Lords Sitting of 28 April 1846

MINUTES.
Sat first. Earl Granville, after the Death of his Father.
PUBLIC BILLS.—2a. Railway Companies Dissolution; Commons Inclosure.
PETITIONS PRESENTED. By Lord Ashburton, and several other Noble Lords, from several Charitable Institutions, against the Charitable Trusts Bill.—By the Marquess of Anglesey and Lord Redesdale, from Parochial Authorities of St. George's in the East, and St. George the Martyr, Southwark, for the Better Observance of the Sabbath.—From Guardians of the Castlebar Union, for the Better Regulation and more Efficient Support of Medical Charities (Ireland).—By the Earl of St. Germans, from Goldsworthy Gurney, proposing a Mode of Ventilation for the New Houses of Parliament, and praying Leave to Explain and Prove the same.—By the Earl of Falmouth, from Clergy of Kirrien, against the proposed Union of St. Asaph and Bangor, but in favour of the Appointment of a Bishop to the See of Manchester,—By Lord Brougham, from Incorporated Trades of Leith, praying that Provision may be made in the Burghs (Scotland) Bill to Relieve them from the Burdens of the Church and Minister of South Leith, which attach to them in respect of the Exclusive Privileges sought to be Abolished.

RAILWAY BILLS.
EARL FITZWILLIAMsaid, that as they were about to give a second reading to a Bill to enable certain railway companies to dissolve, he wished them to consider in what situation Parliament was placed. When the parties ought to be in a condition to pass the Bills, the House were about to pass a measure enabling the companies to dissolve themselves. These Bills had only got into the House on the presumption that the parties were desirous of carrying out their plans, and now, at the last moment, the companies were to be enabled to dissolve themselves. He approved of this course, as it would check that mania for railway speculation from which he was afraid persons in the highest ranks were not entirely free; and which was not only utterly disgraceful to those engaged in it, but was also most mischievous to the country at large. He was desirous of then bringing before their Lordships in a practical shape one part of the subject which it was desirable to consider. They were aware of the immense extent of this speculation, of the capital which would be required to carry these measures into effect, of the pressure which this demand for money would make upon the money-market, and of the effect which the abstraction of so much money from the capital of the country would have on the commerce and

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best interests of the country. The Motion he would make was for a return of the total sums of the estimates for railways for which petitions for Bills had been presented during the present Session, distinguishing the estimates for Bills withdrawn or rejected, and the estimates for those depending in either House of Parliament. He would desire that their Lordships should revise their whole conduct with regard to these measures. They were called Private Bills, but it was an absurdity so to call them and to deal with them as such; they ought to be dealt with as public measures, which should be considered together as the foundation for the system of communication for the whole country. Ten years ago he had proposed to the Government then in office, with whom he was intimately connected, to establish a general board to make a general survey of the country for the establishment of railways. That proposition was not adopted. It was then said to be too late, though very few Bills had been passed; and he knew it would be now said to be much too late, and that if they this Session swamped one-half of the Bills, they would hear of no more Railway Bills in future Sessions. He differed from those who were of that opinion. The abominable gambling they had witnessed proved that large profits had been realized by those embarked in these undertakings, which had been profitable because they were monopolies. The communication between the metropolis and the north was at that moment a monopoly; so, he apprehended, was the Great Western: that the Midland Railway was a monopoly there could be no doubt. They were monopolies which he trusted would not long exist; and till the country was saturated with these railway communications, as it had hitherto been with turnpike roads, there would be great profits derived from those who speculated in them; and those who apprehended that when Parliament had knocked on the head a large portion of the schemes at present before them there would be no further progress in railway legislation, were greatly mistaken. That there ought to be a Railway Department of the State to determine the important points of the country which ought to be connected, he had not the slightest doubt; and there was even now time to establish such a department. With respect to the effect on the money market, in former times, if the Chancellor of the Exchequer wished to raise, for carrying on a war, a loan of 25,000,000 l. or
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30,000,000 l., it was considered a large tax upon the money market; but here there was a demand for 100,000,000 l. of money. His opinion was, that out of the number of Bills now before Parliament a selection should be made, and that there should be an authoritative dictum that Parliament would not sanction schemes requiring more than a certain amount of money. He thought, if they now sanctioned schemes to the extent of 30,000,000 l., that would be as much as they ought to do, considering the monetary interests of the country. The noble Earl concluded by moving for the returns.
The DUKE of CLEVELANDagreed with the noble Earl (Earl Fitzwilliam) upon the necessity for some department of the State dealing authoritatively with the railway projects; and he had no hesitation in avowing his opinion, that the Bill proposed by the Government ought to be passed, for the relief of persons who had been hurried, either by recklessness or folly, into difficulties by these schemes. But he contended, they were not to relieve what was a permanent evil by a temporary remedy. The system of legislation upon railways ought to be altered altogether, for it was totally rotten. He must be permitted to say, that he had the very worst opinion of the directors of the generality of the railway schemes which had recently appeared. Some of them might be honourable men; but many were directly the reverse, having been guilty of the worst sort of conduct for their gain. The system which had been pursued through their instrumentality required an alteration in our legislation; it was not too late to amend it, and he saw no reason why there should not be a Government Department, or a Board of Works, who should have all projected railway schemes before them, and report upon the best.
LORD MONTEAGLEsaid, it was his intention to call for some further information bearing on this subject. If only a list of Bills was given, that by no means would inform their Lordships of the vast amount of mischief which had been done. There had been a great deal of mischief done by a gambling spirit, in many cases where no Bills had been presented to Parliament. It was in the inchoate state of many lines that the most gambling had taken place. He wished therefore to obtain not only the Papers which his noble Friend moved for, but all the notices for Bills inserted in the Gazette; of all Bills

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deposited in the Private Bill Office; the amount of capital which the parties proposed to raise in order to execute their works; the amount they proposed to borrow, in addition; and then—that which was the most important question of all—the number of shares issued to raise the capital. So long as the law permitted the prosecution of these schemes by means of 10 l. shares, a system of gambling would be fostered and encouraged. That was the root of the evil. He also believed that these railway measures would never stand upon a right footing until there was some authority representing the public to revise and examine them; and their Lordships must not be deterred from considering the subject by the failure of the Board of Trade last year. The principle upon which that Board proceeded was right. They had been too much afraid of the impulse which they might give to certain schemes. The precaution and mystery of their proceedings were the great cause of the jealousy with which they were regarded; but all feeling of that sort would have been avoided had they been open to the public. He hoped, therefore, that a public Board would be appointed for the consideration of all railway schemes, which he concurred with the noble Earl in thinking was not even yet too late.
LORD CAMPBELLsaid, there was no doubt that it would be found indispensably necessary to have a Railway Department within the Government. The functions of the Railway Department of the Board of Trade had never been defined. It had been established merely on a Resolution of one House of Parliament—not even on a Resolution of their Lordships' House, but simply by a Resolution of the House of Commons alone. A Board so constituted could not work well; but if an Act of Parliament were brought in, defining its functions, and giving it determinate powers, he had no doubt that its operation would be highly satisfactory to the community. He would not give a Board even so constituted a power of finally deciding on these Bills. He would not take that power from the Houses of Parliament, but he would give the Board a power to hear both sides of the question, which they did not enjoy before.
The DUKE of WELLINGTONbegged to remind their Lordships that the Railway Board was appointed in consequence of the proceedings of a Committee of the House of Commons, and that its powers were limited by the limits fixed in the
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Report of that Committee. It was a measure imposed on the Government, with regard to certain private transactions which came before Parliament, in order that they might receive the powers necessary to enable them to carry these transactions into execution. That was the fact. The noble and learned Lord might be right in stating that the Board of Trade acted according to its instructions, but the Board was confined in these instructions, and possibly Parliament might have been wrong in not giving sufficient powers to it.
LORD BROUGHAMsaid, he had often taken part in the discussions on this subject, and he could confirm what his noble Friend who had just sat down had said. The Government could take no other course but to conform to the recommendations of Parliament. The former Board had been exceedingly crippled in its powers, but it was clear that there should be a Board established having more extended authority and usefulness. If there was anything for which, more than any other, he envied their neighbours on the other side of the Channel, it was the institution of the department of the Ponts et Chaussées. If they had such a Board as that referred to in this country, they would have the advantage of having consistent decisions, of having economical decisions, and, above all, of having right and just decisions.
LORD ASHBURTONsaid, he was most happy to find that the necessity, in fact the extreme pressure of this subject, was forcing itself on their Lordships' consideration; land he trusted the same view of the matter would be taken in the other House of Parliament, and that before long some Committee would be appointed in order to report on the proper course to be taken with regard to the formation of the proposed Board. It would be impossible to go on much longer without such a Board; but the difficulty on which they had to decide was, that these matters pressed upon them so strongly that they could not wait for an alteration in the general system. That general system would be only applicable at some future time, and would not reach those cases which should be decided in the present year. After the people had opened their eyes to their own interests under the Bill now pending before their Lordships, and after the number of Railway Bills had been reduced to the lowest level, they would still have to consider how far the remaining schemes ought to be allowed to proceed in the present Session.
The EARL of DALHOUSIEsaid, their Lordships would not expect him to express any opinion at present respecting the proposed Board; but he was desirous to call their Lordships' recollection to the fact, that his noble Friends about him were not responsible for the absence of any control over railway matters by any branch of the Executive Government. During the first Session after Her Majesty's present Ministers had acquired power, there was no appearance of railway legislation. In the succeeding Session, when a number of Railway Bills were brought forward, Her Majesty's Government at once took the subject into their consideration, and the very next day a Committee was moved for by the then President of the Board of Trade. Before that Committee the entire subject had been most minutely gone into; and in the Report which had been presented from it, the whole question was fully and elaborately discussed, and the most efficacious mode of dealing with Bills when passing through Parliament, as well as of superintending the works afterwards, was dwelt upon. It was then recommended that a department of the Executive Government should be entrusted with a certain control over Bills before they came before Parliament, and it was subsequently decided that that department should be a particular branch of the Board of Trade. He should beg to remind their Lordships, that so far from there being an anxiety on the part of the two Houses of Parliament to extend the authority of the Executive Government to these matters, on the contrary there was an extreme jealously displayed, not only in the House of Commons, but by their Lordships, against anything like an assumption of power by the Executive Government. In order to meet the views of Parliament, the Committee accordingly laid down the exact points on which the Board of Trade was to enter, and those on which they were not to decide. They were told how much they were to decide, and that they were to go no farther. He (the Earl of Dalhousie) had the honour of being entrusted with this department under the Board of Trade; but their Lordships would excuse him from entering into the reasons why they had failed. He might, however, be permitted to say, that if they had not gone farther than the powers entrusted to them, they had been influenced by a zealous desire to discharge their duties efficiently; and, leaving himself out of the question, he would say of the
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gentlemen with whom he had acted, that it was impossible any duties could have been discharged with greater ability than were the duties entrusted to those gentlemen. Men of more perfect integrity and more untiring industry could not be found; but their Lordships should recollect, if they had attempted to exceed the course laid down for them, what their fate would be, more especially from the other House of Parliament. The powers given to that Board were far too narrow to be of great utility; but in the mean time he should submit that the Government were not to be blamed for not having gone further. The matter was not now entirely neglected. A Committee of their Lordships' House was sitting on Railways, and another Committee, on a still wider scale, had been appointed by the other House of Parliament. He trusted that the labours of these Committees would be of a more practical form than they had hitherto arrived at. As to the returns moved for by the noble Earl, there could be no objection to them; but he agreed in thinking that there would be a difficulty in getting them in the precise terms required.
LORD WHARNCLIFFEsaid, there could be no doubt that the powers of the Board over which his noble Friend presided had been strictly limited, and there was no doubt, too, but that they had gone to the extreme verge of those powers. It was even said, in some quarters, that they had overstepped the limits to which it had been originally intended to confine them. He believed the original intention of the House of Commons was, that the Board should report to Parliament, not their opinion on the merits of these schemes, but simply a detail of the facts submitted to them; and some dissatisfaction was expressed that they had not confined themselves to this limit. He agreed in what had been said as to the growing conviction that was abroad as to the necessity of some organization for controlling this portion of the public business; but there were points of extreme difficulty in the way of such a Board as that which had been suggested. One of the first to be got rid of was, the jurisdiction of Parliament. They could not interfere with that jurisdiction without meeting serious opposition; and if they constituted a Board merely for the purpose of collecting details, he feared they would do but little in the way of remedying the evil which they had to meet.
Returns ordered.

MESSAGE FROM THE QUEEN — PENSIONS TO VISCOUNT HARDINGE AND LORD GOUGH.
The EARL of RIPONdelivered Two Messages from Her Majesty, which were read by the LORD CHANCELLOR as follow:—
"VICTORIA, R.
"Her Majesty taking into Consideration the great and brilliant Services performed by Henry Viscount Hardinge, a Lieutenant General in Her Majesty's Army, and the Governor General of India, in the course of the recent Hostilities which have taken place on the Banks of the Sutlej and in the Punjaub; and being desirous to confer some signal Mark of Her Favour, for these and other distinguished Merits, upon the said Henry Viscount Hardinge, and the Two next surviving Heirs Male of the Body of the said Henry Viscount Hardinge, recommends to the House of Lords to concur in such Measures as may be necessary for the Accomplishment of this Purpose."
"VICTORIA, R.
"Her Majesty taking into Consideration the important Services rendered by Hugh Lord Gough, a Lieutenant General in Her Majesty's Army, and Commander in Chief of Her Majesty's and the East India Company's Forces in India, in the course of the recent Hostilities which have taken place on the Banks of the Sutlej and in the Punjaub; and being desirous to confer some signal Mark of Her Favour, for these and other distinguished Merits, upon the said Hugh Lord Gough, and the Two next surviving Heirs Male of the Body of the said Hugh Lord Gough, recommends to the House of Lords to concur in such Measures as may be necessary for the Accomplishment of this Purpose."
To be considered on Tuesday next.

RAILWAY COMPANIES' DISSOLUTION BILL.
The EARL of DALHOUSIEmoved the Second Reading of the Bill for facilitating the Dissolution of certain Railway Companies. He proposed an alteration in one of the clauses of the Bill regulating the scale of voting, it having been found that the adoption of a scale, as in the Joint Stock Companies Act, would disturb the proportion which was required, and would put those who had a large number of shares at a great disadvantage as compared with those who held a smaller number of shares. The alteration proposed would give a vote to every share.
LORD CAMPBELLdid not intend to offer any opposition to the second reading;
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but he begged, before going into Committee, to draw the attention of the noble Earl to the 17th Clause, which seemed to give a very arbitrary power to the chairman of a railway committee, a power which was very likely to be abused. It was provided in this clause that the chairman should sign the minutes of proceedings; that these should be inserted in the London Gazette; and that that insertion should be held as conclusive proof of everything stated in the minutes being strictly and literally true. Now, it might happen that a majority of shareholders having decided against a railway in which the chairman of the committee to which the project was submitted was interested, the minutes might be worded to represent the reverse as the fact; these might be signed, and appear in the Gazette. It might also happen that a chairman of committee, desirous to wind up a company under the Law of Bankruptcy, instead of under the Joint Stock Act, would sign minutes to the effect that such was the wish of the majority of the shareholders; and in either of these cases there was no redress, no appeal. It certainly was stated that any person who knowingly inserted that which was false in the Gazette should be liable to punishment; but still, a speculator, to gain his end, might run the risk of a few weeks' imprisonment in Newgate; and even should he be punished, the injured shareholders would obtain no redress. Some tribunal should be appointed to examine and to certify to the correctness of the minutes before their publication in the Gazette, and the decision might then safely be held as conclusive; but as the Bill at present stood, they gave most arbitrary power, and they were opening the door to what, as it might prove, was gross oppression and injustice.
LORD WHARNCLIFFEwas understood to inquire whether the Bill contained any limitation as to the time of its operation. In reference to the 19th Clause, by which it was provided that Parliament should require from the parties promoting these Bills a return of the number of shares that had been issued, he thought that it would be extremely difficult to comply with that requirement. The governing body, in these cases, was presumed to issue the whole amount of the shares; but it was notorious that, in many cases, they had not done so; and he believed there were no means of ascertaining, in most of these cases, to what extent the shares had been issued.
The EARL of DALHOUSIEthought it

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quite right to state, in respect to the observation of his noble Friend who had just sat down, that the Bill, as it stood at present, contained no limitation of its operation in respect of time. Upon consideration, it had appeared that it would perhaps he better, upon the whole, to limit its operation to two years, to be then renewed, if it should be found at that time to have answered the expectations that were now entertained of it. The other point to which his noble Friend had alluded, the registration of the shares that had been issued, would unquestionably be desirable, if it could be carried into effect. The intention of the Joint Stock Companies Act, passed two years ago, was to secure for the public, as much as possible, a full knowledge of the concerns of any company which was in the act of associating itself for joint-stock purposes, and to require the directors to give as much publicity as possible to all their acts and intentions. The provisional registration consequently required certain particulars to be specified; and he thought the number of shares proposed to be issued was one of the matters that required to be stated. But to acquire an accurate knowledge of how many shares were actually issued at a given time, was exceedingly difficult. In respect to the Bills coming before Parliament, the Standing Orders ensured that Parliament should have an accurate knowledge of the number of shares issued, inasmuch as they required that three-fourths of the intended stock of the company should be subscribed and signed for. Even under that regulation, he doubted that much trickery was practised, and that the contract was sometimes signed by persons who were not actually beneficially interested in the holding of shares. The points raised by the noble and learned Lord opposite (Lord Campbell), and the suggestions made by him, were worthy of the best consideration which could be given to them. Considering that the meetings proposed to be held would be open to the greatest publicity, and that their proceedings would be subject to the closest scrutiny by the parties interested, it seemed hardly probable that any chairman would run the risk, contemplated by his noble and learned Friend, of actually falsifying the minutes which he caused to be inserted in the Gazette. At the same time, every precaution that could be taken ought to be taken; and before the Bill went into Committee he (Lord Dalhousie) would endeavour to see if some of those versed in matters of this kind could
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not provide a remedy for the evil of the noble and learned Lord suggested.
Bill read 2a.
House adjourned.