COPPER AND LEAD DUTIES BILL. (Hansard, 1 September 1848)

§ EARL GRANVILLE
moved the First Reading of the Bill.

§ LORD REDESDALE
said, that however contrary it might be to the usual practice of the House, he should move as an Amendment that the Bill be read a first time that day six months. He did so he-cause he considered that the treatment which their Lordships had received from the other House of Parliament on the subject of this Bill was such that it became their duty to mark their sense of it in the strongest possible manner. The resolutions on which this Bill was founded were carried in Committee of Supply on the 18th of April; but the Bill, by an unnecessary delay, was not brought into the House of Commons until the 8th of May. From that time down to the 28th of August there was not a week in which it was not fixed for a second reading; and he believed it was adjourned about thirty times before it came to a second reading. It was not read a second time, therefore, until the 28th of August, and now, on the 1st of September, within two or three days of the prorogation, it made its advent into this House. Was it proper, he asked, that a Bill which in any way affected the financial circumstances of the country, should be brought up at a period when it was impossible to give it fair consideration? If they were to be treated in this 750 manner, they would cease to be longer a deliberative assembly; and if they did not mark their sense of such treatment, their independence would be gone. He also objected to the measure itself on account of its proposing to reduce a duty, which, being but 6 per cent, could only be regarded as a revenue, and not a protective duty. In the present state of the public revenue, and with the prospect of a failure of the potato crop, and the harvest in Cornwall, it would be particularly unjust to pass a law which would have the effect of subjecting the Cornish producers of copper ores to competition with the slave-raised copper of Cuba. If there was an independent Peer in the House, he must vote against the first reading of the Bill.

§ The MARQUESS of LANSDOWNE
trusted the House would not be induced by the statement of the noble Lord to dispose in this summary manner of a Bill which was intended, not to check and embarrass, but to promote the trade of the country. Did not the noble Lord know, that by the false idea of giving protection to British copper, the smelting trade of this country had been exposed for years to the severest danger—and in fact had been in a course of gradual diminution? Did the noble Lord know that the effect of the measure, which was passed with a view to protection, had caused the establishment of smelting companies in places where smelting companies never before existed? That, he could assure him, had been the case in Chili, the United States, and other parts of the world. Amongst other authorities he might quote that of our consul at Philadelphia, who stated, that in Boston, United States, a company had erected furnaces, and were engaged in smelting considerable quantities of Mexican and Cuba ores—which ores, if not for our high duties, would have been all smelted in England? The noble Lord would promote British industry by causing the ores which would have been smelted in this country to go to America and be smelted there. The consul went on to say that smelting companies had also been talked of in New York, New Jersey, and Philadelphia. Then there was the evidence upon the subject which had been given before the Committee on the Navigation Laws; yet, in the face of such evidence, he was now told that it was essential for the interest of this country to continue the duty under which the smelting trade had broken down. The question was, should the smelting trade be retained in England, or be 751 driven to other countries; and he trusted the House would not adopt the extraordinary course recommended by the noble Lord, which was a most unheard-of proceeding, and the avowed object of which was to defeat the Bill altogether. The Bill had been passed in the other House by a large majority; and if their Lordships refused it a first reading, they would mark it not merely with discourtesy, but contempt.

§ LORD REDESDALE
explained that he had no wish to treat the House of Commons with discourtesy, provided it treated this House with courtesy; but he had stated, and no answer had been given to him, that to send up to that House on the 1st of September a Bill which was brought in in the Commons as early as May was an act of discourtesy. He objected to the measure on its first reading, on account of the late period at which it had been sent up; and he must say that it constituted good ground for this House resenting the treatment which it had experienced at the hands of the House of Commons during the present Session.

§ LORD MONTEAGLE
, whilst supporting the Bill, agreed with Lord Redesdale in his censure of the practice that had grown up of sending important Bills to their Lordships' House at a period so late in the Session. He thought this House was called upon in some way or other, not merely to mark its sense of this mode of proceeding, but to guard against that mode of proceeding hereafter; and he hoped it would be proposed in the next Session of Parliament to take some step that would preclude their Lordships, except where special cause was shown, from entertaining any Bill whatsoever that came up to them after a certain date. Their Lordships had it in their power to mark their sense of this mode of transacting the business of Parliament; and he wished the Bill on the table was such as, without any public inconvenience and sacrifice of the rights of third parties, he could, by rejecting it, mark his own sense, individually, of the manner in which the House had been treated; but as he believed that this Bill would be considered most beneficial to the manufacturing interests of this country, he would therefore support the first reading.

§ The EARL of FALMOUTH
supported the Amendment, and argued that the Bill had not been sufficiently considered in the House of Commons, where it was agreed 752 to by a small majority, and that at a period of the Session when nine-tenths of the Members had left town. The noble Earl then called attention to the apprehensions existing of a deficiency of food in Cornwall by a failure of the potato crop and the wheat harvest, through the continuance of wet weather; and contended that this evil would be much aggravated by the want of employment that would follow the enactment of the present Bill. If there was a body of manufacturers in the country, who were in a flourishing state, it was the copper smelters; and, in addition to the injury which the Bill would inflict on the Cornish miner, it would also have the effect of creating a monopoly in copper smelting.

The EARL of DESART
said, that from the observations of the noble President of the Council, it would almost appear that the copper-smelting trade was on its last legs, and had nearly left this country; whereas he believed that the smelters were about the most flourishing interest which existed at the present moment in the whole of Great Britain, and that if they were not so powerful and so well represented in the other House of Parliament their Lordships would have heard nothing of the measure now before them. As the Bill had not been sent up to their Lordships' House until within two or three days of the prorogation, he trusted that they would adopt the Amendment of his noble Friend.

LORD WYNFORD
considered that the House had not been treated with respect as regarded this Bill. They ought to remember that it was a Bill which, if it passed into law, would confer a benefit on slaveholders.

§ EARL GRANVILLE
replied.