Commons Sitting of 25 April 1882

Preamble
The House met at Two of the clock.

MINUTES.
WAYS AND MEANS—considered in Committee—Resolutions [April 24] reported.
PRIVATE BILLS (by Order)—Second Reading—Dundee Lighting*
PUBLIC BILLS—Ordered—First Reading—Customs and Inland Revenue*[140].
Second Reading—Local Government Provisional Orders (Poor Law)*[130]; Local Government Provisional Order (Highways)*[129]; Local Government Provisional Orders*[131]; Parliamentary Elections (Corrupt and Illegal Practices) [21] [Second Night], adjourned debate further adjourned.
Committee—Judgments (Inferior Courts)*[44]—R.P.; Places of Worship Sites [97]—R. P. Report—Roads Provisional Order (Edinburgh)*[93–139].

QUESTIONS.

  THE ROYAL IRISH CONSTABULARY—APPOINTMENTS OF COUNTY AND SUB-INSPECTORS AT LONDONDERRY.
  MR. REDMONDasked the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, Whether it is a fact that when in 1872 the Royal Irish Constabulary were introduced into the city of Londonderry in place of the old local police, the rule was laid down that of the two officers to be stationed there, namely, the county inspector and the sub-inspector, one was to be a Catholic and the other a Protestant; whether for some time this condition was observed, but for the last five years it has been departed from and both the officers have been Protestants; whether the position of sub-inspector in Derry is worth some£50 or£60 a-year more than that of an ordinary one; and, whether he will state

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  the reasons for not observing the rule made in 1872?
  MR. W. E. FORSTER, in reply, said, the Inspector General informed him that he was not aware of any such rule as that referred to in the Question. For some years subsequent to 1872 one of the officers stationed in Derry was a Roman Catholic. In 1876 a vacancy occurred, which was filled up by the appointment of a Protestant. That was the only change which had been made since 1872. The salary and allowances of the Sub-Inspector stationed in Derry were precisely the same as those received by Sub-Inspectors elsewhere. It was true that he received a small additional remuneration for the discharge of duties in connection with the inspection of weights and measures; but it did not come out of the Constabulary Votes, and did not amount to£50.

  PROTECTION OF PERSON AND PROPERTY (IRELAND) ACT, 1881—MR. M. P. KENNY AND MR. CANTWELL.
  MR. REDMONDasked the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, Whether Mr. M. P. Kenny and Mr. Cantwell, of Castlecomer, were arrested on the same day, the 4th November last, and upon the same charge; whether Mr. Cantwell was released upon the 26th of February; and, whether he will state the reasons for the continued imprisonment, under these circumstances, of Mr. Kenny?
  MR. W. E. FORSTER, in reply, said, that these men were arrested on the same day under similar warrants. Mr. Cantwell was released on the 26th of February; but they did not consider they could yet prudently release Mr. Kenny.

  PROTECTION OF PERSON AND PROPERTY (IRELAND) ACT, 1881—RELEASE OF PERSONS DETAINED UNDER THE ACT.
  MR. O'SULLIVANasked the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, Whether it is a fact that six persons were arrested in Charleville, in October last, under the Coercion Act, on the same grounds of suspicion; and, whether it is true that three of those prisoners have been discharged from prison within the last month; and, if so, was it because those three men were returned Americans they were discharged,
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  while the other three, who always lived in the district, are still detained in prison?
  MR. W. E. FORSTER, in reply, said, it was not true that any prisoners had been released on the grounds stated in the Question; that Patrick O'Brien, Edward Synan, and Denis 0'Conor had been released, but it was news to him that the two first-named were Americans; Denis O'Conor certainly was one. The Resident Magistrate had expressed the opinion that there was no necessity to detain O'Brien any longer. Synan was released because his wife was in a delicate state of health, her mother had recently died, and his friends offered to guarantee his good behaviour, and he was only too glad to expedite the return of O'Conor to America.
  MR. O'SULLIVANasked if there was any offence charged against the three remaining prisoners which was not charged against the three who had been liberated?
  MR. W. E. FORSTERsaid, the question the Executive had to consider before liberating the other prisoners was—would the district be made worse by their release?

  CRIMINAL LAW—THE MAGISTRACY—FLOGGING.
  MR. P. A. TAYLORasked the Secretary of State for the Home Department, Whether it is true, as stated in the "Newcastle Daily Chronicle" of the 22nd instant, that, at the Newcastle Police Court, Patrick Murray, a boy of 13, was, on the 21st instant, sentenced to receive twelve stripes of the birch for having stolen four scarfs, value one shilling and sixpence, from the door of a shop, the committing magistrate, Alderman Milvain, observing that the lad had been twice whipped before, and it was evident that he had not been whipped severely enough, or he would not have come back, and he therefore ordered the police to lay on the strokes till the blood should come from the boy's back; and, if the statement be true, if he will recommend the removal of Alderman Milvain from the Bench?
  MR. HIBBERT, in reply, said, that the matter had been under the consideration of the Home Secretary for some time. He received a letter from Mr. Alderman Milvain stating that the report in The Newcastle Daily Chronicle

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  was substantially correct; that the police reported the boy to be the associate of boys of bad character, some older and some younger than himself; that in October, 1881, he had been convicted of larceny from a dwelling, and sentenced to receive 12 stripes; that in November, 1881, he was convicted of larceny from a shop, and was again sentenced to receive 12 stripes; and that it was on the third conviction—the subject of the Question—that the language was used. The Alderman went on to say that an officer superintended the whipping; and he reported that, although the boy was more severely whipped than on previous occasions, no blood was drawn. In reply, the Home Secretary expressed his regret that the Alderman had used language which had shocked public feeling; said he was glad to learn that the sentence had not been carried out with the severity which had been enjoined; and expressed the opinion that punishments of this kind could not be employed with safety, unless they were administered with moderation and with regard to humanity, especially in the case of children of tender years. Believing that these words would not be without effect upon the Alderman, and that the strong public opinion which had been expressed in reference to this case would have a salutary influence, the Home Secretary did not deem it necessary to adopt the course suggested by the Question.

  POOR LAW (IRELAND)—RELIEF OF DISTRESS—SWINFORD UNION.
  MR. O'CONNOTR POWERasked the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, If, considering the exceptional state of the Swinford Poor Law Union, as evidenced in the reports of the Local Government Board Inspector, Major Spaight, and the inability of the impoverished tenant-farmers who incurred liabilities to the guardians during the distress of 1880 to meet their obligations, the Government will consider the advisability of introducing a short Bill for their relief, and also for the relief of distressed tenant farmers similarly circumstanced in other unions?
  MR. W. E. FORSTER, in reply, said, the hon. Member was, doubtless, aware that Swinford Union was scheduled under the Act of last year. The ad-
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  vances made by the Guardians to farmers and others were ordered to be collected in four annual instalments. During the past year Swinford Union had been largely aided by grants. The condition of the Union required constant attention, and the Local Government Board had been giving constant attention to it. He did not think any further Bill was necessary at present.

  PRISONS (ENGLAND) ACT, 1877—COST OF CONVEYING PRISONERS.
  MR. O'CONNOR POWERasked Mr. Attorney General for Ireland, Whether it is a fact that, under "The English Prisons Act, 1877," English counties are relieved from the payment of expenses for the conveyance of certain prisoners, these expenses being payable out of Parliamentary funds, whereas under the General Prisons (Ireland) Act of 1877, Irish counties are still liable for similar expenses, and have to defray them out of county funds?
  COLONEL COLTHURSTasked Mr. Attorney General for Ireland, Whether he is aware that the Grand Jury of the county Cork have recently submitted a case to counsel respecting the incidence of the charge for conveyance of prisoners, and have been informed that under section 21, Prisons Act (Ireland), 1878, the said charge falls upon the county rates; and, if he is prepared to suggest any remedy?
  MR. O'CONNOR POWERremarked, that the difference in the law in both countries affected the county which he represented to the extent of£1,000 a-year.
  THE ATTORNEY GENERAL FOR IRELAND (Mr. W. M. Johnson): Sir, the hon. and learned Member for the County Mayo (Mr. O'Connor Power) has strictly and accurately stated the difference under the existing law in England and Ireland as to the source from which the conveyance of prisoners is defrayed. In England it is out of moneys voted by Parliament; in Ireland it is out of the county rates. With reference to the Question of the hon. and gallant Member for Cork County (Colonel Colthurst), it is the fact, as stated in his Question, that the Grand Jury of that county, at the last Spring Assizes, took counsel's opinion on the subject, and were advised as stated in his Question. Accordingly, by a Resolution, they drew

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  attention to the fact that this annual charge for Cork County was about£1,800, and expressed a hope that this hardship would be redressed and a remedy found by making the source for this expense the same in both countries—namely, moneys voted by Parliament. That, however, is a question of policy, and should be addressed to the Prime Minister.

  POOR LAW (IRELAND)—MANORHAMILTON UNION—ELECTION OF GUARDIANS.
  MR. HEALYasked the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, Whether it is the fact that Mr. Laurance McDermott has twice applied to the Local Government Board for an investigation into the late election of Guardians for the Manorhamilton Union without reply; why no reply has been given; and, whether an investigation can be granted; and, if not, if he would state why?
  MR. W. E. FORSTER, in reply, said, this gentleman had written several times to the Local Government Board, and had on each occasion received a reply. The Local Government Board were in communication with the Returning Officer on the subject of the late election of Guardians in the Manorhamilton Union; and Mr. M'Dermott was informed, as recently as the 21st instant, that the Local Government Board were not yet able to determine whether an inquiry was necessary.
  MR. HEALYasked if the reply of the Local Government Board was given after the Question was put upon the Paper?
  MR. W. E. FORSTERsaid, he could not say that. The last letter written to him was on the 21st instant, and to each of his previous communications he received no answer.

  PRISONS (IRELAND)—LIMERICK GAOL—GOVERNOR EAGER.
  MR. HEALYasked the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, What has been the result of the sworn inquiry into the conduct of Governor Eager, of Limerick Gaol; whether on Sunday the 2nd instant bread was refused by the "suspects" as being sour; whether on the doctor certifying that this was not the case, and the opinion of an independent doctor being asked, this
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  was refused; whether in every case of complaint an independent inquiry apart from the regular officials will be granted; if not, whether it is the fact that it is the officials who supply him with the information which he gives to this House; whether Mr. Power, confined in Limerick Gaol, wrote to him on the 31st March, pointing out that, although no outrage had been committed in Tralee since his imprisonment on the 20th October last, he is still detained in prison; whether no reply has been given to this letter; and, whether there is any reason for the further detention of Mr. Power?
  MR. W. E. FORSTER, in reply, said, that the result of the inquiry into the conduct of Governor Eager was that he had been cautioned to be more careful in future that improper communications should not be passed out of the prison, and that all unnecessary interference with letters should be carefully avoided. He had also been directed to avoid as much as possible the infliction of punishment, and all unnecessarily stringent regulations, especially with regard to visits to prisoners. With regard to the bread supplied in the gaol, a few of the prisoners had complained of it, and this and other complaints had been inquired into by the Prisons Board, and most of them were found to be trivial. No request was made for an independent inquiry. The medical officer, however, had reported favourably on the bread. As for the case of Mr. Power, a letter had been received from him, and his complaint had been considered by the Lord Lieutenant, who had been forced to the conclusion that he ought to remain in custody. He was, however, allowed out on parole, and on his further application it was extended to the 18th instant.

  PROTECTION OF PERSON AND PROPERTY (IRELAND) ACT, 1881—INVESTIGATION OF CASES OF PRISONERS DETAINED UNDER THE ACT.
  MR. HEALYasked the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, Whether a form printed in the "Water-ford Mail" of March 22nd, purporting to be the form to be used by political prisoners who seek investigation into their case, is correct?
  MR. W. E. FORSTER, in reply, said, that no form whatever was required by

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  persons detained under the Protection of Person and Property Act.

  MERCHANT SHIPPING ACT—EMIGRANT SHIPS.
  MR. A. MOOREasked the President of the Board of Trade, Whether, having regard to the numerous complaints and abuses brought to light during last Session, and to the very rapid emigration taking place at the present moment, he is prepared to revise the Passenger Acts, more particularly in the interests of young unprotected girls, and in the direction of the recommendations put forward by the Board of Trade officials and sanctioned by himself in his Minute of 5th July 1881?
  MR. CHAMBERLAIN: Sir, I hope the object the hon. Member has in view, in common with myself, will be obtained without further legislation. The Report of the Board of Trade officials and my Minute thereon were forwarded in August last to the principal ship owners in the United Kingdom, and also to the principal officers in the various ports, with instructions to report to the Board of Trade any ship carrying emigrants to the United States which did not comply with the recommendations issued by the Board. The principal ship owners, with very few exceptions, have expressed their willingness to meet the suggestions of the Board as soon as they possibly can. The Reports of the principal officers at the various ports show that the number of vessels in which the suggestions of the Board of Trade had not been adopted is steadily diminishing, and there are now very few vessels carrying emigrants that have neglected to adopt them. The Board of Trade will continue their efforts to secure the compliance of all ship owners; but they hope to be able to secure this without further legislation.
  MR. A. MOOREgave Notice that, in consequence of the unsatisfactory answer of the right hon. Gentleman, he would take an early opportunity of calling attention to this subject; and on Thursday he would ask the right hon. Gentleman whether his attention had been called to a paragraph in the papers stating that seven emigrants had died on the way to New York on board an emigrant ship, and that the surgeon reported that these persons embarked in a very weak state of health, and were
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  passed by the emigration officer at the English port; and whether he would cause full inquiry to be made as to how it was that those persons were passed by the emigration agent at the English port?

  UNITED STATES—TRIAL OF BRITISH SUBJECTS.
  MR. PULESTONasked the Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, Whether it is true that Lord Granville, the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, recently interfered in behalf of a British subject, accused in the State of Michigan, in the United States of America, of administering the poison morphine?
  SIR CHARLES W. DILKE: Sir, an application was made last month to Mr. West by William Lane, a British subject, who stated he had been arrested on the 18th of June last on a charge of attempted murder, and had since then been held in gaol awaiting trial, which he was utterly unable to obtain. Mr. West accordingly wrote to the Secretary of State, asking that inquiry should be made respecting the case. Mr. Frelinghuysen replied that Lane was arraigned for trial on the 29th of September, 1881, since which time repeated continuances have been had, but in every instance at the request of Lane's attorney. The trial was commenced on the 24th of March last, and Mr. West reports that it has ended in the conviction of the accused.

  STATE OF IRELAND—COUNTY WICKLOW.
  MR. W. J. CORBETasked the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, Whether he has read the charge delivered to the Grand Jury at Wicklow by the County Court Judge, at the Quarter Sessions just concluded, as reported in the local journal of the 22nd April, as follows:—
  "Gentlemen, as there is no case to go before you, you will be discharged.…I have just come from Baltinglass, where also there was no case for the jury. This shows very satisfactorily for your county. I am exceedingly glad to be able to discharge you from your duties;"
  whether the Judges at Assizes and Quarter Sessions have frequently borne testimony, in their charges to Grand Juries of the county, to the peace and quietness

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  prevailing in Wicklow; whether the returns of crime and outrage, and of malicious injury, indicate the same; and, whether he can inform the House upon what grounds he refuses to advise the Lord Lieutenant, in the face of these facts, to revoke the Orders in Council under which the county has been proclaimed?
  MR. W. E. FORSTER, in reply, said, he regretted that, notwithstanding the testimony borne by the Judges of Assize and the Chairman of Quarter Sessions as to the peace and quietness prevailing in the county Wicklow, the Government did not feel justified in revoking the Orders under which the county was proclaimed. It was quite possible there might be an absence of outrages, and yet that the county might not be free from intimidation.

  MEDICAL GRANT (SCOTLAND).
  MR. RAMSAYasked the Secretary to the Treasury, Whether any decision has yet been come to as to the amount of the medical grant to be made for Scotland for the year 1882–3?
  LORD FREDERICK CAVENDISH: Sir, the Government had hoped to deal with the Grant for Medical Relief in Scotland in connection with the general question of Grants in Aid of local taxation. As they had been reluctantly obliged to abandon that hope, it is considered that this particular anomaly is too great to be any longer continued. It will be my duty, therefore, as a temporary arrangement, to substitute for the Estimate of£10,000 now before the House one for£20,000. It may probably be necessary to amend the law with respect to the conditions under which the Grant is made.

  TURKEY—MIDHAT PASHA.
  MR. M'COANasked the Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, Whether the Foreign Office has received any confirmation of the statements reported in yesterday's papers, that Midhat Pasha is kept in chains at Taif, and that his wife and family at Smyrna are in a state of destitution; and, if so, whether Earl Granville will instruct Lord Dufferin to use his private good offices at the Porte to obtain some mitigation of the cruelty thus inflicted on a Minister who, while in office, always manifested a just regard for British interests in the East?
  SIR CHARLES W. DILKE: No information respecting Midhat Pasha has been received at the Foreign Office; but Lord Dufferin has been instructed by telegraph to make inquiries as to the truth of the painful report to which my hon. Friend refers.

  IRELAND—POTATO CROP COMMITTEE, 1880.
  COLONEL NOLANasked the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, with reference to the Resolution of this House of the 20th July 1881,
  "That, in the opinion of this House, it is expedient that Her Majesty's Government should take steps to carry into effect such of the recommendations of the Potato Crop Committee of 1880 as relate to Ireland, by facilitating the progress of further experiments as to the best means of lessening the spread of the potato disease and promoting the creation and establishment of new varieties of the potato;"
  If any attempt has been made to give effect to the above Resolution of the House either at Glasnevin, or elsewhere; and, if any provision has been made in the Estimates for the experiments and cultivation referred to in the above Resolution?
  MR. W. E. FORSTER: Yes, Sir; steps have been taken for giving effect to the Resolution of the House referred to by the hon. and gallant Member, and are, shortly, as follows:—In 1880–1 two sets of experiments were tried at the Munster Model Farm, under the auspices of the Cork Agricultural Society; and Mr. Carroll, the Agricultural Superintendent under the Board of National Education, will continue to make similar experiments this year at Glasnevin and Cork. He will also extend the scope of the experiments to the production of new varieties of the potato by the propagation from the seed of the apple of the potato. The process is slow, and takes four years to produce the fully developed potato; but Mr. Carroll looks on it as a most important feature in his experiments. Last year seeds of different varieties were sown at the Glasnevin farm. The small tubers which those seeds produced have this year been planted, and in 1884 the fully developed varieties will be obtained. Furthermore, Mr. Carroll has got some seed from America to raise new varieties. This seed, in small quantities, will be sent gratis to the principal agricultural schools, with instructions as to its treat-

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  ment,&c. It will also be sown at the Glasnevin and Cork farms. Mr. Carroll will sow this spring the seed of an old Irish potato of great excellence—the "Black Apple." The development of the sowing will be complete in 1885; and, in order to encourage the production of new varieties of the plant, through the agency of their agricultural schools, the Commissioners of National Education have obtained the sanction of the Treasury for offering prizes for competition among the teachers of those schools. There will be four sets of prizes for different varieties of the potato; each set will consist of a 1st, 2nd, and 3rd prize, and the directions for sowing seed will be issued.
  In reply to Mr. HEALY,
  MR. W. E. FORSTERsaid, he had no information as to the weight of seed and the extent of ground.
  MR. MITCHELL HENRYasked why these experiments were to be confined to agricultural schools in Ireland? Potatoes did not grow only in Ireland; and there was a distinct understanding that this was to be a national expenditure.
  MR. W. E. FORSTERsaid, he considered that as the schools he had referred to were supported at the expense of the nation, it was the fittest place for the experiments.

  MINISTER OF AGRICULTURE AND COMMERCE.
  SIR MASSEY LOPESasked Mr. Chancellor of the Exchequer, If he can now state when the financial arrangements for the year have been announced, what provision has been made to give effect to the Resolution of the 13th May last, with reference to the appointment of a Minister of Agriculture and Commerce?
  THE CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUER (Mr. GLASTONE), in reply, said, he had never intended in what he had said when the Resolution was passed to convey the impression that this particular subject, any more than any other subject of administration, was to be connected with the Financial Statement of the year. He did not think the moment had arrived when they could conveniently enter upon it. What he had had rather in view were the Votes regarding the Department with which the
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  proposed Minister might possibly be connected. He would, however, endeavour to find an opportunity, when the state of Public Business would permit, to refer to the subject.

ORDERS OF THE DAY.

  WAYS AND MEANS.—REPORT.
  Resolutions [April 24] reported.
  Resolution 1.
  MR. E. W. HARCOURTsaid, he wished to take the opportunity of thanking the Prime Minister for the very literal way in which he had carried out the promises he had made earlier in the Session on the subject of roads. He believed the sum which the right hon. Gentleman proposed to appropriate to the maintenance of disturnpiked roads was exactly the sum which those roads at present cost. He thought, however, what they had chiefly to congratulate themselves upon was that the principle was conceded that main roads were to be maintained, not out of the rates, but from other sources. The satisfaction, nevertheless, with which the arrangement would be regarded, would depend entirely upon the manner in which the relief was to be distributed; and, again, as to the method of relief, it was to be remembered that the chief offenders in destroying roads were brewers' vans, timber waggons, and other carriages drawing heavy weights, as well as traction engines, and these ought to be dealt with before it could be said that any justice was done. He had had a large correspondence with highway authorities throughout England, perhaps larger than any other Member in the House; and he thought he could undertake to say that if any degree of justice were done in the matter of maintaining main roads from sources other than the rates the President of the Local Government Board would find very little difficulty in making such alterations as were necessary in the Highway Act of 1878 in a way which would give general satisfaction.
  MR RYLANDSsaid, he understood from the Prime Minister that it was his desire that they should take this stage of the Budget without much discussion, and that sufficient opportunity would be given on the second reading of the Cus-

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  toms and Inland Revenue Bill. His object in rising now was to express a hope that that Bill would be made the first Order of the Day, because he was bound to tell the Prime Minister, in regard to the great Expenditure, there would be considerable examination and discussion. The right hon. Gentleman seemed to think that public opinion was indifferent on this question; but he must say, on behalf of his own constituents and the populous constituencies of Lancashire, that one of the main causes of dissatisfaction with the late Government was their large Public Expenditure. He must also tell the Prime Minister that he had hardly gauged the feelings of the House when he said that the House was indifferent to the Expenditure of the country. He (Mr. Rylands) had a Notice on the Paper on that subject, and he should have pressed it had he not desired to avoid, in the present state of Business, embarrassing the Government. There must be full opportunity for discussion, and they ought also to have an opportunity of redeeming the pledges they gave prior to the General Election.
  SIR STAFFORD NORTHCOTE: I rise, Sir, not to prolong this conversation, for it is, I think, undesirable the matter should now be gone into. It is quite obvious that the question raised with regard to Expenditure, and the financial position generally, ought to be fully discussed. I have no doubt that a full discussion will bring out some points that are not at once evident upon the mere statement of the amount of Expenditure; and there will, perhaps, be an opportunity of dispelling some false ideas on the subject. At the same time, it is quite clear that the position, as stated by the Chancellor of the Exchequer yesterday, is one that demands the serious consideration of the country and of this House, and that we should not be doing our duty, or satisfying the general expectations of the country at large, if we did not make it the subject of serious debate. I could not help noticing the suggestion thrown out yesterday by the Prime Minister that it might be necessary to adopt further or other measures for checking expenditure. I confess that that raises a very large question, upon which I should be sorry off-hand to express an opinion; but it is one very worthy of discussion. I hope,
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  however, we shall not now run into a general or particular discussion, because we have other Business before us; but let it be understood that a full and fair opportunity will be afforded hereafter to discuss the statement of the right hon. Gentleman.
  THE CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUER (Mr. GLADSTONE): Nothing could be fairer or more reasonable than that. It is quite in conformity with what I endeavoured to convey last night, that full opportunity should be given for discussion; and if the best opportunity arises on the second reading, rather than on going into Committee, I am perfectly willing to consult the convenience of the House. Since full opportunity will be given, it is very desirable not to make any partial anticipations. With regard to the remarks of the hon. Member for Oxfordshire (Mr. Harcourt), they were in place, and I thank him for them. Our pledge was limited by the arrangement made at the beginning of the Session, and I do not regard the principle in this grant as having quite so extensive an application as he does. That, however, is not the question. It is not necessary to enter into details; but I must remind the hon. Gentleman that in his estimate of the amount he must take Scotland into consideration, because Scotland is entitled to receive some fair proportion of the amount in respect to main roads.
  SIR WALTER B. BARTTELOTsaid, he did not think the taxpayers would be quite so pleased as his hon. Friend (Mr. Harcourt) appeared to be, especially when they found that a certain proportion of the small amount which was to go to highways was to be given to Scotland. He asked the right hon. Gentleman to give this subject that fair consideration which it required. He recollected the pledges the right hon. Gentleman made to his own tenants with regard to local taxation. He now proposed to increase the Carriage Duty, a duty which had been reduced, and which would again make it a most objectionable tax. The Prime Minister had entirely overlooked that class of traffic which had done the most harm to the roads—the large vans and heavy locomotives. These and the omnibuses, which went to railway stations, were allowed to go free; while the light carriages, which caused little wear to the roads, were to be more heavily taxed. He hoped the right hon.

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  Gentleman would reconsider this matter. With regard to the Malt Tax he was one of those who always strongly advocated the repeal of the tax when barley was at a very low price; but he did not when barley rose to the extraordinary high price it did during prosperous years. But since the right hon. Gentleman had taken off the Malt Duty and placed the duty on beer the price of barley had gone down very considerably. We could grow far better barley in this country than could be grown abroad; but the price of barley was depreciated because, as the right hon. Gentleman knew, he had permitted anything to be used in brewing, and such ingredients as rice and maize and a greater quantity of sugar were now used. Many brewers, especially the small brewers, using substitutes for all kinds of malt and hops, produced beer of a very inferior quality, to the detriment of the people of this country. [A laugh.] The hon. Member for Scarborough might laugh, because he was one of those who recommended his countrymen to drink water only; but all did not share his opinion, and many a man in drinking his glass of beer desired to have it good. He would venture to say that unless something was done to check the evil he alluded to, the repeal of the tax would be anything but a benefit either to the farmers or the country.
  MR. JOSEPH COWENsaid, that, acting in accord with the general desire of the House, he would not enter into a discussion on the Ministerial proposals. But he desired to give Notice that when the Bill based on the Budget Resolutions came on for second reading, he would move an Amendment condemnatory of the intended additional duty on carriages. He recognized the justice of the demand that had been made for concession with respect to turnpikes; and he did not think the sum the Chancellor of the Exchequer contemplated setting aside for that purpose was excessive. He wished to speak with becoming deference and respect of any fiscal propositions of the right hon. Gentleman; but he could not help saying that he thought he had not shown his customary skill in discovering the means for raising the required funds. The mode of assisting those who paid for highways did not strike him as a satisfactory one; but, apart from that, the proposal to increase the tax on car-
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  riages would hamper a useful, varied, and important trade, which was already suffering from depression. There was a large capital embarked in the coach-building business, and there were thousands of workmen employed in it. That trade had suffered proportionately more than any other trade from the recent bad times. The duty at present imposed was a bar to development, and the additional duty would be a further deterrent. The coach-building business was one of the few trades now that were taxed. The Chancellor of the Exchequer pointed out very lucidly on the previous day how the duty on malt was doubly injurious to the trade. It not only imposed a duty, but impeded the maltsters by compelling them to conduct their operations subject to Excise control. The same thing applied to the coach business. Carriage builders were crippled in their operations by the action of the representatives of the Inland Revenue. The persons who used carriages in the usual way were best able to pay the extra tax; but it was not them he was considering. It was the men directly engaged in the trade itself; and when the time came he would endeavour to adduce reasons why the Government should abandon the intended increase of duty. It might be possible, he thought, to extend the proposed relief to the highways without imposing any duty at all.
  MR. MAC IVERasked for some assurance that an opportunity would be given for discussing the Motion of which he had given Notice the previous night, and which it was certainly his intention to bring forward at some stage of the Budget discussion—
  "That Customs duties shall be replaced on such foreign importations as come into unfair competition with the industries of Great Britain and Ireland."
  He asked for this on two grounds. There were many people who seemed to think that importations of luxuries from France might very well be subjected to a tax; and there were many who regarded with alarm the extraordinary depreciation of the revenue derived from intoxicating drinks. Many people felt greatly alarmed at the fact that the Revenue was dependent upon intoxicating drinks for nearly one-half of it; and, so far as that went, it created a state of things which contributed largely to prevent any serious remedial measures being adopted

  1415
  to check intemperance. It was with a desire to forward the cause of temperance, as well as with a desire to free our industries at home from unfair competition, that he trusted a proper opportunity would be given to raise this question at some future stage of the financial Bill.
  MR. EARPcontended that it was incorrect to say that many substitutes had been used for malt for brewing purposes. The diminution in the consumption of barley and the fall in its price were not results of the repeal of the Malt Duty. The diminution in question was partly the result of those changes in the habits of the people to which the Chancellor of the Exchequer had alluded. The brewing trade had been depressed, and consequently there had been less demand than formerly for barley. When the brewing interest should revive higher prices would be got for barley; and in the long run the repeal of the Malt Tax, instead of bearing prejudicially upon the farmer, would affect him beneficially.
  MR. RAMSAYsaid, he did not wish to prolong this desultory discussion; but he was glad to hear the Prime Minister announce that he had not forgotten Scotland when he proposed the Budget last night. He wished, however, to draw the right hon. Gentleman's attention to the fact that it was not from Scotland that the outcry for grants in aid had chiefly come. Their complaint had been directed hitherto to the fact that the grants allowed to Scotland had not been in proportion either to her population or taxation, and that the share they had got of those grants was less than they were fairly entitled to. If he was correct in saying that the grants in aid had not been demanded by Scotland, he would ask the right hon. Gentleman to consider whether it would be expedient to give any new grants in aid for any purpose whatever, in addition to the subsidy derived by the people of England from the Imperial Exchequer. He thought it was a very doubtful question—he did not know what the opinion of the majority of the House would be upon it—whether the counties that received those grants in aid derived any such benefit as was supposed by many of those who demanded them. His experience was the opposite. In the county with which he was connected, they used to get from the Exchequer
  1416
  a share of the sum of £5,000 for maintaining the military roads in the Highlands of Scotland; and he believed the roads in the same district now were maintained at less expense to the ratepayers within the several districts than when the Road Trustees had the £5,000 from the Imperial Treasury in addition to their own contributions. Now, if such was the case, and if the assessment levied for the maintenance of the Police Force had increased since the Government came to pay one-half of the whole amount, these facts should lead the right hon. Gentleman to reconsider the question of renewing those grants in aid, and, at the same time, whether it would not be better to give efficient local administration to the several counties, and so enable them within themselves to levy and control local charges instead of drawing from the Imperial Treasury. He had no wish to detain the House further than to say that it would be desirable that Scotland should be exempted from the increase proposed to be made in the duty on carriages, and left very much as she was—only the Prime Minister taking care to give her, for all purposes, the same proportion of the grants, except special grants for the roads in England, but leaving them in other respects as they were.
  MR. DUCKHAMmaintained that when samples of barley were of as good a quality as in past years they realized a satisfactory price. The low price now obtainable for barley he attributed to a deterioration in the samples. He could not connect it with the repeal of the Malt Tax. He begged to express his gratitude to the Prime Minister for the relief to the agricultural interest which he had shadowed forth in his Budget.
  MR. A. J. BALFOURsaid, nothing could be more certain than that the Prime Minister, in proposing the abolition of the Malt Tax, had in view the enabling of the brewer to use other materials than barley in the manufacture of beer. If the Prime Minister was right one or two things would be the result—if barley was used as before the abolition of the Malt Tax, the amount of barley used in the manufacture of beer would be largely increased; if, on the other hand, other materials than barley were used in the manufacture of beer, it was perfectly obvious that the price of

  1417
  barley must fall, irrespective of the foreign barley that might be imported. The brewer, therefore, was now exposed to two sorts of competition, to neither of which he was exposed before—first, to the competition of foreign barley and foreign malt; and, secondly, to the competition of other substances than barley.
  MR. H. H. FOWLERsaid, he wished to take that opportunity of giving Notice that, on the second reading of the Budget Bill, he would endeavour to justify himself with respect to a charge which the right hon. Gentleman the Member for North Devonshire (Sir Stafford Northcote) had brought against him, with reference to a statement he had made as to his administration of finance. The right hon. Gentleman had said his statements were of a misleading and inaccurate character. He could assure the right hon. Gentleman that he had no intention of misrepresenting him. At the proper time and the proper occasion, he would ask the House to listen to his justification of the statements he had made. He heartily endorsed the expression of his hon. Friend the Member for Burnley (Mr. Rylands), with reference to the dissatisfaction of large constituencies in this country with regard to the National Expenditure. Members on the Liberal side of the House, he believed, were bound to say as honest men that they won their places by pledges to reduce that Expenditure. They were bound to support the most economical Chancellor of the Exchequer this country ever had in reducing the present enormous Expenditure, which was both extravagant and unnecessary.
  SIR STAFFORD NORTHCOTEsaid, he had no intention of imputing to the hon. Member for Wolverhampton (Mr. H. H. Fowler) any desire to misrepresent him. He simply said, or rather wrote, that certain statements which the hon. Member made were, as he considered, inaccurate or misleading.
  MR. CAINEsaid, that if the hon. and gallant Baronet the Member for West Sussex (Sir Walter B. Barttelot) would study the statement of the Prime Minister with reference to the falling-off of the revenue derived from alcoholic liquors, he would find that the depression was caused by the great increase in society of those who, like himself, believed it was better to drink wholesome water than unwholesome beer.
  MR. ALDERMAN W. LAWRENCEregretted that the Chancellor of the Exchequer had not found himself able to deal with the anomalies in the Probate Duty. Freehold property ought to be brought under the same taxation as leasehold property. They ought either to abolish the Probate Duty on leasehold property, or to impose Probate Duty on freehold as well as leasehold property.
  SIR H. DRUMMOND WOLFFsaid, he was sorry the Prime Minister was not present, because he wished to repeat a question he put last night, and on which he received no information. The right hon. Gentleman last night stated that the Government had sent to France a portion of the Revenues of Cyprus, which this country had impounded. He should like to know whether that arrangement took place after an understanding with Turkey or before? When we took Cyprus, we did not give Turkey to understand that we would impound a portion of the Revenue for ourselves or anybody else. It appeared to him that if we acted spontaneously as agents of France, and laid a distringas upon moneys due by Turkey to France, we established a principle of a very doubtful character.
  LORD FREDERICK CAVENDISHsaid, the reason why the hon. Gentleman's question of last night was not answered was simply because he went away without waiting for an answer. The answer was this—that the loan was jointly guaranteed by England and France; and Her Majesty's Government believed they would have been acting most dishonourably if they had not secured what was due to France as well as what was due to this country.
  SIR H. DRUMMOND WOLFF: Was there an understanding with the Porte?
  LORD FREDERICK CAVENDISH: There was no understanding with the Porte, and the Treasury simply acted in accordance with the opinion of the Law Officers of the Crown, who said it was perfectly clear that they were within their rights in stopping those sums out of the guarantee fund.
  MR. J. G. HUBBARDsaid, as the guarantee was joint, our Government could not justly have received a single sixpence from the Porte without dividing it with France; but he thought such joint guarantees were greatly to be deprecated.
  MR. ECROYDsaid, he hoped an assurance would be given by the Government that opportunity would be afforded for the discussion of questions of deep importance connected with the Budget. He should like to discuss the possibility of reducing the duties on tea, coffee, cocoa, and dried fruits, which bore upon the labouring population very severely, and of imposing duties upon the articles of luxury from France and other foreign countries, with which our shops were filled. He concurred with the hon. Member for Newcastle (Mr. Joseph Cowen) in his objection to the increased duty on carriages, inasmuch as it would operate as a distinct discouragement to coach-building, which was an important branch of English industry. It would have been infinitely better had the Chancellor of the Exchequer raised a considerable revenue from articles of pure luxury, instead of maintaining an exorbitant duty on tea. If only in the interest of temperance, they ought to encourage the consumption of an article which was acquiring a more and more important place in the domestic economy of our labouring classes.
  Resolution agreed to.
  Resolution 2.
  MR. PELLdeclared his inability to join in the expression of pleasure at the Chancellor of the Exchequer's proposal for rectifying the admitted injustice which arose from the abolition of toll-gates. The redress which the right hon. Gentleman had offered was not of an equitable nature. In fact, the right hon. Gentleman could hardly intend that his proposals should receive the sanction of Parliament. It occurred to him that the right hon. Gentleman would not be surprised if, on the second reading of the Customs and Inland Revenue Bill, the proposals of the Government were rejected, and if the hon. Member for Oxfordshire (Mr. E. W. Harcourt) were left where he was at the beginning of the Session. The roads were said to be worn down by the trading classes. It was the heavy and the rapid traffic, which really rendered the maintenance of the roads costly, that brought a heavy charge upon the ratepayers. But the trading classes were not to be taxed, except when they took their evening drives in a light carriage.
  1420
  Those who would be taxed were the innumerable people who, after a life of diligence and thrift, had been enabled in their old age to provide themselves with a light carriage and a horse in order that they might enjoy the pleasure of a drive from the town into the country. Of course, the upper classes would also be hit by the Chancellor of the Exchequer's proposal; but the middle classes, who did not use the roads in a way calculated to damage them, would, in a very large degree, have to provide the funds for the restoration of the wear and tear caused by the traders and the representatives of the large commercial houses. This did not appear to be an equitable way of dealing with the question, and he thought the Resolution ought to have pointed to a contribution of a more general nature from all classes of the community.
  MR. BIGGARsaid, he really thought that the Prime Minister, when proposing the additional duty on carriages, was intending it as a practical joke. The right hon. Gentleman was simply repeating his former tactics with regard to the Malt Tax of shifting money from one pocket to another. The tax which the right hon. Gentleman proposed to raise upon carriages was one of an injurious nature, for the simple reason that the manufacturers of cars and carriages in this country gave purely local employment. He was disposed to support the view of the hon. Member who thought it would be more satisfactory if the right hon. Gentleman taxed some articles of luxury which were not manufactured in this country, and were imported. The effect of the tax on carriages would be, he feared, to lessen the number of those vehicles used by the classes who keep carriages, and thus to strike a blow at the coach-building trade, which had not been at all prosperous in recent years.
  SIR STAFFORD NORTHCOTEasked when it was proposed to take the second reading of the Customs and Inland Revenue Bill?
  LORD FREDERICK CAVENDISHsaid, that the second reading of the Bill would be set down for Thursday, with a view to a day being fixed for its discussion.
  Resolution agreed to.
  Resolutions 3, 4, 5, and 6 agreed to.
  Bill ordered to be brought in by Mr. PLAYFAIR, Mr. CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUER, and LORD FREDERICK CAVENDISH.
  Bill presented, and read the first time. [Bill 140.]

  PARLIAMENTARY ELECTIONS (CORRUPT AND ILLEGAL PRACTICES) BILL.— [Bill 21.]
  (Mr. Attorney General, Secretary Sir William Harcourt, Mr. Chamberlain, Sir Charles W. Dilke, Mr. Solicitor General.)

  SECOND READING. ADJOURNED DEBATE.
  [SECOND NIGHT.]
  Order read, for resuming Adjourned Debate on Amendment proposed to Question [24th April], "That the Bill be now read a second time."
  And which Amendment was,
  To leave out from the word "That" to the end of the Question, in order to add the words "considering no corruption has been proved to exist in the larger town constituencies, or in any county constituency, it is inexpedient to adopt such uniform restrictions and punishments as will render the fair conduct of an election in a great constituency perilous and penal,"—(Mr. Robert Fowler,)
  —instead thereof.
  Question again proposed, "That the words proposed to be left out stand part of the Question."
  Debate resumed.
  MR. A. J. BALFOURsaid, he did not wish to introduce a discordant note into the general chorus of approval with which the measure had been met; but he could not forget how very many Bills had been introduced in the course of the last 50 years for improving the methods by which Members were returned; and yet it was questionable whether the House now compared favourably with the House of 50 years ago; tested by results, it might be questioned whether they had gained or lost, whether the Assembly was more competent to do Business, and whether it was more disposed to do it in a patriotic spirit. They must all sympathize with the desire of making elections cheaper, with the object of placing Parliamentary honours within the reach of classes who now could not hope to compete for them, for it was a melancholy reflection how many persons there were in the country anxious to spend their time for the benefit of the public, and able to distin-
  1422
  guish themselves in that House, who were prevented from doing so solely by the want of means. The reason why so much money was spent on elections was that so many persons desired to be elected, and rich men desired and were ready to pay for the privilege of a seat in the House. Although the occupation was neither pleasurable nor easy, the position was so keenly sought after that men were prepared to give thousands for it. However deplorable this might be when we considered who were excluded, it showed that there was some healthy political feeling in the country, and that we had not descended to the level of some countries, where a man could not be a politician without some sacrifice of respect. They must all sympathize with the further object of the Bill, which was to make elections pure; he confessed, however, he looked at it with much less enthusiasm than he did at the first object, not because it was less important, but because he thought it was far less capable of attainment. Corruption by hard cash was not the corruption which, at this moment, we had most to fear from. There were other forms of corrupting constituencies besides giving electors money, or treating them in public-houses. And these methods were likely to increase rather than diminish with every successive extension of the suffrage and increase of the constituencies. Old forms of corruption would fall into disuse without stringent measures to put them down. The bribery, not of individuals, but of classes, was likely to increase rather than diminish. The bribes he spoke of could be clothed in the most eloquent language, put in the form and outward semblance of the loftiest morality, and those who used them would very likely be rewarded by the highest honours of the State. Such appeals to the ignorant classes in the constituencies were becoming more frequent, and they were responded to as salmon were drawn by flies. The bribery to be dealt with by the Bill touched a small fraction of the class which the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster called the "residuum" when he differed from them and the "people" when he agreed with them. It was a very small fraction of that class who were corrupt in the manner contemplated; but the corruption of which he spoke reached every class. It must

  1423
  be admitted that organizations like the Caucus produced the same benumbing and deadening effect that bribery did. The evil of money bribery was that it taught the elector to regard his vote, not as a trust which he used for the highest political purposes, but as a something to be sold; and the organizations of which he spoke had a not less deadening effect upon the individuals who composed them, upon the electoral body, and upon Members of Parliament. If organizations of that kind were to become common over the country, the result would be that, in spite of all they might do against bribery, they would find they were not a higher Legislative Assembly, but a lower one. Passing from these vaticinations to the Bill, he would ask the Attorney General to consider whether the penal provisions were not much too severe? There was no use in showing zeal against corruption by heaping up one penalty upon another. Judges might be trusted to administer the law, although a Judge might have reached his position through a seat in that House attained by corrupt practices; but we could not expect juries to do the same. It was of no use making our laws in advance of the morality of the country; and if we made penalties too severe, juries would insist upon returning verdicts of "Not guilty." The only result of the undue severity of the Bill would be, not to promote purity, but to shelter corruption. His hon. and learned Friend would, he had no doubt, consider from this point of view the suggestions that would be made in Committee. In making these observations, his object had been, not to chill the ardour of the Government in the cause of purity, but to remind the House how small a proportion of the present corrupt practices took the form of actual money bribery, and to point out that Parliament seldom showed to advantage when it congratulated itself on its virtues.
  MR. SERJEANT SIMONsaid, he thought they must all recognize the courageous endeavour made by the Bill to suppress a great and crying evil—an evil from which every Member of the House had more or less suffered, from which every candidate had suffered, and which was a scandal to the country. When an appeal was made to the people for their decision on the course of policy which was desirable for the country, they
  1424
  expected an honest and faithful answer; but if that answer were procured by corrupt practices, the appeal had been in vain, and the answer was not a true and faithful one. The attempt of his hon. and learned Friend to put an end to such a scandal they must hail with satisfaction. At the same time, while he recognized great merits in the Bill he thought it susceptible of considerable improvement. He agreed with the principle of a fixed maximum amount of expenditure, and he held that this provision constituted one of the best and most important parts of the Bill; but the maximum, he thought, should be more elastic, and that it should be fixed with reference to the will, character, and circumstances of constituencies. Like the hon. Member opposite, he was anxious for the return to the House of men of moderate means. The endeavour to make the House one not for rich men only was a proper endeavour, and which, if it succeeded, would add to the dignity of the House and be a benefit to the country. There were men of great ability and high character, but who could not face the extravagant expense of elections as now conducted; whereas men who had passed their lives in amassing wealth, and had not given, perhaps, a continuous half-hour's consideration to a single question of public concern, could, by lavish expenditure, find an entrance into the House. It was time to put an end to such a state of things, and encourage men of ability and character, but of moderate means, to enter public life and devote themselves to the service of the country. The same remark also applied to the working-men candidates. It was conceded on both sides of the House that it would be desirable to have labour represented in that House to a greater extent than it was now represented. He hoped to seethe time when, instead of one or two, there would be, at least, a dozen working men sitting on those Benches. Some years ago, to the honour of the Party opposite, the property qualification was abolished; but it still existed, for all practical purposes, in the form of fees to the Returning Officers. Some parts of the Bill were not altogether satisfactory, and required explanation. The 4th clause, for example, would operate very severely in making a candidate liable for all the acts of his agent. Nothing, of course, could be

  1425
  more criminal than the conduct of the corrupt candidate; but it was not just that a candidate should be punished for all that his agents might do. The doctrine of agency was not the same in election matters as in Common Law, as, in the former case, the employer was held liable for acts done by his agent, not only without orders, but even in direct contravention of his orders. He put it to the House to say whether it was fair to punish a candidate for illegalities committed in such a manner, in the way and to the extent proposed by the Bill? He thought that there should be some limit fixed to the time during which an election might be said to continue. At present it was not easy to say when an election began. Candidates were often announced years beforehand; and perhaps the penal clauses of the Bill might treat as a corrupt practice a dinner given to his neighbours by a candidate who was announced years before to come forward at the next vacancy. As for the proposal to revert to the practice of trying Election Petitions by one Judge, he was entirely opposed to it. In 1874 he moved for a Select Committee on the subject, and the Committee came to the almost unanimous conclusion that Petitions should be tried by more than one Judge; and the law was altered accordingly. He, therefore, could not support the proposal to return to the trial by one Judge. Either two Judges must try election cases, or there should be an appeal from the decision of a single Judge, which would considerably increase expense. He regarded the Bill, on the whole, as an honest endeavour to remedy a great evil; but its details would require careful examination. He hoped, therefore, the Attorney General would have regard to the views of Members expressed in this discussion and in Committee; and the result, he believed, would be an efficient measure.
  LORD GEORGE HAMILTONsaid, that some hon. Members appeared to think that it would be advisable not to pass observations on the details of the measure before the stage of Committee. He, however, was of opinion that such a course must, in the end, be productive of considerable delay; and, therefore, he should not take the advice of those who counselled reticence at the present time. The first point to which he wished to
  1426
  draw attention was that that portion of the Bill which dealt with "illegal practices" would apply to every constituency in the Kingdom. Any candidate for the representation of a constituency who should be guilty of such practices would be disqualified for life from representing that constituency. Now, that would be a tremendous punishment. When seeking in the Bill for a definition of the offences which were to entail so severe a penalty, some friends and himself had at first thought that they must be the victims of an optical delusion. Their difficulty was explained by the fact that the Schedules purporting to explain the nature of these illegal practices were inverted. As it had been proved that corruption existed to a certain extent in the smaller constituencies, but that there was none in the large ones, it would be supposed that in the case of the smaller constituencies the expenditure would be limited, and that a higher scale of expenditure would be tolerated in the large constituencies. But, according to the Schedules, the smaller the constituency the larger might be the expenditure per head, and the larger the constituency the smaller the expenditure per head. The Attorney General, for example, in the borough of Taunton, might spend about 7s. per head in an election contest; but if in contesting Middlesex, which was a much larger constituency, he (Lord George Hamilton) were to spend 2s. per head, he would be prevented for life from representing that county. Surely, so ridiculous a disproportion could not be justified. The Attorney General had pointed out that certain candidates had reduced their expenses at the last Election below the amount permitted by the Bill, and had cited the case of the Members for Birmingham. Their expenses amounted to a little less than£6,000, and that sum would have been admissible according to the provisions of this Bill had it been law, because three candidates stood together; but a proportionate expenditure would not have been allowed to one candidate standing by himself, whom an expenditure of £2,200 would have disqualified for life. What he objected to was that severe and inequitable restrictions were placed upon large constituencies because a certain number of small constituencies had been proved to be corrupt. The Bill practically put all the constituencies of England in

  1427
  swaddling clothes because a certain number of small boroughs had shown themselves unable to walk uprightly without assistance. Now, the smaller constituencies were the remains of the old system of representation, and it was tolerably certain that the next Reform Bill would efface them. The Government, therefore, were now legislating for a moribund system; and, in order to protect constituencies which sooner or later must cease to exist, were imposing such restrictions upon candidates in large constituencies as would make the fair conduct of elections almost impossible. He held that the Schedules could not be allowed to stand. Something must be substituted for them which would work fairly. He suggested that a distinction should be drawn between counties and boroughs. Had hon. Gentlemen who were likely to stand for large constituencies realized what would be their position under this Bill? They would not be able to communicate with their constituents by post, because that course would be too expensive. The only way in which the candidate could make his views known was by public meetings. But then he was not allowed to advertise the public meeting. [The ATTORNEY GENERAL (Sir Henry James) dissented.] At any rate, one of the clauses was capable of that contention. Anyone contesting a county constituency would find himself in a position of great embarrassment. Another difficulty which would confront him under the Bill would be that he could not employ a sufficient number of clerks for carrying on the necessary business. He would suggest that a section ought to be taken out of the Ballot Act Continuance Amendment Bill. He would further suggest that, in regard to these Schedules as to expenditure, the Attorney General should reverse his system. He should calculate for the largest constituencies first and estimate what expenses were necessary. He then could reduce the scale of expenditure in proportion to the size of the constituencies, and in that way he would arrive at a uniform system. It was quite clear that it was not necessary to have so large an expenditure for a small borough as for a large constituency. Or, if the Attorney General objected to that, let him estimate what sum might fairly be spent per head of the electorate, and then say that, in no circumstances, was
  1428
  the expenditure to exceed so many shillings per head. In that way candidates would know what to do, and a far better check than the one proposed would be placed on the evil complained of. Then, as regarded the employment of individuals, he did not believe that large constituencies were affected—though in small constituencies it was different—by the number of persons employed by the candidates. It might be necessary to employ 50 clerks for a day to get through necessary clerical work, and they would not be employed again. But, under this Bill, the most absurd restriction was imposed; and he did not see how, under it, it would be possible to get through the legitimate business of the central committee. Therefore, he thought it would be well to strike out the first Schedule, so far as large constituencies were concerned. If they put all these tremendous penalties on Parliamentary candidates to stop bribery and corruption, the ingenuity of man would, in some way or other, carry out those practices without rendering the guilty parties responsible, and a ready method was at once suggested in the municipal elections. Now, he did not suppose that, in the small boroughs in which corruption prevailed, they would do any good unless they applied the corrupt practices penalties to municipal as well as Parliamentary elections. Moreover, there was another danger which was perfectly certain to occur under this Bill if candidates were to be subject to great penalties. In a very short time, he believed, almost every political association would enter into an arrangement to the effect that those employed would have their salaries raised in ordinary years if they gave their services gratuitously whenever an election occurred. Some such system as that would be adopted, and he failed to see how that Bill would check it. He might illustrate this by referring to what was called the Home Counties Liberal Union. The operations of this Society extended to a good many constituencies; and if an election occurred in any one of these constituencies within the area covered, it would always be possible for this Association or any other to turn on to help the candidate the whole of the officers employed by the Association. If they incurred a penalty it could not be a severe one, and, of course, the penalty would be paid by the Association. If the

  1429
  Schedules remained as they were when they came into Committee, they would not make as satisfactory and rapid progress as they otherwise might do.
  MR. H. SAMUELSONsaid, it was a matter for congratulation that at last the House found itself engaged in practical legislation. He congratulated his hon. and learned Friend the Attorney General on the favourable reception, upon the whole, which his Bill had met with on both sides of the House, and thanked him for his promise to consider suggestions, from whatever quarter of the House they might proceed. The Bill was said to be too stringent; but the disease of corruption was undoubtedly spread very widely, and virulent diseases required drastic remedies. They had been told that this Bill was an attempt to legislate in advance of public opinion. It was certainly not in advance of the opinion of persons who had considered the subject, and he did not believe the Bill was much in advance of public opinion generally. The constituencies were deeply interested in the matters dealt with by the Bill; and there existed a healthy state of opinion, which only required the stimulus of sincere and vigorous action on the part of the Government, showing a real recognition of the magnitude of the evil and a positive determination to eradicate it, to come prominently to the surface. Such a stimulus was afforded by that Bill. He would advert to one or two evils which the Bill did not touch; and if no other Member proposed any Amendment with reference to them, he himself would do so. Nothing was more foreign to the spirit, though not to the practice, of our elections than intimidation. The Ballot, to a great extent, diminished the evil of intimidation; at any rate, so far as employers and customers were concerned. But there were certain other forms of intimidation against which there was no provision in the Bill. There was the requisition dodge. Requisitions in favour of candidates were sent out by the friends of the candidates to electors, who were requested to return the requisitions with their signatures to a candidate's committee or some influential person. The person to whom the requisitions were to be returned could do great injury, if they would, to electors who refused to sign the requisitions; therefore, weak and
  1430
  timid voters were thus intimidated into signing a promise which they often had every intention of breaking. There was also the custom of sending to every voter a polling card, to be personally returned to the committee room after the poll. A man might as well vote openly as take his voting card to the committee room. These practices ought to be declared to be illegal. There was the custom of inserting in newspapers a long list of voters as members of a candidate's committee. Every person who was named in such a list as a supporter of a candidate ought to be regarded, for the purposes of the Corrupt Practices Act, as an agent of that candidate, who ought, to a certain extent, to be made responsible for the acts of that agent.
  MR. DIXON-HARTLANDsaid, that, having lately contested two constituencies, and having had the misfortune of fighting two Election Petitions and one scrutiny, he thought he had some experience of the question now before the House. That experience was all the greater because the constituency which he last fought, and which he now represented, was described by the hon. Member for Kirkcaldy (Sir George Campbell) as the rottenest of rotten boroughs. He thought it was a great mistake for any hon. Gentleman so to stigmatize a constituency of which he had no knowledge, and where he was perfectly unknown. It was a charge very easy to make, and very difficult to refute, as very few boroughs had the good fortune to be able to prove, by the decision of Her Majesty's Judges, as Evesham had done, that such a statement was not only unfounded, but unjust. In his own case, after a trial which lasted from the 2nd to the 17th of the month inclusive, the Judges not only unseated his opponent and gave him the seat, but also awarded him all the costs, yet the law was such that taxing-masters were able to put the Judges' decision at defiance and mulct him in several thousand pounds. He was told that that was always the case; but if that was a question of such national importance that two of Her Majesty's Judges were kept for over a fortnight in a country town, should the cost be so heavy in case of success, and nearly ruinous in case of failure? Was not the knowledge that such must be the result sufficient to deter men from presenting Petitions? He thought a measure ought

  1431
  to be passed to put a stop to the evils disclosed by the recent Commissions; but the present Bill was, in his judgment, at the same time too weak and too strong—too weak because it held out no inducement to keep a party straight, too strong because it was nothing more or less than a Coercion Bill against candidates, and, if it passed, it would put an end to any Member being able to do good in his own borough at any time when he was sitting for it. And though he would be one of the last to encourage bribery under the name of charity, yet he thought that true charity was one of the greatest privileges of Members, and to take away from Members the power of doing good would be a great misfortune. He hoped a clause would be introduced to make the system of Petitions very much cheaper, for it was useless to give a luxury which was too dear to be enjoyed. He also thought it desirable that the present provision of the law relating to a scrutiny should be abolished.
  MR. STANTONsaid, he represented a constituency (Stroud), which, in 13 months, had had five contested elections and four Petitions; and the House would believe that he spoke feelingly on the subject, considering the very dreadful experiences he had had. He believed there was a general feeling in favour of the second reading of the Bill; but, before it passed, he should like to see some provision introduced with regard to out-voters, who were frequently labouring men. Now that the expense of elections was to be curtailed, that class, being unable to bear the cost of a journey to the polling-booth themselves, would, unless some system were devised, be practically disfranchised. He would therefore suggest that the out-voters should have the power to apply to the Returning Officer for a voting paper, to be signed in the presence of a magistrate, and to be returned to the Returning Officer through the Post Office. It might be said that that was interfering with the secrecy of voting; but he would trust to the magistrates not to exercise undue influence nor to divulge their knowledge. The events at Stroud, he might observe, occurred because, at the trial of Petitions, the parties who petitioned were wise enough not to claim the seat. Consequently, the acts of the Petitioners could not be inquired into.
  1432
  Might not the state of things he had described be dealt with in this measure? If the tribunal, whatever it might be, were allowed to inquire into the conduct of both sides, they would get rid of the abuse of Petitions, for Petitioners ought to come before the Court with clean hands, which was hardly ever the case at present.
  MR. SCHREIBER: I could not help thinking, Sir, last night, that the hon. and learned Gentleman the Attorney General took a somewhat disparaging view of his own Bill, when he wished that it should be read a second time after three hours' discussion in a languid House. Now, in my view, no Bills are so important as those which deal with the franchises of the people and the return of Members to this House; and if, in the course of the present Session, we succeed in passing a measure founded on this Bill, and an analogous measure for the municipal elections, we shall do much, I think, to redeem the Session from the barrenness which otherwise seems likely to distinguish it. Now, Sir, no doubt this is an example of what Lord Palmerston once called a "spanking Bill." But, in my opinion, the occasion demands a "spanking Bill;" either that, or that the electors who are so minded should be free to dispose of their votes without those risks to the buyer and seller which are sometimes thought such an excellent joke, and sometimes are no joke at all—witness, the election agents who have been sent to prison, and the two Cabinet Ministers who have been sent—in search of other seats. One thing there is which cannot be tolerated—I mean that the law should remain as it is. Either it must be made more stringent, or it must be entirely repealed. Now, Sir, although I have listened most attentively to all that has been said in the course of this debate, I have not heard a single word about the causes of the flagrant corruption which marked the late General Election; and I do not know how we are to cure a malady, unless we are first clear as to its cause. Of the two causes which seem to me to be at work in the constituencies, the first connects itself so closely with the "struggle for existence," that I hardly like to speak of it as corruption. The poorest class of voters in our towns are so poor, that with them the great question of the day is always

  1433
  how they shall get through to-morrow. Those men, Sir, see two gentlemen, whose wealth is always grossly exaggerated by report, contending for the prize as if their lives depended on the result, and seeing also large sums of money spent on printing, agents, and committee rooms, they, too, put in their claim for a modest share of "what is going" with a force which the local agent finds himself unable to resist; and so, by colourable employment or otherwise, the candidate's return is vitiated. Now, there is only one way in which this pressure can be done away with. We must forbid by law the expenditure which causes it; and that I take to be the real defence of what the hon. and learned Attorney General calls his "Maximum Schedule," and on which, with the permission of the House, I shall wish to say a few words presently. The second cause of corruption I find in the annual recurrence of the municipal elections. Now, Sir, in speaking of that subject, I wish it to be distinctly understood that I know nothing but what is good of my own constituents, and that in anything I may say I refer to what I have read in Blue Books or in newspapers about the constituencies of other hon. Members Well, what is happening now was distinctly foretold by me in 1868. Here is what I said—
  "But, when all this had been done, he (Mr. Schreiber) would not have the House deceive itself—it would have done nothing until it had grappled with the evils of bribery at municipal elections. The Bill of last Session established an identity of Parliamentary and municipal franchise; and he said that while corruption was constant, annual, flagrant at the municipal elections, it was a mockery and a farce to send down Parliamentary candidates and tell them to hold pure elections; "—[3 Hansard, cxcii. 669.]
  and, further on—
  "Whether there would or would not he bribery depended on whether there was or was not a balance of party which made it worth while to contest the municipal elections. So surely as these were contested corruption would come in; and with a reduction of the franchise they would only extend the area of corruption."—[Ibid. 670.]
  Encouraged, Sir, by the success which has attended on that prophecy, I now venture to make another, and it is this—that if "Financial Boards" are established in the counties, with a rating franchise, and with annual elections of their members, your county elections will also become corrupt. The fact is, Sir, that the working man is, as a rule,
  1434
  supremely indifferent whether the local grocer or the local ironmonger sits in the local Parliament; but to the local wire-puller the municipal elections are of supreme importance—first, as tests of the strength of Parties; and next, on account of the patronage which the local majority enjoys. In this way, certain currupt conventions are set up in the municipal elections, which, when the Parliamentary election comes round, make themselves felt with fatal force; and we may spare all our labour on this Bill unless we are determined to deal with the same severity and, at the same time, with the question of the municipal elections. I now wish, Sir, to make a few remarks on one or two clauses of the Bill. The penalty imposed by Clause 4 would be excellent, if the present rate of expenditure is to be maintained. It is a matter within my own experience that a candidate may come down to a constituency; by a profuse expenditure may procure his return; may be unseated on Petition; may then transfer to a friend the interest which his corrupt expenditure has created; and may then, at the end of five or six years, return to the place himself, and make it a subject of the loudest complaint that he was ever unseated on Petition. For such a proceeding the penalties of Clause 4 furnish an effectual remedy; but, under the new scale of expenditure, I must say I do not see how they can be necessary; for the Schedule will go so near to starving an election that it will be quite impossible for a candidate in the future to make himself "agreeable" to a constituency by his expenditure. Passing to the question of "illegal," as distinguished from "corrupt" practices, I am not able to agree with the noble Lord the Member for Middlesex (Lord George Hamilton), for I think it simply monstrous to make laws only to break them. Either let us not make the sin by making the law, or, if we make the law, let us enforce it; either let us abolish the offence of "illegal" practices altogether, or let us visit the breach of the law with the heaviest penalties. I come next, Sir, to the "Maximum Schedule," and taking Poole as a model constituency, with some 2,000 electors, I find I should be permitted to spend £100 in printing and in placarding the walls of the borough. Well, Sir, I really could not undertake

  1435
  adequately to set forth the shortcomings of the present Government for the sum of £100; and I should greatly prefer some latitude in that respect, thinking that I might with advantage spend a larger sum. I therefore do hope, Sir, that the hon. and learned Gentleman will be willing to stretch what he calls his "Maximum Schedule." I ought, perhaps, to mention here that, in 1880, I found it necessary to spend as much as £450 on printing, my placards being torn down by an organized band of 20 men as fast as they were put up. Then, with regard to agency, I see that I shall be allowed the sum of £270 for all the other expenses of the election. How am I to secure out of that sum the services of a competent agent? I can only say, Sir, that I owe my election and my present opportunity of inflicting this speech upon the House to the fact that I was willing to pay for the services of the best agent that money could procure. And, speaking generally, it is my understanding that if I want a good thing I must expect to pay for it; and if I want the opinion of the hon. and learned Gentleman the Attorney General I should expect to have to pay for it. I have no wish, Sir, to see this House composed of poor men, for there is nothing of which I am more profoundly convinced than of this—that the liberties of this House and of the people have been won by men of independent fortune. Every Member of the House ought, I think, Sir, to satisfy these three conditions. First, it ought to be a matter of supreme indifference to him on which side of your Chair he and his Party sit; next, he ought to be able to snap his fingers at any Minister who threatens him with a Dissolution; and, lastly, his circumstances should be such as to place his motives beyond the reach of suspicion. It is, I believe, Sir, because its Members have, in the main, long satisfied these three conditions that this House has been able to establish its hold on the respect and the affections of the English people. I have to thank the House, Sir, for the indulgence with which it has listened to these observations; and I have now only to regret the absence of the right hon. and learned Gentleman the Secretary of State for the Home Department, whose long connection and intimate acquaintance with the politics of the City of Oxford give him
  1436
  a varied and a valuable experience which ought to have been placed at the disposal of the House; and along with that of the right hon. and learned Gentleman I have also to regret the absence of another Member of the Government, whose presence on this occasion was almost equally desirable—I mean, Sir, the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Scarborough (Mr. Dodson).
  MR. O'DONNELLagreed in general terms with the observations of the hon. Member who had just sat down as to the necessity of the House being composed of independent Members who would be able to snap their fingers at any Ministry which threatened them with a Dissolution. But the mere extent of a rent-roll would not bring about that happy consummation. He did not agree with the hon. Member that men of wealth had been exclusively the leading defenders of the liberties of this country. An Irishman (Edmund Burke) rose on many occasions in the House on behalf of liberty; and he was not aware that Mr. Burke was a man of independent fortune, though, indeed, from his wealth of brains he could have endowed the Members of several average Ministries. William Pitt (afterwards Lord Chatham) was for many a day anything but a man of independent fortune. This whole question of independence was a question of relative terms and relative work. The man who barely earned his weekly income might be a man of independence, while the man who counted his annual rent-roll by tens of thousands might be the most abject slave that ever crawled in the wake of a Ministerial Whip. This Bill might be accurately described as a Bill for the prevention of lucrative rewards for services rendered at Parliamentary elections. He was not sure that the House would succeed in convincing the electors at large of the reality of the abhorrence in which it held the system of lucrative rewards for political services until the House first commenced to abolish lucrative rewards for political services in its midst. The Bill was aimed at bribery. Was it anything short of bribery for the Government to invite the votes of Lancashire cotton spinners by proposing the abolition of the Cotton Duty? Was the granting of titles as a reward for political subservience far short of bribery? He thought it would be well that Go-

  1437
  vernments should have clean hands before they ascended the pedestal of virtue to lecture half-starving electors with a view to prevent them accepting bribes. A very large dose of corruption seemed to be the necessary basis of Party Government. The hon. Member who last addressed the House considered £100 a small sum to expend in proclaiming throughout his constituency the shortcomings of the Liberal Government; but the printing bill which he (Mr. O'Donnell) had to pay for the little borough of Dungarvan—and he believed the sentiments he expressed were sufficiently vigorous—did not reach £25; and he thought that, with a judicious selection of sentences, and a careful attention to the most telling phrases of opprobium, the hon. Member with his £100 would get exceedingly good value for his money. As for the Bill itself, it was very good as far as it affected the grosser forms of bribery; but they, he feared, were going out of fashion to make way for finer methods of corruption, which were growing up under the influence of civilization and culture. Under a changed order of things, the Bill would open the door to abuses of the most dangerous kind. He should be delighted to see a diminution in those scandalous bills of costs which disgraced many constituencies; but even after the legal expenses had been reduced to the maximum scale contained in the Bill, he was afraid there would still be the possibility of an enormous amount of corruption. The Bill would not prevent that most dangerous form of corruption—the "nursing" of constituencies, which might be done in various ways. It was carried on by candidates who were wealthy, and by others who were supposed to be wealthy. He knew a candidate who before an election filled the voters of an Irish borough with vain hopes of the speedy erection of a great mill in their midst. He knew another candidate who actually paraded through a town, some short time before his election, a procession of machines, conveying the idea that he was about to make that town the centre of a manufacturing industry. He knew another candidate who ostentatiously sent a staff of surveyors from London to survey the coast in the neighbourhood of a maritime borough, and thus created the impression that he
  1438
  was about to embark in the most lavish expenditure upon piers and harbours. These were illustrations of what "nursing" constituencies meant. A more dangerous form of corruption than that arose through the action of permanent organizations—he cared not whether Liberal or Tory—which manifested their activity with regard to every kind of election, and introduced corruption into every branch of the Representative system. There was nothing in the Bill to deal with such proceedings, and, indeed, he doubted if systematic corruption of that description could be stopped. He believed, however, that the Bill would stop the grosser form of corruption. That, perhaps, was all that the House had a right to expect. But, so far as the attempt to try Election Petitions by a single Judge was concerned, however objectionable in England that might be, it was absolutely intolerable in Ireland. They could not trust themselves to the intense partizans who continually found their way to the Judicial Bench in Ireland. They might have partizans in England, but in Ireland they habitually got partizans. He knew, in his own case, that the question whether he should be unseated or not depended upon who the Election Judge should be. He hoped, if the Government insisted on a single Judge for England, they would consent to allow at least two Judges for Ireland. He should support the second reading of the Bill, although he believed that it would not make any great impression upon the political morals of the country.
  MR. W. H. JAMESsaid, that the expenditure of Conservative candidates, as returned to the House, was invariably greater than the expenditure of Liberal Members. He did not, however, wish to press that point. There was nothing more difficult to define than bribery. There could be no doubt that it was part of the social system, not merely in the matter of election, but in the ordinary affairs of life. It existed there to a deplorable extent. Sir Edmund Beckett, writing to The Times on this subject, pointed out the great extent of the evil. This was at the root of the electoral corruption which they now condemned. When a candidate came before the electors, many persons in humble position were, unhappily, trained in the Belief that the vote they were asked for

  1439
  was hardly worth the having unless they could get something for it. He would give one illustration of this. In the course of a canvas in the county of Kent, a candidate applied to a butcher for his vote. The butcher replied—"Yes, Sir, I shall be very happy to vote for you if now and then you will give me a vote for a leg of mutton." This was the general view taken in a certain class—there should be a quid pro quo. When this Bill came into Committee, he should endeavour to make certain Amendments upon it with regard to the furnishing of all details of expenditure to some public officer. He believed that if such a principle were carried out a great discouragement would be given to corrupt practices.
  SIR WILLIAM HART DYKEsaid, he was prepared to give his general support to the second reading of the Bill, and he was also opposed to the Amendment then before the House. He believed that the evil with which the Bill proposed to cope was not a stationary evil, but one which was growing in our very midst, and was one which required harsh measures to grapple with it. He thought the hon. and learned Gentleman might be congratulated on the favourable acceptance with which the Bill had been received at the hands of the House; and he was of opinion that he had done right in assenting to the further debate on the second reading of the Bill. His (Sir William Hart Dyke's) experience with reference to such matters was, that if a Bill was hurried through the second reading, it generally recoiled upon the promoter, who had much greater difficulty in dealing with it at the Committee stage, in consequence of his ignorance of the general feeling of the House. With reference to the remarks of an hon. Member opposite, he was strongly of opinion that if, instead of discussing the merits or the demerits of the Bill, they proceeded to throw stones at each other across the floor of the House, they would be only wasting the time of the House, and cause a sudden and abnormal rise in the price of plate glass. He wished to add his experience to the assistance of the Attorney General, with the object of making the Bill a good one; and with regard to any other matters he was utterly hard-hearted and reckless. Although the Bill was a most excellent endeavour to stop bribery, he
  1440
  was somewhat alarmed that it was so harsh in some of its provisions. However good their intention might be, the Bill would frustrate it by the harshness of the proposed remedy. He thought they ought to be careful, in order that they might not, by passing the Bill with such severe penalities, cause a swinging back of the pendulum and a re-action against it which might lead to a very serious modification in the future. They had been told that it was a very great hardship that many excellent men should be debarred, by the existing system, from taking part in the proceedings and debates of the House; but it seemed to him that if some of the provisions were not seriously altered, the Bill would have the effect also of preventing a large number of candidates, whose presence would be of great advantage to the House, from ever taking part in an election. He alluded to Clause 4 more particularly, in which it was laid down that if any unfortunate candidate, through his agent, was guilty of any illegal practices, he could not again become a candidate for the constituency. He thought that the clause was a very harsh one as it stood. In the first place, it was obvious that they could not restrict the time occupied in an election, which might last a week or 10 days, or, it was possible, might go on for many weeks, or even months, directly or indirectly. Under the clause, as it then stood, he could not conceive it possible that any two candidates, running a hard race for an election, could carry on the contest for many weeks without being almost distracted by the danger they would run under that harsh clause. Then, with regard to the appointment of only one agent for each constituency, the agent, under the Bill, was made a very important man indeed, and was, practically, the arbiter of the destiny of the candidate during the election. He thought that the severe provisions of the Bill would put a candidate for a large and straggling county in the utmost danger if he were only allowed to have one agent. In such a constituency, with a contest lasting three weeks, it would be utterly impossible for any one agent to prevent, "here and there," some illegal act, which might upset an election. There was not a single county constituency which he would dare fight tomorrow, with anything like security,

  1441
  with only one agent, as the return might be made invalid, with all the pains and penalties attaching to it. He had a great objection to the clause dealing with the maximum of expenditure, because there was too wide a margin. The maximum was not truly fixed, because if it were a correct scale for the expenditure of an election which might last a fortnight, he would say that it was not a true and correct scale for an election which lasted two months. It was certainly wrong in one case or the other. He could see a good and solid reason why there should be a maximum; but, at the same time, he did not see how any election could be conducted in a very large county constituency for a considerable time under the maximum scale. He did not think it would be fair to press the Attorney General to abandon the principle of a certain maximum; but perhaps the hon. and learned Gentleman would consider whether it would be possible to make some alteration in his maximum scale, more especially as they could not restrict the time of commencement or the duration of a contest. In Section 4, Clause 32, of the Bill, it was provided that where a person was prosecuted before an Election Court for any corrupt or illegal practice, the Court should immediately proceed to adjudicate. Supposing that some corrupt machinery outside the scope of the Bill should be introduced by irresponsible persons totally unknown to the candidate, he wanted to know why the section should not be applied to a tribunal sitting in a borough for the summary decision of any charges which might arise? His suggestion was that they should have two Justices sitting in a borough during an election, who could at once decide upon any case which should be brought before them. He thought by those means that they would deal a more deadly blow to corrupt practices than could be found in a great many clauses of the Bill before the House. It was necessary to deal with a difficulty when it arose, and he would venture to say that were such a system as that applied it would be found best calculated to afford immediate relief to any candidate placed in a difficult position. He trusted the hon. and learned Gentleman opposite would carefully consider the many suggestions and amendments which had been proposed with regard to the Bill;
  1442
  and he could assure him that all on the Opposition side of the House would cordially co-operate with him in putting an end to a great evil which they had all talked about for many years, and all had regretted, but he believed had never seriously made up their minds, one and all, to obliterate from their electoral system.
  MR. LEWISsaid, he found himself in great difference with his Friends on the Opposition side of the House with regard to this Bill. He was unable to support the second reading on any ground. It was obvious to the House that it would not be right for him to withhold the expression of his opinion on the subject. He objected to the Bill strongly, because he considered that all the chief alterations which it made were alterations which were highly inexpedient, if not absolutely unjust. It appeared to him that the Bill was remarkable for the alterations it would make upon three leading points, one of them involving several other points of no little importance. In the first place, the character of treating for which the candidate was made responsible, was entirely altered by the Bill. In the second place, a totally new class of offences, with penal consequences, was created by the Bill. And, thirdly, they were asked to give the go-by to the benefit of legislation as to the strength of the Election tribunal, which was based upon the Report of the Select Committee of the House, to which he would refer presently. With reference to the constitution of tribunals to try Election Petitions, he had the strongest possible objection to the clause embodying that alteration. He looked upon it as a most reckless and vital invasion upon the safety of Members' candidates, that their liberties, their character, their political history, their hopes for the future, and all the objects which political men held most dear, should be placed in the power of one Judge, without appeal, under circumstances which did not preclude the possibility even of bias. From their past experience, he was entitled to say there were some sad cases as to which they had heard the remark that a political bias had existed. He had no hesitation in saying that there had been, in the decisions of one Judge especially, most painful evidence of political bias; and in saying, further, with reference

  1443
  to one decision, which was perfectly notorious throughout the Kingdom under the name of the "rabbit case," that it had excited grave dissatisfaction against the tribunal of a single Judge. Nothing would induce him to abstain from opposing this unjust Bill in every way which the Rules of the House would enable him to do so. The House, in a fit of self-denying generosity, thought it right to cease trying Election Petitions, and with a kind of idolatry for judicial personages which was, unfortunately, too rife in England, and for which there was no just foundation, said, "We will place the trial in the hands of one man." He was bound to say that in one or two cases in Ireland, in which Members not connected with the political Party to which he belonged were concerned, there were judgments by which one or two Members of the Home Rule Party were turned out, which he read almost with disgust. The House appointed a Committee in 1875, of which his hon. and learned Friend the Solicitor General was a Member. The Committee, by a majority of 11 to 5, decided that no decision turning a Member out of his seat should be allowed without the concurrence of two Judges. In the majority, he remembered, was his hon. and learned Friend the Solicitor General, and he was in a position to say there was no more determined supporter of that Resolution than the Solicitor General, whose name was on the back of this Bill. The Report of that Committee remained unnoticed for a considerable period. The late Government brought in more than one Bill in which they overlooked that recommendation of that Report; but the late Attorney General was so satisfied with its just requirements, that in the last Bill which they proposed before they left Office they decided to introduce trial by two Judges. In an Election Petition the Judge tried both the law and the facts. Had they any analogy in the whole of their judicial system to that? Yes, they had. All the members of the Judicial Bench in the Chancery Division were exactly in the same position; and what was the case with regard to appeal? Why, that there was an appeal in every case, which might ultimately reach the highest Court of Appeal in the House of Lords. From the decision of a single Judge in the Chancery Division there was an ap-
  1444
  peal even on interlocutory matters. But had the House the least idea how that appeal worked? Were the Judges always right? Those Judges were of great experience. Many of them had been in a leading position at the Bar, and others upon the Bench, for years. Did we find that even in the large majority of appealed cases their decisions were upheld? By no means. He had been able to obtain a Return for the year 1878 of the appeals from the decisions of the Chancery Judges. There were 253 appeals from the Master of the Rolls and the Vice Chancellors, and in no less than 106 cases their decisions were either reversed or materially altered. He believed that the fact of there being two Judges trying Election Petitions would frequently save a large amount of time. As regarded the new offence of illegal expenditure, the provisions of the Bill would probably be, he believed, evaded. If he were a single candidate for a double-barrelled constituency, he should only be allowed to spend some £500; but if he got three "bogus" candidates to stand with him during the whole time of the election, and if they gave him the advantage of their agents and expenses, he should be enabled to spend a considerable amount more than the Bill intended he should; while if a candidate contested a county with 30,000 electors, he would only be entitled to have one agent, and to pay him a wholly inadequate sum. The result must be that the candidate, unable to secure the services of a respectable man, would be obliged to employ some shady customer. At the last Election a certain gentleman stood for Middlesex alone, and his expenses amounted to £7,000. That candidate was the pure son of a pure father; he represented a pure interest, and it was impossible to suppose that he did any impure thing. Well, the benevolent author of this Bill would only allow him to spend £930. It was ridiculous to suggest that a Middlesex Election could be conducted, even in the most niggardly and miserly fashion, upon such an amount. How could the expenditure be controlled? At the Election for West Kent in 1865, it became known at half-past 3 on the day before the polling day that a forged circular had been sent to all the out-voters, stating that each Party had agreed to withdraw a candidate; and it at once became neces-

  1445
  sary to spend £200 in despatching messengers and telegrams throughout the county, in order to counteract the influence of this wicked and impudent forgery. Yet, under the Bill, payments made in such emergencies would be illegal payments, and would render a candidate liable to be for ever prevented from representing the constituency. If he might invent a title for the Bill, it would be—"A Bill for the purpose of frightening Persons from becoming Candidates for a seat in Parliament, and for imprisoning and disqualifying all those who do." If it were conceivable that it could be passed without modification, a pretty equal division on both sides of the House would find themselves in gaol. He intreated the House not to assent to the second reading, because it was impossible to mend a Bill like this when it got into Committee. ["Oh, oh!"] Well, they would ring the bell for a Division, and Gentlemen like the hon. Member for the North Riding of Yorkshire (Mr. Milbank), who so ejaculated, who was now reaping the advantage of sitting so long on that side of the House, would come trooping in to vote down every Amendment that was proposed. The whole legal and moral character of treating, he might remark, was changed by the omission of the word "corrupt." In conclusion, he asked the House not to agree to the second reading of a Bill which was a reckless, an inexpedient, and an unjust attack on the liberties of constituencies.
  Sir R. ASSHETON CROSSsaid, he did not rise for the purpose of taking any part in the discussion, but merely to ask his hon. Friend to withdraw his Amendment.
  MR. R. N. FOWLERsaid, he was quite willing to comply with the request of the right hon. Gentleman, but hoped to raise the question in Committee.
  MR. CALLANsaid, that, not being amenable to the blandishments of the Treasury Bench or the Front Opposition Bench, he had no intention of yielding, even at this late hour, to the request of the right hon. Gentleman, made probably by arrangement. He had observed the Under Secretary for Foreign Affairs taking notes throughout the discussion. He supposed the hon. Gentleman declined to speak now, lest it should be said the Government contributed to prevent a division. No such
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  consideration weighed with him (Mr. Callan) and therefore he proposed to speak his opinion regarding the Bill. ["Divide!"] Last night, when he asked the Attorney-General to grant an adjournment of the House, he would not consent to do so. No doubt, he wished that there should not be a discussion which might disclose some unpleasant facts about the borough of Taunton and other Liberal constituencies. The Attorney General did not desire to fish in troubled waters, and to expose the corruption of the Liberal Party. He regretted it was not proposed that the Bill should operate retrospectively, because he thought, with Baron Dowse, that if they were to view with a judicial mind all the proceedings that occurred in reference to Members of that House, they would scarcely have a House of Commons at all. Why had the word "corruptly," found in previous Acts, been omitted from this Bill? It must have been left out designedly. He was not surprised that a right hon. Gentleman representing Taunton should designedly leave out the word "corruptly." No explanation of this had been offered, and in the short time that remained it was not possible for the Attorney General to give an explanation.
  And it being ten minutes before Seven of the clock, the Debate stood adjourned till this day.
  The House suspended its Sitting at Seven of the clock.
  The House resumed its Sitting at Nine of the clock.

MOTION.

  LUNACY LAWS.—RESOLUTION.
  MR. STANLEY LEIGHTON, in rising to call attention to the impropriety and danger of permitting private persons to make pecuniary profit by keeping in their custody lunatics of the wealthier classes; and to the unfairness of requiring the ratepayers to maintain lunatics of the middle and lower classes; and to move, "That all lunatics ought to be committed to the keeping of the State," said, the Lunacy Laws were in such an anomalous state that the very

  1447
  gravest abuses were possible under them—abuses which, if these laws did not actually encourage, they certainly permitted. The present system, if system it could be called, had grown up during 40 years without revision or re-consideration, as a whole, and was wrong in principle, in practice, and in detail. He feared he would succeed in creating but little interest on the subject among the occupants of the Front Benches on either side of the House, for the official mind upon this question was absolutely dead. The President of the Local Government Board and the Home Secretary, who might be called the heads of the lunatics—he meant in their official capacity—cared for none of these things; and he had almost the same complaint to make of the lethargy of their Predecessors in Office. But he would warn the Government that the country was once roused to the fearful abuses that prevailed, and that the country might be roused again. The law divided lunatics into two classes, rich and poor—a mere arbitrary division without a true distinction. The rich lunatics were handed over to a body of private speculators, who made profit out of their detention. The poorer class—that was, the class below those who could pay £70 or £80 a-year to the owners of licensed houses—were placed in the category of paupers. He did not wish to speak harshly of persons, but only of the principle; he should mention no names; but he could not help speaking strongly of a system that encouraged speculation and large expenditure in licensed houses, with a view to the profit of their owners. The money so invested must pay interest. The owners of these licensed houses were anxious to receive lunatics, and found it difficult to release them. It was not easy to make up one's mind to get rid of a patient who was paying £1,000 a-year. What a temptation was thus placed before poor human nature! It was quite possible to retard the cure of a lunatic by the administration of drugs, and it was almost impossible to prove that any wrong had been done. He asked the Government to take away from the owners of these houses a great temptation. The law must necessarily permit, with regard to lunacy, the forcible arrest of individuals. Prompt measures were necessary without a long inquiry. Therefore, additional precaution was necessary
  1448
  to guard against undue detention. A Scotch Commissioner in Lunacy had said that the question of the detention of lunatics was generally determined by the convenience and comfort of others, not of the patient. That was a point he wished the House to realize. The discharge of a lunatic was a loss to the proprietors; and could they expect a man to clear out his own boarding-house? Inspection was provided, it was true; but the staff of Inspectors was small and overworked, and wholly inadequate to remedy the evils. Prevention was better than cure. Surely it was better to remove temptation. What he would propose in regard to the rich was that there should be a State proprietary of these licensed houses. That the State should gradually take over the establishments—it must be remembered they were more than self-supporting; they yielded a large profit from the payments of the patients—and pay the Medical Superintendent, who would then have no interest in the detention of lunatics, a fixed and adequate salary. Let all vested interest be recognized, and let the change be gradual, the house remaining in the same privacy, and in the care of the same medical man, if he was efficient. The only difference would be that the temptation of self-interest would be removed from the proprietors, whose vested interest would be saved, and that the profit would be utilized for those lunatics who were not able to pay for their maintenance. He was not proposing a mere ideal remedy for a theoretical grievance—real grievances were there. The Commissioners themselves in their Report said—
  "There is an uneasy feeling, somewhat widely spread, that further safeguards are needed for the protection of persons alleged to be insane."
  These were words founded on actual experience. He would give out of the last Lunacy Report two instances, one in which the Commissioners were compelled to require the resignation of the assistant medical man, so grievous was the dissatisfaction at his conduct. Another case he wished particularly to bring before the notice of the House. The Commissioners reported in respect of one licensed private lunatic asylum—
  "Very considerable discontent was discovered among the patients, and numerous charges of cruel practices were brought forward. The cruelty was proved; it consisted in putting blisters on the nape of the necks of unruly pa-

  1449
  tients, which afforded opportunities, apparently freely used, of causing pain by roughly dressing the patients. It appears also that tartar emetic was freely used to bring the patients into a low and weak state. None of the applications of tarter emetic or blisters were recorded in the books."
  He brought forward those two cases from last year's Report of the Commissioners to prove that all things were not so well conducted in private asylums as many supposed. He had no wish to make a sensational speech; he only wished the Government to deal with this matter before a passionate feeling arose in the country on the subject. If he showed some reason why the State should take over the superintendence of private licensed asylums, it would follow almost as a necessary consequence that it should deal in the same way with the poor who were taken care of in the pauper asylums. Under the present system, all lunatics who could not afford to pay £80 or £100 a-year were placed in pauper asylums. The arrangements with, respect to those asylums were simply chaotic, for there were no less than six conflicting authorities; they were the Home Secretary, the President of the Local Government Board, the Courts of Quarter Sessions, the Boards of Guardians, the Visiting Committees, and the Commissioners appointed by Government. Those different bodies were constantly in conflict. Again, a different system as to the care of lunatics existed in each of the Three Kingdoms. Moreover, pauper lunatic asylums were filled with persons belonging to the middle classes, comprising officers of the Army and Navy, clergymen, and literary men. If it were a hardship and a cruelty to associate pauperism and insanity, surely it was a hardship and an injustice to the ratepayers to make them provide for the insanity of the middle classes. The lunacy of the country was increasing; 1,500 persons were added every year to the list of pauper lunatics. Lancashire had recently been compelled to spend £80,000 on new buildings; Gloucestershire, £25,000; Shropshire, £46,000; Middlesex, £40,000; and Kingston-upon-Hull, £50,000. He might be told that this proposal was nothing but centralization; but, at the present moment, lunatic asylums were, in reality, governed from the Home Office, and local bodies bad little or nothing to do
  1450
  in the matter. Nor did he think it possible that these institutions could be properly governed by the local authorities. If the Government were to take over the pauper lunatic asylums, they would be able to introduce a system of classification. At present all cases, whether acute or chronic, were thrust together into one large building very much to the injury of the lunatics themselves; the result being that the recoveries in pauper asylums were less numerous than in licensed houses. If the State took over all asylums, they would be able to create a regular gradation of payment, according to scale. They would be able to get rid of the present abominable system of subvention to the local rates, which the Prime Minister had declared to be the worst possible system that could exist with regard to rates. They did not want another subvention, but they demanded that Departments which properly belonged to the nation should be taken off the rates altogether. It might be said that he was bringing two questions forward at the same time; that was not the case, for he was calling attention to the whole system of the Lunacy Laws, which arbitrarily and wrongly divided lunatics into the two classes of rich and poor—an unsound and indefensible system. If his proposal were supported, they would succeed in dissociating pauperism and insanity, which would be a blessing to the poorer classes; at the same time, they would relieve the ratepayers of a most unjust burden. With regard to the rich, their detention as lunatics would be dissociated from any idea of private profit or speculation; thus a benefit would be conferred upon rich and poor, and a scandal removed from the laws of this country. The hon. Gentleman concluded by moving the Resolution of which he had given Notice.
  MR. GURDON, in seconding the Motion, said, that among all the cases of unjust burdens cast upon the owners of real property, the maintenance of lunatics was the most unjust of all. What possible reason was there that the expenditure for the maintenance of lunatics should fall exclusively upon the owners of real property? Could it be contended for a moment that the owners of real property furnished a larger proportion of lunatics than the owners of other property? Lunacy was a national

  1451
  misfortune, and ought to be under national management and supported by national expenditure. To a certain extent the late Government recognized the fact by a subvention in aid of the maintenance of lunatics; but, like other subventions, it was not an unmixed good. The first result was that a large number of imbeciles were transferred from the Unions to the lunatic asylums—certainly not an economical proceeding. What they wanted was that the management and cost of maintenance of lunatics should be taken over by the State. He thought there was a far stronger case for State management of lunatic asylums than of prisons and police. There was no local provision for dealing with lunatics. The Visiting Justices of counties had really no power in the matter; the power was really in the hands of the Lunacy Commissioners. If the State took over the care and maintenance of lunatics, there would be the minimum of interference and the maximum of relief to the local ratepayers. He was quite willing to admit that the best private asylums were well managed; but, unfortunately, there were second and third-rate, and even in the best regulated among them there could not be such a thorough inspection and publicity as were desirable, and there was, in consequence, an uneasy feeling in the public mind on the subject. There was this important consideration to be borne in mind, that the proprietor of a private asylum had every inducement to keep a rich patient as long as he could; whereas in a public institution he would be discharged as soon as possible.
  Motion made, and Question proposed, "That all lunatics ought to be committed to the keeping of the State."—(Mr. Stanley Leighton.)
  MR. DILLWYNsaid, he did not wish to go into the question whether the maintenance of lunatics ought to fall upon the State or the local rates. His own feeling was in favour of the charges being borne by the rates. While not agreeing with his hon. Friend on that question, he did think that there was great danger in permitting private asylums to keep lunatics of the wealthier classes. He did not say no private asylums should be allowed; but he thought there should not be such a monopoly as now existed of the custody of the
  1452
  wealthier lunatics in the hands of private proprietors. The law at present was most unsatisfactory. If he were an unscrupulous person, he did not see that there was anything to prevent his incarcerating anyone in a private asylum if it was his interest to do so. There were good and bad private asylums; and if he went to a bad one, he might offer to pay handsomely, say,£1,000 a-year, and he would be told that he must get the certificate of two medical men, and the asylum proprietor would probably add—"I can recommend you medical men for the purpose." The trick was then done, and the unfortunate victim was taken to the asylum vi et armis. That was the law at the present moment. He had carried the second reading of a Bill on the subject, and he was in hopes that the Government would deal with a question which was a scandal and disgrace to the country. The question had been before Committees of the House, and there was no excuse for the Government's not having dealt with it before now. They were bound to do so. Until Government took the matter up nothing would be done; and he hoped they would at last take the matter up in earnest, and deal with it as a Government alone could do.
  MR. SALTsaid, that his experience was of public more than of private asylums. Private asylums ought, no doubt, to be under most careful supervision; but they had to consider not only the characters of asylums, but the wishes of those who honestly desired to do their best for their afflicted friends. There were cases in private families where the friends of the lunatic would be strongly indisposed to hand him over to the officials of the State. Private asylums ought to be subject to the inspection both of the Lunacy Commissioners and of the magistrates. Besides, medical men owning the best private asylums had, from their position and wealth, more opportunity to exercise a wise discretion, and to carry out the best methods of treatment, regardless of expense, than the officials of a public asylum, who were only paid a moderate salary. Although he was prepared to go a long way with his hon. Friend (Mr. Stanley Leighton), yet he could not say that, in his opinion, private asylums should never be permitted under any circumstances whatever. The best private establishments should be

  1453
  maintained, while those of an inferior character should gradually be suppressed. He believed there were some strong reasons why public asylums should be maintained by the State. As a financial matter, a good deal was to be said for it; and, moreover, such a course would be likely to get rid of some of the difficulties which now existed in regard to the removal of lunatics. There was one matter connected with the question to which he wished to draw particular attention. Whether lunatics were retained in private or public asylums, there should be a periodical visitation of them by the magistrates. It had been said that the magistrates were of no service in such a case, because they possessed no technical knowledge; but he felt sure—and he spoke from experience—that the occasional inspection of asylums by magistrates had a most beneficial effect. He thought that their acknowledgments were due to the hon. Gentleman the Member for North Shropshire for having drawn attention to this important subject.
  MR. GREGORYsaid, that in the course of his professional life he had happened to have some experience as to the custody of lunatics, and he ventured to say that nothing could be more conducive to their health, happiness, and cure than the treatment bestowed upon them in a well-managed asylum. He admitted that there might be private asylums that required more direction and control, or it might be that some of them deserved extinction. He knew a striking case that came under his own experience of an old lady who was, by order of the Court of Chancery, detained as a lunatic in a private asylum, and she gradually recovered, and the Medical Superintendent declared that she was not a fit subject for the Institution, and that she must be removed. When this was explained to the old lady, she said that she was willing to be guided by her friends if they desired her removal, and to have the Commission of Lunacy superseded; but she expressed her preference for remaining at the asylum where she had spent so many happy years, and a private arrangement gratifying her wishes was made. He knew one private asylum in his own neighbourhood which was most admirably managed. There were grounds, gardens, and plantations surrounding the premises, and there were bil-
  1454
  liard-rooms and concerts and other entertainments provided, and everything was done to promote the health and happiness, and, if possible, cure, of the patients. He questioned if this would be the case under the State. The management of asylums would then be managed under certain inflexible rules, and there would be one uniform system of treatment and control, which would not be beneficial in the interests of the patients, and there would not be the same varied experience in the efforts to cure their malady. He admitted that better management might be enforced by the Inspectors now appointed by the State; and with properly qualified Inspectors and control there would be nothing to complain of. He believed that those who managed private asylums were, as a rule, men who, out of respect for humanity and their own positions, would not do anything wrong against those left in their charge. With regard as to who was to pay for the support of pauper lunatics, that, in his opinion, was entirely another question; but the question now before the House was one of control and management. He doubted very much, however, whether the change now proposed would promote the interests of the country. In any case, if the present proposal was adopted an immense responsibility would necessarily be incurred by the Government, or the Department of it upon which the maintenance and control of all the present asylums throughout the country was to be thrown.
  DR. FARQUHARSONonly wished to say one word upon the subject before the House, as he had no wish to keep the House from the important discussion that was to follow, and that was that in the main he agreed with his hon. Friend that it might be desirable to change the law upon this question in some respects. He emphatically dissented from any argument brought against medical men using their position to keep patients in lunatic asylums. They had heard something of the retarding of cure by drugs; but the Royal Commission from which evidence had been given did not bear out that assertion. The temptation, although great, had been thoroughly resisted. The temptation in the case of medical men in private practice to get more out of their patients was also great; but that had likewise been resisted. He

  1455
  would not say more, as he had no desire to keep the House from the very important discussion which was to follow.
  MR. ROUNDsaid, he wished to say a word in favour of the Motion now before the House, and to thank the hon. Member for North Shropshire (Mr. Stanley Leighton) for calling attention to the important question of the cost and treatment of lunatics. He looked at the question from the ratepayers' point of view, and he never could see why the whole cost of providing for insane persons should be thrown upon one description of property—namely, houses and land, while six-sevenths of the income of the country were exempt from any contribution. He thought lunacy was always considered a national calamity, and he remembered the Prime Minister saying, when he introduced the Irish Church Disestablishment Bill in 1869, and was alluding to the surplus funds, that "the maintenance of lunatics was a duty of the community." These poor people were not drawn from one particular class, and he thought it unfair that the whole burden of their maintenance should be thrown upon ratepayers. At the present time the agricultural interest was suffering from an unprecedented depression, and he believed the ratepayers in the county he represented felt strongly on this subject. He thought that the increase of insane persons, and the necessary increase in buildings for their reception, was attracting attention, as in many counties a second asylum was now found to be required. In 1879 the cost of building asylums amounted to£290,000, in 1880 to£358,000, and in 1881 to£370,000. The whole cost in connection with lunacy was about£1,250,000. He wished to draw the attention of the Secretary of the Local Government Board to the difficulty of ascertaining the total cost from the present Returns and Reports. He had first to examine the accounts of the County Treasurer, then the Local Taxation accounts, and also the Lunacy Commission Report. He suggested that the information of the total cost of lunacy should be given in one Return. His own county was peculiarly unfortunate in respect of lunacy charges, for it was saddled with the cost of the maintenance of almost all pauper lunatics who were brought from India and landed on the Essex side
  1456
  of the Thames; and he hoped the Indian Government and the Local Government Board would give some further relief in this respect. He feared that there was a retrograde feeling in the present Parliament on the subject of local taxation. He remembered that the last Liberal Parliament, elected in 1868, supported by a majority of 100 a Resolution that many of these local charges should be borne by the whole community. He had looked at the Division List on that occasion, and saw the name of the President of the Local Government Board (Mr. Dodson) amongst the majority. He trusted, therefore, that he would not refuse his support to the present Motion, and he earnestly pressed the consideration of the whole matter upon the attention of the Government.
  MR. HIBBERTsaid, he fully recognized the inconvenience and expense to which the county represented by the hon. Member for East Essex (Mr. Round) had been put through the landing in the county of lunatics from India, and he could assure him that the Local Government Board would do all in their power to relieve the county of this additional burden as far as they could. The Motion of the hon. Member for North Shropshire (Mr. Stanley Leighton) was chiefly directed to two points—to the question of private asylums, and to the taking over by the country of the lunatics in the country generally. With respect to the first question, he did not think the hon. Member would secure a majority in that House. He had listened very carefully to his remarks, and had only been able to gather two cases of hardship—one of cruelty, and one of unjust detention, in the private lunatic asylums in the country. Many of them, perhaps, were not satisfactory; but, as everyone knew, there were private asylums and private asylums. A very strong case would have to be made out before the Government abolished the system in this country and took over to themselves the care of the whole body of lunatics. There were no less than 6,300 private asylums in the country. [Mr. STANLEY LEIGHTON: 6,300! There cannot be so many.] He (Mr. Hibbert) was reading from the Commissioners' Report, which gave 2,880 registered private lunatic asylums, and 3,420 licensed houses for the reception of lunatics, making 6,300 in all; and he did not think the Government, after

  1457
  their experience of the expense of taking over the prisons, would be ready to adopt the same course with the lunatic asylums. Nor did he think that any case had been made out against the public lunatic asylums. He had himself been for many years a Visitor of a large one in Lancashire, and he thought he agreed with his hon. Friend that they were the better of the two. They required, however, great care in inspection, and greater care, perhaps, should be exercised in sending patients to them. While fully admitting that, he thought it must be well known to the House that it was almost useless for the Government to bring forward a Bill to remedy these defects with any fair chance of placing it upon the Statute Book. He must admit that there had been a very considerable increase in the number of lunatics. In private asylums the number had risen from 6,454, in 1871, to 7,741, in 1881; in public asylums from 56,735 to 73,113—a very large increase indeed. Much of this increase, however, was due to the subvention given a few years ago to lunatic asylums, and the Commissioners had pointed out that the Act of 1874 had tended to remove lunatics to public asylums. Many had been sent thither whom the managers felt disinclined to receive, on the ground that those institutions were to be regarded as curative institutions, and that confirmed lunatics ought not to be sent there. In this view, two establishments would be required—one for the hopeless cases, and one for patients who might recover; and such a system was not without its advantages. With respect, however, to the principal proposal of the hon. Member, the proposal that the State should take over the public asylums and thereby transfer the expense from the ratepayers to the country, he did not think the House would sanction any such proposal. It was evident, from the statement made last night, that the funds at the disposal of the Government were not large, and additional taxation would have to be proposed if any such scheme were contemplated. He did not think the pauper lunatic class ought to be treated differently to the pauper class in general. No doubt, some hon. Members were in favour of a subvention to the outdoor poor; personally, speaking for himself and not for the Government, he should be very sorry to see the State
  1458
  paying anything directly in aid of the poor. That would be a very dangerous and difficult step to take. If the Government undertook the treatment of all the lunatics, there was no reason why they should not act similarly towards the blind or the deaf-and-dumb class. It had been said that the magistrates had very little control in the matter. He did not agree with that statement; they certainly would have much less if asylums came under Government management. On these grounds, therefore, he could not, on the part of the Government, support the proposal of the hon. Member; and he should be obliged, if a division were taken, to vote against it.
  MR. BERESFORD HOPEsaid, that, having had opportunities of closely watching the working of a private asylum, he should be able to bring down the subject from the world of romance to the level of indisputable fact. Horrifying pictures had been drawn by the hon Member for Swansea (Mr. Dillwyn) of the treatment of lunatics. The House had heard from him of gentlemen who were desirous of spending£1,000 a-year for their own sinister purposes. They had heard how much a-year would go to the ruffianly madhouse keeper, how much to the doctor or surgeon, and how much to the Visiting Magistrates; and, no doubt, the House was carried away by such a picture, which was worthy of a novel by Zola. But, for the consolation of those who had relations with£1,000 a-year—which they were willing to spend to persecute them—he would explain to the hon. Member for Swansea and to the House the process by which a gentleman could be confined in such an asylum. In the first place, he must be handed over to the madhouse keeper by some other person; and it was not everyone who had£1,000 a-year and was willing to expend it in making someone else miserable. Then came the doctor who kept the madhouse, and then the two doctors who signed the certificate knowing that signing a false certificate would entail the utter ruin of their character. Then, again, any lunatics in an asylum were at liberty to write to the Commissioners, and this they could do over the heads of the keepers. How many cases of systematic cruelty and neglect had been heard of? Was the hon. Member for Swansea prepared to say that there had been more cases of

  1459
  assault in private than in public asylums? He had figures to prove the contrary. Then, another argument on which the hon. Member dwelt was that the doctors of these private asylums were tempted by motives of gain to keep their patients longer than patients in public asylums; but the actual facts were that, whereas in public asylums the average period of detention was rather more than three years and seven months, in private asylums it was less than two years and five months; so that the balance was in favour of the private asylum. In fact, he believed the tendency was to let the patients out too soon. How could these injurious charges be brought against a body of highly-educated gentlemen, who spent their lives in the pursuit of science and in works of charity, of their being actuated by low and base motives? The private asylums ought not to be abolished; but the treatment of lunatics should be left to private enterprize and science, as in the case of the treatment of other maladies, and the competition of private enterprize ought not to be discouraged. The old superstition that there was some wide difference between diseases of the mind and diseases of the body was vanishing away before scientific research. The great improvement of medical science in our days was vitally encouraged by personal competition. If they abolished this in the case of "mad doctors," they made them an inferior class, and they struck a disastrous blow at the growth of medical science in regard to the treatment of the insane. The great name of Lord Shaftesbury had been invoked during this discussion; he had fought the battle of the lunatics, and years ago his voice was raised against private asylums. Five years ago a Committee sat upon the subject. As no one had yet quoted a sentence from the Report of the proceedings before that Committee, he would now quote one. As the name of Lord Shaftesbury had been used in connection with that subject, he would quote what was said by that noble Lord in his evidence before the Committee. Lord Shaftesbury's evidence was to the effect that the state of things in private asylums had greatly improved since 1859; that he could not now say of them what he had said before that date, and that there had been continuous advance and improvement since
  1460
  that date. He (Mr. Beresford Hope) wished also to point out that the private asylums were more successful than the public ones. The percentage of cures in the former was 50 per cent of the whole number, whereas in the public institutions it was only 44 per cent. He quite agreed that it might be desirable to extend the powers of the magistrates, to extend the system of medical examinations, and to make it more careful and scientific. But if we were to go into the question of subvention by the State where were we to stop, and where was the money to be found? Was it to be found in an additional guinea on carriages, or by a tax on adulterated tea?
  MR. HIBBERTsaid, he wished to correct the statement he had made as to the number of private asylums. The number ought to be 153.
  SIR R. ASSHETON CROSSsaid, that he had had great experience of the subject, as for many years he had been Chairman of a Visiting Committee of Magistrates. He regretted the absence from his place of the right hon. and learned Gentleman the Home Secretary, as it was a question especially belonging to his Department, and he himself had had much to do with the question at the Home Office. There was a divided jurisdiction on the question of Lunacy, which belonged partly to the Lord Chancellor, partly to the Home Secretary, and partly also to the Local Government Board. He had been particularly engaged on the question some three years ago; and it struck him there were three points especially requiring attention—first, to see that there were sufficient safeguards to protect sane people from being taken into private asylums; secondly, to see that they were properly treated; and, thirdly, that there should be proper means to obtain their discharge when cured. When on the Visiting Committee he had found that many persons were detained who ought to be let out, and he was instrumental in letting them out. He had obtained the appointment of a Select Committee, and that Committee in its Report dwelt on the very points which he had mentioned. The public were not convinced, as they ought to be convinced, that proper precautions were taken before a person was confined in an asylum. He could not conceive anything more terrible

  1461
  than that a person who was not insane should be placed in an asylum out of which it was extremely difficult to get; and they could not be too careful in protecting persons against interested relatives. The Committee suggested that the certificate ought to be granted by two medical men; that the first order to commit should be confined to a limited period, and that a fresh examination of the patient should take place every year. That was a valuable recommendation, as the most important results of a good treatment were seen at an early stage of the disease. Then the Committee advised that precautions should be taken to prevent sane persons from being locked up, and that means should be secured for letting the patients out as soon as ever they were cured. He hoped the Government would take the matter into their serious consideration and carry these recommendations into effect. He had no doubt the Visiting Justices did excellent service in the matter and procured the release of many persons wrongfully detained, as he had himself done when the Chairman of a Visiting Committee. He desired to have a more certain assurance than at present that nobody would be confined in the present asylums who ought not to be confined there. As to the treatment which they received when they were confined there, little complaint was to be made. The Lunacy Commissioners came down and sometimes took things for granted. He was bound to say that once upon a time he paid a visit suspecting something to be wrong. He came down at 8 o'clock on a Sunday morning, when there were no Inspectors, and when he could see things for himself. He took a friend with him, and they did find a considerable amount of wrong going on. He believed that something like this would tend more than anything else to keep things right. He hoped his right hon. Friend would meet these observations in the spirit in which they were made.
  MR. THOMAS COLLINS(who rose amid cries of "Agreed!") said, he was surprised at the impatience that was shown on the other side of the House. He thought it should be recollected that when it was said that persons were improperly detained, there were other cases, perhaps more frequent, when persons actually lunatics were allowed out of the asylum. He would allude to the case of
  1462
  Maclean. That man had been let out, and the result of that might have been much more serious than it was The question which the hon. Member for Shropshire (Mr. Stanley Leighton) had raised was a very large one; but he thought he had acted very unwisely in the interest he had at stake in mixing up two distinct propositions. They had some very strong language from the hon. Member for Shropshire and the hon. Member for Swansea (Mr. Dillwyn), but they had no facts. A larger proportion of persons who went to the private asylums were restored to health than was the case in public asylums. He did not say that this proved that the public asylums were worse managed than the private asylums. Wealthy relatives of patients in private asylums might more frequently remove them, and this might account for the fact to which he had called attention. He contended that to hand over all lunatics to the control of the State would be a retrograde step, and that, at any rate, it would be a change for which public opinion was not yet prepared. Already the State was superseding individual action far more than was wholesome. Every year attempts were made in that House to make the State everything and the individual nothing. It appeared to him that the hon. Member for North Shropshire would have been better advised if he had restricted his Resolution to the question of the cost of pauper lunatics. In his mention of that topic the hon. Member had expressed his decided dislike to the principle of subventions; but did he mean that the whole cost of the maintenance of this class of lunatics should be borne by the locality itself? A great deal had been said of the increase of lunacy in the country, and, no doubt, the subvention given by the last Parliament had increased the demand for more accommodation in the county asylums. In the West Riding of Yorkshire, where the population was 1,800,000, a second asylum had lately been established, and within the last few months a site had been provided for a third; but the fact was, not that lunatics had increased of late years, but that they were better cared for now than formerly. He would rather have seen the lunatic asylums than the gaols transferred to the Treasury. He would not recommend the hon. Member for Shropshire to press

  1463
  his Resolution as it stood; but would suggest that he might consent to an amendment of it, and he invited some hon. Member to move an Amendment, so that they might then debate a definite issue.
  VISCOUNT EMLYNsaid, that the request made by the hon. Member for North Shropshire (Mr. Stanley Leigh-ton) appeared to be a very large one. As to those who were maintained in private asylums, he quite agreed with the Secretary to the Local Government Board that the hon. Member failed to make out a case for the change he proposed. The cases he brought forward went to prove, not that the cost of maintenance ought to be transferred to Imperial funds, but that the supervision was not sufficient. He granted that it might be better; but all that we had a right to ask was that private and public asylums should be carefully, regularly, and efficiently supervised. He could not support the suggestion that private asylums should receive more assistance from the State. It was very difficult to discriminate between persons of the middle class and those of the lower class, and to draw a line separating one from the other. His hon. Friend proposed that all lunatics should be committed to the keeping of the State. With that he could not agree, for the proposal, if adopted, would have a tendency to lower the middle classes. Their object should be to make the middle class independent, and not to reduce it to the level of the pauper class. At the same time, necessary supervision should be exercised, in order to make sure that middle-class lunatics were not ill-treated or improperly confined. It was a mistake to suppose that lunatics of that class were maintained at the cost of the ratepayers. Where accommodation had been provided in pauper lunatic asylums for future tenants, the Visiting Justices had been ready to extend to those middle-class lunatics who approach nearly to the pauper class the assistance of which they stood in need, and had allowed them to enter asylums on payment at a remunerative rate. It could not, under such circumstances, be said that persons belonging to the middle class were thrown upon the rates. One complaint which was made was that subventions granted by the State to local authorities encouraged extravagance. It was not true, however, that the subvention of 4s. per
  1464
  lunatic had led to extravagance. A contrary tendency had, in fact, been apparent. An hon. Member had referred to the question of the removal of lunatics. On that subject he would say no more than that he hoped that when the question of the removal of paupers should be taken in hand the question of the removal of lunatics would be dealt with also. He was of opinion that a better classification of lunatics was needed, in order that the criminal lunatics now kept in the county asylums might be separated from ordinary pauper lunatics. The inconvenience of the present system would not be remedied by sweeping away all local control and handing over the asylums to the Imperial Government Bearing in mind the troubles and sorrows caused to paupers by lunacy, he questioned whether they would benefit by being deprived of the local interest attaching to their cases. He thought that some supervision by the magistrates should be maintained over these institutions; but he considered there was no necessity for the sweeping changes recommended by his hon. Friend.
  MR. DODSONsaid, that his right hon. and learned Friend the Home Secretary was absent owing to an unavoidable engagement, and not to any want of interest in that debate. The right hon. Member for South-West Lancashire (Sir R. Assheton Cross) had called attention to three important points—namely, the conditions under which lunatics were admitted, their treatment, and the mannor of their release. But the Report of the Committee which sat on the matter was not unfavourable to the existing system. So far as he was acquainted with the evidence, there was scarcely one proved case of undue detention for the sake of profit to the proprietor of an asylum, and not a single case of detention through the action of interested relatives or friends. If that be so, the existing system could not be said to be a bad one in that particular. So few Members had spoken in favour of the terms of the Resolution that he thought the hon. Member had better soon go to a division or withdraw his Motion. Under the present system many lunatics were paid for by their friends, whereas the hon. Member wished to throw the expense of their maintenance on the State. [Mr. STANLEY LEIGHTON: That is not my proposal.] The hon,

  1465
  Member's proposal was that all lunatics should be committed to the keeping of the State. It appeared to him (Mr. Dodson), however, that the duty of the State with regard to these persons began and ended with the work of inspecting the places in which lunatics were confined to see if cases of oppression occurred. He could not see why the State should maintain all lunatics—[An hon. MEMBER: That is not suggested.]—well, he could not see why all lunatics should be "committed to the keeping of the State," which were the hon. Member's own words. He failed to see why it should be the duty of the State to undertake the charge of these persons any more than of persons suffering from infectious diseases. In his opinion, the State already undertook too many duties, several of which would be better left to the management of local authorities. With regard to the other part of the proposal of the hon. Member for Shropshire (Mr. Stanley Leighton)—namely, "the unfairness of requiring the ratepayers to maintain lunatics of the middle and lower classes," he understood it to mean that the State should completely, or to a greater extent than now, come to the assistance and support of the ratepayers. He would not enter into the question whether the subvention given by the State of late years had or had not been beneficial in its operation, or answered the purposes for which it was intended; but the hon. Member for Shropshire had, no doubt, heard the Budget of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, and was perfectly well aware that the Government were not at present in a position to supply the means he referred to. Under the circumstances, he thought the debate should now be allowed to come to a conclusion, either by a division or the withdrawal of the Motion.
  MR. SCLATER-BOOTHsaid, he thought the right hon. Gentleman had hardly done justice to the complaints which had been made with very great force from time to time in this House, and, notably, by his right hon. Friend (Sir R. Assheton Cross) on the Front Opposition Bench within a few minutes, in regard to the condition of private lunatic asylums, and the uncertainty, to say the least of it, which existed in the public mind in regard to proper care being exercised in the discharge from the asylums of persons
  1466
  cured. The hon. Member for Swansea (Mr. Dillwyn) had, no doubt, met with very great support in the action he had taken for years past on this branch of the subject. After the Report of the Select Committee it could not be said that they were not familiar with the subject, and his own opinion was that all apprehension ought to be removed from the public mind in regard to these private asylums; and though he was not in favour of the State taking these lunatics into its charge—and into its pay, as it were—he certainly thought the ideal system they ought to aim at was a system by which lunatics belonging to the wealthy and middle-class families might have that ample security which the poor enjoyed in pauper lunatic asylums—namely, the security that it was not to the interest of any human being in the asylum to retain them in it one minute after they were cured. In a public asylum the interest of all the officials was to discharge the patients as soon as possible; but in the private asylums this state of things was reversed, and his view was that no lunatics should be intrusted to those who were pecuniarily interested in their maintenance. It did not follow that the lunatics themselves or their relations or property should not be charged with the cost of their maintenance, or that they should not be kept in a manner adequate to their position and means. They need not be maintained at the cost of the public—that was the short way of putting it; and his hon. Friend was not, he thought, open to the charge of desiring to relieve the better class lunatics from the obligation of maintaining themselves, or relieve their relatives of the obligation of maintaining them. With regard to pauper asylums, for many years he had taken an interest in this subject, not only on account of his long connection with the Local Government Board, but because he had been for many years Chairman of a pauper lunatic asylum in his own county—one of the best managed asylums in the Kingdom. He was strongly convinced of the great advantages which had attended the establishment of these pauper lunatic asylums, and he thought it a very serious and onerous obligation on the local authorities that they should have been obliged, without any assistance from the State, to maintain these

  1467
  institutions. He looked with the greatest satisfaction to the part he had taken in this matter. The right hon. Gentleman was not enamoured of subventions; but there could be no doubt that in this particular case they had worked a vast amount of good. The amount was so small that it did not interfere with the Guardians in the exercise of the discretionary power of maintaining pauper lunatics in their homes or in workhouses, if they were fit to remain there. The cost of maintaining pauper lunatics at home or in the workhouse would still be less than half the amount it cost to maintain them in the asylum. He did not think anything could be more conducive to the interests of the poor as a body than that the State should relieve the ratepayers of some portion of the cost of keeping pauper lunatics. The institutions in which they were maintained were controlled by Government officials—the control being in no respect in the hands of the Guardians. It seemed to him it would be easy to have an extension of that principle, and that there would be no difficulty in providing for the maintenance of the whole of the lunatics of the country in that way. By this means the incomes of the managers, superintendents, and medical and other officers would be secured, and it would not be to the interest of anyone to keep a patient in an asylum after he was cured. He would not detain the House any longer, except to express the opinion that, although the terms of his hon. Friend's Motion were open to some question, their general object was worthy of the support of the House.
  MR. R. H. PAGETbegged to thank the hon. Member for Shropshire (Mr. Stanley Leighton) for having opened this interesting discussion on a question which all who had ever had anything to do with lunatic asylums must feel to be of considerable importance. He wished to say a word with regard to middle-class lunatics, to which allusion was made in the Resolution of the hon. Member. No class was placed in such a position of difficulty as the middle class, when members of their families were unfortunately afflicted with lunacy. It was well known that the expense of private asylums was so great as to render it impossible for all but the rich and well-to-do to have recourse to them; and, at the same time, it was felt that
  1468
  middle-class lunatics were not proper persons to be received into asylums maintained at the expense of the rates. They were considered an unfair burden on the rates; but the difficulty was there were no other asylums open to them, those of a private character being too expensive for them to resort to. Some very pertinent questions had been addressed to the Government on this question; and, without wishing for a moment to degrade or pauperize a class which was specially independent, he would say this—that the State should take some step to alleviate their unfortunate position. It had been brought to their notice to-night that under the State-subvention system lunatic asylums had become very full, and that in many cases it had been found necessary to make a considerable extension of buildings. He would venture to offer this for the consideration of the Local Government Board—that the time had now arrived when steps should be taken to remove from our pauper lunatic asylums the class of idiots. The question had been raised before in the House, and he very much regretted that, hitherto, no vigorous attempt had been made to effect this object. Everyone who had visited pauper lunatic asylums must know this—that in every one of these asylums there was a considerable class of idiots. They were as well looked after as the circumstances of the asylums would permit; but they were a hindrance to the discipline of the institutions, and there was no provision for improving the existing state of things. Everyone who was acquainted with the subject must know that idiots would and could be far better maintained in separate asylums. If this was true—as undoubtedly it was—of the adult idiots, it was ten-fold more true with regard to those unhappy idiots of a more youthful age. The experience of Earlswood and other idiot asylums showed what could be done when young children, in that unhappy state of idiotcy, were taken by the hand and carefully trained and brought up. Instead of living lives of misery and helplessness, their latent faculties might be trained, and they could be made useful members of society—their faculties might be developed, and an extraordinary change might take place in their mental condition. This could only be done in institutions set aside for the training of

  1469
  these children, and at present there was no such provision made for their treatment. [An hon. MEMBER: There is in the Metropolis.] He (Mr. R. H. Paget) thanked the hon. Member for reminding him that provision of this kind had been made in the Metropolis; but it was not the case in the rest of England. He considered it one of the greatest blots in our arrangements for the care of lunatics that we had no such provision throughout the country; and now, whilst they were debating the whole question of the care of lunatics, was a fit opportunity for calling attention to the matter. He hoped, before the discussion terminated, to hear from some of those who were officially connected with the subject that they were prepared to take some steps to deal with this point, as he ventured to say that no more humane object could commend itself to the mind of the most philanthropic person than taking in hand and training those unhappy persons who had been idiots from their birth. It must be remembered that the maintenance of these persons in the present pauper asylums was one of the reasons why those institutions were so full. If they could be sent to proper asylums, where they ought to be maintained and trained, there would be more room in the pauper lunatic asylums. People talked about overcrowding, and the necessity of building; but what was it that had led so much to the overcrowding of lunatic asylums? Was it not this? Did not everyone who had been connected with the management of these asylums know this, that it was a constant practice to send aged, senile paupers into the lunatic asylums—paupers suffering simply from a decay of the mental faculties, who were not fit persons for the hospital treatment of lunatic asylums? Their condition was that of advanced years and of mental and physical decay. Cases of this kind were known to everyone—they were occurring every day. Large numbers of these poor creatures were sent into the asylums, to remain there months, or weeks, or days, until they were released by death from their sufferings. Why were these people received into the asylums? Why, because Boards of Guardians now received inducement to take them which was not offered them before. Perhaps it was not so much an inducement, and it might be more cor-
  1470
  rect to say that that which was a positive hindrance before had now been removed. The President of the Local Government Board would do well to take this matter into his careful consideration. If the right, hon. Gentleman could see any way to exercising his authority, and producing new legislation under which places could be established for the care and maintenance of these people suffering simply from failure of mental faculties consequent, in most cases, upon advanced age, he would relieve the pauper lunatic asylums of a vast number of those who now crowded them out, and would obviate one of the great evils that were now complained of—namely, the necessity for largely increasing buildings and the staff of the asylums. There was one other remark he wished to make, which tended in the same direction, and it was this. He was not in the House at the time, but he understood from those who were that, in an official speech this evening, an opinion was expressed hostile to the idea of any State subvention in aid of the indoor poor. [Mr. HIBBERT: I simply expressed my own private opinion.] He was sorry the hon. Member entertained such an opinion, and trusted he might be able to convert him. He (Mr. R. H. Paget) believed that if State subventions were given in aid of outdoor poor, it would be by no means difficult to persuade the various Boards of Guardians not to consider the various Union-workhouses as belonging to a given local authority, but as belonging, as a whole, to the Poor Law authorities. He believed there were a great many vacant places and beds in some Union-workhouses, whilst others were overcrowded. If they were no longer isolated, but were classified and brought together, he believed it would be found that in many districts one or more of them could be dispensed with. If buildings of this kind could be dispensed with for Poor Law purposes, what more fit and proper use could be made of them than to fit one up as an asylum for the training of idiots, another for the care of harmless lunatics, and so on? These afflicted persons, in such institutions, could, no doubt, be maintained at a more moderate rate than they were at present in the pauper asylums. It would be a great advantage to free the lunatic asylums of harmless

  1471
  imbeciles. There would then be ample room in them for the treatment of that class for whom they were intended, and they could then be used in their proper capacity—namely, as great hospitals. A lunatic asylum should be a hospital for the care of persons afflicted with disease; and when the disease reached a stage from which there was no hope of recovery, and when all that was desired for a patient was that he should be carefully tended and well fed, the patients should be sent off to these buildings he had described. When the authorities had done this, they would have done all that humanity could demand. But the thing must be done in this way. It was in vain to say "Oh! send these people off to the various Union-workhouses." They knew that to be wrong—they knew the poor imbeciles and idiots deteriorated there. [A laugh.] The President of the Local Government Board might laugh at this, but it had been actually proved to be the case. It had been proved within his own experience. Some years ago, in Somersetshire, their lunatic asylums being full, and it being necessary for them to send a number of people to another institution for a time, they, with the greatest anxiety and care, selected a definite number of the most harmless lunatics, whom it was thought could be transferred to workhouses without injury to their physical or mental condition. Before sending them out the precaution was taken to put them in the scales and weigh them. At the expiration of about two months the majority of them were brought back. But what was their condition? Why, they had all deteriorated, mentally and physically, and in every case they had lost largely in bodily weight. Nothing could be plainer than that the Union-workhouses was no place for them. The necessary appliances were not there. The necessary diet and care was wanting; and in the case he had mentioned the unhappy lunatics were all injured by their residence in the workhouse. Now, the whole result of the subvention which had been so much decried had been to do that which the Lunacy Commissioners for years past had told them they ought to do. Take these isolated instances of imbecility from the workhouses where they were badly treated—or, he would not say where they were badly treated, but where the circumstances were un-
  1472
  favourable to their treatment—and place them in the great hospitals for lunacy, which were, and ought to be, the proper asylums for such people. He must apologize to the House for having spoken somewhat warmly on this matter, but what he had stated he knew from his personal experience. He knew the injury that was done to these idiots and imbeciles when they were sent to the workhouses. He felt it was a step which ought not to be taken; and, so far as the 4s. a-week subvention had had the effect of freeing the workhouses and sending these people into the asylums, it had been one of unmixed good. As regarded this particular Motion of his hon. Friend, he could not help regretting that the hon. Member had got two or three subjects rather mixed up in it. He (Mr. R. H. Paget) could not agree to it as it stood. He could not assent to the proposition at the end, "that all lunatics ought to be committed to the keeping of the State." He believed there was much the State ought to do in regard to middle-class lunatics, in regard to idiots, and in regard to the maintenance of the more harmless cases of lunatics in asylums, which might be linked on to, or connected in some way with, the great pauper asylums. This debate would have been of great value if it had had the effect of drawing the attention of those who were responsible in this matter to the fact that the Lunacy Laws were not so entirely satisfactory that there was not room for improvement, in more ways than one, and of teaching them that they were not to sit still and hug themselves in a sense of complacency, believing that all was good, and that there was no room for reform. There was plenty of room for reform, and he trusted that those in authority, and those who had the power to bring in useful legislation on the matter, would not be slow to deal with that which he ventured to assert was of great and urgent necessity, affecting, as it did, the welfare of a class whose ease commanded the sympathies of all those who were actuated by the ordinary feelings of humanity.
  SIR TREVOR LAWRENCEsaid, he was a Member of the Committee which sat on this subject in 1877 and 1878, and had attended almost all the meetings. He had heard a vast amount of evidence, and had given it a great deal

  1473
  of consideration, therefore he trusted he might be allowed to say a few words on the subject. If there was one thing which was conclusively proved during the inquiry, it was that the accusations brought against the private lunatic asylums were entirely without foundation. The hon. Member for Swansea, at whose instance, in a great measure, the Committee was appointed, after having investigated the facts, and taken a great deal of trouble to bring before the Committee the most promising cases, as he thought them—as showing the manner in which business was carried on in those places—came himself to the conclusion that no case had been made out against the private lunatic asylums. He would appeal to the Solicitor General, who was also a Member of that Committee, to bear him out when he said that no case was made out against the keepers of the private lunatic asylums. Every Member who had seen the interior of those asylums must be well aware that the greatest possible skill and the largest possible outlay was brought to bear within them on the treatment of the insane. Let anyone who doubted that statement pay a visit, for example, to the very admirable asylum of Dr. Newington—it would not be a long distance to go. He would ask anyone who had been over that establishment whether, if he was unfortunate enough to have a relative afflicted with lunacy, that would not be a place he would like to send him to? If there was any body of men to whom the thanks of these poor suffering people were due, it was the Commissioners of Lunacy, of whom Lord Shaftesbury was the head. If he might venture the remark, instead of there being a number of sane people shut up in lunatic asylums, there were many out of their minds at large who ought to be in confinement. He was sure hon. Gentlemen who received much correspondence would fully bear him out, when he said that a very considerable number of letters they received emanated from persons who ought to be under some restraint or other. There was one very important consideration in connection with the maintenance of private lunatic asylums. If the Motion of his hon. Friend were to be carried, the result would be that those persons who ought to be brought under the influence of immediate treatment would be kept as long as possible
  1474
  from the influence of that treatment, in the hope that the stigma supposed to be involved would be avoided, and that the family to which the lunatic belonged would be free from it. One of the advantages of private asylums was that they provided admirable treatment for the insane without real publicity. With regard to public asylums, his hon. Friend the Member for Mid Somerset (Mr. R. H. Paget), was right when he advocated the separation of the imbecile and idiots from lunatics. The county of Surrey, which he had the honour to belong to and to assist in representing, had large asylums, and they were constantly being called upon to build others for imbecile paupers and idiots, who, so far as treatment or security were concerned, might as well be out of them. There was no question of security; they were only put there to be taken care of; and if the President of the Local Government Board could see his way to separate imbeciles from lunatics he would do much to help the cure of the insane. One of the great difficulties about private asylums was the liberation of patients at the right moment. Mental disease was not like bodily disease. Bodily disease was over when it had been gone through; but mental disease very often passed away for a time, and then returned. Many cases were brought before the Committee which showed the necessity of extreme care and caution in liberating lunatics. With regard to the point of having patients in public asylums, it was well known, also, that pauper lunatics were occasionally found in private asylums. In Surrey, when their asylums had been gradually getting full, it had been necessary for the authorities to pay a large sum for the purpose of getting some patients in private asylums. He was one of those persons who thought that the Department which his right hon. Friend (Mr. Dodson) represented was already very greatly overburdened; and he was sure nothing could be worse and less desirable, in the interest of the lunatics themselves, or the community in general, than that the lunatics should be handed over to the Local Government Board. If his hon. Friend went to a division he should most certainly vote against the Motion.
  COLONEL MAKINSsaid, he was glad that neither the condition of the atmosphere outside the House nor the depress-

  1475
  ing nature of the discussion itself, nor the visible impatience of some hon. Gentlemen opposite, had prevented them having a most valuable and interesting debate on this Motion. He was prepared to go into the question more particularly as to the very great variation in the cost of maintenance of lunatics in different parts of the country; and he was prepared to adduce figures with reference to that point, in order to show how necessary it was that hon. Gentlemen who took an interest in the subject should take the matter into their consideration. If the debate had done anything it had shown the great necessity which existed for a classification of the inmates in our lunatic asylums. If the right hon. Gentleman the President of the Local Government Board would take into his consideration the desirability of the separation of the imbeciles and idiots from the more pronounced lunatics, the time which had been spent on this debate would not have been thrown away. As to private lunatic asylums, he admitted the force of the remarks that had been made by his right hon. Friend the Member for the University of Cambridge (Mr. Beresford Hope) and by his hon. Friend the Member for Mid Surrey (Sir Trevor Lawrence). There was no doubt that many of the proprietors of private asylums did conduct them in a most excellent way, and did provide shelter for those among the upper classes of society who were unhappily afflicted with lunacy. At the same time, there were objections which might be raised to the continuance of private asylums, and he thought one of them was the question of finance. If the inmates of private asylums were transferred to public lunatic asylums, not, of course, as paupers, not as patients to be aid for by the country or the ratepayers, but as patients under the care of the State, there would not only be a cessation of many anomalies, but he believed a large fund might be raised, which would go to the relief of the rates. He was not prepared to support the Resolution at the present moment; but he would not say the Resolution was not entitled to reasonable support. It was a Resolution which sooner or later would have to be considered by the House. The hon. Gentleman the Secretary to the Local Government Board (Mr. Hibbert) agreed with him as to the necessity for
  1476
  classification. He did not think he need pursue the question.
  Notice taken, that 40 Members were not present; House counted, and 40 Members being found present,
  COLONEL MAKINSsaid, he was sorry to find that the hon. Member for Northampton (Mr. Labouchere) had so little sympathy with the mental sufferings of his fellow-creatures. He should, however, endeavour to meet the wishes of the hon. Gentleman, as far as he could, by abbreviating his remarks. He would not trouble the House with the statistics which he had prepared with reference to the variations in the cost of lunatics in different parts of the country, except to point out that, whereas the cost of lunatics in boroughs was 11 s. 4⅛d., and in counties, 9s. 6¼d.; in private asylums, which were generally under philanthropic management, it was very much greater. Therefore, he thought that even in that respect there would be a considerable advantage to the community if the management of lunatic asylums throughout the country was brought within the purview of some central authority. He was one of those who objected very much to the principle of centralization; but he thought this was one of the cases in which an exception might be made. He had to express the earnest hope that the Government would take into consideration this important subject, and would take an early opportunity of bringing the matter before the House in a legislative form and upon the authority of the Government.
  MR. WARTONsaid, he must protest against the introduction of a little clôdture by the President of the Board of Trade in reply to the hon. Member for North Shropshire (Mr. Stanley Leighton).
  Question put.
  The House divided:—Aves 34; Noes 81: Majority 47.—(Div. List, No. 72.)

ORDER OF THE DAY.

  PLACES OF WORSHIP SITES BILL.
  (Mr. Summers, Mr. Richard, Mr. William M'Arthur, Mr. Alderman Cotton.)
  [BILL 97.] COMMITTEE.
  Bill considered in Committee.
  (In the Committee.)
  Clause 1 (Conveyance of lands by corporations and other public bodies), agreed to.
  Clause 2 (Grant of superfluous lands).
  Motion made, and Question proposed, "That the Clause stand part of the Bill."—(Mr. Summers.)
  MR. WHITLEYsaid, he wished to point out that there was no provision in this Bill to enable the Lords of the Treasury to put a veto upon sales by Corporations. According to existing Acts of Parliament, Corporations could not sell land without the authority of the Lords of the Treasury; but this Bill provided for no veto by the Treasury.
  Question put, and agreed to.
  Clause ordered to stand part of the Bill.
  Clause 3 (Short title) agreed to.
  New Clause—
  "A corporation or municipal body shall not make any such grant without the consent in writing of the Secretary of State for the Home Department, where such consent is now required by any existing Act of Parliament,"—(Mr. Whitley,)
  —brought up, and read the first time.
  Motion made, and Question proposed, "That the said Clause be now read a second time."
  MR. HIBBERTsaid, he quite agreed with the hon. Member for Liverpool (Mr. Whitley) as to the present law with regard to Corporations; but as this new clause was not on the Paper, he would suggest the hon. Member should put it down for Report, in order that time might be given for its consideration.
  MR. R. N. FOWLERsaid, he hoped that, under the circumstances, the hon. Member for Staley bridge (Mr. Summers) would consent to report Progress.
  Motion made, and Question, "That the Chairman do report Progress, and ask leave to sit again,"—(Mr. R. N. Fowler,)—put, and agreed to.
  Committee report Progress; to sit again upon Thursday.
  House adjourned at One o'clock.