Sitting of 12 April 1853

MINUTES.
NEW WRITS.—For Athlone, v. William Keogh, Esq., (Solicitor General for Ireland); for Huddersfield, v. William Rookes Crompton Stansfield, Esq., void Election.
1° South Sea and other Annuities Commutation.
Reported.—Combination of Workmen.

ATHLONE ELECTION COMMITTEE.
MR. BRAMSTONappeared at the bar with the Report of the Athlone Election Committee, which had inquired into the matter of the petition of Mr. R. B. Lawes, complaining of an undue election for the Borough of Athlone. The Committee had determined, That William Keogh, esquire, was, at the Election for the Borough of Athlone, held on the 9th day of July, 1852, duly elected a Burgess to serve in Parliament for the said Borough.
DARTMOUTH ELECTION COMMITTEE.
MR. MILESappeared at the Bar with the Report of the Select Committee appointed to inquire into the matter of a petition complaining of an undue election for the Borough of Dartmouth. The Committee had determined, That Sir Thomas Herbert is duly elected a Burgess to serve in this present Parliament for the Borough of Dartmouth.

DOCKYARD PROMOTION AND PATRONAGE.
SIR BENJAMIN HALLsaid, that day week he had placed on the books a notice in reference to the administration of the affairs of the Board of Admiralty under the late Government, more particularly with reference to Dockyard Promotions; and on that occasion the late Secretary to the Board of Admiralty, the hon. Member for North Northamptonshire (Mr. Stafford), expressed an earnest hope that he would fix the earliest possible day for bringing that subject before the House. He (Sir B. Hall) did so, and the earliest day he could name was Tuesday next. He took his chance upon the ballot, and from that his name stood third on the list. The House would, perhaps, excuse him if he observed that this was a subject which ought not to be delayed for a moment longer than was absolutely necessary. He had, therefore, to appeal to the hon. and learned Member for Tavistock (Mr. R. Phillimore), and the hon. Member for the Tower Hamlets (Sir W. Clay), who had notices on the books for that day in refer-
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ence to one and the same subject, to allow him to take precedence of them on the occasion.
MR. STAFFORDsaid, he must beg permission to add his appeal to that of the hon. Member for Marylebone. He would also appeal to the noble Lord the Member for the City of London (Lord J. Russell) to use his influence with the hon. and learned Member for Tavistock, and the hon. Member for the Tower Hamlets, inasmuch as he might remind the House that two Members of the late Board were Members of the present Board of Admiralty; and therefore the question might be regarded as one which affected the present as well as the late Board of Admiralty.
LORD JOHN RUSSELLsaid, he had no hesitation whatever in expressing a hope that the hon. Members for Tavistock and the Tower Hamlets would allow the hon. Baronet's (Sir B. Hall's) Motion to have precedence on Tuesday next.
MR. R. PHILLIMOREsaid, he had no desire to take a course which the House might regard as objectionable; but the notice which stood upon the books in his name was one of very considerable importance, and as the hon. Baronet the Member for the Tower Hamlets (Sir W. Clay) had a Motion for the same evening, and upon the same subject, he (Mr. Phillimore) was scarcely at liberty to act alone in the matter. He would have no objection, however, to act in concert with the hon. Baronet, and would accede to the request now made, if the hon. Baronet would consent to accede also.
SIR WILLIAM CLAYsaid, he had every inclination to act with perfect courtesy to the House; but he must say that the appeal now made to him was, to say the least of it, very unusual. The ordinary circumstances under which an appeal was made for the withdrawal of a Motion, had reference to the resumption of an adjourned debate; but he could not call to mind any one instance in which an appeal was made to an hon. Member under such circumstances as the present. Private Members had now only one night in the week at their disposal; and, if they were to be met by solicitations to withdraw their notices in favour of others which might be thought more important, he could not see what advantage there would be in having a ballot at all. The Motion of which he had given notice, was one of very great importance, and he could not consent to withdraw it unless the noble Lord (Lord

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J. Russell) would place at his disposal one of the Government nights. If the noble Lord would consent to do this, he (Sir W. Clay) would comply with the request now made to him, but not otherwise.
Subsequently,
SIR WILLIAM CLAYsaid, he wished to state to the House that he had received an intimation that the noble Lord the Member for the City of London was willing to afford facilities for bringing on the Motion which stood in his name with regard to Church Rates; and, therefore, so far as he was concerned, he willingly gave way in order to enable the discussion concerning Admiralty appointments to be preceded with on Tuesday next.
MR. R. PHILLIMOREexpressed his concurrence with the course taken by the hon. Baronet.

EXPULSION OF MR. CRAUFORD FROM TUSCANY.
LORD DUDLEY STUARTsaid, he would now put the question of which he had given notice to the noble Lord (Lord John Russell) relating to the expulsion of Mr. Crauford from the Tuscan dominions. Mr. Crauford was the brother of an hon. Member of that House, the Member for Ayr, and had for some time administered the duties of an office under the Government at Corfu. On the 17th of February last this gentleman proceeded to Florence, on his way home to England, and purposed remaining in that city for a few days till the steamer was ready to leave Leghorn. On the evening of the 21st of February, about twelve o'clock at night, he was returning to his house in Florence, when, to his great surprise, he was accosted by two police officers, who informed him that the orders of the Government were that he should leave the Tuscan dominions in twenty-four hours. Next morning he called upon our Chargê d'Affaires there, who at once represented the case to the Tuscan Government; but all his representations were unavailing, and Mr. Crauford was further informed that if he hesitated to quit the Tuscan dominions within the time prescribed, or at least by the first steam-boat, force would be resorted to to compel his departure. Now Mr. Crauford had been visiting persons of the highest respectability in Florence, amongst others the Attorney General of Tuscany and other persons, who it was to be presumed enjoyed the confidence and respect of that Government. Mr. Crauford had done nothing whatever to give any offence
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to the Government of the Grand Duke of Tuscany; he had not even been caught reading his Bible. Under these circumstances, he wished to ask the noble Lord whether the attention of Her Majesty's Government had been directed to this case; whether any remonstrance bad been made to the Government of Tuscany upon it; and, if any correspondence had passed, whether the noble Lord would have any objection to lay it upon the table of the House?
LORD JOHN RUSSELLsaid, it was perfectly true that Mr. Crauford was expelled by the Tuscan Government from the Tuscan dominions. It appeared that a suspicion was entertained that he was engaged in some revolutionary attempt—a suspicion which was entirely unfounded. His noble Friend the Secretary for Foreign Affairs (the Earl of Clarendon) made a remonstrance upon the subject, and stated that Mr. Crauford had only gone to Florence on his way to this country. And upon this statement the Tuscan Minister of Foreign Affairs expressed his regret at the occurrence, admitted that the suspicion was unfounded, and said that Mr. Crauford should be at liberty at any time, on his return to Corfu, to pass through Tuscany without molestation. With regard to the production of the correspondence, there was some difculty connected with the subject that rendered it inconvenient to do so; and such a course tended not unfrequently to prevent the amicable arrangement of questions of this sort.

ENCUMBERED ESTATES (IRELAND).
MR. H. HERBERTsaid, he wished to ask his right hon. Friend the Secretary for Ireland (Sir J. Young) a question with regard to the intentions of the Government towards proprietors in Ireland whose estates were unencumbered. Great injustice had been inflicted on this class of proprietors in consequence of the establishment of the Encumbered Estates Court. He had always considered that measure admirable and necessary; but by the creation of a particular class of securities superior to those which could be offered by persons not going through the ordeal of that Court, the value of their property which they might wish to dispose of, was materially diminished. It was now almost impossible for a landed proprietor to sell any portion of his estate without going through the Court. Under these circumstances, he wished to ask his right hon. Friend the Chief Secretary for Ireland whether it was the

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intention of the Government to introduce a measure to facilitate the sale of lands in Ireland which did not come under the operations of the Encumbered Estates Court?
SIR JOHN YOUNG,in reply, said the subject was one of extreme difficulty and of great importance; but he had the satisfaction of informing his hon. Friend that it was now under the consideration of the Government. They hoped it might be found possible to continue and extend the principle of the Encumbered Estates Act to the sale of lands not encumbered; but he was not prepared to say that in the course of the present Session Her Majesty's Government would be in a condition to introduce a Bill upon the subject. All he could say was, that it was under their consideration. In the meantime he begged to give notice that he should upon an early day move for leave to bring in a Bill to continue the Court for the Sale of Encumbered Estates in Ireland for one year.

CLITHEROE ELECTION.
MR. MILNES GASKELLsaid, he rose in pursuance of the notice which he had given to move an Address to the Crown for a Commission of Inquiry into the state of Clitheroe. In doing this, ho should not be under the necessity of occupying the time of the House for more than a few minutes. Speaking generally, he was disposed to concur with those who viewed propositions of which the practical effect was to place in abeyance the constitutional privileges of any portion of Her Majesty's subjects, with feelings of very great repugnance; but there were cases—and this was one of them—in which the facts that were brought to light were of such a character, in which the malpractices that prevailed were so gross and scandalous, in which the corruption that obtained was so widespread and general, that Committees of that House would be shrinking from the discharge of their public duty, if they did not ask the House of Commons to institute ulterior proceedings, and in which that House would be shrinking from the performance of its duty if it did not act on the recommendation of those Committees. The case of this borough bore a strong resemblance in its general features to other cases which had recently been brought under the consideration of the House. It was chiefly distinguishable from those cases by the unblushing manner in which corrupt practices had been carried on, and by the total absence of those glosses with which it was
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often sought to cover their perpetration. There had been no scale of refreshments like that at Hull; there had been no coloured tickets like those at Canterbury. The treating had not been confined to the day of nomination, or the polling day: it had existed for near a fortnight previously, and every man, no matter whether an elector or not, appeared to have drunk and eaten as much and as often as he had thought proper at the expense of one, if not of both, the candidates. And not only had there been wholesale and systematic treating, but large sums of money had also been offered for votes: 40 l. had been offered in one case, 50 l. in another, 100 l. in a third, and 30 l. had been offered and accepted in a fourth case, which had been proved to the entire satisfaction of the Committee. There had also been gross intimidation. A practice that was termed "cooping" or "bottling" voters had prevailed to a very considerable extent. Persons of weak nerves and doubtful intentions had been conveyed to a place of safety at the distance of some twenty miles from the scene of action, under a strong escort; and in one instance it appeared that a house so occupied had been besieged by a large party in the interest of the opposite faction. He (Mr. Gaskell) would not trouble the House by reading any portion of the evidence. Any gentleman who referred to it would be able to satisfy himself at once that every means of undue appliance had been resorted to—that the public-houses had been indiscriminately thrown open—and that corruption and intimidation had prevailed extensively. He felt, however, that he should not be discharging his duty if he did not call the attention of the House for one moment to another practice prevailing in this borough—a practice which obtained in too many constituencies, which had led at Clitheroe, as it had since led at Blackburn, and as it must necessarily lead elsewhere, if not checked by the intervention of Parliament, to scenes of disturbance and of outrage, and which appeared to him (Mr. Gaskell) to call most loudly for such intervention. The House would find that in this small borough, containing a constituency of only about 440 or 450 voters, it was the constant habit to introduce large bodies of hired bludgeonmen for the purpose of intimidation. Now, if this practice was to be tolerated—if bodies of armed men were to be permitted to assemble at elections, and were to be altogether unchecked and uncontrolled on such occa-

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sions—if they were to be lodged and kept at the expense of the rival candidates, and were to resort to physical force to procure the success of their employers: it was impossible to conceive a greater mockery than an election carried on under such circumstances, or a course of proceeding which more directly tended to bring contempt and discredit upon representative institutions. He had only to add that in making the proposition that he had submitted to the House, he was expressing the unanimous opinion of the Committee over which he had had the honour to preside.
Motion made, and Question put, "That an humble Address be presented to Her Majesty" [which was read].
MR. COBDENsaid, he had two petitions to present on this subject from the borough of Clitheroe, one of which was signed by 160 of the electors, and the other by a considerable number of non-electors. These petitioners stated that during the last election there was gross intimidation practised; and they gave many particulars, mentioning the names of the parties, who were chiefly proprietors, by whom the intimidation was practised. He did not intend to go into these particulars, and to mention the names given in the petitions, because the question involved was a great deal more important than any which simply affected the borough of Clitheroe. It was a question which that House would have to decide, inasmuch as it affected all the Commissions which had been issued. He could give proofs of the intimidation which had been practised at Clitheroe. He held in his hand a notice to quit, given upon the 30th of July to a voter, he having voted on the 7th of July, after having been for thirty years a tenant of the party by whom the notice to quit was given. He was told, too, that this was only one out of a great number of similar cases. Now he wanted to ask the House whether the inquiries which were to be made by Commissioners in different parts of the country were to include intimidation under the term "corrupt practices?" On looking at the Act of Parliament, he found that, though there might be some doubt on the subject, it was possible for a large and comprehensively minded Committee to say that a door was opened for the taking of evidence of intimidation; but, upon the other hand, it might be contended, as the terms specifically were "corrupt practices," they did not open the door for an inquiry into the existence of intimidation.
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This, then, was the point upon which, in his view, the House would have to come to a decision. He asked the House whether there was any actual difference between bribing a man to vote according to the will of the briber, and threats of pecuniary loss if the voter did not vote with the party who held out the threat? In both cases the motive was pretty much the same—the one being actuated by the desire a gain, and the other by the fear of loss. He would also ask whether mobs were to be allowed to intimidate voters without suffering a legal penalty? The hon. Gentleman (Mr. Gaskell) had spoken of the appearance of bludgeon men who prevented the voters from voting as they pleased. This intimidation was clearly unlawful; but he wanted the House to determine whether the proprietor who held a bludgeon, in the shape of a threat of ejection, over the tenant by threatening to dismiss him if he did not vote according to the landlord's wish, or whether the creditor who held a security over the voter, and threatened him if he did not vote in a particular way, and the customer who threatened the shopkeeper with the loss of his custom if he did not vote according to that customer's wishes—he said he wanted to know whether these were cases that came within the scope of the Act of Parliament for inquiring into corrupt practices at elections? He would take the case of a man who on going to the poll met his landlord; and the landlord said to him, "If you do not vote for A or B, I will dismiss you from my shop or farm." The man, however, voted against the will of the landlord, and the consequence was he was ejected from his farm or shop. Was that a "corrupt practice," or did it come within the scope of the Act of Parliament? He was aware that the House was not the interpreter of its own Acts. It was not possible, therefore, for it to say what the Act meant under which Commissioners were empowered to make these inquiries. He therefore recommended the petitioners in this case, and he recommended it in all cases where intimidation was practised, to tender evidence to that effect before the Commissioners. They must in the first place decide what was the law, while the Judges, as the ultimate tribunal, might have to say what was the meaning of the Act of Parliament; but if there were any difficulty found in bringing forward these cases of intimidation, then, he held, it would be the duty of that House so to amend the Act as to include offences

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of this description. And in case it should be decided that petitioners were precluded from bringing forward cases of intimidation or any other case, he called upon the noble Lord the Member for the City of London—and he thought he would have the unanimous sanction of the House—to bring in a measure which would secure that these practices should be thoroughly inquired into.
MR. WALPOLEsaid, he agreed with the observation of the hon. Gentleman the Member for the West Riding (Mr. Cobden), that the law with regard to intimidation required alteration. He also agreed that the law with regard to bribery and treating required to be amended; but the question of what ought to be the law as to bribery, treating, and intimidation at elections, was a very different question from that of what ought to be the practice with regard to the inquiries under the Commissions issued by the Crown upon an Address from both Houses of Parliament. As regarded the former there must be full proof given in the House, and a Bill would be requisite: but the latter must be determined by the Act of Parliament—an Act which gave the Commissioners more extensive powers than were delegated to any Judge in the land. It was therefore the duty of the House to see that no Commission issued unless it was clearly brought within the terms of the Act of Parliament. By the recital in the Act it appeared that the House might present an Address for a Commission if upon the Report of a Committee it appeared that the Committee had reason to believe that corrupt practices had extensively prevailed in any borough. The words were, "if corrupt practices extensively prevailed." In the present case the Committee had not so reported. They had only reported one case of bribery. Their report was—
"That extensive and systematic treating, together with other corrupt and illegal practices, prevailed at the last election for the said borough." And "that it has been proved to the Committee that Henry Taylor was bribed with the sum of 30 l." Also, "That violent and tumultuous proceedings appeared to have taken place at the said election, and that hired bands of men, armed with sticks and bludgeons, were introduced into the said borough for purposes of undue influence and intimidation."
Let not the House imagine that he did not wish these proceedings to be put down or not inquired into; but he wished the House to take a proper course with regard to the address now moved for, as was prescribed
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by the Act of Parliament. The right hon. Baronet the Member for Morpeth (Sir G. Grey) intimated his opinion the other night that the words "corrupt practices," in the meaning of the Act, extended to treating as well as bribery; but the hon. Gentleman opposite (Mr. Cobden) had expressed a reasonable doubt whether the Act extended to intimidation. There was certainly a reasonable doubt upon that point, and even more he thought upon the question of treating. The sixth section of the Act, which described the mode in which the Commissioners were to act, provided first that they should inquire generally whether corrupt practices had been committed; and they were to report whether these corrupt practices had been committed in a certain way. The only three ways specified in the section were, first, by the payment of any sum of money, or the lending of any loan, for the giving of a vote, or for promising to give a vote, or for inducing persons to refrain or forbear from giving votes; secondly, by the payment of any sum of money in the character of head-money, in compliance with any usage prevalent in the borough; and, thirdly, by the payment of any sum after the election as a reward either for giving, or refraining from giving, a vote at the election. Then the section went on to say that, in case the Commissioners should find that corrupt practices had been committed at the election into which they were hereinbefore authorised to inquire, then it should be lawful, &c. Now, the words "hereinbefore" limited the Commissioners to the points mentioned in the preceding part of the section; and, as he read the Act, these were the only points into which the Commissioners had power to inquire into the corrupt practices alleged to have been committed at any election. It might then be said that if bribery was the only thing implied in the Act, then it did not go far enough to meet the case now before the House; and the House should not, consequently, take the initiative in addressing the Crown to issue a Commission of Inquiry, which for these reasons would, from its very commencement, be illegal, and all inquiry under it would go for nothing, for in that case the House would have empowered the Commissioners to make a most searching investigation, and to exercise powers as to the examination of persons, in a way that could not be done in courts of justice. He therefore deprecated the carrying of the provisions of the Act of Parliament beyond that

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which the law allowed; and for this reason he thought the Motion ought not to be acceded to. Yet he felt as strongly as any one could feel that treating might be as corrupt in its influence as bribery, and that intimidation might prevent freedom of election much more than bribery or treating. Feeling this so strongly, he was inclined to think that this Session ought not to pass over without a Bill being brought in to consolidate and amend the laws relating to bribery and treating; and as he had bestowed not a little time upon such a Bill already, he should, if he obtained encouragement from the House, be inclined to ask for leave to bring it in.
The ATTORNEY GENERALsaid, he quite concurred in the construction which his right hon. Friend (Mr. Walpole) had put upon the Act of Parliament. From the best construction which he (the Attorney General) could put upon it, he was of opinion that treating did not come within the section which authorised that House to address Her Majesty. He very much regretted this circumstance, for he could not but think that treating was one of the very first causes of corruption, and that it might be made not only as mischievous, but possibly more demoralising, than money bribery itself. He begged leave, however, to remind his right hon. Friend of this—that in the Bill, as introduced by the noble Lord the Member for the City of London last year, treating was included among corrupt practices. It was struck out, however, in another place; and the Bill came back to the House of Commons shorn of that provision. But he rejoiced to hear that his right hon. Friend was impressed with the notion that treating ought to be within the scope of the Commissioners' inquiries; and he hoped when he introduced his Bill on the subject of bribery, treating, and intimidation—an announcement which he (the Attorney General) was sure would be received with satisfaction—he would remedy the defect in the existing law, in order that there might be no difficulty in future.
MR. BRIGHTsaid, he was afraid the House made rather a ridiculous figure in respect to the provisions of the present Act. He begged the House to remember that it was only passed last year, and that the noble Lord the Member for London (Lord John Russell) promised that it should be an amendment upon the previous state of the law. But when the Bill came down from that other place, where many measures were altered, but very few amended, he perceived at once that it was so changed
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as to be almost altogether nugatory; and he took the liberty of recommending the noble Lord not to assent to the alterations which had destroyed, as it had turned out, the utility of the measure. The very first time they attempted to put it into force, they found it to be so defective, that the particular kind of corruption which was most commonly practised, and which was most notorious and most destructive to electoral purity, was absolutely excluded from the operation of the Act. The whole system of treating was really a system of bribery in the very worst form, for it corrupted two persons in respect to one vote. The manner in which it was done, so far as his experience went, he could easily state. Personally, as a candidate, he had no knowledge of it; but he happened to live in a town which he believed to be as pure a borough now as any in England; but at an election fifteen years ago, this system of corruption prevailed to a large extent. For several weeks before the election, means were taken by one of the political parties to bribe the publicans and beershop keepers, and through this means to influence both voters and non-electors. Sums of money were said to have been, and he had no doubt were, given to the public-house and beershop keepers—2l. in one case, 5l. in another, and 10 l. in another—for the purpose of free drink being given to anybody who chose to take it, especially electors. Under the present Act these publicans and beershop keepers could not be charged with being bribed. The beer was purchased from them; but the transaction was a bribe, while the distribution of the liquor would come under the head of treating. This mode of treating was excluded from the operation of the present Act; and so was nine-tenths of all the corruption that was practised at the late election. Still, if the House was willing to adopt a liberal and just construction of its own Act, and to give some latitude to the freedom of the Commissioners, they might arrive at a different conclusion from that of the right hon. Gentleman opposite (Mr. Walpole). He (Mr. Bright) conceived that the words "the manner in which the election had been conducted," in the beginning of the clause, and the words "and all other things whereby, in the opinion of the Commissioners, the truth may be better known touching the premises," afforded the necessary latitude. He was glad, however, that the right hon. Gentleman proposed to consolidate and amend the laws relating to this subject. Such a

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measure would be very useful to the Committees and for the information of the public; but he was convinced that no proposition of reform would at all meet the case, unless it included the proposition which he supposed would soon be brought before them by the hon. Member for Bristol (Mr. H. Berkeley). For he contended that the only remedy for the evils of the existing system was that provided by the method of taking the votes by ballot.
MR. STUART WORTLEYsaid, he was unwilling hastily to acquiesce in the opinion that no case of treating could be brought within the operation of the Act, because a general power was given to issue a Commission in all cases where extensive corruption prevailed. Treating might amount to absolute bribery. He understood that in the present case there was treating for the purpose of influencing the votes of electors. Now, if the money was spent at the publican's, though in the shape of treating, for the purpose of obtaining votes, it was very doubtful whether this did not amount, in law, to a "valuable consideration." There was no more reprehensible mode of bribery or corruption than that which consisted in opening public-houses for the purpose of securing voters. It would be a strong measure to disfranchise publicans, and he did not say he should be willing to go to such a length; but there was a necessity for some measure to repress such evils. It did not, as he said, appear quite so clear that treating did not come within the Act; but after the doubts expressed by those for whose opinion he entertained great respect, he was disposed to think that the Commission should not issue in this case. But he hoped that his right hon. Friend (Mr. Walpole) would bring in his Bill, and that the law would be put in a satisfactory state.
The ATTORNEY GENERAL,in explanation, said he should be sorry if it went forth that he was of opinion that treating might not be one form of bribery. Treating, if applied in the mode suggested, might be as clearly bribery as a gift of money; but he did not understand the report in this case to say that treating was resorted to with the view of bribing the publicans.
SIR FITZROY KELLYsaid, he concurred in the opinion that treating was a species of corruption not reached by the Act of Parliament. He might, indeed, add that he thought, if the right hon. Gentleman opposite (Mr. S. Wortley) had carefully read the Act, he too would have
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agreed with the hon. and learned the Attorney General, and his right hon. Friend the Member for Midhurst (Mr. Walpole), that this was not a case in which it was competent for the House, within the conditions of that Act, to address the Crown. He took this opportunity, as more than one question had arisen in that House, and necessarily in the other House of Parliament, of earnestly impressing on those hon. Members who constituted Election Committees the importance of adopting the very words of the clause of the Act of Parliament, if they really saw a case which, in their judgment, required further investigation by Commission under an Address to the Crown. There were many reasons, but one was quite decisive on this point. Although it was not regular to allude to discussions elsewhere, it was now notorious that two of the most learned Judges that ever sat upon the bench entertained one opinion—and two other learned and eminent Judges, one of them at the head of the administration of the law, entertained a directly opposite opinion—on this question. Therefore, it was clear, doubts existed which were entitled to the most serious consideration; and the reason why it was essential the words of the Act should be adopted by Committees, was to prevent those doubts arising; for, however the effect of the Committee's report might be sufficient to address the Crown, if in the proceedings which took place oaths were given, oaths were taken, perjury was committed, and an indictment for perjury followed, no authority in the other House of Parliament, should the precise words be omitted or changed for words equivalent, would prevent the acquittal of the person so indicted, and the total defeat of the ends of justice. Having offered that recommendation, he could not sit down without alluding to what had fallen from from his right hon. Friend the Member for Midhurst. It was with much pleasure that he heard his right hon. Friend indicate his intention to bring this great and important question under the consideration of the House. He took leave to say he was somewhat disappointed at not having heard any intimation from the Government that they were prepared, without reference to the numerous reports of Committees, and the possible reports of Commissions, to bring forward some great and substantial measure on this subject. He should rejoice, in common with others, if further means were devised to investigate and check bribery, and those corrupt practices which formed the greatest blot on the fair page of the constitution. He was

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one of those who thought they had enough information to enable the House satisfactorily to legislate on this subject; and he could only say, looking at the continuation of those practices, although most anxious that the course should be adopted by Her Majesty's Government, that unless within a very short time indeed—unless at some time which would give a fair hope of carrying some full and satisfactory measure through both Houses during the present Session—Her Majesty's Government should intimate their intention to bring forward a Bill, he should, with such assistance as he might be able to procure, take an early opportunity of moving for leave to bring in a general, and he hoped a comprehensive and satisfactory, measure on this subject.
MR. HUTTsaid, he hoped the House would not by any logical licence defeat the ends of justice and the great object of all their legislation. After some experience in matters of election petitions, he could not recall an instance in which an election was carried by practices of a more illegal and improper character than those which disgraced the proceedings of the last election for Clitheroe. The right hon. Gentleman the Member for Midhurst had remarked that only one case of bribery was reported to the House. That was unquestionably true; but the right hon. Gentleman, after so much experience in Election Committees, would recollect that, from the nature of the proceedings, it was unlikely that more than one gross and palpable case would be furnished to the House. The parties who prosecuted these petitions were not likely to spend large sums of money in carrying out a protracted inquiry, after their own purpose had been served, and which could only give satisfaction to the public. The case reported was a very remarkable one, and it came out that the practice of offering to give and receive bribes in exchange for votes was in constant and continual operation in the borough of Clitheroe. But that was not the only act of corruption which marked the proceedings at this election. Treating of a most extensive character prevailed, and it was found by the evidence that in one house as many as 2,000 persons were entertained at the expense of the candidate. If practices of that character, when brought under the cognisance of the House, were not to be followed by further proceedings, he confessed he thought they might as well legalise the putting up to public auction the representation of the people in the several boroughs of England.
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He was quite sure by such a proceeding they would as well sustain the honour, the influence, and the reputation of the House and the morality of the electors, as by giving an absolving protection to the system which prevailed in the borough of Clitheroe.
MR. HINDLEYsaid, he believed the whole House would unite in condemning the proceedings at this election; but the question was whether the Act of Parliament confined the House to bribery, or extensive bribery, in moving an Address to the Crown to issue a Commission for further inquiry. The House of Commons could not carry out the Act by themselves. They had to concur with the Lords, and they knew what passed in another place last night. Therefore, they ought to adopt the suggestion of the hon. and learned Member for East Suffolk (Sir F. Kelly) and be extremely careful, when acting on an Election Committee, to make their Resolution so completely in accordance with the Act that both Houses might agree as a matter of course.
CAPTAIN GLADSTONEsaid, he thought it would be a great injustice to Canterbury and other constituencies if Commissions were issued with respect to them, and not with respect to Clitheroe. As to only one case being reported, much larger lists were given in; and it was well known petitioners never would prove more than sufficient to answer their own object.
LORD JOHN RUSSELLsaid, he thought the House ought not to endeavour to strain the law beyond what the law prescribed. Had the Bill which he introduced last year come back from the Lords in the same state in which it went up, this case of Clitheroe would have been clearly included in it. No doubt the Motion for an Address would have passed the House, and inquiry by a Commission would have taken place. But the House of Lords expressly excluded the case of treating from the Bill, and such being the case it was impossible to act as if the words were included. He stated, at the time he advised the House to concur in the Amendment of the Lords, that if gross cases of treating occurred, they might proceed, as in the Sudbury and St. Albans' cases, to carry a Bill through the Parliament; and that was a course which was open for any Member of the House to take in this instance. The hon. Member for Manchester (Mr. Bright) stated that he warned him (Lord J. Russell) of the effect of leaving out the words, and adopting the

1031
other amendments which were made. He, (Lord John Russell) as he then expressed himself, was unfavourable to those amendments; but the question was, whether he should allow the Bill to drop, and have no Bill at all on the subject. He thought it preferable to obtain such an Act as they now had; and the case of Canterbury and other cases had shown that they were able by that Bill to institute investigations into bribery, which otherwise they would not have been in a position to do. He thought, after the experience they had had, it was tolerably evident the House ought to have power to proceed with an address to the Crown in cases of treating. He was glad to hear that the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Midhurst had paid considerable attention to, and meant to introduce a Bill on, the subject. Whether the Act of last year and the Act of 1842 would be included, the right hon. Gentleman did not say; but he was very glad to hear that he had given the matter his attention, and in introducing a Bill the right hon. Gentleman might rely on receiving the best attention of the Government. He did not think it always incumbent on the Government to introduce Bills of this kind. Individually he had frequently introduced such Bills—some were successful, and others had been altered—but these were questions upon which the House ought to endeavour as far as possible to act without distinction of parties. He thought they would make more way if Bills of the kind were carried by large majorities composed of the different parties into which the House was divided. No doubt, much might still be done in the way of detecting bribery. He thought further legislation would be very beneficial; at the same time he did not regret that he did not take the advice of the hon. Member for Manchester, and allow the Bill of last year to drop.
MR. DISRAELIsaid, he quite agreed with the noble Lord that they ought not to strain the law, and he quite agreed, after what had occurred in another place with reference to the Bill of the noble Lord, that it would not be wise in them to sanction any Commission being issued to inquire into cases of treating, however extensive they might be. Notwithstanding the evidence as to treating in this case of Clitheroe, that was not the basis of the recommendation for a Commission. He must remind the House that the evidence and report to inquire were not at all confined merely to the matter of treating.
1032
There was considerable evidence, if he recollected right, proving that corrupt practices—consisting of direct bribery or offers to bribe—did prevail at the Clitheroe election. It was quite true that in the report of the Committee only one case of bribery, though that case was a very flagrant one, was alleged. But they all knew, and the reason had been already referred to, why the inquiry into questions of bribery ceased before Election Committees. No doubt, it was perfectly open to the House to appoint a Commission to inquire into the subject of treating; but he thought before they decided on that question, they ought to ask themselves whether or not the evidence before the Committee on the Clitheroe election petition proved that corrupt practices of direct bribery extensively prevailed. He did not know what was the number of instances of bribery given in to the Committee; but he apprehended it was by no means inconsiderable. [An Hon. MEMBER: Only one.] He believed a list was furnished of more than twenty. He knew the evidence disclosed four or five instances in which bribes were offered; and one man stood out because they would not give him 150 l.—he refused less than 150 l. He confessed it was a difficult case to decide; but if he must decide, he must decide in favour of issuing the Commission.
The House divided:—Ayes 141; Noes 58: Majority 83.

List of the AYES.

Anderson, Sir J.

Dunne, Col.

Baillie, H. J.

Evans, Sir De L.

Barrow, W. H.

Ewart, W.

Ball, J.

Ferguson, Col.

Bennet, P.

Ferguson, J.

Biggs, W.

Floyer, J.

Blair, Col.

Fox, W. J.

Bland, L. H.

Franklyn, G. W.

Boldero, Col.

French, F.

Booth, Sir R. G.

Gibson, rt. hon. T. M.

Boyle, hon. Col.

Gladstone, Capt.

Bright, J.

Goodman, Sir G.

Brisco, M.

Goold, W.

Brotherton, J.

Grace, O. D. J.

Brown, W.

Greenall, G.

Bruce, C. L. C.

Greville, Col. F.

Buller, Sir J. Y.

Grosvenor, Lord R.

Butler, C. S.

Gwyn, H.

Cobbett, J. M.

Hadfield, G.

Cobden, R.

Hall, Sir B.

Coffin, W.

Hamilton, Lord C.

Corbally, M. E.

Hamilton, J. H.

Craufurd, E. H. J.

Hardinge, hon. C. S.

Crook, J.

Headlam, T. E.

Cubitt, Ald.

Henchy, D. O.

Dashwood, Sir G. H.

Heyworth, L.

Disraeli, rt. hon. B.

Hotham, Lord

Duncan, G.

Hughes, W. B.

Dunlop, A. M.

Jocelyn, Visct.

1033

Jones, Capt.

Percy, hon. J. W.

Keating, R.

Phillimore, J. G.

Keating, H. S.

Phillimore, R. J.

Kendall, N.

Pigott, F.

Kennedy, T.

Pollard-Urquhart, W.

Kingscote, R. N. F.

Power, N.

Kirk, W.

Price, W. P.

Knox, Col.

Repton, G. W. J.

Knox, hon. W. S.

Ricardo, O.

Lacon, Sir E.

Sandars, G.

Langton, H. G.

Scholefield, W.

Langton, W. G.

Scobell, Capt.

Laslett, W.

Scully, F.

Legh, G. C.

Scully, V.

Liddell, H. G.

Seaham, Visct.

Lindsay, hon. Col.

Shee, W.

Lockhart, A. E.

Smith, J. A.

Lucas, F.

Smith, J. B.

Luce, T.

Smith, W. M.

Mackenzie, W. F.

Smyth, R. J.

M'Gregor, J.

Smyth, J. G.

Malins, R.

Spooner, R.

Maxwell, hon. J. P.

Stapleton, J.

Meager, T.

Stuart, Lord D.

Meux, Sir H.

Swift, R.

Miall, E.

Thompson, G.

Milligan, R.

Trollope, rt. hon. Sir J.

Michell, W.

Tudway, R. C.

Montgomery, H. L.

Turner, C.

Montgomery, Sir G.

Vane, Lord A.

Moore, R. S.

Walmsley, Sir J.

Mostyn, hon. E. M. L.

Whalley, G. H.

Mullings, J. R.

Whatman, J.

Muntz, G. F.

Wilkinson, W. A.

Murrough, J. P.

Williams, W.

Naas, Lord

Wise, A.

Napier, rt. hon. J.

Wodehouse, E.

North, Col.

Wynn, H. W. W.

O'Brien, P.

Wyvill, M.

O'Brien, Sir T.

Yorke, hon. E. T.

Osborne, R.

TELLERS.

Pakenham, E.

Gaskell, J. M.

Pellatt, A.

Hutt, W.

List of the NOES.

A'Court, C. H. W.

Henley, rt. hon. J. W.

Archdall, Capt. M.

Herbert, rt. hon. S.

Baldock, E. H.

Hervey, Lord A.

Barrington, Visct.

Hindley, C.

Beaumont, W. B.

Johnstone, Sir J.

Berkeley, C. L. G.

Jolliffe, Sir W. G. H.

Blackett, J. F. B.

Kelly, Sir F.

Browne, V. A.

Mangles, R. D.

Bruce, Lord E.

Molesworth,rt.hn.SirW.

Burke, Sir T. J.

Monck, Visct.

Burrell, Sir C. M.

Monsell, W.

Chambers, T.

Morgan, O.

Charteris, hon. F.

Mulgrave, Earl of

Clay, Sir W.

Oliveira, B.

Cowper, hon. W. F.

Palmerston, Visct.

Davies, D. A. S.

Phinn, T.

Egerton, Sir P.

Pilkington, J.

Fielden, M. J.

Russell, Lord J.

Fitzgerald, J. D.

Russell, F. W.

Fitzgerald, Sir J. F.

Sawle, C. B. G.

Fitzroy, hon. H.

Seymour, Lord

Forester, rt. hon. Col.

Smith, rt. hon. R. V.

Gladstone, rt. hon. W.

Stafford, Marq. of

Graham, rt. hon. Sir J.

Stirling, W.

Granby, Marq. of

Strickland, Sir G.

Hayes, Sir E.

Thompson, Ald.

Hayter, rt. hon. W. G.

Villiers, rt, hon. C. P.

1034

Whitmore, H.

Young, rt. hon. Sir J.

Wood, rt. hon. Sir C.

TELLERS.

Wortley, rt. hon. J. S.

Walpole, rt. hon. S. H.

Wyndham, W.

Cockburn, Sir A.

Resolved—That the said Address be communicated to The Lords, at a Conference, and their concurrence desired thereto.
Ordered—That a Conference be desired with the Lords on the subject matter of an Address to be presented to Her Majesty under the provisions of the Act of the 15 & 16 of Her present Majesty, cap. 57.
Ordered—That Mr. Gaskell do go to The Lords, and desire the said Conference.

DUTY ON CARRIAGES.
SIR DE LACY EVANSsaid, he begged to move for leave to introduce a Bill to alter the scale of Duties on Carriages. He appeared on that occasion as the representative of a large class of artisans, whose interests were materially affected by the present incidence of the tax. Before he proceeded to state what the objections to the existing duties were, he would first place before the House the proposal which he meant to substitute in their place. The present duties were divided into twenty-six different classes, and the rates ranged from 1l. 5s. to 9l. 1s. 5d. He proposed that these twenty-six classes of duties should be reduced to three—namely, a duty of 3l. on four-wheeled carriages drawn by two horses, of 2l. on four-wheeled carriages drawn by one horse, and of 1l. on two-wheeled carriages. He believed that this plan would entail no loss whatever on the revenue, if, indeed, it would not be a gain, because there could be no doubt that it would give a great impetus to the coach-making trade, and bring a larger number of carriages into immediate use. But he did not anticipate any loss to the revenue, even if the number of carriages remained as at present. And now for the objections to the tax. He asserted that, if there was any part of our fiscal code which called for modification, it was that part of it which related to this particular tax. The number of carriages paying duty had been rapidly diminishing during the last ten or twelve years. In 1849 the number of four-wheeled carriages drawn by two horses paying duty amounted to 25,447. In 1852 the number was reduced to 23,778, being a reduction of 1,669, chiefly of gentlemen's carriages, within the last three years, and causing a diminution of duty amounting to near 10,000 l. In 1849 the number of one-horse four-wheeled car-

1035
riages was 41,671; and, in 1852, the number was reduced to 38,883, being a reduction of 2,788. In 1849 the number of two-wheeled carriages was 28,474; in 1852 the number was reduced to 24,591, being a reduction of 3,883. It should be remembered, that during the same period the population and wealth of the country had been increasing; so that when, along with increasing wealth and numbers, they found that there was a diminution of revenue arising from the carriages used by the public, it was conclusive, he thought, that the tax was altogether objectionable in its present form. It was an important fact, too, that during the last ten years, upwards of fifty coachmakers had either become bankrupt, or had been obliged to retire from business. But there was another strong objection he had to urge against the tax, and that was the numerous frauds and evasions which were occasioned by the variety of exemptions allowed under the Act. They had all heard of dog-carts, for instance, which were exempt from duty, and which many noblemen, right hon. Gentlemen, and even prelates, he believed, were in the habit of using for the purpose of availing themselves of the exemption. For dog-carts were exempted if they contained the name of the owner on the back, and did not cost more than 21 l. He could not but consider this as a palpable evasion of the tax, for it could never have been intended that the class of persons to whom he had referred should be exempted from the tax. Then, again, carriages with wheels of less than thirty inches in diameter were exempted; and any one who looked at the advertising columns of the Times, during a period of fine weather, would find a condemnation of this exemption in a variety of advertisements in that paper about "fashionable and brilliant" under-tax equipages, in utter defiance of the provisions of the law, and of the Chancellor of the Exchequer. The right which was extended to parties to compound for the tax, likewise led to numerous frauds. A person, for instance, who had been in the habit of using five, six, or seven carriages, would cease to use more than two for a few months, and then, having compounded with the taxgatherer for two, he could forthwith resume his five, six, or seven carriages. He hoped no hon. Gentleman in that House had acted in this manner; but if they had, he claimed their support on the present occasion. He had had the honour of waiting on more
1036
than one Chancellor of the Exchequer on the subject. He regretted to say that he found the last Chancellor but one (Sir C. Wood) very obdurate upon this, as well as upon other subjects. He admired that right hon. Gentleman in many respects; but it was well known that they had to screw the window-tax out of him; and, perhaps, if he had been in office still, they might have been reduced to resort to a similar unseemly process in regard to carriage duties. He (Sir De L. Evans) was also one of those that waited upon the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Buckinghamshire (Mr. Disraeli), who received the deputation in a most kind and gracious manner, made several acute observations no the subject, and seemed altogether exceedingly favourable—so much so that the deputation came away with the full conviction that the modification of the tax "loomed," not in the distance, but close at hand; but when the Budget appeared, he was sorry to say, there was not a word about duties carriages in it. He was inclined, however, to excuse the right hon. Gentleman, as he believed he had only too many reasons for occupying himself exclusively with the agricultural classes, and had no time to bestow his thoughts upon the poor artisans of the towns. The present Chancellor of the Exchequer, however, had already proved that he was able and ready to grapple with even far greater questions than this, and had shown at once great industry, courage, and high talent in doing so. And he (Sir De L. Evans) only wished he would devote a portion of these admirable qualities to the consideration of the proposition which he now brought before the House, and earnestly submitted for the favourable attention of the right hon. Gentleman.
MR. TURNERsaid, he should have much pleasure in seconding the Motion, because he agreed with the hon. and gallant Member in thinking that the tax in question was one which pressed heavily on a large and deserving portion of the industrious classes. There could be no doubt that the tax, as at present levied, interfered with the use of carriages, and thereby injured the trade of coach-building. It also led to numerous evasions. The coach-builders of Lancashire took the trouble to make out a return last year of the number of carriages which they built subject to the tax, and those which were not. The return from those who built both classes of carriages showed that the proportion of un-

1037
taxed to taxed carriages, was as five to one—while, taking into account the return from those whose trade was limited to untaxed carriages, it appeared that the proportion of untaxed to taxed carriages was something like ten to one. He agreed with the hon. and gallant Member in thinking that the exemptions were taken advantage of by parties whom it was never intended to favour. With respect to compositions, however, he did not agree with the hon. and gallant Member, because he thought he had lost sight of the fact that a party compounding was obliged to give in a return of the largest number of carriages he had been in the habit of using during the year preceding, so that he could not evade the tax by laying down one or two carriages for a few months, as the hon. and gallant Gentleman supposed. The practice of compounding was, in his opinion, an advantage rather than otherwise, inasmuch as it led to the use of more carriages. He was decidedly of opinion that if the tax were differently placed, it would give an impulse to the trade of coach-building, while he did not believe it would entail any loss on the revenue.
Motion made, and Question proposed, "That leave be given to bring in a Bill to alter the Scale of Duties on Carriages."
MR. BRIGHTsaid, that one reason why the Chancellor of the Exchequer should be disposed to deal with this tax was, that it might be improved without any diminution of the revenue, which, under the present system, was slowly but steadily decreasing. He believed that if the duty was reduced, the revenue would be more than maintained, while great relief would be afforded to the public. The coach-builders were an unfortunate class, for they did not seem to have had any political influence, and they were not supposed to be influential at elections. The consequence was, that no Chancellor of the Exchequer had paid them any particular attention, and for many years past their trade had been in course of destruction by a sort of Exchequer garotte, which in all parts of the country had been gradually strangling this branch of industry. Some persons conceived that this duty only taxed luxuries; but he believed that it affected thousands of persons, who did not keep carriages, mainly on account of the pressure and inconvenience of the tax. Carriages were much more useful in the country than in towns, and were kept far more for use than ostentation; and he thought, therefore, that the luxury argu-
1038
ment failed. It had been stated by the hon. and gallant Member (Sir De L. Evans) that fifty coach-building firms had been discontinued in London within ten years; and he (Mr. Bright) believed there were more than fifty towns in Great Britain where the trade of coach-building was at one time carried on, but where it was now entirely unknown. In the city of Manchester there was a wealthy population of 400,000 persons, and that city was surrounded by a cluster of towns, comprising a population of about 1,000,000; but he had been told that there was only one coach-builder in Manchester who turned over more than 10,000 l. a year in his trade. This fact showed, he thought, how the trade was crippled by the present system of taxation. Every gentleman who had kept a carriage knew that if he wanted to part with it he must sell it almost for nothing. A carriage which had cost 200 l., after having been run for a very short time, could not be sold probably for more than 15 l. or 20 l. Well, the coach-builders bought such carriages, but they found this description of stock most useless and oppressive. If they let their coaches for only one day, they were liable to a tax of 6l. Some two years since he (Mr. Bright) hired a carriage in Manchester, which he ran with one horse for two or three months. The carriage might be worth about 50 l., and he paid about 15 l.l. for the three months' hire. The coach-maker told him that, although he might not let the carriage out again for twelve months, 6l. out of that 15 l. must be paid for duty, and that if he had let the carriage only for a single week, he would still have been liable to this tax. He (Mr. Bright) would ask the House to contrast this country with Ireland with regard to the use of carriages. He had visited a gentleman in Ireland, who, although very comfortably off in the world, could not be regarded as a man likely to keep several carriages; yet he (Mr. Bright) drove out for a week in a different carriage every day. Nothing could be more comfortable than such an arrangement in a climate like this, where one day was wet and another fine, one day warm and another cold. A gentleman who lived in the south of Ireland, and who was staying at the same house, told him (Mr. Bright) that he kept no less than eight carriages. He thought these facts, with reference to Ireland, showed to what an extent the carriage duties operated to prevent the extension of carriage-building and the comfortable

1039
accommodation of families in this country. What was the reason that in Ireland a carriage could be bought for a considerably lower price than in this country? [Mr. F. FRENCH: Oh, no!] The hon. Gentleman opposite, who always contradicted everybody who said anything about Ireland, contradicted him; but he (Mr. Bright) was inclined to think he had stated the fact. He would suggest to the Chancellor of the Exchequer, that if carriages were brought into more general use in this country, there would be a considerably increased consumption of iron, timber, leather, cloth, and paint, and it was therefore evident that the question was one materially affecting the industry of the country. The revenue derived from the carriage duty had been, in 1840, 447,000 l.; in 1849, 425,000 l.; and in 1852, 413,000 l.; so that there had been a steady diminution in the amount. It must be remembered that concurrently with this diminution of revenue there was throughout the country an accumulation of wealth going on such as had never before been known. Then, with regard to exemptions; in 1839 the exemptions of carriages with less than four wheels were 20,000, and in 1849 they were 33,000. The coach-builders proposed that the duty upon carriages should be reduced to 3l. for four-wheeled carriages drawn by two horses. He would recommend the Chancellor of the Exchequer to have nothing to do with the horses, because they were taxed in another way. He (Mr. Bright) thought the tax might be applied to all carriages working on springs, but there might be an objection to imposing taxes upon carriages used for commercial or agricultural purposes. He was not at present asking for any reduction, because if, through what he must term the folly of the press, they were to have what he considered unnecessary fortifications and things of that kind, they could not expect that taxes would be taken off as freely as they should like. But what he should recommend to the right hon. Gentleman, when he was going to make a change in this tax, would be to impose a small tax on each wheel, without descending to wheelbarrows or carts used for trade, disregarding altogether the number of horses and the size of the wheel. He thought that this would produce an increasing revenue. Suppose that a man paid 1l. for one carriage, he would have him pay 10 l. if he kept ten carriages. This was a simple mode of levying the tax, and ho believed it would produce a steadily
1040
increasing amount. He hoped that his hon. and gallant Friend was not going to divide, as he supposed that his object would be gained by the discussion which he had provoked.
The CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUERsaid, he conceived that the object of the hon. and gallant Member for Westminister (Sir De L. Evans) in bringing forward this question was rather to elicit discussion upon the most prominent points connected with the subject, than to obtain the decision of the House upon it. He thought, however, that there had been a material omission in the speeches that had been made, for no one could doubt that one of the great causes of the decline of this important trade, and of the consequent diminution of the revenae which it yielded, was to be found in the general introduction and extension of railway travelling. He was, however, far from thinking that this had been the sole cause of the decline of the trade. Without committing the Government in any manner to any course whatever, he must admit that the case of this trade was a very hard one. He had heard the representations of members of the trade, and he had endeavoured to make himself acquainted with the facts. It was plain that these duties were extremely high, that they were excessively complex in their nature, and the imposition of an augmenting charge for each carriage, as the number of carriages increased, was one which he regarded as of very questionable policy. This regulation had, indeed, been found so burdensome that a system of compositions had been introduced for the purpose of neutralising it. A still more serious evil was undoubtedly the multitude and extensive range of the exemptions. He thought both the hon. and gallant Member for Westminster and the hon. Member for Manchester (Mr. Bright) had admitted that these exemptions were at the root of the whole matter. If the House was disposed at any time to deal with the duties upon carriages, they must do one of two things: if they intended to give relief to the trade, they must either make a very considerable sacrifice of revenue, to the amount of some 100,000 l. or more, or they must pluck up courage enough to strike at the root of these exemptions. He was sure the hon. and gallant Member for Westminister would excuse him if he did not now enter into this question at any length.

1041
The hon. and gallant Member had spoken of objects looming in the future, more or less remote. He (the Chancellor of the Exchequer) might observe that his explanations upon matters of this nature now loomed in very near, and he hoped that on Monday next they would cease to loom at all, and—good, bad, or indifferent—would become matters of fact. It would then be his duty to explain the course which Her Majesty's Government intended to pursue, and he would then either be prepared to announce, with regard to this tax as well as others, some measure in the nature of relief, or else to urge what he hoped would be conclusive reasons why the Government were not in a condition to grant such relief. He had given most ready and respectful attention to the representations of persons engaged in this important trade. There could be no doubt, as he had before stated, that their case was one of great hardship, and he was sure that any one filling the position he had the honour to occupy would look forward with great satisfaction to a state of affairs which would hold out a prospect of affording them relief. He hoped, however, that the hon. and gallant Member for Westminster would not press the House to come to a decision on the question to-night.
MR. FITZSTEPHEN FRENCHsaid, the hon. Member for Manchester (Mr. Bright) seemed annoyed because he questioned the hon. Member's infallibility with respect to Ireland. The hon. Member had, however, just now made a statement which he must again contradict, namely, that families in Ireland, whose position would not entitle them in this country to keep one carriage, frequently in Ireland kept eight. Even giving the hon. Member credit for wheelbarrows, he must say that this observation was not a particle more correct than information respecting Ireland in that House usually was.
SIR DE LACY EVANSsaid, he was content for the present with the explanations given by the right hon. Chancellor of the Exchequer, and had no objection, therefore, to withdraw his Motion.
Motion, by leave, withdrawn.

EXPENDITURE OF PUBLIC MONEY.
MR. W. WILLIAMSsaid, the Motion he was about to move was one which deeply affected the economical management and collection of the public revenue, and the character of the House as protector of the
1042
public money. His object was to obtain an assurance from the House that they would not permit any portion of the public taxes to be expended by any persons whatsoever without its concurrence and authority. He considered this duty was one of the most important and peculiar functions of the House of Commons. But he regretted to say that this duty had been for a long period most culpably neglected, by allowing a large portion of the public revenue to be intercepted in its way from the pockets of the people to the public Exchequer. It appeared from a return which he moved for, and which was presented to the House in the course of the present Session, that in the year 1851 the large amount of 6,000,000 l. had been intercepted in this way. Of this sum 3,936,000 l. had been impounded by the officers of the revenue departments—the customs, excise, stamps, taxes, post office, &c., to pay their own salaries. A very large amount had been detained for the purpose of repayments and drawbacks, and 560,000 l. under the denomination of "other payments." Now, what were these "other payments?" In the Customs, they were described for quarantine and warehouses, and judicial establishments in Scotland 313,000 l. In the Excise, the payments other than the cost of collection consisted of pensions granted in the reigns of King Charles II. and William III., salaries to the inspectors of corn returns, payments towards the civil Government of Scotland, for the encouragement of British fishing, for the salaries of process servers, and allowances to the officers of the late tax department in Ireland, &c. In this way 84,679 l. was expended. Then there was a sum of 130,000 l. unaccounted for by the Woods and Forests department. He contended that the whole of this amount of 6,000,000 l. ought to be paid into the public treasury, and that votes ought to be taken in the Estimates for the various revenue departments, as for the Army, Navy, Ordnance, and Civil Services Estimates. He had heard it said that there were difficulties in the way of effecting this; but he would undertake to remove them, and he was sure the Chancellor of the Exchequer could very easily surmount them. The House would be astonished to find what had been the result of the expenditure of such an enormous sum of money without control or supervision. In the year 1806, a period of war and extravagance, a Committee was appointed by a Whig Government to inquire into the cost of collecting

1043
the revenues, and as the result of the inquiry, it appeared that the cost of collecting 58,000,000 l. was 2,797,000 l., or about 4¾ per cent., and it was about the same for the ten preceding years. The expense of collecting the revenue of 1851, which was 56,000,000 l., was 3,936,000,l., being about 7 per cent, or 1,140,000 l. in excess of the cost of collecting 2,000,000 l. less revenue in 1806. Moreover, in 1806, the Post Office packet service was maintained and paid by the Post Office department, which was not the case at present; and if this item of expense were added to the 1,140,00 l., there would be a sum of 2,000,000 l. more for collecting the revenue in 1851, than was paid in 1806. It must also be taken into account that the price of wheat in 1806 was 76 s. per quarter, and in 1805 wheat was at 86 s. per quarter, or pretty nearly double its cost at the present time. Now the cost of almost every article that entered into the consumption of those who were employed in the collection of the revenue, was in 1851 one-third less than in 1806, and yet there had been that enormous increase in the expense of collecting the revenue in the former year to which he had just called the attention of the House. That circumstance could, in his opinion, be accounted for solely upon the ground that that expenditure had taken place without any control upon the part of that House. When the late Sir Robert Peel immediately after his accession to office in 1841 stated in that House the great increase of expenditure over revenue, and an income tax was "looming in the future," he (Mr. Williams) suggested to him, as one means of making up the deficiency, the adoption of the change which he now proposed. A fortnight after, to his great surprise, Sir Robert Peel appointed a Commission, at the head of which was the late Lord Granville Somerset—a most able man—his colleagues in the inquiry being gentlemen connected with the Government. The Commission went to Liverpool, and made a searching inquiry into the system of collectting the revenue in that place, and ultimately made a most able Report. They pointed out the gross mismanagement which pervaded the whole system of collection at Liverpool; they spoke of the incredible inconvenience to which the merchants there were subjected, by the circumstance that a great number of officers worked only from ten in the morning till three in the afternoon, adding, that although the merchants offered to pay the officers
1044
out of their own pockets double what they received, provided they were employed ten hours instead of five, this offer was rejected, as inconsistent with the Customs regulations. The Commission stated, "the inference that this establishment is too large, appears to us irresistible." The discoveries which they made, convinced them that the system of collecting the revenue was extravagant and corrupt from one end of the Kingdom to the other. In point of fact, they did not extend their inquiry to any other place; and he (Mr. Williams) having repeatedly asked for information with regard to the progress made by the Commission, in further inquiry, was at last informed by Sir Robert Peel that the Commission was abolished. What, however, was the result? In 1842 the articles subjected to duty were about 800 in number; the number had since been reduced by 420, the reductions amounting in money to 9,500,000 l. The Customs revenue in 1842 was 21,800,000 l. the cost of collecting it being 1,254,000 l.; in 1851 the charge for collection of 20,600,000 l. was 1,290,000 l., or 36,000 l. more than the amount in 1842, notwithstanding the diminution of the number of duty-paying articles by one-half. A Return which he had obtained showed the extraordinary fact that the new places in the revenue departments from 1841 to 1851 amounted to 1,274, of which number 520 were in the Customs. The superannuation allowances in the Customs and Excise in 1841 amounted to 283,000 l.; in 1851, the amount had risen to 360,000 l., being an increase of 83,000 l., although there was 500,000 l. less revenue to collect. On this point he begged to refer to the Third Report of the Committee of Finance, of which Sir Henry Parnell, the ablest financier of his day, was the chairman. That Committee stated that—
"abuses had arisen from the disposition of the superior officers to favour the retirement of efficient clerks, and that they had been informed that not a few persons superannuated as unfit for public service, had enjoyed health and strength long afterwards to discharge active duties in other public offices and in private business."
It was also observed by the late Marquess of Lansdowne in the House of Lords, that every public office seemed to be the lord of its own will, and to have unlimited power over the pocket of the nation, instead of being, as the constitution required, under the control and check of Parliament. All

1045
the abuses arose from the circumstance of the proceedings being conducted in secret, and without the control of Parliament. The vexatious proceedings of the Customs department had within the last twelve months excited the active hostility of the merchants of the City of London, who declared that they would endure them no longer; and, in consequence of the representations made by them, the Government had promised that the evils complained of should be remedied. What was the course pursued with regard to the docks? Upon the information of discarded servants of the dock companies, a body of forty officers was sent to the docks; 120 informations were prepared, proceedings were taken, and some twenty persons, who had been servants of the companies for a lengthened period, were required to find bail as the condition of escaping imprisonment. Out of the 120 informations one case was tried; it cost the Dock Company 10,000 l. to defend the suit; and the verdict was, that some irregularity had taken place with regard to what was of the value of 6l., the duty payable being 27 s., the Court entirely exonerating the company from any intention to commit a fraud. What the proceedings cost the Government he did not know, but probably it was not less than the expense to the company. All the other informations were abandoned, as well as prosecutions of the officers and servants of the Dock Companies after putting them to great expense and inconvenience. Was a system to be endured which inflicted so much hardship on the merchants who conducted the import and export trade of this country, and equal hardship on the dock companies and the owners of bonding warehouses? He would just refer to the Report of a Commission appointed in 1831, shortly after the accession to office of the late Earl Grey, consisting of the most influential Members of the Government. The Commission, in their report, after observing that the Exchequer was the great conservator of the revenue of the nation, said the public money should be placed, without reduction, in the custody of the Exchequer, and accounted for to Parliament, whose authority should be necessary for the appropriation of the whole. They further said—
"We feel this principle to be of paramount importance to the security of the public money. We think no portion of the public money should be arrested on any plea or pretence whatever on its way to the Exchequer; and that no portion of it should be issued from the Exchequer without previous Parliamentary sanction."
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The Commissioners went on to say that they referred with satisfaction to the existence of a similar regulation with regard to the administration of the finances in France—a regulation which in that country had been productive in its operation of very beneficial results. That Report was signed by Sir Henry Parnell, Sir James Kempt, Master General of the Ordnance, Mr. Charles Poulett Thompson, President of the Board of Trade, Lord John Russell, Sir James Graham, Sir Francis Baring, and the Right Hon. Edward Ellice. Nettling could be more emphatic or decisive than the language in which these high authorities condemned the existing system. Let the House consider in what way the department had conducted its proceedings since that Report was made. Previous to the time of Mr. Pitt, the cost of collecting the taxes of the country had not amounted to more than 2 or 3 per cent, whereas at the present day the expense of collection was not less than 8¼ per cent, including the cost of the packets for the service of the Post Office. About six years ago a Commission was appointed to investigate the subject of alleged frauds in the Customs. They stated in their Report that there were two accounts, one of which was in the light of a private account kept in the name of the receiver general and the comptroller general of the customs for the purpose of paying salaries and the other purposes he had mentioned—a private account of 6,000,000 l. of taxes received from the people, and expended without Parliamentary control. In 1848 Dr. Bowring brought forward a Motion similar to that now before the House. A majority voted in favour of it, but to that hour it had never been carried out. The noble Lord the Member for the City of London (Lord J. Russell) had urged as an excuse that it would occupy too much of the time of the House to go through the salaries of all the officers who collected the revenue. Why, the other evening, they had nearly disposed of the salaries of another department at one fell swoop; and whatever might be said with regard to the difficulties of revision, there should at least be an opportunity of comment with regard to the salaries of all public officers. It would be in the recollection of the House that about two years ago Lord Duncan, after having meritoriously investigated the management of the Crown property under the Woods and Forests, succeeded in carrying a Resolution declaring that all the

1047
receipts of such property ought to be paid into the Exchequer. Notwithstanding that Resolution, however, there was upwards of 100,000 l. in the department unaccounted for, and he hoped the right hon. Baronet at the head of that department would be prepared to give some explanation of that circumstance. He (Mr. Williams) could, however, partly account for it himself. There were about 230 rangers, deputy rangers, lodges, mansions, &c. in the Royal parks. Of the many lodges, which, in some cases, were in fact mansions, upon which a large amount was spent annually, only a small expenditure on one of them was at all accounted for. He entertained great hopes that an entire change of system with regard to Government departments was at hand. The right hon. Gentleman the late Chancellor of the Exchequer, observed in his speech on introducing his Budget, that one part of the duty of the then Government would be to pay the whole of this 6,000,000 l. into the Exchequer. So deeply did the right hon. Member for Buckinghamshire seem impressed with the justice and necessity of such a measure, that he repeated his statement in his reply. Last Friday night the House had a lecture from the present Chancellor of the Exchequer with respect to what the right hon. Gentleman conceived to be the duty of that House, and of the Members of that House. The right hon. Gentleman said—
"No man more fully admits than I do the perfect right of Parliament, and of every Member of Parliament—nay, the bounden duty and obligation of Parliament, to maintain intact its control over the whole of these operations. If it is your duty to fence about with minute, stringent, and rigid forms the whole process of taxation, and to look jealously and keenly into every proposition submitted by the Government for raising money from the people, I will venture to say that it is still more your duty to see that you do not give a blind and unreasoning confidence in a matter where the question is, if not about the imposition of taxes, yet about that which is more delicate—namely, either the creation or commutation of public debt; and the more the House takes on itself that function, the less becomes the responsibility of the Government."
Thus had the right hon. Gentleman, in language most eloquent, most decisive, and most constitutional, described the position and duty of that House with regard to the revision of taxes. He felt sure, therefore, that the right hon. Gentleman would use similar language that evening; and declare that it was the duty of that House, after imposing taxes on the people, to see that no portion of them was expended indepen-
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dently of its own authority and control. After quoting such a declaration of opinion from the right hon. Gentleman, it would be presumptuous in him to detain the House any longer, and he would therefore conclude at once with the Motion of which he had given notice.
CAPTAIN SCOBELL,in seconding the Resolution, adverted to the intimation made by the late Chancellor of the Exchequer, of which the hon. Member for Lambeth (Mr. W. Williams) had reminded the House, that the disposition of the Government with which that right hon. Gentleman was connected was to bring the large sum paid for collecting the public revenue under the supervision of the House of Commons. He was ready to thank the right hon. Gentleman then, and he thanked him now, for the example which, as one holding high office, the right hon. Gentleman had given to his successors. It had been stated that upwards of 1,000,000 l. of money would be saved by this means; but it was enough for the House of Commons that it was expenditure out of sight. That was not an English mode of expenditure; hon. Members did not allow it to their own stewards. They ought to do in public life what they did in private life, so that the public money should be properly accounted for to those who were the guardians of the public purse. The money to which the Resolution related was either properly or improperly spent. If improperly spent in any degree, it was necessary that the House of Commons should investigate the matter; if properly spent, it would be satisfactory to the Ministers of the day, as public servants, that they had it in their power to explain the expenditure of the country. Dr. Bowring, who formerly used to bring forward Resolutions on this subject, had been appointed a Consul in China, as another hon. Member, Sir Henry George Ward, by whom Resolutions had been brought forward on other subjects, had been sent as Governor to the Ionian Islands; and so it might be thought of to deal with the hon. Member for Lambeth, if he persevered. Though the House was crowded last night, when the question of the Canada Clergy Reserves, involving a few thousands, was discussed, so few were present to night, when the question involved mllions, that at one time it appeared as if the House would have been counted out. He had risen, however, principally to give the meed of praise which

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he thought due to the late Chancellor of the Exchequer, who had paved the way for bringing this expenditure under the cognisance of the House of Commons, and whom he thanked, not only for having done so, but for telling the House, on authority perfectly worthy of belief, that if the administrative departments were subjected to thorough investigation, a saving of some millions might be effected—a saving, it might be observed, which would perhaps exceed any to arise from dealing with the public stocks.
Motion made, and Question proposed—
"That it appears by a Return ordered by this House in the present Session, that an enormous amount of the public money is annually intercepted on its way from the people's pockets to the Treasury, and expended without the sanction and control of this House, and in violation of the constitutional principle, that no Taxes shall be imposed upon the people, or the product thereof expended, without the authority of their Representatives in Parliament.
"That the said Return shows, that the amount intercepted and expended in the year 1851, which never reached the Exchequer, was 6,072,151 l. 9s. 9d., of which amount 5,622,257 l. was deducted from the gross receipts of the Taxes by the various Revenue Departments, and expended by the said Departments for the payment of their Officers, and other purposes, without the supervision and control of Parliament.
"That, for the security of the Public Monies, and accurate keeping of the Public Accounts, it is indispensable that the whole of the Public Income should, without any deduction whatever, be paid into Her Majesty's Exchequer, and that no portion of it should be issued therefrom, on any plea or pretence, without the sanction of Parliament, as it was recommended by the Commission, which consisted of Members of this House, appointed by the Crown in the year 1831."
The CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUERsaid, that the task he had to discharge upon the present occasion was an extremely simple one, both as regarded himself and as regarded the Government. As regarded himself he had to state that he had many years ago expressed in that House an opinion that the charge for the collection of the revenue of this country ought, if possible, to be brought under the control of Parliament. As regarded the Government, he had to state that he had himself, since he had been appointed to his present office, thought fit to inquire into the practicability of effecting that great change; and that the subject had undergone some consideration on his part, and on the part of his Colleagues. As an abstract opinion was of very little consequence in itself, they were of opinion that effect
1050
ought to be given to that principle, and they did not mean to desist from their endeavours until they should have organised a measure for carrying out that object. The hon. Gentleman, however, must be well aware that the operation would be a very considerable one, and that a good deal should be done before a perfectly good and clear and simple system of dealing with a subject of such magnitude could be established. The hon. Gentleman must know well that there was a large class of charges included in the gross sums he had inserted in his Resolutions, which it would be impossible to bring under the control of Parliament, for the simple reason that they did not, in any proper sense, constitute a portion of the public income. The hon. Gentleman could not wish that drawbacks and repayments—that sums which had been received in error, and which should be returned to the contributors, but which formed a considerable portion of the total he had enumerated, should be introduced into the public accounts under the head of income, in order that they might afterwards be discharged from the public accounts under the head of expenditure. The hon. Gentleman must also be aware that there were many charges imposed on the public revenue by Acts of Parliament. There was, for instance, the charge—not a very extensive one now—which was called the "hereditary pensions," and which was thrown on separate branches of the public revenue. He (the Chancellor of the Exchequer) did not think that any advantage could be gained by making those hereditary pensions subject to an annual vote of Parliament. The best way to deal with them, in his opinion, would be to make an arrangement—a voluntary and optional arrangement with the pensioners, and to offer them reasonable terms of accommodation, so that the public accounts might afterwards be discharged of those items altogether. In other cases there were public charges which Parliament had been pleased—he could hardly say in its wisdom—to impose on particular branches of the revenue; such as, for instance, the Scottish judicial establishments, which were charged on the Excise. Those were arrangements which he should say were obviously quite indefensible, and ought to be altered. He believed, however, that everything that properly belonged to the expenditure of the public income ought unquestionably to be brought under the control of Parliament, and that we should never establish a sound

1051
system of national finance until that principle should be carried fully into effect. But he confessed that he was not so sanguine as the hon. and gallant Gentleman who had last addressed the House with respect to the immense saving to be effected by that process. The hon. Gentleman the Member for Lambeth (Mr. W. Williams) had stated that the charge for collecting the revenue of this country amounted to 8¼ per cent on the gross sum received; and in that charge he had included the cost of the Post Office packet service. He had spoken of that service as a portion of the machinery for collecting the revenue of the country. But he (the Chancellor of the Exchequer) entirely differed from the hon. Gentleman upon that point; he looked on the packet service as a means of scattering and squandering the public revenue. But however that might be, that service was unfortunately brought under the control of that House, and nothing could be worse than the mode in which it had been managed. He was bound to express his conscientious belief that if it had been exclusively under the management of a Government Department, the expenditure would have been conducted with much greater economy than it had hitherto been. But the hon. Gentleman was probably aware that such measures as could be taken were being taken at present in order to effect every possible improvement in all the different branches of the public expenditure. He (the Chancellor of the Exchequer) should be very sorry to have it supposed that it was his intention to imply the slightest censure on those who had administered the system which he had described as so unsound in principle. He could not, therefore, agree to the terms of the Motion of the hon. Gentleman as it then stood. He hoped that he might appeal with effect to the hon. Gentleman not to call on the House to assent to the Motion in a formal shape, because the terms of it were such, that although he did not at all find fault with it as a vigorous expression of the views and opinions of the hon. Gentleman, yet he thought that if it were adopted by the House, and if it became a public document, it would seem to convey a censure which was not really deserved, and which he was sure it was not the desire of the hon. Gentleman himself to express. The hon. Gentleman stated, in the first portion of his Resolution, that—
"an enormous amount of the public money is annually intercepted on its way from the people's
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pockets to the Treasury, and expended without the sanction and control of this House, and in violation of the constitutional principle that no taxes shall be imposed upon the people, or the product thereof, expended without the authority of their Representatives in Parliament."
Now he (the Chancellor of the Exchequer) had already said in the broadest manner that he wished to give such a construction to the principles of Parliamentary control as would bring all those charges under its operation. But he was l0th to say that a constitutional principle had been violated by the present practice, because that practice had uniformly prevailed in this country in all periods of its history and under all systems of government, and because he believed that the supervision of the expense of collecting the revenue was part of the known and established prerogatives of the Crown. He did not propose to stickle for the retention of prerogatives of the Crown; it appeared to him that it would be better to part with them; but, at the same time, he was not at all disposed to imply any censure on these administrative departments which had been engaged in carrying out the system as they had found it. He should further say that he was convinced that a spirit, not only of perfect integrity, but of enlightened economy, had prevailed among the heads of our great public departments. He felt bound to discourage expectations which appeared to him to be extravagant; but he did not say that they would effect no saving by the contemplated change; on the contrary, he believed that the mere fact of their bringing that expenditure under the control of Parliament would greatly strengthen the heads of the public departments in their attempts to deal with it in the most efficient and economical manner, and would lead, if he should not be greatly disappointed, to a good deal of retrenchment. All he wished was that it should be understood that they could not look to anything like a saving of millions every year from the adoption of the proposal, and, above all, that it should be understood that they were not insensible to the services of such men as Mr. Wood, the chairman of the Board of Inland Revenue, and Sir Thomas Fremantle, the chairman of the Board of Customs, who were, he was sure, themselves ready to carry out to the best of their power the principle of public economy and retrenchment. He wished not to discourage or to supersede them, but to strengthen their hands. That, he thought, was the spirit in which they ought to deal with the question. The Government officers were

1053
already engaged in investigating these departments one after another, in order that they might ascertain how they could best give effect to the principle to which he had already deliberately given the adhesion of Her Majesty's Ministers. With respect to the Board of Inland Revenue, which collected nearly three-fifths of the public income, the investigation had already been carried to an advanced stage. The state of the Post Office department was at present under consideration. In that great department, when they spoke of the charges of collection, they should remember that those charges were not incurred for the mere raising of a particular sum of money, but for an immense system of distributing letters for the accommodation of the country, which it might be extremely difficult to bring under the supervision of Parliament, although he admitted that it was desirable to promote as far as possible that object. After those explanations, which he trusted would be satisfactory to the hon. Gentleman, and to the House, he would conclude by expressing a hope that the hon. Gentleman would not call on them to assent to the terms of his Resolution.
MR. W. WILLIAMSsaid, he did not agree with the right hon. Gentleman as to the objection he had made to the terms of the Resolution. He contended—and the right hon. Gentleman had laid down the principle emphatically in the quotation which he made from the Resolution—that every item of taxation ought to be under the authority of the House, and equally was it established that they should look to the expenditure. The Crown had no power to put its hand into the pockets of the people without the authority of the other two branches of the Legislature. The Crown had no power to appoint a whole host of Customs and Excise officers without the authority of that House, and give them what salary it pleased. He knew for a fact that some of the ablest officers in these departments had been induced to resign their situations in the prime of life to make room for others. However, he was sure that Her Majesty was the last person in the realm that would attempt to invade such a principle. The right hon. Gentleman had met the question, he must say, in a very fair way. He was uncommonly gratified that he had done so in the clear and off-hand manner in which he had just expressed himself. He would rather leave it in his hands, with the high opinion he had of
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his good intentions, and also of the integrity with which he would endeavour to carry out the principle. He should, therefore, not press the Motion.
Motion, by leave, withdrawn.

KILMAINHAM HOSPITAL.
MR. I. BUTTsaid, that in undertaking to bring before the House the subject to which his Resolution referred, he felt that it would be necessary for him to intrude for some time, although he hoped at no very unreasonable length, upon the indulgence of the House. The subject was one with which many hon. Members could not be familiar, while it was at the same time one upon which the feelings of the Irish people were deeply interested, and one which, as he believed, vitally affected the interests of the whole British Army. He had one source of satisfaction in introducing that Motion, and that was, that, although the question was an Irish one, it was altogether unconnected with those political or religious divisions which too much distracted Ireland. It was also, he should add, entirely unconnected with any party divisions in that House; and therefore he trusted that, while he could calculate upon the support of those Irish representatives who were acquainted with the subject, he might also entertain a confident expectation that hon. Members for England and for Scotland would come to a decision upon the point unbiassed by any considerations except the arguments which might be brought under their notice. The institution which it was proposed should be gradually abolished, was one contemporaneous in its origin with Chelsea Hospital in this country. It had been founded by Charles II., under the advice of the Duke of Ormond, who was Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, in the year 1664. At that time Ireland had a separate army, and the institution had been maintained by the stoppage of 6d. in the pound from the pay of each Irish soldier, just as Chelsea Hospital had been maintained by a similar stoppage in the pay of each English soldier. It existed as a corporation, independent of the control of the Secretary at War. High military officers were incorporated as its governors, and it was established to receive as many maimed and worn-out soldiers as might be brought to it from time to time; and, as he had previously mentioned, it was endowed with 6d. in the pound stopped out of the pay

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of the army in Ireland until it should be otherwise provided for. It had also been endowed with sixty-four acres of land close to the city of Dublin. That land had belonged to an ancient priory, and seven more acres of it had been set apart for an ancestor of the noble Lord the present Secretary of State for the Home Department (Viscount Palmerston), so that at the present day the trustees of the institution and the noble Lord possessed the same right to their respective portions of that property. For upwards of a century the Hospital was thus supported; but in the year 1794 a change had taken place in the mode of providing the funds requisite for the maintenance both of Chelsea Hospital and of Kilmainham Hospital. It had at that time been considered advisable to grant a boon to the army in either country; and it had been arranged that the two hospitals should thenceforward be supported, not by stoppages from the soldiers' pay, but by Parliamentary grants from the English and Irish Legislatures. That state of things had continued until the year 1851, when the present Lord Panmure, then Mr. Fox Maule, the then Secretary at War, wrote a letter to the Governors of the Hospital, in which he stated that Her Majesty's Government had found that it was inexpedient to continue the establishment of Kilmainham Hospital, and had determined, that after the 1st of April in that year no fresh admission should be made, and no vacancy should be filled up in any branch of the establishment. Now, it appeared to him (Mr. Butt) that whether it was right or not to destroy that institution which had existed for 150 years, and which had been sanctioned both by the Irish Parliament and the Parliament of the United Kingdom, its abolition ought not to have been effected on the mere authority of the Secretary at War, before Parliament had come to any decision upon the subject. No admissions, however, had since taken place at the Hospital, and the consequence was, that it had been gradually declining, and that unless some new step were taken in the matter it would soon be closed altogether. In that brief sketch of the history of the establishment, he (Mr. Butt) had omitted two remarkable incidents which he thought afforded conclusive arguments in favour of his Motion. In the year 1833 an attempt was made by the right hon. Member for Coventry (Mr. Ellice), who at that time filled the office of
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Secretary at War, to close the Hospital. The present Lord Derby, then Mr. Stansay, was at that period Secretary for Ireland; the Marquess of Anglesey—a name that would be honoured in Ireland as long as a chivalrous and gallant demeanour should have the power of winning the hearts of the Irish people—was Lord Lieutenant; and Sir Hussey Vivian, afterwards Lord Vivian, was Commander of the Forces, and also held the office of Commander of that Hospital. These three functionaries protested in the strongest manner against the proposal to close the establishment. They did so upon political grounds, and also upon military grounds. They protested against such a measure, as impolitic towards the Irish nation, and unjust to the Irish soldier. After three such men had expressed their decided opinion against the proposal in question, he thought, with every respect for Mr. Fox Maule, at present Lord Panmure, the then Secretary at War, that lie had gone a little too far in determining on abolishing, by his own private authority, that ancient institution. Another transaction to which he would call the attention of the House had taken place in consequence of the order contained in the letter of the right hon. Gentleman (Mr. F. Maule). Sir Hussey Vivian, then commanding the forces in Ireland, had energetically resisted the proposal, and before he resigned his office he had endeavoured to meet the objections at that time urged against the establishment, by preparing a plan which would considerably reduce the expenses of its maintenance. He proposed that the number of pensioners should thenceforward be limited to six captains and 200 privates. That proposal was not immediately adopted; but in the year 1845 it was carried into effect under a Royal warrant of Her present Majesty, with the understanding that it was to be a final settlement of the question. After the issuing of that warrant, he said that he was entitled to look upon the arrangement as one binding upon the Crown and the Government of this country. But he would again refer to the opinions which had been expressed in the year 1833 by Sir Hussey Vivian, afterwards Lord Vivian, by the Marquess of Anglesey, and by Mr. Stanley, at present Earl Derby. As regarded the military bearing of the question, he believed he could not quote a higher authority than that of Lord Vivian, unless, in-

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deed, it were the authority of that noble Lord, backed by that of the Marquess of Anglesey. He would read to the House the opinion of Lord Vivian, which dealt principally with the effect of the contemplated measure upon the condition of the Army. He would, however, first observe that Mr. Stanley had rested his opposition to the change merely upon political grounds, and had stated that the evil impression produced in Ireland by the removal of the Hospital, would more than counterbalance any possible saving that might thereby be effected. Lord Vivian, in a letter addressed to the Home Government, said—
"Of the pensioners now in the Hospital, many are in a state to render their removal to Chelsea impossible; and others would not be willing to be so removed, for it would cut them off for ever from their families, and thus many of the benefits at present conferred on the discharged Irish soldier would be done away with, while of those offered by the Chelsea establishment in return, he would frequently, from illness, from the length of the journey to London, or from other causes, be unable to avail himself.…… In addition to the objections I have already noticed, it must be recollected, also, that the establishment is an appendage to royalty. It was granted by a King as a residence and a provision, in their old age, for his faithful and worn-out soldiers; by doing it away, you take in some degree from the splendour of the Crown, of which, in Ireland, it may be said to be one of the radii; and it is also a matter of some importance to consider whether removing the pensioners, and thereby taking from under the eyes of the people of Ireland the fact that the old and worn-out soldier has a comfortable retreat in his own country, may not have an injurious effect on the recruiting of the Army, to counteract which an expenditure may hereafter be required in bounties infinitely beyond any saving that can be made by such a removal."
In another letter his Lordship again said—
"I repeat that to do it away will create a considerable feeling in the minds of many in this country, and will assuredly be used as a handle by those who advocate a repeal of the Union. That breaking up this establishment will, in a military point of view, be prejudicial, I also have reason to know. The proportion of Irish in the Army is very great, and I have little doubt that a very strong feeling exists among the Irish soldiers in favour of finding an asylum in which to pass the remainder of their days in their own country. I am quite certain a very strong feeling exists in the minds of the men now here against being removed, and their opinions and their feelings are well known to the soldiers and to their friends, and thus become disseminated over the country."
The Marquess of Anglesey, in a despatch, declared his concurrence in the objections which Lords Derby and Vivian had urged on political and military grounds. The
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House would observe that one of the grounds on which Lord Vivian opposed the abolition of Kilmainham Hospital had lost its force—namely, that which referred to the agitation for the repeal of the Union. Remembering that the opposition to the change had formerly been successful, and remembering one of the main grounds upon which that opposition had rested, he said, without fear of contradiction, that the impression which would be produced in Ireland by the abolition of the Hospital would be, that nothing was to be gained from the justice of the Imperial Parliament and the Imperial Government, while everything was to be gained from them by turmoil and agitation. When they recollected that that argument, drawn from the agitation for a repeal of the Union, had formerly been successful, he would venture to warn the House that they would be doing a thing dangerous to the peace of Ireland if they were to allow the impression to go abroad that the people of that country could best secure an attentive consideration for their wishes by embarking in a violent political agitation. He knew it might be said that there could be no harm in abolishing Kilmainham Hospital if Chelsea Hospital were to be left open to the Irish soldier. But was it really intended that Chelsea Hospital should be left open for an increased number of pensioners? He thought he had heard something about extending to Chelsea Hospital the same course which had been pursued with respect to Kilmainham Hospital, and he certainly could not understand why one of those institutions was to be maintained while the other was to be closed. There was one more matter of history to which it would, perhaps, be convenient that he should at once advert. In the year 1851 the Committee upon the Army and the Ordnance Estimates had recommended—but had recommended very gently and hesitatingly—that the two Hospitals, Kilmainham and Chelsea, should be consolidated. The Report of that Committee, however, he should observe, afforded no justification for the letter of Mr. Fox Maule (the then Secretary at War), because that letter had been written before the Report had been issued. But the Committee reported that the evidence had satisfied them that the consolidation of the two establishments would lead to a saving of expense. What, however, was the evidence upon which that statement was founded? The House would, perhaps, be surprised to hear

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that that evidence had all been given by the Secretary at War himself and Lieutenant Colonel Tulloch, the head of the out-pensioners of Chelsea. The evidence of those two Gentlemen, if considered, would not be found to afford any justification for the suppression of Kilmainham. Mr. Fox Maule said that a saving would be effected by shutting up Kilmainham; but when he was asked whether he would also advise the closing of Chelsea Hospital, he replied—
"If you ask my opinion as to the necessity of the system of in-pensions at Chelsea, I confess I cannot say much in its favour; but the establishment at Chelsea was founded in the time of Charles II. It is a refuge for old soldiers, and is looked on as one of the national institutions of the country, and I am sure it would be very much against the feeling of the public and the Army that the establishment should be abolished."
Substitute Kilmainham for Chelsea, and here was Mr. Fox Maule's evidence in favour of maintaining the former establishment, unless, indeed, the House was prepared to say that the same reasons had a different significance accordingly as they were applied to the Irish or the English side of the Channel. The right hon. Member for Carlisle (Sir James Graham) was the Member of the Committee who examined Mr. Fox Maule; and, not having made much out of that witness, he next turned his attention to Lieutenant Colonel Tulloch. The right hon. Baronet surpassed even his accustomed ingenuity in extracting evidence from this new witness against an Irish institution. The right hon. Baronet's first question was, "Do you know anything about Kilmainham?" and Lieutenant Colonel Tulloch's answer was, "No, I know nothing about it." Nothing daunted by this unpromising beginning, the right hon. Baronet proceeded to examine his most satisfactory witness by asking him whether the Kilmainham pensioners would have any reason to complain if they should be brought over to Chelsea? This was not fiction. He held in his hand the report of the examination, and this it was which was constantly put forward as a justification for insulting Ireland, and brandished in the faces of all those who objected to the abolition of Kilmainham. Encouraged by this satisfactory mode of examination, which would be most invaluable in nisi prius practice, the right hon. Baronet put another question to the witness, "You think there is no feeling on the part of the pensioners against going to Chelsea instead of Kilmainham Hospital?" and the witness
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replied, "Certainly not; soldiers are the last persons to care about the distance of removal." Now, the condition of some of the inmates of Kilmainham, at the time of this examination, was as follows: One Captain, lost both his legs; another, not so unfortunate, had lost only one; a third had a severe wound in the head; and a fourth was completely debilitated; but, notwithstanding all that, according to the evidence before them, "soldiers were the last persons to care about the distance of removal." The Hospital, however, had the benefit of having that witness cross-examined by a right hon. Gentleman, then a defender of the institution, that right hon. Gentleman being no other than the present Secretary at War. Much as he (Mr. Butt) respected the private and public character of that right hon. Gentleman (Mr. Sidney Herbert), he should say he did not regard his cross-examination as being at all successful. The first question put by the right hon. Gentleman in cross-examining the witness was this: "Is there not a difference in the price of whisky at Kilmainham and Chelsea?" The witness, who admitted he knew nothing about Kilmainham, replied, "I dare say there is." The next question was, "Would not that be an element in the consideration of the question?" The answer was, "I think, with only eight officers to superintend 600 men, there should be no whisky at all drunk." The right hon. Gentleman then put this question: "Is there general sobriety at Chelsea?" The witness replied, "I cannot undertake to say; the out-pensioners, paid monthly, have been found seducing the in-ones to drunkenness." Now, would the House believe it was on the evidence of witnesses of this kind that the Committee had grounded their recommendation to the House to override a charter, and to destroy a monarchical institution of a century and a half's existence? Now that witness, whilst asserting it would be no inconvenience for pensioners to be conveyed to Chelsea instead of Kilmainham, when asked "if the pensioners would give up their pensions to get into Chelsea?" replied, "He did not know, because if they gave them up, they would be deprived of the means of defraying the expenses of their journey." Such really was the case against the institution of Kilmainham; and he asked the right hon. Gentleman the Secretary at War, was there anything in it to justify the step he was about to take in abolishing this institution? Lord Vivian had said,

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that "the establishment was an appendage of Royalty;" and he (Mr. Butt) maintained it was of vital importance that they should not rashly or lightly abolish a monarchical institution. They thought little of voting sums of money to erect palaces for the Queen, which would have purchased over and again the fee-simple of this miserable grant. He did not say that by way of complaint, because he wished to see the majesty of the Crown maintained with all the dignity and splendour befitting the Sovereign of this great Empire. And that reminded him that Irish feeling was deeply concerned in this question; because, when Her Majesty visited Ireland, on being conducted over Kilmainham, She saw a palace of which She might well be proud, and when at parting She made use of the words, "Old soldiers, I am glad to see you so comfortable," an impression was created that sank deep into the minds of the veterans She addressed. The existence of this institution aided in keeping alive those feelings that cemented the union between the two Kingdoms; and this was one strong reason why, as an "appendage to Royalty," it should not be removed. He called on the House then not to assent to the abolition of this institution. He would trouble them now with a brief recital of a circumstance which had been related to him that evening. Colonel Taylor (not the hon. and gallant Gentleman at present in the House) commanded an Irish regiment in the Peninsula. He was wounded on the field of battle, and whilst being conveyed off by some of his own men of the 88th Regiment, one of them received a most dangerous wound, when he cried out, "You and I, Colonel, are knocked up; I will be in Kilmainham, and will you come and see me?" That might be regarded by many as a trifle, but it, surely, showed the feeling of the Irish soldier. He had an authority in his favour on this question which, were he permitted to give the name, would have as much weight with the House as that of Lord Vivian, and would almost be as great as that of the Marquess of Anglesey. It was a letter put into his hand by the noble Lord the Member for Beaumaris (Lord G. Paget), and which contained the following passages:—
"He is rejoiced to find that the case of the old veterans in Ireland will be pleaded for by Mr. Butt. Instead of the establishment being retained for their benefit, it is already shut against the further entry of the old worn-out veteran soldiers—men who have stood all climates that in peace time an army can be sent to; and he thinks
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it a shame that such an establishment should be lost sight of for a paltry saving. This noble building is now exhibited to the soldiers of the Army in Ireland, and in the immediate view of a large garrison who are frequently seen within its walls—the young aspiring soldier listening to the achievements of the old veterans. Instead of this establishment being reduced, it ought to be kept up to its original strength, both in men and officers."
If the present Government had asked the opinion of the distinguished officer who was now Commander of the Forces in Ireland upon this subject, that opinion, he believed, would not have been very different from the sentiments which he had just read. It was relied upon by Her Majesty's Ministers that the Irish soldiers did not enter Kilmainham; but had they not the fact in the letter of the late Secretary of War (Mr. Fox Maule) that they were prohibited from entering? It was, as it were, supposed by Her Majesty's Ministers that every village in Ireland was a "sweet Auburn of the plain," and that the Irish soldier had only to retire to his native home on returning from foreign service. Where, he wished to know, would the Irish soldiers now in India go to when they returned maimed and mutilated? He might be told the feelings of Irish Members were not opposed to abolition. But how many Irish Members, not placemen, would vote with the Government that night? This grant was voted originally by the Irish Parliament, and though he did not assert that the House was bound to maintain every grant made by the Irish Parliament, yet this was a case where, in justice, they were bound to recognise the wisdom and policy of the founders of the institution. What would be the saving which was expected to result from its abolition? The establishment had been reduced under the Queen's warrant to six captains and 200 privates. The charge in the Estimates this year was a little over 6,000 l., though 10,000 l. was the amount fixed by the Queen's warrant. But, it should be remembered that every captain and private, on entering Kilmainham, forfeited his pension; so that in that way a large amount—some 2,500 l. a year—was saved. Therefore, he thought he was not wrong in stating that the cost of the hospital would not exceed 5,000 l. a year. He asked Her Majesty's Government, would they, for the sake of that paltry saving, outrage and insult the feelings of the great body of the Irish people? He did not press it altogether as an Irish ques-

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tion; it was the question of the British soldier. And he wished to know if Chelsea should be maintained when Kilmainham was abolished? or, was the destruction of one merely a prelude to that of the other? The standard of economy was not the one by which this question should be tried. They might save 5,000 l. a year, and in return lose the affection of the brave hearts of the Irish soldiers—those men to whom the greatest soldier of his time—himself an Irishman—had addressed the memorable words on the field of battle, "Soldiers! what would they think of us at home if we were beaten?"
LORD GEORGE PAGETseconded the Motion. He said, that, having been quartered in Ireland for some time, he had been enabled to pay considerable attention to the subject now before the House, and he felt every confidence in saying that a strong feeling existed among the Irish soldiers with respect to Kilmainham Hospital. He would refer to the letters written by Lord Vivian in 1833, in which he stated that the rumour of the abolition of Kilmainham had created a considerable sensation throughout the country, and that, if the intention was carried out, it would prove highly prejudicial to the service. During the time the subject was under the consideration of the Government in 1833, one of the chief means proposed for gradually doing away with the Hospital was to transfer the in-pensioners into out-pensioners. This scheme could never have been acted upon with justice to the Army, as there were many old soldiers who, after spending their health and strength in the service of their country, had neither homes nor families to go to. He had known an instance in point in the regiment to which he belonged. He might remark, that when the subject was formerly before the House, the chief reason given for the removal of the institution in question was, that at that time the artillery had no barrack accommodation in Dublin. Large and commodious barracks had, however, been built since, and therefore he really thought the chief ground of objection to the institution had been removed.
Motion made, and Question put—
"That an humble Address be presented to Her Majesty, representing to Her Majesty, that in the opinion of this House it is expedient and right to maintain for the Irish soldier, in his age or infirmity, the asylum which the Royal Hospital of King Charles the Second, for ancient and maimed soldiers at Kilmainham, near Dublin, has long
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afforded to those for whose benefit it was originally instituted and endowed; that the abolition of this ancient Irish institution would be opposed to the feelings of the Irish nation, and injurious to the honour and interests of Her Majesty's service; and praying, that Her Majesty will be graciously pleased to adopt such measures as may to Her wisdom seem expedient for removing any obstructions which may now exist to the fulfilment of the objects for which this institution is established, in consequence of any directions heretofore issued to the Governors by Her Majesty's Secretary at War, prohibiting the further admission of maimed and worn-out soldiers."
SIR JOHN FITZGERALDsaid, he could state that such an establishment as Kilmainham operated as an encouragement to men to enter the service, for they felt that they had a home to which they could go at the end of their service, and he implored the House not to allow it to be pulled down.
MR. VANCEsaid, as the representative of a constituency which was much interested in this establishment, he was desirous of saying a few words. He wished to contrast the manner in which the demands of the Irish people were met by Parliament, with the attention which was paid to the wishes of a small majority of a Colonial Legislature. He had made a Motion on this subject when the Army Estimates were before the House. which he was unable to carry; but it had at least shown that the Irish Members were not satisfied with the proposed arrangement for Kilmainham, for forty-four of them voted with him, and only four against him. The ostensible reason for destroying Kilmainham was economy; but the same reason might be given for letting the land on which Greenwich Hospital stood in building lots, or in turning Chelsea Hospital into a Model lodging-house, for there was no doubt that the inmates could be more cheaply supported out of the Hospitals. But that was not the object of the founders of such palaces as Greenwich and Chelsea Hospitals. They felt that foreign nations would look with admiration on the provision which was made for sailors and soldiers after long service, in residences in which, after they had lost all the ties of consanguinity, they would associate with their old companions in arms. The Hospital at Kilmainham operated as a stimulus to Irishmen to enter the Army, and he entreated the House not to abolish it without some stronger reasons than had yet been given.
MR. SIDNEY HERBERTsaid, he had nothing to complain of in the speech of the

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hon. and learned Gentleman who had opened the discussion, who had stated the case with perfect fairness and great good humour; and he could not help joining in the mirth which the hon. and learned Gentleman had produced even at his own expense, in the quotations which he had read from the cross-examination of the witnesses before the Committee, the questions cited had reference to considerations which in the case of old soldiers had considerable weight. The question which the House was now called upon to decide was this: would they reverse the policy which they had three times approved of, and which had been carried out successfully by two Governments? It was quite true that the letter of his predecessor but one in the office which he had now the honour to hold, did close the portals of Kilmainham to future admissions. The arguments that had been used to-night, not only by the hon. and learned Gentleman, but by his noble and gallant Friend (Lord G. Paget), referred rather to the plan proposed by previous Secretaries at War twenty years ago, and which after much consideration were abandoned, than to any plan now in existence. At that time it was proposed, not to close Kilmainham to all future applicants for admission, but to divert it from the purpose for which it had been originally instituted, and to give the then pensioners either an increased out-pension, or transfer them to Chelsea, with the exception of some few who were too old and infirm to be removed, and who might be allowed to remain in Kilmainham for the remainder of their days. No such proposal had since been made; and the House must not consider that to be the question on which they were called to decide. The question for the House now to decide was simply this—would they, under the circumstances which he was about to describe, think it wise to reopen Kilmainham, and re-establish it to the extent of the establishment which existed twenty years ago? It had been said there was a just claim for the maintenance of Kilmainham, because it had been built and maintained by stoppages from the soldiers. Now, the fact was that it was not built by the stoppages from soldiers, but by stoppages from that portion of the cost of the maintenance of the soldiers which went to the colonels of the regiment, and consequently diminished the profits of the colonels. But even if that had been so, he maintained that it was of no importance now, because as the poundage on which he contributions were made ceased in
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1794, there was no soldier now in existence who contributed towards the maintenance of Kilmainham. No vested interest in that respect, therefore, could be disturbed. But let the House bear in mind the origin and intention of Kilmainham. At the time of the establishment of the Hospitals of Chelsea and Kilmainham the Irish army amounted to 7,000 men. It was calculated that Kilmainham would hold the whole of the incapacitated men from the Irish army, averaging about 300. There were then no out-pensioners. If Kilmainham had not been established, it would have been necessary to maintain them in invalid companies quartered in towns at a greater expense. The charter of Charles II. specified that those only should be admitted who had been incapacitated by wounds from serving in the ranks. Of course, as the Army augmented, these two hospitals were incapable of taking the larger number that might be required to be taken. Since the foundation of the establishment, the out-pensions had been created and greatly augmented, and the value of the in pension had thereby been materially diminished, for it was no mere matter of speculation that men preferred living with their families, to entering the hospital, especially at a time when prices were low. It was the most natural thing in the world that these old men should prefer going home and living with their families to being secluded in a sort of monastic establishment such as these institutions were, and being obliged to submit to discipline and restraint. Take the case of a man badly wounded. He could not live in one of those hospitals in the same comfort and receive the same attention as he could at home, at the hands of a wife or a daughter. And the result, was found to be, that at Chelsea, men who were almost incapacitated from helping themselves would not go into the hospital, but preferred taking their pensions; and it was natural they should do so. He (Mr. Herbert) wanted to show the House what were the advantages to the soldiers of the two systems; and he must say that he thought public opinion amongst soldiers were at present in favour of out-pensions. But now were the in-pensions confined to maimed and worn-out soldiers? At the time when it was first proposed to close Kilmainham, there were 207 pensioners in the establishment. Of these, 139 were under 51 years of age, 60 were under 41 years of age, and the remainder under 31; 32 of these were militiamen, and

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four were from the yeomanry. What he wanted to show was, that it was not men of long service who came to Chelsea and Kilmainham. He did not mean to say that they would find no instances of that kind in those establishments; but taking the average it was not the case, and for this reason—the men of the best conduct and the largest service had the largest pensions, and men with the largest pensions would not of course go into Chelsea or Kilmainham; but it was the men who had small pensions for short service who were anxious to be admitted to those institutions, where they received more than the worth of their pensions. The House might see that the practical effect of these establishments was not the same now as it had been formerly. It was quite true that there was a charter for Kilmainham, and it might be said that you must not depart from the intention of the founder. But he (Mr. Herbert) would ask, did we now adhere strictly to the intentions of the founder? Of late the Master of Kilmainham had been the Commander-in-Chief in Ireland. According to the intentions of the founder the Master of Kilmainham was to be an old officer who had received wounds; he was to have been ten years a captain; he was not to be married; and if he held another command, he was instantly to give it up. Now, could it be said of Sir Edward Blakeney, the present Master of Kilmainhan, that he fulfilled all these conditions? He (Mr. Herbert) was sure that any one who had partaken of the cordial and frank hospitality of that gallant officer, must be aware that he did not fulfil one at least of the conditions, that, namely, which required that he should be a bachelor. He certainly had another command, which he had not resigned, and whether he was a captain for ten years he (Mr. Herbert) did not know. The original rules of the hospital had been also departed from in reference to the deputy masters. He did not say that that departure from the original regulations was wrong—on the contrary it had proved of great advantage to the public service; but no person could say that the charter had been strictly adhered to when in the most important office connected with the institution it had been entirely departed from both in letter and in spirit. Under these circumstances, the inclination of the soldier to enter into these hospitals having greatly diminished, both as regarded Chelsea and Kilmainham, his (Mr. Herbert's) predecessor had thought it better to decide that though Kilmainham
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should not be diverted from its original purposes, yet, with a view of affording time to consider what was the best course that could be taken, that no more pensioners should be admitted into the establishment. It was quite true that the letter in which this decision was announced had been written without the sanction of Parliament; but Parliament had hitherto marked its approbation of the proceeding by voting for the estimate according to the plan which had been decided upon by Lord Panmure. He (Mr. Herbert) had found the question in that state. His immediate predecessor the right hon. Member for North Essex (Major Beresford) had brought forward his estimate with the same intention as Lord Panmure, and during last year no attempt was made to disturb the existing arrangement. They might call this a cheeseparing economy; but it was only by this individual saving of unnecessary expenditure that general economy in the finances was to be effected. It was a question that must be decided, not only with a view to economy, but with reference also to the general feeling of Parliament. It must be recollected, also, when you came to discuss the question of the effect of the proposed alteration upon Ireland, that every sixpence saved to the country by this plan would be expended in some other part of Ireland by the pensioners; and as to the recruiting service, he would remind hon. Members that there never had been a time, in spite of the great diminution of the population, and of the high rate of wages, when recruiting went on in proportion better in Ireland than at present, and therefore there were no grounds for saying that doing away with Kilmainham was likely to prove injurious to the recruiting service. He hoped the House would consider the facts which he had stated. He had not thought it right to disturb an arrangement which had been adopted by one Government, and confirmed by another. His own opinion was, that they must look in this case to a natural feeling certainly on the one side, but likewise on the other side to the real advantage to the service of these institutions, and to the changes operated in the state of the lower classes in this country during the last year. The question was one which Parliament must decide; but he (Mr. Herbert) was unwilling, unless Parliament should decide against him, to disturb an arrangement which had been adopted by one Government, and which had been confirmed by another.
MR. WHITESIDEsaid, he would only

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trouble the House with a few words. He had the honour to represent a constituency in which there was a large infusion of military spirit. He represented, amongst others, a class of pensioners who took a deep interest in this question. He wished to say a few words on the best arguments that could be uttered on the part of Ministers who sought the destruction of the original institution of Kilmainham. He did not wish to destroy the credit of the right hon. Gentleman who last addressed the House as to his acceptance of the report of the evidence before the Committee that had inquired into this subject. He (Mr. Whiteside) could not, however, avoid observing, that if evidence of such a flimsy and unsubstantial character was to form the foundation of a measure for the destruction of this ancient and time-honoured institution of the country, he must say that he believed the institutions of England to be in a very dangerous position. He admitted that there was a difference between this plan, which was artfully devised, and the plan of a former Government. What was the plan of the former Secretary at War? It was a plan of downright confiscation and injustice, which was subsequently defeated from no feeling of remorse or regret; but the Government of that day called upon the governors of the institution to deliver up the property with which they had been entrusted, for the benefit of the old soldiers of Ireland, for the purpose of forming an artillery barrack, in order, forsooth, to save the money of the Crown. And the order of the Secretary at War being considered an illegal one, the respectable gentlemen who were entrusted with the money said that they thought it right to take the opinion of the law officers of the Crown upon the subject, with a view of ascertaining whether the property in question could be appropriated to purposes utterly foreign to the original intentions of the donors. The late Lord Chancellor of Ireland and Mr. Justice Crampton, who were then the law officers consulted, pronounced opinions upon the question, which were a perfect commentary upon the proceedings of the Government. They declared that such a course on the part of the Secretary at War was illegal. Having thus failed directly in effecting the object they had in view, the then Government proceeded to carry out their plan by an extraordinary and indirect system of policy. What was that indirect system? The then Government felt that they could not get a trans-
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fer of the property by the direct scheme first planned, because it was declared to be a breach of trust to carry it out; they, therefore, adopted this ingenious device—they said they could issue an order through the Secretary at War commanding the governor of the hospital not to admit any more Irish soldiers; and they were determined that if they could not argue them out of the institution, they could at least starve them out. What was the title of the governors of this institution? First, they had actually a letter from Charles II.; and, secondly, they had a Charter, couched in the most solemn and affecting language, in which the King of England recorded his gratitude to those soldiers who had served him faithfully. By that Charter this institution was established, and it was guaranteed that this institution should never be diverted from its original sacred purposes. In the reign of George II., the Charter was confirmed, and the grant was repeatedly and strictly paid; sixty-four acres of land were set apart, for this establishment, and the institution was built upon it. It lasted for two centuries, and until a letter had been received from a Whig official, with a peculiar genius for finance, who considered how he could economise a public fund at the cost of old soldiers, for the purpose of carrying out a grand scheme of financial reform which was devised in 1833, there was no attempt ever made to invade its rights. The official in question demanded information as to the state of the institution, and the account he received was, that there was one man without any arms, another with only one arm, a third was blind, and so forth. He was then puzzled as to what he should do with 205 old Irish soldiers. The right hon. Gentleman the present Secretary at War said that those who did not wish to go into the hospital, were offered by the former Secretary at War the option of coming over to Chelsea. There were fifty-one of those old soldiers who could not be removed. According to the argument of the Secretary at War, if argument it could be called, these pensioners desired to live with their relations, particularly at a time when they had none to live with; and yet, as if to refute the right hon. Gentleman's conclusions, it was shown by a return that ninety-five of the Kilmainham pensioners took the option that was allowed them of being admitted to Chelsea Hospital. Did not that prove that a certain class might prefer to be received into a hospital instead of being sent

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out upon the world? There were letters from eminent and distinguished military men, refuting every argument for the destruction of the ancient institution of Kilmainham Hospital. The then Secretary at War did not, however, give them the option which he had first proposed, but he offered them 2d. or 3d. a day additional if they consented to remain at home. The Secretary at War first invited them to come to Chelsea and when the soldiers consented to do so, he told them that they would be far happier in Ireland, and he would bestow upon them a small pension to remain in their native country. The right hon. Gentleman said that the Master of the Hospital was not appointed according to the Charter, but he forgot that the governor had no option, but was compelled to chose such a person as was represented by the general body to be the most fit for the office. The governors, who were the most eminent men in the country, passed a series of resolutions upon this proceeding, and condemned the transaction as both unjustifiable and illegal. The arguments used by the Government in support of their course were partly founded upon economy, and partly upon the allegation that Kilmainham was useless. If Kilmainham Hospital was useless, then Chelsea Hospital was also useless. Chelsea Hospital was, however, to remain, because it was a time-honoured and an English institution; but Kilmainham Hospital was to be destroyed, because, though it was also time-honoured, and though it dated back many years, yet it happened to be an Irish institution. The argument as to economy reminded him of something he had read in the Spectator of the dissection of a beau's head and a coquette's heart. It was found that in the beau's head there were no brains, but something that was like brains, and in the heart of the coquette there was found no blood, but something that looked like blood. If they dissected the head and heart of a small political economist, he wondered if they could find either blood or brains. He thought not. He believed that they would find something like an ink bottle in the heart, and in the head they would find a small parcel of red tape, which it would be impossible to wind up or to unravel. The right hon. Gentleman (Mr. S. Herbert) taunted the late Government with the adoption of the Estimates of their predecessors. He (Mr. Whiteside) would remind the House that those Estimates were accepted from necessity—a necessity
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which, under the circumstances, it was impossible for them to avoid; so that it was both unreasonable and unjust for the right hon. Gentleman to charge the late Government with inconsistency in taking that course.
LORD SEYMOURsaid, he wished, as he had been Chairman of the Committee on the Army Estimates, to say a few words on the present subject. He viewed this question with a very different spirit from that evinced by the hon. and learned Gentleman who had last spoken. He did not look at it as a question between England and Ireland, nor did he regard the English soldiers as one party, and the Irish soldiers another, but he regarded them as forming one united Army. He deemed it, then, to be their duty to do that which was best for that united Army. The object of the Committee over which he presided had been to see that the money expended for the Army should be expended for the well-being and efficiency of the soldiers. The whole question of pensions was before them, and they found that though in the time of Charles II. the system of in-pensions might have suited the requirements of the time, yet in the progress of civilisation the system of out-pensions had become the plan by which the great body of retired soldiers should be supported. He should be sorry if any question relating to the administration of the Army were to be made a party question in that House. With regard to Chelsea, he had great doubts whether the system of in-pensions there was of use to the Army. It was not the soldiers who had fought our battles in all climates who were to be found in Chelsea Hospital; but it was the household troops, who were mostly stationed in the metropolis. He thought, if the question were fairly looked at, that hon. Members would come to the conclusion not only that Kilmainham was of no use, but that Chelsea ought not to be maintained. The history of those establishments showed that they were kept up not for the military, but for civilians, who acted as superintendents, chamberlains, and washerwomen. It was not correct to say that, by the proposed arrangement, they were attempting to injure the interests of the Irish soldiers; for he looked on all soldiers as equally deserving of the attention of the House, but they must take care that the money spent was expended properly. He had heard nothing to make him alter his opinion that Kilmainham Hospital ought not to be kept up, and he should vote against the Motion, which was most unfair to the English as well as

1073
to the Irish soldiers, as tending to set up a division between them.
MR. ELLICEsaid, that, having been subject to some severe observations by the hon. and learned Member for Enniskillen (Mr. Whiteside), as being the person from whom this proposition originated twenty years ago, he hoped the House would allow him to say a word or two in defence of the course he then thought it his duty to adopt. Having at that time undertaken the office of Secretary at War, he was much pressed by the House of Commons to inquire rigorously into all the details of military expenditure, and, among other subjects, this one of Kilmainham Hospital came under his review. Much reform had been effected since that time, but something still remained to be done. However, at that period he found the laundress of that establishment was the daughter of a noble Lord, in possession of a sinecure of 400 l. a year, paid out of the money intended for poor old, disabled soldiers. He found staff officers of all descriptions pensioned in this establishment—Adjutants and Quartermasters General of the Irish forces receiving emoluments out of the money voted for poor and disabled old soldiers. He was not sure whether that was not the practice still, but he hoped it had been reformed. When he looked further into the details of the expenditure, he found that, so far from the persons to whom a refuge was given in this hospital being deserving old soldiers, who had served the longest and were the most disabled, jobs of all sorts were perpetrated by colonels of militia and yeomanry in favour of men who had never gone out of the country on service in their lives. The subject was not taken up lightly, nor did he propose this reform without great consideration; and, notwithstanding what the hon. and learned Gentleman opposite had said of political economists and of persons without hearts and feelings, at all events the hon. and learned Gentleman would give him credit—he was sure the House would do so—for not wanting consideration for the miseries of men in the situation in which poor old soldiers were placed. He took the greatest pains to inquire into the relative condition of the persons then in the hospital, and he found a great number of them were young men under thirty years of age, many under forty, and the larger portion of them not fit inmates of the hospital. Then it became his duty to consider whether it would not be better for those men, as well as for the country, that the pen-
1074
sions granted to them should be spent by them with their families in the villages in the country; and it was under these circumstances that he recommended this measure to the House. He was not hasty in adopting it; and, as a proof of the pains he had taken, he had proposed that every attention should be paid to the comfort and even indulgence of the pensioners who were in the hospital, and had recommended that those who were disabled should be allowed to remain in the infirmary at Kilmainham, whilst others should be transferred to Chelsea if they desired it, or should receive an addition to their pension if they preferred to return to their friends or relatives. With regard to the Charter by which the hospital was originally established, that House had always claimed and exercised the right to interpose on behalf of the public where an institution no longer realised the advantages for which it was first instituted; and, believing that Kilmainham Hospital was now neither required by the claims of humanity nor by the interests of the public service, he should vote on this occasion with Her Majesty's Government.
COLONEL LINDSAYsaid, he should support the Motion, but he must admit that, to some extent, the applications for in-pensions were not now so frequent as they used to be; but Colonel Tulloch, when examined before the Committee, stated that there were men in the country who only received 5d. a day, who were sergeants so long ago as the Peninsular war, who were now getting into years, whose wives had died, who were now in great distress, some of them being in the poor-house, many of whom had medals with a dozen bars, and who would be delighted to enter Chelsea Hospital if they had the means. There were now about 70,000 pensioners altogether, and it was obvious that amongst such a number many must be incapable of taking care of themselves. It was therefore most desirable that accommodation should be provided for about 600 of this class of pensioners at Chelsea and Kilmainham.
The House divided:—Ayes 198; Noes 131: Majority 67.

List of the AYES.

Acland, Sir T.D.

Baillie, H. J.

Alexander, J.

Baldock, E. H.

Annesley, Earl of

Bankes, rt. hon. G.

Archdall, Capt. M.

Barrow, W. H.

Arkwright, G.

Bateson, T.

Bagge, W.

Beckett, W.

Bailey, C.

Bellew, Capt.

1075

Bennett, P.

Hale, R. B.

Bentinck, Lord H.

Hall, Col.

Bentinck, G. P.

Hamilton, Lord C.

Berkeley, hon. C. F.

Hamilton, G. A.

Bernard, Visct.

Hamilton, J. H.

Blair, Col.

Harcourt, Col.

Bland, L. H.

Hardinge, hon. C. S.

Blandford, Marq. of

Hayes, Sir E.

Booker, T. W.

Heard, J. L

Booth, Sir R. G.

Henchy, D. O.

Bowyer, G.

Herbert, H. A.

Brady, J.

Higgins, G. G. O.

Bremridge, R.

Hildyard, R. C.

Brisco, M.

Hill, Lord A. E.

Browne, V. A.

Hudson, G.

Bruce, C. L. C.

Hume, W. F.

Buller, Sir J. Y.

Jocelyn, Visct.

Burke, Sir T. J.

Jolliffe, Sir W. G. H.

Burroughes, H. N.

Jones, Capt.

Cairns, H. M.

Keating, R.

Campbell, Sir A. I.

Kennedy, T.

Caulfeild, Col. J. M.

Ker, D. S.

Chambers, M.

King, J. K.

Child, S.

Kingscote, R. N. F.

Christopher, rt. hon. R.

Kirk, W.

Clinton, Lord C. P.

Knatchbull, W. F.

Clive, R.

Knightley, R.

Coote, Sir C. H.

Knox, Col.

Corbally, M. E.

Knox, hon. W. S.

Corry, rt. hon. H. L.

Lacon, Sir E.

Cotton, hon. W. H. S.

Laffan, R. M.

Craufurd, E. H. J.

Langton, W. G.

Cubitt, Ald.

Lawless, hon. C.

Davison, R.

Leslie, C. P.

Dering, Sir E.

Liddell, H. G.

Disraeli, rt. hon. B.

Lindsay, hon. Col.

Dod, J. W.

Lockhart, W.

Drummond, H.

Lovaine, Lord

Duffy, C. G.

Lowther, Capt.

Duncombe, hon. A.

Lucas, F.

Duncombe, hon. O.

Macartney, G.

Dunne, Col.

Mackenzie, W. F.

Du Pre, C. G.

M'Cann, J.

Egerton, E. C.

MacGregor, J.

Emlyn, Visct.

Magan, W. H.

Euston, Earl of

Maguire, J. F.

Evelyn, W. J

Malins, R.

Farrer, J.

Mandeville, Visct.

Ferguson, Sir R.

Manners, Lord J.

Fitzgerald, J. D.

March, Earl of

Fitzgerald, Sir J. F.

Maxwell, hon. J. P.

Fitzgerald, W. R. S.

Meux, Sir H.

Floyer, J.

Michell, W.

Forester, rt. hon. Col.

Montgomery, H. L.

Fortescue, C.

Montgomery, Sir G.

Fox, R. M.

Moore, G. H.

Franklyn, G. W.

Moore, R. S.

French, F.

Mullings, J. R.

Frewen, C. H.

Murrough, J. P.

Fuller, A. E.

Naas, Lord

Gaskell, J. M.

Napier, rt. hon. J.

George, J.

Newark, Visct.

Goold, W.

Newdegate, C. N.

Gore, W. O.

Norreys, Sir D. J.

Grace, O. D. J.

North, Col.

Graham, Lord M. W.

O'Brien, P.

Granby, Marq. of

O'Brien, Sir T.

Greaves, E.

O'Flaherty, A.

Greene, J.

Packe, C. W.

Greville, Col. F.

Pakenham, E.

Grogan, E.

Palmer, R.

Guernsey, Lord

Peacocke, G. M. W.

Gwyn, H.

Percy, hon. J. W.

1076

Phillimore, J. G.

Thompson, Ald.

Pollard-Urquhart, W.

Towneley, C.

Potter, R.

Trollope, rt. hon. Sir J.

Power, N.

Turner, C.

Prime, R.

Vance, J.

Repton, G. W. J.

Vane, Lord A.

Rolt, P.

Vansittart, G. H.

Russell, F. W.

Verner, Sir W.

Sadlier, J.

Vyse, Capt. H.

Sandars, G.

Waddington, H.S.

Scully, F.

Walcott, Adm.

Scully, V.

Walpole, rt. hon. S. H.

Seaham, Visct.

Welby, Sir G. E.

Shee, W.

Whiteside, J.

Smith, W. M.

Whitmore, H.

Smyth, R. J.

Wyndham, Gen.

Somerset, Capt.

Wynn, H. W. W.

Stanhope, J. B.

Stephenson, R.

TELLERS.

Swift, R.

Butt, I.

Taylor, Col.

Paget, Lord

List of the NOES.

A'Court, C. H. W.

Gladstone, rt. hon. W.

Alcock, T.

Glynn, G. C.

Anderson, Sir J.

Graham, rt. hon. Sir J.

Baines, rt. hon. M. T.

Gregson, S.

Beaumont, W. B.

Grenfell, C. W.

Bell, J.

Grosvenor, Lord R.

Berkeley, Adm.

Hadfield, G.

Biddulph, R. M.

Headlam, T. E.

Biggs, W.

Heathcote, Sir J. G.

Boldero, Col.

Heathcote, G. H.

Bonham-Carter, J.

Herbert, rt. hon S.

Bouverie, hon. E. P.

Hervey, Lord A.

Boyle, hon. Col.

Heyworth, L.

Bright, J.

Hindley, C.

Brocklehurst, J.

Hughes, W. B.

Brotherton, J.

Hutt, W.

Brown, W.

Jackson, W.

Bruce, Lord E.

Keating, H. S.

Byng, hon. G. H. C.

Kinnaird, hon. A. F.

Cardwell, rt. hon. E.

Laslett, W.

Cavendish, hon. C. C.

Lawley, hon. F. C.

Charteris, hon. F.

Locke, J.

Cheetham, J.

Lockhart, A. E.

Clifford, H. M.

Lowe, R.

Cobden, R.

Luce, T.

Cockburn, Sir A. J. E.

Mangles, R. D.

Coffin, W.

Massey, W. N.

Cowan, C.

Maule, hon. Col.

Cowper, hon. W. F.

Milligan, R.

Crook, J.

Mills, T.

Crossley, F.

Milner, W. M. E.

Dalrymple, Viset.

Moffatt, G.

Divett, E.

Molesworth, rt.hn.SirW

Drumlanrig, Visct.

Monck, Visct.

Duckworth, Sir J. T. B.

Moncreiff, J.

Duff, G. S.

Morris, D.

Duff, J.

Mostyn, hon. E, M. L.

Dundas, F.

Mulgrave, Earl of

Dunlop, A. M.

Osborne, R.

Ellice, rt. hon. E.

Otway, A. J.

Ellice, E.

Paget, Lord A.

Elliot, hon. J. E.

Patten, J. W.

Evans, W.

Peel, F.

Ewart, W.

Pellatt, A.

Feilden, M. J.

Peto, S. M.

Fitzroy, hon. H.

Phinn, T.

Forster, M.

Pigott, F.

Forster, C.

Pilkington, J.

Fox, W. J.

Ponsonby, hon. A. G. J.

Gardner, R.

Price, W. P.

1077

Ricardo, O.

Warner, E.

Robartes, T. J. A.

Wellesley, Lord C.

Sawle, C. B. G.

Wells, W.

Scholefield, W.

Wilkinson, W. A.

Scobell, Capt.

Willcox, B. M.

Seymour, Lord

Williams, W.

Shafto, R. D.

Wilson, J.

Smith, J. A.

Winnington, Sir T. E.

Smith, J. B.

Wise, A.

Smith, rt. hon. R. V.

Wood, rt. hon. Sir C.

Stafford, Marq. of

Wortley, rt. hon. J. S.

Stapleton, J.

Wyndham, W.

Strutt, rt. hon. E.

Wyvill, M.

Stuart, H.

Young, rt. hon. Sir J.

Thompson, G.

TELLERS.

Villiers, rt. hon. C. P.

Hayter, W. G.

Walmsley, Sir J.

Berkeley, G. C.

BURGHS (SCOTLAND) BILL.
Bill, as amended, considered.
MR. ELLICEsaid, he had to move the addition of a clause to this Bill. The object of the clause was to place under the provisions of the Burgh Reform Act (Scotland) certain boroughs which were exempted at the time of the passing of that Statute.
Clause brought up, and read 1°.
Motion made, and Question proposed, "That the said Clause be now read a Second Time."
MR. EWARTsaid, that as representing one of the burghs referred to, he wished to give the clause his support, as removing an evil from these burghs which ought not to have been left by the Scotch Burgh Reform Act.
MR. DUNLOPsaid, he could not agree to the introduction of the clause into the Bill, as it was entirely foreign to its object. He knew not where such a practice would end of foisting in clauses upon anything in any Bill that happened to be before the House. He was quite sure, though he was now unable to state what were the grounds on which the framers of the Scotch Burgh Reform Act had deliberately rejected these burghs from its provisions, that those grounds were satisfactory to them; and in their number was the late Lord Jeffrey, then Lord Advocate. He could not agree to the clause being introduced.
The LORD ADVOCATEthought, after what had been said by the hon. Member for Greenock (Mr. Dunlop), that the hon. Gentleman could not press his clause, which was quite abhorrent from the object of the Bill.
Mr. ELLICEsaid, he would withdraw his clause.
Motion, by leave, withdrawn; Clause withdrawn.
The House adjourned at a quarter after Twelve o'clock.

MINUTES.
PUBLIC BILLS.—1a Clergy Reserves (Canada).
3a Metropolitan Improvements (Repayment out of Consolidated Fund).

THE SITE OF THE CRYSTAL PALACE.
LORD CAMPBELLwished to put a question to the noble Lord, President of the Council, upon a subject in which the public felt considerable interest with respect to the intentions of Her Majesty's Government. He believed they all entertained hopes, in consequence of the Crystal Palace having been removed from Hyde Park to a much more eligible site, that Hyde Park before now would have been restored to its ancient state, and that the public would have all the pleasure they were entitled to derive from the privilege they had long enjoyed, of walking and riding there. He believed it was part of the contract under which Her Majesty's Government agreed that the Crystal Palace should be erected, that by November, 1851, the site would be completely restored; but although they had now arrived at the month of April, 1853, and although the structure had been removed, the site remained in a state that was utterly deplorable. He could hardly describe to their Lordships the aspect of deformity which that part of the park presented. There was no railing or fence around it; animals of all sorts were to be found straying upon it; spring had returned, but no verdure had returned there; and it was in such a condition that the persons to be seen riding upon it must be fond of steeple-chasing, for they met there with obstacles that required very skilful horsemanship. There were stones, and drains, and ruins still to be seen upon it that must rather excite alarm in those who were not very skilful in the management of their horses. He wished to know what was the real intention of the Government on the subject. One of the lungs of London was now overrun with tubercles, and it was really most essential that some prescription should be given for the purpose of curing the malady. If there was any intention of erecting a local monument on the ground for the purpose of perpetuating the memory of the Great Exhibition of 1851, and celebrating the glory of the illustrious Prince from whom it had emanated, he would be contented; and if there was any public subscription for that purpose, he would,

1001
according to his small means, most willingly contribute to it; but if no such intention existed, then he thought the public had been grossly ill-treated by the delay in restoring the site of the Crystal Palace to its former appearance. He knew that his noble Friend the Lord President had acted on the most excellent principle throughout, in regard to the Exhibition—that his object was to do what might be of service to the nation, and he had worthily represented the English people without any violation of the law, when he appeared as their representative at the great public banquet in France. His noble Friend had done that for which he deserved the thanks of the country; he trusted that he and the Government were not to blame for allowing this deformity to continue so long, and that they would receive from him an assurance that Hyde Park was soon to be restored to its ancient state.
EARL GRANVILLE,in his somewhat amphibious character of a Royal Commissioner and a Minister of State, was very happy to have to state that in the correspondence which had passed between himself and the Lord Chief Justice on this subject, the most friendly spirit had been manifested on both sides in reference to the building known as the Crystal Palace, and the site upon which it had been raised, and he believed that the answer which he was about to give would entirely clear away any little difference that remained between the Commissioners and his noble and learned Friend with respect to the complete success of the Great Exhibition. He might say, then, that Her Majesty's Commissioners had been as anxious as his noble and learned Friend could be to restore the site as speedily as possible to its normal condition—an anxiety fully manifested by the correspondence which had taken place on the subject. The contractors, however, whether it was because they were somewhat exhausted by the really marvellous display of energy which they had been called upon to make in the erection of that building, or that they were too much engaged on other undertakings, had entirely failed to perform this portion of their engagements. The Executive Committee, therefore, had, in the discharge of their duty, felt called upon to do that which the deed enabled them to do—namely, to appeal to the First Commissioner of Works to put the ground in its former condition, the contractors being held liable for any
1002
expenditure which might thereby accrue. He was happy then to be able to inform the noble Lord that the First Commissioner had already issued the necessary instructions, and he therefore hoped that the site would be restored to its quondam condition, though he was afraid thereby that his noble and learned Friend would be deprived of the opportunity of executing those daring feats of horsemanship which he was so well able to accomplish.

VACCINATION EXTENSION BILL.
LORD LYTTELTONmoved that the House go into Committee on this Bill (according to order); and said that the essential object of the measure was to make vaccination compulsory, and he conceived that that object would be best accomplished by means of registration. It was unnecessary to call their Lordships' attention to the importance of the subject, especially those who had, like himself, been in the habit of attending Boards of Guardians, or to speak of the certainty of vaccination as a preventive of the small-pox, that being a point on which the whole medical profession had arrived at complete unanimity. Some few facts might be stated with regard to it; and he would mention, that for almost all the information he had to lay before their Lordships, having no scientific knowledge of the subject himself, he was indebted to some able and learned persons belonging to the Epidemiological Society—a new society, amongst whose leading members were Sir Benjamin Brodie, Dr. Bright, Dr. Babington, and Dr. Southwood Smith. He believed it might be said that vaccination was fully established about the beginning of the present century, and the way of judging of its effects was to look to the amount of deaths arising from small-pox within certain periods of time. Looking to the last fifty years of the last century, and the first fifty years of the present century, the result was this—that in the first ten years ending 1760 the deaths were 100,000 from small-pox; in the next ten years, 108,000; in the next ten years, 98,000; in the next ten years, 87,000; in the next ten years, 88,000. During the first ten years of the present century the deaths amounted to 64,000; in the next ten years, to 42,000; in the next ten years, to 32,000; in the next ten years, to 23,000; and in the last ten years, to 16,000; showing a diminution from 108,000 down to 16,000, and a continually progressive de-

1003
crease. Single cases were such as that which was reported by Mr. Livett, of Wells, in Somersetshire, from which it appeared that, while since the year 1837 the small-pox had been prevalent in the adjoining districts, there had been no small-pox whatever in a village where vaccination was practised. It was also a remarkable circumstance that, during the forty-eight years that had elapsed since the opening of the Royal Military School at Chelsea, where vaccination was enforced, out of the number of admissions, amounting to 31,705, there was not a single death from small-pox after vaccination. Looking to foreign countries, he was told that in Ahmedebad, in India, where vaccination was introduced in 1817, and where it became general in 1825, the small-pox since then had not been heard of. In Hanover, out of 45,830 deaths in 1847, there were only eight deaths from small-pox; and in Denmark it was said at one time that small-pox had entirely disappeared, from the universal practice of vaccination in that country. Let them compare the state of England and Wales with that, and it would be found that the fatality from small-pox varied according to the practice of vaccination. England and France were the only countries in which vaccination was not directly or indirectly compulsory; he had no figures with respect to the state of France, but the result was not far different from what it was in England. In Hanover, Bavaria, and Sweden, vaccination was rendered compulsory by means of a pecuniary penalty—the means which he proposed to adopt in this country. In Holland and Prussia it was indirectly but most effectively made compulsory; for example, no person would be admitted to a public school, or maintained by public alms, unless he could prove that he had been vaccinated; and in Prussia no man could be married unless he could show that he had been vaccinated. For the purpose of comparing the two systems of compulsion and non-compulsion, he asked their Lordships to look at the two extreme cases. In Ireland, where the greatest ignorance and prejudice might be supposed to prevail on the subject, no less than 58,000 persons had died from small-pox in the ten years ending 1841, and in subsequent years he believed the state of matters was not much improved. That was one extreme. The other occurred in a part of Europe where the material condition of the population was
1004
extremely good—he referred to Lombardy. He found that in Connaught, which might be considered the part of Ireland where vaccination was most likely to be neglected, the number of deaths during the ten years ending 1841 were 60 in 1,000; in Lombardy they were 1½ in 1,000, or 3 deaths in 2,000. These were the two extremes. The average mortality of late years in England and Wales only, excluding Ireland, which would make the statement worse, and excluding Scotland also, regarding which country he believed the same might be said, although there were no returns on the subject—the average number of deaths in England and Wales during eight years was nearly 22 in 1,000; whereas in a long list of countries in which vaccination was compulsory, the deaths ranged from 8 in 1,000 in Saxony, to 1½ in Lombardy, and the average was not quite five. These facts showed that in this country the mortality from small-pox was more than four times as much as it was upon the Continent. He would now ask the House, after the statement of these results, to look at the state of the law in England. The law upon the subject was very short and simple, and was contained in two Acts of Parliament; it was this:—In every union the guardians were empowered to contract with a medical man to vaccinate all children whose parents were not above bringing them to be vaccinated at the public charge. He believed that the Poor Law Board, the guardians, and the medical men employed by them, had done their best to carry this system into effect, but still the result was unfavourable as compared with other countries. That being so, what he proposed was, without disturbing the present system, simply to add the principle of compulsion to it. It would be impossible for a private Member of Parliament to attempt any fundamental alteration in such a system as this. He must take it in the main as he found it, but the alteration he proposed would be a clear gain. He was not aware that any advantage would be lost by the introduction of the principle of compulsion. We should have all the good results we now had under the present system, and an increase of them. It was said that the system now prevailing had been successful; that it was bringing about a progressive improvement, and that all parties concerned were doing their best to make it still more effective. When it was said, how-

1005
ever, that the success of the system under the present law was to some extent progressive, he must point out some serious and important imperfections in it. In the first place, he asked the attention of the House to the exceeding irregularity, uncertainty, and inequality of the system of vaccination at present practised. They were told by the last returns that the number of births registered in England and Wales in the year ending September 29, 1852, was 601,839; and the number vaccinated during that period, under the Vaccination Act, was 397,128; so that, in round numbers, 400,000 were vaccinated by the public machinery in force, leaving only 200,000, or one-third of the whole number, to be treated in the numerous private vaccinations which took place. Now, there were several very important fallacies in that statement. That general result was by no means the result of anything like a uniform system throughout the country. He had before him a detailed statement showing the extent of vaccination in various parts of England in 1851, the result of which showed that there was a great want of uniformity as to vaccination in different parts of the country. It was irregular in point of time; for, wherever small-pox broke out, there was a sort of panic among the people, and then they went to get their children vaccinated. Where the guardians of a union had been compelled to pay a public vaccinator much better than in other places, there the most enormous difference existed in regard to vaccination. As he had stated, the greatest want of uniformity existed in different parts of the country. In towns, where the people had a shorter distance to go to get their children vaccinated, the result, as might be supposed, was more favourable than in the rural districts. For example, in Birmingham, which, as it might be expected, would be found well managed in this as in other sanitary matters, on the total number of births in the year 1851, the vaccinations were 91 per cent; in Leicester they were only 41 per cent, and in Loughborough only 18 per cent. The contrast between the manufacturing and the rural districts was favourable on the side of the former. In Bideford the vaccinations were only 11 per cent upon the births; in West Ashford, in Kent, they were only 22 per cent; and in Winchcomb only 6 per cent. While the general average, however, was lower in the agricultural than in the manufacturing districts,
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some contrary instances were found. Thus in Derby the vaccinations were only 42 per cent; while at Watford, which was a rural district, the vaccinations were 126 per cent upon the births, in 1851; that included of course the vaccination of children born in previous years. But in London, and in no less a parish than that of St. James's, Westminster, it was reported that in that year on 973 births only 44 vaccinations took place; while in Wellingborough Union, where there were 800 births in 1851, no vaccination at all was reported. There was another point on which he must lay the very greatest stress, and that was the length beyond the regular period to which the operation of vaccination was frequently postponed. As this was a technical part of the subject, he would beg to read a few passages from the report presented to the Epidemiological Society. The committee who prepared that report upon the subject of the information received from the official documents of the Poor Law Board, said—
"In examining these important documents, showing the actual progress of vaccination, as carried on under the Act of 1840–41, it is especially necessary to consider the age when the operation ought to be performed. Unless this distinction is kept clearly in view throughout, the most fundamental errors must arise as to the real efficiency of the existing system. It is the opinion of medical authorities that, unless under peculiar and exceptional circumstances, vaccination ought to be performed within four months of birth."
One amendment, therefore, proposed to be introduced by his Bill was to bring the number of months within which vaccination must be performed down to three. He took that number upon the suggestion of the Board of Health, to one of the members of which, the noble Earl opposite (the Earl of Shaftesbury), he was much indebted for suggestions in regard to the present Bill. The Report proceeded:—
"Every day during which vaccination is delayed beyond the right period, leads inevitably to the sacrifice of life. The amount of this sacrifice may be estimated by the following facts:—the deaths from small-pox in 1839 amounted in England to 8,714, of which 202 occurred in the first month after birth; 181 in the second month; 162 in the third; and 456 in the fourth month. So that no fewer than 1,001, or 11 per cent, of the whole died under four months; while 2,235, or 25 per cent, died under one year; and, in 1847, of 4,227 total deaths, 1,074, or 25 per cent, were also under one year. If, as often happens under the present system, vaccination is delayed till the second or third year, or still later, the sacrifice of

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life is proportionably increased. It is found, for example, that the deaths under three years constitute from 51 to 57 per cent of the whole mortality from small-pox; while, under five years, the proportion rises to 75 to 80 per cent.….. In the decennial period 1831–41, there perished of small-pox in Ireland 58,006 persons, of whom 45,826, or 79 per cent, were under the age of five years; all of whom, if they had been efficiently vaccinated, might, so far as this disease is concerned, have been now alive."
In reference to this subject the Poor Law Commissioners remarked:—
"Though the number of children vaccinated under one year of age is only 32 per cent upon the number of births, we still think that the relation which the births bear to the number vaccinated is a tolerably correct measure of the efficiency of the arrangements for promoting the object of the Vaccination Extension Act, as, from the communications which we have received from boards of guardians and vaccinators, we learn that vaccination is very frequently deferred till the child attains its second or third year."
Upon this statement the Committee thus express themselves:—
"Although with much reluctance, we deem it essential to enter our decided protest to the principle here assumed. No system of vaccination can be considered otherwise than fundamentally defective under which a large number of children thus remain unprotected to the age of two or three."
It must be remembered that attacks of small-pox, even in case of recovery, left the constitution very much impaired, and liable to other diseases. Now out of the total number of 601,839 births for the year ending September 29, 1852, there had been, as he had stated, 397,128 vaccinations by the public officers appointed for that purpose, and 203,039 of those thus vaccinated were above one year, and 194,089 under one year of age. This was a point upon which all the authorities laid the greatest stress, and the Bill therefore proposed that vaccination should be made compulsory within a certain time. This was the general case in favour of this Bill. He proposed to leave out Clause 8, which enacted that all persons coming into the country unvaccinated should be liable to a penalty. He proposed to make it compulsory upon the district registrar, at the time the child's birth was registered, to give notice to the parents and to the guardians of the obligation to have the child vaccinated, because it would be rather hard that poor persons should be liable to a penalty for noncompliance with an Act of which they had not had due notice. The Act only extended to England and Wales. Ireland and Scotland he could not touch, because he was
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not sufficiently acquainted with the circumstances of those countries to undertake to legislate for them; but he had great satisfaction in stating that he had had some communication with Members of the Irish Government upon this subject, and they had expressed the greatest anxiety to have the compulsory principle extended to that country. He should, be very happy, if it were found practicable, that the Act should be extended to Ireland and to Scotland. With regard to the importation to this country of non-vaccinated persons, he begged to call the attention of the House to a valuable suggestion which had been made to him on this point. He was told that a very large proportion of non-vaccinated persons, who often spread the infection in English towns, were the inmates of common lodging-houses. Now, there was a system of inspection of these lodging-houses already in operation, and there would be no difficulty, he imagined, in providing that the examination now in force should include an investigation on the subject of vaccination among the inmates, and that all children who should be found unvaccinated should be vaccinated immediately. There was another preventive measure, which he could only recommend to the attention of the Government. It was in regard to the system of the conveyance of patients to and from hospitals to another, and the spread of infection in that way. This, however, he could not undertake to remedy in the Bill, and he must leave it for the consideration of the Government. It had been pressed upon his consideration that what was still wanted was complete system of national vaccination. There now existed a good deal of prejudice among the poor against the present arrangement, which they confounded with pauperism, supposing that, in taking their children to the public vaccinators, they were receiving parish relief. The Poor Law Board had, indeed, issued an order that gratuitous vaccination should in no degree stamp the recipient with the character of a pauper; but, nevertheless, it was a very natural feeling, and if the machinery were separated entirely from that of the Poor Law Board, which had not necessarily any particular knowledge or information on the subject, the system would probably work better. He could not attempt to introduce into this Bill any special provision for seeing it carried into execution, although he was well aware that that formed an imperfection in it.

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He could not propose that an inspector of vaccination should be appointed, for it would involve considerable expense, and he did not think that was a point which he, as a private Member of their Lordships' House, should introduce into the Bill; he would, however, recommend it to the attention of the Government. It had been objected that, after all, the Bill would not be compulsory, for that a person might pay the fine which the Act imposed, and leave his child unvaccinated. He believed, however, that the infliction of this pecuniary penalty would be perfectly effectual. The ignorance and prejudice which prevailed on the subject was almost entirely confined to the very lowest of the poor, to whom a fine was very serious: and as it was not a thing which could be visited with any more severe punishment than a pecuniary penalty, that was the only mode by which it could be made compulsory. His own impression was, that sooner than pay the fine, the great majority of parents would have their children vaccinated. Another objection urged against the Bill was, that it was an undue interference with the liberty of the subject. This objection, however, he considered was founded upon an entire misapprehension of the nature of the evil, and of the remedy to be applied. It might very well be argued that parents had no right, even looking to their own children alone, to allow them to take the disease; but the proper object of the Bill was, to prevent persons spreading the infection to others—which he considered in reality a criminal act. The principle of the Bill had, indeed, been already admitted, for it had been made illegal and punishable either to inoculate children, or to expose them so as to be infectious; and leaving them unvaccinated, did, in reality, come under the last head. He came next to the subject of the payment which was made to the medical officers of poor-law unions for vaccinations. He was aware that there was a strong feeling on the part of the medical profession with respect to the inadequacy of the remuneration; but still he felt that this was but a part of the general subject of the remuneration of the union medical officers, and that he could not, therefore, meddle with it. He did, indeed, ask the Poor Law authorities if it would not be possible to fix in the Bill a minimum under which the different boards of guardians should not make any contracts for vaccination; but he was told that no such exception to the general
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law, which allowed boards of guardians to make their own contracts for the services of medical men in this matter, could be introduced. Nor, indeed, could he wonder that the Poor Law Board felt a difficulty about interfering with boards of guardians on this subject, when they saw medical men of respectability freely taking these low contracts, and acting on them year after year. He had been told by a noble Friend of his, on the opposite side of the House, that this Bill proposed to punish people for omitting that which they had no facility of doing. He did not, however, believe that that complaint was well founded, because his own experience, and the result of his inquiries at the Poor Law Board, led him believe that no persons who really wished to have their children vaccinated by the public officer, had any difficulty in attaining that object. The noble Lord then, after stating that he proposed to introduce into the Bill numerous amendments, none of which, however, affected its principle, moved that the House should go into Committee upon it.
The EARL of SHAFTESBURYsaid, that when they considered that the smallpox was not only infectious, but that every person so infected became a centre from which the disease spread, he thought that their Lordships would admit the validity of the grounds on which the demand for a compulsory enactment rested. The voluntary system had been tried for a long time in this country, and had failed; and it was necessary, therefore, to resort to other means in order to guard ourselves from this disorder, which was one of the most frightful scourges that ever afflicted humanity. In order to show how completely the present voluntary system had failed, he would compare, in a few instances taken by chance, the comparative number of births and vaccinations. From inquiries made by the Poor Law Commissioners, it appeared that, at present, of all registered, only three in eight were vaccinated. Of those vaccinated, many most imperfectly—hence small-pox was on the increase. Take, as examples, comparison of births with vaccinations: Bideford—births, 567; vaccinations, 69. Newton Abbott—births, 1,563; vaccinations, 150. Huntingdon—births, 805; vaccinations, 68. St. Neots—births, 671; vaccinations, 17. Carnarvon—births, 929; vaccinations, 125. Bangor and Beaumaris—births, 1,025; vaccinations, 420. Metropolis:—St. James's, Westminster—births, 1,427; vaccinations,

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44. Paddington—births, 1,458; vaccinations, 386. Hampstead—births, 286; vaccinations, 93. It was said that people would not accept of vaccination unless small-pox was at the door; that there was a growing neglect of vaccination—that people would not take the trouble to come to the station—vaccination must visit every house: but this omission to have their children vaccinated did not arise to so great an extent as was sometimes supposed from prejudice—though, no doubt, that did prevail in a great many instances—but was chiefly due to indifference or neglect, because directly the small-pox broke out in a district they crowded by hundreds and thousands to have their children vaccinated. The result of this negligence was, that in the year 1835, when small-pox was extensively prevalent, there were 16,000 deaths; and in the two years and a half ending December, 1839, the registered deaths were about 30,000, or about 12,000 annually. Now, if they took the average mortality at one in four of the cases, they would find that these then amounted to nearly 50,000 a year. In Ireland the number of cases varied from 35,000 to 40,000 per annum, because there was there no vaccination at all. The virulence of this disease must, however, be estimated not only by the number of lives destroyed, but also by the sad effects it produced on the human constitution. There was, perhaps, no other disorder which had such injurious effects upon the frame. Where it did not at once destroy, it left there the seeds of disorders which ended in blindness, deafness, an active development of scrofula, consumption, and a diseased state of the mesenteric gland. The growing increase of small-pox had been attributed to diminution in the protective power of vaccination. There had no doubt been a considerable increase in the number of cases of small-pox of late years; but as he believed that the lymph was now as good as ever, the increase must be the result of indifference, and this showed the necessity for an interposition of the Legislature. That vaccination was perfectly preventive of small-pox, was proved by the testimony of an eminent vaccinator, the resident surgeon of the Small-pox Hospital, who stated last year that he had during the last few years vaccinated no fewer than 40,000 persons, and up to the present moment he had not been able to discover a single instance in which a person vaccinated by him had been subsequently attacked with the small-pox. It
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was perfectly correct, as had been stated by his noble Friend, that the small-pox was chiefly confined to the lowest class of the population, and he believed that with improved lodging-houses the disease might be all but exterminated. In almost every case where the small-pox had been introduced into the metropolis, or any other part of the country, it was traceable to an importation from the sister island, where there was no system of vaccination—an additional reason why such a system should be established there. It would be well also to introduce police regulations upon the subject, for he believed it would be found that in many instances the disease had been propagated by means of cabs, omnibuses, and lodging-houses. The effect of the compulsory system, when established in other countries, had been almost to exterminate the disease there. In Prussia it was compulsory, in Copenhagen it was nearly so, and in London and Glasgow it was permissive. There were, in every 1,000 deaths in Prussia of small-pox, 7·5; in Berlin, 5·5; in Copenhagen, 6·75; in London, 16; in Glasgow, 36; in Greenock, 34·6; in Bohemia, 2; in Lombardy, 1·5; in Venice, 2·2; in Sweden, 2·7. In Copenhagen, during 13 years, from 1811 to 1823, there had been but one fatal case of small-pox in a population, at that time, of 100,000. Vaccination was not compulsory in France; but the Vaccine Committee, in their last report, advised that France should at length follow the example of many other nations. The deaths were about, in every 1,000, 10·5; and the number had been only repressed by great exertions of Government. These opinions were maintained by some of the first medical names in Europe, and were founded on the testimony of at least 2,000 medical professors. In Paris, where the compulsory system was not established, the mortality was very great, and the medical board had reported that it was absolutely necessary that a system of compulsory vaccination should be introduced without delay. Indeed, the medical men in France quite agreed with those of this country, in thinking that the establishment of such a system was the only means of putting an end to the disease. It appeared from the last return that the total number of deaths in England from small-pox was 7,500, and in Ireland 5,800; those in Scotland not being known. Taking these data, it was estimated that the number of cases in England was 45,000, and in Ireland 34,800, or a total of 79,800;

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and if those in Scotland were added, it was supposed that the whole would be no fewer than 100,000. When the House reflected what fearful consequences resulted to the persons attacked with small-pox, they would see how absolutely necessary it was, for the safety and comfort of the population, that the compulsory system should be speedily established. Some persons might, indeed, take exception to such a system, as thinking that it interfered too much with the poor, and dictated to parents what they should do with their children. But why should not the House interfere to protect the public, and prevent children being made the centres of contagion to whole districts? But we had already interfered with the liberty of the subject on this matter to a great extent. Inoculation had been prohibited under a penalty, and from thence the transition to compelling vaccination seemed very easy. Interference in this case was requisite to protect the public, and prevent an infected locality becoming a nidus of disease which might extend through the whole community. The law had already interfered in a variety of ways to abate nuisances. They interfered to prevent the smoke and other nuisances in the City and elsewhere; and, for his own part, he hoped those efforts would be persevered in, and that the day would come when not a chimney-stalk, long or short, would be visible in the metropolis. Why, then, should they hesitate to introduce a measure of such benefit to society at large and to the public health? As to the amendments of which notice had been given, he must say he agreed in thinking that children should be vaccinated from the arm of a healthy child, for no doubt there was a prejudice against the virus from animals. If the Bill were properly carried out, and remuneration given to those engaged under it, he believed they would soon exterminate the disease; and he had not the slightest doubt that generations to come would thank their Lordships for the attention they had bestowed on that important subject, and on the blessings that had resulted from it.
The EARL of ELLENBOROUGHsaid, he believed the system now in operation originated in a suggestion made by himself some years ago; but he must admit that, acted upon as it had been, it had not produced the beneficial results which he expected; and he must admit that the two noble Lords who had addressed the House had made out a sufficient case for a material alteration and
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amendment of the existing law, nor did he himself object to the principle of compulsion. He thought that under the circumstances we were justified in resorting to it; but he must say that when we compelled the poor, who had very strong feelings upon the subject, to have their children vaccinated, we should at the same time afford them facilities for the purpose of having the vaccination performed, and should consult their prejudices as to the manner in which it was to be done. The clause which he proposed to insert in the Bill, referred to the establishment of vaccination districts in poor-law unions, and for the attendance of a vaccinator on fixed days there, in order to save the poor from the necessity of going such long distances as they had now to do in some cases. There was nothing in the existing law to prevent boards of guardians from doing this, and it was in fact done in the union where he resided. He thought it was also desirable to provide that in every practicable case vaccination should be performed from the arm of a healthy child. They might, if the requisite facilities were given to the poor, very well say that no child who was not vaccinated should be admitted into any school, and that all persons applying for poor-law relief should be examined, and should not be relieved if they persisted in refusing to be vaccinated. Why, indeed, should they not also impose a penalty on the admission of unvaccinated persons in any manufactory? It was from large congregations of persons in manufactories and workhouses that the disease was spread, and measures should therefore be taken for insuring the vaccination of all persons who were assembled therein. Unless, however, some such arrngement as that which he had suggested were adopted, and the unions were divided into districts of convenient size, the inconvenience to which the poor would be subjected from having to come a long distance would be so great as to prevent the operation of vaccination being so generally performed as was desirable. He would suggest to the noble Lord (Lord Lyttleton), who had charge of the Bill, that it should be committed pro formâ for the purpose of reprinting it with the proposed amendments, and then recommitted on a future day.
LORD LYTTELTONhaving stated his willingness to accede to this suggestion,
House in Committee; Amendments made; House resumed; and to be again in Committee on Thursday next.
House adjourned to Thursday next.