HL Deb 02 February 1891 vol 349 cc1505-12

Order of the Day for the Second Reading, read.

THE LORD CHANCELLOR

My Lords, in moving the Second Reading of this Bill I ask your Lordships' patience for a few moments while I mention a few facts in connection with the measure as it originally passed your Lordships' House and with its fate in another place. A Member of your Lordships' House, whom I regret not to see present (the Earl of Meath), originally brought the question forward; and in the address which he delivered to your Lordships upon it he established, certainly to my satisfaction, and I believe to the satisfaction of most of your Lordships, the fact that there is an evil which requires to be remedied. But it appeared to me that the remedy proposed by the noble Earl was not altogether appropriate; it appeared to me to interfere too much with, and to shake the foundations of, the right of parental control. I certainly thought that the object aimed at by the noble Lord could be met by a simpler form of procedure. On the part of the Government, I undertook to deal with the question, and I accordingly brought in a Bill which was certainly very short and simple; in fact, I believe that some of your Lordships thought that while the Bill of the noble Earl went too far, my Bill did not go far enough. The two Bills were, in the result, referred to one of the Standing Committees, and were there very fully considered. Forty-five Peers attended upon that Committee, the conditions certainly were calculated to add weight and authority to its proceedings, and there can be no doubt that the Committee were actuated by a desire to amend the law. For two days, I think, and part of a third day, the deliberations of that Committee were conducted, the matter being very freely discussed among persons representing different religious opinions, but all the Peers in attendance being desirous of amending the law in a direction which would get rid of the evils which undoubtedly exist. The result of their deliberations was a Report which was adopted unanimously, and with a slight alteration, moved by myself, lest the existing state of the law with regard to the discretion of the Court should be interfered with by the language used in the Bill, and preserving therefore the right of the Court to consider the wishes of the child itself, the Bill recommended by the Committee passed this House by the unanimous vote of your Lordships. In the House of Commons the right hon. Gentleman the leader of the House, when the Bill was brought on there for consideration, had entered into an engagement with the Members of that House that contentious matters should not be introduced at that period of the Session. Although a considerable number of Members of the House of Commons were in favour of the Bill, it was felt that at that period of the Session, and after the pledge that had been given by the Government, it was impossible to proceed with it, and it was dropped. I regret that that result should have happened, and I believe that the occurrence of the intervening period has been fraught with great mischief. It is one of the results of the discussion of a subject of this kind, followed by an ineffectual attempt to legislate, that opportunity is presented to people to take advantage of the state of the law that has been disclosed. The evils disclosed were monstrous, and such as undoubtedly and urgently demanded a remedy. It was evident that the parental rights which the common law have given were being grossly abused, and in some instances for proselytizing purposes by Societies in the interests of one religion or another. It might be said for both sets of proselytizers that they endeavoured, at all events, to promote the moral and social welfare of the children whom they took into their charge; and, perhaps, it is only natural that they should desire to give to children that religious education which they believed would be of most advantage to them. But what can be said for parents who, by the hypothesis upon which alone the Bill could be applicable to them, have abandoned every parental duty, and only strive to make use of their parental rights for the purpose of extorting money from those who have rescued their children from wretchedness, and sometimes from sin and vice? Apart, however, from the proselytizing aims of any Society, there are a number of benevolent and charitable people who have no other aim than that of rescuing children from miserable surroundings, and seeing that they are properly cared for; and these people are also made the victims of abandoned parents, who have sometimes demanded to have their children given back to them for the vilest of all purposes, with the object of extorting money, or else that the parents themselves might derive pecuniary advantage from the wages that their children might be capable of earning from the training they have received. I believe that the Bill as it is now settled, moulded as it has been by the deliberations of the Committee, simply gives to the children of the poor the same kind of protection that the Court of Chancery extends to the children of the rich. It is obvious that the Bill is most urgently demanded from the facts which have been made public from time to time, and which come to me now from day to day, that efforts are being made by the most abandoned parents to resume possession of children under such circumstances that no one could say they were just either to the children or to society, or that in justice or truth such parents ought to have the power to exercise the Common Law right given them. Under these circumstances, cannot forbear from pointing out that those who prolong the existing condition of things incur a very grave responsibility, and that they are acting contrary to the unanimous opinion of a Committee, including men of all shades of politics and of different religious beliefs. The origination of this measure cannot be attributed to one side in politics, and certainly not to one side in religion. It is a distinctly serious and an almost awful consideration that a few narrow-minded persons should, by their opposition, delay the passing of a wholesome and necessary piece of legislation. My Lords, I thought it right to make these observations, that the Bill should not pass without something being said to show the urgent need of the matter being dealt with; and I hope the Bill will now receive the unanimous approval of the other House, and that those who have obstructed it will see that by continuing to do so they will be incurring a very serious responsibility before the country in delaying a wholesome and necessary reform.

Moved, "That the Bill be now read 2a."—(The Lord Chancellor.)

LORD THRING

My Lords, I desire to make a few observations upon this Bill, in which I take the deepest interest. I think that the Lord Chancellor is entitled to the thanks of society for the manner in which he has taken up the Bill and pressed it upon Parliament through its several stages. I know that I am liable to be regarded as a philanthropic faddist; but I do not care about that in this instance, although I am not one of those who are in favour of benevolent legislation, or who think that people can be converted from wickedness to goodness by Act of Parliament. What I do say is this: that where there is an existing law which is shown to interfere with a course of action which is beneficial to many of Her Majesty's subjects, and to the most helpless class of Her Majesty's subjects, I trust your Lordships will not be deterred from repealing that law immediately. Now, what are the circumstances under which this Bill is brought forward? What are the cases to which it applies? It applies principally to two classes of children: the deserted children found in workhouses, and the waifs and strays, the "gutter-children," as they are often called, who may be picked up by benevolent persons in the street. What is the case with regard to the deserted workhouse children, those poor deserted workhouse children, who have never known anything but the monotonous orderly dulness of a workhouse, who have really never felt any individual existence? In every well-managed union they are put out to foster-parents under the guidance of a committee, and it was shown before a Committee upon which I had the honour of sitting, of which Lord Kimberley was Chairman, that those foster-parents are almost invariably kind to the children entrusted to them; that they usually take the greatest care of the little beings until they are able to be put to some employment; and that they look after them during their after life if not interfered with. But what usually happens is that when one of these little children who have been rescued and trained up to the age of 15 or 16 is able to earn a small wage, the parent who has never shown any care for his child demands that it shall be returned to him, and it is very often taken back to misery and ruin. Take the case of the little waifs and strays. They are taken charge of by kind and benevolent people, are clothed, maintained and educated at the expense of those people, sometimes with the knowledge and at the voluntary action of the parents, while sometimes they are children whose parents cannot be found, and who are in the position of deserted children. Here, again, the same thing happens. The time arrives when these poor children can earn wages, and they have to be delivered up again to their wretched abandoned parents under this wicked and cruel law. What possible objection can there be to repealing this law? Surely in the case of workhouse children, who have been maintained and clothed at the expense of the public, the community has a right to say the entire expenditure which has been bestowed upon them shall not be wasted, and that something shall be done to ensure that they shall be brought up in the course in which they have been educated at the expense of the State! Take, again, the case of the waifs and strays: is it right that kind and benevolent people should at the very moment when the child is in the greatest danger at the age of perhaps 15 be deprived of the control over that child? Is that right or just, or for the benefit of the community? From all we can learn from a book by Mr. Booth—not General Booth's Darkest England—but a book upon the condition of the East End of London, it seems that often the only hope of saving the children is to take them away and keep them from their parents, and to bring them up under ordinarily good conditions. The money and the effort that has been expended upon a child in so far helping to make it a useful member of society should not be thrown away by restoring the child to the custody of those from whose cruelty, neglect, and bad example it has been rescued. Is it the object or intention of the law that these poor children should be handed over to degradation and ruin? Surely not. What possible harm can be done by preventing it? I have been told that the measure is an attack upon the home, and upon parental control. The "home," forsooth! What has been the home of these children of the workhouse? How can that home possibly be invaded? What has been the home of the waifs and strays? The streets. Are the streets a home to which we are bound to pay any regard? It is idle to talk of the parents' "home" when the only home of these rescued waifs and strays has been the streets. Then, again, with respect to parental control. I have heard one individual talk of the desecration of the Fifth Commandment. Is there any command, divine or human, which lays an obligation upon any one, even upon these poor children, to honour and obey their drunken and profligate parents, who have never discharged anyone of the duties of parents? Then the last argument I have heard is that with regard to religion as it is called. Really I think it is a mere mockery to say that any religious differences should be allowed to interfere with the saving of these poor children. Is is not better that a child should be brought by even the most bigoted sect that can be found in England, but in morality and decency than that it should be allowed to be placed in surroundings of immorality and indecency? But even if there were a chance of the father's religion being disregarded, or if it is necessary that in such cases the father's inalienable right, as they call it, to have his child educated in a particular religion, should be maintained with so much strictness, all I can say is that the Bill safeguards it, and provides that the duty shall be imposed of seeing that the child shall be brought up in the religion which its parent may require it should be brought, up in. I do not pretend to say that this Bill is a great or comprehensive or heroic measure, but it is a measure which, as the noble and learned Lord on the Woolsack has said, is most urgently needed. It is a Bill which will give heart to those benevolent persons of whom everybody has heard, whom those, who sat upon the Sweating Commission or the Poor Law Commission know, and to those societies of good and kind people who are working obscurely yet earnestly and diligently, who give their time, their money, and their thoughts, throughout the length and breadth of this land, in reclaiming the abandoned children of the poor. I say it is a Bill which cannot do harm; that it is a measure which must do much good; and I trust your Lordships will give such an assent to it that in the other House of Parliament it will meet with that attention which I am sorry to say it did not receive during last Session.

LORD HERSCHELL

My Lords, I should like to say a word or two to add my hearty support to the measure which has been introduced by my noble and learned Friend. It is difficult to see how there can be any controversy as to the principle underlying this legislation. It assumes, what surely is known to be the fact, that a parent may so conduct himself towards his child as to shock all right feeling. When a parent has abandoned or deserted his child, has cared nothing for it, and has left it to be cared for by others, it is outrageous that he should be allowed to go before a Court and say, "Although I have neglected every duty which I owed to my child, and although to deliver it up to me now will be most disastrous to the child, still I have a legal right to the custody of the child, that custody I will have, and you must give it to me." Can anyone maintain such a proposition thus barely stated, and say that ought to be law? All that this legislation proposes to do is that, where the Court is satisfied that a parent has so behaved as to disentitle him to the custody of the child, it shall have power to refuse its aid to procure the delivery of that child back to the parent. The only objection which I have heard raised is that which arises Out of what is sometimes called the religious difficulty. I believe that this difficulty may be greatly exaggerated; and it seems to me absurd to suppose that your Lordships cannot so safeguard this legislation as to meet that difficulty, and yet carry out this beneficial change in the law. I do not believe that, on account of the religious difficulty which may arise in one case out of a vast number of instances, your Lordships will leave the children unprotected, and compel the Courts to deliver them up to parents who ought not to have the custody of them. That is a proposition which surely, it seems to me, it is difficult to insist upon. If the present safeguard in the Bill is not sufficient, suggest additional safeguards; but I would call the attention of those who are pressed with this difficulty to the fact that this religious question was very fully discussed in the Standing Committee of your Lordships' House, and that the provisions of the Bill as they now stand were inserted on account of that difficulty, and met with the full assent and approval of those who were pressed by that difficulty, and who urged it upon the Committee. As that difficulty—the only difficulty, as it seems to me—has been met, I can see no reason why the Bill should not speedily become law. Again I say, if the present provisions and safeguards are not sufficient, in the opinion of any of your Lordships, to meet what is called the religious difficulty, by all means amend them; but do not let that objection stand in the way. Those who, on account of this difficulty, delay or render impossible this beneficial legislation, will, in my opinion, take upon themselves an enormous responsibility, and I would only add that the very religion whose name they invoke imposes upon them the highest possible duty of suggesting provisions which may be deemed sufficient.

THE LORD CHANCELLOR

Since I addressed your Lordships just now, several cases have been put into my hands which have occurred recently, and which my noble Friend is anxious should be quoted. I do not know that I need read the particulars of them, but in each case the child who had begun to support itself in respectability and with intelligence had been taken from the place where it had established itself. In the last case—I think I had better quote more of the particulars, taking one example out of many—a father had deserted his six children. He was sent to prison, and when the man came out he began to live with another woman. The father brought back two girls, of 12 and 14 years of age, to live with this woman, whom he had taken instead of his wife, and to look after their illegitimate children.

On Question, agreed to; Bill read 2a accordingly; and committed to a Committee of the Whole House on Thursday next.

House adjourned at five minutes past Five o'clock, till To-morrow, a quarter past Ten o'clock.