§ The Duke of Wellington, in moving the second reading of this bill, said, that its object was to empower the Commissioners of Woods and Forests to dispose of part of Kensington-gardens for the purpose of building, and with the estimated proceeds of those grounds, to improve and ornament other parts of the gardens, and if there should be any surplus, it was to be applied to the improvement of other of the royal gardens.
§ come to them recommended by the sanction of his noble Friend, the late Chief Commissioner of Woods and Forests, Lord Duncannon, to whom he might allude by name in his absence, and than whom it was but justice to say, that a man more fitted, by his great activity and zeal and business-like habits, for that important office, never had held it. This bill, then, had the recommendation to their Lordships of having been prepared by the advice of his noble Friend. He did not offer any objection to the bill, but he thought, that, in the way in which the produce of the sale of those lands was estimated, it might happen, that the produce might fall short of the sums to which the commissioners were limited; and in that case the public would have to make good the difference. To be sure, the sum was very moderate, but these were times in which the saving of every shilling was of importance, and when also not a shilling of expenditure should be made which was not absolutely necessary. He said this, because he remembered that, when his noble Friends near him were in office, they proposed and carried the proposition for expending 70,000l. for stables at Windsor Palace, at a time when it was with the utmost difficulty he was enabled to wring from them 10,000l., or at the most 20,000l., never more, for the education of the people.
§ The Duke of Wellingtonsaid, he concurred in the eulogium on the zeal, activity, and ability of the noble Viscount lately Chief Commissioner of Woods and Forests. With reference to what had fallen from the noble and learned Lord, he had to state, that all the money would be expended on the responsibility of the commissioners, and if there should be a deficit instead of a surplus in the estimates it would not come out of the pockets of the public.
§ Viscount Melbournewould say one word as to the concluding remark of his noble and learned Friend, in alluding to the erection of stables at Windsor. From what he (Lord Melbourne) had seen in the papers and in accounts of speeches delivered at the hustings during the late elections, he found, that there existed a very great and he believed very general prejudice against that measure. He was very sorry to find it so, for he believed, that a more unfounded prejudice never existed—a more unjust censure never was 915 cast on any measure of Government, as any one would admit who had seen the stables which before that were in use at Windsor.
Lord Broughamsaid, that his noble Friend, the noble Duke seemed to think, that if the estimate should fall short of the expenditure, the expense would not come out of the pockets of the public. No doubt it would come from the land revenue; but that had been made over to the public by the Crown some forty or fifty years ago.
§ The Duke of Wellingtonfully concurred with what had been said by the noble Viscount as to the necessity for the erection of the new stables. They were much wanted.
§ Bill read a second time, to be committed.—Adjourned to Thursday.