§ Order of the Day for the Third Reading read.
§ Moved, "That the Bill be now read 3a."—(The Earl of Northbrook.)
§ VISCOUNT SIDMOUTHsaid, that if he had thought there was any chance of success, he would have moved the rejection of the Bill even at this stage; but he should have to content himself with a simple protest against it. He wished to take this opportunity of explaining that on the second reading of the Bill he had advocated the retention of corporal punishment only for the very gravest offences. The cases of corporal punishment which the Leader of the House had cited in the debate on the second reading were instances which had been held up to universal abhorrence by the whole Navy. He believed that they occurred some 60 or 70 years ago. The noble Earl might as well have referred to the Bloody Assize, and endeavoured to induce the public to believe that the judicial descendants of Lord Jeffreys, the Lord Chancellor and the Lord Chief Justice, would crop the ears of any recreant Tory who might be guilty of "veiled Obstruction" or any similar offence. It was a most painful thing to propose that the power of inflicting corporal punishment in the Navy should he, in the face of public opinion, retained; but he contended that public opinion had not been expressed against the retention. The noble Earl had referred to the House of Commons; but there had been no expression of opinion there against this punishment in the Navy. No single instance had been given in which a man had been deterred from entering the Navy by the prospect of corporal punishment. It was certain that all professional opinion was in favour of the old system, which had always been regarded as essential to the discipline of the Service. Much as he detested corporal punishment, his opinion of its necessity corresponded with that of the Profession at large; and he submitted that it should be retained, in order that the committal of crimes of a disgraceful character should be deterred. For his own part, he wholly failed to see 517 how the substitutes proposed could be either effectual or convenient. Nothing could be less satisfactory than that a man should be court-martialed, and sentenced to imprisonment while his ship was engaged in a blockade, or was kept at sea for any length of time for any other reason. It seemed to him, too, that imprisonment was much more likely to injure a sailor's morale than corporal punishment. He supposed it was useless now to oppose the Bill; but he protested against it, and believed that in time of war it would he impossible to maintain discipline without the old punishment. Unless it was resorted to in such a crisis, the British Navy would fall into a disgraceful state.
§ LORD STANLEY OF ALDERLEYsaid, he wished to bring before their Lordships the hard case of a man who had not been flogged. He was a very young sailor, and had struck a petty officer, and had got five years' penal servitude for this. The Admiralty had reduced this to three years; but that amount of penal servitude was too much, and would ruin him for life. This happened in the Pacific Ocean, and the man had already been in prison for a long time on board ship. Ho was sure this man would much rather have had a flogging and have done with it.
§ THE EARL OF NORTHBROOKsaid, he could not agree with his noble Friend (Lord Stanley of Alderley) that this punishment was by any means disproportionate to the offence. The noble Viscount (Viscount Sidmouth) had not touched the contention of his noble Friend in the speech to which reference had been made. His noble Friend (Earl Granville) asked in the speech whether it was likely that our officers were not as able to maintain discipline without flogging as the officers of Foreign Navies were? The Bill, as a whole, had been carefully considered by, and had met with the unanimous approval of, the Naval Members of the Board of Admiralty, on whom it was his duty to rely.
§ THE MARQUESS OF SALISBURYsaid, that the observations of the noble Earl differed very much from the view of the case which he presented when the Bill was last before the House. He then represented the matter as a political one, and said that, as practical men, we could not keep up a punishment that 518 public opinion had condemned. He did not tell the House that the Naval Members of the Board of Admiralty had arrived at the conclusion embodied in the Bill.
§ THE EARL OF NORTHBROOKsaid, what he represented was, that the position the Government took up was that flogging could not be maintained in the Navy, and that this position, and the provisions of the Bill for altering the law, were entirely and unanimously accepted by the Naval Members of the Board of Admiralty.
§ THE MARQUESS OF SALISBURYsaid, the first was a political question, as to which the authority of the Naval Members of the Board of Admiralty was worth less than that of the Members of the House. Whether the particular punishments to be substituted were practicable might be more an opinion for the Naval Lords. As far as he heard Naval opinion, apart altogether from the political question, it was that considerable injury would be done to the Navy by the abolition of this punishment. He did not think the matter was one on which it was desirable their Lordships should interfere, for this reason—that, to a certain extent, the Executive Government had power to disregard any opinion their Lordships' might give. They had already forbidden the practical application of the punishment; and, so long as the present Government was in Office, the punishment of flogging would not be inflicted. He did not think, therefore, there would be any advantage in going through the form of refusing to pass the clauses, seeing that the Government had the power to disregard the opinion to which they might come. Corporal punishment might be required in time of war, and it was possible it might be restored. When the noble Earl spoke of the experience of the other Navies of the world, he ought to remember what he had apparently forgotten, that they resorted to a much more free application of capital punishment than we did. Practically, that was the issue; in times of crisis, if we did not allow of the application of the milder punishment, there was no doubt that the death penalty to offenders on board ship would be necessary to save the lives of others.
§ VISCOUNT SIDMOUTHsaid, that, in conversation with Germans, he had been 519 told that the disgraceful punishments that were inflicted in the Army prompted Germans to maim themselves in order to avoid the Service.
Motion agreed to; Bill read 3a accordingly; Amendments made; Bill passed, and sent to the Commons.