Lords Sitting of 10 March 1842

Preamble
MINUTES.} BILLS. Public—3a. and passed:—Duchy of Cornwall.
Private.—1a. Glegg's Divorce. Reported.—Loan Societies; Apprentices Regulations; Van Diemen's Land.
PETITIONS PRESENTED. By the Earl of Mountcashel, and Lord Campbell, from various places in the counties of Down, and Tyrone, in favour of the Marriage (Ireland) Bill.—By Lord Brougham, Lord Vivian, and Lord Kin-naird, from St. Martin's-in-the-Fields, Truro, Bodmin, and Dundee, for a Repeal of the Corn-laws—By Lord Brougham, from the Mayor and Corporation of the City of London, against the practice of Burying the Dead in the City, and Populous Districts.—By Lord Feversham, from Boards of Guardians in the County of York, for Alteration of the New Poor-laws.

MARRIAGE-LAW (IRELAND).
Lord Campbell,on presenting petitions from the ministers, elders, and congregations of several chapels in connection with the general assembly of Presbyterians in Ulster, praying that the marriages of Dissenters with members of the Established Church might be declared valid, said he would take that opportunity of mentioning that he had that day received a letter from one of the judges in Ireland, stating that at the late assizes at Carrickfergus a case came on for trial, which involved the same question as that case on which the Irish judges had decided against the validity of marriages of Presbyterians and members of the Established Church by Presbyterian clergymen. As the recent decision had not given satisfaction the
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learned Judge thought it would be a good opportunity to have the case reconsidered by the Irish bench, and afterwards by the House of Lords, aided by the English judges, and he therefore directed the jury to return a special verdict, which they did. The case might thus be submitted to the judges of Ireland for their opinions, and afterwards to the House of Lords. Under these circumstances he (Lord Campbell) would suggest, whether it would not be better for their Lordships to suspend any further proceedings on the bill which had come up from the other House, as they would probably be soon called upon to decide upon the question as to the validity of those marriages in another way.
The Lord Chancellorsaid that, supposing their Lordships should decide against the validity of the marriages, would it not then require some such measure as that now before them to settle the question? He thought it better to go on with the bill.
Lord Campbellthought there could be very little doubt as to the way in which their Lordships would decide; and, supposing they should decide that the marriages were valid, a short declaratory act only would be required; and supposing them to declare the marriages invalid, a short enacting bill would be sufficient.
The Lord Chancellorsaid, that the bill would be so framed as not to interfere in any way with any course which their Lord-ships might think proper to adopt on the subject.
Lord Broughamexpressed a hope that noble Lords would not discuss the question then, as they had referred the bill to the consideration of a committee.
Petition laid on the Table.

THE EARL OF ABERDEEN — THE FRENCH AMBASSADOR.
The Marquess of Clanricarde,seeing the noble Earl the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, would beg to put a question to him on a matter which, in his opinion, did not require any previous notice. He observed that the despatch from the noble Earl to our Ambassador at Paris, a copy of which had been laid on the Table by command of her Majesty, was dated the 28th of January; but he saw by the public papers that since that date the subject of the despatch had been noticed in the French Chambers. The question which he wished

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to ask the noble Earl was, whether he had since received any official reply to it from the French Government?
The Earl of Aberdeen:None whatever.

EDUCATION—(IRELAND).
The Marquess of Lansdownehad a question to put to the noble Duke (the Duke of Wellington) on a subject which he considered of high importance as relating to the state of education in Ireland. Their Lordships were aware that since they met in the present Session, there had been laid before them an important report emanating from the Board of Education, and the more important as it entered more fully and more satisfactorily into the state of education in Ireland and its progress, than had been done in any previous report. From that report it appeared that since the previous report there had been added 400 schools to those already in connexion with the board, making the whole number of schools at the present time 2,000. In the 400 schools thus added there were not less than 60,000 scholars, and, notwithstanding the objections and misconceptions which had long created obstacles to the connexion, there were not less than 290 of those schools in connexion with the general synod of the Presbyterians of Ulster, who now showed their willingness to come forward and partake of the great advantages held out to them by the Board of Education. It also appeared from the report to which he had referred that considerable progress had been made by the board in one most important matter—namely, the proper training of teachers, and thus opening out a much wider prospect of improvement than even many of the most sanguine of the supporters of the system had at first contemplated. Notwithstanding those very cheering prospects, rumours had gone abroad importing that Her Majesty's Government intended either to withdraw some of the grants, or in other respects greatly to alter the present system. For his own part, he did not believe those reports; but, as they had gone abroad, whether well or ill-founded, it was most important to the state of education in Ireland that the exact intentions of Government should, as far as possible, he known on this matter. As estimates for the current year were now, he presumed, in a forward state of preparation, he did not think that it required any apology to their Lordships or to the noble
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Duke, if he asked whether it were the intention of the Government to continue the grants for education to their present amount, or in any way to alter the constitution or proceedings of the Board of Education. If anything were wrong in either of them, no doubt the alteration necessary to remedy the defect, if any, would be made; but still, he repeated, it was of the utmost importance to education in Ireland to have it known what were the precise intentions of Government as to those points. He himself felt much interest in the question of education, having established several schools on the system founded by the National Board; but he made the enquiry on public grounds, having no stronger feeling on the subject than must be entertained by every one of their Lordships in a matter of such vital importance to the interests and well-being of a people.
The Duke of Wellingtonsaid, as the noble Marquess had given him notice of his intention to put the question to him, he was prepared to give the noble Marquess an answer. With respect to the report to which the noble Marquess had referred, he did not feel it necessary to enter into any observations upon it at that time. With respect to the noble Marquess's question as to the intentions of the Government with respect to a change in the grants or in any other matter connected with the Board of Education in Ireland, he would say that if the Government intended any alteration it would be after the most mature and deliberate consideration of all the bearings of that alteration on the institution itself, or the general improvement of Ireland as connected with it, For his own part, he had always had his own opinion on the subject of this system of education, and though there were some points of it of which he did not approve, yet he had never opposed any grant for the purpose, and certainly he would never be the person to make any alteration except upon due consideration and his firm conviction that it would be for the improvement of the institution itself, and that it would not deprive the people of Ireland of any of the benefits which they now derived from it.
The Marquess of Lansdownethanked the noble Duke for the information he had given him. As he understood the noble Duke, he took it that there was to be no

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alteration in the amount of the grants made for education in Ireland, and he trusted he might assume that no alteration of any kind—at least, no important alteration—would be made in the present system until the fullest consideration of the Government had been given to the subject, and until the Government should have availed itself of the opinions of Parliament on the subject.

POOR-LAW RETURNS—USE OF MACHINERY.
Earl Stanhopesaid, he had to move for certain returns, for which, as no objection would be made to them on the part of the Government, he did not feel it necessary to give a notice. The motion was for a return of the number of paupers admitted into each of the union workhouses from January 1st, 1836, to December 31st, 1841, and also of the number of persons accommodated therein, and the number of deaths occurring annually therein, specifying the cause of each death.
Agreed to.
Earl Stanhopein presenting a petition to their Lordships would express a hope, that he should be more fortunate in getting the return which had just been agreed to than he had been with respect to certain returns for which he moved, and which had been ordered, nearly three years ago. The motion on that occasion was for a statement of the sums borrowed for each union workhouse, and also of the sums laid out in law expenses for periods of three years each before and after the passing of the new Poor-law Act; that motion was made and agreed to on the 16th of August, 1839, but from that time to the present, no return had been made to it. There was a point beyond which their Lordships' patience ought not to be carried, but in the present case he thought it had been carried to excess. Two Sessions had now and the returns were not forth coming. If any difficulties had arisen as to the making out of such returns, it was the business of those whose duty it was to make them to state those difficulties, that they might be removed. However, after this, he gave notice, that if not produced within a short time, he should move that the returns be made forthwith. He would take this opportunity of giving notice also, that if a bill which he perceived was now in progress through the other House, entitled "A bill for regulat-
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ing the duties on the Importation of Foreign Corn," should come up to that House, he would, on the question of its second reading, move as an amendment, that it be read a second time that day six months, and take the sense of the House on the amendment. He would now beg to call the attention of their Lordships, to a petition which had been intrusted to his care. It was signed by only one individual, a member of one of the humbler classes, but it spoke the language and expressed the sentiments of many hundreds of thousands of those classes. The petitioner was Abraham Leach, a poor handloom weaver of Rochdale, in the county of Lancaster. He complained that he was robbed, oppressed, and brought to beggary by the manufacturers, who had taken from him the means of labour, and had substituted for it untaxed machinery. It was not his intention to detail the sufferings of large bodies of the handloom weavers; he would not enter into the extent of those distresses, but would say a word as to their cause. The petitioner said, and said truly, that the system on which the manufacturers had acted for a long time was subversive of the great bond and compact of society, by which men gave up an equal claim to the productions of nature, in order that they should be guaranteed in the enjoyment of their fair share. The petitioner asked, and he (the Earl Stanhope) would be glad to hear some satisfactory answer to the question he asked, if the Government did not give protection to large classes of the people, were those classes bound to yield obedience to the Government? It had been always held, that if the one was not granted there was no legal claim to the other. It was said, that Government was instituted for the protection of the citizens of a state, and the petitioner claimed a right to such protection. He stated, that by untaxed machinery his labour had been rendered wholly unprofitable, and that his loom which, in 1805, would have produced 80 l., was now not worth as many shillings. The prayer of the petitioner was, that their Lordships might take these matters into their serious consideration, and that he might be restored to those means of support which he formerly enjoyed as the price of his labour; but that if their Lordships should be of opinion, that this course would not be for the benefit of the nation at large, they

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would at least grant him compensation for the amount of the loss he had sustained. He (Earl Stanhope) thought that the prayer was most reasonable. All the petitioner claimed was, in strict conformity with the sacred principle of liberty which was at the commencement of the French revolution defined to be the right of every man, to do whatever he liked provided he did not injure another. He fully concurred in this principle, which ought to be applied in its fullest extent, and in every possible case, and he would contend that no man had a right to injure another, still less to injure whole classes of the community, by depriving them of the fair reward of their labour. The petitioner, then, was perfectly right in the call he made upon their Lordships, and all they could say or do, would fall short of doing him and his class justice, if they did not remedy the growing evil of which he complained. If he were asked what that remedy was, he would say it was this, that those who deprived others of employment in one particular business should supply them with an equivalent employment in another, or give them compensation to the extent of the loss they had sustained. The petitioner was borne out in his statement of the losses he had sustained in his business by the testimony even of the master manufacturers themselves, for he (Earl Stanhope) had been told by one manufacturer, that for certain articles of piece goods for which the weaver got 4s. 6d. in 1815, he now got only 10 d. Was it possible to exist, or rather, to vegetate, on such a system as this? Was it possible to expect that men who were ground down by the loss of means of profitable employment should feel any attachment to the present system? No, but the system would beget feelings of revenge, which when roused under particular circumstances would show themselves strongly. He would, therefore, earnestly entreat their Lordships to take the circumstances into their most serious consideration. They might rest assured that the evils here complained of, would not be remedied either by a fixed duty on corn or a sliding-scale. The poor class of operatives could be relieved only in one or other of two ways —either by obliging those who deprived them of work in one way to supply it by work of another kind, or, as he (Earl Stanhope) had before said, by giving
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them compensation for the loss they had sustained. He might illustrate his meaning by a reference to a haymaking machine about which his opinion had once been asked. He would not prohibit its use, or prevent any person from endeavouring to avoid by it the risk arising from unfavourable weather, but he would compel such person to make full compensation to the labourer who had been employed by him in haymaking, for the loss of their earnings of which he had no right to deprive them.
Lord Monteaglesaid, that with respect to the complaint of the noble Earl as to the non-production of the returns for which he had moved in 1839, he would find on inquiry, that the fault lay, not with the officer whose duty it was to make those returns, but with the noble Earl himself in not having renewed the order in the ensuing Session; for the noble Earl must be aware, that an order made for the production of returns in one Session expired with the Session in which it was made, and no more would be heard of it if not revived in another. He could not sit down without entering his protest against the doctrines avowed by the noble Earl. Was it to be tolerated, that in a country like this, which owed so much of its greatness and prosperity to the industrious application of capital to machinery, the people should be taught to regard with vindictive feelings those who employed that machinery, and should be taught to look upon them as wrong doers, from whom they were entitled to receive compensation? The petitioner, their Lordships would observe, was a handloom weaver. Was he not as such himself an employer of a machine? Let him ask had not that very handloom displaced in its day a more simple form, by which alteration manual labour was, in a considerable degree, dispensed with? Were artisans then to go back to the more simple form of industry, or were they not, on the contrary, bound to go on with new improvements in machinery,—with those improvements to which this country owed so much? If machinery was the cause of distress, why not go back to the primitive state of man and abolish the plough, which was a machine effecting a saving of manual labour? He must, therefore, again protest against the doctrine, that all or any of the existing distresses were owing to the employment of machinery. The fact

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was, that all and everything about them was machinery; there was nothing connected with the comfort and convenience of man which machinery did not place more easily and cheaply within his reach than it could possibly have been by manual labour. He was sorry to have intruded upon the attention of their Lord-ships by even one observation on the subject, but he could not restrain himself from thus protesting against the doctrines avowed by the noble Earl, who had held up as an object for vindictive feelings in the working classes a system which had produced and carried civilization all over the world, and without which they most be driven back to the barbarism of their remote ancestors.
Earl Stanhopedenied, that there was any neglect on his part in reference to the returns for which he had moved. Those returns had been moved for by an address to the Crown, to which an answer had been returned, informing the House that they should be produced, and he did not see why the lapse of a Session should prevent it. With respect to the observations of the noble Baron as to his opinions, he would only say, that when the proper time came, he should be able to defend those doctrines, as the noble Lord called them. The noble Baron had charged him with wishing to go back to a state of barbarism. He had not said anything of the kind, but he would now say, that a state of barbarism could not make the condition of some classes of the people worse than it was. Could a state of barbarism produce such an appalling fact as that 800,000 handloom weavers should be in a state of absolute destitution? [Noble Lords: No, no, not that number.] He had heard they amounted to that number, but he would not state it with certainty, He could declare, however, that in many places the handloom weavers were reduced to a state of destitution. In the town of Stockport alone there were above 15,000 persons whose average income did not exceed 1s. 1d. per week each. What could be worse than that condition? Talk of the prosperity of the country, why it could not be denied, that the country was more happy and prosperous—at least the people were more so —before this introduction of machinery. They had plenty of work and were well paid for it. The noble Baron need not be surprised at finding very strong language from the people on the great change which
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had taken place in their condition, nor need he be surprised, that the peace of the country should be endangered, when the poor working men found themselves in that state from which any change must be for the better.
The Earl of Devondid not mean to prolong this discussion, but merely rose to observe, that the practice of Parliament was, that no adjournment of their Lordships' House should prevent the return to any orders made by them. All orders made in the Session were considered obligatory out of it.
Petition to be laid on the Table.

BAPTISTS' AFFIRMATIONS.
Lord Denmanobserved, that in consequence of some observations that had fallen from a noble Lord on a former evening, he had now to lay on their Lordships' Table a bill for rendering the affirmation of that sect of Christians called Baptists equivalent to an oath in courts of justice. He had reason to know, that the operation of the law as it now stood, granting exclusively an exemption from taking an oath to Quakers and to those who formerly had been Quakers, but had seceded from the society, pressed very severely on that class of Christians called Baptists, who had very strong religious scruples against taking an oath at all, and he thought it very desirable that they should be released from that difficulty by having their affirmation received on all future occasions in evidence in those cases where an oath was now required. This was the object of the bill he now begged leave to lay on the Table.
Bill read a first time.
Adjourned.