Lords Sitting of 12 February 1857

MINUTES.
Took the Oaths.—The Lord Talbot of Malahide in Ireland, being created Lord Talbot de Malahide of the United Kingdom.
PUBLIC BILL.—1a Dissenters' Relief.

AFFAIRS OF GREECE.—QUESTION.
THE MARQUESS OF CLANRICARDE,seeing his noble Friend the Secretary for Foreign Affairs in his place, had a question to put respecting a matter which had appeared in the public papers, namely, the intended withdrawal of our troops from the kingdom of Greece, and an arrangement said to have been made with the Government of that country with respect to the debts and the management of its finances. He wished to know if the Government would lay upon the table the correspondence on the subject, so as to inform the public on what was done with regard to it? The Government was justified in withdrawing the troops, as the troops had only been sent for the purpose of enforcing the neutrality of Greece; but the two transactions appeared to have been mixed up together. No doubt we ought to have some control over the finances of that country, as it was our debtor, and we ought to take care of our debts; yet if such an arrangement was carried too far, it would involve us in difficulties.
THE EARL OF CLARENDONsaid, he

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was glad to have an opportunity of answering the question put to him by his noble Friend. Their Lordships were aware that the troops were sent to Greece in consequence of the spirit of hostility which had manifested itself in that country towards the Western Powers, and when a successful attempt had been made to incite insurrection in the neighbouring provinces of Turkey. Upon these occurrences taking place it was agreed by Her Majesty's Government and the Government of France to send a small force to the Piræus in order to check proceedings of which we had so much reason to complain, and which acted, of course, as a powerful diversion in favour of Russia, by engaging the attention and arms of Turkey in the restoration of order within her own territories. That measure was quite successful. The troops never have moved from the Piræus, and, the war being over, they would be withdrawn. But in the course of the last autumn the Greek Government laid before the three protecting Powers a statement of the revenue and expenditure of Greece, offering to pay a small annual instalment of the interest on the loan guaranteed by those three Powers, and which interest has, in point of fact, been exclusively paid by them ever since the loan was made. The Greek Government, however, at the same time suggested that the protecting Powers might prefer, instead of receiving this small instalment of interest, to allow it to be applied to the internal improvement and the development of the resources of the country. Her Majesty's Government, however, could not agree to that proposal; first, because it was by no means clear that by a better administration the revenues of the country might not be increased; and, secondly, because, although the latter might be profitably applied to developing the internal resources of Greece, Her Majesty's Government could not sanction the application in the way proposed of money which belonged to the treasury of England. But, as the Greek Government challenged inquiry respecting the accuracy of the financial statement transmitted by them, Her Majesty's Government proposed that a Commission, consisting of the Ministers of the three protecting Powers at Athens, should inquire into the financial condition of Greece. The statement was laid before Her Majesty's Government as creditors, and as creditors they proposed to inquire into the accuracy of it. The proposal was made to the Rus-
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sian Government, who concurred in it, and expressed their wish to take part in the Commission. Some little delay had arisen in respect to the attributes of the Commission, and its duration; but the Commission itself had been accepted in the most frank and cordial manner by the Greek Government. He had also to say that this proposal had been made in a perfectly friendly spirit to the Greek Government, and with no intention whatever of interfering in the internal affairs of their kingdom, or that the Commission should last beyond the time for which it was established. He (the Earl of Clarendon) believed that the protecting Powers were about to render essential service to Greece by the advice and assistance which the Commissioners would be able to render to her Government, and it was expected that the Greek Government might in this way have it in their power to effect certain administrative and financial reforms, which single-handed, they might possibly not be able to achieve. He believed the Commission would be established in a few days, and he hoped it would tend eventually to put an end to the contests for influence which had so often taken place between foreign Powers—contests which did no service to the Powers engaged, and which only distracted and wounded the public feeling of the country which was so unfortunate as to be the subject of them. He must say that the discretion and judgment of the English and French Ministers had done much towards carrying out the policy of their Governments in this respect, and he hoped that English and French parties at Athens no longer existed. The papers on this subject consisted chiefly of the correspondence with the French and Russian Governments respecting the Commission; and as that Commission was not yet absolutely established, it would, he thought, be premature to place them on their Lordships' table.

DISSENTERS' RELIEF BILL.

  PRESENTED. FIRST READING.
  LORD BROUGHAM presented a Bill for the further relief of Dissenters. He said it was the one referred to by the Bishop of Oxford in the debate at the last meeting of the House on the Church Discipline and other Bills of the Lord Chancellor, and was the same with the one he had presented the Session before the last, only that a clause was added on the right rev. Prelate's suggestion, whose absence, he was sorry to say, was owing to a great

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  domestic calamity. That proviso was intended to prevent the possibility of the Bill being supposed to affect in any way the indelible character of holy orders. The only operation of the proposed law would be to free Dissenters who had once been Clergymen of the Church, and now were united to dissenting congregations either as ministers or otherwise from Church censure, and from all civil or temporal disabilities, while it also deprived them of all clerical rights or immunities. He hoped the Bill, being very short and simple, and having been carefully drawn, would not be found to fall within the scope of his noble and learned Friend's objections, so well founded in general, to the manner in which Acts of Parliament are framed. Of the course proposed, the having an examiner to prepare and superintend the passing of Bills, he approved, so far as to say that it was a step in the right direction. But he conceived it to be insufficient; first, for the reason he had so often assigned, that a single person is wholly inadequate to the task, not on account of the labour being so great, but because a single mind applied to detect errors or note oversights is insufficient; there must be several, in order to afford good security against such slips. Therefore a Board is required as he had proposed in his Resolutions of 1847. But here, as on every other question connected with legal improvement, we are led to one and the same conclusion—the necessity of a Minister of Justice, or department charged with the whole of that great subject. He understood from the Votes that his right hon. Friend (Mr. Napier) was to bring the question again before the other House this evening, and he heartily wished him success. He had so often urged the matter on the attention of their Lordships that he should not detain them with further remarks upon it at present than to mention the fact that when, as President of the Law Amendment Society, he had communicated to Sir R. Peel, then at the head of the Government, the memorial of the Society, strongly recommending the appointment of a Minister of Justice, the answer returned was not merely courteous but it indicated that the proposal would forthwith be taken into favourable consideration, and that the memorial was, or would immediately be, communicated to Lord Lyndhurst, then Chancellor.
  Bill, for the further relief of Dissenters, read la.

SECONDARY PUNISHMENTS.

  SELECT COMMITTEE MOVED FOR.
  THE MARQUESS OF SALISBURY THE MARQUESS OF SALISBURY rose to move the appointment of a Select Committee to consider the question of Secondary Punishments. It was not his intention, in moving for the Committee, to go into that much-disputed subject; but he could not help expressing his satisfaction that the right hon. Gentleman the Home Secretary had so greatly altered his opinions since last Session. When, last Session, he (the Marquess of Salisbury) brought the subject before their Lordships, he was told that the ticket-of-leave system was perfectly successful, and that the Reports which were about to be issued would show its success; noble Lords opposite, in fact, then treated the matter as an imaginary grievance. Since that time, apparently, valuable information had been obtained, and great alterations of opinion had taken place. The Secretary of State had thought it right to introduce a Bill on the subject, although, judging of its tenor by the right hon. Gentleman's speech, he feared it would be an inefficient one, and would require much amendment before it could pass their Lordships' House. The Home Secretary had, however, introduced another measure, from which he (the Marquess of Salisbury) expected good results—that on reformatory schools. There was another subject which had excited great attention; it was that of prison discipline. Lord Denman had said that the object of punishment was to deter from crime; but our punishments had an opposite effect. The system of criminal law which we followed encouraged crime rather than deterred from it. In this view the system of military prisons was much better than that of civil prisons. In the former the diet was much more severe than that allowed in the latter. In the military prisons the diet is thirty ounces of solid food per diem and half a pint of milk, no meat. In the civil prisons, for instance Millbank, the diet is given to be forty ounces of solid food, of which a considerable portion is meat, besides one pint of soup, one of gruel, and one of cocoa. In the civil prisons there was sometimes thirty-eight ounces of bread daily per head, and the allowance sometimes even reached forty ounces. In point of fact, as regarded persons imprisoned for crimes, they fared better than common labourers. It appeared, however, that the I system was not favourable to health, for the returns show that since 1845 the per-

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  centage of cases of sickness in military prisons had been only 16 1–10th, while in civil prisons it averaged 70 per cent. That the system adopted in military prisons had a more deterring effect than that of civil prisons appeared from the fact that the recommittals to the former were fewer than those to the latter. He did not think that it was in the power of the local authorities to remedy the existing evils; it rested entirely with the executive Government. The noble Marquess (who was most imperfectly heard throughout) was understood to advocate a plan for keeping prisoners for long terms on public works during the latter part of their sentences; and to accompany sentences for short terms with a more severe punishment than mere detention. The noble Marquess, in conclusion, moved, "That a Select Committee be appointed to consider the Question of Secondary Punishments."
  EARL GRANVILLEsaid, he regretted not to be able to accede to the Motion which the noble Marquess had submitted to the House; but he thought that the noble Marquess had hardly made out a case at this time for the Committee which he had proposed. Last year Committees of both Houses sat upon the general question of secondary punishments, and the course which they adopted upon that occasion appeared to him to be a very judicious one; for, instead of both examining precisely the same witnesses and going over exactly the same topics, they came to an understanding by which one Committee took up one part of the subject while the other devoted itself to another part. In that manner their Lordships obtained much valuable information upon the subject of transportation generally; while before the Committee of the other House very little evidence, comparatively speaking, was given upon that point, and the witnesses were examined principally upon the questions of punishment, penal servitude, prison discipline, and labour on the public works. Under these circumstances he thought that it was not necessary for their Lordships to appoint a Committee at this time to go over either of the grounds which were then inquired into. The noble Marquess apparently did not wish that the Committee should investigate the general question of transportation; but his principal arguments were based upon the condition of different prisons and upon the superiority of the results obtained in military prisons over those obtained in civil prisons. The noble
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  Marquess referred, for example, to the lower scale of dietary and to the less frequent recommitments in the military prisons; but there were great differences in all the circumstances between the persons who were committed to military and those who were confined in civil prisons. In the former the imprisonment was almost always for short terms, and it was not until a prisoner had been confined some time that the low diet began to tell upon his health. So also with regard to recommittals—there was an obvious difference between the two classes of prisoners. In one case the prisoners met with persons belonging to the same criminal "profession," as he might almost call it; and the inevitable consequence whenever they associated was that they became hardened, and having no work to go to when they came out they were extremely likely to be recommitted. The soldier was differently situated in this respect, both with regard to the contamination which he met with in gaol, and his employment when he came out. Moreover, it was probable that the statistics of comparison were not altogether to be relied upon, because the recommittal of soldiers might not be so accurately reported as was the case with civilians, owing to regiments being frequently moved from the mother country to the various colonies, which made it more difficult to trace the men. The noble Marquess had spoken with great candour and satisfaction of the measures which the Government had taken on this subject, and he (Earl Granville) was happy to perceive that it had been favourably received by the country; but, whether good or bad, it was certainly the most complete measure yet proposed. For any practical result there was no comparison between a proposal of that kind and an inquiry without any definite object. He was not prepared, after the experience of past years, to give any distinct pledge as to the arrival of Bills from the other House; but it was the firm determination of the Government that a Bill which related to a subject of so much importance, and which occupied the public mind to so great an extent, should be proceeded with in the House of Commons as speedily as was practicable, and should be sent up to their Lordships in reasonable time for their consideration. With regard to the employment of convicts on public works, he could assure the noble Marquess that it had not been lost sight of by the Government; on the contrary, it had been most carefully

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  considered; but unless the feeling of the House was almost unanimous, he should be inclined to request his noble Friend not to press his Motion for the appointment of a Committee.
  EARL STANHOPEsaid, that, as the person who moved the appointment of the Committee of last year, he felt bound to make a few remarks on the present occasion. He fully acknowledged the praiseworthy objects which the noble Marquis had in view; but, at the same time, it appeared to him that those objects would be hindered rather than promoted by the appointment of a Committee. Inquiry was in its place last year; but the time for action had now arrived, and the appointment of a Committee at the present juncture would be welcome only to such persons as were not desirous of applying a remedy to the great and urgent evils of the present system. It would afford them a pretext for standing still, and taking no measures at all. Last year there had sat a Committee of their Lordships' House; there had also been one appointed by the other House, and both exerted themselves for some time to inquire into the whole subject. The Committee of their Lordships went fully into the colonial branch of the subject, and he (Earl Stanhope) was glad to observe that Sir George Grey, in his speech the other night, stated that the Government had derived considerable advantage from the information elicited by that Committee. As truly stated by the noble Earl opposite, the Committee of the House of Commons went fully into another branch of the subject—namely, the question of prison discipline, or the domestic branch of the subject. Taking both Committees together, and not looking at either singly, he thought they afforded an amply sufficient mass of information, and that their Lordships would only perplex and encumber themselves if, after the investigation of last year, they were to resolve that another inquiry was necessary. For these reasons he hoped that the noble Marquis would not press his Motion. Before he concluded he felt bound to state with how much pleasure he had heard the plan of the Government. He did not of course pledge himself to details; he had not seen the Bill, and spoke only from the general outline which had been presented to Parliament; but the measure appeared to him just and wise, framed on sound principles, and likely to afford satisfaction to the Colonies and
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  give protection to society at home. One great difficulty had always been that few persons had been willing to look at the question as it affected both the colonies and the mother country. Chairmen of quarter sessions and magistrates engaged in the administration of the criminal law were apt to devote their attention exclusively to the home branch, while other persons—for example, the late Sir William Molesworth, whom he desired to mention with all respect—confined their attention to the Colonies. But no satisfactory measure could be proposed which did not take into consideration both the interests of the Colonies and those of the mother country. He thought that the measure of the Government embraced these two points, and that, while it consulted the wishes and feelings of the colonists, it remedied the evils which had been so much and so deservedly complained of at home. He hoped that there would be as little delay as possible in passing the measure through the other House, and, when it was before their Lordships he should not feel debarred by the general approbation which he now expressed from proposing or supporting such Amendments or alterations as he might think desirable. A kind of taunt had been thrown out by the noble Marquess on the change which had taken place in the opinions of Sir G. Grey respecting this question. For his (Earl Stanhope's) part, there was, as it happened, no change in his own opinions to avow. From first to last he had been a friend, a zealous friend, to transportation upon an improved system. But at the same time, there was, he fearlessly confessed, no question upon which he would have felt less ashamed to avow a change of opinion than upon this of secondary punishment, in which so much depended upon the statistics and facts which the carrying out of any principle might furnish. He therefore should not hold himself precluded from proposing or supporting any Amendment, which upon full consideration might appear to him calculated to render the measure more effective. Meanwhile he trusted that the noble Marquess would not press his Motion for the appointment of the Committee.
  THE EARL OF CARNARVONsaid, he must support the Motion for a Committee, for he thought farther inquiry was needed. The two Reports to which Lord Granville had alluded did not touch the point to which the noble Marquess had drawn the attention of the House. One of them dwelt

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  mainly upon the higher kinds of secondary punishment; the other, upon transportation, considered in a geographical point of view. He could not admit that the proposal which the Home Secretary announced the other night was a complete measure. The speech of the right hon. Gentleman, to judge from the reports of it which had appeared in the newspapers, wanted a comprehensive treatment of the subject. It dealt with the worst class of criminals, who were to be sentenced to some kind of perpetual imprisonment; with the second class, who were to undergo various periods of penal servitude; and with a class placed between these two; but the great bulk of our criminals—those who received short sentences—were wholly and entirely untouched. It seemed to him to be an ingenious alteration and shifting of the periods rather than of the nature of punishment. Nor had he succeeded in ascertaining from the speech what were the intentions of the Government with regard to the ticket-of-leave system. He should like to know whether it was to be continued as at present, whether the operation of the ticket of leave was to be extended to other countries, or what other changes or modifications the Government designed to introduce. Certain he was that the present system could not continue much longer. It was as bad for the community at large as for the criminal himself: for the community, because it afforded no security against lawlessness and violence; and for the criminal, because the so-called advantages which it conferred upon him operated to his injury. He felt no sentimental interest in criminals, but he pitied those unfortunate men, who were made outcasts from society by their own actions, but whom the present state of the law maintained in their degraded condition. It was unfair to hold out to them inducements, which could rarely be realised, to lead them on by the present system of rewards and punishments only that they should find themselves worse off without the prison walls than when they were within it; it was unfair that by the actual operation of the existing system they would be placed in a position in which they had no alternative between starvation and crime. The 1,600 or 1,700 who were discharged on tickets of leave were but as a drop in the bucket, compared to the 60,000 or 70,000 who were sentenced to various periods of punishment every year. With regard to what had been said by the
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  noble Marquess as to the food of priśoners, he must say he was surprised to read in the Western Australian despatches laid on the table last year, that the surgeon attributed disease among the prisoners to excessive food and consequent repletion. He believed that where exception was taken to short sentences it generally applied to juvenile delinquents, for, there could be no doubt that in the case of boys committed to prison, a very short sentence, accompanied with easy prison discipline, took away all the wholesome fear and shame that should attach to imprisonment. But, in a question of this kind, the great difficulty was to steer clear of excessive lenity on the one hand and excessive severity on the other; and any measure that proposed to deal with this question ought to combine reformation for the offender, punishment for the offence, and security for society. He hoped that in the settlement of this question due attention would be paid to that most important point, the association and classification of criminals. The existing system was attended with many undoubted evils, and against the various systems proposed there were many great objections, but he thought it was worthy of consideration whether or not a mode of classification, according to age, should not be resorted to. He rejoiced in the prospect of a partial return to transportation, which in the case of old offenders could not, in his opinion, ever be dispensed with. The old system of transportation, or rather compulsory emigration, by which convicts were assigned to the governor of a colony, and by him re-assigned as labourers to the colonists, had been attended with the happiest results; and he was therefore glad to find that the Government had determined upon a recurrence, however partial, to the system of transportation.
  LORD CAMPBELLbegged to say, with all respect for the noble Marquess, that he quite agreed with the noble Earl (Earl Granville) who told them that the time was come for action and not for inquiry. Prison discipline was no doubt highly important; but it was a subject which they had been considering for many years, and there had been Committees on that question specifically. In the two Committees which sat last year, one of this and one of the other House, the whole subject was thoroughly investigated. He himself had the honour of being examined last year before the Committee of the House of Commons on secondary punishments, and he would take

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  on himself to say that the subject was very fully inquired into. Consequently he regarded the refusal of the Committee by the noble Earl as a proof of the sincerity of the Government in the steps they had proposed elsewhere to take. If they had not wished to act, they would naturally have supported the present Motion, and thus obtained an excuse for further delay. The country was now in a most alarming position in reference to this matter. Never before in the history of England had society been in such a predicament; never before had all those who had been convicted of crime been retained in the country, and liable at any time to be let loose upon the country to renew their depredations. In former times the remedy for such an evil was to hang all those who had been convicted. That was a very summary and a very effectual mode of disposing of criminals. To such an extent was it resorted to in the reign of Henry VIII. that about 1,000 criminals were hanged every year; all those who were convicted of stealing property of the value of 12 d. were immediately strung up. In the 16th century, when colonisation and emigration began, transportation was the common sentence, and it was the practice to send criminals to Barbadoes, Virginia, and the American plantations. During the reigns of the Stuarts, William and Mary, Queen Anne, George I., George II., and even part of the reign of George III., criminals were still sent to the American plantations, and the country got rid of them as soon as they had been sentenced by the Judge to be transported. When the country lost the American colonies, it was for a time placed in difficulty; but, then, fortunately, there sprang up the colony of Botany Bay, and from that time until three or four years ago convicts were got rid of by being sent to Australia. But now, either by bad luck or from mismanagement, they had lost that resource—a resource which he knew was the envy of the whole continent of Europe. Transportation was at an end, and their criminals when released had no means of earning an honest livelihood, and often had really no resource but that of returning to their former pursuits. That was a state of things which was most lamentable. A peaceful citizen going to bed at night had no security that his house would not be broken into before the morning; and there was no safety for him in going along the streets, as he was liable to be garotted. Such a state
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  of things called for, and he trusted would receive, immediate attention on the part of the Government and the Legislature. He was not acquainted with the details of the measure which had been introduced in another place, but unless it provided for the deportation of convicts, of whose reformation there was no reasonable hope in this country, he would not give it his support. Any measure which the public safety required would be fully justified, and he did hope that all the energies of the Government would be concentrated on that point. In his opinion, transportation was the only punishment which afforded a reasonable chance for the reformation of criminals, and he hoped that the Government would direct their attention specially to the means of continuing that punishment. It was supposed by some persons that the crime which now unfortunately prevailed was attributable to the system of ticket of leave; but he was satisfied that it arose from the diminution of the punishment of transportation, and that if the issue of tickets of leave were to cease to-morrow there would be little improvement in the condition of the country. His own opinion was that when a conviction took place upon satisfactory evidence, and when the Judge thought it his duty to pass the most severe sentence allowed by law, although the criminal might turn up his eyes and pretend to be pious and penitent, the punishment ought to be rigidly enforced.
  EARL FITZWILLIAMsaid, he had never heard a speech which was a greater satire on the administration of justice in this country than that of his noble and learned Friend the Lord Chief Justice. The noble and learned Lord told the House that the country was never before in such a position as it was at present; that no man could go to bed at night without expecting to be the victim of an outrage before he rose in the morning. Could there be a more lamentable state of things, especially stated as they were upon such high authority? This country had formerly excited the envy of foreign nations on account of its possessing vast colonies beyond the Atlantic, which enabled it to dispose of that portion of the population which had become outcasts at home. He (Earl Fitzwilliam) trusted that the measure now before the other House of Parliament might have a beneficial effect; but he was bound to express it as his decided opinion that the question of secondary punishments would never be solved by man under the present

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  system of legislation. Nothing was thought of but punishing crime, and relieving the community by the exercise of severity to criminals. That was beginning, in his opinion, at the wrong end. Legislation should begin by teaching men not to commit crime, not by punishing them; and if Parliament thought that in providing punishments for criminals, and not providing education, it was doing its duty, he (Earl Fitzwilliam) thought that Parliament would find itself most egregiously mistaken. Parliament might endeavour to do its duty in the line at present chalked out for it on the subject; but if it did not go beyond that line—if it did not provide sufficient education for the unprotected portion of the community—he had no hesitation in saying that Parliament would fall far short of what the exigency of the case demanded, and what the urgency of the age required.
  VISCOUNT DUNGANNONsaid, he did not think such an inquiry as that which was proposed by the noble Marquess could at all impede the progress of the measure which had been introduced in the other House, and he regretted that the Government had not acceded to it. The noble Marquess had mentioned some facts which deserved their Lordships' serious attention. He had stated that in some cases the dietary of the poorhouse was by no means so good as that of the gaol. He (Viscount Dungannon) remembered that some time since a comparison was made between the dietary of the county gaol of Flintshire and that of the workhouse of Flint, which showed that the inmates of the gaol certainly had the advantage. The noble Marquess had referred to the condition of prisoners when they were discharged after having undergone confinement on the separate system. During the recess he (Viscount Dungannon) visited the convict station at Spike Island, in the county of Cork, and he was informed that three or four prisoners who had been received there from a prison at Dublin, which was, he believed, conducted upon a system similar to that adopted at Pentonville, were in such a condition that they were unfitted for any sort of employment for a considerable length of time. The nature of the punishment they had undergone had utterly suspended, and indeed almost destroyed, their powers of mind. Surely, punishment was never intended to affect the health of criminals to such an extent as to render them useless members of
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  society. The noble Earl who last spoke had said they were beginning at the wrong end, and had urged the importance of imbuing the minds of the rising generation with such principles as would restrain them from the commission of crime; but he (Viscount Dungannon) would ask whether there ever was a period in the history of this country when greater attention was paid to the education of the community than at the present time? He was convinced that there were very few persons desirous of receiving instruction, who were unable to obtain it. He had heard with great satisfaction the Statement of the Lord Chief Justice, that he would oppose the Bill which was now before the other House if provision were not made for the deportation of all incorrigible criminals. With regard to the system of tickets of leave, he also concurred in the suggestion, that one of the conditions upon which such tickets were granted should be that the recipients should not go within 100 miles of the places where their crimes had been committed, because, when convicts returned to the scene of their wicked exploits, they were almost forced, by the impossibility of obtaining employment, to resume their former pursuits, and they frequently seduced the young and inexperienced to follow their bad example. Without any reference to the question whether the repentence of those men was sincere or not, the public safety demanded that the experiment should be made elsewhere than in this country. He was sorry to find that the Bill introduced by the Government in the other House did not contain any provision in reference to tickets of leave, but he hoped that before it came up to their Lordships that omission would be remedied.
  LORD RAVENSWORTHsaid, he rose to draw the attention of the House to two points in connection with the question—one of which he had given notice of a Motion on—namely, the construction of harbours of refuge on the north-east coast of England, and the employment of convict labour in their construction. He was, in the first place, disappointed to learn that the Government had not made any provision in the Bill introduced by the Home Secretary for the employment of convict labour on useful public works in this country. The necessity of harbours of refuge was proved by the fact that numerous deputations, representing the greatest amount of trade in the north of England, had already waited on the Government to induce them to pro-

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  ceed with their construction, and that every year numbers of ships, and lives, and a vast amount of property were lost on that coast. Last year, within three days, £100,000 worth of property had been lost by wrecked ships, and a great many lives lost. He (Lord Ravensworth) pronounced no opinion in favour of any particular locality; but he knew that harbours of refuge on that coast were greatly needed for the preservation of life and property, and he was satisfied that convict labour could be employed upon their construction with the greatest advantage to the general community. As regarded the employment of convict labour, he had been favoured by a noble and learned Lord (Lord Wensleydale), who approved of the suggestions which it contained, with a letter on secondary punishments, in which it was suggested that, as the great bulk of the criminal population of the country should remain in the country, it became necessary to provide a comprehensive scheme for the employment of their labour, and it then suggested the establishment of depôts in different parts of the country to receive that population, and keep them apart from their old associates, and that it would be desirable to employ them upon harbours of refuge and upon drainage, especially in Scotland and Ireland. The first object, therefore, of the writer's suggestion for the employment of the criminal population was the construction of harbours of refuge; and there could be no question that, under proper regulations, such employment could be made highly beneficial to the convict, by accumulating his wages against his discharge, as well as highly beneficial to the public, by removing the men from the temptation to relapse into crime. The only difficulty that he (Lord Ravensworth) had heard started was the expense. But ought such a consideration to be suffered to weigh with a great commercial country like England in an object of such importance as the absorption and possible reformation of its criminal population? The reduction made in the Naval and Military Estimates amounted to far more than would be required for the purpose of constructing harbours of refuge; but in time of war nothing was thought of pouring millions into that absorbing gulf; whereas in time of peace there was hesitation about a few thousands for one of the most important objects that could be conceived. It was not reasonable that such an object as the profitable disposal of the criminal
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  population of the country and the salvation of life and property by means of harbours of refuge should be rejected on the narrow ground of pounds, shillings, and pence. A mere modicum of the reduction in the Estimates would be quite sufficient for the purpose. But there were many modes of lightening, if not of defraying altogether, the expense in this case; for instance, the tolls levied on vessels taking shelter from bad weather. Look, too, at the annual loss of life and property sustained by the country from casualties which might be greatly diminished by proper exertions. Again, the large sum paid in tolls and dues by the commercial marine of the country gave it an additional right to the protection to be derived from harbours of refuge. Was there, too, no unreasonable expenditure in the maintenance of our convicts in a state of idleness? From the tenth Report on Prisons, it appeared, from the evidence of Colonel Jebb, that the annual cost of maintaining each prisoner at Millbank was £23 1s. 10 d.; at Pentonville, £24 12 s.; and at Dartmoor, £30 4s. 11 d. At Portland, on the other hand, where the convicts were employed on public works, and where the value of their labour was taken into account, the annual cost of maintaining each prisoner was only £2 17 s.; and at Portsmouth, where the convicts were also employed on public works, the annual cost of maintenance per man was £4 16 s. When their Lordships looked at that estimate of the cost of keeping convicts employed, as compared with those who were unemployed, and when they had regard also to the enormous loss of property in shipping, from time to time, by disasters at sea, he thought the inference went irresistibly to support the suggestions he had made to the House. Again, let their Lordships look at the state of the workhouses in England and Wales, where at this moment there were 51,586 children of both sexes, of whom 6,000 were fit for public service. That was a serious consideration, and another reason, as he thought, why the Government in a time of peace, with the whole resources of the country at their command, should direct their attention to providing such facilities as he had ventured to suggest for the greater protection of the shipping of the country and of the lives of men engaged in seafaring pursuits. He might also remind their Lordships that, while there were no less than three or four different harbours of refuge

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  on the south coast of England, there was not a single one throughout the whole 260 miles of iron-bound coast on the northeast. He thought, when the question of how our convict population was to be dealt with was under consideration, it was a perfectly legitimate opportunity for him to make the suggestions he had done, and he trusted they would meet with such attention as they fairly deserved at the hands of the Government.
  LORD STANLEY OF ALDERLEYsaid, he did not deny that the construction of harbours of refuge would be most useful to the commercial interest of the country, nor that the employment of convict labour on them, to a certain extent, might be of advantage; though he could assure the noble Lord that convict labour in Portland was not employed with such advantageous results as the noble Lord had supposed, inasmuch as it entailed a large amount of expenditure in establishment charges, which made it difficult to apply it in all cases where it might be desirable to have recourse to it. With regard to the formation of a harbour of refuge on the north-eastern coast of England, he readily admitted that it was desirable to have harbours of refuge to which vessels might have recourse in severe weather or under circumstances of distress; but whilst he said this, he could not see that the north-eastern coast had a greater claim to such accommodation than other parts of the coast. If, for instance, he were to admit its claim, he saw a noble Lord opposite who would at once put in a similar claim for the Welsh coast, and a noble Friend behind him who would put in a claim for the Bristol Channel; and both would pronounce it a hardship and an injustice if the Government began on the north-eastern coast works which they were not prepared to construct elsewhere. Already Her Majesty's Government were largely engaged in the construction of works of this description. He need only mention Portland Harbour, Dover Harbour, and the harbour at Alderney, where the works would prove not only extremely useful and beneficial to commerce and navigation, but had been strongly recommended to the attention of the Government as on many accounts highly essential for the defence of the country in time of war; and he was sure the noble Lord would agree with him that all these had priority of claim to the north-eastern coast. Extensive works were also being prosecuted at Holyhead,
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  with a view to the improvement of the communication between England and Ireland; and also at Portpatrick, for the improvement of the communication between Scotland and Ireland. Moreover, of all the great seaports of England, excepting Liverpool, those connected with the Tyne were the least in the position to come to ask Parliament to construct a harbour of refuge, seeing that for years past they had levied heavy contributions on the shipping which frequented the Tyne, a large portion of which was not applied to the improvement of either the navigation or the harbour, but to paving and lighting the town of Newcastle and other municipal purposes. Had that money been expended on the navigation and improvement of the harbour, they might by this time have erected twenty harbours of refuge in that part of the country. He repeated, that he was ready to admit the importance of establishing harbours of refuge, and should be glad to see the possibility and the opportunity of doing it; but at the same time it would be extremely difficult to place his hand on any one spot on the Eastern coast and satisfy the public that they should begin there in preference to any other. He hardly knew a single point of the coast, from the Humber up to the Frith of Forth, which had not put in its claim for the construction of a harbour. Now, he did not mean to assert that the existence of this difference of opinion as to the best position for a harbour of refuge ought to prevent the Government from devoting their attention to the subject. At the present moment, however, he was not prepared to recommend the commencement of any new work of this description, though he admitted that the whole question—not as to the establishment of harbours of refuge on the part of the coast pointed out by the noble Lord, but through out the whole coast of England—was well worthy the consideration of the Government.
  LORD VIVIANexpressed his strong opinion that there was no question which more deserved the attention of Government than that of the formation of harbours of refuge on the more dangerous portions of the coast, or an object for the accomplishment of which grants of public money might with more propriety and advantage be made.
  On Question, Resolved in the Negative.
  House adjourned till To-morrow.