Commons Sitting of 24 May 1883

MINUTES.
SUPPLY—considered in Committee—ARMY ESTIMATES, Votes 2 to 6.
PRIVATE BILLS (by Order)—Second Reading—East and West India Dock.
Considered as amended—Exeter, Teign Valley, and Chagford Railway; Windsor, Ascot, and Aldershot Railway.
PUBLIC BILLS—Ordered—Tramways Provisional Orders (No. 4) (South Shields, &c.)*.
First Reading—Local Government (Ireland) Provisional Order (Limerick Waterworks)* [197].
Second Reading—Medals [188]; Copyright* [141].
Select Committee—First Report—Crown Lands*.
Committee—Report—Poor Law Conferences* [187].

PRIVATE BUSINESS.
  EXETER, TEIGN VALLEY, AND CHAGFORD RAILWAY BILL (by Order).

    CONSIDERATION.
    Order for Consideration, as amended, read.
    Motion made, and Question proposed, "That the Bill be now considered."—(Mr. Dodds.)
    VISCOUNT FOLKESTONEsaid, he begged to move the re-committal of the Bill. The House would remember that, when the Bill was before them on the second reading, he had opposed it, on the ground that it contained provisions enabling the Company to charge excessive and differential rates for the carriage of artificial manures, and a higher classification for such manures in comparison with that in which manures were classed generally as "dung, compost, and all other kinds of manures." His opposition to the second reading of the Bill was withdrawn, on account of the passing of the Standing Order proposed by his right lion. Friend the Member for North Hampshire (Mr. Sclater-Booth), which provided that any Bill containing provisions in regard to questions relating to new tolls or rates should not be reported by the Committee until a Report by the Board of Trade on the powers sought had been laid before the Committee, and the Committee should have reported, specially, to the House in what manner the recommendations or observations contained in the Report of the Board of Trade, and also in what manner the clauses of the Bill relating to the powers sought had been dealt with by the Committee. By that Standing Order, it was provided that all matters relating to new tolls or rates should be brought under the notice of the Committee, whether they formed the subject of opposition or not; and those who were looking after the agricultural interest in that House were induced to believe that the effect of that Standing Order would be to prevent Committees from imposing any increase of rates with regard to articles necessary for the fertilization of the soil, carried by new Railways. But now this Bill, among others, came down, from a Committee upstairs; and it was found that

    733
    the charges upon artificial manures were very largely in excess of the vast charge upon "dung, compost, and all other kinds of manures." It was contended in the Report of the Committee upon this Bill that the charges were not in excess of those authorized for like undertakings in previous years; but it appeared to him, although he did not know whether he was right in the supposition or not, that, upon the face of this Report, the Committee, who had the Bill under their consideration, had only looked at the charges which had been asked for in regard to the different classes, and had not turned their attention to the classification of the different articles in those separate classes. In all Railway Bills, except within the last year or two, when he believed that some eight or nine Bills were allowed to pass without these differential rates on manures having been brought to the attention of the House—in all Bills, except those Bills which had been allowed to pass by inadvertence, he was safe in asserting, artificial manures were intended by Parliament to be classed with manures of the lowest class, under the term of "dung, compost, and all other kinds of manures." But, in this Bill, although the attention of the Committee was called to the matter by Standing Order 145A, it appeared that artificial manures were charged at the rate of 3d. per ton. The original charge the Railway Company proposed to levy upon artificial manures was 3½d. per ton; but the Committee had reduced that charge to 3d. a ton. But they had not reduced the class in which artificial manures were here placed to the level of the lowest class given in the Schedule; and he found, also, in the Bill, that "dung, compost, and all other kinds of manures" were charged for at a higher rate than was formerly or generally permitted by the House of Commons. Instead of the charges being, as he believed it used to be, a general rate of 1½d. per ton, it was proposed now to impose, as the lowest charge, a rate of 2½d. a ton. It might be said, perhaps, that the Standing Order having been passed by the House, and the attention of the Committee having been called to the fact, and the Committee having reported upon it, it was not desirable or proper that he should challenge the decision of the Committee; but he should like to call
    734
    the attention of the House to the fact that all the Committees to which this matter had been referred had not come to the same decision. In fact, the House had that day passed the third reading of a new Railway Bill—the Pewsey, Salisbury, and Southampton Railway Bill, which measure made the charge for artificial manures the same as that for the lowest class of manures. He found in Class 4, which included "coal, culm, cinders, &c.," "all sorts of manures and undressed materials, &c.," a charge of 1¼d. per ton. Therefore, it would be seen that, in the Pewsey, Salisbury, and Southampton Railway Bill, the charge upon the lowest class of manures was more than 1d. less than that proposed to be charged in the Exeter, Teign Valley, and Chagford Bill, which the House was now asked to read a third time. He found that in the class in which he fancied the Committee had permitted, in the Bill now under discussion, artificial manures to be included—namely, sugar, corn, grain, flour, &c., in the Pewsey, Salisbury, and Southampton Railway Bill just road a third time, the charge was 2½d. per ton per mile, which was the same price the Exeter, Teign Valley, and Chagford Railway Bill proposed to charge for their very lowest classes. It seemed to him that the object of the Standing Order, on account of which his opposition and the opposition of other hon. Members to this Bill was withdrawn on the second reading, had been overlooked, and that the Committee had had their attention called to the rating of different classes proposed to be taxed by the Bill, but had not had their attention called to certain subordinate articles which had been placed in other classes. The Railway Company had been enabled, by some means or other, to take artificial manures out of the lowest classes, which, he contended, were the classes in which they ought to be included, and had placed them, by some inadvertence on their part, in a higher class, thereby enabling the Railway Company to charge a higher price for the carriage of manures than had generally been permitted to be done by the legislation of former years. He thought it behoved those who represented the agricultural interest to keep a watchful eye on these attempts on the part of the Railway Companies to charge

    735
    higher rates than were absolutely necessary for the carriage of agricultural commodities. It was necessary that they should keep a watchful eye upon every endeavour to impose higher charges on these articles; because the House would be aware of the fact that the Railway Companies were not altogether particularly careful of the agricultural interest, while they claimed, on the other hand, to have every care bestowed upon their interest. They had it in evidence, laid on the Table of the House, that the Railway Companies were in the habit of charging much lower rates for the conveyance of foreign produce from the port of debarkation than they charged to those members of the agricultural community who sent to London on the produce grown in this country itself. This difference in charge might not be a heavy loss in money to the agricultural interest. It might not be, in the case of this line, that so large a quantity of artificial manures would be carried as to occasion a very serious loss to the agricultural interest upon it; but hon. Members should remember that this was a precedent, and that it would be made a precedent in future for new Railway Companies to come to Parliament and ask for similar privileges in increasing their rates and charges. It was, therefore, absolutely necessary, for the well-being of the agricultural community, that all attempts of this kind should be carefully watched and guarded against. He might also say this—that the carriage of artificial manures was a matter of vital importance to the Railway Companies themselves; because it would be evident to the House that, the more agricultural manures were carried by the Railway Companies down to the country districts, and the more fertilizing-materials were generally used in those districts, the larger would be the amount of produce that would be raised by the agricultural community in such part of the world and placed upon the Railway Company's line, and sent up to the different markets that might be located within reach of the Railway. It might be that the Railway Company, if they placed their artificial manures in the lowest class, should set themselves right by levying a charge for insurance on artificial manures. They contended that they ought to charge a higher rate, an account of artificial manures being
    736
    liable to sustain damage in transit. Now, he wished to point out that it would be much better for the agricultural community that artificial manures should be placed in the lower class, and that the Railway Company should charge a certain rate for insurance. He found that the extra cost covered by insurance, supposing artificial manures were to be charged at the same rate as "dung, compost, and other kinds of manures," would be 1s. per £100 in value, or 1s. per cent. If the whole distance of the Railway was 24 miles, it would be a very easy sum to find out what the extra cost for carrying the artificial manures would be—namely, the fourth of 1d. per ton for the whole distance; whereas this Railway Company had come to Parliament to ask it to sanction a charge at an extra rate of 1d. per ton, not for the whole distance which the insurance of 1s. per £100 value would cover, but 1s. per ton for every mile. He thought he was not asking too much of the House, when he asked them to re-commit the Bill for the further consideration of the Committee; because it appeared to him that the Bill, and another Bill which came after it, and which he should oppose for the same reason, had been permitted to be passed by the Committee upstairs, under a misapprehension of the reasons for which the Standing Order was passed by the House, and for which his opposition and that of other hon. Members on both sides of the House was withdrawn. He begged to move that the Bill be re-committed.
    MR. SPEAKER: Does the noble Viscount propose to follow the usual course of re-committing the Bill to the same Committee?
    VISCOUNT FOLKESTONE: Yes.
    MR. JAMES HOWARDsaid, he had great pleasure in seconding the proposition of the noble Viscount opposite (Viscount Folkestone), for there was no reason whatever why the Railway Company should charge more for guano than they did for farmyard or stable manure. In the first place, guano was only manure in a more highly comminuted and concentrated form; and it was far more easily handled, loaded, and unloaded, than stable manure. Another point was that a great deal more could be put on a truck than in the case of ordinary manure—perhaps two or three times the weight; and, upon these

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    grounds, he should most strongly support the Amendment of the noble Viscount.
    Amendment proposed, to leave out the words "now considered," in order to add the words "re-committed to the former Committee."—(Viscount Folkestone.)
    Question proposed, "That the words 'now considered,' stand part of the Question."
    SIR ARTHUR OTWAYsaid, that various questions of an extraneous character had been introduced by the noble Viscount who moved the re-committal of the Bill (Viscount Folkestone). The House would remember that, a short time ago, there was a long discussion upon the question of the charges to be imposed upon the carriage of manures, and the result of that discussion was the passing of a Standing Order, at the instance of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for North Hampshire (Mr. Sclater-Booth), whom he now saw opposite. Now, what did that Standing Order say? It said—
    "In the case of any Bill relating to a Railway, Tramway, Canal, Dock, Harbour, Navigation, Pier, or Port, seeking powers to levy tolls, rates, or duties in excess of those already authorized for that undertaking, or usually authorized in previous years for like undertakings, the Bill shall not be reported by the Committee until a Report from the Board of Trade on the powers so sought has been laid before the Committee, and the Committee shall report specially to the House in what manner the recommendations or observations in the Report of the Board of Trade, and also in what manner the Clauses of the Bill relating to the powers so sought have been dealt with by the Committee."
    Now, the House would remember that that Standing Order met with considerable favour on the part of the House. It was regarded by hon. Members as a means of avoiding difficulties which might arise, and the waste of time which would be occasioned, if the rates inserted in every Railway Bill were to be considered and discussed over and over again by the House. The Committee upstairs had carried out strictly that which was required by the Standing Order, and its Report was in conformity with all the requirements of the Standing Order and of the Report of the Board of Trade, which was placed before the Committee. The Report of the Board of Trade upon the subject was very short
    738
    indeed, and he would read one paragraph of it, which said—
    "In the Railway Acts of former years, when guano and artificial manures were less important than they have since become, no distinction was made between those manures and ordinary manures, and both were placed in the lowest class of about 1d. per ton per mile. In subsequent years, it has been the practice to grant more favourable terms. A table of some of the rates so authorized is appended to this Report. One of these Acts, it will be observed, dates as far back as the year 1857; other instances are to be found in Acts passed in 1863, 1865, and 1866; but more frequently in those of later years. Most, if not all, of the larger Companies appear to have made special charges for guano and artificial manures, as for manufactured articles. In this Bill, it is proposed to class guano and artificial manures with manufactured goods at a maximum rate of 3½d. per ton."
    The question for the House to consider was, whether the Committee had dealt with that Report from the Board of Trade. The House would allow him, for one moment, to assure the noble Viscount opposite that he was not without sympathy with some of the statements which the noble Viscount had made. But he presumed that it was the duty of the Committee, in all matters, to conform to the requirements of the House. He would, therefore, state how far the Committee had conformed to the requirements of the House, and how far they had acted on the recommendations of the Board of Trade. This was the Report of the Committee—
    "That, in pursuance of Standing Order No. 145a, a Report from the Board of Trade was laid before the Committee stating that, subject to the observations in the Report respecting the maximum rate of charge for passengers, the tolls, and the maximum rates of charge for passengers, animals, and goods upon the Railway are not in excess of those authorized for like undertakings in previous years. In the Bill, as submitted to and passed by the Committee, the maximum rate for artificial manure, and other articles classed therewith, has been reduced from 3½d. to 3d. per ton per mile; the charge for parcels exceeding 56 lbs., and not exceeding 1 cwt., has been reduced from 3s. to 1s. 6d., and the charge for short distances has been reduced from four miles to three miles. After hearing evidence—and it has been proved to the Committee that the rates for passengers proposed by the Bill are the same as those authorized by the Teign Valley Railway Act, 1863, for the use of the Teign Valley Railway, of which the proposed Railway will form an extension—the Committee are of opinion that the rates proposed by the Bill, as amended, should be sanctioned."
    He submitted to the House that there would be very considerable inconvenience

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    if, in the case of every Railway Bill which came down from a Committee upstairs, they were to go into all these questions of rates again. He was afraid they might find themselves engaged in interminable discussions without producing any good result. Wherever a Bill allowed a Railway Company to make a higher charge than another Company was allowed to make, they would have this story repeated over and over again. He understood that it was in order to save the valuable time of the House that his right hon. Friend opposite (Mr. Sclater-Booth) had proposed the Standing Order as a mode of terminating the difficulties to which he had alluded. Personally, he (Sir Arthur Otway) had only one wish, and that was to carry out what he considered to be the requirements of the House in dealing justly with the matter. He found, when the Bill came before him upstairs, that the rates of the new Railway were exactly those already in existence in the case of other Companies. He and his Colleagues had, however, taken off altogether a not inconsiderable sum from the charge originally proposed for the carriage of manures; and, on the whole, he submitted that the rates as now authorized by the Bill were no higher than they ought to be under the circumstances. The noble Viscount asked that the Committee should reconsider the Bill; but he frankly confessed that he was afraid they would be unable to come to any other conclusion than that which they had already arrived at. They had heard all the evidence with great care, and not without reference to the Birmingham case; and he had given his decision in conjunction with others who acted with him. He would appeal to the House whether they were prepared to sanction a course which would undoubtedly lead to great inconvenience, after having so recently determined how to avoid that inconvenience? If the Amendment of the noble Viscount were assented to, they would certainly have the re-committal of Railway Bills moved wherever the rates and charges appeared to those who represented the agricultural interest to be in excess of those which they would like to see imposed. If the House entered upon such a course, he was afraid they would be altogether departing from the most excellent arrangement for the settlement
    740
    of the question they had adopted only a short time ago.
    MR. CHAPLINsaid, he could not agree with the hon. Baronet the Chairman of Ways and Means (Sir Arthur Otway) that the observations of the noble Viscount the Member for South Wilts (Viscount Folkestone) were in the least degree extraneous. He (Mr. Chaplin) thought, on the contrary, that they were very much to the point, and he was of opinion that those who represented the agricultural interest in that House were much indebted to the noble Viscount for raising the question again upon the present Bill. He was quite aware of the Standing Order, which had recently been passed by the House; but he demurred to the proposition that that Standing Order, even at the time it was proposed, was universally considered to be satisfactory, or that it was received with universal favour. Whatever might have been the feeling at the time, undoubtedly, if the result of the Standing Order was to be that Bills were to come down to the House from Committees upstairs, containing clauses which were considered most detrimental to the agricultural interest, he, for one, objected to be bound in any way whatever by the decision of the Committee upstairs. The facts of the case were extremely simple, and nothing that had been said by the hon. Baronet the Chairman of Ways and Means altered, in the least degree, the decision those hon. Members who opposed the second reading of the Bill had arrived at. The House had before them the plain fact that, in the Bill, there was a certain class of commodities necessary for the development of the agriculture of the country upon the carriage of which such a price was charged as must be most adverse to that agricultural development. That being the case, they really had no alternative but to oppose the further progress of the measure. The hon. Baronet the Chairman of Ways and Means had been lavish in his protestations of regard for the agricultural interest. Now, he (Mr. Chaplin) desired to see some practical effect given to those protestations, and he hoped the noble Viscount would press his Amendment to a division. He (Mr. Chaplin) felt convinced that if the noble Viscount did so, be would receive a very large amount of support, and he trusted

    741
    that his noble Friend would be successful in carrying his proposition that the Bill be sent back again to the Committee upstairs. He believed it was highly probable that, in such a case, it would meet with a much more favourable consideration than it had received at present. Certainly, if it did not, the question would have to be raised over and over again.
    MR. DUCKHAMsaid, they had been told by the hon. Baronet the Chairman of Ways and Means (Sir Arthur Otway) that, in the early days of Railway legislation, 1d. per ton was considered a fair charge for the carriage of manures. They were now called upon by this Bill to pay 3d. per ton per mile, and they had not heard any statement yet which would justify a three-fold charge being imposed upon the agricultural interest. The hon. Member for Bedfordshire (Mr. James Howard) had stated, quite correctly, that artificial manures were more easily packed together in railway trucks, and that they did not occupy one-half the space of ordinary farmyard manures of the same weight. Then, why should the agriculturists be required to pay a greatly increased charge for carriage? He thought it behoved the House to look with a great amount of jealousy on any increased charge being placed by Railway Companies upon the carriage of agricultural produce, or upon commodities necessary for agricultural development. They had before them the Report of a Select Committee, which had taken great pains in investigating Railway rates and charges, and that Committee found that there was a great diversity in the amount of charge made for the carriage of the agricultural produce of the farmers of this country and the agricultural produce sent in from foreign countries. They were told that that was in consequence of the competition with water carriage. Nevertheless, the fact remained that the great Railway Companies were reducing the charges upon foreign produce which were formerly imposed; and, after buying up and closing our internal water carriage, thus creating a powerful monopoly, they were now seeking to place a three-fold charge upon the carriage of our own agricultural produce. Despite the opinion which had been expressed by the hon. Baronet the Chairman of Ways
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    and Means (Sir Arthur Otway), he thought it behoved the House to look carefully into the matter, and to see that excessive charges were not sanctioned by any Act of Parliament.
    MR. J. W. BARCLAYsaid, he wished to assure his hon. Friend the Chairman of Ways and Means (Sir Arthur Otway) that no blame was attached to him in respect of the complaints that were made in regard to the Bill. He quite agreed with his hon. Friend that it might be better if a Government Department had been empowered to settle these questions of rates without requiring them to be discussed by the House. At the same time, he submitted, that no private Bill should be allowed to pass through the House without being brought under the notice of those who were concerned in watching over the public interests, if it contained a proposal to increase the rates, or to establish a difference of classification. There was no desire to cast any reflection upon his hon. Friend the Chairman of Ways and Means. The question had been discussed fully in the House, upon the second reading of this and other Bills, and a desire was then expressed that the Board of Trade should deal with the subject. Nevertheless, the Board of Trade simply presented a Report to the Committee; and the Chairman of Ways and Means, on the strength of that Report, said there was nothing unusual in the Bill. No doubt, the Report of the Board of Trade, that there were precedents for the charges made in the Bill, was correct; but he (Mr. J. W. Barclay) thought it might fairly be said that they were very few. There were two complaints against the present Bill; first, in respect of common manures being charged the excessive rate of 2½d. per ton per mile, whereas the maximum charge in a large majority of cases was 1d. or 1½d. per ton per mile; and, in the second place, it was complained that the Railway Company, in this instance, sought power to charge a much higher rate for artificial manures than for ordinary kinds of manure. No doubt there were precedents for that; but the right hon. Gentleman the President of the Board of Trade told thorn, when the question was under discussion on the second reading, that the eight Bills in which these differential charges were sanctioned had

    743
    been passed in consequence of inadvertence, and that it was owing to the passing of those eight Bills that the necessity had arisen for the further consideration of the matter, with a view to the prevention of increased and differential rates on manures in future without the sanction of the House. If there was anything to be said in favour of uniformity of practice, he would call the attention of his hon. Friend the Chairman of Ways and Means to the fact that there were other Railway Bills now before the House in respect of which the rate asked was only one-half of what was asked by the Railway Company promoting the present Bill. He might instance the Plymouth, Devonport, and South-Western Railway, a line of 30 miles, which cost £43,000 a-mile. This Railway was a line of 18 miles, and would only cost £18,000 a-mile, and the charges proposed to be levied in this case were almost double those which the other Railway proposed to levy. Now, he contended, and he understood the House desired, from the discussion which took place the other day, that there should be some uniformity of charge—that some principle should be laid down on which rates and charges should be fixed, and that they should not depend on the will of the agents promoting these Bills, which was very much the case at present. If one Railway Company, in every respect similar to another Railway Company, wished to charge twice as much as the other for the same amount of work, he thought a strong primâ facie case was made out that the one Company was asking too much. Several Railway Companies, whose Bills had been called in question, had deferred to the views expressed by the House, and he contended that it would be wise on the part of the House to adopt a uniform practice of charging all manures alike. This Company had inserted very high rates indeed in their Bill; and, as it was the first time the question had come before the House in this manner, he thought if the House were to express a decided opinion on the subject, it would form a good precedent for the guidance of the Chairman of Ways and Means, and for Members of the House who might be called upon to serve on these Committees in future. At the same time, it ought to be made clear to the Board of Trade that the House of Commons would look
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    to them to some extent to protect the public interests, and not to show themselves, as he was afraid they did, in too many cases, to be more anxious to protect the Railway Companies from the public than to protect the public from the Railway Companies.
    MR. B. SAMUELSONsaid, the question which had been raised was one which affected not only the agricultural interest, but the whole community. It was not simply whether the Railway Companies were to impose exorbitant charges upon persons who were chiefly concerned in agricultural pursuits, but whether Railway Companies were to be allowed, at their pleasure, to charge rates which were considerably above those which had hitherto been considered to be sufficient. He quite agreed with the hon. Member for Forfarshire (Mr. J. W. Barclay), that there was no intention to convey a reflection upon the hon. Baronet the Chairman of Ways and Means, because it was clear that the Report of the Board of Trade did not afford sufficient materials to guide the hon. Baronet in regard to the rates which he ought to sanction. But if a Standing Order had been passed, and which, he hoped, would soon be passed, in conformity with the Resolution of the House on Railway charges—namely, one empowering the public to be represented before Railway Committees—then such a difficulty as had arisen in the present case would not have arisen at all. What had happened in this case was that the hon. Baronet the Chairman of Ways and Means had not had his attention called sufficiently to the fact that the charges proposed to be made by this Railway Company were very considerably in excess of the charges usually levied on the articles to which they were intended to apply; and, although it was not desirable that they should, on ordinary occasions, review the decision of Committees of that House, still it must be considered, having regard to the new Standing Order moved by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for North Hampshire (Mr. Sclater-Booth), that this was a case for referring the decision of the Committee back again. It was desirable, if possible, to have nothing authorized beyond the maximum Railway charges now sanctioned and if they now wished to insist in this Bill that no increase of the rates should be allowed,

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    the attempt would, probably, never be made in any future Bill. If they did allow it, they would establish a precedent which, he was afraid, would be a bad augury for any attempt they might make hereafter to have the charges reviewed generally, and to lower the maximum rates in the interests of the public. He saw no reason whatever why they should not, in the present case, make an exception to the wholesome rule of abstaining from reviewing the decision of a Select Committee; and he thought it would be better to set aside the decision of the Committee in this case, in consequence of the extraordinary circumstances which had arisen. If they allowed the present rate fixed in the Bill to pass, they would be told hereafter that these rates had been sanctioned, and other Railway Companies would ask for similar high rates. He thought the value of the article did not justify them, in accepting the rate, nor was there any reason for a high rate on account of the space taken up. In point of fact, no reason whatever was given by the Railway Company to justify any exceptional favour being conferred upon them. If this precedent were now allowed, any general review of Railway rates in the public interest would be rendered very difficult, if not impossible.
    MR. ROBERTSONsaid, he disputed the wisdom of reviewing a decision which had already been arrived at by a Select Committee of the House. As a matter of common sense, he thought that when the question of what the charge should be was referred to a Committee, they should support the decision of the Committee. It was most unwise, in his opinion, for the House to re-open the special questions referred to a Committee, and again to discuss the principle upon which charges were to be levied upon articles of different bulk and different value. It was stated that these charges would be detrimental to the interests of agriculture. Now, he was sure that if any one interest in the country had been more benefited by the construction of railways than another, that interest was agriculture; and, in view of the depression which had come upon agriculture of late years, he was perfectly satisfied that if there had been no railways the agricultural community would have been far less able to bear it.
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    They were in a position now to have their produce carried much more cheaply than formerly, and they were able also to get better prices for everything they produced. He could speak from personal experience. He had now to pay 12 s. per ton for coal where he was living in Wales, which would have cost formerly 22 s. per ton; and, in regard to agricultural produce, there was not only a reduction in the price of carriage, but the farmers got double the price they were able to obtain formerly. But, in point of fact, there were two sides to everything; and it was, indeed, too much the fashion for any interest which felt it had a grievance to come to that House to ventilate it. He asked the House, in the interests of public legislation as applied to Public Bills, not to agree to the Amendment proposed by the noble Viscount opposite (Viscount Folkestone). They had every year to deal with millions of money expended in public measures, and he thought they ought to secure the pockets of the investing community from being improperly attacked. He hoped the House would not consent to send back the Bill to the Committee.
    MR. HICKSsaid, he wished to draw the attention of the House to the only question before it, which was simply this—whether a certain class of articles which, from the very introduction of railways, had been placed in the cheapest class, should now, in these days, when agriculture was so depressed, and at a time when the House had, over and over again, professed its desire to improve agriculture and increase the production of the country, should be now placed in a higher class—were they likely to effect that object by allowing the Railway Companies to charge 50 or 100 per cent more for the carriage of agricultural commodities than they had been allowed to charge in times past? The hon. Baronet the Chairman of Ways and Means (Sir Arthur Otway) told them there had been some few instances in which this alteration of charges had been allowed; but he (Mr. Hicks) was sure there was no hon. Member of that House who would not admit that such alterations had been made without the knowledge of the House. It was only this year that the attention of the House was openly drawn to the fact that, within the last year or two, several Railway Companies had

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    succeeded in getting artificial manures removed from Class 8 to Class 9, and that was the real question now before the House. Were they going to allow one Railway after another, until it included the whole Railway system of the country, to depart from the original bargain made with Parliament? He thought it his duty cordially to support the Amendment.
    MR. HENEAGEsaid, he wished to ask the House, if it was going to stultify itself, by allowing the Bill in its present shape to be read a third time, after the discussion which took place the other day, and after a Standing Order had been passed as the result of that discussion. Either that Standing Order was intended to protect the public, or it was not; if it did not, then they ought to come to the conclusion at once that it was utterly futile. His own opinion, however, was that it would be extremely dangerous and inconvenient if, after having passed that Standing Order, they now allowed a Bill to receive the sanction of the House which increased a certain class of rates by 200 per cent, and thus form a precedent which would be quoted hereafter as done under the sanction of the new Standing Order.
    MR. SCLATER-BOOTHsaid, he could not agree with what had just been stated by his hon. Friend the Member for Grimsby (Mr. Heneage), nor yet with the language of the hon. Baronet the Chairman of Ways and Means (Sir Arthur Otway). The hon. Member for Grimsby said the Standing Order was futile; but, if so, how was it that they were then discussing that Bill, seeing that all the Standing Order provided was that these matters should be brought to the attention of the House? Again, his hon. Friend opposite the Chairman of Ways and Means looked upon the Standing Order as a compromise. It was no compromise at all. It was merely a means of curing the grievance that a Private Bill Committee, whether dealing with an opposed or an unopposed Bill, should be allowed per in-curiam to sanction the introduction of changes relating to tolls and rates without the knowledge of Parliament. The Standing Order provided a remedy for that particular complaint; and he was satisfied himself that in this and in other cases
    748
    the Reports which had been sent down from the Committees upstairs effectually secured the object which the House had in view in passing the Standing Order. If Parliament desired to go further, and to alter the rates upon these commodities, or to give a locus standi to persons to be heard before Railway Committees on behalf of the public interests, it would require fresh legislation, or some other means beyond the Standing Order. His hon. Friend opposite (Mr. J. W. Barclay) stated that if anybody was to be complained of in the matter, it was the Board of Trade, who were instructed to report to the Committee, and recommend what should be done. In this case, that Bill came before the hon. Baronet the Chairman of Ways and Means as an unopposed Bill, and the hon. Gentleman stated that he had acted in accordance with the Standing Order sanctioned by the House, and that he bad given effect to the recommendations of the Board of Trade. The Bill, no doubt, contained provisions which increased certain charges, and as the hon. Baronet said, there were precedents for that; but the question was, whether the statements made by hon. Members wore correct, that the effect of this Bill, as passed by the Committee, was practically to double or treble the charges upon the carriage of certain articles compared with those originally allowed to be charged by other Railway Companies in the same position. The point was, whether that should be allowed to pass without question. He certainly felt that the House was placed in a position of considerable difficulty; and if the Standing Order had answered the very limited purpose that these things should not be done without the knowledge of the House, he thought it was still free for the House to express its opinion upon the issue now raised before it.
    Question put.
    The House divided:—Ayes 69; Noes 177: Majority 108.—(Div. List, No. 98.)
    Words added.
    Main Question, as amended, put, and aqreed to.
    Bill re-committed to the former Committee.

  WINDSOR, ASCOT, AND ALDERSHOT RAILWAY BILL (by Order).

    CONSIDERATION.
    Order for Consideration, as amended, read.
    Motion made, and Question proposed, "That the Bill be now considered."—(Mr. Dodds.)
    SIR GABRIEL GOLDNEYsaid, that, not with standing the very large majority by which the Amendment in regard to the last Bill was carried, he would venture to say a word, in order to show the extreme inconvenience of the course now being pursued, if it were to be considered that every Bill dealing with Railway charges, after it came down from a Select Committee, was to be discussed again in that House. He thought the House ought to do one of two things—either to give a locus standi to some authority representing the public to be heard before Railway Committees, or to abide by the decision of the Committee when that decision was reported. He thought the last case could not be regarded as a fair illustration of the present one. In this instance, all the landowners and persons interested in the carriage of agricultural commodities were in favour of the Bill, which would effect a considerable saving in the charges they now had to pay in sending their goods to market. He hoped the noble Viscount who proposed to move the re-committal of the Bill (Viscount Folkestone) would bear in mind that it was not always the agricultural interest that was benefited in these matters. They all knew very well that when the cost of carriage was diminished, the price of the article itself would immediately rise; and, even in this particular case, the profits would not go into the pockets of the agriculturists, but into those of the manufacturers, who were at the bottom of this agitation. At all events, he trusted that whatever the House did that day, they would consider carefully the gravity of the course they proposed to enter upon, and would, at any rate, in the first instance, alter the Standing Order passed a short time ago. Perhaps the best course would be to repeal the Standing Order, and to give certain authorities a locus standi to be heard in the different Committees, so that the question might be fought out with the Railway Companies
    750
    in Committee, and the House might not be converted into an arena for settling disputes between one party and another.
    VISCOUNT FOLKESTONE,in moving that the Bill be re-committed in the same way as the last one, said, it would not be necessary for him to detain the House by repeating the observations he had made on the Exeter Bill, the grounds of his present opposition being almost identical with those which applied to the last case. He should like, however, to make one remark in regard to what had fallen from the hon. Member for Shrewsbury (Mr. Robertson). The hon. Member appeared to think that it was invidious for the House to take cognizance of anything that had been decided by a Committee upstairs. Now, he (Viscount Folkestone) begged to remind the House that one of the objects of passing the Standing Order this year was that by that means the House should be allowed to decide whether it agreed with any Committee in allowing the charges and tolls of a Railway Company to be increased. He understood his hon. Friend the Member for Chippenham (Sir Gabriel Goldney) to say that this was a question which affected the manufacturers of artificial manures more than the agricultural community. He begged to deny that assertion in toto; because, if the rates were raised on artificial manures, they would not be borne by the manufacturer at all, but by the agricultural community. If the price of manures was now £5 per ton, and the rates for carriage were raised by 1s. per ton, the manufacturer would not allow that additional sum to come out of his own pocket, but would throw the extra 1s. upon the unfortunate man who was compelled to purchase the article. His hon. Friend who reported the present Bill (Sir Henry Selwin-Ibbetson) said that this Bill had not been passed as it was submitted to the Select Committee, but the maximum had been reduced to 3d. per ton. Now, that was the rate which was charged for the carriage of sugar, grain, corn, flour, &c.; and, by imposing that rate on the carriage of guano and artificial manures, it was plain that the Committee had placed those articles in a higher class than that in which they were formerly placed. Guano and artificial manures were formerly in the lowest class, whilst sugar, grain, and other articles were in the

    751
    highest class. It was, therefore, evident that in this Bill the attention of the Committee had been called to the rates charged in the different classes, and not to the classification of the articles themselves. He begged to move the re-committal of the Bill.
    Amendment proposed, to leave out the words "now considered," in order to add the words "re-committed to the former Committee."—(Viscount Folkestone.)
    Question proposed, "That the words 'now considered' stand part of the Question."
    SIR HENRY SELWIN-IBBETSONsaid, that, after the discussion which had taken place, and the decision which had been come to on the previous Bill, he did not propose to detain the House for more that a few minutes. At the same time, he thought that, as Chairman of the Committee which made the Report in this particular instance, it would be hardly proper or courteous to the House if he allowed the matter to pass without making one or two remarks. He did not think that his noble Friend who moved the re-committal of the Bill (Viscount Folkestone) would, for one moment, suppose that the interests of agriculturists had not been considered, at all events, by himself, the Member for West Essex. But what the Committee had to deal with was a Report from the Board of Trade, submitted to them in consequence of Standing Order 145a; and, as he imagined, the object of that Standing Order was to call the attention of Committees to the classification, as well as to the rates charged upon different articles, so that, in their Report to the House, they should call the attention of the House to certain particular facts, in order that the House, as it was doing that day, might, if it thought fit, reverse the decision of the Committee. So far as the Committee were themselves concerned, it was certainly shown, to their satisfaction, that, on a short line of this kind, the carriage of this particular article of artificial manures would not be remunerative except at a given price; and it was shown, also, that there was an amount of care required in the carriage of this particular class of manures, and in the storage of it in trucks, which took it out of the class of ordinary manures, and justified, in their opinion, the higher charge which the Railway Company
    752
    stated was necessary in order to enable them to carry at a profit this particular article of commerce. That matter came before the Committee, and they also took into consideration the fact that the Board of Trade, in their Report, pointed out to them that, in other instances, a similar charge had already been authorized in Railway Bills. Under those circumstances, the Committee felt justified in allowing a rate which seemed to be necessary for the proper carriage of these particular articles, and which did not seem unreasonable, when they considered the evidence brought before them as to the necessity of exercising greater care in the carriage of artificial manures as compared with the carriage of common manures. Those were the reasons which, he thought, justified the Committee in coming to the conclusion they had arrived at; and he could not help feeling that, if the House was of opinion that another course should be adopted, and that artificial manures should be placed in the lower class as common manures, they ought to go further, and instruct the Board of Trade to make representations to that effect before the Committee, instead of simply calling the attention of the Committee, as they had done in the present instance, to the Standing Order, and allowing the Committee to judge from the evidence whether the charge submitted by the Railway Company was a proper one or not. In this instance, the Committee had, upon the grounds he had mentioned, come to the conclusion set forth in their Report. They thought they had sufficient evidence before them to justify that Report. At the same time, the Committee would be perfectly prepared to reconsider the question if the House desired them to do so; but, on the evidence before them, they were of opinion that they were justified in the decision they came to. He could only repeat that, if the House had made up its mind that these particular manures were not to be classed with the higher description of goods which required special care and attention, it would do well to make a special Order to that effect, and thus prevent the constant recurrence of discussions in the House upon the decisions of Railway Committees.
    Question put, and negatived.
    Words added.
    Main Question, as amended, put, and agreed to.
    Bill re-committed to the former Committee.

  EAST AND WEST INDIA DOCK BILL [Lords>] (by Order).

    SECOND READING.
    Order for Second Reading read.
    SIR HENRY SELWIN-IBBETSONsaid, he did not propose to proceed with his opposition to the Bill. He believed that the promoters of it had come to an understanding with their opponents; and, as he accepted the agreement which had been come to, he would not persist in his opposition.
    Bill read a second time, and committed.

QUESTIONS.

  MEXICO—RENEWAL OF DIPLOMATIC RELATIONS.
  MR. MONKasked the Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, If he will inform the House what steps have been taken by Her Majesty's Government towards the renewal of diplomatic relations with Mexico?
  LORD EDMOND FITZMAURICE: Sir, communications have recently passed which give hope of an early renewal of diplomatic relations between this country and Mexico, and I hope shortly to be able to make a fuller statement to the House as to their nature.

  CIVIL SERVANTS OF THE CROWN IN CONNECTION WITH FINANCIAL UNDERTAKINGS.
  SIR GEORGE CAMPBELLasked Mr. Chancellor of the Exchequer, If the issue of general rules for regulating the connection of public servants, both executive and judicial, with Joint Stock Companies and other enterprises, and their receipt of emoluments as directors and managers, has yet been considered; and, if any decision has been arrived at?
  THE CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUER (Mr. CHILDERS): The matter to which my hon. Friend's Question refers has not come before me since I became
  754
  Chancellor of the Exchequer; but now that my attention has been called to it by my hon. Friend's Question I will take care to look into it. It is one, however, which does not concern the Treasury only, but which may, perhaps, require the collective action of Her Majesty's Government.
  SIR GEORGE CAMPBELLsaid, that as the Prime Minister, while he was Chancellor of the Exchequer, had promised to look into the matter, he would repeat the Question on a future occasion.

  IRELAND—LOANS TO IRISH RAILWAYS.
  MR. T. A. DICKSONasked Mr. Chancellor of the Exchequer, If, in reply to the deputation which waited upon him on the 26th of April, he is now prepared to state the decision of the Government with reference to the application for a reduction of the rate of interest on loans to Irish Railways?
  THE CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUER (Mr. CHILDERS): Sir, in reply to my hon. Friend, I have to state that although some details have not yet been settled, we have virtually decided to reduce the rate of interest on loans to Irish Railway Companies made by the Irish Board of Works from 5 to 4 per cent as from the 1st of July next. Special arrangements will have to be made with reference to certain cases where payments have fallen into arrear, and these may take some little time to complete. When the whole are completed the Treasury Minute will be laid before Parliament.

  SOUTH AFRICA—ZULULAND.
  SIR HENRY HOLLANDasked the Under Secretary of State for the Colonies, What steps, if any, Her Majesty's Government propose to take to put an end to the hostilities now being carried on between Cetewayo and another Chief in Zululand?
  MR. EVELYN ASHLEY: Sir, Her Majesty's Government do not propose to intervene in the quarrel now going on within the borders of Zululand proper any more than they did before the Zulu War.
  SIR MICHAEL HICKS-BEACH: May I ask the hon. Gentleman a Question arising from that answer? Did not Cetewayo undertake, at the instigation

  755
  of Lord Kimberley, not to make war on the neighbouring Chiefs or people without the previous sanction of Her Majesty's Government, and, in the event of any dispute with any neighbouring Chief, to refer it to the arbitration of Her Majesty's Government? Hoes Her Majesty's Government intend to insist upon the execution of those terms on which he was restored to Zululand, or is the Convention with Cetewayo to be a dead letter, like the Transvaal Convention?
  MR. EVELYN ASHLEY: In a matter of such importance and intricacy, I must ask the right hon. Baronet to give Notice of his Question.
  SIR MICHAEL HICKS-BEACH: I will ask the Question to-morrow.

  LUNACY ACTS—MR. JOSEPH BERRY.
  MR. BROGDENasked the Secretary of the State for the Home Department, Whether he has seen a statement in the "Echo" newspaper of the 19th instant in reference to a patient named Mr. Jos. Berry, detained in the Kent County Lunatic Asylum; and, whether he will be good enough to make inquiries into the case?
  SIR WILLIAM HARCOURT,in reply, said, that he had ordered inquiries to be made into the truth of the statements referred to in The Echo to a patient named Mr. Joseph Berry, detained in the Kent County Lunatic Asylum.

  THE MAGISTRACY (ENGLAND AND WALES)—PORTSMOUTH BOROUGH MAGISTRACY.
  SIR H. DRUMMOND WOLFFasked the Secretary of State for the Home Department, Whether the Lord Chancellor has refused to consider the unanimous recommendation of the Town Council of Portsmouth for the appointment of an ex-mayor, being one of the senior aldermen, to the commission of the peace for the borough; and, whether it is his intention to appoint instead a gentleman not resident in Portsmouth, and who has never taken any part in the general business of the borough?
  SIR WILLIAM HARCOURT,in reply, said, that he had received a letter from the Lord Chancellor's Secretary stating that his Lordship had never refused to consider the recommendations made to him by the Town Council of
  756
  Portsmouth. On the contrary, he had followed the recommendations of the Town Council, who submitted the names of two of their Aldermen to him. No objection had been raised by them to the intended appointment.
  SIR H. DRUMMOND WOLFFgave Notice that he would repeat the Question, and would also ask whether the gentleman to be appointed had not taken a prominent part in organizing a great Liberal demonstration?
  SIR WILLIAM HARCOURTsaid, he know nothing about the matter; but it appeared, from the postcript of the letter, that the gentleman appointed was a Conservative.
  SIR H. DRUMMOND WOLFFsaid, he did not know whether the Alderman or the other gentleman had been refused; but he would repeat the Question on Monday.

  NAVY—WARRANT OFFICERS.
  SIR H. DRUMMOND WOLFFasked the Secretary to the Admiralty, Whether it is the intention of the Government to improve the position of the warrant officers of the Navy in respect of uniform, compensation allowances, pay while serving on board ships in harbour, and Greenwich pensions?
  MR. CAMPBELL-BANNERMAN: Sir, no final decision has been come to on this subject; but, as I informed the hon. Member in answer to a Question on the 16th of last month, the case is under consideration.

  THE NATIONAL GALLERY AND BRITISH MUSEUM—ELECTRIC LIGHTING.
  MR. COOPEasked the First Commissioner of Works, Whether he is aware that the Electric Light has been used in the South Kensington and Jermyn Street Museums for upwards of two years, without any accident occurring; whether he is aware that a code of regulations has been adopted jointly by the Electric Lighting Companies and the Fire Insurance Offices, and approved of by his Department, whereby the risk of fire is reduced to a minimum, and no extra charge for insurance is made for electrically lighted buildings where these regulations are in force; whether there is absolute danger of fire to the National Gallery, arising from the proximity of

  757
  the old workhouse in St. Martin's in the Fields, now used by the Admiralty as a receptacle for disused stores; and, whether he is prepared to take measures whereby the National Gallery and the British Museum may be lighted by electricity, and thus be made available for at least three evenings in the week for the improvement and enjoyment of the working classes and others who are prevented by their avocations from visiting our grand national collections during the day?
  MR. SHAW LEFEVRE: Sir, I am quite ready to admit all the premises of the hon. Member's Question, except the danger to the National Gallery from the workhouse at its rear, which has no foundation whatever. I still remain of opinion, however, that we have not had sufficient experience of the electric light to justify me in advising the Trustees to use it in the National Gallery, even if they did not entertain other grave objections to opening those Galleries at night.

  CRIMINAL LAW—WIFE-BEATING.
  MR. COOPEasked the Secretary of State for the Home Department, Whether, in the case of men brutally assaulting their wives, when, as at present, the effect of being sent to gaol is frequently more severely felt by the wife and children than by the guilty party, he is prepared to take steps whereby magistrates may be empowered, at their discretion, to inflict the punishment of flogging in lieu of fine or imprisonment, the punishment to be doubled in the case of a second offence?
  SIR WILFRID LAWSONsaid, that, before the right hon. and learned Gentleman answered the Question, he wished to asked whether, considering that almost all brutal assaults on wives referred to in the Question of the hon. Member were committed by drunken men, the right hon. and learned Gentleman would consider the desirability of providing more adequate punishment for those who supplied them with the drink?
  SIR WILLIAM HARCOURT,in reply, said, that the question of adding or substituting the punishment of flogging in cases of assaults of this character had been very carefully considered in a Bill proposed by his Predecessor in Office, and the conclusion arrived at by the late
  758
  Government and the House was that it was not desirable to make any change in the law. He saw no reason for dissenting from that view.

  TREATY OF BERLIN—ARTICLE V.—RELIGIOUS LIBERTY IN BULGARIA.
  SIR H. DRUMMOND WOLFFasked the Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, Whether the American Missionaries and the Greek Schools in the principality of Bulgaria have been exposed to any ill-treatment on the part of the Bulgarian authorities; and, if so, whether Her Majesty's Government are taking any steps to prevent such infractions of Treaty stipulations?
  LORD EDMOND FITZMAURICE: I regret to say, Sir, that there have been complaints of conduct on the part of the Bulgarian local authorities in the matter alluded to by my hon. Friend. Her Majesty's Agent and Consul General has, on several occasions, made representations on the subject to the Bulgarian Government, and has called their attention to Article V. of the Treaty of Berlin, which guarantees religious liberty in the Principality. He has also received instructions that whenever specific acts, such as those complained of, come to his knowledge, he should join with the Representatives of the other Treaty Powers in remonstrating. The Secretary of State is in communication with the United States Government on the subject of the closing by the Bulgarian authorities of the American schools.

  PRISONS (IRELAND)—MR. HEALY, M.P., MR. DAVITT, AND MR. QUINN, PRISONERS IN RICHMOND GAOL.
  MR. LALORasked the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, If it is true that Mr. Healy, M.P., Mr. Davitt, and Mr. Quinn, who are at present confined in Richmond Gaol, have been deprived of the usual privilege of receiving visitors, in consequence of the appearance in the newspapers of the 18th instant of letters from Messrs. Healy and Davitt in reference to the Pope's Circular; and, if it is true, whether the authorities in Ireland will regard it as a punishable offence to question the justice of the Pope's interference in the temporal affairs of that Country?
  MR. TREVELYAN: Sir, the letters of Messrs. Davitt and Healy, which were

  759
  addressed to the Lord Mayor of Dublin, were submitted on Thursday last by the General Prisons Board to the Government for instructions as to whether they might be sent on. The Government offered no objection to their being sent on, and accordingly they were posted to their destination on the same day. On the following day—Friday—they appeared in the Dublin newspapers, and on Saturday a report was received from the Prisons Board that Messrs. Healy and Davitt had sent copies of these letters for publication before authority for their despatch had been given, and that for this breach of the prison rules the privilege granted to them of seeing visitors had been suspended. Messrs. Davitt and Healy ought not to have sent copies of these letters for publication without permission, and the Prisons Board took the usual course in suspending their privileges for an infraction of the rules; but his Excellency, having regard to the fact that the issue of the letters had been allowed, ordered the suspension of their privileges to be removed. Mr. Quinn was not concerned in the matter at all, although reference is made to him in this Question.
  MR. HARRINGTON: May I ask the right hon. Gentleman whether he has any proof that the letters were brought out from the prison by visitors?
  MR. TREVELYAN: There is enough proof to satisfy the Prisons Board.
  MR. JOSEPH COWENasked the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, If the state of affairs in Ireland will permit of the release from prison of Mr. Healy, M.P., Mr. Davitt, and Mr. Quinn?
  MR. TREVELYAN: Sir, this is not an ordinary case of remission of sentence, as Messrs. Healy, Davitt, and Quinn can at any moment obtain their release by undertaking to comply with the law. This, however, is not altogether a sufficient answer, because, undoubtedly, on previous occasions the Irish Government has communicated with the judicial authorities which required certain persons to keep the peace, and who, on refusing to be bound over, were committed to prison; and after negotiations with those judicial authorities, the Irish Government had brought the term of imprisonment to a close without the persons in question having consented to give bail. The Lord Lieutenant will, therefore, in
  760
  this case communicate with the Judges of the Queen's Bench who passed the sentence, with a view of satisfying himself whether any action is desirable.

  PUBLIC DOCUMENTS—PREMATURE DISCLOSURE TO THE PRESS—THE ARMY MEDICAL INQUIRY.
  SIR WALTER B. BARTTELOTasked the Secretary of State for War, By whose authority a full Report of the Army Medical Inquiry was sent to the newspapers before that Report had been communicated to the House; and, if sent without authority, if steps have been taken to find out the person who furnished to the papers a copy of the Report? He wished to add the further Question whether the noble Marquess was aware that the Report was not even yet in the hands of Members, although it was published in the newspapers on Saturday last?
  THE MARQUESS OF HARTINGTON: Sir, I extremely regret what has occurred in this matter, and I will state to the House exactly what has taken place. For some time past The Times newspaper has devoted considerably more space and attention to the discussion of military matters than any other morning paper has done. Having regard to this circumstance, and also to the fact that from time to time unauthorized and incorrect statements have, somehow or other, got out from the War Office, and considering also that it was desirable that questions of this kind, if discussed elaborately in newspapers, should be discussed in a deliberate and careful manner, and not in a hurried manner, it has been for some time past the practice to allow gentlemen connected with The Times newspaper to have an early proof of the Papers which it is intended to present to Parliament and to publish. I ought to add that the Department, which had, or was supposed to have, with regard to the gentlemen to whom the documents were committed, satisfactory proof of their good faith and discretion as to the manner in which the documents should be used, obtained a distinct understanding from those gentlemen that nothing should be published on the subject until the Papers were in the hands of Members. Acting on that practice, my noble Friend the Earl of Morley, the Chairman of the Committee on the subject, gave to two gentlemen

  761
  connected with The Times immediately before the Whitsuntide Holidays his own proofs of the Report and of the Evidence taken before the Committee, in the expectation that the Papers themselves would be in the hands of Members by the time Parliament re-assembled, and that they would not be published until they were distributed. My noble Friend was extremely surprised to find that the Report and extracts from the Evidence were published at great length in The Times of Saturday and subsequent days, and he has communicated with the editor of The Times, who has expressed his regret at the premature publication of the articles; but I must say that, looking to the want of care, to say the least of it, that has been exhibited in this case, it appears to me the practice had better be altogether abandoned. No blame whatever rests on any person in the Department. In reply to the additional part of the Question of the hon. and gallant Member, I am sorry to say that I have been informed by the Stationery Department the Evidence is so voluminous that it will not be in the hands of Members until Tuesday next. Under these circumstances, I propose to postpone Vote 4 of the Medical Vote until the House has had time to read and carefully consider the Report. I may also add that on the Army Estimates I will postpone Vote 9, which contains the Vote for the constabulary employed under the Contagious Diseases Acts, because the House will probably like to have the Bill, which is to be introduced on the subject, in their hands before they discuss the Vote which raises the question.
  SIR WALTER B. BARTTELOTsaid, he believed that the Prime Minister gave the House an assurance, through the Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, that no publication should take place until Papers were in the hands of Members; but, not with standing this, they found a full and authentic Report of a Committee that sat at the War Office appearing in the newspapers before it had been distributed to Members.
  MR. GLADSTONE: As this, Sir, is a matter in which I am concerned, I am bound to say that, without at all going into the merits of the matter, the promise to which my hon. Friend refers was a Departmental promise, and had no relation to this particular matter.
  MR. PULESTONasked when the Bill referred to by the noble Marquess would be laid on the Table?
  THE MARQUESS OF HARTINGTON: I cannot say, Sir.
  DR. CAMERONsaid, that, as there was a great deal of dissatisfaction felt throughout the Medical Profession at the very unfair nature of the extracts published, he should to-morrow ask the noble Marquess sundry Questions as to the correctness and accuracy of various statements, and whether they had not been contradicted by other evidence which had been suppressed?
  MR. CALLANgave Notice that tomorrow he would ask the Secretary of State for War whether the action of the Earl of Morley had not been in consequence of the bad example of the late Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, who communicated the Report of the Land Commission to The Times several days in advance?
  THE MARQUESS OF HARTINGTON: With reference to what has fallen from the hon. Member for Glasgow (Dr. Cameron), I may say that one of the reasons why I regret the publication is that the Papers have been published, not only without any authority, but, in my opinion, in a manner altogether calculated to mislead the public.
  MR. A. J. BALFOURsaid, that there was no pledge that such a thing would not occur again. Perhaps the Prime Minister would now give the House some promise which should not be Departmental.
  MR. GLADSTONE: The answer which I gave did not afford ground for a taunt.
  MR. A. J. BALFOURsaid, he did not intend a taunt.
  MR. GLADSTONE: If the hon. Member did not intend a taunt, he has an unfortunate mode of expressing himself, or I have become more obtuse. It was merely that the House might not be misled on matters of fact that I referred to what happened on a former occasion when a promise was given on behalf of the War Department. I am not aware that this objectionable practice prevails in other Departments, but I entirely concur with the noble Marquess in the letter and spirit of his reply.
  MR. A. J. BALFOURwished to repeat that he had intended no taunt to the Prime Minister.
  MR. O'DONNELLasked the noble Lord the Secretary of State for War, If he would inquire whether the understanding on which early copies of documents were furnished to The Times was an understanding that the review of them should, on the whole, be favourable to the Government of the day? If so, he would ask the noble Lord, with regard to the understanding that the publication of a review in The Times should not precede the distribution of the Papers to Members; whether its object was to conceal from the public the fact that The Times was in possession of those documents some days before they were in the possession of the House? If the Question was not answered now, he would repeat it to-morrow.
  THE MARQUESS OF HARTINGTON: As far as I am aware, Sir, the practice arose as stated by me in answer to the Question of the hon, and gallant Member (Sir Walter B. Barttelot). I know no other object intended or thought to be gained by it. As to the question whether the reviews were to be of a favourable character to the Government, any hon. Member could see that if such an object had been sought in the present instance, it certainly had not been attained.

  RUSSIA—TRANS-CAUCASUS TRANSIT DUTIES.
  MR. ARTHUR ARNOLDasked the Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, Whether, consequent upon the recent opening of the Poti-Tiflis-Baku Railway, any new arrangement has been made as to Russian Customs Duties upon British cotton manufactures and other goods in transit for Persia and Central Asia?
  LORD EDMOND FITZMAURICE: Sir, according to the last Reports from St. Petersburg, it would appear that there is an intention on the part of the Russian Government—although no Ordinance on the subject has been as yet published—to impose a duty of from 30 to 50 per cent on the import duties now in force in Russia upon merchandize arriving at Batoum or Poti in transit for Persia, that this merchandize should not be allowed to be transported by railway further from Tiflis, and should be deprived of the use of the railway now ready from Tiflis to Baku, being obliged
  764
  to go by road to the Persian Frontier, and thence to Tabreez. Reports on the subject will be found in Parliamentary Paper No. 15, 1883, Part III., and other Papers will be laid on the Table.

  CONTAGIOUS DISEASES (ANIMALS) ACTS—FOOT-AND-MOUTH DISEASE.
  MR. DUCKHAMasked the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, Whether the Privy Council will enforce (with the least possible delay) the provisions of the Contagious Diseases (Animals) Act of 1878, and prohibit the importation of live animals into the United Kingdom from countries in which the foot and mouth disease prevails?
  MR. DODSON: Sir, I cannot admit the assumption involved in the Question that the Act of 1878 has not been carried out by the Privy Council. That Act laid down as the general law that all foreign animals were to be slaughtered at the port of landing, subject to a positive direction to the Privy Council to admit freely animals from countries free from disease, and with a power enabling the Privy Council to prohibit importation in exceptional and special cases. The question of the hon. Member is too vague to admit of a definite answer in the affirmative or the negative. I may, however, say that the Privy Council have exercised their prohibitory powers in the case of all countries likely to send us rinderpest, that they have also, from time to time, exercised their discretion in prohibiting animals from specified ports and specified countries in which foot-and-mouth disease has been exceptionally prevalent, and that they will continue to use the discretion vested in them, subject to a deep sense of the responsibility imposed upon them.
  MR. HENEAGEsubsequently gave Notice, in consequence of the very unsatisfactory answer given by the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, that on Monday next he would ask whether he would lay on the Table a copy of the case on which a legal opinion was taken in reference to the powers of the Government under the Act to prohibit the importation of cattle from foreign countries where there was reason to believe disease existed, as was lately mentioned by Lord Carlingford?

  PAPAL SEE—DIPLOMATIC COMMUNICATIONS—MR. ERRINGTON.
  MR. JOSEPH COWENasked the Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, If Mr. Errington has again been the channel of communication between the Foreign Office and the Vatican; and, if so, whether papers on the subject will be printed; and, whether Lord Granville has written to Mr. Errington congratulating him on his success in securing the censure of the Archbishop of Cashel by the Pope, and if it is intended to remunerate Mr. Errington for his services?
  LORD EDMOND FITZMAURICE: Sir, I stated on March 19, in reply to the hon. Member for Tyrone (Mr. Macartney) that the British Government never entertained a scheme for establishing a Resident at the Vatican. Mr. Errington has not been the channel of communication between the Foreign Office and the Vatican, and I would refer my hon. Friend to the answers given in this House on the 7th and 10th of February of last year by my right hon. Friend the President of the Local Government Board, and on the 14th of the same month by the First Lord of the Treasury. Mr. Errington, having received no appointment, will receive no remuneration. There are no Papers to present to Parliament on this subject. Her Majesty's Government highly appreciate any measures which tend to strengthen the respect for law and order in Ireland; but the document to which my right hon. Friend refers was not issued at the request of Her Majesty's Government, and no congratulations have consequently been sent to Rome with regard to it.
  MR. JOSEPH COWEN: I should like to ask the noble Lord for an elucidation of this point. Mr. Errington went to Rome last year; he carried with him a letter of recommendation from the Foreign Minister; and, in consequence of that letter a Circular was issued to the Irish Bishops. Mr. Errington has since been to Rome. ["Order!"] I am perfectly in Order, Sir. Another Circular has been issued, and I wish to know if the letter of recommendation which Mr. Errington formerly carried has been withdrawn, or is still in operation?
  LORD EDMOND FITZMAURICE: I make no complaint of the Question
  766
  of my hon. Friend; but I think he will see that it is to a great extent of an argumentative nature and dealing with a delicate matter, and I must ask him to give Notice.
  MR. NEWDEGATE: I wish to put a Question to the First Lord of the Treasury. It is manifest from what has appeared in this House that certain communications have had the authority of Her Majesty's Government. ["Oh!" and "Order!"]
  MR. SPEAKER: The hon. Member is now entering on matters of controversy. He can put any Question he thinks proper arising out of the answer to the last Question.
  MR. NEWDEGATE: I humbly apologize, Sir. I thought it necessary to make a statement. I will put the Question in this shape. I wish to know whether Mr. Errington—whoso success I need not refer to—[Cries of "Order !"] I wish to ask the First Lord of the Treasury whether Mr. Errington has had any authority from any Department of Her Majesty's Government in approaching His Holiness the Pope; and, if so, under what Act of Parliament the Department which has authorized Mr. Errington has acted?
  MR. GLADSTONE: I rather think, Sir, although I will not trust my memory at this distance of time absolutely, that this Question was put and answered last year, and that it was explained last year in one or more of the answers to which my noble Friend has referred, that Lord Granville had written and addressed a letter to Mr. Errington, of which the nature was then distinctly explained. If I am wrong, and the hon. Member does not find that information in former answers, there will be no difficulty in repeating the nature of the letter. There has been no other authority whatever to my knowledge, and I do not think it could have been given without my knowledge.
  MR. NEWDEGATE: I will put the Question, in a more regular form, on Monday.
  LORD RANDOLPH CHURCHILL: May I ask the noble Lord the Under Secretary of State, in reference to his answer, whether the letter to which the Prime Minister has just alluded, given by Lord Granville to Mr. Errington, still remains in force, or whether the recommendation contained in it has not

  767
  expired; and, if it has not expired, whether the recommendation will be contemporaneous with the life of the present Government; and I also wish to ask whether the noble Lord is prepared to state positively that Mr. Errington has not had any part of his expenses paid out of public funds?
  MR. GLADSTONE: If I am right in my impression of that letter, the noble Lord will see that it must undoubtedly remain in force until Mr. Errington ceases to be a Gentleman of honour, intelligence, and good information. The letter simply convoys an assurance of that kind.
  MR. O'DONNELL: Are we to understand from the answers which have just been given that if Mr. Errington represents himself to His Holiness the Pope or the Government of the Church in Rome as in any way authorized by Her Majesty's Government, he is acting under false pretences? Either "Yes" or "No" can be given to that Question.
  MR. GORST: Can the noble Lord give the House any assurance that no part of Mr. Errington's expenses has been paid out of the public funds?
  LORD EDMOND FITZMAURICE: I think Notice ought to be given of that Question.
  SIR H. DRUMMOND WOLFF: The noble Lord, in his reply to the hon. Member for Newcastle (Mr. J. Cowen), said that Lord Granville had not written any congratulation to Rome. The Question that the hon. Member for Newcastle asked was whether Lord Granville had written to Mr. Errington a letter congratulating him on his success; and, therefore, I would like the noble Lord to be good enough to answer that Question.
  LORD EDMOND FITZMAURICE: I naturally gave the answer to the Question in the sense in which it was asked.
  SIR H. DRUMMOND WOLFF: I think the House is entitled to more definite information on this point. The noble Lord says that Lord Granville has not written to Rome; but the question is whether he has written to Mr. Errington. That is a very simple question, and one to which we ought to have an answer, "Yes" or "No."
  LORD EDMOND FITZMAURICE: I gave a perfectly fair and straightforward answer. [Cries of "No!" and
  768
  a cry of "Evasion!"] I made no verbal distinctions whatever, and I believe the House is satisfied with the answer. ["Hear, hear!" and "No, no!"] If the hon. Member is not satisfied, he is, no doubt, at liberty to ask a further Question on giving Notice.
  SIR H. DRUMMOND WOLFF: I ask the Question distinctly; and I have a perfect right to have an answer.
  MR. O'BRIEN: I would like to ask the Prime Minister if he has any objection that it should be distinctly known in Rome that any representations made by Mr. Errington have only as much weight as is given by Mr. Errington's position as Member for Longford, and that he is in no sense a Representative of the Government?
  MR. GLADSTONE: Perhaps the hon. Member will be kind enough to put that Question on the Notice Paper. It is also most reasonable that the hon. Member for Portsmouth (Sir H. Drummond Wolff) should give Notice of his Question.
  An hon. MEMBER: It is on the Paper already.
  SIR STAFFORD NORTHCOTE: We have adopted lately, Sir, in this House a practice which has been convenient, no doubt—namely, instead of reading the Questions out aloud, they are merely referred to by their number; and, therefore, there may be some mistake as to the Question which was really put. The Question put by the hon. Member for Newcastle was put very distinctly in these words—
  "Whether Lord Granville has written to Mr. Errington congratulating him on his success in securing the censure of the Archbishop of Cashel by the Pope?"
  The Answer which was given by the noble Lord did not appear to be a direct Answer to that part of the Question. I think the noble Lord will see that the Question having been put upon the Paper in these terms, it should be answered directly.
  LORD EDMOND FITZMAURICE: I quite agree with the right hon. Gentleman; but I have said already that I gave my answer in the sense of the words on the Paper. When I said that Lord Granville had not written to Rome, I was answering the Question whether Lord Granville had written to Mr. Errington, who is, I believe, at Rome. I

  769
  must add I drew no verbal distinction whatever.
  SIR H. DRUMMOND WOLFF: In consequence of the answer of the noble Lord, I beg to give Notice that I shall again bring this subject forward on a Motion for the Adjournment of the House.
  MR. JOSEPH COWEN: The Question which I put to the noble Lord was clear and distinct—namely, whether Earl Granville has written to Mr. Errington expressly with reference to certain transactions, or has he not? Yes or no?
  LORD EDMOND FITZMAURICE: I should very much regret if, through any want of clearness on my part, any misunderstanding should have arisen in reference to this subject. I have already answered the Question twice. [Cries of "Yes or No?"] When my hon. Friend asks whether Earl Granville has written to Mr. Errington congratulating him on his success in securing the censure of the Archbishop of Cashel by the Pope, I distinctly say that Earl Granville has not done so.
  MR. HARRINGTON: I beg to give Notice that on Monday I shall ask the Prime Minister, Whether any instructions were given to Mr. Errington by Earl Granville; and, if so, what the nature of those instructions was?
  MR. JOSEPH COWEN: I beg to give Notice that on Monday I shall ask the noble Lord the Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, Whether Earl Granville has written to Mr. Errington a letter thanking him generally for his success at Rome, without thanking him specially for having procured the censure of the Archbishop of Cashel?
  MR. O'DONNELL: I beg to give Notice that on the same day I shall ask the noble Lord, Whether he has any objection to lay the letter of Earl Granville to Mr. Errington upon the Table of the House?

  INDIA—LAW AND JUSTICE—TREATMENT OF NATIVES AND EUROPEANS.
  MR. O'DONNELLasked the Under Secretary of State for India, If his attention has been called to the fact that, in a recent prosecution against the European proprietor and a Native captain of a Bombay line of coasting steamers for alleged breach of the Passenger Acts, both the European proprietor and the
  770
  Native captain were sentenced to fines by the magistrate; whether the European proprietor made use of his right of appeal as a European to procure a rehearing of the case in a higher court, with the result that it was decided that no breach of the Passenger Acts had been committed, and that his fine must be remitted; whether the Native captain, because he was not a European, had no right of appeal, and cannot have his fine remitted; and, whether Government intends to maintain the privilege of appeal for some of Her Majesty's subjects, and to refuse it to others, solely on the ground of difference of race?
  MR. J. K. CROSS: Sir, since answering the hon. Member's Question on Monday last, I have seen, in The Hindoo Patriot of the 30th of April, a mention of the case referred to; but the facts are so insufficiently stated, that it is not possible to say whether the Native would, or would not, have had the right of appeal.

  LAW AND JUSTICE (ENGLAND AND WALES)—CASE OF JOHN RAFFERTY.
  MR. WILLSasked Mr. Chancellor of the Exchequer, When it is intended to proceed by writ of "capias" in the Queen's Bench Division of Her Majesty's High Court of Justice against John Rafferty of Monaghan, who was charged in February last before the Liverpool Stipendiary with being concerned in smuggling 2,405 pounds of leaf tobacco concealed in fifty casks, entered as containing flax seed, and also with being implicated in three other smuggling transactions of great magnitude, the said John Rafferty having been then discharged by the Stipendiary Magistrate from the custody of the police on the application of the Commissioners of Customs, who intimated their intention to prosecute in the Queen's Bench Division of the High Court of Justice?
  THE CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUER (Mr. CHILDERS): Yes, Sir; proceedings are being taken in Rafferty's case, and it is set down for hearing this term. It is not, however, possible, as yet, to give the exact date of hearing.

  REPORT OF THE ROYAL COMMISSION ON AGRICULTURE.
  MR. ROUNDasked the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, If he will have

  771
  the Report from Her Majesty's Commissioners on Agriculture re-printed?
  MR. DODSON,in reply, said, that he was now in communication with the Stationery Office on the subject.

  POOR LAW (IRELAND)— ELECTION OF GUARDIANS—COUNTY LONGFORD.
  MR. JUSTIN M'CARTHYasked the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, Whether it is the fact that, after the recent contest for the election of Poor Law Guardians in the neighbourhood of Clough Keenagh, county Longford, twelve electors who voted against the nominees of a resident landlord were refused the right of turbary which they had enjoyed for years; and, whether he will take steps, at future elections, to protect voters from being punished for voting according to their conscientious convictions?
  MR. TREVELYAN: Sir, I have received a telegram from which it appears that the facts are substantially as stated, except that there was no right of turbary in question, but a yearly rental, which the landlord refused to renew. The Government cannot, of course, take any steps to compel a landlord to let a turbary to particular individuals. With regard to future elections, I have, on more than one occasion, already referred to a measure by which the Government hopes to be able to secure protection for voters from interference from any quarter in the exercise of the Poor Law franchise.

  CONVICT PRISONS —PAY AND POSITION OF WARDERS—REPORT OF THE COMMITTEE.
  SIR H. DRUMMOND WOLFFasked the Secretary of State for the Home Department, Whether he can lay upon the Table the Report of the Committee appointed to inquire into the claims of the Warders of Convict Prisons; and, whether it is intended to make any improvement in the pay and position of those officers?
  SIR WILLIAM HARCOURT: This Report is, I believe, completed; but I have not yet seen it.

  EXPLOSIVE SUBSTANCES ACTS—THE ORDERS IN COUNCIL.
  MR. JOSEPH COWENasked the Secretary of State for the Home De-
  772
  partment, If there is any evidence to show that dynamite has been purchased from dealers in that article for illegal purposes; and, whether the new Orders in Council are unequally applied; if they have led to a large reduction in the consumption of dynamite for legitimate purposes; and if his attention has been called to a trade circular issued by a firm of gunpowder manufacturers showing how the stringent regulations applied to the sale of dynamite do not apply to the sale of other explosives? He also wished to ask the right lion, and learned Gentleman, Whether he intended to bring in a Bill this Session dealing with the general question of the sale of explosives as he had promised to do; and, whether he was aware that in certain mining districts the sale of explosives had decreased by one-half?
  SIR BALDWYN LEIGHTONasked the Secretary of State for the Home Department, Whether his attention has been called to the great inconvenience caused to those engaged in mining operations by the late Orders in Council in regard to explosives; also as to the dubiousness of certain words used in the Orders, such as "keeping" and "private use," as applied to miners, storekeepers, agents, instructors, and others respectively; also as to the jurisdiction apparently given under these Orders to the rural police; and, whether he will consider the propriety of some modifications or some explanatory directions to the local authorities?
  SIR WILLIAM HARCOURT: No doubt, Sir, this is a very important question; and when I brought before the House the Bill relating to explosives I referred to the unsatisfactory state of the law upon the subject. Under the law, as it then stood, any person might have had in his possession 15 lbs. of dynamite; while a person having a registered store or magazine might have a much greater quantity in his possession, and the local authorities had no power to restrict such persons from possessing any quantity of explosives of that character. It was the general opinion of the House, at the time I brought forward the Bill, that such a state of things was not satisfactory. Under the existing law, power has been to impose, by Order in Council, such conditions upon the sale and possession of explosives of a nitro-glyce-

  773
  rine character as may be thought necessary. The possession of gunpowder is not regulated by Orders in Council, because it is provided for by express Statute. What has been done by recent legislation is this—Persons are not to have in store, or for private use, dynamite, or other nitro-glycerine compounds, without obtaining a certificate from the police or the Justices that they are proper persons to have it. That seems to me to be a very necessary and reasonable condition. The hon. Member for Newcastle (Mr. J. Cowen) asks me whether, under the present law, persons have not improperly obtained dynamite. Well, it is just the fault of the present law that we do not know how persons become possessed of that explosive; and that is why we have thought it necessary to obtain, as far as we can, a register of the persons who have it in their possession. There is no difficulty whatever for a decent and respectable person to obtain the necessary certificate, which is granted without any charge being made for it, and which, we hope, will prevent explosives of this character from getting into improper hands. Under the old law, it was possible for 10 persons conspiring together to get into their hands 150 lbs. of dynamite. It is quite true, as has been stated in the Question, that a circular has been issued by the manufacturers, who naturally are not satisfied with any restriction upon their trade, which, however, is a very dangerous one, and which, in the opinion of Parliament, requires regulation. The Inspector of Explosives states that the complaints with regard to the restrictions come almost entirely from the manufacturers, and not from those who use these explosives. As far as I am aware, these restrictions have acted beneficially, and in no case injuriously. The words "private use" are well understood, because they are in the Act of 1875; and as to fuller terms and explanations, the Inspector of Explosives has published a handbook, of which a new edition is in course of publication, which contains all the regulations on the subject.
  MR. DONALDSON-HUDSON: I should like to ask the Home Secretary whether it will be necessary, under these regulations, for every miner who uses nitro-glycerine compounds in mines to take out a certificate?
  SIR WILLIAM HARCOURT: I think that it is only right that miners should be required to obtain certificates. What I hope is, that we shall see done universally what is done generally— namely, that dynamite is kept in store by the mine owner, and is served out to the miner for his daily use. It is extremely dangerous for miners to keep dynamite in store in their own houses.
  SIR BALDWYN LEIGHTONinquired whether there was any authority to make a charge for the certificate?
  SIR WILLIAM HARCOURT: No, Sir.

  INLAND REVENUE—EXCISE PERMITS.
  MR. BIGGARasked Mr. Chancellor of the Exchequer, If he is aware that Excise Officers issuing permits for removal of "Duty paid" unblended spirits in cask, frequently omit to enter on the permits the date on which the spirits were bonded, and whether he will arrange to have this information supplied in future; what mode of supervision exists to ensure the delivery of spirits to consignee within the period specified on the permit, and whether such time is in many cases greatly in excess of that required for consignment; whether the Revenue authorities have any objection to order that the date on which spirits are placed in bond be branded on the casks; and, whether, in the case of spirits blended in bond, they will have the casks containing same legibly endorsed with the word "Blended," and so described on the removal permits?
  THE CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUER (Mr. CHILDERS): In reply to the first Question of the hon. Member, I have to say that it is not necessary for the date on which the spirits were bonded to be entered on the permits. In reply to the second Question, the rule is that when the time limited in the permit is exceeded, the spirits are detained until an explanation of the delay is furnished. It is, however, necessary to leave the matter in some cases to the discretion of the local officer, who knows the mode of conveyance intended to be used. I see no reason for adopting the suggestion made in the third Question. The suggestion in the fourth Question is already the rule, so far as the casks are concerned; but there seems no reason to alter the form of the permits, as suggested.

  POST OFFICE (IRELAND) — THE BELFAST POST OFFICE.
  MR. BIGGARasked the Postmaster General, Whether it is a fact that the Government have bought or rented ground in Belfast to build a new post office; and, whether it is not possible to have sufficient accommodation in the present building; and, if it is not sufficient, if he would explain why the Government does not push forward the new building?
  MR. FAWCETT: Sir, in reply to the hon. Member, I beg to say that the Government has bought ground in Belfast for the erection of a new Post Office, in consequence of the insufficiency of the present accommodation, and that no time is being lost in making arrangements for its erection.

  IRELAND—THE COMMISSIONERS OF NATIONAL EDUCATION—THE VOTE FOR MODEL SCHOOLS.
  MR. LEWISasked the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, Whether any communications, in the nature of advice or instructions, has passed between the Lords of the Treasury and the Commissioners of National Education in Ireland, as to the future application of that portion of the Vote in Supply for National Education hitherto used in support of model schools, and suggesting less expenditure thereon in future, in order to have funds to carry out certain intended arrangements for separate denominational training of teachers; and, if so, whether he will lay upon the Table a Copy of any such communications?
  MR. TREVELYAN: Sir, the hon. Member refers to a Correspondence between the Lords of the Treasury and the Commissioners of National Education, which has not, as yet, been officially before the Irish Government. I am not, therefore, at present in a position to express any opinion as to whether it ought to be laid on the Table.

  THE SCOTTISH LEGAL FRIENDLY SOCIETY—DISHONESTY OF OFFICIALS.
  DR. CAMERONasked the Lord Advocate, If the Crown authorities have
  776
  yet decided whether they will institute proceedings against any of the office bearers of the Scottish Legal Friendly Society for their dishonest practices, which official reports show to have been resorted to in connection with the management of that Society?
  THE LORD ADVOCATE (Mr. J. B. BALFOUR): Sir, some time ago a criminal charge of falsehood, fraud, and wilful imposition was preferred against certain of the office-bearers of the Scottish Legal Life Assurance Society in Glasgow. I caused a very careful investigation to be made. It appears that at a general meeting held in June, 1881, the salaries of the Secretary and of the Treasurer were raised from £250 to £500 each, that of the President was raised from £100 to £250, and that of each member of committee from £25 to £125. The charge against the accused office-bearers was that this very large and sudden augmentation of their salaries had been corruptly obtained by means of fictitious votes. Admission to the general meetings is obtained by presentation of the contribution books of the members; and it was alleged, and I believe there is ample evidence to prove, that fabricated contribution books were used for gaining admission by persons who were not members of the Society at all. Unfortunately, it is not possible to ascertain how many fictitious votes were so admitted, nor how far the resolutions to increase the salaries were carried by their votes. This circumstance, as lawyers know, raises a great difficulty in the way of preferring a relevant criminal charge. In the second place, whatever ground of suspicion there may be, it does not appear, from the evidence at our command, that the fabrication or the use of the fictitious books can be brought home to the office-bearers accused. It is only too apparent that there has been gross and culpable mismanagement in this Society, to the great injury of its members, who belong to the working classes; and I do not hesitate to say that I should be glad if I saw my way to the discovery and punishment of the guilty parties by the Criminal Law. But, after consultation with my hon. and learned Friend the Solicitor General for Scotland, I have come to the conclusion that there is not sufficient evidence, at least for the present, to sustain a criminal prosecution.

  ARMY (AUXILIARY FORGES)— ROMAN CATHOLIC MILITIAMEN.
  MR. O'BRIEN (for Mr. SEXTON)asked the Secretary of State for War, If it is true that, on Friday, the 27th ult. the Catholic men of the Militia under training at Monaghan (being about 100 out of a total of 110) were left without dinner because, as Catholics, they refused to eat meat on a Friday; and, if so, how the matter can be explained?
  THE MARQUESS OF HARTINGTON: Sir, of the Militia training at Monaghan, on the 27th of April, 104 out of 156 present were Roman Catholics. The usual meat ration was issued to them, and if they refused to eat it I am afraid it is probable that they went without their dinner. I am informed that, by universal custom among Roman Catholics, soldiers and sailors are dispensed from all obligation to fast or to abstain from flesh meat, and that this applies even in Catholic countries. Therefore, as no soldier need have any scruple on the subject, I see no objection to the issue of meat rations on the occasion referred to. Further, it was brought to notice that some of the sergeants were making a traffic of the meat rations, supplying eggs, &c, to the recruits in exchange. As it appeared that the sergeants were the only gainers by this transaction, the strict rule of each man having his own ration was enforced.

  PARLIAMENT—BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE—SCOTCH BUSINESS.
  MR. A. ELLIOTasked the Secretary of State for the Home Department, If he can state when it is intended to introduce the Bill for the improvement of the administration of Scotch Business?
  SIR WILLIAM HARCOURT: Sir, I am not able at present to answer the Question.

  SOUTHPORT FORESHORE.
  MR. GRANTHAMasked the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, Whether the seal of the Duchy has now been affixed to any document for giving effect to the contemplated sale of the foreshore to the riparian owners; whether, by the exercise of his good offices, he has now succeeded in securing for the town of Southport that part of the foreshore which they consider it is essential
  778
  to the interest of the town they should possess; whether Lord Belper (a former Chancellor of the Duchy) did not state in his evidence before the Select Committee in "Bertolacci's" case, that by an almost invariable usage, and one which he thought it was very desirable to maintain, it had been customary in all cases of important grants and donations out of the Queen's revenues of the Duchy, or of granting important leases, or of any great question for the improvement of the landed property of the Duchy, for the Chancellor to reserve such questions for a meeting of the Council; to hold such meetings from time to time, and then to bring all those questions before the Council; and that it had also been his custom to be guided by the opinion of the Council; and, whether, inasmuch as the proposed sale embraces over 9,000 acres of land, for a sum of £15,000, to private persons, and thereby excludes the rights of the public, it is not of sufficient importance to induce him to seek the advice of the Council?
  MR. DODSON: Sir, my answer to the first Question is—not yet. My answer to the second Question is also—not yet. But I hope what I am now doing will ultimately lead to an amicable settlement, especially if, as both parties have now accepted my good offices, the matter is allowed to be quietly worked out. With regard to the third Question, the usage referred to still prevails; but this Question does not fall within any of the categories mentioned by Lord Belper, the conclusion of whose statement, as to the entire authority resting with the Chancellor, the hon. and learned Member has not quoted. With regard to the last Question, all that is sold of the foreshore is the Duchy's interest, whatever that may be; and the rights of the public, so far from being excluded by the sale, are increased by it, inasmuch, as, by the transfer from the Crown, they become subject to the compulsory powers given to local authorities by the Public Health Act.

  LAND LAW (IRELAND) ACT, 1881—JUDICIAL RENTS—"CHAINE v. NELSON."
  MR. T. A. DICKSONasked the First Lord of the Treasury, If his attention has been called to the case of Chaine v. Nelson, decided in the Common Pleas in Dublin on the 17th, as to the date of judicial rents, and whether that decision

  779
  affects 35,000 tenants; and if, having regard to the fact that these tenants entered the Land Court in October and November 1881, on the assurance of the Chief Commissioners that their rents would accrue from the gale day next after the passing of the Land Act, pursuant to the 60th section, the Government have any remedy to propose?
  MR. GIVANasked the First Lord of the Treasury, Whether the recent decision of the Court of Common Pleas in Ireland, in the case of Chaine v. Nelson, that the sixtieth section of "The Land Law (Ireland) Act, 1881," does not apply to decisions fixing fair rents, was in direct conflict with the opinion of the Chief Commissioners; whether over 30,000 cases were entered and recorded at the first sitting of the Land Commission, owing to the announcement of the Commissioners that the fair rents, when fixed, would commence on the 1st November 1881; whether, acting on the opinion of the Commissioners, landlords have accepted, and tenants paid, the judicial rents as from the 1st November 1881, in the majority of cases already decided; and, whether, in view of the litigation which the decision of the Court of Common Pleas will cause between landlords and tenants whoso rents have been so paid, the Government will introduce a measure during the present Session to settle the question, or otherwise support in whole or in part a Bill now before the House, and set down for the 6th June, which provides that where an application has been made, or shall be made, to the Court, under "The Land Law (Ireland) Act, 1881," to fix a fair rent, the judicial rent fixed by the Court shall relate back to, and shall commence to run from, the gale day next after the service of the originating notice to fix a fair rent, this provision to apply to rents fixed either before or after the commencement of the Act?
  MR. PARNELLasked the First Lord of the Treasury, Whether his attention has been called, to the judgment of the Court of Common Pleas Division of the High Court of Justice in Ireland, in the case of Chaine v. Nelson, by which the declaration of the Court of the Land Commission, made in November 1881, that, in the case of tenants who filed their applications for the fixing of a judicial rent on the first occasion on which the Court sat, the judicial rout should date
  780
  from the gale day next succeeding the passing of the Land Law Act, has been annulled; and, whether the Government will consider the desirability of introducing a short Amendment Bill to clear up this doubt which has arisen as to the construction of the Act, and to ratify to the forty thousand Irish tenants who filed their applications on the first occasion on which the Court of the Land Commission sat, the undertaking and advantages extended and promised to them by the Court?
  MR. BRODRICKsaid, that, before the right lion. Gentleman answered, he wished to ask him whether any inconvenience which might result would not arise from the unprecedented action of the Land Commissioners in issuing an erroneous interpretation of a portion of the Land Act, before the matter was judicially brought before them?
  MR. GLADSTONE: I think, Sir, it would be irregular on my part to answer the Question which has been put to me by the hon. Member, involving, as it does, a censure upon the Land Commissioners in putting their judicial interpretation upon the Act.
  MR. GIBSON: Not judicial.
  MR. GLADSTONE: I will not enter into controversy with so high an authority as the right hon. and learned Gentleman on that point; I will assume, even, that I am entirely wrong; but still my answer will remain the same, because, in the present position of the question, it is not for me to give an opinion upon it. And that is really my answer to the three Questions which have been put to me. In the first place, I believe the facts, as set forth in the Questions, are stated with substantial accuracy. In the second place, the importance of the subject is very great indeed, and Her Majesty's Government are fully alive to it, and it will be their duty carefully to watch and consider the proceedings. But the judgment is one that has been delivered by the Court of Common Pleas, and it is possible that it may be made the subject of appeal. That being so, it is quite obvious that it would not only be contrary to general rule, but highly impolitic in the circumstances, for the Government to signify any intention whatever, until the law is finally settled, either by judgment upon appeal, or by its being made known that the present judgment is acquiesced in,
  MR. LEWIS,in consequence of the answer just given by the Prime Minister, gave Notice that on Monday lie would, ask, Whether the view taken by the Land Commissioners in this case was not stated in a Circular issued by them to the tenants, not in the exercise of their judicial office, but voluntarily on their part?
  MR. T. A. DICKSON: I do not think there is the slightest prospect of an appeal in this case. The tenant was utterly unable to enter upon an appeal. [Cries of "Order!"]
  MR. SPEAKER: The hon. Member is not putting a Question.
  MR. T. A. DICKSON: I wish to ask, in case the tenant decide not to appeal, whether the Government will be prepared to enter upon the matter, and relieve the tenants from the effect of the decision of the Court of Common Pleas?
  MR. GLADSTONE: With great respect to my hon. Friend, I own I have serious doubts as to the expediency of entering, at the present moment, into the consideration of these contingencies; and I do not think the matter can be advanced by further discussion in existing circumstances.

  PARLIAMENT — BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE—AGRICULTURAL HOLDINGS (ENGLAND) BILL.
  MR. HENEAGEasked the First Lord of the Treasury, Whether he can fix an early day for the Second Beading of the Agricultural Holdings Bill, in order that there may be a convenient time between the Second Reading and the Committee stages of the Bill without unnecessarily delaying its progress?
  MR. GLADSTONEsaid, he thought the week after next would be a very convenient period for many Members for taking the second reading of this Bill. Monday next was already engaged for the Estimates; and he was not able to say anything about Thursday until he saw that progress would be made in Supply to-night. He referred to the Notice Paper for Tuesday, and, without any disrespect to the subjects which appeared on the Paper, he was inclined to think it very probable that that evening might be practically free; and, if it could be arranged, his right hon. Friend (Mr. Dodson) would be glad to propose the second reading of the Agricultural Holdings Bill on that day.
  SIR STAFFORD NORTHCOTE: At the Evening Sitting?
  MR. GLADSTONE: Yes, Sir.
  LORD RANDOLPH CHURCHILLsubsequently asked whether the Prime Minister's proposal referred to Tuesday next only, or would apply to all Tuesdays?
  MR. GLADSTONEsaid, he was making no declaration one way or the other; he was speaking only in reference to the state of the Notice Paper.

  PARLIAMENT—RULES OF DEBATE— QUESTIONS.
  MR. STEWART MACLIVERasked the First Lord of the Treasury, If he will take into consideration whether the time has not arrived for revising the present system of putting Questions in the House, so as to limit the number of Questions at each sitting; and, whether, with a view to facilitate Public Business at the opening of the House, a new arrangement could be made for answering Questions?
  MR. O'DONNELL,at the same time, asked whether it was the intention of the Government also to consider whether the time had not arrived for revising the present system of giving answers to Questions.
  MR. GLADSTONE: I do not think it would be expedient that I should re-open, at the present moment, this important part of the question of Procedure.

  PARLIAMENT — BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE —PARLIAMENTARY ELECTIONS (CORRUPT AND ILLEGAL PRACTICES) BILL.
  MR. GORSTasked, Whether it was still the intention of the Government to proceed with the Corrupt Practices Bill?
  MR. GLADSTONE: I am not aware that there over was any doubt as to the intention of the Government to proceed with that Bill.

  PARLIAMENT — BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE—NATIONAL DEBT BILL.
  SIR STAFFORD NORTHCOTEasked, When the Government intended to proceed with the second reading of the National Debt Bill; and why the Bill had not been delivered to Members?
  THE CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUER (Mr. CHILDERS)replied, in terms of his answer just before the Recess, that full Notice would be given before this Bill was proceeded with. He hoped

  783
  the Bill would be circulated almost immediately.

  MADAGASCAR—BOMBARDMENT OF MAYUNGA.
  MR. W. E. FORSTER: There is a Question I should be glad to ask the Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs. There is a rumour, which I have heard with regret, to the effect that a port in Madagascar has been bombarded by the French Fleet. I would like to know if the Government have any information about it?
  LORD EDMOND FITZMAURICE: In reply to my right hon. Friend, I cannot do better than read a telegram handed to me a few minutes ago, just as I was leaving the Foreign Office. It is from Colonel Miles, our Agent at Zanzibar, and is as follows: —
  "Bombardment of Mayunga took place on the 16th, and lasted six hours; force then landed under cover of guns and took possession. Hovas Suffered great loss; French none. Admiral returned Mayotte, leaving garrison."
  I may add that Mayunga is a port and town on the North-West Coast of Madagascar; and Mayotte is an Island already in French possession.

  TURKEY—THE NEW TARIFF.
  MR. ARTHUR ARNOLDasked the Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, Whether he could give the House any information in reference to the important telegram which had appeared in The Times and other newspapers concerning the Commercial Treaty with Turkey?
  LORD EDMOND FITZMAURICE: Sir, the statement in The Times to which my hon. Friend refers is practically correct. Her Majesty's Chargé d' Affaires at Constantinople received, on the 31st of March, an assurance from the Turkish Minister for Foreign Affairs that the Tariff of 1861 would remain in force till the end of September next, pending further commercial negotiations between this country and Turkey. On the 18th instant, however, Her Majesty's Chargé d' Affaires received a Note from the Porte, stating that it was their intention to levy forthwith an ad valorem duty of 8 per cent on all imports. Her Majesty's Government have since been informed that this duty is now being imposed. Mr. Wyndham has addressed a formal protest to the Porte on the subject.

  ARMY (AUXILIARY FORCES)—USE BY THE VOLUNTEERS OF THE BUTTS AT WORMWOOD SCRUBS.
  ADMIRAL EGERTONasked the Secretary of State for War a Question of which he had given him private Notice— Whether the butts at Wormwood Scrubs were to be permanently closed, so as to deprive the Volunteers of their use?
  THE MARQUESS OF HARTINGTONsaid, the private Notice to which the hon. and gallant Member had referred was given him as he entered the House. He could hardly be expected to know what was going on at Wormwood Scrubs; but he would endeavour to obtain information on the point before the Volunteer Vote came on.

  PREVENTION OF CRIME (IRELAND) ACT, 1882—SEIZURE OF THE "KERRY SENTINEL."
  MR. PARNELLasked the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, If he could give the House any information with regard to the reported seizure of the printing presses, the type, and the premises of The Kerry Sentinel, the seizure of the issue that was in course of being printed, the arrest of the printer and manager of the paper, and the occupation of the premises for several days by an armed police force, an occupation which, as regarded a portion of the premises, was, he believed, still in operation, and by which three issues of the newspaper were prevented from being printed?
  COLONEL KING-HARMANsaid, he would wish to ask the right hon. Gentleman, at the same time, if he would be prepared to lay on the Table of the House a copy of the article which appeared in The Kerry Sentinel, and which was reported to have formed the basis of the action by the Government?
  MR. HARRINGTONasked, also, whether any such article as the hon. and gallant Member alluded to had appeared in The Kerry Sentinel; and whether it was in consequence of such an article that the course referred to was taken against the paper?
  MR. TREVELYAN: Sir, the reports which have appeared in the newspapers regarding the seizure of The Kerry Sentinel were obviously so important that I came down to the House provided with extremely full information with regard

  785
  to the whole affair. Since, however, I came to the House I have received a telegram from Dublin, which, while not asking me to refrain from answering the Question, is of such a nature as to lead me to think that it would be in the interests of public order, and possibly in the interests of private individuals who may have charges brought against them, that I should not answer it, and that I should be wrong to enter into any details on the matter. I regret extremely, however, that I am not able to give the full answer to the Question which I came to the House prepared to give.
  MR. PARNELLwished to say, with reference to the refusal—which, he trusted, was only a temporary one—of the right hon. Gentleman to reply to the Question, that he should put a Question on the Notice Paper for next Monday.
  MR. TREVELYANsaid, he was quite prepared to give full information; but he should not be justified in doing so after receiving the telegram he had alluded to.
  MR. HARRINGTONsaid, he was interested in the question; and as it would appear from the answer of the right hon. Gentleman that he had some peculiar feelings of delicacy with regard to giving information, he wished to assure the right hon. Gentleman that he was perfectly prepared to meet any charge either in that House or out of it.
  MR. T. P. O'CONNORsaid, he did not wish to press the right hon. Gentleman to give any information which he had good reason for withholding; but the hon. and gallant Gentleman the Member for the County of Dublin (Colonel King-Harman) had asked a Question which was calculated to excite misapprehension, and to leave his hon. Friend near him (Mr. Harrington) under an unjust stigma. He would, therefore, ask the Chief Secretary, whether he was able to inform the House that the proceedings against The Kerry Sentinel were not based on any article which appeared in that newspaper; and whether the notice which appeared in it addressed to the "Invincibles" was not also published in, and copied from, The Times and other newspapers?
  MR. TREVELYAN: I am sorry to say that I feel bound to confine myself to the answer that I have already given; and in confining myself to that answer
  786
  I wish it to be understood that it is not intended to imply any charge against any individual whatever, either in the House or out of it. Still, I am quite certain that I ought not to answer this Question without more minute information from Dublin.

ORDERS OF THE DAY.

  SUPPLY—ARMY ESTIMATES.
  SUPPLY—considered in Committee.
  (In the Committee.)
  (1.)£56,000, Divine Service.
  MR. O'DONNELLsaid, that upon this question of the Vote for Divine Service, which made provision for Roman Catholic and other chaplains for Her Majesty's Forces, he wished to suggest that not only with advantage, but with justice, there ought to be an addition to the staff of Catholic chaplains, and that they ought to be permanently attached to the Service, so that, in case of necessity, they might follow the regiments abroad. The reason why he offered that suggestion to the noble Marquess the Secretary of State for War (the Marquess of Hartington) was that, under the present system, when Catholic soldiers were ordered abroad, and especially to India, they found themselves, in a large number of cases, practically deprived of the ministrations of clergymen who were able to converse with them on the most necessary topics in connection with their religion. He believed that the Vote now before the Committee made no provision for Catholic chaplains, in such cases, accompanying Catholic regiments from home for service in India; and he would strongly suggest to Her Majesty's Government—it was not in his power to propose an increase in the Estimate— but he would strongly suggest to Her Majesty's Government that they ought to take some steps to provide Catholic soldiers with adequate divine service, and with proper assistance, in the form of chaplains, for the performance of their religious duties when they left England, as well as when they were at home in England. He was aware that when Catholic soldiers left England and went to such a place as India, they found there, in numerous instances, a species of local chaplain or priest, who was appointed by the local government to sup-

  787
  ply the religious necessities of the Catholic troops. But he wished to point out to Her Majesty's Government that in 9 cases out of 10 that provision was utterly inadequate, and, in many instances, was merely nominal, for this reason—that owing to the want of Catholic chaplains accompanying the regiments who were able to speak the English language, the soldiers had to put up with the ministrations of Italian, Portuguese, and French priests, who, possessing a very scanty acquaintance with the English language, were unable to hear the confessions of the soldiers, or of their wives and children, and were unable to preach a sermon on Christian duty in intelligible English. On that account the difficulties of the Service were greatly increased among Catholic soldiers serving upon garrison duty in India, yet there was an unusually largo proportion of Catholic soldiers with their wives and children on foreign service. This was exceedingly hard upon the Irish soldiers. As the noble Marquess the Secretary of State for War would be able to inform himself, it was the practice, in accordance with old traditions, which had not yet been given up in the Army, to enforce an altogether excessive measure of foreign service upon Irish recruits. By the existing system in the Army, Irish recruits were passed in excessive numbers from the home battalions to the battalions ordered for foreign service; and, in that way, in proportion to the whole number of Catholics in the Army, there was always an excessive number of Catholics on service in India and at other foreign stations, the idea being, he supposed, that Irish soldiers would do bettor when they were as far as possible away from Ireland, having in view the state of government which Her Majesty's Advisers maintained, as a rule, in that country. This point must also be taken into consideration—that, even if there was no more than a proper proportion of Irish Catholic soldiers serving abroad, there should still be precautions taken that chaplains able to converse with, and preach to, and hear the confessions of, Catholic soldiers and their wives and families, should be provided in adequate numbers. But when there was a disproportion in the number of Catholic soldiers sent abroad, the grievance was undoubtedly
  788
  increased, and the injustice dealt out to such Catholic soldiers became much more apparent. He wished to point out to Her Majesty's Government that the difficulty of finding recruits in Ireland and in Irish Catholic centres for the Army was a difficulty that was recognized; because, as the noble Lord who now sat on the Front Opposition Bench, and who was, he believed, one of the Secretaries connected with the Army (Lord Eustace Cecil) under the late Government, had more than once pointed out that there was a distinct difficulty in obtaining recruits for the Army. Could there be a stronger reason, he would ask, why young Irish Catholics, brought up in religious principles, ought to object to enter the Army, than the knowledge that they were generally sent on foreign service in disproportionate numbers; and when they arrived abroad they found, in the vast majority of cases, no priest with whom they could enter into conversation, or from whom they could receive advice with regard to their spiritual condition? Of course, there was provision for the service of Mass; and the service of Mass being in Latin in all parts of the Catholic Church, except in Asia Minor and Poland, Catholic soldiers, accustomed to attend the service of Mass in their own country, could follow that service wherever it was performed. But, outside the service of Mass, there were a largo number of other duties intimately connected with the performance of Catholic worship and the fulfilment of the obligations of the Catholic Church, which required that the priest should be able to converse well with Catholic soldiers. Nothing could be more grotesque than the efforts of these foreign priests; no doubt, most worthy, zealous, and devout French, Italian, and Portuguese priests, appointed to fulfil the duty of Catholic chaplains in India and other places— nothing could be more grotesque than efforts to explain the simplest principles of the Catholic religion to the unfortunate military congregations committed to their charge. Of course, Her Majesty's Government took these chaplains from the ranks of the Roman Catholic missionaries; and, to a large extent, the Roman Catholic missionaries in these parts were supplied from the Propagandist Mission in Rome and elsewhere; and, from that reason, they

  789
  could not rely upon the persons so selected and so appointed conveying that which was necessary to be conveyed to Irish Catholic soldiers, and it was absolutely necessary to provide the means of furnishing Roman Catholic soldiers with priests who were able to preach to them, and to speak to them in their own tongue. He could assure Her Majesty's Government that complaints upon this head were being made privately everywhere throughout Ireland by Irish Catholic soldiers who had returned from India; and unless something was done to remove the grievance these complaints would take a, public form. No attention had hitherto been paid to the complaints of the men; and it was only natural that if this inattention was continued their grievances would become public eventually. There were many reasons why Her Majesty's Government, if they were desirous of bringing Irish recruits into the British Army, should exercise some care in regard to this point. He did not wish to do more now than to refer to the unfair portion of service abroad imposed upon the Irish recruits, apparently, simply because they were Irish; and, in the present case, he only referred to the matter in order to show the necessity of supplying Catholic soldiers ordered for foreign service with English chaplains. He did not intend to propose any reduction of the Vote, because his suggestion would really involve, if adopted, an increase; but he had raised the question upon this Vote, because, unless he did so, he did not well see how he could bring under the notice of the Government the absolute necessity of dealing with an actual and growing evil.
  COLONEL O'BEIRNEsaid, that he had served for some years in India, and he had visited almost every garrison and every station; but he had certainly found no difficulty in obtaining the services of a Roman Catholic chaplain who could speak English. There were only two occasions which he recollected in which there was any difficulty; and in one of those two instances the priest was an Italian. He thought the real grievance the Roman Catholic chaplains were under was, that they were not placed upon a footing of equality with the Protestant chaplains with regard to pensions and furlough. They received no pension whatever; and they were treated very unjustly in the matter of furlough, being
  790
  allowed no leave of absence. He certainly saw no reason why they should not be placed upon perfect equality with the Protestant chaplains, both as regarded pension and furlough; but he did not think there was very much force in the grievance suggested by the hon. Member for Dungarvan (Mr. O'Donnell), that they could not speak the English language. His own impression was that that was an entire misapprehension; but if it was really a fact, there could be no doubt that it was a very improper arrangement.
  MR. BLAKEsaid, he was personally able to corroborate fully the statement of his hon. Friend the Member for Dungarvan (Mr. O'Donnell) as to the hardships which English-speaking soldiers in India suffered in consequence of the inadequacy of the supply of English-speaking chaplains. The hon. and gallant Member for Leitrim (Colonel O'Beirne) stated that, according to his experience, all the Catholic chaplains in India spoke English. Now, he (Mr. Blake) ventured to think that his own experience of India was even more extensive than that of the hon. and gallant Gentleman. He had visited almost every cantonment from Lahore to Mysore; he had been in 25 or 30 cantonments at least; and he had taken great interest in the Roman Catholic soldiers, and in the manner in which provision was made for the performance of their religious duties. He had heard some of the sermons preached by the Roman Catholic chaplains; and he ventured to say that at least six out of seven of them were utterly unintelligible. They were preached by Italians, Frenchmen, Poles, and priests of other nationalities; and, although they were undoubtedly delivered in what was called English, if the chaplains had spoken in their own language, there would have been a far better chance of understanding them than there was from the attempt to speak in English. The soldiers complained very much of the great deprivation they were subjected to in not being supplied with priests whose ministrations they could understand; and the soldiers' wives complained of the same thing, and especially of the absence of religious instruction for their children by the chaplains, such instruction as was given being absolutely useless. It was also a matter of complaint that when the services of the priest was required at the

  791
  last moment by an English-speaking soldier, the comfort which he would have received from a chaplain who was able to speak his own language was altogether denied him. The Catholic Metropolitan in India was a Swiss, and all the Bishops were foreigners. He believed that, throughout the whole of India, there was not a single English or Irish Bishop; and the foreign Bishops naturally brought their own countrymen over. He entertained no doubt that, from what he had heard, there was a real and substantial grievance in not having English-speaking chaplains sent out with; the Catholic soldiers serving abroad; and he trusted that the noble Marquess the Secretary of State for War would consider the grievance, and listen to the representations which were made to him. If English-speaking chaplains were supplied, he believed it would afford great comfort to these men, and their wives and children, and that it would tend to increase the morality of the Army, and produce other good results.
  THE MARQUESS OF HARTINGTONsaid, the immediate question they had before them was the provision to be made for the administration of Divine Service to the troops on the Establishment of the Army. The respective proportions of members of the English Church and of Roman Catholics in the Army were 62 chaplains in the English Church, 17 Roman Catholics, and 7 Presbyterians. The hon. Member for Dungarvan (Mr. O'Donnell) had raised the question of the provision made for Roman Catholic chaplains in India. As the Committee were aware, they had nothing to do in those Estimates with any of the Indian military establishments. All the provisions of every kind for the Army in India were made and paid for by the Indian Treasury; and he almost doubted whether they were in Order, on that occasion, in discussing the question of the ministrations of Roman Catholic chaplains in India. Perhaps the hon. Member for Dungarvan (Mr. O'Donnell), and other hon. Members from Ireland, would recollect that when he (the Marquess of Hartington) was Secretary of State for India, he had, in answer to a Question, entered fully into the provision made for Roman Catholic chaplains; and he thought he was able to show that their condition had been considerably improved within recent years, and that the authorities there were not indisposed to
  792
  make a further improvement, if it were called for. The hon. Member had referred to the condition of Roman Catholic chaplains on board ship on the passage from this country to India. A correspondence had taken place between the India Office, the War Office, and the Admiralty upon this subject; and he found that the provision of Roman Catholic chaplains on board ship devolved upon the Admiralty; and he was not in a position to say whether it was done or not, or what was done. But when he was previously in Office it was certainly his own view that provision should be made. The hon. Gentleman also complained that there was a system also prevailing in the Army of imposing an undue proportion of foreign service upon Roman Catholic soldiers. That was the first time he (the Marquess of Hartington) had heard that allegation made; and he had no reason whatever to suppose that any disproportion whatever took place. He thought that if the hon. Member would look at The Army List he would see that it was not so. He quite agreed that, wherever it was practicable, the arrangements in connection with religious ministrations should be so made that the clergymen appointed would be able to converse with the soldiers in a language they could understand; and if the hon. Member would refer to the answer he had given upon that subject when he was at the India Office he would find that the matter had not been neglected.
  COLONEL COLTHURSTsaid, he would like to say a word upon the statement of the noble Marquess the Secretary of State for War in reference to the present position of the matter. He recognized the disposition of the noble Marquess to deal with the question in the fairest possible way; but he wished to point out that, although the position of the Roman Catholic chaplains might be better now in India than it was some years ago, yet that, nevertheless, it was very inferior to that of the Protestant chaplains. In the case of the Protestant chaplains, provision was made for granting a furlough of two months. Now, a furlough of some kind was absolutely necessary; and although for two months the Protestant chaplain could go on furlough, and the Department paid for his substitute, there was no such provision made in the case of the Roman Catholic chaplain. He thought the question of

  793
  furlough ought to be looked into again by the Indian Government, with the view of placing the Roman Catholic chaplain upon nearly, if not entirely, a footing of equality with his Protestant brethren. He was sorry to hear the depreciation of the Roman Catholic chaplains serving in India which had been indulged in by the hon. Member for Dungarvan (Mr. O'Donnell) from the Irish Benches. He believed that nothing of the kind was felt by the soldiers, who had benefited by the ministrations of these reverend gentlemen, nor was it the feeling of the authorities in India. There might be instances in which Italian, French, or Polish priests were unable to speak the English language well; but, as a rule, he believed the services of the Roman Catholic chaplains had been very valuable, and were fully appreciated by the soldiers. As far as he could learn, the chief matters of complaint were that the Roman Catholic chaplains were not sufficiently paid, and that they were not allowed a substitute when proceeding on furlough.
  GENERAL SIR GEORGE BALFOURsaid, he had never known a single military station in India where the services of Roman Catholic chaplains had not been available for the European troops there located. A more devoted set of men than these priests, he was bound to state, he had never known; and as regarded the implied assertion that the priests were on the same footing as chaplains of the Episcopal and Presbyterian Churches, he was surprised to find that the hon. Member for Dungarvan (Mr. O'Donnell), who was generally so well informed upon Indian subjects, was not better informed upon this matter when he put forward such an idea. If there were any difficulties in India, they arose, he was afraid, out of difference of opinion in the Roman Catholic Church itself. The priests were still declared to be wholly subject to the orders of the Bishop, and not disposable at the orders of the Government. They were not, then, servants of the State, being removed and posted at the will of the Bishop. That was a source of more trouble and discontent than the difficulty of understanding or appreciating the services rendered by the Roman Catholic chaplains. Then, also, there were the rival pretensions of the French and Portuguese Sees in India, in opposition to the Irish Roman Catholic Bishops.
  794
  The latter were supposed to be viewed with far less favour by the Pope than the other Sees were.
  MR. O'SHEAinquired whether any appointments of Roman Catholic chaplains were made after consultation with the Irish Bishops?
  MR. O'DONNELLsaid, he had raised the question for the purpose of drawing the attention of the House to a very important subject; and it was a question upon which he certainly expected to have obtained some amount of sympathy from so good a Catholic as the hon. and gallant Member who represented the County of Cork (Colonel Colthurst). He had brought forward the question for the sole purpose of securing that the Catholic soldiers in India should be provided with chaplains who would fully attend to their religious duties; and he had not said a single word against the worthy and admirable Catholic priests who at present performed these functions in India, except that, in many cases, they were Italians and Portuguese, and were imperfectly acquainted with the English language. He therefore failed to see the applicability of the words the hon. and gallant Member had, no doubt, in advertently used, when he spoke of him (Mr. O'Donnell), and of the denunciation of the priests coming from the Irish Benches. Perhaps, however, the hon. and gallant Member had made that speech in order that his words might be reported by the faithful Errington, as part of the ambassadorial mission confided to that hon. Member by Her Majesty's Government. It would, at least, be equally trustworthy with many other things the faithful Errington had been instructed to pour into the ears of the Roman Propaganda. He admitted the readiness which the noble Marquess (the Marquess of Hartington) had displayed in dealing with some of the grievances of the Catholic chaplains in India; but that was not the question he had brought forward that night. He was glad to hear an admission from the other side of the House that there was still much in the condition of the Catholic, chaplains in India that required improvement. The question he had raised related solely to the inadequate number of Roman Catholic chaplains supplied in India who could speak the English language fluently and distinctly, and in a manner suited to the understanding of their Roman Catholic congregations.

  795
  The noble Marquess the Secretary of State for War pointed out that the present system of supplying Roman Catholic chaplains was entirely a matter for the Government of India and the Catholic Church in India; but that was one of the strongest arguments that could be brought forward in support of his (Mr. O'Donnell's) contention. He had suggested that, under the existing system, there was much that was capable of improvement; and, in those respects, he had suggested an improvement. Insomuch as they had no means of dealing with the Government of India, he proposed that a permanent staff of Catholic chaplains should be sent out, and also that there should be a sufficient increase to allow of additional chaplains being kept to minister to the wants of Catholic soldiers in those cases—unfortunately too numerous—in which English-speaking chaplains were not at the disposal of the Government of India, or the ecclesiastical authorities in India. Unquestionably, unless they could increase the strength of the Government chaplains from this end, there was very little chance of increasing the number at the other end; and that was why he had brought forward the question on the present Vote, which dealt with the provision for Divine Service. If there was an increase in the number of Catholic chaplains sent out to India, they would be available wherever they were wanted; and he believed that there would not be any hesitation on the part of most worthy men in Ireland and in this country to go out to India, in case of necessity, for that purpose. In regard to the differences between different sections of the Catholic Church, to which the hon. and gallant Member for Kincardineshire (Sir George Balfour) referred, he believed they were much less important than the hon. and gallant Member appeared to think; and if any differences of that kind required to be smoothed over, why not transport the faithful Errington to India? This was a very important question; and although it was in the power of the noble Marquess the Secretary of State for War to say that, strictly speaking, they could not go into details upon the matter on the present Vote, still the fact was widely known to hon. Members representing Ireland that the difficulty in providing Catholic chaplains to minister to the spiritual wants of Catholic soldiers serv-
  796
  ing abroad greatly increased the difficulty of recruiting the Army in Ireland. In the case of the Protestant chaplains, the Government was able to find English-speaking clergymen in abundance; and there could be no difficulty as to their power of speaking to Protestant soldiers in a language that was intelligible to them. If the Government found any difficulty in providing English-speaking chaplains from England, he could assure them they would get plenty of volunteers from the ranks of the Irish Catholic priesthood. He trusted, therefore, that more attention would be paid to the matter than appeared to have been done hitherto, if he might judge from the speech of the noble Marquess the Secretary of State for War. He had been glad to hear the noble Marquess express indignation at the idea of sending out an undue proportion of Irish Catholic soldiers abroad; but, although the noble Marquess doubted the fact, he (Mr. O'Donnell) was satisfied that it was correct. That, however, was not the time to enter into details; but he would be prepared to give details, either privately to the noble Marquess, or in any debate which might be raised in the House. The evil had been growing for some time, and attention required to be paid to it. Although there could be no doubt of the admiration felt for the fighting qualities of Irish soldiers, he, for one, thought that a fair chance ought to be given to their valorous fellow-citizens from England and Scotland for doing their duty also.
  SIR ARTHUR HAYTERsaid, he wished to state, in answer to the question of the hon. Member for Clare (Mr. O'Shea), that the Roman Catholic chaplains were named by the Roman Catholic Bishops, and not by the Government. He was afraid that in discussing the Vote the Committee had rather strayed away from the subject before them, because the question of chaplains in India formed no part of it. He might observe, however, that there was no foundation in fact for the statement that there was any disproportion between the number of Roman Catholic chaplains, in comparison with the number of Roman Catholic soldiers, and those of other religious denominations. The total number of Protestant soldiers, according to the last annual Return, was 60,000, and the number of chaplains was 62; the number of

  797
  Catholic soldiers was 18,000, and the number of Roman Catholic chaplains 17; the number of Presbyterian soldiers was 7,500, and the number of Presbyterian chaplains 7. One-fifth of the soldiers were Roman Catholic, and one-fifth of the entire number of chaplains were also Roman Catholics. As a matter of fact, the proportion was about one chaplain to every 1,000 soldiers in each case. He might add that an additional Roman Catholic chaplain had recently been appointed at Gibraltar. He could assure the hon. Member for Dungarvan (Mr. O'Donnell) that the matter should be further looked into by the War Office and the Secretary of State for India; and if there was anything to complain of a remedy should be found. He hoped the hon. Member would be satisfied with that assurance, and would now allow the Vote to be taken.
  MR. BLAKEsaid, he wished to say a word in regard to the observations which the hon. and gallant Member for the County of Cork (Colonel Colthurst) had addressed against himself (Mr. Blake) and his hon. Friend the Member for Dungarvan (Mr. O'Donnell). The hon. and gallant Member spoke of their denunciation of the Catholic priests in India. That observation was most unwarrantable and unjust. There had been no denunciation of any kind. His hon. Friend and himself had spoken in becoming terms of these excellent, zealous, and holy men; and the only thing they had said in relation to them, as a matter of objection, was that they were indifferent English scholars. He believed it was a fact that a considerable number of the chaplains who attended to the religious wants of the troops spoke indifferent English, and some of them hardly any English at all. He remembered, on one occasion, being in company with a Polish priest on the Indus, who was fulfilling the duties of chaplain to the Roman Catholic soldiers, though he did not speak a word of English. He was, nevertheless, a most excellent man; and he (Mr. Blake) only instanced the case as an illustration of a good many ones of a similar character. A great number of Poles and Frenchmen had gone out to India from the most laudable motives, in consequence of the persecution against the Roman Catholic priesthood in Poland and Franco. That persecution had been the cause of a very large number of foreign priests
  798
  going out to India; and many of them, to his own knowledge, hardly spoke one word of English. Their sermons, owing to this cause—although he had no wish to speak of them with the slightest disrespect—were sometimes positively ridiculous. The soldiers and their wives frequently complained to him that some of the chaplains could not give consolation to the dying, or instruction to the children, in consequence of not knowing their language sufficiently. The only question raised by his hon. Friend the Member for Dungarvan (Mr. O'Donnell) had reference to the inadequacy of the number of English-speaking chaplains. There was, however, another question which had also been raised, which ought to receive the attention of Her Majesty's Government; and that was the insufficiency of the pay received by the Roman Catholic chaplains.
  THE CHAIRMANpointed out that the present Vote had no reference to that question.
  MR. ARTHUR O'CONNORthought that this was a question which would be much more properly discussed upon the Indian Estimates; and he trusted that the hon. Member for Dungarvan (Mr. O'Donnell) would bring it up when those Estimates were before the House. The hon. Baronet (Sir Arthur Hayter) had stated that there was this year an addition to the list of Roman Catholic chaplains, and that a new chaplain had been appointed at Gibraltar. He would suggest to the hon. Gentleman the desirability and propriety of also establishing an English-speaking Catholic chaplain at Aden. He had more than once heard from officers coming back from India and China with sick Catholic soldiers—either going down the Red Sea to Aden, or coming from the Persian Gulf—who could obtain no religious consolation, because there was no English-speaking priest at that station. On many occasions officers had clubbed together, and, at their own expense, sent out mules and donkey boys in search of a priest who lived in the country some miles from Aden, in order to bring him to minister to the spiritual wants of some dying English or Irish soldier. The Portuguese chaplain was not sufficiently conversant with the English language, and, therefore, the services of a Roman Catholic chaplain were practically nil. He believed he had brought this matter before the Government on previous

  799
  occasions; but he had not heard that anything had been done in regard to it, and it was, unquestionably, a very great hardship. The men were expected to; fight like heroes in maintaining our Empire in India; and in return they were allowed to die like dogs, without the religious ministrations which were allowed to their Protestant countrymen.
  COLONEL COLTHURSTsaid, he, wished to say a word in reply to the remarks which had fallen from the hon. Member for Waterford (Mr. Blake). He was sorry if he had wounded the hon. Gentleman's susceptibilities; and he would substitute the word "depreciation" for "denunciation." His hon. Friend said that he (Colonel Colthurst) knew nothing of the subject; but he had been many years in the Army, and had spoken a great deal upon this matter to officers and men who had been in India, and who knew quite as much about the matter as the hon. Member did. He had found very few complaints of want of knowledge of the English language on the part of the Roman Catholic chaplains; and the best remedy for that would be to make more liberal arrangements. As regarded the question of chaplains on board the troop ships, the noble Marquess the Secretary of State for War said it was a matter for the Admiralty. It had been brought under the notice of the Admiralty; and it had been passed on from the Admiralty to the War Office, from the War Office to the India Office, I then from the India Office to the Admiralty back again, and so on, back-wards and forwards. He thought there would be no real difficulty if these Departments would lay their heads together, and come to a conclusion as to the provision that was necessary. Ships were constantly coming home with invalids, and they ought to be accompanied by a Roman Catholic priest speaking the English language. He hoped his hon. Friend the Financial Secretary for War would give an assurance that this important subject would be taken into consideration, and brought under the notice of the Secretaries of State for the different Departments.
  MR. HARRINGTONsaid, that, although the hon. and gallant Member for Cork (Colonel Colthurst) had made an explanation of his previous remark, he was a little unfortunate in the word
  800
  he had substituted for "denunciation." He had used the word "depreciation," which was quite as little called for. There had been no attempt whatever, on the part of his hon. Friends on those Benches, to depreciate the character of the Roman Catholic priesthood who ministered to the wants of Roman Catholic soldiers in India. There could be no depreciation in saying that a man who was not born in England, and had had no opportunity of learning the English language, did not speak that language thoroughly. The hon. and gallant Member had had no personal experience of his own; but, nevertheless, he gave his opinion in opposition to the experience gathered by his hon. Friend the Member for Waterford (Mr. Blake) on the spot, which was, that the want of English-speaking Catholic chaplains was largely complained of by the Roman Catholic soldiers as a very great grievance. As to the differences of opinion among the Roman Catholic Bishops in India which the hon. and gallant Member opposite (Sir George Balfour) had hinted at, he could assure him that he had mistaken for jealousy and difference of opinion that which was a principle of discipline in the Catholic Church. There was no doubt the subject was somewhat involved, and that difficulties laid in the way of a satisfactory arrangement; but these were matters which might easily be taken in hand and got over. The proposal of the hon. and gallant Member for Cork (Colonel Colthurst) was, that the only way to meet the difficulty was to send out to India chaplains from this country; but the question was one of Church discipline, and the Bishops were very jealous of their rights, and he doubted whether they would feel disposed, to give facilities to chaplains who were sent out, not by the Ecclesiastical Body, but by Her Majesty's Government. It would be better, he thought, to communicate with the Bishops in India, and see whether they would not find it worth their while to keep, at the principal stations where soldiers were placed, a certain number of English-speaking chaplains. He had no doubt that the Bishops would be glad to co-operate with the Indian Government, and would gladly bring English-speaking chaplains, when the necessity arose, into communication with English-speaking soldiers serving in any part of their Bishoprics.
  MR. BRANDsaid, the hon. Member for the Queen's County (Mr. Arthur O'Connor) had raised a question as to the appointment of a Roman Catholic chaplain at Aden, so that soldiers coming home from India should have the ministrations of a Roman Catholic chaplain at that place, if it were found necessary. The appointment of a Roman Catholic chaplain would rest with the Indian Government, and he would take care that the attention of the Secretary of State for India was drawn to the statement which had been made. There was one point in the remarks of the hon. Member for Dungarvan (Mr. O'Donnell) which he ought to refer to. The hon. Member contended that a distinction was drawn between English and Irish soldiers with regard to service abroad. Now, it was quite impossible that such a distinction could be drawn in selecting soldiers for foreign service, because they were sent by roster, and it was quite a chance whether they were English, Irish or Scotch. He could assure the hon. Member that if any case of the kind could be pointed out to his noble Friend the Secretary of State for War, it would be visited with the most severe censure. He trusted that, after this explanation, the House would be allowed to proceed with the Vote.
  MR. BIGGARsaid, he believed it to be a fact that the number of Irish Catholic soldiers in the Army sent out for service abroad was much larger, in proportion to their total number, than either English or Scotch soldiers. If chaplains were attached to a particular regiment, then they would go from place to place with the regiment. That would be a great advantage, because the chaplain would become acquainted with the different members of the regiment to which he was attached, and the result would be that he would have complete control over the men, and a knowledge of their different peculiarities of character. It appeared to him that the present system was so arranged as to provide the Army with chaplains in the worst manner that could be fixed upon. The Government sent out troops to India without chaplains at all, and then they provided no proper remuneration for the services of the clergymen they employed in India. If the English or Irish Bishops were asked to recommend chaplains, there would be no difficulty in
  802
  obtaining the services of English-speaking chaplains, notwithstanding that the persons sent out would necessarily be deprived of preferment, and of all chance of becoming public men. It certainly seemed to him that the present system of supplying chaplains who could not speak a word of English to English-speaking soldiers was most absurd. He agreed with his hon. Friend the Member for Dungarvan (Mr. O'Donnell) as to the importance of giving instruction to the children of soldiers in the Army; but it was perfectly impossible that the children could receive any instruction from chaplains who could not speak a word of English. It was very well known that the men who enlisted in the Army were, as a rule, men possessed of a small amount of education, and especially of a small amount of religious education. It was, therefore, most desirable that the influence which proper chaplains could exercise over such men should be brought to bear, so that the men themselves might be benefited in their moral life. Even from a selfish point of view, that was a most desirable object for the Government to attain, seeing that it would make the men less likely to get into difficulties and misconduct themselves. The more highly trained a man's moral and religious principles were, the less probable it was that he would be led away by bad companions, and be guilty of breaches of discipline and other misconduct. This was not the first time the question had been raised, both in regard to the Army and the Navy, and, on the last occasion, many promises had been made by the Government of future improvement. Those promises, nevertheless, had been constantly broken, and no substantial improvement had taken place. He thought the best course would be for his hon. Friend to move the rejection of the whole of the Vote, in order to see if the Government were not able to make some substantial bonâ fide promise, of which some account might be taken. Until that was done, he entertained no sanguine anticipation of being able to see any real reform effected, and no satisfactory settlement could be arrived at until a substantial promise could be extorted from the Government.
  MR. O'DONNELLsaid, that in regard to the establishment of a sufficient number of chaplains, he would remind

  803
  the Government that by the scheme now in force in the Army there was an opportunity of entirely recasting the method of appointing chaplains, because, under the scheme for the localization of the Army into practically three Armies, an English, a Scotch, and an Irish Army, the Irish Army would be almost entirely composed of Catholics, and it would be only natural for the Irish regiments to take Catholic chaplains with them whenever they were ordered for service abroad. He thought it would not be very difficult to come to a permanent arrangement with the Catholic ecclesiastical authorities, by means of which special faculties would be granted to the Roman Catholic chaplains appointed to the Irish Catholic regiments. He did not know whether the formation of the Army into three Divisions was actually contemplated under the original scheme—"Childers' scheme," as it was called—but, if so, they would soon have a substantial Irish Army, and it would then be economical, as well as expedient, to supply the Army directly with chaplains. It might be a little too soon to carry out a scheme of that kind in the present year; but, in the course of a very few years, the progress of localization would make it incumbent upon the Government to consider the existence of a separate and distinct Irish Army, and to legislate for it.
  Vote agreed to.
  (2.) £36,900, Administration of Military Law.
  COLONEL ALEXANDERsaid, he desired to call the attention of the Committee and of the right hon. and learned Gentleman the Judge Advocate General (Mr. Osborne Morgan) to the very large number of sentences by general courts martial of penal servitude which had been carried out last year in the Army stationed in the United Kingdom, no trusted that the right hon. and learned Gentleman would be able to give some explanation of the cause of this increase of the number of sentences of penal servitude inflicted last year over the year 1881. Whereas, in the year 1881, only 11 sentences of penal servitude were carried out in the Army at homo, in the year 1882, no fewer than 86 sentences of penal servitude were inflicted, or eight times as many as in 1881. In point of fact, nearly as many sentences
  804
  were carried out in the Army at home as were carried out both in the Army at home and abroad together in the year 1881. He must remind the Committee that at home only one description of court martial—namely, a general court martial—could pass a sentence of penal servitude, and, in former times, it was seldom ever necessary to have recourse to so high a Court. He, therefore, thought it did not speak much for the conduct of the Army at home last year, that it had been found necessary so frequently to hold a general court martial with a view of obtaining sentences of penal servitude. They had heard a great deal lately about the better class of recruits they were now obtaining in the Army. The fact he had just mentioned seemed rather to belie that statement. He did not speak of minor courts martial, such as district and regimental courts martial, of which there were a considerable number, seeing that the test of the discipline of a regiment was not exactly the number of courts martial in the Court Martial Returns, because he knew that very many commanding officers abstained from trying a man when they ought try him by court martial, merely in order that he might be able to point to a clean court martial sheet; but a general court martial was quite another thing. When sentences of penal servitude were passed, and carried out, the soldier in fact became lost to the Army, and was virtually expelled from Her Majesty's Service. He, therefore, hoped his right hon. and learned Friend the Judge Advocate General would be able to give some explanation of the very large number of 86 sentences of penal servitude which had been carried out in the Army stationed in the United Kingdom.
  THE JUDGE ADVOCATE GENERAL (Mr. OSBORNE MORGAN)said, he was glad that his hon. and gallant Friend (Colonel Alexander) had asked the question, because it gave him an opportunity of contradicting a statement which had been made in the public papers in regard to the Return to which his hon. and gallant Friend referred. It was quite true that the number of sentences of penal servitude had been very much increased during the last year, but that was because penal servitude had this year been awarded for offences for which only imprisonment was

  805
  awarded formerly—namely, offences under the 32nd section of the Army Regulation Act with reference to enlistment in the Force after having been discharged with disgrace. Formerly, that offence was punished by imprisonment only, and the offenders were tried by district court martial; but, in consequence of the frequency of the offence, it had been thought proper—he said nothing as to the justice or policy of the change—to try the men by general court martial, for the purpose of giving them penal servitude. The offence itself had decreased, but the severity of the punishment had increased. With one single exception, the Return, so far from showing an increase of crime, showed a remarkable decrease of crime. He had taken some pains to get the figures accurately, and he had compared them with those of previous years. The figures were these. Number of courts martial at home of all kinds in 1881, 9,451; in 1882, 8,319; number of offences for which men were tried at home in 1881, 13,324; in 1882, 11,927; showing a reduction of about 11 per cent. But that did not represent the whole of the decrease during that time, because the total average strength of the Army at home was larger than it was in the previous year. The total average strength of the Army at home, in the year 1881, was only 87,982; whereas in 1882, it was 90,075, showing a 2 per cent increase in the number of men in the Army, which must be added to the percentage of decrease in the number of punishments, thus showing a reduction of rather more than 13 per cent. What was even more satisfactory was, that there had been a reduction almost everywhere, with only a single exception, in every kind of crime. For instance, the number of desertions had fallen from 1,393 in 1881 to 1,383 in 1882. That was not a very large reduction, but still it was a reduction. The offences against enlistment regulations were in 1881, 1,133; in 1882, 854, showing a largo diminution of cases of drunkenness on duty; there were in 1881, 1,004; and in 1882, 969; of simple cases of drunkenness, in 1881, 932; in 1882, 800; of cases of making away with necessaries, which was a very common offence, there were, in 1881, 2,212; in 1882, 1,873; of cases of absence without leave, in 1881, 1,871; and in 1882, 1,634. He gave these
  806
  figures, because he thought they were important, as showing that there had been a substantial decrease in almost every kind of crime in the Army. He was very glad to have had an opportunity of giving this explanation, because a certain class of writers had attempted to make out that the conduct of the Army was going from bad to worse, and he thought the figures he had given afforded a strong proof that the charge was not only unpatriotic but untrue.
  SIR WALTER B. BARTTELOTsaid, he had fully intended to reserve the remarks he was about to make until a subsequent Vote was reached; but, as the right hon. and learned Gentleman the Judge Advocate General (Mr. Osborne Morgan) had gone very closely into the question of punishments, he was bound to take the present opportunity of saying that as he could not agree with the figures the right hon. and learned Gentleman had put forward, he must, therefore, demur to the statement he had just made. With the permission of the Committee, he would give the numbers of courts martial, and the various punishments inflicted in the Army, taken from the annual Returns, the only source of information on the subject. He had taken great trouble to compare accurately the Returns of 1872, and those of 1877, the medium year, with the Returns for the year 1881, and with the Return in respect of the Army at home for 1882. They had not received any Return from abroad for the year 1882, and why that Return had not been produced by the right hon. and learned Gentleman, who knew all that was taking place with regard to this matter, he was quite unable to conceive. He was certainly of opinion that the Return in question should have been laid upon the Table of the House, because upon the thorough understanding of this subject depended the efficiency and well-being of the British Army. It was professed that we had a better class of men, that crime had diminished, in short, that in our Army we had everything that could be required. He had no wish to depreciate anything that had been done. This was no Party question, and whatever he might have to say upon it now, and in the future, would be in the interest of the Service and the country alone. The result of his comparison was very different from that arrived at

  807
  by the right hon. and learned Gentleman the Judge Advocate General, for what did he find? In 1872, the number of courts martial at home was 9,408; in 1877, 11,145; increase 18 per cent; in 1881, 10,706, increase 14 per cent; in 1882, 9,243, decrease 2 per cent over the number in 1872. In 1872, the number of courts martial abroad was 5,924; in 1877, 5,792; in 1881, 7,621. He was bound to admit that, under this head—court martials at home— there had been a decrease last year; but it was a very small one indeed. In 1872, the number of desertions and offences relating to enlistment at home was 2,271; in 1877, 3,211, increase 41 per cent; in 1881, 2,871, increase 26 per cent; in 1882, 2,402, increase 6 per cent over 1872. In 1872, the number of desertions and offences relating to enlistment abroad was 206; in 1877, 285, increase 38 per cent; in 1881, 280, increase 36 per cent over 1872. The number of cases of violence to superiors, insubordination, and neglect of orders at home in the year 1872 was 1,153; in 1877, 3,777; in 1881, 1,862, increase 61 per cent; in 1882, 1810, increase 57 per cent over 1872. The number of cases under this head abroad was for 1872, 898; 1877, 900; and in 1881, 1,502, or an increase of 67 per cent over 1872. The number of offences under the head of quitting or sleeping on post at home for the year 1872 was 202; for 1877, 255, increase 26 per cent; 1881, 380, increase 88 percent; in 1882, 322, increase 59 per cent over 1872. Oases of drunkenness on duty at home were 470 in 1872; 747 in 1877, increase 59 per cent; 1,232 in 1881, increase 162 percent, and 1,077 in 1882, or an increase of 129 per cent over the number in 1872. ["No, no!"] The right hon. and learned Gentleman seemed to signify some doubt as to the accuracy of these Returns; but if they were inaccurate, he would ask what was the use of publishing these delusive volumes every year. He came now to cases of ordinary drunkenness at home, of which there were 1,000 in 1872; 1,419 in 1877, increase 42 per cent; 1,059 in 1881, increase 6 per cent; 889 in 1882, decrease 11 per cent as compared with 1872. He was very glad to have reached a point at which he could corroborate the statement of the right hon. and learned Gentleman. The number of cases of
  808
  disgraceful conduct at home in 1872 was 403; 659 in 1877, increase 65 per cent; 33 J in 1881, decrease 16 per cent; and 324 in 1882, or a decrease from the number in 1872 of 36 per cent. In the case of the offence of absence without leave, the result was very much the same, there having been a decrease of 33 per cent for the year 1882 as compared with 1872. Under the head of making away with necessaries there were at home 2,038 offences in 1872; 4,255 in 1877, increase 109 per cent; 2,627 in 1881; and 2,081 in 1882, increase of 2 per cent. The Committee should understand that he had made these calculations upon an average of 100,000 not upon the exact number of men in the Army, so as to avoid unnecessary difficulty, as the Army in 1872 was 99,306. He now came to the punishments inflicted of penal servitude. There were at home in 1872 12 cases; 16 in 1877; 12 in 1881, and 86 in 1882. Of penal servitude inflicted abroad there were 59 cases in 1872; 35 in 1877; in 1881, no fewer than 87, or an increase over the number in 1872 of 47 per cent. In 1872, the number of cases of reduction to the ranks was at home 1,001; 1,171 in 1877; 1,830 in 1881, increase 83 percent; and in 1882, there were 1,337 cases; or an increase of 34 per cent over the number in 1872. The number of cases of this kind abroad were 1,131 in 1872; 915 in 1877; and 1,582 in 1881, or an increase of 40 per cent as compared with the number in 1872. In 1872, the number of cases of reduction to the ranks with imprisonment was 81; 169 in 1877, increase 102 per cent; 293 in 1881, increase 260 per cent; and in 1882, there were 219 cases, or an increase of 170 per cent as compared with the number in 1872. It might be said that corporal punishment had nothing to do with the matter. But it was in force in 1872, and certainly existed abroad in 1877, although the Returns for those years were absolutely nil. In 1872, the number of solitary confinements and imprisonments at home were 5,018; 9,381 in 1877; 8,161 in 1881; and in 1882 they were 7,272, which represented an increase of 45 per cent over the number in 1872. Under this head, abroad, there were 4,161 in 1872, 4,315 in 1877, and 5,206 in 1881. Having gone through the Returns of punishments for serious offences, he

  809
  would not trouble the Committee with a comparison of the numbers in the case of minor punishments. He could not, however, help thinking that if anyone would take the trouble to read an article which appeared in The Times with regard to punishments in the Army, he would come to the conclusion, notwithstanding the anxiety of the right hon. and learned Gentleman the Judge Advocate General to show there had been a decrease of crime, that the small decrease which had taken place in some instances did not tell favourably for the soldiers, when we took into account the great advantages that had been bestowed upon the Service, and from which great results had been expected.
  THE JUDGE ADVOCATE GENERAL (Mr. OSBORNE MORGAN)said, that having again compared the Returns for 1882 with those for the year 1881, he was in a position to state to the Committee that the account he had given of the state of crime in the Army, before the hon. and gallant Baronet opposite (Sir Walter B. Barttelot) rose, was absolutely accurate. He pointed out that the Return for 1882 was necessarily incomplete, because it only referred to soldiers serving at home. The Returns showed a diminution of every description of crime. The total number of offences committed by soldiers at home in 1881 was 13,324; whereas in 1882, it was 11,927. The total number of home courts martial in 1881 was 9,421, as against 8,393 in 1882, showing a decrease of 11 per cent, or, taking into account the increased number of men then on home service, a diminution of 13 per cent. If the hon. and gallant Baronet would look at page 49 of the Report for 1881, he would find the number of courts martial held since 1868 had been decreasing, and it would appear that, so far as it went, the Return for 1882 was smaller than for any other year, except one, since that date. In 1868, there were held at home 12,701 courts martial, and though they subsequently fell, they rose again in 1877 to 10,870; in 1878, to 11,751; in 1879, they fell to 9,729; in 1880, to 9,108; in 1881, they were 9,421; and in 1882, they stood at 8,319. He thought these figures would bear out the statement he had made, that, with the single exception of one year, the number of courts martial held in the United Kingdom last year was the smallest on record.
  LORD EUSTACE CECILsaid, he thought his hon. and gallant Friend (Sir Walter B. Barttelot) had done good service in drawing attention to the Returns furnished to the House on the subject of Army offences and punishments. He (Lord Eustace Cecil) would not, however, go into the question between his hon. and gallant Friend and the right hon. and learned Gentleman opposite (Mr. Osborne Morgan), and would merely remark that it was unfortunate that the matter had been discussed without full Returns, and especially in the absence of the Returns from abroad for the year 1882. The Committee must bear in mind that a great many crimes committed by the 20,000 men who composed the Army in Egypt before starting, were adjudicated on board ship. There must also have been a large number of offences committed by the Army in Egypt of which the Committee had no account whatever. In saying that, he was casting no slur on the gallant Army which served there; but it must be recollected that corporal punishment had been abolished two years ago, and that sundry other punishments had been devised in lieu of it, although he had not been able to make out exactly what they were. Unless they had a Return of the number of courts martial held abroad last year, together with the crimes, and the punishments inflicted for them, more especially the extra ordinary punishments —such as penal servitude—the Committee could come to no conclusion as to whether the abolition of corporal punishment had had a good effect or otherwise in the case of the Army when on active service. His hon. and gallant Friend had called attention to the fact, and he himself had also observed, that there had been a great increase in the number of punishments under the head of penal servitude. The right hon. and learned Gentleman, as he understood him, implied that penal servitude was a substitute for imprisonment; but, surely, the former was the more severe punishment of the two. The right hon. and learned Gentleman, being a lawyer, must know that two years' imprisonment was the punishment for misdemeanour, and that penal servitude was inflicted in the case of felony. He believed that the same rule held good in the Army. Having, in his time, sat at a good many courts martial, he knew that penal ser-

  811
  vitude was very properly looked upon as a fearful punishment, and that it was never inflicted except for very grave and serious crimes. The increase of punishment under this head showed that, at all events, the officers had had some difficulty in maintaining discipline amongst the men, and keeping that good order in the regiments which everyone desired to see in the British Army. Of course, it was not for him to say that the figures of the right hon. and learned Gentleman were in any way wrong. He had not been into the question so closely as his hon. and gallant Friend; but, having listened to his statement, he was bound to say that there were still some points which demanded explanation, and which could not be satisfactorily cleared up until the Return of the number of crimes committed abroad, and the punishments inflicted for them, was laid upon the Table of the House.
  MR. A. J. BALFOURsaid, that anyone who had listened to the speech of the hon. and gallant Gentleman (Sir Walter B. Barttelot), in which this question of the effect of the abolition of corporal punishment was raised, and the answer made to it by the right hon. and learned Judge Advocate General, must have been almost amused at the diametrically opposite conclusions which they drew from precisely the same Returns. He thought that, perhaps, one cause of the difference between his hon. and gallant Friend and the right hon. and learned Judge Advocate General—two Gentlemen quite capable of accurately extracting information from a Government Return—was that his hon. and gallant Friend had adopted, for the sake of convenience, a fixed numerical basis on which to found his calculations of the percentage of increase or decrease in the amount of crime and punishment in the Army. Whatever the year, whatever the actual strength of the Army, his hon. and gallant Friend assumed that he was dealing with 100,000 men, so that the comparison of one year with another could always be made on the same principle; but, of course, the result of the plan adopted by his hon. and gallant Friend, which was convenient for many reasons, was to produce a discrepancy between his figures and those of the right hon. and learned Gentleman the Judge Advocate General. But, apart from that explainable difference, there
  812
  remained a large amount of discrepancy between his hon. and gallant Friend and the right hon. Gentleman the Judge Advocate General which could not be thus accounted for. he attributed it, however, partly to the fact that, while the right hon. and learned Gentleman only made a comparison in respect of last year, his hon. and gallant Friend had dealt with the state of the Army during the last 10 years, and had pressed upon the consideration of the Committee the conclusion he had drawn from the comparison of the Returns during that period. He (Mr. A. J. Balfour) was obliged to confess that no answer had yet been made to his hon. and gallant Friend's contention, that though within the last 10 years a new Army system had been adopted, that privileges and advantages had been conferred upon recruits, and that, in consequence, the country had a right to expect men of a better class to enter the Army, nevertheless, this result had not been attained. His hon. and gallant Friend had pointed out that if you take the years 1872, 1877, 1881, and 1882, you will find an increase in the number of crimes under almost every head, and that, corresponding with this, there was an increase, as admitted by the Judge Advocate General, both in the quantity and the severity of the punishment inflicted. The conclusion drawn from that was that, notwithstanding all their endeavours to render the Military Service attractive, the men who joined it were either of a worse class, or were dealt with in a less successful manner than our soldiers were treated before. From one of those positions it was impossible to escape. If hon. Members looked back they would find that, during the last 10 years, there had been in respect of the Army, both at home and abroad, a large increase of crime and punishment. He hoped the right hon. and learned Gentleman having charge of that part of the subject would furnish the Committee with the conclusion he had framed, not upon the comparison of the Returns of the years 1881 and 1882, but upon the comparison of all the Returns of crime and punishment in the Army for the last 10 years.
  SIR WALTER B. BARTELLOTsaid, it was only fair to assume, in comparisons of this kind, that the Army numbered 100,000 men—they would find

  813
  that, in 1872, the Army was, as nearly as possible, 100,000 strong—and, therefore, it was utterly impossible to make a fair comparison unless they considered its present strength 100,000 men. He ventured to say that no record could be produced that was more condemnatory of the system which at present existed than the record of crime he had produced to-night, which, though it might be inaccurate in certain minor points, was generally accurate. He challenged the noble Lord the Secretary of State for War to get up and say that the crime of the Army had not steadily increased since 1872, when the old system prevailed. What with the new appliances and methods of making the Army a perfect machine, they had not yet been successful in doing so.
  THE MARQUESS OF HARTINGTONsaid, he quite agreed with the hon. and gallant Gentleman (Sir Walter B. Barttelot) that this ought not to be, in the slightest degree, a subject of Party discussion. He believed that the actual facts, as presented in the annual Return, bore out the conclusion the War Office had come to; and he contended that, without knowing what were the exact circumstances of particular years, what were the changes, what were the circumstances under which the Army was serving in one particular year or another, it was almost impossible to arrive at an accurate conclusion. He had endeavoured to follow the hon. and gallant Gentleman, but he was unable to call to mind the exceptionable circumstances of the first year to which the hon. and gallant Gentleman had referred. He, however, found that the number of courts martial in the first year recorded—1865—were 109 per 1,000 men at home and abroad; in the next year, 125 per 1,000 men; in the next year, 124 per 1,000 men; and in 1868, without any apparent cause, the number had risen to 144 per 1,000 men. The number then considerably fell, and again apparently without cause; while it had increased in the last two years. Until one had had the opportunity of going into the matter thoroughly, it would be impossible to arrive at a just conclusion. He, however, entirely agreed with the hon. and gallant Gentleman that the subject was one of the greatest possible importance, and fully deserving the attention of the Committee and those who were in charge of the Army.
  COLONEL STANLEYsaid, he thought that every word the noble Marquess had said had only strengthened the case of his hon. and gallant Friend (Sir Walter B. Barttelot) in pressing upon the Government the necessity of giving—which he (Colonel Stanley) did not think the noble Marquess opposed—some Return which would really show how the figures stood in regard to crime in the Army. As the noble Marquess had stated, no doubt there was great force in the assertion that the circumstances of the various years differed, and that some explanation could be given to show obvious causes why figures differed; but there was an insuperable difficulty in the way of giving the figures. The figures were given for the use of those who were, generally speaking, conversant with the general position of affairs; and, therefore, a marginal note to show what proportion of the Army was not in actual service, and to show what change had taken place in Military Law, would be all that would be required by his hon. and gallant Friend. It was a great advantage that the Committee should have a speech on a subject of this kind from a person who was not connected with the Army, such as his hon. Friend the Member for Hertford (Mr. A. J. Balfour); and he (Colonel Stanley) hoped that they might understand from his noble Friend (the Marquess of Hartington) that if his hon. and gallant Friend (Sir Walter B. Barttelot) pressed for the Return, and they were able to agree upon its coin-mom form, the Government would assent to give a Return, showing the state of crime in various years, with such explanations that might be necessary to bring out the accurate facts of the case, it being borne in mind it was a matter of vital importance to the Army. He assumed, apart from Party considerations on this matter, it was of vital importance to show whether the reforms that had taken place in the past 10 or 12 years had been attended by the result that Parliament was led to believe would attend them, or whether they had been pursuing throughout a mistaken policy.
  COLONEL ALEXANDERsaid, that before the Vote was put, perhaps he could explain one point that was mooted by his hon. and gallant Friend the Member for West Sussex (Sir Walter B. Barttelot)—namely, the word "nil" under the head of "corporal punishment," Upon

  815
  the Chairman's (Sir Arthur Otway's) own Motion, in 1867, the power of inflicting corporal punishment was struck out of the Mutiny Act, except when the Army was actually serving in the field. He thought it right to call attention to the numerous cases of penal servitude which occurred last year. There never had been a year, for the last 200 years, in which penal servitude had been inflicted so largely at home—86 cases of penal servitude, inflicted at home in one year, was entirely unprecedented. It should be borne in mind that when a man had undergone an ordinary term of imprisonment he could return to his regiment; but if he was sentenced to penal servitude, he passed from the Army, and virtually became a convict.
  THE JUDGE ADVOCATE GENERAL (Mr. OSBORNE MORGAN)said, he had stated before that almost every one of these sentences of penal servitude wore awarded for crimes for which, formerly, imprisonment was awarded. Formerly, men re-enlisting without declaring the circumstance were sentenced to a term of imprisonment, and then discharged with ignominy; but now they were sentenced to penal servitude, and then discharged with ignominy.
  SIR ARTHUR HAYTERpointed out that he made out his Return quite separately from his right hon. and learned Friend the Judge Advocate General, in regard to the years 1881–2. He had in his hand a Return, or an analysis, of the crime in the Army during those two years; and he was able to follow, item by item, and crime by crime, his right hon. and learned Friend's statement, though he had not seen it previously; and he found that his Return exactly corresponded with his right hon. and learned Friend's. In 1881, the number of courts martial held at home was 9,421; and in 1882, 8,319. In the two years there was a decrease of total of-fences for which men were tried at home; for the number in 1881 was 13,324, and in 1882, 11,927, a decrease of 1,397. The number of sentences passed in 1881 was 9,251, and in 1882, 8,156. For drunkenness, the court martials were, in 1881, 932; and in 1882, 800; a decrease of 132. In 1881, there were 1,889 cases of absence without leave, and 1,639 cases in 1882. There were, in 1881, 1,393 courts martial for desertion, and 1,308 in 1882. For offences
  816
  in relation to enlistment, the courts martial were 1,133 in 1881, and 854 in 1882. For violence to superiors, 875 courts martial were held in 1881, and 753 in 1882. In 1881, the number of offences for being drunk on duty were 1,084, and in 1882, 969. Of making away with uniform the number of offences in 1881 was 2,312, and in 1882, 1,873. He might add that, in 1881, the total strength of the Army at home, exclusive of officers and warrant officers, was 87,992, while in 1882 it amounted to 90,075. He assured the Committee that those figures were absolutely accurate. The only reason why he was not able to produce the figures with regard to the men abroad was that they had not received the particulars; as soon as the Returns were received, they would be included in the annual Statement, and would be at once presented to the House.
  MR. A. J. BALFOURasked what had been done with regard to the Office of the Deputy Judge Advocate in Dublin? He would like to know also how the work, formerly done by the Legal Secretary to the War Office, was now performed.
  THE JUDGE ADVOCATE GENERAL (Mr. OSBORNE MORGAN)said, that last year his right hon. Friend the late Secretary of State for War (Mr. Childers) and himself thought they could reduce the staff by doing away with the deputy Judge Advocate in Dublin; but Sir Thomas Steel was so opposed to the abolition of the Office that, as a matter of fact, that Office had never been discontinued. In answer to the hon. Gentleman opposite (Mr. A. J. Balfour), he would take the opportunity of stating a fact, which was not generally known, that for the last three years the sum of £1,600 had been saved to the country annually, in consequence of the work formerly done by the Legal Secretary to the War Office, Mr. Clode, being taken over by the Judge Advocate General and his staff.
  DR. LYONSsaid, it was not easy for the public to ascertain to what extent the strength of the Army varied year by year; and, therefore, it would be as well that in the Return there should be a statement of the percentage of the increasing of the various crimes. There was, undoubtedly, a very warm feeling in the country upon the subject; the

  817
  public believed that the Army was improving in the general moral character of the men, and that all that had taken place recently had had the effect of improving the tone of the men of the Army. He trusted that nothing would transpire to shako that belief which the people had.
  Vote agreed to.
  (3.) £520,000, for Militia Pay and Allowances.
  SIR HERBERT MAXWELLsaid, there were one or two matters arising out of this Vote which he wished to bring before the Committee and the noble Marquess the Secretary of State for War (the Marquess of Hartington). He thought it was plain, from the Report of the Committee on Recruiting, that the Militia this year was in a much less satisfactory state than it had been in any previous time since its organization; there were, in point of fact, 12,200 less effectives in the Militia than there were two years ago, and he should like to hear an expression of opinion as to the reasons for that alarming decrease. For his own part, he was inclined to attribute it to the new system of training the recruits. That point was referred to in the Report of the Inspector General of Recruiting. The great evil of the present system seemed to be that there were two systems at work—two competing systems. Under the old system, the recruits were drilled with their comrades at head-quarters; but now, a change had been made, whereby they were drilled by themselves. He was aware there was an apparent saving. The recruit who enlisted formerly received 10 s. bounty; and it was very true that, occasionally, he pocketed his bounty and never came up for training at all. Under the present system, he received nothing at all, unless he remained for the full period of training of 63 days. What resulted? The desertions under the now system seemed to be almost the same as under the old—namely, about 5 per cent; and, as a mere question of economy, what was the result? Under the old system, a recruit received 10 s. on enlistment; and, therefore, when he disappeared, he cost the country 10 s., and no more; now he cost the country, not only his bounty, £1, but his daily pay and the cost of his kit; in fact, it might be safely taken, that
  818
  whereas 9 per cent of the desertions under the old system cost the country a sum of £1,250 a-year, the same ratio of desertions under the new system cost the country no less than £25,000; therefore, the apparent saving gained by insuring the re-appearance of recruits after enlistment, was totally lost by the increased cost of recruits under the new system. And the country was not a bit better for the change; it was no advantage to the country that a man should be trained for 63 days and then disappear. The main evil of the existing state of things seemed to lie in this—the competition between the two systems, and he could give an instance of his own experience. His own regiment was the 4th Battalion of the Royal Scotch Fusiliers, the territorial district of which regiment comprised the counties of Ayrshire and Wigton. The Renfrewshire Militia, now called the 3rd Battalion of the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders, whose head-quarters were at Stirling, was trained and recruited in Ayrshire; therefore they had comprised in that one episode of Militia training almost the length and breadth of Scotland, because the Renfrewshire Militia, belonging to the head-quarters of the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders at Stirling, was sent to train in Ayrshire, where it competed unfairly with the district regiment. It competed unfairly with the district regiment, for the very reason that the regiment was sent from its own head-quarters, its own recruits were sent to be drilled under the old system, and the recruits in the county regiment were drilled under the new system. A recruit, so long as he got his bounty and pay, did not care two-pence whether he belonged to the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders, or to the Royal Scotch Fusiliers; and the result in this case was, that whereas the 3rd Battalion of the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders was formerly never up to its strength, it was now considerably over it, and the battalion with which it completed, and which up to the last two years had always been above its strength, was now considerably below it. What he desired the noble Marquess to do was to hold out a hope of some equalization of the conditions of recruiting; for the present system seemed to be altogether unfair and undesirable. There was another point

  819
  to which he wished to draw the attention of the Committee, a point to which he had, in former years, called attention—namely, that of the musketry training in the Militia. He was most unwilling to repeat what he had said in former years; but since last year they had the Report before them of the Committee on Musketry Instruction. In that Report it was stated that the musketry instruction of the Militia was in a most unsatisfactory state, and the causes were not far to seek, for those causes wore set down as want of time, want of instruction, and want of range accommodation. In fact, musketry instruction in the Militia was nothing more nor less than a farce, and a very expensive farce. What was done at present was to give a man 20 rounds of ammunition, which he had simply to fire away in his annual course, imposing on him at the same time most difficult and unreasonable conditions. He had to fire his rounds in a very great hurry. A strong battalion—say, of 800 or 1,000 men—would, under ordinary conditions, take a long time to fire 20 rounds, with due care and attention to principles; but what did they find? He had seen repeatedly men marched down to the range, often a very bad and inadequate range, and the pressure of time had been so great that they had had no opportunity of studying the proper positions; the great thing seemed to be to fire away the ammmunition, and get the Returns made out. The Committee on Musketry Instruction considered that recruits would be trained more perfectly the first year they were out if they were put through a competition similar to that which took place in the Line, and they recommended that an extra three weeks be given for that purpose. When recruits had once been properly trained, which he admitted to be of immense advantage, he should be very glad to hear that some provision had been made for improving their firing. The Committee hoped that the shooting might be kept up at an annual course of 60 rounds per man. That would be a great improvement; but if, under the existing system, a difficulty was felt in completing a course of 20 rounds, how would it be possible to get through a course of 60 rounds. He thought that rather than impose an additional 40 rounds, it would be better to discontinue for a time musketry instruction altogether. The present
  820
  instruction was perfectly useless and expensive, and by its discontinuance they would, at all events, save the trouble—which was considerable—and the expense. Another course, which he had ventured to suggest on a former occasion, was that alternate annual training might be devoted to drill and musketry instruction, and a third course, to which he himself considered greater objections might be raised, was that the companies should come up singly to headquarters, and be instructed during the non-training portion of the year. That would involve, of course, the men leaving their homes twice a-year instead of once; and he thought that, on the whole, there was no alternative between extending the period of the Militia training and the discontinuance of musketry instruction.
  COLONEL RUGGLES-BRISEsaid, he could say, with some authority, that the Militia in the Eastern Counties was never at so low an ebb as it was at the present moment. There was no doubt that the agricultural depression and the great sparcity of labourers and working men in agricultural districts had had a considerable effect upon recruiting; but the deterioration of the Militia at the present time not only prevailed in regard to the non-commissioned officers and rank and file, but even on the officers. Perhaps he would be allowed to show what was the state of things in his own regiment in the year 1877–8. Under the old system, and before they had the system of brigade depôts, his regiment was 840 strong; under the operation of the brigade depôt system it had been reduced to 600. Now, he would give the House, as shortly as he could, what he thought were some of the reasons for the deterioration of the rank and file in the Militia. The right hon. and gallant Gentleman below him (Colonel Stanley) had stated, very clearly, the views he himself held on this matter. He (Colonel Ruggles-Brise) believed that the taking away of the 10 s. gratuity upon enlistment was the main reason of the deterioration, and a greater piece of false economy than that, to his mind, had never been committed in connection with the Force. If 10 per cent, or 15 per cent only, of those who received the 10 s. gratuity, never appeared at the training—say, about 500 men in all—it would not cost the country more than about

  821
  2s. 6d. per head upon those who remained. Boys now came up without gratuity, and deserted after having obtained the bounty and other necessaries, and that was a far greater expense to the country than would be a increase of 10 per cent, or 15 per cent, on the bounties paid to 400 or 500. Another reason for the deterioration of the Militia was the necessity for their coming up for preliminary drill at the time of the enlistment. The result of that had been most unfortunate, particularly upon recruiting in the Eastern Counties. The Government had given the commanding officer no option. He, however, would insist upon the men coming up for their 56 days' preliminary drill, previous to their entering the regiment; but he would not continue the system at present in force. Another thing, which was highly objectionable to the people who would be most likely to join the Force, was that the men were kept at drill during the hay harvest. That was a great grievance, particularly in the Eastern Counties; and he would recommend, for the future, that the men should be called up at a convenient season of the year. By keeping the men up after the hay season had commenced, they were retaining them at one of the most inconvenient seasons—so far as employers of labour were concerned—which could possibly be found. There were other causes for the deterioration of the Militia; and the result of all these things had been a diminution in the number of enlistments. In one district with which he was acquainted the number had fallen from 411 men in 1877–8 to 140 men in 1882–3. Another complaint he had to make with regard to the Militia was with reference to the control the commanding officers now had over the men. The officers were, as a matter of fact, treated as nonentities, and were hardly ever consulted upon any matter affecting the regiment. The officers could not enlist their own recruits; they could not select their own adjutants; they were not consulted on any points whatever. Up to a few years ago, he thought up to the year 1880, every man who made an application for his discharge, made it to his commanding officer all the year round—that was to say, not only during the training season, but all through the year. If the commanding officer thought
  822
  fit, as he naturally would, in the case of a man who held a lucrative situation which it would be a great disadvantage to him to lose, and it was necessary for the man to leave the Militia, that commanding officer did not hesitate to give a discharge. Now, however, under the Order of July, 1880, the discretionary power was taken away from the commanding officer, and every man who applied for a discharge had to have it. He (Colonel Ruggles-Brise) had found, when he went up to train his regiment in 1882, that 63 men had been discharged without the fact having been brought to his knowledge. Under those circumstances, he had asked for the orders granting the discharges. These were furnished to him, and he found that he had nothing whatever to do with the discharges, and that if the men applied for them, they were to have them. It seemed to him a most monstrous thing to enlist men into the Militia who, after a short service, if they changed their mind, could leave the Force again without difficulty. As he had said, it had always been the custom of commanding officers to give men their discharge, rather than to allow them to lose an advantageous situation; but now, the men who applied for their discharge through any freak of temper or caprice, were to have it. No doubt, a greater number of men had been discharged as medically unfit during the last few years than had been discharged previously. So far as the Army went, no doubt, it was most desirable that they should be careful in selecting the men; but he thought that in the Militia it was not necessary for them to be so particular. There were many slight defects in the temperament and constitution of the men; and it was surely not necessary to lay down the same hard inflexible rules as to men in the Militia as it was in the Army. The authorities, however, seemed to be of a different opinion; and the result of the course they had taken had been to deprive the Force of a great many men. Then, again, the Militia had been weakened through the brigade depôt system; because, whilst formerly if a man who was out of work and wanted a few shillings would enlist for the bounty, he had not that inducement at the present time. What he (Colonel Ruggles-Brise) disliked more than anything else was the recruiting for the Militia being

  823
  mixed up with the Army recruiting. The Militia commanders had no power whatever to enlist Militiamen, and their own staff were not under their control, except during the training period of the year. As he understood it, the recruiting sergeant sent out for recruits in the Militia and in the Regular Army, got 2s. 6d. for a recruit for the latter, and only 1s. 6d. for one for the Militia. Owing to that, what inducement had a sergeant to make any effort to secure recruits for the Militia? He had none; and the result was, that he cared little about enlisting Militiamen, and went in to get as many of the 2s. 6d. men as he could. Moreover, the Militia sergeants and non-commissioned officers were in a very unsatisfactory position at the present time. Formerly, commanding officers used to get in the Service excellent men from the Line regiments—men who had seen service, and who had good characters, and who had been wont to look to the Militia as a resting-place after a hard service in foreign countries. Now, however, they had no rest at all. Under the brigade depot system, they were employed all the year round; and the work they had to do now, they told him, was far harder than that which they ever had to do in their old regiments. He could assure the noble Marquess the Secretary of State for War that the dissatisfaction of these non-commissioned officers was complete. As to the Militia bands, he knew of one case where the brigade colonel at the depôt had insisted on taking control of it. The officer commanding the Militia refused to give the brigade commander that control, on the ground that the instruments belonged to the officers, and not to the Government. That excuse was a valid one, and the bandsmen were not interfered with so far as the instruments were concerned; but they were ordered on parades which, of course, very much interfered with their practice. In this matter, he was not finding fault with the officers commanding the depôts; but he very strongly complained of the system. Then it had been said in the debate, that they ought to have some voice in the selection of their adjutants, and so they ought; but, instead of that, the state of the case was this. He himself had, within the last 12 months, had a vacant adjutantcy. He knew a young
  824
  officer, in one of the depôt brigade regiments, who was formerly in his (Colonel Ruggles-Brise's) own regiment, and he had been satisfied that he would make a very useful adjutant, and had intended, when a vacancy came about, to recommend him for it. To his surprise, however, one morning a letter came down from the brigade depôt, saying that Captain So-and-so had been nominated, and that if he had any objection to make to him he was to say so. That, certainly, astonished him. Of course, he knew of no objection to the officer named, and it would have been a very invidious thing for him to have stated an objection. The captain recommended might be a very good officer; but he (Colonel Ruggles-Brise) did object, on the ground that he knew an officer in the brigade who would be useful to him. On making application at the War Office, he found, however, that that officer was in India, and that he would not be allowed to return home unless he paid his own expenses; therefore, he (Colonel Ruggles-Brise) was compelled, nolens volens, to accept the officer nominated by the War Office. He could not say that he had not got an attentive, and zealous, and able adjutant; but this he did say, that the system was as bad and as rotten as it possibly could be. Out of four regiments, there were two from which they could select their adjutants; but those regiments might happen to be in India, or on foreign service. They had only a few officers at home, and, out of that few, probably some of them might be suffering from ill-health, or, for other causes, might be unfit to act as adjutants, which would reduce the number from which they could select very considerably. Probably very few of those officers at home cared to have the adjutantcy; probably, none of them were apt teachers, or fitted to take the position; but, whether that were so or not, the commanders were bound to choose from the limited number of officers who might happen to be at home. It was not fair to these commanding officers that they should be bound down to so limited a selection. He had said, when he commenced the few observations with which he had troubled the Committee, that he never knew the Militia in a less satisfactory condition, both as to men, non-commissioned officers, and officers, than it was

  825
  at the present time. Before long, he had no doubt they would be in the same position with regard to junior officers in the Militia as they were 20 years ago, or previous to 1868. There would be a great dearth of them. They had been filling the ranks of junior officers from young men, who were anxious and willing to enter the Line; but, now, the difficulties of getting into the Army through the Militia were so great, the competition being so considerable, that it was really harder work for an officer to obtain admission into the Line through the Militia, than for him to obtain it in the ordinary way. No one had done more since 1868 for the officers of the Militia than Lord Cardwell; no one had done more for them, in his (Colonel Ruggles-Brise's) experience, since the noble Lord's Army Bill came into operation. He was afraid now, however, that, before many years had elapsed, they would have no junior officers at all in the Militia. The captains and officers of high rank they might have; but they would not get the boys. He would not occupy the time of the House any more than to say that he did hope the Government would treat the Militia as a more local Force than they were doing at the present moment. They were now being blotted out most certainly and most surely. As far as the men were concerned, what he should like to see would be a re-introduction of the system of paying the 10 s. bounty on enlistment, and that the Government should revert to the old system of training and drill.
  LORD ALGERNON PERCYsaid, he wished to draw attention to one or two questions which had not been touched upon by previous speakers. The first was the position of sergeant majors of Militia regiments serving on their Army engagements, as regarded promotion. They were induced to enter the Militia under the supposition that they would be in exactly the same position as the sergeant majors of their linked battalions. They were made warrant officers, and they imagined that they would be in the same position; but it appeared that they were not eligible for promotion to the position of quartermasters in any battalion except their own Militia battalion, and, only then, in the event of no quartermaster of the Line battalion wishing for the place, and the commanding officer of the Line
  826
  battalion not putting forward any other candidate. The result was, that the sergeant major of a Militia regiment could not, by any possibility, be promoted, because the new quartermaster of the Line regiment would at once be in his place; and if the quartermaster of the Militia retired, he would, of course, apply for the vacant place, and the sergeant major of the Militia battalion could only remain in the position of sergeant major. That did not seem to him (Lord Algernon Percy) to be fulfilling the territorial system. He did not think that a good system; but if we were to have the territorial system carried out in its entirety, the three battalions should be treated like three battalions of one regiment, and the promotion should go in these three battalions. Now that pensions were done away with, every inducement should be held out to good non-commissioned officers to go on to the Militia Staff. A short time ago, the Militia Staff was filled by very young non-commissioned officers, and commanding officers felt great inconvenience from that. This would be the result again, because no non-commissioned officer of any standing would take all the hard work of a sergeant-majorship, if he could get no other promotion. This might be said to be only an individual case; but he had a letter from a non-commissioned officer, whom he had known in the Regular Service, and who said this had utterly shipwrecked his career, and was creating great discontent among the non-commissioned officers in the Service. With regard to the clothing of the Militia, it was monstrous that the moment new clothing was served out, it should come unsewn and require repairing. Militiamen could not be expected to repair their clothes neatly; and the result was, that the regiment did not look as smart as it should. Then, with regard to the boots, he hoped the Government would do something, for that was a most important point. When the men were in billets, it perhaps did not matter so much; but now that the majority of the Militia regiments were in camp—and it was very much better for the Service that they should be in camp—only one pair of boots for each man, whatever the weather might be, or the condition of the ground, was bad both for the Service and for the men. It caused

  827
  discontent among the men, and the effects would be felt after, if not during, the training. West weather was known to have an effect on men after a time, and he had no doubt that was the case with the Militia. During the first week's training of his own regiment there was rain incessantly; the camp could not be easily drained, and the lines were extremely wet. Waterproof sheeting could not be obtained at the time, and the men had no change of boots. There might be some difficulty in dealing with more boots at the end of the drill, for men could not well be allowed to take away two pairs of boots; and the boots now supplied wore so bad, that if they were stored till next training, the men would not be able to put them on. This difficulty, he thought, might be obviated by serving out better boots, which would last two or three years. There was no reason why the boots should not be kept in store with the rest of the clothes and properly looked after by the non-commissioned officers. Allusion had been made to the drilling of the recruits immediately on enlistment, instead of waiting till the regiment came up for training. One great objection to that was that the recruits could not be drilled by their own non-commissioned officers at all, and it very often happened that the Militia sergeant was away recruiting; men were enlisted and sent to be drilled by the depôt sergeant, who took no interest in them. The men then went away, and when the training began the sergeant know nothing of the men, and the consequence was that the men were thoroughly neglected, and became dissatisfied. There was no doubt that the drill of the Militia had very much deteriorated since this new system was adopted. While he was at Aldershot he saw several Militia colonels, who agreed that the system of drilling recruits the moment they came in had spoiled the drill of the battalions; for it was impossible to give the men battalion drill, and so the men were only partially drilled. An Order was issued not very long ago that the permanent Staff should always appear in uniform. That might be all very well on paper, and, no doubt, the Order was issued because the system suited the Army very well; but it had had a bad effect on the Militia. It was hard upon the sergeants that, whenever they were not on duty, they should
  828
  always have to appear in uniform; but I it operated still more hardly upon the bandsmen, because in all the Militia regiments the bandsmen obtained a certain amount of income out of the training period by playing in twos and threes at theatres and other places, and by giving instruction in private houses. If they were always to appear in uniform, they would be very much prejudiced; and there were regiments in which, upon the issue of that Order, the band had given notice that they would purchase their discharge in a body. Another Order was issued not very long ago, which had operated very hardly on the men, under which no man was allowed to purchase his discharge unless he had given notice some time previous to the training—about three months' notice. The result was, that at the commencement of the training, men came up to purchase their discharge at the last moment. They had not heard of the Order, and they were told that they could not purchase their discharge. The result was that a great many men were absent. The system had created uncertainty, and men would not enlist. There could be no doubt as to the bad condition into which the Militia had fallen. Men were being recruited at the present moment standing only 5 feet 2 inches; and, judging from their appearance, they were very juvenile indeed; in fact, it had lately been brought to his personal notice that some of these men burst into tears on discharging their rifles. That did not look as if they were very fit to defend their country; and he was told that the chest measurement was not properly considered. The Militia was very much below its strength, and that, he believed, was due among other things, to the Orders he had mentioned, which were vexatious, and were issued without due regard to the nature of the Militia, and the circumstances by which it was surrounded. Orders which suited the Army would not suit the Militia, and Orders which looked well on paper had had a bad effect on the Militia.
  SIR HENRY FLETCHERsaid, there was one matter which he should like to bring forward, and that was that there were two classess of sergeant majors in the Militia. One class were men who were what he might call old soldiers; and the other class were men who were appointed to the rank of sergeant major

  829
  who had never been in the Regular Army, but had been, all through, pure and simple Militiamen. The difference of pay and allowance in these two classes was very considerable, and had, for some time past, caused great dissatisfaction. The sergeant majors who had been promoted without having been in the Regular Army received 3s. 6d. a-day, with a maximum pension of only 1s. a-day; whereas the sergeant majors who had been promoted from the Regular Army received 7s. 2¾d. a-day, and were entitled to a maximum pension of 4s. 6d. a-day. He brought this matter forward, because it affected very materially the regiments in Scotland. In many of those regiments the language used among the men was the Gaelic, and that was the reason, he supposed, why the sergeant majors were promoted from the ranks of the Militia regiments to sergeant majors; it was because they knew the language. And, beyond their not receiving the same amount of pay and a pension as the non-commissioned officers who were promoted from the Regular Army, the system materially affected the discipline of these Highland regiments, because now there was great difficulty in obtaining recruits, and the commanding officers of those regiments were in a great measure dependent on the sergeant majors to act as interpreters in the orderly room and on parade. He strongly urged the Government to put the sergeant majors from the Militia on the same footing as those who had risen from the Regular Service, in order that the discipline in the Scotch regiments should be as efficient as it formerly was. There were, he believed, only eight or ten of those officers; and he hoped the Government would see the propriety, while they existed, of putting them on the same footing as warrant officers. That would have a good effect on the discipline of the Scotch regiments, which had proved true and faithful to this country in the past.
  GENERAL SIR GEORGE BALFOURsaid, if the efficiency of the Militia could be fairly judged of by the numbers available at training, then the present Militia Force was nothing but a miserable paper Force. Out of 143,000 officers and men, only 85,000 had appeared at the training; and out of a nominal strength of 1,256 permanent Staff, there were only 881. Military efficiency could
  830
  never be expected so long as there was that remarkable falling off in officers and men at the training. With regard to the Artillery, out of 18,000 men, there were only 8,577 present; and, in the Engineers, only 928, out of 1,319; and nearly half the Infantry were absent from the training. No doubt, the non-training of the Irish Militia might account for the absence of a portion of this Force; but, after making allowance for that fact, it would still be found that the absentees from training were far too numerous. Now, considering the short training given to the Militia, it was utterly impossible, with these great absences, to give them anything like a military appearance. All the men who were enrolled in the Militia ought to have been present at the training, and the Return should distinctly show not only the men and officers of the several arms, but also the numbers for the several parts of the United Kingdom.
  LORD EUSTACE CECILasked the noble Marquess the Secretary of State for War to state all he could as to the Irish Militia. He understood they had been called out; and he should be glad to know whether the whole Force was to be called out, and whether the noble Marquess would turn his attention to the condition in which the Irish Militia were said to be, not only as to training, but, what was of more importance, as to musketry instruction? He was told that their condition in that respect was terrible. Colonel Walker, of the Fusiliers, who had paid attention to this matter, stated that the state of the Irish Militia was a great deal worse than that of the English, both as to instruction and the arms with which they were supplied. He did not quite understand whether they were all to have the Martini-Henry rifle, or only a portion of them. If those rifles were only to be supplied to the English and Scotch Militia, he supposed the Irish Militia would still be armed with the old Snider, and then there would be differences as to instruction and ammunition; and if it happened that the Militia were called out for active service those differences might be very serious. But there was something more serious still. He was told that a number of the ranges in Ireland were very deficient—more deficient than in England—and that was

  831
  a matter of the first importance. All these things were still as they had been for some years past. He did not blame the noble Marquess, or the War Department; but this was still the fact, and he thought upon these questions as upon other Army questions, something should be done. He and his Friends would be most happy to give the Government their assistance and advice in these matters, and he was sure if the noble Marquess would give his attention to these questions, he might be even more successful than those who had preceded him in finding a solution. A solution of some sort was most necessary. Nobody could look about and see what was going on abroad, and at home, without feeling that the position of both our Army and our Militia was of the utmost importance. He did not go so far as to say that this was merely a question of money, because he did not think it was. There were a good many things to be thought of besides money; and he was anxious to hear what was the noble Marquess's solution of the difficulties which had been pointed out. These difficulties were undoubtedly very great, and he was sorry to see that there were increasing difficulties—namely, in getting recruits for the Militia, in instruction, and in training.
  SIR ARTHUR HAYTERsaid, the proposal of the hon. Baronet the Member for Wigtonshire (Sir Herbert Maxwell), that a certain number of the Militia should be detached, either by regiments or companies, and employed simply in learning musketry, had been tried and had failed. The authorities at the War Office believed that it would always do so, because so much in this country depended on the state of the weather, which often put great difficulties in the way of regiments getting any opportunity whatever of firing.
  SIR HERBERT MAXWELLsaid, his proposal was not that companies should be struck off training, but that they should either be brought up for musketry instruction during the non-training period, or else be exclusively trained in musketry in alternate years.
  SIR ARTHUR HAYTERsaid, that plan would entail additional expense, because the men could not be expected to come up without receiving the ordinary pay. Some of the remarks addressed to him by the hon. and gallant
  832
  Gentleman the Member for East Essex (Colonel Ruggles-Brise) with regard to the Militia appeared rather to be directed against the system as a whole. For instance, with regard to the adjutants, he (Sir Arthur Hayter) must point out that the union between the Militia and the Line was a cardinal principle of the existing military organization. He had been informed by very high authorities, that there was no difficulty in obtaining excellent adjutants for the Militia from the linked battalions, and that, therefore, there was no necessity to create a wider field of selection for adjutants than already existed. He could not say that any complaints on this subject had reached him other than those of the hon. and gallant Gentleman. With reference to the statement that there was a want of officers in the Militia, that, he was sorry to say, was the case, and the fact was a good deal caused by their being less inducement for them to qualify for commissions in the Line, whore he believed the number of commissions open to them had been reduced by nearly one-half. But, as he found that the want of officers varied in different parts of the country, it was difficult to draw conclusions from particular instances; and their hope was, that the agricultural depression which, as lie understood, had been so detrimental to the Militia, would not continue to injure it. The hon. and gallant Gentleman had also said that there had been a diminution of enlistments in the Militia on account of the bounty of 10 s. having been abolished; but it was thought much better not to recur to the bounty system. There were two systems of drill going on in the country; and it was considered that the better way of dealing with recruits would be to give the men the option, either of drilling immediately on enrolment, or of drilling continuously with their regiments. The reason for giving this option was that, owing to the conditions existing in some counties, it was found impossible to make the two systems work together. In the agricultural districts, they found that the men preferred, as a rule, to work with their corps; on the other hand, they found that the men in the manufacturing districts, who felt perhaps the immediate pressure of want, preferred to proceed at once to the barracks, and go through their drill there,

  833
  where they received the money due to them. Where the drill and training took place together, a man would only be disturbed in his calling once, and it was proposed, in that case, to give him 30 s. at the close of the preliminary training; but were these were separate, it would be seen that a man would be twice disturbed, and, in that case, they proposed that he should receive £1 at the commencement of the drill, and £1 at the close of his training. It was thought that that arrangement was a fair solution of the difficulties of the question. the hon. and gallant Gentleman also alluded to the fact that the Militia sergeants complained of overwork, because they had to perform duties at the brigade depôts harder than they were before accustomed to. No doubt, they were hard worked; but it must be borne in mind that they had better men to compete with. He thought, however, this question was one rather for the consideration of the colonel of the regiment than the Department which he had the honour to represent. Remarks had also been made upon the payment of sergeants major in the Highland Militia regiments; and it had been pointed out that the difference between their pay and pensions, as compared with those of the Army sergeants major, was very considerable. He understood the hon. and gallant Baronet (Sir Henry Fletcher) to say that the sergeants major in the Highland Militia regiments received 3s. 6d. per day, and were entitled to a maximum pension of 1s. per day; while the Army sergeants major received 7s. 2¾d. a-day, and were entitled to a pension of 4s. 6d. a-day. The hon. and gallant Baronet asked that there should be a removal of this inequality, and had based his claim upon the fact that the services of these men were almost indispensable to their regiments, owing to their knowledge of Gaelic. He (Sir Arthur Hayter) would investigate the matter; but he was bound to point out that however valuable their services had been, and although they were undoubtedly useful on account of their speaking Gaelic, they had always been confined to the Militia, whereas the Serjeants major of the Army had to undergo a long period of active service abroad. It seemed, therefore, hardly fair to put the two classes of men upon a footing of equality. However, as he had already
  834
  said, the matter should be inquired into. He was glad to point out an encouraging feature in the present Returns—namely, that they showed an increase in, the number of Militia recruits as compared with the preceding year. That was a circumstance that would be satisfactory to the noble Lord opposite (Lord Algernon Percy), who said that the test of the popularity of the Service was to be found in the number of enrolments. On the other hand, the Militia Reserve showed a slight decrease; the number of men being 26,629 for 1883, as compared with 27,274 for the year 1882. The noble Lord the Member for West Essex (Lord Eustace Cecil) had inquired as to the weapons supplied to the Irish Militia. The order had been given for the supply of 9,000 Martini-Henry rifles, and only one regiment of the Irish Militia would that year be armed with the Snider rifle.
  EARL PERCYsaid, he had listened with interest to the speech of the hon. Baronet the Financial Secretary to the War Department (Sir Arthur Hayter); but he was bound to say that the hon. Baronet had left untouched a great many points to which his attention had been directed. He trusted the authorities at the War Office would take all those points into consideration; and he would remind the hon. Baronet that as this Vote presented the only occasion on which the Militia were able to express their hopes and fears, it was natural that they should desire to know as soon as possible what chance there was of their hopes being realized. The hon. Baronet had said nothing about the musketry training of the Militia, a subject on which, for some time past, so much had been said and written; but he could not help thinking that the Government would do well to state what they really proposed to do in this matter. It was all very well to tell the Committee that it was impossible to have the regiments up for drill and musketry instruction in alternate years, because the weather had affected some regiments detrimentally; but that statement equally applied to companies being struck off in alternate years for musketry training. The complaint was, that the training was very hurried, and that each unit, struck off for musketry instruction, was obliged to undergo it under circumstances of great disadvantage. When

  835
  the weather was extremely bad, the disadvantages of the present arrangement were very great; and, he believed, that unless some remedy for this state of things could be devised, the Militia would never attain the desired efficiency. Next to this came the question as to the drilling of recruits on enrolment; and he must express his regret that the authorities did not propose to make any change in this respect. The hon. Baronet had told the Committee that, as far as the War Office view of the subject went, drill on enrolment was more popular in the manufacturing than in the agricultural districts. He (Earl Percy) doubted that very much. He knew that the Militia regiments in the agricultural districts were very much below their strength; and he knew, also, that in the Northern manufacturing districts, the percentage of recruits under the old system of preliminary drill was more than double what it was in the case of battalions who trained their recruits under the new system, and that the percentage of untrained men in those battalions was much more than double what it was in the battalions in which the old system was in force. When the hon. Baronet said that the great test of the popularity of the Militia was the recruiting, and that if we could get a great number of recruits we really assured the efficiency of the Militia, he (Earl Percy) was, with great respect, obliged to differ from him entirely. It was not the number of the men, but the training which they received, which constituted efficiency; and, even if it could be proved that the training of the men on enrolment was popular, and succeeded in bringing recruits, it would be found that the present system of training them was such as to give no chance of getting a thoroughly efficient Militia. Everyone knew that Parts 2 and 3 of the Field Exercise could hardly be taught to men when they were only brought together in small numbers; and that the esprit de corps, which existed in the case of a large number of men, ceased under those circumstances, when the men were drilled only in small squads by a sergeant or other non-commissioned officer. His own regiment, he was glad to say, had never been subject to that most pernicious system, and he hoped it never would be. With regard to the appointment of adjutants, he agreed with
  836
  every word which had fallen from the hon. and gallant Member for East Essex (Colonel Ruggles-Brise). It was all very well for the hon. Baronet (Sir Arthur Hayter) to say that no complaint had reached him on the subject; but there was a good reason for that, because it was a very disagreeable thing for an officer, commanding a regiment, to complain of his adjutant. Of course, he would complain of a serious dereliction of duty; but there was no doubt that, otherwise, a commanding officer would do anything rather than report against his adjutant, because he knew that such report would ruin that officer's career. If the hon. Baronet inquired into the subject, he would find an almost universal dislike to the system of changing the adjutants of regiments every five years, not only because of the difficulty of getting an officer suited to the service, but because, if a good officer was obtained, two years were necessary for him to become thoroughly acquainted with his duties, and then, at the end of the fifth year, he went away, and another officer took his place. His own experience was, that this system was most detrimental to the efficiency of a regiment; and he contended that it was impossible, in so short a space of time, for men coming straight from the Regular Army to learn all the contradictory orders contained in that huge volume issued to the Militia under the name of an Army Circular. The consequence was, that the commanding officer was not able to trust to his adjutant; he had to look to everything himself. It might be said a colonel ought to know everything; but it must be remembered that a Militia colonel had his attention turned to other things for 11 months of the year, and, therefore it was very hard that he should be handicapped in this way. The whole system was bad. He was not there to speak of the bearing of the system on the Regular Army; but as to its bearing on the Militia he felt very strongly. He believed that the Militia, in its present condition, could not much longer exist. He did not know whether there was a definite purpose on the part of anyone at the War Office to disgust the present senior officers, or not; but he was firmly persuaded that such would be the result of the course which was now being pursued. There were two

  837
  small points which had been mentioned in the discussion, and which had received no notice from the Treasury Bench. Both of them were points which he could assure the hon. Baronet affected the popularity of the Militia. One point was, that most absurd Order which was issued, to the effect that the Staff of the Militia was to wear their uniform all the year round. His noble Relative (Lord Algernon Percy) had said that that Order worked particularly hard upon the bandsmen. He (Earl Percy) disagreed with his noble Relative. He did not believe the Order bore more severely upon the bandsmen than upon the remainder of the Staff, because many of the regular Staff were employed in civilian occupations; and, if they were forced to wear their uniform on all occasions, he did not see how they were to carry on their work. He had heard of colonels of Militia regiments—in fact, he knew one—who employed his Staff from time to time in beating his covers. He (Earl Percy) had serious thoughts, when the Order was issued, of having all his Staff in uniform out to beat his covers, so that they might see what the real consequence would be of preventing the men. pursuing their ordinary civilian occupations in plain clothes. The next point was that relating to a second pair of boots. He believed the supply of a second pair of boots would do more to increase the popularity of the Militia than almost anything else they could do. He was sure all Militia officers would bear him out in that opinion. One word about recruiting. The hon. Baronet had said that the failure in recruiting in agricultural districts might be attributed to the agricultural depression. Unfortunately, he (Earl Percy) could not get any recruits, and his regiment was recruited entirely from the manufacturing districts. In fact, he found, in regard to recruiting, exactly the same complaints in manufacturing districts as in agricultural districts, and, therefore, he could not accept the statement of the Government, that the agricultural depression was the cause of the want of recruits. He, however, could tell the Government what was one of the chief causes of the want of recruits. Last year, it was thought necessary, on account of the exigencies of the Public Service, to call the Militia up for two months. How was that done?
  838
  It was well known that a Militiaman, when he came out for training, did not do so for the sake of his pay. He laid by a little, out of his previous earnings, to keep his wife and family during the training of the regiment, and made an arrangement with his employer to take him on again when the regiment was disbanded. In proof of the fact that the men's families were but poorly provided for, when the Militia were up for training, the men constantly applied for advances which they might send home. Such being the condition of the men, last year, on the very day his regiment would naturally have returned to their homes, the Government sent down an official Order, that the men were to be kept for another month. He (Earl Perey) applied for leave to send home those men who were in the greatest distress; but he got no answer until the third week of the second month, when, of course, it was of no good. The distress in the regiment was excessive; and he said then, and he was prepared to say now, that the action of the Government in that instance did more to make the regiment unpopular, and to prejudicially affect recruiting, than anything else that could be done. If such a thing was to be done again, some compensation should be given to the men. The men came out on warrants for only a month's training; and if the men had raised the question as to whether they could legally be kept up for a second month, he was not sure whether it would have been found that there was any legal power to prevent their return home at the end of the first month's training. Practically, the Government deluded the men into believing that they would be kept up for only a month; whereas it was intended that they should be kept up for two months, while no separation allowance or additional pay was to be allowed them. He had no wish to detain the Committee with a long story; but he could tell the Committee of individual cases of great hardship. A most respectable man—a Volunteer sergeant—came to him at the end of the first month's training with tears in his eyes and said he could not remain, because his wife and children were starving at home; and he added that, as soon as that training was over, he would rejoin the regiment, but that he would not re-enrol then. He (Earl

  839
  Percy) was persuaded the same intention entered the minds of many other men, and that, owing to this circumstance, he was more deficient of recruits than he had been for a long time. This playing fast-and-loose with a battalion did not only affect the particular regiment, but all the regiments in the district around. The regulations which now existed in the Militia rendered it almost impossible to get any Volunteer sergeants at all. Volunteer sergeants, at the best of times, were not the best part of the Militia Force; but, however inefficient they were, it was absolutely necessary to have them, but the action of the Government had tended to deprive regiments almost entirely of those men. He did not wish to make an accusation against either one Government or another, because he did not know under what Government what he was about to refer to occurred. At one time, when a Volunteer sergeant committed himself in any way, the practice was to reduce him. It was, however, said that it was necessary to make a Militia sergeant equal to a sergeant of the Regular rank, and that it was a great shame that a Militia sergeant should be reduced without being tried by court martial. It was now impossible to punish a sergeant without trying him by court martial. A man who might have committed some trivial offence, which could very justly be overlooked, had now to be brought up before a court martial; his trial had to be fixed in a formal manner, and, finally, his sentence had to be read out at the head of the regiment, and his stripes taken off. A Volunteer sergeant's office was a very invidious one, because he had very often to take into custody men who were his friends. It would, therefore, not be anything to wonder at if, when men were liable to be tried by court martial for the slightest offence, they refused to take the stripes. He must now apologize to the Committee for having detained them so long. The present, however, was the only occasion there was to express the grievances of the Militia; and he trusted that before the debate closed they would receive from the Treasury Bench some explicit answer to the questions raised. He trusted, likewise, that the Committee would be cheered by some hope being held out that the changes which had lately been made, and which he and others considered worked so preju-
  840
  dicially to the Militia, would be reviewed.
  COLONEL STANLEYsaid, that, before the noble Marquess the Secretary of State for War rose to reply to the observations of the noble Earl (Earl Percy), he hoped he might be allowed to add his testimony to that of his noble Friend as to the hardship which, no doubt, was quite unintentionally imposed by the action of the War Office last year upon certain Militia regiments, in keeping them up for double the usual period of training. The War Office acted strictly within their right, and the power which they exercised was one which undoubtedly might, under certain circumstances, be a useful one, and one which it was well to retain in the Act. It was, however, a power which worked very hardly upon the men, unless concurrently with its operation the question of separation allowance could be dealt with. He knew of many hard cases resulting from what occurred last year. There were many men perfectly ready to train for one month, but in regard to whom it amounted to a great hardship to continue up for a second month. Many men were, in consequence of the prolonged training, subjected to the loss of employment; though he was happy to say that, in more than one case, employers who had found themselves obliged to give the men notice had, in pursuance of a generous public spirit, taken them back. Commanding officers were, by the proceedings of last year, placed in a position in which they ought not to be placed. As to the disrating of non-commissioned officers, he agreed there was some inconvenience found in the way in which it was now brought about. That House, itself, however, was responsible, because when the Act of 1879 was passing through the House, the change was fully discussed, and was forced upon the authorities by the distinctly expressed wish of the House. It was thought that non-commissioned officers ought not to be disrated without a power of appeal to a court martial; and the power which remained to the Militia, although it had been taken from the Line, was done away with, and done away with, he felt, at some practical inconvenience to the Service. As to musketry instructions, he owned he did not quite understand what was the argument of his hon. Friend the Financial

  841
  Secretary (Sir Arthur Hayter). It was admitted that the musketry instruction in the Militia was very imperfect, and the hon. and gallant Gentleman the Financial Secretary had said it was felt to be desirable to extend the musketry training; but the weather had interfered with it so much, that it was deemed wise not to sacrifice the time and trouble, but to hurry on the instruction in a few days. He (Colonel Stanley) thought it was a question well worth consideration, whether some arrangement could not be made, say, every second or third or fourth year, whereby the training would take place at a time when fine weather might reasonably be expected to prevail. His noble Friend the Member for Westminster (Lord Algernon Percy) had spoken of the hardship inflicted on sergeant majors of Militia, in consequence of their not being able to be promoted beyond that rank. He (Colonel Stanley) confessed that he might not have followed correctly all that had taken place; but he had something to do, in 1877, with the quartermasterships of the Line and of the brigade depôts, and it was then intended that the duty of the quartermastership should, as far as possible, be worked round, so as to give all the officers who had once been quartermaster an opportunity of remaining at the depôt. He did not know whether it stopped short at quartermasters; but he believed the intention was that sergeant majors and Staff sergeants should be dealt with in the same manner. It was well worthy the attention of the noble Marquess (the Marquess of Hartington) as to whether something could not be done to improve the position of sergeant majors of the Militia. He hoped the noble Marquess would rise before the discussion was closed, and find himself able to give the Committee an assurance that all the points to which attention had been drawn would receive his careful consideration; and that, if possible, he would make some proposal in respect of them.
  THE MARQUESS OF HARTINGTONsaid, the Committee would not expect him to enter into the details, of a somewhat technical character, which had been touched upon in the course of the discussion. He could assure the Committee that he and his hon. Friends would, as far as they were able, cause inquiries to made, and do what they
  842
  could to meet the wishes of hon. Gentlemen. There were one or two points, however, that had been touched upon, on which it might be desirable he should make a few observations. Perhaps, the most important point raised was that of the musketry instruction of the Militia. The Report of the Musketry Instruction Committee was in the hands of the military authorities early last year; but the operations in Egypt very naturally prevented its full consideration. There were two very great difficulties in the way of imparting to the Militia anything like thorough musketry instruction; one was that of time, and the other that of ranges. Considerable progress had been made, however, in doing something to remove one of the difficulties. Full information had been obtained as to the state of the ranges throughout the country, and of the possibility of improving the range accomodation. Arrangements had been made for improving the actual ranges on the Northern stations; and in the South there were ranges which, he hoped, would be available for complete musketry instruction of the Line, and also of certain Militia regiments, which would be banded together for the purpose of instruction. Very exhaustive inquiries were being made throughout the country as to the ranges; and when the Reports fell in, they would be tabulated, and everything would be done to improve the range accomodation, both for the Line, Militia, and Volunteers. The question of time was, perhaps, a still greater difficulty. He perfectly agreed with what had been said by the hon. and gallant Gentleman the Member for Wigtonshire (Sir Herbert Maxwell). It was, however, almost impossible to increase the amount of ammunition and to extend the time of training. The change would not only entail a large expenditure, but it would also alter the character of the Militia Force, and it was very doubtful whether it would be possible, or, if possible, desirable, to greatly prolong the term of training. It might be possible to devote alternate trainings exclusively to musketry instruction, or to devote occasional trainings to such instruction. The military authorities at the War Office were endeavouring to do what could be done in the matter, although he did not see it was possible, in the very short time

  843
  available for the purpose of training, that the musketry instruction could be brought to a very high pitch of perfection. It had been already shown what it was proposed to do in regard to the training of recruits. Any hon. Member who read the Report of the Inspector General of Recruiting, would see that that subject had been very fully and very candidly discussed in that Report. It was pointed out that there were some advantages and some disadvantages in the present system, and the Government had endeavoured to modify matters in a way which they hoped would be satisfactory to Militia officers generally—namely, by enabling recruits to be trained in such a manner as would be most convenient to the men themselves. If was said it was impossible to train recruits at the depôts. The Report of the Inspector General dealt, to some extent, with that subject. The position of officers and non-commissioned officers in Militia regiments had also been referred to, and complaint had been made that Militia officers had not the same control over different matters which they had had hitherto, and which, on the whole, they had so satisfactorily exercised. The Committee would see that Parliament, having adopted the principle of amalgamating the Militia with the Regular Forces, it was not possible to leave to commanding officers and to adjutants of regiments the entire and complete discretion which might formerly have been possible, and which, in many cases, was exercised with very great advantage. Lord Cardwell endeavoured to blend the Auxiliary and Regular Forces into what he called "an harmonious whole." Progress had been made in that direction. There might, in the process, have been some friction; but what they had to look for was the efficiency of the whole Force. He could not help thinking that the Committee would be of opinion that a united Force, which was under the direct control of the military authorities, would be, in time of need, a much more valuable Force than one whose parts performed independent duties, no matter how well those duties might be performed. He thought that, at the outset, there must inevitably be some friction, when changes such as those were made. The authorities in the Regular Army had been used all their lives to strict discipline, and could
  844
  not, therefore, be expected, at first, to have all that consideration for the more imperfect discipline, or, perhaps, the more imperfect methods, that prevailed in the Militia, that might be expected of them. He had no doubt that the Army authorities might have been, in some cases, too exacting in their demands, or too ready to find fault with the system they found in operation; but he trusted that, as the system was more developed, and as the actual connection between battalions of the Line and of the Militia became more direct, the effect would be to reduce the inequality, and to produce greater efficiency in the whole Force. In time, he believed, the system would be found to work with greater smoothness, and the friction that existed would not be found to have any permanent existence. Some reference had been made to the Orders issued to the permanent Staff, as to the wearing of uniforms, and as to the period of training. Those were specimens of what he referred to, when he spoke of the friction that existed. They would make inquiries into those matters; and he trusted that the Militia officers would not hesitate to communicate with the War Office authorities, who would be anxious to give full and reasonable consideration to all the complaints that were made.
  LORD BURGHLEYsaid, he wished to know why the pay of the Infantry Staff of Militia was reduced this year by £1,200?
  THE MARQUESS OF HARTINGTONasked, what page the items referred to appeared upon?
  LOUD BURGHLEYreplied, that they would be found upon page 33. The noble Marquess would find that, last year, the pay for the Militia Staff was £219,519; whereas, this year, it was only £218,398.
  COLONEL STANLEY: Does it arise from the fact that there are more of these officers this year serving in Line regiments than were so serving last year?
  THE MARQUESS OF HARTINGTON: I believe the reduction is on account of a transfer in Vote 1.
  EARL PERCYsaid, that perhaps the noble Marquess would state what was the reason for the increased charge for Provisions, Forage, Lighting and Fuel?
  COLONEL ALEXANDERsaid, there was a point to which he wished to refer,

  845
  and which he would apologize for mentioning—a matter which he had expected to hear brought forward by the hon. Baronet the Member for Wigtonshire (Sir Herbert Maxwell). As neither the hon. Baronet nor any other hon. Member had brought it forward, he (Colonel Alexander) would take upon himself to do so. Last year the hon. Baronet had asked the right hon. Gentleman the Secretary of State for War (Mr. Childers) whether he would not do something to bring about the retirement of the old Militia adjutants, such retirement having been described as a proper thing for those gentlemen who had done good service in their day, but were now almost beyond their work. In 1875, Lord Cranbrook, as he (Colonel Alexander) was aware, made an offer of retirement at the rate of 10 s. a-day to these officers, and they rather foolishly, perhaps, declined it, or a great number of them did so. The only excuse for those who declined it must be that they had not then served so long as adjutants as they had now. Some of them had only served four or five years. He had looked up the names of these officers, and he found that there were still 23 or 24 serving whose services as adjutants varied from 12 to 22 or 23 years. Now, it must be quite evident to the Committee that if the limit of service in one battalion of Militia was fixed at five years, surely 12, or 15, or 20, or 22, or 23 years' service must be a great deal too long. The fact was, that these officers were all past their work, and some of them were very much dissatisfied, finding that they exercised no command, after having served so much longer than many of the other officers of the regiment. A feeling of that kind caused considerable friction between these officers of the Militia and the adjutants and colonels of the regimental districts, If his (Colonel Alexander's) proposal was to cost a very large sum of money, he would not venture to bring it before the Committee; but, so far from that being the case, his hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Wigtonshire had shown, last year, that a distinct saving would be effected by the retirement of these officers. There would be no loss, but rather a saving of 1s. 9d. a-day, by the retirement of each of these officers. He, therefore, hoped the noble Marquess would re-consider that point, and see whether he could not offer some
  846
  terms to these officers to induce them to retire. A Representative of the Government had stated just now—and he (Colonel Alexander) had taken down his words—that Line adjutants were a cardinal point of union between the Line and the Militia. They had several battalions of Militia which had no Line adjutants; and, if it was a good thing to have these officers as a cardinal point of union between the Line and the Militia, it followed, as a matter of course, that the rule ought to be made applicable to the whole of the Force, and ought to be brought about as soon as possible. It was a very bad thing to have the two systems running concurrently.
  MR. O'SHEAsaid, he should like to know what the standard of height in the Militia was at the present moment, because the difference between the proper strength and the effective strength, as given in print, was enormous? He wanted to know whether the standard had been lowered to the minimum?
  SIR HERBERT MAXWELLsaid, that, without putting any slight on those adjutants to which his hon. and gallant Friend (Colonel Alexander) had referred, he thought there was no doubt that the Service would be much hotter without them. He disagreed entirely with his noble Friend (Earl Percy) in his estimate of the services of the new class of adjutants. He believed that the marked improvement that had taken place in the Militia during the last few years, was owing very much to the new blood that had been introduced into it from the Line by the adjutants under the new system, and he trusted that nothing that had fallen from his noble Friend that night would be taken by the gallant body of officers, who had to perform these duties, as any disparagement. Now, although the old adjutants had declined Lord Cranbrook's offer of 10 s. per day, after a service of 15 years, as retirement pensions, it must be remembered that their duties had become much more arduous since that time, owing to the formation of the brigade depôt system. He supposed any one of them would be now glad to receive the terms that were then offered; and, as had been stated, it was the fact that a saving would be brought about in that way, because the double duty of adjutants of brigade depôts and adjutants of Militia regiments could not

  847
  be imposed on officers under the old system, although it could be on officers under the new system. Last year, the right hon. Gentleman who was now Chancellor of the Exchequer, then Secretary of State for War (Mr. Childers), gave him this assurance. He said—
  "We are looking forward to the carrying out to the full of the system under which the Adjutants of Militia regiments will be in the same position with regard to term of service, as officers of this rant are in in the Line regiments with which the Militia battalions are connected."—(3 Hansard, [269] 618.)
  He thought it would be to the advantage of the Service, if this body of men were disposed of in the manner which had been there pointed out.
  MR. NEWZAM-NICHOLSONsaid, he wished to call attention to a question he had put a short time ago, to the Secretary of State for War, as to the position of non-commissioned officers who were transferred from the Marines to the Auxiliary Forces. The fact of these men having been unable to obtain the warrant rank and increased pay that were allowed to non-commissioned officers transferred from regiments of the Line, was certainly a great grievance. In the case he had before alluded to, which come under his own immediate notice, the grievance still remained. It seemed to him to be very strange that good non-commissioned officers from a Force that had so eminently distinguished itself in Egypt, as the Royal Marines, should not be able to obtain the same rank on a transfer to the Militia as if they had come from the Line. Whether there were one such case or more, he sincerely trusted that before long he would hear that this grievance had been remedied.
  EARL PERCYsaid, he wished to have an explanation of the figures on pages 34 and 35, relating to the Artillery Militia. Last year the number was 18,412, of whom only 9,549 came cut, or very little more than half; but, in the case of the Infantry Militia, of 119,566, 70,403 came out. That was a great deal more than half; and the Irish Militia were not in training, which increased the proportion in England and Scotland, where they were trained. Although very little more than half the Artillery Militia came out, Her Majesty's Government appeared to have increased the numbers of the Artillery very considerably, and to
  848
  have decreased that of the Infantry Militia from 119,566 to 117,575. He should like an explanation of that, as it seemed to him to be very extraordinary. He should have thought that the decrease would have been in the ease of the Artillery, and the increase in the case of the Infantry.
  MR. O'DONNELLsaid, he wished to make a few observations as to the Irish Militia. Though the Committee was called upon to vote a certain sum of money for it, it appeared to him to be rather in the nature of a Force that was being kept up in order to give a certain amount of prestige to a section of the landlord class in different counties in Ireland. It was not his intention to enter at any length into this question; but he wished to point out that the social relations in Ireland had been fundamentally changed, and that the feudal ideas that suggested the policy of embattling the county strength, so to speak, under the county landlords no longer existed. There was a strong disinclination on the part of the Irish farmers and peasantry to put themselves under the leadership of those landlords who were known as the exterminators of the country. Again and again, the scandal had been seen of a great landlord, such as Lord Clanricarde, whose relations with his tenantry were a scandal to the country—["Oh, oh!" and cries of "Order!"] He was absolutely correct in what he stated, and he maintained that over and over again such a scandal had been seen as a landlord of this class, in command of a regiment composed largely of his own miserable tenantry. The state of feeling in Ireland at the present moment, however, was such that it would be necessary for Her Majesty's Government to consider the propriety of remodelling the Irish Militia Force if it was to continue to exist. The Irish Militia was always disbanded, or dispensed from training, in times of agitation and disturbance. They used to be useful as an appanage of what used to be called county families, but which was not recognized in that character in the country any longer. It was desirable, therefore, that the Government should endeavour, as far as possible, to identify the Irish Militia with the institutions of the present day. It would be no use to attempt to brigade Irish county Militia regiments under Irish county landlords.

  849
  He did not say one word as to the relations between the English landlords and their tenants. The English landlords were, and always had been, the leaders of their people in the country; but, as to the Irish landlords in the Irish counties, there was an increasing objection to placing them over Irish county regiments. The rule of merit was a thing more and more introduced into the Regular Army, and that rule should be more and more introduced into the Irish Militia system, if that Militia was to be a Force which was to be useful to the nation, or to secure the respect of the world at large.
  MR. BIGGARsaid, he could corroborate what had been said by the hon. Member who had just sat down (Mr. O'Donnell) as to the objectionable character of the landlord officers of Militia in Ireland.
  SIR HERBERT MAXWELLasked if the hon. Gentleman the Member for Cavan (Mr. Biggar) was in Order in making offensive remarks about the landlords of Ireland in reference to this Vote?
  THE CHAIRMAN: I must say I have not heard any offensive remarks from the hon. Gentleman who just spoke (Mr. Biggar). Any objection which any hon. Member may have had to what was being said by the hon. Member for Dungarvan (Mr. O'Donnell) should have been taken while that hon. Member was speaking.
  MR. O'DONNELLsaid, that what he had stated was, that the Government might be guided by views that were perfectly right in their own eyes; but between the class to which he had referred and the Irish people there was a vast gulf, and he had protested against that Force being officered by the landlords. He protested against these attempts, these small attempts, of hon. Members to pass judgment upon the action of hon. Gentlemen in this matter.
  MR. BIGGARsaid, he knew something about the Militia regiments in the county of Cavan, and some of the officers were of the highest character and ability, one of them having been formerly Member for the county, and a candidate at the time when he (Mr. Biggar) was first elected. At the same time, others of the officers were gentlemen who were not entitled to the highest consideration. He was acquainted with one who cer-
  850
  tainly would not do credit to any Force. He (Mr. Biggar) had received reports from a number of different sources, to the effect that the regiment had been, from time to time, in the most disorganized state so far as the officers were concerned. Then, again, the Committee was aware that the officers of the Antrim Artillery Militia were notorious practical jokers. In the case of that regiment, the practical jokes were not, as might be expected, on the part of the young and foolish officers, but on the part of the old senior officers. The joking was carried on to such an extent that some of the officers had been compelled to retire from the regiment, and it seemed to him (Mr. Biggar) that it would be highly desirable if some of these officers were requested to retire from the Service. Then it had been reported, and he believed with truth, that the adjutant of the regiment had been for some time past receiving allowances for forage and for the keeping of a horse, though, in point of fact, he was not the owner of such an animal, and did not have one in his possesion. He believed that very recently that officer in question had attempted to make a colourable occasion for the allowance he received for the support of his horse. He (Mr. Biggar) had inquired into the circumstances, and he had ascertained that the Government had asked for information on the subject, but had not yet received sufficient to enable them to confirm his statement. However, he was informed that the inquiry which was being made on the part of the Government was not being instituted in a legitimate way—that was to say, by an officer of a suitable position to make such investigation—but by a non-commissioned officer, who had been sent from Belfast for the purpose. The report of that non-commissioned officer might be true enough; but, at the same time, it would not be entitled to so much consideration as the report of a superior officer. In the case of this forage, it had been certified for by a superior officer; and, no doubt, they must assume that that superior officer did not knowingly give an untrue return. At the same time, it was very probable he did not use sufficient care in inquiring into, or examining, that particular transaction. If these statements were true, he (Mr. Biggar) thought there should be a clean sweep made of all these officers in the

  851
  Artillery regiment. So far as he could gather from the speeches of hon. and gallant Gentlemen who belonged to Militia regiments, the Militia altogether was more ornamental than useful. Recruits were called out for one month's training, as a rule, or training of such short duration that he should think could hardly be of any value. If the training were taken for one month, with a probability of the men being afterwards put into the Line and becoming military men, it would be all well enough; but if, at the end of the period of drill, they were to be disbanded, it seemed to him that the money spent on the Force was thrown away. For these reasons, he really thought that the Committee would do well to criticize severely every Vote for such purpose as the Militia, and more especially with regard to the Militia of Ireland, because, in point of fact, they had not, in that country, suitable officers to put in command of the regiments. Some of the officers such as those described by the hon. Member for Dungarvan (Mr. O'Donnell) had no special knowledge of military affairs; and as to the junior officers themselves, they were made up of young men who had never been brought up to any military occupation, and, in point of fact, knew as much about military affairs as did the rank and file, or certainly very much less than the adjutants of Line regiments. He had hoped that the hon. Member for Dungarvan would have moved to reduce the Vote by the sum for the Irish Militia; but, as he had not taken the trouble to do so, he (Mr. Biggar) would not push the matter further.
  THE MARQUESS OF HARTINGTONsaid, that with regard to the charges of practical joking in the Antrim Militia, the matter had been investigated, and there was found to be no foundation for the allegations made. The fullest information had been given to him, and he had handed it over to the hon. Member, and he was surprised that, after having giving that information to the hon. Member, that it had not affected his tone. As to the question which had been raised with regard to the alleged incorrect Returns, he (the Marquess of Hartington) regretted very much that there appeared to be some foundation for the complaint. The subject, however, was under inquiry, not, as the hon.
  852
  Member seemed to think, by a non-commissioned officer, but by a competent officer, and the facts, whatever they were, were sure to be brought to light. The standard of height for the Militiamen was 5 feet 4 inches; but commanding officers were permitted to use their discretion as to enlisting men of not less than 5 feet 2 inches. The absence of so large a number of men from training last year was due to the fact that the Irish Militia regiments were not called out. A large proportion of the Irish Militia were Artillery, and the number of men not trained was greater in that arm than in the Infantry.
  MR. HARRINGTONsaid, he could give some experience of his own, of one of the Irish Militia regiments. The Kerry Militia assembled annually at Tralee, and their assembling was always announced the next day by the simultaneous disappearance of all the doorknockers in the town. The amusement of knocker-wrenching was not pursued by the privates in the Militia, but by the so-called gentry on the Staff, and the example which they set their men by their conduct, and their disgraceful appearance in the police-courts from time to time, was such as would justify hon. Members from Ireland—who were interested in the peace of their country—in moving to reduce this Vote by the sum which would be appropriated to the Irish Militia. If the Government wore going to introduce no better system of discipline into the Irish Militia Force, and to impose no check on those young gentlemen who played at toy soldiers in Ireland, the Vote would always receive very serious opposition.
  Vote agreed to.
  (4.) Motion made, and Question proposed,
  "That a sum, not exceeding £69,000, be granted to Her Majesty, to defray the Charge for Yeomanry Cavalry Pay and Allowances, which will come in course of payment during the year ending on the 31st day of March 1884."
  MR. ACLANDsaid, he wished to ask for some information as to the result of the Inquiry which had been ordered last year into the condition of the Yeomanry Cavalry? There were some points in connection with it upon which he knew he should be expressing the feeling of other Yeomanry officers. It was true that that Force had been frequently

  853
  spoken of with not quite so much respect as more numerous, but possibly not more efficient, Forces received. Those Forces were really not more useful than the Yeomanry might be, if adequate attention were bestowed upon it by the Government. During the last 10 years, there had been considerable changes in the Yeomanry. Shortly after the Autumn Manœuvres took place in 1872, Colonel Oakes, who was made the first Inspector of Yeomanry, established for the first time a School of Instruction at Aldershot; and since that time more than half the officers had passed the examinations. Out of 625 Yeomanry officers, including many who had actually served in the field in the Regular Army, and men who had been in regiments for 20 or 30 years, as well as men who had recently joined, 255 had obtained certificates from the School at Aldershot. That was a change which merited the attention of the Government. He also wished to draw attention to the fact that, whereas, in the old days, inspection was carried on by some smart Cavalry colonel, who went down to the place, and, having been hospitably treated by the Yeomanry officers, went away next day, telling them he had never seen such a smart body; now, the Inspecting officer spent two or three days at the place, saw how the instruction was carried out, satisfied himself whether it was efficient, then held a formal inspection, and presented an adequate Report to the Government. That was a much more efficient method of inspection. Another point which ought to be dealt with, was that the Yeomanry officers were not in the same position as the Volunteer officers, with regard to the men under their command. According to the Act of Geo. III., under which the Yeomanry were now serving, any Yeoman could leave his regiment upon 14 days' notice. The consequence was, that if any one of them was offended by his captain, or any of the troop to which he belonged, or felt the slightest inconvenience in attending duty, he could send in his resignation, and the officers had no hold whatever upon him, although the regiment might have gone to considerable expense upon his clothing. It would be a great advantage if the officers could have some hold on the men; and if, as was the case in the Volunteers, the men should be bound to serve for three, four, or five years, or,
  854
  if they left before that time, should be required to pay £4 or £5 to the contintingent fund towards the expense of their clothing. Then there was another difference between Yeomanry and Volunteers, which was constantly forgotten. It was true the Yeomanry were Volunteers; but while an Infantry Volunteer cost the Government very little, he brought nothing to the Government. He went to his drill when it suited him, and, after an hour or two of drill, went home; but the Yeoman had to provide an efficient horse, and devote it to the Service for the whole day. His horse was worth at least 7s. or 8s. a-day, but for that he received no remuneration whatever; and not only that, but many of the Yeomanry had to ride 10, 15, and even 20 miles to attend duty, and both horse and man must be fed. The Yeomanry had not only to provide that, but they had to make up for the absence of their horses from their work; whereas Volunteers were put to no expense, and regarded drill as a recreation rather than a duty. Besides that, it must be remembered that while the only wear and tear in the case of the Volunteers was that of their uniform, the Yeomanry had the wear and tear of saddlery, and that was an important item. He did not wish to ask for any great expenditure on the Yeomanry. He knew the way in which the Yeomanry had been regarded by the country in recent years; but there had been a great improvement in the Force. What he wished to show was that a very little more attention on the part of the Government with regard to the Yeomanry, and a very little more expense, would insure greater efficiency in what might be made a very useful Force. Their present pay could not be diminished in any way; 7s. a-day was the lowest amount for which men could be obtained with horses, and the men were well worth that amount. It was also true that, looking at the class of men in the Yeomanry, the period of drill could not be extended beyond eight days. He wished the time could be longer, but with men of 35 or 40 years of age, with responsible positions at home, it was impossible to ask them to remain away from home for more than eight days. But he thought something might be done in the way of calling out the recruits earlier, and requiring some of the officers to go and

  855
  drill them. He was satisfied that the Yeomanry could be made a practical and useful body, and there was no doubt that they could be taught to ride and shoot; most of the men could do both already. And what he wished to urge was, that the Government should give some inducement to men to join the regiments; secondly, some encouragement to the men to make themselves efficient; thirdly, some more attention to shooting; and, fourthly, some control over the men by the officers. If they did that, they would find the Yeomanry become a very much more useful Force than it had been for the last 20 or 30 years. The question was, how could men be encouraged to join the Yeomanry? No one had given the Yeomanry such a severe blow as the right hon. Gentleman the late Chancellor of the Exchequer (Sir Stafford Northcote) gave them, when he abolished the horse tax of 10 s., from which Yeomen had previously been exempted. In consideration of that exemption, the men would willingly spend £2 or £3 on their drill. The only other suggestion he had heard was that the Yeomanry should be exempted from sitting on juries, and he believed that would answer the purpose. He was sure a great deal might be done to encourage the men to make themselves efficient. Under the present system of payment, a Yeomanry private who had joined only a week, got the same pay as a sergeant who had long been the right hand of his officer, or who had been in the regiment 10 or 15 years. They both got the same amount, and that was not the right way in which to treat the men; and what he wished to see was some different rate of pay for different grades of efficiency, and certainly a different rate of pay for different ranks. He would suggest that £1 should be given to every sergeant, and 10 s. to every corporal, additional, after the permanent duty. That would not involve a very large amount for the whole Force, and it would be well worth while. Some allowance for the expense of food for the men and the horses at separate troop drills was absolutely necessary, and he would suggest an allowance of 3s. 6d. a-day per man, provided that three-fourths of the men were present at the drill. He should also like to see the pay depend to a certain extent on the efficiency in mus-
  856
  ketry. All farmers could shoot to some extent, and he did not see why we should not take advantage of that, and make them learn to shoot properly as soldiers, Volunteer officers would admit that shooting was the life and soul of the Volunteer Force. The prizes they had to shoot for were what induced the men to join that Force; and the same plan might be adopted for the Yeomanry. From actual experience in a mounted Rifle corps, he (Mr. Acland) was able to say that it was perfectly easy to carry the long Enfield rifle on the saddle without injury to man, horse, or saddle, and that was what he should like to see given to the Yeomanry. Their present carbine was of very little use beyond 500 or 600 yards. It had been proposed to do away with the Yeomanry sword; but he should strongly deprecate that step. In the first place, the Yeomanry were exceedingly fond of the sword, and the sword exercise was one in which they took great delight. In the next place, they were liable to be called out in the case of riots, and swords had a considerable moral effect over a crowd; and it was a better weapon for that purpose than the carbine, if they were called out. Although they could not be taught in eight or 10, or even 100, days to use the sword for purposes of defence or attack, they could be taught to carry it in such a way that it should be safe. There was one other suggestion, which he knew had been in the minds of Yeomanry officers. He did not wish to dwell upon it now; but there was a feeling that the Yeomanry horses might be turned to account for supplying remounts to the Cavalry. One practical suggestion he had heard was, that every Yeoman, whose horse had been certified as in good condition and efficient for that purpose, should receive £1 a-year on the condition that the Government should have the right of refusal whenever Cavalry horses were required. Another suggestion was, that a system of breeding should be adopted, in which stallions should be placed at points accessible to the Yeomanry, so that the produce might be available for re-mounts for the Cavalry; and another suggestion was, that all the horses used for any of the Auxiliary Forces should be registered, with a view to being purchased by the Government, if required. Any-

  857
  thing that could be done in that way would, he believed, be an encouragement to men to join the Yeomanry. He hoped that if anything did occur to the Government, they would give the Yeomanry the benefit of it, and that they would not regard the encouragement and improvement of the Yeomanry as unworthy of their attention. The whole Yeomanry Vote was only £69,000, which only slightly exceeded the pay of the adjutants only in the Volunteers; and he did not think that, considering that the Government got men and horses of superior intelligence and energy, and capable of being taught in a much quicker time than ordinary Militia recruits, money could be spent in a better manner than upon this Force. He hoped, therefore, it would be thought worth while to give a little more and expect more in return. What he would suggest was, that if the Government were not prepared to give the Yeomanry anything in the way he had suggested at once, they would do this. During the next three or four months almost all the Yeomanry regiments would be out. All the officers would be together, and they might be consulted as to the means required to encourage the Yeomanry. If an invitation was sent out to them to send up suggestions to the War Office, and if not this year, at least early next year, a Committee was appointed, consisting of members of the Yeomanry inside this House, or out of it, or of gentlemen in the War Office, and evidence was taken from Yeomanry officers, he believed some practical result might be obtained.
  VISCOUNT NEWPORTsaid, he rose for the purpose of asking the noble Marquess the Secretary of State for War, whether there was any prospect of the recommendations of the War Office Committee, which sat to consider the question of the permanent Staff, being carried out? It was some time since that Committee, of which he (Viscount Newport) was a Member, made its Report. There were certain arrangements proposed, that the Committee believed would be beneficial to the Yeomanry, and, at the same time, some reductions were suggested. Upon those reductions the Government eagerly seized, and proceeded to carry them out with the greatest alacrity, although nothing had been done in the direction of the improvements suggested. He could assure the Com-
  858
  mittee that they would never have dreamed of proposing the reductions, had it not been believed that the counterbalancing arrangements recommended would be carried out also. He hoped some attention would be paid to the recommendation of the Committee with regard to the mounting of the sergeants. Sergeants were sent down to the Yeomanry regiments without any provision being made for mounting them, and the consequence was that the captains had to find them horses. Most of these were not trained; and the Committee would understand that an officer drilling mounted men could not perform his duty effectually unless he was mounted on a thoroughly well-broken horse. He agreed with the hon. Gentleman who had just sat down (Mr. Acland) that payment should be made for the mounted troop drills which were now compulsory. In his opinion, the Yeomanry Calvalry Force deserved some encouragement from I the Government; but, at present, it seemed that the words of the noble Earl (Earl Percy) with regard to the Militia, that the Government were acting as if they were exceedingly desirous of putting an end to it, applied to the Yeomanry I with still greater force.
  COLONEL LEVETTsaid, he should like to say one or two words on points that he regarded as important in connection with the Force which formed the subject of the present Vote. The hon. Member for East Cornwall (Mr. Acland) had alluded to the fact that the Yeomanry did not occupy quite so good a position in the opinion of the country as the Volunteer Force. He (Colonel Levett) believed the reason for that was to be found in the kind of weapon with which they were armed. The enormous range and power of the rifle had undoubtedly much to do with the relative positions of the Volunteers and Yeomanry; and it was upon that ground that he thought the latter were entitled to ask the Government for some assistance. The Yeomanry were told, by the visiting officers, that they must pay more attention to their shooting. But the facilities afforded by Government did not make this a very easy matter. For instance, they were only allowed 30 rounds of ball-cartridge a-year; and it was optional whether the men fired that number of rounds or not. Again, if the men attended the ranges to practice, it was done at their own expense; and not only was that the case,

  859
  but the officers had to pay the expenses of the Sergeant Instructor who attended there. He ventured to suggest that a small amount of assistance from the Government in these respects would have a very beneficial effect upon the efficiency of the Force. He thought that if every man who rendered himself an efficient shot was rewarded with some mark of distinction from the military authorities—if he were allowed a small sum in addition to his pay—the result would soon show itself in the improved firing of the Yeomanry as a body. Again, the Yeomanry had to contend year after year with the difficulty of going through their training upon more or less untrained horses. A man might render himself as efficient as he pleased; he might attend regularly year after year, and be the best of swordsmen; but, if he rode a bad horse, he could never compete with a Cavalry man mounted on a thoroughly trained charger. He did not advocate the changing of the Yeomanry into a mounted Rifle corps. It was truly said the other day by Lord Wolseley, that the weapon of the Cavalry man was the sword; and he (Colonel Levett) was certainly not inclined to see any such change effected. But lie thought that if the Yeomanry were encouraged to study thoroughly the light Cavalry work, for which they were fitted; if they were afforded better opportunities for drill, and were encouraged in their shooting, the country would have in them a much more valuable body of men than they would get for the money the Committee was now asked to vote. He would suggest a small increase of pay to those men who, at the range, attained a certain degree of efficiency, and that the expenses of the Sergeant Instructor who attended the range should also be paid. He sincerely hoped Her Majesty's Government would, at all events, consider the various proposals he and others had submitted to them, which, if adopted, he believed would greatly benefit the Force.
  MR. MONCKTONsaid, the hon. Member for East Cornwall (Mr. Acland) alluded to several schemes for inducing men to join the Force; and he (Mr. Monckton) would also place before the Committee a proposal that had been suggested to Her Majesty's Government, and which, if adopted, he believed, would be a great stimulus to the Force. Some time ago the proposal was made
  860
  that all Yeomen who rendered themselves efficient should be excused from serving on Grand Juries. Now, that was a practical suggestion, and he was sure it would be very well received by the Yeomanry throughout the country. On the other hand, there would be some difficulty in the way of its application; because, if the immunity from serving on Grand Juries were granted, he could not help thinking that, in small counties—in Rutland, for instance—where there was a strong and loyal body of Yeomanry, undue pressure might, in consequence, have to be put upon other persons in the country who were liable to serve. One proposal that he would submit to the consideration of Her Majesty's Government was, that every Yeoman who was owner of a proper horse of 15 hands should be exempted from Carriage Duty in respect of one light cart. He believed that concession would be very gratefully received by the Force. Another suggestion, that he thought would have a very good effect, was that badges should be given for length of service; and, if it were possible, he would like to see permission given to troopers to retain the uniform after 20 years service. He was aware that that was not done in the Line; but the position of that branch of the Service was entirely different to that of the Yeomanry. However, he merely threw this out as a suggestion, remarking, at the same time, that no expense would be incurred by its adoption, except for the outfit, which, after 20 years of service, would probably not be in very good condition. Further, he would suggest that the Government should give prizes to the owners of the best horses. No doubt, great expense was caused to captains of troops and colonels of regiments in the matter of horses and other things relating to the Force, and this would have the effect of deterring many persons in the various counties from undertaking the command of regiments who would otherwise do so, and who were most fitted for the Service. It had also been urged that there should be an increased quantity of ammunition served out to the men, and it was pointed out that at present only 30 rounds were issued. He (Mr. Monckton) thought it impossible that any man, with so small an allowance of ammunition, could make himself an efficient shot; and he heartily agreed with the proposal, that men who did make themselves efficient in this respect

  861
  should receive an increase of pay. The last proposal was, that when it was thought conducive to the further efficiency of a Yeomanry regiment, the adjutant should stay with the regiment longer than the term now established. He would suggest that, on the representation of the colonel of the regiment, endorsed by the Inspecting officer to this effect, that term should be extended from five to seven years. In making these suggestions, he could not hope for the adoption of all of them. He trusted, however, that some of them would find favour; and that, at all events, Her Majesty's Government would put forward some scheme that would offer encouragement to a class of men whose services and sacrifices had not been as well recognized as they ought to have been.
  MR. EVANSsaid, he agreed with the hon. and gallant Gentleman who had just spoken (Colonel Levett), that an improvement was desirable in the shooting of the Yeomanry; he would venture to add that there was great room for it, and that, he believed, if some encouragement were given, a large number of regiments would render themselves efficient in that respect. He did not believe, however, in requiring men to expend a certain quantity of ammunition, because the effect of that was, that a great amount of shooting took place at the ranges, sometimes very much to the danger of those living in the neighbourhood His object in rising was to confirm the opinion of the hon. and gallant Member for Lichfield, that a small amount of encouragement to the Yeomanry would result in a great increase of efficiency. He agreed, also, with the noble Viscount opposite (Viscount Newport), that, as the Government had made the reductions in the case of the Yeomanry which the Committee recommended, it was desirable that the improvements, suggested as an equivalent, should also have been adopted; and he had no doubt that, had this been the case, increased efficiency would have followed.
  VISCOUNT FOLKESTONEsaid, he hoped the Committee would allow him to make a few observations in support of the proposals so ably advanced by his hon. Friend opposite (Mr. Acland). He agreed with him, that a small concession would be sufficient to encourage men to join the Yeomanry. It was owing to
  862
  the fact that little or no encouragement was given, that the officers of the Force had such immense difficulty in maintaining their regiments even in the attenuated condition they were in at present. He would like to bring before the Committee a fact that would show, in a practical way, that the Yeomanry was a Force which deserved encouragement. The members of the Yeomanry were called out for eight days' training; unlike the Volunteers, they had to leave their occupations, and remain in a town, generally one of the principal towns of the county to which they belonged, for the prescribed time. The patriotic citizens of the place, in their endeavour to assist the Yeomanry, appeared to think that, during their period of training, they were fair game, and that they ought to be mulcted to as great an extent as possible for the purpose of increasing the trade and profits of the town. That constituted a serious detriment to the Force he had the honour to belong to, and it was one which could not but militate largely against the possibility of getting recruits. It had been stated, over and over again by those who had written and spoken on the subject, that it cost the Yeomanry generally, for their eight days' training, a sum varying from £2 to £5. His contention was, that the Yeomanry, if it was a Force worthy of being kept up at all, should receive soma encouragement from Her Majesty's Government. He saw that the money voted for the Yeomanry in 1882 amounted to £69,000, the total number of the Force being at that time 14,458 men, which included officers, permanent sergeants, and rank and file. Each man was paid 7s. a-day for the eight days' duty in the year; and that allowance for the number of men mentioned would amount to £39,000. He would take the mean between the two sums stated to be the cost out of pocket to the men, and place it at £3 10 s. Say that each of the 14,458 men spent that amount, irrespective of their pay, and then, by a short calculation, hon. Members would see that the Force spent about £49,000 over and above the amount received for turning out. Besides that, the officers had to pay a largo sum; although he did not complain, he had to pay rather more than £40 a-year to keep up his own troop. All the officers did not pay as much; but in the case of some senior officers, the amount

  863
  was more. But taking the amount at the low average of £20 for each of the 625 officers in the Force, the whole cost under that head would be £12,500, which, added to the £49,000 before mentioned, would give a total of £61,500. That was the sum which the Yeomanry annually expended in the maintenance of their own Force, without any encouragement from the Government or any other source whatever; a sum only about £8,000 less than the Government paid for the whole of the Force during the year. He trusted the Government would decide, either that the Yeomanry was a Force that should be kept up, and was therefore worthy of some little encouragement, that would preserve it, at least, at its present numerical standard; or that it should be done away with altogether. The Committee should bear in mind that, for the 200,000 Volunteers in the country, there was no allied Cavalry but the Yeomanry Cavalry, and that those only numbered 14,458 men. He believed military men would agree with him that that was a very small Force of Cavalry, as compared with the number of Volunteers out to keep up for the defence of the country. The country had not a superabundance of Regular Cavalry; and his contention was, that they had not from that source Cavalry sufficient to support the Volunteers, in case it were necessary to call them out for home defence. At such a time, the country would have to fall back upon the Yeomanry, and could fall back upon that alone. Therefore, he might fairly say, that if the Government considered it necessary and good to keep up and encourage the Volunteer Force, it was equally advisable that they should do something to maintain and encourage the Yeomanry; and then it would be found that they were quite as deserving of encouragement as the Volunteers. He would conclude by calling the attention of the Committee to the words of the Inspector General of the Auxiliary Forces, spoken at a lecture delivered in the month of March last, to the effect that the Yeomanry had struggled gallantly to keep their heads above water during two or three years of depression, and that if anything could be done to make the people understand that they were a valuable branch of Her Majesty's Forces, it would, in his opinion, be a very good thing. For these reasons, he
  864
  (Viscount Folkestone) hoped Her Majesty's Government would do something to enable officers who were anxious to keep up the strength and efficiency of the Yeomanry to carry out their wishes.
  MR. MONTAGUE GUESTsaid, he quite agreed with the remarks which had been made by the noble Viscount opposite (Viscount Folkestone) with reference to the encouragement which should be given to the Yeomanry. But he did not agree with him in his calculation as to the amount which it cost a Yeomanry officer to support a troop, because he thought he heard the noble Viscount say that the captain of the troop had to pay most of the expense, and that the subalterns did not pay so much. He (Mr. Guest) had to pay £10 a-year for a house for his sergeant, and to find him a horse, and pay for his drill; and he thought the Government ought to pay something more towards such expenses for drill, and for the house in which the sergeant had to live. If ever the sergeant went out with the troop, he (Mr. Guest) had to hire him a horse and pay his expenses. The Government, surely, ought to do something towards that. He did not quite agree with what had been said as to the compulsory service of the men; because, if the men were told that they were to serve for so many years, a great number of them would say they would not join at all—they did not care to tie themselves to time. A number of men would say—"I would like to join the Yeomanry; but I do not care to tie myself for a number of years." The Government ought to give some encouragement to the Force; for, as a rule, the men were all anxious to make themselves efficient in every branch of exercise through which they could be put—as, for instance, the sword exercise and shooting. They worked exceedingly hard to make themselves efficient, and there was no body of men in the world who were able to make themselves more efficient in the short time that they had at their disposal. There were some people who said that the Yeomanry were not worth keeping up; but such people evidently did not understand what the Yeomanry were. He (Mr. Guest) first joined the Yeomanry in the year 1859, when they were a very different body of men to what they were now. At that time

  865
  many of the men were old and white-haired; they were certainly not soldiers; but, in the present day, it would be difficult to find any where in Europe 14,000 irregular Cavalry who, for the short time they had at their disposal for drilling, were so efficient. Not only was that the case, but he might say even more. He had seen the Regular Cavalry, and he had been a soldier himself, and he could say that the horses of the Yeomanry Cavalry of England were far finer than the horses of the Regular Cavalry. [An hon. MEMBER: Farm horses.] He begged the hon. Member's pardon; they were not farm horses; and he could say emphatically that they would be glad of a few hundreds of such horses in the Regular Service. When the question was asked—"Is the Force worth keeping up?" he could only say that, in his opinion, it was; and though he quite agreed that it was not right to spend money unnecessarily, he could not regard the Yeomanry as a mere fancy—he looked upon them as a very valuable Force. As the noble Viscount opposite had said, we were not able to spend very much money upon Cavalry, so as to have a very large Force; and if this country had some day to fall back upon its Volunteers, we should be placed in this position—that we should have 200,000 ably officered and efficient Volunteers, who would require to have Cavalry to co-operate with them, for we could not possibly do without Cavalry. Where, then, were these Cavalry to come from? For it must be remembered that it was impossible to make a Cavalry soldier in a moment. We should want Cavalry to support our Volunteers, and where should we get them? The only Force upon which we could fall back would be the Yeomanry; and he quite agree with a remark which had been made by one hon. Member, that since a regular school of Cavalry had been started at Aldershet there had been a great deal more efficiency among the officers, who had worked themselves up considerably and did know their duty. For some years past, he might say, the officers had been good, active men, and most anxious to become real good soldiers. He, therefore, hoped that Her Majesty's Government, if they meant to keep up the Force, would give some real encouragement to it such as was worthy of it; and he hoped that, if this was not
  866
  done this year, it would, at all events, be done next.
  MR. A. F. EGERTONsaid, he had had the honour of serving in the Force for 30 years; and he would like to say a word or two as to the expense to which the men were put when on duty. He had understood his noble Friend. (Viscount Folkestone) to say that every man spent some £2 or £3 over and above the sum allowed him by the Government. His (Mr. Egerton's) experience was against that view, for he had known men in his own regiment pass through their period of duty, and bring home money to their wives, out of the sum of 7s. per day which was allowed them. He did not say all did that; but his point was that the sum allowed was an adequate sum. Then, as to the shooting of the Yeomanry. The difficulty in that respect was the difficulty of providing ranges. In the regiment which he had the honour to command, with six troops, there were only three troops which could command ranges; so that the shooting was in abeyance in three out of the six troops. That was a difficulty in regard to which the Government might possibly be able to give some assistance. It could only be met by an increased expenditure. If the ranges were at a distance, it was necessary to take the men to them; and it was impossible to expect that the Yeomanry officers should pay the expenses. Another point on which he would like to say a word was as to the preliminary drills which were compulsory before any man could go and draw money on permanent duty. There were a certain number of mounted drills which must be perfected by every Yeoman before he could draw any pay at all; but there was great difficulty in getting a sufficient number of men to attend the mounted and troop drills. It had been said that the proper way to meet that difficulty was to draw upon the public purse, for a very small expenditure would make a very considerable difference in the number of men who would attend this special duty. He had made a small calculation on this subject; and he believed that one day's pay for each man in the Service would insure a very much larger attendance at the mounted drills, and that would only amount to £3,500 a-year. That would be the extent of the increase, and it would give each man 2s. 6d. or 3s. per

  867
  day for his attendance at mounted drill. A great country like this might surely stand such an increase of the Yeomanry Vote, which now stood at £69,000. Then there was a charge for the horses of the permanent sergeants. At present the captains had to pay for those horses at their own expense; but there were very few Yeomanry regiments which were not near to Regular Cavalry regiments, and it would be a very easy matter for the Regular Cavalry to provide horses temporarily for the permanent sergeants. As to the efficiency of the Yeomanry, there was a general consensus of opinion among the Yeomanry officers that the Force had become far more efficient within the last few years, and especially since the establishment of the school at Aldershot, which had made the very greatest difference in the efficiency of the body, and especially in the efficiency of the junior Yeomanry officers. There were now a great many Yeomanry officers who had never served in the Cavalry, but who were quite as good as, if not superior to, the Cavalry officers in the power of drilling their men. The Yeomanry had greatly increased instead of decreasing in their efficiency; and, with a very small increase in the Government funds that were spent upon them, that efficiency would be still further increased.
  MR. BROMLEY-DAVENPORTsaid, the Committee had rather been treating the subject as though there was some proposal to diminish the Vote; but that was not the case. The hon. Gentleman (Mr. Egerton) had said that he had been connected with the Yeomanry for the last 30 years; but he (Mr. Davenport) had had the honour of being a member of the Force for more than 40 years, and he did not at all agree with the noble Viscount (Viscount Folkestone), who had said that if the Government would not consent to improve the Yeomanry, they ought to do away with it altogether. He (Mr. Davenport) hoped they would allow it to continue as it was, rather than take such a bold step as that. He remembered the time when the Yeomanry were spoken of in a very slighting way, both in that House and out of it; and he remembered somebody saying that the Force was one which was not required to leave the country on foreign service, except in case of invasion at home. That was one of the sar-
  868
  casms that used to be levelled against the Force—attempts to make them ludicrous. But the Yeomanry had lived through that sort of thing, and he believed it was now as efficient as possible. A point on which he differed from some remarks that had been made was this—he was strongly of opinion that it would be a very great mistake to attempt to change the Yeomanry into Mounted Volunteers. They must stick to the sword. His own regiment had very often been called in to aid the civil power; and he believed it was universally acknowledged that in their services on those occasions they had done their duty very well indeed; and, although they had occasionally used the sword, they had used it with moderation. As to the remarks which had been made upon the attenuated condition of the Yeomanry, his own regiment, far from being attenuated, was now stronger than it had been for many years, and numbered 550 men.
  THE MARQUESS OF HARTINGTONsaid, the noble Viscount who had spoken earlier in the discussion (Viscount Folkestone) had seemed to him to prove rather too much. It was very doubtful whether the efficiency of the Force would be greatly increased by any small expenditure such as was likely to be adopted by the House. No doubt, there were a good many well-to-do men in the Yeomanry, who were, to a great extent, officered by rich men; and both these classes were willing to spend a certain amount of money, be-sides giving up a certain amount of time in the Service. This was, no doubt, very valuable to the country; and it afforded to the men and officers themselves a change of occupation and of scene which was not altogether disagreeable to them, and for which they were willing to pay a certain amount of hard cash; and he doubted very much whether any moderate sum of money, such as the House was likely to grant, would be at all certain to improve the efficiency of that valuable Force. Some reference had been made to what had been done by his Predecessor in Office (Mr. Childers). He believed his right hon. Friend did, last year, endeavour to help the Committee to arrive at a conclusion, by inviting a certain number of Yeomanry officers to the War Office to discuss the question; but he believed there were great dif-

  869
  ferences of opinion in what was put forward, and nothing very practical was suggested to be embodied in the form of proposals. The consequence was that when he (the Marquess of Hartington) acceded to the Office he now held, he did not find any such proposals before him for increasing the Vote, or for modifying the Vote; and the subject, therefore, had not come immediately and directly before him. Under these circumstances, it was not altogether accurate to say that the recommendations of the Committee had not been carried out. So far as his recollection served him, the amount of this Vote was now very much the same as that at which it stood some years ago—it had not materially increased nor decreased. The value of a Volunteer Cavalry Force, to act in case of need with Volunteers, was, no doubt, very great; and, if any moderate increase could be suggested for it, he could only say that it should be most favourably considered; but he wished to point out that the various suggestions which had been made that evening would involve, if carried out, a very considerable increase in the Vote, and that was a direction in which he thought very few hon. Members would be prepared to go. It must be remembered that the constitution of that House varied very greatly according to the nature of the proposals which happened to be brought before it. The House that night had been composed either of Yeomanry officers, or of Gentlemen who strongly sympathized with them, and the economists of the House had been represented in extremely small numbers. But if the Government consented to make the various alterations which had been suggested, the composition of that House would be very considerably altered, and there would be a much larger number of hon. Gentlemen in attendance prepared to make a practical protest against any very considerable increase in the Vote. And he did not know that that protest would come wholly from one side of the House, because he had observed that hon. Gentlemen opposite were becoming spirited advocates of economy; and the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Westminster (Mr. W. H. Smith) took the Government to task only last Tuesday for their extravagance. Of all the suggestions which had been made that night, it appeared
  870
  to him that only one was of a practical character, and that was with regard to drill. The demand which had been made on that point seemed to him to be fair and reasonable; and if he could see his way to meeting it he should have great pleasure in so doing. But he knew that there might be some difficulty about it; and, therefore, he could only promise that his best attention should be given to the subject.
  SIR WILFRID LAWSONsaid, he regretted that his hon. Friend the Member for Burnley (Mr. Rylands) was not present, for this would have been a good opportunity for putting into effect that hon. Gentleman's abstract Resolution in favour of economy. What was the use of these Yeomanry? A great deal had been said as to their being excellent fellows, who wanted a great deal done for them; but he altogether failed to see of what use they were. Of course, nobody who was not a colonel should talk about these matters at all; but common sense taught even civilians that 9,000 men brought in from the sheep-fold and turned to soldiering were sure to be unskilful—indeed, as the hon. Member for East Cornwall (Mr. Acland) had said, it was hardly safe to let them have a sword. When they were called out for one week, for a picnic like the Derby, and not for soldiering, it was absurb to say that they could add to the permanent strength of the country. He had just asked the hon. Member for Buckinghamshire how long he had been in the Army, and the hon. Gentleman said 12 years. And he did not know the duty yet. All night these Yeomanry officers had been saying—"Do this for us, and do that for us. Do something or other for us, and if you don't you had better abolish us." He (Sir Wilfrid Lawson) would say, in reply to that—"All right; you had better be abolished;" and, therefore, he should take the liberty of objecting to the Vote in toto, hoping for the support of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Westminster (Mr. W. H. Smith), who was so strong an opponent of the extravagance of the Government.
  MR. ACLANDsaid, he had not spoken of the use of the sword by the Yeomanry in the sense in which the hon. Baronet (Sir Wilfrid Lawson) had understood him. All he had intended to say was, that those Members who knew anything

  871
  of a Cavalry regiment would know that when men wore brought in from the sheepfold for only one week—and it was very unfortunate that they could not be got for more—it was not surprising that at first their use of the sword should not be perfectly safe.
  COLONEL O'BEIRNEsaid, he objected to the Vote. Before any money was voted for the Auxiliary Cavalry, the Regular Cavalry ought to be properly attended to. On a recent occasion, when they had to send out three Cavalry regiments to Egypt, they had, in order to enable the men to go out, to denude three other regiments of their horses. ["Question!"]
  THE CHAIRMANsaid, he must remind the hon. and gallant Gentleman that the Vote under discussion referred to the Yeomanry, and not to the Regular Cavalry.
  COLONEL O'BEIRNEsaid, his contention was simply that the Regular Cavalry should be made thoroughly efficient before any money was voted for the Auxiliary Cavalry.
  MR. ILLINGWORTHsaid, that, whatever might be thought of the Yeomanry Cavalry, there was no doubt that the discussion in regard to it had been somewhat protracted. He was quite persuaded that it would shortly become a question whether the Force ought not to be allowed to die a peaceful death. The question asked by the hon. Baronet the Member for Carlisle (Sir Wilfrid Lawson) was a most pertinent one—namely, what was the use of the Yeomanry Cavalry, and what reliance could be placed upon it in time of need? It had been asserted, in some quarters, that the Force did add strength to the Army and defence of the country; but nine out of every ten of the speakers in the present debate rather regarded the Yeomanry as an ally of the Civil power in case of an outbreak amongst the people. He ventured to say that the great mass of the people of the country looked with great disfavour and suspicion upon the Force, and in the very strongest manner deprecated its use, when it was, unfortunately, found necessary for a military force to co-operate with the Civil power. So far as the Northern Counties were concerned, Peterloo was by no means wiped out of the memories of the people. "Where it was necessary to employ a military force for the maintenance of order, it
  872
  was infinitely better that a handful of Regular soldiers, who were not liable to use their swords indiscreetly, should be employed, than a whole regiment of Yeomanry. What possible service could this Force be in time of war? He could not imagine it facing any foe, except it be a body of Frenchmen of about equal number, who had never been on horseback before. It was admitted that they were only trained for eight days in the year, and that it seldom happened they had the same horses two years in succession. He was proud of the county he came from. In that county there were not many men who played at soldiers; but there were people who had to pay taxes, and who felt very strongly against any waste of money in this direction. The county certainly possessed a regiment of Yeomanry which trained at Harrogate. That annual training was made the occasion of a gathering of the fair sex and idle people; but, so far from the Force being seriously regarded as of any use, there was not one man in 50, out of the Force, who considered it was of the slightest value whatever. Hon. Gentlemen who were connected with Yeomanry regiments had admitted that the Force was not of the slightest value; because every one of them had said that, if it could not be made more efficient, it had better be abolished. The hon. Member for East Cornwall (Mr. Acland) gave the Force such a character that he (Mr. Illingworth) wondered the Minister of War would have anything more to do with it. The hon. Gentleman told them that a man could even leave the Force on 14 days' notice if he disliked his officer, or had any other cause of dissatisfaction. They heard a great deal in the House about patriotism, and they had heard hon. Members who were officers in the Force complain that such an enormous charge as £10 a-year were laid on some officers. Surely £10 was a paltry sum to pay for the honour of the office held by those hon. and gallant Gentlemen. It appeared to him (Mr. Illingworth) they purchased very cheaply the marvellous distinction of being at the head of this still more marvellous Force. If such an incident as the removal of the horse tax had seriously interfered with the numbers and the efficiency of the Force, that fact alone afforded a strong proof of the folly of maintaining

  873
  any such institution as the Yeomanry Cavalry. Did the removal of the horse tax involve any new tax? Nothing of the kind; but, because relief was given to those who owned horses, the numbers of the Force, they were told, decreased. He considered it was the duty of hon. Members to take up a position of opposition to Estimates of this kind. The Force did not commend itself to the great mass of the people of the country; and within a comparatively short time the Government would be pressed to abolish the Force, which, he believed, was mainly kept up for the amusement of a number of gentlemen who belonged to a class not very oppressively employed, and who wanted some occupation of a gentlemanly and easy character during a part of their leisure time. He believed that if the country were polled nine-tenths of the people would willingly vote for the abolition of the Force.
  SIR PHILIP MILESsaid, he could not agree with one remark the hon. Member for Bradford (Mr. Illingworth) had made. As an old Cavalry officer, he must say he considered the Yeomanry Cavalry a very valuable Force. It was all very well to say they were fine weather soldiers; but he could not imagine any body of men who, in case of an invasion of the country, would be more useful in their own country, in which they knew every road and bye road.
  Question put.
  The Committee divided:—Ayes 126; Noes 21: Majority 105.—(Div. List, No. 99.)
  House resumed.
  Resolutions to be reported To-morrow.
  Committee to sit again To-morrow.

  MEDALS BILL.— [BILL 188.]
  (Mr. Courtney, Secretary Sir William Harcourt, Mr. Chancellor of the Exchequer.)
  MEDALS BILL.— [BILL 188.]

    SECOND READING.
    Order for Second Beading read.
    MR. COURTNEY,in moving that the Bill be now read a second time, said, it was introduced, after mature consideration, to meet the great evil of making, and putting in circulation, medals which were imitations of the current coin of the Realm, and which did not constitute any offence against coinage in
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    the present law. The attention of the Government had been drawn by the authorities of the Mint to the extent these medals had been put in circulation; but there had been a good deal of uncertainty as to whether they should take any measures to put a stop to the evil. It was now, however, proposed to make it a misdemeanour to possess, without reasonable excuse or justification, any medal resembling a coin, or bearing superscriptions such as those on the Queen's coins. He would admit that it was a difficult matter to word an Act of that kind so that it should operate fairly; but he was sure the principle of the Bill would not meet with any objection in any part of the House. He, therefore, confidently proposed the second reading.
    Motion made, and Question proposed, "That the Bill be now read a second time."—(Mr. Courtney.)
    MR. JUSTIN M'CARTHYsaid, the hon. Gentleman (Mr. Courtney) had said the Bill had been brought in after great deliberation. He should not have thought it, if the hon. Gentleman had not taken the trouble to inform the House of the fact; because, in the first place, the Bill overthrew, in a simple line, the great principle of our Criminal Law, that a man must be proved guilty, and not himself prove his innocence. They had not heard a single word of explanation as to the practical reason why the Bill was introduced, or what the evils were against which the Bill proposed to contend. If any person—
    "Makes, or has in his possession for sale, or offers for sale, or sells, any medal, cast, coin, or other like thing, wholly or partially of metal, or any metallic combination, and resembling in size, figure, and colour any of the Queen's current gold or silver coin, or having thereon a device resembling any device on any of the Queen's current gold or silver coin, or being so formed that it can by gilding, silvering, colouring, washing, or other like process, be so dealt with as to resemble any of the Queen's current gold or silver coin,"
    he should be liable to one year's imprisonment. There were many things which resembled coins, which were used as medals or ornaments, and all these would come under the Bill. Ancient coins, for instance, would come under the Bill. In its present shape, he could not approve of the measure.
    MR. COCHBAN-PATRICKsaid, he agreed with the hon. Gentleman the

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    Financial Secretary to the Treasury (Mr. Courtney) that it was not easy to frame a measure to put down illegal coinage. It appeared to him that the present Bill would fail in the object the hon. Gentleman had in view, and that, on the other hand, it might be attended with results which the hon. Gentleman had not in contemplation. He thought he was right in conjecturing that the occasion of this measure was a sentence in last year's Report of the Deputy Master of the Mint. In that Report reference was made to the prevalence in the country of what were known as "Hanoverian medals." Those medals bore on one side a likeness of the Queen, and on the other side an equestrian figure altogether different from any device on the current coin of the Realm. The medals, however, were very common; and the Deputy Master of the Mint said, in his 12th Report—
    "It is clear, therefore, that the facility with which these medals can be procured is the cause of much crime. Thirty prosecutions have been taken for uttering these coins. It is doubtful whether there is any provision in the Statute now in force which makes it illegal either to make or sell them. It would appear desirable that an Act should be passed, expressly prohibiting both their manufacture and sale."
    Now, it appeared to him (Mr. Cochran-Patrick) that the Bill under consideration had a much wider scope, and was much more vague in its language, than the Act which was recommended by the Deputy Master of the Mint. He would admit that, while they were trying to meet a particular evil, it was very possible to cause considerable inconvenience in other directions. The offence which was laid down by the Bill was that of having made, or being in possession of, or offering for sale, any medal, cast, or coin having a resemblance to the current coin of the Realm. Now, the 7th clause of the Coinage Act of 1861 laid down that—
    "Whoever …. shall import or receive into the United Kingdom … any false or counterfeit coin resembling, or apparently intended to resemble, or pass for any of the Queen's current gold or silver coin, knowing the same to be false or counterfeit …. shall be guilty of felony."
    In the 13th section it was said that—
    "Whoever shall, with intent to defraud, tender, utter, or put off …. any medal … resembling in Size, Figure, and Colour the current coin …. shall be guilty of a misdemeanour."
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    In both those cases a guilty knowledge or intention was distinctly laid down; but, under the present Bill, the mere possession of a medal or coin was to be an offence, though a person might be in possession of it quite innocently. The Bill might be attended with effects not desired or intended by the Government. Results not intended might be easily avoided by an alteration of the language; and he hoped that the hon. Gentleman the Financial Secretary to the Treasury would, in Committee, turn his careful consideration to the subject.
    COLONEL KING-HARMANsaid, he thought the hon. Gentleman (Mr. Cochran-Patrick) had not carefully studied the Bill. If a person made or sold medals which were liable to be used for an illegal purpose he was liable to imprisonment. Such was the simple intention of the Bill, and it appeared to him the House ought to support it.
    EARL PERCYsaid, he did not read the Bill in the same way as the hon. and gallant Gentleman (Colonel King-Harman). The Bill said that any person who made, or had in his possession, or offered for sale, or sold, any coin which resembled the current coin should be guilty of an offence. What he should like to know from some authority was, the moaning of "resemblance." Every old sembled, in some respects, Her Majesty's coin; and, therefore, anything more ridiculous than the Bill as it stood could not be conceived.
    SIR WILLIAM HARCOURTsaid, everybody knew that there were coins made to look as much like sovereigns as it was possible. Those things were the means—the manufacturer did not himself utter them—those things were the means by which the unwary were deceived. The uttering of these medals was a very mischievous kind of fraud, and did a great deal of harm to innocent people. It was the resemblance of these medals to real coin that did all the mischief; and, therefore, their manufacture ought to be stopped. In fact, the word "resemblance" was the essence of the Bill. He thought that, in the same way, they ought to stop the manufacture of anything looking like a bank-note. In Committee the language of the Bill could be altered if it was thought necessary. He hoped that now the House would not reject the second reading.
    MR. WARTONsaid, a more ridiculous, contemptible, or absurd Bill was never introduced, not even by a private Member, on a Wednesday. After the passing of such a Bill as the present, it would be illegal to possess many kinds of counters used in a round game of cards. Anything circular resembled the Queen's coin. He could not help thinking that it was simply a love of legislation which prompted the Government to introduce such a miserable Bill as the present.
    MR. MOLLOYsaid, the right hon. and learned Gentleman the Secretary of State for the Home Department, when he got up to make the matter plain, and explain why the Bill had been introduced, only told them what was the ease at the present time. He (Mr. Molloy) considered that the law was now sufficiently strong to cover illegal coinage; and he would ask the right hon. and learned Gentleman's attention to what the Bill really did. If the Bill were put in force, it would be an offence for a man to possess a Napoleon, because it resembled in appearance a coin of this Realm. ["No!"] If the right hon. and learned Gentleman would take the trouble to read the Bill, he would see that the possession of a Napoleon would subject a man to 12 months' imprisonment. The Bill said—
    "If any person, without due authority or excuse (the proof whereof shall lie on the person accused), had in his possession a medal resembling the Queen's coin."
    ["For sale!"] Of course, for sale; no one kept Napoleons for the sake of keeping them. If a man in this country, therefore, had a Napoleon in his possession, he would be liable to 12 months' imprisonment. There were gold coins in Greece, and the possession of one of such coins would subject the possessor to 12 months' imprisonment. The Bill, in fact, was so absurdly, so idiotically drawn, that one was at a loss to imagine where it was picked up. It would be a wise thing, for the sake of the legislative dignity of the House of Commons, if the Government withdrew the Bill, and re-introduced it in a shape consistent with the dictates of common sense.
    THE SOLICITOR GENERAL (Sir FARRER HERSCHELL)said, he could assure the House that the mischief at which the Bill was aimed was no imaginary one. During the 10 years from
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    1868 to 1878, 10 per cent of the total number of prosecutions for uttering bad coins were in respect of uttering Hanoverian medals, and the prosecutions had even increased since 1878. As the law stood at present, it was impossible to touch the people who made them. There was no useful or beneficial purpose served by making them; they were the means of fraud, and they did no good. There was only one object in making medals like sovereigns, and that was to enable people to commit fraud. The Law Officers had, in certain cases, been obliged to advise that prosecutions should not be taken against the manufacturers, though they knew there were considerable consignments of them from this country to the Continent, in order that they might be passed off. If people wanted medals, let them have them unlike sovereigns. The exact wording of the Bill could be fully discussed in Committee, though he did not believe it was open to the objection taken by certain hon. Members. He could not understand how anyone could say that a Napoleon would come under the Bill. It was different in size, and did not at all resemble a sovereign.
    MR. R. N. FOWLERsupported the second reading. The hon. Member for the King's County (Mr. Molloy) had directed attention to matters which deserved consideration in Committee; but, certainly, a case had been made out for legislation. If the Bill was badly drawn, the best course to pursue would be to allow it to go into Committee, and there make the required Amendments.
    Question put, and agreed to.
    Bill read a second time, and committed for Thursday next.

  LAND IMPROVEMENT AND ARTERIAL DRAINAGE (IRELAND) BILL.
  (Mr. Courtney, Mr. Herbert Gladstone.)
  LAND IMPROVEMENT AND ARTERIAL DRAINAGE (IRELAND) BILL.

    [BILL 189.] SECOND READING.
    Order for Second Reading read.
    Motion made, and Question proposed, "That the Second Reading of the Bill be deferred till Thursday next."—(Mr. Courtney.)
    COLONEL KING-HARMANsaid, he would move that the Order for the Second Reading be discharged. The Bill had not been printed, and it was

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    not a good example to set, for the Government to bring in Bills, and place them on the Orders of the Day before they had been printed. This was the third time during this week that the same course had been taken, the other occasions being those on which the Board of Works (Ireland) Bill and the Charitable Trusts Bill were put down for second reading. The House was being treated not only with scant courtesy, but with unfairness. If the same thing were done by private Members, it would certainly be resented by the Government. He would move that the Order be discharged, in consequence of the Bill not having been printed.
    MR. SPEAKER: The hon. and gallant Member (Colonel King-Harman) proposes to take a course which is most unusual, and without precedent. I understand the hon. Member in charge of the Bill only proposes to postpone this stage of the Bill.
    MR. COURTNEY: Yes; till Thursday next.
    COLONEL KING-HARMANsaid, he would not have called attention to the case, had it been an isolated one. In consequence of the New Rules of Procedure, hon. Members had to be exceedingly careful how Bills were brought in, and they had to remain night after night to watch the proceedings.
    MR. TOTTENHAMasked the hon. Gentleman in charge of the Bill whether, before Thursday, the Bill would be printed and distributed?
    MR. COURTNEYsaid, the action taken by the hon. and gallant Gentleman the Member for Dublin County (Colonel King-Harman) considerably surprised him. The course taken in respect of the Bill was one of a usual kind. Leave was given to bring in the Bill, and a day fixed for second reading. It was hoped that, in the interval, the Bill would be printed and circulated; and it was never intended to take the second reading on the day fixed if the Bill had not been printed. When the Bill was called just now, he (Mr. Courtney) at once moved that it be deferred till Thursday; and he hoped that before next Thursday it would be in the hands of hon. Members. It would be very inconvenient to prevent Bills being brought in unless they were ready to be printed and circulated. The hon. and gallant
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    Gentleman was hardly correct in his reference to the Charitable Trusts Bill, because that Bill was printed before the Whitsuntide Holidays. The hon. Gentleman the Member for Leitrim (Mr. Tottenham) might rest assured that before the second reading of the Bill was taken ample time would be given for its perusal.
    MR. R. N. FOWLERsaid, he thought there was no fault to find with the course suggested by the hon. Gentleman (Mr. Courtney); but there was one remark of his to which he (Mr. R. N. Fowler) must take exception, and that was that the Charitable Trusts Bill was in the hands of hon. Members before the recent Holidays. It was perfectly true the Bill was distributed during the Recess; but it stood for second reading on Monday the 21st instant. When he asked the right hon. Gentleman in charge of the Bill (Mr. Shaw Lefevre) if he intended to bring it on on that day, he expressly said he did. They had certainly reason to complain that the Government proposed to move the second reading of a Bill which had only been delivered during the Recess, and which, of course, hon. Members had had no opportunity of considering.
    MR. THOROLD ROGERSsaid, he received the Charitable Trusts Bill on the Saturday before the Recess.
    MR. WARTONsaid, that the Charitable Trusts Bill was distributed on the 12th, and it was put down for second reading on the 21st, the day the House re-assembled. If such proceedings were adopted by the Government, it would be his duty to block second readings. Such sharp practices were unworthy of Members of even the present Government.
    MR. MOLLOYasked if the hon. Gentleman (Mr. Courtney) would promise not to take the Bill on Thursday, if it was not then in the hands of Members?
    MR. COURTNEY: Yes; I promise that.
    Question put, and agreed to.
    Second Reading deferred till Thursday next.

  MOTION.

    TRAMWAYS PROVISIONAL ORDERS (NO. 4) (SOUTH SHIELDS, &c.) BILL.
    On Motion of Mr. JOHN HOLMS, Bill to confirm certain Provisional Orders made by the

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    Board of Trade under "The Tramways Act, 1870," relating to South Shields Corporation Tramways, and Wolverton and Stony Stratford Tramways, ordered to be brought in by Mr. JOHN HOLMS and Mr. CHAMBERLAIN.
    House adjourned at a quarter before Two o'clock.