Commons Sitting of 16 March 1877

MINUTES.
SUPPLY—considered in Committee—ARMY SUPPLEMENTARY ESTIMATE—CIVIL SERVICES AND REVENUE DEPARTMENTS REMAINING SUPPLEMENTARY ESTIMATES AND CIVIL SERVICES AND REVENUE DEPARTMENTS EXCESS ESTIMATES FOR 1875–6, AND VOTE OF CREDIT ASHANTEE EXPEDITION (EXCESS)—Resolutions [March 15] reported.
WAYS AND MEANS—considered in Committee—Resolution [March 15] reported.
PUBLIC BILLS—Resolution [March 15] reported—Ordered—First Reading—Consolidated Fund (£1,213,502 6s. 9d.).
Second Reading—Customs and Inland. Revenue (Duties on Offices and Pensions) [91]; Elective County Boards (Ireland) [100] put off.
Committee—Report—Supreme Court of Judicature [103]; Exchequer Bills and Bonds (£700,000); High Court of Justice (Costs) [99].
Third Reading—Justices Clerks [5], and passed.

QUESTIONS.

  ARMY—THE 94TH REGIMENT—CASE OF PRIVATE GEORGE MILLS.—QUESTION.
  MR. J. COWENasked the Secretary of State for War, Whether it is true that Private George Mills, of Her Majesty's 94th Regiment, was, on the 29th day of January last, put under arrest, he having made a grave charge against an Officer of his Regiment; that he so continued under arrest until the 10th day of February following; that in the meanwhile the Officer against whom such charge was made, having been placed under arrest, broke his arrest and absconded, and subsequently sent in his resignation, whereupon Mills was released; whether the imprisonment of George Mills in the above circumstances and his subsequent discharge without a trial were in accordance with Military Law; and, whether he is entitled to receive any compensation for his imprisonment?
  MR. GATHORNE HARDY: Sir, the statement contained in the Question of the hon. Gentleman is generally correct, but not altogether so. The private in question, George Mills, made a charge against an officer of his regiment for an offence committed in the August previous. He was put under detention. He was not imprisoned, but confined in the guard-room, and as his pay was continued to him, he suffered no loss whatever. On the officer absconding an order was sent from the Horse Guards for his release on the 8th February, and on the 10th he was released. Under such circumstances, his detention was strictly in accordance with law, and was both legal and justifiable.

  ARMY—MOBILIZATION, 1876—STAFF PAY.—QUESTION.
  COLONEL NORTHasked the Secretary of State for War, If it is true that officers who accepted appointments as Generals,
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  Lieutenant Generals, and Major Generals in the Mobilization of 1876 have been disallowed the Staff pay of their respective ranks as named in General Orders, by reducing it to that of inferior rank; and, whether this reduction was made known to those officers before appointment, and under what Warrant or Regulation this reduction has been made?
  MR. GATHORNE HARDY,in reply, said, that no such deduction had been made, the pay having been given according to the rank held. That was the rule at present followed, but he did not wish it to be regarded as a precedent for the future.

  PAUPER LUNATICS (SCOTLAND).

    QUESTION.
    MR. BRUENasked the Lord Advocate, To state what portions of the grant from Imperial funds towards the maintenance of pauper lunatics in Scotland was, in the years 1875 and 1876, applied towards the maintenance of the lunatics who were in the insane wards of poorhouses; and what was the sum per head per week contributed in this way towards the cost of maintenance of such lunatics?
    THE LORD ADVOCATE,in reply, said, the total amount of the grant in 1875 towards the maintenance of pauper lunatics in Scotland was £59,483, and of that amount the proportion contributed towards the maintenance of pauper lunatics in the licensed wards of the poor-houses was £5,283. In 1876 the corresponding figures were £62,637 and £5,803. The amount contributed by Government was half the cost of maintenance, except in cases where the cost exceeded 8s. a-week, the limit of the Government grant being 4s. In 1875 the average daily contribufrom Government in aid of the maintenance of pauper lunatics in poorhouses was 3s. 6¾d., and in 1876 it was 3s. 9d. In Scotland those licensed wards in poor-houses were under the direct control of the Board of Lunacy, and not of the authorities who had charge of the poor, and they were inspected by the medical officers of the Lunacy Board. No case was admitted into them unless the medical officers certified that it was a proper case for detention there. In fact, they were used for the purpose of relieving the asylums where violent and

    13
    incurable cases of insanity were treated, the poor-house wards being reserved for chronic and harmless lunatics.

  QUEEN v. CASTRO—THE EXPENSES OF THE PROSECUTION.

    EXPLANATION. QUESTION.
    MR. WHALLEY: Sir, before putting the Question I have upon the Paper, I will ask leave to make a personal explanation in reference to what occurred on the last occasion when I brought this subject before the House. On that occasion, Sir, I may have appeared to disregard your order, repeated, as you stated at the time, to confine my remarks to making intelligible my Question, and was then justly required to resume my seat for having disregarded your orders. For any appearance of having done so, I beg leave to express my regret, and to state that I had no intention whatever to do so. My excuse is, that I was speaking under this impression, no doubt, entirely wrong, that, having intimated my intention to conclude with a Motion, I was in possession of the right of audience beyond that of merely putting the Question on the Paper; and again, Sir, I beg leave to express my entire acquiescence in your ruling. I now beg to ask the Secretary to the Treasury, with reference to the Tichborne prosecution, Whether it is the fact that Charles Orton received from the Treasury during the progress of the trial a weekly payment of twenty-one shillings, such payment being made by Police Inspector Denning, and the said Charles Orton being dealt with for this purpose under the name of Webb; and, as the said Charles Orton was not called as a witness on the part of the prosecution, what was the object for which payment to him, if any, was so made; and whether the honourable Gentleman will now inform the House of the total cost of this prosecution, and the items of the expenditure, as has been done in other cases?
    MR. W. H. SMITH: I must remind the hon. Gentleman and the House that he asked me this Question, in almost the same terms, on the 5th of August, 1875, and I then replied that, seeing the House had, on a former occasion, determined on a division that the information which he sought should not be given him, I did not consider it consistent with my duty to the House or to the hon. Mem-
    14
    ber to answer the Question as he requested me. I think the decision which the House then came to is still binding on me, and that I should not be consulting either the convenience or the time of the House if I answered the Question which the hon. Gentleman has now put to me.

  MERCHANT SHIPPING ACTS—LOSS OF THE STEAMSHIP "WELLS."

    QUESTION.
    MR. MACDONALDasked the President of the Board of Trade, If any inquiry has been held, or if not, when it will be, into the circumstances of the loss of the steamship "Wells," lost with all her crew, which sailed from Memel in December last with a cargo of linseed, which was apparently loaded in bulk, judging by the letter (of the mate to his wife) picked up on the north-east coast, and which was also complained of by the writer of the letter as being much too deeply laden?
    SIR CHARLES ADDERLEYThe Board of Trade, Sir, has made most complete inquiry into the loss of the Wells, through the Consul at Dantzic, and the evidence obtained by the Vice Consul at Memel, where she loaded, partly from the shippers, partly from the Master of Pilots, was that her cargo was linseed, carefully stowed, the hatches being very well secured—more so than in most cases. Her load-line was a foot out of water. She might have loaded deeper, but for the shallowness of the water over the bar. The owner asked for a formal inquiry, but the Board of Trade thought it unnecessary. The letter picked up in the bottle was certainly wrong in its main allegation, that the load-line was under water.

  BOROUGH MAGISTRATES—THE MAYOR OF BURY.—QUESTION.
  MR. PHILIPSasked the Secretary of State for the Home Department, Whether there is any objection to the mayor of Bury, Lancashire, he being duly qualified and having taken the correct oaths, taking his seat on the county Petty Sessional Division bench, to exercise jurisdiction within the borough of which he is the mayor?
  MR. ASSHETON CROSS,in reply, said, that whilst guarding himself against

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  being supposed to give an accurate interpretation of the law, he was of opinion that the mayor was entitled to be present, and to preside at any meeting of county justices held within the borough, so far as the justices were acting in relation to the business of the borough; but they were not so acting when they were enforcing the general law of the land.

  EPPING FOREST—LEGISLATION.

    QUESTION.
    MR. RITCHIEasked the Secretary of State for the Home Department, Whether Her Majesty's Government propose to bring in, this Session, a Bill to confirm the scheme of the Epping Forest Commissioners; and, if so, when it was likely to be introduced?
    MR. ASSHETON CROSS,in reply, said, that a scheme with respect to Epping Forest had been for some few days before the Government. The evidence on which it was based, however, and which was very voluminous, had not yet been printed; and he had had no opportunity of seeing it. As soon as he had done so, he would consult with the First Commissioner of Works, and state the course which the Government proposed to take in the matter.

  TURKEY—PROGRESS OF NEGOTIATIONS—QUESTION.
  THE MARQUESS OF HARTINGTON: I wish, Sir, with the permission of the Chancellor of the Exehequer, to repeat the Question which I put to him on Tuesday last—Whether the Government are in a position to give the House any further information respecting the negotiations in the affairs of Turkey?
  THE CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUER: Sir, at the present moment the situation is this—We have received from the Russian Government a proposal to join in a Protocol which shall embody the views of the Powers as to the situation in the East. The draft of this Protocol, as proposed by the Russian Government, was given to my noble Friend Lord Derby on Sunday last. It has been considered by the Government, and certain modifications in the language have been proposed. These amendments have been placed in the hands of the Russian Ambassador, who could, how-
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  ever, only receive them ad referendum, and who is now awaiting further instructions from his Government on the subject.

  METROPOLIS—THE UNIVERSITY BOAT RACE—HAMMERSMITH BRIDGE.

    QUESTION.
    SIR HENRY HOLLANDasked the Secretary of State for the Home Department, Whether his attention has been directed to the state of Hammersmith Bridge, and the number of persons collected on the Bridge during the practice of the University crews, particularly on the day of the Race; and, whether the right honourable Gentleman intends to take any steps in the matter?
    MR. ASSHETON CROSS,in reply, said, he was glad the attention of the House had been invited to the subject, which was one of considerable importance. Every possible care and precaution had been taken last year to prevent people from crowding on the bridge during the race; but it so happened that after it was over and before the crews had returned from Mortlake a great number of persons got on the bridge, whom it was found quite impossible to make move on fast enough as the boats went by, the consequence being that such a deflection of the bridge was caused as was, in his opinion, dangerous. This year he had asked his right hon. Friend the President of the Board of Trade to have, through Colonel Tyler, a thorough investigation of the bridge instituted, and the result was that, in the opinion of that gentleman, if the people were admitted to the bridge at all on the day of the race, it would be impossible for the police to prevent excessive crowding or to guard against unforeseen accidents, and that it would, therefore, be desirable that the bridge should be closed on that day until the crowds attending the race had dispersed. That opinion having been conveyed to the Bridge Committee, he had received from them, through their secretary, a copy of a resolution, to the effect that all traffic on the bridge would be stopped from 8 o'clock till 10 on Saturday, the 24th inst., and no person would be allowed to remain on it during that time. He felt bound to add that, as the bridge was a very old one, it was a matter worthy of serious con-

    17
    sideration, especially as there were several boat races in that part of the Thames during the year, whether it was not the duty of the Committee to come to Parliament for further powers to make the bridge safe for the public.

  PARLIAMENT—BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE.—QUESTIONS.
  In reply to Mr. PARNELL,
  MR. W. H. SMITHsaid, he did not intend to proceed with the Valuation of Property Bill (Ireland) Bill on Monday next. He would before bringing it on, confer with hon. Members for Ireland as to what day would be convenient for them.
  In reply to Mr. RYLANDS,
  THE CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUERsaid, the Navy Estimates would be proceeded with on Monday, with the Prisons Bill as the second Order.
  In reply to Mr. BERESFORD HOPE,
  Mr. GATHORNE HARDYsaid, he was sorry he could not proceed with the Universities Bill before Easter.

  ORDERS OF THE DAY.

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

  ELEMENTARY EDUCATION (IRELAND).

    RESOLUTION.
    MR. O'SHAUGHNESSY,in rising to move an Amendment dealing with the question of Irish elementary education, said, that it ran in the following terms:—
    "That, having regard to the educational progress now taking place in England and Scotland, it is expedient to adopt measures consistent with economy and the rights of conscience to promote the general diffusion of elementary education among the Irish people."
    The progress to which his Notice referred as having taken place in England and Scotland consisted in this—that Parliament had declared that it was the duty of parents to educate their children, and that they had established the system enabling them to discharge it. Of course, it was only when the State had created adequate machinery for instruction, that it was entitled to declare the educa-
    18
    tion of children a legal duty. They had laid the foundation of their structure, and when the present generation of children attained manhood, it was reasonable to expect that they would all be adequately educated. But even before that result would be arrived at, a gradual improvement would have taken place, an increasing enlightenment would be visible among the people, and with it an increased capacity for appreciating and following in social and political matters all that was wise and good. Whilst, then, these great changes were taking place in Great Britain, it behoved those who represented the Irish people to take care that that country did not lag behind its neighbours, and that its posterity should not wake up 50 years hence to find themselves inferior in intelligence and in mental capacity to the generations of Englishmen and Scotch-men who would have grown up by their side. However honest might be the efforts of Irish Members in behalf of their country, if a future generation of Irishmen awoke to such a discovery, they would reproach them with having neglected the most important duty of all, and if they did not utter such reproaches he thought they would be unworthy of their national traditions, and unworthy of any great future as a nation. He would, however, ask if there were any ground for anxiety on this subject? If they were to take the statistics of the present day Ireland, perhaps, did not contrast very unfavourably with Great Britain; but what they must consider was not the present condition of England and Scotland, but what their position would be when the system of universal education would have had full effect; and they must consider further whether the progress Ireland was making, and the system on which she depended, would place her on a par with Great Britain. He found by the Census of 1871, that out of a population of 5,400,000, about 1,600,000 persons in Ireland over 5 years of age could neither read nor write; and that something over 800,000 could only read, and even of those the greater part could derive little information from their reading. This was, of course, a fallacious test as to their future, because of the illiterate, many were old persons born at a time when education was an impossibility, and they would give place to young

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    persons taught in the existing schools. When, however, he looked at the population between the ages of 15 and 20, he found that 21 per cent could neither read nor write, and that 19 per cent could read only, so that the knowledge of the latter class was necessarily exceedingly limited, the accomplishment of reading without being able to write conferring but a small educational advantage; in fact, for all practical purposes he would be disposed to place them on the same footing as the totally illiterate. He would now see what progress they had made in Ireland of late years, so that they might ascertain whether or not that progress would place them on a level with Great Britain. Necessarily dealing again with figures, he found that, in 1851, 47 per cent of the Irish population were totally illiterate—that was, could neither read nor write. In 1861, 39 per cent of the people were in the same position; and 10 years later the figures were reduced to 33 per cent. It would, therefore, be observed that, whilst in the first decade they reduced the number of illiterates by 8 per cent, in the second the reduction was only 6 per cent. This was the more remarkable because between 1861 and 1871 many of the older generation who had no educational advantages must have passed away. It was probable that progress would continue at a constantly decreasing rate, inasmuch as the lower they got in the strata of society, the greater difficulty they found in inducing people to appreciate the benefits of education. No doubt, that every day more zeal was manifested in the cause by the better classes; but even supposing that they were to maintain their rate of progress at 6 per cent for every 10 years, it was hardly necessary to point out that the day of universal education among the lower classes of the Irish people was very remote. This, he contended, was quite a sufficient justification for his calling attention to the question before the House. He would now examine the machinery which was at work in Ireland, and endeavour to discover if its features accounted for the state of things he had described. There they had two systems at work, spread over the entire country, and, so far as accommodation went, adequate to its wants. They had the National Schools, under the control of Government; the Volun-
    20
    tary Schools, which were generally under the guidance of associations of Christian Brothers and nuns, schools for Roman Catholics, and Church Society Schools, and similar institutions for Protestants. Now, in 1871 the total number of children of school age, between 5 and 16, was 1,500,000. The National Board at that time had on its rolls upwards of 1,000,000 children; the Christian Brothers had 40,000; the Convents about 25,000; and the Protestant Schools about 25,000 more. But the average attendance at the National Schools was only 389,000 children. The Census Returns of 1871 stated that at that time out of the 1,500,000 children of school age, as many as 792,000 were not attending school at all; 16 per cent of the pupils attended only 20 days of the year; 23 per cent attended over 20 days and under 60; and he thought about 10 per cent attended over 60 and under 80 days. The attendance at the schools of the National Board over 80 days was 49 per cent of the pupils; that at the Church Education schools 57 per cent; and that at the Roman Catholic elementary schools 64 per cent. It would thus be perceived that although they had a very large proportion of Irish children on the rolls of the schools, the attendance was very inadequate, and the work of education could not be efficiently carried on until it was brought to a much higher standard. The National Board at present considered an attendance of 90 days in the year necessary, and was about to raise the standard to 100. It was quite apparent, he repeated, that the present machinery was quite insufficient to produce universal education, and that if they were to keep that object in view it must be supplemented by some stimulus that did not now exist. The question was, what that stimulus should be; and though he should be glad to think it would be unnecessary to have recourse to compulsion, yet he urged that they should not approach the problem in a spirit of theory, but that they should be guided by the experience of other nations. They must consider what others had done, and how far it was necessary and possible to adapt their practice to their own case. If, then, they were to judge by the experience of surrounding nations, all that went to show that nothing but compulsion could produce universal elementary education.

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    There might, perhaps, be something in the condition of Ireland by which the effect might be obtained by other causes, or which would render compulsion a failure amongst them; but if that were not so, compulsory education was the only solution. Quite admitting that compulsion was an evil, he would point out that ignorance was a greater evil still and he contended that, if compulsion were necessary to extirpate ignorance it ceased to be an evil and became benefit to the community. They had seen compulsion adopted in Germany and the events of the last few years told them with what effect. It was about to be adopted by France—a fact well worth, of remark, because, of all the countries of Europe, France was the one in which the voluntary system was carried out witch the most perfect discipline, and in which there was the greatest anxiety on the part of the Government to educate the people without compulsion. He was informed that the latter system had been adopted for a very long time in the Basque Provinces, amongst people having considerable analogies with the Irish people, with excellent results; and finally it had been adopted in Great Britain—a country were voluntary effort in every department of life was the most relied upon, and where the great principle had been to leave things to their natural developement. Here, then, they had four nations, distinct in race, in religion, and in forms of civilization uniting to adopt the compulsory system As regarded Ireland, experience taught them that neither the excellence of the system, nor the zeal of those who managed it, nor the activity of Government, could produce adequate progress The question was, what new element they were to introduce, and whether, if no new voluntary element could be discovered, and they were not to remain behind their neighbours in enlightenment and civilization, they must adopt compulsion, provided that it could be applied without violating the religious liberty of the people. In England the Government had applied the Education Act under two systems—the first laid down in the Act of 1876. The elementary Education Act of 1870 provided for the creation of school boards wherever its principles were adopted. It imposed upon local authorities the duty of levying rates for building schools, their
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    management, and the regulation of compulsion. In 1876 the duty of education was imposed in a less direct manner, and enforced in two different ways—first by forbidding the employment of children whose education had not been attended to, and secondly by punishing the parents who neglected them. The school-board system, however, being unpopular, would be utterly unnecessary and unsuitable to Ireland. All the duties of a school board, except the duty of compulsion, were already discharged in Ireland by other bodies. There was no necessity for levying money for building schools, because the schools already existed. The management of their National Schools was under the superintendence of the Board of Patrons, and that of their voluntary schools under the associations which had not established themselves. Under these circumstances school boards were unnecessary, for they would only have the effect of upsetting the present arrangements, and of breaking the continuity it was so desirable to maintain in educational administration. Besides that, school boards were not very popular in many parts of England, and their unpopularity had been reflected and perhaps exaggerated in Ireland, where he thought they would so endanger the success of any educational scheme that they might dismiss the idea of adopting them. The first thing was to create a public opinion in Ireland in favour of universal education, and great care should be taken not to excite public feeling against an unpopular Act. The Act of 1876 pursued different lines. It was felt that the Act of 1870 failed of acceptance in many places, and was ill-calculated, particularly in the rural districts, to produce universal education. It was found necessary to introduce compulsion of an indirect character, less likely to press with sudden violence on the habits and inclinations of the people, and to avoid expense. Further, it was found desirable to leave education more to local feeling than to the hard-and-fast rule of the school boards; and if compulsion was to be employed in Ireland it seemed to him that they must follow those lines, and render it as indirect as possible. It could be rendered indirect by bringing its action to bear, not only on the parent, but on the employer, by prohibiting the latter from tempting the

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    parent to evade his duty. But even in applying this mild system, they must endeavour to suit the condition of Ireland, and to render it milder still. England was prepared for the measure of the noble Lord the Vice President of the Council, by the previous existence of the school boards, and the new system was rather a relief than an addition to the old one; but Ireland had not yet tasted compulsion, and therefore they must be slower in applying it, and its penalties must be mitigated. In cases where they had granted exemptions in England they must make them broader for Ireland, where they must ask themselves what exemptions were necessary which the circumstances of England did demand. The law of 1876 prohibited the employment of children under 10 years of age, and of those over that age, unless their education was attended to; but it exempted from the operation of the Acts such employments as did not interfere with education, and also such employments as might be determined upon in the manner prescribed by the Acts. The Act, then, gave the local authority power to exempt from its prohibition certain agricultural employments for six weeks in the year. In Ireland they must entrust the duty of determining what employments should have this privilege to some local body — to the Board of Guardians, or some other authority; but it must be remembered that this would not give the Board of Guardians any power to interfere with the management of schools. The exemptions would, of course, vary in different places. In some districts the assistance of children was required to a very large extent for haymaking; and in counties like Donegal they were constantly employed in herding sheep. The requirements of such districts would demand particular consideration, and ample provision must be made that the wants of agriculture were not suddenly interfered with, because in Ireland machinery was not used to the same extent as in England, and emigration had diminished the number of hands available for agricultural purposes. The other mode of compulsion was that employed on the parent who, habitually and without reasonable excuse, neglected the education of his child, or whose child was found habitually wandering and not under proper control. The local authority thereupon
    24
    warned the parent to comply with his duty, and if he neglected to do so within a certain time, a complaint was made to the magistrates, and the Court ordered him to send his child to school. If, however, he could prove that there was no school within two miles of his residence, or that sickness or any other unavoidable cause interfered, he was held to have a reasonable excuse. It was here that it became necessary to consider the special condition of Ireland, and what other excuses should be held to be legitimate in that country. He would submit that as compulsion was new to the people of Ireland grave domestic inconvenience should be regarded as an excuse, and also that in cases where the parents were unable to pay the fees, poverty should relieve them from the operation of the law. He had no great fear that many such cases would occur; he had heard that a clergyman once remarked that one hen would lay in a week as many eggs as would provide fees for the education of six children for the week. There would, no doubt, be other cases of exemption, but there was one that the House would have to consider with great care, if ever compulsory education came to be dealt with, and that was the exemption founded on the religious aspect of the question. What, he asked, was now the religious aspect of primary education in Ireland? The first feature was this—it must be remembered that the Irish people, whether Protestants or Catholics, were very much attached to their respective religions and strongly of opinion that religion should be closely united with education. The second feature was, that any attempt to compel the people to attend schools of which their consciences disapproved would not only be unjust, but would prove a failure, and provoke deep exasperation and resentment. Such a law, indeed, would be resisted as a violation of conscience, and it could not be enforced, for men would rather suffer than obey it. They would find sympathy from their fellow-citizens, who would regard them as martyrs; the law would be set at defiance and brought into odium; and—what he held to be more unfortunate—the cause of education would be seriously compromised. How did the Roman Catholics and their spiritual advisers regard the system of primary education which now prevailed in Ireland? First, as a matter of practice,

    25
    they availed themselves of it in most of the rural districts, protesting at the same time that they objected to the principle upon which it was based. He could not express the views they held on this subject more candidly than by quoting to the House some observations which had lately fallen from the Prelates of the Roman Catholic Church in Ireland. The Archbishop of Cashel, speaking lately, said that it was the right of the Catholic people of Ireland to educate their children, under the sanction of their Church, in the religion which they held to be the best, not to say the true one, and not to incur by doing so any social, pecuniary, or other penalty whatsoever. Having cited the decision of the Synod of 1850, that the changes introduced into the National system were incompatible with the discipline of the Church and with the safety of the religious principles of Roman Catholics, his Grace went on to say—
    "But cannot this very undesirable state of things be remedied, or, in other words, is it not possible so to modify what is known as the National system of education amongst us as to render it really acceptable to, instead of being, as it is, merely tolerated by, the Catholic people and clergy of Ireland? I believe it is. We are not inexorable; I hope we are not unreasonable or ungrateful. We acknowledge that the National system has been hitherto, on the whole, productive of much good, especially in Munster, where it is unmixed. We hold, however, that of its nature, its tendency is to be mischievous; and that, if it has not been so, it is because its working has been well watched. The elements of evil abide in it, and, as long as they do, it cannot enjoy the full and implicit confidence of the people and priesthood of the Irish Church. It is not national, because it gives no place in its vaunted publications to anything creditable to the religion or ancient fame of the people. We want to have this spirit of exclusiveness banished from our schools, three-fifths of which are attended, I may say, by Catholics alone. Let this much, at least, be granted us, and if there must be mixed schools in the North, or elsewhere, let the terms of Lord Stanley's letter be there rigidly enforced. Nor is it out of any spirit of sacerdotal querulousness or with a view to embarrass the Government of the day that we ask you and respectfully insist on the concessions which I have thus briefly indicated."
    The Bishop of Down and Connor, in a late Pastoral, said that—
    "it was a misrepresentation of the acts and feelings of the Bishops to say that they had accepted the system of mixed education. Their conduct proved a moderate and confiding disposition in them. Whilst they were most willing to live in charity they could not be induced to barter faith. The Rev. Mr. Kennedy, Protestant clergyman, had said he would adhere to
    26
    it, because the principles of the Board were the principles of the Reformation."
    The Bishop thought that if it had thus become so un-Catholic, it would be a libel to insinuate that any Bishops of the Catholic Church could approve of it, or accept of it as safe; and, in fact, the primary schools were only accepted because they were denominational, because reference showed that there was no common platform which in this matter of education could satisfy and secure the rights of all. Now, they must remember that the Prelates who candidly set forth these principles—and in doing so they had the cordial support of the Catholics of Ireland—did not in practice offer any unreasonable obstacles to the National system when it was fairly managed, and when the principles to which they objected were prevented from doing harm. That was shown by the fact that even in Ulster very nearly one-half of the children on the rolls of the National Schools were Roman Catholics. They must judge the particular action of the Irish clergy under the compulsory system by a reference to their present generous and practical mode of action. They regarded the system as founded upon a wrong principle; they protested against it; but still they they used it when it was possible to do so without allowing those evil principles to do harm. The House could not expect the flocks of the priests to accept a law which would compel them without any exemption to frequent schools founded on what they believed to be wrong principles. The English rural National Schools were now managed in many cases in a way that met with the approval of the people; but a demonstration might come to-morrow which would bring into action principles that might render those schools most objectionable. At the same time, as long as they did not allow those principles to come into operation, they might expect the Roman Catholics of Ireland to pursue their present course. What security, he would now ask, had they a right to demand, if they accepted compulsory education. He replied that they had a right to ask that the Catholics should claim exemption from the obligation of sending their children to school if it would violate their conscience to send the child to a school in their immediate neighbourhood. The Catholic

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    parents were guided by the advice and authority of their clergy in this matter, and therefore if compulsory education was not to become mere coercion, and necessarily a failure, they must grant an exemption to the enforcement of the Act in cases where parent and pastor certified that there was no school in the neighbourhood where the child could be conscientiously sent. The priest must join in the certificate, or otherwise a parent might make religion the pretext for unworthy reasons for not sending his child to school. He had no doubt that such cases would be exceptional, and that the only effect of such an exemption would be to make all parties more conciliatory, and to prevent the creation of controversies. It was not merely for Catholics that this exemption was necessary, but it was required also for Protestants living in the South of Ireland in the neighbourhood of schools under Catholic management and altogether frequented by Catholics. He had now treated the great difficulty of the question—the impossibility of forcing parents to send their children to schools of which their consciences disapproved. He had further suggested the means by which this difficulty might be met, namely—a certificate from the pastor and parent that there was no school in the neighbourhood to which the child could be sent with safety to its religious principles. Once thrown down before a bench of magistrates, this certificate should be an absolute bar to further proceedings. There might be other solutions of the question, but he would impress upon the House that unless it was recognized that parents were not to be obliged to send their children to schools of which they disapproved, any attempt at compulsion would be a failure. There was little fear that this exemption would be abused. It was merely a security against the violation of conscience. It might be urged that it would increase the power of the priests, but the fact was that the priests had the very same power at this moment. Under the voluntary system they could prevent parents from sending their children to particular schools, and they could do no more under the compulsory system. At this moment Catholic parents might disobey the priests, but the instances in which they did so were rare, and he dared say that under the system of com-
    28
    pulsion the instances of disobedience would be equally rare. It might also be said that to grant this exemption would be a grave concession of principle, but he would ask if the Roman Catholic clergy rigidly insisted on their principles in the matter? They made no concession involving danger to their flocks, but still they acted in a spirit of conciliation and practical concession wherever it was possible, and if they were not met in the same spirit of conciliation he feared that the interests involved in the question would fall to the ground, and that they would make very little progress in the matter. He would only say that although those who sat on that side of the House differed from Irish Members on the Conservative side on many points, he had yet no doubt that his hon. Friends would approach the sub-j ect in a spirit of conciliation, that they would respect the feelings of their Roman Catholic fellow-countrymen, and that the religious difficulty would disappear before their anxiety for the welfare of the country. The English Act provided that before any proceedings were instituted a warning was to be given to the parent, and he would suggest that in the case of Ireland that warning should be repeated. The Act also gave the Court power to inflict a penalty of 5s. on any parent who neglected to comply with its provisions. If, however, a penalty was to be inflicted in Ireland, it would be necessary to make it smaller still, because the country was much poorer than England. Further, the Act declared that a prosecution was not to be repeated more than once a fortnight, but a longer interval would be required in Ireland. In Eng' land, if the parent persisted in his neglect, his child was sent to an industrial school; but in Ireland it would be impossible to carry out such a provision without immense cost, and he thought that it would be unnecessary. The statutes also set up in England a power for the purposes of administration which it called the local authority. This in some places was to consist of the Guardians of the Poor, and in others of committees chosen from the corporations. He would not suggest that any such power should be constituted in Ireland. Possibly it might be necessary to do so at some future time; but, in any case, the tribunal would have nothing to do with

    29
    education beyond seeing that the children went to school. At present he would leave compulsion to the public opinion of each district. There were many Acts which Parliament now left to be enforced by individuals or associations, and it was thus that he would treat a compulsory Act in the first instance. It might be said that this was giving great power to irresponsible hands; but if they created numerous and broad exemptions, that power could not be used harshly. It was very improbable that people would incur odium by enforcing laws against the popular feeling of their districts. No doubt, in towns where large numbers of children roamed at large about the streets, men would take counsel and join together for the purpose of enforcing the law; but nobody would regret such a proceeding. The object in view was to impress upon the people that the necessity of education was recognised by the law, and thereby to create public opinion in its favour. Beyond this he thought it would be impossible to go at first. He would now say a few words as to the efficacy of instruction. The Government had provided means for testing the value of their school work in England, and it was necessary in that country, for many of the schools were merely private adventures, and it was well known that the instruction they afforded was inadequate. The case, however, was different in Ireland, and he believed that they would practically do enough if they compelled the children to make a proper number of attendances at school. There were very few private schools in Ireland, where the great majority of their schools—he might say all in the rural districts—were under the National Board, and therefore under proper inspection at that moment. With regard to the other schools—those conducted by Roman Catholic and Protestant institutions—he believed that all those who knew them would consider the application of a test equally unnecessary. In proof of that he could refer to the testimony borne to them by the Commissioners of Primary Education in Ireland, who reported in 1870. The less they incumbered compulsion with complications, the greater the chance of its success. There remained many other questions connected with the subject which he had not touched upon, because they had no
    30
    bearing upon the question of compulsion. There was the question of the payment of the National teachers, whose remuneration at present was not only inadequate, but precarious—and unless it was dealt with generously before the close of this Session, he feared that the cause of education in Ireland would suffer severely; then there was the question of training schools; the question of the position of the model schools, to which there was now so strong an objection on the part of the great bulk of the population; the complaint that the National Board enjoyed the monopoly of providing school-books; the complaint, as had been pointed out by the Archbishop of Cashel, of restraints put upon harmless religious practices in schools where all the children were of one religion; and other matters which, although important in their character, did not directly bear upon the subject before the House. These were questions which would have to be discussed and settled, but if they were to wait for their settlement before bringing education home to the Irish people, the days of general enlightenment in Ireland were, indeed, very remote. He would only say this — that compulsory education would give all classes a greater interest in the subject, and produce in all those who were brought into contact with its administration the spirit of conciliation, which would remove in practice many obstacles which now existed in theory. In certain respects the difficulty of introducing compulsion was not as great in England as in Ireland. The Royal Commission of 1870 reported that Ireland had sufficient school accommodation for the wants of the country. Again, as he had previously observed, a large proportion of the youth of the country was on the rolls of the schools, and to a great extent compulsion would only be necessary to insure sufficient attendance. That in many rural districts was absolutely true, but it was not so accurate as to the towns, because there many children absented themselves completely from school. The most important question was how far the public mind was prepared for so great a change as compulsory education. The Royal Commission reported that it was not popular, and they declined to recommend it for rural districts, although they spoke with less hostile language with reference to

    31
    its application to the towns; but even when they made their Report, they found opinions favourable to compulsion in many districts, and one witness remarked that he did not find the Roman Catholic clergy of Dublin at all so hostile as he had expected. Things, however, had altered since then. England and Scotland had adopted compulsion; the signs of progress were already apparent; and the sense of the necessity of action was growing in Ireland. For his own part, he had conferred with persons of every creed in many districts, and he had found opinion preponderate in favour of compulsion. He had spoken to Catholic clergymen in several towns, and he had found that they were willing that it should be tried, provided that it was accompanied with security for the religious liberty of the people. But what was the opinion of those who were most interested—the people themselves? If there were nothing but compulsion to produce universal education, and if compulsion were applied with due regard to their sentiments and their condition, he believed that it would be willingly accepted. He could conceive the absurdity of a cry of coercion being raised, but from various indications he believed that the people of Ireland were beginning to think for themselves to a greater extent than some of their countrymen supposed, and that they would not be deceived by that cuckoo cry. He believed that all Irishmen looked with hope and anxiety to the progress of their country. Some looked to that progress being achieved under their present Union with England, whilst others expected it under the sway of a domestic Legislature sitting in Dublin. Some, perhaps, had higher aspirations; but the higher the aspirations any man entertained, the greater the sacrifice he must be prepared to make to achieve what was an absolute condition of national progress—the diffusion of enlightenment among the people. What had the people of Ireland seen within the last few years? They had seen the people of England, with their traditional love of liberty, with their dislike of interference with personal freedom, and the people of Scotland, with their sturdy independence, submit themselves for the good of the community to the compulsory system. They now beheld another example in a country with which they had ancient traditions
    32
    of sympathy, and to which they had always looked with admiration and affection. The last war had taught France many salutary lessons, and none more salutary than the value of education. The Irish people saw that whilst that country was ruled by the Bourbons, and the Bonapartes, and the Orleans Princes, her people were left by paternal Governments to plod along miserably enough under a voluntary system; but now that the French people, for the first time in history, enjoyed in calmness the reality of liberty, they began to feel its responsibilities, and they, too, for the good of France, were about to submit themselves to compulsory education. With examples like this before them of free countries, he had no doubt as to the ultimate verdict of the people of Ireland. The proceedings to be taken on his Amendment that evening were in the hands of the House; but he would say, with great respect, that he felt no desire, and that he would regard it as a misfortune, to take a division at that stage of the question. It was hardly ripe for detailed discussion, and he hoped that if it were discussed, the grave difficulties such a subject presented would meet with considerate treatment and forbearance. If they treated them with the warmth which educational topics so often awakened in that House he feared that they must bid a long farewell to the progress of elementary education in Ireland. The only object to be gained by the Amendment was to call public attention to an important subject. It was only by a discussion there that that object could be gained, and it was for that reason that he had ventured to bring it forward under a strong sense of duty. He begged to thank the House for the patience with which they had listened to him, and would conclude by moving the Resolution of which he had given Notice.
    MR. O'REILLYseconded the Motion.
    Amendment proposed,
    To leave out from the word "That" to the end of the Question, in order to add the words "having regard to the educational prgress now taking place in England and Scotland, it is expedient to adopt measures consistent with economy and the rights of conscience to promote the general diffusion of elementary education among the Irish people,"—(Mr. O'Shaughnessy,)—instead thereof.
    Question proposed, "That the words proposed to be left out stand part of the Question,"
    THE O'CONOR DONsaid, he was sure he expressed only the general feeling of the House when he congratulated his hon. Friend the Member for Limerick (Mr. O'Shaughnessy) on the admirable manner in which he had placed that subject before them. His hon. Friend, however, would forgive him for saying that he regarded the Resolution which had just been submitted to the House as of a very vague and indefinite character; and without the explanation which had been given by his hon. Friend, it would, he considered, have been extremely difficult to understand exactly what the House might have been bound to in the event of its accepting it. But he thought it was pretty clear from the speech which had been made, that what his hon. Friend wished the House to approve of, was the establishment of some national system of compulsory education in Ireland. While, however, the general tendency of his hon. Friend's speech was in that direction, it was to be remarked that in the earlier portion of his observations he expressed the hope that compulsion, to which he said he had a strong objection, would not be necessary; but, notwithstanding that statement, he had gone on to contend that recourse should be had to compulsion as soon as possible. There could be no doubt that this was a very important subject. Were the people of Ireland prepared to adopt such a system as his hon. Friend had indicated? Was such a system necessary? He agreed with his hon. Friend that if it were necessary, in order to secure for the population of Ireland the full advantages of education, the people of that country would not be found to be behind the English and the Scotch in the verdict which they would pronounce; but he confessed that, for himself, he entertained an old-fashioned prejudice against compulsion unless it were proved to be essential. The people were quite alive to the importance of education, but he did not think a mere declaratory Act setting forth that it was the legal duty of every parent to educate his child would be of any use. It was very easy to speak of a cuckoo cry against the word "compulsion"; but he held that in Ireland there had been a great deal too much compulsion on various matters, and he certainly did not believe that the enactment of a law compelling education in that country
    34
    would have a tendency to render education more popular. He believed the effect would be quite otherwise. According to the last Return of the Census Commissioners, there were between the ages of 5 and 16 only 1,200,000, children in Ireland. That was the number they had to deal with, and not 1,500,000 as stated by his hon. Friend. Now, his hon. Friend had shown that on the rolls of the National Board Schools there were about 1,000,000, and in the other schools in Ireland, in a rough way, very nearly the other 200,000 would be accounted for. Fully admitting that the fact of a child's name being on the roll was no proof that he received education, what they had to ask was, how many children were there in Ireland giving such a number of attendances as would justify them in supposing that they were receiving a real education? Considerable progress had been made within the last few years. According to the latest Return from the National Education Commissioners, nearly 400,000 had given a sufficient number of attendances at the National Schools to entitle the teachers to payment for results. For that purpose 90 attendances, to be raised in future to 110, were required. He admitted that up to the year 1871 the progress of education had been slow, and his hon Friend stopped his statistics at that date but in 1872 important changes were effected by making the payment of the teachers depend upon results and on the regular attendance of the children, and the consequence was that between 1872 and 1873 the number of children who had put in a sufficient number of attendances had increased by 50,000. In the year after that there was a falling off in the progressive increase of attendances, which was attributable to the epidemics which prevailed throughout the country; but he believed that when the Returns for the year just ended were published, it would be found that the increase continued rapidly to progress. Looking to all the circumstances of the case, he thought he was entitled to say that the proposal which had been made by his hon. Friend was at least premature. It was a proposal which the necessities of Ireland at the present moment did not justify. When the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Bradford (Mr. Forster) introduced his Bill for establishing compulsion in England, the

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    number of children throughout that country who were not at school, but who were of school-going age, was very large; but in Ireland, the proportion of children who were not receiving education was nothing at all in comparison with what existed in England when the compulsory scheme of the right hon. Gentleman was first proposed. His hon. Friend (Mr. O'Shaughnessy) had said that he would not advocate direct compulsion; that he would prefer the indirect system of attaining what he desired; and that he would fine the man who employed children without having received from those children a statement showing that there had been on their part a certain number of attendances at school. But was his hon. Friend not aware that at the present moment that was the law in Ireland with regard to almost all employments except agriculture; and the number of children who were there hired out for agricultural pursuits was very small. Then his hon. Friend spoke of the National system as one which was objectionable to the Church to which the majority of the people belonged; but if that were so, he was afraid that the objections would only be rendered stronger if a system of compulsion were adopted, and that the result of this would be to render a system of indirect compulsion practically inoperative. While, therefore, wishing to support his hon. Friend in any appropriate means to improve the education of the Irish people, he could not go along with him in supporting the application of a system of compulsion, direct or indirect. His view of the whole matter was that, instead of adopting the system which his hon. Friend had advocated, they ought, as far as they possibly could, to extend and encourage the system of making the payment of teachers dependent upon the attendances of children at school. He believed that by carrying out that system, or something of a kindred character, and by obliging parents to contribute towards the cost of the education of their offspring, a regularity of attendance would be secured which would entirely dispense with any necessity for compulsion; and that when the present generation of children grew up to manhood the Irish people would not be found one whit more backward in education than the people of England and Scotland.
    MR. BRUENsaid, the general character of the Resolution enabled him to support it, but he could not quite agree with many of the observations of his hon. Friend opposite (Mr. O'Shaughnessy) in introducing it. He believed that in the country parts of Ireland there was not the same difficulty in securing the attendance of children at school that was experienced in some of the large towns. He admitted the necessity for calling attention to the matter, but thought they could not adopt compulsion without a good deal of further consideration. Still, he admitted that if they were not to begin to look the difficulties in the face they would never arrive at any conclusion on the matter. The excuses and grounds of exemption which had been suggested covered a wide area, and would go a long way towards destroying the compulsion it was proposed to secure. Poverty ought not to be a ground of exemption, because provision ought to be made for the payment of fees for children whose parents were too poor to pay them. If the certificates of clergymen were to give validity to excuses, it was to be feared they would sanction too many cases of nonattendance. He believed the question of primary education in Ireland would soon have to be seriously considered, as large masses of the population, principally in the towns, were still to a great extent uneducated. He wished to support his hon. Friend in endeavouring to have the question thoroughly considered; but he agreed with the hon. Member for Roscommon (the O'Conor Don) that to adopt compulsion before they saw their way out of the difficulties in which it was involved would be dangerous. His hon. Friend had done well to bring the subject before the House; but he trusted he would be content with having elicited the views of those who took an interest in the subject, and that he would withdraw his Resolution.
    MR. BUTTsaid, every Irishman was indebted to his hon. Colleague for the temperate manner in which he had brought the subject before the House, and he should be disposed to say of him, that which was sometimes considered as a compliment—that he was a little in advance of the age. The great defect in Ireland at the present time was that voluntary effort in regard to education had never been encouraged

    37
    as it ought to be; in fact, it could not be encouraged to any material extent unless they enlisted religious zeal on behalf of education. But this was shut out under the present system. Until religious zeal had been enlisted in the cause of education it could not be said that the voluntary system had failed, and until then the time had not come for the adoption of a system of compulsion, even although it might have to be ultimately adopted. Indeed, to interest the people in the work of education was to make the best possible preparation for any system of compulsory education they might afterwards adopt. Up to the present time everything had been done to exclude the influence of religious zeal both from Catholic and Protestant schools, and especially to discourage the Christian Brothers' and convent schools, to which the people were especially attached. The Protestants had protested against this course even more than the Catholics. He hoped that steps would even yet be taken to enlist the voluntary zeal of the people in the cause of education, and that by this means it might then be rendered unnecessary to adopt any form of compulsion. It was on account of the neglect of the voluntary efforts that the first educational Estimates had been swollen to £500,000. He thanked his hon. Friend for bringing forward this subject; but he thought it premature to propose the adoption of compulsion at the present time, or until they had so far modified the National system as to enlist the voluntary zeal of all classes and creeds in the cause of education.
    MR. PLUNKETdesired to join in the general expression of gratitude to the hon. Gentleman opposite (Mr. O'Shaughnessy) who had brought the question forward in so temperate and conciliatory a manner, more especially when it was considered that it was a question which might very well have been introduced in a different spirit. He had shown that the question deserved further consideration, and that, although a great advance had been made, there was still room for considerable improvement, especially in the large towns; but the terms of the Resolution were very vague, and he hoped the hon. Member would be able to accept the advice offered him generally
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    from both sides of the House, and would not press the Motion to a division. He did not intend to follow the hon. Gentleman through the details of his proposition; but he wished to say a word upon what had fallen from the hon. Gentleman's hon. and learned Colleague (Mr. Butt). He (Mr. Plunket) took exception to the view that the discussion of the subject and the elucidation of Irish opinion on the question of coercion should be postponed until a radical change had been effected in the National system. It had been represented to the House that the system of National education as now established in Ireland had not been successful. For himself, he must enter his protest against any such opinion as that going forth to the public. Nothing could really be further from the fact. Various influences had been at work in Ireland improving the condition of the people; but none of them had been operating so beneficially towards that end for many years past as the National system of education. He trusted that the question which the hon. Gentleman (Mr. O'Shaughnessy) had so well started would be considered throughout Ireland, and that when they resumed its discussion in that House, they would be possessed of fuller information and in a better position to judge how a proposal of coercion in any form was likely to be received in that country. He hoped that when the subject was brought forward again the discussion might be longer and fuller; but, in the meantime, he only wished to express his conviction that a proposal of coercion, to be acceptable to Ireland, must be of such a character as not to violate the broad and absolutely essential principles on which the National system of education now established in that country had been founded, and by reason of which it had flourished so well and so long.
    MR. O'REILLYagreed with what had been said in praise of the calm and temperate manner in which the hon. Member for Limerick (Mr. O'Shaughnessy) had introduced his Resolution. He agreed, however, with the hon. Member's Colleague (Mr. Butt) in the remark that he was probably before his age. They were not yet prepared for absolute compulsion in Ireland. With regard to that question generally, he did not himself now hold as strongly as he once did the opinion that the day

    39
    might not come when it would be necessary to require by law the residuum of parents in Ireland who neglected to send their children to school to discharge their parental duty in that respect. He regretted he could not quite agree with the congratulations of the hon. Member for Roscommon (the O'Conor Don) upon the progress which they had made in regard to National education in that country, although he thought that such progress as had really been attained had been aided by the principle of payment for results. On the contrary, he believed it was slow and unsatisfactory. As a proof, he might mention that of 1,200,000 children of school age, only 600,000 attended school, and that for a period of but 90 days in the year. Neither could he agree with the hon. Gentleman's statement that very few children were employed in agriculture, for in his (Mr. O'Reilly's) district almost every child of the labouring class was employed for a large part of the year in agriculture at considerable wages; and he was in favour of the adoption of at least this amount of compulsion—that no child should be so employed without having an educational certificate. With respect generally to the introduction of absolute compulsion, lie remarked that there was in Ireland an absence of any suitable machinery for its application. In saying that, he did not mean the merely technical machinery, but that there was an absence of those moral elements out of which such a machinery could be created. He apprehended that the last and also the worst instrumentality to which they could resort for such a purpose would be the Constabulary. Neither did he think the Boards of Guardians could be fitly entrusted with such a function. They did not sufficiently possess the confidence of the population, nor were they themselves sufficiently educated always to appreciate the value of education to others. At the same time, the attendance of the children at school was very bad in many parts of Ireland, and though the clergy at church on Sundays frequently urged the parents to send their children to school, their most earnest exhortations were often ineffectual. Therefore he could not agree with the hon. Member for Roscommon in thinking that they could trust altogether to the parents to secure the attendance of children at school, and he thought there was some
    40
    ground for calling attention to the necessity or the expediency of resorting to compulsion, indirect if not direct, in order to secure attendance at school. The Royal Commission had reported that there was ample school accommodation, and the only difficulty was as to the attendance. At present anybody who chose to build a school and could put in it about 30 pupils went to the Commissioners of Education, at once got a salary for the teacher, and thenceforward took no further interest in the school. That state of things tended, especially in the North of Ireland, to an unnecessary multiplication of schools which involved no burden and no responsibility on those who had built them. He was of opinion that no grant should be made by the State for educational purposes, unless considerable local contribution was made, either of money, or of what was far more important—namely, personal effort to promote the efficiency of education. As long as education in Ireland was paid for entirely out of a central fund, whether out of taxes levied in the United Kingdom, or in Ireland alone, so long would the schools there be comparatively ineffective, and zeal and energy would not be exerted in their behalf. He did not advocate the principle of universal compulsion, but thought that indirect compulsion might be more effectually carried out by means of an increase of the local fees devoted to schools. He wished to suggest that a rule should be established providing that one part of the salary should be paid to the managers of schools by the State, and that another portion should be contributed locally. That would interest the managers in their work, and increase the efficiency of the schools. He hoped the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary for Ireland, and the Government would consider what measures could be brought in to increase at once the efficiency of the schools, for this was a question of urgent necessity. The schools were not doing all they might do, nor were the teachers receiving the amounts which was their due. In conclusion, he trusted the result of the present discussion would tend to the advancement of education in Ireland and contribute to the improvement and prosperity of the Irish people.
    MR. W. E. FORSTERcongratulated the House on the excellent tone of the

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    debate and the business-like manner in which it had been conducted. In discussing the question of primary education the real points were sometimes forgotten in side issues, and he believed many hon. Members would feel that in debates in that House upon Irish education very often what was least considered was the interests of the Irish children. He must say that he thought his hon. Friend (Mr. O'Shaughnessy) had made out that the interests of the Irish children demanded the attention of Irish Members, and of the House generally, for it was distressing to know that of Irish men and women 57 per cent could not read and write. He had no doubt that that scandalous state of things was diminishing day by day; but it would be a very long time before we could look without shame at the condition of education in Ireland. By some means or another we found the present state of things among a people who cared a great deal about education. He had always heard and believed that, speaking generally, Irish parents compared very favourably with English, and even with Scotch parents, with reference to their desire for the education of their children, yet, by some means or other, the education of Irish children was neglected, and they had not been able to receive the education which they all desired they should have. He thought the exertions made to secure it were not at all sufficient. The statistics were not at all pleasant. For instance, the average daily attendance of children at schools in Ireland was only 395,000, being only 7½ per cent of the population, while the average daily attendance in England was 2,000,000, being 10 per cent of the population. The most disagreeable feature in these statistics was the very small proportion the average daily attendance bore to the numbers on the roll, the former being 395,000, and the latter being 1,000,000; whereas in England the average daily attendance was 2,000,000, the number on the roll being 3,000,000. This great difference between the average daily attendance and the number on the roll in Ireland certainly did point to the necessity for the adoption of some penal measure for insuring a better daily average attendance. He did not think that they could get further tonight than to bring the question before the country; but he ventured to prophecy
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    that it would be found in Ireland, as it had been in England, that, however much they might dislike compulsion, they would be unable to secure attendance without it. And after all, what did compulsion really mean? It simply expressed that it was the duty of the parents to take care that their children should be taught, and that it was the duty of the State to give them aid, if necessary, for that purpose. Undoubtedly Parliament had to consider the special circumstances of the case as regarded Ireland; but he could not see why that country should be behind others in the acknowledgment of its duty in that respect. There was no Vote that he supported with greater pleasure than the Imperial grant for the promotion of education in Ireland; but be thought that the localities ought to bear a fair proportion of the expense.
    SIR MICHAEL HICKS - BEACHagreed with the opinions which had been expressed by several speakers, that it was a great public advantage that this subject should have been brought before that House, because much good must result from public attention being drawn to the defects of National education in Ireland, in the way it had been by the able and moderate speech of the hon. Member for Limerick (Mr. O'Shaughnessy). In considering the question, however, hon. Members should not form any exaggerated estimate of the deficiencies of education in Ireland, and he was afraid that the statement of the right hon. Gentleman opposite (Mr. W. E. Forster) might lend some colour to exaggerated estimates upon that point. The right Gentleman had spoken of the large proportion of the Irish population who were unable to read or write, or who were able to read only, and not to write, and upon those figures he had based certain of his arguments. He (Sir Michael Hicks-Beach) was afraid that it must be admitted that a large proportion of the Irish population were unable either to read or write; nevertheless, he should wish to draw the attention of the House to the fact that there was a very decided and marked improvement in Irish education during the last 40 years. From the Census Returns it appeared that for the 10 years ended in 1841 the proportion of the population above five years of age unable to read or write was 52 per cent, for that ended in 1851 the proportion was 46 per cent, for that

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    ended in 1861 the proportion was 38 per cent, and for that ended in 1871 the proportion was 33 per cent. He did not mean to say that even the last of those figures was satisfactory, but they certainly showed a very marked improvement, and, it should be remembered, in criticizing them, that this improvement occurred after a time when large numbers of the population had left the country, those emigrating being probably the best educated of their class. The right hon. Gentleman had spoken of the number of attendances of children at school in Ireland as compared with the attendances in England, and in doing so instituted, as he thought, a comparison upon an erroneous basis. He alluded to the average attendance each day, from which no comparison could be made. The soundest basis upon which to form an opinion was that properly pointed out by the hon. Member for Roscommon (the O'Conor Don)—that was, not the average daily attendance, but the numbers and percentage of children who had made a sufficient number of attendances to pass the results examination. These were the children who might be regarded as being educated. Thus, though the right hon. Gentleman said there was an average attendance of 2,000,000 of children in England, out of 3,000,000 on the rolls, yet when he (Sir Michael Hicks-Beach) came to examine what percentage passed the result qualification he found the proportion 34 per cent out of 1,783,000 children, including infants. He would not deal with the number of children on the rolls in Ireland, for, as already remarked by the hon. Member for Roscommon, the systems in the two countries were very different. He found that in the last Return, taking the school population and their attendance, the proportion that passed was 400,000, or 33 per cent of the total population of children of school age. That was only 1 per cent behind England. It must, however, be borne in mind that the qualifying attendance in Ireland were only 100 in the year, whereas they were equal to 125 in England. But even taking this into consideration, he thought that, whether it was desirable to introduce measures of compulsion or whether it was not, the state of Irish education was not altogether so backward as was sometimes believed. The question now before them
    44
    was whether, by indirect or direct means, they could induce a more satisfactory attendance of children at school. In England this question had been approached in a more tentative manner than any question which had engaged the attention of the Legislature during the last decade. By the Elementary Education Act of 1870, school boards had been empowered to make bye-laws for compulsory attendance; yet he found that out of 1,760 school beards only 674 had as yet exercised that power. A great advance was made in England last year in the powers given to school attendance committees of Town Councils and Boards of Guardians to make bye-laws for compulsory attendance. But this provision had not yet come into practical operation; and whether that power would be largely exercised in the future time would show. He simply referred to it to show that nothing more had been done in England in the way of direct compulsion than to give power to local authorities which they might exercise at their discretion. After all the repeated discussions and agitations for compulsion not much more than one-third of the school boards had put the compulsory powers into practice. He thought it would be admitted that this question of compulsory attendance in Ireland must be approached with even greater caution than had been found so necessary in England. What did the hon. Gentleman the Member for Limerick himself suggest? He objected to school-beard compulsion altogether, and said that everybody would agree with him that school boards were not wanted in Ireland — and everybody would share his impression that that was the general opinion of the Irish people; but the hon. Member also said that any compulsory system in Ireland must be much milder than the English system in its powers of compulsion and more flexible in the power of making exceptions, so as to admit of other grounds for non-attendance being urged before the authorities besides those which were recognized as reasonable grounds in England. Now, as to the power of compulsion, the hon. Member for Roscommon had very properly pointed out, that so far as indirect compulsion of children employed in trades was concerned, that compulsion was at the present moment, and under

    45
    the existing law, exercised in Ireland as much as in England. Well, then, it was really a question of the agricultural population of Ireland, which, of course, formed a very large proportion of the whole population. Now, what was their case? There were something like 300,000 occupiers of land in Ireland holding land under the value of £8 per annum. These persons employed their own children, rather than those of others, in the operations of agriculture. It would be very clear that it was much easier to enforce a law forbidding a person to employ another person's children in his business than to enforce a law to forbid a parent to employ his own children on his little farm. Then, again, the hon. Member for Limerick said that to be fair to the parents, they must have a smaller penalty than in England, though that penalty was only 5s.; and, more than that, the hon. Member, seeing another difficulty in the case, did not even propose that the attendance committees which had been instituted in England, should be extended to Ireland. He (Sir Michael Hicks-Beach) had no doubt that the hon. Member foresaw no little difficulty in forming any attendance committees in Ireland that could or would carry out any compulsory bye-laws. The religious difficulty would most certainly arise. For his own part, though he did not think that it would be impossible for the system to be put in force in Ireland, he could not but feel that there were grave difficulties in regard to its adoption which scarcely presented themselves in England. What he understood the hon. Member for Limerick to recommend really amounted to nothing more than this—that Parliament should recognize it by law as the duty of the parent that his child should be educated; but if such a law were passed as that, supposing that the duty of enforcing the law was not placed upon anyone whatever, was it likely to have any practical effect? What was the history of the Agricultural Children Act in England? Did not Parliament repeal that statute, and substitute another system, because the Agricultural Children Act, placing the duty of enforcing the attendance upon no one, was inoperative? And he ventured to say that if such a law were passed in Ireland it would be, if possible, more inoperative, because in Ireland, for the reasons
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    he had described, the fact that the parents employed their own children in agricultural work, they had less chance of eliciting public opinion on the side of such a law than in England. The hon. and learned Member for Limerick (Mr. Butt) had said that he thought that the difficulty of the whole matter was that there was no voluntary co-operation on the question of education in Ireland, because Parliament had decreed that religious education should not have State aid. He had heard that statement with astonishment; he did not believe that there was any country in the world where the religious instruction of children attending the National Schools was better cared for than in Ireland. There were no fewer than 5,882 National Schools under clerical managers; and in the vast majority of those schools, religious education was thoroughly and efficiently given every day in the week; but there were no doubt rules in the Irish education system which were of immense value, particularly in those parts of the country where there were small minorities of particular religious denominations to secure liberty of conscience to all. There were in Ireland among the whole of the Irish National Schools no fewer than 57 per cent of mixed schools where the children of Roman Catholics, Episcopalians and Presbyterians were taught together. He was bound to say that whatever might be the failure of the system of National education in Ireland, he trusted no change might ever be made in it which would diminish the religious liberty of the parents or the children. He thought that, after all, the speech of the hon. Member for Limerick, and the course of the whole debate, pointed to the fact that although he hoped they had discussed the question to a very useful purpose that evening, yet the time had not arrived when it could be practically dealt with. It would be a matter for future consideration whether by the extension of indirect compulsion, by a more general enforcement of the payment of school fees, by requiring the pre-payment of fees, and a certain return for regular attendance, and other means of that kind they could not very much encourage the attendance of children at school. He was inclined to believe that when parents had to pay for the education of their children, they

    47
    would take greater pains than now in seeing that they were regular in their attendance at school. He hoped that they would have a little more experience than they at present had how the system adopted for England, practically worked before attempting to extend it to Ireland. They would be enabled to walk in the light of English experience. Although he could not undertake to deal with the question at once, he might, on behalf of the Government, state that the question would receive their most careful attention, and that he would, in every way in his power, cooperate with the Board of National Education in Ireland upon the subject. The only way by which a proper attendance of the children in schools in Ireland could be secured was, he was convinced, by educating public opinion in its favour. They might pass what law they close, but he firmly believed that it would be of no avail whatever unless supported by public opinion. He hoped the hon. Member had, by his Motion, though it had no immediate practical result, immensely contributed, to awaken public opinion in Ireland to the need of a more regular attendance at school; and he thanked the hon. Member—on behalf of himself and the House generally—for having brought the subject under their notice. He thought the hon. Member could not but be satisfied with the debate that had arisen upon his Motion; and he (Sir Michael Hicks-Beach) hoped the hon. Gentleman would continue to devote his attention to what was a most interesting and important question as regarded the welfare and future prospects of the Irish children.
    MR. RAMSAYsaid, he should not like the discussion to close without expressing his sympathy with the object the hon. Member for Limerick had in view in bringing the subject before the House. No one who had listened to the details he had brought before the House could fail to see that, whatever difficulty there might be in the way of the education of the Irish people, it had been shown that their condition was not satisfactory, or what the people of this country would wish to see it. Everyone must sympathise with the desire of Irishmen to have the whole population of that country able to read and write. The right
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    hon. Baronet had disputed the accuracy of the figures which had been adduced by the right hon. Member for Bradford, but the Chief Secretary omitted to take notice of the fact that whilst 125 daily attendances were required to make up the 250 attendances which were requisite in England and Scotland to enable a child to obtain the Government grant, only 90 daily attendances were required in Ireland. This, it would be seen, was a great difference, and when the fact was considered, coupled with the great irregularity in the attendance of the children of the various schools throughout Ireland, it was clear that the pupils could not fail to be far behind as compared with those who were educated in English and Scotch schools. He considered that it was of very great importance that some form of compulsion should be established, whether it was direct or indirect. The hon. Member for Limerick had not pressed upon the House that direct compulsion should be resorted to at the present time. On the contrary, he had recommended that indirect compulsion should be adopted in such a form as would secure the co-operation of the parents. He was sure of this—that the House would do nothing to interfere with the freedom of the parent to select the school at which his child should be educated, and it was certain that no subject of greater importance could be discussed than the means of providing for the educational advancement of the Irish population, so that it might keep pace with the advance of intelligence in Great Britain.
    LORD CHARLES BERESFORDentirely concurred in the opinion expressed by hon. Members opposite, that the National Board had failed because it was not popular with the people. It was originally intended to combine religious and other teaching, so that two creeds might be educated in the same schools. The Protestants did not like the Board system of education because their clergymen could not go into the schools at any hour of the day they chose with their Bibles under their arms and give religious education to the children, and the Roman Catholic priests did not like it because they considered that the religious education given in the schools was insufficient. The Protestants, however, were not in favour of denomina-

    49
    tional education, because they thought it would place the education of the great mass of the people in the hands of the priests; and they objected, notwithstanding the fact that they were the first to have recourse to the denominational system by establishing parochial schools. For himself, he objected to a secular system of education where the children of two different creeds had to attend the same school. He looked upon the denominational system as the best for Ireland, and believed, that if it were adopted there would be no need of compulsion, as the people would willingly send their children to the schools where they thought the true religion was taught. He did not agree with what had been said about compulsion. He would have a Board that would go annually round Ireland and superintend the education of the schools, and see that the children were properly educated. If the suggestions made as to local contributions were carried out, one result, he thought, would be the establishment of denominational education.
    CAPTAIN NOLANthought that Ireland was not ripe for compulsion in the matter of education, and that any scheme in that direction at the present moment would be a failure. With respect to the National Board, although it was regarded by the people with some mistrust, it did not deserve that mistrust so much as was the case 20 years ago. Under the Board, education might be carried out in the denominational sense—and, indeed, such was the rule in the greater part of Ireland; but if it worked in a secular sense, it would not work well for the people of Ireland, who were a religious people. If they adopted compulsion, they would alienate the clergy, who really were the persons who looked after the education of children in Ireland, and they would cease to take the interest they now manifested in the schools. In Ireland one creed had the wealth and the other creed the great bulk of the population, so that the local head of the Board would be of a different creed. He suggested that the present National system should be allowed to go on, leaving the people to put more trust in it and get rid of the idea that it was a system of secularizing education, as it was once endeavoured to be made. He thought the people of Ireland would be led to have more trust
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    in the National system if the restrictions at present imposed on the purely denominational schools were removed and the convent schools, for instance, placed in a pecuniary sense on the same footing as the secular schools. That was a point in the speech of the right hon. Baronet the Chief Secretary for Ireland that he specially wished to refer to, inasmuch as it was a practical point. It appeared that while 2s. 11 d. per head was paid to the population of Scotland, only 2s. 1d. was paid to the people of Ireland. The difference was upwards of £120,000; and if Ireland received the same amount paid to Scotland, all the differences would vanish. Some details of the Irish system required amendment. The denominational schools were not so well paid as the secular schools. Religious education was not given in an unmixed school, and only with certain restrictions of time in other schools. It used also to be the interest of the teachers to have as many pupils in their schools as possible; but now, where the "result" fees were too large, it might injure a teacher to have children in his school who did not pay the school-pence, and this made it the teacher's interest to exclude backward children. The Motion before the House was an excellent one in its way, and they must all feel deeply indebted to the hon. Member for Limerick (Mr. O'Shaughnessy) for having brought it under their consideration, but he hoped it would not be further pressed just now, for he did not think that Ireland in its present condition was quite ripe for it. Circumstances might arise under which the compulsion would remain, and the character of the school be changed, and thus children would be compelled to attend schools which were not in union with the religious convictions of their parents. He hoped that would be guarded against. Beyond that, he concurred with his hon. Friend the Member for Roscommon (the O'Conor Don), that it was inexpedient to arouse an ill-timed opposition to the National Board of Education. Until their system of education had been more fully worked and tried he did not consider that it would be right to interfere with its progress by setting up a compulsory system of education in Ireland.
    Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

  SALMON FISHERIES (SCOTLAND) ACT, 1862—THE SOLWAY FISHERIES.

    RESOLUTION.
    MR. STAFFORD HOWARDrose to call the attention of the House to the condition of the law as affecting the Salmon Fisheries in the Solway Firth, and to move—
    "That, in the opinion of this House, it is advisable that a Royal Commission be appointed to consider and report as to the best means of carrying into effect the intention of the Legislature with regard to the Stake Nets in the Solway, as expressed in the thirty-third Clause of 'The Salmon Fisheries (Scotland) Act, 1862;' and also to report as to the desirability of further legislation with a view to removing the injustice consequent upon the conflicting state and interpretation of the laws affecting the Solway Fisheries in England and Scotland."
    The hon. Gentleman said, that the question was not a new one—it was rather complicated, and not of special interest except to a few Members locally interested; but as the question was of some importance, and could not be settled except by the interposition of the Legislature, it was necessary that legislation should be preceded by inquiry. The arrangement of the various Acts that had been passed regulating these fisheries was something like putting together a Chinese puzzle. From 1804 to 1861 the Solway was under one uniform law—the 44 Geo. III. c. 45—which was, on the whole, beneficial, though it left open the question of the legality of stake nets. But about 1860 the salmon fisheries of the United Kingdom had so deteriorated—owing, he believed, chiefly to the ravages of stake nets—that a Committee of the House of Lords was appointed to inquire into the subject as to Scotland, and a Royal Commission in respect of England. The Committee of the House of Lords, after receiving a great deal of evidence, recommended the abolition, or, if that were impossible, the regulation and restriction of fixed engines. The Royal Commission which reported for England also stated that, after careful consideration, they were prepared to recommend the suppression by law of all fixed engines. In 1861, in consequence of that Report of the Committee of the House of Lords, the Lord Advocate brought in a Bill for the suppression in Scotland of fixed engines; but it was referred to a Select Committee of Members whose constituents wore interested in stake nets, and the
    52
    effect really was rather to strengthen than otherwise the position of those nets; therefore, it was subsequently withdrawn by the Lord Advocate. But in the same year—1861—a comprehensive Act was passed for England, by which all fixed engines were pronounced illegal, except such as were exercised in virtue of any grant or charter, or were sanctioned by immemorial usage. The Act of 1861 repealed either totally or partially about 30 other Salmon Fishery Acts, among them being the Solway Act, so far as it related to Scotland, and to fish other than salmon in England, and it was then that commenced an admixture of the law of the two countries. In 1862 the Lord Advocate tried his hand upon a general Act for Scotland. The 33rd section of that Act was the one that affected specially the Solway. By that section the provisions of the English Act of the previous year, so far as they related to fixed engines, were to apply to the Scotch shores of the Solway and the rivers running into it on that side; but all offences under these Acts were to be tried by the provisions of the Scotch Salmon Fisheries Acts. At that time it was evident that the Scotch Members, whose constituents were interested in the question, believed that that section would put an end to the greater part of the fishing by stake nets on the Scotch shore of the Solway. In the debate in 1862 on the 33rd clause of the Salmon Fisheries (Scotland) Bill applying the English Act of 1861 to the Solway, the Lord Advocate, in answer to Mr. Ewart, said—
    "Chartered rights, or rights which rested on immemorial usage were saved. It was quite out of the question to have one law applicable to one side of the Solway, and another law to the other side."—[3 Hansard, clxvii. 74.]
    Mr. Bouverie then contended that it was unjust to deprive these people of their property in the fishery without giving compensation; but the clause was passed by 32 to 14. At the instance of Mr. Ewart its operation was suspended till 1865, so as to give some compensation for the change in the law, and this extension of two years the Lord Advocate considered ample compensation. In the year 1865 a further Act was passed, under which the Home Secretary had power to appoint special Commissioners, who were to inquire into the legality of fixed engines, and to remove such as wore not proved to be

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    privileged. Inasmuch as the 33rd section of the Scotch Act of 1862 had placed the Scotch shore of the Solway under the provisions of the English Act, so far as related to fixed engines, it had been generally supposed that these Commissioners would have inquired into the stake nets on that side of the Solway. The Commissioners held their sittings in Carlisle in 1867, two years after the section of the Scotch Act should have come into operation. They decided that all the nets on the English side of the Solway were illegal, and ought to be removed, but that they were not empowered to inquire into the stake nets on the Scotch shore, because there was no appeal provided to any of the Scotch Courts from their decision. Shortly afterwards the Home Secretary announced that the Law Officers of the Crown concurred with that decision, and that nothing could be done without further legislation. In November, 1867, Mr. Percy Wyndham asked the Secretary of State for the Home Department—
    "If the Government will bring in a Bill to amend the Laws affecting the Salmon Fisheries in the Solway Frith? Up to a comparatively recent period the whole of the waters in the Frith were under one law, though part was in England and the other part in Scotland. The fishery legislation of 1861-2 had, however, introduced a different state of things, which was productive of great injury to the fishery. Two attempts had been made to rectify the evil, and had failed only through accident."
    Mr. Gathorne Hardy, in reply—
    "Regretted that, not having been able to communicate with the Lord Advocate, who just now was very much engaged elsewhere, he could not give a definite answer to the Question. It certainly seemed to him that a great injustice existed at present, as on the English side a proper examination of the nets and fisheries had taken place, whereas no such examination was provided for the Scotch shore; and it might very well be that nets were in use on the Scotch shore which inflicted injury on the fisheries on both shores. The use of nets ought to be placed on the same footing on both sides of the Solway, and he would consult the Lord Advocate upon this point."—[3 Hansard, cxc. 427.]
    Now, all that he (Mr. S. Howard) asked for was an inquiry into previous legislation with the view to further legislation on the matter. Having called attention to the various Acts affecting the question, he would now proceed to point out a few facts which had resulted from this legislation. In the first place, on the English side, owners of stake nets
    54
    had been obliged to prove their titles; but not so with regard to the Scotch side. Again, immemorial usage had a different interpretation in Scotland from what it had in England, much to the disadvantage of the latter. While on the English side fixed engines had been done away with, on the Scotch side there were, within a distance of about 12 miles of coast, 29 stake nets, 78 traps, and 9,000 yards of "leaders." On the English side there were only three modes of fishing legal, but on the Scotch side there were eight legal modes of capture. On the English side the weekly close time was 48 hours to a minimum of 42; on the Scotch side the close time was only 36 hours—a difference of 12 hours to the disadvantage of the English fisherman. Now could this be considered fair and reasonable? Besides this the Scotchmen paid nothing whatever towards preserving the fish of which they caught the greater proportion. He held in his hand a map of the stake nets—they were like the teeth of a comb. There were 29 stake nets, as he had said, in about 12 or 13 miles, two-thirds of them being between the mouth of the Annan and the Esk. All these caught fish towards the preservation of which the Scotch paid nothing whatever. He thought he had really said enough to justify the words he had used in his Motion—that a great injustice was done under the present law to English fishermen. In all the early Scotch statutes, from the 15th century, fixed engines were set down as illegal, except in waters of Solway and Tweed, which were specially exempted from all restrictions on account of Border jealousies, and he thought it very hard that the Scotch should be allowed to appeal to antiquated modes of exemption in favour of illegal fishing when the cause of those exemptions had been entirely removed. He did not admit the legality of the exemptions at all, and the time had come when they ought to be rescinded. Those stake nets only came into existence in 1780, when they were erected at Newby, at a place a short distance west of the mouth of the Annan. The legality of the Newby nets was tried in 1869 in the case of "Johnston v. Mackenzie," and the Scotch Courts found that the exemptions in the Acts of the waters of the Solway held good, because the net was in the water of the Solway and therefore legal. If they claimed the right to keep these stake nets on the

    55
    strength of the old exemptions, why did they not claim the right to fish all the year round, to which, under those exemptions, they were equally entitled? He asked for an Act which would empower the Home Secretary to appoint Commissioners for England who should have the power to inquire into the legality of these Scotch stake nets and remove all such as should be proved illegal; and, further, he would like very much that an Act should be passed for the Solway similar to that relating to the Tweed passed in 1827, which had had the effect of increasing the value of the Tweed fisheries from £4,000 to £11,000 a-year. Last Session he (Mr. S. Howard) asked the Home Secretary—
    "If he can state why it is that, whilst all the stake nets on the English side of the Solway were done away with by 'The Salmon Fisheries Act, 1861,' those on the Scotch side have been allowed to remain; and, whether he can render any assistance in remedying what is felt by the English fishermen to be a great injustice?"
    The Home Secretary, in reply, said—
    "He was not in any way responsible for the legislation of 1861, but the fact unfortunately was, that the law on the two sides of the Solway was different. The subject was mentioned in the Reports of the Inspectors of Salmon Fisheries for 1875, who said it was desirable to remove the anomaly; but the Scotch proprietors were indisposed to adopt the necessary legislation. The Esk was under the English Acts; but there would be a strenuous opposition among the proprietors on the north side of the Solway, which was only the estuary of the Esk, to come under the same law."—[3 Hansard, ccxxx. 1175.]
    He hoped the right hon. Gentleman was prepared to abide by that statement—because upon his own showing those nets were illegal. The Home Secretary had power to define the limits within which all stake nets were illegal; stake nets were illegal within limits of every estuary as defined by the Home Secretary; and he had stated that that part of the Solway was simply an estuary of the Esk, and thus proved that all stake nets east of Annan were illegal. He asked the Home Secretary, who was responsible for the salmon fisheries of the United Kingdom, to rescue the Solway from the unfortunate and anomalous position into which it had been allowed to fall by the jealousy of bygone generations and piecemeal legislation, and to grant the prayer of the Petition of 120 poor fishermen on the English side of the river, praying that House to take steps by which that
    56
    great injustice might be removed. He hoped that the facts he had stated had convinced hon. Members that there was a great injustice done to English fishermen by the present state of the law, and that hon. Members would accord to his Resolution that support which he thought it justly deserved.
    Amendment proposed,
    To leave out from the word "That" to the end of the Question, in order to add the words "in the opinion of this house, it is advisable that a Royal Commission be appointed to consider and report as to the best means of carrying into effect the intention of the Legislature with regard to the Stake Nets in the Solway, as expressed in the thirty-third Clause of 'The Salmon Fisheries (Scotland) Act, 1862;' and also to report as to the desirability of further legislation with a view to removing the injustice consequent upon the conflicting state and interpretation of the Laws affecting the Solway Fisheries in England and Scotland," — (Mr. Stafford Howard,)
    —instead thereof.
    Question proposed, "That the words proposed to be left out stand part of the Question."
    THE LORD ADVOCATEadmitted there was an inequality in the law relating to the fisheries on the opposite sides of the Solway; and it was necessary that he should point out that there was a difficulty in suggesting how that inequality could be removed. Hon. Members were probably aware that the law with regard to salmon fishing in the sea round the coast of England differed from the law of Scotland. In England, since the days of Magna Charta, the right to that fishing had been vested in the Crown, not for its own advantage or for the advantage of individuals, but for the benefit of the public at large, and the Acts passed on the subject of the Salmon fisheries along the English coasts amounted simply to the regulation of a public right in the general interest of the community. In Scotland the case was different. The fishing of salmon on the coast of Scotland was the patrimonial right of the Crown; and the Crown had power to give, and had been in the habit of giving, rights of fishing to individual proprietors. A right thus constituted was the private property of the individual so favoured by the Sovereign. He did not intend to discuss the merits of the question further than to say this—that in Scotland there was no such thing

    57
    as a title by immemorial usage. No extent of possession, even if it were for 1,000 years instead of 40, would of itself constitute a private right to heritable estate under the law of Scotland. A person who claimed heritable property must produce a charter; and although there were circumstances in which possession for 40 years might be regarded as interpreting the terms of an ambiguous charter, yet it was always on the charter itself, and never on the mere possession, that the right was based. Now, it was a matter of notoriety that many of the rights of fishery in the Solway Firth rested upon grants made by the Crown so early as the time of Queen Mary and James VI. It might be that there were now persons fishing with stake nets on the Scotch side of the Solway who had no right to do so; and he did not for a moment suggest that there ought not to be an inquiry with a view to ascertain whether there was not unauthorized fishing—whether the right of fishing was not exercised by persons who had no title by charter or grant, and also, perhaps, whether those who had received grants or charters had not exercised the right in excess of what had been conferred upon them by the Crown. But if by the words "carrying into effect the intention of the Legislature" was meant repealing those old exemptions and sweeping away the patrimonial rights of towns, communities, and private individuals on the Scotch shore, he must say that that was not the intention of the English Acts, for they contained a special reservation in favour of rights constituted by grant or charter, or by immemorial possession according to the law of England. He was not prepared to accept a Motion couched in the terms of that of the hon. Member (Mr. S. Howard), especially after the explanations he bad given; but if he did not insist upon that particular Motion, he (the Lord Advocate) was quite prepared, on the part of the Government, to promise that there should be an immediate inquiry, which he trusted would form the basis of some future settlement of the question. But he must distinctly say that he could not promise that the purport of that inquiry would be to sweep away valuable heritable rights which were as much constituted property by the law of Scotland as property in land, and which, perhaps, had only re-
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    cently been the subject of purchase and sale. A measure for that purpose would be one not to regulate the interests of the public, but to confiscate the rights of private property. There might be some method suggested of modifying or regulating these rights and, perhaps, abolishing them, in a manner which would not inflict pecuniary loss upon the owners; but he could not promise a measure which would deal with them in the way in which the public rights on the English side had been dealt with.
    MR. PERCY WYNDHAMsaid, the question was, not whether stake nets were a nuisance or not, but whether effect should be given to the undoubted intentions of the Legislature; and there could be no doubt that the intentions of the Legislature were that both shores of the Solway should be placed under the same law; and it was thought right that this should be done under the Scotch Act of 1862. There was great opposition on the part of the Scotch Members to that proposal, and the House, on that occasion, heard a great many arguments, such as they had often heard on questions relating to Salmon legislation, and had refused to give effect to, and such also as the House had just heard from the hon. and learned Lord Advocate. It was found that the English Act of 1861 was defective for want of the proper machinery to carry it out; and the result was that a Select Committee was appointed upon the subject in 1864, and in 1865 an Act was passed which created Special Commissioners, who were appointed for the purpose of inquiring as to the rights which existed with regard to fixed engines under the Act of 1861. There was no intention to take away engines that were held by royal charter, but the object of the Commissioners was to ascertain whether the engines in use were held by royal charter, or whether—as was the fact in 99 cases out of every 100—they were held by no such title. As a result, the Act of 1861 was extended to Scotland; but the machinery that was found necessary to give it effect in England was not extended to Scotland also; and Mr. Paterson, who was Chairman of the Commission, when formally applied to for his view on the matter, said at Carlisle that no jurisdiction was expressly given to the Commission to inquire into the legality of any engine

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    situated in Scotland, and that an appeal was given to the Courts of Westminster only; and that, as this state of things might lead to unfortunate results, all the Commissioners would do was to report their opinion to the Home Secretary, who might consider it proper to take the opinion of the Law Officers of the Crown on the subject. The inequality in the existing law had been condemned by the last three gentlemen who had held the office of Lord Advocate, and Lord Moncreiff brought in two Bills, with the object of rectifying it, in 1866 and 1868. Both those Bills contained clauses which had for their object the rectification of the present anomalous state of the law. The second Bill, he might add, proposed to reduce the area of the Solway—which might come under the operation of the English law—to narrower limits. No doubt the hon. Gentleman would be satisfied with a more limited area, for it was a matter of remark that where the injustice—if he might use the word—pressed most severely was that part of the estuary of the Solway which was furthest inland, where the fish went up into the English rivers. He did not know how the Government intended to meet the Motion; but with regard to the proposition for a Commission, he thought all the information necessary on the subject had already been collected, and was at hand. He did not know what his hon. Friend (Mr. S. Howard) wished for; but what was desirable was to see a uniformity of the law on the Solway, as had been expressed over and over again in the House; and when the hon. and learned Lord Advocate talked about the interference with private property, and of royal charters, he begged to remind him that the whole object of the Commission appointed in 1865 was to prove whether the people who alleged that they had royal charters possessed them or not; and the effect was to sweep away a lot of them. And it was in the hope that the Commissioners would be appointed to carry out the same sort of inquiry for Scotland as was instituted in England, that his hon. Friend had introduced his Motion that night. It might be said that they should have Scotch Commissioners appointed under the Scotch law; but if that was the case they would have to go back on what was done when it was considered desirable that the Solway in all parts
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    should be under one and the same law, and that that law should be the law of England.
    MR. FLETCHERsaid, it had not been his intention to take part in this debate, but after the speech they had just heard from the hon. and learned Lord Advocate he desired to say a few words. He was sure he was speaking the sentiments of every Member of the House when he said that his hon. Friend the Member for East Cumberland (Mr. S. Howard) had laid his case before the House in a speech which showed much research, and no little ability. In his (Mr. Fletcher's) opinion his hon. Friend had made an unanswerable speech—at any rate, it had not been answered by the hon. and learned Lord Advocate—and he had shown conclusively that great hardship and injustice were inflicted on all connected with fisheries on the Cumberland side of the Solway. It was difficult to conceive anything more irritating to a large body of intelligent and industrious men who earned their bread by fishing on the Cumberland shores than to find their hands tied by Act of Parliament forbidding them to use those engines and cunning devices which were used with deadly effect by the fishermen on the opposite coasts of Scotland. And this was not all, for it could not be doubted that the greatest portion of the fish caught in the Scotch nets were English salmon born and bred in English waters. He had not gathered from the speech of the hon. and learned Lord Advocate what it was that he was willing should be done. He had told them a great deal about the "patrimonial rights of the Crown" and "immemorial usage," but he had not attempted to show that the grievances complained of by the hon. Member for East Cumberland did not exist. He knew that they existed, but he would not accept the proposition now before the House for the appointment of a Royal Commission; he promised, however, that if that proposition was not pressed, he would, on the part of the Government undertake that some inquiry should take place. But he (Mr. Fletcher) would like very much to know what he intended should be the nature of such inquiry and by whom it would be conducted? He knew of no means of inquiry more likely to be effectual than an inquiry conducted by a Royal Com-

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    mission. The House had heard a great deal to-night about the legal anomalies which beset English and Scotch fisheries; but in his opinion there were other matters not precisely of a legal nature which required to be looked into. For instance, in Cumberland there wore two very fine salmon rivers—the Eden and the Derwent. For some reason which had never been explained one of those rivers was a very early salmon river, and the other a very late one. In the Eden fresh run salmon made their appearance in February; but in the Derwent very few were caught before the month of July. Now, it was quite obvious that legislation in reference to the close time which would be applicable in the one case might be totally inapplicable to the other. Surely that was a proper subject of inquiry with a view to legislation. Whilst alluding to this perplexing subject he would mention a circumstance which, though not strictly relevant to the subject now before the House, might be of interest to those who were fond of salmon fishing. It used to be the general opinion that the reason the Derwent was so much later than the Eden was that the temperature of the water in the Derwent was much lower than that of the Eden. Some years ago he (Mr. Fletcher) had some experiments made which proved conclusively that such was not the fact. The temperature of the water in the two rivers was taken daily for twelve months, and it was found the mean temperature of both rivers was practically the same for each month of the year. The real cause of that anomaly yet remained to be found. Reverting to the Question before the House—he hoped that hon. Members would not be alarmed at the legal difficulties with which the hon. and learned Lord Advocate had surrounded himself, and that the Government after all would assent to the inquiry as proposed by the hon. Member for East Cumberland, which inquiry he could not doubt would result in legislation that would remove what was felt to be a great injustice by the inhabitants of Cumberland.
    MR. ERNEST NOELsaid, he thought the case presented by the hon. Member for East Cumberland (Mr. S. Howard) was by no means so unanswerable as the hon. Member for Cockermouth (Mr. Fletcher) conceived.
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    As the hon. Member for East Cumberland had said, as far as the question of inquiry went, there was not much need for it; for almost every fact concerning the Solway was now pretty well known. What was wanted, and what was desired by his hon. Friend was that some action should be taken to provide that the practice on the English side of the Solway should become the practice on the Scotch side. It had been laid down, as if there was no doubt on the question, that the intention of the Legislature in the Acts of 1861 and 1862 was to abolish all stake nets. He (Mr. E. Noel) ventured to say that there was considerable doubt about the matter. In the Act of 1861, which was the English Act, no doubt all stake nets were prohibited; and by the Scotch Act of 1862, Clause 33, fixed engines on both sides of the Solway were brought under Clause 11 of the English Act; but there were these remarkable words in the clause—
    "But this section shall not affect any ancient right or mode of fishing as lawfully exercised by any person at the time of the passing of this Act, by virtue of any grant, or charter, or immemorial usage."
    It was, therefore, clear that instead of it being the intention of the Legislature to do away with all stake nets, there were stake nets which were to be preserved. When the Act of 1862 was passed, there was a discussion in that House. The hon. Member who represented Dumfries at that time objected to the wording of the clause, and in the discussion which took place, the then Lord Advocate said that this Act would not in anywise interfere with any chartered rights whatsoever. If, however, what was asked by the present Motion was granted, it would interfere most materially with very clear chartered rights. When asked to take other people's property for some public good, they had always been accustomed in that House—and he believed in every civilized Legislature—to remember that for any private property which was taken for the public good, the owner should have fair compensation. But in the course of this debate he had not heard a word intimating that they were prepared to pay fair compensation for rights which, he held, could be proved to be private property founded on as clear rights as any private property—

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    such as land—held by anyone in this country. They were told they had a river with different laws on the different sides, and they were asked to make both sides of the river alike, because it was hard that the fishermen on the English side should be heavily weighted by their neighbours on the Scotch side. That sounded very plausible; but he asked the House to remember what the promoters of the Motion asked. They wanted to take from persons property which they had held for hundreds of years — held under Royal charter, granted by the Kings of Scotland, and never revoked, and they wanted to do this without any compensation. A like proposition had never been brought before the House. He quite admitted that there was a grievance. It was a grievance which was stated by the Commissioner in 1867. Mr. Paterson, when he was adjudicating on the salmon fisheries at Carlisle, said that he could not undertake to enter upon the subject of Scotch stake nets, because he had not proper and sufficient jurisdiction, there being no provision in the Act for an appeal to a Scotch Court of Session. He (Mr. E. Noel) quite agreed that the Government ought to provide some easier machinery, by which if there were any illegal stake nets they should be removed, as those on the English shore were removed. He did not wish to keep up a single stake net on the Scotch side which had no right to exist there. Let there be all the inquiry in the world; but if it could be shown that the stake nets belonging to the burgh of Annan were as much private property as any acre of land held by any person, to take them away without compensation, so far from being just, seemed to him to be the very reverse. If they were asked to do this on public grounds—if they were asked to do it because the salmon fisheries were being destroyed and they ought to consider the food of the people—he should have felt it was a case much more deserving of consideration than was this one. But he thought the House should be made acquainted with some facts connected with some of those stake nets. He would venture to read a short extract from a Report made by Mr. Buckland in the year 1871. He reported—
    "It is my opinion, having twice examined the Solway, that the natural conditions of tide
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    expanse and the formation of ground are such that fixed engines are the proper mode of catching the salmon in this district. No number of draft or other nets could produce the same amount of salmon in good condition for the use of the public. Therefore I cannot advise their complete abolition; first, because it would interfere with the rights of property according to Scotch law; and second it would diminish the quantity of salmon sent to market."
    That was the opinion of Mr Buckland, whose efforts to preserve salmon were well known. Yet, with this statement before them of the best mode of fishing in that country, they were asked to enter in and confiscate those chartered rights. He would venture also to read a short extract from the Report of Mr. Walpole, who was certainly not opposed to the preservation of salmon. That gentleman said there could be no question that sweep nets and hang nets were infinitely more destructive than the stake nets now in use; yet the old stake net proprietors had been severely fined. He could quote also from the Report of Mr. Young to the same effect, and he thought the House would see that the proposition before it was one that it would be most unfair and most unjust to carry out. His hon. Friend (Mr. S. Howard) spoke of the injustice of the present law, but what he proposed seemed to be vastly more unjust; and, therefore, he (Mr. E. Noel) whilst having no desire to prevent an inquiry being instituted by the Government, hoped that they would also appoint Commissioners, by means of a short Act, who would try in a cheap form the legality or illegality of every stake net on the Solway. He was quite prepared for that, but he must protest against this Motion, because the language in which it was couched and the tenor of his hon. Friend's speech conveyed a demand that the House should confiscate what was as clearly private property as the land of any proprietor in the country.
    MR. J. MAITLANDsaid, his hon. Friend (Mr. E. Noel) appeared to be very much afraid of confiscation; but the hon. and learned Lord Advocate had distinctly stated that he would not sanction anything that approached confiscation. And his hon. Friend should remember that salmon fishing was the only kind of property where they might see that a man reaped who had never sown The peculiarity of it was that there was one

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    set of people who took care of the salmon, and another set who caught them and made property of them. That appeared to him to take it out of the ordinary condition of ordinary property, and when anyone talked of confiscation, he would always remind them that salmon existed in this country solely in consequence of the stringent enactment of the Legislature, and that the property of the fisheries had enormously increased in late years by Parliament having taken away the rights of other proprietors. That being the state of matters, he confessed that he sympathized with the Lord Advocate and the Government—because he believed that, on the one hand, they were scrupulously desirous of having nothing like confiscation; and on the other hand, they were anxious to keep up the supply of salmon. Speaking from his own experience, he believed that salmon fishing in the Solway was falling off in value. That was the case even in the time that he could remember, and the oldest inhabitants could tell a most lamentable tale. It was not a question of English and Scotch. The people who had these stake nets no doubt exercised very sharp practice on those on the other side. They had their property increased in value, and did nothing in return. The same thing held good as to the other proprietors in the rivers. They could do nothing, although the nets had increased. An Act had certainly been passed by which the close time was largely extended. But the question was what was to be done? He was unable to give any suggestion; but he thought they might have an inquiry, and if there was to be one, he hoped it would be not only as to stake nets, but also as to illegal modes or successful modes of fishing, such as flats and draft nets and other engines. He believed that by the Act of 1865 the Commissioners had the power to inquire not only as to stake nets, but other engines. He hoped if this inquiry was granted that the Commissioners would be empowered to look into both, and not only one mode. He was perfectly astonished at the small revenues these fisheries seemed to yield, for the payment was only £1,060 altogether.
    MR. ASSHETON CROSSsaid, the Government really had only one object in this question—that right should be done. He thought that anyone who
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    looked at a map of the Solway would convince himself that there was a good deal going on on the north side of the Solway that ought not to go on. So far as the Government were concerned, they were perfectly willing to put that right, not only in the most practical and feasible, but in the shortest and most ready way. That was a totally different thing—and he did not think the House ought to confuse the two stories—that was nothing like confiscation. A good deal of mischief was going on, and people were doing things which they ought not to do; and when people were doing what they had no right to do, they ought to be prevented from doing it. That had been done to the full extent on the English side, and the question was, as to what was to be done on the Scotch side. Therefore there could be no objection on the part of the Government to there being a full and fair inquiry into the matter. He had no objection to accept the Motion as it stood on the Paper except that he thought it would not carry them very much further; and he did not think it would answer the purpose they had in view; for the Motion was "to call the attention of the House to the condition of the law as affecting the salmon fisheries in the Solway." Now, he did not think the attention of the House could have been called to it in a more simple and effectual manner than by the hon. Member for East Cumberland. Then the Motion said that it was advisable to appoint a Royal Commission—
    "To consider and Report as to the best means of carrying into effect the intention of the Legislature with regard to stake nets in the Solway, as expressed in the thirty-third Clause of the Salmon Fisheries (Scotland) Act, 1862, and also to report as to the advisibility of further legislation."
    He did not object to that if it stopped there; but he objected to the latter part of the Motion, because it referred to an injustice as existing, assuming that injustice did exist before the fact had been proved by a Commission. The Motion proceeded—
    "With a view to removing the injustice consequent upon the conflicting state and interpretation of the laws affecting the Solway Fisheries in England and Scotland."
    In talk across the Table of that House it might for convenience of discussion be

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    allowed that an injustice did exist. It might be assumed in that way, but it should not be assumed in a Resolution of the House. If the hon. Member were willing to accept a Motion from which the latter words were omitted, he (Mr. Cross) would raise no objection. He wished to point out to the hon. Member that, as had been mentioned on both sides of the House, a great mass of information on this subject had already been collected; and if anything was wanted, it was that any Commission that might be appointed to make inquiry into this matter should have power to require people to prove the rights they claimed. The Motion of his hon. Friend did not go far enough; he (Mr. Cross) would therefore make the proposal that the Commission should have power to require parties who appeared before them to prove their rights. It would probably be found that many would be found exercising rights they were not entitled to exercise, or which they were exercising in excess; these questions would then be settled once for all. In this there could be nothing in the nature of a confiscation of rights. It was not because certain customs might not be in accordance with the law of England that therefore persons should be deprived of these rights they held under the law of Scotland. The rights in this case were rights of property, and he asserted the principle that they were not to be invaded, however convenient such a course might seem, and whatever primâ facie reasons might be shown. He was perfectly willing to make a demand that such rights should be proved; but being once proved they should not be taken away unless under the extreme pressure of public interest. Proof of right should be called for, and, that being done, it was not necessary to add to the discussion the question of the state of the law on either side of the Solway. He did not say that the result would be that the English and Scotch sides would be under the same law; but when all injustice was removed, it should be established that no right should be exercised unless as right of property. If this was sufficient for the hon. Member for East Cumberland he (Mr. Cross) was perfectly willing to accept the Motion in the amended form he had indicated.
    MR. J. MAITLANDasked if the right hon. Gentleman intended the in-
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    quiry to extend to the stake nets and engines in the upper waters?
    MR. ASSHETON CROSSsaid, he was simply dealing with the question of the Solway Firth according to the Motion, for the reason that the Solway had been excepted from fishery legislation; but he did not maintain, or let fall anything that might lead to legislation in other matters which he was not then prepared to discuss.
    MR. STAFFORD HOWARDsaid, he would be glad to adopt the Motion in the form proposed by the right hon. Gentleman. With regard to the question of injustice, it simply referred to the fact that an investigation had taken place upon the English side, and not upon the Scotch side, and that there was a desire such an investigation should take place.
    SIR WILFRID LAWSONsaid, he understood that the Home Secretary accepted the proposal of the hon. Member for East Cumberland as a matter of form; but that it was necessary to move the omission of the last two lines—namely—
    "With the view of removing the injustice consequent upon the conflicting state and interpretation of the laws affecting the Solway Fisheries in England and Scotland."
    He would move accordingly that these words should be omitted.
    Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
    Amendment proposed,
    To leave out from the word "That" to the end of the Question, in order to add the words "in the opinion of this House, it is advisable that a Royal Commission be appointed to consider and report as to the best means of carrying into effect the intention of the Legislature with regard to the Stake Nets in the Solway, as expressed in the thirty-third Clause of The Salmon Fisheries (Scotland) Act, 1862;' and also to report as to the desirability of further legislation,"—(Sir Wilfrid Lawson,)
    —instead thereof.
    Question, "That the words proposed to be left out stand part of the Question," put, and negatived.
    Words added.
    Main Question, as amended, put.
    Resolved, That, in the opinion of this House, it is advisable that a Royal Commission be appointed to consider and report as to the best means of carrying into effect the intention of the Legislature with regard to the Stake Nets

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    in the Solway, as expressed in the thirty-third Clause of "The Salmon Fisheries (Scotland) Act, 1862;" and also to report as to the desirability of further legislation.
    Resolved, That this House will immediately resolve itself into the Committee of Supply.
    Motion made, and Question proposed, "That Mr. Speaker do now leave the Chair."

  THE SLAVE CIRCULARS, 1876—SURRENDER OF A SLAVE AT JEDDAH.

    RESOLUTION.
    SIR GEORGE CAMPBELL,in rising to call attention to the surrender at Jeddah, in December last, of a recently imported African slave who had escaped into a British man-of-war, and to ask for explanations regarding the application to such cases of the Slave Circular of August last; and to move—
    "That the slave trade carried on under the Turkish and Egyptian flags requires the active attention of Her Majesty's Government,"
    said, that he was not there to allege any special ill-usage of the slave who had been given up at Jeddah; but although there might not have been hardship in the way of immediate barbarity in the treatment of that slave, was it not a hardship that a man should be torn from his home in Nubia, in the interior of Africa, that he should be made a subject of the slave traffic, and that he should be carried across the seas and sold to a master who worked him as an out-door slave in digging sand at Jeddah, for the purpose of being used as ballast by the ships frequenting that place? This incident at Jeddah constituted a typical case, and raised the question which he wished to submit to the House, whether it was right and proper, and whether it was in accordance with the feelings of the people of this country, that a slave who had escaped to a British man-of-war should be surrendered by an English officer, and again made a slave. It was no ordinary case of domestic slavery as practised in the East, where the slave had been born and brought up in the house of his master. This slave was a recent importation, and he had actually got on board a British man-of-war. The question then arose, being on beard a man-of-war, what was to be done with him, and it was decided for-
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    mally and deliberately to give him up. If the case had occurred at Zanzibar, this slave, under the orders of the Admiralty, would have been entitled to his freedom as a newly-imported slave. But as the case occurred in the Turkish dominions, and because we had no Treaty with Turkey for the suppression of the Slave Trade he was given up. Turkey was a specially favoured nation in this and other matters. Although we had no Treaty with Turkey we had Turkish promises without end on this subject abolishing this black slavery; yet the Slave Trade was actually carried on under the Turkish flag in a flagrant and open manner and on a great scale. The first question he wished to put, and which he hoped the Government would make clear, was whether the Slave Trade Circular of August last did or did not mean that a slave who had found his way on beard one of Her Majesty's ships was not to be given up. If the Circular meant that he was to be given up the British nation had construed the terms of the Slave Circular wrongly. He held that the meaning of that document, whatever it was, ought at least to be made clear, so that there should be no misconception. The second paragraph of the Circular left a considerable discretion, but the first paragraph of the Circular was, he thought, applicable to this case. The words of that paragraph were that the officer in command should "not admit any demand made upon you for his surrender on the ground of slavery." If that was the construction to be put on the Circular an error had been committed in this case. Here no demand whatever had been made, yet the slave was deliberately and formally delivered up. The question, he understood, was as to the meaning of the word received. Was it to be construed as if a slave was not received until it was determined to keep him on board, or was he received as soon as he put his foot on beard our ship? He maintained that the deck of a British man-of-war was "free soil," and whenever a slave had under any circumstances been permitted to come on beard he could not be delivered up. He was anxious that the point should be cleared up, because he was a Member of the Royal Commission which reported upon the question, and he had the misfortune to differ from his Colleagues upon it. There could be no doubt that

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    throughout the 17th and 18th centuries, and down to the present time, the doctrine had been held that a slave who once got on beard a ship of war should not be given up. In proof of that, as regarded the 17th century, he need only refer to the Treaty entered into with Tripoli, which provided that when one of His Majesty's ships of war appeared off Tripoli, on notice being given to the Consul, and proclamation being made, any Christians who escaped on beard should not be required back again. In the 18th century the language of Lord St. Vincent, addressed to the Secretary of the Admiralty, was equally explicit. His Lordship stated in his despatch, that from the days of Blake it had been the practice of the Navy not to surrender slaves that had escaped on board His Majesty's ships, and he added, "God forbid that such a Divine maxim should ever be forgotten." In the present century, he (Sir George Campbell) had to quote as his authority the expressions of Lord Clarendon, when Secretary for Foreign Affairs in 1856. Lord Clarendon said—
    "If a slave take refuge on board a British ship of war, it should be the duty of the captain still, as heretofore, to refuse to surrender him."
    No words could be plainer than those, and it was clear from those authorities and others which he could cite, if necessary, that during the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries, down to the year 1870, it was the rule of the British Navy, that the deck of a ship of war was free soil, and that the slave who set his foot on it thereby became free. With unimportant exceptions the Governments of foreign countries supported this view. Portugal and Holland questioned the application of the rule, but the Governments of Germany, Italy, and the United States, and the official legal authority of France concurred in regarding the deck of a man-of-war as part of the national territory, and the slave who had once gained that deck as free. He believed there was no doubt that this country wished the freedom of escaped slaves to be maintained, providing there was no excessive complication arising with other Powers. There was no danger of this complication now. So long as the United States, or any other great civilized Power, maintained a system of slavery it might have been difficult to carry out that principle;
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    but all difficulty was now removed by the fact that no great or civilized Power maintained a system of slavery. Then it was urged that it would cause difficulty and complication in countries where slavery now existed, and where slaves had to be employed in coaling Her Majesty's ships at some foreign stations and on other similar duties. He was inclined to think that in maintaining a great principle of this kind we might very well consent to submit to any petty inconvenience from being compelled to employ free labour instead of slave labour for the coaling of our ships at any port where slavery was still maintained, and he understood that this was done at the ports of Brazil, and that only free labourers were employed by British men-of-war. There could be no doubt that at the present moment a large traffic in slaves was being carried on openly and with perfect impunity in the Red Sea under the Turkish and Egyptian flags—a traffic which our Naval officers did nothing to interfere with or put down, because they had no power to do so. The evidence taken before the Committee was on that point very ample and conclusive, and Sir Bartle Frere spoke in the most positive terms to that effect. The Reports of the Consuls at many parts in the East were equally strong in denouncing Egypt and Turkey as the great offenders in this way, and one Consul even said that 500 slaves were in one instance put on beard Egyptian or Turkish vessels and carried across the Red Sea in sight of the English Consul. He might be told by the Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, as they were told the other night, that efforts were now being made to conclude a Treaty with the Khedive of Egypt in order to suppress the Slave Trade. On that he would only observe that such efforts had already been made before, and he sincerely hoped they would prove more successful than they had done heretofore, although he could not feel very sanguine on that score. But, as to the Slave Trade extensively carried on under the Turkish flag, he wished to know whether the Turks alone were to be for ever privileged in these matters, and were to remain exempt from all the laws of civilization and all the restraints which were imposed on other people. Were British interests so bound up with Turkey that, for the

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    sake of those interests, we were ready to let her carry on the Slave Trade with impunity? It was high time, in his opinion, that the Slave Trade should be declared piracy. So long ago as 1822, at the Congress of Verona, the Duke of Wellington pressed that upon the Powers, but France would not agree to it. Now he was sure France would be actuated by the highest sentiments of humanity, and the only resisting Power would be Turkey, and her resistance ought to be put down. In treating with the Turkish Government we should not be content with asking for promises which had been and always would be broken, but should require sterner and more effective measures. The hon. Gentleman concluded by moving the Resolution of which he had given Notice.
    Amendment proposed,
    To leave out from the word "That" to the end of the Question, in order to add the words "the slave trade carried on under the Turkish and Egyptian flags requires the active attention of Her Majesty's Government,"—(Sir George Campbell,)
    —instead thereof.
    SIR HENRY HOLLANDsaid, he should not have intervened between the hon. Member for Kirkcaldy (Sir George Campbell) and the Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, if he had not had the honour of serving on the Royal Commission with reference to Fugitive Slaves on which the hon. Member was one of his Colleagues. He was not surprised that the hon. Member had taken up this case, because everybody would acknowledge his efforts to check the Slave Trade; nor was he surprised at the view taken by him of this case, as it had been strongly pressed by the hon. Member on the attention of the Commission. The Commissioners did not think that the mere fact of the admission of a fugitive slave on board one of Her Majesty's vessels necessitated the retention of that fugitive slave, but that the captain was bound to take all matters into consideration, especially when in the port of a friendly State in which domestic slavery was recognized as law. The hon. Member contended, contrary to the opinion of all his Colleagues, that the mere fact of a fugitive slave being on beard one of Her Majesty's ships ought to secure him from being given up. The Commission, however, reported that the ships
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    of the Royal Navy should not be made a general asylum for all fugitive slaves; but that the commanders of such ships should carefully inquire if, beyond the desire of the slave himself, there were reasons for thinking he would be treated with inhumanity, before they determined whether or not to surrender the fugitive. The hon. Member said that before 1870 there were no cases in which slaves had been surrendered. But he was mistaken, as there were other cases on record. By way of example he (Sir Henry Holland) would quote one. In 1837 a slave took refuge on beard Her Majesty's ship Romney, lying in the harbour of Havannah. The commander surrendered him to his owner, and Lord Palmerston, who was not usually supposed to be a supporter of slavery, wrote a despatch on the 5th of January, 1838, in which he said that the conduct of the commander was right and proper. Indeed, at that time our ships were expressly ordered not to go into the ports of the Southern States of America, because difficulties might arise if slaves escaped to them. The Admiralty, surely, could hardly be blamed for issuing a Circular in accordance with the distinct opinions of the Lord Chief Justice and of the late Mr. Justice Archibald, than whom a better Judge never sat on the English Bench; of Sir Robert Phillimore, and of three such international lawyers as Mr. Mountague Bernard, Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, and Sir Henry Maine. The Circular was clear in its terms. All cases were to be inquired into, and so far the Circular was in favour of the slaves. It was also in accordance with the Report of the Commissioners, whether that Report was right or wrong. He did not propose to discuss the case now under consideration, because the Under Secretary would deal with it. If admission on board Her Majesty's ships for the temporary purpose of inquiring into the truth of any case was in itself a bar to any surrender, it appeared to him that a great hardship would be inflicted on fugitive slaves, because admission would generally be refused. As to the Slave Trade in the Red Sea, he shared in the opinion of the hon. Gentleman, and he heartily desired to see a check put upon it; but he thought that they might trust the Government, looking to the statements that had been made by them on the subject, and con-

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    sidering that the rule laid down by Lord Carnarvon for the abolition of domestic slavery in the protected territories of the Gold Coast, carried out as it had been so ably and energetically by Governor Strachan, was the most efficient step that had been taken for years towards the extinction of that trade.
    MR. WHITBREADthought that when this case was fully examined, it would be seen that it would be difficult to deal with it by a Circular. No Circular, in his opinion, could possibly be drawn that would stand. When he first saw the latest Circular, he thought it was an innocent one, but when he examined it he had a different opinion. His hon. Friend (Sir George Campbell) wished to lay down a law that it would be unlawful to put a slave ashore, but that would not stand for a moment. It might operate hardly upon the slaves themselves, as there would be circumstances when a captain would be obliged to do so. He did not think any written Circular could accurately lay down the principle by which our commanding officers ought to be guided. The Slave Circular instructed the captain of a British vessel, in the case of a slave received on beard while in territorial waters, not to entertain any demand for his surrender upon the ground that he was a slave; but it did not tell the captain that he was not to think of him as a slave at all. He (Mr. Whitbread) would say that all our difficulties on the subject of slavery had been occasioned from this new system of issuing Circulars which fettered the discretion of our captains. Those who framed these Circulars appeared to think it necessary that we should look upon the slave as property. The right view appeared to him to be that when once a slave was on beard one of Her Majesty's ships, the captain should entirely ignore the fact that the slave was claimed as property by some one, and should treat him exactly as he would treat a free man, with this exception, that there were certain cases in which the captain ought to detain a slave to save him from ill-treatment or capture when he would not detain a free man. That was the principle which the country would like to see adopted, and which, while the captains were allowed to exercise their own discretion, had been satisfactorily carried out. They were well acquainted with these waters
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    and were thoroughly familiar with the questions that were likely to arise.
    MR. ANDERSONsaid, this case was a distinct instance of the folly of tying down the discretion of our officers by these Circulars. Under the old system the thing went on very well, but since these Circulars had been issued we had got into difficulties which would undoubtedly increase. He would ask, however, why it was that slavery existed at Jeddah at all—it existed there only because this country had neglected its duty in not putting an end to this institution in that part of the world. We had chosen to continue on friendly terms with this accursed country of Turkey in Europe years after we ought to have thrown her over. We had secured Treaties for the suppression of the Slave Trade with nearly all the world except Turkey and Egypt, and we ought to have long ago insisted on Treaties with these powers also, and not allowed their flags to carry on this infamous traffic in the Red Sea. It was a notorious fact that in Turkey in Europe slaves were bought and sold in spite of all the firmans against the traffic, and that that was the only State in Europe in which such a traffic was carried on, and a great part of their supply came from the Red Sea. We ought at once to say with the other Powers that it should no longer be allowed. He went a step further, and said with the hon. Member for Kirkcaldy that all civilized nations should regard this traffic in human flesh as piracy, and crush it wherever it could be got at.
    MR. BOURKEsaid, he did not think that the House was anxious that this debate should be unduly protracted, and therefore he ventured to rise at that early stage of it to give such information on the subject as he was able to lay before the House. He concurred in a great deal that had fallen from the hon. Member for Kirkcaldy (Sir George Campbell), but must dissent from one proposition which he had laid down—that we ought to adopt a certain course with regard to fugitive slaves, because we should not have a great Power to interfere with us in that course. That was a principle which this country had never adopted. It had always done its best to suppress the Slave Trade, and he hoped it would continue to do so; and, whether we were opposed by a

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    small Power or a great one, he trusted that would make no difference. The hon. Member had drawn a distinction between Oriental and Occidental slavery, but for his part he recognized no difference between the two; and, whether it was carried on on the shores of the Red Sea or on the West Coast, the endeavour of Her Majesty's Government would be to put a stop to it. With regard to the Slave Trade in the Red Sea, there could be no doubt that that was Oriental slave trade, and to excuse it upon that ground would be absurd and revolting to his feelings, and also would be contrary to the policy of England. The hon. Member had also occupied a large portion of his speech with a description of the law of England relative to fugitive slaves. That was a question which was discussed last year at very great length, and it resulted in a Commission which had reported on the subject. He did not, therefore, think it would be agreeable to the House that he should now renew that discussion. At the same time he could not allow what the hon. Member had stated to pass altogether unnoticed. The hon. Member had read a despatch from Lord Palmerston to Mr. Jerningham, written in 1860, by which he endeavoured to support the proposition that England had at all times maintained the doctrine that fugitive slaves, whether within territorial waters or not, should not be surrendered when they got on beard Her Majesty's ships. Now, the hon. Member had not dealt fairly with the House in that case. In fact, that was an exceptional case. We had been obliged to act with regard to Brazil on a different principle from any other country. Brazil had for years openly violated all her Treaties with us in regard to the suppression of the Slave Trade; for that reason we took a high hand with her, and acted with regard to her in a totally different way from all other countries. The hon. Member must have known that the case to which he referred was quite an exceptional one.
    SIR GEORGE CAMPBELLsaid, he did not know the case was exceptional.
    MR. BOURKEwas very much surprised to hear it. It was a well-known fact that Brazil had been an exception to the rule laid down. Beyond that, Lord Clarendon in 1870 laid it down as his opinion, with respect to the
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    case of slaves taken on beard at Madagascar, that commanders of Her Majesty's cruisers were not justified, where slavery was legal, in recovering fugitive domestic slaves. In 1870 a letter from Mr. Hammond laid down precisely the same rule, but in stronger terms, and that rule was exactly contrary to what had been stated by the hon. Member for Kirkcaldy as being the general principle upon the subject. Now, with regard to the interpretation which the hon. Member put on the Circular, he must altogether decline to interpret' this Circular, or any other law or regulation in an abstract form. When cases arose under the Circular, they would be dealt with according to the Circular; and when they knew all the facts connected with the Jeddah case, they would be enabled to decide whether the Consul had acted rightly or not. The hon. Member for Bedford (Mr. Whitbread) objected to lay down any rules in the Circular—he would rather state principles, and leave the matter to the discretion of the officers; but how could he state principles to officers engaged in all parts of the world except in a Circular? The principle to which the hon. Gentleman had referred appeared to him (Mr. Bourke) exactly the same as that laid down in the Circular, which directed that in no case should a slave be surrendered on the ground of his slavery. Supposing it had been the case of a free man, would the hon. Gentleman have had him put ashore at once?
    MR. WHITBREADsaid, that in the Jeddah case there was no demand for the surrender.
    MR. BOURKE: Just so. Certainly not! There was no demand for surrender; and if he were a free man who came on board you would have put him ashore at once. This man was treated better than if he had been a free man, because, instead of being simply put ashore, he was handed over to the Consul, who took security that he should not be ill-used; and that was the second regulation of the Circular under which fugitive slaves were to be dealt with. He was not going to say more than this—they had not yet received the Report of the Consul; and that might easily be accounted for. We had no communication directly with Jeddah. Communication was only had by casual steamers calling there from time to time—very

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    often there was no communication for a number of weeks. But when the Report was received, the Government would take the whole matter into consideration, and say whether the Consul had done right in giving up this slave, taking security that he should be well treated. It was quite true, as had been said, that we had no Convention with Turkey. Last year he stated that the Government were hoping to make a Treaty with Turkey on the subject of the Slave Trade; but, at the present moment, Turkey had quite enough to do with matters vitally affecting her Empire, and it would be too much to expect she would enter into any Treaty affecting matters connected with the Slave Trade; but when she recovered from her present condition he trusted she would be prepared to make the same advance which other countries in the East had made for the suppression of the traffic.
    Question, "That the words proposed to be left out stand part of the Question," put, and agreed to.

  THE TICHBORNE CASE—THE QUEEN v. CASTRO—THE CORRESPONDENCE.

    OBSERVATIONS.
    MR. WHALLEY,on rising
    "to call attention to Correspondence with the Home Office relating to the Tichborne Claimant, now suffering penal servitude under the name of Castro alias Orton, soliciting inquiry into the circumstances connected with his trial and conviction, together with Documents in the nature of evidence in support of such application, and especially Affidavits by Charles Orton, the brother of Elizabeth Jury, and Mary Ann Tredget, the sister of Arthur Orton,"
    said, that he felt embarrassed how to justify himself in introducing the Tichborne case again before the House. Nothing could be more satisfactory than the manner in which the right hon. Gentleman the Home Secretary answered Questions on ordinary occasions; but he (Mr. Whalley) confidently asked hon. Members whether that course had been pursued by the right hon. Gentleman and also by the Secretary to the Treasury in answering Questions on this subject. It would have been much better to have disposed of the subject in a straightforward manner by giving a direct answer to the Question rather than presuming on the incompetency of any particular Member that put the Question,
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    because until that was done the Question still remained upon the Paper. He had presented Petitions signed by 300,000 persons arraigning the administration of justice in this case, and preferring charges against those who tried him which no Judge had ever before allowed to remain on the Table of the House without demanding a full inquiry. He took upon himself the responsibility of substantiating the charges so made before any tribunal that House might appoint for investigating them. Besides the pressure that was put upon the Press during the trial not to speak or discuss the points and circumstances as they arose, the Press had, by some extraordinary circumstance, omitted to notice the action of public opinion in favour of the Claimant which had not abated since the trial. He wished to know why an officer of that House was selected to pay Charles Orton 21s. a-week for more than 12 months to keep his address secret and to communicate with him under a fictitious name. He asked why this man was not called on the trial. He declared that the man had been tampered with by the Treasury, and that a direct bribe was given to him by his retention by the Solicitor to the Treasury of 21 s. a-week for the express purpose of preventing the unhappy man now in Dartmoor from obtaining the benefit of this man's evidence. How the right hon. Gentleman the Home Secretary, so intelligent, courteous, and able a person, could lend himself to such a proceeding he could not imagine. He could prove by documents in his pocket that this man was paid this money for more than 12 months. He had asked a Question on the subject the other evening of the Secretary to the Treasury, who, however, declined to reply to it on the ground that he had answered a similar Question nearly two years since; but when he turned to the answer given by the hon. Gentleman in August, 1875, he found that he had on that occasion also declined to give the information asked for. He believed it was true that nearly £10,000 had been paid for the bringing up of witnesses from all parts of the world by the Treasury, at the expense of the public, but they were afterwards kept back because it was found that their evidence would be adverse to the prosecution, and he regarded the 21 s. a-week paid to Charles Orton as nothing less than hush money.

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    He could not help expressing his surprise that the Home Secretary who manifested so much courtesy and ability on every other subject should make this case an exception. ["Oh!" and "Divide!"] He would, however, again ask him why he did not lay before the Judges who tried this case the evidence brought before the Home Office showing that there had been a miscarriage of justice. The right hon. Gentleman said it would be a bad precedent to lay before the Judges evidence which would have been brought before the Court, because in Court the witnesses could be examined and cross-examined. He (Mr. Whalley) regarded that dictum as a very startling one, and it did not accord with his own experience as to the practice in such cases. In two cases of murder he had been partially instrumental in rescuing persons who had been convicted from the penalty of death, and that penalty had been remitted entirely in consequence of evidence brought forward by himself and others after the trial. If the Home Office had excluded from consideration the evidence that should have been produced at the trial those men must have suffered capital punishment. A great doubt existed in the case, and that doubt would probably have been removed if Charles Orton and his sisters had been called at the trial. The prosecution had spent about £300,000 in prosecuting the defendant, and he himself and others had been fined and imprisoned for taking his part. But he did not complain on his own account; he never did so. All he asked was that the right hon. Gentleman should lay before the Judges the additional evidence which had been procured, and which to his mind was very important. Six persons had all sworn that in 1854 they boarded the Osprey in Melbourne Harbour, and that they saw and spoke to a body of men who represented themselves as having been saved from the wreck of the Bella. One or two of the witnesses, moreover, swore that among those men they recognised the Claimant. Further than that, a Mrs. Alexander, who was known to the right hon. Member for Greenwich (Mr. Gladstone) as a person of respectability, declared that she recognised the defendant as a person whom she saw in Australia in 1835. He also complained that the Government had given Dr. Massey Wheeler an ap-
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    pointment which had taken him out of the country, and deprived the defendant of the benefit of his evidence. If the right hon. Gentleman chose to treat him (Mr. Whalley) with indifference, that was what he was accustomed to; but why should he complain to the House that he was troubled with these Questions being repeated? The evidence to which he was now referring was not old evidence. Every week had brought forth fresh testimony, which had culminated within those very walls in a statement made to him (Mr. Whalley) by one of the Sheriffs of the City of London, to the effect that the Lord Mayor had told him he knew the whole family of the Ortons, and that this man was no more Arthur Orton than the Lord Mayor himself was. This was no ordinary case of a miscarriage of justice. Here was a man who, if the judgment passed upon him was right, had been roaming through the country for seven years under an assumed name and had been raising enormous sums of money from the people on the strength of that imposture—and it was a discredit to the administration of justice in this country that such a state of things should have been possible. On that ground alone it was most important that there should be an inquiry. He held in his hand a printed copy of five letters—he would not trouble the House by reading them—entitled "Junius to Mr. Cross." Whether or not they had been written by the hon. Gentleman who had been the advocate of this man, it was not for him to say; but they were most admirable compositions, and he thought it would be well if the right hon. Gentleman would have them printed and circulated among the Members of the House. Well, those letters distinctly stated, in effect, that the man had been convicted, not in consequence of the evidence against him, but on account of the misconduct of his counsel. In refusing an application for a new trial, the Judges said to the advocate more than once, and almost in so many words" That man was sent to prison on account of your insolence and your misconduct." If that was true, he (Mr. Whalley) should have expected the hon. Member for Stoke-upon-Trent to be present in order to speak in his own defence, but he noticed with sorrow that the hon. Member was not in his place. It was

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    true that this unhappy man had put himself into the hands of his friends, who selected for him his counsel, and he was convicted, he (Mr. Whalley) would not say through the fault of his counsel, nevertheless that learned advocate was extruded from his position as a Bencher of his Inn, and had also been disbarred. This was the result of a fearless advocacy used on behalf of a man who had been unjustly accused, and it among others was in his mind a sufficient ground upon which to ask that further inquiry should be made. There were, without doubt, many hon. Gentlemen—not all, of that he was perfectly sure—who firmly believed that the right man was in the right place—["Hear, hear!"]—who might think that he was not Tichborne—that was to say, that he had put himself forward as Sir Roger Tichborne when he was not Tichborne—and really he (Mr. Whalley) was almost shocked at the eagerness with which hon. Members cheered that sentiment, because the right hon. Gentleman opposite might consent to give an inquiry. Although many hon. Members might believe that this man was not Tichborne, he could not think that there were many who believed that this man was Orton, but who, like the Lord Mayor, would not go the length either of saying that he was not Sir Roger Tichborne or that he was Arthur Orton. Some might say, after such an interminable trial—"We are not going to have the course of affairs in this House deranged in the same way as the business in the Courts of Law; it is only this unhappy monomaniac that we are going to get rid of; "but no question had ever taken hold of the feelings, the patriotism, the good sense, and he might say the Christianity of the country, to the same extent. It was in their hands, and they would demand a hearing for it. This poor man when left to himself, and having peculiar skill in the art of shooting—[Laughter]—why could he (Mr. Whalley) not mention that without being laughed at?—and being deliberately deprived of the aid of the public funds to defend himself was told with ferocity by the Lord Chief Justice that if he dared to go to these rifle matches or any place to solicit money his bail would be estreated, and he would be shut up. In consequence, he (Mr. Whalley) had been compelled to get up subscriptions, which he had also been compelled to spend
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    very freely. Indeed, the last 50 witnesses had been paid for with money out of his (Mr. Whalley's) own pocket. He waited with anxiety to learn whether the Secretary of State would again say that evidence could not be considered now because it was not brought forward at the trial. In conclusion, he assured the House that nothing but his strong sense of the conviction that the man in prison was Sir Roger Tichborne would induce him so persistently to present himself to the House in a manner so obnoxious to it.
    MR. ASSHETON CROSSsaid, the hon. Member for Peterborough (Mr. Whalley) had at different times asked him many Questions, and he must put it to the House whether at any time he had treated the hon. Member with the slightest discourtesy? [Mr. WHALLEY said, he had not complained of any discourtesy on the part of the right hon. Gentleman, but rather to the contrary.] He must deprecate the practice of bringing this matter perpetually before the House without any definite object. In July, 1874, a Motion for a Return of the expenditure in connection with the trial was negatived by 45 against 4, and that was the reason why the Secretary to the Treasury had refused to give any information beyond that contained in the Return already presented to the House. As for himself (Mr. Cross) and his Department, there was no rule that new evidence should not be considered by the Home Secretary, and it was very often considered, but it was for the Home Secretary to draw his own conclusions as to whether such evidence might have been brought before the Judge at the trial, so that the witnesses might have been subjected to cross-examination; and if it appeared there was no sufficient reason why they should not have been examined at the trial, this was a circumstance to which the Home Secretary would give due weight. With regard to the Notice which the hon. Member opposite had placed on the Paper, he (Mr. Cross) had understood that it was intended by that Motion "to call attention to Correspondence with the Home Office relating to the Tichborne Claimant;" but he had listened attentively to the address of the hon. Member without hearing an allusion to any Correspondence which had taken place with the Home Office.

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    Nor had he heard the slightest allusion to any "special documents" relating to the evidence of Mary Ann Tredget, while only a slight reference had been made by the hon. Member to that of Charles Orton. All he could say was that he hoped the House would never constitute itself a Court of Appeal in criminal trials; and not only so, but that it would not encourage Motions of the indefinite and purposeless description of that which had been brought forward by the hon. Member for Peterborough. In conclusion, he would quote what he said to the House in March, 1876. It was to the effect that "he had answered many Questions on the subject in reference to which he hoped a statute of limitations would at some time come into operation. He had read every Petition and paper on the subject presented to him as Secretary of State, including the letters of 'Junius' in the Englishman; and nothing had raised the slightest doubt in his mind as to the convict's guilt and the justice of his sentence. That being so he was bound to act on his judgment and to advise the Crown accordingly; and if in any advice he gave to the Crown he acted improperly he was responsible to the House." This was what he said in 1876, and he repeated it in 1877; and, until some evidence was placed before him which would induce him to alter his opinion, he should continue to act as he had hitherto done.

  UNHEALTHY STATE OF THE WAR OFFICE.

    WITHDRAWAL OF MOTION.
    SIR WILLIAM FRASER,who had a Notice of Motion on the Paper—
    "For an Address for Copy of the Report of and of the evidence taken before the Committee or Board specially appointed by the Secretary of State for War in 1875, of which the Quartermaster General of the Army was President, to examine and report upon the unhealthy condition of the War Office and Horse Guards in Pall Mall,"
    said, he should not bring it under the notice of the House. In taking that course he had done all he could, and the responsibility now rested on the Government. He believed that until a full investigation took place a great deal of sickness would go on amongst the clerks in the office.
    Main Question proposed, "That Mr. Speaker do now leave the Chair."
    Motion, by leave, withdrawn.
    Committee deferred till Monday next.

  SUPPLY—REPORT.
  Resolutions [15th March] reported.
  First twelve Resolutions read, and agreed to.
  Thirteenth Resolution read a first time.
  On Question, "That it be now read a second time."
  Mr. W. H. SMITH, in fulfilment of the promise he made to the right hon. Member for Pontefract (Mr. Childers), when the subject of pensions awarded to retiring officers in the Survey was before the Committee of Supply, said, the Expenditure for the Survey in the year 1875-6 was £136,831; an excess Vote was taken this year in order to make up a deficiency of the ordinary Vote for that year. In the course of 1875 the Treasury called the attention of the Board of Works to the fact that the Vote was exceeded, and the consequence was that 110 persons had been dismissed from the office with the view of reducing the expenditure, and of that number 63 had been pensioned at a cost of £4,000 per annum, the saving effected amounting to £2,831 per annum. He confessed that personally he regretted that such a large number of persons had been pensioned under those circumstances, and thought that it would have been more desirable that the reduction in the expenditure of this branch of the public service should have been effected in a more economical manner. The Chancellor of the Exchequer had taken steps to prevent the reduction and the abolition of such offices in future without ample notice being given to the responsible officers of the Treasury.
  MR. CHILDERSsaid, that the explanation of the hon. Member fully justified the inquiries he had made on the subject. It was a very bad case indeed. In spite of the orders given by the Treasury, the Department of the Works had not kept within their Estimates, but exceeded the Vote by £5,000 or £6,000. They were then ordered to economize, and discharged a large number of persons,

  87
  and then came a fresh addition to the Establishment Vote, just as if no reduction had been made. He hoped the moral of it would be that the Treasury would be enabled to exercise a proper control in such matters for the future.
  MR. RYLANDSthought that this transaction was about one of the worst that had been brought under the notice of the House, and that the explanation offered was altogether unsatisfactory. They were now called upon to pass the Vote on the Report instead of their having been furnished with the necessary information upon it in Committee of Supply, which was a most objectionable course to pursue.
  SIR HENRY SELWIN-IBBETSONcontended that the re-organization which had taken place in the Office would lead to a considerable saving.
  Question put, and agreed to.
  Resolution agreed to.
  Remaining Resolutions agreed to.

  COUNTY BOARDS (IRELAND) BILL.
  (Captain Nolan, Mr. Fay, Mr O' Clery.)
  COUNTY BOARDS (IRELAND) BILL.

    [BILL 100.] SECOND READING.
    Order for Second Reading read.
    CAPTAIN NOLAN,in moving that the Bill be now read a second time, said, that although a great many Irish Members had left the House under the impression that the Bill would not be taken, still, as a private Member who had not been fortunate enough to procure a Wednesday, he felt he would be wanting in his duty if he did not try to proceed with it when he had a chance. The Bill was not a revolutionary one, and was founded on the idea that the Boards should be purely elective. The measure would also avoid the difficulty at present experienced of having so many voting lists.
    Motion made, and Question proposed, "That the Bill be now read a second time."—(Captain Nolan.)
    MR. BRUEN,in moving that the Bill be read a second time that day six months, said, he was taken by surprise by the Bill being proceeded with at so late an hour. He did not think that the measure had been well conceived, because the bodies which administered the affairs of counties in Ireland were at present representative, and with a few
    88
    improvements the system would be rendered entirely satisfactory. Moreover, such a change as the one proposed by the measure was one which was not at all in accordance with the Resolution which was arrived at by the House the other day. He denied that in many eases the Board would really be elective. He believed, if he went into the details of the measure, he would be able to show that many of the provisions would be unworkable, but he would not detain the House at that late hour, but would conclude by moving its rejection.
    Amendment proposed, to leave out the word "now", and at the end of the Question to add the words "upon this day six months."—(Mr. Bruen.)
    MR. PARNELLsaid, there appeared to be a very remarkable difference between the system of county government in Ireland and in England. In Ireland they were governed by a system of grand juries and County Boards, and in England they wore governed by a system of local authorities. The English system had grown with the growth of the country; but in Ireland they had never had any institutions except those which appeared to be given, he might say, as a symbol of contrast, and against which he protested. After the debate which had taken place on the Motion of the hon. Member for South Norfolk (Mr. Clare Read) the other day, he thought it was rather late in the day for any hon. Member of the House to get up and say that it was not right to extend representative institutions. He hoped that an opportunity would be given, either on the second reading of the Irish Valuation Bill, or some other occasion, for a full discussion on the whole question of Grand Jury and county reform in Ireland.
    SIR PATRICK O'BRIENsaid, that he felt the existing system was indefensible. Provided each Barony in a county was represented, the remainder of the Grand Jury was entirely in the hands of the High Sheriff, who might, if he so pleased, call as a Grand Juror any person, quite irrespective of his property or other qualification, it was no answer to say he did not do so—the objection still remained. There was a strong feeling in Ireland against the continuance of this system, and in favour of making the County Boards representa-

    89
    tive, and he should therefore vote in favour of the second reading of the Bill, as a protest against that system.
    SIR MICHAEL HICKS - BEACHsaid, that the question before the House was not whether the Grand Jury system was entirely satisfactory; and he was quite ready to admit that it needed reform. But the question was, whether it should be reformed in the way proposed by this Bill. He wished it to be understood that the Government fully accepted the Resolution of his hon. Friend (Mr. Clare Read), passed unanimously a few nights ago, with respect to Ireland as well as to England; and when they were able to approach the question, the Government would be most anxious to provide really representative bodies for the transaction of county business in Ireland. But he could not accept the present Bill as even the basis for county reforms in Ireland, and he must therefore oppose the second reading.
    Question put, "That the word 'now' stand part of the Question."
    The House divided:—Ayes 15; Noes 62: Majority 47.—(Div. List, No. 39.)
    Words added.
    Main Question, as amended, put, and agreed to.
    Second Reading put off for six months.

  WAYS AND MEANS.

    CONSOLIDATED FUND (£1,213,502 6s. 9d.) BILL.
    Resolution [March 15] reported, and agreed to: — Bill ordered to be brought in by Mr. RAIKES, Mr. CHANCELLOR of the EXCHEQUER, and Mr. WILLIAM HENRY SMITH.
    Bill presented, and read the first time.
    House adjourned at One o'clock till Monday next.