HC Deb 11 May 1951 vol 487 cc2392-406

3.45 p.m.

Surgeon Lieut.-Commander Bennett (Gosport and Fareham)

I should like to begin by thanking the Under-Secretary of State for Air for coming here today to deal with this somewhat abstruse problem. When he and I were engaged in our respective studies at the University of Oxford, I do not believe either of us studied aeronautics or aerodynamics as such, even though we may both have belonged to the same air squadron and done a certain amount of light-hearted flying there at His Majesty's expense. We have since gone our own ways and now we are on opposite sides of the House discussing aeronautics.

My topic today is the flying-boat. That seems rather to put a sharp fence around the subject, as if it were shut off from other forms of aviation, but I should like, at the outset, to make it clear that I do not think there is a fundamental division on aeronautics between the flying-boat and the land aircraft. In the course of my few remarks I shall seek to establish my belief that they are growing ever closer together both in function and in performance. In this country the flying-boat, like the medium upon which it operates, experiences crests and troughs. At one time we are on a crest and at other times, such as now, we appear to have a trough.

We have had a great boom in flying-boats—we have had the Empire flying-boats on our civil routes and we have had the Sunderlands which are derived from them, all of them well ahead of their time and making a very fine thing for military aviation—but it now appears as if Great Britain is about to turn its back on the flying-boat. I am one who is not prepared to do so. I do not think that we have any right to turn our backs on the flying-boat. Even though the civil arm turns its back on it—if they are entitled to do so—and if it does not consider the flying-boat to be any good, on a national basis we cannot afford to turn down the flying-boat's claims to attention.

One of the most salient problems that confronts us in this country, organised as we are, is that if both military and civil aviation are nationalised, an immense responsibility will foe thrown on the Government to keep an open mind and to see that all forms of research are facilitated, even though the Government of the day may not support the products of one arm at a certain moment. For the sake of the next generation, so to speak, it is necessary that the purse-strings should be suitably unloosed so that research and development may be carried out for the benefit of the future, which not everybody may be able to foresee.

In the past, the flying-boat developed alongside the float plane. The range of aircraft was very short and a lot of flying was done over the sea. Boats and floats developed together. It was recognised that about two-thirds of the earth's surface is covered with water and that water is a medium which may claim a certain share in aviation because one can land on it without applying steam rollers or doing anything else to it. We saw the development of the Empire flying-boats and the Sunderlands. Because of the nature of our country and the Empire, to get anywhere they had to fly over water and alight near or on a handy coastline. It was largely because if anything went wrong—as is always liable to happen in any aeroplane—they could put down at any intermediate point on their route that the flying-boats were such a good undertaking for both oversea reconnaissance and oversea transport.

I do not suggest for a moment that flying-boats would attempt to alight in mid-Atlantic or on any open sea. They would be very foolish to do so, because, as a result of the speed at which they move, the water would have the effect of a solid if they hit it and they would be liable to be considerably corrugated. Clearly, therefore, not even the keenest exponent of the flying-boat is likely to say that he wants to be able to land and to take off in mid-Atlantic. That is not a practical thing. But if there has to be an emergency landing, and it is pulled off with care, there is a very good chance for the aircraft, and especially for the people on board, which does not exist with regard to an aircraft not so constructed.

I was very glad to receive the day before yesterday an answer from the Secretary of State for Air to the effect that a new flying-boat, a machine with four gas turbines and a displacement twice that of the Sunderland, was coming out. That, I am sure, will hearten those who believe in the flying-boat, but it is not entirely with the matter of reconnaissance over the sea that I am concerned. I think there is much more for the flying-boat to do than that. We can all admit that for reconnaissance and operational use over the sea, the flying-boat has been proved a success, because we have seen in Korea that the only aircraft which the Air Force have been able to use have been a couple of squadrons of Sunderlands, which have given a very good account of themselves.

I do not think that the future of the aircraft capable of alighting on water is a narrow matter. The future will bring some very radical changes, which, in turn, will bring radical changes in our outlook regarding these aircraft. There is no doubt that, up to now, the excessive weight and the very angular and awkward shape of aircraft that alight on the water have told very heavily against them. They have got to have a hull instead of a thin envelope of a fuselage, a boat-shaped underneath, and the step which creates drag. All these characteristics have detracted very heavily from the performance of such aircraft.

I think everyone must agree that nowadays, in aircraft as well as in ships, there is a one-way tendency, which is for them to grow ever larger. I think that they grow up to the largest that can be made at any time in the light of the engineering knowledge of the period, and that knowledge does not diminish. Therefore, I think it is right to say that we shall go on seeing aircraft growing in size—civil aircraft, bombers and transport aircraft of all kinds, and also, if we like to visualise them, the heavily armed cruising battle planes of the future.

Aircraft nowadays are a great deal bigger than those of before the war. All of them are very much bigger than they used to be, and, in general, it can be said that the experimental aircraft of today will be the average sized aircraft of tomorrow. We may well pay attention to the fact that the experimental and even Service aircraft of today, such as the American B. 36, the Brabazon and the big Princess flying boat are all in the region of something like 130 tons. I believe that these extremely large aircraft will be the ordinary aircraft of tomorrow.

When we have this steady growth of aircraft, we get a number of problems, and I should like particularly to deal with two of them. One is the proportion of the total weight of the aircraft that is taken up as undercarriage, not only the elements and physical pieces of the undercarriage, but the mechanism, the machinery and the power plant which have to operate it, and also the very heavy stressing that has to be applied to the points to which the undercarriage struts are joined.

All that creates a lot of weight, and as aircraft get bigger, not only does that weight get very large; it becomes a larger percentage of the aircraft and, of course, it becomes a very large absolute weight until—to take a perfectly normally designed aircraft of today, the Hermes—the undercarriage weight amounts to something like a quarter of the total pay load. That is a very uneconomical proposition, and as aircraft get bigger so the undercarriage elements will also continue to grow. Therefore, this will be an enormous incubus for aircraft in future to have to carry.

I have recently argued this matter with people whose names are household names in aviation. Those I have met are all inclined to say that something will have to happen, that this must cease. They are all inclined to agree with the thesis which is written for all to read in one or two books to which I may refer later: that as flying boats which land on water are growing in size, they will have to sacrifice proportionately less to make a planing hull that will alight on water.

The contention upon which I should like the Under-Secretary of State to comment is that the curves, so to speak cross: the increasing inefficiency, relatively, of the landplane is being surpassed by the increasing efficiency at large sizes of the seaplane and that, to use a figure which I have derived from several sources, at a weight of something like 60 or 80 tons it looks as if there will be a transition and that it will become more economical to operate water aircraft than land machines.

There is another point in this connection. Land aircraft require runways, and as aircraft grow in size—and so, coincidentally, does the wing loading of their design and with that the landing speed and the top speed also—the runways which they require will need to be longer, wider, thicker and stronger throughout. When we consider that many aerodromes of bomber stations which were built during the war cost about £2,500,000 each; when we consider that aircraft are already half as heavy and, perhaps, half as fast again as they were at the end of the war; when we consider that all these concrete runway aerodromes are now too small to take all but a few of the large aircraft even of today, and when we consider that the dimensions of a runway are magnified by half as much again, the total amount of the runway which is required comes to about three and a half times as much, and the £2,500,000 becomes £9 million. One then begins to see the formidable task that has to be faced in continuing to provide concrete runways for increasingly large aircraft.

This is a mammoth problem. As a matter of the strength of the runway, which depends, of course, upon the weight per wheel that an aircraft presses on the runway, we now have the Shackle-ton aircraft, which weighs, I believe, 40 tons when fully loaded. This machine rests on two wheels, so that as a dead weight alone there would be about 20 tons per wheel, which is a very large pressure. Bigger aircraft are having to use multi-wheel bogy landing undercarriages, or even caterpillar undercarriages, to spread the weight, but there will be a limit, I believe, even to that process. When one realises that aircraft are now of the order of 60 or 80 tons and will become much bigger still, there is no theoretical reason as far as I can see why we should not be having aircraft of 500 tons. How will those aircraft ever be put on a runway?

The other problem relating to runways is the amount of the country that they swallow up. Right up to the beginning of the war even the biggest air liners used to land on grass. We have——

It being Four o'Clock, the Motion for the Adjournment of the House lapsed, without Question put.

Motion made, and Question proposed, "That this House do now adjourn."—[Mr. Kenneth Robinson.]

Surgeon Lieut.-Commander Bennett

We have a few figures, although there are not many to go on at the moment. I have had a Parliamentary answer this day from the Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Civil Aviation, who gives the length of the only runway in existence in civilian use in 1941 as 3,000 feet, and the longest of all the very long runways at Heathrow Airport is just over 9,000 feet. That is three times the length in 10 years.

We have also to consider the sacrifices that have to be made to obtain these runways. I am informed in another answer which I received today, that to build the aerodrome at Heathrow, 57 houses have had to be demolished. The further runways north of the Bath Road may involve the demolition of some 600 residential properties and a further 150 properties may have to be demolished for the final stage of development. That is, 800 houses have to go to make this one airport. I will not say any more about that. We need not be so sanguine about the housing situation as to view that with equanimity.

Another figure relevant to Heathrow Airport is this. The ground required for Heathrow alone is 4,600 acres. If that area, good land as it is, were sown with wheat, it would provide enough to keep 70,000 people of our population supplied with bread all the year round. If we have several aerodromes of this size there will be very little left of this island, and we have to weigh other interests against that of aviation. Surely the accumulation of these facts is very heavily against the infinite development of the concrete runway.

Of course, there are other considerations, too. The flying-boat operating base can be of the utmost simplicity. We cannot nowadays build speedily, emergency runways and aerodromes, for instance, in operational circumstances. They cannot be built in a hurry. But if we use flying boats, all we need are one or two launches and a tidal beach to careen and scrub the aircraft. We only need a mooring buoy instead of large hangars, and dispersal is an easy matter. The final and culminating argument is that no matter how hard the enemy bombs the aerodrome, one does not have to go round filling up the holes. That is quite a potent point in war-time. Maintenance is an easy thing, and, of course, for advanced fighter bases that is one of the most important points of all.

When we consider the fighter what do we see? Do we still see the same handicap in the future? I am informed otherwise. I am told, for instance, that Mr. Alexander de Seversky, who has written another of his great books, has said: Other areas of development are opened up with the application of jet and rocket propulsion. Heretofore, to cite an example, water-based planes were less efficient than land-based versions. Because the propellers had to clear the water, the cross-section of the plane was greatly enlarged, producing parasite drag and cutting performance. With the advent of jet and rocket motors, the picture may change radically in favour of the water-based aircraft. I have recently read an extract from the American "Aviation Daily" of 17th April—less than a month ago—which states that the Consolidated Vultee Aircraft Corporation can now build water-based aircraft with the same performance as comparable land planes. One of their engineers at the national aeronautic meeting of the Society of Aeromotive Engineers showed photographs of a water-based plane meeting the same specification as the North American F.86, which Convair had flown as a radio controlled model version. There is a future for water-based fighters, transport aircraft and big bombers.

In passing I should like to mention the amphibian. There are numerous parts, even of this country, such as the Western Isles, which the amphibian could serve. There are plenty of purposes for which it could be used. It could also be used for short hauls for military purposes. My noble Friend the Member for Inverness (Lord Malcolm Douglas-Hamilton) ran a Saro Cloud amphibian 18 or 19 years ago and carried 9,000 passengers in two years in the Western Islands and Highlands. We have very good amphibians, the Short Sealand and the Supermarine Seagull. I feel that there is a future for the amphibian, and in this country we are turning our backs on it most unwarrantably.

This country's greatness has been built upon the sea. That sea power has made us what we have been. Air transport is now beginning to threaten sea power, but that sea power can be married with air power to produce one power which can dominate both land and the sea and once again make us the most powerful nation in the world.

4.6 p.m.

Mr. Ralph Morley (Southampton, Itchen)

I am glad that the hon. and gallant Gentleman the Member for Gosport and Fareham (Surgeon Lieut.-Commander Bennett) has introduced this subject for discussion and has done so in such a lucid and well documented speech. I think that the people of these islands have a special interest in flying boats because Great Britain was the pioneer in flying boat construction. It was in Great Britain in the early days of aviation that the greatest strides in the technique and design of flying boats were made.

In my constituency we also have a special interest in flying boats because it was in Southampton that the Supermarine flying boat was constructed, and in the earlier days of aviation made the longest oceanic flights. We did, for a time, have the Solent flying boats based upon the port of Southampton, and we were very sorry to lose them. As the hon. and gallant Member indicated in his speech, there are many people who prefer to travel in a flying boat rather than a land plane because the flying boat is more roomy and provides greater comfort, and because they think it is safer. It may not be safer but they feel that it is, and that gives them a certain degree of psychological comfort.

The value of the flying boat for military operations was proved during the last war. The Sunderlands were very effectively used for anti-submarine operations. They were also used for the evacuation of civilians in conditions in which land planes could not have been used. In the Far Eastern theatre of warfare in the Second World War flying boats were of considerable value as they could be operated where there were no aerodromes or where the aerodrame was subjected to heavy enemy bombardment.

There is, therefore, no doubt of the civilian value and military value of the flying boat. But it seems that recently there has been a lull in the development of the flying boat. I should like to know from the Under-Secretary of State for Air, who is to reply to the debate, what is the reason for that lull. So far as I am aware the only flying boats that have been produced recently are those that have been produced by Saunders Roe, the S.R.A.1, which I understand is a very fast fighting flying boat, and that magnificent specimen of British engineering skill the Princess flying boat.

I have risen merely to ask the Undersecretary of State for Air a few questions about the future of the Princess flying boat. I have asked his colleague, the Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Civil Aviation, a number of questions in the past on this subject, and the manner of his answers was what, in a young lady, would have been described as somewhat coy. I suppose it would be better described in the case of a Minister as displaying proper Ministerial reticence.

The Parliamentary Secretary said that the Princess flying boats were to be used for civil aviation. Then they were transferred to the R.A.F. May I ask the Under-Secretary why they were transferred to the R.A.F. and for what reason? I should like also to ask him where the Princess flying boats, now that they have been transferred to the R.A.F., are to be based for their future operations? Will they be based somewhere on Southampton Water, at Calshot, or at the Southampton Marine Airport? If that be the case that would be some consolation prize to us for having lost their services. I hope my hon. Friend will be able to give me a reply.

4.10 p.m.

Air Commodore Harvey (Macclesfield)

I think my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Gosport and Fareham (Surgeon Lieut.-Commander Bennett) is to be congratulated on having brought this matter before the House, because there is a feeling among hon. Members on both sides that the flying boat has been neglected in recent years; so much so that the Princess flying boat was almost cancelled, but I shall refer to that in a few moments.

The Korean war has, in my view, emphasised the importance of flying boats. The main contribution of the R.A.F., apart from transport work, has been carried out by squadrons of Sunderlands. Very little is known of the valuable work done by these units, but I am told that they have done a tremendous job in the Korean war in transporting personnel and equipment to places where landplanes could not be navigated. In fact, no landplane of comparable size could have carried out the same work at all, due to the lack of airfields. If we consider the North Atlantic during a period of war, it is thought possible, that convoys could have cover toy land-based aircraft from North America, Greenland, Iceland, from the coasts of Northern Ireland and the North-West coast of England.

But will airfields be available, and if they are, will not they toe required by heavy bombers? My hon. and gallant Friend has emphasised the increasing cost of building airfields owing to the extra weight of land-based aircraft. That will be a problem, because although America may be able to do so, this country will not be able to afford either the money or the manpower and the great engineering facilities required to build a modern runway.

Conditions in Korea are not unique. Similar conditions exist in many other parts of the world. They exist in the South Atlantic, in the Indian Ocean, the South Pacific and the East Indies. During the war the Catalina flying-boat, amphibian as it was then, operated a service between Ceylon and Australia and did valuable work. As my hon. and gallant Friend said, during the war the runway for a bombing station, or an airfield as a whole, cost something like £2½ million. He said it may cost now £9 million and I am certain that it would cost not less than £5 million. The time factor also is important. It takes a long time to build a modern airport, whereas a flying-boat base, at least a temporary one, can be constructed in a matter of a week or two.

There is one question I wish to put to the Parliamentary Secretary about the Solent flying boats. B.O.A.C. had about 18 of these flying boats for sale and a few of them have been sold, four or five.

Mr. Morley

Two.

Air Commodore Harvey

I think one was crashed and that was replaced. Then the Government restricted the sale of these aircraft to other foreign countries, and permission had to be obtained. I should like to know whether or not the Air Ministry has converted these Solent flying boats into military aircraft, which could be used to carry modern equipment against submarines. I am told that they are idle, doing absolutely nothing, but that they could be converted into very good military aircraft in a few months. Obviously, they would not meet the specifications required of a brand new flying-boat, but they would have a vastly improved performance on that of the Sunderlands. I ask the Under-Secretary, if he has not already done so, and I think he probably has, if he will get a move on in order to provide one squadron and the reserves for that unit.

We all recognise the difficulties of the Government in regard to priorities. We would probably rather have fighters and bombers, and there is, of course, the case of Transport Command, which is equally important, but we believe that Coastal Command ought to be well served with the best aircraft it can get, in order to be able to meet the Soviet submarine menace. We are told that the Russians have submarines in large numbers—something like 300 fast submarines. The lifeline of this country is to North America, because of our food supplies, and, in organising proper convoys, the flying-boat may well play an important part.

We are not satisfied that enough has been done in this direction. My hon. and gallant Friend referred to the new four-engined jet flying-boat. I am not sure that it has yet been ordered; I do not think it has, but has only yet been considered as a project. The Korean war has been going on for nearly a year, and it is nearly two years since the Berlin airlift commenced, and every pointer shows that the international situation has worsened during that period. The Deputy Foreign Ministers have spent 10 or 11 weeks in Paris trying to reach an agreed agenda, and it is quite clear that Mr. Gromyko is only filling in time in order to prevent us coming to an arrangement with the Germans over their re-armament.

I ask the Government to consider these matters. One flying-boat squadron may not be much, but it may make all the difference. I should like an assurance that the Government will proceed with the project in order to get these boats into service, and give the flying-boat the full consideration which it deserves.

4.17 p.m.

The Under-Secretary of State for Air (Mr. Crawley)

I am sure that the House is very grateful to the hon. and gallant Member for Gosport and Fareham (Surgeon Lieut.-Commander Bennett) for raising this question, and to both hon. Members who have also taken part in the debate. It is a subject about which it is very important to do some clear thinking, and I thought that the speeches were very fair and well-informed. I ought to say to the hon. and gallant Member for Gosport and Fareham, since he referred to my Oxford days, that in those days I was rather more conservative than I am now, and that the only time I left the ground was on a horse. Later, I took to the air, and, since the hon. and gallant Gentleman has now taken to the horse, perhaps he will come over on this side of the House.

The hon. and gallant Member for Gosport and Fareham said that the development of flying-boats seems to go in crests and troughs. I think it would be truer to say that, like almost any other kind of development, it goes in phases, and if there is any prejudice in the hon. and gallant Gentleman's mind as between flying-boats and other types of aircraft, I should have thought that the natural prejudice would have been in favour of the boat. It is a very beautiful thing. It is very comfortable, and there is certainly an illusion—I think it is mainly an illusion—of increased safety. It combines two elements which are less familiar in the case of land aircraft and has something more adventurous about it.

If, in fact, neither the Royal Air Force nor civil aviation, nor the Royal Navy, which might be suspected of having a predilection in favour of flying-boats, are developing flying-boats, there must be very good reasons for it, and I shall briefly try to suggest what some of them are. I would repeat that this is not a decision for all time against flying-boats. There may well be developments in future which may swing the pendulum the other way. I will only give some of the reasons why in the last few years the pendulum seems to have swung against the flying-boat.

First, let us take the question of bombers. There is one obvious difficulty in having flying-boats as bombers. We cannot drop the bombs through the hull, or, if we did, it would be a very complicated operation, and that would seem to rule them out as bombers, at any rate, for the moment. Superficially fighters seem more attractive and I know a lot of people who think flying-boat fighters would be the thing for places like Hong Kong and the Far East. I think that is a superficial view. There is one overriding difficulty about flying-boat fighters. Fighter aircraft for the most part are armed with cannon, and if a flying-boat fighter is hit with a cannon shell it could make a hole in the fuselage, which would sink the boat on landing.

That in itself is an overriding difficulty even in the places where water seems to have a greater advantage. When one studies the question and how to refuel these fighters and re-arm them on the water quickly enough to get them off when there is a short warning of coming attack, even apart from the question of holding, the practical difficulties of operating fighters off the sea are impossible to overcome at the moment.

The same for the moment is true of transport. The development of transport aircraft is going on very fast and we have got tail loading and nose loading, which makes the carriage of things like tanks and lorries very much easier. From the military point of view, it looks as if the development of transport will be in the tail or nose loading aircraft. This is not an easy thing to carry out on water, so we are faced with the fact that in our present state of development we have got to have aerodromes on land, and when we carry tanks and lorries they have to be big aerodromes on land. Therefore, economically we have got large and expensive aerodrome facilities on land apart from the military sphere.

That is really where we begin. If, in some coastal command, the tremendous advantage of flying boats was proved it would justify the building of extra facilities on the seashore for flying boats. The fact is that today there is, I am told, nothing that the land aircraft, the Shackleton, cannot do which the flying boats we have can do except in some parts of the world like the Archipelagos in the Far East where there is no airport. But for our strategic purposes today these areas are secondary.

Air Commodore Harvey

Korea.

Mr. Crawley

I think in Korea the planes have good base facilities and also in Japan. I do not think that in Korea it would be effective, but it would be in Indonesia and that part of the world if the war were carried on there because of lack of airport facilities. As the Shackleton can do everything that the Sunderland, or something better than the Sunderland, can do, it is unlikely that it will be replaced by flying boats. For the moment we have concentrated on the development of land aircraft. That is really the answer to my hon. Friend's question, too.

That brings me to the main argument which the hon. and gallant Gentleman put forward about the question of size. I do not agree with him that aircraft will get bigger. As a matter of fact, it looks as if the pendulum has gone the other way and that they will get smaller. It is the Comet and not the Brabazon which looks like succeeding in civil aviation, and if one is talking of fighters the tendency is to smaller aircraft. If one comes to the pertinent question of undercarriages, which are not only heavy and complicated but sometimes go wrong, then I think the development of smaller aircraft, perhaps without undercarriages, will go forward. In the war, we often learned of Hurricanes, which crash landed on their bellies and did little harm. It does not seem impossible that with the development of jet aircraft we will be able to develop aircraft, which will land on some sort of fuselage that does not need an undercarriage.

Therefore, far from getting bigger and heavier, fighters will get smaller, lighter and much faster. So I do not think one can take it for granted that fighter aircraft will get larger. That is true also of the bomber. The B.36 is probably the largest aircraft flying, but it does not follow that the four-engined jets are likely to become larger still. We may have tremendous power and better range and carrying capacity with smaller aircraft. If that be the case it will not be true that we should have to take to the sea because there is not enough land to go on extending airfields.

With those things in mind we have a design for the replacement of the Sunderland which, I think, is complete, but it is true that it has not gone into production. And we are going to operate the Princess flying boats. We want them mainly as a reserve in war and it has not been decided how they will be operated in peace-time. Various projects are being studied whereby we can make as good use as possible of them and learn as much as we can from them. Perhaps in the operation of the Princess flying-boat we may see the pendulum swing again on the over-riding consideration of safety. If it proves, and the makers claim it will so prove, that the Princess flying boat is so strong that it can land on the open sea with a good chance of surviving, even in mid-Atlantic—it sounds unlikely—there will be a safety factor in flying boats which will have a bearing on civil and military aviation.

We are also studying how and where the Solents might be useful to us, but I cannot give a definite answer about that. As far as the Royal Air Force is concerned, there is a large area of the world, such as in Africa, the Far Eastern archipelagos and the West Indies, which are of secondary importance, where the Solents might be useful, but needs in the immediately dangerous areas must have the highest priority.

Air Commodore Harvey

Does the hon. Gentleman appreciate that flying boat manufacturers still have not the capacity to carry out a great deal of work to convert aircraft from civil to military use? Would it not be a good idea to get on with providing those facilities?

Mr. Crawley

We are looking into that matter very carefully. We are considering that in connection with the Princess and we shall do the same with the Solent.

Surgeon Lieut.-Commander Bennett

Can the hon. Gentleman say whether he is likely to try to get the jigs and tools for the Solent class in reserve, in case there is a call for further production?

Mr. Crawley

If we take over the Solents we shall need to have the tools available and I am sure that that will be done.

Mr. C. I. Orr-Ewing

Can the hon. Gentleman say whether consideration is being given to using flying boats in sheltered waters with Asdic and other anti-submarine developments?

Mr. Crawley

I am sure that that will be studied at the anti-submarine school.

Question put, and agreed to.

Adjourned accordingly, at Twenty-nine Minutes past Four O'clock, till Tuesday, 29th May, pursuant to the Resolution of the House yesterday.