Lords Sitting of 19 March 1846

MINUTES.
PUBLIC BILLS.—1a. Out-Pensioners' Services (Chelsea and Greenwich); Out-Pensioners' Payment (Greenwich and Chelsea); South Sea Company.
2a. Metropolitan Buildings.
PETITIONS PRESENTED. From the Company of Brewers of the City of London, and Trustees of the Bookbinders' Provident Asylum, Ball's Pond Road, praying to be Exempted from the Operation of the Charitable Trusts Bill.—From Guardians of the Magherafelt Union, for Alteration of the Irish Poor Law.—From Great Torrington, Bradford, and Hollacombe, for Protection of the Agricultural Interest.—From the Presbytery of Dee, in favour of the Turnpike Roads (Scotland) Bill. — From Farmers and others of Happing, for Alteration of the Tithe Commutation Act.

IRISH POOR LAWS—PRIVILEGE.
The EARL of CLANCARTYhaving presented a petition from a Union in Ireland against the Irish Poor Law Bill,
LORD BROUGHAMwished to ask the noble Lord the Chairman of the Irish Poor Law Committee, whether it was true that that Committee had been stayed and obstructed in the proceedings yesterday by the refusal on the part of a witness to produce certain papers, he being fortified in his refusal by the Poor Law Commissioners? He (Lord Brougham) could not have believed

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the monstrous fact if he had not seen and spoken with the witness alluded to, Mr. Gulson, Assistant Poor Law Commissioner, upon the subject.
The EARL of CLANCARTYsaid, that the fact, as stated by the noble and learned Lord, was quite true; but it had since been ascertained that the papers would be produced to-morrow.
LORD BROUGHAM: This is an obstruction of the proceedings of the Committee; and by it a grave offence against our privileges has been committed. My Lords, the Poor Law Commissioners must be informed that it is at their high peril that they refuse to produce any documents that are demanded by one of your Committees from a witness. And, then, to say that Mr. Gulson should obtain their permission first! We do not want their permission. The Committee has only to report to the House that they are so obstructed and stayed in their proceedings by reason of the non-production of this document, and this House will give them, if they have not the power themselves, a specific order of the House for the production of the papers they may require.
The EARL of ST. GERMANS, having unfortunately been absent from the Committee on the occasion, begged to ask his noble Friend whether these papers, to produce which so much reluctance had been exhibited, were not marked "private and confidential."
The EARL of CLANCARTYsaid, that although the papers in question were marked "private and confidential," according to the statement of the witness, they were the instructions of the witness, and the only means of carrying out the orders of the Poor Law Commissioners.
LORD MONTEAGLEsaid, he had not had the honour of assisting his noble Friend on the Committee the day upon which this circumstance occurred, and being unwilling to prejudge any set of men, or assume they were in error before he had positive evidence on the subject, was inclined to suppose it might yet turn out that the Poor Law Commissioners had directed Mr. Gulson, not of his own accord, to offer to produce certain documents which they would have been willing and ready to produce if called for by order of the House. But he was decidedly of opinion that the Poor Law Commissioners had no right to withhold documents that were marked "private and confidential," because their Lordships, by obtaining partial information
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only, would be left in a worse position than if they had got no information at all.
The EARL of CLAREsaid, that there was no ground for the supposition of the noble Lord, as Mr. Gulson had been positively forbidden by the Poor Law Commissioners to produce the papers in question. The Committee, therefore, ordered the witness to withdraw, and stopped the proceedings, intending to appeal to the House. In the meantime, the Poor Law Commissioners thought better of it, and agreed to produce the papers. In justice to Mr. Gulson, he must say that no indisposition to produce them had been evinced on his part; that he had been ordered by his superiors not to produce them; and that he had merely thought it right to obey that order, and await the decision of their Lordships' House.
LORD CAMPBELLthought there must be some misunderstanding on the subject; for he could not believe that the Poor Law Commissioners were so ignorant of the law as to do anything so preposterous and absurd, as to direct that those documents should not be produced before their Lordships' Committee. Be the documents what they might it was for the Committee, and not for the Commissioners by their orders beforehand, to settle what documents should be produced before the Committee.
LORD BROUGHAM: My Lords, the Poor Law Commissioners are wholly without excuse in this manner. The document is not a private letter at all. I have read Mr. Gulson's letters to the Commissioners, to ask leave to produce the document before the Committee. That document contained his instructions from them. But the answer was, that he was not to produce the letter, because it was "private and confidential." Good God! my Lords, is a public department—the most delicate perhaps to administer of all—to be allowed to give to its officers public instructions to be produced when called for, and private and confidential instructions which are not to be produced? I am the less disposed to concede this, because I see that the discretion of the Commissioners has been at fault on other occasions. I have read Mr. Parker's case, and though I shall not say anything to prejudge a matter now undergoing investigation in another place, yet this I will tell them, that I have defended them through good report and through bad report when they were in the right: in the nomination of some of them I had a hand, and therefore I feel responsible for

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them; but I warn them to attend more to the letter of Acts of Parliament—to the will of Parliament—and to do their duty without fear of the newspapers; for that charge I make against them, that in Mr. Parker's case they have acted, and have avowed that they have acted, through fear of the press.
Subject dropped.

METROPOLITAN BUILDINGS BILL.
VISCOUNT CANNINGmoved the Second Reading of the Metropolitan Buildings Bill. Their Lordships would remember that in the Session of 1844 an Act was passed, the object of which was to repeal the old Building Act of 1774, which had been found inefficient for the purposes it was intended, namely, for establishing and defining a well-digested and well-regulated code of rules, by which metropolitan buildings should be erected and repaired, with a view to the safety and comfort of the public. The country had had more than a year's experience of the new measure; and he was bound to admit that in several respects defects were apparent in the Bill. It was scarcely to be expected to be otherwise in a measure so full of details as this necessarily was, and affecting so many interests, and interests of such various kinds. The consequence had been, that many representations of different sorts had been addressed to the Government, setting forth the real or supposed defects of the measure, and pointing out what the complainants considered would be the proper remedies to be applied. Some of those representations contained suggestions, and others complaints, many of which, no doubt, were unreasonable; while, on the other hand, he must admit, others were founded upon just and reasonable grounds. Where the latter was the case, the Government had considered it to be their duty to take those complaints or suggestions into consideration, with a view to devise some remedy for the defects complained of. The Bill upon their Lordships' Table, therefore, was only the Bill of 1844, containing several Amendments, which had been thought necessary in consequence of the representations which had been made to the Government. At a later period of the Session he should deem it his duty to bring the whole of the corrections before their Lordships, embodied in a Bill, if any further Amendments were proposed. In the mean time it would only be necessary for him to refer to the amended clauses on
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the Act of 1844, which described the machinery by which it was proposed to carry it out. Under the Act of 1844, there were two official referees appointed. A subsequent clause in the Bill directed the appointment of a third officer, who was called the registrar, whose duty it was to put upon record the decisions of the official referees, and as it was understood that this officer would generally be a barrister, to act as a sort of legal assessor to them, by affording them advice upon legal matters. The clause also provided that the award of one referee was final and binding, if the seal of the registrar was affixed to it. This was calculated to lead to great inconvenience, inasmuch as the referees might give different awards; and the one which received the seal of the registrar, who was not supposed to be practically acquainted with the details of building, was final. Her Majesty's Government had deemed it their duty to seize the earliest opportunity of removing this obstruction; and for that purpose they proposed to appoint an additional referee who should possess co-ordinate powers with the other two; and, of course, from the mere fact of there being three referees, in case of disagreement, a decision would be come to by a majority of referees acquainted with the subject. The most formidable objection to the appointment of this third referee was the additional expense. By the Act of 1844 the salaries of these referees were partly borne by the Consolidated Fund, and partly by the city of London, and the counties of Middlesex, Surrey, and Kent. The salary of each referee was 1,000 l.; but by the additional appointment it was not proposed to increase the expense, as one of the parties had retired on account of the condition which had been heretofore attached to the office, that he should be debarred from pursuing his ordinary professional avocations: the Government now proposed to appropriate this sum to the payment of 500 l. per annum each to the successor of this gentleman and the third referee, and to permit them to pursue their own private practice as surveyors. He hoped no objection would be offered to the passing of this Bill, so that it might go into Committee next day.
LORD COLBORNEsaid, there never was a Bill passed that had met with more objections, and had so little answered the purposes for whieh it was intended, as the Metropolitan Buildings Act of 1844. He

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could speak to the inefficiency of the measure, and he was gratified in hearing the noble Viscount express his intention to introduce a new Bill during the present Session; and he trusted that the provisions of that Bill would be such as would do away with the necessity of constant complaint against it on the part of the public, by providing a proper and efficient remedy for the existing defects.
LORD CAMPBELLdid not rise to oppose the second reading of the Bill; but he must say that he thought the only way to remedy the evil would be to repeal the Bill of 1844 altogether. He was convinced, that to attempt to patch up that Bill would only be to make confusion worse confounded. He and some noble Friends of his foretold the difficulties that would ensue; but in vain. His noble Friend had given but a faint idea of the confusion that had been occasioned. So very defective was the Act, that he thought few of those noble Lords who supported it in 1844 had read it through. The present Bill touched only two or three clauses out of some hundred or more equally objectionable; and he would suggest to the noble Lord (Lord Canning) that the better course would be to withdraw the present Bill, and bring in another more comprehensive, or, at least, one to repeal the Act of 1844, and allow buildings to be regulated for the present by the old Building Act of 1774, which, whatever its defects, was perfection, compared with the present.
The DUKE of BUCCLEUCHsaid, he had read the Bill of 1844 several times while it was before the House. He did not say that the Act was not in many points capable of improvement; but it was almost impossible to propose a measure of such a nature, dealing as it did with various interests, and involving many complicated matters, that should be in the first instance altogether free from objection. Questions of doubt were seen to arise, and objections to be made especially by those whose acts it was most necessary to control. He should much regret to see the Act repealed altogether, as the noble and learned Lord suggested; for it was absolutely necessary for the safety of the buildings and the health of the people that stringent measures should be taken.
LORD ASHBURTONregretted that no measure had hitherto passed for abolishing the smoke nuisance in the metropolis. So serious had that nuisance become, owing to the establishment of so many
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manufactories, and the introduction of steam-engines, that the citizens of London were only by great accident ever permitted to see the sun, unless they went some miles out of town for that purpose. He was informed, that, by a very small expenditure, the nuisance might be abated in nearly all cases.
LORD CAMPBELLhad granted two or three patents, while he held the office of Attorney General, any one of which would be effectual for remedying the nuisance of which the noble Lord complained, and that not only without any great expense, but with considerable economy, by diminishing the cost of fuel. He was inclined to agree that measures to compel the adoption of a remedy should be passed.
The DUKE of BUCCLEUCHreminded the House that a Bill passed some Sessions ago for compelling manufacturers to consume their own smoke in the manufacturing towns.
Bill read 2a.
House adjourned.