§ SIR T. ESMONDE (Kerry, W.)I beg to ask the Secretary to the Treasury if he is aware that the number of volumes of the State Papers, "Rolls Series," has been so far 219 for England and only 11 for Ireland? And whether, seeing that £1,000 is annually voted by Parliament for the publication of the Scottish State Papers, and that nothing is voted for the publication of the Irish State Papers, he will see that an appropriation is made in the Estimates for the current year for the specific purpose of the publication of Irish State Papers, and that the disparity between the number of volumes published for England and for Ireland will be, as soon as possible, reduced?
§ MR. HANBURYThe "Rolls Series" are not State Papers in the technical sense, but documents affording material for the History of the Country before the Reign of Henry VIII. The publication of the series, which began in 1857, is now coming to a close. Of the 244 volumes which have been published, 12 are exclusively Irish, 3 are exclusively Scotch, and the remaining 229, though chiefly English, also throw light upon the history of Scotland and Ireland. We have received no representations as to important Irish documents being still unpublished. The £1,000 mentioned in the Question is provided annually in the Vote for the Register House, Edinburgh, for the publication of Scottish Historical Records, not necessarily State Papers. The Royal Irish Academy, which deals 373 with similar documents of purely Irish interest, receives from the State, in money and housing, upwards of £2,000 a year, though it is fair to add that the funds of the society are applicable to other purposes besides the publication of such documents. Private collections of historical documents are dealt with by the Historical MS. Commission, who have recently been engaged on the Ormonde Papers and the Acts of Queen Elizabeth's Council in Ireland. We recently bought back for the Irish Record Office some State Papers of about two centuries back at the sale of the Phillips library. State Papers are being calendared for all the three kingdoms, and up to the present time there have been published 66 volumes of calendars which relate to England and Wales alone; of volumes relating to Ireland as well as England, 40 have been published and 4 are in the press; and of volumes relating to Ireland alone, 18 have been published and 2 are in the press.