OSBORNE ESTATE BILL (Hansard, 12 December 1902)

§ MR. CALDWELL

thought this Bill could not possibly have been brought under the special notice of the King. He hardly thought the law could have been explained to His Majesty, or he would have been astonished at any such Bill being introduced in his name. It was a Bill of a very objectionable character. It set out the matter as if this was a gift of the Osborne Estate to the nation. when it was perfectly obvious that the interest dealt with was mainly that of a person under age, whose consent could not be set forth in the Bill. So far as the King's right to deal with this estate was concerned, that was a life interest, and he (Mr. Caldwell) had no objection to the King's dealing with that on the terms mentioned in the Bill. This House was being asked, in order to complete a gift which it was not in the power of the King himself to make, to do two things which, he ventured to say, were most objectionable, and which might form very awkward precedents in the future. The first thing he alluded to was that this House was being asked, within a very short time after the death of a person, to lay aside the Will of that person without any change of circum stances to necessitate it, and for this every hon. Member of the House who did not protest would be responsible. He thought that was a dangerous precedent, and it was asking the House too much to pass a Bill giving effect to a precedent of that kind. They were asking the House to consent to the alteration of the Will of a person recently dead, who, if she had wished to leave her estate in this particular manner, had the most ample opportunity for doing so. They were also asked to give effect to the confiscation of the patrimonial rights 1059 of another person who was not in a position to give his consent to the change—that was to say, they were to break the entail of a property by Act of Parliament, at the instance of the tenant for life, and without any acknowledgment of the rights of the tenant in tail. These were, in his opinion, very dangerous precedents. These were very serious things for the House to do, for they would form precedents which might give rise to a good deal of future misgivings in regard to the safety of property so far as the House of Commons was concerned. The other point he wished to refer to was this: The only thing the public had got to do, so far as Osborne was concerned, was to bear the expense of the upkeep. A private estate of the nature of the Osborne Estate required an immense amount of money to keep it in repair, and practically had no commercial value. When the Act of 1872 was before the House the Queen was anxious to have her rights secured as regarded her private estates. Mr. Gladstone at that time referred to the Osborne Estate, and he said that the House need not object to the Queen keeping her private estates, and he argued that they ought to give facilities to the Crown to keep those estates as private estates, because if they ever came to put them on the Imperial Treasury it would mean a heavy burden to the ratepayers. What he objected to in this Bill was that the use of the Osborne Estate was to be limited to one particular class of the community. With the exception of the house, which was in the personal occupation of Her Majesty, the whole grounds, by the words of sub-Section 4, were to be retained as a memorial to Her Majesty, but the rest of the estate was to be set aside 1060 and used for the purpose of officers, both naval and military, and their wives and families. The buildings and the whole of the grounds were to be used for the benefit of these officers. They could not call that a gift to the nation. If the Osborne Estate was to be kept up at the public expense, he did not see why it should not have been left entirely to the management of the Crown, and he did not see why it should be restricted to officers naval and military. If they were going to make a sort of Chelsea Hospital at Osborne, why not make it eligible to others? When he looked at this supposed gift to the nation, he did not think it was a very generous one. It was only the gift of the King's life interest in it, but His Majesty did not want to occupy it personally, and to that extent only it was a gift. So far as he was concerned, he merely wished to enter a protest against Parliament being asked to sanction by this Bill two principles, firstly, that they should set aside the wishes of the Queen within two yeas of her death without any change of circumstances; and secondly, by this Bill they were confiscating the patrimonial rights and property of those who were not in a position to give their consent to the change.