Lords Sitting of 1 March 1853

MINUTES.
PUBLIC BILLS.—Reported.—Bail in Error.
3a Law of Evidence (Scotland).

TRANSPORTATION.
The BISHOP of MANCHESTER, seeing the noble Duke the Secretary for the Colonies (the Duke of Newcastle) in his place, begged to ask if he could give the House any explanation as to the intentions of Her Majesty's Government with respect to convict prisoners in Bermuda and Gibraltar; and whether any steps had been taken for assimilating the treatment of those convict prisoners to that of those of the same class at present in Portland. Misapprehensions of a serious kind had gone forth with respect to what had hitherto been the practice in those prisons, and it was highly desirable that some information should be given on the subject. He would, therefore, ask whether any, and what, arrangements were going on with reference to the new building for the reception of prisoners which was said to be erecting in Bermuda, and also whether any provision would be made for their separate confinement?
The DUKE of NEWCASTLEsaid, that when the subject of the continuance of transportation was before the House a few days ago, he had stated, with reference to transportation to Bermuda and Gibraltar, that there was no intention on the part of Her Majesty's Government to make any alteration in the system of sending convicts to be employed on public works at those places. With respect to the other question of the right rev. Prelate, he (the Duke of Newcastle) had the satisfaction of informing him that the convicts now confined in hulks at Bermuda would rapidly be placed on the same footing with those who were now imprisoned on the more improved system to which the right rev. Prelate had referred as carried on at Portland. It was well known to those who had devoted attention to this subject, that it was impossible to maintain any proper system of discipline, or to ensure morality or health on board hulks. Until within a short time, by far the greater proportion of the convicts at Bermuda had been imprisoned on board the hulks; but the present Governor of Bermuda, Captain Elliot, one or two years ago, had called the attention of the Government to this subject, and, by the permission of Government, had purchased a small island

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called Boaz for the erection of a prison for the convicts. That prison had been erected on the most improved plan, and it was now so far completed, that already 300 of the convicts hitherto confined on hoard the hulks had been removed into it, and he trusted that before very long the remainder of the convicts would be placed there. It would be interesting to the right rev. Prelate further to be informed that this prison contained separate cells for each prisoner, and that the whole of the prison was lighted with gas. The right rev. Prelate had not asked him any question with reference to other convict establishments; but he (the Duke of Newcastle) was anxious to add, that so impressed was the Government with the conviction that it was desirable to limit as far as possible the number of convicts in hulks, that every attention should be paid to the accomplishment of that object. The space within which prisoners could be confined at Gibraltar was limited; but only one-third of the prisoners were confined in hulks. He hoped that it might become possible to remove the hulks from Gibraltar; but at present that desirable object could not be attained. As to the prisoners at Bermuda, he had only to repeat, that he hoped the present year would see them all removed to the new prison.
LORD CAMPBELLsaid, that as he was about to go on circuit in a few days to administer justice to Her Majesty's subjects, he hoped the noble Duke would allow him to put a question, though he had not given notice of it; it was, however, a question relating to the same subject—the punishment of transportation. He knew he should be asked by the grand jury in every county he should visit whether he could inform them as to what were the intentions of Her Majesty's Government with respect to the continuance of transportation as a secondary punishment; and he wished to know whether he should be able to say, that whatever difficulty there might be in sending convicts to the Colonies to which, till recently, they had been sent, the punishment of transportation would still exist, and that when he pronounced sentence of transportation for seven years, or for ten years, or for life, it would not be a mere mockery?
The DUKE of NEWCASTLEthought there would be some inconvenience in giving a positive answer at the present moment, because he stated on a former occasion that great alterations, both in the law
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as regarded secondary punishments and in prison accommodation, must be made before any final arrangement of this very difficult question could be arrived at by Her Majesty's Government. At the same time, he thought it right to state to his noble and learned Friend, that, as at present advised, he (the Duke of Newcastle) could not but believe that it would be necessary, before a long period had elapsed, to bring the punishment of transportation to a close; because, he must remind his noble and learned Friend, when he said that, though it might be requisite to abandon transportation as regarded those colonies which were unwilling to receive convicts, yet convicts might be sent to some other place, where no such unwillingness existed; that, as regarded convicts sentenced to various terms of punishment, the Government did not need to go very far from home for a place of punishment, if that alone were required. He did not know that the suggestion which had recently been made with respect to an island on the coast of Great Britain, or in the Hebrides, would not answer the purpose; but he must remind their Lordships that, as at present carried on, the system of transportation (so called) was very different from that to which allusion was made. It embraced a system by which men who had undergone a certain amount of punishment, and had behaved well, received tickets of leave, and, after some time had elapsed, became incorporated with and absorbed into the free and pure part of the population. That was the difficulty; and his noble and learned Friend would see, that whereas all the colonies of Australia, except Western Australia, had protested against the continuance of that system, there were none of the more ancient colonies of this country, and none which had been hitherto free from the taint of convicts, who would not solemnly and strongly protest against the introduction of that class. Considering the social state of their colonies, where were they to look for any society into which convicts could be introduced, as they were formerly into Van Diemen's Land and New South Wales, and as they were now into Western Australia? What he had stated went to show the inconvenience of giving an answer to the question which his noble and learned Friend had put, because he must see how many subjects were to be considered before a final determination on the matter could be come to; but he confessed that he

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should be deceiving his noble and learned Friend if he did not state that, looking to the duty which Her Majesty's Government, must perform to the Colonies of this country, be felt that he should not be acting in accordance with that duty if he were to say that they would continue the system of transportation in the form in which it had been hitherto carried on.
LORD CAMPBELLsaid, that it was most highly desirable the punishment of transportation should be continued. He took on himself to say, as a Judge, that if he pronounced sentence of imprisonment for life in England, the sentence produced no such effect as if he had said that the prisoner should be transported beyond seas; and, as the result of his own experience, be should state that if a period of imprisonment in England were to be substituted for transportation, it would be a miserable failure. He thought the system of travaux forcés would not succeed here. We could not force our convicts on respectable colonists who had settled in a colony; he did say that it was of vast importance to find some quarter of the globe whore the advantages might be derived from the punishment of criminals by transportation, to which the noble Duke had referred, because part of the system was reformation, so that they should be employed, and become useful members of society. In the colonies there were many thousands who had been transported as convicts, but who were now earning their bread by honest labour, honourably maintaining their families, having their children well educated, and being themselves useful members of society. Had it not been for the punishment of transportation, not one of those persons would have been reformed.
The EARL of HARROWBY(who was almost inaudible) referred to the Falkland Islands as a place which had been thought a suitable receptacle for criminals, and was understood to indicate the physical character of those remote islands, and the circumstances in which convicts would be placed, but at the same time to qualify the representations given of the ultimate advantage that would attend the transportation of criminals thither. The subject was one which must be considered in various relations. With respect to convicts re-entering society, there were difficulties in the Colonies; but there were still greater difficulties in their procuring employment in a thickly-peopled country, where honest men found it hard to gain a livelihood.
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The vast proportion of those who had gone out to the Australian colonies as convicts bad had the opportunity of procuring honest employment; but he doubted exceedingly whether they could have succeeded in gaining a livelihood in our own thickly-populated country. He did not pretend to dogmatise on the subject, or to say that it was free from difficulty; but he wished to urge on their Lordships that there were two sides of the question, and that there were resources of which the Government might avail themselves.
LORD MONTEAGLEexpressed his concurrence in the opinion of his noble Friend; it was pre-eminently true that the subject was one which must be considered in its various relations. Their Lordships had to consider the interest of the colonies, undoubtedly, but not exclusively; there was nobody, whatever difficulties might be incident to keeping at home the whole criminal population, who would not be ready to say that transportation should cease to colonies advanced in civilisation. Our present system of transportation was injurious to many colonies; and colonists under such circumstances, whose interests were undoubtedly to be considered, declared that they would no longer receive our convicts. There were, however, very different cases. It was assumed that the Falkland Islands were entirely uninhabited—that they were as destitute of men as they were of trees; and therefore the mere sending the convicts to those islands did not seem to present any difficulty. The real difficulty was with regard to imprisonment at home. Supposing such system to be effectual, with his usual sagacity his noble Friend had asked what was to become of the prisoners whose term of punishment had expired? If they were to be set at liberty, but exposed to every possible temptation, and brought into contact, with all their habitual associates in vice, society was not discharging its duty. On the other hand, if they brought the convicts into a colonial society liable to be contaminated by such association, the State would not be held to perform its duty by that society. The question stood in a most unfortunate position. By dealing with the principle of transportation as had been done, they had made it hateful and odious to the greater part of their colonial possessions, who otherwise might have sought the assistance of that convict labour which they now rejected. Proof of this was to be found in the correspondence from the

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Cape, previous to that fearful resistance to authority which was almost tantamount to a declaration of war against the mother country Antecedently to that event, there were applications made to the home authorities, expressing willingness to receive our convicts if they were employed not in the midst of the civilised parts of the country, but in works that would prepare the way for civilisation in other parts of the country—employed, as had been well said, as pioneers of civilisation; and then by the time their sentences had expired, not only would improvements have been effected, but many of the convicts would turn out good members of society. But to proceed as we had done, pouring the whole stream of convict population into one colony, Van Diemen's Land, against the will and the entreaty of its inhabitants, was the very course to be taken if we had in view the purpose of making the convict system odious all over the world, detestable to the colony, and disgraceful to ourselves. He hoped it might be taken for granted, in consequence of what had passed some years back, that no change in the administration of the law so great as that of putting an entire and final stop to transportation could be attempted without first obtaining the sanction of the Legislature. It was at one time said that as incidental to the prerogative of the Crown it was competent to the Government to make alterations of that kind without an Act of Parliament; it was stated that by an exercise of the prerogative an alteration had been made with respect to the seven years' transports, and that such convicts were not now transported; but a noble and learned Lord (Lord Brougham) had interposed, and the result of the Committee which he moved, was a general admission that, whenever such change was made, it could only be made legally by Act of Parliament. If so, the question having to be discussed in the shape of a proposition for a Bill, if to be discussed at all, he would only add, that we must not only look to the mere question of transportation, but also to the proposed alternative. We should profit in such inquiry by the experience of foreign countries, and consider well what was likely to be the consequence of letting loose these classes dangereuses upon the country after a certain term of imprisonment. We should consider what sort of class the forçats would be likely to form. They might have certificates of good conduct from keepers
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of penitentiaries; but would any man give employment to discharged convicts while there were in his neighbourhood men untainted with crime seeking work and unable to obtain it?
LORD BROUGHAMobserved, that on the occasion to which the noble Lord had just referred, and which had led to the appointment of a Committee, it was admitted that when the law denounced one punishment for a certain offence, and the Court had applied the law and pronounced the punishment which the law awarded, it was not in the power of the Crown afterwards to alter that to a sentence which, if it had been originally pronounced by the Court, would have been error in law and of no force. But on that occasion a Committee of that House was appointed, which sat for many weeks, and made a report, which he had not had occasion to look at since, but which he thought he might safely state was unanimous; and, though many Members of the Committee entered upon the inquiry adverse to transportation, and desirous of its being abandoned, yet the more the Committee inquired into the matter the more unanimous they were (if one might so speak, as if there were degrees of unanimity)—the more clearly and firmly were they of opinion that we could not for the present, at least, dispense with transportation. The subject was one of great difficulty and importance, and well deserved to be fully and deliberately weighed and discussed; and it was unfortunate that the House should be brought to such a discussion only incidentally. The difficulties were enormous both of continuing transportation and of giving up transportation; and he (Lord Brougham) protested he hardly knew whether he did not consider the difficulties on the one side pretty nearly balanced by the difficulties on the other. But he would fain hope, whatever system was adopted as a substitute for transportation, should it be abandoned, that the introduction of what were called travaux forcés, and falsely called the penitentiary system, would not be resorted to; though, at the same time, he would not say that secondary punishment might not be so framed as to meet the principal objections to the continential system of the galleys or travaux forcés.
LORD WHARNCLIFFEconsidered it a very great defect in our present system, and one that must be remedied in any substitute for it, that the quarter to which criminals were sent should be a place of

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attraction to convicts. In spite of the opinion given by the noble and learned Lord, he had not the slightest doubt that transportation had lost much of its terrors, and that, with respect to a great number, the prospect of a free passage to the neighbourhood of the gold districts, with the chance of an escape or the hope of an early release, was at this moment rather an attraction than the contrary.

LAW OF EVIDENCE (SCOTLAND) BILL.
Bill read 3a.
LORD BROUGHAMsaid, it gave him the greatest satisfaction that this Bill was now passed and could be sent down to the other House, and he trusted it would speedily become law. It would make the Scotch law of evidence identical with that which was now the English law of evidence, with the exception of one slight addition, in which there was an improvement on the existing English law, but only for a very short time, as he was perfectly confident that the clause in his Bill making that the law of England also would be allowed to pass.
Bill passed, and sent to the Commons.

BAIL IN ERROR BILL.
LORD CAMPBELL, in moving that the House should go into a Committee upon the Bail in Error Bill, said, he would take the opportunity of briefly pointing out its principal provisions. It was a measure which nearly concerned the administration of justice, and, indeed, the liberty of the subject. It had long been the reproach of our law that after a conviction in a case of misdemeanor, where a sentence of imprisonment was pronounced and a writ of error was brought, the defendant was sent to prison, and there remained while the writ of error was pending; and it sometimes happened that he was discharged from prison after having undergone the full term of his imprisonment, before the writ of error had been decided in his favour. That grievance had remained unredressed until the year 1845. At that time the case of the late Mr. Daniel O'Connell had been heard. Mr. O'Connell had been in prison while a writ of error had been pending before the House of Lords, and it had then been proposed that the law should be altered; but his noble and learned Friend (Lord Lyndhurst) thought that it would not be advisable to alter the law until that writ of error should have been decided. Mr. O'Connell had accordingly remained in prison until that
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House had determined that the judgment against him had been erroneous, and then he was discharged. But he had suffered imprisonment for some months, although that House had thought that his sentence could not be justified. That circumstance had caused considerable scandal; and his noble and learned Friend (Lord Lyndhurst), who had always been an earnest and effectual friend to law reform, had introduced a Bill by which it had been enacted that if a writ of error should be brought by the defendant in case of misdemeanor, and gave bail that he would surrender in case the judgment against him should be affirmed, he should in the meantime be discharged out of custody, and enjoy his liberty. That Bill had proceeded upon an excellent principle, but, unfortunately, it had been rather defective in its provisions; for no special care had been taken that the prisoner who had been discharged should be recaptured when the decison was affirmed, and the consequence had been that in almost every instance in which bail had been given, the prisoner had escaped. One object of the present measure was to remedy this defect, and to take care that the defendant should always be forthcoming. According to the former Act he was merely required to surrender if the judgment should be affirmed: it was now proposed that he should from time to time, upon notice being given to him, make an appearance at every stage of the proceedings. Another evil in the Bill of Lord Lyndhurst was one of a character which had produced great perversion of justice. That Bill enabled defendants to tamper with prosecutors; and in various cases in which there had been convictions for atrocious crimes, the defendants, by bringing writs of error, had been admitted to bail, and had made up their differences with the prosecutors by giving them sums of money. The prosecutors afterwards did not appear, and the writs of error were necessarily decided in favour of the previously convicted parties. In one case several persons had been tried before him (Lord Campbell) at Westminster, and had been convicted upon the clearest evidence; but a sham writ of error had afterwards been brought, a compromise had been entered into with the prosecutors, who did not join in error, and the convicted parties had necessarily been discharged from custody. In order to guard against that evil, it was provided in the present measure that no reversal of the decision of the Court before which a case had originally been tried could

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take place until notice had been given to Her Majesty's Attorney General, and until he had certified to the Court of Error that he had received such notice, and that he concurred in the discharge of the prisoner. He (Lord Campbell) hoped that that provision would effectually put an end to compromises such as those to which he had referred. There were also in the Bill other clauses of a less important, but still, as he believed, of a useful character.
House in Committee.
Bill reported without Amendment; Amendments made; Bill to be read 3a on Monday next.

RAILWAY ACCIDENTS AND RAILWAY MANAGEMENT.
The EARL of MALMESBURYsaid: In moving for returns with respect to the railway accidents which occurred during the year 1852, according to the notice which I gave your Lordships last night, I think I am not travelling out of the wake of public opinion if I direct the attention of your Lordships and the attention of Her Majesty's Government for a few minutes to this subject, which has certainly of late occasioned considerable interest in the public mind. There exists throughout the country a strong feeling, in which, I must say, that I myself participate, that these railway accidents have been increasing lately, and are still upon the increase. I think your Lordships must be under the same impression, and that you must entertain a strong opinion that during the last year more railway accidents occurred, and a greater sacrifice of life took place, than we had heard of in any preceding year. There is scarcely a week in which we do not read in the public prints lamentable accounts of these accidents, entailing mutilation and death upon a great number of individuals. But I do not think I should have troubled your Lordships upon this occasion if I were not certain of the public alarm that now exists upon this subject, and of the general belief which prevails, not only that the manner in which railways are managed is extremely dangerous to passengers, but that every effort that might be made is not made to prevent a recurrence of those dreadful casualties. I believe there is a strong feeling in the public mind that some third power between the public and the railway directors should be exercised to protect, upon the one hand, industry and capital as they ought to be protected in a great commercial country, and to protect,
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upon the other hand, the Queen's subjects from such injuries as might by proper precaution be avoided. We seem really to have now returned to the same state of feeling with respect to the perils of travelling which prevailed among our ancestors sixty years ago. At that period, when they proceeded from Edinburgh to London, they insured their lives and made their wills before entering upon a journey which was considered so precarious, and which usually occupied about a fortnight. And what is the state of things now? The opposite extreme, as regards the rapidity of travelling, has been arrived at. We now travel with the most wonderful celerity. But in other respects extremes have met, and people before they engage upon a railway journey or excursion insure their lives almost as if they thought they were going to the Antipodes. There is something ludicrously tragical in the mode in which a person who has paid for the ticket which was to guarantee his arrival at the end of his journey is led to insure his life. When he has got his ticket he smilingly looks round, and sees the bills announcing the arrival and departure of the trains; and by their side he sees posted—I must say with the most ingenuous candour on the part of the directors—another bill by which he is invited in the most seductive terms to insure his life, as a duty which he owes to his wife, his children, and his friends. A man might then be said to enter the railway carriage, impressed with the notion that he should never again see those friends; and that they would never again see him, or at least that they would only see him as a shapeless corpse; he acts upon the advice and insures his life. That is the general feeling among the great mass of the people of this country who travel by railway; and I am informed upon good authority that the company which thus insures the lives of travellers, gave to the shareholders at the period of their last dividend something like 7 per cent. The public think that they are at the mercy of the railway companies. I do not know whether or not they are; but certainly a very great change has taken place in the relative position of the travelling public now and the railway companies, as compared with the relative position of the travelling public and the old coach proprietors and owners of post horses. The old coach proprietor and post-horse master stood hat in hand before the public, while now the public stand hat in hand before the railway companies and directors. The

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management of the details of locomotive business of the old coaches was formerly in the hands of a class of men of inferior education and position—I mean the ostlers; but the business, which was formerly in the hands of the ostlers, is now placed in the hands of highly-educated gentlemen, some of whom are of distinguished rank and leading Members of Parliament. These men are certainly not responsible to the public in the same way in which their humbler fellow ministers to the public wants formerly were when conducting the details of coach travelling. I think that this is a subject that ought to attract the attention of every Government, and that the time has arrived when the Government ought to consider whether they can tranquillise the public mind upon this matter—when they ought to consider whether means cannot be taken to enforce certain rules and regulations, and to effect certain improvements in railway travelling, without trenching at all upon the rights of the companies, as commercial or trading associations—but which will tend to the safety and security of Her Majesty's subjects. There are many details connected with this question which I will not now press upon your Lordships' consideration; but there are one or two points which must strike every one very forcibly, and to which I shall briefly refer. All the accidents of a slighter nature that occurred this year—the collisions, which, while they inflicted some injury upon the person, led to no loss of life, and merely caused bruises, and contusions, and concussions of the brain, and trifling accidents of that description, have been invariably effected, I believe, by two persons who were sitting opposite to each other having been thrown together with more or less violence. On the Brighton line in the month of December last an accident occurred, by which eighteen or nineteen persons were severely injured on their heads and faces by having been so thrown together in two compartments of a railway carriage. I saw those unfortunate sufferers, very soon after the accident, some of whom had been thrown with so much violence that they were severely injured; while one of the travellers, who had no vis-a-vis, had been thrown against a soft cushion, and the result was that he had escaped unhurt. I mention that fact because it has been suggested that the carriages might be made—and I think the suggestion a very sensible one—to contain a number of persons in a row
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without any other persons being placed opposite to them, and that the partition opposite to them should be stuffed. The carriages of course would be very much narrower than at present, and formed somewhat like the coupé of a diligence, but without windows in front. I am aware that you could not put the companies to the expense of making new carriages all at once; but you might have some controlling power which, as the old stock were out, would gradually enforce that or any useful discovery that might be made in the construction of carriages. There is another point which has of late occupied very much of the public attention, and in which the safety of the lives of travellers is very much involved, but which on many lines seems to be left entirely out of the question; I allude to the want of punctuality in the arrival of railway trains. When first railway carriages were started, the time-tables issued were very well observed; but nobody is now astonished at finding that he arrives at the end of his journey, one, two, or even more hours, after the time announced in the printed tables of the railway. The railways abroad are infinitely superior to ours in this respect, and I must say that I think some effort might be made to remedy to a great extent that evil, although it would of course be impossible to insure constant punctuality in the arrival of trains. But I believe that there is still a more important point; and that is, that a certain communication should as a matter of obligation be estab-between the metropolis and the principal towns of this country. Such a communication does not at present exist; and I can give you an instance of it from my own knowledge, which, I think, is one of the most inexcusable acts of arbitrary power that could be witnessed in a civilised country. During four months of this winter the whole of the county of Dorset, and a great part of the south of Hampshire, were, I may say, excommunicated from London, for there was no day train from Dorchester before twelve o'clock except one which left at six in the morning; so that no person in Dorsetshire, during the winter months, though the distance is not more than 100 or 130 miles, could reach London in sufficient time to pass through the metropolis unless he arose at four or five o'clock in the morning. The result of the arrangements made by the railway company was, that my noble Friend at the head of the Post Office (Viscount Can-

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ning) said that he could not give us in Dorsetshire a day mail, which the whole of that district had enjoyed for two years. This was the result of the caprice—for I can give it no other name, as no reason was given for the change—of the railway directors; while the only reason that could be adduced for those arrangements was the caprice of the directors. My noble Friend said he had no authority over the departure of the trains which carried the mails; so that we were entirely at the mercy of the managers of the company. On the same line there was what I might almost call an outrage. A parliamentary train started from Dorchester at six in the morning, full, no doubt, of persons of the poorer classes; and those persons, during the four winter months, were kept four hours waiting in Southampton until the company chose to start another train for them. Your Lordships can easily imagine the expense and discomfort to which these poor people were thus exposed—expense arising out of the necessity of providing themselves with provisions during the delay, and discomfort arising out of the fact that they were provided with no proper resting-place during those three hours. These are things which, I think, require the interference of the Government. We have so far protected the interests of the poor as to obtain for them cheap trains; but I think we ought also to protect them by providing for their removal from one terminus to another without any unnecessary inconvenience or delay; and that the companies ought not to be allowed to subject the passengers by such trains to expense, and cold, and inconvenience for no reason whatever in this case, so far as I can learn. I was asked by many of my brother Members of this House living in that county to make a representation to the directors of this railway. The directors admitted the existence of those grievances; they confessed there could be no reason why there should be only three trains from Dorchester to London, and four from London to Dorchester; they confessed the cruelty of keeping these poor people in Southampton; they confessed the hardship of taking away from a district only 100 miles from London its daily post; but they said they could not remedy those evils; the only reason for their mode of proceeding being sic volo, sic jubeo. That is the only answer that could be got from a power that is perfectly arbitrary. I inquired of the station-masters and other
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persons conversant with the working of the system, and they all said that there was no necessity whatever for those evils, which were owing to nothing but a little want of management. Well, I think we ought not to be exposed to that want; and I would urge on Her Majesty's Government the necessity of considering whether, without infringing on the rights of those companies, or interfering with their profits—and I have always been anxious that they should have large profits, and have always thought it would be bad policy to impoverish them by reducing their charges to the lowest possible scale—I would urge on Her Majesty's Government the necessity of considering whether they could not devise some remedy for those abuses. I think it is incumbent on them, and that they could not do a more popular act than to investigate grievances which have become the subject of conversation in every society, and which I have now taken the liberty of bringing under your Lordships' consideration, Everything I have said upon the subject has come under my own observation, and I can answer for the truth of every statement I have made. In conclusion, I beg leave to move—
"That there be laid before this House returns of the number of passengers and railway servants killed or injured by accidents, from the 1st of January, 1852, to the 1st of January, 1853."
LORD VIVIANwished to know whether the Government had the power of stopping the traffic on a line which was in a dangerous condition?
LORD STANLEY OF ALDERLEY, in answer to the question of the noble Earl, said he conceived that when a railway was once opened there was no power on the part of the Government to interfere with it in any way, or to stop the traffic upon it. The powers given by Parliament to the Board of Trade, or the Railway Commissioners, enabled them, before a railway was opened, to send an inspector, who should certify that the road was in a fit state to be safely worked for the accommodation of the public, and until such certificate was given no railway could be opened. With regard to the subject which the noble Earl had brought under their Lordships' attention, it was undoubtedly one well deserving consideration. He agreed with the noble Earl, that though it might be contrary to the ordinary principles of commercial policy for the Government to interfere with such bodies as railway companies and their transactions—bodies which represent-

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ed the enormous capital of 250,000,000 l., or more than one-fourth the amount of the national debt—vet in this, as in other cases, their maxim should be, Salus populi suprema lex. If it could be proved that the real security of the public would be promoted by direct interference on the part of the Government, it would be very proper that the additional powers which were necessary should be given to them; but he must caution Parliament to be very careful before they relieved railway companies from the responsibility which properly attached to the parties who worked the lines and carried on the details of the traffic. If Parliament relieved the companies from responsibility by giving to a department of the Government the power and the obligation to prescribe for them exactly what course they were to take to secure the safety of the public, the companies, if they attended to such directions, might consider themselves relieved from all liability: whereas if they left the companies the responsibility of working the lines, they would find, that under the Act of the Lord Chief Justice—which gave to persons injured by accidents the power of recovering compensation in cases where the accidents had arisen from any neglect on the part of the companies—their responsibility was by no means trifling. The noble Earl had called attention to some matters of inconvenience to the public, and had mentioned, as one case, that when a railway collision took place, the passengers who sat on opposite seats knocked their heads against each other, and that serious injuries were caused. He (Lord Stanley) did not know whether the noble Earl proposed to put the passengers into boxes similar to those provided for horses, or what other mode he would adopt for preventing the usual results of such accidents; but all such matters would more properly be left to the regulations of the companies, and could hardly be considered as subjects for legislation. The noble Earl had alluded to the powers of investigation with regard to railway accidents. Now, there was a power of investigation on the part of the Board of Trade. When an accident occurred, the Board of Trade sent down an inspector to inquire into the circumstances and report to the Board, and on receiving the report the Board made such suggestions as they thought fit to the railway company; but they had no power to compel the companies to carry into effect those suggestions, but Parliament might fairly consider whether it ought not to give such power. He thought it would not be de-
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sirable at present to enter into any discussion as to the mode in which railways were conducted, inasmuch as a Committee had been appointed by the House of Commons, on the Motion of the late President of the Board of Trade, to inquire not only into the question of the amalgamation of different railways and canals, but also into the principles upon which railways should be conducted and managed. The whole of that subject had been referred to the Committee, and until that Committee reported he thought it would be unadvisable and inexpedient to discuss more particularly those matters which the noble Earl regarded as dangerous to the public safety. With regard to the returns for which the noble Earl had moved, he (Lord Stanley) did not think there would be any objection to their production. They were, in fact, the reports ordinarily laid upon the table every year. These reports, however, could not be prepared, he believed, until after Easter, and they had not generally been laid upon the table until May, June, or July. As to the reports relative to the particular accidents which occurred last year, he believed there would be no difficulty in their production.
On Question, agreed to.
House adjourned to Thursday next.