LORD BROUGHAMI beg to call the attention of your Lordships to a Notice of Motion which I made on the previous evening, and to the Motions made on several other occasions relative to certain returns affecting the administration of the Poor Law. The cause of the delay has now been very sufficiently and very fully accounted for; and it has not been, I find, in consequence of any unwillingness on the part of those having these returns to produce 704 them to your Lordships' House. It was their undoubted duty to comply with the order; and on receiving the intimation, ten days ago, an effort was made to prepare the returns immediately; but to make them out it was necessary to go over the whole of the books for the last five years. This would, as might be expected, occupy a very great deal of time; and I believe, therefore, there has not been the least, not the slightest unnecessary delay, and, much less, any contumacious, or improper, or in any way reprehensible feeling on the part of those honourable — those most honourable—persons the Poor Law Commissioners; that is, so far as concerns the last ten days; and the previous delay, I hear, arose from a doubt as to whether the returns were wished for by the House within any particular time; but, of course, there was no intention of avoiding the order, or of offering by that avoidance, or in the delay, any disrespect. I cannot, my Lords, state so much without saying that it is with great pain, with very great regret, I find that in any quarter there should exist any wish whatever to increase that obloquy under which these honourable and able persons must needs—must of necessity, whether they will or not—perform their difficult, arduous, and, as I think, and as every one must admit, their delicate duties. When, as a Member of Her Majesty's Government, I, many years ago, took part in carrying the Bill respecting the Commission through this House, I found that, in recommending those most fit to be appointed to its administration, there were several gentlemen refused—for I made an offer to one or two to whom, as I should have supposed, the appointment would be of importance—to accept of that appointment; and they rejected the offer on the ground that they could not stand the inevitable odium which would fall on them in carrying out, for the first time, the important, beneficial, and, as it then was, novel system. Sir Frankland. Lewis and Captain Nicholl, who had been most successful in all they undertook, with other able gentlemen, obtained by their exertions the greatest possible amount of benefit to the country; they proved themselves able and excellent men; but, from, the very first, from the very beginning, they were assailed in all quarters, in the press, at public meetings, and in anonymous communications. This I know; and I especially know the latter fact, because I myself received many of them, not one of which contained less—that was very mode- 705 rate and civil indeed—than a threat of corporal vengeance; and they were generally ornamented with very remarkable and significant little pictures, from which, as conveying the meaning of the correspondent, I should have derived great advantage had my education, in the point of reading, been neglected. So that, from my experience, I know that the Commissioners were frequently, and still more violently, so assailed. It certainly may be ludicrous to look upon it in this light now; but this potty annoyance has been most painful to them, they being men—and conscious that they were undeserving of the abuse — of the greatest humanity. I believe that Commissioner Nicholls, Mr. Shaw Lefevre, Sir F. Lewis, are men of extremely humane and compassionate dispositions, and yet they were never called less than hard-hearted tyrants and Somerset-house despots. I have always defended them on all these occasions; I believe that they are in the right; I will not, of course, defend them, when I see that they are in the wrong. It is the system that should be blamed, if there be any blame, and not them; as a system it has to be carried into effect, however unpopular it may be in some quarters, and whatever be the abuse it is subjected to from the ignorance of some and the malignancy of others; but the men who carry it into effect stand free from all charge. I maintain, too, that the system is good. I have followed it in all its operations; I have examined all the proceedings and reports; and I have never yet seen any reason to complain except in two things. One of these was the introducing of a certain change, which must be lamented, and which was made on improper grounds—the granting outdoor relief, and adding wages with the rates, which was the very object of the whole Bill, and the very corner-stone of the Bill, to prevent. And I trust that the intention is to remedy those defective portions of the system, and to extirpate such of the poisonous and mischievous weeds as have found their way in.