THE SELECT COMMITTEE ON THE SWEATING SYSTEM. (Hansard, 24 March 1890)

* THE EARL OF DUNRAVEN
In asking your Lordships to exempt me from further attendance on the Select Committee which you appointed three Sessions ago to inquire into the Sweating System, I do not think it would be proper for me to go into my reasons in detail on this occasion, however desirous and anxious I might be to do so, and I am most anxious. Your Lordships will, I think, realise that this inquiry is, in some respects, very peculiar in its character. You will understand that it is not a very pleasant thing to ask to be dissociated from one's Colleagues in a matter of this kind, and I hope your Lordships will believe that, in my mind at any rate, the motives which actuate me are amply, and more than amply, sufficient. Your Lordships know that, in the first week of last August, your Com- 1667 mittee decided to postpone, on account of the late period of the Session, the consideration of the Draft Report, which, as Chairman, it was my duty to bring up. And you are probably aware, because it appears to be generally known, that when the Committee re-assembled a month ago they, on a Division, unanimously decided not to take into consideration that same Draft Report; and they have not met since. I do not wish to make any remarks about that, other than to say that it indicates, of course, a very considerable difference of opinion between the Chairman and the Committee as to the whole nature and character of the Report that is called for by the evidence that was given before the Committee. The House will some day have an opportunity of judging of all these matters; and when your Committee report, assuming, of course, that I am still alive and not disabled by the decrepitude of extreme old age, I shall be able to enter into any explanation that may seem necessary or desirable. I will only add that I feel myself to be in a very unsatisfactory and equivocal position in so far as I am credited with duties and responsibilities that I am not in a position to fulfil and to discharge. I am and must be held liable, outside this House, at any rate, in matters of fact and opinion which I am powerless to affect or influence. If any good could result from my continuing to serve on your Lordships' Committee, I think it would be my duty to put on one side any considerations of that kind, however much my opinions or my views might be liable to misconception, but I can be of no service to the Committee or to the House, or to the public in this matter. Any useful work that I was able to perform was accomplished many months ago; and as I feel certain that no harm can possibly arise to any person interested in the matters that were brought before the Committee, I feel myself at liberty to ask your Lordships to relieve me from what I think is a false position, a position very unsatisfactory and disagreeable to me; and with all respect I ask your Lordships to dispense with my further services on this Committee.

§ * THE EARL OF DERBY
My Lords, of course I do not rise for the purpose of objecting to the Motion of the noble Earl 1668 opposite, however much I and other Members of the Committee may regret the decision to which he has come; but I quite agree with him that this is not the time at which any controversial discussion can take place with regard to the causes of his retirement from the Committee. In the first place, it would be contrary to the Rules of this House to enter into a discussion upon the proceedings of a Committee which is still sitting and has not yet reported; in the next place, even if it were not contrary to order, it would be contrary to common sense, because it is quite obvious your Lordships can be no judges of the merits of a dispute with regard to which you have not the Papers before you. Neither the Report to which the noble Earl has referred nor any other which may be substituted for it are in your Lordships hands; and in the absence of those documents it is clearly impossible for you to form any judgment upon the question at issue. I will only say that in my judgment, and I may say in the unanimous judgment of those who sat with me upon the Committee, there is really no such fundamental difference of opinion between our views and those of the noble Earl as he seems to imagine, and we did not, and do not, see that there was anything to necessitate his retirement. At the same time, we fully admit that is entirely a question for him to decide. We therefore accept his decision, and we shall always do full justice to the care and attention and the assiduous labour which he has given to what lie truly calls an unusually difficult and protracted inquiry.

§ LORD THRING
My Lords, I feel called upon to make a few observations upon this subject, Of course, as the noble Lords have said, it is impossible for us to discuss the matter now. The draft Report of the noble Earl has not yet been made public. Those of the other noble Members of the Committee are not even printed yet, and, therefore, we cannot compare them. But there is one circumstance to which I feel bound to call your Lordships' attention. Immediately after the sitting took place at which the noble Earl's Report was rejected, there appeared a paragraph in various newspapers stating that the noble Earl's Report had been rejected because it showed too much sympathy with the poor and prophesying 1669 that the Report which bears my name would be colourless, would express no sympathy with the poor, and was altogether the Report of a political economist of the oldest and driest school. I shall say nothing with regard to the Report, for it will speak for itself; but this I will say, that I and the other noble Lords on the Committee were not less careful of the needs and wants of the poor than the noble Earl; and I am able for myself and Colleagues to express the admiration which we have felt at seeing the patience with which the poor bear their sufferings, at the absence of exaggeration on the part of the witnesses and the plain and simple way in which they related their tales of misery; and more than that, our admiration at that which has, perhaps, still more impressed itself upon our minds than any other circumstances in this inquiry, namely, the unbounded charity with which, according to the evidence, the poor relieve each other's necessities. I may assure your Lordships that the Report will do full justice to the conduct and needs of those whose position was inquired into.