§ MR. MAURICE HEALYI beg to ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department whether the attention of the Record Department has been called to an article in the Irish Ecclesiastical Record for April last, in which strong complaint is made of the manner in which the gentleman commissioned to investigate and edit the documents in the Papal Registers relating to Great Britain and Ireland has discharged his duties; whether he is aware that the 561 summaries of the documents as published in Volume I. of the "Calendar of Entries" are seriously imperfect; that the translations of the Latin of the documents contain gross blunders even on elementary points; that the arrangement of the abstracted documents is not chronological, as the instructions to editors require; that the volume contains numerous errors in chronology arising from the want of knowledge and care of the editor, and that no translation or explanation is attempted of large numbers of obsolete and feudal and legal terms, or that they are mistranslated; whether complaints have reached the Department of the Irish portion of the work, and of the errors resulting from the total ignorance of the editor of Irish topography and the forms of Irish local names; whether it is the case that the Record Department employ only one person on this important historical work at a total annual cost of £380, whereas the French Government employ 12 scholars for the same purpose; and whether the Record Department will take care that the remaining portion of the work is more efficiently done; that a sufficient staff' is employed for the purpose; and that, to secure that the Irish portion of the work is properly done, some Irish scholar will also be employed on it?
§ SIR M. W. RIDLEYI have ascertained from the authorities of the Record Office that their attention had not been called to the article in question; and that they had received no complaints as to the Irish entries. The serious allegations made by the hon. Member demand a careful investigation by competent persons; and such an inquiry would obviously require some little time. I am not familiar with the working of the Record Department, but I shall communicate with that Department with a view to having the necessary inquiry made, and shall be glad to convey to the hon. Member the results of the steps taken.