Sitting of 1 May 1849

Preamble
MINUTES. PUBLIC BILLS.—1o Marriage by License.
PETITIONS PRESENTED. By Sir John Yarde Buller, from Exeter, and other Places, against, and by Mr. Bright, from Newport, Isle of Wight, in favour of, the Parliamentary Oaths Bill.—By Mr. S. Crawford, from Inhabitants of London, for Universal Suffrage; and from Edward Sharp and others, for Separation of Church and State.—By Mr. G. Hamilton, from the Bath Church of England Lay Association, for an Alteration of the Church Temporalities (Ireland) Act.—By Mr. Bright, from Morpeth, Northumberland, and by other hon. Members, for the Clergy Relief Bill.—By Mr. Roundell Palmer, from Winchester, and several other Places, against, and by Mr. Stuart Wortley, from Chichester, in favour of, the Marriages Bill.—By Mr. Alexander Smollett, from Dumbarton, against the Marriage (Scotland) Bill.—By Mr. Bankes, from Symondsbury, against Endowment of the Roman Catholic Clergy—By Captain Fordyce, from Aberdeen, and several other Places, and by other hon. Members, against, and by Viscount Melgund, from Greenock, in favour of, the Sunday Travelling on Railways Bill.—By Mr. Colxlen, from Saddleworth, Yorkshire, for the County Rates and Expenditure Bill,—By Mr. Blackstone, from Oxford, for Repeal of the Duty on Malt and Hops.—By Mr. Deedes, from several Places in the Eastern Division of the County of Kent, for Agricultural Relief—By Mr. Turner, from several Places, against the Copyholds Enfranchisement Bilk—By Mr. Tatton Egerton, from Bowden, Cheshire, for Encouragement to Schools in Connexion with the Church Education Society for Ireland.—By Mr. Bright, from North Berwick, complaining of the Influx of Irish Paupers.—By Captain Fordyce, from Aberdeen, against the Lunatics (Scotland) Bill.—By Sir Joshua Walmsley, from Turton and Little Lever, Lancashire, against the Public Roads (England and North Wales) Bill.—By Mr. Bright, from Sheffield, and other Places, for the Abolition of the Punishment of Death.—By Mr. Smollett, from Stirling, against the Registering Births, &c. (Scotland) Bill.—By Mr. Adderley, from Uttoxeter, for an Alteration of the Sale of Beer Act.—By Mr. Bright, from Manchester, and other Places, for referring International Disputes to the Decision of Arbitrators.

BREACH OF PRIVILEGE.—REPORTING THE DEBATES.
MR. J. O'CONNELLwished to call the attention of the House to a matter which he thought involved a breach of their privileges. A sessional order, passed at the beginning of every Session, provided that the debates in that House should not be reported, or at least that no strangers should be allowed in the House, and that no accounts of their proceedings should be published in the papers. He was not going to argue the good sense of keeping such a rule upon their books; but, if it was the pleasure of the House that the rule should be done away with, he had no objection,

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and he thought it would be for the credit of the House. So long, however, as that rule remained upon their hooks, he thought it ought to he as much respected as every other order of the House. He found in a newspaper called the Times, which some hon. Members might have soon that day, a violation of this rule. That paper contained a report, or what purported to be a report, of a debate which occurred in that House last night on the third reading of the Irish Rate in Aid Bill. He believed the proper course for him to pursue, after having stated his reasons for taking such a course, would be to move that the printer of the paper should be called to the bar to answer for his conduct in infringing the rule and strict order of the House. He found that the debate or proceedings of last night were regularly set out and reported. He found not only this, but that a great deal of what some hon. Members did say was given, a great deal of what other Members said was omitted, and a great deal that hon. Members did not say was put in. Now, he found himself in the last dilemma; nay, he found himself in two of them. He found that a great deal of what he thought it his duty to say to the House on a question of some importance to Ireland was omitted, or so misrepresented that he would not have known his own child. He was made to say things that he certainly did not say. It might be a matter of very little importance to the editor or proprietor of the Times to give what he (Mr. O'Connell) might chance to say; but his conduct was canvassed in Ireland; and, as an Irish Member, he had a right to demand, that if that House allowed reports to be published, such reports should at least be tolerably accurate. He had observed that Irish Members particularly were not treated fairly—that the same measure was not meted out to them that was meted out to English Members. No matter of what importance the subject on which they spoke might be to Ireland, their speeches were abbreviated, and the utmost injustice was done to them. They were subject to censure from their constituents for their conduct, and they ought in common fairness to be allowed the ordinary means which the House thought fit to afford of placing their sentiments on record, and of enabling their constituents not only to sec their acts, but the reasons of those acts. This, however, was not the case. The most trivial English debate, upon the most passing subject of the day, was faithfully reported;
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but let a subject of the deepest interest to the people of Ireland be brought forward, and they found the debate slurred over, and the speeches of Members mangled or misrepresented. Many of the Irish public were not aware whether their Members had done their duty or not. He did not know who, among the Irish Members, would be inclined to submit longer to this; but he, for one, certainly would not. It might be said, that he thought rather too much of himself and of what he said; but he would stand on his right as a Member of Parliament. So long as he was a Member of Parliament, he would discharge his duty, and say what his duty dictated, without fear or favour. If other Members were to be reported, he would insist on being reported; and, if other Members were not to be reported, then he would submit to be similarly dealt with. If the rule of the House were a good one, let the House enforce it, or abrogate it. Inasmuch as that rule had been violated; inasmuch as what purported to be a report had appeared in a public newspaper, and inasmuch as there did not exist the excuse for the violation of the order of the House that the report was a fair and impartial and accurate one, he arraigned the printer and proprietor, and all concerned with the newspaper, for having violated the order of the House by the publication of that report, and he concluded with the Motion that the printer and proprietor of the Times newspaper be called to the bar of the House.
MR. SCULLYseconded the Motion.
MR. SPEAKERsaid, that in order to make the Motion in the regular form, the hon. and learned Member must ascertain the name of the printer of the paper.
MR. J. O'CONNELLthen stated the printer to be John Joseph Lawson, of Tottenham Cottage, Downshire-hill, Hampstead, in the county of Middlesex; and the Motion he wished to put was, that he be required to attend at the bar of the House to-morrow.
Paper delivered in, and paragraph complained of read.
Motion made, and Question proposed, "That John Joseph Lawson do attend this House To-morrow."
MR. O'CONNORhoped the hon. Gentleman the Member for Limerick would spare the time of the House by not proceeding with his Motion. If any hon. Gentleman, in the House or out of it, had a right to complain of misreports, he (Mr. O'Connor) had; and he should begin to

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doubt his own identity whenever newspapers began to report him or speak of him well. The hon. Gentleman wished to stand well with his constituents; but if the Times did not report what he said, other newspapers reported what he did not say, and he might set one against the other.
SIR G. GREYdid not know whether the hon. Gentleman the Member for Limerick was serious in his Motion. With respect to the grounds laid for the Motion, he must say that though reports of their proceedings were contrary to the letter of the order of the House, yet, after the length of time during which reports had been sanctioned, and considering the immense benefit and value of an impartial report, he did not think it could be expected that the strict letter of the order was now to be acted upon. He was not much in the habit of reading reports of the debates, and therefore he was unable to form an opinion as to their literal accuracy; but he had not heard before that the speeches of Irish Members were not reported. There was, however, now published a summary or sketch of the debate. This was a modern practice, and an extremely useful one, and through it the pith of the debate was given in a compressed form. He must say that the summary generally presented a most fair and impartial précis of the debate. He thought it rather inconsistent on the part of the hon. Member, while complaining that his speech was not reported, to call for the application of the rule of the House against reporting.
MR. BROTHERTONsaid, that the Times was a most accurate paper with respect to reports. But he would give to the hon. Member an example with respect to another paper. The Daily News the other day reported that he (Mr. Brotherton) stated in that House that his last election cost him 4,000 l. Now, the fact was, that he had been elected five times; he had never solicited a vote, and his elections had never cost him a single penny. His neighbours, and those who knew him, would not believe the report he had referred to, but they imagined that strangers might give credit to it.
MR. J. O'CONNELLsaid, that if the debates were reported at all, Irish Members ought to be treated with fairness. He repeated that, not only was much omitted which they said, but a great deal was given which they did not say; and
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Irish Members ought to be treated with the same fairness as was shown to others. If the House wished to get rid of the rule, it would do well to abrogate it; but, as long as the rule existed, he had the means of enforcing fair play. He should, at present, withdraw his Motion; but, if he perceived a repetition of the conduct of which he complained, he would call on the House to decide whether it would maintain the rule or not.
MR. GRENVILLE BERKELEYsuggested to the hon. Member to send, in future, his speeches to the papers, instead of making them in that House.
Motion, by leave, withdrawn.

THE NINEVEH EXCAVATIONS.
SIR J. PAKINGTONasked the Chancellor of the Exchequer whether it was the intention of Government to assist Mr. Layard in his discoveries at Nineveh by any grant of money; and if so, to what amount?
The CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUERsaid, that on receiving an application from the trustees of the British Museum for the sum of 3,000 l. on account of these excavations, he had agreed to appropriate the sum of 2,000 l. to defray the expenses incurred during two years by Mr. Layard; subsequently a further application appeared to have been made to the Treasury for more money, to which no answer had yet been given.

ABOLITION OF THE PUNISHMENT OF DEATH.
MR. EWART, in rising to move for leave to bring in a Bill on this subject, said that he believed that the conviction was every day growing stronger, openly with the public and secretly with the House, that the time was not very distant when they must totally abolish the punishment of death. The increasing conviction among the public was proved by the numerous and almost unanimous meetings in the country. In the House many Members who seemed neutral, or even unfavourable, had avowed to him that the time must probably come when the Motion would be carried. The only crime virtually punished with death was murder. Yet the number of murders lately had most unfortunately and lamentably increased. Now suppose that they had abolished capital punishment in the last year, would not his right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for the Home Department have attributed to the repeal of

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capital punishment the number of murders that had recently taken place; and was not he (Mr. Ewart) equally justified, when those murders had continued notwithstanding the executions, in attributing the murders to those executions? As his right hon. Friend would have used that argument against him in the event of his Motion having been carried, he (Mr. Ewart) was equally right in using the argument against the right hon. Gentleman when the Motion was not carried. During the course of all the arguments on this question, he had carefully avoided the theological part of the discussion: he maintained that upon this question, as upon all others, they were bound to act upon a system of exalted expediency, and to look at the general interests of the country. He, therefore, abandoned on this occasion anything like the theological part of the question. He again took his stand on the principle that they who justified executions were bound to prove that they were indispensable. The first writer on the subject of such deep interest to humanity, the immortal Italian jurist, Beccaria (the man by whose writings he was first converted to the opinions he held), laid it down that nothing but necessity could justify the execution of any individual. [The hon. Gentleman here quoted, from his work, De' Delitti e dette Pene, the words of Beccaria.] In the last report of the Criminal Law Commissioners they equally expressed their opinion that the right of the Legislature to inflict capital punishment rested on the ground of strict and cogent necessity, and (to quote their own words) that "to go beyond this involved a transgression in foro cœli"on the part of the Legislature. Now he maintained that during the course of the argument on this subject, his opponents had begged the question: they had assumed the necessity, they had not proved it. They had appealed either to the prejudices or the fears of the community. He denied that his right hon. Friend, with all the evidence which he could command, went further than to state that the country was not yet prepared for the change proposed: a question which he (Mr. Ewart) would like him to try anywhere in this country himself. It was true that he advanced a certain series of statistical arguments, which he (Mr. Ewart) believed to be rather ostensible than real. There were elements in the calculations of his hon. Friend which deprived them of their validity. His right hon. Friend
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had stated that in cases of attempts at murder there had been an increase in the last five years ending 1846, as compared with the five years ending 1831, from 451 to 1,099 crimes. He stated also that there had been an increase in the cases of rape, of arson, and of forgery; and he added, in all those crimes you abolished capital punishment, and therefore the diminution of capital punishment has caused an increase of crime. If this were true, his right hon. Friend was bound in consistency to ask them to restore capital punishment. His right hon. Friend did not do this, but he selected four crimes out of twenty in which capital punishment had been abolished; but he did not go to the whole number of twenty, in which he (Mr. Ewart) was prepared to show that in the majority of instances the crime had diminished. He said, with respect to attempts to murder, that in the five years ending 1831 the committals were 451, and in the five years concluding 1836, the committals had increased to 668. From 1836 to 1841, when capital punishment had ceased, the crime rose to 937, and in 1846 to 1,099. Therefore, according to the statement of his right hon. Friend, there was a rise from the year 1831 to 1846 of attempts at murder from 451 to 1,099. This was a large increase, undoubtedly; but even whilst capital punishment existed, there was as great an increase in the crime as after it was abolished. Then his right hon. Friend showed an increase since the repeal of capital punishment in cases of rape. It was true that in that case also the number of crimes had increased, but it was also true that before the repeal of capital punishment, prosecutors did not prosecute for the crime; they indicted for the minor offence—an assault with intent; and when both crimes were blended in one, no doubt there appeared to be a rise in the number of crimes. Then his right hon. Friend took the case of wilful burning. It was true that this crime had increased; but, according to the tables produced by the right hon. Baronet, it had diminished very considerably in the first six years following the repeal of capital punishment. For the five years ending 1831, the committals for wilful burning were 312; for the five years ending 1836, they were 360. Capital punishment was abolished, and in five years ending 1841 they fell to 183. Then his right hon. Friend referred to the crime of forgery, and said that the committals for five years previous to

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1836 amounted to 350, when the capital punishment was abolished by "Lord Denman's Act," and that they rose from 350 to 564, and that in 1846 they rose to the still greater number of 735. He (Mr. Ewart) had carefully looked at the returns made to the House, and he found that there was a different mode of making the return in the first period from that which had taken place in the last. In the first period it was customary to put on the register such forgeries only as were capitally punished, but now all forgeries were entered—there was no distinction; hence the apparent increase of crime. This was admitted in a return made to a Motion of his own in 1847. He did not think it fair in his right hon. Friend to select a particular time and a particular series of years to prove his ease. The real way to prove whether or not crime had increased or diminished by the abolition of capital punishment, was to take a certain number of years antecedent to the abolition of capital punishments, and a certain number of years subsequent; and if you found that on the whole the result of the abolition of capital punishment had been the diminution of crime, it might fairly be argued that the experiment had been successful. There had been a return laid before the House, in his opinion, most conclusive on the subject; it was made on his Motion, at the suggestion of a much respected friend, a man who had laboured hard in the cause of the repeal of capital punishment, Mr. Wrightson, and the result was that crime had diminished most decidedly with the diminution of capital punishment. He had a return of eighteen different crimes which had been capitally punished, and the number of committals after the capital punishment was discontinued. In cattle stealing there was more crime in the five years previous to the repeal, than in the five years after. So, with regard to coining, there was a very large diminution; the same in wilful burning; and, with regard to burglary, there had been a diminution from 4,307 to 3,700. He had a return printed by the House in 1839, which took two periods of five years each. In the first of these periods, the five years ending 1831, there were executed in England and Wales 259 persons; in the second period 99 persons were put to death. In the first period, there were nearly 12,000 capital offences; in the next period, 11,320. He maintained that on this general and perfectly fair view of the case, the experiment
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had been successful, and justified the House in carrying it further. It would not do for his right hon. Friend, or any one else, to appeal to the vindictive feelings of the community. His right hon. Friend was bound to prove that it was expedient for the good of the State, that for the crime of murder the criminal ought to die; he was bound to put it on the ground of legislative expediency. To prove that the fact of the diminution of executions for murder had diminished the crime, he would lay before the House the following table: In six years ending 1818, there were executed for murder, 122—the crimes were then 444; in the six years ending 1824, there were executed 91, and the crimes diminished; in the six years ending 1830, the executions were 75; in the six years ending 1836, 74; and in the six years ending 1842, the executions for murder amounted to only 50, and the committals for the crime fell to 150. The crime had diminished one-half, although the population had largely increased. In 1834, 1835, and 1836, in which no executions took place in London or Middlesex—these were the only years in which there were no convictions for murder. It had been laid down by the jurists of all times that the excellence of a punishment consisted in its certainty, and its defects in its uncertainty. He asked his right hon. Friend, was he prepared to execute for every crime of murder? Within the last few days, a considerable sensation had been caused by the execution of two criminals, whose crimes were very different—he meant the unfortunate woman who had been executed at Bristol, and the infamous criminal who had recently been executed at Norwich. He knew that, even among those who still upheld the necessity of capital punishment, the inequality of the punishment relatively to the crime had in these cases excited some degree of astonishment. He, therefore, maintained that his right hon. Friend could not, consistently with a due regard to public feeling, invariably execute in all cases of murder. Then he maintained that he lost the proper degree of certainty in his punishment. It had been laid down that a small punishment which was certain, was far more valuable than a cruel punishment which was uncertain. It was most justly considered by the public that these degrading exhibitions contaminated public morality. He remembered that in an old Act of Queen Elizabeth it was stated, that it having been found that thieves and pickpockets

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resorted to the gallows at the time of an execution, it was expedient that all such thieves and pickpockets should be hanged. That Act was an early proof both of the inefficiency and of the demoralising tendency of public executions. During every period before and since, they had been alike inefficacious, and alike demoralising. He knew how his right hon. Friend met this part of the case; he said that it was not the mere exhibition, the scaffold and all its solemn appendages, which affected the people; but although they were not affected by the sight of the execution, they had unfortunately the means of reading the accounts of these degrading exhibitions in the newspapers of the country. The purity and morality of the Sabbath were contaminated by the issue of such publications. It was the execution, not the crime, which first attracted readers. Those crimes which had ceased to be capitally punished had ceased to have this false and dangerous attractiveness; and the details of those crimes were no longer dwelt upon and followed. But the retention of capital punishment for murder, caused a retention of a low, immoral, and sanguinary curiosity. Nay, it had a reactive effect on the public mind. It was for the general interest that public attention should be fixed on the magnitude of the crime. But by executions the attention of the public was diverted from the magnitude of the crime to the magnitude of the punishment; instead of concentrating observation and abhorrence on the crime, you diverted it towards the punishment and the criminal. The same effect was produced on the mind of the criminal also. Instead of dwelling on his crime, he was absorbed in the contemplation of his punishment. But not only the magnitude but the nature of the punishment was objectionable. How could that punishment be effectual which imitated the crime which it professed to control? But the strongest, and therefore the often-repeated, argument against it was, that it left room for neither compunction nor repentance. This was the reason why the resistance of the mind to capital punishment went on constantly increasing. It was in vain for his right hon. Friend to assert that men's minds were not yet favourable to abolition. The clergy, who had long maintained a neutral position, were gradually becoming the opponents of executions. They were the authors of several works in favour of their abolition. He had last year cited the opinions of the
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Judges. He was justified in saying that the opinions of three English and two Irish Judges, and of the recorders or magistrates of many of our towns, were favourable to total abolition. But that conviction was still more widely prevailing among the great moral and religious classes which formed the glory of this country, he meant the sacred alliance of those different religious denominations which had achieved the great triumph of the abolition of slavery and the slave trade. They had succeeded in their former great and holy efforts. They would succeed in this. They, in common with him (Mr. Ewart) believed that the Gospel unfolded two sacred and mighty principles, at variance with capital punishment—the condemnation of revenge, and the encouragement of repentance. In unison with their feelings and his own, he called upon the House to sweep from the Statute-book of England the unchristian principle of revenge, and to follow, as their inspirer and their guide, the Christian spirit of repentance. The hon. Member concluded by moving for leave to bring in a Bill to repeal the punishment of death.
LORD NUGENTseconded the Motion.
SIR G. GREY: My hon. Friend the Member for Dumfries has rightly anticipated that I shall feel it my duty to oppose the Motion. With every respect for the opinions of many Gentlemen who think that the punishment of death might in all cases be dispensed with, I entertain the strongest conviction that, without making any predictions as to what in the course of years may be the duty and policy of the State to do in this matter, the time is yet far distant when we can safely dispense with the extreme penalty of the law in cases of extreme guilt. I must remind my hon. Friend that many of the arguments he has used are more applicable, perhaps, to former periods than to the present; for since 1841 no person has suffered death, the extreme penalty of the law, except for the offence of wilful and deliberate murder. My hon. Friend, at the commencement of his speech, expressed an opinion in which I concur, that this question does not rest upon theological grounds; and I am not prepared any more than he to argue it upon such grounds. I will only say upon that point, that while I entertain the strongest conviction that there is nothing in the written Word of God which precludes the State, for its own safety, for the safety of society, from inflicting

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the punishment of death, I conceive that there is nothing, on the other hand, which imposes upon the ruler the obligation of inflicting that punishment even in cases of murder. I entirely agree with what is stated in a pamphlet which contains similar statistical statements to those which my hon. Friend has adduced—a pamphlet entitled Punishment of Death—Statistical Argument, reprinted from the Eclectic Review for August, 1848—that it is the duty of the Government to treat the malefactor with reference to the welfare of the State, and that if the State is as safe without the infliction of this punishment as with it, it has no right to inflict it. But that holds good of every other punishment also; we have no right to transport a man for the mere gratification of a vindictive feeling; the only justification for imposing any punishment is the interest of society, the protection of life or of property, or of those other interests which it is proper to protect. Now, with respect to the crime of wilful and deliberate murder, that being the only one which, in ordinary circumstances, subjects the offender to the extreme punishment, I am prepared to maintain that there is a necessity—I do not mean that it is one capable of absolute proof and demonstration, such as I think my hon. Friend has rather unreasonably required of me, but I am prepared to appeal to reasonable men and ask them whether it is not necessary, not merely for the protection of society, but of human life, to throw around it that guard which is constituted by the deterring effect which I am convinced the terror of death has upon the minds of men? My hon. Friend says that murders have recently very much increased, and that as, if he had succeeded in this Motion last year, I should have appealed to the increase as a proof of the evil effect of the alteration of the law, he has a right to appeal to it now as a proof of the bad consequence of retaining the law as it is. Now, first, I deny the fact of the increase. There have been two or three instances of very great aggravation recently, which have attracted much public attention; but taking, as he says we ought, a series of years, I find that murder is the only crime which has not very materially and considerably increased. I take for a period of 25 years the average of commitments for murder; in the last 10 years ending 1848 they were C7 yearly, and in the 15 previous years the same number—67; the
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convictions for murder in 1844, 1845, 1846, 1847, and 1848, did not very materially—21, 19, 13, 19, 23. I have no reason to suppose that the number will vary materially this year; it may not even equal that of 1848. I trust it will not. My hon. Friend has no right, therefore, to say that murders are increasing notwithstanding capital punishment, and that that is a proof that it is not only ineffectual, but tends actually to produce the crime. I believe that there is in the human mind that terror of death that makes this punishment operate with a deterring influence upon parties who otherwise would take human life from vindictive motives, or motives of gain, or other motives; and I believe that that does tend to keep down the crime, notwithstanding the temptations to it, almost to a fixed standard. I am not prepared to say that men who commit murder always calculate upon consequences; there are many cases in which men, reckless of all consequences, under some strong passion or evil motive, commit crime, and then the kind of punishment does not act with any determinate effect upon them. But we are to look at those who do not commit the crime, and who are deterred from it by the knowledge that they would suffer death if they did; and that there are such I think we may safely infer from the fact that murder is a crime which has not increased. My hon. Friend says, that nothing but necessity can justify an execution; I quite agree in that, meaning however not a necessity capable of mathematical proof, but that degree of necessity which should induce those who make the law, and those with whom the execution of law rests, to impose this punishment till they are satisfied that they can safely remove what they have hitherto believed to be a strong protection to human life. My hon. Friend has also referred to statistical arguments, following my statement of last year; but I must remind him that I did not profess to rest the case much upon statistical arguments, for the statistics are so liable to the operation of various disturbing causes, that there is not much reliance to be placed upon them. In Tuscany, Belgium, and the Roman republic, there were no executions, and my hon. Friend said that murders had, in consequence, been very few. My hon. Friend said further, that in all those crimes from which the punishment of death had been removed, there had been an actual diminution since it had been taken away. I must

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state, however, that looking at the class of offences in which this punishment was frequently, though not generally, executed in late years—attempts to murder, rape, arson, burglary—I am hound, notwithstanding what he has said of the incorrectness of my figures of last year, to adhere substantially to the statement I then made, and to say that crime under those heads has increased since the abolition of capital punishment. My hon. Friend says, that if so, I ought to move for leave to bring in a Bill to restore the capital punishment; but I deny that life and property rest upon the same grounds, and that you ought to afford the same protection to property that you do to life. You might, by executing every sheepstealer, deter from stealing sheep; that was attempted many years ago, but it was found utterly impracticable; the feeling of mankind would revolt against the application of the extreme penalty to a comparatively minor offence, and the consequence would be—as it was—the greatest degree of uncertainty in the infliction of punishment, and so no sheepstealer would have the fear of punishment before his eyes, not one in a hundred being really punished. I agree with my hon. Friend that certainty is an essential element in the administration of the law, and certainty has prevailed in respect to murder; I do not say in every case, in cases where there were circumstances of extenuation, but in general in cases of deliberate wilful murder, every one does leave the court with the firm conviction that the law will be vindicated by the execution of the criminal. My hon. Friend says, that uncertainty must attach to this punishment, because we cannot execute in every individual case, and that he has a certain punishment to offer: what that is I do not know, but I think he ought to have mentioned what is this substitute of his—a punishment to be inflicted in all cases, so as to avoid the possibility of uncertainty as to the penalty to follow the crime. But then, he says, look at the inequality, and he refers to two recent cases where the degree of public abhorrence was different, and the punishment was the same; then what becomes of his "certain punishment," which in all cases is to attach to murder, irrespective of circumstances? I admit that the facts of the two cases may be widely different. My hon. Friend referred to the case of a poor woman, who, under the influence of deep poverty, consigned to untimely death her new-born offspring; and said in such a
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case it was impossible to inflict the extreme penalty. The law makes this last crime also capital, and I admit it may be difficult and unnecessary in such a case to inflict the punishment of death; and, if it is not necessary, taking all the circumstances into account, it may be right to recommend such a person to the mercy of the Crown. I am far from extenuating that crime, or saying that there is no such case which would justify execution; but what would become of my hon. Friend's certainty of punishment when he came to deal with a case of this nature precisely as he would with the most revolting case of deliberate murder? If you apportion the punishment to the circumstances of the crime, then you fall into the fault which he says now attaches to the punishment of death. Now, with regard to these statistics, I must tell him that he, with the writer of the pamphlet in question, has fallen into some great errors, while professing to correct mine. First, with regard to attempts to murder, the mode in which I stated the case may have led to the error. I stated the great increase that had taken place in the attempts to murder since the capital punishment had been removed in those cases in which no injury dangerous to life had been inflicted; but I ought to have stated that the class of offences under the head of "attempts to murder," in the criminal tables, comprised many to which my hon. Friend adverted as formerly omitted from that class, namely, assaults with intent to do some grievous bodily harm. Those assaults were formerly capital; they are not now; and since they ceased to be so, the convictions for that crime have very considerably increased. It is said, this shows the punishment to be of no avail, for these persons attempted to commit murder—the capital crime. That would be so, if there had been an attempt to murder in all the cases; but the class comprises those attempts to which I have referred, merely to inflict some bodily harm; and, of 1,159 cases in the last five years, 1,002 are cases which were formerly capital, and are not so now, in which there was no intention to murder, but only to commit some bodily injury. With regard to rape, it is said that I ought to have taken into account the increased number of prosecutions. There may be something in that; the very great increase in those cases since the abolition of capital punishment may be in part accounted for by the increased willingness to prosecute. But

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when it is said that formerly they prosecuted for the minor offence, I believe that is a mistake, for it did not rest with the prosecutrix unless she perjured herself—it rested with the magistrate to determine the nature of the charge, and with the clerk of assize to frame the indictment, and with the jury to decide of what offence, if any, the accused was guilty. I fully admit that juries were more in the habit then of convicting for the minor offence, but the commitments for rape in the seven years subsequent to the abolition of capital punishment have been 818, to set against 412 in the seven preceding years; and, allowing a fair deduction for the unwillingness of parties to prosecute when the offence was capital, I must say that, the number having doubled, this crime cannot be cited in favour of the abolition of capital punishment as tending to diminish crime. With regard to arson, the capital punishment was abolished in 1837; in the 22 previous years the commitments amounted to 897; in the 11 years since (half the former period) to 946; being more than double the proportion. With respect to forgery, it has been stated that that head comprises many offences not included under it in former returns, and that therefore the comparison is unfair. To a limited extent that is true. By the 1st William IV., c. 66, all offences relating to forgery were consolidated, and, by the 10th section, forged receipts for the delivery of goods, formerly punishable as simple frauds, were brought within the law of forgery. No doubt this would disturb the comparison of commitments to some extent; but, when it is stated that the larger class of offences are of this kind, I must be permitted to say that that is directly contrary to the fact; for I have here a statement which shows that these cases bear a very small proportion to the whole. Then with regard to burglary. On this point it is said I have committed a most egregious error, and I am charged with making what amounts to a gross misstatement. It is alleged that about the time that capital punishment was changed, the crime was by law defined anew, and made to include offences committed between certain hours of the evening and morning—including a much longer time than before; and that, although I was aware of this circumstance, I nevertheless had argued that the crime of burglary had greatly multiplied. Now, by the same statute which abolished capital punishment in cases of burglary, the time which is essential
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to the offence of burglary is declared to be between the hours of nine o'clock in the evening and six o'clock in the following morning; whereas before this enactment the time was defined by common law as the period between sunrise and sunset; so that the assertion that this statute greatly enlarged the period within which the offence could be committed, is quite contrary to the fact; and I have a statement before me of the committals for burglary during the ten years preceding the abolition of capital punishment and the ten years after, showing a considerable increase in the latter period; but I will not trouble the House by entering further into this part of the subject. I have already said that I do not ask the House to decide this question upon statistical figures—but to take a broad common-sense view of the whole question. I ask the House whether they are prepared, on full consideration, to say that capital punishment can be abolished with a due regard to the interests of the country and the prevention of crime? The hon. Gentleman has adverted to the crime of high treason. Now, we certainly in these days do not hear much of this crime—but I ask whether, if a man levies war against the Queen, and involves the country in scenes of war and bloodshed, the law is to be chargeable with cruelty in consigning that man to the scaffold, in order to deter, by the fear of the utmost penalty of the law, others from pursuing a course that might lead to the death of hundreds or thousands of Her Majesty's subjects? I hold that till it can be clearly and satisfactorily shown that some other punishment will equally deter from the commission of crime, and protect society, it is the duty of Government and Parliament to exercise the power of capital punishment now possessed, in order to the vindication of the law and the protection of the subject. My hon. Friend trusted that in this debate I would not appeal to the vindictive feelings as an argument, and that I would not give in to the notion that merely because a man was guilty of a great crime, therefore he ought to die. There are, however, considerations connected with this view of the question, which I cannot but regard as of importance. If the impression is once produced in the minds of the community, that the law does not sufficiently protect them from the crime of murder, will an inducement not be held out to private individuals to do what they will be led to regard as a protection for themselves? I believe the

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effect would be to promote feelings of private revenge that are now kept down and subdued because the law is known to be strong enough to vindicate its rights, and inflict that punishment which is essential to the protection of human life. I will refer, very briefly, to what has been said with reference to the absence of executions producing the absence of convictions for murder. It has been stated, that in the years 1834, 1835, and 1836, no executions whatever took place in London and Middlesex, and that during those years no conviction for murder occurred. Now, I might draw just the contrary inference from the statement, and say, there were no convictions for murder, and, therefore, no executions. The law still attaching the penalty of death to murder, there were no persons executed in those years, be-cause none were convicted; and, therefore, I might argue that the law was effectual. I cannot understand how any argument for abolishing capital punishments can be founded on the statement that no executions took place, seeing there were no convictions. But he might appeal to the experience of the year 1833 with far more force than his hon. Friend appealed to the following years. He might say, that, because there were various executions in 1833, they had proved deterrent in 1834, 1835, and 1836. But while it is true that in 1834, 1835, and 1836, no executions and no convictions took place in London, as had been stated, yet I must remind my hon. Friend, that during the same period several took place at Horsemonger-lane gaol—which, as regarded the population, might be said to be comprised in London as much as any of the metropolitan prisons. My hon. Friend, however, reserved his strongest argument to the last, namely, the evils arising from public executions. I quite agree with him, that those evils are very great. Nothing is more to be deplored or censured than the desire exhibited by multitudes—and the facilities given them, for mere pecuniary gain, to gratify their depraved taste—to witness the last dying agonies of a fellow-creature suffering the extreme penalty of the law. This is an evil which all should seek to check; but some years ago, when a Bill was brought forward to alter the practice, none protested more against that measure than my hon. Friend, on the ground that it would be likely to perpetuate this kind of punishment; and yet my hon. Friend has made the evils arising from public
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executions his strongest argument. On this point, I can say no more than that I entirely concur with him in the censure he has cast upon the scenes attending public executions; but a public execution is not absolutely necessary. If that question comes before the House to be discussed on its merits, I shall be prepared to give my opinion; but I warn the House against supposing that it is necessary to the maintenance of capital punishments to have them public; and, therefore, the arguments of my hon. Friend have no direct bearing on that question. My hon. Friend has spoken of the opinions of two English and three Irish Judges, and several Recorders; but I will remind my hon. Friend that when those distinguished functionaries were examined before Parliamentary Committees, the great majority gave a decided opinion that capital punishment could not be dispensed with in cases of murder. I confess that I can address no new arguments to the House in addition to what I have said on this subject on former occasions, I will only express the hope that the House will not allow my hon. Friend even to lay his Bill on the table; and that the opinion of the House will be so firmly and decidedly expressed as to leave on the public mind no doubt whatever as to the views entertained on this question.
MR. BRIGHT: I am rejoiced to have heard the speech of the right hon. Baronet the Home Secretary, because it does not indicate that he feels quite so confident on this question this year as he did twelve months since. The right hon. Baronet commenced his speech by an allusion to this not being the time when my hon. Friend's proposition could be safely entertained. The right hon. Baronet would seem to admit by that that he was looking forward to a better time; and I suppose he means a time which is not far distant, when the proposition of my hon. Friend the Member for Dumfries may be taken into consideration, and may become the law of the land. The right hon. Gentleman has also, as the House will observe, repeatedly, during his speech, repudiated any conclusion drawn from the statistics of this question. I agree with him in thinking that statistics cannot be absolutely relied on with regard to this subject, because they are so likely to be disturbed; and I should not urge that the question should be decided on the figures connected with it, although I do not fear the conclusion to which they lead. But

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the right hon. Baronet has avoided throughout his speech any defence of the present system on any ground of principle. He has asserted that nations are not prevented by divine law from putting individuals to death when the public safety requires it; but he does not assume that we are bound by that law to inflict capital punishment, or that it is impossible that a time may come when the public safety, even according to his own view, may no longer require it. Now, I think this is a question which at this moment is invested with peculiar interest, because recent events have brought it before the public view in a manner which demands attention. And when it was said by some persons that the cause of my hon. Friend might suffer if he brought the question forward at this moment, I gave him my opinion that there never was a time when it was so much his duty to bring it before the Legislature as on the present occasion. We all wish—nobody, I am sure, more than the right hon. Baronet—that public executions—that capital punishments—should be done away with; but, unfortunately, public executions, that is to say, the infliction of capital punishment, is so ancient a practice—at least, nearly as ancient as crime—that we have become used to it, and men do not investigate carefully the grounds on which a contrary practice is urged on this House. I agree with the right hon. Gentleman as to the limits of the question; I believe it is unnecessary to go into what is called the Scripture argument. The hon. Baronet the Member for Oxford University is not present, and as he was the only Member who used that argument last year, it may not be necessary to say any thing in contradiction of it now. But there is one thing which may be said for the conversion, if it be possible, of such Members as the hon. Baronet the Member for the University of Oxford, and that is, that for some centuries after the introduction of the Christian era, no person holding, or professing to hold, the Christian religion was known to interfere in capital punishments. It is on record that a Roman emperor removed Christians from the office of prefect, and refused to appoint them to that office, upon the ground that their religion prevented them from adjudicating in cases of capital punishment. And we have it upon the testimony of a learned historian, that up to the period of the fifth century Christianity was understood
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to forbid its converts to be implicated in any degree whatever in the infliction of death upon criminals. We come then to the simple question of expediency, upon which I am ready to rest this case, although I think a great deal might be said upon it on grounds of principle, with which expediency has little or nothing to do. The right hon. Baronet said he would not rely upon statistics; but there can be no doubt that statistics prove this—that in those countries where capital punishments are not now, and have not been for many years inflicted, the lives of the inhabitants are at least as safe as they are in those countries where they are still inflicted. There can be no doubt that in the New England States of North America, in Tuscany, Belgium, Sweden, Austria, Prussia, and Prance—that in all those countries where capital punishments are rarely or never inflicted, human life is just as safe as it is in Spain, or in England or in Ireland—in the former country, where capital punishments are very frequent, or in the two latter countries, where they have been much too common. But our past legislation, I think, affords no proof of the advantages of capital punishment. I recollect a passage in a very admirable piece of biography—I mean the life of that most excellent man the father of the hon. Baronet the Member for South Essex, which bears upon this point. In the Life of Sir Thomas Powell Buxton, by his Son, that eminent man is reported to have stated, in a speech on this very question of capital punishments, that within the lifetime of persons then living not more than fifty or sixty offences had been capital—that this House went on increasing the number of capital offences until they amounted to 250, and that having reached that enormous amount, the Legislature found all its efforts ineffectual to repress the commonest offences by this punishment. And from 250 capital offences some twenty-five or thirty years ago, the House has very wisely come down until now practically we have only one offence which is punished with death; and there is a strong argument to be drawn from this fact—that whereas hanging men up at Newgate, by the dozen occasionally, was not sufficient to put down even common and minor offences, I cannot conceive how the same punishment can he effectual to put down offences which are committed under circumstances of intense passion in most cases, and under a condition

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of mind in which, I am quite sure, the deterring effect of any punishment must be exceedingly small. Now, hanging for horsestealing, or for forgery, or for burglary, or for coining, did not and could not suppress, or even prevent, the increase of those crimes, and the House has admitted it by abolishing the punishment. Well, then, how can it have an effect to put down the crime of murder, which is almost always committed under circumstances which shut out from the contemplation of the criminal the consideration of that which must follow from the offence? I am of opinion that the effect of punishment to deter from crime has been at all times greatly over-rated, and this is probably at the foundation of much of the error which has prevailed with regard to the measurement of punishment for particular offences. Now, take the cases which have recently occurred. I am glad this question has come on now, because of those cases, for they afford the best possible illustration for those who oppose the punishment of death. If the abolition of this punishment cannot be defended upon that most awful case at Norwich, I say our principles and policy are not worth defending at all. Now, take the case of the individual who suffered death the other day at Norwich. Does any hon. Member of this House believe that the threat of any punishment, either in this world or the next, could have deterred that man from the crime which he committed? It was evidently long contemplated. It was the crime of an educated man. It was a crime committed on calculation. It was the crime of a man of remarkable ability in some points of view. Every precaution was taken to escape discovery; and there can be no doubt whatever that all punishments which legislatures or courts of justice could have inflicted would have had no effect in deterring him from his grave offence. Take the case that occurred at Bristol, and the same argument will apply. The murder there was not premeditated. It arose from great aggravation. It arose from sudden impulse, when the opportunity offered; and there can be no doubt in that case, precisely the same as in the other, that the idea of the punishment was wholly shut out from the contemplation of the criminal. There are other cases to which I might refer where the same argument might be used. But now I would ask the House to consider what is the effect of these executions. The right hon. Baronet,
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if I understood him, admits that the effect of these executions on the public assembled to witness them is bad. But the object of a public execution is to bring people together. And they are brought together that they may see the awful punishment which the law assigns to certain offences. Now, we have it in the public papers that at the moment when that murderer at Norwich fell, there was a shout of execration from the thousands that were assembled. I ask the House whether that shout of execration did not arise from that feeling which is the source of murder—whether it did not arise from a vindictive feeling, out of which must necessarily have sprung the deed in his case—the very offence for which he suffered? There can be no doubt that among the twenty thousand persons who, we are told, were there assembled, a large number returned to their homes in some degree more ready to commit a crime of violence than they were before they had attended the execution. We have it upon the page of ancient writers, and I think it is especially mentioned by St. Augustine, that gladiatorial exhibitions and the execution of criminals in the circus had the effect of increasing crime—that they increased the ferocity of the people, and that the sight of those cruel acts made the people less merciful, and more inclined to the commission of crime. But that case at Bristol is one of a still more horrible character. I cannot conceive how any Government can continue, or wish to continue—I believe the right hon. Baronet does not wish to continue—a punishment which can lead to scenes so frightful and disgusting as took place at the recent execution at Bristol. What can be more appalling than the sight of half-a-dozen men dragging a woman of 18 or 20 years of age—a woman untrained, most ignorant, to some extent partly imbecile—dragging her to a public execution, and clergymen coaxing or exhorting her to walk quietly to the scaffold. Now, what could be the effect upon the multitude assembled to witness that execution? I do not believe there is a single Member of this House who can be of opinion that the effect of that execution upon any human being who witnessed it would be otherwise than most unfavourable for the very purpose for which these executions are assumed to take place. There is another very strong argument with regard to the publicity of these punishments. I think it invests criminals with a character which is bad for

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the criminal and for the public. There was an execution in Wales the other day—I think at Brecon. When the individual was convicted—when the jury had pronounced him guilty, or when the judge had sentenced him—some person in the court called out to him and said, "Now, Jem, mind you die game!" That was the expression of some person, a comrade it might be of his, who was in the court and saw all the awful scene. And the man did "die game," according to their views; and the sheriff, and the clergyman, and every officer connected with the execution of that criminal, I believe, would say that the effect of that single expression in court had been most unfavourable upon his mind—that during the whole period that elapsed between the trial and the time of his execution he was maintaining the resolution to "die game." He was not listening to the chaplain. He was not preparing himself for that tribunal before which he was so soon to be sent; and his accomplice, or his comrade, and such as he who witnessed the execution, would, of course, glory in the hardihood exhibited, and the defiance which this criminal bade to the law and to its terrors. But there is another point connected with this which I think important. Why is it that the newspapers give such great notoriety to these cases of murder? Why, chiefly because there is the death of a human being in the question. If the murderer was to be subjected to a punishment short of death, do you think your newspaper offices would have been crowded in all the towns of the country waiting for the newspapers with all the horrid particulars of the Norwich execution or the Norwich case? No. The murderer would be a murderer, but he would not be a hero; and you would find that that most mischievous appetite which is created under these exciting circumstances, and which among the feeble, or incapable, or vicious portion of the population brings on a repetition of the offence, would no longer be created and excited. Now, I have some cases of the results of that kind of excitement which I think are striking. Some time ago a young man in the town of Manchester—in the open street—shot a woman who was either his wife, or with whom he had been living as his wife, and who for some cause had left him. He was executed at Liverpool. Very shortly after a young man in the open street—precisely as in the former case—cut the throat of a young
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girl to whom he had been paying his addresses in the town of Stockport. Neither of them denied the crime. In fact, there were many people in the street at the time the offences were committed. Well, that young man at Stockport was also hanged. Almost immediately afterwards, a young man at Leeds stabbed a young woman to whom he was paying his addresses—stabbed under circumstances which made his escape impossible. He returned immediately to his house, and there could not for a moment be a doubt of his guilt. Since that there have been two other cases. I have not the particulars, but in one there was a murder followed by suicide, and in another there was an attempt at murder which did not succeed. Now, these cases are evidently all of the same class. They have been committed under almost precisely similar circumstances. They have followed in rapid succession; and I believe that the fact of the great notoriety of these cases—first of all, of the offence, then of the trial, then, and which is made still more notorious, of the execution, and all the horrible circumstances attending the execution—I believe the effect of this has been, to induce the commission of these offences in as great a number as I have stated. The right hon. Baronet the Home Secretary, in reply to my hon. Friend's argument as to the irregularity and injustice of this punishment, appears to me to have used arguments which are utterly fallacious. He says, my hon. Friend's punishment would not be more regular than this. I think the right hon. Baronet must know his argument was unsound. If you had a punishment short of that of death, it is clear you would not find men acquitted while there was a moral, I may say a legal, certainty of their guilt; and although there would still remain a difference in the guilt of criminals, as there is now, you would be able, in some degree, to apportion the punishment to the guilt. For instance, if the punishment was perpetual imprisonment, you could, if you thought fit, after a certain period, relax its rigours with regard to those whose offence was not of the blackest die, and you could continue it in all its severity to those who had committed offences of the very highest nature. But the right hon. Baronet must know that the present irregularity of punishment is a thing which saps the very foundation of your judicial system altogether. It is quite notorious that juries in many cases allow men to escape, of whose guilt

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they have a moral certainty. A friend of mine has a letter from a physician in a town in the north of England, in which he states that he knows that not less than four murderers are now at liberty in his district, every one of whom has been tried, of whose guilt there cannot be a shadow of doubt, and is not in the minds of the people; and yet they have been tried and acquitted, and acquitted on this ground solely, that men were on their juries so conscientious on this point, or so timid, that they seized upon objections which were not valid, and, rather than send these men to the scaffold, they allowed them wholly to escape. Now, upon the principle of my hon. Friend the Member for Dumfries, these men would not have escaped; they would now have been enduring a punishment commensurate with their crimes. But I would ask the right hon. Baronet's attention to one or two cases which have come very distinctly and painfully under his own notice, and I apologise to the right hon. Gentleman if anything I may say shall call up recollections that may be painful; but he will, I am sure, admit that this question is of so much importance that a Member of this House, holding such strong opinions as I do upon it, is bound to lay the whole case before the House, with the view of bringing about such a change in the law as he may believe to be desirable. Now the right hon. Baronet will recollect a case at Durham last year, in which two men were convicted of the murder of the Duke of Cleveland's gamekeeper. One of those men was hanged. The other was not. The ground taken was, that it was believed the shot fired by the one man produced the fatal effect. The evidence was to that effect. I have it from very good authority that not only the man who was executed, but his comrade who was reprieved, was of opinion that the selection had fallen upon the wrong man, and that the man who was hanged had not fired the shot which had taken fatal effect; and, I may add, that that also is the opinion of others who were interested in the case. I find no fault with the evidence, nor with the opinion of the Judge, nor with the decision of the right hon. Baronet, if it was fair to make a selection upon this ground; but I am bound to believe that the right hon. Baronet did shrink from the hanging of the two men upon the evidence; and that, under the circumstances, if one was reprieved, the other should also have been reprieved. But
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what was the effect of that execution? At this moment there are two men awaiting their trial at Durham for the murder of another gamekeeper, whose murder, it was said, was contemplated by the two men convicted last year; and there is a strong belief that the murder which has taken place this year has been in revenge for the sacrifice of the life of their comrade who was executed last year; and I know that persons who gave evidence last year on that trial have not felt they were so secure as before in their ordinary passing through the country, owing to the excited and irritated feelings which had been produced by the results of that trial. The right hon. Baronet will recollect another case—the case of a young woman who was convicted of a murder last year near this House, and who was not executed. Now, the right hon. Baronet was probably of opinion then, and may be now, that the reprieve of that criminal was not a course which, under the present state of the law, ought to have been taken. But compare the case of Annette Myers with Harriet Thomas, and you will see that to reprieve the former, and to hang the latter, is an administration of the law that cannot create respect for it, or any belief in its justice or impartiality. I was glad that Annette Myers was not hanged. I received a letter from the family of the soldier whom she murdered, requesting me to apply to the right hon. Baronet the Home Secretary, and to express a hope on their behalf that she might not be executed, and it speaks well for that family, that they had such a feeling; but it was a feeling that was participated in almost through the whole country, and the Home Secretary only obeyed the public sentiment in the course he took on that occasion. I believe it is a practice with the right hon. Baronet, and with Gentlemen holding his office, to refer those cases to the Judges where application for a commutation of sentence has been made. But how difficult it is to arrive at a proper conclusion with regard to these! There are fourteen Judges, I believe, who go circuit. Before the whole of these, I presume, at times these cases come. Here are fourteen or fifteen men to whom reference is made. They are not asked in the capacity of a jury, of whom a majority may decide, but one Judge is asked with regard to this case, and another with regard to that, and the opinion of one Judge varies very much from the opinion of another. Now, there was a man recently convicted at Newcastle. He was

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convicted of murdering his own child. The jury recommended him to mercy. The Judge asked on what ground. They said, on the ground of their hostility to capital punishments. The Judge observed that that was not a ground he could entertain. A deputation afterwards waited upon the Judge, who said that he would be delighted if they could suggest anything that would serve as a ground upon which he could recommend a lesser punishment. But suppose he was a Judge of another character—a man with strong opinions in favour of capital punishment—a man of stern and unrelenting character—then you would find that the right hon. Baronet from one Judge would get an answer that would justify a reprieve, and from another an answer of an opposite character, though the cases and facts might be precisely the same. Well, then, I say that a punishment which is so hostile to the opinion of juries—which places the Home Secretary in this painful, I will say this distressing, position—the execution of which depends upon the opinions of twelve or fourteen men of varying temperament—I say that a punishment like that is not fit for this age and country, and is one which, with our regard for justice and law, ought no longer to be retained and practised. Now, with regard to public opinion, the right hon. Baronet appears to me to be in some degree not willing to take into his view the strength of opinion on this question. The right hon. Baronet will recollect a case of execution last year at Monmouth, where nearly every householder and every male inhabitant sent a memorial entreating that the execution might not take place. [Sir G. GREY: It was not upon the merits of the ease; they objected to the execution taking place at Monmouth.] The right hon. Baronet says it was not upon the merits of the case. The memorialists did not wish it to take place at Monmouth; but if you took it to Newport you would have had a similar memorial from there. It was not because the people of Monmouth had a greater objection to it than the people of Newport or Abergavenny would have had that they memorialised. How many memorials has the right hon. Baronet had from Bristol? I am told that 3,000 women signed a memorial praying that Harriet Thomas might not be executed; that as many men did the same; that five different religious congregations also forwarded memorials; and that the mayor, the magistrates, and the authorities, I believe, of Gloucester
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also sent memorials relative to the same case. Surely this proves that public opinion is running very rapidly in the direction to which, I feel certain, the right hon. Baronet only wishes it might run faster, in order that it may call upon this House, in a voice not to be resisted, that this question may be settled in the only way it ever can be settled in a Christian and civilised country. An intimate friend of mine is very active upon this question—I allude to Mr. Gilpin of Bishopsgate-street—and when this question is settled, I believe that his name will be ever known in connexion with it. I have had information from him as to a largo number of meetings—probably fifty—that he has attended in various parts of the country. There has never been a question, however exciting, however interesting, which has gathered larger assemblies in the largest rooms in every city—not of passionate and hasty persons, ready to pronounce against the punishment of death, but of persons prepared to argue the question dispassionately, taking into consideration the statistics which the right hon. Baronet is disposed to cast aside; and from all these meetings there have come most unanimous declarations which attest that the public opinion is ripe upon this subject. Now, the right hon. Baronet has some difficulty upon one point. He has not faith in this House with regard to the question. He believes that in the course he takes he is acting in accordance with the preponderating opinion of Parliament. I do not say what the House of Lords would do; but I believe the right hon. Baronet mistakes if he thinks you would not go with him in abolishing the punishment. I believe, also, that five-sixths of the hon. Members of the House have not considered the question minutely, because it is not a party question. You must grapple with it. Why take it for granted that, because people have been put to death for generations or for centuries, you ought to go on hanging still? Recollect that "custom without truth is but agedness of error." We are about to discover that at this time of day, and in this country—with public opinion as it is—with the undoubted fact that public opinion in favour of the sacredness of human life, is ten thousand times more powerful to preserve it than all the terrors of the law; under such circumstances we shall come to the conclusion that this question must be settled, and that the death punishment will be abolished by the House

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if the right hon. Baronet will propose it. Suppose he were to come down with a proposition that the punishment should be abolished. What would be the result? I believe there would not be six men out of the 656 who would object to it—not a man who would move an amendment to it. It might be suggested that the measure should be temporary—an experiment for five or ten years—and I should be willing even to consent to that. Now, the right hon. Baronet has more influence in this matter than anybody else. He is, in his present high office, the one authority in the kingdom. His dictum would still the fears of the timid—the doubts of the hesitating. It would put an end to the indifference or opposition which prevails now in the House to a considerable extent, and, throughout the whole kingdom there would be an almost universal acknowledgment that the Government and the right hon. Baronet had acted in accordance with the intelligence and experience of the age, and that they had done that which was in accordance with common sense and Christian principle. Now, I have shown, I think, that statistics, so far as we have gone into them, do not prove that life is more secure in this country than in countries where capital punishments are not inflicted. I have shown that our past severity has failed; that we have had sixty capital offences, which number has been raised to 250, and has now been reduced to one; that the infliction of death did not deter from the common offences, and that it cannot be expected to succeed better in the case of the gravest crimes. I have shown that executions excite the passions which are the sources of murders; that the notoriety which is given to these cases is evil for the criminal and the public; that some guilty persons escape, while the innocent may suffer; and that the greatest irregularity and injustice inevitably prevail. Two cases which recently occurred—the one at Norwich and the other at Worcester—are illustrative of the truth of the proposition I endeavour to establish: the Norwich criminal was a much greater criminal than the one at Worcester—the one a hardened and a calculating murderer, and the other an almost imbecile, a wandering, incapable vagabond, to whom the leniency of the Crown, according to the opinions of great numbers in Worcester, might have been extended. But let me say that the right hon. Baronet is more interested in having this punishment abolished
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than any other man in England. The Judge upon the bench does not suffer so much as he. The jury do not suffer, because they decide according to fact. The Judge decides according to law; but the law gives to the Home Secretary a veto, which throws upon him the full, the awful responsibility of the execution of the punishment. No doubt, the right hon. Baronet has exercised the awful duties of his office to the best of his judgment and conscience; but how much more gratifying would it be to his feelings to be relieved from the responsibility attaching to such an office. It is on all these grounds, and assuring the House that I feel more strongly on this question than upon any other that can come before it, I have the greatest pleasure in supporting the Motion of my hon. Friend the Member for Dumfries.
MR. H. DRUMMONDsaid, the hon. Gentleman who had just sat down had argued the question with his usual ability; but he thought he had the happiness to have heard the same speech before. ["No, no!"] Yes; he remembered precisely the same appeal to the right hon. Baronet—he remembered the same remarkable cases from Durham—and he remembered, too, the answer which was given to those cases at the time. The hon. Gentleman the Member for Dumfries, who began the debate, anticipated that in a short time the law enforcing capital punishments would be repealed. He confessed, he, for one, should not be surprised at it; for he saw every day increased morbid sentimentality, increased false humanity, and increased sympathy with murderers on every side. He had seen the petitions which came to the Secretary of State for the pardon of murderers with unbounded disgust; for he saw that, so far from any reverence for human life being manifested, it was just the reverse: there was a total indifferentism towards murder, and a sympathy with murderers. It was unfair in the hon. Gentleman the Member for Manchester to say that the right hon. Baronet the Home Secretary anticipated the time when this law would be altered. He (Mr. H. Drummond) understood him to say nothing of the sort. That murders had increased, there could be no doubt. They had increased not only in frequency, but in intensity; and he believed, that they had done so mainly because murderers were made heroes in that House; and because these debates, which had gone abroad, instilled into people's minds the idea that, after all,

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murder was not such a detestable crime as in the dark ages people were accustomed to think it. One argument used was, that murderers said they did not care for being hanged. He wondered if the people who used this argument were ever at school. At school it was common enough to hear boys say they did not care for being flogged; but at the same time they all knew very well that boys did care for being flogged, and that their fear of a flogging did prevent many offences from being committed. With respect to secondary punishments, which people were so anxious to substitute for the punishment of death, nothing could be so fatal as to look to public opinion, expressed at public meetings, as their ground of action. If they adopted secondary punishments, of course they must have places where secondary punishments could be inflicted. He had lately presented a petition to the House on this subject; and he wished the House to hear what people would say on the other side. The petitioners complained that, judging from the splendid buildings which were erected to carry out the cellular system, it was and must be a most costly outlay. Separate apartments were required, which should be lofty and spacious, well warmed and ventilated, with conveniences and even luxuries which were known only to the opulent; the diet, also, was required to be generous, in order to sustain the mind and body, and prevent them from wasting away in idleness and ennui. Now, no sooner would such establishments be built, than a mass of petitions would be poured into the House, as much as those that were now directed against the punishment of death. The hon. Gentleman who spoke last, said, that they might mitigate and modify the punishment for murder—that while some were confined for life, others might be liberated on their good conduct.
MR. BRIGHT: I did not say so. I said, it might be possible to relax the imprisonment with respect to hard labour or solitary confinement. I referred to no provision for their coming into society again—it is the present law that does that.
MR. H. DRUMMONDbegged the hon. Gentleman's pardon, as he had misunderstood him. They were told that this was not a theological question, and undoubtedly he was not going to talk theologically. But there was one plain sentence in holy Scripture, to which he could not but advert—" He that sheddeth man's blood, by man
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shall his blood be shed." An hon. Gentleman had said, that they were not bound by the Christian religion so to act. No, certainly not; they might act in defiance of it if they pleased; but if they did, they must take the consequences; and these consequences, he believed, would be, that not only murders would be increased, but also deeds of violence.
SIR E. N. BUXTONfelt reluctantly bound to say that he was not prepared to vote for the Motion of his hon. Friend the Member for Dumfries, inasmuch as it seemed to him that they had not yet arrived at that point at which they could say that there was so great a difficulty and uncertainty in obtaining convictions for murder that they must abolish the punishment now attached to the crime. On the other hand, it appeared to him that there was a growing dislike amongst the people of this country to convictions in capital cases. He had observed instances of this in the county he represented, where some atrocious cases of poisoning had occurred. In one case, a woman charged with poisoning her husband was now at large; but so convinced was the prosecutor of her guilt, that he tried her again on a second indictment, and he (Sir E. Buxton) had no doubt upon his own mind that she would have been convicted if the punishment were not death. In a second case, there was a conviction; but again, in a third case, also that of a woman, there was no conviction. If they found that there was an increasing difficulty in getting convictions in cases of murder, they would thus be only adding to the evil by retaining the punishment. He believed it would be a much better check to crime to have a certainty of punishment in a diminished form, than a severer punishment if uncertain. While he could not assent to the Motion, he thought that before long they might, through motives of expediency, be obliged to come to the conclusion it involved. He entirely concurred in the remark of the right hon. Gentleman the Secretary of State for the Home Department, that public executions were a great moral evil; and he would suggest, as public trials took place within the limits of a building, so should executions. It was well known that at Norwich a much larger number of persons desired to be present at the trial than could be accommodated; and he saw no reason why executions should not take place within the precincts of the gaol; so that although

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they would be public like the trial, very few could be present at them.
MR. BROTHERTONsaid, that after the powerful and eloquent speech of the hon. Member for Manchester, he did not think it necessary to trespass beyond a moment on the attention of the House. The hon. Gentleman who had just resumed his seat, and the right hon. Baronet the Home Secretary, had told them that, in their opinion, the time was not yet come when the country ought to dispense with capital punishment. He would humbly ask what was the symptom whereby they were to know when that time would come? He had often heard it said that they were a Christian Legislature, and that they lived in a Christian country. But when he came to consider the important injunction respecting our rule of faith, he very much feared that they disbelieved the principles they professed, by not looking more to the reformation of society for the prevention of crime. It was fully shown and admitted that capital punishment did not prevent crime, and that it had a demoralising effect on those who witnessed it. It was the duty of the Legislature to act on and inculcate the principle of cherishing the sacredness of human life; for if they should disregard it, how could they expect the people, generally, to pay respect to it? He believed, although some of the Judges were favourable to capital punishment, that the improved education of the people had given rise to a strong public feeling against the taking away of human life. It was recorded of a judge having stated that a man who would cut down a tree would take away human life—and a man was hung for cutting down a cherry tree in Essex. Lord Campbell, in his Lives of the Lord Chancellors, related of Lord Loughborough, that he thought the change of burning to hanging would have the effect of awing those who beheld it, and deterring from the crime of murder. When it was the habit of judges to condemn to burning, public opinion was found to be very much opposed to it, as it was now opposed to hanging. He wished to see the punishment of death totally abolished. He believed that by such a measure crime would not be increased, while by it they would be acting in accordance with justice, humanity, and sound policy. After the eloquent speech of the hon. Member for Manchester, he (Mr. Brotherton) did not feel himself called upon to enter more fully into the question, but
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would give his cordial support to the Motion.
SIR G. STRICKLANDentirely dissented from the opinion expressed by the hon. Baronet the Member for South Essex. He hoped to live to see the day when capital punishment would be nearly if not wholly abolished; but he hoped he would never live to see it take place privately. His horror of an execution would be ten times greater if it were to happen in a private manner. Prom an early period of his life he entertained a horror of capital punishment, but on grounds different from those taken by other hon. Gentlemen. Having been called to the bar, he went circuit for a few years, when lie became so deeply impressed with the imperfect character of all human tribunals, that he felt thoroughly convinced that in some instances the innocent had been found guilty, and were wrongfully executed. He had seen poor wretches in the dock struck with such terror at their position as to be unable to defend themselves. He had the satisfaction of seeing that state of things altered, and of having assisted in giving counsel to the prisoners, which was not previously the case. Still, when he considered that human tribunals must he imperfect, he thought they ought not to have recourse to that punishment which, if wrongly inflicted, never could be recalled. He believed that argument and public feeling were daily gaining strength in favour of the sacredness of human life; and he hoped the time was not far distant when capital punishment might be totally and safely abolished.
COLONEL THOMPSONwould submit, that the practical way to put an end to capital punishment, would be by setting about the preparation and improvement of some punishment not including death, and trying the effect of it on those cases or crimes which at present were spared from the actual execution of capital sentences. If this was proved effectual, there would be a disposition to trust the repression of murder to the same. But there appeared a total absence of such punishment at present, though there would be no difficulty in creating it. The public had not much confidence in transportation as now administered, even though declared to be for life; for there was always the idea abroad, that a criminal, by pretended reformation, would find some good-natured governor to send him back again. There should be a removal to some distant land, return from

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which should be made as hopeless as from death, with the single exception of innocence being subsequently proved. In this way the threat might be held out of cutting off from all that made life valuable, as effectually as by the rope, value four-pence, whose cheapness had been contrasted with the expense of penitentiaries.
SIR G. GREYhoped the public out of doors would not, from the description of the hon. and gallant Gentleman, be induced to adopt the idea that transported convicts were sometimes sent home by governors, because no governor had the power of exercising the prerogative of mercy. Transportation for life could not be altered, except by the express act of the Sovereign.
LORD NUGENTsaid, that if the supporters of the Motion wished for an argument confirmatory of their views, it was to be found in the actual state of crime at this moment. Not only statistics, but example and experience, were in favour of those views; so that the whole burden of proof rested with their opponents—first, that capital punishment had a tendency to repress crime; and, secondly, that crime could not be equally well repressed by any other punishment. He believed that the great majority of the Judges of the country were in favour of removing the punishment of death, and in corroboration of which, the opinions of Mr. Justice Wight-man, Mr. Justice Coltman, and Mr. Baron Richards, were opposed to death punishment. Mr. M. D. Hill was also of opinion that the punishment of death ought to be abolished; because, he said, if we did wrong, we never could atone for it. [Cries of "Divide!"] In deference to the wish of the House to go to a division, he would at once conclude by appealing to those hon. Members who might have any doubt on their minds to lean to the side of humanity, and vote for the Motion.
SIR H. VERNEYsaid, that a quarter of a century ago, when acting with the father of the noble Lord who spoke last, on the Prison Discipline Committee, he felt as he now did as to the iniquity, abomination, and wickedness, of public executions. He held that they did not tend to repress crime, while they were abhorrent to humanity. He thought the Secretary of State should bring forward some Motion and test the feeling of the House upon the subject of some better mode for the punishment of criminals. A friend of his, a man of benevolent and humane feelings, attended the execution of Rush, in order to
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determine his mind on the subject, and he wrote to him to say that he was fully convinced that if men were no longer seen alive after their conviction, a much better effect would be produced on the public mind.
The House divided:—Ayes 51; Noes 75: Majority 24.

List of the AYES.

Adair, H. E.

Heyworth, L.

Adair, R. A. S.

Hobhouse, T. B.

Aglionby, H. A.

Horsman, E.

Anderson, A.

Lennard, T. B.

Barnard, E. G.

Lushington, C.

Blake, M. J.

Meagher, T.

Bright, J.

Masterman, J.

Brotherton, J.

Mowatt, F.

Clay, J.

O'Brien, J.

Cobbold, J. C.

O'Connell, J.

Cobden, R.

Pilkington, J.

Cowan, C.

Pryse, P.

Crawford, W. S.

Robartes, T. J. A.

Devereux, J. T.

Salwey, Col.

D'Eyncourt, rt. hn. C. T.

Scholefield, W.

Divett, E.

Sidney, Ald.

Ellis, J.

Smith, J. B.

Fagan, W.

Strickland, Sir G.

Fox, W. J.

Thompson, Col.

Gibson, rt. hon. T. M.

Thompson, G.

Greene, J.

Thornely, T.

Hanmer, Sir J.

Trelawny, J. S.

Hardcastle, J. A.

Willcox, B. M.

Harris, R.

Williams, J.

Headlam, T. E.

TELLERS.

Henry, A.

Ewart, W.

Heywood, J.

Nugent, Lord

List of the NOES.

Abdy, T. N.

Howard, Lord E.

Baldock, E. H.

Jervis, Sir J.

Berkeley, hon. Capt.

Keogh, W.

Blackall, S. W.

Lacy, H. C.

Brooke, Sir A. B.

Lewis, G. C.

Campbell, hon. W. F.

Lewisham, Visct.

Clive, H. B.

Littleton, hon. E. R.

Craig, W. G.

M'Taggart, Sir J.

Dalrymple, Capt.

Maitland, T.

Denison, J. E.

Martin, C. W.

Drummond, H.

Maule, rt. hon. F.

Duff, J.

Maunsell, T. P.

Duncuft, J.

Milner, W. M. E.

Dundas, Adm.

Mitchell, T. A.

Dunne, F. P.

Morris, D.

Du Pre, C. G.

O'Connor, F.

Ebrington, Visct.

Ogle, S. C. H.

Evans, J.

Owen, Sir J.

Ferguson, Sir R. A.

Packe, C. W.

Fordyce, A. D.

Palmerston, Visct.

Granger, T. C.

Parker, J.

Greenall, G.

Peel, rt. hon. Sir R.

Grey, rt. hon. Sir G.

Plowden, W. H. C.

Haggitt, F. R.

Portal, M.

Hastie, A.

Prime, R.

Hawes, B.

Pugh, D.

Heald, J.

Richards, R.

Heathcoat, J.

Romilly, Sir J.

Herbert, rt. hon. S.

Sandars, G.

Hildyard, T. B. T.

Sibthorp, Col.

Hope, A.

Somerville, rt.

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Spooner, R.

Verney, Sir H.

Stafford, A.

Watkins, Col. L.

Stansfield, W. R. C.

Wawn, J. T.

Stanton, W. H.

Wilson, J. W.

Sullivan, M.

Wood, rt. hon. Sir C.

Thicknesse, R. A.

TELLERS.

Townley, R. G.

Tufnell, H.

Turner, G. J.

Bellew, R. M.

CROWN PROSECUTIONS (IRELAND).
MR. KEOGH, pursuant to notice, then rose to call the attention of the House to the general management of Crown prosecutions in Ireland, at assizes and sessions, and to the expenditure incurred in these prosecutions. The subject, he said, was one of general importance to Ireland; and the system to which his notice referred, if only in a pecuniary point of view, called loudly for an alteration, seeing that large sums of the public money were expended upon these Crown prosecutions in a manner least calculated to produce the effect for which they were instituted. He did not intend, in bringing forward his Motion, to make the slightest charge against the Government, nor did he intend to refer to the late State prosecutions in Ireland, the more especially as he perceived his hon. Friend the Member for Montrose had a notice on that subject on the Paper, which would shortly be brought before the House; but although he did not intend to refer to those matters, he would have to occupy the attention of the House while he stated some facts in support of his Motion. No doubt the attention of Government had been wholly directed to far more important matters; but still it must not be forgotten that a system which involved a certain speedy and uniform administration of the law ought to form an essential ingredient in any plan for permanently improving the state and condition of Ireland. As regards the expenditure upon these prosecutions, he found that in the year 1847 a vote was taken for Crown prosecutions in Ireland amounting to 71,000 l., forming a very considerable sum in the Miscellaneous Estimates, while in 1830 the expense incurred was only 37,500 l., showing an increase of 34,000 l. in the intermediate period. Another item to which he wished to direct the attention of the House was this: in the year 1846, the expense incurred in the nature of fees payable to counsel for prosecutions was 12,000 l., whilst in the following year, 1847, it had increased to the large sum of 19,000 l.; and therefore, whether
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they consider the importance of this subject, as far as it was calculated to produce an efficient administration of the law in Ireland in the vast expenditure incurred in these prosecutions, it was one well worthy of the attention of the House and the Government. Indeed, it might resolve itself into a question of the propriety of establishing a public prosecutor, or, to follow the example of this country, in appointing Crown prosecutors for the different counties. Some time ago, the system adopted was to have a Crown solicitor in each of the different circuits. That system was continued down to the year 1842, when it was recommended by a Treasury Minute that these Crown solicitors should be made more numerous, with reduced salaries, and distributed over the counties instead of being confined to the circuits, and that system had remained in force ever since; and the result of it had been, of course, to increase the number of persons engaged in these general prosecutions. In addition, however, to these Crown solicitors, there were what were called sessional solicitors. Now, four-fifths of the Crown business was transacted at sessions; and yet, strange to say, small contemptible salaries were paid to these latter officers, which were barely Sufficient to enable them to discharge their duties, whilst the assize solicitor received a much higher remuneration. Every magistrate in the country could speak to the inefficient manner in which the business of his country was managed by the Crown solicitors. They generally travelled in a great hurry through the country, and in most of the prosecutions they were called upon to conduct, they knew little or nothing of the case, being too often instructed by a police sergeant or a stipendiary magistrate; and when the prisoner came to the bar, he had the satisfaction of finding the prosecutor so ignorant of the facts of his case, that the jury had no alternative but to acquit him. That was the mode of proceeding at sessions, and a similar course prevailed at the assizes; and while such a system continued, it was impossible that the criminal business of the country could be well conducted. The consequence was, that the people speculated upon the chances of an acquittal; and how could it be otherwise, when they saw at every assize in eight out of twelve cases there was an acquittal, while parties who had listened to the trials left the court with the impression upon their minds that had an efficient prosecution taken place, a conviction must inevitably

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have followed? But this was not all. Unfortunately, within the last few years a system had obtained a footing, the operation of which was tantamount to a perfect denial of justice. Whether influenced by motives of economy, or a desire to improve the former practice, he could not say, but certainly the Attorney General for the last two years had come to the resolution that in what were called larceny cases, there should be no prosecution at all; so that, during the last two years, offences which did not come up to what were called White-boy cases were not prosecuted at all; and so long as that rule lasted, no expenditure of money, nor exertions of the Government, would be sufficient to suppress crime. Let him, in a word or two, point out the practical operation of this rule. The solicitor to the Crown did not take up larceny cases, because he was not paid for them; and in default of his looking after such prosecutions, the duty devolved upon the clerk of the peace, whose time was so much taken up with them at the sessions and assizes, that he was utterly unable to check the presentments and attend to the management of the fiscal business of the county. In the case of the county of Limerick, for instance, at a recent assize, the clerk of the Crown, instead of attending to that description of business, was engaged every day in conducting prosecutions, to the number of 230; in a great number of which there was an absolute failure of justice, owing to that gentleman having had no previous acquaintance of the circumstances of each case. But the instance of Limerick was not a solitary one; for there were many of his hon. friends in the House who were perfectly aware of similar systems prevailing in different counties in Ireland; and from one end of the country to the other there were heard nothing but complaints upon this subject, mingled with an earnest demand for an alteration in the system. There was another branch of the subject to which he wished to direct the attention of the House and the Government. Without making any invidious observations upon the knowledge of portions of the Irish bar, he might be allowed to say, that within the last few years there had been so many changes and alterations in the criminal law of the country, that for the due and proper conduct of the criminal business of Ireland, it was absolutely necessary that the Crown counsel should be well versed in those changes, and fully competent to carry out a prosecution with
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energy and ability. Now, what was the fact? Why, upon every circuit in Ireland the leading Crown counsel was what was called the "father" of the bar; in other words, as his title indicated, he was the oldest member of the bar; and, in fact and in truth, most, if not all, of the Crown prosecutors had held their offices for the last half-century. A memorial had been presented from one part of Ireland complaining of this—and very properly so, too; for a gentleman who had been so long called to the bar could not be very familiar with the changes which had since and were continually taking place in the law. Another branch of the system of administering criminal justice in Ireland loudly complained of was, the manner in which the duties of the stipendiary magistracy were performed, upon whom, of necessity, many functions rested of a highly important character. Now, from what class were those gentlemen selected? For his part, he generally found them to be retired half-pay captains—perhaps active partisans at elections; and yet they all knew, as he had already observed, upon no one did more important duties devolve than upon these officers—duties, too, which necessarily involved a tolerable acquaintance with the criminal law of the country. For instance, in the absence of counsel, the duty of preparing cases for prosecution at the assizes or the sessions devolved upon the stipendiary magistrate; and yet no care was taken to select them from professions fitting them for the office, such as barristers or solicitors, whose previous avocations would enable them to give proper consideration, and readily understand the cases brought under their notice. It could not be disputed, therefore, that in consequence of these defects in the legal machinery, there were frequent occurrences of an absolute denial of justice. The people of Ireland, ever remarkable for their astuteness, did not lose sight of these things; and, in committing crime, a man well calculated the chances of his conviction in the event of its being detected; so that those defects in the law acted, in point of fact, as instigators to the commital of offences. Without troubling the House, therefore, with further details, he thought he had stated sufficient to justify his asking Government for the appointment of a Committee on this question. Almost every commission which had sat upon the administration of the law in Ireland, had recommended a change in this system; yet, up

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to this time, no effectual change had taken place, with the exception of that made by the Attorney General, which had only served to defeat the ends of justice, and accumulate the expenditure. Upon these grounds—though he did not hope for any immediate amendment—he hoped the House would grant a Committee upon this subject, which would involve no protracted inquiry, but which might result in suggesting a change that would secure a certain, speedy, and uniform administration of the criminal law in Ireland.
Motion made, and Question proposed—
"That a Select Committee be appointed, to inquire into the general management of Crown Prosecutions in Ireland at Assizes and Sessions, and into the expenditure incurred in those prosecutions."
The ATTORNEY GENERALsaid, before he proceeded to state to the House the short grounds why he apprehended this Committee ought not to be appointed, he must be allowed to thank the hon. and learned Member for Athlone for the tone and manner in which he had brought this question before the House. The hon. and learned Gentleman had abstained very properly from introducing topics of a personal or exciting character, which he might have had recourse to; and, following the same course and the same line of argument, he (the Attorney General) would endeavour, as shortly as possible, to satisfy the House that this case could be properly left in the hands in which the constitution had placed it—namely, in that of his right hon. Friend the Attorney General for Ireland. He must, in the first place, remind the House that the large increase of expenditure which the hon. and learned Gentleman referred to, occurred some time before his right hon. Friend the Attorney General for Ireland came into office; but having found, as his right hon. Friend did, from inquiries into the system, that a very expensive system had previously regulated the criminal administration of Ireland, he availed himself of the earliest opportunity, and his long experience, in effecting a reduction of the expenditure to the extent of one half; and he (the Attorney General) was surprised that his hon. and learned Friend, who formerly assisted in some of these Crown prosecutions under the old system, should not have found out, by his recent experience, the beneficial effects which had resulted from the alteration. His right hon. Friend the Attorney General for Ireland came into office early
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in 1848, or towards the close of 1847, while the excessive expenditure took place in 1846 and 1847; but immediately upon his taking office, he adopted measures for reducing it, which he would by and by state in detail, the results of which had proved highly satisfactory, and established his desire to faithfully discharge his duty to the country. Now, some years ago the practice in Ireland was the same as in this country—namely, criminal prosecutions were conducted at the expense of each county, and managed by local solicitors, who employed counsel of their own choice. At that time, none but extraordinary cases were prosecuted at the expense of Government; but with succeeding Attorney Generals changes were made in the system, and numerous cases were taken up by the Crown, which ultimately led to the adoption of a most expensive system. It then became the practice to have two counsel for each case; and when the two Judges on circuit were engaged upon criminal prosecutions in two courts, then it was usual to instruct four counsel to provide for each case, and the consequent expense of preparing four briefs was incurred. At this time, the Crown solicitor was paid by fees, and of course he did not stand very nice in making four briefs, and waiting to ascertain the necessity of such a proceeding. In 1834, Mr. Attorney General Blackburn issued a general direction to the Crown solicitor, which he would now shortly bring under the attention of the House. Mr. Attorney General Blackburn said, in his direction, that, with the concurrence of the Solicitor General, he proposed that in ordinary cases two counsel only should be employed on the part of the Crown, and that the fees payable to the advising and preparing the indictment in each ease should be 3l. 3s., and to his junior, 2l. 2s., the Crown solicitor having discretion in cases of difficulty or importance of calling in the aid of two other Crown counsel, or when two courts were sitting, and cases were likely to come on in both courts. Now, the House would at once perceive that the matter was in a great measure left to the discretion of the Crown solicitor, who, of course, from the manner in which he was paid, considered every case of importance, and continued to fee four counsel and deliver four briefs in each case wherever two courts were sitting. In addition, however, to all that, there was the practice of delivering the depositions in all cases for his advice; but

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he should perhaps best illustrate this point by mentioning a particular case which occurred to his right hon. Friend the present Attorney General for Ireland. The depositions in two hundred and odd cases were delivered to him in one set, and indorsed upon all the cases was the general fee of thirty guineas, to advise upon the propriety of proceeding with the prosecutions; and, considering the station of his right hon. Friend, the House would agree with him in thinking that was a reasonable and moderate sum. But what was the practice when his right hon. Friend came into office? Why, he found that, in addition to this foe of thirty guineas given to him for advising on each case, or on all the cases in a bulk, when the Crown counsel went down on circuit, each case was submitted separately to him to advise upon, with a fee of a guinea each, so that he received 300 guineas for doing that which the Attorney General had already done for thirty. Now, his right hon. Friend came into office late in 1847, or early in 1848. At that time, or soon afterwards, under the direction of the Lord Lieutenant, he went down into the country to conduct a special assize, but his attention was then so much engrossed by the one matter he was engaged upon, that he had not an opportunity of directing his mind to the details of these charges; but on his return, and before the next circuit, he issued to the various Crown solicitors an instruction which reflected as much credit upon the judgment of his right hon. Friend, as the ready acquiescence in its terms was honourable to the profession of which the hon. and learned Gentleman who had introduced this subject was a member. On the 4th of July, 1848, his right hon. Friend issued this circular:—
"1. No more than two counsel shall be employed in each case on the part of the Crown; this rule to apply to all cases, whether only one or both courts are disposing of criminal business. If only one is so occupied, the counsel to be employed are the permanent Crown counsel on the circuit; when both courts are engaged in criminal business, the two supernumerary counsel ought to be employed. When convenient, it will be advisable that one of the permanent and one of the supernumerary counsel should be employed in each court; but this is to be at the discretion of the senior Crown counsel, who will make such arrangements as he shall consider most conducive to the public service; but the expense of more than two counsel is not to be incurred in any case. In any case this will render it necessary that the permanent counsel should return any briefs they may have received, which, in consequence of both courts sitting in criminal business, they shall be unable to attend to."
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It was very creditable to the bar that they had acquiesced in this rule. The second rule was this:—
"2. When there are a number of cases of the same description, and only one or two witnesses to be examined, as, for instance, in prosecutions under the recent Act, for having arms without licence in a proclaimed district, as occurred in some counties on the last circuit, only one counsel is to be employed in each such case, and a very small fee paid."
The necessity of this rule would be apparent when the House was informed, that under the old system four counsel were employed at one assize town in each of eighty cases, arising out of mere matters of form under the Arms Act. The third rule was—
"3. Cases in which prosecutions have been directed by the Attorney General are not to be submitted to counsel on circuit for directions (as is now done in all cases) unless in cases in which such directions are equally required by the Crown solicitor for his guidance, as when some of the witnesses do not attend, or their examinations vary from their informations: the object of this rule is merely to limit the eases for directions to those instances in which such directions are really required."
The House would remember that this rule was to meet the case where, after the depositions had been examined by the Attorney General, they were referred to the Crown counsel, who merely attached his signature to them, for which he received a guinea for each case. The remainder of the instructions were as follows:—
"4. A similar course is to be observed in relation to indictments in these cases of frequent occurrence, in which a settled form of indictment is used, the expense of submitting them to counsel should not be incurred, but in cases of difficulty the present practice is to be continued; but when counsel receive their briefs (if any mistake has occurred in the indictment), they will of course have proper indictments sent to the grand jury.
"5. Briefs are not to be given out to counsel until the prisoner has pleaded, the intention being that the expense of employing counsel shall not be incurred in cases in which the accused is not amenable, or pleads guilty.
"6. The amount of fees whore a trial is had, unless in cases to which the second rule applies, is to be regulated by Mr. Blackburn's letter of June, 1834, namely, not exceeding three guineas to the senior Crown prosecutor, and two guineas to each of the other counsel employed.
"7. The Crown is not to be at the expense of defending prisoners; and therefore should the Court think right to assign counsel for a prisoner's defence, such counsel should act gratuitously, as is the case in England."
These regulations, he was sure, would convince the House that the matter might be safely left in the hands of his right hon. Friend the Attorney General for Ireland.

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He held in his hand a return which would at once show the beneficial operation of these rules since the circuit of 1848. It was a return of the expenses incurred on all the circuits from 1840 to 1848. At the spring Munster assizes of the latter year, before the rules came into operation, 375 trials took place, at the expense of 3,223 l. 10 s.; at the last assizes, under the new rule, 348 trials occurred, at an expense of 878 l.; so that nearly the same number had been tried for 878 l. which had previously cost 3,223 l. Now, did not that show that the matter might be safely left to the judgment of his right hon. Friend? At all events, he apprehended it was sufficient to justify the House in refusing to grant a Committee. What more could a Committee possibly do? While, if one were appointed, would it not be tantamount to saying that the right hon. the Attorney General for Ireland was not pursuing the right course—would it not, indeed, be casting censure on him for what he had really done? But, said the hon. and learned Gentleman who brought forward this Motion, in Ireland the office of Crown counsel was held in most oases by gentlemen who had grown infirm in the discharge of their duties. Well, was not that the case in England? Was it the practice of this country to dismiss gentlemen from their offices because they were somewhat advanced in age? Such cases did not call for the exercise of authority, but ought rather to be left to the good feeling of the gentlemen who held these offices, and it was utterly useless calling upon Government to remove them. He would now, with the permission of the House, just advert in a few words to the memorial to which the hon. and learned Gentleman had made some slight allusion. That memorial had been presented from the grand jury, who had made a contrast between the manner in which their assize business had been transacted by an aged Crown counsel, and the mode in which his right hon. Friend despatched the business of an adjoining county. Certainly that was a high testimonial of the ability of his right hon. Friend; but the mere fact of these gentlemen being dissatisfied with the result of such a comparison, was not sufficient to justify the Crown in dismissing their counsel. He thought it ought to be sufficient to convince the House that his right hon. Friend wished to discharge his duty to the best of his ability, and to use his utmost exertions to introduce some improvement
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into the present system. The hon. and learned Member had alluded to another point. He had said that there had been a failure of justice in consequence of the indisposition of the Attorney General for Ireland to prosecute every case of petty larceny, pocket-picking, and other matters of the kind. Now, he thought that the proper course had been taken in not prosecuting these cases. As the fees and cost for the preparation of briefs, in cases conducted by the Crown were great, the Attorney General for Ireland had given directions that only one fee should be handed to counsel in such cases, and that whenever the clerk of the Crown complained of the heaviness of expense in any case, only one counsel should be employed. The object which his right hon. Friend had had in view was, to save expense; and at the same time he secured the Irish bar from the abuses which were creeping into it with respect to the management of these cases, to take care that the administration of the criminal law of the country should not miscarry. He (the Attorney General) apprehended that his right hon. Friend had been successful in his endeavours in this direction; and he thanked the hon. and learned Gentleman opposite for the opportunity which he had afforded him of making this explanation to the House. But he thought the House would concur with him in thinking that it would be making a very bad return for the exertions which his right hon. Friend had made at the commencement of his career, and which he was about to carry out still further, to pass the apparent censure upon him involved in the Motion of the hon. and learned Member opposite. Having, as he believed, answered the charge which the hon. and learned Member had brought forward, he trusted that he would see the propriety of withdrawing his Motion.
MR. KEOGHthanked the hon. and learned Gentleman (the Attorney General) for the manner in which he had been pleased to speak of the mode in which he had brought forward his Motion; but the hon. and learned Gentleman had paid him another compliment which he did not deserve. The hon. and learned Gentleman seemed to think he was going to make an onslaught on the Attorney General for Ireland—and had taken the trouble to defend him against a series of charges which he (Mr. Keogh) had never made. The hon. and learned Gentleman had not, however, said, one word upon some of the important

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topics which he had introduced. For instance, he had made no allusion to the management of Crown prosecutions by the Crown solicitors, a source of great expense to the country.
The ATTORNEY GENERALknew that the hon. and learned Member for Athlone was not going to make an onslaught on his right hon. Friend the Attorney General for Ireland, for he had told him so at the commencement of his speech; but he was glad of an opportunity of refuting charges which, if not openly made, were insinuated. He thought he had disposed of all the topics in his hon. and learned Friend's speech.
MR. O'FLAHERTYwas glad to hear the admission that a reduction in the expense of these prosecutions had been commenced, and that it would be still further carried out.
MR. HENLEYtrusted he had not rightly understood the Attorney General to say that because a gentleman was old in his office, any delicacy should be shown with respect to his removal. Where the proper dispensation of the criminal justice of the country was concerned, he thought such a consideration superfluous. With respect to the reforms which the Attorney General for Ireland had introduced, they might be expected at first to cause inconvenience, but he trusted that they would be carried out still further.
SIR W. SOMERVILLEwas happy to find that the reforms which his right hon. Friend the Attorney General for Ireland had introduced, had met with, he might almost say, the universal approbation of the House. It was also gratifying to know that the diminution effected in expenditure had involved no falling off in the efficiency of the system.
MR. MONSELLthought it an unfortunate circumstance, that under the present system so small a proportion of persons committed underwent trial. The omission entailed injustice to the persons charged with offences, and expense to the country.
The ATTORNEY GENERALdoubted whether a Committee would have it in their power to obviate the objection of the hon. Member.
Motion, by leave, withdrawn.
The House adjourned at a quarter after Nine o'clock.

MINUTES.
PUBLIC BILLS.—1a Poor Laws (Ireland) Rate in Aid.
PETITIONS PRESENTED. By the Bishop of Exeter, from Torrington, and other Places, that Article 11, Sect. 5, Cap. 2, may be Expunged from the Criminal Law Consolidation Bill.—By Lord Monteagle, from Leitrim, for an Alteration of the Poor Law (Ireland); also that the Landed Property of Ireland may be relieved from the Repayment of any Portion of the Money advanced for Public Works.—By Lord Redesdale, from Moneymore and Muff, against the Rate in Aid (Ireland) Bill.—By the Bishop of Llandaff, from Colebrooke, and other Places, for the Suppression of Seduction and Prostitution.—By the Earl of Warwick, from Northampton, and other Places, against the Navigation Bill.—By the Bishop of Waterford, from Waterford, for an Efficient and Comprehensive Health of Towns Bill (Ireland); also for the Establishment of an accurate Registry of Births, Deaths, and Marriages in Ireland.—By the Bishop of Gloucester, from Wiltshire, against any Alteration of the Law of Marriage.—From Yealmpton and Tristow, that the Educational Grant may hereafter be Dispensed according to certain Conditions.

CRIMINAL LAW CONSOLIDATION BILI—THE CLERGY.
The BISHOP of EXETERpresented a petition from a very respectable body of clergymen in his diocese on a subject of very great interest to the clergy of the Established Church in general. It related to a Bill which had recently been introduced by his noble and learned Friend on the opposite benches for the consolidation of the Criminal Law, and prayed that the penalty of prœmunire, which was very vague and almost unintelligible, might be exchanged for something distinct and practical. As affairs were now conducted, it was really impossible for any man, either lay or clerical, to state what the law of prœmuire was; for the Court of Queen's Bench on a recent occasion (namely, the case of the Queen v, the Archbishop of Canterbury) had been equally divided upon it. Two learned Judges in that Court had expressed opinions diametrically contrary to those expressed by two others; and thus a motion of great importance had been refused, because in all such cases, when the Court was equally divided, the motion was considered as decided in the negative. His noble and learned Friend, in his Bill for the digest of the law, said nothing on this subject either on one side or the other. Now, it would be satisfactory to the House, and to the petitioners, and to the country in general, if his noble and learned Friend would say that it never was his intention to leave the law in such a condition, and if he would introduce some words into his Bill of a declaratory character.
LORD BROUGHAMwas anxious to remove all doubts upon this subject, by exchanging the words, of which the petitioners complained, for some others which might hereafter be agreed on. His Bill intended to leave the law on this subject exactly as it found it. He fully concurred with what his right rev. Friend had said, namely, that there had been no decision on this subject in the case recently before the Court of Queen's Bench. That case was quite as undecided as if it had never been in the Court at all. It would be expedient, however, before his Bill was passed, that Parliament should apply itself to the consideration of the law of prœmunire, and that it should not leave it in a state which was an opprobrium to the country.
The BISHOP of EXETERconcurred with Lord Brougham in thinking that the present condition of the law on the subject was an opprobrium to the country. On

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every occasion of the confirmation of a bishop, it was doubtful, first, whether an archbishop was not guilty of a dereliction of his duty if he did not make a stringent inquiry into the qualifications of the bishop about to be confirmed; and, secondly, whether he was not infringing on the prerogative of the Crown, if he ventured to carry out such an inquiry. He threw out, as a mere suggestion—for he would not make a Motion to that effect—that it would be desirable for the House, before it came to a decision, to ask the opinions of the learned Judges on this subject.
LORD BROUGHAMconcurred in the propriety of the suggestion.
Petition laid on the table.

RAILWAY ACCOUNTS.
LORD BROUGHAM: I rise, my Lords, to bring under your consideration a subject second to none which ever yet engaged the attention of Parliament, in its magnitude and its great national importance—I mean the Railway concerns of this country, producing a vast mass of commerce, involving a prodigious investment of capital, causing a great entanglement of credit, and, though leading in their remote consequences to immense national advantages, and though connected ultimately with mighty improvements in our social condition, yet in their present position and in the stage at which they have now arrived, deserving the most cautious and mature deliberation both of Government and Parliament, because in their present aspect, whatever may be the value of their ulterior results, whether they may end in benefiting or in ruining the country, they fill every reflecting man with no slight, nay, with most serious apprehensions. If there be any persons, my Lords, who take blame to themselves and look back with self-reproach to their indifference in former years on this subject—if there be any persons who were then blind to the dangers which beset the path of Parliament—who were insensible to the possible evils of the course of legislation which we then pursued—who were callous to the appeals made to their feelings, moral as well as political, on the subject of the gambling mania which then infected all classes of the country from the highest to the lowest—who shut their eyes to the risk that the nation incurred from panics in the money-market and from disasters in the commercial community—and who, because they did not perform their duty by giving warning of such results,
1032
rendered Parliament as it were an accomplice in their offences—I have the satisfaction of reflecting that I am not in the number of those persons. For I, backed by a noble and illustrious Duke, who is now absent, early in the day, indeed so long ago as the years 1838 and 1839, denounced this state of things, and with another dear and lamented friend of mine, whom I can no longer hope to see in his place, the late Lord Ashburton, we two warned Parliament not to encourage this madness of gambling, and warned the country to stay in its progress to destruction by not making itself a party to that disease. But those warnings, my Lords, were given in vain. We have now these Railway Bills presented to us daily, and are expected to pass them as matters of course. We have suffered those Bills to pass into law almost without examination, and we have established in all directions these public nuisances, these gambling companies, which, by a euphuism, we mildly call Railway Companies. We have suffered them to arrogate powers to themselves, without which they never could have absorbed the capital of the country. We have given them the most extraordinary rights and privileges, and immunities, and, above all, the most extraordinary powers to deal with private property. I am not now speaking of the power of requiring returns of the profits of their lands from private individuals, which is a great nuisance, and a great oppression upon them; but I am speaking of public bodies enjoying transcendental powers far beyond that—a power, too, given by Acts of the Legislature. Not only have those bodies power to interfere with lands strictly settled—not only have they power to obtain lands fettered by the wills of the dead, and by the settlements of the living—not only have we allowed lands, which the ordinary courts of law could not by any stretch of jurisdiction convey from the rightful occupiers, to he transferred to those bodies in fee-simple, but we have even allowed them to establish their works, and to make their roads, and to drive their engines, through the private grounds of individuals, not one acre of which they could touch by law; and we have set all private rights at defiance that railways may go through our noblest properties, usurping the place of the harrow and the plough, and rendering the surrounding country hideous and uninhabitable. Why have we done all this? Because we have adopted the principle that all private interests must

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give way to the public advantage; and hence the monopoly of transcendental power which Parliament deemed itself justified in granting to these companies. But Parliament has done worse and has gone further than this. We have given them powers which enable these joint-stock companies to obtain subscriptions to an enormous amount for their own purposes—subscriptions which not one of them would ever have obtained but for the sanction of Parliament. All the writers on that branch of political philosophy, which is sometimes decried and sometimes extolled under the name of political economy, have contended, and justly, that there are some advantages in the joint-stock companies, when they are not established for the purpose of monopoly, but only are enabled to borrow capital for the erection of their works which they could not otherwise obtain for that purpose. But all authorities join in saying this, that great care should be taken that you do not seduce into those establishments more of the small capitalists of the country than its general interests, agricultural, trading, manufacturing, and commercial, require, and can afford. But as everything was to be sacrificed to the one thing needful, namely, rapid locomotion—as the old established mode of travelling at the rate of ten miles an hour, with comfort and convenience to Christian men, and at their own time of commencing and closing their journeys, reposing when they pleased, at comfortable inns, which are all now either destroyed or ruined—as that old established mode of travelling was to be exchanged for a system by which you are cooped up in a box and shoot along the road with a velocity so tremendous that you have to thank God if you arrive at your place of destination with unbroken bones—as all this was to be done for what was called the public advantage, we established these companies and enabled them to collect an amount of capital far larger than any required for mere purposes of locomotion. My Lords, you did more than this—you enabled persons whose object was not locomotion, and who cared not one straw whether one inch of the railways which they projected was ever laid down or not—you enabled, I say, persons who were not makers of railways but makers of railway plans, and railway surveys, and railway attorneys' bills, and who wanted to charge, without stint of measure, for the plans, and surveys, and bills which they drew up, to go
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on without the least check on their proceedings. There is also another class of persons to whom your Lordships made yourselves accessories before the fact—persons who cared as little for the formation of railways as the surveyor, the engineer, and the attorney, but who cared exceedingly for the shares which were thrown into the market. You enabled these persons, the traffickers and gamblers, to dispose of those shares, and to take advantage of the dupes who were disposed to pour into their coffers the money, of which they had not too much; and, by doing this, you enabled them, upon the ruin of private persons, to raise princely fortunes for themselves. Against those persons you took no precautions, and it is now difficult to see how you could have taken them when you once allowed Bills of this kind to pass. In one Session—that of 1846—no fewer than 519 Railway Bills were passed, some extending, some amending, and others altering existing laws. I have already stated to your Lordships the transcendental powers which you conferred by these Bills on the railway companies to obtain property, and the extraordinary means with which you invested them for the collection of capital. Your Lordships can have no idea of the extent of carelessness of which you were guilty in passing the various clauses of those Bills. I recollect well that my noble and learned Friend when on the woolsack (Lord Lyndhurst) was perfectly incredulous when I first informed him that your Lordships had passed a Bill by which the Great Western Railway Company was entitled to make evidence, not of its books by producing them, but of extracts from those books, which any copying clerk might produce without even proving that they were correct copies. But, furthermore, that Bill made such extracts conclusive evidence for the company of payment of money by the company—evidence, too, which could not be refuted, except by the very difficult, and in some cases impossible, process of proving a negative. I mention this as a proof of the zeal displayed by Parliament to forward the object of those dealers in locomotion, and of these jobbers in shares and scrip, and as a proof also of the unreflecting carelessness with which you granted immunities to the railway companies for the execution of schemes for which you had previously granted them largo privileges. I have now stated to your Lordships the

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causes of the recent mania, and I now proceed to explain its effects. They are not trifling—they are not disproportionate to the magnitude of the causes. How much capital do your Lordships imagine was vested in four or five years in railroads in England and Scotland alone, without including Ireland, India, Guiana, Demerara, Jamaica, and other parts beyond the seas? If I were to say that in England, 50,000,000 l. were so invested, your Lordships would say it was a large sum—it is; the amount of one year's public income of the whole country. But what would your Lordships say if I were to mention 100,000,000 l, nay, if I were to go further, and say 150,000,000 l.? What if I were to tell you of 180,000,000 l.—ay, and those millions actually paid up? For such is the fact, under the various railway calls. No great wonder, then, if the money market and the commercial world felt this. No great wonder if the Chancellor of the Exchequer of the day, for whom I have a great respect, and other most able financiers whom I see before me, and who are no longer Chancellors of the Exchequer, happily for themselves, should all be in great trepidation and alarm, when so large a sum as 180,000,000 l. was withdrawn in so short a period from the capital of the country, and vested in one particular and novel line of employment. No great wonder if there has been a commercial and a money crisis, and that we are scarcely out of it now, when I am addressing your Lordships. I recollect well that when I told my dear friend. Lord Ashburton, that things were as bad then as they were in 1824 and 1825, he replied to me that they were much worse, and he took out of his pocket a paper on which he had noted down the various sums which had been paid up for railways at that time. They amounted then to 83,000,000 l.; now, they are more than doubled; for, as I stated before, 180,000,000 l. have been paid up. During all this time, the money-making Englishman was rivalled in all his proceedings by the long-headed Scot. The spirit of gambling, which had never crossed the Tweed since the time of the Darien and Mississippi schemes, again attacked the cautious and wary natives of the north, and they rivalled their English neighbours in their devotion to these hazardous speculations. Ireland, with its light-heartedness and lightheadedness, had 5,000,000 l. embarked in them, which for a not very rich country is no inconsiderable
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amount, although I believe a large portion of it, as usual, came from England. Beside this, another million and a half was, I believe, contributed to the support of similar schemes in Demerara and Jamaica. But this is not all. There are calls still to be met. No wonder, I say, that we still have fears of a crisis in the money market, and disasters in the commercial community; for how much do your Lordships think still remains unpaid to these companies, and how much are their dupes liable to be called on to pay? I have not had time since I first gave notice of my present Motion to go through the lists of all the companies; but I have gone through one-fifth of the list by the alphabet, and I find that in that list the calls which remain to be paid amount to 30,000,000 l., and for those calls, in whole or in part, the shareholders are liable at any amount. Multiplying this by five you will have 150,000,000 l. Thus 150,000,000 l. to be paid, is to be added to 180,000,000 l. which has been paid; and that amount of good money is to be sent after the bad money already expended. Now the liability to which parties are subject for these unpaid calls, is far worse, and entails more anxiety, than the liability of a merchant who puts his name to a bill of exchange, and knows that he must pay it on a certain day, or go into the Gazette. These unhappy individuals do not know when they will have to pay their liabilities—they may be called upon to pay them at once, or they may be deferred by instalments for years. They are therefore obliged to keep their capital locked up to meet the calls, or else they are tormented with ceaseless anxiety lest they should not have it at command when it is wanted. This liability is a cloud always impending over their heads, which may burst in storms to their destruction, but which certainly hides from them the cheering and refreshing light of day. I am not therefore surprised, my Lords, looking as I do to the 180,000,000 l. vested in one line of business, that we have already had one great panic. I think that we may be justly apprehensive of another, when we find that 180,000,000 l. is not sufficient to satisfy the maw of this ravening pest, but that 150,000,000 l. more must be extracted from the already exhausted resources of the country. Therefore, it is, my Lords, that I look upon this spirit of gambling, this overturning of all the prudent maxims and habits of our ancestors, as the gigantic, the monster evil of the

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present day. By small degrees it first made progress amongst us; but each day it is making further advances, and gaining fresh strength, and before long I am afraid that it will be found overwhelming the soil.
"Parva metu primò; mox sese attollit in auras Ingrediturque solo."
Upon that soil it will pour all its desolating and pestilential influence as sure as ever effect followed cause. I have now spoken of the evils which this unhappy system has imposed on the commerce of the country. I have spoken of the gambling mania which it has excited among all classes; but I have as yet scarcely alluded to the moral pestilence which it introduced among us—first ten, and latterly three, years ago. I much fear that these gambling propensities, these desperate speculations, cannot he indulged in with safety to any who intermeddle with them. They cannot be without damage to the regular habits of trade, or to the honest pursuits of industrial labour. I think that it cannot be safe that men should desert the ordinary occupations in which they obtain regular profit from their exertions and the judicious employment of their capital, and should betake themselves to dealing in all the chances and risks of a lottery, acting the parts of reckless gamblers rather than of prudent tradesmen. So far the character of our people has suffered, not only among the middle classes, who generally gamble not, but also among our inferior classes, who are always clear from the contagion of that vice. I much fear, my Lords, that I cannot stop here. Schemes much worse than any which I have yet mentioned are to be considered—schemes which, unfortunately, are but too notorious to us all. It is not merely of common gambling in shares that I have to complain, but of contrivances of a worser kind. At the time when this spirit of gambling was authorised, encouraged, and stimulated by the formation of highly privileged companies, unfortunately left without that superintending control over them by Parliament which I now seek and wish to obtain, there arose a practice of carrying on these speculations in one regular way, though it varied somewhat in its phases. The object of the speculator was not to make railways, but to make profit in shares. His first endeavour was to get hold of a number of shares, but not for the purpose of qualifying himself to be a director, unless thereby he could obtain
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a control over the company, and so render his shares more valuable by the patronage they commanded. In that case he might go on as a shareholder for some time, but, unquestionably, not for long. No, he did not long hold fast by his shares. Some people may think that Brag is a good dog, but Holdfast is better. Not so the shareholder; he is of opinion that Holdfast is a good dog for the present, but that Brag is a better for the future. His object is to dispose of his shares at a profit; and he, therefore, goes about among his friends and neighbours, and says, "You get but 3½ per cent now for your money; I have a scheme by which I will guarantee to you 7 per cent or 10 per cent for your money for a series of years." "Oh!" then says a poor widow woman, "if that be the case, as I can't got more than 3½ per cent for my money in the funds, I'll even try to get 7 per cent in the railroad; and "Oh!" says a poor man—and I now speak of a surgeon in Yorkshire, a very able man, who after labouring for twenty years in his profession saved a few thousands, which he had invested in the 3 per cents as a provision for his old age—"if I can convert my 150 l. a year into 500 l. a year, I am a happy man; and why should not I have a share in the railroad?" Whilst this manœuvring is going on, a good dividend is declared out of capital, the shares rise to a high premium, and then the demand for shares comes pouring in. What does Holdfast with his shares then? Holdfast he is no longer: he is now Brag; he takes his shares into the market, and he sells them at a premium to his friend the widow, or to his friend the surgeon, who no longer thinks of riding about the country to his patients in all weathers, and of charging half-a-crown for his visits, but says to himself, "I'll sleep in bed at nights, and enjoy myself with my 500 l. a year like a gentleman;" and then he proffers his thanks to his good friend Holdfast. What follows next? One year the surgeon's dividend is paid, the next it is not. What is still worse, the year afterwards this unhappy gentleman receives a call to pay up large amounts on which he had never calculated. Having paid down all his savings for his shares, and having neglected his business on the strength of his anticipated income, and having, perhaps, let a rival step in to take it from him, he is called on to pay 25—or, it may be, 40—per cent on his shares. He is a ruined man for the rest of

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his life; all his savings are gone: he had paid down his all for his shares at a premium of, perhaps, 20 l. per share; they tumble down to par, and then to 20 l. discount. Holdfast has by this time got rid of all that he once held. He makes his fortune, but the poor surgeon is ruined. In every railway company, I am sorry to say, you have an Holdfast; and in every railway company, by his artifices, shares are first run up to 20 per cent premium, and afterwards dropped to 20 per cent discount. I know, my Lords, of another individual who was ruined in this way. He belonged to one railway company which purchased the property of another. An interest of 10 per cent was guaranteed to all who joined in the purchase. What cares Holdfast how that guarantee is to he made good? It is paid one year. How? Out of capital. That is now the patented mode of dealing in such cases, and will continue to be so as long as the community is placed at the mercy of the dealers in shares. You have knocked up, my Lords, the travelling by post; you have destroyed the postmasters and their inns; and you have thus left yourselves entirely at the mercy of the railway companies. What care the dealers in their shares for the comfort or convenience of the public? All they want is to raise the price of shares, and to sell them at a profit. There is, however, my Lords, another class of men who have an interest in bringing shares down from a premium to a discount. I know a relation of my own, who purchased shares at 187, which subsequently dropped as low as 108, and, I believe, even to 104. He purchased them, not to sell, but to hold, in the North Western. [A VOICE: The Midland.] No, I say nothing of the Midland, for I am not alluding to any individual. A great capitalist from London came into the field. He took every means—he used every artifice, to pull those shares down. He succeeded. Then he bought them up largely; then, again, he did all he could to raise them; and, finally, he raised them to 134, when he was no longer Holdfast, but Brag, and he sold every one of them. In another railway 10 per cent interest was guaranteed to the subscribers, as usual, for a certain number of years. Capitalists were attracted to this line, and the shares rose to a premium of 20 per cent. Here, again. Holdfast was awake to his own interest. He had raked together 2,000 of these shares—sold every
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one of them—and netted, by the sale, 40,000 l. The parties who bought, what has become of them? Do they get the 10 per cent interest guaranteed to them? Nothing of the kind; they cannot even sell their shares now; and that shows how much they have lost and Holdfast has gained by the transaction. My Lords, there is another shift to which these stockjobbers have recourse, and to which I must briefly call your attention. A friend of mine, Mr. Hutton, the official assignee at Bristol, by accident, but fortunately for the public, happened to succeed either as legatee or executor—I forget exactly which, nor is it material—to the property of a person who had fifty shares in a certain railway. In either case—either as proprietor or trustee—he was bound to look after the accounts of that company; and he, therefore, required to see their books. That company had stated in its published accounts, that it had at the bank a balance in its favour of 32,100 l., meaning, as was naturally to be supposed, money actually there, to be operated on according to the will or exigencies of the company. Now, this company was the South Devon, one of the branches of the Great Western Railway Company. At first the company objected to Mr. Hutton seeing their books: but, on his threatening to enforce their production by legal proceedings, he was allowed to inspect them, but was told that he could not be allowed to take any extracts from them. Mr. Hutton, however, having a good memory, I and being from his official engagements I well versed in figures, he retained in his; memory the figures which he found in the I books, and thereby discovered that the alleged balance of 32,100 l. was, in point of fact, only a balance of 2,500 l., and that the remainder was made up of a quantity of overdue bills—absolute trash, not worth the stamps or even the paper upon which they were written. Your Lordships may, perhaps, be disposed to ask how these overdue bills had come to he placed to the I credit of the railway company. I will inform you, my Lords—for it lets a very I strong light in upon the transactions of these railway gamblers to keep up the price of their shares for their own private purposes and for those of their company, by a series of tricks injurious to, and therefore concealed from, the public at: large. Of that deficit of 20,000 l., 11,000 l. was owing to the company by their solicitor, a gentleman belonging, or lately

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belonging, to a respectable firm in the metropolis; and he had paid in these overdue bills when a demand was made upon him by the company for the calls due. This discovery led to further inquiry. Mr. Hutton asked how certain other calls were met; and then, upon inquiry, discovered that Mr. Sandars, the secretary of the Great Western Company, who was in receipt of a liberal salary of 2,000 l. a year, had been allowed to run into an arrear of 16,000 l for his calls, of which only 2,000 l. odd was paid, so that there was a balance against him of more than 13,000 l. My Lords, I ask whether anything can be more dishonest than this, that the directors of a company should be guilty of such a delusion and fraud on their shareholders and the public as to allow their secretary, so well and so liberally paid, to run in arrears for such a sum upon his calls, when they pounce on a poor widow for her calls the very moment they are due? The secretary, I am told, is still in his office; and there is a solicitor, who now owes to that company 190,000 l.: having received that amount of money to pay for land which he had purchased on its account at different times, the directors had allowed him to draw first 20,000 l. and then 40,000 l., and then 90,000 l. for the land which they had purchased, and that, too, without the production of a single title-deed or voucher. Your Lordships may ask why the directors do not sue this man? Why, he has not a halfpenny wherewith to bless himself; but if that fact were made known, down would come the shares of the company, and therefore this transaction has been carefully concealed by the directors. The Motion, my Lords, with which I intend to conclude my observations this evening, will put an end, now and for ever, to the concealment of transactions like these. It will be remembered beyond this evening, and will make the affairs of these railway companies more accessible than they hitherto have been to the shareholders and to the people of England. I have one more statement to make to you, my Lords, which I think is not immaterial. A mode has for some time past existed of adding to one concern another, when the capital of the first is found insufficient to carry on the original project. A railway company starts, I will suppose, with a capital of 1,000,000 l. The bills for the surveys, for the expenses of agents, for those of engineers, for attending to the progress of the measure
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through the two Houses of Parliament, amount to a largo sum; and another large sum is duo for the engines, the trains, and the rest of the plant. Here I may be permitted to state, what I forgot to mention to your Lordships, that in the accounts of the South Devon Railway Company, the balance of 31,000 l. in its favour was drawn up on the hypothesis that all the plant was then as valuable as on the first day on which it was purchased—an hypothesis which was destitute of the slightest foundation. But to return from this digression. The sinews of war are found to be insufficient—more money is wanted. Application is made to Parliament for the increase of their capital by the creation of an increased number of shares. To induce new shareholders to come in—for in such an emergency the old shareholders cannot easily get out—they guarantee to the new shares a larger amount of interest, and call them "preference shares," a name indicating something good for the new interest, but nothing save loss to the old shareholders. Suppose a person to purchase original shares, he would expect to get a rateable portion of the increase of traffic. Not so, however—he would be tied down to the 5 or 3½ per cent, and nothing more—or at least he would never be guaranteed more—he might get it, or he might not. The "preference shares" have, however, a guaranteed sum entirely independent of profit, and the holders of the original shares are exposed to all the jeopardy and risk as to the amount of dividends which they may receive. The secretary of the Great Western Railway, and the solicitor to whom I have before alluded, held preference shares. So long as they thought those shares good, and as they were not called on to pay any calls upon them, those gentlemen answered to the name of Holdfast, and never dreamt, or at least never breathed, a suggestion, that there was anything illegal or fraudulent in the transaction. For my own part, I do not give an opinion whether it was illegal or fraudulent; I only say that originally these gentlemen never dreamed or said that it was so. But as soon as a call was made upon these preference shares, these gentlemen said that the whole transaction was illegal, and that they would have nothing to do with it. The secretary, I believe, used such language; and the solicitor, I know, did so. I should like to know one thing, from sheer curiosity. If another House of Parliament—I won't say in this country, but in another

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country, which has great dealings in railways—would take a hint from me, and institute a searching inquiry into the expenses of pushing Railway Bills through the Legislature—say in Canada, for I don't say here—I would wish that Canadian House of Commons, for which I have a very profound respect, to inquire also how those expenses are to he diminished. For, when in the year 1837, I gained the concurrence of the House of Lords to my standing orders, which placed private Bills on an entirely different footing, and sent them to the consideration of a Committee consisting of only five individuals, I recollect well that people said, that if such a plan were good for the Peers of England, why was it not equally good for the Commons of Canada? They said—" Is England, where the climate of December is now connected with the calendar of May, so cold a climate, that what does well for the Peers there, cannot do well for the Commons of Canada? "And I may, then, well inquire why the representatives of the people in the Canadian Legislature cannot do that which we have done in this country? Some time ago I wished some of the Members of the Canadian Parliament to communicate their resolutions to their colleagues; they had done so, but their colleagues said that such resolutions would not do at all, for, said they, the very reason that would make them do well in England, was precisely the reason why they would not do at all at Montreal, or Quebec, or Toronto. It was found in this Canadian Parliament, that the Members of whom it was composed, had usually been put to great expense in the conduct of elections; that their constituents pressed sore upon them for the purpose of exerting their influence to procure situations through the Colonial Office, commissions from the Commander-in-Chief, patronage from the Treasury, and every species of employment which the service of the State could in any manner supply. Now, the Members of the Canadian Legislature found these demands upon their favour and assistance so onerous, that they were glad to get rid of them upon almost any terms; and they found it much easier to do jobs for their friends in passing Railway Bills than in procuring Government employments; and thus the hon. Members of the Canadian Parliament contrived to pay their constituents either in meal or malt. I tried, year after year, for seven or eight years, to induce those Members of Parliament to adopt the orders which
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your Lordships had, at my instance, sanctioned by your approval; but, as you well know, I tried in vain. The House of Commons, after seven or eight years, that is to say, in the year 1845, had been induced to make a change; but what I wish to get at is the state of things antecedent to the time at which the Canadian Parliament had taken any step towards reforming the abuses of which I complain;—I wish for returns showing the practice which prevailed at the time when any Member who thought proper could get a Bill committed. I have seen some of the bills of costs to which the carrying of those railway measures gave rise—I saw that the money had been spent, but I never for a moment supposed that a single shilling of that money went improperly into the pockets of the agents; they were men of honour, and incapable of appropriating a penny of that money to their own use; but they were perfectly capable of applying shares for the benefit of the company. They were prompt to send shares in the right direction—nothing so good as right shares in right places; applied to Members at critical moments—nothing could be more effectual than the application of shares; they often brought down half a dozen Members, or more, to vote upon a question which they had never hoard debated. It was under a knowledge of such facts as those that your Lordships passed your recent Standing Orders; and, if similar orders had been adopted elsewhere, there was not one of those Railway Bills which would not have been thoroughly sifted, and such orders would have thrown great light on the mode of conducting Bills through the Canadian Parliament. There had been instances of as much as 5,000 l. having been offered to one, two, three persons to lend their names to certain railway concerns; and when they asked how they were to have it, the answer was, "In any manner you please—in shares, in hard cash." Of course, they disdained to do anything of the kind, or to accept any consideration upon those terms. But such was the acuteness, the astuteness, the sagacity of the agents in those cases, that they were eventually enabled to bring about and produce the desirable end at which they aimed. The 658 Members of the Canadian Parliament—I beg pardon, I was thinking of another place—what I meant to say was, that of the 150 Members of the Canadian Parliament, many were glad to obtain a certain number of

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shares, and pass the necessary Bills with the least possible delay. But are we, after all, quite sure that even the House of Commons in this country will adopt all the measures that your Lordships may think necessary upon this subject? Not long since a very stringent measure against bribery at elections was submitted to the House of Commons, which they did not like, and which they seemed resolved not to have. Still I shall do everything in my power to obtain the information which my Motion is calculated to bring forth. I feel an insatiable curiosity to get at that information. I can scarcely sleep comfortably in my bed until a Committee is appointed to examine into these Railway Bills. Companies that acted honestly could incur no disgrace by such a proceeding, because everything disgraceful must be the fault of individuals. I want above all things to know what was paid to Members of Parliament in passing Bills. And now I will ask, is there any person in this House, or out of this House, prepared to deny that the case which I have brought under the notice of your Lordships is one that calls for the interposition of Parliament—an interposition which I conceive has become indispensable, although so many schemes have been devised and propounded for arresting and staying the progress of the evil—an evil that is twofold—being one that gives power to men to cheat unwary members of society by false, fraudulent, and manufactured returns; and, secondly, by producing a species of mischief more difficult to deal with, but still not impossible to be suppressed—I mean the spirit of gambling, which unhappily pervades so large a portion of the community, that it becomes no easy matter to define its limits. It is a mania which, I fear, still affects society to a very alarming extent, manifesting itself by such symptoms as sending coals to Calcutta, and crockery to Brazil—a delusion not surpassed by the Mississippi scheme, or the South Sea Bubble, the license trade of 1812, or even the joint-stock companies of 1824 and 1825. The continuation of the same passion during the last two years is almost sufficient to make one despair of applying any remedy to an evil of such enormous magnitude. When capital becomes abundant, and the means of its employment circumscribed, I cannot but look with fear and trembling upon the itch for speculation which seems to afflict every class in this country; and especially when I see that irresistible tendency influencing
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the mercantile classes of England—men who of all others should be the most cautious. I believe that the Legislature can do much to prevent the excessive operation of that tendency, but not so much as they can do to prevent fraud and Imposture, for they can do much to give absolute, unqualified, unsparing publicity to all railway transactions. I see no remedy so effectual as that. The Parliament of England have a right to enforce that publicity, and it is their bounden duty to exercise that right. It will be in the recollection of your Lordships, that my noble Friend opposite (Lord Monteagle), who by the course which he took in this House regarding railways has done much service to Ireland, as well as to this part of the united kingdom—your Lordships, I say, cannot have forgotten that my noble Friend brought forward a Bill, which, if it had been carried into a law, would have produced an honest and stringent audit of all railway accounts; and I hope in the present instance for the support of my noble Friend in pressing upon the adoption of the House a decision which cannot for one moment longer be delayed. The Motion to which I have to request your concurrence is one of considerable length, entering into many details, with the reading of which I shall not now occupy your time; but this I will say, that if the returns take many months in preparation, I would rather not wait for them, but prefer to content myself with a portion of that which I now require. Whatever can be obtained in the course of a month or six weeks, will be much better than to wait perhaps till the end of the Session for returns which, however full, would at that time be uselsss, because if not obtained within the shorter period that I have mentioned, they cannot be rendered available till the next Session of Parliament, and every one knows that calls upon railway shares will come in immediately. It is, therefore, of the utmost importance that information should be obtained, and measures passed by Parliament in order to prevent the continuance of unjust or unreasonable calls, and to endeavour, if possible, to stay the progress of the gigantic gamblings in which vast numbers of the community are now engaged. In the course of the observations which I have addressed to your Lordships, I have spoken and stated facts without reference to papers or documents; but if any of your Lordships should think proper to refer to official sources, then you will find that every

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one of my statements is in exact accordance with all the records relating to this subject that can he considered authentic. Let me remind your Lordships that there are calls now in progress for capitals which in the whole are not less than from 140,000,000 l. to 150,000,000 l., and that these calls are in many instances made by persons who are desirous of paying interest by obtaining more capital for the purpose of carrying on a culpable traffic in share gambling. I trust that the course I have taken may be productive of good effects, and that as many as possible of these returns may be speedily produced. The Noble Lord then handed his Motion to the Lord Chancellor, as follows:—
"Return of the Share Capital of every Railway in the United Kingdom: Also, the Capital authorised to be raised by their Acts of Parliament: Also, the Number of Shares issued and Number allotted to each Director: Also, Amount of each Share: Also, when the Calls on such Shares became due: Also, when received: Also, the Capital raised by each Railway in the United Kingdom on the Security of their Debentures: Also, when such Debentures were issued: Also, Date of Act of Parliament sanctioning such Issue of Debentures: Also, Amount of each Debenture: Also, Rate of Interest paid to the Lender: Also, Term for which such Loan was made: Also, Commission paid by the Railway Companies to the Broker or Agent for obtaining Loans on the Security of Debentures: Also, Cost of Construction of each Railway, exclusive of Land Purchases, Parliamentary Expenses, and Law Charges: Also, Law Charges, and stating whether Taxed or not: Also. Money expended in Purchases of Land and Property: Also, Parliamentary Expenses: Also, Engineers' Charges: Also, Cost of Railway Plant: Also, Amount entered in each Year's printed Account for Depreciation of Plant: Also, Total Annual Receipts from Passengers or Goods from the first Opening of any Portion of the Railway; Also, Total Annual Expenditure contingent on the working of the Railway, exclusive of the Interest paid to the Debenture Holders: And also, Mode by which the fixed Dividends which have been paid to the various Shareholders was ascertained "
The MARQEUSS of LANSDOWNE: I am assured that the House must feel deeply interested in the statement which has been just made to them by the noble and learned Lord opposite, and will be most anxious to join with the noble and learned Lord in every effort that can reasonably be made for the purpose of repressing the spirit of gambling to which he has this evening so forcibly called your Lordships' attention. It has been very fairly, and I may add very truly, stated to your Lordships, that there will be considerable difficulty in producing all the papers included in the Motion
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now before the House; but I trust that as much as may serve the immediate objects in view, will be prepared within the period which we may presume to be sufficiently early. I am bound also to say that in the opinion of Her Majesty's Government the time has arrived when this and the other House of Parliament are bound to provide by law for the future protection and security of that class of persons who have from various circumstances invested considerable parts of their fortunes in these undertakings. We all understand very well, and it is therefore perfectly unnecessary that I should waste your Lordships' time with any explanation or description of the powers which the Legislature has delegated to the directors of railway companies; but those who have thus been invested with great powers, must be instructed and made to feel that such powers have been delegated to them as important trusts, not for their own individual advantage, or even for the profit of the company whose affairs they conduct, but to be exercised for the public good; and they should further be required to remember that such powers were not given to them by any means unconditionally, but that, on the contrary, those persons are liable to a very heavy amount of public responsibility. At the same time your Lordships, I am sure, will not disregard this circumstance, that much excitement was to be expected from a change so great as that which has taken place in the commercial enterprise of this country. The discoveries in science—discoveries remarkable and brilliant—have been in a manner most extraordinary applied to practical purposes and objects. Such results have excited the attention and the admiration of the world. Can your Lordships then wonder that events of so startling a character should be followed by dazzling effects upon the minds of those who regarded those changes not as means where by science was to be advanced, but by which great gains and emoluments were to be realised? It had its effect not only on persons engaged in legitimate traffic and enterprise, but it also produced its effect upon every adventurer—upon every person disposed to speculate in that lottery which was opened on a larger scale than ever it had been opened before to the gambling spirit of the world—that lottery in which large prizes were to he gained, but in which, unfortunately, there were so many blanks. In the midst of this earnest pursuit of advantages, many

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of which were found to have been imaginary, there cannot be a doubt that still many respectable companies were formed, enterprises founded on the most legitimate principles, and carried on in the most honourable manner, and for the most lawful objects; and those who have conducted their affairs honourably and fairly will have nothing to apprehend from the proposition brought under the notice of your Lordships this evening. I think we may feel a perfect reliance that the companies who have managed their affairs with prudence and good faith will he amongst the first to hail with satisfaction this proposition, the effect of which will be to place upon a footing different from companies worthy of confidence those who have mismanaged their affairs, and who have made it manifest to the world that they are unwilling or unable to carry on business upon sound principles. It is the interest of the public that a means for auditing the accounts should be provided, and that it should be seen that the conditions on which the Act of Parliament had been passed, to enable the various companies to carry out the system, were lawfully and completely fulfilled. I therefore join in expressing, on behalf of the Government, my earnest hope that my noble Friend near me (Lord Monteagle) will be prepared again to undertake the task which he engaged in last year, and which he may now hope to commence under more favourable auspices, and with a more complete knowledge of the subject. To such a Bill as I hope my noble Friend will bring in, the Government will give its support; and if my noble Friend should, from any cause of which I have now no knowledge, and which I am very far from anticipating, be unable to bring in a measure of the kind to which I refer, then the Government will themselves feel it their duty to propose a Bill of that nature, though I beg most distinctly to declare my full conviction that it would be much better—much more advantageously introduced—if laid before your Lordships by my noble Friend—because from the very great attention which my noble Friend is known to have paid to the subject, I hope and trust that his measure would enjoy the support not only of this hut of the other House of Parliament.
LORD MONTEAGLEcould not allow the opportunity to pass without expressing, in the first instance, the great satisfaction he felt on the subject being at last brought under the consideration of their Lordships;
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because, impressive as had been the statement made by his noble and learned Friend—important as the facts were on which he had dwelt—ho took upon himself to say, that if the whole of the information, for which it was the object of his noble and learned Friend to call, were laid before them, the result would be infinitely more astounding and alarming than even the eloquence of his noble and learned Friend. When they considered this question in its bearings on the whole commercial interests of the country, it was impossible to overrate its importance. If ever there was a case in which it was the duty, nay the obligation, of Parliament to give an effective and instant remedy, it was one in which, if they looked back to past years, they could not fail to consider themselves to a great extent responsible. It was quite true that there were cases in which, from the natural expansion of enterprise and speculation, let them do what they would, they could not restrain the imprudence of mankind; but this was a case in which, unfortunately. Parliament had aggravated and stimulated, in spite of all warning, the mischief that had occurred. It was impossible to approach this subject without taking an opportunity of doing justice to a noble Member of their Lordships' House, to whom one might refer the more freely because he was absent. But though he was absent, it ought to he remembered, both there and elsewhere, how Lord Dalhousie had warned them, and that if his warnings and recommendations had been attended to in both Houses of Parliament (he need not on this subject, as had been done by his noble Friend, adopt, in speaking of the other House, any geographical disguise), much difficulty would have been averted. Their Lordships gave their sanction to his proposition, which however, was fruitlessly adopted by them, for it was not adopted in the other House of Parliament. The noble Lord, who during two years had applied himself to this subject, had induced their Lordships to pass a Bill, which, if it had been accepted by the other House of Parliament, would make that important separation in which the public was so much interested, namely, a separation of that class of railways to which the noble Lord the President of the Council had alluded, and which he (Lord Monteagle) believed to be a most important and numerous class—the class that was well managed, from the class which he would designate as being a disgrace to

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those individuals who supported them, as well as a means of the moat serious loss to the subject. He (Lord Monteagle) could give additional information as to the mode in which evils were produced under this system, and could afford proofs of how deeply Parliament were responsible for those abuses. His noble and learned Friend had alluded to the fact of capital being applied, not to the purposes for which capital was properly applicable, but to enable parties to declare fictitious dividends. As long as there was capital to be so applied, there existed the means of effecting this fraud—for fraud it was; the man who declared out of capital a dividend that should only be declared out of profits, was, so far as that transaction was concerned, guilty of a fraud on the public, because parties purchased on the faith of the dividend, and if the dividend were fraudulent, the purchaser gave a consideration which the real value of the property would not warrant. But their Lordships could hardly believe the length to which Parliament had gone in some cases to allow the indefinite perpetuation of this system. A power of borrowing proportionately to the capital was allowed, as well as a further power to allow the parties who borrowed to capitalise the debt. There was also a further power given to borrow more money in proportion to the extended capital, and money was So borrowed a second, third, and fourth time; and he asked was not Parliament responsible for that? He did not complain of the people out of doors; but let them look at home, and see whether that and the other House of Parliament had been faithful stewards in discharging the duty entrusted to them. It was to be hoped that the Legislature would at length become sensible to the grave responsibilities of their position, and perceive the necessity of taking, with as little delay as possible, the requisite steps with a view to the correction of an evil which all admitted to be a very serious one. The trickery of the present railway system was managed by a select few. It was all arranged, not after the curtain had been raised, but while the curtain was still dropped, and the public knew nothing about it until they experienced its damaging effects upon their pockets. He would do the Bank of England and the East India Company, but particularly the former, the justice of admitting that they had never desecrated their characters by having to do with such proceedings. Whatever difference of opinion
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might exist as to the general policy adopted by the Bank of England, it was at all events certain that the directors of that great commercial company never gambled in its shares, and seldom held a larger quantity of stock than was essentially necessary to give them a qualification. It was capable of demonstration that in the case of that particular railway company whose officers had been committed a few days since for a breach of their Lordships' privileges, the directors had taken steps to run down the value of their own securities, in order that they might afterwards buy them up at a profit of 50, or 150, and sometimes even of 200 per cent. That was, no doubt, an enormous gain for the directors; but the melancholy feature of the case was, that the profit thus netted was taken out of the pockets of another class of people who had no knowledge of what was going on behind the curtain. It was full time that the Legislature should step in, and prevent the indefinite perpetuation of a system which was productive of so much injury to the public. The interests which would be injuriously affected by it were every day becoming more numerous, for it was a well-known fact that the practice was becoming quite common of inserting in marriage settlements a power to the trustees to invest the stock in railway debentures; but what is the value of the debenture of a fradulent company? The measure which he (Lord Monteagle) brought forward last Session, with a view to correct the evils of the present state of things, was such as no honourable railway company could have complained of or objected to. All well-managed companies would have found their financial condition very much improved by the operation of such a measure. They would be in a much better position if their accounts were accompanied and attested by the official signature of an independent officer. The present system of auditing railway accounts was a farce; for everybody knew that the person who audited and attested the accounts was himself more or less connected with the men who had plotted the original fraud on which the company was based, and had, like them, a direct interest in its success. He felt the necessity of a measure to remedy the evils of the present system, and he was happy to find that the Government was prepared to take up the matter in an earnest spirit. He could have no wish to keep this or any other measure in his own hands; but he felt justified, by

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the discussion of that night in having introduced it. The measure would be better in the hands of the Government; and if ever any public good should be done, by reason of the enactment, he wished that his noble friends connected with the Government should have the credit of it. He would infinitely prefer that to claiming it for himself, and if he could assist them, he would earnestly afford them his co-operation. If the Government were unwilling to undertake it, then he was willing to proceed with his measure. He had received many well-founded obejections to the Bill he had introduced last year, which would enable him to prepare another Bill less open to objection than that presented by him last Session. While it would not be open to the objection of being less stringent, it would be more operative; but while it was more operative, he would take care it should not be a measure likely to be used for purposes of a vindictive character.
EARL GRANVILLEwould like to have said a few words on the subject under discussion; but after the statement of the noble and learned Lord (Lord Brougham), as well as of the noble Lord who had taken so much pains on this subject (Lord Mont-eagle), and still more after the declaration of the noble Lord the President of the Council, he felt it was unnecessary for him to do so. He might state in confirmation of what the noble Lord had said, that their Lordships would, he was sure, he unanimous in saying that a measure for the audit of accounts was required. Some honourable members of the railway world who were opposed last year to the Audit Bill of the noble Lord, and to the clause introduced by the Railway Commissioners the year before last, giving a power to the Railway Commissioners to inspect accounts, now wished for the passing of a law that might be satisfactory to the public. With regard to the noble Lord (Lord Monteagle) taking charge of the Bill, he (Earl Granville) could say, on the part of the Government, that it could not be in better hands. The Government were very anxious that the noble Lord should continue his exertions; but, at the same time, feeling the necessity was great, they would themselves bring forward a Bill if the noble Lord abandoned his measure.
LORD BROUGHAMhad totally forgotten to mention one of the strongest illustrations of the necessity for their Lordships' interference, and which showed the desire that existed on the part of some
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railway companies to conceal their affairs. There was a case recently disclosed where there was actually a correspondence in cipher between the chairman and the secretary.
Motion agreed to.
House adjourned to Thursday next.