HC Deb 19 March 1878 vol 238 cc1625-32

(18.) Motion made, and Question proposed, That a sum, not exceeding £12,814 6s. 5d., be granted to Her Majesty to make good Excesses on certain Grants for Civil Services and Revenue Departments, for the year ended on the 31st day of March 1877, viz.:—

Class I.
£ s. d.
Royal Parks and Pleasure Gardens 395 8 5
Harbours, &c. under the Board of Trade 675 1 7
Lighthouses Abroad 3,299 19 6
Class II.
Colonial Office 36 12 6
Household of the Lord Lieutenant, Ireland 1 6 4
Office of Public Works, Ireland 400 16 5
Class III.
Criminal Prosecutions, Sheriffs' Expenses, &c. 419 11 10
Land Registry Office 23 4 10
Registry House Departments, Edinburgh 671 13 5
Law Charges and Criminal Prosecutions, Ireland 3,190 7 9
County Prisons and Reformatories, Ireland 869 1 11
Miscellaneous Legal Charges, Ireland 1,469 6 4
Class IV.
National Gallery 97 10 6
National Gallery of Ireland 20 17 8
Queen's Colleges, Ireland 780 1 11
Class V.
Commissions for Suppression of the Slave Trade 42 1 3
Class VII.
Miscellaneous Expenses 421 4 3
Total Amount Voted for Civil Services £12,814 6 5
Revenue Departments Nil.
Grand Total £12,814 6 5
GENERAL SIR GEORGE BALFOUR

said, he saw no earthly reason why all these charges—except, perhaps, one—should not have been submitted to the House in May last year. He considered it an essential obligation on the part of every Minister entrusted with the control of public moneys to relieve himself of all the many responsibilities connected therewith, and to obtain the authority of the House of Commons for all unauthorized outlay, immediately its occurrence became known to him.

MAJOR NOLAN

did not know whether they were required to discuss that sum of £12,000 altogether; because, if so, he should move the reduction of the Vote by £780 1s. 10d.

MR. W. H. SMITH

remarked that the hon. and gallant Gentleman opposite (Major Nolan) was not quite clear as to what this particular Vote was. It was the result of careful examination by the Comptroller and Auditor General of the expenditure by the Public Departments of their several Votes in the year 1876. The Comptroller reported that certain Departments not only spent the Votes given to them, but exceeded them to the extent of the amounts stated in this Excess Estimate. Separate items had been carefully examined by the Public Accounts Committee upstairs, and the Public Accounts Committee had allowed these charges as having been properly incurred under the circumstances. At the earliest moment it was the duty of his hon. Friend the Secretary of the Treasury to come down to Parlia- ment and ask for a Vote in the year 1877–8 for the amount spent in excess of the Votes for the year 1876–7. The consideration of the House was exercised by the Committee upstairs, and when he was a Member of that Committee with an hon. Gentleman opposite, they were most careful in passing these Excess Estimates. As for himself, he was glad to see that the amounts were lower this year than they had ever been before.

GENERAL SIR GEORGE BALFOUR

was exceedingly indebted to the right hon. Gentleman for the explanation he had given; but he considered there was more to be said. No doubt, the Public Accounts Committee had the important duty of detecting all omissions and commissions; but there was a primary duty to be performed by the authority who spent money which the House of Commons had not voted. The responsibility for such unauthorized expenditure was so great that the party incurring it ought to relieve himself by applying to Parliament for sanction for his assumed liability. But here they found that the Board of Trade, in the month of May, 1876, and in January, 1877, gave an order to incur expenditure at Dover, without the sanction of the House of Commons; and they perfectly well knew when they did that they were exceeding the Estimates passed by that House. They ought to have come to that House immediately the House met in February of last year and asked for an increase to the Estimates. That had nothing to do with the Committee on Public Accounts. He quite agreed that the £12,000, as compared with former excesses, was very small indeed; and he had no doubt the course pursued by the late Secretary to the Treasury had had a great effect in preventing irregularities.

MAJOR NOLAN

moved that the Vote be reduced by £780 1s. 11d. At 2 o'clock that morning the Irish Members moved the adjournment of the debate; but they were not allowed to report Progress; and thus they were not only deprived of the opportunity of expressing their opinion, but their opinion could not be given to the country. The position of the Irish Members in that House was. this—they saw no hope that the Government would do anything whatever for Catholic Education in Ireland. Last year they did not debate the Esti- mates, because they had hopes that something would be done; but at present they were entirely without hope from the Government, and there was no sign of any kind or description that they intended to place Catholic youth in Ireland on a similar footing with the children of Secularists and Protestants. They could not allow that to continue, and it was their firm resolve to oppose the Vote by every means in their power without wasting time needlessly. Ireland contributed £8,000,000 a-year to Imperial taxation; £3,000,000 or £4,000,000 might be required in Ireland, and a surplus of £3,000,000 or £4,000,000 was sent over to England to be devoted to English purposes. The fact was, the Irish people paid for their own education, and therefore ought to have whatever education they chose. Let them, therefore, have equal means of education, or let them have no endowments at all. Let Protestant and Secular endowments be swept away, and let them have their own education. In moving the reduction of this Vote, he wished it to be understood that he had no animosity to Secularist education. It was quite right that if anyone wished to educate his child at a Secularist University, he should have ample opportunities of educating his child, and he was quite willing that every man should have the opportunity of educating his children. But from what he knew, Irish Members would, in the future, very much object to voting money for the endowment of Secularist education, when only Secularist education was to be endowed in Ireland; and it was his intention, whenever a Vote came up which would afford him the opportunity, to protest against this system. If the Government insisted on forcing this money on Ireland, it was going against a majority of three or four to one as far as Ireland was concerned. Why the Government should force this measure of Secularist education on Ireland, against the wishes of the Irish people, he could not understand. If the Government persisted in this Vote, it would be seen that Irish feeling was so strong that they could no longer disregard it, and a couple of Sessions would not pass before they would find it convenient to abandon the present system.

THE CHAIRMAN

Does the hon. and gallant Member propose to omit the item or to reduce the Vote?

MAJOR NOLAN

Sir, I propose to reduce the Vote.

Motion made, and Question proposed, That a sum, not exceeding £12,034 4s. 6d., be granted to Her Majesty, to make good Excesses on certain Grants for Civil Services and Revenue Departments, for the year ended on the 31st day of March 1877."—(Major Nolan.)

MR. CHILDERS

really would appeal to the hon. and gallant Member, and would ask him to listen to a conclusive reason against his Amendment. He was not an admirer of the Irish Queen's Colleges, and therefore did not speak from that point of view; but the fact was, that under the regulations the fees received from students, instead of going directly to the Professors, were passed as a matter of account through the Exchequer, and an estimate was made of the probable amount to be paid to those who were entitled to the money. In the present case, it appeared that a larger amount than was at first estimated had been paid into the Exchequer, and it was necessary to take a Vote to pay it out. Therefore, if the Committee rejected the Vote, the position of the thing would be this—the Exchequer would have received £700 from fees which would go into the Consolidated Fund, and would not pay over to those to whom it properly belonged. Fees which had been received from students, which were intended to be paid as a matter of account to the Professors, would thus be retained by the public. The Exchequer would retain the students' money and the Professors would lose it. He was sure that the hon. and gallant Member did not wish that.

MAJOR NOLAN

would be quite willing to vote compensation to the students if they were at all wronged; so that he did not see that the difficulty suggested need stop him on the present occasion.

MR. O'CLERY

was of opinion that the action of the hon. and gallant Member for Galway (Major Nolan) was not action against the present Vote, but was a protest against the whole system. It was a question which they had no means of raising in public except by their action in that House. This appeared to them the most feasible way of doing it. In many of the constituencies in Ireland, one of which he had the honour to represent, there were 97 per cent of Catholics, and for the last few years not a single student had been sent from them to any of the Queen's Colleges. As the hon. and gallant Member for Galway had put it, if the Secularists in Ireland were so numerous as to require a separate system of education, let them pay for it. He had no hesitation in saying that the Irish Catholics would have no objection to pay as they were paying at this moment; and he was sure the Presbyterians would not object as they had one College—namely, the Queen's College, Belfast. One of these Colleges—namely, that at Galway, was so much a failure, that the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Greenwich (Mr. Gladstone), when he introduced his Bill for the system of University Education in Ireland, proposed to leave it out altogether. Seeing that the action of the Irish Members was a protest against the whole system of Queen's Colleges in Ireland, he hoped the hon. and gallant Member for Galway would continue to resist this Vote.

MR. MUNTZ

said, it appeared to him that the hon. Member who spoke last (Mr. O'Clery) had not accurately understood the remarks of the right hon. Member for Pontefract (Mr. Childers). The Government were not taking money in any way. They were only in the position of trustees who had received a sum of money and wanted to repay it. If hon. Members wanted to attack the Queen's Colleges, the proper time to do that was when the Queen's Colleges came before the House. This being merely a Supplementary Vote, he hoped the hon. and gallant Member would not trouble the House to divide upon it.

MR. O'DONNELL

would go so far as to say that he was disposed to go so far as to suggest that the Professors should have full compensation for the fees they had not received. When the Professors accepted their Chairs in the Queen's Colleges, they expected a large amount in fees from a numerous attendance of pupils; but they only found a thin attendance at the classes, and their Chairs, accordingly, were not remunerative to anything like the extent that for their position and attainments they had a right to expect. The present was an opportunity on which we were called upon to form an opinion one way or the other. The Government might be the trustees; but the Irish Members of that House were in no respect the trustees for the Queen's University. The Representatives of the Irish Party had opposed the Grant to Queen's Colleges and to the Queen's University in Ireland from the commencement, and they would continue to put their opposition in a practical shape in every possible way and on every occasion when the question came within their ken. They would seize every opportunity of marking their sense of these anti-national and most prejudicial institutions.

MR. MELDON

said, he should be glad if his hon. and gallant Friend (Major Nolan) could see his way not to press his Motion to a division. There was no man who would more persistently than himself oppose grants of public money to the Queen's University; but he did not look upon this Vote in the light of a grant. It was simply a Vote for the purpose of handing to the Professors certain moneys which had been voluntarily paid into the Exchequer on their behalf by the students. The Professors were entitled to certain fees from the students, and an arrangement was made whereby these fees instead of being paid directly to the Professors were paid into the General Fund for the purpose of equal distribution. The money having been thus paid into the Exchequer for a particular purpose, all that was now sought was that the Exchequer should not be allowed to retain this money; but that it should be handed over to the persons for whose use it was paid. It was in no sense a grant, nor was the principle for which Irish Members contended so strenuously the other night at all involved. Indeed, the pressing to a division the Amendment would very much weaken the opposition to the Queen's College Votes. He appealed, therefore, to his hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Galway (Major Nolan) not to persevere in his effort to throw out this Vote. If, however, he did so, he (Mr. Meldon) would vote with him, because the outside public would not draw the distinction between the Votes, and it was very important that the Irish people should know that the Irish Representatives were determined not to allow this system of education, so abhorent to them, to continue. He should be sorry, further, if a Vote was taken on the matter, as a Vote of the kind was apt to be misconstrued out-of-doors by people who could not distin- guish between the amount now asked and the motive and meaning of its payment, and a sum actually asked to be voted as a grant from the country to the University.

MAJOR NOLAN

said, he could not withdraw from a position which was perfectly logical. If they started upon the common basis that the Queen's Colleges were not for the education of the majority of the population of Ireland, then they were perfectly right in objecting to the Vote. The effect of the process contemplated by the Vote was simply to make the Government trustees of the money paid by the students, and it was to this quasi-trusteeship to which we objected so strongly. He should not object to the money being returned to the students, who could deal with it as they thought fit; but he certainly could not sanction the system of trusteeship on the part of the Government which the Vote would set up and perpetuate.

Question put.

The Committee divided:—Ayes 11; Noes 294: Majority 283.—(Div. List, No. 57.)

Original Question put, and agreed to.

House resumed.

Resolutions to be reported To-morrow;

Committee to sit again To-morrow.