§ LORD CARLINGFORDrose to call the attention of the House to the mode in which Guarantees from the County Rates to Railways in Ireland are granted or refused. The matter was one of very considerable importance in reference to the extension and completion of the railway system of Ireland by the construction of lines and branches, no small number of which were still required, and remained to be made in the poorer parts of the country. The present seemed an appropriate moment at which to ask the attention of Her Majesty's Government to the subject, because, as they knew, the other night, in another House, the coup de grâce was given, for a long time to come at least, to the controversy as to the purchase of the Irish railways by the "State. Without going into the merits of that controversy, he would express his opinion that it was a great advantage to Ireland that a decision had been come to on the question. It would have been much to be regretted had the uncertainty on the subject been continued, because such a feeling would have operated to prevent all parties in Ireland from turning their attention to the completion of the railway system. 1394 But he desired to call their Lordships' attention to the question of guarantees. One means by which railways had been constructed in Ireland was that of a guarantee of a part of the required capital by the county, or a portion of the county, through which it was to pass, to the promoters of the particular line. In the minds of some persons in this country there was a feeling against the guarantee system, and when any proposition made in respect of Ireland was dismissed with the objection that it was "exceptional," he regarded the objection with suspicion. Things were so exceptional in Ireland that exceptional measures must be applied in that country; and were such measures necessary in any other part of the Empire he would not object to them on the ground of their being exceptional. A considerable number of useful lines of railway had been made in Ireland during the last 20 years, under the system of county or baronial guarantee—lines which but for the guarantee of the county rates would not have come into existence. In Ireland the Grand Jury performed much the same fiscal functions as were discharged by the Quarter Sessions in this country. It consisted of the principal landowners of the county. There were also in Ire-laud bodies called Road Sessions, or Baronial Sessions, or Presentment Sessions; one of which assembled in each barony of the county, and at which a certain number of the ratepayers were associated with magistrates. Those ratepayers were not chosen by popular election—they were selected by the Grand Jury from a number of the highest ratepayers of the county. That state of things, though it did indirectly import the representative element into the taxation, was not satisfactory. He thought it should be made impossible for the magistrates attending ex officio to be present in such numbers as to overpower the ratepayers, which might be the case at present. He thought there ought to be a real representation. He did not, however, go so far as to say that the present state of things was a mere sham or an unreality, or that, as a matter of fact, it did not give considerable control to the ratepayers. He believed it did;—he believed that county expenditure was very seldom forced on the ratepayers by the magistrates, and he did not think it would be possible, after 1395 due notice of application, to force on the ratepayers guarantees for Irish railways. Of the lines to which guarantees had been granted within the last 20 years or thereabouts, the Midland Great Western was the most important. The guarantee in that case seemed to have been badly framed, and had not turned out satisfactorily for the counties which gave it; but he was not prepared to say that without it that important railway would have been made so soon. The guarantee in that case amounted to £500,000. Then came a line to which a guarantee of £125,000 was given. It was the Killarney Junction Railway—a very useful line, but he doubted that the required capital could have been raised without the guarantee. The Limerick and Ennis Railway obtained a guarantee for £75,000, the Tralee and Killarney line one for £55,000, and the West Cork one for £66,000. All those lines had been made. Guarantees had been granted to other lines, some of which had been made, while some had not. In none of those cases had there been any opposition which made itself heard before a Committee of this or the other House of Parliament; but he was not aware that any evidence was offered in support of the guarantees, beyond the resolutions of Grand Juries, which had not always been carried unanimously. It was only the year before last that for the first time one of these guarantees was opposed before a Committee of this House—namely, the Athenry and Tuam line. It was petitioned against by a rival company, the Midland Great Western, and two or three powerful landowners. One ground of the opposition was that the guarantee had not been sanctioned by the Presentment Sessions. This was so new an idea that the Treasurer of the County of Mayo said—"Until lately I never heard of the baronies being asked;" and certainly there had been eases of six or seven guarantees in respect of which the assent of Presentment Sessions had not been held to be necessary. However, counsel against the Bill warned the Committee that they would be making a precedent if they passed a guarantee in respect of which there was any want of assent, however small, and the guarantee clauses were thrown out. In 1873 the promoters of the Ennis and West Clare line came before Parliament to in- 1396 crease the rate per cent of their guarantee from 4 to 5. The case was heard by a Committee, of which Mr. Floyer was chairman. It was proved that no resolution of ratepayers had been adopted in favour of the Bill. They did not appear to have been consulted at all, the promoters thinking that the resolution of the Grand Jury was enough; but the objection was held to be fatal, and the Bill was thrown out. He did not find that there had been any other case where a Bill of this kind had been opposed before a Committee, on this ground, until the other day, when the Sligo, Leitrim, and Northern Counties Railway Bill came before a Committee of their Lordships' House. He had no interest whatever in this Bill, but he must say the line appeared to him to be a useful one as forming a very desirable connection between Ulster and Con-naught, The High Sheriff of Sligo called together two meetings of the ratepayers, and resolutions in favour of the guarantee asked for in the Bill were carried by those meetings. Out of six baronies in the county of Sligo five assented to it, and out of six in the county of Leitrim, five signified their assent. There was no small amount of opposition to it; but according to the case of the promoters, a large majority of the landowners and ratepayers were in favour of the guarantee. Certainly if he had had the honour of a seat on the Committee he should have liked to hear the whole case. What alarmed him and others who looked upon those guarantees as of great importance was, that the Bill had been rejected by a Committee of their Lordships' House after a larger amount of proof of assent to the guarantee than, perhaps, had ever been given in any other case that had come before Parliament, and upon principles laid down by the Chairman which would be fatal to any conceivable guarantees. They feared lest the rejection of this Bill should form a precedent by which future Committees would feel themselves bound—and that, he thought, would be a great misfortune to some parts of Ireland. It was clear that the time had come for laying down some rides on the subject. His reason for troubling their Lord-slips with it was the hope that those who took an interest in the question of Irish railways, and the Government, would agree with him that the matter required 1397 to be looked into and put upon a proper looting. If any amount of dissent on the part of a minority of the ratepayers were to be conclusive against a guarantee, that ought to be laid down in order that parties might be saved the trouble and expense of bringing before Parliament cases to which there was some small amount of opposition. The amount and the kind of assent required ought to be stated if the assent of a majority was to prevail in any case. He thought it would not he difficult to devise rules, whether by Standing Orders or by statute, under which guarantees would be encouraged under proper conditions; but promoters should be required to produce formal proof of assent by the Grand Jury and of assent at the Baronial Sessions, with the number of ratepayers voting for or against. Bills containing a provision for a guarantee should not be passed even as unopposed Bills unless such proofs were given to the satisfaction of that House or the other House of Parliament. Again, he thought this was a case in which the useful system of Provisional Orders, introduced of late years, might well he applied. He did not see why the Department of the Government which issued those Provisional Orders should not, if it appeared necessary, hold a local inquiry, and in that way obtain information on which Parliament might form a sound opinion. This was a time at which it would be wrong to discourage the attempts of districts in Ireland to provide themselves with improved railway accommodation; and he therefore hoped that the Chief Secretary for Ireland and the President of the Board of Trade would look into this matter carefully, and turn their attention to devising a system which, while it would give the means of security to the ratepayers, would at the same time encourage the granting of guarantees for well laid-out and useful lines of railway.
LORD INCHIQUINsaid, he must impress upon their Lordships the necessity of looking carefully into these guarantees and giving every security to the ratepayers. In the case of the Ennis and West Clare Railway, which had been referred to by the noble Lord who had just spoken (Lord Carling-ford) no notice had been given to the ratepayers of the intention to apply for the guarantee of £50,000 which passed 1398 for that line in the first instance. The promoters, finding they could not carry out their work, did obtain the consent of the Grand Jury for their application to increase the rate per cent from 4 to 5. When they came before the Grand Jury one half that body was at luncheon, and they got the guarantee through. He was in the Grand Jury room at the time; but being an Irish Peer could take no part in the business. Afterwards a unanimous resolution was passed against the proposal at two Presentment Sessions and he assisted some other gentlemen in an opposition which led to its rejection by a Committee of the House of Commons. He had mentioned to their Lordships that the original guarantee was £50,000. How much did they suppose was the subscribed capital when that guarantee was obtained? A sum of £3,000, of which £1,500 had been spent. He was sorry to say that in Ireland it was a very easy thing to perpetrate a job; and it should be made a rule that a guarantee by local authorities towards the construction of a line of railway should never be beyond the amount of shares taken. He entirely agreed with the noble Lord (Lord Carlingford) that every power should be given to the local authorities in Ireland necessary to promote the prosperity of the country, but care should be taken that they have no authority to abuse it.
§ EARL BEAUCHAMPsaid, that having been Chairman of the Committee on the Sligo, Leitrim, and Northern Counties Bill, he hoped he need scarcely assure their Lordships that the members of that Committee, like all their Lordships, were anxious to promote the welfare of Ireland; but the question brought forward by the noble Lord was of wider importance than the fate of any particular line of railway. As to the case of that line, he ought, perhaps, to observe, in the first instance, that neither a Presentment Sessions nor a Grand Jury had any statutory power in respect of a guarantee. Any resolutions which they might come to would be entitled to due consideration and weight as being the opinions of persons of property and intelligence residing in the district of the proposed line; but they could not be held to, in any way, bind a Committee of that or the other House, or to influence the decisions of Parliament. In the case referred to, the 1399 Committee were anxious to guard against precedent, and to deal with the case on its own merits. With that view, having heard the preliminary objection, they decided that they would not refuse to go into the case, though they intimated that they would require strong reasons of public policy to justify them in granting the guarantee in the face of an opposition of ratepayers. On hearing the ease of the promoters they found that while the line was perhaps a very good one, running through an agricultural county, it presented no features which took it out of the ordinary category and raised in its favour considerations of public policy. In the evidence in support of the Bill, every witness on behalf of the promoters told the Committee most distinctly that without a guarantee it would be impossible to construct the line. Yet, after it had been decided not to allow the guarantee, there was still a desire shown, notwithstanding the alleged impossibility, to proceed with the Bill. Except on the point of a guarantee the Committee were of opinion there might be a good case; but having decided adversely on a matter which had been stated by witnesses of high authority to be of vital importance, they were unable to pass the Preamble. It was not correct to say that they had come to that resolution on account of objections raised by only one or two ratepayers. There had been much evidence given which showed that opinion in the localities affected was very much divided on the subject. More-over, the Great Western Railway of Ireland had contended that its interests would be injured by the guarantee being given. The case of the Midland Great Western Railway Bill of 1849 had been referred to as affording a precedent in favour of guarantees; but it must be remembered that that Bill was introduced on the authority of a responsible Minister of the Crown, and with the sanction of the Chancellor of the Exchequer. If guarantees were to be proposed at all, that was the way in which the Bill should be brought forward. He thought it would be well if the House were to pass a Standing Order for the purpose of guiding Committees on these questions; if that could be done Committees would be relieved from a very disagreeable position. The expenditure of public money by local bodies in Ireland was a matter which, in his opinion, ought to be 1400 very jealously guarded—for a meeting ostensibly called for the purpose might very easily be diverted to another, and the person affected would have no proper notice of what was going on. The Committee were extremely anxious to refrain from setting any precedent in the case, deeming it to be more advisable that their Lordships' House of Parliament should frame rules on the subject.
THE EARL OF MORLEYsaid, that in defending the Committee of which he had been Chairman, the noble Earl (Earl Beauchamp) had entered into matters entirely irrelevant to the subject introduced by his noble Friend (Lord Carlingford.) It seemed to him that if the remarks of the noble Earl meant anything, it was that all the Acts which had been passed sanctioning guarantees such as those to which he referred were utterly invalid. He quite concurred in the view that it required very strong grounds of public policy to justify such sanction if there were an opposition, however small, of the ratepayers; but the doctrine of the noble Earl went to the extent of saving that if there was any opposition at all no guarantee should be granted. Now, he should like to know, what measure of public advantage there was in the adoption of which any large body were likely unanimously to concur? There were reasons why on grounds of public policy a line intended to connect two important districts of Ireland should have been sanctioned, if it were found possible; but if the doctrine laid down by the noble Earl were carried to the extreme length to which he seemed to wish to push it, very few important railways would be made for many years to come in Ireland. Alluding to the Midland Great Western Railway, the noble Earl said that they opposed a Bill with reference to which as cesspayers they would be called upon to enter into a guarantee; but nothing would be easier than to exempt that railway from the operation of its clauses. It was somewhat unfortunate, he could not help thinking, that the Committee was presided over by a noble Earl who declared himself to be opposed to all guarantees, and he thought his noble Friend below him (Lord Carlingford) had ample justification, in what fell from the noble Earl, for the Motion which he had submitted to the House.
§ LORD COLCHESTERsaid, he was glad that this subject had been brought 1401 before the House. He had been the only dissentient from the decision of the Committee, as he had not been satisfied that any very large number of ratepayers objected to the guarantee asked for. The difficulty was to say what meeting of ratepayers or others should be necessary for sanctioning the making of a line through any district, and therefore he was not surprised at the decision of the majority of the Committee, although, in his opinion, if the Committee were satisfied that the line would be a good one, and that the opposition to it was small, the guarantee ought to be sanctioned. At any rate, the noble Lord opposite (Lord Carlingford) had done good service in bringing the question before the House.
§ THE DUKE OF RICHMONDsaid, he quite concurred with his noble Friend (Earl Beauchamp) that this subject was one of great importance, and that the noble Lord lately at the head of the Board of Trade had rendered good service by calling attention to it. As to the remark of another noble Earl opposite (the Earl of Morley), that it was unfortunate that the Committee of last Session should have been presided over by a noble Lord who had a predisposition against the system of guarantees, it was an entire error to suppose that his noble Friend (Earl Beauchamp) had any such predisposition. No doubt the subject was surrounded by very great difficulty. If the noble Lord wished to carry out the system of guarantees throughout Ireland in a more practical form, it seemed to him that nothing short of an Act of Parliament could do it, and that in dealing with the question they would have to reconsider the whole question of local taxation in that country. The noble Lord suggested it should be a Standing Order that if a guarantee was given, the Committee should accept that guarantee as an earnest that the country was in favour of the line; but he went on to add that he was not prepared to state the exact proportion of the assent and dissent which should be required. It appeared to him (the Duke of Richmond), however, that was the whole question, which should be left to the Committee, and he believed it was the practice of both Houses of Parliament to leave all those matters to the discretion of the Committee to which Railway Bills were referred. Each case 1402 must stand on its own merits, and therefore to issue a Standing Order that those guarantees should be accepted in the manner suggested would be to establish a most inconvenient course of proceeding.
§ LORD CARLINGFORDwas understood to say he had not meant to suggest that.
§ THE DUKE OF RICHMONDAnother noble Lord opposite (the Earl of Morley) appeared to him to have a wrong impression as to what those guarantees really were. As he himself understood the matter, the Presentment Sessions, who voted those guarantees for the railways throughout the country, were acting ultra vires, and they would not be intra vires until Parliament had passed the Bill sanctioning the object which the Sessions had in view, and it had become the law of the land. The noble Earl (the Earl of Morley) had said that if a railway company might be taxed for the benefit of another company which was going to compete with it, there would be nothing easier than to put in a clause exempting that company from the operation of the Act. But why should they not equally exempt all the other parties who objected to the guarantee, and who did not think they would be benefited by the line. As had been pointed out, a public meeting might be called to consider a scheme for a line of railway, but the majority who might decide in favour of the line might not have an acre of land within the barony. The more they looked at the question, the more difficult and intricate they found it to be and he did not, as at present advised, see any mode of dealing with it by a Standing Order; while if they attempted to legislate upon it they would have to re-open the whole question of local taxation in Ireland.
§ LORD REDESDALEthought that matter required the grave consideration of Parliament. Nothing, in his view, was more certain than that anything in the way of a guarantee should be exceptional, and not made a general practice. If they required a certain number of assents to the construction of railways, and thereupon sanctioned guarantees, they might render it impossible for railways to be made independent of guarantees. He considered that railways might be made in Ireland without guarantees.
§ THE MARQUESS OF LANSDOWNEdesired some specific assurance from the Government as to the course which would be pursued, or whether these questions would be left practically to the decision of the Chairmen of the separate Committees. He believed that the system of guarantees might be extensively and safely applied to the making of railways in Ireland, provided the persons on whom the risk of them ultimately fell had a proper opportunity of electing whether they would grant them or not. As he understood the Irish Grand Jury system, that proper opportunity was not afforded at present. That was not the right occasion on which to discuss the merits of the Irish Grand Jury system; but he might say that the representation accorded under it to the cesspayers and the occupiers of land was almost entirely illusory, and that ratepayers might very easily find themselves saddled with burdens of which they had previously no conception. He trusted that good would result from the attention which had been called to that subject that evening.
§ THE MARQUESS OF SALISBURYsaid, that if the system of guarantee in connection with railways in Ireland was to become customary instead of exceptional with regard to the ordinary modes of prosecuting public works in that country, it would be necessary to take into consideration some of the difficulties which would arise. In the first place, it would be necessary to re-cast the Grand Jury system in Ireland, so as to give a fair chance of being heard to the occupiers and owners who were to be compelled to take a share in the speculation; and this would obviously be a very difficult task. Again, if a district was called upon to guarantee a railway, was it not just that the guarantee should be confined to the district to be benefited by the railway? Was it fair to call upon one barony to guarantee a railway which was to be constructed through another barony, merely because they were both in the same county? In order to introduce any system of guarantee that would give satisfaction to Ireland they must re-cast the system of local taxation and re-construct the area of local administration. In no country had guarantees been so largely tried as in India, and he did not dispute that under particular circumstances they did confer 1404 great advantages upon a country; but the result shown by the last balance-sheet of India was that we were paying Indian railway shareholders £1,700,000 a-year in dividends, for which the Government received no direct returns. It was desirable to consider whether local funds should be brought in aid of local extension. He thought it would be better for local bodies to make railways by money borrowed by themselves.
THE EARL OF LIMERICKsaid, the Grand Juries in Ireland were, to a certain extent, less representative bodies in Ireland than the Quarter Sessions were in England, and he thought some steps should be taken to secure that these guarantees should be given only after the strictest inquiry. Though not absolutely opposed to guarantees, he urged that there should be better means of ascertaining the view of the ratepayers, and that they should not have to incur the expense of opposing Bills before Committees; an expense from which he had himself shrunk in the case of a scheme to which he entertained objections. Such schemes should also undergo more stringent scrutiny. Peers were excluded from Grand Juries, on which many large estates were consequently not directly represented. He hoped the Government would deal with the matter.
§ THE EARL OF BANDONhoped that, the notion of State purchase having been abandoned, at least for the present, railway companies should be allowed greater facilities for amalgamation and other purposes. But for guarantees many of the most important lines would never have been made, and while some guarantees were levied on the county cess, others were levied on the Poor Law valuation, which was deducted by tenants from the landlords.
LORD ORANMORE AND BROWNEstated that in most parts of Ireland the persons, who were to represent the ratepayers at Special Sessions, were chosen by ballot by the Grand Jury from the highest cess payers, and as they generally out-numbered the magistrates attending Special Sessions, the ratepayers could not be taxed without the consent of their representatives.
§ LORD EMLYstated that the barony constables returned 100 of the highest ratepayers to the Grand Jury, who selected 10 of them to constitute the 1405 Baronial Sessions. All the magistrates of the county being, however, at liberty to attend, they sometimes swamped the cesspayers, and a large number of them attended on the Bill lately before the Committee being considered. He regretted the decision at which the Committee had arrived, as it involved a principle which, if not fatal to guarantees, would certainly throw cold water upon the granting of them. As he understood the noble Marquess opposite (the Marquess of Salisbury), he would object to the granting of a guarantee under any circumstances in the case of an Irish railway.
§ THE MARQUESS OF SALISBURYsaid, he objected to the establishment of a system of guarantees.
§ LORD EMLYNo such system had been advocated by his noble Friend (Lord Carlingford) who introduced the subject. Some of the small railways in Ireland could not have been made unless undertaken by some powerful Company, or by means of a guarantee. He was acquainted with the ease of one Irish railway which was constructed by funds obtained on a guarantee, and after a few years it became prosperous and its shares were now nearly at par. He hoped the Government, in the interest of Ireland, would devise some system by which a fair expression of the opinion of the ratepayers might be obtained, and he suggested that such opinion could be fairly elicited through resolutions of the Boards of Guardians or the expressed consent of, say, two-thirds of a given number of the largest cesspayers.
LORD NAPIER AND ETTRICKpointed out that the cases of India and Ireland in reference to guarantees were different. The Government gave the guarantee for India and the particular locality to be benefited, but did not do so in Ireland.
§ LORD WAVENEYconcurred in the views expressed by the noble Marquess (the Marquess of Salisbury) that to establish a system of guarantees would be in effect to create a new means of local taxation. He thought the Committee had arrived at a proper conclusion.
§ House adjourned at half past Seven o'clock, till To-morrow, half past Ten o'clock.