RESOLUTION. (Hansard, 28 July 1881)

§ MR. ARTHUR ARNOLD

, who, throughout the whole of his speech, spoke amid great interruption, in rising to move— That, in the opinion of this House, it is desirable that the charge of Windsor Park be transferred from the Commissioners of Woods, Forests, and Land Revenues to the Commissioners of Her Majesty's Works and Public Buildings, said, he did not mean by his Amendment to imply any censure upon His Royal Highness Prince Christian, the Ranger, or to advocate any change in his posi- 68 tion or his authority. Indeed, he had nothing but congratulations to offer His Royal Highness upon the splendid success attending the Volunteer Review so recently held in the park, a success which was, in no small degree, due to the personal exertions of His Royal Highness. He thought, however, it most important that at Windsor, as at Buckingham Palace, the Banger's authority should be considerable, and that the Princes who held those offices should represent the hereditary rights of the Sovereign in the domains of the Crown. The simple object of his Amendment was to obtain an approval of the policy which would place Windsor Park in the same position in reference to the Public Accounts as that in which all the other Royal Parks and Palaces now stood. The question at issue was, whether the policy of the Act of 1851 of regarding Windsor Park and woods as a sort of revenue could be justified? He desired to remove the Royal domain of Windsor from what he might call the commercial category of Crown Lands. That domain was 14,000 acres in extent. He would not diminish it by a rood; his only desire being to place all those Crown Lands which pertained to the Royal dignity in one Department. Windsor Park and woods should be reserved for Royal, not for revenue purposes. When the Act of 1851 was passed, and this portion of the Crown property was so strangely misplaced in a Revenue Department, there were two circumstances in consideration. In the first place, a lower estimate of the Royal dignity and of the interest of the people in maintaining that dignity prevailed at that period, and a Government of that period would have shrunk from placing 14,000 acres of the Crown Lands in perpetual reserve by the measure which he now recommended; and, in the second case, the supply of Navy timber for what were then called "the wooden walls of England" was present to the minds of Ministers, and influenced them. in classing Windsor Park and woods with the Crown forests. Now, it was chiefly as a matter of good administration, and also because he desired to place Windsor Park and woods as a Royal domain out of the reach of the commercial incidents affecting the remainder of the Crown Lands, that he wished the House to express an opinion in favour 69 of the policy of placing Windsor Park and woods in the same category as all the other Royal Parks, Palaces, and Gardens. Windsor woods were now classed with the Crown forests, which might not be permanent possessions of the Crown. By making of the 14,000 acres a Royal domain, and by reclaiming it from a Revenue Department with which it had no proper connection and placing it with other Royal domains upon the Votes of Parliament, the House would show its disposition to remedy a glaring irregularity in our system of Public Accounts, and it would give an assurance of splendid loyalty to the Crown, and of its devotion to the vital interest of the vast and increasing population of the country. He begged to move the Resolution of which he had given Notice.

MR. GLADSTONE

said, he could not help strongly advising, as far as he might presume to advise, the House not to proceed in this matter. He was very doubtful whether his hon. Friend the Member for Salford (Mr. Arnold) had taken into his view all the considerations which bore upon it. He wanted them to perform an act of splendid loyalty, and to make a magnificent gift to Her Majesty. He (Mr. Gladstone) would venture to remind his hon. Friend that the business of asking the Representatives of the people to lay any burden on the country for the purpose of any new endowment of the Crown was a function which that House jealously required to be reserved to the responsible Advisers of the Crown. The difficulty which might arise in the ordinary Business of that House would be the effect of the proposal on a large number of hon. Members whose minds and hearts were 70 overflowing and almost bursting with loyalty, and who would be making loyal proposals out of the exuberance of their feelings. There were many matters to be taken into consideration in connection with this question, affecting as it did the general group of questions relating to the allocation of Royal residences and pleasure grounds for the Sovereign, and to the relations between those possessions and the general estates of the Crown, and, again, the questions relating to the contingent interest of the Heir Apparent in the estates of the Crown, inasmuch as they became his absolute property on the demise of the Sovereign; all these formed a complicated mass of subjects involving a great variety of delicate and difficult considerations, with regard to which it was almost an established practice that they should be handled mainly at the commencement of each reign, or, if otherwise, on the responsibility of the Government. He was quite aware that, in particular cases, where very small questions of interest of property were concerned, and where, on the other hand, very large matters of public interest were involved—that was to say, where the comfort and advantages of great populations were concerned—a different rule had been observed, and some infractions of the general rule had taken place. But it must be observed, with respect to the great part of Windsor Park, that this question of allocation was considered at the time to which the hon. Member had Referred, and when the general settlement was made. The general settlement was made, with what view? With the view of securing, as far as Parliament was willing to grant it, the management of the Crown estates with some degree of independence, subject, undoubtedly, to the control of the Treasury, but still to a more remote and general control than that which was commonly used in our system of administration, and all this with a view to the good husbandry of the Crown property, because the Crown property was the equivalent which, at the commencement of each reign, the Sovereign offered to the nation in return for the Civil List. Now, that was a serious, grave, and complicated question; and he thought it was plain that there was no case before them to justify their action on the present occasion. Windsor Park was one of the greatest ornaments 71 of the country. It was a property of considerable value, and to make the transfer which his hon. Friend suggested would have a very important bearing upon the proprietary value of that property. It would place it under a different system of management, and subject to different rules, and it would involve important modifications of the arrangement made at the commencement of the reign. He was bound to recommend to the House that they should not initiate or entertain a subject of this kind, which obviously required some very strong evidence of public interest in order to make out even a primâ facie justification. There was no such case here. There was no public grievance. There was no constant inconvenience. The small and momentary question as to the inconvenience threatened to Members of the Legislature, which arose on a recent occasion, was as much a matter of amusement as of convenience, and it afforded no occasion at all for the reopening of this serious question. He could not help hoping that his hon. Friend would not feel disposed to press this matter on the attention of the House. In any case, he (Mr. Gladstone) must press it strongly on the House from an opposite direction—that no step could be safely, or even becomingly or decorously, taken without the most careful preliminary investigation, which must always precede a serious modification of an arrangement having reference to the property of the Royal Family.