Lords Sitting of 7 May 1895

The Lord Ponsonby (E. Bessborough)—Sat first in Parliament after the death of his brother.
DISEASES OF ANIMALS ACT, 1894.
Return as regards Ireland, for year ended 31st December 1894, presented.
CROFTER COLONISATION.
Sixth Report of Her Majesty's Commissioners appointed to carry out a scheme of colonisation in the Dominion of Canada of crofters and cottars from the Western Highlands and Islands of Scotland; with appendices, presented.

EDUCATION (ENGLAND AND WALES).
Return showing

1. The expenditure from the grant for public education in England and Wales in the year 1894, upon annual grants to elementary schools; and

2. The actual number of elementary schools on the Annual Grant List, &c., and the results of the, inspection and examination of elementary schools during the year ended 31st August 1894, presented.

COMMERCIAL, No.3 (1895) (SUEZ CANAL).
Returns of shipping and tonnage, 1892, 1893, and 1894 [in continuation of Commercial, No. 2 (1894)]: presented (by command), and ordered to lie on the Table.
DISTRESS FROM WANT OF EMPLOYMENT.
Message sent to the House of Commons for copy of the Reports, &c., of the Select Committee.
RAILWAY AND CANAL TRAFFIC ACT, 1888.
*THE EARL OF JERSEYgave notice that on an early day he would move for a Select Committee to inquire into the operation of the proviso of Sub-section 2 of Clause 27 of the Railway and Canal Traffic Act, 1888.

THE LATE LORD SELBORNE.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR (LORD HERSCHELL): I am sure I shall be
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acting in accordance with the wishes of your Lordships if I give expression to the sense of the loss which this House has sustained owing to the death of Lord Selborne. Just ten years ago, when an illustrious predecessor of his on the woolsack died, the late Lord Cairns, Lord Selborne, who was prevented from being present by severe domestic affliction, gave expression to his wish to have offered his testimony to the remarkable powers and great worth of his illustrious predecessor, and to the loss which this House and the country had sustained. My Lords, I am sure we all feel that we have lost another illustrious lawyer who might worthily rank with the one to whom I have just alluded. He was a master of equity jurisprudence; but, although having the completest mastery of technicalities of the law, he was no mere technical lawyer. He had a remarkable grasp of legal principles and a capacity of applying them with the utmost intelligence and perspicacity. His industry was indefatigable; he spared himself no pains to ever give of his best. He used his utmost endeavours to arrive at a right conclusion, and his judgments are as remarkable for their thoroughness and solidity as for the clearness of their expression. But it is not only as a distinguished advocate and Judge that he will be remembered. He took a foremost part in the changes that were made, now some 20 years ago, and which led to the system of judicature and administration of the law which now prevails in our Courts. He was one of the most active in bringing about what he conceived to be of great public value, the concentration in one building of the various Courts of Justice. My Lords, I have spoken of what he was as a lawyer and a Judge. I need not remind your Lordships that he was much more than this. The power and the ability with which he took part in the discussions of every question in your Lordships' House must be fresh in your memory. The echoes of the speeches which he has made not long since still linger on these walls, and even those against whom his arguments were directed could not fail to bear testimony to their admiration of the force and power of those arguments and to their appreciation of the fact that these sterling abilities were neither

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dimmed nor diminished by age or by growing infirmity. My Lords, I do not think any of us can forget the impression which he made of earnestness and sincerity whenever he addressed your Lordships' House. This is not the time or place to dwell upon what he was as a man, but a few words your lordships will pardon me. In spite of the absorbing and increasing nature of his duties and labours in connection with the law, he never allowed himself to be entirely occupied by them. His energies were distributed in many directions of fruitful activity with a view to the benefit of his fellow-men. He obtained the highest rewards of the career which he had chosen, but I believe that few men have ever less made them their ambition or their aim. I have met few who were more completely unworldly in spirit than was Lord Selborne. On his lofty sense of duty it is not necessary to dwell. All must recognise it. Where his duty, as he saw it, led him, there he followed without flinching or reserve, and without the slightest regard for personal consequences. Behind a somewhat reserved manner there lay, as all who had the honour and pleasure of Lord Selborne's acquaintance knew, a kindly heart and a warm affection. If there were some who thought at times that his judgments of those who differed from him on political questions were unduly severe, I am sure that they were all ready to recognise that this resulted solely from the strength—I may almost say the passionate strength—of his convictions, and was in no way prompted by personal ill-will, or malice, or desire to give offence. I am quite sure that in this House we all, without respect of parties, feel that the House is poorer for his loss. A blank has been left which will not easily be filled, and those of us who have to take part in the discharge of judicial duties in this House, sitting as the ultimate Court of Appeal, will long have reason to mourn the loss of an invaluable colleague.
LORD HALSBURY: After what has been most truly said by the noble and learned Lord on the Woolsack, I should be doing violence to my own feelings if I did not express to your Lordships my desire to be associated with what has been said. It has been my fortune to
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practise before Lord Selborne as an advocate and to sit with him as a Judge; and I can truly say that no one could have gone through that experience without recognising not only his vast learning and unflagging industry, but that which is, perhaps, more desirable in a Judge, the candid determination, at whatever cost, to arrive at a true solution of any problem put before him. The noble and learned Lord has truly described the personal character which was behind the great judicial character I have indicated; and I may say for myself, speaking with the knowledge now of some considerable time, that I have ever found him, as all who came within the sphere of his influence found him, a most kindly and I generous friend. ["Hear, hear."]
THE DUKE OF DEVONSHIRE: It would be presumptuous on my part to attempt to add anything to the tribute which has been paid by the noble and learned Lords who have addressed your lordships to the legal eminence of the great lawyer whose loss we mourn. But I desire, on behalf of those with whom Lord Selborne was, during many of the later years of his life, most closely associated in politics, to tender to those noble; Lords the expression of our gratitude for the recognition which has been given to the character of Lord Selborne, not only as a lawyer, but as a statesman. The extraordinary acuteness and subtlety of Lord Selborne's intellect could not fail, whenever we listened to him, to remind us of the Oxford student and the trained lawyer; but the conviction and the energy with which he advocated and supported his political opinions must have served to remind all who ever heard him or knew him that Lord Selborne was something much more than an advocate. We could not fail to recognise that the political opinions which he held had been formed conscientiously, as they were held with tenacity. I desire, also, on this occasion to recall to the recollection of your Lordships the extraordinary self-sacrifice and patriotism with which Lord Selborne, for many years after politics had ceased to have any personal interest for himself, continued to advocate and defend the causes which he had at heart, with an energy and a perserverance which might have put younger men to shame. I only

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desire now, on the part of his political friends, to tender to the noble Lords who have addressed the House our most sincere and heartfelt thanks for the recognition which they have given to the great qualities of Lord Selborne. ["Hear, hear."]
THE MARQUESS OF SALISBURY: I should be sorry to allow this occasion to pass without adding, on behalf of my own political friends, a tribute to the character of Lord Selborne—not as a Judge, for that has been amply done, but as a statesman and politician. I have been with him in this House for more than two-and-twenty years, and by far the greater part of that time I passed in opposition to him, though in the later years of his life I was his political ally. But during all that time when I was in opposition to him, in the course of many anxious debates, I recognised—as everyone else who took part in those debates recognised—not only the extraordinary power which Lord Selborne brought to bear upon the examination of every argument that could be urged on any political question, but also the great fairness and candour which were always present with him, and always led him to attribute the best motives to his opponents and to give the fairest colour he conscientiously could to the arguments and considerations which they adduced. He appears to me, my Lords, to have fulfilled an ideal which is hard to attain in such a political system as ours—to have reconciled perfectly the patriotic independence of the individual with the practical association with other men which our party system requires. He was a strong party man, and he did his best for his party; but he never, under any temptation or under any circumstances, forgot the vital principles to which he was conscientiously attached, or allowed any political object to induce him to swerve from following them sincerely. The noble Lord who has just sat down mentioned how Lord Selborne, to the end of his life, and often at the cost of great self-sacrifice, continued to maintain with earnestness and vigour the opinions and the causes to which he was specially attached. That observation leads me to conclude with a remark which, perhaps, may be out of harmony with the general tenour of our discussion in this House, but which, perhaps, the
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present occasion may seem to justify. It appears to me a worthy opportunity to remark on the attitude, in respect of the most sacred of all subjects, of the two great Chancellors who have been mentioned in this discussion. Abroad, and to some extent in this country, you will find men who affect to think that attachment to Christianity, and a belief in its truths, is an indication of a feeble intellect. But no one who knew intimately either Lord Cairns or Lord Selborne, as I had the privilege to do, could doubt that, while they belonged to the acutest intellects which have ever adorned Parliament or the law at any period of our history, they were not less remarkable for the intensity of the belief arid the conviction with which they cherished the Christian truths which they supported by their conduct, and to which they had always been attached. ["Hear, hear."]
THE EARL OF ROSEBERY: My Lords,—I did not come down to this House with any intention of taking part in a discussion which, I understood, would be limited to the legal members of your Lordships' House. But it would not be proper, after the remarks of the noble Duke and the noble Marquess, that I, holding the position which I do in this House, should seem to abstain from the discussion when it has passed beyond the bounds to which I had thought it was to be limited. I have not the good fortune of being able to say, like the last two speakers, that I was in political agreement with Lord Selborne during the last few years of his life. I may say that, on more than one point, we were in very acute disagreement. But that enables me all the more sincerely to say, on my own behalf, and, I am sure, on behalf of those who act with me, that no difference of opinion abated in the slightest degree our respect for that great man, or our memory of the services which he had rendered to his country. ["Hear, hear."] It was my privilege once, for a very short time, to sit in Cabinet with Lord Selborne; and, though the time was short, the experience was rich, because no one could sit in council with him without being struck by the laborious fairness which he brought to the consideration of every question, great or small, that was submitted to him. We have one or two great qualities associated

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with Lord Selborne which cannot perish with his name or generation. We have the memory of an industry which was in reality sleepless, and of which the traditions surpass, perhaps, all that is known of human industry. We have that disregard of worldly position, of worldly temptation, which led him in 1868 to refuse the great prize of his profession rather than palter with principles which he held higher than any prize or any profession. I think he showed something of that in his appearance. There was something in his austere simplicity of manner which I think must have recalled to every onlooker something of those great lawyers of the Middle Ages, who were also great Churchmen; for to me, at any rate, Lord Selborne always embodied that great conception and that great combination. I congratulate the noble Marquess who spoke last on having touched a higher and deeper note than any of those who preceded him; and I, at a great distance and with great humility, beg to associate myself most entirely with the praise which he passed on Lord Selborne in the religious aspect of his career.

EVIDENCE IN CRIMINAL CASES BILL.
On the Order for the Third Reading of this Bill,
LORD HALSBURYsaid, he wished to call attention to a state of affairs which had arisen in connection with this Bill. Originally he introduced this Bill, and the Lord Chancellor introduced a similar one subsequently; and both were put down for Second Reading on the same day. At that time he stated that he was willing and anxious to confide the Bill to the care of the Lord Chancellor; and, as a matter of fact, he had neither moved the Report stage nor the Third Reading stage of the Bill. He certainly understood, however—he did not say that his noble and learned Friend pledged himself on the point—that the measure was to receive the favourable attention of the Government, and he had noticed with some anxiety that this Bill had never yet been on the Order-book of the House of Commons. But the situation was somewhat changed. Whatever his chances might have been in handing the Bill to some hon. Member in the other House, the Government had since that time taken the whole
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time of the House, and it was absolutely impossible, unless the Government themselves intervened, that this Bill could have any chance of passing into law. Circumstances had recently occurred, to which he did not wish to refer, which seemed to him to emphasise the necessity for a change in the law. It had become an absolute scandal at the present time to see the way in which the law was administered. Not a day passed in which the injustice of this grievance might not be illustrated by some case in which a person was accused of an offence and yet be unable to give an account of his conduct in a Court of Justice save in exceptional cases. As the Lord Chancellor had said that the prejudices against the measure had diminished, he could not see any reason why some effort should not be made to carry this Bill into law, particularly as the one element, supposed to be a discordant one, and which might have raised obstruction in the House of Commons, had been removed.
THE LORD CHANCELLORassured his noble and learned Friend that there had not been the slightest alteration in his view with reference to this Bill being passed. There was every intention on the part of the Government to pass it into law. He reminded the noble Lord, however, that he had himself held the office of Lord Chancellor in a Government which was in power for six years, which had this Bill under their charge more than one, and yet they did not succeed in passing it into law. [Lord HALSBURY: "They tried."] If it was so easy to pass a Bill like this, then the late Government ought in that time to have succeeded. He had no objection to the Bill.
LORD ASHBOURNEsaid, he was in favour of the principle of both Bills, but he deplored the omission of Ireland from measures where its presence was essentially necessary. He hoped that in the interest of the administration of the law the Bill would pass for this country, but he had no doubt that in many quarters acute disappointment would be felt at the omission of Ireland from a Bill which appeared to demand its presence.
Bill read 3a and passed.
House adjourned at Five o'clock