§ SIR JOHN HAYasked the Under Secretary of State for India, Whether the Secretary of State in Council has had his attention called to the recent judgment, by Lords Justices Cotton, Bowen, and Fry, in the Court of Appeal, in the case of "Kinloch v The Queen and v. The Secretary of State for India in Council," and to the sympathy which all those able Judges expressed for the position of the Troops who claimed the alleged balance of their prize money; whether he will consider the desirability of advising Her Majesty to refer the long unsettled question respecting the residue of the Kirwee Booty to the decision of the Admiralty Division of the High Court of Justice, under the Act 3 and 4 Vic. c. 65, s. 22; and, whether the residue of the property, taken from the Ex-Princes of Kirwee, should, under sections 2 and 12 of the Statute I Vic. c. 2 (the Civil List Act), be paid over to the Consolidated Fund, if it is not distributed as prize money to the Troops?
§ MR. J. K. CROSSSir, I cannot find, in the shorthand notes of the three judgments, any remark which bears the interpretation placed on the views of the Lords Justices by the right hon. and gallant Member (Sir John Hay), unless an expression by Lord Justice Fry, of his sympathy with the motives of Mr. Kinloch, can be held to bear that construction. There does not appear to be any reason for re-opening the question of the alleged residue of Kirwee Booty, which was settled by the Lords Commissioners of the Treasury, after full consideration and hearing counsel, in 1809 and 1870.
§ MR. STEWART MACLIVERasked the hon. Gentleman, whether it was correctly reported that the Government of India had refused to give an account of the prize fund; and, whether, seeing this fund came into their hands in 1858, and was not distributed until ten years afterwards, while some of it was still disputed, it was not incumbent upon the Secretary of State to interpose his authority in behalf of those interested in the matter?
§ MR. J. K. CROSSSir, this Question, I am told, does not arise upon that which I have just answered; but refers to the sum, shown as the balance of the Military Prize Funds, in the Finance and Revenue Accounts. It it is not the far that the Government of India have refused to furnish a statement of those balances. On the contrary, they did furnish a statement in considerable detail, and I have asked them to supply still further details.