Sitting of 8 July 1851

MINUTES.
PUBLIC BILLS.—2° Mercantile Marino Act Amendment; Militia Ballots Suspension.

CIVIL BILLS (IRELAND) BILL.
Order for Committee read.
House in Committee; Mr. Bernal in the Chair.
Clause 22.
MR. REYNOLDSbegged to draw the attention of the Attorney General for Ireland to an incident connected with the office of the Recorder of the City of Dublin. Up to the year 1841, the Recorder had been elected by the Corporation; but by the provisions of the Irish Municipal Act, the power of appointing him was taken from the Corporation, and vested in the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland for the time being. But though the Corporation had been relieved of the patronage, they were still under the obligation of paying a portion of the Recorder's salary; and he now wished to be informed whether there was any intention on the part of the Government to remove that burden from the Corporation of Dublin?
SIR WILLIAM SOMERVILLEreplied that the question alluded to by the hon. Member had nothing whatever to do with the subject of the Bill before the Committee. He believed that, in reference to the grievance complained of by the hon. Member, the people of Dublin had no more reason to complain than every other town in Ireland; and he had no intention, on the part of the Government, of introducing any measure on the subject.
MR. REYNOLDSsaid, that in no instance in Ireland, except that of Dublin, had a Corporation who had parted with its
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patronage remained subject to the liability to pay a salary.
Clause agreed to.
Clause 73.
MR. TORRENS M'CULLAGHbegged to move an Amendment of which he had given notice: it was to expunge the words "or under a tenancy from year to year." These words were few in number, but they involved an important principle. For several years past there had been a policy pursued by the right hon. Gentleman the Secretary for Ireland, in which he was aided by the right hon. and learned Gentleman the Attorney General for Ireland, which had now reached its climax. This policy might be termed an anti-tenant policy. The right hon. Gentleman (Sir W. Somerville) came into office pledged to bring in Bills to ameliorate the condition of the tenants in Ireland. He had brought in one or two Bills, which, however, fell far short of what the occasion required. The verdict—the damning verdict of their policy, was to be read in the fact that under the system they had pursued with regard to the land question in Ireland—for he would not mince matters—he charged most distinctly upon the system they had pursued, the damning fact that 2,000,000 of their fellow-countrymen had been either starved to death or banished for life. He should not abuse the English language by calling it emigration. Emigration meant voluntary going out to seek a home elsewhere. But their dealing with Ireland had changed the very meaning of the words exile and home; they had made America the only place an Irishman could think of with respect to home. They had taken away the few securities which remained. There was not a man in Ireland who was not aware of the direful effects of what was called the "quarter-acre" clause. The next step was taken last Session. About this time last year there came a flight of Bills from the other House of Parliament, each of them having for its object the diminution of some one of the remaining securities of the people. The Irish Members stopped these Bills in transitu, and thus unwillingly lengthened the Session two or three weeks; and he had hoped that that lesson would have had some effect on the Government. But there were some people who could neither learn nor unlearn anything. The Committee would be astonished perhaps to find that this was an adjourned debate. The very words of this clause were to be found in the first Clause of a

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Bill ironically termed a "Bill for Amending the Relations of Landlord and Tenant in Ireland." The first clause of that Bill, which was introduced last year into the House of Lords, was to enable the owners of land to sue by ejectment for recovering the possession of land and tenements in that country by persons holding from year to year. That was the very power which this Bill proposed to give. The right hon. Home Secretary of State, last year, when that Bill came down from the House of Lords, declared that he would not support such a Clause, and it was taken out of the Bill. And yet they had the very same Clause inserted in a Bill which had nothing to do with the immediate relations of landlord and tenant. Had the right hon. Secretary of State changed his mind? Did he think that what was wrong in 1850 was right now? Or did he think there were still too many people in Ireland, and that he must take measures to lessen them? Because that was the question they had to decide. Let him (Mr. T. M'Cullagh) address English Gentlemen. In their fortunate country no landlord had the power to serve an ejectment on a tenant from year to year; and because 2,000,000 of people had been weeded from the face of Ireland, were they prepared to give a power to the proprietary class in Ireland, which they themselves had not? Would their constituents thank them for causing more Irish paupers to come here in their transit to another country? The details of the census were withheld, and withheld without cause; but he believed the analysis of the census would prove that to neither famine nor fever could they attribute one-fourth of the decrease that had taken place. They must find a means of keeping up the life blood of the country. Why, a paper in this city had gravely asked what the number of the population of Ireland was to be, and observed that it had been said that 4,000,000 of people were quite enough for Ireland. Fever and famine had been abroad in the south and west of Ireland, and it was generally supposed that there was their harvest. There they no doubt committed fearful havoc; but famine and fever were, comparatively speaking, unknown in Ulster; and in Leinster the people were, comparatively speaking, well to do. Now, in Ulster, there were 406,000 persons less in 1851 than there were in 1841; and this in a province which the rest of Ireland was taunted with not imitating. How was this illustrated and ex-
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plained? By the fact that in Ulster there were 63,608 human dwellings less than in 1841. What was the use of industry—what was the use of thrift—what was the use of the mixture of population, which they were so fond of boasting of? What was the use of loyalty and order, which they extolled so much, if the result was, that out of 2,400,000 persons 406,000 were fugitives from the land in which they were horn? In Ulster the tenants had what they called bargains with their landlords, and under these bargains they had got what they called tenant-right—he begged pardon for using that seditious word in that assembly. The mass of these tenants were from year to year, and they proposed to do with regard to these tenants what they would not venture to do in any English county. Then with regard to Leinster, there had been a diminution during the last ten years of 337,000 persons. Was that caused by famine and fever? He did not underrate the sad effects of those causes; but he had reason to believe that if a census had been taken just after 1847, they would have found no such decrease of the population. The diminution was attributable to the extirpation of the peasantry by eviction, and by the demolition of their humble houses. In Leinster there were 42,529 fewer houses in 1851 than there were ten years ago. He believed that the two last harvests would have done much to restore the country had the Government come forward with the Bills which they promised when they took office—had they done, what he believed the late Earl of Besborough would have done had he lived and remained in office. They had abandoned their pledges so far as attempts to realise them were concerned. But the people were gone, the people were going. He asked them in the name of constitutional right, in the name of civilisation, in the name of a merciful God, were they prepared to stimulate a system which he again said had depopulated the country?
Amendment proposed, line 15, to leave out the words "or under a tenancy from year to year."
MR. HATCHELLsaid, he should not go into the general questions which the hon. and learned Member for Dundalk had introduced. The hon. and learned Gentleman appeared to him to have totally mistaken the import and meaning of the proposed Clause. He had alleged that the effect of the Clause was to enable landlords

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in Ireland to clear their estates. Now, although a tenant from year to year held the land only at the will of the landlord, he was entitled to a notice, and that arrangement of the law was not sought to be disturbed by this Bill. It had nothing at all to do with the question of title, or with the ejectment of tenants who were prepared to abide by their contracts. The Clause only provided that in case a tenant from year to year should owe a year's rent, and would not pay it, the landlord should be at liberty to resort to a proceeding to compel the tenant to pay that rent. If a man went to an owner of land and said, "I will take 50 acres of land of you at 50 l. a year," and the landlord said, "I will let it you," and they put those seven or eight words down in writing, the landlord would then have the remedy which it was proposed by this Bill to give in the case of tenants regarding whose holdings there was no written agreement. The hon. and learned Member for Dundalk had been pleased to say that he (Mr. Hatchell) was an advocate of anti-tenant legislation. Now, as he viewed this clause, it would have quite a contrary effect to that which was predicated by the hon. and learned Gentleman. At present, if a tenant owed a year's rent, the landlord could not enforce it except by giving a six months' notice to quit, which must expire at the end of the year, so that by that time there would be two years' rent in arrear, and then another half-year expired before the landlord could get his ejectment. That was an anomaly in the law, and it was to meet that anomaly the present Clause was introduced. If there had been a contract in writing, the landlord would have been enabled to have obtained an ejectment without giving notice. The evidence before the Devon Commission showed the necessity of an alteration in the law to the effect now proposed. At present the landlord gave his notice to quit, and that caused irritation in the mind of the tenant, who went to his quarter-sessions' attorney, and if he could discover a mistake in the date, or any other flaw, the tenant set his landlord at defiance, and a state of war between landlord and tenant arose. A lawsuit followed, and the result was an eviction, the tenant all this time spending his substance in resisting the landlord, instead of honestly exerting his industry to pay his rent and fulfil the contract he had entered into. In consequence of the present state of the law, the landlord was compelled to serve
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his tenants with notices half-yearly, not for the purpose of getting rid of the tenants, but to enable him to recover the rent. Possession was the condition on which the rent was to be paid; but if Gentlemen said that the tenant was to hold possession and pay no rent, then he had no more to say.
MR. WHITESIDEsaid, he was glad to see so many Gentlemen from England present on this occasion, as it would be only necessary to make them properly understand the principle which was involved, to ensure their coming to a fair decision on the question. There was no doubt but that these proceedings were mere patchwork legislation, and that a better opportunity never offered for dealing comprehensively with the great question of landlord and tenant than at the present moment; but the Government had missed the opportunity, and it seemed to him that it was lost for ever. There was the In-cumbered Estates Court transferring the property of Ireland into stranger hands; and, in fact, many matters conspired to render the present a most favourable time for the introduction of some well-considered measure on that subject. There was no doubt but that the present question affected the great bulk of the tenantry of Ireland. The evidence taken upon the Devon Commission was so much useless lumber, for no measure had ever been framed upon it. Two learned friends of his at the Bar had written a book with a view to show how the marrow of the report of that Commission could be applied to the existing law in Ireland; and they said that they thought it would be an improvement in the law if the present system of notices to quit, which this Clause went to abolish, was so abolished. The complexity of the question of the law of landlord and tenant in Ireland would he known from the fact, that in the reign of George III. sixty Acts of Parliament had reference to that subject, and the law of distress occupied thirty Acts, and no attempt had ever been made to condense and systematise that great body of enactments, and the lawyer had to grope his way through all those Acts to know what the law was. Both landlord and tenant in Ireland were oppressed by the number and complexity of the laws; and the greatest boon that House could confer on the country would be to condense and systematise them. Although he (Mr. Whiteside) had voted against those Clauses in the Bill relating to landlord and tenant in the Committee upstairs, he would not

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vote for their being now expunged. He wished, however, to state that this was in fact the County Courts Bill for Ireland. In England the principle on which the new County Courts were framed was that of uniformity, but the local courts in Ireland he had heard called "schools for perjury." It would be a wise reform to abolish those old local courts, in Ireland, as they had been abolished in England, and to assimilate the law in the two countries. In conclusion, he had only to express a hope that the Judges of the proposed courts would be selected for their own merits, totally irrespective of political party or family influences, and thereby secure the due administration of the law, by placing it in the hands of learned and properly qualified persons.
MR. REYNOLDSwas astonished how the hon. and learned Gentleman the Member for Enniskillen, who had so eloquently opposed the 73rd; Clause in the Committee upstairs, could have so marvellously changed his mind on the subject. But if his speech on the present occasion was good for anything, it ought to persuade the Committee to reject the Bill. The speech of the right hon. and learned Attorney General for Ireland seemed to him also most extraordinary. If it had been delivered immediately after the Devon Commission, he could have understood it; but in the year 1851, after the quarter-acre clause and the poor-law had worked out their sums of mortality, and the law of ejectment, too, had been strained to the maximum power of oppression, he confessed he could not understand such a speech. He would just call the attention of the right hon. and learned Attorney General for Ireland to the number of Civil Bill ejectments which had been brought in one county in Ireland—he meant the county of Tipperary, to show how the work of estate clearing had gone on. In 1844, the number had been 27,000; in 1845, 37,000; in 1846, 42,000; in 1847, 142,000; in 1848, when the calamities of Ireland had commenced, they had fallen to 82,000; in 1849, to 34,000; and in 1850, when the process of ejectment had done its work, the number had been only 24,000. The people by that period were in their graves, in the workhouses, or across the broad Atlantic. In the year 1851 the population ought to have increased to 9,000,000 and some odd thousands. It was rapidly increasing until 1847, and now it was reduced to 6,500,000,
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and, deducting this from the 9,000,000, at which the population ought to stand, there was a blank of 2,500,000 of human life to fill up. The great organ of public opinion in this country, the Times, had estimated that within a given period 1,000,000 of persons had emigrated to America. He believed that estimate was exaggerated; but taking the figures as correct, and deducting that 1,000,000 from the deficiency of 2,500,000, there was the appalling fact that 1,500,000 persons had been, in four years, sent to untimely graves for the want of the necessaries of life. He maintained that the Clause of the Bill before them was totally at variance with the title. But if a notice to quit was to be supposed a relief to the tenants of Ireland, he would pray that they should be protected from such mercy. He maintained that it was a landlord's Clause, and as such he should offer his most strenuous opposition to it. He had moved for papers relative to the Kilrush and Ennistymon workhouses last April, but they had not yet been furnished, to enable him to bring that case before Parliament. However he would take a future opportunity of doing so. He could tell the right hon. and learned Attorney General for Ireland, that when those representatives who really felt compassion for the sufferings of the people returned to their constituents, a rally would be made to put an end for ever to such patchwork legislation as the present, which was intended only still further to strengthen the hands of the landlords. However the proposed Bill might be on the whole a useful one, he was prepared to endanger its passing sooner than allow such a clause to remain in it.
MR. WHITESIDEbegged to explain that the reason why he had opposed the Clauses in the Committee upstairs was, that they were misplaced in the present Bill.
MR. MOOREthought, although the hon. and learned Gentleman (Mr. Whiteside) had considered the present question was likely to be decided by English Members, that he might be disappointed, and that it would be decided, as it ought to be, by Irish Members. He could not understand why the hon. and learned Gentleman voted one way in the Committee upstairs, and on the present occasion he intended voting directly contrary. The system of legislation which was adopted towards Ire-laud might have a good object, but it was all in the wrong way.
Mr. J. O'CONNELLsaid, that this Clause attempted to do that which the Bill of last year tried to do, and which had been defeated. If this were so, what new light had been thrown on the subject? The tendency of the policy of Parliament ought to be to compel the landlords to give leases to their tenants. The right hon. hon. and learned Gentleman the Attorney General for Ireland said the present system led to war between landlord and tenant, which ended by eviction; but this clause would enable them to begin by eviction. He thought it a lasting disgrace to the statesmanship of that House that no measure had been brought forward and carried which would settle this question on a just basis. Until it was settled there never would and never could be peace in Ireland. He did not expect that it would ever be his fortune to address the House again, and he could not avoid taking that opportunity of reminding them of broken promises and pledges unfulfilled. He foretold the result of their policy last Session, and he told them it was not then too late to retrace their steps, to deal kindly with the people of Ireland, and to do them justice; but instead of that they were going on in the same partial system of legislation, which could do no good, but must cause an increase of misery in the country.
MR. ROEBUCKwanted to know what they were all talking about? They had heard a great deal of the census, and now they had had a farewell speech from the hon. Gentleman the Member for Limerick, which certainly appeared to him to have nothing to do with the present Bill. As far as he understood it, when a tenant held under a lease, a landlord in Ireland had the power of ejectment, and it was proposed that in case of tenant from year to year, if the tenant was a year in arrear of his rent, the landlord should have the same summary process. It was apparently a question whether an arrear of rent of one year should not be equivalent to a six months' notice. Now he could not very well understand that putting out a man who was in arrear was the highest possible injustice; but if a man were in arrear a whole year's rent, he did not see, for the honest and fair protection of the tenant, that anything more was required. He must know that he was in arrear, and he was not taken by surprise; and that being so, he should like to hear the arguments of hon. and learned Gentlemen opposite,
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who knew most about the country. Irish Bills were always to him a matter of astonishment. Here was a sort of omnium gatherum. He fancied that this was a Bill for the regulation of certain courts of law; but, in this Bill, which was to regulate procedure, here was a Clause which changed the substance of the law. He entreated the right hon. and learned Gentleman the Attorney General for Ireland to deal with this matter in a systematic manner. If they were to deal with procedure, let them have procedure only; and when they were dealing with the substance of the law, let them have the substance of the law only.
MR. ROCHEsaid, it was impossible to discuss this question properly without going into the general state of Ireland. One of the greatest evils of that country, no doubt, was the unsatisfactory state of the law of landlord and tenant. But this was an attempt to legislate so as to increase the power of the landlords; and he contended that it was unfair to introduce a Clause having such an effect in such a Bill. The decrease in the population of Ireland was in a great measure owing to evictions; the proof of which was in the fact that it was in the rural districts only that the decrease had taken place. Great Britain increased from 1821 to 1831 in population 15 per cent, whilst Ireland in the same period increased 14½ per cent. During this period Connaught increased 22 per cent, Munster 14 per cent, whilst from 1841 to 1851, Ireland has decreased 20 per cent. Connaught, which increased, from 1821 to 1831, 22 per cent, has now since 1841 decreased 28 six-tenth per cent; and Munster, which before increased 14 per cent, has now decreased 23 five-tenth per cent. In the cities there had been an increase. Forty-three per cent had been the increase of towns, and 20 per cent the decrease of counties. Then in houses the decrease had been 20,068. In the same time the population had decreased by 1,659,330, or a number very nearly equal to the whole population of Switzerland twenty years ago. Another proof was in the fact that there are now 268,000 houses less in Ireland than there were in 1841.
MR. MORE O'FERRALLsaid, he objected to the Clause, as being inserted in a place to which it did not belong. The hon. and learned Member for Sheffield (Mr. Roebuck) was right in describing it as a Bill of procedure. It contained no less than twenty-five Clauses relating to that most important subject, the tenure of land

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ed property in Ireland, and Clauses of that nature ought not to be introduced into such a measure. He also objected to the proposed Amendment of the hon. and learned Member for Dundalk(Mr. T. M'Cullagh),for the same reasons as those slated by the right hon and learned Attorney General for Ireland. He would ask the Government, lest that subject might be taken up as a means of disturbing the people of Ireland, to strike all the Clauses out of the Bill which affected that part of the subject, until next year, when they might bring in a more comprehensive and satisfactory measure. As they had waited for ten years without doing anything, they might easily wait for six months longer.
SIR WILLIAM SOMERVILLEsaid, that if the Clause were struck out, similar clauses would remain in twenty other Bills. The only question which the Committee had now to consider was, whether the words proposed by the hon. and learned Member for Dundalk (Mr. T. M'Cullagh) were an improvement to the Bill or not. He assured the Committee that his motive in supporting the Clause was to improve the condition of both landlords and tenants. He believed that the Clause, so far from being a landlord's Clause, was a tenant's Clause, framed to act beneficially for both parties. It was a mere begging of the question to refer to the census and to the drains of emigration, when hon. Gentlemen representing Irish constituencies would not endeavour to amend the law. His desire was to get rid of the harassing system of six monthly notices to quit. He believed that nothing could be conceived to set landlord and tenant by the ears more effectually than those periodical notices to quit. He knew of an estate in the north of Ireland where the regular custom was to append a notice to quit to every receipt given for rent. This Bill was directed to improve the relations of landlord and tenant, and not to complicate them further. By the present system, the landlord was compelled to torment the tenant, and to unsettle him in his holding; while, in case of ejectments, the landlord lost eighteen months' rent. Surely it was not unreasonable to give the landlord possession of his land at the loss of a year and a half's rent. He spoke as an Irish landlord, who had lived the greater part of his life in Ireland, and he unhesitatingly declared his conviction that the tendency of this clause would be materially to improve the relations between landlord and tenant.
MR. ROEBUCKsaid, the right hon. Gentleman who spoke last had somewhat perplexed him. The right hon. Gentleman said the tenant was harassed, and was prevented from exerting himself by having notices to quit continually served upon him. He could understand the force of that argument; but the right hon. Gentleman went further, and, by way of curing this evil, he proposed to give the landlord more power than he already had, and that was what he could not understand. The right hon. Gentleman said this was a most important subject. If so, why was it that the right hon. Gentleman did not bring in a Bill to deal with it, and not in a Bill professing to regulate procedure, introduce a Clause which altered the substance of the law?
SIR WILLIAM SOMERVILLEsaid, he could enable the hon. and learned Gentleman to understand it. If this Bill passed, there would be no necessity to be continually giving notices to quit.
MR. SHARMAN CRAWFORDsaid, the speech of the right hon. Gentleman the Secretary for Ireland had fully confirmed what had been said by himself and others on that side of the House as to the tyrannical power exercised by many landlords in Ireland. Certainly nothing could be more tyrannical than with a receipt for rent giving a tenant notice to quit, and keeping him in a continual state of degradation. He objected to this Clause because, among other evils, it would create a discouragement to the granting of leases. It was this want of security that caused the people to emigrate. He deeply regretted that the noble Lord (Lord John Russell) was not present, for if he were in the House, he (Mr. S. Crawford) would have asked him whether public faith had not been broken with the Irish people by the non-production of some comprehensive measure directed to this subject. They had lately given the tenant at will the privilege of the franchise, but now they were introducing a Bill which would place the tenant still more in the power of the landlord. He had waited in vain for the Government to introduce some Bill on the subject of the law of landlord and tenant, but in vain, and he now gave notice that he would himself do so during the next Session.
Question put, "That the words proposed to be left out stand part of the Clause."
The Committee divided:—Ayes 55; Noes 24: Majority 31.
Question put, "That the Clause, as amended, stand part of the Bill."
The Committee divided:—Ayes 56; Noes 20: Majority 36.
Remaining Clauses, and the Schedules, agreed to.
House resumed; Bill reported as amended.

THE SOUND DUES.
MR. CLAYwished to ask the noble Lord the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs—this being the year during which (under the agreement of 1841 with Denmark regulating the dues levied by that country on goods passing the Sound) notice can be given of terminating such agreement; whether it is the intention of Her Majesty's Government so to give notice; also, whether any, and what, negotiations have been entered upon between this country and Russia, or Prussia, having for their object the commutation of these dues for an immediate money payment to Denmark, or other compensation?
VISCOUNT PALMERSTONbegged to inform the hon. Member that the agreement of 1841 related to a tariff which had existed since 1645, and that certain duties contained in it were lower than those which were exacted anterior to 1841. The arrangement of that year not only brought down all duties to the scale of 1645, but it also reduced some below that scale, and it was therefore an advantageous arrangement to this and other countries. Her Majesty's Government had not taken any steps to dissolve the existing agreement with the Danish Government, nor had any negotiations at present been entered into on the subject. He (Viscount Palmerston) thought the House would see that, independently of all other considerations, and setting aside the question whether it would be expedient to terminate the agreement, the present moment was not one at which it would be right to do anything that might have the appearance of pressing hardly upon Denmark, which country had so recently passed through a severe struggle. He would not pronounce any judgment upon the parties in that question; but this was clearly not the time at which a generous and friendly Government would take any step that might be considered of a hostile character.
MR. HUMEbegged to ask the noble
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Viscount whether we had not a right to protect our own ships?
Subject dropped.

COURT OF CHANCERY.
VISCOUNT PALMERSTON reported to the House, That the Address of the House of Commons of the 27th day of June last, that Her Majesty would be graciously pleased to add to the Commissioners appointed to inquire into the practice and proceedings in the High Court of Chancery, two or more persons not of the profession of the Law, but such as to Her Majesty may seem qualified as men of business to assist in and make more effectual the labours of the Commissioners; and also praying that Her Majesty would be graciously pleased to cause Instructions to be given to the said Commissioners, to direct their immediate attention to the course of business before the Masters in Ordinary of the said Court, so as to report, as speedily as may be, their opinion as to the proper steps for regulating the business in those Offices in such manner as to diminish the delay and expense to the Suitors, has been laid before Her Majesty. And that Her Majesty has given directions accordingly.
CHURCH EXTENSION.
VISCOUNT PALMERSTON reported to the House, That Her Majesty has received the Address of the House of Commons of the 1st day of July, 1851, praying that She will be graciously pleased to take into Her consideration the state of spiritual destitution existing throughout England and Wales; with a view that Her Majesty may be pleased to direct the adoption of such measures as She may deem expedient, for affording more efficient relief to the spiritual wants of the people, and for an extension of the parochial system corresponding to the growth of a rapidly increasing population, by the help which may be drawn from the resources of the Established Church itself: And that Her Majesty has commanded him to inform the House, that the attention of Her Government had previously been directed to the best means of rendering the resources of the Established Church available for affording more efficient provision for the spiritual wants of Her People in England and Wales, and that they may be assured of Her cordial concurrence in the adoption of well-considered measures for promoting this important object.

ATTORNIES AND SOLICITORS.
LORD ROBERT GROSVENOR, in asking the House for leave to re-introduce a Bill to repeal the Attornies and Solicitors' annual certificate duty, said hon. Members would be glad to hear that he should be exceedingly brief in his observations. Last year, he had stated at some length the origin, nature, and operation of this tax. He had shown to the House that it had every vice in principle which a tax could possibly have, and that its operation was in consequence partial and oppressive. And he had great reason to believe that the House had been satisfied with his arguments; for though, upon a fifth division, the right hon. Chancellor of the Exchequer had got a majority, yet on four previous occasions the House had affirmed the principle he advocated—on one occasion by a majority of 259 to 224—a considerable majority for the Motion of a private individual. It was therefore useless to urge reasons of the validity of which the House had declared itself satisfied. The repeal of this tax was virtually carried; the only question was, the time when it should take place. It might have been a more prudent course for the right hon. Chancellor of the Exchequer to have included it in his arrangements for the year; but, as Finance Minister, he probably thought it necessary more severely to test the opinion of the House before yielding to it. He (Lord R. Grosvenor) had intended bringing forward this question at an earlier period of the Session: but he had thought it would not be well to do so during a Ministerial crisis, or when it might interfere with more important measures. At the present period of the Session he could hardly hope to proceed much further with the measure; all he could do would be to ask permission of the House to lay it on the table, with a view to proceed with it next Session. It would be most unwise and impolitic in the right hon. Chancellor of the Exchequer to oppose this Motion, as the House would no doubt adhere to its former judgment. But so little did he desire to embarrass his right hon. Friend in any way, that if he would only give him to understand that, next year, if the income tax were granted, and no unforeseen circumstances arose to make it impossible, he would repeal this duty, he (Lord R. Grosvenor) would be contented simply to lay the Bill on the table, or even not to do so much. If he could not have that assurance from the right hon. Gentleman, it
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would be his duty to press the Motion to a division.
Motion made, and Question proposed—
"That leave be given to bring in a Bill to repeal the Attornies and Solicitors Annual Certificate Duty."
The CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUERsaid, it was his painful duty to resist the Motion. It would be far more agreeable to him if he could remit all the taxes—if he could say yes to all the numerous deputations who came to Downing-street asking for the reduction or remission of some tax or other. But, unfortunately, it was his duty to resist those applications which he did not think were founded on sound principles; and the present was one which he considered in that category. He had already carried through the House, to its last stage, the financial proposal for the year. Some had reproached him for not allowing a sufficient margin in the course of the present year; and the hon. Member for Buckinghamshire (Mr. Disraeli) had brought forward a Motion declaring that no reduction whatever of taxes ought to take place, and that no further revenue should be sacrificed. He could not suppose that the hon. Gentlemen who supported that Motion could possibly agree to the Motion of his noble Friend. He had felt it his duty to stand by the proposal he had made to the House; it would have been exceedingly unfortunate had he withdrawn from the country the boon promised in the early part of the Session: he was therefore bound to resist this Motion. He would put it to hon. Gentlemen on his own side of the House, whether, in their opinion, this was the first tax of which they should claim the repeal. They were in favour, generally speaking, of a reduction of duties pressing on the consuming population: would any one get up and say that this was such a tax? They had been in favour of the reduction of duties on raw material, as affording the means of employment to the people: would any one say that this was a tax interfering with the employment of the people? Hon. Members on the other side had expressed their opinion that the first reduction ought to be reduction of the income tax; but every sixpence they sacrificed in repealing a tax of this kind, so far prevented the possibility of the reduction they sought. If both sides of the House were of opinion that this was the first tax that ought to be repealed, he should have no more to say in opposition to it. If, on the

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contrary, they thought that it ought only to take its turn with other taxes, and that there were others which had a prior claim, let them resist this Motion. As the noble Lord did not propose the reduction in the present year, it would be more unwise on his part to give any pledge as to the next. He had reserved but a very moderate surplus after repealing the window duty, about 300,000 l.; and, at present, they knew not what claims might be made upon them for the cost of the Kaffir war. Would it, then, be wise in him to promise, or for the House to pledge itself, to sacrifice 120,000 l. a year in this tax, looking at the circumstances which might occur? If, in the course of next year, there should be a considerable surplus, and the House was prepared to maintain the income tax as it stood, then he would take into consideration what other taxes should be reduced or modified. Until they knew what would be the probable income and expenditure for next year, it would be unwise and injudicious to pledge themselves to sacrifice 120,000 l. The contrary policy had always been acted upon by his predecessors. Should the House now pledge itself to repeal this 120,000 l., it would be to that extent incapacitated next year from reducing taxes which it might be thought more necessary to get rid of. The tax complained of was not an especial burden upon the attornies and solicitors; conveyancers and other parties paid the same tax. He hoped the House would not agree to repeal this tax, either in the present year or the next, till they saw what was their financial position, and until it was known whether the income tax was to be renewed or not.
LORD ROBERT GROSVENORsaid, as his right hon. Friend had confined himself merely to general assertions, and had not ventured on the hopeless task of attempting to prove the justice of this tax, he would refrain from making any reply.
Question put.
The House divided:—Ayes 162; Noes 132: Majority 30.

List of the AYES.

Adair, E. A. S.

Bankes, G.

Alcock, T.

Baring, H. B.

Arkwright, G.

Barrow, W. H.

Armstrong, R. B.

Bateson, T.

Bailey, J.

Benbow, J.

Baird, J.

Beresford, W.

Baldock, E. H.

Berkeley, hon. H. F.

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Blake, M. J.

Keogh, W.

Blandford, Marq. Of

Kershaw, J.

Blewitt, R. J.

Knightley, Sir C.

Booth, Sir R. G.

Knox, Col.

Bremridge, R.

Lacy, H. C.

Brisco, M.

Lennox, Lord H. G.

Buck, L. W.

Leslie, C. P.

Burrell, Sir C. M.

Lindsay, hon. Col.

Castlereagh, Visct.

Locke, J.

Cayley, E. S.

Long, W.

Chaplin, W. J.

Lopes, Sir R.

Chatterton, Col.

Lushington, C.

Chichester, Lord J. L.

Meagher, T.

Christopher, R. A.

Martin, J.

Clay, J.

Maunsell, T. P.

Cocks, T. S.

Maxwell, hon. J. P.

Codrington, Sir W.

Miles, W.

Coles, H. B.

Monsell, W.

Cowan, C.

Moody, C. A.

Crawford, W. S.

Morris, D.

Cubitt, W.

Mullings, J. R.

Davies, D. A. S.

Muiitz, G. F.

Dawes, E.

Murphy, F. S.

Denison, E.

Napier, J.

Duckworth, Sir J. T. B.

Newdegate, C. N.

Duke, Sir J.

O'Brien, J.

Duncan, G.

O'Connell, J.

Duncombe, T.

O'Connor, F.

Du Pre, C. G.

O'Ferrall, rt. hon R.M.

East, Sir J. B.

O'Flaherty, A.

Evans, Sir De L.

Packe, C. W.

Evans, J.

Palmer, R.

Ewart, W.

Pechell, Sir G. B.

Farrer, J.

Peel, Col.

Forbes, W.

Perfect, R.

Fox, S. W. L.

Plowden, W. H. C.

Fox, W. J.

Power, Dr.

Freestun, Col.

Prime, R.

Freshfield, J. W.

Pugh, D.

Frewen, C. H.

Reid, Col.

Fuller, A. E.

Renton, J. C.

Gallwey, Sir W. P.

Repton, G. W. J.

Geach, C.

Reynolds, J.

Gilpin, Col.

Richards, R.,

Gooch, E. S.

Sadleir, J.

Goold, W.

Salwey, Col.

Grace, O. D. J.

Sandars, G.

Greene, T.

Sandars, J.

Grenfell, C. P.

Scholefield, W.

Grosvenor, Earl

Scully, F.

Gwyn, H.

Sibthorp, Col.

Hall, Sir B.

Smyth, J. G.

Hall, Col.

Somerset, Capt.

Hallewell, E. G.

Spooner, R.

Hamilton, G. A.

Staunton, Sir G. T.

Hastie, A.

Stephenson, R.

Heald, J.

Strickland, Sir. G.

Henley, J. W.

Stuart, Lord D.

Henry, A.

Stuart, J.

Herbert, H. A.

Thompson, Col.

Hervey, Lord A.

Thompson, Ald.

Heywood, J.

Thornhill, G.

Higgins, G. G. O.

Tollemache, hon. F. J.

Hill, Lord E.

Tyler, Sir G.

Hindley, C.

Tynte, Col. C. J. K.

Hodgson, W. N.

Verner, Sir W.

Hogg, Sir J. W.

Vyse, R. H. R. H.

Hope, Sir J.

Waddington, H. S.

Hope, H. T.

Wakley, T.

Hornby, J.

Walmsley, Sir J.

Hudson, G.

West, F. R.

Jones, Capt.

Whiteside, J.

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Williams, J.

Willoughby, Sir H.

Williams, W.

Worcester, Marq. of

TELLERS.

Grosvenor, Lord R.

Stafford, A.

List of the NOES.

Abdy, Sir T. N.

Harris, R.

Anson, hon. Col.

Hatchell, rt. hon. J.

Armstrong, Sir A.

Hawes, B.

Baines, rt. hon. M. T.

Headlam, T. E.

Bell, J.

Heyworth, L.

Bellew, R. M.

Hobhouse, T. B.

Berkeley, Adm.

Howard, Lord E.

Bethell, R.

Hume, J.

Bouverie, hon. E. P.

Hutt, W.

Bowles, Adm.

Jermyn, Earl

Boyle, hon. Col.

Labouchere, rt. hon. H.

Brockman, E. D.

Langston, J. H.

Brotherton, J.

Lewis, G. C.

Brown, W.

Lygon, hon. Gen.

Bruce, C. L. C.

Mackinnon, W. A.

Buxton, Sir E. N.

M'Gregor, J.

Campbell, hon. W.

M'Taggart, Sir J.

Cardwell, E.

Mahon, Visct.

Carter, J. B.

Manners, Lord J.

Childers, J. W.

Marshall, W.

Christy, S.

Melgund, Visct.

Clay, Sir W.

Milner, W. M. E.

Clements, hon. C. S.

Milnes, R. M.

Clerk, rt. hon. Sir G.

Mitchell, T. A.

Clifford, H. M.

Molesworth, Sir W.

Cobden, R.

Mostyn, hon. E. M. L.

Cockburn, Sir A. J. E.

Ogle, S.C. H.

Coke, hon. E. K.

Owen, Sir J.

Colebrooke, Sir T. E.

Palmerston, Visct.

Cowper, hon. W. F.

Parker, J.

Craig, Sir W. G.

Pendarves, E. W. W.

Crawford, R. W.

Philips, Sir G. R.

Crowder, R. B.

Pinney, W.

Currie, H.

Ponsonby, hon. C.F.A.C.

Currie, R.

Portal, M.

Davie, Sir H. R. F.

Pusey, P.

Dawson, hon. T. V.

Ricardo, J. L.

Denison, J, E.

Rich, H.

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

Robartes, T. J. A.

Disraeli, B.

Romilly, Col.

Divett, E.

Romilly, Sir J.

Douglas, Sir C. E.

Russell, Lord J.

Duncan, Visct.

Russell, F. C. H.

Dundas, Adm.

Seymour, Sir H.

Dundas, rt. hon. Sir D.

Seymour, Lord

Ebrington, Visct.

Sidney, Ald.

Ellice, rt. hon. E.

Slaney, R. A.

Ellis, J.

Smith, rt. hon. R. V.

Elliot, hon. J. E.

Smith, J. A.

Estcourt, J. B. B.

Smith, J. B.

Evans, W.

Smollett, A.

Fergus, J.

Somerville, rt. hn. Sir W.

Ferguson, Col.

Spearman, H. J.

Fitzpatrick, rt. hn. J. W.

Stuart, Lord J.

Forester, hon. G. C. W.

Thicknesse, R. A.

Forster, M.

Thornely, T.

Fortescue, hon. J. W.

Towneley, J.

French, F.

Trelawny, J. S.

Glyn, G. C.

Trevor, hon. T.

Goulburn, rt. hon. H.

Tufnell, rt. hon. H.

Graham, rt. hon. Sir J.

Wall, C. B.

Grenfell, C. W.

Willcox, B. M.

Grey, R. W.

Wilson, J.

Hallyburton, Lord J. F.

Wood, rt. hon. Sir C.

Hardcastle, J. A.

Wood, Sir W. P.

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Wyld, J.

Wyvill, M.

TELLERS.

Hayter, W. G.

Hill, Lord M.

Leave given. Bill ordered to be brought in by Lord R. Grosvenor and Sir Frederic Thesiger.

THE BALLOT.
MR. H. BERKELEYrose to move for leave to bring in a Bill for the Protection of the Parliamentary Electors of Great Britain and Ireland by taking the votes by way of Ballot. The hon. Gentleman observed that never was it so important to make an effort in this cause as at the present moment. They were upon the eve of a general election, and it would be a struggle of no common order. It was one in which the landocracy bade fair to be arrayed against popular rights, in which all that wealth and power could effect would be effected against poverty and dependence, and in which the political bully would go forth to trample upon the rights of electors, unless there were interposed between him and his victims the protecting shield of the ballot. He called upon his hon. Friends, therefore, who had hitherto supported him in this Motion, to unite with him once again in advocating this cause, and in endeavouring to persuade the First Minister of the Crown that, without protection to Parliamentary voters, no plan of reform which he might contemplate would give satisfaction to the people, or could be otherwise than a nullity. He begged to tell the noble Lord that he might extend the constituencies, but that the action of open voting would contract them; that he might increase the number of electors, but; that with it he would increase the arena of intimidation and corruption. Of what use would any Parliamentary reform be to the tenantry of great estates, or to the tradesmen of the cities throughout England, unless they were afforded protection against their landlords and their customers, and allowed to give a free and conscientious voce without fear of ruin? To introduce reform without the ballot, was to attempt to cure a superficial disease in the electoral system, while the cancer gnawing at its vitals was left unheeded. He knew no question which reflected so much ignominy upon its opponents as this question of the ballot. It was simply a proposition to give to the electors throughout the kingdom an undoubted and legal right; and its rejection by that House seemed to him to amount to a virtual condemnation of the

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purity of election. We, the advocates of the measure (said the hon. Gentleman), have torn the last rag of reasoning from your shoulders, and there you stand, denuded in the face of the world, an indecent picture of naked obstructiveness. He found, from the pages of Hansard, that the noble Lord considered that the present system worked well, and that he feared a change. The noble Lord had never been very explicit with regard to the change which he dreaded, but he feared a change. Now he asked him, could that system be said to work well, the terrors of which deterred a full third of the electors of this country from recording their votes, while it permitted the corruption and intimidation of the majority of those who did vote? which allowed forty-eight Peers of the realm and seventeen wealthy Members of Parliament to return to that House ninety-eight Members by direct unconstitutional interference, in spite, too, of the Sessional Orders made annually against the interference of Peers? which converted agricultural voters into a mere electoral flock of sheep? which, once in seven years, or oftener, converted this country into one vast arena of drunken confusion and corruption of all kinds? which was one great he throughout? which granted to a man in theory that which it denied him in practice? and which complimented a man upon his liberty while it rendered him a slave? Yet that was the system which the noble Lord thought worked well. But, supposing for one moment that the result was good, then a good end was achieved by means the most abominable, the most abandoned, and the most unconstitutional. That was the way in which the good end was achieved, and upon the horns of the dilemma he was willing to leave the noble Lord. Now he invited the noble Lord to tell the House why when in England a man was so admirably protected in almost all his rights, he should be denied protection in his capacity of a Parliamentary elector. Why should this invidious distinction be made? For instance, a man might buy a carriage. After he paid the purchase money, and a tax upon it, he might drive where, when, and how he pleased—he was protected in that right. The same with a horse—tax and turnpike paid, he might ride the animal where he thought fit. But a man buys a freehold, rents a house, and, paying taxes, becomes entitled to a vote. You recognise his right to this vote on two conditions: the one, that he should not barter it for money;
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the other, that he should not place it at the disposition of a Peer of the realm. Then, says the elector, I consent; but grant me protection from the Peer and the persecutor. Now what is the reply? It is here—embalmed in the pages of Hansard. The opponents of the measure are filled with virtuous indignation. "Protection!" say they—"why, you coward! and you are a liar too, you wish to he and to conceal it. You unmanly, un-English poltroon. Protection, indeed! why, you want to upset our glorious constitution!" Now, what makes this the more exquisitely absurd is, that all those among them who were directors of the Bank of England, all who were directors of the India House, all those of the Trinity House, all who were members of clubs in Great Britain and Ireland—and their name was legion—all of them sought the protection of secret voting—nay, so enamoured were they of it, that they could not erect a statue to the late Sir Robert Peel without the ballot; and a political club—and a great political club, too—was so in love with it that they not only elected, but expelled, their members by ballot. There had been an instance of that lately, and if they were to vote for giving protection to the voter by the ballot that night, to-morrow they would be expelled from their club by the ballot. When proposing this Motion last Session, he had ventured to make some statements upon the backsliding of certain hon. Members upon this question, and he had deeply deplored that the right hon. Baronet the Secretary of State for the Home Department should have held it necessary to withdraw his support from it, giving no better reason than that the action of public opinion had taken so beneficial an effect that the ballot was no longer needed. Upon this subject let him just call into court that illustrious witness who lately descended from the moon, and took up his station at Aylesbury. Surely some good counsel might be derived from an examination into the details which had been laid before them by that worthy. He passed by Aylesbury, however, with the brief observation, that, while the man from the moon spoke to the corruption, bribery, and treating that went on in that borough, intimidation also flourished in full force; and he did not believe that there ever was an election at which the screw was more severely put upon the electors by the land-ocracy surrounding the town, than in the election between Bethell and Ferrand.

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And let the House remember that Aylesbury might be regarded as a type of what towns situated in the hearts of counties would be at the next general election. One word as to the Falkirk burghs. The hon. Member for those burghs had been returned from that nest of corruption as "duly elected." He had risen in his place, he had laid his hand upon his heart, and had assured the House that he had nothing whatever to do with drenching the electors with whisky; and it would be both personal and unparliamentary if they were to doubt the hon. Gentleman's word. There could be no question, also, but that the hon. Member for St. Albans could rise in his place, and lay his hand upon his heart, and assure them that he knew nothing whatever of "Bell metal," and was entirely innocent of "Sovereign Alley." But with reference to what took place at the last St. Albans election, he would quote from the report in the Times newspaper. The report, which was dated "St. Albans, Christmas eve," contained the following passages:—
"The contest commenced at eight o'clock this morning—if contest it could be called—where an immense number of the constituency had long before the polling-day yielded to the blandishments and seductions of Mr. Bell's agents. The scene presented by the borough all day was anything but calculated to lead to the belief that Father Mathew's disciples were very numerous there. All business was suspended, the shops were closed, the ancient freemen came forth into the streets in the intensest state of hunger and thirst that ever fell on man with all the good things of the world around them, and a passer-by might have imagined that the crews of a shipwrecked and famished navy were making up for the privations of their rafts in the taverns and hostelries of this famous town. Towards midday the sights presented in the principal streets were absolutely disgusting. Drunken men and women were rolling and staggering about the streets, or lying in some instances in the curious places which inebriety selects. Postchaises were dashing about laden with the heaviest freights of drunken and 'independent' voters, smoking cigars and pipes, and indulging in short efforts of oratory."
The Times also gave an account of the close of the poll, when it appeared that both the candidates addressed the people. He did not find in Mr. Bell's speech much matter for comment. That hon. Gentleman merely told the drunken mob that they had greatly and gloriously distinguished themselves, and he found out that the conduct of his electors was the counterpart of that of the Guards at Waterloo. Mr. Carden, on the other hand, asserted that in his defeat he had achieved a victory (Mr. Carden knew nothing of the
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kidnapping which his witnesses would undergo), and that he had broken down the barriers which combined fraud, personal interest, and local corruption, had raised against him. In the course of his speech Mr. Carden used these remarkable expressions:—
"I was told that if I would put the bribery oath to every elector I might win my seat; but I refused to do so, for I did not wish to peril the future happiness of those men who, having taken a bribe, would not scruple to swear they had never received one."
If confirmation of that opinion were needed, they had it in the recorded fact, that at one period of the proceedings, when the bribery oath was read, it was received by the pure and immaculate electors of St. Albans with shouts of laughter and derision. Indeed, they seemed to think the bribery oath an exceedingly good joke. He wished to remind the House, that, by establishing a system of secret voting, they would place the suborner entirely at the mercy of the suborned. They could not prevent a man from purchasing a vote, but they could prevent him from knowing whether the vote was paid in return for the bribe. By the operation of the ballot four distinct events would be cast into the shade: firstly, whether the elector whose vote had been purchased voted as the briber expected he would do; secondly, whether the elector so bribed voted for the opponent of the person for whom his vote was purchased; thirdly, whether the elector, after his vote had been purchased, might not split his vote between two opposing candidates; and, fourthly, whether the elector voted at all. Was it likely that 5l., 10 l., or 20 l. notes would be thrown into such an ocean of doubt and conjecture? He thought it was contrary to common sense to entertain such an expectation. He (Mr. Berkeley) had obtained on this subject the opinions of many persons who were accustomed to conduct elections, and they all concurred in the opinion that intimidation would be completely set aside by the ballot. They also considered that the ballot would be a preventive of bribery in all populous constituencies, though some doubt might exist as to its effect upon smaller constituencies. This was quite sufficient for him, for, intimidation once destroyed, he would be well contented to take the chance of bribery, diminished as that chance would be by secret voting. He conceived that intimidation involved the principle of bribery in its worst form.

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They might reward an elector for his vote, and in so doing they were not guilty of any act of tyranny, although they acted unconstitutionally; but when they intimidated an elector to give his vote, or punished him for giving it, they acted not only as tyrants but as robbers, and therefore he held that intimidation was infinitely worse than bribery. Among the evils which intimidation included he would place exclusive dealing, the withdrawal of custom, the ejectment of tenants, and those inquisitorial searches into the lives and finances of electors, the results of which were used to twist from them false votes. In order to show the effect of the present system, he would lay before the House some particulars respecting the last election at Bath. They had been told by his hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, that, at a contested election for that borough, at least one thousand electors abstained from voting in consequence of intimidation. Now he (Mr. Berkeley) had written to a gentleman with a view to ascertain the effect of that system of intimidation in the city of Bath, and his friend had sent him a sort of analysis of the voting. His correspondent said—
"It was a quiet election, no beer-houses opened; there were a few instances of direct intimidation, but they were the exception, not the rule. On the register 3,130 electors, of whom only 2,151 polled, namely, 1,110 for Scobell, and 1,041 for Sutclffle—unpolled, 879; of whom 250 quitted or dead, 100, mostly Tories, out of town, 50 ultra-Radicals who did not think Captain Scobell enough in advance, 30 Catholics who objected to his opinions on religious matters going too far. There were consequently 449 who dared not to vote, and who, upon being canvassed, replied,' We wish Captain Scobell success; we will work for him privately, but if we vote we may as well close our business.'"
Now if there were 449 electors in Bath deterred from voting by intimidation, how many did the House imagine were deterred from placing themselves on the register? This, then, was the electoral system which worked well! He (Mr. Berkeley) asked for the ballot as the greatest boon that could possibly be bestowed upon the agricultural constituencies. The right of tenant-farmers to vote was now a mere nullity. He thought the best plan that could be adopted under the present system on great estates, would be to allow the steward to send in a list of voters at the time of the election to the sheriff of the county, with the name of the candidate for whom they voted appended to it. These unfortunate and degraded men would then be saved from having to
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ride to the next market town to tell a lie. He could assure the House that he felt a deep interest for the tenant-farmers of England. It was true he had felt it to be his duty to object to them in the character of soldiers or constables, solely on the ground that they were undisciplined and disobedient, but he would do them justice in their civil capacity. There was not a better drilled or more obedient body of electors in Europe. The adjutant and the colonel had no means of compelling obedience, but it was not so with the landlord and the steward. The farmer might refuse to go out to fight, but he must not refuse to go out to vote. If he refused to go out to fight, no punishment followed; but if he refused to go out to vote, condign punishment ensued. He (Mr. Berkeley) was prepared to assert that from 1835, when evidence was taken on the subject before a Parliamentary Committee, down to 1851, the state of tyranny and slavery in which the agricultural constituencies, were held, had continued with unabated rigour. At present the farmers, galled by low prices and high rents, had begun to murmur at this sort of dispensation, and were inclined to believe that they were not truly represented in that House. The last South Nottingham election offered a striking instance of this fact. He held in his hand the Times report of the proceedings at that election. He had selected the Times report, firstly, because the reports of that paper were generally correct, and admirably written; and, secondly, because the Times had manifested a direct bias against the question he then brought forward. It could not be supposed, therefore, that the statements he was about to read were written with any bias in favour of his proposal. He found in the Times, after a statement of the result of the election, these remarks:—
"The result astonishes everybody. That in the most aristocratic county in England, with the landlords, almost to a man, banded together in support of their nominee, a scion of one of the largest landed proprietors in the county, he should be defeated by a plain country gentleman, a retired solicitor, with scarcely an acre of land of his own in the county, appears truly marvellous, marvellous indeed!"
How did the Times account for that marvel? The Times said—
"It can be only accounted for, by the fact of the losses of the occupiers of land for the last two years rendering them indifferent to whether they be expelled their homesteads or not."
The Times, therefore, admitted that the penalty for a free and independent vote

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was expulsion from a homestead. The account proceeded:—
"Mr. Barrow has for many years presided at and taken part in their farmers' clubs and meetings. Lord Newark has never been seen by one farmer in a thousand until this contest, and during this election many who voted for him did so with extreme reluctance. In some cases farmers were actually dragged from their hiding-places in hay or straw stacks, taken to the poll, and forced to vote against their wishes. In many instances the answer to the question, 'For whom do you vote?' was 'For Lord Newark, I suppose,' the unwilling tenant looking at the same time into his landlord's face for a nod of assent."
Surely the House, after hearing this tale of humiliation and degradation, selected from the Times, an advocate of open voting, would permit him to apostrophise that great organ of the press, and exclaim O tempora! O mores! He would read one very short extract more from the Times, for the benefit of any hon. Members who might be sufficiently weak and deluded to believe that the Sessional Orders against the interference of Peers were ever intended to be carried out:—
"In the Bingham district a very clever ruse was played off, which had the effect of turning some votes for Mr. Barrow. During the previous night bills were posted in every village purporting to come from a nobleman who has been conspicuous in biassing his tenantry in favour of Lord Newark, of which the following is a copy, 'South Nottinghamshire Election: Lord Chesterfield hereby announces to his tenantry that he takes no part in this contest, and he wishes them to exercise their elective franchise whichever way they feel disposed.—Bretby, Feb. 12."
He would simply put it to the House to consider—when this miserable trickery, this mere election squib, could carry the votes of some electors—what effect the ballot would have had on the election for that county. He considered that it would be much better to take the franchise away altogether from the tenant-farmers than to expose them to the degradation to which they were now subjected. He asked country gentlemen how they could reconcile it to their consciences to perpetuate a system so cruel and unconstitutional in its operation? At one time the country gentlemen eulogised these unhappy people to the skies, and described the tenant-farmers as the free, hardy, independent cultivators of the soil; while at another time those gentlemen were found driving their tenants to the poll like a herd of swine to the next market town. At one time the country gentlemen placed these tenant-farmers on horseback side by side with themselves, dressed in gaudy
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uniforms, their bands playing "See, the Conquering Heroes come!" while, at another time, these same gentlemen were ferretting the farmers like rats in haystacks and strawstacks, where they had crawled in their degradation, to prevent themselves from being compelled to violate their consciences and to tell a lie in the face of God, to the detriment of mankind. Oh! for the pencil of Hogarth, or the stereotype of Punch, to immortalise the discovery and dragging forth of the glorious yeomanry and independent electors from haystacks and strawstacks! for, in a future and more improved age, some pictorial monument would surely be necessary to convince people that such things could be in England in the nineteenth century. He would give the House one more instance of the working of the electoral system in an agricultural district—the county of Gloucester. It appeared that there was in that county a Mr. Handel Cossham, of Wickwar, who had been a very active partisan of the defeated candidate at the last West Gloucestershire election. He believed his hon. relative would confirm his statement that Mr. Cossham was a highly respectable man. Mr. Cossham had lately joined a total abstinence society, and at a meeting of that society, held in Bristol on the 10th of February last, which was reported in the Bristol Mercury, he made a speech remarkable for its good sense, its moral courage, and its penitential tone. Mr. Cossham said—
"That there were many political evils connected with strong drink. He had a great deal to do with the last West Gloucestershire election: he repented it now, and ever should. The drinking at that election was enough to corrupt all England, much more the county of Gloucester. The reason they had not better men to represent them was that the drinking custom had made elections so expensive that the best men would not come forward, while those that did took good care when they got into Parliament to make the electors repay what they had cost them."
Now he (Mr. Berkeley) found that in this speech Mr. Handel Cossham was, whether consciously or unconsciously he could not tell, expressing the sentiments of old Daniel Defoe, and almost in his very words. The coincidence was most remarkable. He (Mr. Berkeley) might remind the House that in 1708 Daniel Defoe published a review, in which he lashed the electoral system of the day, and recommended the ballot. It would be seen, on reference to Hansard, that Mr. Ward quoted with

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considerable effect from that work when he brought the question of the ballot before the House in 1842. Now, in 1710, two years after Defoe's work was published, a Bill to give electors the protection of the ballot passed through the House of Commons, but was rejected by the House of Lords. He (Mr. Berkeley) considered the rejection of that Bill most unconstitutional, because the House of Lords encroached on the privileges of the House of Commons when they interfered in the electoral arrangements of that House. The Lords of that day, however, seemed to have been as determined as the Lords of the present day to keep a grasp on the collars of the constituencies, and they knew that if the people got the ballot they would be compelled to relax that grasp. Defoe's exertions, nevertheless, did not cease; but in 1716 he published another work, entitled Thoughts on Trade and Public Spirit, which contained fresh strictures on the corruption of the electoral system. Now, the coincidence of opinion between Daniel Defoe and Mr. Handel Cossham was remarkable; their thoughts seemed to go pari passu. For instance, Mr. Handel Cossham strongly deprecated the political evils of strong drink, and bore penitential testimony to those evils. Daniel Defoe, on his part, said—
"The frequent orders of the House against treating to strong drink, bribery, and corruptions in elections, have had but little effect; for most people believe they are easily evaded; but one great fault lies in the electors, which are generally of that sordid temper to sell their votes, birthrights, and country for a small sum, or, what is worse, a pot of ale."
Again, Mr. Cossham believed that great expenses were incurred at elections, and that when men got into Parliament they contrived to repay themselves for their outlay. What said Daniel Defoe?—
"In this bad age men go to great expenses to be returned for some pitiful borough; but you must not suppose this is for public spirit, for there are few men to be found though of never so great estates that will serve without round salaries, if they have not strong inclinations to perquisites also."
And this sterling old writer concluded by declaring that "the corruptions at elections are so rivetted in the nature of the people, that the only remedy is by way of balloting." He (Mr. Berkeley) begged to thank the House for the attention with which they had heard him, and would, in conclusion, make an appeal to the noble Lord at the head of the Government.
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That noble Lord stood pledged to further Parliamentary reform. He (Mr. Berkeley) was grateful to the noble Lord for that pledge, but he hoped the noble Lord would not turn aside from this great branch of the question. Shortly after the passing of the Reform Bill, Mr. Grote came to the conclusion that, in order to complete the electoral system, protection to the voter was necessary. He (Mr. Berkeley) did not know how many hon. Members might vote with him that night, but he did know that there were 150 Members of that House who agreed with Mr. Grote, and among them were those bearing great names, men remarkable for talent and wisdom, with whom the noble Lord was in daily communication. He (Mr. Berkeley) was proud to number among the names of those who supported the question the revered name of Romilly—one, who combined with that name high position, great talents, and great popularity. He (Mr. Berkeley) was also supported in his opinions on this subject by the Attorney General, than whom no legal gentleman was better acquainted with the present electoral system and its working than his learned Friend. He was supported, also, by the high authority of the Solicitor General, whose eloquence and sound judgment went hand in hand, and whose brilliant defence of the question could not easily be forgotten when the House came to a resolution in its favour. But, if he were strong in modern legal authority, was he not equally so in ancient legal authority? He had, on a former occasion, shown the House that Lord Chief Justice Holt considered it "a great privilege to elect those who are to bind life and property by the laws they make—a privilege not to be deputed to another." This great privilege, as he (Mr. Berkeley) had shown, however, was not deputed to, but was actually seized upon, by others. Sir W. Blackstone laid it down that the House of Commons "should be elected of the people, to make the laws for the people, and to check the tendency of laws framed by the House of Lords." He (Mr. Berkeley) had shown that this great constitutional maxim was completely set at naught by the fact that the majority of the Members of the House of Commons were the nominees of the House of Lords. He begged to ask the noble Lord at the head of the Government to reconsider the question for the sake of the people of England. If the noble Lord would give a pledge that

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he would take the subject into his consideration, he (Mr. Berkeley) would most readily withdraw the Motion. If the noble Lord, however, declined to do so, he had only then to ask leave to bring in a Bill to give to the Parliamentary electors of Great Britain and Ireland the protection of the ballot, as the only means of enabling them to discharge a solemn duty, and of securing to them the free enjoyment of an important right, and a great privilege.
Motion made, and Question proposed—
"That leave be given to bring in a Bill for the Protection of the Parliamentary Electors of Great Britain and Ireland by taking the Votes by way of Ballot."
MR. ELLISseconded the Motion. He had had an opportunity of seeing the intimidation which was practised at elections, and he was persuaded that the voter could not be protected unless Parliament extended to him the shield of the ballot. He looked upon the noble Lord (Lord John Russell) as the natural leader of reform; and in the name of the electors of this country he called upon him to reconsider this question. He, therefore, expected that he would make the ballot a part of his promised reform. The principle of the ballot was adopted in all their clubs, in their literary and charitable institutions; and why should it not be given as a shield to the tenant-farmer and the tradesman? He admitted that it was natural for a tenant to vote for a good landlord, and that would still be done, but all landlords were not good. He knew that working men in manufactories had been coerced by both parties in a manner which was disgraceful to the country. He hoped the time had arrived when an end would be put to these things. It could not possibly mast much longer. The people would demand their rights, and whoever was the Minister he would be obliged to grant them. He belonged to the people; he knew their wants, their wishes, and their requirements, and he knew that this was one of them. His hon. Friend who made the Motion belonged to a proud aristocratic line, and therefore the more honour was due to him for appearing as the advocate of the measure. He did not believe there could be any independence in a borough where there were only 200 or 300 electors unless voting by ballot was in operation.
MR. HUMEsaid, he had heard with the greatest satisfaction the speech of the hon. Gentleman who had placed this Motion before the House. To him (Mr. Hume)
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that speech appeared unanswerable, and he could not understand how any man professing a desire to give freedom and practical reform to the people could hesitate for a moment to give his support to a Motion for vote by ballot, seeing that it was intended to afford protection to the constitution, by giving a constitutional defence to the people in exercising their right to elect Members to that House. He was sorry that there should be apparently any difference of opinion on that subject. He unfortunately lost the opportunity he had of bringing forward his Motion on Parliamentary reform on a previous occasion, and therefore he was obliged to give notice that he would bring it on as an Amendment to the Motion of his hon. Friend (Mr. H. Berkeley). But he had since considered that their object was the same, and though he believed that the country required more than was proposed by his hon. Friend, he should be sorry to interfere with any proposition by which that House was to be made the constitutional organ to represent the wishes and feelings of the people at large. He asked the noble Lord at the head of the Government to act when he had the power, in the way in which he wished to act when he had not the power. It was by that means that they proved the sincerity of men. At times when the hopes of reformers were low, when the chances of their success were but small, still the noble Lord's voice was heard assisting the cause. What then were the noble Lord's sentiments? In 1832, as soon as he had the power, the noble Lord came forward as the organ of the then Liberal Government, and announced the Reform Bill, which was subsequently passed. He (Mr. Hume) asked no more from the noble Lord than the fulfilment of the sentiments which he then expressed. The noble Lord declared that the time for the nomination of Members of Parliament had gone by—that the people of England would no longer permit Peers of the realm to nominate Members of the House of Commons, who ought only to be elected by the people. Then the noble Lord, in bringing forward a measure for the extension of the suffrage, declared that there ought to be no constituency with a less number than 300, and that he hoped to see in some boroughs double that number. Those who opposed the Reform Bill in that day often reproached its promoters with reaping little or no advantage from it; but the benefits which that Bill had con-

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ferred on this country, he (Mr. Hume) was unable to estimate. No man could tell what might have been the consequences if the old system had been persisted in, and if the people of England, let loose, had acted as the people of other countries had done. But there were two points reserved by the noble Lord in that introductory speech—namely, the ballot and triennial Parliaments. On that occasion the noble Lord said these were points of great importance, but he was anxious to see the trial which would be made of the reforms he proposed; if it should be found they were incomplete, then would be the time to bring forward the questions of the ballot and triennial Parliaments. He (Mr. Hume) would tell the noble Lord that the advantages they had contemplated from the passing of the Reform Act had not been produced, and the time was come when he ought to propose that very reform of the ballot which he held back until a trial was made of the Reform Act. But he (Mr. Hume) was not satisfied with that single reform. He considered there were other and more important reforms necessary, the most important of which was the extension of the franchise. Believing as he did, on the authority of our best and most constitutional lawyers—Blackstone and others—that every man in this country who paid taxes, and performed the duties required of him, as an Englishman, by the State, ought to have a voice in the election of representatives to that House, he had ever been the humble advocate of an extension of the suffrage, though he was not bound or wedded to any particular mode of extending it. He had put down first in his Motion extension of the suffrage, and protection to all persons in the exercise of that suffrage. He then took the second point which the noble Lord reserved, namely, the duration of Parliaments, which he had often heard the noble Lord say it might be desirable to limit to four years. That would certainly be better than seven years; but in his (Mr. Hume's) opinion three years would be preferable to four years. It was to him (Mr. Hume) a matter of economy. The House might be surprised when he said that on economical principles there ought to be a reform in the representation. He was old enough to recollect the struggle that was made before the French war to obtain a reform in Parliament; and he told those who then resisted reform that they desired that war in order to crush the principles of reform,
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and sought to prevent the spread of those principles by banishing the persons who advocated them. And what had been the result? In 1792 and 1793, when there was the same demand for reform in this country that there was now, what was the state of our charges, and what was the amount of the debt? The amount of the debt was then about 240,000,000 l., and the annual charge 9,250,000 l. They went to war in order to crush reform principles; they failed in their object, for since then a greater degree of reform had been obtained than was ever contemplated by the reformers of 1792. On the termination of the war there was an addition to the debt of 600,000,000 l., leaving an annual charge of 21,000,000 l. on the country. That was the result of the efforts of the landed proprietors who obstructed the progress of reform. He had no hesitation in saying he looked to a reform in the constitution of that House as a means of lessening taxation and checking extravagance in the public expenditure. The House of Commons might be said to be the taxing organ of this country, and unless it was a perfect machine, and acted on sound principles, they could not effect those changes which he was anxious to see carried out, both in their legislation and their expenditure. He would not read the proceedings at a meeting of the "Friends of the People," in that day, in which an ancestor of the noble Lord, and the Duke of Richmond, and Colonel Sharman, the father of his hon. Friend the Member for Rochdale, took part; but he might state that the object of the reformers of that period was to remove from the House of Commons all the influences which prevented beneficial changes in the constitution, and which upheld a system of class interests in that House. He said, the noble Lord ought to profit by the example of the history of that day. He (Mr. Hume) would ask if it could be reasonably expected that peace and contentment should reign in this country, if the Legislature persisted in denying to six out of every seven males in the country the right of a voice in the election of representatives? With regard to the share which the people had in the representation, every other country in Europe, Russia excepted, stood superior to England; and was such a state of things to be tolerated by the artisans of this country? He therefore counselled the noble Lord at this time, when employment gave wages, and wages gave contentment, that this was

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the moment for him to come forward and grant an extension of the suffrage, and the protection of the vote by ballot. He (Mr. Hume) was anxious that something should be done. New circumstances had taken place since he had last proposed this question. The policy of the Government had been altered, and the noble Lord himself had declared that every colony connected with this country was entitled to British institutions—meaning thereby responsible government—and that the people should elect those who governed them. Another event had occurred which he regarded with great satisfaction. They had had a representation in Ireland on the principle of property and assessment. Was it possible, under these circumstances, that the people of England would remain contented with the existing system? He held in his hand a paper taken from the Parliamentary records, which showed that in Calne, in Reigate, and in other boroughs, there were only from 150 to 250 electors. He therefore asked the noble Lord to redeem the pledge which he gave. In five of the metropolitan boroughs there were 89,000 electors, who elected twenty-four Members; whilst in twelve other boroughs—namely, Andover, Knaresborough, Tavistock, Thetford, Evesham, Marlborough, Lymington, and five others, with a body of electors numbering only 3,509—the same number of Members were returned as in those five metropolitan boroughs. The inequality was so great that he was satisfied it could find no advocate in this country. Unless the ballot was to be included in the noble Lord's scheme of reform next year, it would not give satisfaction. It would not give that protection to the voter which his (Mr. Hume's) hon. Friend (Mr. H. Berkeley) had shown was so important, even with a limited constituency. He could not help asking why were the benches opposite so empty? It was because the hon. Members who usually occupied them were regardless of the interests of the people. He hoped that would be borne in mind by the people of England, if they were to have a general election next Session, which seemed probable. He thought it was more than likely that the electors would take into their consideration this important fact, that, few as the electors were, if they would but act honestly, they might send a very different order of representatives to that House—men taken from the middle classes who would attend to their inter-
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ests, and be the means, in an economical point of view, of bringing about a great reduction in the public expenditure. He (Mr. Hume) was anxious that the division should simply be on the ballot. Some of his friends had told him that his Amendment was too extensive in its scope. He was desirous of taking from every man the pretence of not coming to a decided vote. Notwithstanding, therefore, the terms of his Amendment, he should not press it, but content himself with simply supporting the Motion of his hon. Friend (Mr. H. Berkeley). It was his earnest desire to see the reform party set up, and again acting with the energy and principle which formerly characterised them. The noble Lord had allowed that powerful reform party to linger on from year to year, until it was almost inanimate. It was in the power of the noble Lord, by a satisfactory and well-timed measure of reform, to reanimate and reunite that party. If he availed himself of the opportunity which now presented itself of doing that, he would be backed by the people, and success would attend any reasonable and proper measure of reform which the noble Lord might introduce.
CAPTAIN SCOBELLsaid, he could assure the House that he had had no intention of addressing them that evening, but having had the honour of presenting a petition from the city which he had the honour to represent, which was numerously signed, and which bore on this subject, he could not remain silent. He knew that there could be little novelty in connexion with that topic. Perhaps he himself was the greatest novelty, being the last person who had entered the House. He had declined to canvass the three thousand electors of Bath, considering the office of canvassing not merely unnecessary but degrading. He took the more open course of meeting his constituents in their several wards. He had, therefore, had full opportunity, both personally and from those gentlemen who had learned the views of the electors, to know the fact that great intimidation was used, that threats had been held out to tradesmen, that various means, shakes of the head in some instances, sending for bills in others, were not very usual, but were not unusual means of intimidation resorted to in the city of Bath during the contest. He might be asked whether he was in favour of vote by ballot. He would say if a better plan could be produced for protecting voters, let it

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supplant the ballot; but as they never had heard of a better plan, and as the ballot had been established in different countries, it must be assumed that the ballot was the only practicable plan. It was no new thing for him to be a friend of the ballot. Some twelve or fifteen years ago he had had considerable experience at an election, and had then means of closer observation, perhaps, than recently, because he had canvassed some of the constituency in the case to which he referred. It was no unusual thing for him to find a person telling him in a whisper, "I wish to give my vote to the Liberal side, but I dare not. Say nothing of it, Sir." When he reverted to incidents which had occurred within the last two or three weeks, he could not, as an honest man, as a faithful representative, abstain from declaring in that House, on the first occasion on which he had addressed it, the sense he entertained of the justice, expediency, and absolute necessity of sheltering men in the exercise of that right which the constitution conferred on them. It was worse than trifling with the population of this country to put into the hands of constituencies the power of electing representatives without giving them the means of using it independently. The petition to which he had alluded directed the attention of the House to a hardship which the constituency he represented now felt, respectfully stating that—
"The electors of Bath had lately proceeded to elect a Member for the city; that in the exercise of that right, and in the discharge of that duty, the petitioners found very many electors intimidated from giving votes by threats of ruin to their families."
They properly told the House that it was a duty they had to perform—that they were trustees, as it were, for those who had not votes; for there were persons who must work the constitution out of doors, and who sent persons to that House to work the constitution within doors. If he might venture to add his voice to those which had been addressed to the noble Lord at the head of the Government, whose speeches he had so often read and admired out of doors, he would entreat the noble Lord to give reform in time. What was given, should be given freely, and it would be found to possess treble the value which would attach to it if it were begged for, and, at last, obtained almost by force. That very day he had received a letter from one of his constituents, which contained these words:—
"I have been discharged by my employer for
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voting for you. I have been obliged to pawn some of my things to maintain my family; and all the remedy, or rather no remedy, I can get from my employer is this, 'Go to the gentleman whom you voted for.'"
That was but one instance among many; and when such cases could be accumulated, as they had been by the hon. Gentleman who introduced the Motion, it was time they set about doing their duty, and securing to those to whom they looked to elect proper representatives proper means of doing so. The petitioners went on to remark that the public declaration of voting created painful divisions in families and in society. The fact had been glanced at in the debate, that all private clubs used the ballot; and the object was evidently to prevent clamour, malice, and the display of angry passions. The means were excellent for attaining the end in view; and when the ballot was found to be good for the protection of those who had only the indulgence of bad feelings to guard against, how much more fit was it to be applied in a case where it would afford still further protection—protection to men who, without it, must either suffer ruin, or sacrifice their principles. He therefore joined his humble voice to the solicitations of others, in urging on those who had the remedy for the existing evil in their own hands, that when they were before the country next year with a new Reform Bill, they would take care to make it a liberal measure; for if it were a little measure the people would not be satisfied; and when they got that little they would try to get more.
Question put.
The House divided:—Ayes 87; Noes 50: Majority 37.

List of the AYES.

Adair, H. E.

Evans, W.

Adair, R. A. S.

Ewart, W.

Armstrong, R. B.

Fergus, J.

Bass, M. T.

Ferguson, Col.

Berkeley, C. L. G

Fox, W. J.

Bernal, R.

Geach, C.

Blake, M. J.

Gibson, rt. hon. T. M.

Blewitt, R. J.

Granger, T. C.

Brown, H.

Grenfell, C. P.

Clay, J.

Hall, Sir B.

Cobden, R.

Harris, R.

Cockburn, Sir A. J. E.

Hastie, A.

Collins, W.

Henry, A.

Crawford, W. S.

Heyworth, L.

Crawford, R. W.

Hobhouse, T. B.

Currie, R.

Hodges, T. L.

Dawes, E.

Hume, J.

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

Johnstone, J.

Duncan, Visct.

Kershaw, J.

Duncan, G.

Langston, J. H.

Evans, Sir De L.

Lushington, C.

Evans, J.

M'Cullagh, W. T.

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M'Taggart, Sir J.

Scrope, G. P.

Meagher, T.

Scully, F.

Milner, W. M. E.

Smith, J. B.

Moffatt, G.

Stansfield, W. R. C.

Morris, D.

Strickland, Sir G.

Muntz, G. F.

Stuart, Lord D.

O'Brien, J.

Stuart, Lord J.

O'Connell, J.

Thompson, Col.

O'Connor, F.

Thompson, G.

O'Ferrall, rt. hon. R. M.

Trelawny, J. S.

O'Flaherty, A.

Villiers, hon. C.

Pechell, Sir G. B.

Wakley, T.

Perfect, R.

Walmsley, Sir J.

Pigott, F.

Wawn, J. T.

Pilkington, J.

Willcox, B. M.

Power, Dr.

Williams, J.

Ricardo, O.

Williams, W.

Rice, E. R.

Willyams, H.

Robartes, T. J. A.

Wilson, M.

Roche, E. B.

Wood, Sir W. P.

Salwey, Col.

TELLERS.

Scholefield, W.

Berkeley, H.

Scobell, Capt.

Ellis, J.

List of the NOES.

Armstrong, Sir A.

Heald, J.

Baines, rt. hon. M. T.

Heathcote, Sir G. J.

Baird, J.

Labouchere, rt. hon. H.

Baring, rt. hn. Sir F. T.

Langton, W. H. P. G.

Barrow, W. H.

Lewis, G. C.

Bell, J.

Lockhart, A. E.

Blackstone, W. S.

Lopes, Sir R.

Boyd, J.

Matheson, Col.

Bremridge, R.

Moody, C. A.

Broadley, H.

Newdegate, C. N.

Brockman, E. D.

Prime, R.

Campbell, hon. W.

Richards, R.

Carter, J. B.

Russell, Lord J.

Cayley, E. S.

Sandars, G.

Craig, Sir W. G.

Seymour, H. D.

Crowder, R. B.

Seymour, Lord

Currie, H.

Smollett, A.

Denison, E.

Townley, R. G.

Denison, J. E.

Vane, Lord H.

Dundas, G.

Walsh, Sir J. B.

Evelyn, W. J.

Willoughby, Sir H.

French, F.

Wilson, J.

Frewen, C. H.

Wood, rt. hon. Sir C.

Gwyn, H.

Halford, Sir H.

TELLERS.

Hallewell, E. G.

Hayter, W. G.

Hatchell, rt. hon. J.

Grey, R. W.

Bill ordered to be brought in by Mr. Berkeley, Mr. J. Ellis, and Mr. Hume.

POOR EMPLOYMENT (IRELAND).
MR. SCULLYrose to move a Resolution to give effect to the employment of the inmates of workhouses in reproductive labour, so as to endeavour to make them self-supporting. He said, his strong conviction was, that the existing system was injurious, not only to the ratepayers, but to the morals and habits of the inmates of workhouses. There were two leading objections taken by the Government and the Poor Law Commissioners to the employment of the inmates of workhouses on reproductive labour. They stated, in the
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first place, that the uniform effect of the introduction of such a system would be to derange the discipline of the workhouses; and, in the second place, that it would bring the labour of the paupers into direct competition with that of the industrious classes out of doors. These were serious objections, if true; but he was prepared to show that they had no foundation in fact, and that the introduction of a wise and judicious system of employing the able-bodied poor in workhouses was attended with effects the very reverse of those contemplated by the Poor Law Commissioners. In those workhouses where it had already been carried out—such as Cork—the result was very remarkably in opposition to that anticipated by the Commissioners. The master of Cork workhouse stated, that previous to his appointment, the system adopted in the house had been a total failure, but that the employment of the inmates during the last two years on productive labour, and the use of a training school, had been attended with the most signal success; a marked change for the better had taken place, and one of the most significant proofs of this was, that the prison cells had been taken down, and workshops established in their stead. Indeed, it appeared that, if allowed by the Legislature, this workhouse could manufacture not only for its own wants, but for those of other workhouses in Ireland. He could mention other workhouses where similar effects had been produced, though the principle had not been carried out to the same extent. In Clonmel, according to the statement of the master, the industrious employment of the inmates had given increased facilities for maintaining discipline instead of deranging it; and the same effect had been produced at Waterford and other workhouses. These facts were a complete answer to the objection of the Commissioners, that the discipline of the houses would be interfered with. The other argument they made use of, viz., that it would bring the labour of paupers in workhouses into competition with that of the industrious poor out of doors, would be a very serious one if the case of Ireland was similar to that of England. But they were, in truth, very different. He should be only too happy to see manufactures extended to Ireland; but, virtually speaking, the south and west, and a great part of the east of Ireland, were wholly devoid of manufactures, and it was only in the north that manufac-

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turing industry prevailed. How, then, could the inmates of the workhouses compete with the labours of the poor out of doors; and were they to maintain them in idleness in the workhouses from some imaginary fear of a competition that did not exist? There were in the workhouses of Ireland from 90,000 to 100,000 poor just at that age when they might be made, by proper training, useful members of society; but instead of being taught to become independent members of society in after life, they were so treated as to render them burdens to the different Unions of Ireland, to become paupers for life, and to leave no other remedy in the hands of the guardians but that of emigration. They were employed in breaking stones, picking oakum, and other occupations of that kind; and he would put it to the House whether that was employment suitable for the able-bodied poor of Ireland? In one of the Dublin Unions there were over 800 women, and how did the House think they were employed? They were absolutely engaged in bands of fifty driving capstan mills—a kind of employment on which it was disgraceful to have women employed, one that tended to make them lose all self-respect and correct moral feeling. The numbers at present in the workhouses of Ireland were enormous, and, he was sorry to say, they were on the increase daily. He found, from a return he held in his hand, that the number of paupers in the workhouses in the county of Tipperary had increased from 12,500, in 1848, to about 23,800 last year. But, though the paupers were thus increasing, the work provided for them was not increasing in any thing like the same proportion. It had been clearly shown by correspondence with the Poor Law Commissioners that had been published, that the officers of the Boards of Guardians were anxious to carry out the system of employment which he now recommended. One reason he would urge in favour of his Motion was, that it would make the inmates of workhouses, instead of becoming emigrants, the means of teaching others in their own country works of a useful nature, not only in agriculture but in manufactures of different kinds; and he was satisfied that the great evil in Ireland, as regarded manufactures, and one of the chief obstacles to their progress, was the want of skilled hands.
Motion made, and Question proposed—
"That, in order to lighten the severe pressure of Poor's Rate in Ireland, it is expedient to faci-
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litate by every means the employment of the inmates of workhouses in reproductive labour, so as to make these establishments, as far as possible, self-supporting; and that it is the duty of the Poor Law Commissioner to see so desirable an object fully carried out."
MR. O'FLAHERTYseconded the Motion. He would appeal to the good feeling of the right hon. Baronet the Chief Secretary for Ireland, who was a Poor Law Commissioner himself, and entreat him to pay attention to the statement which had been made as to the condition of the workhouse paupers in Ireland, and the means by which that condition might be ameliorated. He held in his hand a return from the Union of which he was himself the Chairman, showing that the only way of carrying out the Poor Law in that country without pauperising the whole community, was by adopting the self-supporting system. In his Union it had proved to be a most successful experiment. They had saved in the space of about eleven months upwards of 1,000 l. in the expenses of the workhouse. He hoped, therefore, the Commissioners would not throw any unnecessary impediments in the way to prevent its being extended all over Ireland.
SIR WILLIAM SOMERVILLEcould assure his hon. Friends the Mover and Seconder of the Motion, that he was fully alive to the importance of the subject to which the Motion referred. It was at all times of great importance, but at the present moment, considering the crisis through which Ireland was still passing, and the great pressure which that country had to sustain, by reason of the poor-rates, it became particularly important. The Motion referred to two distinct matters—1. The industrial employment of the pauper; and, 2. The reproductive labour of the pauper. Now, the Poor Law Commissioners had always been desirous of giving useful employment to the paupers in the workhouses, and that upon the self-supporting principle; but when it was proposed that the paupers should be employed in what was called reproductive labour—that was to say, that the produce of their labour should be taken into the market, and there compete with the produce of free labour—that the pauper labourer should compete with the independent labourer—the question then assumed a totally different aspect. It must be remembered that the inmates of a workhouse were found at the public expense with lodging, food and clothing. If those inmates were to be employed in

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manufactures, and the produce of their labour were to enter into the markets and there be sold in competition with the produce of free labour, it was evident that free labour could not successfully sustain that competition, and that the independent labourer must, in his turn, become the inmate of a workhouse. A distinction had been made between agricultural labour and manufacturing labour; but it seemed to him that the principle equally applied to both descriptions of employment. Supposing an extensive farm were attached to a workhouse, and, by means of pauper labour, large quantities of wheat, oats, potatoes, and other articles were produced, it was quite clear that that produce might be carried into the market, and that you might at any time undersell the farmer. Was it not obvious, then, if the principle contended for by the hon. Mover were extensively adopted, great injury might be inflicted upon the agricultural interest of Ireland? The successful experiment referred to by the hon. Member for Galway (Mr. O'Flaherty) in his own Union, was a case confined to the self-supporting system—that of maintaining the inmates of the workhouse out of the produce of their own labour. So far from the Commissioners throwing impediments in the way of that system, they had always encouraged it. In many of the Unions the Guardians, by virtue of the 11th and 12th of Victoria, had attached twenty-five acres of land to the workhouses for the employment of the paupers. The hon. Gentleman who moved the Resolution (Mr. Scully) had made one suggestion which was deserving of consideration. The hon. Gentleman said that it might happen that in certain workhouses there might be a surplus of goods manufactured by the inmates, and that one mode of disposing of them might be, not by selling them in the open market, but by sending them to other workhouses. Now, that was certainly a very different thing, and if it could be done, he at present knew of no objection to its being adopted. But, after all, he thought it would be better to leave the whole matter in the hands of the Commissioners, and allow them to exercise their own discretion on the subject. It was evident from the course they had hitherto pursued, that the Commissioners were not disposed to carry their powers further than what a due regard to the general interests of society demanded. To bind the Commissioners by a pledge such as that contained in the
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Resolution now proposed, would be a most objectionable proceeding. To convert all the workhouses in Ireland into so many great manufactories, was a system which no Parliament could sanction. It had never been adopted in England; and wherever it had been partially acted upon, it had been found to be detrimental to the interests of free labour. However, he did not deny that such a system would, unquestionably, work better in Ireland than in England. For the reasons he had given he could not consent to the Motion, and he hoped the House would leave the matter in the hands of the Commissioners, and not pledge them to the dangerous principle involved in the Resolution.
MR. ROCHEhoped the House would not leave so important a question to be decided by the Poor Law Commissioners in Ireland. That House was the proper place in which the question should be decided. And what was the question? It was, whether the Legislature would carry out the principles of political economy in all their integrity as regarded the support of the paupers in Ireland or not? He nevertheless concurred with the right hon. Gentleman the Secretary for Ireland in the distinction which he had drawn between employing pauper labourers in the workhouse, for the purpose of teaching youth, and accustoming them to industrial habits, and employing them for the purpose of what was called reproductive labour. It would be very right to employ paupers in the workhouse; but it would neither be useful nor right to convert the workhouse into a manufactory for the purpose of competing with free labour out of doors. The real difficulty they had to deal with, after all, was the great excess of pauperism in Ireland. The only mode of meeting this difficulty was by applying themselves, one and all, to the great productive sources of the country. On a former occasion he called the attention of the right hon. Chancellor of the Exchequer to the great benefit that might be conferred on Ireland by encouraging the cultivation of flax in that country, and by extending advances of public money which he allowed for the building of farm houses to the building of scutching houses for flax. If that were done, considering the great demand there was for that article in England, remunerative employment might be given to every single man in Ireland. But how was his proposition met? Why, the right hon. Chancellor of the Exchequer came

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down to the House with a great majority at his hack, and literally pooh-poohed the question. What he on that occasion asked the right hon. Gentleman to do was to allow a portion of the loan which he was applying to the erection of farm buildings in Ireland, to the erection of buildings for the preparation of flax in that country. But the right hon. Gentleman would not listen to the proposal, and it fell to the ground. Nevertheless, that was one of the means by which encouragement might be given to manufactures in Ireland, and by which the great difficulty of pauperism in that country might be met. It would at the same time be a most legitimate mode of encouraging reproductive labour. The Government was responsible for a great portion of the pauperism in Ireland, for they introduced no measures to diminish it. He hoped the hon. Member (Mr. Scully) would not divide on the Motion, as he felt he could not support him if he persisted in extending his Motion beyond the self-supporting system.
MR. POULETT SCROPEsaid, it seemed to be [taken for granted by the right hon. Gentleman the Secretary for Ireland that political economy was opposed to the employment of the paupers in reproductive labour. But there was nothing in political economy which advocated the employment of useless in preference to useful labour. Merely employing paupers for employment sake, for instance, in breaking stones, was false political economy, and could not have any support from him. The argument of the right hon. Baronet would have come with great grace from the other side of the House; for it was the strongest Protectionist argument he had ever heard, to contend that people were to he prohibited from competing with their neighbours because they had greater advantages. As it was, the argument was worthless; because at present the Irish pauper was fed on foreign corn, and clothed in English manufactures, so that it was clear they would not compete with their own countrymen. At the same time, he believed that there was a strong prejudice against the competition of paupers with the productions of independent labourers; and, therefore, he would suggest that the Motion should be confined to the self-supporting system, where their labour would not come into the general market in the same way as he observed the Government were now employing the convicts on public and spe-
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cial works, which did not enter into general competition.
SIR JOHN WALSHsaid, that if he had understood the hon. Member's Motion to be for a large grant to establish a poplin manufactory at Tipperary, or a silk manufactory at Belfast, he should be the first to oppose such a principle; but he did not understand him to propose anything of the kind. [Mr. SCULLY: Hear, hear!] He understood him to suggest the employment of persons confined in workhouses in some productive labour, as a better application of time than allowing them to remain utterly idle, and without any labour at all, He (Sir J. Walsh) could assure the right hon. Baronet the Secretary for Ireland he need not fear that any labour of this description would have a tendency in the least degree to displace free labour. On the contrary, if, for instance, flax could be manufactured in the workhouses of Ireland by the inmates, and the experiment were successful, and of which he had very little doubt, it would give the greatest possible stimulus to free labour. The case of Ireland was different from that of England. The paupers of England were only a small proportion of the population, and the labour was only intended to deter idle persons from becoming inmates of workhouses. But in Ireland, by the pressure of circumstances, by the unhappy results of calamities by which that country had been visited, a vast percentage of the population had been thrown into the workhouses. It was then a point to be considered how they could be employed with benefit to themselves, and without injury to the rest of the country. And, guarding himself from agreeing to any application of Government funds, or large capital to carry on considerable industrial establishments, he could not see any possible injury from assenting to the proposition of the hon. Member for Tipperary.
COLONEL DUNNEwas convinced that the principle contained in the Motion of the hon. Member for Tipperary (Mr. Scully) was absolutely necessary for carrying out usefully any poor-law in Ireland. He was opposed to making workhouses large manufacturing establishments; but believing that paupers were most usefully employed when supporting themselves by productive employment, he should cordially vote for the Motion.
COLONEL THOMPSONhad listened with attention to the three last speakers, and could not help believing that, upon ex-

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amination, they would be found to be right. If the House would allow him, he would illustrate his view of the question in this manner:—Suppose the inmates of a workhouse in Ireland or in England were to grow cauliflowers, which being not peculiarly adapted for the consumption of paupers, they sold in the market. The result would be some increase of the quantity of cauliflowers in the cauliflower market, and some diminution in the selling price of cauliflowers, and consequently in the reward of labour in that particular production. But the money taken for the cauliflowers would incontinently be sent into the potato market, and there cause an exactly equal increase in the demand for potatoes, and consequently in their selling price, and in the reward of labour bestowed on potato-growing. So that in the aggregate there was as much good as harm. If friends from Ireland would "chew upon this," he thought they would be able to make something of it. And he would go further, and inquire what would be the consequences of stopping the pauper growth of cauliflowers, and taking the price of the potatoes from the ratepayers instead. There would not be the influx of cauliflowers into the market, to the terror of the growers; but at the same time there would be a deduction from some other dealers, of what would have been expended on them by the ratepayers if the money had not been taken from them for the rates, which must work those dealers as much woe as the others had of joy. So that in the aggregate, the naked result was, that the ratepayers got nothing, instead of something, for their money. And this was the way in which the support of paupers was a damage to a country, namely, that without affecting the rest of the industry of the country in the aggregate, it took the whole amount out of the ratepayers, as much as if they were obliged to throw it into the sea. He thought this argument would in the end be found to stand good, and that we should by degrees come round to the opinion that it was advisable to employ paupers in workhouses in all ways which could be made profitable.
SIR LUCIUS O'BRIENsaid, it was perfectly ridiculous the idea of the market being overstocked, to the injury of the agriculturists, by the small quantity of produce which even several poorhouses might be able to raise. He admitted that there were difficulties in employing the poor in productive employment; but he thought
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these difficulties might be overcome by a careful superintendence by the Board of Guardians. He should vote for the Motion.
MR. SHARMAN CRAWFORDconsidered it a sound principle that every man supported by the State should work, and, if possible, make a beneficial return for his labour. He supported the Motion on the ground that the reproductive employment of paupers would be a far less evil than any to be apprehended from a displacement of the labour market. He was willing to admit that there might be evils connected with the course proposed; but he thought that, under the circumstances, the evils would be much less of allowing the paupers to be usefully employed, than in allowing them to remain in idleness.
LORD CLAUD HAMILTONsaid, there was one view of the question which had not been touched upon in the course of the discussion, and that was the immense advantage which resulted from the industrial education received by the youth of Ireland within the walls of the workhouses. He knew of scores of instances where, in consequence of the industrial training received within the workhouse, young persons had been enabled not only to maintain themselves, but to take their relatives out of the workhouse. This was not simply a question of political economy. Ireland was at present in a state of transition; and if the question was to be met by cold abstract principles, the difficulties under which she was labouring would be increased. He did not wish to see large tracts of land inclosed, as if agricultural industry was alone likely to be productive; but he wished to see all kinds of industry encouraged, and not forbidden and thwarted, as it was constantly, in the ease of trades, by the Poor Law Commissioners. He thought the hon. Member for Tipperary (Mr. Scully) entitled to their gratitude for bringing forward the subject, and he hoped the House would receive the proposition with that favour which it so well merited.
MR. J. WILSONsaid, that the proposition divided itself into two parts, on one of which they were all agreed, while there was a difference of opinion on the other. The hon. Gentleman (Mr. Scully) who brought forward the question, deserved great credit for calling the attention of the House to the industrial training of pauper children. Two years ago an Act was passed enabling different Unions to join together to establish schools, and he believed it had

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been attended with the greatest advantages; but he thought the House ought to pause before recognising the principle laid down by the hon. Gentleman with regard to pauper labour. About five years ago, after the famine had taken place in Ireland, a great mistake had been committed in endeavouring to give outdoor labour on public works to Irish paupers. No one could deny that the effect of giving Government aid in that particular way was to create an undue and unfair competition between the pauper and the independent labourer, and to reduce large masses of the people to the condition of State paupers, who would otherwise have been earning independent wages. The rights of the independent labourer ought to be most carefully guarded. If this system were established, there would instantly be a competition between pauper and independent labour, and for every pauper that was fed indoors, a new pauper would be created out of doors by withdrawing a portion of the labour on which the free labourer had previously existed. Hon. Members would also recollect the error of the old poor-law system in England, for as long as the practice was for the parish to find employment for the pauper, the effect was to create pauperism, until, in some particular parishes, every farm labourer was hired out by the parish officers. In Ireland, as in England, it would diminish the wages of the labourer out of doors, and increase the number of indoor paupers. The same system had been tried not only in England, and in the public works in Ireland, but also in Holland and Flanders. In Holland more care had been taken in this matter than in any other country in the world, and the result had been the most miserable failure. Similar attempts, without any more success, had been made in Flanders. There was nothing more injurious to the independent labourer than this sort of fictitious competition created by persons being partly supported by charitable institutions, or by institutions supported by public funds. The value of labour must find its own level, and it must not be by encouraging pauperism that they could expect to improve the condition of the labourer. He saw no objection to the establishment of industrial schools for children, or even to industrial employment for the purpose of recreation or for procuring food for the people in the workhouse; but as to workhouses entering into competition on a large scale with free labour, either in agriculture or in manufac-
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tures, he believed that to support such a proposition would be fostering a very dangerous fallacy. The system that was now proposed was no doubt very popular in Ireland, because it seemed to be a very short cut to a remedy; but short cuts often proved to be the longest road to arrive at a desired point. He hoped the House would look to the results of the experiments that had been already made of this system, and hesitate, before coming to a conclusion, to pass a resolution of this kind, which would sanction, in his opinion, a most illusive and dangerous doctrine.
MR. H. HERBERTsaid, he must congratulate the House and the country on the fact that a talented and influential Member of the Government had now described as a failure their policy in Ireland, and the measures of relief adopted amid the protests of every man of sense, persevered in in the midst of remonstrances, and, he would say, without meaning it offensively, almost in spite of common sense—in spite of prophecies and repeated warnings. It was extraordinary to hear those acts quoted and pointed at as a warning to hon. Gentlemen on that side of the House, which the Government were told at the time by hon. Members on that side would be mischievous. He begged English Members to bear in mind that the properties of Irish Members had been mortgaged to pay for that pernicious system, which was now described as a failure, but which was then adopted in spite of every entreaty and every warning. He also begged English Members to consider that it had taken three years to induce the Government to adopt a system recommended almost by every man of common sense in Ireland—he meant the reduction of the area of taxation. It took three years to establish that principle, and at the end of the first year, for the first time, the Government was able to point out a beneficial alteration in the working of the Poor Law in Ireland.
MR. J. WILSONbegged to explain. He had not said anything about the general policy of the Government with regard to Ireland, but he had stated that the system of employment in public works that was first attempted had been immediately abandoned. These public works had been undertaken with the unanimous consent and sanction of that House.
LORD NAASthought it would be a dangerous principle to allow workhouse produce to come into the market to compete

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with that of the independent labourer; but he did not believe this was contemplated by the Resolution, and he should therefore support it. It was a great disadvantage to the governors of workhouses to have no means of employing the paupers in useful labour. He could not help congratulating the House on the extraordinary solicitude of hon. Gentlemen on the opposite benches in favour of home produce, and did not see how they could be in dread of such produce in a few workhouses.
SIR HENRY BARRONsaid, it was most desirable to encourage manufactures of a certain description. In the Union with which he was connected, no less than seventeen trades were carried on in the workhouse. The inmates made all their own clothing, male and female, and made the furniture required. The great advantage was in the improved moral feeling which had been thus excited; when the paupers left the workhouse they turned their industrial training to account, and earned their own livelihood. Training masters were employed in the different trades at considerable salaries; nevertheless, the Union found a saving in this course. The hon. Member for Westbury (Mr. J. Wilson) had confounded this industrial training with quite a different system. The fact was he had got so thoroughly imbued with a certain political dogma, that it entered into his thoughts on every subject. It was absurd to apply political economy learned from books to a country in such a state as was Ireland at the present moment. The system adopted in Holland was no other than a vast system of outdoor relief. Here the question was one of reproductive employment for those immured within the walls of workhouses. Equally distinct from it was the system in operation in England prior to the enactment of the present Poor Law. It was nothing less than misrepresentation to make such comparisons; it was making a very bad use of political economy. There were many kinds of labour carried on in the workhouses, which were not followed in Ireland at all. In one case it had been contemplated exporting the produce of the pauper labour to America. Would that injure the labour market of Ireland? Every honest man wished to see the pauper become a useful member of society, and contribute something towards his maintenance. They did not want him to go into the public market to compete with the honest labourer, but simply to be employed
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in the workhouse at such trades as would contribute to his support without interfering with public labour. It would be an exceedingly wholesome state of things if the whole of the people could be brought to support themselves without being obliged to go to other countries for the common necessaries of life. The question brought forward by the hon. Member for Tipperary (Mr. Scully) resolved itself into this—were the people in the workhouses to be supported in idleness; or were they to have the means of contributing something to their own support by useful and reproductive employment?
The CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUERsaid, that the hon. Baronet (Sir H. Barron) had found fault with the hon. Member for Westbury's (Mr. J. Wilson's) false notions of political economy, and the confusion of his ideas, because he told us that it was a great mistake to suppose that this Resolution meant anything but labour within the walls of the workhouse. He thought, however, that the hon. Member for Waterford had not heard what had taken place in the early part of the debate, because if he had listened to the arguments about the inmates of workhouses raising their own food, he would hardly suppose that the sole object of the Motion was to give them employment in the workhouse. He could hardly tell what it was intended by the hon. Baronet to do in Ireland; but the people of this country grew their corn outside of the workhouse. He wished hon. Gentlemen I to consider the practical result of the measure on which they were about to vote. Any intention of giving outdoor relief was disavowed. He should like to know what the hon. Member for Waterford would have, and what the employment of paupers in cultivating farms attached to workhouses could be, if it was not outdoor relief under another name. What would be the result of it? The hon. Member for Waterford (Sir H. Barron) said, there was no similarity between the system of raising corn out of the workhouse, and the system adopted in Flanders and Holland; but the system in those countries was to employ paupers in raising crops by their labour. He should like to know the difference between the cultivation of farms by paupers out of a workhouse, and a system of outdoor relief. With respect to the remarks of the hon. Member for Kerry (Mr. H. Herbert), I he must say that no person justified the

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relief works in Ireland, except as the means of saving life. The hon. Gentleman referred to the decrease of the Irish population, and attributed it to the measures of the Government. Sorry as he was to see such a decrease as had been shown in the population in Ireland—a decrease of which a great portion was to be attributed to the disease and distress recently prevailing in that country—he thought this proved that the Government were justified in what they did; for though they had not been successful to the extent they wished in saving human life, yet there was no doubt life had been saved to a very great extent through the various means adopted by this country. Did the hon. Member mean to say that if the people of Ireland had been left to the unassisted exertions of the people of Ireland, there would not have been ten times as much misery and mortality as there had been? But coming more immediately to the question before the House, he would ask, if it was intended to do that which the Resolution purported to do, namely, to employ the inmates of the workhouses in reproductive labour, and so to make them self-supporting? If so, there was great danger of doing away with the principle, that to the able bodied relief afforded in workhouses should be made distasteful? He would ask whether it was right to employ the paupers in such outdoor labour as a farm attached to the workhouse would give, or in trades which they might exercise much more beneficially elsewhere? For himself, he held that to render the labour the same there as elsewhere, was contrary to the whole principle on which the test of the workhouse was founded. Ireland might learn from the experience of England, and in England we had been led to adopt the test to prevent fraud—to prevent parties going on the rates when they could maintain themselves. Nothing would countervail the permanent injury done to Ireland, to labourers as well as ratepayers, if they abandoned the principle of making the workhouse test as severe as possible. He believed that the security of property depended on their maintaining it in full vigour, and therefore should object to any change in the law which took away from its stringency. He warned the Irish Members that any present trifling gain which might be obtained by the employment of inmates of workhouses in the manner proposed by the hon. Member for Tipperary,
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would be more than counterbalanced by the dependent spirit which that employment would create amongst the distressed districts of Ireland.
SIR H. BARRONbegged to say, that he was himself a most unequivocal supporter of the test.
MR. HENLEYcould not at all understand the argument of the right hon. Chancellor of the Exchequer, for whilst he quite agreed that nothing could be more dangerous for Ireland than to break down the workhouse test, he could not ascertain by what necessary connexion of terms the employment of the people in the workhouse broke into that test. It might, indeed, depend on the quality of the labour given—whether, that was to say, it was agreeable or disagreeable; but he could not see how its being productive or unproductive could make it more or less of a test to the labourer. He could not see, within the terms of the Motion, what difference it could make, if a man was employed in breaking oakum, whether he did it so as to get something for the workhouse or not, whether it was reproductive, or whether it should be worth nothing; and the words of the Motion only went to that—that so far as might be, the labourer was to be employed in productive rather than in unproductive works. To anything which broke down the test, no man would be more opposed than he was; but that this proposition would do so had not been shown. He thought that the Government had been rather hardly pressed in the matter of Irish relief, because he recollected that in the autumn of 1846, when they came into office, and stated that they should follow up what had been commenced by the preceding Government, no objection was taken by the Irish Members to the mode of the relief, but only that it was not likely to be sufficient. He could only look at the Motion in the terms in which he found it, and if the House went to a division, he should certainly vote for it.
MR. LABOUCHEREsaid, that every Gentleman who intended to support the Motion seemed anxious to explain away its obvious meaning; and it had been said that it only declared the course which the Irish Poor Law Commissioners had hitherto pursued. The hon. Gentleman who had just sat down (Mr. Henley) seemed to think that the Chancellor of the Exchequer's objection was solely against pauper labour being productive; whereas, as he put it, the question was, as to the adop-

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tion of this principle, whether the Poor Law Commissioners were to turn their attention to an inquiry how paupers might be put to work not primarily and stringently as a test, but primarily intended to be reproductive. Then he thought it would be most objectionable, if the House considered the course pursued by the Irish Poor Law Commissioners to be substantially prudent, to affirm a resolution which raised at least a supposition that the House desired some new principle. He certainly thought that whatever temporary relief might be given to the ratepayers by making the Irish poorhouses a colossal workshop, the ultimate injury that it would entail on Ireland in all respects, morally and otherwise, it was impossible to calculate. Reference had been made to the relief measures by which the Government, under the appalling circumstances in which Ireland was placed in 1846, endeavoured to mitigate the fearful calamity which fell on that country. He had never underrated the frightful extent of the pressure on Ireland in consequence of the blast of the potato root; but, notwithstanding his deep impression on that point, he had seen with the most painful feeling the lamentable account of the diminished population in Ireland afforded by the census. However, in reference to the measures taken for the relief of the calamity which visited Ireland, it was more easy to criticise them, now the emergency had passed away, than to devise measures to meet the circumstances at the time. He believed that nothing could exceed the desire which at the time pervaded every class in England to go to the rescue of Ireland. At the time he supported the measures which had been alluded to, he was convinced that they could not be adopted without great concomitant evils, and he remembered that in 1846, when the Government took up the measures of the late Sir Robert Peel's Administration on the subject, he (Mr. Labouchere) exposed himself to a good deal of reproach when he stated that he expected great evil from them; but that all his objections disappeared when he saw the necessity of interfering with the frightful destruction of life which must take place, without some remedial measures in Ireland. Even now, he was far from being convinced that those measures with respect to relief in Ireland were not in the first instance the best, though after a time it was impossible to go on with the system on account of its concomitant evils, and then
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what was called the soup-kitchen system became a most excellent substitute.
SIR DENHAM NORREYSrather distrusted the object of the Motion, and could not disconnect the hon. Member who brought it forward from the proceedings of certain Boards of Guardians in Tipperary, who were in the habit of selling the surplus productions of the workhouse labour in the public market, so that the Motion seemed open to all the objections urged against such a system. He thought, however, that the right hon. the Chancellor of the Exchequer had confounded the employment of the poor in the workhouse precincts with the outdoor system. He hoped his hon. Friend would not divide, as he was certain all were agreed, at least upon the general principle.
MR. SCULLYsaid, he must deny the statement just made by the hon. Baronet (Sir D. Norreys), as to the Tipperary Boards of Guardians selling the products of workhouse labour in the public market. All that was desired was, that the Guardians should be at liberty to employ the poor in productive labour. He was against any competition of workhouse labour with free labour in agriculture.
Question put. The House divided:—Ayes 42; Noes 64: Majority 22.

List of the AYES.

Archdall, Capt. M.

Hodgson, W. N.

Bankes, G.

Jones, Capt.

Barron, Sir H. W.

Knox, hon. W. S.

Bateson, T.

Langton, W. H. P. G.

Blair, S.

Meagher, T.

Blandford, Marq. of

Miles, P. W. S.

Booth, Sir R. G.

Milton, Visct.

Boyd, J.

Mullings, J. R.

Burroughes, H. N.

Naas, Lord

Cabbell, B. B.

Norreys, Sir D. J.

Crawford, W. S.

O'Brien, J.

Dunne, Col.

O'Brien, Sir L.

Farrer, J.

Power, Dr.

Forbes, W.

Prime, R.

Frewen, C. H.

Scrope, G. P.

Gallwey, Sir W. P.

Thompson, Col.

Gilpin, Col.

Waddington, H. S.

Goold, W.

Walsh, Sir J. B.

Granby, Marq. of

Whiteside, J.

Grogan, E.

Hamilton, Lord C.

TELLERS.

Henley, J. W.

Scully, F.

Herbert, H. A.

O'Flaherty, A.

The House adjourned at a quarter after Twelve o'clock.

MINUTES.
PUBLIC BILLS.—la Loan Societies.
2a Attornies and Solicitors Regulation Act Amendment; Lodging Houses; Appointment to Offices, &c.
3a Apprentices to Sea Service (Ireland) (No. 2); Expenses of Prosecutions; Landlord and Tenant.

ATTORNIES AND SOLICITORS REGULATION ACT AMENDMENT BILL.
The MARQUESS OF CLANRICARDE, in moving the Second Reading of this Bill, observed that it was introduced for the purpose of giving to the graduates and students in the Queen's Colleges in Ireland the same advantages and privileges which were enjoyed by the students and graduates in the English Universities with regard to their admission as attorneys in the Courts of Common Law, and as solicitors in the Court of Chancery. He could not refer to the Queen's Colleges in Ireland without congratulating their Lordships on the great success with which they had been attended, notwithstanding the severe and selfish opposition to which they had been exposed.
LORD MONTEAGLEjoined his noble Friend in his congratulations to their Lordships. He condemned, in strong term3, the resolutions of the Synod of Thurles

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against these Colleges, but observed, that so strong had been the opposition which they had met with from a large portion of the Roman Catholic clergy, that remonstrances against the decision come to by the Synod, and in favour of mixed education, signed by many hundred persons, clergy as well as lay, had been addressed to the See of Rome; and these protests were so strong that the bishops had not ventured to forward them to Rome.
Bill read 2a, according to Order, and committed to a Committee of the whole House.

LODGING-HOUSES BILL.
The EARL of SHAFTESBURYthen moved the Second Reading of this Bill, and in so doing said that he felt that it would be necessary for him to detain their Lordships for some two or three minutes by some preliminary observations, not so much to prove the existence of a great social mischief, as to explain and justify the principle of the remedy which he proposed to apply to it. But first he must give them some notion of the present state of things, and that could not be done without a statement of details; but as their Lordships had already passed a Bill for the regulation of common houses, he thought that they might be spared the most protracted and disgusting particulars. The measure which he had then to propose was intended principally for what might be termed the stationary population. The migratory population was that which chiefly resorted to the common houses, whilst the stationary population was that which resided in our large towns, and spread themselves over them in different directions. It was to improve the condition of the latter population that he now introduced this Bill; and to give them some slight notion of the condition in which that population was, even in the most favourable view which could be taken of it, he would read to their Lordships a return, which had been made to the Statistical Society, at the instance of his noble Friend (the Earl of Harrowby), in 1842. The result of an inspection made by that society in that year was as follows:—
"Total families inspected, 1,465; total rooms for whole, 2,174; having one room for whole family, 929; two rooms, 408; three rooms, 94; four rooms, 17; five rooms, 8; six rooms, 4; seven rooms, 1; eight rooms, 1; remaining three 'not ascertained.'"
Such was a sample of the condition in
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which the population lived in one of the wealthiest parishes in the metropolis; but what must be the state of things in its less favoured dtstricts, such as Whitechapel, Shoreditch, St. Luke's, Spitalfields, and others which he could easily name? The return which he had just read to their Lordships showed that 929 families were sleeping in one room. He would say nothing of the cases in which their would find two, three, or four families residing in these single rooms. He would say nothing of their condition, nothing of the want of fresh air, nothing of the contaminated character of the room, nothing of the privies for several hundreds, nothing of the want of water, nothing of the want of drainage, nothing of the vast mass of filth, nothing of the neglect of the authorities, and of the helplessness of the people, nothing of the want of everything that was necessary to the comfort and health of the wretched inmates of these miserable dens. He confessed that he should like to detain their Lordships with details on these points, in order that he might impress on their minds how dreadful the real state of things was, and how necessary it was for them to apply to it an immediate remedy. For this was not a state of things applying only to that great metropolis—it applied also to the small towns and villages scattered over this great country. Their Lordships would find that even worse things than these were revealed to them by the ravages of disease. It was the ravages of the cholera which first revealed these rotten parts of our system, as it would do again, if we did not previously provide a remedy against them. He requested their Lordships just to let him state what were the secrets which the cholera revealed to us. Let not their Lordships run away with the notion that our villages, so beautiful to the passers-by, were full of Arcadian simplicity and purity. No such thing; in such villages were the most offensive localities that could be found. It was true that no remedy had yet been provided for the evils which prevailed there—for this Bill only applied to cities and boroughs which, according to the last census, had a population of 10,000 inhabitants., He would just bring under the notice of the House two instances which showed that in our villages there was a state of things which of itself was sufficient to breed a pestilence throughout the United Kingdom. First of all, he would bring under consideration the picture of Mitcham, an agricultural village in the

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county of Norfolk, with a population not much exceeding 500 inhabitants. This was the report of the inspectors of populous places in that district:—
"During the prevalence of the late epidemic cholera, about one-fifth of the inhabitants were attacked, and the deaths in one month were 3.8 per cent of the whole population. On examining the patients whose lives had been spared, I found them, with scarcely an exception, in a state of great physical prostration. Four or five years previously the village was afflicted with typhus; the same houses were recently attacked with cholera, and only about five weeks before my inquiry influenza was so prevalent as to seize almost universally man and beast."
But even this description was nothing to that given of another village in the same county of Norfolk—he meant the village of Nordelf. It was well worthy the attention of their Lordships:—
"There is no kind of drainage in the place; the houses are small, unventilated, dark, damp, and dilapidated; the floors are of brick, uneven, broken, and full of cavities; the roofs decayed, unsafe, and abounding with holes; the rooms are inconvenient, comfortless, and filthy in the extreme; pigstyes and privies, in the foulest condition, are situated within a few feet of bed-places, in which I saw many patients in cholera, lying enveloped in the disgusting effluvia from the surrounding abominations."
Such was the report of the inspector. Now, let their Lordships mark the result. "There were 52 cases of cholera among a population of 150." Fifty cases of cholera in the small population of this village! Why, it swept away one-third of its whole population. What would their Lordships have felt if such a rate of mortality had occurred in that metropolis? Why, it would have carried off no less than 700,000 of the inhabitants of London. Everything was done which could be done to check the ravages of that pestilence. And mark the result:—
"After the cleansing operations, commenced on the 7th of December, only four additional cases of cholera occurred, together with a few cases of diarrhœa, that were arrested in the very onset."
That was the state of things in a small parish, arising entirely out of the lamentable domiciliary condition of its residents. Now, there was, at no great distance from the splendid chamber in which their Lordships were then sitting, a wretched precinct, which they would do well to see with their own eyes, as he had done, before they returned home that evening—it was Church-lane, in the parish of St. John, Westminster. He had selected this pa-
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rish from the report to which he had already referred, and he would read to their Lordships a summary of its condition:—
"Church-lane.—A picture in detail of human wretchedness, filth, and brutal degradation. In these wretched dwellings, all ages and both sexes; fathers and daughters, mothers and sons, grownup brothers and sisters, the sick, dying, and dead are herded together."
He could say, from his own knowledge, that this was no exaggerated picture of the condition of the district; but the summary went on as follows:—
"Take an instance:—House, No. 2, size of room, 14 feet long, 13 feet broad, six feet high; rent 8s. for two rooms per week—under-rent, 3d. a night for each adult. Number of families, 3—eight males above 20; five females above 20; four males under 20; five females under 20; total, 22 souls. Landlady receives 18 s. a week—thus a clear profit of 10 s. State of rooms, filthy."
Not to detain their Lordships longer, he would now give them the final summary of their inspector, who had visited 161 places and districts, containing an aggregate population of 1,912,000 souls. His statement was, that the reports were uniform on this point, that the condition of the domiciles of the labouring peasantry was such as he had described it. Let their Lordships next consider the consequences which were almost certain to result from such a melancholy description of affairs; and, first, with regard to the physical condition of the people. You could not enter into their habitations without seeing the physical degradation which it produced. All the persons who had fainted under the disgusting atmosphere which they had to breathe whilst inspecting their tenements—all who could bear testimony by personal experience to the deleterious miasma which reigned within them, concurred in stating that they could enter fully into the feelings of those who occupied them; for they themselves had felt the same necessity for some stimulus to support exhausted nature which the inmates felt. The depression of strength and energy which was there produced created a strong propensity for intoxicating drinks. Fever was never absent from such abodes. Hundreds and thousands were struck by it, and became easy subjects for cholera, or any other epidemic. It was a melancholy fact, that in such places fever selected for its attacks the heads of families, and not only the heads of families, but all who were in the prime of life, and were the fathers and

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mothers of healthy children. That fact was clearly established by the records of our fever hospitals; and in the returns from those establishments their Lordships would find that the greatest mortality from fever always prevailed among the most vigorous patients. From a court adjoining Gray's Inn Lane, in a space not larger than the chamber in which he was then speaking, 84 cases had been sent to the Fever Hospital since February last, and more cases were still going. Could their Lordships suppose that these physical evils produced no mischievous moral consequences? He was sorry to have to inform them that they produced the most fatal and deadly consequences. They generated habits of drinking—they led to the overthrow of decency. Every function of nature was performed in public—there was no retirement for any purpose—there was no domestic education—nay, education itself was useless, if children returned to their homes to unlearn by example what they had learned by precept. He grieved to reflect that in these dens there could be no domestic training of that description which was more valuable than any other training—the training of the mother; and that the want of such domestic training could not be compensated by any system of public education which could be devised. This he saw daily. He had, as many of their Lordships perhaps knew, been for some time connected with the ragged schools recently established in the metropolis. Most of the ragged children whom they saw about the streets attended those schools, and not, he trusted, without benefit. A young boy or girl received there useful lessons; but they returned to the single room, in which six families might be residing, without any regard to the restraints which were necessary for a social, moral, and religious life, and they lost in one hour all the decent impressions Which they had gained in the previous six. Until this source of evil were removed, all your hopes to improve the morals of your people, all your efforts to give them a useful and religious education, will be vain. You must stop this welling fountain of disaster, if you would carry into execution the benevolent and provident views which you, in common with all who have property to protect, entertain towards the lower classes. There were other consequences from this state of things to which he wished to call the attention of their Lordships, and those were
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its financial consequences. It was clear to him that a great part of the pressure on the poor-rates was produced by the condition to which the people were reduced by their habits of intoxication, and by the fever which always raged in their dwellings, owing to the causes he had already assigned. Thousands of widows and orphans, deprived of their natural protectors in this manner, were yearly carried to the poorhouse, and there became a permanent charge on the rates, or else were supported by private charities. He would give an instance of the working of this part of the system. During the prevalence of the cholera it was reported to the Sanitary Board, that there was a court near Chiswick in such a crowded and filthy condition, that if the cholera broke out there, its ravages must be deplorable. Mr. Grainger brought the case under our notice. We told the parish authorities to remove from that court some of the families residing in it; for we warned them that, if they did not, and the cholera ravaged it, the results would be most dangerous. Within three days after we had given that notice, the cholera did break out there. It seized, like fever, on the heads of the families. In one day several died, and fourteen children were in consequence carried to the public workhouse to become a permanent charge on the poor-rates, when the expenditure of 10 l. in the first instance might have rescued the parish from further expense, and have saved the lives of their parents. He was quite sure, from calculations which he had made with his two excellent friends, Mr. Chadwick and Dr. Southwood Smith, that if the sanitary condition of our towns should be improved according to the plans which they superintended and suggested, within ten years from this time the poor-rates would be reduced to one-third of their present amount. It was a partial endeavour to meet this state of things that induced him to propound a measure, founded on a principle already recognised by their Lordships in the Baths and Washhouses Act. Let it be observed, in the first place, that the Bill was permissive, and not compulsory; and, in the second, that it was founded on the assumption" that such institutions as those which he was then about to propose were altogether remunerative, self-supporting, replacing both principal and interest, without anything of an eleemosynary character about them. He would just furnish their Lordships with an

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instance of the mode in which a similar experiment had been tested by experience. He was connected with a society for ameliorating the situation of the labouring classes, and for improving their domiciliary condition. That society had proceeded on this principle, that it was impossible to improve their domiciliary condition unless they could be made to study their own interests. We constructed, therefore, houses of every description; we tried houses of every sort—from those containing only rooms enough for one family to the large barrack, in which several families, with two or three rooms each, reside under the same roof. In every instance we have found our outlay remunerative. We have expended in building, and in improving and adapting existing houses, 23,000 l.; and the net result, deducting all incidental expenses for repairs, &c, averages 6 per cent, or 5½ per cent on the new buildings, and 12 per cent upon the old. And all this we have done at rents never more, and sometimes less, than what was paid for the most scanty and foul accommodation. Look at the average rent paid in Snow's Rents, Westminster, a vile place, where in 1844 it was 2s. 4½d. per week per room. Look at the apartments occupied by the London Dock labourers, for which they paid an average rental of 3s. a week, although nothing could exceed the filth which polluted them. In many lodging houses from 1s. 6d. to 3s. a week was paid for a single bed, several sleeping in the same room, wanting in everything like comfort and cleanliness. There was one remark which he had made before, and which he would venture to repeat then:—
"It had been said that an increase of rent was a consequence which the working people would not be able to bear. Assuming an increase, he was convinced that they would be able to bear it from the greater health they enjoyed, and the greater activity and diligence they would be able to bestow on their work."
Supposing, for the sake of argument, that what he now proposed would lead to the payment of an increased rent by the working men, he thought he could show that they would be enabled to bear such increase; for, living in unwholesome dwellings, they lost about thirty days by ill health in every year, and, putting the loss at 1s. 6d. a day, the loss by the year was 45 s., and when they removed from unwholesome to better regulated lodgings, their health was greatly improved. He
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should never forget the remark made by a woman, who, having removed to one of the improved lodging houses, observed that it was a blessed thing to dwell there, for by the wages she earned she now was enabled to live, though she never could do so before. He could not give a better proof of the advantages resulting to the poor people from the improved air, drainage, and comfort in their lodgings, than by stating the fact, that when the cholera was raging in Church-lane, there was not a single case of sickness in the great lodging house, which was as near to Church-lane as he was to the woolsack at that moment. This was not merely the case with the lodging houses belonging to the society with, which he was connected, but an equally favourable account might be given with respect to all the model lodging houses in London. He had shown that the establishments such as he proposed to encourage by the present Bill were remunerative, and fully paid their expenses, repaying both principal and interest. The operation of the Bill would, in the first instance, be limited to boroughs and parishes not having less than a population of 10,000 persons; and it was provided that the council of any borough might adopt the Act, the expense to be charged on the borough fund; that, on the requisition of ten ratepayers, churchwardens might convene a vestry to determine whether the Act should be adopted; but the Resolutions were not to be deemed carried unless two-thirds voted for them; that, when the Act was adopted, the vestry should appoint commissioners for carrying the same into effect, and that the overseers should levy, as part of the poor-rate, such sums as the vestry should deem necessary; that vestries of two or more parishes might concur; that town-councils and commissioners might erect lodging houses, or adapt buildings, or purchase existing houses; that if lodging houses were considered unnecessary, or too expensive, they might be sold with the approval of the Treasury; that the council and commissioners might make bylaws, subject to the approval of the Secretary of State. Then came a provision which was necessary to prevent abuse, and it was to the effect that no person receiving parochial relief should be a tenant of these lodging houses, except the relief was given on account of accident or temporary illness. The Bill was guarded in every respect against the probability of jobbing, and against its being converted into eleemosy-

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nary uses, which would entirely destroy the object in view. A too rapid and too general adoption of the Bill was also guarded against, and it had this advantage, that if faulty it could not be widely spread, as one or two failures would utterly check its operation. The Bill violated no principle, but merely enabled a locality to provide what a labouring man could not provide for himself. There were reasons why this undertaking should not be left to private speculators. First of all, they shrank very much from it, because it required a great deal more care and supervision than any private individual was inclined to bestow on it, and, moreover, private speculators had a tendency to have recourse to small, narrow, and confined houses; for there was no doubt that such houses, without having any arrangements for decency and comfort, gave a much larger profit than constructions on the plan such as he proposed, and such as were, in his opinion, indispensable for the comfort and decency of the population. In proof of the enormous profits yielded by very small houses, he mentioned an instance of a house belonging to the society with which he was connected, and which they now kept as a mere curiosity. That house, notwithstanding every means of comfort and decency were afforded in it compared with other houses of the same size, returned 30 per cent on the outlay. What, then, must be the profit made by those who, having a large number of these small houses, took from the inmates the same amount of rent, without giving anything like the same accommodation as the society he belonged to? There were at present a vast number of schemes for the improvement of the working classes, and he felt assured that those classes would, if the opportunity was afforded them, also improve themselves. The concurrent testimony of all persons conversant with the habits of the people went to show that the improvement of their domiciliary condition reversed all those frightful pictures which he had felt it his duty to present to their Lordships. On this subject also he might bring to bear the testimony of foreign nations. He knew no one subject which had so much excited the interest of foreign nations as that of the erection and management of lodging houses for the people. Their Lordships would be surprised to hear of the amount of correspondence which had proceeded from all parts of Europe; from Paris, Germany, Spain,
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Italy, and also from the United States, asking for plans. He could assure their Lordships that not a few of the foreigners who arrived here to see the Crystal Palace, came to him desiring to be taken round to those establishments formed for the benefit of the working classes; and they expressed their opinion that nothing was more satisfactory, or more full of promise for the wellbeing of this country, than the efforts made for the advantage of the working people, more particularly in that particular direction to which he now called their Lordships' attention. The present really was a measure by which they would give to the working man that which he had a right to possess—a full and free opportunity for the development of his energies. It was really heartbreaking to see the effect produced on the honest workman, who came up to this capital, by being compelled to place himself in some filthy locality and some ill-ventilated house. He had seen, and he could bring evidence to the same effect from others who had more opportunities than himself of witnessing the circumstance, young persons in the vigour of their life, and quite capable of earning 30 s. or 35 s. a week, completely broken down within eight or ten months of their arrival in this town, in consequence of the unhealthy mode in which they were compelled to live, and either carried to their graves, or reduced to a position of hopeless want. A noble Friend whom he saw opposite, would no doubt corroborate what he stated, when he said that this was no exaggerated picture. Here he could not help mentioning what he had before noticed in another place, that Mr. Porter, in a little treatise called Self-imposed Taxation, showed that the working people of the United Kingdom expended annually on gin, other spirits, tobacco, and beer, no less a sum than 57,000,000 l. Now, if the habits of those classes of the people were improved, what an advantage would be gained if, instead of that amount of money being so spent, it were expended in obtaining wholesome bread, meat, clothing, education, and comfortable and decent dwellings! He had propounded the present measure to the House of Commons, where it was received with great favour; and he trusted that it would be received with equal favour by their Lordships, who, he was quite sure, would not fall short in this labour. He felt convinced that their Lordships, while they had a common interest in the decency and comfort of all their fellow-

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subjects, would show that, notwithstanding the difference of station and fortune, they were under the influence of common sympathies and a common Christianity.
Moved—That the Bill be now read 2a.
The MARQUESS of NORMANBYhad on more occasions than one called their Lordships' attention to the necessity of legislation on this subject, and he now expressed his satisfaction at finding the cause taken up by one so well calculated to advance it. With regard to the limitation in the Bill, he must observe that the evils to be remedied existed almost to the same extent in localities which would not come within the operation of the measure, and he should have preferred if the limitation in respect to a population of 10,000 had not formed part of it. Knowing, however, the vigour, zeal, and energy of his noble Friend on these matters, and having witnessed the favourable manner in which his appeal had been received by their Lordships, he felt sure that, if the present measure should prove successful, it would only be considered as an instalment, and that next year its operation would be extended to those localities now excluded from the Bill, but which stood equally in need of improvement in the dwellings of the working classes.
LORD KINNAIRDwas aware that the machinery of the present Bill could not be acted on in Scotland; but when it came into successful operation, he trusted their Lordships would agree to apply its provisions to Scotland. In proof of the beneficial effects produced by the establishment of comfortable lodging houses, he referred to one formed in that neighbourhood, the establishment of which had caused all the other wretched lodging houses to be shut up; and he added as a proof that such institutions were not unattended with moral advantages, that on the day of the expected riots in 1848, all the lodgers returned to the dwelling and reported their presence.
The EARL of HARROWBYsuggested that when Bills were brought before Parliament for widening the streets, making improvements in the metropolis, and devoloping the resources of property thereby, care should he taken to insert in such Bills a provision for the erection of structures similar to those contemplated by the present measure, for the accommodation of the displaced population. That population could not, on account of its necessities, extend beyond a certain area; and if large
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streets were made on the sites of their present dwellings, they could only occupy another spot in a more crowded condition, un-loss care was taken to provide proper accommodation for them. In conclusion, he congratulated his noble Friend (the Earl of Shaftesbury) on now presenting himself to their Lordships in the character which he had hitherto deservedly borne out of that House—as a most disinterested friend of the working classes.
The MARQUESS of LANSDOWNEdid not rise to say anything in support of the present Bill, because all their Lordships who had heard the statement of the noble Earl must feel that it required no support, but spoke for itself, and claimed universal approbation. There had, however, fallen from the noble Earl an observation which he thought not the least valuable of his remarks—that they would labour in vain in respect to the education of the people, unless they accompanied their efforts in that direction by some provisions similar to those now recommended. In reference particularly to what had fallen from the noble Earl in respect to ragged schools, he (the Marquess of Lansdowne) having taken part for many years in the administration of the public grant for the support of schools, had felt the greatest desire to see the progress of those particular schools adverted to by the noble Earl. The ragged schools were very praiseworthy institutions; but he agreed with the noble Earl that the circumstances by which the children were surrounded at home, did away with all the beneficial results of attendance at the ragged school. Reformation was much needed in this respect, for in the present condition of the homes of the poor, a constant moral deterioration of their children was going on; and whatever good might be done to them by the ragged schools, was undone by the examples they beheld under the roof of their parents; for, after all, whatever might be attempted, morality or immorality must be inculcated under the roof of the parents. He therefore thought that the providing more decent and more wholesome habitations had a bearing on the education of the people. He approved of the limited application of the Bill, for confining it in the first instance to large towns, would set an example of voluntary action which would ultimately lead to the general adoption of the system. He thought the House was indebted to the noble Earl (the Earl of Harrowby) for his suggestion that, while great and magnifi-

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cent streets were being constructed, it was worthy of consideration whether it would not be possible to make some provision for the displaced population. He was not prepared to say that their Lordships should make a Standing Order in their Journals on the subject, but there might be a Standing Order in their own minds when Bills for constructing large streets came under their consideration.
On Question, Resolved in the Affirmative; Bill read 2a accordingly, and committed to a Committee of the whole House.
House adjourned till To-morrow.