the Bill, or to the spirit in which the right hon. Gentleman proposes to administer it. The object of my right hon. Friend the Member for Pontefract was merely to give a legislative condemnation to the practice which the right hon. Gentleman himself denounces
  1918
  —that of subscribing and making purses to enable senior officers to exchange. That Amendment cannot be described as in opposition to the principle of the Bill. Then the right hon. Gentleman stated that Lord Penzance, Lord Justice James, and the right hon. Gentleman opposite (Mr. Hunt) had been employed on other Commissions connected with the Army, and were good authorities upon Army matters. I can hardly concur in the opinion that, however good authorities they may be on Army matters, they are the best men for settling the future policy of the Army. I do not think that a Commission composed of a couple of lawyers and a county Member is the best Commission we could have for such a purpose. The Commission should have included some one who had been connected with the administration of the Army; but this Commission was of a purely judicial character; and it never seems to have occurred to my noble Friend (Lord Cardwell), when he appointed those Commissioners, that they would do nothing else than report whether, if the officers' grievances were well founded, compensation ought to be awarded to them. I do think the Commission did somewhat exceed the scope of their instructions when, finding it not desirable to award any pecuniary compensation on account of exchanges, they took it upon themselves to recommend that payment for exchanges should be restored. The right hon. Gentleman has said that the declaration of officers was the only thing on which we had now to rely. That is very dangerous ground to proceed upon. I would be the last person to say a word that would be offensive to any officer. But we know that declarations of the most stringent kind could not be enforced during the existence of the purchase system, and, notwithstanding those declarations, that over-regulation prices had grown up was a matter of perfect notoriety. We know, and the right hon. Gentleman knows, these things, and yet he proposes to rely on declarations. No doubt, to a great extent we rely on declarations at this moment. I do not wish—and I do not know any one on this side who wishes—to contend that the present is a perfect system. If the right hon. Gentleman can recommend any improvement let him do so by all means. What is the declaration

  1919
  which an officer is required to make? Is it that he has not done something condemned by law? But what the right hon. Gentleman is going to substitute is that he has not done something contrary to the Regulations the right hon. Gentleman is going to lay down. My right hon Friend the Member for Pontefract did attempt to make illegal this practice of subscribing a bonus, and making up a purse to enable senior officers to exchange. But is there no difference between requiring an officer to declare he has paid nothing whatever except certain sums specified in the Schedule, and making it illegal to do so? Parliament tells the officer up to this time that his position is not to be obtained by any pecuniary compensation whatever. In future you are going to tell him that on certain conditions his position may be bought. You are now about to do what our Predecessors attempted when they laid down the regulation system, and over-regulation prices were the result. It is true, as has been stated, that General Havelock and other distinguished officers were obliged to sell their commissions—but what compelled them to do so? It was the purchase system; that purchase system which hon. Gentlemen opposite did so much to oppose the abolition of. It was impossible for a poor officer under that system to get on at all, except by the practice of exchanging for money; and, naturally, officers who wished to rise in their profession would take every chance that was left open to them to do so. But is it not a very different thing that an officer who has obtained by good fortune a commission in a privileged regiment of great prestige should barter the prestige of that regiment for a sum of money? I do not think that the conduct of officers in past time was deserving of the indignation of the right hon. Gentleman opposite. The right hon. Gentleman, referring to the speech of my right hon. Friend the Member for the City of London (Mr. Goschen), says that it began with money, continued with money, and ended with money; and the same charge was made last night against my right hon. Friend by the hon. and gallant Member for Westminster (Sir Charles Russell). But Sir, is it our fault or the fault of hon. and right hon. Gentlemen opposite that a word is brought into this discussion
  1920
  that some of us regard as lying at the very root of the matter. The right hon. Gentleman opposite does not get rid of the money consideration by saying that he will not know anything about it. He does not, he cannot, deny that it is a question of money. The right hon. Gentleman seems to suppose that because he does not wish or intend to know anything about the sums of money which will pass between officers, he can by that easy process get rid of this as a question of money altogether. We have listened to speeches in which sordid considerations for exchanges was referred to; but we have also read the Report of the Commissioners and the evidence of gallant officers who were examined, and we find that the beginning of their evidence was money, the continuation of it was money, and the ending of it was money. And, Sir, if we find that pecuniary considerations occupy so large a space in the minds of gallant officers, to meet whose grievance the Bill was introduced, is it our fault, or is it the fault of right hon. Gentlemen opposite, that we have been obliged to call the attention of the House to the pecuniary consideration which the right hon. Gentleman thinks he can dispose of so readily? With respect to the Amendment of my hon. Friend (Mr. Trevelyan) I have not heard from the right hon. Gentleman any reason for refusing to accept it. The right hon. Gentleman says he thinks the measure right in itself, and equally applicable to one class of officers as another. We, on the other hand, think that the Bill is not right in itself, and, that although there may be some degree of palliation for it in the case of officers who entered under the Purchase system, who paid large sums for the position they hold, and who have been deprived of certain pecuniary privileges, we hold that there is no shadow of reason for re-establishing the system in the case of officers who entered the Army without any pecuniary intervention at all. The right hon. Gentleman has shown no ground for extending this system. Has any officer been examined by the Commissioners who has entered the Army since the abolition of Purchase; or have the officers themselves proved that there is any difficulty in effecting the necessary exchanges; is there any scrap of evidence that they themselves

  1921
  wish to have the system extended? Even if there were any such evidence I would ask what claim have the officers for any such provision? It was admitted last night that the privilege of possessing a commission in one regiment would show a distinct pecuniary value as compared with a commission in another regiment. Appointments are made to the Guards and to other distinguished regiments by the favour of the Commander-in-Chief, or of the colonels of those regiments; and it cannot be denied that, under these circumstances, the commissions of these officers, as compared with those of other officers, will possess a pecuniary value. The right hon. Gentleman says that no officer is entitled to exchange from those regiments; but he has not stated that he will impose any difficulty whatever in the way of such exchanges; and the result of the Bill will be that a young officer appointed to a certain regiment by the favour of the Commander-in-Chief, or of the colonel, will on the day that he obtains his commission become possessed of a valuable commodity, for which he has paid nothing, but with which he may part for a pecuniary consideration. The right hon. Gentleman was extremely indignant last night because we ventured to doubt whether this Bill would not restore Purchase. Well, I say that the effect of the Bill will be, contrary to the wish of the right hon. Gentleman, to restore something very like it; and not only that, but it will actually establish a new purchase system. I maintain that no answer has yet been given to the speech of my right hon. Friend the Member for the University of London (Mr. Lowe) on the first night of the debate, in which he challenged hon. Gentlemen opposite to show a distinction in principle between buying a commission for a sum of money and exchanging in consideration of a sum of money. That is the system you are establishing, and that, not in the case of officers who entered the service under the old system of Purchase, but who joined the Army under totally different conditions, and who have no claim whatever to benefit in a pecuniary sense by the system which this Bill will set up.
  Question put, "That those words be there added."
  The Committee divided:—Ayes 168; Noes 259: Majority 91.

  AYES.

  Acland, Sir T. D.

  Harcourt, Sir W. V.

  Adam, rt. hon. W. P.

  Harrison, C.

  Anderson, G.

  Harrison, J. F.

  Ashley, hon. E. M.

  Hartington, Marq. of

  Backhouse, E.

  Havelock, Sir H.

  Balfour, Sir G.

  Herschell, F.

  Barclay, A. C.

  Hill, T. R.

  Barclay, J. W.

  Hodgson, K. D.

  Bass, M. T.

  Holms, J.

  Bazley, Sir T.

  Holms, W.

  Beaumont, Major F.

  Howard, hn. C. W. G.

  Beaumont, W. B.

  Ingram, W. J.

  Biddulph, M.

  Jackson, H. M.

  Bolckow, H. W. F.

  James, Sir H.

  Brassey, T.

  James, W. H.

  Briggs, W. E.

  Jenkins, D. J.

  Bright, rt. hon. J.

  Johnstone, Sir H.

  Bristowe, S. B.

  Kay-Shuttleworth. U. J.

  Brogden, A.

  Brown, A. H.

  Kensington, Lord

  Burt, T.

  Kinnaird, hon. A. F.

  Cameron, C.

  Knatchbull-Hugessen. rt. hon. E.

  Campbell-Bannerman, H.

  Laing, S.

  Carter, R. M.

  Lawrence, Sir J. C.

  Cartwright, W. C.

  Lawson, Sir W.

  Cavendish, Lord F. C.

  Leatham, E. A.

  Cavendish, Lord G.

  Leeman, G.

  Chadwick, D.

  Lefevre, G. J. S.

  Chambers, Sir T.

  Leith, J. F.

  Childers, rt. hon. H.

  Locke, J.

  Clarke, J. C.

  Lowe, rt. hon. R.

  Clifford, C. C.

  Lubbock, Sir J.

  Colebrooke, Sir T. E.

  Lusk, Sir A.

  Collins, E.

  Macdonald, A.

  Conyngham, Lord F.

  Macgregor, D.

  Corbett, J.

  Mackintosh, C. F.

  Cowan, J.

  M'Arthur, A.

  Cowen, J.

  M'Kenna, Sir J. N.

  Cowper, hon. H. F.

  M'Lagan, P.

  Cross, J. K.

  Maitland, J.

  Dalway, M. R.

  Marjoribanks, Sir D. C.

  Davies, D.

  Marling, S. S.

  Davies, R.

  Massey, rt. hon. W. N.

  Dilke, Sir C. W.

  Monk, Sir A. E.

  Dillwyn, L. L.

  Monk, C. J.

  Dixon, G.

  Montagu, rt. hn. Lord R.

  Dodds, J.

  Moore, A.

  Dodson, rt. hon. J. G.

  Morley, S.

  Dunbar, T.

  Muntz, P. H.

  Dundas, J. C.

  Noel, E.

  Earp, T.

  Norwood, C. M.

  Egerton, Adm. hon. F.

  O'Conor, D. M.

  Errington, G.

  O'Conor Don, The

  Evans, T. W.

  Palmer, C. M.

  Eyton, P. E.

  Pease, J. W.

  Fawcett, H.

  Peel, A. W.

  Ferguson, R.

  Pender, J.

  Fitzmaurice, Lord E.

  Pennington, F.

  Fletcher, I.

  Perkins, Sir F.

  Fordyce, W. D.

  Philips, R. N.

  Forster, Sir C.

  Playfair, rt. hon. L.

  Forster, rt. hon. W. E.

  Price, W. E.

  Gladstone, rt. hn. W. E.

  Ramsay, J.

  Gladstone, W. H.

  Rashleigh, Sir C.

  Goldsmid, J.

  Rathbone, W.

  Goschen, rt. hon. G. J.

  Reed, E. J.

  Gourley, E. T.

  Richard, H.

  Gower, hon. E. F. L.

  Robertson, H.

  Grieve, J. J.

  Russell, Lord A.

  Hankey, T.

  St. Aubyn, Sir J.

  1923

  Samuelson, B.

  Tracy, hon. C. E. D. Hanbury-

  Shaw, R.

  Sheil, E.

  Villiers, rt. hon. C. P.

  Sheridan, H. B.

  Vivian, A. P.

  Sherriff, A. C.

  Vivian, H. H.

  Simon, Mr. Serjeant

  Walter, J.

  Smith, E.

  Watkin, Sir E. W.

  Stansfeld, rt. hon. J.

  Weguelin, T. M.

  Stanton, A. J.

  Whitbread, S.

  Stevenson, J. C.

  Whitwell, J.

  Stuart, Colonel

  Williams, W.

  Swanston, A.

  Wilson, Sir M.

  Taylor, D.

  Yeaman, J.

  Taylor, P. A.

  Young, A. W.

  Temple, rt. hon. W. Cowper-

  TELLERS.

  Hayter, A. D.

  Tillett, J. H.

  Trevelyan, G. O.

  NOES.

  Adderley, rt. hon. Sir C.

  Dalkeith, Earl of

  Agnew, R. V.

  Dalrymple, C.

  Alexander, Colonel

  Davenport, W. B.

  Allsopp, H.

  Deakin, J. H.

  Anstruther, Sir W.

  Denison, W. E.

  Archdale, W. H.

  Dickson, Major A. G.

  Arkwright, A. P.

  Disraeli, rt. hon. B.

  Arkwright, F.

  Douglas, Sir G.

  Arkwright, R.

  Duff, R. W.

  Ashbury, J. L.

  Eaton, H. W.

  Assheton, R.

  Edmonstone, Admiral Sir W.

  Baggallay, Sir R.

  Bagge, Sir W.

  Egerton, hon. A. F.

  Balfour, A. J.

  Egerton, hon. W.

  Barrington, Viscount

  Elcho, Lord

  Bates, E.

  Elliot, Sir G.

  Bateson, Sir T.

  Elliot, G.

  Bathurst, A. A.

  Elphinstone. Sir J. D. H.

  Beach, rt. hn. Sir M. H.

  Emlyn, Viscount

  Bective, Earl of

  Eslington, Lord

  Benett-Stanford, V. F.

  Estcourt, G. B.

  Bentinck, G. C.

  Ewing, A. O.

  Bentinck, G. W. P.

  Fellowes, E.

  Beresford, Lord C.

  Fielden, J.

  Beresford, Colonel M.

  FitzGerald, rt. hn. Sir S.

  Boord, T. W.

  Floyer, J.

  Bourne, Colonel

  Forester, C. T. W.

  Bousfield, Major

  Forsyth, W.

  Bright, R.

  Freshfield, C. K.

  Brise, Colonel R.

  Gallwey, Sir W. P.

  Broadley, W. H. H.

  Gardner, J. T. Agg-

  Bruce, hon. T.

  Garnier, J. C.

  Burrell, Sir P.

  Goddard, A. L.

  Buxton, Sir R. J.

  Goldney, G.

  Callender, W. R.

  Gooch, Sir D.

  Cameron, D.

  Gordon, rt. hon. E. S.

  Campbell, C.

  Gordon, W.

  Cartwright, F.

  Gore, J. R. O.

  Cave, rt. hon. S.

  Gore, W. R. O.

  Cawley, C. E.

  Gorst, J. E.

  Cecil, Lord E. H. B. G.

  Greenall, G.

  Chapman, J.

  Gregory, G. B.

  Churchill, Lord R.

  Hall, A. W.

  Clive, hon. Col. G. W.

  Halsey, T. F.

  Cobbold, J. P.

  Hamilton, I. T.

  Cochrane, A. D. W. R. B.

  Hamilton, Lord G.

  Cordes, T.

  Hamilton, Marquess of

  Corry, hon. H. W. L.

  Hamond, C. F.

  Corry, J. P.

  Hanbury, R. W.

  Cross, rt. hon. R. A.

  Hardcastle, E.

  Cubitt, G.

  Hardy, rt. hon. G.

  Cuninghame, Sir W.

  Hardy, J. S.

  Cust, H. C.

  Hay, rt. hon. Sir J. C. D.

  1924

  Heath, R.

  Paget, R. H.

  Henley, rt. hon. J. W.

  Palk, Sir L.

  Hermon, E.

  Pateshall, E.

  Hervey, Lord A. H.

  Peel, rt. hon. Sir R.

  Hervey, Lord F.

  Pell, A.

  Hildyard, T. B. T.

  Pelly, Sir H. C.

  Hill, A. S.

  Pemberton, E. L.

  Hodgson, W. N.

  Peploe, Major

  Hogg Sir J. M.

  Percy, Earl

  Holford, J. P. G.

  Phipps, P.

  Holker, Sir J.

  Pim, Captain B.

  Holland, Sir H. T.

  Plunket, hon. D. R.

  Holmesdale, Viscount

  Polhill-Turner, Capt.

  Holt, J. M.

  Powell, W.

  Home, Captain

  Praed, C. T.

  Hood, Captain hon. A. W. A. N.

  Praed, H. B.

  Price, Captain

  Hope, A. J. B. B.

  Puleston, J. H.

  Hunt, rt. hon. G. W.

  Read, C. S.

  Isaac, S.

  Rendlesham, Lord

  Jervis, Colonel

  Ridley, M. W.

  Johnson, J. G.

  Ripley, H. W.

  Johnstone, H.

  Ritchie, C. T.

  Jolliffe, hon. S.

  Rodwell, B. B. H.

  Jones, J.

  Roebuck, J. A.

  Karslake, Sir J.

  Russell, Sir C.

  Kavanagh, A. Mac M.

  Ryder, G. R.

  Kennaway, Sir J. H.

  Sackville, S. G. S.

  Kingscote, Colonel

  Samuda, J. D'A.

  Knight, F. W.

  Sanderson, T. K.

  Knowles, T.

  Sandford, G. M. W.

  Lacon, Sir E. H. K.

  Sclater-Booth, rt. hn. G.

  Learmonth, A.

  Scott, Lord H.

  Legard, Sir C.

  Scott, M. D.

  Legh, W. J.

  Scourfield, J. H.

  Leigh, Lt.-Col. E.

  Selwin-Ibbetson, S: H. J.

  Lennox, Lord H. G.

  Leslie, J.

  Shute, General

  Lewis, C. E.

  Sidebottom, T. H.

  Lewis, O.

  Smith, F. C.

  Lindsay, Col. R. L.

  Smith, S. G.

  Lloyd, S.

  Smith, W. H.

  Lloyd, T. E.

  Smollett, P. B.

  Lopes, Sir M.

  Somerset, Lord H. R. C.

  Lorne, Marquess of

  Spinks, Mr. Serjeant

  Lowther, hon. W.

  Stanhope, hon. E.

  Lowther, J.

  Stanhope, W. T. W. S.

  Macartney, J. W. E.

  Stanley, hon. F.

  Maclver, D.

  Starkey, L. R.

  Mahon, Viscount

  Steere, L.

  Majendie, L. A.

  Stewart, M. J.

  Makins, Colonel

  Storer, G.

  Malcolm, J. W.

  Sykes, C.

  Manners, rt. hn. Lord J.

  Taylor, rt. hon. Col.

  March, Earl of

  Tennant, R.

  Marten, A. G.

  Thynne, Lord H. F.

  Mills, Sir C. H.

  Tollemache, W. F.

  Montgomerie, R.

  Torr, J.

  Montgomery, Sir G. G.

  Tremayne, J.

  Morgan, hon. F.

  Turner, C.

  Mowbray, rt. hn. J. R.

  Twells, P.

  Naghten, A. R.

  Vance, J.

  Nevill, C. W.

  Verner, E. W.

  Newdegate, C. N.

  Wait, W. K.

  Newport, Viscount

  Wallace, Sir R.

  Nolan, Captain

  Walpole, hon. F.

  North, Colonel

  Walsh, hon. A.

  Northcote, rt. hon. Sir S. H.

  Waterhouse, S.

  Watney, J.

  O'Byrne, W. R.

  Welby, W. E.

  0'Gorman, P.

  Wellesley, Captain

  O'Neill, hon. E.

  Wells, E.

  Onslow, D.

  Wethered, T. O.

  1925

  Whalley, G. H.

  Wyndham, hon. P.

  Wheelhouse, W. S. J.

  Wynn, C. W. W.

  Whitelaw, A.

  Yarmouth, Earl of

  Wilmot, Sir H.

  Yorke, hon. E.

  Wilmot, Sir J. E.

  TELLERS.

  Wolff, Sir H. D.

  Dyke, W. H.

  Woodd, B. T.

  Winn, R.

  Bill read a second time, and committed to a Select Committee.

  Clause agreed to.
  Clause 3 (Definition of Army Brokerage Acts), agreed to.
  MR. HAYTERrose to move the following new Clause:—
  (Terms of every agreement for exchange to he reported to Secretary of State.)
  "No exchange shall he made in pursuance of this Act unless the terms of the agreement entered into between or on behalf of the officers making such exchange he reported to the Secretary of State for War before the same he authorised.
  The hon. Member said that, in rising to make that Motion, he was not without hope that, even at the eleventh hour, the Government would assent to it, so that at least the country would feel that these transactions should take place in the light of day. The right hon. Gentleman said that he would take good care that no harm should be done to the officers of the regiment into which the exchange took place; but he did not, apparently, intend to look very much to the terms of the exchanges. The Bill was not a little measure. Purchase had been extinguished, and the House should be very careful how it allowed either the old system, or one like it, to grow up again. If there was any doubt whatever as to the large sums to which officers of the Guards would be entitled on the passing of this Bill, it was to be supplied in many quarters. Colonel Bateson stated that as much as £20,000 had been offered for a commission in the Life-Guards. It was certain that the four Heavy Cavalry regiments which did not go to India would acquire thereby an immense pecuniary advantage, and it was absurd that they should be allowed this to the exclusion of other regiments. If the right hon. Gentleman would accept his Amendment, it would remove much of the apprehension that was now felt, and would meet many of the Amendments which had been offered on this side of the House. He was sure that without it the whole system would crop up again, and in every mess-room exchanges would again become the universal topic of conversation, as Purchase was some time ago. He hoped the
  1926
  right hon. Gentleman would meet them half-way, and accept a Motion which would do away with a great deal of the distrust which was now felt at the operation of the Bill.
  New Clause (Mr. Hayter,) brought up, and read the first time.
  MR. GATHORNE HARDYsaid, that if the hon. and gallant Member thought that he could accept this clause he must have formed an extraordinary opinion of those debates. He stated at the outset of these discussions that he neither could nor would know anything of the money which might pass between officers exchanging. The proposal would compel him at the outset to become acquainted with the terms on which every exchange was proposed to be affected. The question had been discussed over and over again in the course of the debate, and were he to acquiesce in the Amendment he might as well drop the Bill altogether.
  SIR HENRY HAVELOCKsupported the Amendment, and denied that the right hon. Member for the City of London (Mr. Goschen) had cast any slur upon the officers of the British Army. The Secretary for War seemed to hope, by shutting his eyes to money payments, to modify in some way the transactions which would take place under this Bill. He regretted the Amendment had not been accepted, because he was sure that the Regulations which it was proposed to frame in regard to exchanges, if they were to be of any effect at all, would have to be framed in something like the spirit of the Amendment.
  MR. GOSCHENsaid, that if he supported the principle of this clause, he hoped he would not be subjected to such reflections as the Secretary for War had made in his speech, and which he believed that the right hon. Gentleman would be sorry for after. The right hon. Gentleman said that he had discussed the question from a money point of view more than any other hon. Member who had taken part in the debate, and that money formed the beginning, middle, and ending of his speech. The joke was a very good one on the part of the hon. and gallant Member for Westminster (Sir Charles Russell), but it was hardly worthy of repetition by the Secretary of State for War. What was the fact? The beginning of his

  1927
  (Mr. Goschen's) speech was composed of extracts from the Commission, the middle of it was devoted to the Report of the Commission, and the end to the Bill of the right hon. Gentleman, together with his views upon it. He thought, therefore, that the Secretary for War was hardly justified in making such a remark. The Committee might entirely rely on the statement of the right hon. Gentleman that he would be uninfluenced by the amount of money which passed; but what Members on the Liberal benches were very anxious about was, that they should be informed how the system worked. A short time after it was put in operation they would ask under what circumstances exchanges had been sanctioned, and for such information as they thought the House of Commons was entitled to ask for. For these reasons, he would support the Amendment of the Member for Bath.
  Motion made, and Question put, "That the Clause be read a second time."
  The Committee divided:—Ayes 158; Noes 254: Majority 96.
  Bill reported, without Amendment; to be read the third time upon Thursday.
  THE MARQUESS OF HARTINGTONsaid, he was not aware that there would be any further discussion on the third reading; but he presumed the right hon. Gentleman would take it at an hour when, if necessary, discussion would be practicable.
  MR. GATHORNE HARDYsaid, it would be placed second to the Artizans Dwellings Bill; but if there were any opposition, he would not bring it on at so late an hour that it could not be properly discussed.

FRIENDLY SOCIETIES BILL.
THE CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHE-QUERsaid, he would postpone the Order for going into Committee on this Bill to Monday, the 19th of April.
CONSOLIDATED FUND (£822,661 8s. 11d.) BILL.

  THIRD READING.
  Order for Third Reading read.
  LORD EDMOND FITZMAURICEwished to explain how it happened that
  1928
  he was not acquainted with the fact when he put a Question on the subject to the First Lord of the Admiralty yesterday, that £12,000 had been voted as compensation to the owners of certain boats on the Coast of Africa engaged in the pearl fisheries, which were destroyed by Her Majesty's Ship Thetis. The item had been inserted not in the Navy Estimates, but in the Civil Service Estimates, where he should never have thought of looking for it, and the discussion on it came on very late on the night of the 10th instant when there were very few Members in the House.
  MR. HUNTsaid, the Vote was placed in the Civil Service Estimates on the principle that the Department which administers a Vote should take the Vote on its Estimates.
  MR. SHAW-LEFEVREsaid, nobody could suppose that this Vote would have appeared on the Civil Service Estimates, as there was an item in the Navy Estimates for damage done by Her Majesty's vessels.
  MR. W. H. SMITHpointed out, however, that in this particular case the Vote had to be administered not by the Admiralty, but by the Foreign Office.
  And it being now twenty minutes past Six of the clock, the House suspended its Sitting.
  The House resumed its Sitting at Nine of the clock.

CURRENCY.

  MOTION FOR AN ADDRESS.
  MR. ANDERSONrose to call the attention of the House to the subject of the Currency; and to move—
  "That an humble Address be presented to Her Majesty for the appointment of a Royal Commission to inquire into the operation of the Bank Acts of 1844 and 1845."
  He remarked at the outset that after what had happened already that day, all he could hope for was an audience fit though few, and, therefore, he would confine his remarks as much as possible—
  Notice taken, that 40 Members were not present; House counted, and 40 Members being found present—
  MR. ANDERSON, proceeding, said, that when he was met by the somewhat ungracious interruption of the hon. Member for Scarborough, what he was saying was, that he was not going to make a long speech. He intended, moreover, as far as possible, to avoid figures and statistics, because it was too much the custom to overload speeches on such subjects with figures and statistics, in order, as he supposed, that the audience, if not convinced, might at least be confused. It was just two years since he brought forward this question, and he might briefly allude to what then took place, for it was possible a similar thing might occur now. He was met by that serried band of bankers which, without any formal alliance, performed all the functions of a trade union, and at once put down anything like an attack upon its monopoly. This was nothing new, and nothing they need not have expected. They remembered how the land interest had fought for the Corn Laws, the shipowners for Navigation Laws, mine-owners against mine legislation, and they knew how officers were even now fighting for their privileges; but he had been of opinion that the House was accustomed to look with suspicion on men who were known to be battling for their own interests or privileges, and he hoped it would be so now. On that occasion, however, he was also opposed by the Gentleman who was then the Chancellor of the Exchequer, and was now the Member for London University (Mr. Lowe), and he regretted that the right hon. Gentleman was not in his place, as he intended to make some strictures upon him, and had sent him word to that effect. The right hon. Gentleman treated his (Mr. Anderson's) arguments and subject with a lofty scorn quite worthy of him, and said, in effect, that there was no reason at all for an inquiry; that the principles which regulated the currency were well known; that he understood them thoroughly; and that if the matter were left to him and the Government, they would bring in a Bill to set everything right, and make that admirable Bank Act more admirable still. They waited patiently, and at last they did get a Bill, and he never saw a Bill meet with such a shout of derision as that Bill was met with. The very newspapers which had patted
  1930
  the Chancellor of the Exchequer on the back when he advocated the Bank Act, scoffed at the Bill. No one would have it. It proved that he either knew nothing about it, or that he had brought in the Bill to shelve a troublesome subject. The Bullionists would not have it, because it was founded on the theories which he (Mr. Anderson) had advocated. Those theories were, that when gold went out of the country, the trade of the country required the equivalent of that gold; that there should be an extra issue of paper money to correspond to it; that that extra issue should be based on Government security; and that the profits upon it should belong not to the Bank, but to the Exchequer. These formed the basis of the Bill. But although it was founded on correct principles, these were adopted in such a manner as to be utterly impracticable and unworkable, and it almost seemed as if this were done intentionally. The Bill, in fact, seemed framed as a mockery to that suffering trade it was intended to relieve. The first provision was, that there should be no relief till the discount rate had risen to 12 per cent. which was 2 per cent higher than it had ever been before, and therefore a worse panic than ever before. The next condition was that the existing note issues should have become "ineffective through panic." But in no panic had any note issues even been ineffective. Panics made notes more effective, and in our previous panics the difficulty as to notes had only been to get plenty of them, or, indeed, to get any at all; but even if bank notes did become ineffective in a panic, it was very difficult to see how a farther issue would make them more effective. He had heard it said that this part of the Bill meant not ineffective through panic, but scarcity of notes through hoarding; but he could not think that a man with such a command of language as the right hon. Gentleman, could have used words which expressed a meaning so very different from that which was in his mind. Much more likely was it that the condition was intended for nothing else than to delay the coming into operation of the Act until the Greek Kalends. The next condition was that the foreign exchanges should be favourable to this country, and as it was not said what foreign exchanges, it might

  1931
  be supposed that all foreign exchanges were meant. But as soon as these foreign exchanges were favourable to this country, the panic was over, and so it was only after the disease had run its course, and the patient was on the fair way to recovery, that the State doctor was called in with his patent paper medicine, and took the credit of the cure, which would have been very well effected without his assistance. The next condition was that the profit should go to the Exchequer; but the mode in which this was proposed to be arranged for was just as impracticable as the rest. The Treasury was to get the 12 per cent. and it was to pay back to the Bank just 2 per cent for the trouble and risk of the discount. The result of this would have been that the bank managers would simply have declined to do business. They would have been manifest fools to do business on such terms. They would have acted in such a case just as they did in 1866. On that occasion they got a letter on the very terms provided for by the Bill, and instead of increasing their issue, and allaying the panic, they kept the letter carefully in their drawers, the result being that they were enabled to keep the rate at 10 per cent for a period of three months. A Bill for amending in such a way was either an insult to the understanding, or a mockery of the troubles of trade. The only glimmering of discretion that the right hon. Gentleman did show was in never venturing to bring the Bill up for discussion. Ultimately, the Bill bantling was exposed and deserted, and left to die of neglect. However, he (Mr. Anderson) met with other opposition. The Times was good enough to denounce him, and it admitted a letter signed "J. G. Hubbard," written, he believed, by a Gentleman who was now a Member of the House, and who he hoped was present to-night, for he believed he was considered a considerable authority in the City. That Gentleman commenced his letter by denouncing all currency reformers as people who wanted to eat their cake and have their cake, and he finished up a long letter by giving his own remedy, which was the issue of Exchequer notes. He now asked, passing over the respective merits of bank and Exchequer notes as regarded curing panics, where was the difference between them as regarded the eating
  1932
  their cake and having their cake? To have been consistent, he ought to have insisted on the withdrawal of all notes, and the return to bullion pure and simple. That was the high Toryism of currency, which would make the currency the master of trade instead of its servant. He did not wish now to defend or advocate his own particular views. In some places they had been misunderstood, and in others they had been misrepresented; but he wished at present only to argue for inquiry, and the ignorance or haziness of idea which he had shown to exist on the part of a Chancellor of the Exchequer and other authorities he considered a strong reason for inquiry. He would give other reasons. There had been no inquiry since 1848, and yet there had been many events to call for an inquiry. The French had since then inquired into our system, and at the close, instead of adopting our system, they adopted a free system, by which they had been able to keep up their stock of gold when ours failed, and to keep down their discount rate when ours rose, and to avoid panics. Then, moreover, the French had come through the trouble of an exhaustive war and an enormous money fine, and they came through it, too, comparatively scatheless. Surely it was time we knew the reason for their doing this while we fall into a state of collapse if gold to even a hundredth part of the French fine left the country. That was a fact which ought to be enough to prove the necessity for inquiry; but, again, we had had the crisis of 1873 since then, and on that there was a great deal of difference of opinion. The bullionist party said we should have had a panic but for the Bank Act. The currency reformers said that but for the Bank Act they would have had no 9 per cent and no crisis. Our commerce was then sound, and our work plentiful, and the only cause of the crisis was that a foreign nation wanted to buy a little of our gold. £4,000,000 left the Bank, but £1,000,000 went to Scotland, another to the counties, and so only £2,000,000 left the country—the result of this being that money rose from 3 to 9 per cent in three weeks, and that every trade we had was threatened with collapse, and fell into a state of prostration, from which even now they had hardly recovered. But the country was

  1933
  not poorer. Even the bullionist Times admitted that. It said that if the foreigners had not given something more valuable, the gold would not have gone. Even if the money had been sunk in the sea, it was inconceivable that it could have produced such an effect in a healthy state of matters; but that there was no scarcity of capital was shown by the fact that within a month Russia came with a demand for a small loan of £8,000,000 or £10,000,000, and our bullionists offered them £80,000,000. Very soon the rate was down again at 2½ per cent—and why? Not because our high rate attracted gold—because little gold came to the country—but because the paralyzation of our whole trade made home capital no longer needed. The bullionist party said the 9 per cent was only the natural result of supply and demand. He denied that it was natural demand and supply, but in a forestalled market, and unless the country was prepared to say that credit trade was bad, and ought to be put down; it was very questionable policy to have money laws which enabled all the lenders to make a raid every now and then on all the borrowers, blackmail them, and strip them bare. It was not the mere 9 or 10 per cent discount rate that formed the plunder, but that in a crisis all sorts of property and merchandize and stocks, except gold, became immensely depreciated, and then owners of gold stepped in and bought everything at half value. There was another good reason for inquiry. It was that the American system of bank notes had been established since the last inquiry. They were called inconvertible notes, and it seemed to be thought that there was something discreditable in that. He was well aware there was a party who wanted to overthrow the National Bank system of America. Of that party he would say—
  "O fortunatos nimium, si sua bona norint."
  They had the best currency in the world, and did not know it. It had one fault, one serious defect—it was rigidly inelastic, and instead of trying to cure that fault, they were going to throw the whole thing away, and return to specie payments and free banking, by which they meant the right to any one to issue notes. If America attempted to resume specie payments, he believed she would have the same troubles which befel this country between 1819 and 1825, and
  1934
  she would only accomplish it at the expense of a crippled trade; and, on the other hand, if she adopted free issues, she would have mushroom banks and a bogus currency. They had other good reasons at home for inquiry, because a doubt had been raised as to whether the gold in the Issue Department of the Bank of England was absolutely held as against the issue of notes. The public always believed so, but the hon. Baronet (Sir John Lubbock) had greatly shaken this faith by saying that in the event of an extremity, the Bank of England would interfere with the gold in the Issue Department, and would be right to do so. Under these circumstances, it was time for the House to consider how far it was safe to leave the Issue Department of the Bank of England any longer under the control of the Bank's Directors. Another reason for inquiry was that they had a Committee of the House of Lords and a Committee of the House of Commons on the question of the Bank Act in 1848, and these two Committees came to absolutely opposite decisions, and no inquiry at all had been held since 1857. There was yet another reason for inquiry. Germany had lately changed her standard from silver to gold, and this had done this country great injury, and was calculated to do still more in the future. The loose ideas which prevailed in many quarters on this subject was also an additional cause for the inquiry he asked. Bullionists said the Bank Act was merely intended to secure the convertibility of the bank note, and that it had succeeded. Now, that was only a secondary object of the Bank Act; but they ignored all the principal objects which had ignominiously failed, and they paraded convertibility as a success; but he denied that the Bank Act insured the convertibility of the bank note; that convertibility had only been secured on three occasions by setting the Act aside. It would therefore be far fairer to say that the Bank Act put the convertibility of the bank note into hazard. Even admitting that it did secure its convertibility, he contended that they paid a great deal too much for it. They might pay too much for a good thing, and it was paying too much to secure the convertibility of the bank note only by destroying the convertibility of everything else in the country. On occasions of panic our

  1935
  commerce collapsed, our mills were stopped, ships rotted in the docks, and our workpeople starved, and all for what? Why, merely that they might avoid a depreciation of 5 or 6 per cent in the paper currency. People did not seem to understand what the convertibility was, for which they had to suffer such sacrifices. It was not a question of good or bad notes; it was a question between notes instantly convertible and notes ultimately convertible. In conclusion, he urged upon the Government the necessity of having a full and proper inquiry. Do not let them have the miserable thing they had two years ago. The country wanted to know whether there was not something unsound in a system of currency which contracted when more was needed, and expanded when less was required. The country wanted to know why France had refused to adopt our system, and had, in fact, adopted an opposite one. He asked for a Royal Commission because he had not confidence in a Committee of this House on such a subject. The difficulty was to find a Committee the Members of which had not formed some opinion on the subject. A Royal Commission would be much more likely to be independent, and therefore to arrive at a sound judgment.
  MR. MORLEY, in seconding the Motion, said, he should have been deterred from doing so if the object of the hon. Member had been to aid any particular crotchet or urge any impracticable theory upon the House in connection with this subject. The ground upon which he (Mr. Morley) ventured to press upon the Chancellor of the Exchequer to yield to the suggestion conveyed in this proposal was, that the trading classes of this country were exposed constantly to fluctuations which were destructive to small traders. Some hon. Members had beard with great pleasure the announcement of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, that he proposed to refer the Bill intended to prevent the Scotch banks from coming into London to a Committee for consideration. He was persuaded that he was expressing a very general feeling in the City, when he said that there would be a feeling of relief if the scotch banks were to come into London. The Scotch were confessedly the best bankers in the world. We needed more banking accommodation, and a substantial
  1936
  addition to the existing accommodation would be secured by the establishment, legally and absolutely, of the Scotch banks in London. The traders, in making this appeal to the House, were not asking for any pecuniary help. Trade was never more thoroughly sound or more based on capital, than it was now. The most intelligent part of the trading class believed that there was more danger in low rates of money than in high rates. The Bank of England, being a joint-stock bank, having to provide dividends twice a-year, frequently competed with Lombard Street for the discounting of bills, when, in the interests of trade, they ought to keep the rate high rather than low. He justified the competition as a matter of trade, but deplored its mischievous tendency. The solution of one great difficulty in that matter would be, that they should have a really national establishment for the issue of their notes and circulation. There was no subject more worthy of the attention of the Chancellor of the Exchequer than that. They were not raising the question of the Act of 1844, or pushing any extreme view; but he could state, as the result of many years of trading experience in the City of London, that a large number of small traders were needlessly and periodically ruined from causes beyond their own control, and were driven out of existence by a pressure which was so excessive. What they wanted was steadiness in the rate of discount. Gold, no doubt, like every other commodity, would find its level, but no commodity varied so constantly and largely in price. On September 17, 1873, the Bank Rate was 3 per cent. On November 12, or less than two months afterwards, it was 9 per cent. It was easy to see how such violent fluctuations must affect trading operations, which often took six or nine months for their accomplishment. When they approached a period of panic, the Bank of England was impotent to help them. In 1857, the Bank was reduced to such a condition, that unless the letter of the Government had been issued, it could not possibly have paid its notes. The Minister would have deserved impeachment if he had refused to issue that letter under the circumstances. No other country in the world had been subjected as this was to those tremendous panics, and as a commercial

  1937
  nation we had been made the laughingstock in every money-market of Europe. The Chancellor of the Exchequer would confer a boon on the trading class if he acceded to the present proposal.
  Motion made, and Question proposed,
  "That an humble Address be presented to Her Majesty", praying that She will be graciously pleased to appoint a Royal Commission to inquire into the operation of the Bank Acts of 1844 and 1845."—(Mr. Anderson.)
  SIR JOSEPH M'KENNAsaid, he thought the necessity for that Motion was removed by the Notice that a Committee of that House would be moved for to-morrow. Such a Committee could better perform the duties that would devolve on it than a Royal Commission. The theory of financial panics was referrible to the state of our foreign exchanges; while the state of the exchanges was favourable to this country, no difficulty was experienced; but when the balance of trade turned against us, our margin of specie rapidly ran away, and a panic became imminent, if we kept our engagements to pay all our obligations in sterling, or in money that was convertible. The fear that we might not have in the country sufficient coin to balance our foreign exchanges was, in fact, the cause of panics; but did the hon. Member for Glasgow (Mr. Anderson) mean that we were to have money which was inconvertible? If such a principle were affirmed by the House, it would give the greatest possible shook to the trade of the world. The precious metals were the recognized medium of commerce all over the world, and we required specie to meet our obligations to other countries when the balance of trade was against us. When the balance of trade was in our favour, we paid other countries with their own bills. The Bank Acts of 1844 and 1845 were intended to make certain institutions keep margins of money in hand; and he could not see how trade and commerce, with the great expansion they had undergone since those years, could be carried on at all, unless they bad provision made that some capitalists should hold money in hand of such a nature as would enable us to discharge our debts abroad as well as at home.
  MR. J. W. BARCLAYsaid, interest was the price which was paid for the use of capital, and according to experience
  1938
  and theory, the rate of interest should depend upon the supply of capital. The loanable capital of this country was a very extraordinary sum, the deposits alone had been estimated at £600,000,000 sterling. Surely it was a very great anomaly that the withdrawal of £3,000,000 or £4,000,000 out of this £600,000,000 should so affect the price of the whole as to double the rate of interest. Recently, at a meeting of the Associated Chambers of Commerce, the feeling was strongly expressed that there ought to be an inquiry into the anomaly, by which the withdrawal of so small a quantity of gold could have such an effect upon the whole of the loanable capital of the country. So far as appeared, the panic of 1873, which raised the rate of discount from 3 to 9 per cent. might have been obviated by an increase in the stock of gold held by the Bank of England. If the Bank had had a few millions more in its coffers, there would have been no need for alarm. The question for the country was, how was it possible to increase this store of gold, so that the withdrawal of £3,000,000 or £4,000,000 might not be regarded with apprehension? If the note issue of the country, instead of being in the hands of 188 banks, were concentrated into one general bank of issue, the quantity of gold which would be required to be kept in store would be very much less than when scattered over the 188 banks. They had been told that the provisions of the Bank Act had ensured the convertibility of the notes since 1845, and it had been denied that the bank notes were ever in jeopardy. If that was the case, why had the Bank Act been suspended? The time had now come when this question of a national note issue ought to be fairly and clearly considered by the country. They were beginning to more and more understand what was the real value and service which a bank note performed; and practically, so far as currency or circulation was concerned, there was no difference whatever between a bank note and a sovereign. For all purposes of circulation, the one was really as good as the other, and the necessity for convertibility was only in order to insure that an undue amount of paper money was not put into circulation at once. The experience of the last 30

  1939
  years showed what had been the fluctuation of the currency from time to time, and what amount of gold or specie was necessary to maintain the convertibility. Looking over the expansion and contraction of the circulation of the whole country since 1845, so far as he had been able to discover, the greatest contraction which took place within a space of six months did not exceed £4,000,000 sterling. It therefore appeared, if the notes had been issued from a national Department, and if that Department had maintained in its coffers 5,000,000 of sovereigns, it could have insured the convertibility of the notes without its being necessary to realize any of the securities whatever. They ought to recognize that banking and the issue of notes should be separate, and that both could be better conducted when separate. What occurred to him as the simple remedy, not only for the circulation, but also for securing an additional store of gold in the coffers of the Bank of England, was to establish by Act of Parliament a separate Department of issue corresponding to the Mint Department, whose duty it should be to supply paper to the country in exchange for gold. The rules under which the Department was conducted could be made as stringent as those of the Mint. It would be the duty of this department to issue notes to all persons who wanted them for gold, and the law should settle what amount of gold the Department should hold for the convertibility of notes. There was a strong feeling in the country that the time had arrived when an inquiry ought to be made into our financial system, and that if the present anomalous state of things went on, great danger to our commercial prosperity was likely to arise. He, therefore, trusted that the right hon. Gentleman would consent to the appointment of the proposed Royal Commission.
  MR. J. G. HUBBARDagreed with the hon. Member for Glasgow that it was desirable, in the interest of trade and of the community, that the Bank rate of interest should fluctuate as little as possible, because commercial operations were carried on with more certainty when the rate of interest was steady. He was afraid, however, that the fluctuations in the rate of interest were beyond the control of any human being or
  1940
  of any Government, however great its power might be. He must demur to the assumption by the hon. Member for Glasgow and the hon. Member for Bristol (Mr. Morley) that trade had suffered to any great extent in consequence of those fluctuations. The House would recollect that those fluctuations had never lasted long, and that it was only for a short period during which the temporary pressure lasted that an exceptionally high rate of interest was demanded. The high rate of interest which the merchant had to pay occasionally for the money he borrowed was as nothing compared with the fluctuations in prices which were continually recurring from week to week, and from month to month. He affirmed that scarcely a house of position or of importance had failed during a commercial crisis, in consequence of its being unable to obtain the accommodation it required, provided it had good security to offer. Where the variations in the rate of interest were destructive was in cases where men had undertaken operations of an extended character at a time when the rate of interest was exceptionally low, and because neither their capital nor their credit was commensurate with their trade. The moral to be drawn from these facts was that people with little or no capital should limit their transactions accordingly, and he ventured to assert that in no case had a man failed owing to a high rate of interest who would not in all probability have failed if the rate of interest had remained stationary. In to-day's paper there was a most remark able illustration of his argument. It was that of a house which had failed for several millions, at a time when the rate of interest was only 3½ per cent. its failure having been occasioned by its engagements being infinitely beyond its capital and its deserved credit. He was ignorant of the fact that had been stated by the hon. Member for Bristol, that the Bank of England competed with other banks and discount brokers for bills, nor was it the business of the Bank of England to do so. Receiving as it did the surplus deposits of bankers and traders, it was bound to hold them with a degree of reticence that would not apply to any other bank. The hon. Member had expressed his surprise that with the enormous loan capital of this

  1941
  country the loss of two or three millions of gold should so largely affect the rate of interest; but he should not forget that the bulk of our loan capital was already out on loan, and that it was merely the small portion of it which was available for lending which was affected by the loss of the gold. The reason why this country was more subject to panics than France was because here credit was pushed and strained to its utmost degree; whereas such was not the case among our neighbours, who traded upon capital rather than upon credit. It was the knowledge of the immense operations carried through by the French and German Governments with reference to the engagements and payment of the indemnity to Germany, quite as much as the actual abstraction of gold, which necessitated some 12 months back the stringent action of the Bank of England. One feature very seldom noticed by those who criticize the Bank of England was that the Bank was not only agent of the Government in the management of the issue department, but was also a joint-stock bank, with banking business of its own. But where was the private or joint-stock bank which published its accounts from week to week? The Bank carried on business in a house of glass; everybody might see what it did. It not only published accounts of the issue department, but it published its private banking accounts. The Bank did not wish to escape criticizm; but it was an unheard-of proceeding for any bank to publish from week to week an account of its reserve and deposits. Very few banks in the country could carry on business if they were subject to such an ordeal. The hon. Member for Glasgow not only brought his Bill of Indictment against the Act of 1844, but also against certain writers in The Times who defended it. The principle on which that Act proceeded was that all issues beyond £15,000,000 must be based on gold—that when gold was carried away notes should be cancelled and the currency diminished pro tanto. The hon. Member for Glasgow said that was a very antiquated and mischievous policy—he held that when gold went away they should put something in its place, and that something was paper money. But where were they to stop in that process of substitution? The whole
  1942
  essence of the Bill of 1844 was this—at £15,000,000 they must stand. The hon. Member for Glasgow said the amount of paper issues was too small; but his argument, as a writer in The Times expressed it, amounted to this—it was trying to have your cake and eat your cake. They had not lent their gold for nothing. They got something for the gold that had been taken away. They had value received in corn, wine, cotton, foreign securities. But the hon. Member for Glasgow was not satisfied with the value received for the gold we parted with; he wished as fast as it left us to occupy its place with paper; but if they went on in this way as they had done in other countries, the convertibility of the Bank note would be lost, the value of all property would be shaken, and instead of the stability of appreciation which this country had enjoyed for so many years, they would be reduced to that deplorable state to which many Continental countries had been driven, by the unlimited issue of paper money. That was the state of things which would inevitably follow from the substitution of paper money desired by the hon. Member for Glasgow. There was a very great distinction between the issue proposed by the hon. Member for Glasgow and that proposed by the late Chancellor of the Exchequer. The hon. Member proposed to fill up with paper any gap caused by the withdrawal of gold; but the proposal of the late Chancellor of the Exchequer was the new creation of a circulating medium, for the purpose of being used at a period when our credit was internally shaken and was no longer available, and bills of exchange would no longer circulate, so that it became expedient for the Government to supply a greater amount of circulating medium for the purpose of settling the transactions of the country. He did not conceive that the operation proposed by the late Chancellor of the Exchequer could at all be an admission that the Bank Act of 1844 had broken down. On the contrary, it showed how safe in the estimation of the Government that Act must have been before they could venture to load it with the additional temporary responsibility which they proposed. His own opinion with regard to the measure of the late Chancellor of the Exchequer was that the whole question had better be left alone.

  1943
  He did not wish to see any such remedy-provided by anticipation; but if it had been provided, it would require all those safeguards by which the right hon. Gentleman's proposal was environed. With regard to the proposition of the hon. Member for Glasgow, he could not see that it was called for; and if the hon. Member would read the Reports of the inquiries which had already taken place, he would obtain an insight into the principle of the Bank Acts and the Bank of England—namely, that of limitation of credit—which would satisfy him that no further inquiry was necessary.
  SIR ANDREW LUSKsaid, he thought the hon. Member for Glasgow (Mr. Anderson) was deserving of credit for having called the attention of the House to this subject, which was one that related to the currency of the country, and, at the same time, included the question of issue by Scotch banks, and such English banks as possessed the privilege. There was no need to go into all the deeper quagmires of bank notes and such things, which no man could understand in this world or he believed in the next. There was no subject which he would rather not discuss with a man than banking matters. As far as his experience of money matters went—and he had had some experience—they were very much the same as other commercial transactions. A banking company was simply a commercial firm, established for the purpose of making money, and if we gave them the privilege of issuing notes, that was our fault, not theirs. He agreed with the right hon. Gentleman who spoke last. He had scarcely ever seen a house in the City of London which failed that did not deserve to do so. They came down because they trusted to credit, and the consequence was as we saw. He did not understand why the Government of this country should support any fictitious system of credit. He believed, however, that the Chancellor of the Exchequer would do well to grant the Commission which the hon. Member for Glasgow desired, for then people would be led to look into this affair of banking and currency. There was something in what the hon. Member had said. Things had changed a good deal since the sensible measure of Sir Robert Peel was passed; and he could wish that the Government of the day would appreciate
  1944
  the circumstances of the times as well as Sir Robert Peel had done. Sir Robert Peel had gone as far as any reasonable or intelligent man could go in his day, and there he stopped. Now, he would like to ask the right hon. Gentleman—who was an intelligent man also—why, if it was not desirable to appoint the Commission proposed by the hon. Member for Glasgow, he should not look into these matters himself, and see whether they could not be put into a better condition. The liabilities and money matters of the country were different from what they were in Sir Robert Peel's time, for the average of money that passed through the clearing house in a week was now about £100,000,000. It would be impossible to say what would happen if those who owned the money were to call it in. One thing was certain the time was come when, considering the riches of England, we ought to put an end to all private banks of issue. We ought to put all men on an equality and do away with all monopolies and privileges. It was an hallucination to think that bits of paper were money. When people wanted our gold and took it away from us, all we had to do was to give a higher price for it, and we should get all we wanted just as we should get corn, tea, or any other article. He hoped the time was coming when things would be allowed to take their natural course, and then men would not trade so much upon bank notes and regulations of currency which they misunderstood. He wished to see an end put to a system under which men stood upon crutches, when they might better stand upon their own feet.
  SIR JOHN LUBBOCKsaid, he had heard nothing during the discussion to shake his conviction that the panics of 1848, 1857, and 1866, were not due so much to the provisions of the Act of 1844 as to the fact that the operation of that Act had been completely misunderstood. It was, on the other hand, through the effect of that Act that the store of gold was maintained which ultimately brought us through those panics. The hon. Member for Glasgow (Mr. Anderson) spoke of bankers enjoying a monopoly and special privileges from the State; but out of more than 100 banks in London only four or five enjoyed any privilege from the State, and he was at a loss to see the alleged monopoly. The hon. Member said that with a paper currency when

  1945
  gold went out of the country it would be replaced by paper; but the only effect of that would be that more gold would continue to go out of the country, and at last they would have an entirely paper currency, a result which no one desired. The hon. Member for Glasgow had criticized the policy of the Bank of England. Well, there might be differences of opinion as to that policy. But the general opinion of the commercial community was, he thought, upon the whole, that the management of the Bank of England had on the whole been conducted with caution and prudence. The hon. Member for Glasgow had referred to the American system with great praise, and to the fact that in this country the rate of interest had gone as high as 9 per cent. But did the hon. Member know that in America the rate rose not to 9, but to 90 per cent. and even more? Again, the hon. Member had asserted that American notes had never been discredited; in this the hon. Member was entirely mistaken, and he entirely overlooked the panic through which America had passed within the last few months, and from the effects of which American trade and commerce had scarcely yet recovered? The hon. Gentleman, indeed, admitted that the American system had one fault—that it was not elastic. That was the greatest fault that a currency could have, and it was the elasticity of our system which accommodated it to transactions involving more than £6,000,000,000 per annum. He had great difficulty in understanding what was meant by a system of notes which would be ultimately convertible. If notes were payable at certain periods only, they became bills of exchange, and would have a different value according to the time they had to run, and therefore they would not be adapted for the purposes of currency. His hon. Friend the Member for Bristol (Mr. Morley) stated that the present system had led to a large number of failures. Now, he must say he entirely concurred with his right hon. Friend the Member for the City of London (Mr. J. G. Hubbard) and his hon. Friend the Member for Finsbury (Sir Andrew Lusk) that there had been few failures indeed which could fairly be traced or attributed to our system of currency. After all, what was the difference in the fluctuation of the rates? The rate of interest had
  1946
  reached 9 per cent. as had been stated, and within three weeks had fallen as low as 2½ per cent. and the result, said the hon. Member for Glasgow, had been to strip traders bare. He thought, indeed, that if the rate had been raised a little sooner it need not have been carried nearly so high; but, after all, they must look at the average. Now, what had the average rates been upon three months' bills? In 1868 it was £2 2s. per cent. in 1869 £3 4s., in 1870 £3 2s., in 1871 £2 18 s., and for the last two years the average was, he believed, about 4 per cent. That being the case, he could not but think that in that respect there was very little to complain of. The hon. Member for Glasgow said that to avoid the evils of which he spoke there should be a paper currency which would vary 5 or 10 per cent in value. But what did that mean? It meant that every person who had an income of £1,000 a-year, should submit to a fluctuation of, perhaps, £200 a-year, without knowing whether his income would be decreased or increased to that amount. Such fluctuations would be most inconvenient, and would strike at the very root of our commercial prosperity; and although there were questions connected with the subject which might well be considered, he could not help thinking that the present system was not open to the accusations which had been brought against it by the hon. Member for Glasgow.
  MR. HANKEYremarked that almost all the speeches which had been delivered, save, perhaps, that of his right hon. Friend the Member for the City of London (Mr. J. G. Hubbard) and the hon. Baronet the Member for Maidstone (Sir John Lubbock) had reference to the subject of banking, and not to the subject of currency. Now, what was currency? Popularly understood, the word simply meant ready money—that which everybody wanted as the substitute of barter. Messrs. Baring and Rothschild might negotiate a loan of £30,000,000, and yet there might not be a sovereign passed in the transaction. It was the duty of the Government to coin money sufficient for the daily use of the people, but there the functions of the Government were at an end. But the great requirements of the country had nothing to do with currency. The power of obtaining that which was understood as

  1947
  currency was only limited by the means at the command of the individual—it was itself practically unlimited. There must, however, be some sacrifice made to obtain it, for if they could get on without gold and silver they would be so much the richer, as they would not be deprived of the use of them for other purposes. He frankly admitted that the railroad interest alone, which was now tenfold greater than it was some years ago, demanded an enormous amount of increased currency; but that had nothing to do with the Act of 1844, or with banking. Sir Robert Peel in framing that Act by which the convertibility of bank notes should always be secured, left the Bank of England and every other bank to act as free as possible; the only tie was with regard to the issue of paper money. As to that he refused to allow any new bank to issue paper money. The right hon. Gentleman the Member for the City of London had entered so fully into the question about the Bank of England that he (Mr. Hankey) would not trouble the House with any remarks upon it.
  MR. C. PALMERsaid, that the time had now arrived when this question of the Bank Charter Act ought to form the subject of investigation. It was said that no result would follow from such an investigation; but he thought the time for it was opportune, and that such a step would, at all events, have the beneficial result of at least satisfying the minds of the trading community. In countries that were not trammelled by a Bank Act the rate of interest was even; whereas in this country it was subject to sudden fluctuations. That subject itself deserved investigation.
  MR. MUNDELLAreminded the right hon. Gentleman the Chancellor of the Exchequer that he gave Notice he would to-morrow move for a Select Committee to inquire into the question of issue, and he would suggest to him to include in that inquiry the operation of the Bank Acts of 1844 and 1845. He contended that the inquiry should be conducted not by a Select Committee, but by a Royal Commission, the Members of which could be chosen from the widest field and not merely from the House of Commons.
  THE CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUERsaid, he agreed with the hon. Gentleman who had just sat down that
  1948
  a Select Committee of that House was not likely to set at rest some of the questions which had been touched upon that night, and which were more largely discussed in other quarters in this country; but he must go a little further than the hon. Gentleman, and say that, in his belief, neither would a Royal Commission settle those questions. A short time ago a deputation from the Associated Chambers of Commerce waited upon him and requested him to lay before the Government a proposal for the appointment of a Royal Commission to discuss those various questions upon which there was so much difference of opinion and set them at rest; but when he asked those gentlemen what their views were on different points which had been raised he found there was considerable difference of opinion among them, but that they had very wisely, for the purpose of getting a Commission appointed, resolved to put their differences of opinion behind a veil and to express no opinion on many of those critical questions. They alleged that the Government should appoint a Royal Commission for the purpose of showing who was right and who was wrong. He did not know whether any being in this world or in another world could select a Commission that would satisfy everybody when they pronounced against their opinions. He was quite certain that if it were the unfortunate position of a fallible body of men like the present Government, or any Government, to have to make such a selection they would find the task an exceedingly difficult one; because they must do one of two things—they must either select a Commission which would be composed of men who were all of one colour of opinion, in which case it would be said, "Oh! this appointing of a Commission is a mere mockery," or else they would have to appoint a Commission which would contain eminent men whose views would be equally well known, but whose opinions would differ from each other. The result of such a Commission would simply be to leave matters where they stood before. There would be the usual difference of opinion, and nobody would be satisfied. Therefore, he felt that they would be doing very little good, and probably a great deal of harm, by appointing a Commission of a roving character to ascertain whether we had

  1949
  exactly the right sort of currency system, and, if not, how we were to get it. An hon. Gentleman had said—"After all, what would he the harm of having a Commission? at the worst there would only be a little time wasted in investigation." Well, in his opinion the appointment of a Commission would have a wider result than that. It would create a false impression; and, as a great deal of the mischief which everybody now complained of was the result of a false impression, it was necessary to be particularly careful in this matter. The false impression which he ventured to think lay at the root of so much evil consisted in regarding the questions of credit and currency as one, instead of regarding them as perfectly distinct. In his belief, the evils attributed to our system of currency arose mainly from an over-straining of credit. There were, no doubt, some points of friction in the system of currency itself, and he should be prepared to-morrow to show the desirableness of practically considering those evils with a view to their mitigation. But that was a very different question from entering into the large inquiry now proposed. The Government felt that if they consented to the appointment of the Commission they would be betraying their own conviction and be seeming to throw doubt upon the general soundness of the Act of 1844. Several serious occurrences had taken place since the Act of 1844, but those troubles had arisen from causes which had nothing to do with the Act of 1844 or the question of currency. They had their origin in the fact that we were carrying on an enormous and unprecedentedly large system of commerce and trade; we were the centre of the monetary transactions of the greater part of the world; we were carrying on business which required not only a large amount of fixed capital, but a large amount of disengaged and floating capital. Now, the more we could utilize our system of credit, which stood towards currency very much in the same relation as currency stood towards barter, the less loanable capital we required, and we had learnt to carry on our transactions with a much smaller amount of currency than would have been possible without the system of credit. The great increase in the amount of our transactions was in itself a proof that the Act of 1844
  1950
  had not been of a character to restrain the development of the industry and energy of the country. What he wished to point out, however, was that since we had chosen to give a great expansion to our commercial and mercantile enter-prizes by means of a large amount of credit based on a small amount of loan-able capital, the withdrawal of capital affected our financial system in a proportionately high degree. The hon. Member for Glasgow (Mr. Anderson) thought it very strange that when we wanted more money we had less, and that when we wanted less we had more. But the matter was very easily explained. When a gentleman spent a good deal, his banker's balance fell, and when he spent little, his banker's balance got up. He would not detain the House after all the discussion that had taken place; he would only express a hope that the hon. Gentleman would not feel it necessary to divide the House on the Motion as he did not think any good would result from it. He (the Chancellor of the Exchequer) objected to a Royal Commission because it would be very difficult to constitute it satisfactorily, and also because if they succeeded in doing so they would raise false notions which had much better not be raised.
  MR. SAMPSON LLOYDsaid, the Associated Chambers of Commerce had no difference of opinion as to the advisability of having an inquiry into this subject, and he believed that this inquiry might be made more easily by a Royal Commission than in any other way
  MR. ANDERSONmaintained that the inquiry on the minor question, which was to come up to-morrow, would in no way meet the end he had in view. He felt obliged to press his Motion.
  Question put.
  The House divided:—Ayes 47; Noes 133: Majority 86.

NEW FOREST—DEER REMOVAL ACT, 1851.

  MOTION FOR A SELECT COMMITTEE.
  LORD HENRY SCOTTrose to call attention to the present condition of the New Forest, particularly in respect to the operation of "The Deer Removal Act, 1851," and to move—

  1951
  "That a Select Committee be appointed 'to inquire into and report upon the present condition of affairs in the New Forest, into the operation of 'The Deer Removal Act, 1851,' and particularly into the exercise and effect of the powers of in closure given by that Act to Her Majesty's Commissioners of Woods and Forests.'"
  The noble Lord said, the effect of the operation of the Act of 1851 had been that nearly all the best land in the Forest had been enclosed; that very little would remain for the exercise of the rights of the commoners; and that the privileges of the public were seriously interfered with. Unless either the Government or the House interposed, all the rights of the commoners would be taken away, and the privileges of the public sacrificed. Before any fresh legislation on the subject was attempted, it was desirable that information upon it in all its bearings should be obtained by means of a Select Committee. The value of the rights of the commoners had never yet been ascertained, and justice required that their case should be inquired into. It was most important that the right of free user enjoyed by the public in the Forest should be preserved; and he might remark in connection with that point, that there was now awakening in the country a public feeling in respect to the inclosure of open spaces, of which they had a striking example in the case of Epping Forest.
  MR. COWPER-TEMPLEconsidered that ample grounds existed for the appointment of the Committee, and he hoped the Government would assent to the proposal. The policy under which the Act was administered tended to the destruction of the beauty and enjoyment of that great national place of recreation which could never be replaced.
  MR. W. H. SMITHsaid, that he had no objection to the appointment of the Committee. The position of matters in regard to the New Forest was certainly not satisfactory.
  Motion agreed to.
  Select Committee appointed, "to inquire into and report upon the present condition of affairs in the New Forest, into the operation of 'The Deer Removal Act, 1851,' and particularly into the exercise and effect of the powers of inclosure given by that Act."—(Lord Henry Scott.)
  And, on April 22, Committee nominated as follows:—Lord HENRY SCOTT, Mr. COWPER-TEMPLE, Mr. WILLIAM HENRY SMITH, Sir WILLIAM HARCOURT, Earl PERCY, Sir CHARLES
  1952
  DILKE, Mr. LOPES, Colonel KINGSCOTE, Lord ESLINGTON, Mr. ALEXANDER BROWN, Mr. JOHN STUART HARDY, Mr. RYDER, Mr. ERNEST NOEL, Mr. EDWARD STANHOPE, and Mr. BIDDULPH:—Power to send for persons, papers, and records; Five to be the quorum.

METROPOLIS LOCAL MANAGEMENT ACTS AMENDMENT BILL.— [BILL 38.]
(Mr. Board, Sir Charles Mills, Mr. Coope, Mr. Gordon.)
METROPOLIS LOCAL MANAGEMENT ACTS AMENDMENT BILL.— [BILL 38.]

  SECOND READING.
  Order for Second Reading read.
  MR. BOORD, in rising to move that the Bill be now read a second time, said: The object of this Bill is to remedy an anomaly in the rating of certain property within the metropolitan area, which has arisen apparently from an oversight in framing the Metropolis Local Management Act of 1855. In the outskirts of the metropolis, within the jurisdiction of the Metropolitan Board of Works, there is still a large quantity of land unbuilt upon—occupied chiefly as pasturage or market gardens—representing altogether an annual value of about £88,000, which, although fully rated to the poor rate, is entitled, under the Act of 1855, to an abatement of 75 per cent on the sewers rate levied by the Metropolitan Board of Works—or, in other words, the sewers rate can only be levied on one-fourth of the annual value of such property. There are, also, in the same area tithes of the annual value of £25,000 wholly exempt, and £1,000 partially exempt, besides railways, water companies, and cemeteries claiming total or partial exemption under the same Act; and yet the Metropolitan Board, disregarding all exemptions, issues its precepts in full to the local authorities, who are consequently compelled to increase the rating on house property in their several districts in order to make up the deficiency arising from these exemptions, which they on their part are bound to respect. More than one-half of the metropolitan parishes have no exempt property, and therefore have nothing to complain of; but, in the remainder, occupiers of house property suffer in proportion to the greater or less amount of land contained within the boundaries of their respective parishes, and it unfortunately happens that the grievance is greatest where the rates are higher and the householders poorer than in other parts. I will take one example from many, and

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  I select it from my own constituency, because I am better acquainted with the circumstances there than I am with those in other parts. In Plumstead, a parish populated almost entirely by the workmen and others employed in the Royal Arsenal, and where the rates are, or were last year, 8s. in the pound, there is land of the annual value of £18,617 and tithes £2,690, out of a total rate-able value of £254,000. The effect of the exemptions in this case is that the Local Board is obliged to levy increased rates on these poor householders in order to make up the deficiency caused by the exemptions enjoyed by land and tithes, and which are not regarded by the Metropolitan Board of Works, but must be by the local authorities. Now, having stated the nature of the grievance, I will first briefly explain how it arose, and then proceed to the remedy. When the Metropolitan Board of Works was formed under the Local Management Act of 1855, the boundaries of the metropolitan district were so defined for the purposes of that Act, as to include large tracts of land still unbuilt upon in order to anticipate the extension of the metropolis, and so avoid the constant necessity of re-adjustment which would otherwise have arisen. The basis of assessment to the metropolitan rate was made the same as the poor rate; but an abatement of 75 per cent was allowed on land to avoid the opposition that would certainly have been made to so extended a boundary by the occupiers, had it been proposed to charge them with the full amount of a rate raised for purposes from which they could derive little or no benefit. It appears, therefore, that these abatements were the consideration in return for which the Metropolitan Board were to secure a sufficiently extended boundary for their purpose; and now, having obtained all they require, they leave the suburban ratepayers to pay the cost, the result being that a householder living in these outlying districts—who, in the majority of cases, is a poor man—has actually to pay more in proportion towards metropolitan improvements, the benefits of which hardly reach his remote neighbourhood, than a rich inhabitant of a central district where there is no exempted property. The remedy proposed in this Bill appears to me to be of the simplest possible description; it consists merely in enabling the Metropolitan
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  Board of Works to take cognizance of the exemptions provided for in their Act of 1855. That the omission of this power in the first instance was an oversight I am convinced, and I cannot imagine any valid reason for the opposition with which the Board have thought proper to meet my proposal. There is certainly another method of redress—namely, to repeal these exemptions altogether. [Sir JAMES HOGG: Hear, hear!] The hon. and gallant Gentleman says "Hear, hear;" but what will the occupiers of the land say if he proposes to break faith with them in that manner? As I have already pointed out, these abatements formed the basis of a distinct contract between the occupiers of land and the Metropolitan Board of Works, whereby the latter obtained a sufficiently extended boundary for their purpose, and now the hon. and gallant Gentleman would break faith with them This is certainly out of the question. When this Bill was introduced last year its principle, so far from being questioned, was admitted; but it was objected that no machinery was provided by which its purpose could be effected, and it was said that such machinery should be that of the Valuation (Metropolis) Act, 1869. This objection has been met in the present Bill by the addition of three clauses, whereby the valuation lists may be made to show the extent of exemption claimed in respect of any property included in them, and by the last clause, the power of appeal is extended to the additional items in case of incorrectness. The Bill is based on the broad principle of justice to the poorer class of ratepayers who reside for the most part in the outskirts of the metropolis. It will not harm their richer neighbours, but will remedy a grievance which has been repeatedly pointed out to the Metropolitan Board of Works, and should long ago have been redressed at their instance; therefore, I have no hesitation in calling on hon. Gentlemen on both sides of the House to support the second reading, which I now beg to move.
  Motion made, and Question proposed, "That the Bill be now read a second time.—(Mr. Boord.)
  SIR JAMES HOGGstated that he was quite prepared to admit that the Bill introduced by the hon. Member showed a somewhat anomalous state of

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  things, and that there was a certain amount of inequality in the incidence of the taxation. The Metropolitan Board were fully alive to this, and had passed a resolution on the subject when the hon. Member's Bill was before the House last Session. The Board concurred in the opinion that some redress was needed for the state of things complained of, and decided on the advisability of remedying the inequality which led to the introduction of the Bill. But while agreeing with the hon. Member so far, the Board could by no means concur in the means which it was desired to adopt for securing the ends in view. Their view was rather that the occupiers of land should be placed on the same footing as occupiers or owners of houses. It appeared to the Board that there was no reason for this immunity of land. Its owners derived various advantages from its nearness to London, and which, as regarded the sewer rate of the district, it might be fair that it should be assessed at only one-fourth of its value; this did not apply to the rate of the Metropolitan Board, of which a large part was not for sewers, but for street and other improvements, parks and open spaces, protection from fire, and municipal administration generally. If the Bill of the hon. Member passed, the deficiency in the rates would have to be made up from other districts of the metropolis. For instance, take the case of Plumstead. Assuming that the Board made a rate of £10,000 on the district, of which, say, four-fifths was house property and half land, the local authority would raise £9,500 of this sum from the owners of property, and on account of the exemption £500 only from the owners of land. The Bill, in effect, asked Parliament to enact that the precept of the Board should be reduced from £10,000 to £8,500, by which means £1,500 would have to be raised on the other districts of the metropolis. The whole rateable value of the metropolis was £20,644,000, while that of arable land was less than £90,000, and it appeared to the Board that the simplest plan would be to remove the exemption altogether. This was their intention in their resolution passed in July last year, when they expressed a determination to endeavour to obtain a remedy in the event of a Bill for amending their Loans Act being introduced. As affairs stood at present,
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  the Board were bound to adopt the county rate in making their assessments, putting land at its full value and calling upon the local authority for its rateable proportion of the Board's expenses, although the local authority could only raise from the owners of such land one-fourth of the amount which, if the land were assessed at its full value, would be payable in respect of it, and the remaining three-fourths had to be made up by laying a higher rate on the owners or occupiers of houses in the district. The hon. Member had alluded to the Act of 1855; but, as a matter of fact, the Board had nothing to do with the passing of that Act, not being in existence at the time. They could not, therefore, have entered into any compact of the nature alluded to by the hon. Member. In conclusion, he (Sir James Hogg) must repeat, that while the Board admitted the anomaly and would be glad to see it removed, they were not prepared to endorse the proposal contained in the Bill introduced by the hon. Member, and he therefore moved that it be read this day six months.
  Amendment proposed, to leave out the word "now," and at the end of the Question to add the words "upon this day six months."—(Sir James Hogg.)
  Question proposed, "That the word 'now' stand part of the Question."
  MR. SCLATER-BOOTHsaid, that there was some force in the objections raised by the hon. and gallant Gentleman; but, on the whole, he thought the hon. Member for Greenwich had succeeded in establishing his case. The question involved was a difficult one, and full of technicalities, which rendered it unsuitable for discussion in a Committee of the Whole House; and he should, therefore, recommend the hon. and gallant Gentleman to withdraw his opposition on the understanding that the Bill was referred to a Select Committee.
  Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
  Main Question put, and agreed to.
  And, on April 14, Committee nominated as follows:—Mr. STANSFELD, Sir CHARLES MILLS, Sir JAMES LAWRENCE, Sir SYDNEY WATERLOW, Sir ANDREW LUSK, Sir CHARLES LEGARD, Sir JAMES HOGG, Mr. ASHLEY, Mr. COOPE, Mr. GOLDNEY,

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  Mr. SAMUDA, Mr. SPENCER STANHOPE, Mr. HEYGATE, Mr. JAMES, and Mr. BOORD:—Power to send for persons, papers, and records; Five to be the quorum.

CONVENTION (IRELAND) ACT REPEAL BILL.— [BILL. 85.]
(Mr. P. J. Smyth, Mr. Downing, Mr. Ronayne, Mr. Richard Power, Mr. O'Gorman, Mr. O'Clery.)
CONVENTION (IRELAND) ACT REPEAL BILL.— [BILL. 85.]

  SECOND READING.
  Order for Second Reading read.
  MR. P. J. SMYTH, in moving that the Bill be now read a second time, said, in the Session of 1871, in answer to a Question put by him to the Irish Solicitor General, Mr. Dowse said with reference to the Act which this Bill proposed to repeal, that there was no statute of a similar kind in England, and that it was still in force in Ireland. In consequence of that answer, he introduced in the Session of 1872 a Bill similar to the one then before the House. He was opposed by the Government of that day, as he was told he would be opposed by the Government of the present; but as he was persuaded his request was a most reasonable one, he trusted the House would lend him its attention for a few minutes. The title of the Act which it was the object of this Bill to repeal, was calculated seriously to mislead. It was not an Act to prevent unlawful assemblies, but to make unlawful assemblies, which without it would be perfectly lawful. It was introduced in the Irish Parliament by Lord Clare, in the year 1793, the pretence being a rumoured intention of the Catholics to hold a Convention in Athlone. It enacted—
  "That all assemblies or other bodies of persons elected or otherwise constituted or appointed are unlawful assemblies, and all persons taking part therein are guilty of high misdemeanour."
  An Act of so extraordinary and unconstitutional a character could not fail to meet with vehement opposition in the Irish Parliament. Mr. Grattan said its object was not the peace of the country, but reflection on great bodies, and gratification of spleen at the expense of the Constitution, by voting false doctrine into law. His objection to the Bill was, that it was a trick, making a supposed national Convention in Athlone in 1793 a pretext for preventing delegation for ever. Lord Clare, at all events, had his pretext in 1793. He was curious to
  1958
  know on what pretext the hon. and learned Gentleman the Solicitor General for Ireland would attempt to justify, in 1875, the prevention of delegation for ever, and the voting of false doctrine into law. Hon. Members would see, by referring to the Act, that it related solely to the mode of convening or holding a public meeting, and not in the slightest degree to the object for which a meeting might be convened. A meeting might be convened for the worst imaginable object, and if it had not a representative character, it might, so far as this Act was concerned, proceed without interruption. On the other hand, if a meeting be convened for the most laudable object in the world, and if it had a representative character, the police were commanded to disperse it by force, and those taking part in it as representatives were liable to the penalties of high misdemeanour. That was the law of public meeting in Ireland in this, the seventy-fifth year of the Legislative Union. He might be told the Act was not enforced since O'Connell's time. But why, if violated, had it not been enforced? Why the opposition to this Bill? Let the truth be proclaimed; the motive be frankly avowed. It was felt that this Act was a potent weapon in the hands of Government, and so it was held in reserve, bright and polished, for some great occasion. Such was the policy; but it was an unconstitutional policy, and as unstatesmanlike as it was unjust. It was a policy that condemned the Irish people to live on sufferance in their own land, and hold the plainest of constitutional rights—the right of public meeting—at the caprice of the Law Officers of the day. They have ostensibly,
  "The letters Cadmus gave,"
  but they are told in effect,
  "He meant them for a slave!"
  A conclusive proof of the mischievous vitality of the Act, and at the same time an overwhelming condemnation of it, would be found in the Act disestablishing the Irish Church. A special clause in the Irish Church Act, placed the Convention Act in abeyance, in order to enable the Protestants of Ireland to meet by delegation for the purposes of organizing their Church. A former Attorney General for Ireland (now Mr. Justice Barry), explaining that clause, said—

  1959
  "By a peculiar law of old standing in that country, and framed for a particular purpose, no person or body could meet by delegation."—[3 Hansard, cxcv. 1019.]
  Thus, before a section of the Irish community could discharge one of the most solemn duties ever imposed upon men, Parliament was obliged to remove the barrier interposed by this Act of old standing, framed for a particular purpose. It was the Act thus emphatically condemned, this peculiar Act of old standing, framed for a particular purpose in 1793, put aside for a particular purpose in 1869, and maintained for some very particular purpose from the Union to the present day, that he then asked the House totally to abrogate, and by so doing assimilate the law of Ireland, with reference to public meetings, to that of England. There was nothing which so impressed the observer of public events in England during the last half century, as the ease and quietness with which vast constitutional changes, amounting to revolutions, had been effected. A convention was held in Manchester or Birmingham, or a series of delegate meetings in London, and, as if by magic, religious liberty was established, and a cherished monopoly went down, and the portals of Parliament were widened, till the Commons' House became the expression of the peoples' will. The magician was not their Canning or their Brougham, their Cobden or their Peel, but that principle of representation that underlay the Constitution, and, like light itself, permeated the whole framework of English society. Give to Ireland the benefit of that saving principle—give her the Constitution. Repeal the Convention Act, or Repeal the Union.
  Motion made, and Question proposed, "That the Bill be now read a second time."—(Mr. P. J. Smyth.)
  THE SOLICITOR GENERAL FOR IRELAND (Mr. PLUNKET)said, he must oppose the Motion of the hon. Gentleman. The Motion had been before the House on several occasions, and had been resisted by the Representatives of the Irish Government of both political parties. The speech of the hon. Member tended to create a misapprehension as to the character of the measure. The Convention Act did not in any degree interfere with the right of public meeting
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  in Ireland, nor did it interfere with the right of petitioning. That Act provided that meetings of a representative character, or in the nature of a delegated assembly, drawn together for the purpose of procuring a change in matters established by law in Church and State, should not be allowed. It would not be denied, he apprehended, that were the Act repealed a convention would be immediately called together in Ireland. Would not such an institution necessarily act as a rival to the House of Commons, and keep alive and exasperate those unhappy dissensions that had already existed there? Could any one doubt that such meetings would tend to create discontent and dissatisfaction in Ireland, and lead to most unhappy results? But this Bill would make such meetings legal, and would therefore enhance the danger. The Constitution gave the same liberty for lawful meetings in Ireland and in England. At present the Irish people were not deprived of any right of meeting in order to petition Parliament, or for any other legitimate purpose. When this proposal was made in 1872 it was opposed by the late Prime Minister, who said—
  "We must admit, with deep regret, that we have not reached the time when we could safely and prudently venture to apply the entire identity of political legislation to Ireland, which I believe every man in this House desires."—[3 Hansard, ccxi. 166.]
  The Bill would confer on the Irish people a dangerous gift; it would enable them to set up a mock Parliament and a mimic House of Commons, and he would therefore give it his decided opposition.
  CAPTAIN NOLANsaid, there had been representative meetings not long ago in Dublin of the very character described, and they were not interfered with. He should support the second reading.
  MR. SULLIVANsaid, the custom had been to have two weights and two measures for England and Ireland. The system of taxation, as had been shown a few nights ago, was in Ireland most oppressive and double in amount. The Convention Act was not put in motion against the friends of the Government. A few days ago a meeting of medical men was allowed to be held at the Limerick Junction, in direct contravention of the Convention Act; but those who held the meeting were not disturbed,

  1961
  because it consisted of friends of the Government. Could any Minister dare to propose a Convention Act for England? The Irish Convention Act was the cause of disturbances. If the Irish met in thousands they were charged with endeavouringto over awe the Government, and if they met, as they did lately at the Rotunda, in Dublin, then they were despised on account of the paucity of their numbers. Whether their meetings consisted of few or many, the result was the same; their voice was not heard. To public opinion out-of-doors he would fearlessly leave it to decide whether such oppression should be allowed any longer to continue.
  Question put.
  The House divided:—Ayes 38; Noes 110: Majority 92.

  TONNAGE ADMEASUREMENT BILL.
  Considered in Committee.
  (In the Committee.)
  Resolved, That the Chairman be directed to move the House, that leave be given to bring-in a Bill to provide for the measurement of the Tonnage of British Ships.
  Resolution reported:—Bill ordered to be brought in by Captain PIM and Mr. RITCHIE,
  Bill presented, and read the first time. [Bill 98.]
  House adjourned at half after One o'clock.