Sitting of 31 July 1857

MINUTES.
NEW WRIT—For Falkirk District of Burghs, v. James Merry, esq. Void Election.
PUBLIC BIILS.—1° Burial Grounds (Scotland) Act (1855) Amendment.
2° Divorce and Matrimonial Causes.
3° County Court Judges (Falconer and Yates's Salaries).

ELECTION COMMITTEES.—QUESTION.
MR. BAILLIEsaid, he would beg to inquire of the right hon. Gentleman the Secretary of State for the Home Department, whether it was was the intention of the Government to order the Attorney General to prosecute all the persons reported to the House by Election Committees as having violated the laws of the country, or whether the prosecutions were to be confined to the cases of the persons

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reported against by the Mayo County Election Committee.
SIR GEORGE GREYsaid, he believed the ordinary practice to be that the Attorney General was ordered to prosecute on the Motion of the Chairman of Election Committees, if it were the opinion of the Committees, that what had taken place, justified such a proceeding. In the case of the Mayo County Election the Chairman of the Election Committee, with, he understood, the concurrence of the Committee, made a Motion for the prosecution of two individuals. He did not know who were the other persons to whom the hon. Gentleman alluded, but he had no doubt that if the Chairman of other Election Committees should make similar Motions, the House would deal with each case according to its merits.

PROBATE AND LETTERS OF ADMINIS TRATION (IRELAND) BILL.

  COMMITTEE.
  Order for Committee read.
  House in Committee.
  MR. M'MAHONexpressed a hope that the hon. and learned Gentleman would strike out all in the Bill relating to real estate, because the landed gentry and the farmers in Ireland were already sufficiently taxed. He should feel it his duty to offer every resistance to that part of the measure.
  MR. J. D. FITZGERALDsaid, he only proposed to pass the Bill through Committee pro formâ, with the object of having all the Amendments printed.
  Bill considered in Committee.
  House resumed. Bill reported; to be printed as amended. Recommitted for Friday next at Twelve o'clock.

REVISING BARRISTERS (DUBLIN) BILL.

  COMMITTEE.
  Order for Committee read,
  Motion made and Question proposed, "That Mr. Speaker do now leave the Chair."
  MR. NAPIERsaid, he wished to express his disapproval of the Bill. Under its provisions the right of appointing revising barristers for Dublin would be vested henceforward exclusively in the Irish Executive. By that arrangement Mr. Shaw and the two other gentlemen who had since the year 1853 discharged that duty, and discharged it in an unexceptionable manner, would find their claims to a continuance of their office wholly set aside. He denied the justice and expediency of such a
  802
  mode of proceeding; and he believed that the House ought not to invest the Irish Government with a power bearing so directly on the purity and freedom of election in the city of Dublin, where party spirit came into such strong and frequent operation, and where it was natural to suppose that the Government would desire the registration to be as favourable to them as possible, especially as a, son of the Lord Chancellor of Ireland had been an unsuccessful candidate at the last election. He therefore begged to move that the House should resolve itself into a Committee on the Bill on that day month.
  Amendment proposed,—
  To leave out from the word "That" to the end of the Question, in order to add the words, "this House will, upon this day month, resolve itself into the said Committee," instead thereof.
  MR. J. D. FITZGERALDsaid, that he must complain of personal considerations being introduced into the discussion. He denied that the Lord Chancellor of Ireland or his son had anything to do with the Bill; and said it originated exclusively with himself and his learned colleague, the Solicitor General for Ireland, and the Chief Secretary, who determined, as a matter of law, that it was necessary to propose such a measure. The present question was merely a question as to the construction of an Act of Parliament, and it was absolutely necessary that some measure should be passed on the subject. Under the Reform Act the duty of revising the electoral lists for the city of Dublin were to be discharged by the chairman of the county of Dublin; but as that functionary had too much to do to perform that duty, Parliament had empowered him to appoint a deputy, and he had accordingly appointed Mr. Dobbs as his deputy in 1834. The duties of revision for the city of Dublin became very much augmented, and it became necessary to appoint three deputies. Accordingly, Mr. Dobbs (who performed the duties since 1834), Mr. Shaw, and Mr. Kemmis, were appointed. His right hon. and learned Friend seemed to throw Mr. Dobbs and Mr. Kemmis overboard altogether. In March last the chairman of the county of Dublin, who had appointed the three gentlemen, died, and he contended that with the death of the chairman the office, and consequently the duties, of the deputies ceased. In 1851 an Act of Parliament was passed which gave the Lord Lieutenant the power of appointing a revising barrister in the event of the death of the

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  then chairman of the county of Dublin. The Government appointed Mr. O'Hara, a gentleman of twenty years' standing at the bar, under that Act, and as he could not perform the duties single handed, it was necessary to come to Parliament to give the Lord Lieutenant the power of appointing another. It was absolutely necessary that the Government should bring in this Bill in order that the electors of the city of Dublin might not be defrauded of their rights. The Solicitor General for Ireland took exactly the same view of the Acts of Parliament as he did. He denied that the Government were liable to blame for delaying the Bill, because when it was before the House on a former occasion hon. and learned Gentlemen objected to proceeding with it.
  MR. HARDYsaid, that it appeared to him doubtful whether the three gentlemen referred to were the deputies or substitutes of the late chairman. But he wished to call the attention of the House to the fact that in England these offices were annual, and selected by the Judges from non-political persons; while in Ireland there was a different system. It was essential, above all things, that revising barristers should be free from political bias, and yet the result in Ireland was shown by there being 17,000 disputed claims before the revising barristers. The Lord Lieutenant had the power of appointing one revising barrister by the Act of 1851. This was a false position, as his name was necessarily much mixed up with party conflicts, and one from which the Government should heave taken the opportunity afforded them by present circumstances of retracing their steps. There were great difficulties connected with the law on this matter, and it behoved the House seriously to consider how it ought to act. The best course to pursue would be to bring in a Bill to continue in office the three gentlemen who had hitherto discharged the functions of revising barristers in Dublin, and to vest the appointment afterwards in the Judges.
  MR. BUTTsaid, that he entirely concurred in the remark of the hon. and learned Gentleman who had just spoken, that these appointments should be made by non-political functionaries, such as the Judges, which was the course followed in England, and he thought that, for the sake of the dignity of the Lord Lieutenant, and the confidence of the citizens of Dublin in his administration of the law, nothing could be more objectionable than to give such
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  power to him. That principle, however, had been sanctioned by the House in 1851, and the real question before them now was, whether they should go into Committee upon the Bill. In point of law, he was clearly of opinion that the jurisdiction of the three barristers appointed by the late chairman of the county of Dublin, to superintend the revision of the electoral lists, had ceased on the occasion of the death of that gentleman, whose deputies they had been. Still, when the House went into Committee he would be ready to support an Amendment which, while respecting the rights of the gentleman who had recently been appointed revising barrister by the Lord Lieutenant, would, in future place in the hands of the Judges the right of making these appointments.
  MR. WHITESIDEsaid, he could not but designate the Bill as a little job got up between the resignation of the right hon. Member for Stroud (Mr. Horsman), and the appointment of the right hon. Member for the county of Kerry (Mr. Herbert). The real objects of the Bill were, that the Government of Ireland should be enabled to remove any doubts that might be entertained with respect to the validity of the appointment of Mr. O'Hara to the office of revising barrister in the city of Dublin, and that they should have a right to bestow on some other gentleman a similar piece of patronage. Mr. Shaw was, it seemed, to be got rid of; but that gentleman, irrespective of any absolute right he might have to a continuance of his office, was entitled to the highest consideration for his character, his professional attainments, and the perfectly unexceptionable manner in which he had for many years discharged the duties with which he had been entrusted; and he (Mr. Whiteside) could not help feeling that if the Irish Government were to take every posible opportunity of ousting from public situations their political opponents, and appointing their partisans to the vacant offices, it would be impossible to defend the continuance of that Government in its present form. Several of the official appointments made in Ireland of late years had given great offence to no inconsiderable portion of the people of that country; and he might mention that two of the number had been considered so objectionable, that he had been asked to bring them under the notice of the House; but he had declined to accede to the request lest he should thereby subject

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  himself to a charge of acting under the influence of a feeling of personal hostility. He thought it was not too much to ask the Government that when they find in offices men who were known to be respectable, they should not, merely because those men did not belong to their party, turn them off before they died. Being desirous that justice should be done, he should vote for the Amendment.
  SIR GEORGE GREYsaid, he must express his regret that all measures relating to Ireland, whether of trifling or great importance, could not be brought forward without the introduction into the debate of personal questions, with which it was impossible the House could deal. The hon. and learned Member opposite (Mr. Whiteside) impugned the appointments made by the Lord Lieutenant, under the powers of Acts of Parliament. He insinuated that they had been made, not from corrupt motives, but without regard to the merits of the different candidates, and that men had been placed in those offices who were unfit for them. He was content to meet that assertion with a general denial. He believed that in making the appointments the Lord Lieutenant and the present Irish Secretary had been actuated by the single desire of promoting the interests of the public service. The hon. and learned Gentleman moreover had alluded to two appointments of which he seemed specially to disapprove, but which he had not brought under the notice of the House, from a fear of rendering himself liable to be charged with yielding to a feeling of personal hostility. But it appeard to him (Sir George Grey) that it would have been better for the hon. and learned Gentleman to have run that risk than to have indulged in sweeping accusations, which might extend to any person in office. Formerly the chairman of the sessions of the peace for the county of Dublin was the officer appointed by law to revise the register of voters for the city, but he had power to appoint deputies to assist him in the discharge of that duty. The Act of 1851 recognised the tenure of the chairman to this office of revising barrister, but it expressly enacted that on his death or resignation the Lord Lieutenant should appoint persons to perform the duties of the office during good behaviour. The chairman was now dead, and the ordinary rule of law was, that a deputy holding an appointment under a principal ceased to have an authority to act on the resignation or decease
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  of his principal. Under the terms of that Act the Lord Lieutenant appointed Mr. O'Hara—an appointment to which he believed there was no objection—but the Attorney General for Ireland being persuaded that the whole work of revision could not be satisfactorily performed by one individual within the time prescribed by the statute, proposed that the Lord Lieutenant should be empowered to appoint a second person to act in conjunction with Mr. O'Hara. If the hon. and learned Gentleman thought the Lord Lieutenant should make one appointment and the House another, let him say so; but that course would be utterly inconsistent with any precedent. If the House should think that the appointment should be placed in the hands of the Lord Chief Jnstice of Ireland instead of the Lord Lieutenant, that was a matter to be decided in Committee, but such a course of proceeding would be inconsistent with the principle established in Ireland, where the Lord Lieutenant appointed the assistant barristers by whom the electoral lists were revised. For himself, he could see no reason why they should distrust the Lord Lieutenant in such a case.
  MR. M'MAHONsaid, he could state that nepotism prevailed to a very considerable extent in the appointments of revising barristers made by the English Judges; and he believed that a great majority of the bar of England would rather that power should be placed in the hands of a responsible public officer, such as the Secretary for the Home Department, than that it should be left in the hands of the Judges.
  MR. GREERsaid, that the case of the gentleman under discussion was rather put forward as an appeal than as a claim. Under any circumstances, power should be given to the Lord Lieutenant to appoint a sufficient number of barristers to revise the lists.
  COLONEL FRENCHsaid, that he was very much opposed to giving the appointment to the Lord Lieutenant and the Lord Chancellor of Ireland. It should be recollected that the son of the Lord Chancellor had stood for the City of Dublin at the late election, and was defeated. The gentlemen at present holding these offices had always discharged their duties satisfactorily, and it would be in accordance with the practice of the House that a selection should be made from them of the persons by whom the duties of the office were to be first discharged.
  SIR BROOKE BRIDGESobserved, that he thought that such a power ought not to be entrusted to a man filling a political position, and liable to be influenced by party considerations.
  Question put, "That the words proposed to be left out stand part of the Question."
  The House divided:—Ayes 90; Noes 57: Majority 33.
  Main Question put and agreed to.
  House in Committee.
  Clause 1 (Lord Lieutenant may appoint two barristers under Civil Bill Act).
  MR. NAPIERproposed that the additional barristers to be appointed under the Bill should be appointed by the Lord Chief Justice, instead of the Lord Lieutenant.
  Amendment proposed, in page 3, line 3, to leave out the words "instead of the," and to insert the words, "in addition to the," instead thereof.
  MR. J. D. FITZGERALDremarked, that he thought it much safer to leave the appointment in the hands of the Lord Lieutenant, who was a stranger to the country, and not mixed up in feeling with the local politics of Dublin, as the Lord Chief Justice might be. In England he knew there were many complaints that young and incompetent barristers were appointed to revise the list of voters, and in Ireland the Judges were less under the influence of public opinion. On grounds of policy and principle, he thought the appointment would be much better left in the hands of the Lord Lieutenant.
  MR. WHITESIDEsaid he would support the Amendment. He contended that nothing could be more reasonable than the demand that the English practice in that case should be extended to Ireland. As he had remarked before, the object of the Bill was to create a new place.
  MR. H. A. HERBERTsaid, when he first saw the Bill the objection he entertained to it was, that it created a new office, but on subsequent consideration he was convinced that another revising barrister was required. He had been long enough in his present position to know the inconveniences attending the creation of new offices in Ireland, and he could assure the Committee that it was the desire of the Government to create none for which there was not some absolute necessity.
  COLONEL FRENCHcould not understand why a second appointment should be made; but, if it must be made, he saw no reason for transferring the patronage from the Lord Lieutenant to the Chief Justice.
  MR. BUTTsaid, he should feel bound to support the Amendment if it should be pressed to a division. But he should rather see it so altered that the power of appointing the new revising barrister should be given to the three Chief Judges in Ireland instead of the Chief Justice of the Court of Queen's Bench. It appeared to him that by such an alteration additional security would be obtained against any abuse of the power.
  MR. HENLEYsaid, it had never fallen to his lot to hear that in appointing revising barristers the English Judges had been actuated by political considerations. The Attorney General for Ireland said the Judges were more under the influence of public opinion in England than in Ireland. Did he mean to infer that the Judges in his own country would not do right except under the influence of public opinion? If he did, such an expression of opinion on the part of the highest officer of the Crown in that country was entitled to considerable weight. Everybody knew these appointments did not, in fact, rest with the Lord Lieutenant, but with the Irish Secretary or some other person, who might be mixed up in the electioneering in the city of Dublin for the time being. These were offices which ought to be kept free from political partisanship. He thought that an important principle was involved in the Bill, and that the Amendment was entitled to the serious consideration of the Government. If the appointments were to rest with the Government, it would be impossible, even if the best men were selected, to convince the public that they had been made for any other but for political reasons. He therefore trusted the Government would allow the appointments to be placed in the hands of some independent functionary.
  MR. GREERobserved, that it seemed to be left out of consideration altogether that the decisions of the revising barrister were subject to appeal. There was no pretence for saying that the appointments of the Lord Lieutenant had been partisan appointments. That of Mr. O'Hara was not a partisan appointment. They would not find the Judges in Ireland always impartial. The appointment would be as well made by the Lord Lieutenant as any one else, under public opinion. But if there was to be a change, he did not see how the Lord Chancellor could be passed over.
  MR. NAPIERsaid, that he was willing to give the appointment to such of the Judges as the House should decide, so long

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  as it was taken from the hands of the Lord Lieutenant.
  MR. HILDYARDexpressed his regret that neither the Home Secretary nor any other Minister was present, because he should have liked to know the opinion of the Government upon the important point now raised. No portion of the Reform Bill had given greater satisfaction than that which took the appointment of the revising barristers out of the hands of the Government; and notwithstanding what had been stated respecting the feeling which led to the appointment of revising barristers in this country, he maintained that a proof that these gentlemen had performed their duty well was to be found in the insignificant number of appeals brought against their decision.
  MR. J. D. FITZGERALDsaid, that he wished to explain that he had no intention to cast any imputation upon the Judges in either country. He had merely said he had heard complaints as to some of the appointments made by the English Judges. After all, those Judges were but men liable to all the feelings and affections arising from relationship and connection, and who performed their duties better than other persons because they were operated upon by the coercive influence of public opinion, which had not so great an effect upon the Irish Judges.
  Question put, "That the words proposed to be left out stand part of the Clause."
  The Committee divided:—Ayes 88; Noes 63: Majority 25.
  MR. NAPIERsaid, if the Government would agree to place the appointments in the hands of the Judges, he would not press the other Amendment, of which he had given notice, and he believed the Bill would pass without further opposition. If not, as he considered the principle to be a very important one, he should wish to take the sense of a fuller House upon it, and he should therefore raise the question upon the bringing up of the Report. He moved that the Chairman report progress.
  MR. BUTTinquired if his hon. and learned Friend would adopt his suggestion for placing the appointment in the hands of the three Chief Justices in Ireland?
  MR. NAPIERsaid, he was willing to do so.
  MR. J. D. FITZGERALDexpressed a hope that as the hon. and learned Member intented to divide the House on bringing up the Report, he would not object to the Bill passing through Committee.
  COLONEL FRENCHthought that, in the
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  absence of any Cabinet Minister, the debate should be adjourned.
  MR. HORSMANhoped hon. Members would allow the Bill to go through Committee.
  MR. HENLEYrepeated that the Bill involved an important principle, and said he thought there was a better chance of having it fully discussed in Committee than upon the Motion for bringing up the Report.
  COLONEL FRENCHbelieved that if the noble Lord at the head of the Government was present, he would not have disregarded the suggestions which had been made by the opponents of the Bill in its present form.
  House resumed.
  Committee report progress; to sit again on Friday next.

  SLIGO (BOROUGH) ELECTION.
  House informed, that the Committee had determined,—
  That John Patrick Somers, esquire, is not duly elected a Burgess to serve in this present Parliament for the Borough of Sligo:
  That the Right honourable John Arthur Wynne is duly elected, and ought to have been returned a Burgess to serve in this pee-sent Parliament for the Borough of Sligo.
  And the said Determinations were ordered to be entered in the Journals of this House.

  IPSWICH ELECTION.
  House informed, that the Committee had determined,—
  That Hugh Edward Adair, esquire, is duly elected a Burgess to serve in this present Parliament for the Borough of Ipswich:
  That John Chevallier Cobbold, esquire, is duly elected a Burgess to serve in this present Parliament for the Borough of Ipswich.
  And the said Determinations were ordered to be entered in the Journals of this House.

  HUNTINGDON COUNTY ELECTION.
  House informed, that the Committee had determined,—
  That John Moyer Heathcote, esquire, is not duly elected a Knight of the Shire to serve in this present Parliament for the County of Huntingdon:
  That Edward Fellowes, esquire, is duly elected a Knight of the Shire to serve in this present Parliament for the County of Huntingdon.
  And the said Determinations were ordered to be entered in the Journals of this House.

  PARLIAMENTARY OATHS.—QUESTION.
  LORD JOHN RUSSELLgave notice that he would on Monday next move that a Select Committee be appointed to consider whether the provisions of the Act 5 & 6 Will. IV,, c. 62, were applicable to Oaths appointed by law to be taken by Members of that House at the Table previously to taking their seats, and in what manner the said Act would apply, and to report thereupon to the House. He would propose to name twenty-five members of the Committee, and that all Gentlemen of the Long Robe should be Members. He wished to ask the noble Lord at the head of the Government whether, as this question concerned the seat of a Member of that House, and as the Committee would have but a short time for their inquiry, he would allow the Motion precedence on Monday?
  VISCOUNT PALMERSTON, in reply, said, that although he was very unwilling to assent to any course which would delay the business at present before the House, he thought that under the special circumstances of the case he could hardly refuse to accede to his Noble Friend's request.

  EDUCATION.—QUESTION.
  SIR JOHN PAKINGTONsaid, he wished to move an Address to the Crown for the appointment of a Commission of Inquiry on the subject of Education, and as he believed the proposal would not be opposed by the Government, and the discussion was therefore likely to occupy a very short time, he would beg to ask whether the noble Lord at the head of the Government would afford him an opportunity of bringing forward the Motion on an early day—say Thursday or Friday next?
  VISCOUNT PALMERSTONsaid, he would consult his colleagues, and would answer the question of the right hon. Gentleman in the course of the evening.

POOR LAW GUARDIANS IN IRELAND.

  QUESTION.
  MR. MACARTNEYsaid, he wished to ask the Chief Secretary for Ireland Whether the Poor Law Commissioners for Ireland have come to any decision as to the legality or illegality of a paid Officer of a Union, and appointed a Magistrate,
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  and thereby becoming an Ex-officio Guardian, taking part in the proceedings, and voting on questions affecting his conduct and remuneration; and whether there is any objection to laying on the Table of the House a Copy of the Correspondence between the Middleton Board of Guardians and the Poor Law Commissioners, upon the right of Dr. Barry to vote as an Ex-officio Guardian, he being one of the paid Officers of the Union?
  MR. H. A. HERBERTsaid, in reply to the first inquiry, he had to observe that the question had not actually been raised before the Poor Law Commissioners in Ireland as regarded Officers of a Union generally, but with regard to a doctor of a Dispensary district who was a Magistrate, the question had been raised whether he had a right to sit as an Ex-officio Guardian; and the Poor Law Commissioners had given it as their opinion that he was legally entitled to sit as a Guardian; but that as a matter of propriety and decorum he ought not to vote on any question involving the management of his own Dispensary or the amount of his own salary. There was a clause in the English Poor Law Act prohibiting any party who received a salary out of the Poor Rates from voting as a Guardian; and it was a very serious question whether it would not be proper to extend that provision to Ireland. With regard to the second question, he had to state that there had been no communication in which Dr. Barry was named at all, that abstract questions had been put by the Clerk of the Middleton Union. If his hon. Friend moved for that paper, he should not object to its being laid on the Table.

TROOPS FOR THE RED RIVER.

  QUESTION.
  MR. ADDERLEYsaid, he would beg to ask the Under Secretary for War for what purpose Troops have been sent to the Red River?
  SIR JOHN RAMSDENsaid, the troops to which the hon. Gentleman had referred had been sent in order to replace a body of equal number whose term of service expired rather more than a year ago.

NOXIOUS TRADES AND NUISANCES.

  QUESTION.
  MR. ADDERLEYsaid, the First Commissioner of Works had stated on the previous day that by the Nuisances Removal

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  Act there was no power to prevent the noxious trades to which allusion was then made being carried on; and he wished now to ask Whether there is not full power, under the Act 16 & 17 Vict., c. 128, s. 1, to prevent any trade occasioning noxious effluvia in the metropolis above London Bridge, without using all practicable means for counteracting such annoyance to the neighbourhood?
  SIR GEORGE GREYsaid, by the Act to which the hon. Gentleman referred power was given to the Secretary of State to direct information to be laid against persons carrying on noxious trades within the limits of the Metropolis, but there was a Bill passed last Session which, after reciting that power, provided that no proceeding should be taken under the said Bill against other nuisances than smoke, unless it should appear that the local authorities had failed to take proceedings for the suppression of such nuisances. He understood that the local authorities concerned in the nuisances to which the hon. Gentleman called the attention of his right hon. Friend the First Commissioner of Works on the previous evening were the vestry of Lambeth, and the First Commissioner had brought the subject under their notice.

MAIL CONTRACT PACKETS.

  QUESTION.
  LORD NAASsaid, he wished to ask the Secretary to the Treasury What steps have been taken by her Majesty's Government in pursuance of the Report of the Committee on Contract Packets appointed under the Treasury Minute of 1st March, 1853; and whether it is now contemplated to grant an extension of any existing Contracts, notwithstanding the modifications recommended in that Report?
  MR. WILSONsaid, the Report to which the noble Lord referred contained a great number of recommendations, and one paragraph in it, having reference to the length of contracts for the postal service, pointed out the true principles on which the original contracts and the renewals of contracts were made. He was not aware how far those principles had been acted upon. Most of the services had been let for a long period. The contract with the Peninsular and Oriental Company was for no less than eight years, and that with the Royal West India Mail Company was for eleven years. They had no official proposal before the Treasury at present for he extension of any of those services.
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  Whenever they might have any such application before them it would be the time for them to consider whether it would be for the public advantage that any such extension should take place. Certainly on no other consideration would any extension take place; but at the present moment they had no such application before them.

THE BRITISH SCHOONER "MARIA."

  QUESTION.
  On the Motion, that the House at its rising do adjourn till Monday,
  MR. JOHN LOCKEsaid, he wished to call the attention of the House to the seizure of the British Schooner Maria in Venezuela, and to inquire whether Her Majesty's Government have received any satisfactory reply from Her Majesty's Chargé d' Affaires at Caraccas on the subject. Although very strong representations had been made to the Chargé d' Affaires on this subject by the Vice-Consul at Bolivar, the former official had taken no notice of them, and therefore he (Mr. Locke) had thought it right to bring the matter to the notice of the House. The schooner Maria, commanded by Captain Ouseley, traded with cattle between Demerara and Venezuela; and it appeared that, so far back as the 17th of February, 1856, she, being then in ballast, was anchored at Caraccas, at the mouth of the Orinoco, for the purpose of loading with cattle and carrying them to Venezuela. When she was so anchored there, the custom-house officers came on board, and, finding that the vessel was simply in ballast, proceeded to seize certain small articles belonging to Captain Ouseley, consisting of tweed, cotton, and other things. They insisted upon duty being paid, and fined him 100 dollars. The Vice Consul considered it was a breach of the law on the part of the authorities at Caraccas to fine Captain Ouseley 100 dollars for having these articles on board when the vessel was in ballast. However that might be, the fine was paid, and also the duty on the articles mentioned. The cholera was then raging at Caraccas, and Captain Ouseley determined to go further up the river. Having anchored his vessel, he went on shore in search of provisions, and took these articles with him. His boat was boarded by a canoe, all the articles were seized, and he was taken to Bolivar. He was there put in a boat and taken down the river to where the Maria lay at anchor. The vessel was seized and

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  carried back to Bolivar. It was not until a decree was obtained from the Court of Bolivar that the vessel was liberated, and when liberated the masts and rigging were found to have been destroyed. Captain Ouseley was unable to fulfil his contracts in Venezuela and Demerara, had been compelled to employ a lawyer to get the decree, and had been put to serious inconvenience and expenses, for which he claimed, as compensation, the sum of £3,000. Whether that claim was in amount right or wrong was not for him to decide; but Captain Ouseley was justified in complaining of the Chargé d' Affaires at Caraccas, who from that time to this had taken no notice whatever of his representations, or of the remonstrances of the Vice Consul. It must be obvious to every one that it was only to those deputed by the Government that traders in such places could look for protection, and therefore it was a case which imperatively demanded that the Government should call to account the Chargé d'Affaires at Caraccas.

  THE INDIAN ARMY.—QUESTION.
  SIR JOHN PAKINGTON SIR JOHN PAKINGTON rose, in pursuance of notice, to ask the First Lord of the Treasury whether he will lay upon the Table of the House the Report made by the late Lieutenant General Sir Charles Napier to the Duke of Wellington upon the organization, &c. of the Bengal Army. Perhaps the House might for a moment be of opinion that this question had already been put, and that the request had been already complied with, as they had a paper which purported to be an extract from the despatch of Sir C. Napier. But there was one paper which had been asked for, and which had not been adverted to in any one of the answers given upon this subject; and he had received private information of a reliable character, from which he believed that that paper which had not yet been produced was of very great importance. When the noble Lord at the head of the Government stated, in answer to the hon. and gallant Member for East Norfolk (General Windham) and his right hon. Friend the Member for Buckinghamshire (Mr. Disraeli), that the papers of the late Sir Charles Napier did not refer to the organization of the Bengal Army, but to the external defences of the country, he must say he thought at the time that the noble Lord was entirely mistaken. He (Sir J. Pakington) had reason to believe there were two distinct papers, of different
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  dates, from Sir C. Napier, to one of which the noble Lord had adverted, but the other of which he had not noticed. The question of his right hon. Friend the Member for Buckinghamshire referred to a Report made by the late Sir Charles Napier to the late Duke of Wellington, upon the stale of the Bengal Army, whereas the noble Lord spoke only of the external defences. He had felt it to be his duty to make inquiries again, lest he might have been deceived as to the existence of two Reports, and upon making those inquiries found his suspicions confirmed. He affirmed that two distinct Reports were made by Sir C. Napier, for he found that, although the Report of which the noble Lord spoke came to the Horse Guards, it was not made directly by Sir C. Napier to the Duke of Wellington, but was presented in the first instance to the Marquess of Dalhousie, and forwarded by the Marquess of Dalhousie to the Horse Guards. The Report presented to the House was written on the 27th of November, 1849, and in that despatch there was a passage which corroborated the statement which he had just made with respect to the existence of a second despatch. It ran thus:—
  "There are some things which admit of correction; this may be put right when the Commander in Chief is placed on a proper footing, but not till then. I shall consider this matter in another letter."
  It was to that other letter that all these inquiries had been directed, and to that other letter the noble Lord had not referred in any of the answers which he had given to the House. He was informed that it was written early in the year 1850—that it was a Report of considerable length—that it adverted in extenso to the organization of the Bengal Army, to the state of that army, to the grievances of which the troops complained, and to the remedy which Sir C. Napier thought ought to be afforded. If he were correctly informed, the Report went on to foretell the evils which would inevitably result, unless the Government with a bold hand dealt with the condition of the Bengal Army. He thought at least it was clear that, if the Government objected to the production of that Report, it could not be for the reason assigned for not producing the other—namely, that as it related to the external defences of India, the public interest required that it should not be produced. The Report which he now asked for had nothing to do with the external defences of India, but related exclusively to the condition of the Bengal Army. He could

  817
  not but think that, at this moment of exciting interest, a Report of so important a character would be most acceptable to Parliament. He therefore called the noble Lord's attention to what he conceived to be the misapprehension under which the noble Lord had answered former inquiries. He was sure the noble Lord had not intended to divert the attention of the House from one Report to another, and he was convinced the noble Lord was under some misapprehension with regard to this subject. He wished, therefore, to ask the noble Lord whether he was rightly informed that such a Report existed, and, if so, whether there would be any objection to lay it upon the table of the House?
  VISCOUNT PALMERSTONsaid, he wished to state, in answer to the question of the hon. and learned Member for Southwark (Mr. John Locke) that as soon as his noble Friend at the head of the Foreign Department became aware of the circumstances to which his hon. Friend has referred he put himself in communication with a commissioner from Venezuela, who was then in England, but who was about to return to his own country. Lord Clarendon stated to him what he had heard, and urged him to bring the matter under the serious attention of his Government immediately upon his return. Al the same time instructions were given to Her Majesty's Chargé d' Affaires at Venezuela to take whatever steps he might think necessary. Sufficient time had not yet elapsed to enable the Government to receive an answer to either of those communications, but he could assure his hon. and learned Friend that Lord Clarendon would adopt such measures as the case might appear to require. With respect to the question of the right hon. Baronet opposite, the House would remember that upon a former occasion he stated that the Report to which he understood the question of the right hon. Member for Bucks and the hon. and gallant Member for Norfolk to refer was, not a Report made to the Duke of Wellington by Sir Charles Napier, but one addressed by the latter to the Marquess of Dalhousie, of which a copy was sent in a private letter from Sir Charles Napier to the Duke of Welling ton. At the same time he stated that that Report did not relate to the organization of the Bengal Army, but reform generally to the external defences of India, more especially as connected with the recent acquisitions in the Punjab.
  818
  He told the House that there were passages in that Report which did relate to the condition and discipline of the Indian armies, and that he would lay those passages upon the table. That promise had been fulfilled this morning; but the right hon. Baronet now stated that the questions of the right hon. Member for Bucks and the hon. and gallant Member for Norfolk related to another and a subsequent Report, and in confirmation of that statement he had quoted one passage from the extracts which had been laid on the table, in which Sir Charles Napier said that his observations upon certain matters mentioned in his Report would be made in a subsequent letter. That letter the right hon. Baronet thought must have been addressed to the Duke of Wellington and not to the Marquess of Dalhousie, and must have been written some time in 1850. It was more probable, however, that the letter, if written, was addressed to the Marquess of Dalhousie and not to the Duke of Wellington, because the first document was a Report to the Governor General, and not to the Commander in Chief in England, with whom the Commander in Chief in India had no official connection. He had now to state to the House that when the questions of the right hon. Member for Bucks and the hon. and gallant Member for Norfolk were first put he made inquiries and was informed that the Report to which his answer related, and from which he had given extracts, was the only Report found at the Horse Guards to answer the description which had been given, and that even this was only found after some delay among private papers. After the statement of the right hon. Baronet, however, he would make more minute inquiries, and if there was such a paper as that to which allusion had been made, and if it contained nothing more than what the right hon. Baronet supposed, he was not aware that there would be any objection to its production; but of course he must read it before he could make any promise on the subject.
  MR. WHITESIDEsaid, he rose to call the attention of the House to the petition of the Hindoo inhabitants of Bengal, Behar, and Orissa, for themselves and the other Hindoo inhabitants of the said provinces, in the Appendix to Report from Select Committee on Indian territories, 1853, p. 429. In connection with this petition he was desirous, however, of bringing

  819
  under the notice of the House the following passage in a communication addressed by Major General Hearsay, to the Deputy Adjutant General of the Bengal Army, and dated, Barrackpore, January 28, 1857:—
  "I beg leave to report for the information of Government that an ill-feeling is said to subsist in the minds of the Sepoys of the regiments at Barrackpore. A report has been spread by some designing persons, most likely Brahmins or agents of the religious Hindoo party in Calcutta (I believe it is called the Dhurma Sobha), that they (the Sepoys) are to be forced to embrace the Christian faith."
  In the fourth paragraph of the same communication the writer said:—
  "Perhaps those Hindoos who are opposed to the marriage of widows in Calcutta are using underhand means to thwart Government in abolishing the restraints lately removed by law for the marriage of widows, and conceive if they can make a party of the ignorant classes in the ranks of the army believe their religion or religious prejudices are eventually to be abolished by force, and by force they are all to be made Christians, and thus, by shaking their faith in Government, lose the confidence of their officers by inducing Sepoys to commit offences (such as incendiarism) so difficult to put a stop to or to prove, they will gain their object."
  He (Mr. Whiteside), however, had been informed by a gentleman who had resided fifteen years in Calcutta that these statements of Major General Hearsey were to the last degree improbable. The society referred to in the first extract, he had told him, contained some of the largest landed proprietors, the most distinguished literary persons, and the wealthiest native merchants in Calcutta—men who might be truly said to represent the public and the Natives of that vast territory, and it would be most unfortunate indeed if those powerful and influential persons had really turned against us, inasmuch as we might find it very difficult to hold the country against them. What Major General Hearsey doubtless referred to was a matter of some importance. It had been stated more than once on the part of the East India Directors that they had passed no law except one dealing with what they called the atrocious practice of depriving a man converted to Christianity of his inheritance, and the Chairman had assured the House that no interference had taken place with caste,—a point of great importance, because it affected the opinions and actions of 100,000,000 of people. The Marquess of Dalhousie had taken credit to himself for the passing of the law in question; but according to the
  820
  statement of the gentleman to whom he had already referred, that law had caused greater alarm and apprehension over the whole territory belonging to the East India Company than any other which had been enacted since England obtained sway in that country. The words of the Act were:—
  "So much of any law or usage now in force within the territories subject to the East India Company as inflicts on any person forfeiture of rights or property, or may be held in any way to impair or affect any right of inheritance, by reason of his or her renouncing or having been excluded from the communion of any religion, or being deprived of caste, shall cease to be enforced as law in the courts of the East India Company and in the courts established by Royal charter within the same territories."
  What happened when the law was passed in 1850? All the chief landed proprietors, wealthy merchants, and eminent literary persons in Calcutta addressed a memorial against it to the East India Company. The Directors promised to take their representations into consideration, but they did not do so, and the memorial—which though emanating from Hindoos, was one of the most masterly papers he had ever read—was sent to Parliament. It had very likely been forgotten by the House, but was extremely important as expressing the opinions of wealthy and powerful Hindoos. The memorialists, or petitioners, went deeply into all the questions involved in the obnoxious law, which they strongly condemned as a breaking down of every barrier which religion, law, and custom had raised for the protection of Hindoo society, citing instances in which its operation would wound them in their tenderest and most cherished feelings. The petitioners stated that they had no objection to the Act so far as it applied to persons who had lost caste by a change of religion, but that there were many other ways in which caste might be lost—for instance, by neglect of the ceremonies in honour of the dead, and adultery on the part of a woman. In short, they regarded the Act in its entirety as subversive of Hindoo society, and they added that they did not feel called upon to defend their religion, which had been handed down to them from their ancestors, and which was the religion of 100,000,000 of people. That petition emanated from some of the first men in Calcutta—not from armed Sepoys who had deserted their colours, but from men of station, wealth, and intelligence. He thought the petition was very suggestive, and well worthy of the consideration

  821
  of Parliament, and therefore, he should move at a later period that that Appendix be reprinted.
  MR. VERNON SMITHremarked that he thought the hon. and learned Gentleman had taken a course which went beyond even the usual licence of discussion upon the question of adjournment, for, having given notice of his intention to move for the reprinting of a petition presented in 1853, he had proceeded at once to discuss that petition before the document had been made known to the House. Had he (Mr. Vernon Smith) been aware of the hon. and learned Gentleman's intention he should have been prepared to answer more fully his observations, but there was one matter which he was desirous of noticing at once. The hon. and learned Gentleman seemed to impute some indiscretion to General Hearsey, a distinguished officer of the Bengal army, but one of the very last men who would make any imputation upon the Hindoos that he did not believe to be correct. That officer was married to a Hindoo lady, and was without doubt one of the most popular officers in India; and his popularity was based upon his thorough acquaintance with the language and habits of the people. With respect to the Act to which the hon. and learned Gentleman referred, it was true that it was passed in 1850, but it was intended as the development of an Act of 1832, and it was so stated in the preamble of the Act of 1850. A petition was afterwards presented in 1853 to the Committee, and evidence was taken, but nothing had been done since then, as far as he (Mr. Vernon Smith) was aware, by the petitioners or the Society referred to, to counteract the effect of the Act, nor had they addressed the Court of Directors upon it. The Court of Directors in 1851 intimated their entire approval of the provisions of the Act. Upon the 9th of April, 1850, the Marquess of Dalhousie wrote as follows:—
  "The Government will, doubtless, continue as heretofore to administer to Hindoos the general body of Hindoo law; but I conceive that the Government will not do its duty if it leaves unchanged any portion of that law which inflicts personal injury on any one by reason of his religious belief. In now acting on this principle I can see no semblance of interference with the religion of the Hindoos, nor any unauthorised interference with rights secured to them."
  That was the opinion of the Marquess of Dalhousie, and he (Mr. Vernon Smith) also deprecated any interference with the religious feelings of the Hindoos; but at the same
  822
  time he would caution the House against fanaticism of another kind, which would leave the convert to Christianity exposed to loss of rights and privileges. They had been proceeding in one direction for some time, but he hoped there would not be a reaction in the opposite extreme, and that we should not permit Christian converts to be persecuted because of their conversion. He admitted that the policy of the Act of 1850 might be a doubtful matter, and that upon a future occasion it might be necessary to remodel it, and place the whole subject upon a better footing; but he hoped the House would not proceed upon an isolated act, but would treat it as a great question that ought not to be frittered away by partial dealing with particular portions.
  MR. AYRTONobserved, that he considered it to be important that the House should be aware of the impression which prevailed in India, of the document that had been referred to. When Sir C. Napier came from India he had a communication with the Duke of Wellington, who desired him to place his ideas respecting the Bengal Army in writing. Sir C. Napier did so, and the memorandum he furnished was forwarded to the Marquess of Dalhousie for his explanation. Those explanations were of such a character that it was not thought necessary to take any further steps in the matter. Such was the impression that prevailed abroad, and it would be desirable to know whether it was a correct impression or not.
  SIR EDWARD COLEBROOKEsaid, it was his intention, in addressing the House the other evening, to have alluded to this subject, and to have quoted the opinions, not merely of those persons who felt themselves to be aggrieved by this law, but of other gentlemen of great respectability and impartiality, who felt that great dissatisfaction had arisen in India through the operation of the law referred to by the hon. and learned Gentleman (Mr. Whiteside) They had given Imperial pledges that they would maintain the Hindoo and Mahomedan laws of inheritance, and in other especial particulars. It was true that, on the other hand, it was hard that converts to Christianity should be deprived of their rights to property in consequence of their conversion. The feelings of the Hindoos, however, were strong and their prejudices rooted, and without wishing to give undue prominence to the matter, he could not but believe that the law in question had been one among other causes of the wide-spread feeling of

  823
  discontent which prevailed throughout Hindostan, under the belief that the Government intended to interfere with the exercise of their religion. Then, again, about three years ago a despatch was laid before Parliament changing the fundamental principles upon which education was carried out in India. The former policy was to adopt the purely secular system of education, but the despatch in question introduced the whole system of Privy Council grants to all sects and religions and to every missionary establishment throughout the country. The other day a noble Lord in another place referred to the fact that Viscount Canning had given money in aid of missionary institutions in India. The reply to this was that he had distributed none of the public money for that purpose. But the Natives of India were unable to make any distinction between the public and private acts of the Governor General, and therefore he thought any distribution of money for missionary purposes by Viscount Canning was in the highest degree objectionable. A few nights ago his right hon. Friend (Mr. Vernon Smith) spoke in terms of censure of Colonel Wheeler for having endeavoured to spread Christianity in his regiment; but when the heads of the Government set the example, with what consistency could they find fault with their servants? When the Government of India set an example to their servants in this matter we need not be surprised to find that example imitated. He believed, however, that the right hon. Gentleman the President of the Board of Control had acted under the pressure of the House. He felt it his duty to state his opinions to the House on this matter, because he regarded it as one of very great importance. He entreated the Government to take the subject into their serious consideration, for he believed that this, in connection with other causes, had had no slight effect in producing a feeling among the population of India, the consequences of which had been developed so alarmingly in the Native army of Bengal.
  MR. MANGLES, after the fair and proper manner in which the hon. and learned Member (Mr. Whiteside) had brought forward this subject, felt bound to admit in the frankest manner that he (Mr. Mangles) was wrong in what he had stated the other day. He had spoken from memory, and had not seen the law to which the hon. and learned Gentleman referred for several years, and he was misled by the circumstance
  824
  that in the Committee of 1853 one or two gentlemen, one of them a barrister from Calcutta, gave evidence favourable to the views of the society in this matter. The subject of conversion to Christianity and the retention of property by the converts was pointed at, but he did not remember that the question of loss of caste was at all raised. The gentleman to whom he had alluded contended, on the authority of one Sanders, that those who became converts to Christianity might expect to suffer persecution and the loss of their property, and that, therefore, the converts in India had no right to complain if, in becoming Christians and earning all the advantages attached to that profession, they suffered the disadvantages also, one of which was the loss of their worldly goods. He must apologise to the hon. and learned Gentleman, but he hoped he had not contradicted him with anything like rudeness. The law, he might observe, was as applicable to Mahomedans as to Christians. It was intended to save converts from the loss of their property, and he still thought that the law was a wise and a just one.
  SIR CHARLES WOODsaid, the hon. Baronet had made an attack on the Minute of Education of 1854, which was drawn up, and for which he (Sir C. Wood) was responsible, when he was President of the Board of Control, and he had totally misapprehended the facts when he stated that that Minute was drawn up under any pressure whatever. It was considered with great deliberation, and adopted after having been submitted to the whole Court of Directors. Persons best acquainted with India were consulted on the subject, and they all agreed in opinion that no danger could result from carrying out that Minute to its fullest extent. He would read one or two extracts from the document to show that it was not in any sense open to the charge of introducing a proselytising spirit in India. There was not the slightest feeling against the missionaries as missionaries; but what was very properly objected to was that there should be any attempt on the part of Government or persons in authority acting with Government to endeavour to proselytise in any way whatever. That was an opinion which he very strongly held; it was held by all the members of the Government, and he could truly say that they had ever shown the most scrupulous abstinence from everything that could be construed into interference with the religion of the people of

  825
  India, whether Mahomedans or Hindoos. The Minute with reference to the Government schools stated that "it was and is indispensable that the education coveyed in these schools should be exclusively secular." Then, with reference to grants in aid, which were given to the schools of all denominations, whether Christian, Jew, Mahomedan, or Hindoo, it was stated, "The system of grants in aid will be based on an entire abstinence from all interference with the religious instruction conveyed in the schools assisted." Requests for aid in certain cases were refused, as being opposed to the religious neutrality to which they had always adhered. It was provided that "schools conducted by all denominations of Christians, Hindoos, Mahomedans, Parsees, Budhists, Jews, or any other religious persuasion, may be affiliated to the Universities." Now, he did not know how it was possible to carry out more completely the principles of religious equality in the schools than was laid down in this Minute, there being, as he had shown, the most careful abstinence from all interference with the religion taught in those schools.
  Motion agreed to; House at rising to adjourn till Monday next.

DIVORCE AND MATRIMONIAL CAUSES BILL.—SECOND READING.

  ADJOURNED DEBATE.
  Order read, for resuming Adjourned Debate on Amendment proposed to Question [30th July], "That the Bill be now read a second time;" and which Amendment was, to leave out the word "now," and at the end of the Question to add the words, "upon this day three months."
  Question again proposed, "That the word 'now' stand part of the Question."
  Debate resumed.
  MR. GLADSTONE: Sir, in justification of the course which was adopted last week, when a considerable portion of this House demanded further time for the consideration of the marriage question, I could not appeal to anything more conclusive than the course which the present debate had taken. Last week my noble Friend at the head of the Government, when he was told that the subject could not be properly considered by the House in the present period and circumstances of the Session, said, on the contrary, that there was no reason why the debate should not be conducted with the same earnestness,
  826
  force, and effect as at any other time, adding that if necessary the duration of the Session might be extended for an unlimited period. Now, last night what did we witness? No unkindness, undoubtedly, on the part of the House, but such a degree of lassitude as was entirely unconquerable, and such as made it scarcely possible for any hon. Gentleman to state his opinions to the House. After the speech of my hon. and learned Friend the Attorney General, with the single exception of the hon. Member for Hertfordshire (Mr. Puller), eight hon. Gentlemen in succession—a circumstance unparalleled in my experience—spoke on the same side of this question, not wanting certainly—if I may presume to say so; and I will not speak of their ability—in earnestness in expressing their views upon the subject. Its magnitude was admitted—its novelty not denied, and yet on one side of the House it remained wholly undebated. This extraordinary course of proceeding was at length consummated into a climax, when the Secretary of State for the Home Department actually complained that a division did not take place last night, and spoke of premeditation as having been evinced to invole the debate in difficulties. [Sir G. GREY: I never saw clearer signs of predetermination]. My right hon. Friend, as I understand, adheres to the expression, and is not sorry that he used it. He says he never saw clearer signs of predetermination. But were the signs on the part of those who under circumstances so discouraging were discharging their conscientious obligations, or were they on the part of those who, with this great, this new subject before them, remained systematically silent in order that the House might arrive at a division? I do not want to make any charge, or to lay any blame upon any one. This is too serious and too sad a subject to be connected with the recriminations of party, or to be made the occasion of an attack upon any Government. It is not a subject on which to make concessions to party, and what I have said I have said not to throw censure upon any one, but to show the justice of the appeal of those who have urged that it was impossible to do justice to this subject in this Session and under the circumstances in which it is pressed upon our attention. It may be said that the debate was all on one side, because the speeches of those who were opposed to the Bill of the Government contained nothing which

  827
  deserved an answer. That is language which may be applied to any debate, but it is enough to say that that is not the view taken by many hon. Members not the least entitled to attention in this House. We are not attended to when we say that the circumstances under which this Bill is pressed forward are unprecedented and unusual; nor when we urge that those who oppose the Bill do so in deference not only to their own sense of duty, but also to the strong feeling which is entertained upon the subject by the great mass of their fellow subjects, and that we are required to discuss one of the most difficult of all propositions at a period of the year when no such proposal has ever before been made to Parliament, We are not attended to when we say that there has not been time to lay before the House the ordinary information in the shape of facts and statistics with which it is usual to furnish it, when called upon to legislate on important matters, but I hope we shall be attended to when we urge that the House is proceeding in entire ignorance of the strong feeling upon this subject which exists among the people wherever it has been brought before them. It is vain to say that they ought to have known of this Bill before. The circulation of intelligence is not very rapid after all the accelerations of modern days, if we mean by that the bringing home of any subject to the minds of the people; but still a strong feeling has been excited, and I must take up the attention of the House for a few moments in showing how very recently the people out of doors have been made acquainted with the action of the Legislature on this Bill. I have received letters from different parts of the country, stating that it would have been easy to obtain very numerously signed petitions against this Bill, but that seeing the manner in which the Government were determined to press it forward it was deemed useless. One gentleman writes from Cornwall that if it were not for the shortness of the time he could get his petition signed by eight-tenths of the population of the parish. He says that the labouring classes are against the Bill to a man, and also a large proportion of the middle classes. Another writes from Lincolnshire, that the Bill, as it came down from the Lords, is thoroughly hateful in the eyes of the great mass of the middle classes and the poor, eminently so amongst all Church people, but very markedly so amongst religious Dissenters. From Suffolk I learn that all classes are
  828
  against the Bill, one poor man making the remark, that instead of the marriage vow running "until death do us part," it should be, "until we two quarrel." The writer who forwards a petition, adds, that the signatures would be trebled if a little more time were allowed. Another writes from Wantage that it would be impossible to exaggerate the state of feeling in his district. In short, I am certain that neither the Government nor the Parliament has any conception of the danger that exists of tampering with this law, or of the number of honest men, fathers of families, who are hostile to the change proposed. I dare say that you will tell me that these people do not understand the nature of the provisions of this Bill; but can there possibly be a stronger reason for asking for time to consider them? I do not doubt that such is the case. I have seen signs in the petitions that even some among the best educated classes do not understand the provisions of this Bill. Surely, then, it is inconsistent with the general policy of Parliament, with prudence, and I may almost say with decency, that such a measure should be forced on. And what is the reason for forcing it on? It is not, surely, the importance of settling a question by the delay of which one or two or three individuals may be affected? My noble Friend the Member for King's Lynn (Lord Stanley), who seemed to know a great deal more about our motives than we know ourselves, told us most ingenuously that his reason for not wishing to delay the Bill was, we might be able to show that we had done something, that we should not be compelled to present a blank roll of legislation to the country. That is my noble Friend's reason for pressing forward the Bill, under the present unfavourable circumstances. But we have no right, I maintain, to make a character and reputation for the House by passing a most important measure without the full consideration and importance it demands, simply because it is pressed upon us by the Government. We are not to hurry on an important subject lest it should be said out of doors that we are idle, and lest in the estimation of the public we should lose caste. Are we likely to recover or preserve our estimation in the country by such an attempt to keep up appearances? No! Believe me, our estimation in the country depends not on the quantity and rapidity, but on the quality and wisdom and stability of our

  829
  legislation. We are told that we cannot approach this question, more particularly considering the position in which we are placed by the previous practice of Parliament, without considering the alternatives. As has been stated by my hon. and learned Friend the Attorney General, we have been in the habit of passing private divorce Acts, and those private Acts for a, long period have passed without objection. I do not at all dissemble that this constitutes a real and serious difficulty in the matter; but this I do say, that of the three alternatives before us,—the passing of this Bill, continuing to pass private Acts as before until we see our way better before us, or the stopping of these private Acts altogether, the alternative of passing this Bill is immeasurably the most dangerous. I frankly own I have never seen greater signs—and I mean to adduce some of those signs—of what may be called a crude state of the Parliamentary mind upon this subject. I plead guilty to it myself. It is only during the present year that I have found leisure to inquire into this subject, and I do not feel prepared to pass a deliberate opinion upon it until we have had more time for consideration. We are told in the public journals that ten minutes', some say half an hour's, consideration will suffice to settle the question. Such suggestions as these may prove the rashness with which some men would undertake to decide the most sacred and solemn questions, but they do not tend to diminish the real difficulties of the case, nor do they avail to guard us from the future embarrassment into which such rashness would most assuredly lead us. It has been said, why have you not objected to the private Bills?—and the inference sought to be drawn from our not objecting to those Bills is, that we ought not to oppose the Bill now before us. My answer to that argument is, that when Parliament has entered into a course of passing private Bills in the nature of privilegia for individuals, it ceases to be competent, morally competent at least, to take an effectual objection to any one of those private Bills. We had a strong instance of this the other day in the case of Shepherd's Disabilities Bill, for which there had been but four or five precedents; but it was argued that by passing previous Bills of the sort, Parliament had constituted to this individual a right of expecting that, the same Bill should be passed in his instance; and it was said that, however
  830
  much we objected, we must be content to pass this Bill and afterwards to raise the general question. There is nothing more certain in the history of this question—and this is one of the many inaccuracies in what I must call the very inaccurate speech of the Attorney General, to which I shall have to draw the attention of the House—than that this fixed system has been so little fixed that, whenever the practice of passing divorce Bills has at any period shown a tendency to grow frequent, there has been a strong Parliamentary reaction with a view to check the pressure. Twice during the last century and once towards the close of the last century attempts were made to limit the practice. I grant that they were defeated, and that the practice attained a certain extension; but, surely, the very fact that private persons never could come before Parliament and claim these divorces ex debito justitiœ ought to be a sufficient proof of the absolute necessity for a full discussion of the case before entering on a new course of proceeding. When, instead of repeating to-day what was done yesterday, we enter upon a now system and take a new starting point, then it is that, by every consideration of justice and propriety, you are not only entitled but bound to examine into the whole matter, and to entreat the House to consider the people upon which it is about to act. Now, it may be said that the two statements, that there is great danger in precipitancy, and that there is a strong feeling in the country against this measure and no strong feeling in its favour, are antagonistic, because it may be urged that if we legislate hastily, still if the public are not blindly in favour of the measure, if they are strongly opposed to it, it will be easy to retrace our steps. In my opinion, to rely upon such a representation would be to trust to a very gross fallacy. The feeling of the country may be, as I believe from the very imperfect evidence which we have been allowed to collect it is, against this measure; but if the Bill be passed, although an overwhelming majority of Christian husbands and wives may be against it, you will have constituted an interest in behalf of certain parties who will become, as it were, an entire sect in favour of such laws, both for their maintenance and for their extension, and the prescriptive right which they will have acquired in consequence of your legislation, will make it impossible for you to correct

  831
  the results of any hasty and precipitate decision. Now, Sir, what is the effect of the Bill before us?—because it is sometimes said, and in a certain sense it is said with truth, that it is a Bill of moderate scope and extent, the operation of which is to deal with marriage as a whole and in all its characters. But what are the characters of marriage? They are admirably described in a passage by Lord Stowell, an authority whom we need never apologize for quoting in this House, because there is no passage in his works which I have seen which will not repay any attention that may be bestowed upon it. Lord Stowell admirably discriminates the threefold character of marriage. He says:—
  "As the law of nature, it was antecedent to the formation of society, and an important but a mere personal contract between the two parties. When society was formed it became not only a personal but a civil contract, connected with civil privileges and obligations. When religious principles were received in a State the marriage became also a religious contract, accompanied with plighted vows, and calling upon Heaven to witness them. The idea that the marriage contract was indissoluble was taken from the construction put upon certain texts of Scripture."—Hansard, Parl. History, xxxv. 306.
  Thus Lord Stowell clearly distinguishes between marriage as a personal engagement between individuals antecedent to and independent of political society, the civil sanction which the laws and institutions of society give to it, and the religious character which it acquires in virtue of the institutions of the Christian religion. A good deal of the difficulty with which we have to contend arises from the circumstance that this House, not, so far as I can judge, sufficiently qualified for the purpose, undertakes to deal with marriage in all these three characters. By this Bill it undertakes not only to deal with the civil consequences and obligations of marriage, which I believe we should find matter of comparatively easy solution, but also to determine the effect of and to cancel solemn vows between two individuals upon which a union for life has been stipulated to depend; and lastly, not being to my knowledge invested with any theological authority, it sets itself up as a square and measure of the consciences of men. It undertakes to determine the religious obligations of marriage and to say when the rite solemnized in the face of the congregation and of God shall cease to have effect, when it shall be repealed, and when that, which the Apostle declared to be a great mystery of Christianity,
  832
  shall be dealt with by the House of Commons; and it also asserts that it rests with that House to say what view is to be taken of that mystery by the intelligence and the consciences of men. A great deal of our difficulty arises from the undue scope of the measure in that respect, and great would be not only the relief to my own mind, but the mitigation of the practical evils connected with this measure, if we were content to legislate simply with regard to the civil consequences and the civil responsibilities of marriage. Because, if a man is to fancy himself in the unhappy position of those who are included in this Bill, is there one of us who really thinks that the vows which we have taken in the face of our God are affected in their force by the legislation of this House. I must confess that there is no legend, there is no fiction, there is no speculation, however wild, that I should not deem it rational to admit into my mind rather than allow what I conceive to be one of the most degrading doctrines that can be propounded to civilized men—namely, that the Legislature has power to absolve a man from spiritual vows taken before God. Having thus generally described the great defect of the Bill, I will touch upon some of the assertions of my hon. and learned Friend the Attorney General. He says that although technically there is no code of law upon this subject of marriage, yet, in point of fact, the proceedings of the Legislature with regard to it are really judicial, and are founded upon rules which practically constitute a code, which is as well ascertained as that of any other branch of the law, and which has been in operation in that form for 200 years. That is, to say the least of it, a very loose and inaccurate statement. This system has not been in operation, as a system, for 200 years. It has been in a state of growth from its earliest seeds for something like that time, but it is not 100 years since it grew to its present state. Nay, is it a system yet? My hon. and learned Friend says that it is a code as well ascertained as are the rules of any other branch of the law. Is that true? What says the Standing Order of the House of Lords, to which, if it be a code, we must look to discover its provisions? The Standing Order of the Lords says:—
  "Ordered by the Lords Spiritual and Temporal in Parliament assembled that no Bill grounded on a petition to this House to dissolve a marriage for the cause of Adultery, and to enable the petitioner

  833
  to marry again, shall be received by this House unless a provision be inserted in such Bill that it shall not be lawful for the person, whose marriage with the petitioner shall be dissolved, to intermarry with any offending party on account of whose adultery with such person it shall be therein enacted that such marriage shall be so dissolved."
  Exception is made in cases in which the other offending party is dead, and it is ordered,—
  "That such Order be declared a Standing Order, and entered on the roll of the Standing Orders of this House, printed and published, so that all persons may the better take notice of the same."
  That is the Standing Order of the House of Lords. Every Divorce Bill is introduced into that House with a clause of this description, and from every such Bill that clause has, for a number of years, been struck out. Thus the Standing Order and the practice of the House of Lords are at variance upon this vital point, as many persons regard it, of the intermarriage or remarriage of the guilty parties, and yet my hon. and learned Friend tells us that the code of procedure in these matters is as well established as that of any other branch of the law. My hon. and learned Friend says that divorce is a principle of the Reformation. I will come to that by and by but he also said, I think, that the indissolubility of marriage depended upon its being a sacrament. [The ATTORNEY GENERAL: No!] My hon. and learned Friend was not so distinct upon that subject as he was in most parts of his speech. I am glad that he contradicts me. He at least abandons—[The ATTORNEY GENERAL: No!] I was not going to say that my hon. and learned Friend abandons any thing which he said, but he disclaims the doctrine that the indissolubility of marriage depends upon its being a sacrament, and therefore abandons the doctrine upon which most of the promoters of the Bill have taken their principal stand.
  THE ATTORNEY GENERAL: The indissolubility of marriage was certainly the rule long before the Council of Trent, but that Council enunciated the doctrine for the first time in 1561. [Mr. BOWYER: No!] So we Protestants say.
  MR. GLADSTONE: The point upon which my hon. and learned Friend is a issue with the hon. Member for Dundalk does not touch that with which I am dealing. If you look to the Report of the Commission upon which this Bill is mainly founded you will find that there the question is made to hang essentially upon the
  834
  sacramental character of marriage. It is there contended that in Roman Catholic times marriage was indissoluble because it was a sacrament, and that ceasing to be held as a sacrament at the Reformation, it therefore ceased to be considered indissoluble. That doctrine has been repeated by great authorities elsewhere. It is a doctrine entirely void of foundation. The Council of Trent has declared that, so far as the opinion of the Church of Rome is concerned, marriage is indissoluble independently of its sacramental character; and, upon the other hand, the whole Eastern Church, by which marriage is held to be a sacrament, hold it to be dissoluble. So much for the connection between the indissolubility of marriage and its sacramental character. I think my hon. and earned Friend cannot say that I paid him a bad compliment in congratulating him upon having embarked no part of his fortunes in so crazy a craft as a theory of that description. My hon. and learned Friend says that this Bill makes no change in the law, but that it reduces to legislative form that which has had a legislative effect for a long series of years. I do not want to enter upon verbal controversies when we have so much substantial matter to debate, and therefore I will not trouble the House by quoting the authority not only of persons who have questioned this Bill, but that of the Commission which reported in 1853, and which declared that the dissolution of marriage is unknown to the law of England. But let me grant for argument sake to my hon. and learned Friend that the principles upon which Divorce Bills have hitherto been based are likewise the principles of the present measure, does it follow that he is justified in. asserting that he is introducing no new law? To my mind, Sir, it is impossible there can be a grosser fallacy. If I grant to him that the Bill has Parliamentary precedent, yet I say it introduces entirely a new law for the purposes to which it is addressed. What does it contemplate? Does it merely propose a continuance of the precedents upon which my hon. and learned Friend rests his case? Is not this the very groundwork of the Bill—that heretofore we have limited the power of obtaining divorces to the wealthiest classes in the country? And that is true. I believe there is on record the case of a Mr. Chippendale, or some such name, who was allowed to sue in formâ pauperis; but, speaking generally, your Law (if you

  835
  like to call it a law) was strictly limited to the highest classes of this country—such as could afford to pay a large sum to set it in operation. But what is my hon. and learned Friend going to do? He is going to give you a law under which divorce is to be made accessible to all classes of the community. Is not that a new law? You have got upon your Statute-book an Act which provides that the members of the Royal Family shall not be permitted to marry except after a certain time and without the consent of the Sovereign. But that is not a principle of the British law for the whole community; it is a principle of one law for the Royal Family and for them alone; and so also this code about which my hon. and learned Friend speaks, and under which he says a principle of law has been established, is a code as entirely foreign to the British nation as the Act regulating the marriages of the Royal Family. Your middle classes, your lower classes, care no more for it than if, instead of being a code for the use of the nobility and high gentry of England, it had been established for the use of the inhabitants of the planet Jupiter. Multitudes of them do not even know of its existence—nay, there are many clergymen even who are ignorant of its existence. The fact of the occurrence every year of one or two of these Divorce Bills limited to particular classes of Society has had no more effect upon the mass of the British people than if no Divorce Bill had ever passed. I am most anxious. Sir, to make this assertion broadly, because it is vital to the whole case. The hon. and learned Gentleman says he is bringing forward no new law. Well, I won't argue with him whether it is a new law as regards that infinitesimal part of England to which it applies, but I say the present Bill pledges him to carry divorce to the door of all men of all classes, and his law, therefore, is as completely novel to all intents and purposes as if the first Bill of divorce, passed in the case of Lord Roos, in the reign of Charles II., had never been introduced into Parliament, and had never been followed up by others to pander to the passions of society. My hon. and learned Friend has gone at some length into a Scripture argument. He felt it, and justly so, to be a necessity of his position, because, as he is dealing with the highest spiritual matters, and is calling upon us to say under what law the clergy are to act in future, I am not surprised
  836
  that he did not follow the example of the Commission of 1853, and leave the question of Scripture in the background, dealing simply with the abstract question of divorce. Sir, I shall enter into that theological argument under protest. It is impossible to conduct it in this House as it should be conducted. We are not competent to do so. I am obliged to say, with great respect, that my hon. and learned Friend is not competent; and a fortiori, therefore, I myself am much less so. I think it very hard that we should be called upon to pass Bills in such a form that we are incompetent to deal with the reasons upon which they are founded. The patience of this House could not possibly allow time or opportunity for the discussion of a Scripture argument. That is a matter for the closet of divines or a synod of theologians; it is not a discussion which can be entered into by a popular assembly. Under compulsion, however, I am obliged to touch that argument—rudely, inadequately, and unsatisfactorily to myself, as I must needs touch it. My hon. and learned Friend pointed out with great exultation, and I must ask his attention here. [The ATTORNEY GENERAL (who was conversing with his neighbour on the Treasury bench)—I am listening.] Oh, I do not doubt my hon. and learned Friend's ability to do two things at once, or, indeed, any number of things at once. My hon. and learned Friend, then, pointed with great exultation to what he seemed to consider fundamental discrepancies among certain authorities who are opposed to this Bill. He laboured to show, with respect to the single Greek word imported into this debate, that Mr. Keble had given it one construction, Mr. Baddeley a second, and a writer in the Quarterly Review a third construction, considering it as "idolatry or apostasy." [The ATTORNEY GENERAL: I quoted a fourth from old authorities.] Yes, but I am dealing with new authorities, and with the newest of all—namely, my hon. and learned Friend in his speech of yesterday. He quoted those three writers, and said they gave three different constructions. Now, in the first place, as regards the Quarterly Review, which I hold in my hand, my hon. and learned Friend is totally inaccurate. The reviewer does not give the meaning of "apostasy or idolatry" to the term ; he discusses the various meanings assigned by other persons without giving his judg-

  837
  ment in favour either of one or the other. My hon. and learned Friend told us yesterday that unfortunately an Attorney General could only devote now and then a stray half hour, stolen from his other laborious duties, to the study of this question. Undoubtedly, that is a great misfortune to my hon. and learned Friend, and a still greater one to the House, because the natural consequence is that even when he refers to such a work as this my hon. and learned Friend is unable to quote it accurately. If he will look at the Review he will find a passage where certainly the interpretation which he brought forward is treated of, but if he had read any other parts of the article he would have found that other interpretations are also discussed, and that, as I have said, no decision is given between one or the other. What I want to point out, however, is this: My hon. and learned Friend quoted these three constructions as if they had been mutually destructive of one another, whereas the fact is that all agree in the one essential point, namely, whether the words of exception in St. Matthew refer to a peculiar law of the Jews which was transitory in its character, and which, therefore, does not apply to Christians. Now, I challenge my hon. and learned Friend to contradict me when I say that accepting all those constructions whether of "idolatry and apostasy," "adultery," or "marriage with a foreign woman," in each of these respects the Jews had peculiar laws, and whichever interpretation of the term you adopt it is susceptible of reference to the peculiar law of the Jews, and is, therefore, equally capable of proving that the words of St. Matthew concerned the Jews only and had no bearing upon the case of Christians. My hon. and learned Friend spoke of discrepancies among those who hold that the best interpretation of Scripture is that which makes marriage indissoluble, mid every one must admit the extreme difficulty of Considering those terms which it has now become a matter of very nice criticism to elucidate. But what is his case? Here is a Bill which rests on the ground of Scripture. Two Gentlemen have spoken in favour of it, the hon. and learned Attorney General and the hon. Member for Hertfordshire (Mr. Puller). How do their arguments agree? My hon. Friend bases his argument on the words in the fifth chapter of St. Matthew. The Attorney General throws that verse overboard. My hon. and learned Friend used
  838
  words which are so remarkable—and they are as well worth listening to as those of Lord Stowell—that I must quote them to the House—
  "The reasonable deduction was that our Saviour, in addressing those who were conversant with and were bound by the Jewish law, thought it requisite in one place to say that he excepted the case which was provided for by the Jewish law, but thought it unnecessary in another place to introduce the exceptional case, because adultery in the Jewish law was not a case of divorce, but was subject to criminal punishment. Our Saviour was condemning those things which were divorces among the Jews, and adultery was not a case for divorce, according to the Jewish law, but for criminal punishment."
  My hon. Friend (Mr. Puller), agreeing with the vast majority of those who support this Bill, says that that verse does constitute a real exception—that the adultery mentioned in that verse did constitute a ground of divorce applicable to us as a precedent. The Attorney General, on the other hand—acting, I think, quite rightly and wisely, but in contradiction to my hon. Friend—throws overboard that verse, and shows you that it could have no bearing upon the question, because the punishment of adultery, according to the law of the Jews, was not by divorce, but by the severer method of capital punishment. So much for the harmony in the Scriptural interpretations of the only two Gentlemen who in this House have as yet undertaken to show us Scriptural warrant—or, indeed, any warrant at all—for the present Bill. Now, Sir, it is not to be dissembled that a very great diversity of opinion prevails with respect to the true construction to be put on Scripture in this matter. There are, in the first place, those who think that the prohibition of divorce—that is, divorce carrying with it the power of remarriage—is absolute. There are those who think that there is in Scripture permission to marry after divorce in case of adultery alone, but that the permission is limited to the innocent man, and that there is not given to the women under any circumstances liberty to marry. That I believe to be the most ancient opinion of the Christian Church after the old law, as I shall call it, of indissolubility. There are others who go one step further. They give liberty of divorce and remarriage both to the innocent man and to the innocent woman. There are others who give liberty of divorce after adultery to both parties if they are innocent, and to the man although he is guilty. There are others, and that is the description of the Scotch law at the present

  839
  moment, who give it to both whether innocent or guilty, provided there is no intermarriage between the guilty parties. There is another class that permits the intermarriage of the guilty parties, and there is another which considers that divorce may be permitted, not only for adultery, but for other causes. Now, the great peculiarity of this Bill is this: I have given seven different constructions of Scripture on the point, all of them having some champions and advocates. I do not say they are supported by sound argument; but the peculiarity of the present Bill is that it does not agree with any of these different interpretations of the Scripture on this subject. There is, I believe, a feeling amongst certain religious people that our marriage law was drawn too tight; that by relaxing it in the manner here proposed they will make it square with Scripture; and that if that point could be established it is felt that it would be a conclusive argument for the Bill. But no one could show that it squares with Scripture by any construction that can be put upon it. What did the Bill do? It relieves—I must so speak of it, I suppose, though the relief is more than doubtful—it gives relief to the man in case of the woman's adultery, and it gives relief, not in case of the man's adultery, but of the man's adultery under very rare and peculiar circumstances. The Attorney General has invited us to force his construction upon the consciences of 17,000 clergymen. Let us see how my hon. and learned Friend's construction agrees with his Bill. My hon. and learned Friend throws over the verse in St. Matthew, but finds another for his purpose—that in which our Lord said, "They twain shall be one flesh, whereupon they are no more twain but one flesh." And my hon. and learned Friend said that by the fact of adultery the bond is broken. Now, is that the sense of the Scripture? No, it is an arbitrary sense put on the words by my hon. and learned Friend—a construction put upon them perhaps by Archbishop Cranmer, but which is not supported by any weight of authority, and which it is impossible to defend against those who would press upon his hon. and learned Friend for further changes in the law of marriage if this Bill passed. It is a most arbitrary rule, founded on the notion that the bond of marriage is so affected by adultery that it exists no longer. We have many causes far more fatal to the great obligations of marriage, as disease,
  840
  idiocy, crime involving imprisonment for life, and which, if the bond be dissoluble, might be urged as a reason for divorce; but that is not what I wish to dwell upon at present. My hon. and learned Friend said by the fact of the adultery the marriage bond is destroyed, and then he asked the House to pass a Bill under which nineteen out of every twenty adulterers in the land would be covered with perfect immunity. I repeat, the enormous majority of adulteries are adulteries of men; and having shown that adultery destroyed the marriage bond, my hon. and learned Friend immediately demanded a licence to destroy nineteen-twentieths of the propositions he laid down. My hon. and learned Friend commenced at once child murder upon his own Bill—for he justified it from Scripture that marriage could not exist after adultery, and then he proceeds to pass a law to compel cohabitation, when according to his own showing, in nineteen out of twenty cases the parties are no longer married. Such is the mode in which Scripture is handled by Attorney Generals, and in which they invite the House to repose in them confidence so implicit that you are to force their construction on the consciences of the clergy, who, if they say it is contrary to their vows, are to be humanely told to go and obey. I have, however, yet to learn if marriage is destroyed ipso facto by the adultery of the husband; but granting it to be so, how they could say to the wife, "you have ceased to be married to your adulterous husband, but we nevertheless compel you to live with him." There is this difference between my mode of construing Scripture and the Attorney General's—that I do not ask the House to stand upon any argument, ingenious or not ingenious, I may be able to construct from any text. The lights of history, the records of antiquity, the lives of those who followed our blessed Lord have immense weight, in my view, in determining the true sense of scriptural authority. With respect to the great question of the indissolubility of marriage, let me observe that we had too much dogmatism, but the length to which I should push the argument is this—That the Gospel was intended to work out a certain great and provident result; and the mode of attaining this result, the most precious and blessed for mankind at large, was, in the wisdom of God, not by means of commands and forms in a rigid shape, but rather by the infusion of a new spirit into the precepts of the law, a

  841
  spirit that pervaded every artery and vein of society, raised its tone from the degradation of heathenism, abolished the cruel sacrifice of human life, abolished the exposure of children, abolished polygamy, abolished slavery. I was rather struck last night by the speech of my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Dundalk (Mr. Bowyer). The Attorney General in his speech ventured to predict that the hon. and learned Member was about to deluge us with extracts from the Council of Trent. I suppose, however, that my hon. and learned Friend was so awed by this warning that, from beginning to end of his speech, he did not make a single reference to the Council of Trent. At the same time I must own that my hon. and learned Friend has given an interpretation of the text of Scripture bearing upon this subject which it will be found extremely difficult to dispute. With regard, however, to the main point in the case, we had with us the authority of his hon. and learned Friend the Attorney General—and he was a host in himself. Those who approved the lax interpretations of the verse of St. Matthew the Attorney General throws overboard. I will, however, venture to point out this: that if we take the text of St. Matthew as giving a licence of marriage after adultery, we place St. Matthew in conflict on the point with the other Evangelists and St. Paul: and here I may remark that the supporters of the Bill appear to consider that the Bible all through had been, as it were, a volume bound up in calf—yet that was not so. The Bible had been produced piecemeal. The Gospel of St. Matthew was written for the Jews and probably in He brew; the Gospels of St. Mark and St. Luke were written for foreigners and Gentiles. You have no right to say that the Gospel of St. Matthew was known to the Gentiles, for whom the other gospels were written, for many generations. And yet, by the construction of the hon. Member for Hertfordshire (Mr. Puller) this essential and vital point in the Christian law of marriage—namely, that it migat be dissolved by adultery—a most important provision in the application of Christianity to the diseased state of society in Rome, where the relations between the sexes were most polluted at that time—was kept a perfect secret from the Gentiles and never was proclaimed! But, on the other hand, take the Attorney General's more reasonable interpretation, and suppose that our Saviour spoke of the Jewish
  842
  law relating to adultery, which required the guilty parties to be put to death, and then you at once have St. Matthew in complete harmony with the rest of the Scripture. St. Matthew wrote for the Jews, to whom this exception had a meaning and St. Mark and St. Luke addressed the Gentiles, for whom an exception, referring to the Mosaic law, had no manner of application. The hon. Member for Hertfordshire, in his most ingenious, able, and candid speech, told us there were two Mosaic laws for adultery; that the one required the parties to be caught in the fact; the other spoke generally; yet both appeared to denounce the punishment of death. But that in construeing these laws the one which was stricter and narrower in its terms would naturally be chosen, and therefore the hon. Member inferred that the punishment of death was not inflicted by the Jewish code, except in cases where the adulterers were detected in flagrante delicto. My answer to that is plain. I believe that the hon. Gentleman is the first man who made this discovery. For 1,800 years the Gospel has been in the world, and I never heard of any one, although I have made some inquires on the subject, to whom that construction has ever occurred before. After all, therefore, this is not likely to be the true interpretation, or an interpretation on which it would be safe for us to build the great law of marriage. But I think I can point to a solution of the hon. Gentleman's doubts on this head. He questions whether the punishment of death was inflicted except in the case of flagrans delictum. Now, if he looks to the same chapter of Deuteronomy, which touches the cases of adultery properly so called, he will find that so rigid is the law in regard to the infliction of the sentence of death that it is provided that this sentence should be visited not upon the incontinence of a married person only, but even upon the incontinence of a person betrothed to be married. And does the hon. Member think that a person who was merely betrothed would be liable to a heavier punishment than one who was actually married? I do not believe that the hon. Gentleman's acute mind will for a moment embrace such a proposition. Without presuming to trouble the House further on that subject, I venture to say that in my opinion historical testimony, and particularly the primitive and early testimony of the Christian Church, is vital

  843
  to this matter. I humbly propound this construction of the verse from St. Matthew, commonly quoted as an authority for divorce and remarriage in cases of adultery:—As our Lord was speaking to Jews, as the Jewish law,—of which alone He took cognizance, and not of the practices of the Jewish people—as that law provided the punishment of death for adultery, it is quite plain that the whole case before us is about remarriage during the lifetime of the divorced parties; and the Mosaic code inflicting death upon the person guilty of adultery, it is impossible to bring in that passage for the solution of a problem to which it obviously has no reference. At the same time I do not think, without historical testimony properly so called, that we ought to give in to any mere construction put upon that text. In respect to history, then, I make this proposition boldly, in the face of the learned Attorney General and of Her Majesty's Government, that for the first 300 years after Christ you have not a shred or a vestige of divorce with remarriage for any cause whatever. The remains of that time are not so very bulky; yet, although I may not have been able to examined them so perfectly as I would wish, I make this assertion with confidence. If that assertion is good, your position is very weak, when you tell me that out of the fifth, or even out of the fourth century, you can get some authority for these divorces. I am not now speaking of the power of ingenious criticism, but of historical testimony to the meaning and practice of Christianity; and as far as that testimony is concerned it is upon the writers of the three first ages of the Church, above all others, that you are entitled to rely with confidence. I do not like to weary the House with citing the names of them. Among them are some very curious cases. There is a reference of Hermas to the subject, and others well worth attention, if we were now at liberty to enter into these details. But the House is well aware that there are circumstances patent on the face of history which tend to show us pretty clearly what the meaning of the very earliest Christian Church was. The tendency of the very earliest Christian Church was not actually to forbid—I do not say they ever absolutely came up to that point—but towards the prohibition of second marriages altogether, and in any case even after the death of one of the parties. And if these marriages—at all
  844
  other periods regarded as perfectly innocent and honourable—were, I will not say prohibited, but looked upon with suspicion at this particular period, we have the strongest reason to infer that this was the time of the very greatest strictness ever known, and in which you are not likely to find the permission of second marriages during the life of both the parties. I will not quote particular passages from particular authors, but this I will quote, because it is so precisely to the purpose and so irrefragable that I do not see how it can be disputed. I refer you to the authority of the laws of the Church. You have now in existence a code—namely, the Apostolical Canons, of which it is not in your power to fix the date with the same exactness as though it were an Act of Parliament, but you can fix its date with absolute exactitude up to this point, that you know by the references made to this code that it existed and was in full force prior to a certain epoch. I am safe, then, in asserting that the Apostolical Canons belong to the third century of Christianity. They are anterior to those Councils of the Church which were held in the fourth century. These canons form, not a local law, but the general law of the Church at that time, as far as it was known when they were promulgated, and afterwards when they were adopted by a Council. Well, the canon says in a few words, "If a layman divorce his wife and marry another, or marry a wife divorced by another, let him be separated from the Church." If that position of mine be contested I shall be prepared to return to the charge. If it be not, I take it with the greatest confidence as laid down for the present before this House, subject to challenge, that we find no trace of the practice of divorce for remarriage in Christendom for the first three centuries of our era, with this single exception, that in the writings of Origen you find a statement, not of what existed either in authority or in action, but of an individual opinion on his part. This opinion expressed by Origen is, I think, the first sign we have of a tendency to greater laxity of ideas on this subject. The ground on which I believe he goes is, that the innocent husband whose wife has been divorced for adultery might be permitted to marry again during the lifetime of the divorced woman. After the lapse of the first three centuries you begin to find a change. That change appears at the outset in a very limited

  845
  form, because, after the reference by Origen to which I have just alluded, in the writings of Lactantius you first find a distinct opinion that the innocent husband of a divorced wife ought to be allowed to remarry. From that time forward down through the fourth and fifth centuries you discover a tendency setting in towards latitude. And why was that, Sir? Because the Church, having now come into contact with the great mass of the people, was unable perfectly and entirely to impregnate them with the spirit of Christianity, but, on the contrary, bore on her shining garment, so to speak, some portion of the impurity necessarily contracted from an extensive admixture with a corrupt state of society. Could anything be more natural than that during those ages in which the Christians formed an isolated and self-governed community marriage was held to be indissoluble; but that when they found their way into high places, and had to do with Prefects, with Emperors, and almost with Attorney Generals, arguments drawn from human law, from the common practice of the world, from heathen usage and tradition, should, to a certain extent, leave their marks upon the rules of Christianity—happily, indeed, not so as to affect its life, but undoubtedly so as in some degree to lower its tone? This subject is extremely curious and interesting. Take the division of the Church into the East and the West. In which was the Church more powerful? In the West. What do we find accordingly? That the Eastern Church gives the greater liberty of divorce, and the Western Church less. The Eastern Church has never extirpated divorce down to the present century. In the West, on the contrary, the law of the Church, after some struggles, remained unbroken, and it was triumphantly established that a Christian marriage, once validly contracted, ought to be indissoluble. We, I then, after a long period, come to the Reformation; and here we have to encounter a natural and legitimate attempt to array on the side of innovation the Protestant feelings of this country. My hon. and learned Friend led the way in this attempt. He gave us to understand that this doctrine of the indissolubility of marriage was a Popish principle, that with the Reformation came in new principles, and that since the Reformation the necessity of a change herein has been universally recognized. And while I am mentioning
  846
  my hon. and learned Friend it would be ungrateful in me not to take notice of the undeservedly kind language in which he thanked Heaven that I had not lived and died in the middle ages. My hon. and learned Friend complimented me upon the subtlety of my understanding, and it is a compliment of which I feel the more the force since it comes from a gentleman who possesses such a plain, straightforward, John-Bull-like character of mind.
  "Rusticus, abnormis, sapiens, crasséque Minervâ."
  Therefore, and by the force of contrast, I feel the compliment to be ten times more valuable. But I must say, if I am guilty of that subtlety of mind of which he accuses me, I think that there is no one cause in the history of my life to which it can be so properly attributed as to my having been for two or three pleasant years the colleague and co-operator with my hon. and learned Friend. And if there were a class of those subtilissimi doctores which was open to competition, and if I were a candidate for admission and heard that my hon. and learned Friend was so likewise, I assure him that I would not stand against him for a moment on any account. However, my hon. and learned Friend spoke of the principles of the Reformation, and he read a very long passage which the House, no doubt, understood to have been quoted from the Reformatio Legum. But that was not the case, as my hon. and learned Friend knows. The case was not quoted from the Reformatio Legum at all. The Reformatio Legum, I must say, opens the floodgates, and lets in divorce by wholesale. My hon. and learned Friend should abstain from quoting Reformatio Legum. It is easy to say that divorce is a Protestant principle because it is established in the Reformatio Legum, but when the House hears what was established in the Reformatio Legum it will be more cautious than my hon. and learned Friend in admitting that divorce is a Protestant principle; because the Reformatio Legum not only admits divorce for adultery, but admits it for desertion, for violence, and for long-continued strife. There are not less than five or six heads for which divorce a vinculo is admitted by the Reformatio Legum. In that sense no doubt the Reformatio Legum is worse than my hon. and learned Friend, because it contains more of the instalments of which his Bill only gives us the first fruits. But in some respects

  847
  it is much better, because it does not violate the cardinal Christian principle of the equality of the sexes and the identity of rights between them, and because it manifests a bonâ fide intention to treat adultery as a criminal offence. It does not propose to inflict the capital punishment upon the adulterer, but it does recommend a punishment which, although not capital, is of the next degree of severity. My hon. and learned Friend says he founds his Bill upon the principles of the Reformation, and he has got a case in which Archbishop Cranmer took part. I have a great reverence for Archbishop Cranmer. He had his weaknesses, and the memory of his six recantations cannot be effaced. But his faults were nobly redeemed, and on the whole he must be deemed to be not only a good man, but a wise man. But I must say that if my hon. and learned Friend tells us that the personal opinion of Archbishop Cranmer is to govern our consciences contrary to the general law of Christendom and to the opinion of the Reformed Church of England itself for 300 years, such a claim is so extravagant that he ought not to attempt to force it upon us. Now, my hon. and learned Friend in his speech of last night, to which we all listened with the greatest interest, surpassed himself in liberality, for he gave us a ninth beatitude. He said, "Blessed is the man who trusts the received version." Now, surely that doctrine is much more in keeping with the middle ages—with those subtilissimi doctores—than with the opinion of an Attorney General of a liberal Government in a Parliament of the nineteenth century. "Blessed is he who trusts the received version!" That is, blessed is he who shuts his eyes; blessed is he who does not attempt to discover historical truth; blessed is he who discards the aid of legitimate criticism; blessed is he who, in order to save himself trouble and pass an important Bill without exertion, determines not to make use of the faculties that God has given him and throws discredit upon scholarship and upon the University of which he is a conspicuous ornament by refusing to recognise anything but the received version. Certainly, the eight beatitudes are very fine, they stand very high in our estimation; but the ninth is more than worthy to take its place beside them. But the hon. and learned Gentleman went further and gave us a new article of faith, for he said in another portion of his speech that the Protestant Churches, when they all go together, cannot possibly
  848
  be wrong. [The Attorney General was understood to dissent.] I was much struck by the assertion, but whether he said or not that the Protestant Churches cannot go wrong all together, the fact is that they have not gone together, and, what is more, not one of the Protestant Churches has gone with my hon. and learned Friend. Not a single Church can he find. The Church of England has not gone with him, and I will grapple with him on that point. He says that after the Reformation the law was that marriages were dissoluble until the end of the sixteenth century. What is his authority for that assertion? If he replies, "The Report of the Commission," let any one read that Report and see on what trumpery evidence that assertion is founded. I do not think that the Commissioners adopted that opinion. But my hon. and learned Friend gave us to understand that, in his opinion, until the case of Foljambe occurred, at the end of the sixteenth century, marriage was dissoluble by divorce a vinculo in the Ecclesiastical Courts all through the reign of Elizabeth. This matter is of importance, because it determines the character and spirit of the English Reformation. My hon. and learned Friend cannot find the proof of his assertion in the Reformatio Legum, because that was compiled in the reign of Edward VI. If it had received the Royal sanction in that reign it would have been repealed by Queen Maw, and would have been re-examined by Queen Elizabeth. But the Reformatio Legum never received the sanction of law, and something more ought to have been quoted to show that the Church of England was in favour of divorce for adultery in the reign of Elizabeth. There is not, indeed, a shred of authority for that assertion. There is a passage from Mr. Sergeant Salkeld which, without giving any authority for the assertion, says:—
  "Divorce for adultery was anciently a vinculo matrimonii, and therefore in the beginning of the reign of Queen Elizabeth the opinion of the Church of England was that after a divorce for adultery the parties might marry again."
  I speak in the presence of many lawyers, and I say that such loose and random words are not entitled to the slightest weight until we know the sources upon which that opinion is founded. I assert the contrary, and I maintain that the practice during the reign of Elizabeth was not to recognise divorce a vinculo at all, and that the rules of the Ecclesiastical Courts were the same after the Reformation as before on this subject. I will give my hon. and learned

  849
  Friend conclusive proof of this assertion, and I will thus give the coup de grace to the assertion that divorce was a Protestant principle of the English Reformation. I am about to quote from a work written by Francis Clarke in the year 1596. He was at that time senior proctor of Doctors'-commons, and he was brought up in the study of the ecclesiastical law from his youth, ab incunabulis educatus, as he says of himself. He had practised thirty-six years in the Ecclesiastical Court:—
  "Exercitatum me per triginta jam et sex annos stetisse in Arcubus Procuratorem, cæteris etiam omnibus seniorem esse, in eâdem curiâ."
  Francis Clarke is a competent authority upon the practice of Queen Elizabeth's reign, because he was senior proctor in Doctors'-commons. He began to practise in 1560, two years after Elizabeth came to the throne, and he practised until 1596, one year before the canons of Whitgift. Now, the House will pardon me if I read a little Latin—not more than a tenth part of what my hon. and learned Friend read—but the House will see the historical importance of this passage:—
  "Quamvis in titulo Quod causes tangentes Matrimonium (§ Si Maritus et § Si Mulier) dicitur in casibus in cisdem specificatis agendum esse in causâ divortii sive separationis è thoro et mensâ, tamen de jure canonico legibus hujus regni in hâc parte approbate, non licet personis in his casibus (viz.) nee propter adulterium nee propter sævitiam divortiatis aut separatis, ad secundas convolare nuptias viventibus prioribus maritis vel conjugibus, quia vinculum matrimonii semel perfecti non potest ab homine dissolvi nisi morte naturali. Ideo in omni sententia in his casibus latâ inseritur hæc clausula:—' dictos N. et M.' (scilicit partes illas qui cupiunt divortium ratione adulterii si causa fuit instituta propter adulterium vel ratione sævitiæ allegatæ et probatæ) 'a thoro, mensâ, ac mutuâ cohabitatione et obsequiorum conjugalium impensione donec et quousque duxerint invicem rcconciliandos et non aliter neque alio modo separamus et divortiamus' (plerumque vero admittitur (omittitur?) hoc verbum divortiamus). Solent etiam judices moderni ad evitandas secundas has nuptias viventibus prioribus conjugibus (quod est admodum commune), expressè inhibere personis separatis, ne convolent ad alia vota durante vitâ separatorum cum admonitione etiam, quod innupti nisi fuerint reconciliati, mancant. Et quotics de hujusmodi nuptiis secundis coram summis Com-missariis Regiis in Causis Ecclesiasticis vel coram Judicibus Revcrendissimi Cantuariensis Archiepis-copi quærelatur delinqucntcs in his casibus puni-untur et corriguntur atque ab hujusmodi secundis nuptiis (seu potius connubiis adulterinis) divortian-tur et separantur."
  I will venture to say that more clear and conclusive testimony than this was never placed before the House. So much, then, for the spirit of the English Reformation and the practice of the reign of Queen
  850
  Elizabeth. With regard to later history there is not much dispute. In a bad time a bad precedent was made. The bishops of the Church did their duty in resisting it. In spite of courtly favour and influence they stoutly opposed the Bill introduced on behalf of Lord De Roos, who was a cat'spaw of Charles II., although the House of Lords had to discuss the various stages of that Bill under the evil and malign influence exercised by the unconstitutional presence of the Sovereign. A hundred and eighty-seven years have elapsed since that time, and with thankfulness for my country I observe that the practice does not appear to have grown. I hope it is needless for me to say that I do not mean to cast any reproach upon those most blameless persons—and some most admirable persons—who have availed themselves of the facilities which were afforded them; but I may justly say of the practice that it has not shown a tendency to spread. On looking roughly through the list which has been laid on the table I find that, commencing with the reign of George III., in the thirty-four years between 1765 and 1799—there being some blank years in the return—ninety-five divorces took place—a considerable increase, certainly, upon the number of divorces previously granted. In the next thirty-one years, down to 1830, eighty-two divorces took place; and within the twenty-six years from that period to the present there have been ninety-nine divorces. Now, although there is a small increase, yet when you consider the immense extension of the wealthy class which profits by divorce, I may say it is matter of great congratulation that the practice has not spread more widely. Now, although I have already trespassed so largely on the patience of the House, I must still beg to be allowed to say a very few words upon the religious question involved in this measure, and also upon its social effects. The religious question is one which we shall probably have to discuss at great length in the future stages of the Bill. I feel strongly, in common with my noble Friend the Member for North Leicestershire (Lord J. Manners), the hardship which will be inflicted upon the clergy if this Bill should pass in its present form. I confess, notwithstanding the arguments of the hon. and learned Attorney General, and notwithstanding we are entering the month of August, I do not yet feel convinced that the House of Commons will back the hon. and learned Attorney General in his determina-

  851
  tion to press this Bill. I do, however, feel convinced of this—that if the House of Commons should unfortunately back my learned friend in compelling the adoption of his construction of Scripture with reference to the sacred rite and great mystery of marriage by the Church of this country, farewell to peace in the relations between Church and State! My hon. and learned Friend, who conies forward enunciating his glib doctrines about submission to the law, and the free principle of the union of Church and State, will have done more to forward the projects of those who seek to destroy that union than if he had voted with the hon. and learned Member for Sheffield in every division that has taken place against the regium donum or grants to Dissenting ministers. I wish to say that in my opinion the religious question is not limited to the clergy. I protest against any such limitation. We of the laity have consciences and belong to the Church, as do the clergy. We look to the law of that Church as founded upon something else than the dicta of the House of Commons or the House of Lords. We look upon the Church as a society governed by laws which afford sufficient and adequate means, by the co-operation of the respective powers, for making such changes as are proved to be necessary; and I protest against the doctrine, as degrading, that the religion we profess is not only in external matters—which I grant are incident to the state of the Church as an establishment—but in spiritual matters, relating to what the apostles call "great mysteries," to be cut and carved at the pleasure of my hon. and learned Friend or any majority at his beck. We cannot have religion respected in the country unless we show that we respect it ourselves, and being a body assembled here for secular purposes, and composed of persons of various religious persuasions, I ask whether it is consistent, I do not say with the interests of the Church or of the clergy, for that is a narrow ground upon which to place the question—but with the respect and reverence which we feel in our inmost hearts to be due to the revelation of God, that we should call upon this House—so constituted for civil and secular purposes—to take upon itself by its sole authority to determine religious and spiritual matters. Why, we may learn a lesson from heathenism in this respect. Even in times outside the pale of Christianity so strong was the conviction of wise men that it was impossible to secure the respect of
  852
  the people to a religion which was evidently the mere creature of statecraft, that in the great States of antiquity we invariably find an endeavour to maintain, in some form, however corrupt, the idea of divine communication, of divine revelation, of divine institutions, of divine offices, separated from the political offices of the State; because it was felt that it would be destructive of the very idea of religion, to allow the people to suppose that its concerns were regulated, like the concerns of this earth, by the pure will and pleasure of secular Governments. That is the principle upon which I trust this House will proceed. I do not deny the high functions of this House. I do not deny that this House ought to be a consenting party, and an authoritative party, with regard to whatever is introduced into the religion of the State; but neither our history, nor our constitution, nor our law—so far as I am acquainted with its scope and outline—nor the principles, as I think, of our religion itself, permit us to believe that we are acting otherwise than most unwisely, and even profanely, if we take into our own hands the remodelling of religious rites and usages. I should be sorry to offend the susceptibilities of my hon. and learned Friend; but he is a professor of free opinions, he likes free expressions, and I hope I have said nothing offensive to him. Now one word with regard to the social question. I think that he has committed an error in the mode in which he has shaped and directed the enactments of this Bill, but I think that the most vital error of all was in its principle. I greatly fear its effect upon the people of England. I do not undertake to say whether that effect will be slow or rapid. Prophecies of tins kind are frequently too confidently made, and are often disappointed. God grant it may be so! God grant that the prophecy may in this case be altogether unfilled! I did not quite understand the application of my hon. and learned Friend's quotation the other night—
  "Iliacos intra muros peccatur, et extra."
  It was intended, I suppose, to have reference to something or other in his speech. I could not see what it did refer to, but I thought it might possibly refer to considerable immorality, resulting, both in town and country, from a lax law of divorce. The state of our country with respect to this matter is peculiar. I feel it very painful to be obliged to refer to such a subject, and I assure the House I do so with great

  853
  reluctance; but we are forced into the discussion, and it cannot be avoided. I frankly own that I do not take a very sanguine view of the condition of the country with regard to this large and dangerous class of sins. I am afraid, as respects the gross evils of prostitution, that there is hardly any country in the world where they prevail to a greater extent than in our own. With regard to another most dangerous evil—namely, what is called antenuptial incontinence, its prevalence is so general in country as well as in town, that we must all feel humbled to the dust when we consider with how little strictness Christian obligations are in that respect observed. There is, however, a bright side of English society—I do not speak as to all classes of the community, for I cannot say it altogether of the upper classes; but with regard to the lower classes of society, where they are not, as is the case in London, brought into immediate contact with the incessant solicitations of temptation, I do say with joy and thankfulness that the observance of the marriage tie is faithful in the highest degree. If that be so, how singular it is that a great and deplorable laxity with respect to chastity before marriage should be coupled with extraordinary strictness in the observance of the marriage vow. The circumstance requires explanation, and my explanation—than which I think a more rational or probable one cannot be found—is that it is attributable to the indissolubility of marriage according to the English law. All Englishmen and all Englishwomen—all Irishmen and all Irishwomen—and in Ireland the observance of the marriage vow is still more exemplary than in this country—know that on entering into the marriage state they contract an indissoluble tie. And then you have the authority of philosophers—most impartial philosophers—of Gibbon, who condemns the licence of divorce, and of Hume, who speculating with his unequalled acuteness on this subject, says there is nothing so dangerous as to bring a man and woman into union, unless you bring them into absolute and total union. The union has been absolute and total. The whole course of desire, thought, purpose, will, and habit has adapted itself to the entireness of that union. The marriage state is a total and absolute change. You pass over a gulf which you know you cannot repass; you enter upon a new state, and you adopt all its obligations; but you are now going to make that gulf which has hitherto been
  854
  impassable, passable; you are going to say to the woman who has sinned, although she may have sinned under the strongest temptation, "Your sins shall be unpardoned; you shall be divorced, and nothing shall reconcile you to the man from whom you have been divorced. You may marry again, and you may offend again, toties quoties; your sin shall be unpardonable by the person you have offended, though with his whole heart and soul he may be desirous to forgive you." That to me is a most doubtful state of things as regards the shutting the door to the penitent; but still more doubtful is the shaking the great idea of the marriage contract in the minds of the English people. Do not let us deal with humankind as if they were creatures of pure intellect, and as if life was governed by conviction. The traditions of past times, and the rules and customs of society, which a man inherits as it were from those who have gone before him, have more perhaps to do with the government of life than any other consideration. The indissolubility of English marriage is an idea which has never been shaken in the mind of England. At no time have the middle and lower classes of the English people known what it was to have marriage, dissoluble. Take care, then, how you damage the character of your countrymen. You know how apt the English nature is to escape from restraint and control; you know what passion dwells in the Englishman; but here is a great feeling of restraint observed among your population, and which has prevailed ever since England was England, that the marriage tie is indissoluble. And is there any adequate reason for giving a shape to this notion? Are you quite sure, when you have shaken the feelings of the people on this vital point that they will settle down again upon a basis defined for them by my hon. and learned Friend the Attorney General or by Act of Parliament? As I have said, you are bringing in a system entirely novel—not novel, perhaps, as regards that small class of persons who have from time to time been divorced through the intervention of private Acts of Parliament, But perfectly novel as regards the great bulk of the community, and the great precedents of human history. No single age, or country, or period has ever known a law of divorce like this. None have ever gone so far, without going further. The great Jurist Schavoni states that at the Reformation all protestant States changed the law of marriage; but

  855
  for 200 years after that there had been no change, because the reformers founded themselves on the clear view and sense of the Scriptures, and limited themselves to cases of divorce with remarriage for adultery and desertion, for it was the general opinion of the reformers that desertion as well as adultery was a ground of divorce; and this shows that it is most material that we should bear in mind the arbitrary and novel character of this plan, with respect to which I regret that I cannot regard it in any other light except one—namely, as the first instalment of change—the first stage on a road of which we know nothing, except that it is different from that of our forefathers, and that it is a road which leads from the point to which Christianity has brought us, and carries us back towards the state in which Christianity found the heathenism of man. I again repeat my thanks for the patience and attention with which you have listened to me. I resist this measure conscientiously, desirous, however, at the same time of avoiding all matters that would introduce angry feeling into this debate. If I have spoken warmly on the subject, it is because it has offended my own conscientious feelings. I resist this measure because I believe it to be a retrograde step, and pregnant with the most dangerous consequences to our social interests, in that it tends to bring us back again towards a state of laxity which Christianity does not recognise. I resist this measure because I believe it is not desired by the people of this country. I admit that the indications we have before us of the manner in which the Bill is regarded out of doors are imperfect, but they all go to prove that the feeling of the country is hostile towards it. I object to it because it contains a proposal harsh and unjust towards the ministers of religion, but still more so because the assumption of this function by the sole authority of Parliament involves an insult to what is far higher than the ministers of religion—namely, to religion itself. I object to it on all these several grounds, and, lastly, I must be permitted to renew the objection that it is pressed forward at a time when it is impossible to bring the general mind of the country and the House to an adequate consideration of its magnitude and importance and, although what I may do may be utterly powerless in arresting its progress at least I am determined, so far as it depends upon me, that I will be responsible for no part of the consequences that may
  856
  result from a measure fraught, as I believe it to be, with danger to the highest interests of religion, and the morality of the people.
  SIR GEORGE GREY: I have listened to the speech of my right hon. Friend, in common with every hon. Member of this House, with all the interest and attention which his brilliant orations and his subtle and ingenious arguments always excite and sustain in every assembly he addresses. I will at once say that I do not rise for the purpose of entering into the theological arguments employed in this debate either by my hon. and learned Friend the Attorney General, on the one hand, or by my right hon. Friend the Member for the University of Oxford on the other. With regard to the authority of Scripture, I may be permitted to say that I think those ingenious exercitations of the human mind on doubtful passages of Scripture rather tend to obscure their direct meaning, or to give them a meaning which they were not intended to convey, and so to weaken and impair rather than to establish the just authority of Scripture. It is at the same time the bounden duty of every man to avail himself of all the lights within his reach to assist his judgment in the interpretation of Scripture, and to adopt implicitly the conclusions at which he may arrive. But when my right hon. Friend says the authority of Scripture is doubtful in this matter, we are left in incertitude, and I feel that we are at liberty to adopt such rules with regard to this matter for the benefit of society as we may think most conducive to human interests and most in accordance with the general precepts of the Gospel. I cannot agree with the hon. Member for West Surrey (Mr. Drummond) that from the beginning of Genesis to the end of Malachi the rule is invariably laid down that marriage is indissoluble. I will only say I have read Scripture differently from him. I would ask those hon. Members who hold that text of Scripture to be absolutely binding which says, "Those whom God has joined together man shall not put asunder," how they reconcile the interpretation which they put upon those words with the fact that divorces a mensâ et thoro, by means of which a separation between man and wife takes place, are constantly granted in the Ecclesiastical Courts in this country? There is, I admit, a practical distinction between that class of divorces and divorces a vinculo; but I should like to know

  857
  how it is that the putting asunder of husband and wife, which is the result of the former class, can justly be said to be in accordance with the law of God, while the more complete separation which takes place as a consequence of the latter is maintained to be in direct opposition to that law? But, passing from that point, I shall briefly advert to the charge of a desire to legislate with precipitation with reference to the important subject of this Bill which has been brought against the Government. In so doing I shall not repeat the arguments which I but a few evenings ago submitted to the House when the Motion of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Oxfordshire (Mr. Henley) for the postponement of the measure was under discussion. I then stated that the question with which the Bill proposes to deal was one which had undergone the consideration of various Commissions and Committees, which had been much debated in the other House of Parliament, and which had come down to us from that assembly after having been subjected to mature deliberation. It has received in addition a great deal of public attention, has been commented on in various publications, and we thought the time had arrived when the opportunity should be taken of effecting what we considered a great improvement of the law on this subject. But my right hon. Friend the Member for the University of Oxford has told us to-night that he received a letter from a correspondent in Cornwall which shows that the people of the country do not quite understand the nature of the Bill; that many of them are under the impressior that it contains provisions the operation of which would be to alter the marriage service; and my right hon. Friend urges that fact as a reason why time for further consideration of the details of the measure should be afforded, Now, if any views so absurd as those to which my right hon. Friend has referred prevail throughout the country, I can only say that I am more than ever rejoiced that the Motion of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Oxfordshire—which if carried would have prevented that discussion by means of which I hope all delusions as to the effect of this Bill will be dispelled—was not successful. But, to return to the speech of my right hon. Friend the Member for the University of Oxford, I may observe that I listened to that speech with pleasure and admiration, but at the same time with the most unfeigned
  858
  astonishment. My right hon. Friend has treated the proposition contained in the Bill before us ns an innovation upon the law of England never heard of until the present time; and has sought to establish the complete indissolubility of the marriage vow. But my right hon. Friend is not satisfied with opposing the principle of the Bill; he objects to its details. He says it is a partial Bill, inasmuch as it excludes the members of the female sex from the enjoyment of those advantages which it purports to confer. Now, upon the statement that this Bill proposes an innovation on the existing law I wish to make a few remarks. My right hon. Friend more than once alluded in the course of his speech to the fact that a Commission was, in 1850, appointed to investigate the justice of the complaints which were then made of the scandals and abuses connected with the present law of divorce; and I may venture to remind the House that that Commission was composed of men of the greatest learning and experience, who in entering upon their investigation proceeded entirely upon the assumption that divorces were notoriously obtained in this country, and were sanctioned by Parliament; and their duty was to inquire into and suggest a method by which that end could be better obtained. The Report of that Commission was presented in 1853 to the notice of the Government of the day, and in 1854 the Administration of the Earl of Aberdeen, of which my right hon. Friend was a distinguished member, speaking in the House of Lords through its Lord Chancellor, laid before that assembly a Bill which I now hold in my hand, and which is entitled "A Bill to transfer the Jurisdiction in Matrimonial Causes to the Court of Chancery, and to establish a Court of Divorce." That Bill was discussed in the House of Lords; it was read a second time, was committed, reported, and was abandoned in the middle of the month of July, simply because" it was deemed expedient that it should be passed in conjunction with the Testamentary Jurisdiction Bill, which it had been found necessary to postpone. It was, I repeat, abandoned for that reason only, and not because the Government entertained the slightest doubt as to the soundness of the principle which it had been framed to carry into effect. Now, will the House believe that the measure to which I have been referring is in principle identically the same, and in many of its most important provisions perfectly

  859
  corresponds with the Bill which is now under discussion, and which my right hon. Friend has so vehemently opposed this evening? The measure of 1854 proposed to establish a Court of Divorce, and the 26th Clause was meant to empower the Judges of that Court, in case the act of adultery had been satisfactorily proved, and that there had been no connivance or other fault upon the part of the husband, to grant a dissolution of the marriage tie. That is precisely the course which we have adopted in the present Bill, the only difference between it and the Bill of 1854 being that it tends to afford a cheaper and more effectual mode of obtaining that remedy which the Bill of 1854 was meant to provide than would have been provided under the operation of the latter measure. Now, a great deal has been said in the course of this debate with respect to the intolerable hardship which this Bill is calculated to inflict upon the clergy by compelling them to marry persons who happened to have been divorced. Upon that point I can only say that the Bill contains no clause by which a clergyman would be compelled to marry persons so circumstanced. The only clause which can be supposed to have that effect is one which is also to be found in the Bill which was introduced by the Government of which my right hon. Friend was a member, and which says that it shall be lawful for the divorced parties to marry again as if there had been no prior marriage, or as if the marriage tie had been dissolved by death. But I am afraid my right hon. Friend's memory is not quite so good as his imagination is vivid and his eloquence is brilliant. We heard nothing, at all events, in 1854 of those inflexible rules of Scripture upon which he has to-night laid so much stress, and I can only infer from that fact that he did not in 1854 entertain those conscientious scruples to which he has in the course of this debate given expression; for, if he did entertain them, I know him too well to suppose for a moment that he would have assented to the introduction of the Bill to which I have called the attention of the House. But, descending, from the high theological grounds which have been taken on this question, let us deal with the measure before us with reference to the dictates of reason, the demands of society, and the feelings of human nature. Looking upon it in that light, I cannot help thinking that there prevails among hon. Members generally
  860
  a disposition to attach to the Bill an exaggerated importance. It would seem to be regarded as a complete innovation upon our social system as introducing an entirely new law of divorce—and, indeed, the noble Lord the Member for Leicestershire (Lord J. Manners) prophecies all sorts of evils as the necessary consequence of its enactment. He threatens us with a renewal of a state of things such as that which prevailed in France owing to the decree of the Convention, at the time of the Revolution, abolishing marriage. He goes on to refer to the results of the law of divorce as established in Prussia, and seems to be of opinion that similar results will follow the passing of the present measure, entirely forgetting that its operation will by no means be to place the law of divorce in this country on the same footing as it is in Prussia. My right hon. Friend, though he does not go so far as the noble Lord, impugns the statement of my hon. and learned Friend the Attorney General that this Bill is to substitute a general law for what has been for years the practice of Parliament. Let me call the attention of the House to two or three passages in the Report of the Commission presented in 1853. My right hon. Friend quoted part of a passage in that Report:—
  "By the law of England that contract is indissoluble, and when once it has been constituted in a legal manner there are no means of putting an end to it in any of our courts."
  But he omitted what follows, which is most material in considering what has been the practice of Parliament—
  "Nevertheless, the mutual dissolution of such a contract, where adultery has been committed, is so consonant to reason and religion, that where the general law has failed to give a remedy, Parliament has stepped in to provide one specially, by passing a particular law in favour of those who can make out a case which will warrant its interference."
  And in a subsequent passage, after tracing the course of Parliament for the last two centuries, the Commissioners, referring to the commencement of the last century, say—
  "By these means, the right to obtain a divorce a vinculo was definitively established."
  The regulations of the House of Lords were alluded to last night, as showing a desire on the part of Parliament to restrict these privileges. What Lord Loughborough did in 1798 was, to lay down regulations, which were adopted by the House of Lords, and which bound the persons who came to Parliament for private Acts; but in laying down those rules, the House of

  861
  Lords gave a more direct sanction to the proceedings, and made it impossible for them to turn round and say, "Having invited you to come to our doors with a view to obtain a remedy for the wrong you have suffered, and knowing that you have complied with the rules we have made, because by the law of England marriage is indissoluble, we will not violate the law by granting any of these privileges." The noble Lord the Member for North Leicestershire (Lord J. Manners), feeling that the practice pressed rather hardly upon his case, said, "It is true two or three Bills for divorce have annually crept through Parliament." Crept through Parliament! Does the noble Lord mean that these Bills have passed with his silent consent, simply because he never heard till now that there were any such Bills before the House? Does not the noble Lord know that in 1840, upon the Motion of my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for the Colonies, this House, adopting the same course with the other House of Parliament, also laid down certain rules by which proceedings in Bills of divorce were to be regulated? Does he not know that this House proclaimed those rules, and, by so doing, invited persons to come and seek a remedy by Act of Parliament which the general law did not give? But more than that: it was not long ago that a Standing Order was made which requires that, at the commencement of every Session, a Divorce Committee of nine Members shall be appointed; and the noble Lord must be the most ignorant and innocent man in the House, if he does not know that, in conformity with notice placed on the paper for the appointment of that Committee, with the names of the nine Members to be appointed, the question has been put from the Chair, Session by Session, which appoints that Committee for the purpose of granting proper facilities, with proper checks, no doubt, for obtaining divorces, and of avoiding the scandal from the repeated publications of those details which must necessarily be gone into by some court of inquiry before divorce Bills are granted. I would remind the noble Lord that there are, at the present moment, on the table of the House, four of those divorce Bills waiting progress, and if, hitherto, he has abstained from opposing divorce Bills, because he I did not know they were "creeping" through the House, I tell him there are such Bills. I invite his opposition to them, and I hope he will take the sense of the
  862
  House whether they shall be proceeded with or not. If you are to reject this Bill upon the ground stated, that marriage is indissoluble, and if you believe that upon Scriptural rules, you are not at liberty to support the second reading, you will act with the grossest inconsistency; you will violate your duty to God, you will violate your consciences, (which you allege, and I dare say honestly allege, to be the obstacle to passing this Bill), in consenting to pass those private Bills which embody identically the same principle. With regard to the question, whether the course adopted for so many years by Parliament does not amount to a judicial proceeding; whether, in fact, Parliament is not acting as a court for the consideration of these subjects, any doubt will be at once removed by reference to the evidence given before the Commission by men whose opinions are entitled to respect. Sir J. Stoddart, the eminent canonist, and Dr. Lushington, who has had long acquaintance with courts of this nature, give their opinion in the strongest form that Parliament has constituted itself a court—more expensive and inconvenient than other courts, no doubt—but Parliament has constituted itself a court by which, on certain facts being proved, and in the absence of proof of other facts which debar the person seeking the remedy from obtaining it, as a matter of course, and as a matter of right a remedy has been granted to suitors equally as if the law had authorized the ordinary courts to entertain these suits. Assuming, of course, that there is no Scriptural prohibition binding on our consciences, I think it idle to discuss whether marriage is dissoluble or not. We have the authority of the whole human race in opposition to this alleged indissolubility of marriage. It is said that in the Roman Catholic Church it is indissoluble, and that over the greater part of the Continent, where the people are Roman Catholics, it is indissoluble. But is marriage indissoluble in Roman Catholic countreis? The Council of Trent may hold that it is indissoluble, but—I speak with all respect of the Roman Catholic religion—is there not avery convenient mode of dispensing with the doctrine of the Church by a supreme authority? Have we never heard of dispensation? It may be a tribute to human nature, to human frailty, to human weakness, if you will, but the exercise of that power is an admission that it is impossible, inany state of civilized society, to maintain the doctrine in all its strictness that

  863
  marriage is indissoluble, and that in no case and for no cause the bond shall be dissolved. The question which we have to decide is, not whether there shall be a new law of divorce, because this Bill, with the slight exception that it allows a woman to sue for a divorce on the ground of adultery on the part of her husband, accompanied with desertion, does not alter the grounds and causes for which divorce is now granted; it simply alters the court in which the suit is brought for the dissolution, of the marriage. Is not that an improvement? The right hon. Gentleman the Member for the University of Oxford says, "You tell me you are not altering the law, but the law now only grants divorces to those who are rich enough to pay large sums for them. You are altering the law because you admit other persons to that remedy. Although equally entitled, equally suffering from the intolerable grievance of broken marriage vows by those to whom they were bound for life, if those vows had not been broken, they ought still to be debarred from a remedy by the enormous expense which you impose on those who come to Parliament for relief." The right hon. Gentleman seems to think it an advantage that this privilege should be confined to those who are rich enough to obtain it if they choose, while they know there are others suffering from the same grievance who, from deficiency of means cannot obtain it. Does he mean to say that if the fees of a court were reduced to enable suitors to come to it who were before excluded, not by law, but by not having the means to pay the expense, that would be a great innovation, and the law would be changed, simply because redress, instead of being nominally was really open to all? I am afraid the only objection to the Bill is that it does not go far enough in that direction. It is no alteration of the law of divorce, but only removes, in a certain degree, a glaring injustice. According to the statement of some hon. Members, whereas there are now ten persons asking for divorce there will be 100. But if so, we must come to the conclusion that there are now ninety persons who suffer the same grievance as the ten, and are not debarred by law but by the expense of proceedings in Parliament, Parliament being a judicial court in these matters, and shutting its doors to all but those who have the means to defray the expenses. I will not go into the details of this Bill. I have stated generally
  864
  the object which it has in view, and I have said some things which I hope may tend to dispel the alarm of the noble Lord the Member for Leicestershire as to the fearful results likely to result from this Bill. I shall only advert to one provision in the Bill, and very shortly to that, because it can more properly be considered in Committee, namely: the clause which is to be found also in the Bill introduced by Lord Aberdeen's Government, which allows the party divorced to marry again after the time for appeal against the decree granting the divorce a vinculo has expired. I myself have seen many addresses complaining that a clause of the Bill imposes upon the clergy an obligation which they cannot conscientiously discharge. Now, with regard to that subject, I must say that in this House the question has been most incorrectly stated. It has been said, that all that the clergy desire is, that they should not be placed under the obligation of reading the marriage service and performing the ceremony of marriage between the person who has been divorced and the person who has been the cause of that divorce,—in other words, between the guilty parties. Now, I admit, that a matter of detail would be best discussed in Committee, but I wish to point out to the House that the statement to which I have referred as to the objection of the clergy is entirely incorrect. Why, Sir, the objection to the measure which is attributed to the clergy has no reference to the guilt or innocence of the parties, but is founded upon the alleged indissolubility of the marriage tie. It is not a question of the marriage of guilty parties at all, but it is the question whether you hold that when a husband, without any collusion or participation on his part, has suffered the greatest wrong which a man can suffer by the breach of the marriage vow on the part of his wife, a clergyman may say, "You are a married man, and being so I am not bound to recognize the law of man or to admit the validity of the divorce which you have obtained." [A gesture of dissent from Mr. HENLEY.] The right hon. Gentleman the Member for Oxfordshire shakes his head, but let me remind the House that this subject has been fully discussed elsewhere, and a right rev. Prelate, speaking on behalf of the clergy, has dealt with it with all that eloquence and force which he so eminently possesses, and what were the terms of the proviso which he moved upon the very subject of the

  865
  obligation of the clergy to marry persons who had been divorced? Why, they were as follows:—
  "Provided, nevertheless, that, inasmuch as by the law of this Realm and Church the bond of marriage hath hitherto been indissoluble, no clerk in holy orders of the Church of England shall, after the passing of this Act, be liable to any censure, penalty, or punishment whatever, in any court, ecclesiastical or civil, for refusing to perform the marriage service over any person or persons who, having been married and divorced, shall seek to be married again during the lifetime of the husband and wife, from whom they have been divorced under the provisions of this Act,"
  It is quite clear, therefore, that the Amendment of the right rev. Prelate did not apply only to the marriage of the guilty parties, but that it included the case of remarriage of the innocent persons, whether husband or wife. My only object in making these observations is to place the matter before the House in its true light. When we get into Committee we shall be able to discuss this particular question more fully and more conveniently, and I hope and trust that the House will then be convinced that the position taken up by the opponents of this measure, on the ground to which I have referred, is utterly untenable. It is said that this Bill will impose a new obligation upon the clergy. Now, that I utterly deny. The system of legislation upon the subject hitherto has been, that Parliament has been, to a limited extent, a court of divorce, and in all cases where a divorce has been granted the obligation of the clergy to remarry the divorced parties has existed to the fullest extent to which it will exist under this measure, which I hope and confidently believe will in a very short time become law. It may be true that when this Bill is passed into law clergymen may be called upon to pronounce the blessing of the Church upon the marriage of persons who have been divorced more frequently than they have at present; but that is only a question of degree—not of principle. At present, any person who has been divorced may present himself before a clergyman to be married according to the forms of the Church, and therefore I say that the obligation upon the clergy to perform the marriage ceremony already exists, and is not in any way created by this Bill. I do not wish to say more upon this subject. I have only been anxious to bring back the House to the region of common sense and reason, and to persuade them that the alarm which has been expressed as to the altera-
  866
  tion of the law of marriage and divorce is entirely a fiction of the imagination; and I certainly hope that this House and the country will be disabused upon this subject, and that the House will assent to the second reading to the Bill.
  LORD LOVAINEsaid, he rose with some diffidence to address the House, after the very powerful speech of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Oxford University—a speech which for eloquence he had never heard surpassed within those walls; but as one of those who still entertained a lingering regard for the rules and practices of the Christian church from its foundation to the present time, it was impossible for him to let the speech of the right hon. Gentleman the Secretary of State for the Home Department pass without some comment. It might be quite true that the right, hon. Gentleman the Member for the University of Oxford might have been a Member of the Government which had introduced a Bill similar to the present, and therefore inconsistent; but not one of the arguments of that right hon. Gentleman (Mr. Gladstone) had been touched by the right hon. Baronet, who had carefully avoided all allusion to antiquity, and had not ventured to refer to any of the authorities quoted in proof of the position that the Church had invariably held the doctrine of the indissolubility of marriage. The right hon. Baronet had descanted freely upon the instances in which divorces had been granted in violation of the law of the Church, and had charged those who opposed the Bill with hypocrisy, because, while professing to maintain that marriage was indissoluble, they had allowed private divorce Bills to pass without opposition. He could only say in reply to that statement, that it had been the invariable rule of the House of Commons to pass such Bills sub silentio, but it did not follow that every hon. Member who allowed a Bill to pass without opposition thereby signified his approval of its principle or its object. He (Lord Lovaine) might retort on the right hon. Baronet by saying, that the Government did not by this Bill attempt to extend divorces to all classes. Even if this Bill was passed divorces would still be restricted to the wealthy. The Government, in fact, proposed to still leave marriage indissoluble to nine-tenths of the people. The right hon. Baronet had made some severe remarks upon the remonstrance of the clergy. It should be recollected, however, that the

  867
  clergy had now for the first time awakened to a knowledge of the fact that henceforth the power of obtaining divorces would be possessed by a numerous class who had not hitherto enjoyed it; and that an adultress would be allowed to marry in the same way as the person whom she had wronged; and that they themselves would be obliged to pronounce the blessings of the Church upon parties convicted of a heinous sin. To perform the marriage ceremony in such cases would be nothing less than rank blasphemy; and he did not suppose that anybody would attempt to inflict so great a hardship upon the clergy. He trusted, therefore, that the clause providing for the marriage of the adultress would not be persevered in; and he should emphatically deny that the opponents of the measure wished to preserve the privilege of divorce for the rich. They were altogether opposed to the practice of dissolving marriage; and they were, therefore opposed to increasing the facilities for divorce, and for the marriage of divorced parties, which would be afforded by the measure now before the House.
  THE SOLICITOR GENERALsaid, he had listened to the right hon. Member for Oxford University with pleasure and admiration, but did not think that his speech, able and eloquent as he admitted it to be, touched the practical bearings of the question before the House. He agreed with him that the House of Commons was not a fit arena for the discussion of religious questions, and, notwithstanding the able speeches they had heard from his hon. and learned Friend the Attorney General on one side, and from the right hon. Gentleman, and the hon. and learned Member for Dundalk (Mr. Bowyer) on the other, he thought that the minute criticism of Scriptural texts was a task more appropriate to the study of the divine, or the library of the scholar, than to the popular branch of the Legislature. But the Bill, with all the theological, legal, and social considerations which it involved, had been discussed elsewhere; the opinion of the heads of the Church had been expressed upon it, and while, undoubtedly, there was a difference of opinion upon the question, the weight of authority was in favour of the marriage tic being dissoluble in certain cases; and the right hon. Gentleman was obliged to allow that even in the early ages of the Church this doctrine was held. Undoubtedly, however, that doctrine at the present day was held by at least a great portion of
  868
  the Church, Any hon. Gentleman who wished for it might find much valuable information in the Report of the Committee, and the Committee recommended the adoption of the measure now under the consideration of the House. But assuming that they satisfied themselves that there was nothing contrary to religion in the course they proposed, then came the practical question with reference to the effect of the measure on the social condition of the people, and certainly he was rather surprised at the noble Lord the Member for Leicestershire (Lord J. Manners) who last night descanted in terms of much indignation at the idea of introducing a change which, according to him, would produce almost universal immorality. He spoke as if the measure would dissolve the framework of society; and he based his opinion on the result of the facilitating of divorces in Germany, by the law of that country. The noble Lord referred to the speech of Baron Gerlach, showing the frequency of divorce in Prussia; but he did not tell them that in Prussia divorce was allowed for a great number of causes, some of them very trifling in their nature, while by this Bill the right of divorce was confined to cases of adultery. They had, however, an illustration nearer home, much more apposite, for the purpose of testing whether any danger to morality was likely to follow the adoption of this measure—that of Scotland, where the law of divorce went much further than was proposed by this Bill, although stopping short of that of Prussia. In Scotland divorce was allowed in cases of adultery or continuous desertion; and it did not appear that this facility produced those frightful consequences which were apprehended by the opponents of the Bill; nor were all the people running after divorces in the way some hon. Members seemed to suppose. It appeared that in five years there were only ninety-five cases, and he had yet to learn that the people were more immoral than those of this country. So that, although the expenses of obtaining a divorce in Scotland was only £20 or £30, the evil results which were anticipated by some hon. Members as likely to flow from the Bill were not justified by the experience of the operation of a somewhat similar law in that country. Looking at the matter in a practical point of view, the question for the House was, whether the present state was desirable or not—whether they were prepared to stay where they were, to

  869
  retrograde, or to go forward. They who contended that marriage was indissoluble, could not with consistency consent to a legislative divorce; for if to grant it at all was contrary to the Divine law, they ought never to consent to pass a Divorce Bill. Would they go back, and abolish divorce altogether, or retain the present law, Which gave a remedy to the rich but not to the poor? It was objected that the new court would be very expensive, that it would lead to all sorts of collusion, and that dissolution of marriage would be very frequent. It was true the Bill did not go as far or bring divorce as low as it might; what it did accomplish was to substitute a judicial legal tribunal for an anomalous, expensive, extraordinary and legislative one. As it stood the Bill went sufficiently far, for it was easier to extend the provisions of such a measure than to abridge them. He could not coincide in the extravagant ideas of the expense entertained by some Members, but he believed the Bill would afford a much more extensive remedy than the present, at an expense not too great. If that were so, what was the real objection to the second reading? Then it was said, this was a coercive measure upon the clergy with respect to the re-marriage of divorced persons; but as his right hon. Friend the Home Secretary had remarked, it made no change in the law with regard to the clergy, but left them in exactly the same position as they were at present. The clergy had no more right to complain of this Bill than of the system which had existed for the last one hundred and fifty years. If a greater number of such marriages should be solemnised it would only show the more extensive operation of the Bill; but, if, as some supposed, that there really would be no such increase, then the grievance upon the clergy would not exist even in degree. He submitted that if they were satisfied, as he thought they would be, that the Bill was no violation of religion—that there was a sufficient necessity for additional legislation—the House would agree to the second reading of a Bill which would be just to individuals, and advantageous to society, and would supply the deficiencies in the present law.
  MR. HENLEYsaid, he should not have risen to address the House had it not been for one or two remarks of the right hon. Gentleman the Secretary for the Home Department (Sir G. Grey). He thought the speech of that right hon. Gentleman was an exceedingly clever and able one after
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  the fashion of that House, for while affecting to answer the speech of the right hon. Member for Oxford University (Mr. Gladstone) he had, with singular adroitness, avoided answering or attempting to answer any one of the arguments contained in that speech. In common fairness he should have noticed what the right hon. Member for Oxford University stated at the commencement of his address, that, until within the last few months he had not been able to look deeply into the subject. If that had been done, the remarks that had been made about a difference of opinion expressed now and two or three years back would have been out of place. The right hon. Gentleman the Secretary of State for the Home Department apparently wished to put before the country in a true light the opinions of the clergy upon this subject; and in what manner did he do it? Not by referring to the best expressed opinions of the clergy, not by referring to the petitions against the Bill, signed by 80,000 or 90,000 persons, many of them clergymen, nor to the declaration signed by about 8,000 of the clergy of all shades of opinion. And when the right hon. Gentleman stated that the clergy who complained of a grievance rested that complaint upon an opinion that marriage was indissoluble, he was not acting with fairness in so misrepresenting those clergymen. The right hon. Gentleman (Sir G. Grey) quoted the opinion of a single prelate, and represented it as that of the whole clergy, though it was in the direct teeth of the declaration which had been signed by 8,000 of their number. A more complete misrepresentation of the views of the clergy could not have been given, and he would ask whether it was fair or candid on the part of the right hon. Gentleman to set forth the declaration of a single prelate in the way he had done? The declaration stated their earnest desire that facilities unauthorised by Scripture and by the law and ritual of the Church should not be given for the dissolution of holy matrimony. They did not say that marriage was indissoluble, but they prayed that, as marriage with a divorced woman was declared to be adulterous, they might not be compelled to celebrate such a marriage. He (Mr. Henley) agreed with the clergymen who had signed the declaration in thinking that marriage was not indissoluble. [Sir G. GREY: I read the declaration otherwise.] He (Mr. Henley) knew the clergyman who drew it up, and that was his opinion. The Attorney General had very adroitly put the point of indissolubility

  871
  as if it were the whole question at issue. But even if they held marriage to be dissoluble, the question still arose whether was wise or prudent to bring it home to the doors of the people at large. It was clear from the language of the hon. and learned Attorney General and the right hon. Baronet that the present Bill was only an instalment, and indeed it would be impossible long to withhold from every class o the people that which was within the reach of a limited portion of them. It therefore became an important question whether they would best consult the interests of morality and religion by depriving the limited number who could now obtain a dissolution of marriage of that supposed benefit, or by bringing it within the reach of all classes of the community. The example of Prussia had been referred to, and no one could say that the law of divorce in that country had worked well. The Solicitor General alluded to Scotland, and spoke of the small number of divorces that took place there; but if the numbers in England were to be in the same ratio to our population the increase would be very considerable. The hon. and learned Gentleman did not, however, tell the House that in Scotland the divorcee parties could not marry again, a circumstance which made all the difference in the case. A mere separation was not likely to have the same effect on the morality of the country as giving the parties who had committed the sin permission to enter into a contract of marriage with each other. That feature of the Scotch law to which he had referred formed an essential safeguard against the moral evils which were likely to arise, and one of which the present Bill took no notice. The hon. and learned Gentleman the Attorney General called the present system a blot on our laws and a scandal. The blot consisted in people who were aggrieved not having a remedy unless they were rich. But this was not to be done away with by the Bill. The Solicitor General said that they must go still further, step by step; so that the blot was only half rubbed out. Then as to the scandal, which consisted of the crim. con. action—a very discreditable kind of action, no doubt,—in what way was it proposed to remove it? It was said there was a fine proposed by the Bill, but no appropriation of the money; and a suggestion was thrown out that it might be applied in the shape of compensation to the injured husband. Then what became of the scandal? What was a crim. con. action but an action for compensation
  872
  to the husband! At present the action was decided by a jury; but his hon. and learned Friend would take it out of the hands of the jury, leave the Court to fix the fine, and, he supposed, appropriate the money, though that was not in the Bill. This was straining at the gnat and swallowing the camel. The hon. Gentleman the Member for Herefordshire (Mr. Puller) acknowledged that this Bill had created great alarm in the country, but he could not understand why. It was for this reason that people felt that though this might not be a new law, yet it was a law which was going to be brought within the reach of the great mass of the population, and they thought, whether rightly or wrongly, that it would therefore have a tendency to shake the sanctity of the marriage tie. That was not an unnatural apprehension, for it was impossible that this innovation could stop here. Nobody could say exactly what the cost of obtaining a divorce under the new law would be, but the House might depend upon it, that if it were large that would be a "blot" which would be struck at immediately. Again, the argument would be urged, that there ought to be one law for the rich and another for the poor. There must be smaller courts for the poor man, it would be said, and he could not see how that demand was to be resisted, for additional facilities for the poor man was the only ground on which the Bill rested. It could not be pretended that the measure was called for by the country, for not one single petition had come up in favour of this Bill, or praying for an alteration in the law. The history of this change was this. Parliament was about to sweep away the testamentary jurisdiction of the Ecclesiastical Courts, and then it was thought that if matrimonial causes—the first idea did not include cases of dissolution of marriage—could be transferred to an independent tribunal the Ecclesiastical Courts might be got rid of altogether. This led to the appointment of a Commission, for it was by a Commission that the first steps were usually taken in these matters. The right hon. Gentleman the Home Secretary had referred with great complacency to the evidence taken by the Commissioners, and had pointed out to the House the manner in which the Commissioners had cross-examined the witnesses. But none of these witnesses had ever come near the Commission. The Commissioners, lawyer-like, wishing to shorten this business, sent for the evidence taken before the Committee

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  of the House of Lords, and printed it bodily in their Report. He (Mr. Henley) had given his best attention to the Bill, and his unfeigned desire was for more time; nor could there be a better proof of the necessity of giving more time for the consideration of this matter than the confusion in the mind of the right hon. Gentleman both as to this point and as to the real opinion of the clergy, to which he bad before adverted. Time would also have allayed the misapprehensions which existed on the subject. If this Bill were passed now it would be passed against the feelings of the majority of the country. The people of England were not unreasonable. If the arguments in favour of this Bill were right, and they had time to consider them, they would be assenting parties to the Bill; but if it were passed now, the universal opinion would be that it had been forced through Parliament with indecent haste, and without giving an opportunity to the representatives of the people to communicate with their constituents. It would have been a much wiser course to lay aside the Bill until the new Testamentary Courts had got into fair working order, instead of hurrying on a Bill, which, as it stood, would tend to multiply divorce, and be prejudicial to the best interests of the country.
  MR. WALPOLE: As one of the Commissioners who signed the Report on which this Bill is said to be founded, I trust the House will grant me its indulgence while I explain the reasons which induce me to support its second reading. I cannot help thinking with my learned Friend the Attorney General, that the nature of the Bill has been much misunderstood and much misinterpreted; and when I hear my right hon. Friend who has just sat down acknowledge that if it had been longer before the public it would have been accepted by them ns a wise settlement of the question—[Mr. HENLEY: If the arguments in its favour were right.] I cannot help regretting that those who take au interest in the subject should not have endeavoured, at least in Parliament, to instruct the people as to the real nature and bearings of the measure. But that this has not been clone is palpable from one of the letters read to-night by my right hon. Friend the Member for the University of Oxford, showing that the people in the parish referred to were under the impression that by this Bill any husband and wife who quarrelled might have their marriage dissolved.
  874
  Moreover, if a stranger had come into the House to-night, ignorant of the laws and history of our country, and had heard the splendid language in which this Bill has been denounced, he would have run away with the idea that some strange fatuity had taken possession of Parliament; that the sacred relations of marriage were about to be broken; that we were going to introduce the most lax insecurity into our English homes; that the position of woman, which has been raised so high by the influence of Christianity, was about to be lowered, and that the whole state of the morals of the country was to be degraded by the passing of a measure which would facilitate divorces to an undue extent and in a manner unsanctioned either by reason or by Scripture. But if the same stranger had waited until the first effect of that magnificent eloquence had passed away, if he had taken time to recall his thoughts or had appealed for information to some one who possessed more accurate knowledge of the law as it now is, and also as it will be under this Bill, he would have learnt with astonishment after such denunciations that the relations of marriage are in no degree loosened or unsettled by this measure; he would—he must have been—told that no woman would be placed in a degraded position as compared with that which she occupied before; he would, he must, have been told that the nuptial bond could not be dissolved for any cause but that for which a dissolution can now take place; nay more, be would, and must, have been told that the only object and purport of this Bill is to substitute one good judicial tribunal for three bad ones—in one of which the proceedings are admitted to be a scandal and a disgrace to the country; in another of which, for the same offence, you go through the same proof and the same trial; and in regard to the third of which we have introduced the monstrous absurdity that the Legislature of the country is to try a question which of all questions most requires judicial thought, judicial habits, judicial patience, and judicial impartiality. I do hope that the House and the country will see what is the nature and effect of this measure by comparing the existing law, or at least the existing practice which has become law, with that which will be law, when this Bill is passed; and for that purpose I trust that the House will bear with me while I bring these points as clearly and as shortly as I can before

  875
  them. By the law and by the Bill there are two kinds of divorce—one of which is permanent and the other temporary. The permanent divorce is the divorce, a vinculo matrimonii, and the temporary divorce called by this Bill a "judicial separation," is called by the law, a divorce a mensâ et thoro; the causes of these two kinds of divorce are by the Bill and by the present law substantially the same. The causes which justify a judicial separation are adultery and cruelty, and to these the Bill adds wilful desertion. The causes, or rather I should say the only cause, of divorce a vinculo—for it ought to go from one end of the country to the other that there is but one ground for that kind of divorce—is the same in this Bill and under the existing law—and that is adultery. This kind of divorce can be obtained by the husband where adultery is proved on the part of the wife, but it can be obtained by the wife only in certain cases in which there is proof of aggravated adultery on the part of the husband. The Bill and the law are therefore concurrent as to the causes for which divorces are to be allowed. Nor do they differ as to the consequences which are to follow them. The consequences of a temporary divorce or judicial separation are, that the parties are legally separated, with the power of reconciliation and of meeting again, but while they are separated a suitable provision is made for the wife under the name of alimony. The consequence of the divorce a vinculo undoubtedly is since the marriage vow is broken by that act, that the tie which held the parties together is gone, and—whether rightly or wrongly I will presently inquire—both by the Bill and by the law the parties are remitted to their single state, and being remitted to the single state, they are both allowed to marry again. Now, Sir, I think I have shown that there is really and substantially not one iota of difference between the law and the Bill, either as to the divorces intended to be allowed, or as to the causes for which they may be promoted, or as to the consequences which are to follow from them. That being so, I put it to the House, and through the House I put it to the country, whether there is in this measure anything calculated to lead to that profligate dissolution of manners with which we have been threatened if we pass this measure. And now let me grapple, and grapple fairly, with the objections which have been raised and urged against it. These objections, coming
  876
  as they do from the same persons strike me as not a little remarkable, because they appear to arise from the most opposite quarters and certainly they lead to the most opposite results. According to one argument the Bill goes much too far, and according to another it does not go far enough. According to one you ought to have no divorces at all, because marriage should in all cases be indissoluble; according to another you ought to extend if not the causes of divorce, at least the remedies to the parties applying for them, by allowing to the woman the same facilities that you allow to the man. My right hon. Friend (Mr. Gladstone), in that splendid address which he delivered this evening, pointed out forcibly in his own glowing language the corruption of manners to which he thought this Bill would lead. But I must remind him of his own statement, that for one adultery committed by a wife there were twenty committed by husbands. Now the force of his argument, if fairly traced to its logical consequences, was that, if you allow divorce to a husband on the ground of adultery, you must concede it to the wife also on the same ground; but then if his other statement be true, that for one adultery committed by wives, there were twenty committed by husbands, he would multiply by twenty the number of divorces which may take place under this Bill. If we look to the reasons upon which these objections rest we shall find them to be very different. One is founded upon the opinion that in all cases and under all circumstances marriage is or ought to be indissoluble except by death. Another rests on the idea that marriage, even though it is sanctioned by a religious ceremony, partakes more or less of the nature of a civil contract, and can, like other contracts, be modified or destroyed. A third objection is taken by the clergy, and it seems to me to have more justice in it than any of the others. The first of these objections, namely, that the Bill goes too far, proceeds upon the assumption—that marriage is or ought to be indissoluble; and, even if it be not, still it is unadvisable on moral grounds, and for the good of society, to prevent divorced persons from marrying again. In considering this subject I bear in mind the Scriptural allowance of divorce and the Scriptural permission of remarriage. No doubt these two things are essentially distinct in themselves, but I believe it will be found that the latter resulted in reason and religion directly from

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  the former. It is painful to enter into a religious argument, and I shall do so only so far as to show that I am upon religious grounds justified in stating that marriage is dissoluble for the one great offence, the sin of adultery, and that when that happens there is nothing in Scripture prohibiting a recourse to second nuptials. My right hon. Friend, following the Attorney General, pointed out to the House the remarkable passages in St. Matthew, St. Mark, and St. Luke. Now, Sir, the view which I take of this case is that which has been taken by the great majority of divines, in the earliest ages of the Church, and also by the great mass of modern divines. Upon this subject I will use no words of my own, but will take the language of one to whom I need not say the Church has always looked up as one of the most judicious and the most learned of her divines. Dr. Hammond, in his Tract on Divorces, says:—
  "That Matthew should be interpreted by the other two, the more explicit and larger by the shorter and less explicit, seems not reasonable; and, besides, it were not easily imaginable what should become of those verses of Matthew, both xix. 9 and v. 32 "except for fornication," if the full sense were expressed by Mark and Luke without them; for though it is easy to conceive such words to be meant when they are not expressed, yet it is not so easy to conceive them not to be meant since they are expressed."
  That is the view which I take of the subject. I make this quotation without arguing the case, because I don't wish to enter into a religious discussion. But I cannot help, by way of illustration, confirming the view thus taken by Dr. Hammond. Suppose three jurists in this country were writing treatises upon points of criminal jurisprudence. Suppose two of them said, "You shall not kill;" and the third said, "You shall not kill except in self-defence;" would there be any contradiction there; would not the three stand well together? and would not the exception mentioned by the third be imported into the general rule laid down by the others? Again, suppose the same two jurists said, "You shall not swear," and the third added, "You shall not swear except in a court of justice," would any one say that these dicta were not in perfect accordance? And so, when two of the Evangelists say, "You shall not put away your wife;" and by another Evangelist it is said, "You shall not put away your wife except for fornication," is not the expressed qualification of the third to be understood in the command conveyed
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  more briefly by the other two? This view is confirmed by divines, both ancient and modern. The opinions of the ancient divines were all collected by Cranmer at the time when Parr's case was under consideration, and they will be found by anybody who wishes to refer to them in the second volume of Burnet's History of the Reformation. The opinions of the ancient divines were also collected by Bishop Cosin in the Duke of Norfolk's Case, and it may he found in the 30th volume of the State Trials. The modern divines, to some extent, differ as to the remarriage of the parties divorced. Bishop Hall, Bishop Taylor, and many others, all agree as to the divorce on the ground of adultery. From the time of the Duke of Norfolk's Case down to the present moment you have had, without exception, as far as I know, the Bench of Bishops concurring in this: they remonstrated, no doubt, against parts of these divorce Bills which are called privilegia, but they never objected, as far as I know, on the ground that divorce was not permitted by our Saviour for adultery. So much on that part of the case, which relates to the Scriptural permission of divorce for the one excepted cause. But, says my right hon. Friend, there are no authorities favourable to the remarriage. Now, I own there is a vast difference between the two propositions; but, according to the best judgment I can form of the case upon Scriptural grounds, I think the divorced woman alluded to in the New Testament as one whom it is not lawful to marry, is always referred to as one that has been put away for some of the lesser offences which the Jews insisted on, and not for the higher offence of fornication or adultery, which is in itself a complete disruption of the marriage bond. If I am right in that conclusion, it necessarily follows that Scripture is silent on the question of remarriage, and, being so silent, it is in the power of every State to deal with the subject in the way most conducive to public morals, and most beneficial to the community at large. There being no Scriptural prohibition of divorce on the ground of adultery, but, on the contrary, an allowance of it, and there being no prohibition of the remarriage of parties so divorced, the social question immediately arises—ought the State to allow or to prohibit these remarriages? That is one of the most important questions which can be agitated in any assembly. It is not very easy to grapple with all the difficulties

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  which present themselves, but this, I think, one must admit—that divorce for adultery has at all events always been allowed to the innocent party; and the reason is obvious. If you do not confer upon him this privilege you make him suffer for the guilt of another, and throw upon him a load and a burden which neither reason nor religion justifies you in imposing. I do not wish to rest on my own opinion on such a matter as this, but there is a beautiful passage in one of the divines to whom I have referred which so entirely conveys my own views on this part of the question that I will venture to read it to the House:—
  "Shortly, then, I doubt not but I may (notwithstanding great authorities to the contrary) safely resolve that in the case of divorce it is lawful for the innocent person to marry. But for that find the Church of England hitherto somewhat tender on the point, and this practice, where it rarely falls, generally held, though not sinful, yet of ill report, and obnoxious to various censures. I should therefore earnestly advise and exhort those whom it may concern carefully and effectually to apply themselves to the forementioned remedies; reconciliation, if it be possible to prevent a divorce; holy continence, if it may be obtained, after a divorce; but," and now mark these words, "if these prevail not, I dare not lay a load on any man's conscience which God hath not burdened; I dare not ensnare those whom God will have free."
  These are the words of no less an authority than Bishop Hall, and I will only add that if the marriage is so entirely dissolved as regards the innocent party that he may enter into second nuptials, it is difficult to conceive how the marriage of the guilty can be otherwise than put an end to after divorce, to all intents and purposes whatsoever. I arrive, therefore, at my first conclusion—namely, that the objection, that this Bill goes too far, is neither warranted by Scripture nor by reason, and that we are perfectly justified in recognising that which has been the practice of this country for so many centuries, namely, the dissolution of the marriage bond, when either of the parties has broken that bond by the act of adultery. The other objection taken is, that the measure does not go so far as it ought to go. Now, I am happy to say that this objection does not demand the extension of divorce to cases of ill-temper, disgust, impossibility of living together, voluntary separation, and so forth. Burke, in his own beautiful language, has described how much, by confining marriage to the pair, and making it indissoluble, Christianity has done to promote the happiness, the peace, and the civilization of the world. In using
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  the word "indissoluble," however, Burke recognised the one exceptional ground of divorce; and I certainly think if you grant divorces for any other cause than adultery there would be immense danger of breaking up that which is the tenderest of all earthly ties, and that you would, in point of fact, degrade marriage into a mere transient connexion. Nobody has taken up this ground in the course of the debate, but the reasoning of my right hon. Friend went to show that the language of Scripture must be applicable to both sexes, and that if you allow divorce to the man you ought to allow it equally to the woman. Now, I think my right hon. Friend does not distinguish, as he ought, between the Scriptural permission of divorce and the social application of that permission to suit the exigencies of Society. I believe that Scripture allows divorce both to the man and the woman on the ground of adultery; but, examining the question socially, I find a broad distinction between the consequences of this sin as the same may be committed by the husband or the wife. On the one hand the adultery of the wife necessarily breaks asunder all family ties, and may introduce into the family circle a spurious offspring. On the other hand, the adultery of the husband has no such necessary consequences; and for these reasons, even if there were no others, I doubt whether we ought to allow the woman to obtain divorce, equally with the man. Besides these reasons, however, there is another and a stronger one, which has been pointed out by Chancellor Kent as the result of his observation in America, and which has been given also by Lord Brougham, as the result of his observations in that country. If, it is said, you allow adultery committed by the man to be a ground of divorce on the application of the woman, you will probably encourage collusion where the parties mutually desire a separation, and in fact, you will enable them to obtain divorces almost at their pleasure. No woman, or barely one, would, because she and her husband could not live happily together, commit adultery in order to obtain a divorce; but I fear there are many men who would not scruple to adopt this method of ridding themselves from the shackles which bind them to one whom they have ceased to care for. Hence by collusion their object might be obtained. These are the reasons which induce me to say that you must draw a distinction, not upon

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  Scriptural, but upon social grounds, between the offence of the husband and that of the wife. I come now to that part of the Bill which proposes an extension of the means of obtaining divorce to the wife, which she does not possess under the existing law. The wife at present can only obtain a Parliamentary divorce when an enormous crime—such as incest or bigamy has been committed by the husband. In these and like cases divorce has been given by Parliament to the wife. This Bill extends her remedy to two other causes—namely, adultery coupled with wilful desertion or gross cruelty. This seems to me only a reasonable extension to be given to the wife. I know it is said that even this extension is a breaking up of what was well called the blessedness of the family home with all its charities; but the answer is that in such a case the home has nothing of a family character. It is a blighted, deserted, barbarous, and unchaste home. That cannot be called a home where the husband is guilty of brutal barbarity, where the voice of kindness is never heard, or where the woman is left in such a state of solitude that she may be considered as completely in a state of widowhood as if her husband were actually dead. I have therefore no fear of giving on these grounds to a deserted, betrayed, and insulted wife, the reasonable extension of the power of obtaining divorce contained in this Bill. Thus then would I deal with the great objections to this Bill made by two different parties—namely, that it goes too far, and that it does not go far enough. I will now advert to the objections made to it on the part of the clergy. With reference to this subject I am happy to agree entirely with the view taken by my right hon. Friend (Mr. Gladstone). I appeal to the Government to introduce into this Bill a clause which will save a clergyman from the oppression upon his conscience which would be inflicted by the measure as now it is drawn, inasmuch as it would compel him to solemnize a marriage according to rites which in his belief are no longer applicable to the parties who call for it. My hon. and learned Friend said that obedience to the law was the thing to be required. I agree with him, but I go further, and I think I may challenge my learned Friend to concur with me in saying that there is no class of people in this country who are more obedient to the law than the clergy of the Church of England. Therefore it is not
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  against them that an argument of this kind should be addressed, nor should we take advantage of their ready obedience to the law for the purpose of straining their consciences unduly. But if you pass the Bill without a clause protecting the clergy you put them in a position in which no man ought to be put,—viz., that of finding himself bound to violate the law of the land, or to violate what he believes to be the law of God. This is a dilemma which you can avoid, because you can either say that marriage with adulterous parties shall, after the Bill is passed, be entirely a civil contract, or you can introduce a clause under which it might not be compulsory on the clergy to solemnize these marriages, leaving it to those who do not entertain any religious objection to them to solemnize such marriages, if they hold well. There is one illustration on this part of the case which, if the House will permit me, I should like to advert to, and it supports most justly the argument advanced on this branch of the subject by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for the University of Oxford. In the year 1605 there was a clergyman in this country who actually solemnized a marriage between a divorced guilty person and another party. Two years before that the canons of 1603 had been made, and one year before the statute against bigamy had been passed. The canons of 1603 enjoined a prohibitory bond against a subsequent marriage, which implied, according to the opinion of Dr. Hammond, that except for that bond the parties might marry again. The statute against bigamy passed in 1604 contained a proviso implying a recognition by Parliament of the proposition, that the sentence of an Ecclesiastical Court did, in fact, work a dissolution of the marriage bond; for while it declared bigamy to be a felony it also declared that the Act should not extend to any person who was or should at the time of such marriage be divorced under a sentence of an Ecclesiastical Court: and if the sentence of such a court had not worked a dissolution of the marriage bond, it must have been bigamy to have married a woman who had been divorced from her husband while she was still alive. The clergyman to whom I have referred was no ordinary man. He was afterwards a prebendary of the very city in which we are now sitting. He was subsequently Bishop of this Metropolis and subsequently to that again he was Archbishop of Canterbury. As I have already

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  intimated he solemnized a marriage between a divorced guilty party and another person. He thought he might do so, no doubt, in consequence of the statute and canons to which I have referred; but as time passed over him, and as he reflected more upon the subject, his conscience rebuked him, he conceived he was wrong, and there is hardly a circumstance more touching in the whole history of Archbishop Laud, for he was the clergyman to whom I refer, than that of his every year setting apart that day on which he had done that act, which he subsequently thought he was not allowed to do, as a day of penitence and self-humiliation. Nay, more, in the writer, which I have now before me, "Huyler's Life of Archbishop Laud," you will find a prayer which he composed upon the subject, which prayer must, I think, convince any one that the conscience of a clergyman, when it is like the conscience of that excellent man, ought to be respected by any Government, and that such clergymen ought not to be made, in obedience to what you are pleased to call the law of the land, to solemnize marriages which they believe to be contrary to the law of God. I do trust that the Government will take this subject into their serious consideration, and will not throw upon the clergy the grievous oppression which this Bill will inflict upon their consciences. And now, Sir, before I sit down, I wish to make, with the permission of the House, a few observations with reference to the concluding remarks of my hon. Friend the Member for the University of Oxford (Sir W. Heathcote), echoed, as they have been, to a certain extent, by my right hon. friend the Member for the county of Oxford (Mr. Henley). My hon. Friend the Member for the University of Oxford said that there were only three courses to be taken with reference to the measure now proposed. He said, you must remain as you are, or you must go back and declare marriage never to be dissoluble, or you must go forward by making a great and permanent settlement of this question. I will consider these three courses, and show to the House which of them ought, in my opinion, to be adopted. Remember that the main object which this Bill professes to have is simply to point out a new mode in which these divorces are to be obtained, and not the causes for which they are to be granted. If you want any proof of this, you will find it in the preamble of the Bill, which says simply
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  that it is expedient to amend the law relating to divorce, and to constitute a court with exclusive jurisdiction in matters matrimonial, and, in certain cases, to decree a dissolution of marriage. That being the principle of the Bill, the only question we have to determine upon the second reading of the Bill is, not whether a clause should be introduced to protect the clergy, nor whether you are to continue to permit divorce for the same causes as those for which they have been granted heretofore, but whether the tribunal you are proposing to establish is the best tribunal for obtaining the object which you have in view. Now, apply to the measure the three courses which my hon. Friend the Member for the University of Oxford has pointed out. Take the first—that of remaining as we are. What would be the consequence of adopting such a course? Would it not be that you must retain that disgraceful blot upon the jurisprudence of this country—namely, the action for criminal conversation, which attempts to measure a husband's wrongs by such an amount of pecuniary damages as a jury may award—would it not be that you must also retain those proceedings in the Ecclesiastical Court which are now taken upon written evidence, and not upon evidence given in the presence of a jury, when the rights of such a case can alone be well examined, with a power of appeal to the Court of Arches in the first instance, and finally to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council. Would it not be that you must further retain the palpable anomaly of leaving with Parliament the decision of a most important judicial question? I cannot consent to this. The second course propounded to us is that we should go back to a certain extent, and, declaring marriage to be indissoluble, that we should prohibit divorce in any case whatsoever. I entreat the House to reflect much and long before they arrive at that conclusion. The soundest ethical writers, and the soundest jurists have always held that the absolute indissolubility of the marriage tie will only lead, as it has done in other countries, to a connivance at conjugal infidelity, and to a general laxity of morals. Nor is this unnatural. We cannot but expect that impunity for sin will lead to sin; and unless you put some restraint like that imposed by the law of divorce on human passions, I am afraid there is danger—infinite danger—that the other sex, when they feel that be their conduct ever so bad they will still retain their husband's name and their

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  husband's rank, they may be tempted to commit these offences to a greater extent than when they know that the penalty which hangs over a guilty wife is degradation from her former honourable position. But, more than this, a general indissolubility of marriage would inflict a wrong on the injured husband which you have no right to entail upon him. In the words of Bishop Hall, to which. I have already referred, you are imposing "a load on a man's conscience which God bath not burthened;" you are "ensnaring those whom God hath made free." If, then, I cannot acquiesce cither in leaving things in their present anomalous state, or in establishing a general and avowed indissolubility of marriage, I have no other course open to me but to endeavour, as best I may, to settle this difficult and delicate question—not as my right hon. Friends would seem to imply, by giving an instalment of change which might be afterwards added to, but by avoiding the dangerous extreme of absolute indissolubility on the one hand, and the still more dangerous extreme of a too easy separation on the other. My belief is that this Bill will effect these objects—that it will tend to check that flood of pollution which must inevitably flow from the connivance at conjugal infidelity—that it will accomplish the great ends of all laws of marriage, namely, to protect the wife from the inconstancy of her husband, and the children from the inconstancy of their parents. I would not be thought insensible to the admirable reasoning, the beautiful diction, the glowing, the heartfelt eloquence of my right hon. Friend the Member for the University of Oxford, which must have entranced all who listened to him; neither am I indifferent to the consequences of any step which might diminish, even by a hair's breadth, the sanctity of the marriage bond. But I accept this measure because I believe it will settle this most important and difficult question on a better foundation than that on which it now rests. I accept it because I believe its principle to be authorised by our holy religion, sanctioned by experience, and in the strictest conformity alike with sound morals and the highest policy. I accept it, above all, because I believe it will tend to uphold the sacredness of the marriage tie, to discourage the inducements to that sin, which of all other is the worst for the moral purity of society, and to preserve to us that blessed security and peace which now constitute— as God grant they may ever constitute—
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  the charm, the happiness, and the unspeakable blessing which now surrounds an English home.
  MR. NAPIERsaid, he wished to draw the attention of the House to a very few points connected with the question before them. His right hon. Friend (Mr. Walpole) had pointed out the distinction between Scriptural permission and social allowance in regard to divorce; and it was very essential in such a discussion to keep in view the difference between the religious and the civil aspects of marriage. No doubt, in its religious aspect, marriage was an indissoluble contract; but statesmen had to deal with the question when to grant or withhold human sanction. The cardinal blemish in this Bill, however, which his right hon. Friend had done nothing to vindicate, was the provision it contained for the remarriage of the adulterer and adultress. This provision involved a total alteration of the law of this country as at present administered; and whether they looked to the practice in Scotland, in Holland, in France, or in the United States, they would not find that the guilty party, by reason of his or her sinful act, acquired the privilege of contracting another Christian marriage. They had been told that Archbishop Land, having solemnized the remarriage of a divorced person, on subsequent reflection became convinced that he had done an unholy and unlawful act. Yet this measure called on them to make such unions not only legal but Christian marriages. This was not merely changing the whole of our law, but going in the very teeth of the Divine law. He had listened in vain to the powerful statement of the hon. and learned Attorney General for any defence of this proposal. His right hon. Friend, indeed, said, "If Scripture be silent on this point, the question becomes one of human policy." But was Scripture really silent upon it? Bishop Hall had certainly been quoted, but the passage in question was exclusively confined to the right of the innocent party. The authority of no eminent divine of our Church had been adduced to show that the remarriage of the guilty was allowable. Whatever might be the other merits of any measure which gave a religious sanction to the marriage of persons who had been convicted of adultery, he would say, "Perish any such measure rather than the Legislature should lend its sanction to so obnoxious a provision." He agreed with the right hon. Gentleman (Sir G. Grey) that hon. Members were bound to

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  apply their own minds to this matter, and he, for one, preferred the simple light of plain Scripture to all the opinions of divines. He remembered the powerful argument of his right hon. Friend (Mr. Walpole) upon, the question of the marriage of a deceased wife's sister. His right hon. Friend then, adopting the words of Bishop Butler, said, "Wherever a doubtful question arises on the Divine law, give the doubt to God." Was his right hon. Friend's mind now so clear of all doubt that he could give his sanction to the principle involved in this Bill, and say, that if a woman married her adulterer during the life of her husband, the guilty parties were as fully married as if the first marriage had been dissolved by death? Such a position was opposed to the universal voice of the Reformed Church. The present Archbishop of Canterbury—a man of so much meekness, of wisdom, experience, and moderation, that his opinion was entitled to the highest respect on this subject—said, during the debate in the other House, that he could neither reconcile it to reason nor to the Divine command to allow the marriage of the guilty parties during the life of the innocent husband or wife. In that opinion the Archbishop was supported by the whole of the Bishops, with one exception, by the late Speaker of the House of Commons, the Earl of Shaftesbury, and other lay peers of eminence. A great Nonconformist preacher, Richard Baxter, had enforced the same view. He had not heard a single authority in favour of such a permission. This question was debated in the House of Lords in 1800, on the Bill of Lord Auckland; and Bishop Horsley then maintained that the guilty parties ought not to be allowed to marry. The Bill passed the House of Lords with that provision, and also a provision making adultery a crime punishable by imprisonment; and the Bill in that form was supported in the Commons by Mr. Wilberforce, Mr. Romilly, and other eminent men. All this went to prove that it was never before contemplated to allow the marriage of the guilty parties. For himself he (Mr. Napier) had no objection whatever to the remarriage of the injured and unoffending party; but he would urge upon the House, when dealing with the religious part of the contract, that they had no right to stir one step beyond the point where they felt themselves safe upon Holy Scripture. To that length they were perfectly safe; but when they proceeded further, and said that the guilty
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  party might, during the life of the wife or husband, intermarry with the partner of his or her guilt, see what confusion, what inconsistency, and running against the whole amount of authority and spirit of the divine text of Scripture they involved themselves in. The clergy held that such marriages ought not to be allowed; and he regretted that his right hon. Friend the Member for the University of Cambridge should separate himself upon this question from those who, in other respects, he so honourably represented, and should give his sanction to a proposition unknown to the law of England. [Mr. WALPOLE intimated dissent.] Where, then, was the law to be found? In what statute or code could it be traced? Acts of Parliament granting divorces originated in the desire of peers, whose wives had been unfaithful, to obtain the opportunity of marrying again, and perpetuating their honours; but the private Acts by which such divorces were decreed were no part of the law of the land. They merely dissolved marriage, and enabled the husband, the injured party, to marry again. The right hon. Baronet (Sir G. Grey) had said that, unless the House assented to this Bill, they would not discharge their duty to God if they did not reject all private Divorce Bills in future; but he (Mr. Napier) thought there was a material difference between this measure and Bills which enabled unoffending persons to marry again, while they gave no such permission to the guilty parties; and he would ask whether the right hon. Gentleman would consent that the analogous clause in this Bill be struck out? If this Bill were adopted in its present form, a clergyman who had married a woman, and made during the ceremony the declaration contained in one of the prayers in the office for the solemnization of matrimony, that it should never be lawful to put asunder those whom matrimony had made one, might, after that woman had committed adultery and been divorced, be called upon to marry her again, and to repeat the solemn declaration. The clergy would then, in his opinion, he subjected to a most intolerable tyranny; and he thought a clergyman ought rather to strip off his gown, and resign his living, than be the instrument of prostituting the holy service of the Church by converting an adultress into a bride. He thought one great defect of this Bill was, that it did not make adultery a crime. Under its provisions adultery could merely be punished by a fine;

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  and it would, consequently, be regarded out of doors as a gentleman-like and aristocratic offence. The proper solution of the question would be to make adultery a misdemeanour, punishable at the suit of the injured party. This would be consonant with the law of Scripture, while the punishment of adultery by imprisonment would tend to repress the crime and to prevent collusion. The Attorney General had contended for a distinction between the man and the woman with respect to divorce; but he (Mr. Napier) did not understand how, consistently with the principle of common sense, the Legislature could refuse to the wife the remedy granted to the husband. The Bill, however, was intended only for the husband, although both Lord Stowell and Dr. Lushington had expressed very strong opinions in favour of both parties. There was, then, no help for the woman; and further, as the Bill would abolish civil actions for adultery, and did not make adultery an indictable offence, Roman Catholics, and those who held the indissolubility of marriage, would be deprived of any remedy whatever.
  THE ATTORNEY GENERALwas understood to say, in reply, that the matter had been discussed on Scriptural grounds, on grounds of morality, and on the ground of affording relief to tender consciences. The hon. Member for West Surrey (Mr. Drummond) had, singularly enough, drawn his arguments against the Bill from the Old Testament, and challenged the House to point to a single passage from the beginning of Genesis to the end of Malachi, which countenanced the dissolubility of marriage. But he (the Attorney General) thought there were many instances of adultery followed by marriage to be drawn from that source. There was certainly a remarkable one of adultery and murder combined, followed by the marriage of the parties. His right hon. Friend the Member for the University of Oxford, who, like Aaron's rod, swallowed up all the rest of his (the Attorney General's) opponents, had transcended himself on this occasion. His right hon. Friend had come down to the House impressed with the high religious duty of opposing the Bill, on the grounds that it was anti-scriptural, pregnant with the most imminent danger to the highest moral interests of the community, and an instrument which would rend the Church of England in twain. And yet, notwithstanding, the right hon. Gentleman must vote
  890
  for the Bill, or he must not vote at all. None that respected the right hon. Gentleman—and no one respected him more than he (the Attorney General)—could permit him to vote in conformity with his speech. Had the right hon. Gentleman no scruples, in 1854, as to the injury likely to ac crue to the morals of the community, and was he indifferent to the interests of the Church of England in that year? There was a saying, "O, that mine enemy had written a book." He (the Attorney General) might have wished that his antagonist had been a Cabinet Minister. Was not the duty of a Cabinet Minister plainly this, to be no party to any measure that was opposed to religious obligations, the duties of morality, or the interests of the Church of England? And yet, this very Bill now before the House, was a measure of the Cabinet of 1854, of which his right hon. Friend was a distinguished Member. Surely, his right hon. Friend could not have it said that he was such a creature of impulse that the opinions, sentiments, and principles of conduct adopted by him in 1854 were forgotten in 1857. And what reason had his right hon. Friend given for his conversion? Why, a treatise which he produced, and which turned out to be written by some obscure proctor in an Ecclesiastical Court in Ireland ["No, no!"], no doubt a Roman Catholic proctor, and published at Dublin.
  MR. GLADSTONEsaid, the book was written in London; but the copy from which he quoted was published in Dublin seventy years afterwards.
  THE ATTORNEY GENERALresumed: He said, however that might be, his right hon. Friend was, in 1857, the eloquent denunciator of a measure framed by the very Cabinet of which he was a member in 1854—
  "Who would not laugh if such a man there be;
  Who would not weep"—
  He would not finish the quotation. His right hon. Friend, however, had touched, in one respect, on dangerous ground, and was admirably answered by his (the Attorney General's) right hon. Friend the Member for the University of Cambridge (Mr. Walpole) who reminded him of the language of the canons of 1603, which clearly and distinctly embodied the principle that there might be a divorce a vinculo. It was, therefore, correct to tell the House, as he (the Attorney General) had ventured to do, that the Reformers of England were uniform in their opinion on the subject,

  891
  and that opinion was echoed by the general impression entertained by the reformed Churches throughout Europe. One-word as to the Scriptural argument. He was exceedingly happy to find the hon. and learned Member for Dundalk (Mr. Bowyer), followed by others, accept readily the interpretation which he (the Attorney General) ventured to take of the disputed passages. What was the consequence of that interpretation? The moment they admitted that, in the passage of St. Matthew, the Saviour was excepting the case of adultery, as being provided for by the Jewish law, the practical result was this, that the divorces spoken of were divorces prohibited and condemned as divorces proceeding on grounds wholly independent of the ground of adultery. There was, in point of fact, no injunction contained in the Scriptures that divorce should take place upon the ground of adultery; but there was, at the same time, to be found in them no prohibition of any description of divorce except such as was founded upon grounds wholly exclusive of those in which adultery was involved. That was the real position in which the Scriptural argument stood, and he might, perhaps, before leaving that point, be allowed to protest against the course which had been adopted by his right hon. Friend, in seeking to reduce the Scriptures, as it were, down to a minimum. The Bible of the early Church was not, as at the present day, bound in calf or morocco, but consisted of different gospels, which were published and circulated in different countries; and if they were to strike out of any one of those gospels a passage which did not happen to be found in another, the consequence would be that the most important doctrines would be brought into peril. His right hon. friend had also stated that he (the Attorney General) had misquoted the passage taken from the Quarterly Review, to which he had referred upon a previous occasion, and had put upon that passage an interpretation which the writer had not put upon it. [Mr. GLADSTONE: No, no!] Surely his right hon. Friend had been a little too precipitate in finding fault with his knowledge of the author's meaning, for he found that in explaining that single word which had been so much tortured, the writer had put upon it a construction different from almost every one else, stating its true interpretation to be "apostasy or idolatry." He could not, therefore, understand how his right hon.
  892
  Friend could accuse him of having put an erroneous interpretation upon the passage in question. But, to revert to the point which was more immediately the subject for their consideration, he should ask the House if they were that evening prepared to adopt the principle of the indissolubility of the marriage tie, and thereby to declare that no step should be taken to meet the wishes and the requirements of the community at large? Were they disposed to take that course, or to give "a local habitation and a name" to that principle which had, up to the present time, been acted upon and approved by the country; which was in conformity with the Scriptures, and in accordance with the true interests of society? Did hon. Members believe it to be desirable that two persons, in whose case the crime of adultery rendered the one loathsome to the other, should be bound to one another for life, or permitted to enjoy only such a state of separation as would prevent either from again entering upon the marriage contract? He felt assured that the House would hesitate long before they came to a conclusion such as that. As to the difficulty which was raised in the case of the clergy, that was a question which could be more properly dealt with in committee than upon the second reading of the Bill, and if the House felt satisfied that, in passing the measure into a law, they were doing that which was calculated to confer a benefit upon the community at large, he saw no reason why one particular class should be exempted from the obligations which that law involved. In conclusion, he had only to express a hope that the House would assent to substitute a convenient, expeditious, and economical tribunal, in cases of divorce, for that mockery in our system of judicial procedure which at present existed.
  Question put.
  The House divided:—Ayes 208; Noes 97: Majority 111.

  List of the AYES.

  Adeane, H. J.

  Bethell, Sir R.

  Anderson, Sir J.

  Biggs, J.

  Antrobus, E.

  Black, A.

  Archdall, Capt. M.

  Bonham-Carter, J.

  Ashley, Lord

  Bouverie, rt. hn. E. P.

  Ayrton, A. S.

  Bouverie, hon. P. P.

  Baines, rt. hon. M. T.

  Bovill, W.

  Baring, T. G.

  Brand, hon. II.

  Barnard, T.

  Briscoe, J. I.

  Baxter, W. E.

  Brocklehurst, J.

  Beale, S.

  Bruce, Lord E.

  Berkeley, hon. H. E. F.

  Bruce, H. A.

  Berkeley, K. W. F.

  Buchanan, W.

  893

  Buckley, Gen.

  Hume, W. F.

  Buller, J. W.

  Ingham, R.

  Butler, C. S.

  Ingram, H.

  Butt, I.

  Jermyn, Earl

  Buxton, C.

  Jervoice, Sir J. C.

  Buxton, Sir E.

  Keating, Sir H. S.

  Byng, hon. G.

  Kendall, N.

  Calcraft, J. H.

  Ker, R.

  Campbell, R. J. R.

  Kershaw, J.

  Cardwell, rt. hon. E.

  King, hon. P. J. L.

  Cavendish, hon. C. C.

  Kinglake, A. W.

  Cheetham, J.

  Kinnaird, hon. A. F.

  Churchill, Lord A. S.

  Kirk, W.

  Clay, J.

  Knatchbull-Hugessen, E

  Clifford, C. C.

  Labonchere, rt. hon. H.

  Clifford, H. M.

  Langton, J. H.

  Clive, G.

  Langton, H. G.

  Codrington, Gen.

  Legh, G. C.

  Colebrooke, Sir T. E.

  Lennox, Lord H. G.

  Colvile, C. R.

  Lewis, rt. hon. Sir G. C.

  Coningham, W.

  Locke, Jno.

  Cowper, rt. hon. W. F.

  Lowe, rt. hon. R.

  Cotterell, Sir H. G.

  Luce, T.

  Craufurd, E. H. J.

  Mackinnon, W. A.

  Crawford, R. W.

  Mangles, R. D.

  Dashwood, Sir G. H.

  Mangles, C. E.

  Davie, Sir R. H. F.

  Marjoribanks, D. C.

  Denison, hon. W. H. F.

  Martin, C. W.

  Dering, Sir E.

  Massey, W. N.

  Dillwyn, L. L.

  Matheson, A.

  Duncan, Visct.

  Melgund, Visct.

  Ebrington, Visct.

  Miles, W.

  Evans, T. W.

  Mills, T.

  Ewart, W.

  Mitchell, T. A.

  Farquhar, Sir M.

  Moncrieff, rt. hon. J.

  Ferguson, Sir R.

  Morgan, O.

  FitzRoy. rt. hon. H.

  Morris, D.

  Foley, J. H.

  Mostyn, hn. T. E. M. L.

  Foley, H. J. W.

  Napier, Sir C.

  Forster, C.

  Nicoll, D.

  Fortescue, hon. F. D.

  Nisbet, R. P.

  Fortescue, C. S.

  Noel, hon. G. J.

  Freestun, Col.

  Norreys, Sir D. J.

  Gaskell, J. M.

  Norris, J. T.

  Gifford, Earl of

  North, F.

  Glyn, G. G.

  Ogilvy, Sir J.

  Goddard, A. L.

  Osborne, R.

  Goderich, Visct.

  Paget, Lord A.

  Gordon, L. D.

  Pakenham, Col.

  Greer, S. M'C.

  Pakington, rt. hn. Sir J.

  Grenfell, C. W.

  Palmerston, Visct.

  Grey, rt. hon. Sir G.

  Patten, Col. W.

  Grey, R. W.

  Paull, H.

  Griffith, C. D.

  Paxton, Sir J.

  Grosvenor, Earl

  Pechell, Sir G. B.

  Gurney, S.

  Philips, R. N.

  Hackblock, W.

  Pigott, F.

  Hadfield, G.

  Platt, J.

  Hall, rt. hon. Sir B.

  Powell, F. S.

  Hamilton, J. H.

  Pritchard, J.

  Hanbury, R.

  Pugh, D.

  Hankey, T.

  Puller, C. W.

  Hardcastle, J. A.

  Ramsden, Sir J. W.

  Harris, J. D.

  Ramsay, Sir A.

  Hay, Lord J.

  Rebow, J. G.

  Headlam, T. E.

  Ricardo, O.

  Heathcote, hon. G. H.

  Ridley, G.

  Heneage, G. F.

  Roebuck. J. A.

  Henniker, Lord

  Russell, H.

  Herbert, rt. hon. H. A.

  Russell, Sir W.

  Hodgson, K. D.

  Rust, J.

  Holland, E.

  Schneider, H. W.

  Hudson, G.

  Scholefield, W.

  894

  Seymour, H. D.

  Walpole, rt. hon. S. H.

  Smith, J. B.

  Walter, J.

  Smith, rt. hon. R. V.

  Watkins, Col. L.

  Smith, A.

  Weguclin, T. M.

  Somerville, rt. hn. Sir W.

  Western, S.

  Stanley, Lord

  Westhead, J. P. B.

  Stapleton, J.

  Williams, W.

  Stephenson, R.

  Williams, Sir W. F.

  Stuart, Lord J.

  Wilson, J.

  Stuart, Col.

  Wise, J. A.

  Sykes, Col. W. II.

  Wood, rt. hon. Sir C.

  Tempest, Lord A. V.

  Wood, W.

  Thessiger, Sir F.

  Wood, B. T.

  Thompson, Gen.

  Worsley, Lord

  Thornely, T.

  Wyld, J.

  Tite, W.

  Windham, Gen.

  Trelawny, Sir J. S.

  Trueman, C.

  TELLERS.

  Turner, J. A.

  Hayter, rt. hon. W. G.

  Villiers, rt. hon. C. P.

  Mulgrave, Earl of

  List of the NOES.

  Adams, W. H.

  Lovaine, Lord

  Adderley, C. B.

  Lowther, hon. Col.

  Bernard, T. T.

  Macarthy, A.

  Beach, W. W. B.

  M'Cann, J.

  Beecroft, G. S.

  Maguire, J. F.

  Bowyer, G.

  Malins, R.

  Bridges, Sir B. W.

  Manners, Lord J.

  Buller, Sir J. Y.

  Martin, J.

  Burghley, Lord

  Miller, S. B.

  Cairns, H. M'C.

  Mills, A.

  Garden, Sir R. W.

  Monsell, rt. hon. W.

  Christy, S.

  Mowbray, J. R.

  Cobbett, J. M.

  Naas, Lord

  Cole, hon. H. A.

  Napier, rt. hon. J.

  Collins, T.

  Newark, Visct.

  Copeland, W. T.

  Newdegate, C. N.

  Cross, R. A.

  North, Col.

  Damer, L. D.

  O'Brien, P.

  De Vere, S. E.

  O'Connell, Capt. D.

  Disraeli, rt. hon. B.

  O'Donaghoe, The

  Dod, J. W.

  Packe, C. W.

  Du Cane, C.

  Palmer, R.

  Egerton, W. T.

  Pevensey, Visct.

  Elmley, Visct.

  Pilkington, J.

  Esmonde, J.

  Roupell, W.

  Estcourt, T. H. S.

  Sandon, Visct.

  Farnham, E. B.

  Scott, hon. F.

  Foster, W. O.

  Smyth, Col.

  Gard, R. S.

  Spooner, R.

  Garnett, W. J.

  Stafford, A.

  Gladstone, rt. hon. W.

  Steuart, A.

  Greville, Col. F.

  Taylor, Col.

  Hamilton, Lord C.

  Tomline, G.

  Hamilton, G. A.

  Trefusis, hon. C. H. R.

  Hatchell, J.

  Trollope, rt. hon. Sir J.

  Henley, rt. hon. J. W.

  Vansittart, W.

  Hildyard, R. C.

  Waddington, H. S.

  Holford, R. S.

  Walcott, Admiral

  Hope, A. J. B. B.

  Waldron, L.

  Hopwood, J. T.

  Walsh, Sir J.

  Horsfall, T. B.

  Warren, S.

  Howard, Lord E.

  Whiteside, J.

  Ingestre, Viscount

  Whitmore, H.

  Johnstone, hon. H. B.

  Wigram, L. T.

  Kelly, Sir F.

  Wyndham, H.

  King, J. K.

  Wynne, W. W. E.

  Knox, Col.

  Langton, W. G.

  Laurie, J.

  TELLERS

  Levinge, Sir R.

  Heathcote, Sir W.

  Liddell, hon. H. G.

  Lygon, hon. F.

  Main Question put and agreed to:—Bill read 2°, and committed for Tuesday next.

  MUTINY IN INDIA.—QUESTION.
  Mr. SPOONER: Sir, I wish to ask the noble Lord at the head of the Government whether he can inform the House if the Government have received any despatches from India, and if so, what is the nature of them?
  VISCOUNT PALMERSTON: Sir, the despatches that have been received are gone to the India House, and I have not yet seen them; but I may state that my right hon. Friend (Mr. Vernon Smith) has received private letters from Calcutta, Bombay, and Madras, the general complexion of which is, that they give precisely the same information as that already announced through the telegraphic despatch. No fresh events of importance are detailed.
  MR. P. O'BRIEN: May I ask whether the Government have received any confirmation of the report that Delhi has been taken?
  VISCOUNT PALMERSTON: As I have stated, the despatches give no further information than that supplied by the telegraph, and I learn from that source that Delhi has not been taken.
  House then adjourned, at a quarter after Two o'clock, till Monday next.

MINUTES.
PUBLIC BILLS.—1a Employment of Coalwhippers; Valuation of Lands (Scotland) Act Amendment; Court of Session (Scotland); Charitable Trusts Acts Continuance.
2a Parochial Schoolmasters (Scotland); Land and Assessed Taxes, &c. (Scotland) Acts Amendment; Lunatics (Scotland); Christ Church (West Hartlepool); Bankruptcy and Insolvency (Ireland).
3a Bill Chamber (Scotland); Bankruptcy and Real Securities (Scotland); Commons Inclosure; Public Works (Ireland); Turnpike Acts Continuance.

INDIA.—THE COMMISSARIAT.

  RETURNS MOVED FOR.
  THE EARL OF ELLENBOROUGH: My Lords, I informed the noble Earl (Earl Granville) that I wished to ask him to-day whether he has any objection to lay upon the table certain returns which I think it is very desirable we should possess. The first to which I allude is a copy of any Order issued by the Governor General in Council for the purpose of providing carriage for the army in the North-Western Provinces after the first of February in this year.
  The next is a, return of all the carriage in the possession of the Commissariat in those Provinces and in the Punjab, according to the last accounts; and the third is, a copy of any Order issued by the late Governor General in Council, or by the Governor General acting with the powers of Governor General in Council, for the purpose of reducing the number of Commissariat animals in the North-West Provinces and the Punjab. I ask for these returns because I feel that in point of fact in the campaign now entered, upon everything depends upon carriage. If the force now before Delhi had had sufficient carriage it would have been there on the 26th of May. It would then have found in occupation of the city not more than 5,000 men; and carrying with it, as it might have done, two 18-pounders, it would have knocked down a sufficient portion of the wall to have enabled it to make its entry and occupy that place; and even if it had not had two 18-pounders I cannot but think that English soldiers are capable of getting up a wall which English ladies are, it appears, capable of descending. There is no doubt, therefore, that had the force arrived at that time, sufficiently provided, it would have obtained full success, and many of the deplorable calamities which have taken
  786
  place in India from that period to the date of the last accounts would have been prevented. My Lords, this is not the way in which war used to be carried on in India. I recollect—I was a boy at that time—hearing with admiration what General Gillespie did when a similar mutiny, terminating in the destruction of all the officers of a Native regiment, occurred at Vellore. He was then quartered at Arcot, nine miles distant, and in one hour and a quarter after receiving the intelligence, not waiting for 18-pounders, he burst open the gates with his gallopers—entered with his gallant troops, sabred all the mutineers, and there was an end of that mutiny. That was the way in which we carried on war in India when we were forming an empire—that is not the way in which we maintain one: those were the days of the red hand—these are the days of red tape. Well, from the want of carriage, that force arrived before Delhi on the 8th June—fourteen days too late—and there were then at least 10,000 men in the city. Sir H. Barnard had to fight for his encamping ground; but he beat the enemy and took all his guns. There are men whose genius has inspired them, and who, flushed with victory, have followed up their advantages until all has been gained. It has not been the fate of Sir H. Barnard, however, to accomplish that. What is now the position of Sir H. Barnard for want of carriage? It may be said that I am arguing after the event, and that the necessity for carriage could not have been foreseen. Sir Charles Napier, nine years ago, foresaw all this; and it is the quality of such men as he was to foresee events of great moment and to provide for their occurrence; others wait till the events have happened, and then take means, not always successful, to remedy them. The first class are the men by whom empires are won; the others are those by whom empires are endangered or lost. But what is the position of Sir H. Barnard before Delhi? He has again and again repulsed the enemy in their attacks on his position; but he has done no more. He says that he is waiting for reinforcements; but there are no reinforcements to go to him unless you evacuate the Punjab, and he has no artillery necessary for bombarding. No doubt, a premature attack, which must necessarily have failed, would have been most disastrous to our influence in India; and I rejoice that it has not taken place. Sir H. Barnard is in a position very similar to that in which the Duke of

  787
  Wellington stood on the frontiers of Portugal after the battle of Talavera, when he said that if he could keep his army intact there was no danger of the French conquering Spain. So of Sir H. Barnard;—so long as he keeps his forces intact, the Native States will remain faithful; but if he suffers a repulse, the native princes will not he able to resist the pressure of their own people. But I am of opinion that Sir H. Barnard cannot remain where he is—the climate forbids it. When the heavy rains set in he will be cut off from Mecrut, from Umballah, and from the Punjab; he will be imprisoned in a very narrow slip of land, and he will be in a situation—I will not say of peril, but in a situation which can only end in ruin and destruction. If he cannot attack Delhi with a certain expectation of success, he ought to retire in time to Mecrut, and thence to Umballa, and unite with the troops in the Punjab; and I trust he may be able to strike some great blow while in motion, so as to leave n formidable impression of the British forces, and then place himself with his back to the hills, where Europeans can live, and there await the arrival of the grand army which should move up the Indus and the Sutlej. But all these difficulties and dangers would have been avoided if the army had had that carriage in the first instance which ought to have been prepared early in February, and which in former times it always possessed. I wish also to say a few words as to the state of Calcutta. We have not indeed sufficient information to enable us to judge of the necessity for the extreme measures which the Governor General has adopted. He has disarmed all the Native troops, although but a few days before he had gone to Barrackpore to thank a Native regiment for having offered to march against the mutineers. Your Lordships know enough of Calcutta to be aware of the perilous position in which such a measure must place that city. Even the Governor General's body guard, which every one thought was as fully to be relied on as Her Majesty's Guards, has been apparently disarmed, for no exception has been stated. Your Lordships will remember, too, that to disband a regiment is to punish it only—but to disarm it is to dishonour it. And what is to be clone with the men? Are they to be kept there, or are they to be sent into the country? If the latter is done, it will have the same result as disbanding them, but with the addition of exasperating them by dishonour. It is stated that the Euro-
  788
  peans at Calcutta have made an offer to form a volunteer corps, which, however, has been declined. I do not hear that steps were taken to arm the vessels, to make use of the marine force in any way, or, indeed, that any measures of precaution were adopted to provide against this outbreak; and we are informed that in a moment the town of Calcutta was thrown for protection upon its merchants and clerks, walking about under umbrellas, with revolvers in their pockets. How are you to provide a guard for the Mint or the Treasury? Such a state of things cannot last. It is impossible for any power to attempt to govern a country without the aid of its inhabitants, or to defend a city if the population are opposed to you: if you do so it is conquest, not government. What has been the conduct of the Indian Government in this crisis? The measures adopted by the Indian Government are such as to shake confidence in its duration. I regret that any necessity should have arisen for any measures whatever; but that they should be in absolute contradiction to the current of all the measures which had been adopted during the previous two or three weeks is what I cannot understand. My Lords, I am willing, and always shall be, to give to the Government of India all the material support which it is possible for this country to afford, and move than Her Majesty's Ministers appear to be willing to accept; but, looking at the want of carriage which has paralyzed the operations of the army, at the constant change from actual alarm to excessive self-reliance, and at the oscillation from day to day between measures of totally different tendencies, it is perfectly impossible for me, and I think it must be impossible for any one, to place confidence in that Government. The Noble Earl concluded by moving:
  That there be laid before this House,
  1. Copy of any Order given by the Governor General of India in Council, or by the late Commander in Chief in India, since the 1st February 1857, for providing Carriage for the Troops at the several Stations in the North-west Provinces and the Punjab:
  2. Copy of the last Return of the Number and Description of Commissariat Animals at the several Stations in the North-west Provinces and the Punjab:
  3. Copy of any Order given by the late Governor General in India in Council, or by the late Commander in Chief when assuming the Powers of Governor General in Council, for reducing the Number of Commissariat Animals heretofore kept at the several Stations in the North-west Provinces and the Punjab.
  EARL GRANVILLE: My Lords, with

  789
  regard to the papers which the noble Earl has requested me to present to the House I have no objection to do so, although I do not think much practical good will result from their production. Her Majesty's Government are certainly anxious to give any information that any of your Lordships may think necessary with regard to the present state of affairs in India. The noble Earl has gone very much into military details with respect to the war now going on in India. I do not think that your Lordships wish me to follow the noble Earl in those details; I think that I, who have no pretension to any great military knowledge, would simply be making myself ridiculous by attempting to do so; and I must say that I attach even less importance than I was inclined to attach to the observations of the noble Earl on this subject a few days ago, when he went into military details to which it was utterly impossible for me or any one of your Lordships, or indeed any person whatever, to give an answer; for I find that some of the principal statements then made by the noble Earl, have since, by the communications made by persons not in England, but on the spot, received a most distinct and positive negative. And I do think it is most extraordinary that the noble Earl, who speaks with all that authority to which his knowledge and experience entitle him, should be so anxious to criticise the conduct of the Government in India, as to come down here night after night for the purpose of entering into discussions on those very points on which we have no information, and on which it is impossible for the noble Earl himself to have any reliable information. The noble Earl has this evening come down with that intention, although on this very evening we expect to receive by mail more ample information; and if it does not throw the whole of the light that might be given, it will, at all events, throw some light on this question. The noble Earl has studied military questions, and I, therefore, who am an ordinary civilian, do not choose to expose myself by speaking on military details. About a year ago, during a conversation which I had with Mr. Macaulay, he pointed out to me a passage with which perhaps I ought not to trouble your Lordships, but I really think it does apply in some degree to discussions of this detailed character in this House upon facts with which you are not well acquainted. The passage occurs in the speech delivered by
  790
  Lucius Æmilius to the Roman Senate, at a moment when military operations were being carried on abroad. The speaker says, there are many men among us who know how to lead an army into Macedonia, who can point out where camps are to be located, and which are the places that ought to be guarded; who know exactly the moment and by what means Macedonia is to be entered; who know where the granaries are to be placed, and by what land or sea transport the commissariat is to be supplied; who know when they ought to come hand to hand with the enemy, and when it would be better to remain quiet; who not only settle what is to be done, but when anything else is done without their advice complain of that person who ordered it to be done to the Government. He then says,—
  "Hæe magna impedimenta res gerentibus sunt. Neque enim omnes tam firmi et constantis animi contra adversum rumorem esse possunt, quam Fabius fuit; qui suum imperium minui per vani-tatem populi maluit, quam sccunda fama male rempublicam genere."
  He then goes on to say that he is not one of those who think that Governors General are not to be admonished, and he adds,—though I think the noble Earl will not agree with this sentiment,—"But I think that he who carries all things by his own opinion is rather a proud man than a wise one." And he goes on in that strain. I do think that, when the noble Earl states that he is ready to give all material support to the Governor of India at a great crisis like this, if he took a wise and judicious view of what that public spirit, which he possesses in an eminent degree, requires, he would feel that some little moral support was not entirely out of the question. The noble Earl has himself been accused, in a very interesting historical account, which many of your Lordships may have read, of vacillation, of giving contradictory orders, and of I know not what else, when a most important crisis occurred during his Governor Generalship of India. I am sure the noble Earl does not admit the justice of those criticisms. If he thinks that they were unjust—and it should be remembered that they were not made till eight or nine years after the event, and when he was in this country, and able therefore at once to confute his accuser—I ask him whether he considers it is just, in his place, and with his authority, in this House, to speak on facts with which he really is most imperfectly

  791
  acquainted, and to throw discredit upon those who are displaying their utmost energies in a most important crisis. I do not wish to defend any person in this House merely because he is employed by the Government; but this very morning I received several communications from persons not, perhaps, so eloquent as the noble Earl, but who certainly have had as much experience of the affairs of India, and whose opinion is entitled to as much weight as that of the noble Earl. They are perfectly indignant at the aspersions which he threw upon the Government of India last night, and say that, according to the very best accounts which they have received, everybody has been astonished, not only by the energy and industry, but by the singular calmness and real courage which Lord Canning has shown on this occasion. I have seen a quantity of telegraphic messages which were sent by Lord Canning in every direction on the very first day on which information reached him of the mutiny. The proof of the pudding is in the eating of it. The troops are pouring in, according to the last mail, and I have no doubt that that intelligence will be fully confirmed by the next mail. It is said that people in India wore greatly surprised how the European forces could have been collected so rapidly, and that the moral effect of their arrival was beginning to be strongly shown. My Lords, I thought it right to make these remarks. The noble Earl comes down here day after day and makes statements as to the stale of affairs on India which I am sure cannot be well founded. It is utterly impossible that he should know the whole of the facts, and therefore I do trust that your Lordships will calmly consider those matters, and that you will not be led away by any unnecessary alarm. I think it is of the utmost importance that there should not go out by each mail to the Natives of India something which may induce them to suppose that one of the most powerful parties in this country is treating the Indian Government with contempt, and affecting a disbelief in its ability to meet the present state of things in India.
  THE EARL OF ELLENBOROUGH: The observations which have been referred to by the noble Earl were certainly made a very long time ago; but the principles of war have always been the same, because they are founded on common sense. If Lucius Æmilius were now, instead of the noble Baron, Secretary for War, I feel sure
  792
  that he would agree with me on those two points that I have already mentioned,—viz., that no army can move efficiently without the means of carriage, and that time is everything in war. Now, all I said with respect to the proceedings before Delhi rested upon those two principles. The noble Earl has referred to what is supposed to have been the course of my conduct in India.
  EARL GRANVILLE: I did not express any opinion on that subject. I merely stated that it had been commented upon.
  THE EARL OF ELLENBOROUGH: When I landed in India I found that a great military' disaster had occurred, and that things were, in fact, precisely in that position in which I take them now to be—that is to say, one-half of the people were in a state of panic, while the other half were in a state of the most absurd self-confidence. I took my own line between the two, as that course seemed to me the best to meet the danger; and I must say, whatever may be the authorities from history to which the noble Earl has referred, I am consoled, in the midst of all that has been said with respect to my conduct in India upon military subjects, by what the Duke of Wellington said here, that whether I gave an order to stand still or to advance or to retreat I gave the right order under the circumstances shown to me at the time.
  THE MARQUESS OF CLANRICARDE: I do not wish to pronounce a summary judgment upon any Governor General of India, past, or present. I do not wish to give a history of any order which the noble Earl opposite may or may not have given to General Pollock, under any particular circumstances; but I think with the noble Earl (Earl Granville), that the noble Earl opposite has not acted in this matter in a manner which becomes a member of the British senate. The noble Earl has not only not given his moral support to the Government, but concluded his speech this evening—a speech in which he displayed his powers to the utmost, and which we know was prepared, for he gave us notice of it—by saying that he has no confidence in the Indian Government. Why does not the noble Earl move for a change in that Government? If we had a more numerous attendance of peers, or if we could have anticipated the delivery of such a speech as we have heard tonight, I would undoubtedly have moved, as an Amendment to the Motion before your Lordships, that this House has confidence

  793
  in, and is ready to support the Government of India. This I would have done, because if it is to go out to India and to the world that the generals and civilians to whom the management of affairs is intrusted have not the confidence of those in this country who set themselves up as great authorities on Indian subjects, great mischief is likely to ensue. The noble Earl ventures upon a discussion of details about which he confesses that he knows very little, and which he founds merely upon a telegraphic report that a certain regiment had been disarmed instead of disbanded. For all that we are aware of to the contrary, there might have been very sufficient reasons for disarming this regiment, and the noble Earl was himself compelled to admit that the nature of the emergency may have rendered such a step advisable. If the noble Earl can place no reliance on those by whom affairs are conducted in this great crisis, it is, unquestionably, his right and his duty to say so. But it is neither his duty nor his right to throw distrust on the Government of India without testing the real feeling of your Lordships on that subject. It is only due to those who occupy positions of great responsibility in India, that nothing should be done to weaken their power and authority as long as they hold difficult official situations. My Lords, I have myself given notice of a question connected with the Indian Government which I wish to put to Her Majesty's Government, but it is not one that can impair the power of the Government in India. At the present moment, the Indian Government is crippled by a set of perfectly absurd regulations. Those regulations relate to the civil service of the East India Company. Provision is made by an Act of Parliament for sending out, upon certain reports from the Governor General, individuals to supply vacancies in the civil service to a limited extent; and regulations are made by the Boad of Control, by which the Indian Government is bound and fettered. I cannot exactly say what those regulations and instructions are; but it is well known that the civil service has long been inadequate to supply the wants of its own branch of the administration, and that it has been necessary to supplement it by drawing away a great number of officers from their regiments, in order to place them in civil employment. No doubt, many of these officers have been spoilt for military duties by having been thus turned into civilians. Still, a certain proportion
  794
  of them would surely be found useful in the present emergency, if restored to their regiments. I therefore wish to have an assurance that, if these officers are sent back to the army, the Governor General shall not he prevented by any network of foolish regulations, from supplying their places in the civil departments by any class of men whom he can find in the country. There is a large available population of Europeans, East Indians, natives of India, who are well qualified for employment under the Government; and the Governor General ought to be at liberty, irrespective of any regulations as to covenanted or uncovenanted service, to appoint these men, at least provisionally, to any civil situation in which he may think they would prove useful. My Lords, I will only add that if Parliament have not confidence in our present Indian administrators, the sooner it substitutes for them persons in whom it has. confidence, the better it will be both for this country and for India.
  THE EARL OF MALMESBURY: My Lords, I have long known the courage of the noble Marquess, but I did not expect from him the hackneyed reproof, so often given to this side of the House when we differ from Her Majesty's Government, and express something like a want of confidence in their exertions and their opinions,—namely, that we ought to bring forward a vote of censure upon the Ministry and challenge the House to a division. We should deserve small credit for public spirit if, because we entertained some misgivings as to the conduct and views of the Government, we were to press a Motion of a want of confidence in the Ministry to a division, in order to show to the country at this critical emergency that there exists a great conflict of opinion among the members of the Legislature. Moreover, by such a course, we should probably expose ourselves to aspersions like those unjustly cast upon us on a former occasion—namely, that for party objects we did not hesitate to side with the mutineers rather than with the Government. What, my Lords, is the meaning of challenging us to show a want of confidence in Her Majesty's Government?
  THE MARQUESS OF CLANRICARDE: I spoke of a want of confidence in the Indian Government.
  THE EARL OF MALMESBURY: That distinction is very like a quibble upon I words. It is the duty of Her Majesty's Government as well as of the Indian Government to meet this emergency; but I

  795
  cannot believe that the noble Marquess is serious in wishing a Motion of confidence or no confidence, whether directly in Her Majesty's Government or indirectly in the Government of India, to be pressed to a division in either House of Parliament. Of all persons in the world the noble Marquess has the least right to admonish us to be careful how we criticise Indian affairs.
  THE MARQUESS OF CLANRICARDE: What I said was, make what remarks you please, but don't make them in a way that can lead to no good practical result.
  THE EARL OF MALMESBURY: If these subjects are not to be discussed—if a noble Lord is not say that personally he has no confidence in the Government of India, you might as well close the mouth of every Opposition Member of this House. Indeed, if the doctrine of the noble Marquess is to prevail, instead of separating, as it is said we are to do, soon, we might as well break up for the Session after the sitting of this very night. I confess, my Lords, that I was hardly prepared for this extreme delicacy now recommended to us on Indian affairs. For two long years has the noble Marquess assailed the ears of this House with his denunciations of almost every institution in India. He has complained of the courts of justice and their administrators, of the system of taxation, of the practice of torture, and, in short, of every conceivable grievance that could be heaped upon an oppressed people. And when the noble Marquess thinks fit to lecture us about mischievous speeches, does he not lay himself open to the retort that his own speeches for the last two years have helped to produce all the mischief in India which we are now deploring? I do not charge him with the direct responsibility for such a result. I merely say that the tone he has adopted to-night might fairly expose him to such a rejoinder. If every one who differs with the Government in opinion ought to divide the House, why, on the many occasions to which I have referred, did not the noble Marquess himself have the courage to divide?
  THE MARQUESS OF CLANRICARDE: Almost every Motion, that I made was carried.
  THE EARL OF MALMESBURY: But the noble Marquess' Motions were merely Motions for papers, and his speeches were only paper speeches. They had no practical effect, or at least their effect, if read in India, could only be pernicious. But I say, my Lords, that these discussions are
  796
  of use, because their tendency is to rouse the country, which now appears to be lulled in a false security. I am sorry to see, in all the language held by Her Majesty's Ministers in both Houses, symptoms of a spirit calculated to encourage supineness and over-confidence. These are not times in which to blind the eyes of the community. It is impossible, in my opinion, to exaggerate the magnitude of the peril of this crisis, and it would be most impolitic to do anything to prevent the spirit of this country from being thoroughly roused to a sense of the position in which the Indian empire is placed. The noble Earl (Earl Granville) cannot say he was taken unawares, because he brought down a printed book wherewith to answer my noble Friend. [Earl GRANVILLE: The noble Earl gave me notice of his intention to bring the subject forward.] I have only to express a hope that the noble Earl and his colleagues may follow the advice which my noble Friend has given them in his last two or three addresses in this House. No one is able to give them such good advice, and no one can speak with so much experience upon the affairs of India. Above all, I entreat the Government not to blind their eyes to the danger of the present state of affairs in Asia, because the greatest possible danger exists, and by underrating the extent of that danger they fail to arouse that national spirit which is the best safeguard against any perils which may threaten the country.
  THE MARQUESS OF CLANRICARDE: I did not wish to stifle discussion. I only protested against an incidental attempt to cast censure upon a person whose conduct you are avowedly not in a position to judge.
  THE DUKE OF ARGYLL: My Lords, we do not complain that the noble Earl (the Earl of Ellenborough) has expressed a want of confidence in Her Majesty's Government, but that he has expressed an utter want of confidence in the local Government of India, with regard to the proceedings of which he can know nothing whatever. The grounds upon which the noble Earl justifies his want of confidence are directed against the abilities, the judgment, and even the industry of the Governor General of India. The noble Earl assumes that the means of moving the army will be wanting, and he says that it is a canon in military matters that you cannot move an army without the means of carriage. Why, my Lords, whoever disputed that an army cannot move without carriage? But what right had the noble

  797
  Earl to conclude that there had been any difficulty in finding the means of carriage? By the last mail not a word was said upon the subject—what the army was then waiting for was a siege train. But supposing there was a want of the means of carriage, the next question is, whether this great outbreak could have been foreseen. Now, what is the evidence upon this point? The noble Earl has referred to Brigadier General Hearsey. No man in India has perhaps had more experience in mutinies of the Native troops than Brigadier General Hearsey. I believe that upon one occasion during the administration of the noble Earl, and on three or four other occasions, General Hearsey has been successfully engaged in putting down mutinies of the Native troops. Yet General Hearsey says that he had not the least idea of it, and that it was utterly unknown to him that he had been sitting over a mine. Well, then, what right has the noble Earl to expect that Lord Canning should have better information as to the state of feeling among the Native troops than General Hearsey, who has been twenty years in India, and who is familiar with their language and habits? The noble Earl next complained of the disarmament of certain troops in Calcutta, and he contrasted that disarmament with a recent address made by Lord Canning to the same troops, expressing confidence in their loyalty. But, my Lords, was it not the duty of the Governor General, so long as he had a hope of the fidelity of the Native troops, to assume that they would be loyal? What has been said upon this subject by as great a man as the noble Earl? Sir Thomas Munro says you ought always to show confidence in the Native troops, and address them in the language of confidence. So far did Sir Thomas Munro carry that doctrine, that he objected to the system of always mixing European and Native troops, and said that they ought not to be mixed, in order the more strongly to show your confidence in the Native troops. Lord Canning may have been hoping against hope, and he may have had suspicions of the future fidelity of the Native troops, but he was justified, until the reverse had been shown, in expressing confidence in their fidelity and loyalty. Subsequent events and the discovery of a plot led the Governor General to doubt the fidelity of those troops. Was he to leave them with arms in their hands, to cut the throats of their officers,
  798
  as had been done in other places? What could he do but disarm them? Why should the noble Earl complain of that? The noble Earl says the conduct of Lord Canning is a proof of vacillation and weakness. I say it was a change of opinion arising from a change in the evidence before him. The noble Earl says that, having disarmed the Native troops, the Governor General left Calcutta to be defended by the civilians armed with umbrellas and revolvers. My Lords, that is a fancy picture, the truth being that the noble Earl knows nothing whatever about the matter. The noble Earl not only said that Lord Canning has done what he ought not to have done, but that he has failed to do what he ought to have done, and that he ought to have embodied the marines and sailors for the defence of the city. But does he know that he did not? Until the mail arrives he can know nothing about the matter. Suppose when the mail arrives it appears that Lord Canning did not resort to that step—is the noble Earl sure that it was a necessary step? It will probably appear that, owing to the fortunate diversion of the Chinese expedition, and to the arrival at Calcutta of large numbers of the European troops employed in China, the safety of Calcutta was for the time perfectly assured without calling upon the sailors and marines. I ask your Lordships whether the noble Earl is justified, upon such assumptions, in using his great authority and the influence of his character and experience in depreciating the exertions of the local Government of India. Her Majesty's Government at home are always greatly obliged by the noble Earl's suggestions and always consider them with deference to his opinions, but my noble Friend and the noble Marquess complained, and I think with justice, of the irrelevancy of the noble Earl's speech and of its tendency unjustly to disparage the local Government of India.
  Motion agreed to.

PAROCHIAL SCHOOLMASTERS (SCOTLAND) BILL.

  SECOND READING.
  Order of the Day for the Second Reading read.
  LORD KINNAIRD LORD KINNAIRD moved the Second Reading of the Parochial Schoolmasters (Scotland) Bill. It was a measure to enable the parishes to pay the Schoolmasters of Scotland the salaries they now receive, as

  799
  well as to clear up the question which had been mooted as to whether they had a right to any salaries at all. It was merely a Continuance Bill, introduced at the request of the Lord Advocate, who feared that it could not be passed through the other House in time to comply with their Lordships' Resolution as to not reading Bills after the 7th August.
  Moved that the Bill be now read 2a.
  LORD PANMUREsaid, he did not object to the second reading of the Bill. It was competent for the Scotch proprietors to refuse the payment of the schoolmasters, but, to their credit be it spoken, they had not done so, nor had they permitted the doubt to make any difference in their payment. He hoped the Bill would have the effect of keeping the subject before the public until a comprehensive measure on the subject of Education in Scotland should be passed.
  LORD POLWARTHsaid, he would not oppose the Bill. He hoped that the schoolmasters to be appointed under the Bill would be made to feel that they held the same independent position that other schoolmasters enjoyed.
  Motion agreed to; Bill read 2a accordingly, and committed to a Committee of the whole House on Monday next.

TRANSFER OF REAL ESTATE BILL.

  ORDER FOR SECOND READING DISCHARGED.
  LORD BROUGHAM LORD BROUGHAM moved, that the Order of the Day for the Second Reading be read in order to its being discharged, as it was a measure he could not hope to see carried at that period of the Session. Some time ago he presented a petition to their Lordships from a learned conveyancer, who had for thirty years been the manager of what was called a Manor Court. During that time there had been a transfer of every one of the five hundred and odd estates of which that large manor was composed, and it was found that the average number of words in the conveyances for the sale of these estates was not much above seventy, whilst the expense of conveyance itself never exceeded seven shillings; and there had never been in the whole period a single dispute, much less an action, arising out of any doubt or difficulty as to the conveyance or the boundaries of the estates conveyed. It therefore occurred to many persons who had examined this subject, that an inquiry by means of a Commission would be useful;
  800
  and, accordingly, an inquiry was instituted the result of which was the Bill, the second reading of which he was now compelled to postpone. The object of the Bill was simply to establish a system of registration, without which it was impossible, as he thought, to carry out any great or useful improvement in the transfer of property.
  THE LORD CHANCELLORagreed with his noble and learned Friend that it would be in vain to hope to carry the Bill at this advanced period of the Session. He also concurred with him in thinking that the foundation of all improvement in the nature of simplifying, shortening, and cheapening the transfer of property must be found in some mode or other of registration; that was to say, that facilities should be given to the purchaser of an estate for ascertaining exactly to what incumbrances it was subject. Whether the Bill of his noble and learned Friend was the best mode of doing this he did not pretend to form an opinion. The subject was, no doubt, a difficult and complicated one; and he could assure his noble and learned Friend that the Bill, together with the Report upon their Lordships' table, should have his most serious consideration.
  Order of the Day read accordingly, and discharged.
  House adjourned at a Quarter-past Seven o'clock, to Monday next, Eleven o'clock.