HC Deb 17 July 1876 vol 230 cc1481-6
LORD HENRY LENNOX

I rise, Sir, under feelings of considerable difficulty to ask the House of Commons to give me a measure of their indulgence while I allude to a personal matter deeply affecting myself and my position in this House. I will try to make as short a statement as I can; and I never should have brought myself or my affairs before the House of Commons had it not been that on a very recent occasion one of the most distinguished men and one of the most distinguished Judges of the land, while summing up the evidence in a recent financial case, alluded to the conduct of a certain body of gentlemen, of whom I was one, and distinctly stated that their conduct, in his opinion, required explanation, and he hoped, if they had any explanation, it would be given, for it was needed. Sir, I hope that before I sit down what I shall be able to show to the House will be as satisfactory to the noble and learned Lord and to this House as it certainly is to my own conscience. I need not say more than that I am alluding to the now celebrated Lisbon Tramways Company. I joined that com- pany at the solicitation of the Duke de Saldanha, and in consequence of my knowledge of Portugal, of Lisbon, and of the country generally. All that was told me was that I was to have as my colleagues a very distinguished body of men, including, among others, the then Chairman of the Union Bank of London and the then Chairman of the London and South Western Railway, and that our fees were to be £100 sterling per annum. I beg to say, Sir, that I knew nothing whatever of the preliminary contracts, agreements, or other arrangements which it now appears were made between the promoters of the company and the Duke de Saldanha and the contractors. I have letters in my pocket which I could produce, but I know that my word will go as far as the letters, in which every one of these gentlemen distinctly states that neither directly nor indirectly had I the slightest knowledge of any one of these agreements, contracts, &c, which have been the subject of discussion in a Court of Law; and, more than that, Sir, I can say I had never seen the contractors until I joined the Board, and I never saw Mr. Grant, the principal promoter, from the time of his leaving the House of Commons until after the prospectus was issued. Here do not let me be supposed to be throwing a stone at Mr. Grant in the time of his difficulties; I am merely stating it as a fact to show that there was no personal communication whatever between me and the promoters of the company until I formally took my seat on the Board as a director at £100 a year. The next point I will run over as quickly as I can, because I know I am trespassing upon the goodwill of the House. I have had a seat in this House 30 years, and I prize very much the esteem and goodwill of every Member of it. Lord Chief Justice Coleridge, in the undoubted exercise of his right, commented, though not so strongly as other Judges have done, upon the practice of directors receiving qualification shares. I received my qualification shares—100, and of these I returned 50 when I left the Company. I assure you beyond that, that I invested my own money in 300 shares of the Company. I am not here to defend now, according to present views of the matter, the system of qualifying directors; but I do think I may fairly say that at that time—and it is five years since these transactions occurred—the practice was well known to every hon. Member of this House, that no objection was ever made to it, and it was considered to be the ordinary way of remunerating directors. I have to state, in addition, that with the exception of those 100 shares, which I did not know were furnished by the contractors—and I have a letter from the contractors, Messrs. Clark and Punchard, saying that I could not know it—that except these 100 shares I never received any money payment, shares, or remuneration whatever, direct or indirect, for my position on that Board, and I am a large loser by the non-success of the Company. Now, Sir, the next point the noble and learned Lord made—and he spoke most strongly—was contained in these words— How, after the engineer's report and Mr. Grant's urgent letters requesting that the money should he returned for the line, he really could not understand the conduct of the directors, and that conduct required explanation. I entirely agree with the Lord Chief Justice that if the directors had received Mr. Grant's urgent and, as the Lord Chief Justice called them, manly letters requesting them to discontinue the line and return the money to the shareholders, and had then gone on with the line, that their conduct would have required explanation which it would have been difficult to give. But I hold in my hand a letter from Mr. Punchard stating in the most solemn manner that these letters of Mr. Grant were never laid before the Board of Directors at all, and that I could not have known anything of the matter. More than that, these manly letters, as the Lord Chief Justice called them, which Mr. Grant wrote, were not at all written with reference to the line which the directors went on with, which they ultimately carried out, and which was worked for a year and a-half. I say this distinctly, and in so many words—that Mr. Grant's letters were never seen by the Board of Directors. They were a protest against the engineer's, Mr. Trevethick's, remarks on the Cascaes line, where the gradients were bad, and the distance round to Cintra from Lisbon was doubled. The line actually carried out was one the concession for which was obtained by the Duke de Saldanha, and which was in a straight line from Lisbon to Cintra. The directors did more than that, for, having altered the route from that laid down in the prospectus, they issued a circular to the shareholders saying what they intended to do and asking for their approval, and that request and demand were ratified by a general meeting two months afterwards at the Company's offices. Sir, I only wish to say that I make this explanation to-night as an independent Member of the House. Feeling and knowing that there was a feeling that I have been mixed up with practices with which I ought not to have been mixed up, five years ago, I felt that the most honourable, the most straightforward, and the most manly conduct that I could pursue was to place my resignation of the high office which it has been my privilege to hold for three years in the hands of the Prime Minister, and patiently to await any attacks that came from any part of this House. I will only say, in conclusion, that deeply as I regret the loss of my position at the Board of Works, I would willingly yield up that or any other post of high trust, so long as I can continue to enjoy the esteem and goodwill of this great Assembly, in which the better part of my life has been passed.

MR. DISRAELI

Before I avail myself, Sir, of the permission of the House to speak on the Order of the Day on the subject to which I have adverted, I wish to refer to the remarks made by my noble Friend. I think it due to him and to the House to say that all I know of this affair is that I received a written intimation from an hon. Gentleman who sits opposite that it was his intention to make certain charges against my noble Friend to-day. I have had no authentic statement of any charges against my noble Friend, and having confidence in his honour and conduct, I have never credited them. But I felt it was my duty, under the circumstances, to communicate to my noble Friend that I had received this intimation, and I left him to consider what course he would take. My noble Friend, with that delicacy which the House will appreciate, said these things had happened five years ago, when he was not a Member of the Government, and he wished to defend his conduct as one who was not now a Member of the Government. He felt that it would be a position more satisfactory to him if, as an independent and private Member, he vindicated his conduct, and therefore he tendered me his resignation. I have been present in this House to answer the Question the Notice of which was given to me privately, but that Question has not been put to me to-night. The House has heard the statement of my noble Friend, and, without misinterpreting the feeling of the House, I think it is one not unworthy of himself. I have no wish to precipitate any decision on the subject at this moment, but I could not reconcile it to my own feelings not to say these few words.

MR. TREVELYAN

So much has passed in letters not marked "private" between myself, the right hon. Gentleman who has just spoken, and the noble Lord who has likewise addressed the House, in a manner so creditable, I must say, to his feelings, that I would rather not leave this matter without explanation to the chance gossip of the Lobbies. Therefore, I will just say this—that the right hon. Gentleman has slightly misunderstood the letter I addressed to him. I did not say in that letter that I was prepared with any charges against the noble Lord, or that I would put the Question to the right hon. Gentleman to-day. I felt that in a matter of such extreme, delicacy the main object of every one who wished to approach it as a public man should be to give the Government the power of acting first in the matter. So on Friday I wrote a private letter to the right hon. Gentleman informing him that I should to-day—not put a Question to him, but give public Notice of a Question of certainly a most open nature. The Question, which I do not happen to have in my pocket, was, so far as I recollect, to ask the First Lord of the Treasury what course he proposed to pursue in consequence of the facts affecting the Chief Commissioner of Works which had been brought to light during the proceedings of the trial "Twycross v. Grant?"It was never my intention to press the noble Lord, as the right hon. Gentleman has mistakenly understood, by putting that Question without first of all a long private and then a long public Notice. Of course, after what has passed, I shall not enter into the case further, but I can assure the right hon. Gentleman that this is a case susceptible of two colours. One is that which is put upon it by those who regard it only from a public point of view. That was the case with myself, for I never even heard of the Lisbon Tramways Company until two months ago, when I read, of it in The Times, and when I determined as a public man to go to the bottom of the business. There is also the colour most naturally put upon it by the noble Lord who was concerned in it, and who, I think, yielded, I will say in some excess, in some cases to indiscretion and imprudence. I had, I can assure the right hon. Gentleman, good reason for calling the attention of the House to this matter, for the result which I expected has been that which has been brought about. I thought it was necessary to press for that result as a tribute to public morality, and, as that result has been brought about, I shall not say one additional word.