Sitting of 8 June 1857

MINUTES.
PUBLIC BILLS.—1—° Probates and Letters of Administration; Pimlico Improvements; Public Offices Extension: Sound Dues.
2° Oaths; Fraudulent Trustees, &c.; General Board of Health; Savings Banks (No. 2); Alehouse Licensing; Married Women's Reversionary Iaterest.

MORTMAIN—QUESTION.
MR. HADFIELDasked the Attorney General whether it is intended to bring in a Bill to amend the Mortmain laws in England, and to assimilate the laws there to those of Scotland and Ireland, and especially to give facilities to transactions for charitable institutions connected with real, leasehold, and copyhold estate, founded upon valuable consideration in money, rent, and otherwise, and whether the same be by way of purchase, mortgage, lease, or otherwise howsoever?
THE ATTORNEY GENERALreplied, that the Government were fully aware of the magnitude and importance of the subject, but they considered that they were not able to deal with it during the present Session with proper regard to its importance. With regard to the Bill referred to, the hon. and learned Member for Durham (Mr. Atherton) had last year introduced a Bill for the purpose of setting aside the present law. That hon. and learned Member had given notice of a similar Bill for the present Session. Last year he (the Attorney General) had given the hon. and learned Member all the assistance in his power, and he would give him the same assistance this year. Beyond this he could not go.
MR. HADFIELD: Will the Government support the Bill elsewhere if it should pass this House?
THE ATTORNEY GENERALwas understood to decline to answer that question.

CIVIL SERVICE SUPERANNUATION ACT.

  QUESTION.
  MR. DANIEL O'CONNELLasked the Chancellor of the Exchequer when the Government will bring in the Bill for the amendment of the Civil Service Superannuation Act?
  THE CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUER: Sir, the question with regard to
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  the Civil Service Superannuation Bill is one of great magnitude and difficulty, and the Report lately presented by the Committee is now under the consideration of Her Majesty's Government. I cannot say that we have come to a decision to introduce a Bill, but I ought to add that the Committee of this House last year recommended that certain questions should be proposed to actuaries with a view of determining how far the claim of the Civil Service with respect to an abatement of their payments was founded in equity, and how far they have ground of complaint that they have not received an equivalent for what they have already paid. The Treasury called the attention of the Civil Service Commissioners to that subject, and the Commissioners recommended that the inquiry should be pursued. The Commissioners communicated with the actuaries, and the actuaries have called for a mass of information from the different departments, but have not yet made a Report on the subject. The Commissioners have promised to give the Report of the actuaries in a supplementary Report, which we have not yet received, and therefore the subject has not yet been considered by the Government.

  GREENWICH HOSPITAL.—QUESTION.
  SIR GEORGE PECHELLinquired of the Secretary to the Treasury whether the case of certain naval officers of Greenwich Hospital has been favourably considered, and which was referred to the Treasury by the Board of Admiralty, praying they might be placed in the same position with regard to the receipt of half-pay as other officers of that establishment.
  MR. WILSONsaid, that the subject alluded to by the hon. and gallant Member for Brighton was one of great importance to the service, and required a very considerable amount of deliberation. The rule both in the army and navy was that whenever an officer took any civil employment his half-pay was suspended during the time he was so occupied. There were, no doubt, exceptions to that rule, and the Governor and Deputy Governor of Greenwich Hospital were exceptions to the rule: [Sir G. PECHELL: "And the Commissioners of Greenwich Hospital"]; but it was to be borne in mind that greater responsibility attached to the Governor and Deputy Governor than to the officers in

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  question. It was true that the military officers of Chelsea Hospital drew their half-pay as well as their salaries, but the salaries of the officers of Greenwich Hospital were much larger than those of the corresponding officers of Chelsea Hospital. The salary of the four captains of Greenwich Hospital was £400 a year; their total present emoluments were £620, and their half-pay, if granted, would be £264 in addition. The salary of the four Commanders was £300, and of the ten lieutenants and masters £230, but their total present emoluments, independent of half-pay, were £503 and £398 respectively. With regard to the officers at Chelsea, the salary of the major was £350, and of the adjutant £200, while the salary of the three captains and three lieutenants was only £63, against the £230 received by the lieutenants and masters at Greenwich; so that if the half-pay of the Chelsea officers were added to their salary their whole emoluments would not be found to amount to so much as the civil pay, without half-pay, of the officers of Greenwich Hospital. The Government were of opinion that to make an exception in the case of these officers would be to open a wide door to similar applications, and they were, therefore, not prepared to make so great an exception to the general rule.

MUNICIPAL BOUNDARIES (SCOTLAND).

  QUESTION.
  MR. BAXTERwished to know whether the Lord Advocate intended this Session to introduce a permissive Bill providing for the extension of the municipal boundaries of burghs in Scotland.
  THE LORD ADVOCATE: The Government are prepared with a Bill, and I hope it will pass this Session.

HARBOURS OF THE UNITED KINGDOM.

  QUESTION.
  MR. BAXTERasked the Secretary of the Treasury when he intended to move for the Select Committee to inquire into the harbours of the United Kingdom?
  MR. WILSON: I will do so early next week.

  POSTAL COMMUNICATION WITH AUSTRALIA—QUESTION.
  MR. ADDERLEYasked the Secretary to the Treasury whether any and what arrangement has been made for the transmission
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  of mails to and from the Australian Colonies, including the branch services to South Australia, Van Diemen's Land, and New Zealand; and, if not, what steps are being taken by Her Majesty's Government towards completing the same?
  MR. WILSONsaid, it would, doubtless, be in the recollection of the House that a contract had been entered into for the purpose of maintaining a monthly postal service between this country and Australia. That contract had come into operation in the mouth of August last, and it had been in full operation ever since, to the perfect satisfaction of the Government. The plan included an arrangement by which a branch mail should be established between Melbourne and Tasmania, on the one hand; and between Melbourne and New Zealand on the other; and orders had been sent out to the local authorities to make arrangements accordingly. The Government, however, had reason to believe, from information which they had received about a month since, that there had been some misunderstanding with regard to the branch mails between Melbourne and New Zealand. The authorities there imagined that no arrangement had been made with regard to those branch mails; but long before those representations were received instructions had gone out, and the necessary arrangements for the branch mails must by this time be made.

THE TROOPS AT THE CAPE.

  QUESTION.
  MAJOR STUART WORTLEYasked when, without in any way lessening the force at the Cape of Good Hope, it is the intention of Government to remove the 6th, 45th, and 73rd Regiments, whose period of colonial service had expired some time, and to replace those regiments with three others?
  VISCOUNT PALMERSTON: I think the hon. and gallant Gentleman will remember that this question was fully answered upon a former occasion by my hon. Friend the Under Secretary for the War Department, who stated that no doubt the regular time of service of those regiments at the Cape had expired, but that the public exigencies required their detention at that station beyond the usual period. I would submit to the hon. and gallant Gentleman that it is hardly to be expected that the Government should state in this House their intentions with respect to the

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  moving of this or that regiment from this or that station. It is very natural that the friends of the officers belonging to those three regiments should like to know when they may be expected home, but still the settlement of such matters must be left wholly to the discretion of the responsible department.

STATUTE LAW COMMISSION.

  QUESTION.
  MR. WARRENasked the First Lord of the Treasury whether any and what steps have been taken by the Government towards carrying out the recommendations contained in the last Report of the Statute Law Commission, and the views of the several witnesses examined before the Committee of this House, appointed to consider the propositions in that Report; and whether an officer with a competent staff has been appointed, as proposed by the said Committee, for the purpose of attending to all Bills referred to that officer, and reporting exactly to Parliament the state of the existing law, and how it would be affected by the proposed alterations, and especially after a Bill has passed through a Committee to examine it and report immediately to the House what has been done by the Committee, and whether that Committee is to be reappointed?
  MR. BAINES, in reply, said the Select Committee to which the hon. and learned Gentleman alluded had been appointed last Session for the purpose of considering the recommendations of the Statute Law Commission as to how far the adoption of such recommendations was advisable. He (Mr. Baines) had the honour of being chairman of that Committee. They examined a number of witnesses, from some of whom they obtained much valuable and instructive information. But when the dissolution of the late Parliament was determined upon, they had not completed their inquiry. They therefore made no recommendation, but simply reported the nature of the evidence they had received. He begged further to state that the Government, after mature consideration, did not think it advisable to renew that Committee again in the present Session, because, in the first place, there was a great number of Members who had given great attention to the subject, and whose assistance in the prosecution was most valuable, but who were already fully engaged upon other Committees; and in the next place, because of the great number of Committees that must be
  1324
  appointed upon election petitions and other matters. Under such circumstances, the Government thought it impossible to enlist in the present Session the assistance of those who were best qualified for the prosecution of such an inquiry as the one in question. There was a further reason for their coming to that Resolution—namely, the fact mentioned by the noble Lord at the head of the Government the other night, when he said that Her Majesty's Ministers had under their consideration the question relative to the establishment of the department of a Minister of Justice. If such a measure were ultimately determined upon, the supervision of current legislation, with a view to its correction and improvement, would doubtless be included in the functions of the proposed department. For those reasons, therefore, it was not the intention of the Government to renew the Committee referred to.
  On Motion, That the House go into a Committee of Supply,

CIVIL SERVICE EXAMINATIONS.

  OBSERVATIONS.
  VISCOUNT GODERICHwas understood to say that, as the Secretary for the Treasury had given notice of his intention to go into Supply on the Civil Service Estimates to-night, he was anxious to call the attention of the House to the last Report of the Civil Service Commissioners, and to the present system of admission to the Civil Service. It would be recollected that last year he submitted a Motion to the House for an Address to the Crown on the subject of competitive examinations, which was adopted upon a division. In consequence of a rule of the House, however, which required that a Motion, involving a charge upon the revenue, should be submitted in Committee, it was necessary to take further proceedings, and the matter was consequently postponed; and when in July last he again brought the question before the House, and moved that Mr. Speaker do leave the chair, the Chancellor of the Exchequer rose and made a statement, which was felt by him (Viscount Goderich) and other hon. Members interested in the question, to be of so satisfactory a nature with regard to the intentions of the Government that he had consented to abandon further proceedings in respect to the Address he had moved, and to leave

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  the matter in the hands of the Government, reserving to himself the full right to bring the question again before the House of Commons, if the Government did not realize the hopes then held out. The Government had not wholly redeemed the pledge which they gave last year, and therefore he now availed himself of the right which he had reserved. It might perhaps be convenient if he stated the principle and objects of the Motion which had been adopted last year. The object of the Address was:—First, to express the thanks of the House to Her Majesty for the adoption of a system of examination for admission to the Civil Service under an Order in Council of May, 1855, and further to convey to Her Majesty the sense of the House that that system would be improved if the principle of competition were extended and more largely applied. It was thought that the principle of open competition should be extended on three grounds. First, because it was calculated to raise the standard and efficiency of persons employed in the Civil Service; secondly, because it would put an end, as far as it was possible, to the system of appointments to the Civil Service being generally made through the influence of Members of that House, which, as the evidence contained in the first Report of the Civil Service Commissioners last year showed, had, before the Order in Council of 1855, worked extremely ill; and, thirdly, because of the effect which the adoption of a system of competitive examination would be likely to have on education in England, for as there was little hope that direct legislation on the subject of education would be adopted by that House, it was believed that such a system would tend more than any other indirect encouragement to raise the standard of education throughout the country. He was sorry to see that the Report of the Civil Service Commissioners did not show that the hopes which had been held out by the Government had been realized. He would state the language used by his right hon. Friend, on the faith of which he had withdrawn his Motion last year. His right hon. Friend said, and truly said, that offices in the Civil Service might be divided into three classes—first, those consisting of clerkships in the principal offices of State; secondly, clerkships in the Revenue Departments, which were not filled up by their heads but by the Secretary of the Treasury; and, thirdly, the lower appointments, such as tidewaiters,
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  postmasters, &c. With regard to each of these classes, his right hon. Friend told the House the intentions of the Government. With regard to the first, he is reported to have said—
  "The plan at present adopted in reference to the superior departments of the Government—such as those of the Secretaries of State and the Treasury, was that, whenever a vacancy occurred, several candidates were selected by the head of the department, and subjected to competitive examination, to determine who was the fittest person to fill the vacancy."
  That was the language of his right hon. Friend; but the plan had not, as he should show, been generally adopted. With regard to clerkships in the Revenue Department, his right hon. Friend used this language:—
  "There was, besides, an intermediate class, and he very willingly admitted that the principle advocated by his noble Friend had great recommendations in respect to that class, comprising, as it did, many persons in the superior branch of the Revenue Department, and clerks nominated by the Treasury. With respect to the Secretary of the Treasury, that officer not being the head of the department for which his nominations were made, was not interested to the same extent as the head would be in obtaining efficient servants, therefore that class of appointments required some additional security to that which now existed."
  On the general subject of competition his right hon. Friend had said:—
  "He quite admitted, however, that experience was in favour of the principle recommended by his noble Friend, and it would be the study of the Government, by gradual means, by feeling their way as they advanced, by avoiding those difficulties the existence of which experience might point out, to give as much extension as could with safety and propriety be done to the principle advocated by his noble Friend."
  He (Lord Goderich) was perfectly content after those assurances to leave the matter in the hands of his right hon. Friend. Having withdrawn his Motion in consequence of that speech, he had looked with great interest at the second Report of the Civil Commissioners, and he rose from it with a feeling of disappointment, for there was no evidence of any advance since last year, when the first Report was published on the subject. He would state what the actual results had been. From the first establishment of the system in May, 1855, down to the 14th of February last, the latest date of the Report, certificates of competency had been granted to 1,906 candidates, 898 upon London examinations, 907 upon provincial examinations, and 101 on reports from heads of departments. The number of certificates refused was 956—namely, 499 upon London examinations, and 457 on provincial examinations, making the admissions to examinations in the proportion

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  of one to three. He would then compare the number of competitive examinations which had taken place in the period from May, 1855, to March, 1856, with the period embraced in the last Report. In the first period there had been a competition for fifty-eight situations, for which 175 candidates competed; while in the latter there had been only fifty-one situations competed for, and 158 candidates contended for them. He had hoped to see that principle of limited competition which had been so successfully adopted by the Secretary of State for the Colonies, and to the beneficial results of which he bore last year such satisfactory testimony, extended to other Government offices. At the period of discussion last year that principle had been adopted partially in the Audit-office, in the office of the Chief Secretary of Ireland, in the Education-office, in the Colonial-office, in the Treasury and War departments, and in the office of the Civil Service Commissioners themselves. Since that time it had been extended to only two other departments—it had been adopted partially at the Home-office and entirely in the Public Works-office. No attempt that he could discover had yet been made to introduce it into the departments of the Admiralty, the Exchequer, the Foreign-office, the India Board, the Board of Trade, or the Post-office; and no effort whatever had been made to alter the manner by which the patronage vested in the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Wells (Mr. Hayter) was distributed. When he withdrew his Motion last year he did not expect that the result of the speech of his right hon. Friend would have been so small. In the Inland Revenue Department there had been 121 candidates, of whom 103 had been examined; of these fifty-six had been successful, and forty-eight had been rejected. In the Customs exactly the same thing had happened, except that the proportion of successful candidates was one in three instead of one in two, while in neither of these departments had there been a single competition for clerkships. He had such confidence in the Chancellor of the Exchequer, and his intention of carrying out his promises, that he had taken this opportunity of bringing the subject forward, and of asking his right hon. Friend for an explanation, instead of making a direct Motion; and he still hoped that, in spite of the discouraging blue-book which the Civil Service Commissioners had this year laid before Parliament,
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  the system of competition would be more fully introduced into the Government offices. The Civil Service Commissioners had given the strongest evidence in favour of the adoption of a reasonable system of competition, and had shown also that where it had been applied it had been eminently successful. It was sometimes said that the only result of the system would be to introduce into the Civil Service a class of persons who would be above their work. The Commissioners, however, reported most favourably of the merits of gentlemen who had been appointed to clerkships by the method of competition. They had stated, as the result of an examination for four clerkships in their own office, as follows—
  "The facts which we thus bring forward, with relation to the competition for clerkships in this office, are intended to show that if opportunities were more easily and generally afforded than at present to persons to compete for situations of the like character, a highly-instructed class of industrious young men would present themselves as candidates. We must add, in justice to the four gentlemen who received appointments in this office, as the consequence of their success in the competition we have described, that they have passed the period of probation to our entire satisfaction, and have proved themselves to possess aptitude for official duties, and most creditable habits of regularity and industry."
  And he had no doubt the Secretary for the Colonies, if he spoke in that debate, would say that he had no reason to be dissatisfied with the system he had adopted. The greatest interest was manifested in this subject out of doors, and the greatest desire was felt by the public, as well as by those who were engaged in the work of education, that the system of competition should be more largely adopted. The hon. Member for Derby (Mr. Bass) asked a question the other night about it in consequence of the large number of letters which he had received. He (Viscount Goderich) had received a letter from Mr. Buckmaster, one of the Society of Arts' examiners of members of mechanics' institutes, in which he stated strongly an opinion that examination for officers in the civil service would raise the standard of education. That gentleman had classes of young men under his care, who attended those classes and educated themselves in the hope of gaining admission to the civil service; and he stated also that the great success of the examinations of the Society of Arts was the result of the Motion made last year, and the speech of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, which led to the belief

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  that a system of competition would be largely adopted, and that the persons who were successful at these examinations would be able to make the knowledge they had acquired useful to them in obtaining service under the Crown, As the evidence of the Civil Service Commissioners was in favour of a system of competition, and the feeling of the public was in favour of a similar course, he (Viscount Goderich) felt great confidence that the House would not think he had unnecessarily occupied their time by drawing attention to the subject. He had no desire to urge the Government to adopt hastily any very extended system of this kind; all he urged was that they should not stand still, and, above all, not go back. If the right hon. Gentleman would say that the system adopted in the Colonial-office would be extended to other departments of a similar kind within a reasonable time, and if the Government would, try the experiment of open competition in such offices as clerkships in the Revenue department, they would be able to make that experiment without risk and on a sufficiently large scale. Just to show to what a number of situations that system might be applied, he need only state that since May, 1855, the Secretary to the Treasury had nominated to 240 situations of this kind, making twelve or thirteen a month during nineteen months. Supposing that four or five persons had competed for each of those situations during the time embraced in this calculation, some fifty or sixty persons per month would have been trying to secure them, and the effect of such a competition upon the education of the country it was impossible to overestimate. He had every wish to leave the question in the hands of the Government, and if the Chancellor of the Exchequer would show him that he would really carry out the system, he would not be inclined to refuse him longer time in which to do it. If, however, the right hon. Gentleman could give no such assurance—if he had been overruled by others, and was unable to persevere in the course he had sketched out, he (Lord Goderich) must reserve to himself the right to appeal from that altered decision on the part of the Government to the opinion of the House of Commons. He trusted, however, that the right hon. Gentleman would relieve him from the necessity of taking any further steps in the present Session of Parliament, and that he would state explicitly
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  what were the intentions of the Government on the subject, so that those persons who were desirous of seeing the system of competition fairly tried might know clearly what they had to expect and to rely on. He begged to add one word to express his high sense of the zeal and ability exhibited by the Civil Service Commissioners in the performance of their duty.
  MR. BASSsaid, that before the right hon. Gentleman answered the question of the noble Lord, he wished to recall to his mind the short conversation which took place between him (Mr. Bass) and the right hon. Gentleman the other afternoon. On that occasion the right hon. Gentleman had, in answer to a question he had put, referred him to the Order of Her Majesty and to the first and second Reports of the Civil Service Commissioners; but having carefully perused those documents, he (Mr. Bass) must say that he could not find a single word on the interesting point on which he had put his question. What he desired to know was, who it was that had the power of nominating or recommending such persons as were ultimately selected for examinations for offices in the Civil Service. No explanation was given on that subject in the documents to which the Chancellor of the Exchequer had referred him. If, as he feared, we were in the same condition as formerly with regard to the nomination or recommendation of candidates for the Civil Service, then he thought that neither had the public the opportunity of getting the best servants who could be procured, nor had the most efficient men throughout the country such a reasonable chance of getting employment as their merits entitled them to. The noble Lord had shown that in the last year little progress had been made in the competitive system; but as regarded nominations and recommendations, the House ought to know from the right hon. Gentleman how they were obtained—whether they were obtained as formerly, or whether the public had better access to the public service than was formerly the case.
  MR. RICHwas glad this subject had fallen into the bands of the noble Lord (Viscount Goderich) who had fully stated the case; but he (Mr. Rich) could not agree with the noble Lord's declaration, that he would rest satisfied with an assurance from the Chancellor of the Exchequer that this subject would meet with the consideration of the Government. For himself,

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  however, he owned that, highly as he estimated the integrity and the earnestness of his right hon. Friend, yet, looking at the blue-book before the House, he felt there must be some insuperable obstacles in the way of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, which prevented him from practically adopting the doctrines which he expressed himself last year as anxious to carry out. He would not quote the language of the Government, in which they pledged themselves to adopt open competition generally in the Inland Revenue, in the Customs, and in the Post Office, and in which they stated their desire that the competition should be shared in by such a number of candidates as would make it a real competition; but he should confine himself to a comparison between the number of competitions which took place in the first six months of 1856, before the pledge had been given by the Government, and the number which took place after the pledge had been given. He found from the blue-book that in the case of 376 vacancies which had occurred last year in clerkships and offices of higher importance sixty-six appointments had been given away on competition, but of that number forty-three had been given in the first six months, and only twenty-three in the last six months of 1856. There were no dates to the 310 appointments which had been given on nomination, so that he could not say which of them had been made before the 1st of July, and which after. It was possible that a greater number of vacancies had occurred in the first six mouths than in the last six months, but he found nothing to induce him to come to such a conclusion. It was clear, however, from the figures he had quoted, that forty per cent, fewer appointments on competition had taken place after the pledge of the Government to promote competition than before. He found, moreover, that in the first six months of last year the average number of persons nominated to compete for each appointment was four and-a-half, while in the last six months the average number was three, and of those three thus nominated only two and a half actually submitted to examination. Could any examinations be properly termed competitive in which an average of only two persons and a fraction contended for an appointment? A stronger fact than either of these was, that out of 210 vacancies which occurred in the Customs in the year 1856, only two were given away upon competition,
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  and for those two places, just two persons competed, and even one of these could not pass. Among the facts recorded in the blue-book he found it stated that in the Civil Service Commissioners Office three clerkships of £100 a year each, rising by an increase of £10 per annum to £200, and another of £200 a year, rising by an increase of £15 per annum to £300 a year, fell vacant. These situations were not submitted to purely open competition, but the Commissioners mentioned the fact of the vacancies to two or three heads of colleges and schools, and to a few persons interested in competitive examinations. In a very short time forty-six gentlemen presented themselves for examination, two of whom were rejected on grounds irrespective of their mental qualifications. The House had been told that the Civil Service was so unpopular that they could not get persons to enter it; but who, he asked, were the forty-four gentlemen who competed for those situations? Several of them were the sons of clergymen, seven or eight were the sons of private gentlemen, three or four were the sons of colonial judges and police magistrates, and the others were the sons of professors and professional men; the whole of them were well educated, twenty-five of them having been educated at Cambridge, Oxford, Trinity College; Dublin, or the London University, while many of the others were studying or had completed their studies at Eton, Durham, the collegiate schools attached to the University of London, at Exeter, at Tunbridge, or other noted educational establishments. Some few of those gentlemen of course failed; but the first twenty proved their ability in ancient and modern history, in ancient and modern languages, in mixed and pure mathematics, and in other matters which showed a sound and liberal education; while the four who succeeded obtained seventy per cent. of the marks, the possession of one hundred of which would indicate perfection, and exhibited great proficiency in Latin and Greek—one in Hebrew—in mixed and pure mathematics, in book-keeping, in ancient and modern history, in short hand, and in other acquirements. With these strong facts before them of unfulfilled pledges on the one hand, and of the easy and successful operation of competition, when honestly undertaken, the House had a right to require from the Government, not an assurance that they would carry out the plan according to the

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  pledge which they had given, but some explanation of what had occurred, for otherwise they must believe that the system, instead of being accelerated, had been retarded. Independently of the important subject which his noble Friend (Lord Goderich) had pressed upon their attention, it was the bounden duty of the Government to keep clear and distinct faith with the House, and to observe every pledge that they made.
  MR. MALINSsaid, that some time ago a young gentleman, who was very anxious to submit himself to a competitive examination for a civil appointment, had called upon him and asked him to give him a nomination. He (Mr. Malins) could not understand what necessity there was for a nomination as the examination was open to the whole world, and this he told the young gentleman. "Oh!" said he, "any Member can nominate." He (Mr. Malins) told him that he knew nothing about such a power, but that he conceived that any nomination which he could give him would only amount to a representation on his part that he was a person of respectability. However, he gave to the young gentleman what he called a "nomination." In a few days the young man called on him again, and said that it had been of no use whatever—just as he had expected—and he asked him to ascertain how he was to get a nomination. Now, that was just one of the things that was beyond his (Mr. Malin's) comprehension. He did not understand, then, he never had understood, and he didn't understand now, how to put that young man in the way of getting a nomination. But if these examinations for Civil Service appointments were really competitive—if they were open to all the world, what, he wanted to know, did the "right of nomination" mean? If the nomination, however, were a Government job—if it meant that without Government influence, followed by an examination, no one could be appointed, he could perfectly comprehend the matter. But if such were the case, they had better declare at once that these examinations were not open to all the world, that there was no such thing as competition, that patronage was to be all paramount, and that the highest ability would be of no avail unless accompanied by Government influence. He hoped they should hear that this restriction would be removed, and that those who
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  desired to submit themselves to examination might be able to do so without meeting with those difficulties now thrown in the way.
  THE CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUER: The hon. and learned Member for Wallingford (Mr. Malins) is so accomplished a lawyer, and is so well acquainted with all the branches of our civil jurisprudence, and is so conversant with all Acts of Parliament, and the whole of our law, that I confess it is highly improbable that I should be able to give him any information on a matter lying so much within his own peculiar knowledge. The Order in Council issued about two years ago, regulating the examinations for admission to the Civil Service, made no alteration in the power of the Crown with respect to nominations for that service. Motions were made, when the Order in Council was issued, proposing that all situations in the Civil Service in the gift of the Crown should be laid open to public competition, and it was explained that such was not the effect of the Order in Council, but that the power of nomination vested in the Crown remained untouched by that Order. The hon. and learned Gentleman must be aware that the nomination to places in the Civil Service in the different administrative departments is part of the prerogative of the Crown, as well as the fixing of the amount of salaries, those salaries being subsequently voted by this House. With respect to certain of the principal departments of the Government, such as the offices of the Secretaries of State, the Admiralty, and other chief offices, the immediate nomination is by usage vested in the head of the department. With respect to all other offices, such as those in the revenue departments, the Audit Board, and others similarly situated, the nomination rests with the head of the Government for the time being. That is the usage with respect to the Civil Service, and I confess that I should have thought the hon. and learned Gentleman would not have required any information from me on such a point. This statement, I believe, will also furnish an answer to the question put to me by the hon. Member for Derby (Mr. Bass). A few days ago that hon. Gentleman put a question to me, and I referred him—as constituting the best source of information—to the Reports of the Civil Service Commissioners and to the Order in Council on the subject. He would there find that

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  the former law and practice of the country had not undergone any alteration. I have on former occasions expressed my opinion that it would not be desirable, with reference to the efficiency of the Civil Service, that the clerkships and the different subordinate employments in the administrative departments should be thrown open to public competition. The throwing them open was a proposal which at one time was received with favour by the public at large, but the Government, after carefully considering the matter, arrived at the conclusion that such was not an expedient mode of filling up the vacancies in the Civil Service. What they did propose was, that all persons who entered the Civil Service should be subject to examination with the view of testing their efficiency. That examination has been conducted by very competent persons, and the result of the system is embodied in the two Reports on the table of the House. It has been stated by my hon. Friend the Member for Richmond (Mr. Rich) that the course which the Government has pursued has been a retrogressive one, and that they have lost a portion of the advances which they at one time made. I will come presently to the question of competition; but with respect to the execution of the Order in Council in reference to the examinations of candidates for the Civil Service, there has been no retrogression and no flagging, but the system has been enforced with the utmost strictness and regularity, according to the intent and effect of the original order. If hon. Members refer to the statements contained in the Second Report of the Commissioners they will find the number of examinations, and also the number of rejections, which latter in the first year was twenty-nine per cent, and in the second year thirty-eight per cent, showing that the examinations had increased rather than diminished in strictness, and that the system adopted for trying the qualifications of candidates is a real and efficient test. This observation will apply to the whole of the system established by the Order in Council. The Government not only never professed any intention to introduce the system of open competition—that system to which the hon. and learned Member for Wallingford refers, and to which, I presume, the Gentleman who applied to him also referred—but on every occasion on which the question was debated in this House stated in the most distinct manner their objection
  1336
  to that system, and their intention not to give it a trial. It appears to me that the real practical matter at issue between my noble Friend, when he brought forward Motions on the subject, and the Government was—as to what extent the plan of voluntary competition among a limited number of candidates, selected by the heads of Departments, or by the head of the Government, should be carried. That has nothing to do with the question of nomination or recommendation by any hon. Member of this House, or by any member of the Government. What I stated last year, to the best of my recollection, was, that it did not appear to me that the system of competition could be applied with advantage to that class of officers in the Civil Service who performed, for the most part, mere mechanical duties, such as the duties of watching, guarding, and those of trust; that the number of those was considerable; that the difficulty of bringing them all to London, or to some one central place, to be examined, would be very great; and that I did not see any likelihood of advantage resulting from officers of that class being subjected to examination. I also stated that, with respect to clerks and other officers of whom a liberal education was expected, and who had to perform duties which could only be discharged by persons receiving a liberal education, a competitive examination, among a limited number of candidates, chosen by heads of Departments, was, on the whole, most conducive to the public service. I do not know that my noble Friend at the head of the Government could give stronger evidence of his concurrence in that opinion than by conferring all the appointments in the Treasury on that principle, and if the hon. Member refers to the blue-book, he will find that the vacancies have been so filled up, and the result has shown that the principle had worked in the most advantageous manner. With respect to the diminished number of competitive examinations in the last part of the year, I was not aware of that fact, and can only say that it must have arisen from some accidental diminution in the number of vacancies. The real question is, what is the number of offices in which that system is adopted? As far as I know, it is adopted in the Treasury, in the War Department, in the Home Department, and in the Colonial Department. It is also adopted in the Board of Trade. [An hon. MEMBER: Not the Board of Trade.] I may be

  1337
  mistaken. I understand now that it is not adopted in the Board of Trade. Well, it is adopted in the Board of Works, and in three out of the four offices of Secretary of State. I believe also that, on some occasions, it is adopted by the Admiralty. This statement shows that the heads of Departments have voluntarily adopted that principle in filling up vacancies. My noble Friend at the head of the Government, looking to the short time during which the system had been in existence, had not felt himself justified by a mere act of the executive Government to make it compulsory on the heads of Departments to follow this system, but it has been recommended by the practice of the Treasury, and a majority of the other superior Departments. I can only repeat my belief that this mode of filling up vacancies will give you the choice of candidates best qualified for the public service, and most likely to discharge their duties in a satisfactory manner. I regret that it is not in my power to state that the Government, at the present moment, have any further intentions than to express an opinion in favour of that system. I can not say that they intend to lay down any inflexible rule on the subject, to depart from the present frame of the Order in Council, or to render it necessary that there shall, in any instance, be competitive examinations when the head of the Department himself entertains objections to that course. I trust, however, that on the whole, the manner in which these appointments have been filled up has been satisfactory as regards the efficiency of the public service; and, for my own part, taking a general view of the subject, I have come to the conclusion that a great and important progress has been made with regard to the admission of persons to the service of the State, and that we have entered upon a course which will tend in its results to increase the efficiency of the public service.
  COLONEL SYKESsaid, that he wished, as one who had taken considerable interest in the subject, to express his thorough conviction that, if the Government were earnest and sincere in their desire to promote the intellectual advancement of the middle and lower classes, they ought to place at the disposal of the public a certain portion of the patronage of the heads of Departments, or allot to the examiners of the society of Arts or other trustworthy bodies, some of the minor offices. The system of examination after nomination
  1338
  confined the competition to a very small and selected circle, and consequently it did not become generally known that any such competition was going on, and thus the proposed system became perfectly ineffective in its operation. It was absurd to say that the smallness of the salaries—£50, £60, or £100 a year—would limit the number of competitors, for he had had opportunities of knowing cases in which salaries of no greater amount had been competed for by lieutenant colonels on half pay, so that it was not probable that there would be any dearth of competitors on account of the lowness of the salaries.
  MR. W. VANSITTARTwished to know on what ground persons were nominated to compete for these positions?
  THE CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUER: Upon the ground of efficiency.

  THE ITALIAN LEGION AND THE ARGENTINE REPUBLIC—QUESTION.
  MR. MONCKTON MILNESsaid, he wished to put a question to Her Majesty's Government respecting the engagement entered into with the Argentine Confederation for the reception and employment of a certain number of the officers and soldiers of the Italian Legion; and to ask whether the authorities of the Argentine Confederation have adhered to the stipulations of that agreement. At the close of the late war, as the House was aware, offers had been made by the Government to the foreign troops who had enlisted in the service of this country to convey them to Canada or the Cape of Good Hope. A promise, however, had been held out to the soldiers of the Italian Legion that they should be conveyed to a station on the river Parana, and documents, which reminded him of the late George Robins, were circulated amongst them, under the authority of the Argentine Confederation and of Her Majesty's Government. It offered them advantages which it was fearful to contemplate. They were told that in the territory of the Argentine Republic they would find a beautiful climate, a country which would produce every fruit, where ice was unknown, where the best species of mutton and beef sold for only 1d. a pound, where the women were remarkably handsome and very industrious, and where many of them wanted husbands. It was then stated that the men on arriving out in South America would be established on the banks of the Parana, where they

  1339
  were to receive a very large territory, for which they were to pay only a moderate rent to the Government. A large number of officers and soldiers accepted those inducements, and were sent out by the War Office. He had been informed, however, that the engagement entered into with those persons had not been adhered to. They had not been conveyed to the banks of the Parana, but had been landed elsewhere against their will, without the means of arriving at the place of their destination, while other parts of the agreement, with, reference to supplying them with money and food, had not been carried into effect. At the present moment those poor fellows were wandering about the country in a state of destitution, instead of having, as they were promised, the means of gaining an honest and sufficient subsistence. He thought that when this country enlisted foreign soldiers it was bound, when their services were no longer necessary, to see them placed in a proper position, and for that reason he had felt bound to endeavour to elicit some explanation from the Government upon the subject.
  SIR JOHN RAMSDENsaid, that he thought the explanations he was about to offer would satisfy the House that there had been no breach of faith either on the part of the Government or on the part of the Argentine Confederation. The state of the case was this—when the war was concluded the Italian Logion was disbanded at Malta, and a great part of them returned home. The remainder of them, however, amounting to about 1,050 men, were not allowed to do so, and they were brought over to England, in order that they might avail themselves of the proposal to convey them either to Canada or to the Cape of Good Hope. Shortly after their arrival negotiations were entered into with their respective Governments, and about 700 of those men were permitted to return to Italy, while 350 were left in this country. At that time there happened to be in this country an agent of the Argentine Confederation, whose duty it was to obtain emigrants to settle in the Argentine territories, and he, hearing that these men were to be sent to one of the colonies, applied to the Government to enter into negotiations, with the view of inducing those men to emigrate to the Argentine territory. The Government thought it undesirable that they should be a party to any such transaction, and they therefore referred the Argentine
  1340
  agent to the men themselves, saying that they would be willing to give them a free passage if they agreed to accept the terms which might be proposed to them. The terms offered by the Argentine agent were accepted without any interference on the part of the Government. The only step taken by the Government was to give them a free passage, and the gratuity of one year's pay. The men went out in two vessels, the first of which arrived at Parana, where the men disembarked. They found, however, that the rate of wages was extremely high, averaging for unskilled labourers from 4s. to 5s. a day, and, finding that they could obtain so much, the pay which had been promised them being, in addition to a grant of twenty-eight acres of land, only 6d. a day during the first year, 4d. during the second, and 2d. during the third, applied to the Argentine Republic to be released from the terms which they had originally accepted; and that Government having complied with their request, two-thirds of them were released, while the remaining third determined to go and see the place where it had been intended that they should be located; but on arriving there they found that it was further off than they had expected, and they therefore applied to be allowed to return to Parana to be dismissed. The Argentine Government complied with their request, and they were now at liberty at Parana. In the case of the remaining men, as soon as the ship in which they had embarked had touched at Montevideo, some of them had gone on shore, and, finding that the price of labour there was the same as at Parana, they had refused to go any further, and at once demanded their liberty. Their request, of course, had been immediately complied with, and they had them released from the stipulations into which they had entered entirely of their own accord, and not owing to any compulsion upon the part of the Argentine government. He had lately seen a letter which was written by an English Gentleman, who had lived for a great many years in the territories of the Argentine Confederation, where he made his fortune, and from that letter he had ascertained that the rate of wages in those territories averaged from 4s. to 5s. a day, while the best meat could be procured at the rate of a halfpenny per pound. Under these circumstances he did not think the men were by any means to be pitied.

  THE OATHS BILL.—NOTICE.
  SIR FREDERIC THESIGERsaid, he was anxious, for the convenience of hon. Members, to inform the House what was the course which he proposed to pursue in reference to this Bill. Acting in accordance with the statement which he had upon a previous occasion made, he had abstained from offering any opposition to its second reading, but, as he feared from the cheers which had followed the passing of the Bill through that stage that some misapprehension as to his intentions in relation to the future progress of the measure might prevail, he should beg leave to give notice that he should in Committee propose at the end of the new oath to add the words,—
  "And I do make this promise, renunciation, abjuration, and declaration, heartily, willingly, and truly, on the true faith of a Christian."

  ALDERSHOT.—OBSERVATIONS.
  SIR FREDERICK SMITHsaid, that in the discussion which had taken place with respect to Aldershot a few evenings before, several statements as to the employment of the men in pitching their tents and other matters had been made at variance with those to which, he had given expression. Now, as he had occupied the position of second officer in command at that camp, he had deemed it to be his duty, in order to set matters in their true light, to write to its present commander, General Knollys, in order to obtain all the information bearing upon the point. He had received that morning, in reply to his communication, the following letter, which he thought would satisfy the House that many of the statements to which he had adverted were not quite consistent with the fact. General Knollys said,—
  "The troops have been under canvas during 1855 and 1856, as long as the weather admitted of it, and they will shortly be placed again under it. The last two months have been chiefly passed in drill, agreeably to the general instructions of our service, and the weather has not admitted of my putting the troops under canvas until the last week without special orders. The same system will, however, be pursued this year as has been carried out during the last two. Of this, cooking in the field, of course, forms a part, and at which you may remember all the regiments of militia were successfully practised, as well as the young and newly-enlisted regiments of the line; the case is some what different with regard to those regiments who came from the Crimea, who had little to learn in cooking that I could teach them. Field operations have been always practised when the summer field days could no longer take place. Route inarching, taking up positions, outpost duty, form
  1342
  part of this instruction, along with reconnaissances for the cavalry, and bridge making for the engineers. We have a class of officers receiving instruction in surveying and military sketching under an artillery officer from Woolwich, and I trust to be enabled to extend this instruction still further, and to a greater number of officers. Besides the fort we constructed under your superintendence, we have executed military works on the bank of the canal. All the roads lately finished have been completed by the soldiers—three entirely without working pay. The whole of the temporary stabling was constructed by the military. The horses have continued remarkably healthy, particularly some of the military train, who continued out throughout the winter. The only casualties among the latter were from kicks. There is only one hut in the whole camp that is at present out of repair—mess-house, letter M. The felt is in a good state of preservation throughout, and no rain enters through the roofs. The whole of the gravel in the lines has been spread by the troops. I have no idea that desertion has ever been induced by the camp. Whatever there has been extra may easily be accounted for by the peculiar circumstances which attended the regiments coming from the Crimea. The average of the sick has continued lower than that of any other station. We have an abundant supply of good water from Cæsar's camp, and it is not likely to fail. The above are the points you have made queries on, and I trust you will think my answer satisfactory."
  That letter showed a very satisfactory state of things, and, to prove that it was borne out by the facts, he would next read a statement which was made by the brother of Sir H. Smith, who was barrack master at Aldershot, and an experienced officer. With reference to the huts, his words Were—
  "They are in excellent repair, not the least appearance of decay; they are light, airy, and wholesome; there is but one instance on record of a hut having given way, which is the mess-hut in M line, south camp, used as a private residence; the back broke—the defect was made good immediately. The felt is extremely good and water-tight, will last for years—in my opinion as long as the hut stands, by proper attention being paid to it. The supply of water from Cæsar's camp is good and ample, without the least probability of its failing. In the event of the bank of the reservoir giving way, the wells in the camp will sufficiently supply the troops with good water until such time as the reservoir has been repaired. The latrines are extremely well, and from the manner in which the Cyanic Manure Company deodorize them there is no complaint. The urinals have been reconstructed and answer well; they are deodorized by the company, as are also the drains, by which means no offensive effluvia arise there from. In the kingdom there is not a more healthy spot than Aldershot. Take the average of the number of men quartered (12,000) in the camp during the last six months, the sick amounted to 2½ per cent; in my opinion not another barrack in the kingdom could show this. From the opening of the camp in May, 1855, to the 1st of June, 1857, the camp has accommodated 4,825 officers, 131,632 men, and 6,550, horses;

  1343
  and I do most positively assert that every officer, man, and horse were accommodated with everything the regulations allow them immediately on their arrival in the camp. No cavalry regiments arrived in the camp last November; consequently what was stated in the House the other night is totally unfounded. From conversations which I have had at different periods both with officers and non-commissioned officers, I am convinced the camp does not lead to desertions; on the contrary, the men are partial to it."
  Motion, "That the House go into a Committee of Supply," agreed to.

  SUPPLY—ARMY ESTIMATES.
  House in Committee; Mr. FITZROY in the Chair.
  (1.) £151,744, Educational and Scientific Branches.
  COLONEL NORTH COLONEL NORTH rose to express a hope that on some future occasion other opportunities would be given to Members of discussing some of those votes. He had voted for the disputed £50,000 for Aldershot on Friday night, not wishing that the soldiers should be sufferers, and looking on camp training as a matter of great importance; but there were matters in vote No. 12 which he thought open to objection, but no opportunity had been afforded of taking the sense of the Committee upon them.
  SIR JOHN RAMSDENsaid, that the hon. and gallant Member would have an opportunity of making any observations he thought proper with respect to the Vote in question on the bringing up of the Report.
  MR. RICHwished to call the attention of the Committee to the fact that the sons of men who were not officers were charged for their education at the Royal Military College at the rate of £125 per annum; there being additional charges by which that sum was raised to £150 per annum. Now, the State had undertaken to provide for the education, to a certain extent, of the sons of deceased officers at that institution, but, instead of doing that, they had in reality laid the burden of payment upon civilians who sent their sons to be educated to the college, and the consequence was that the system operated as a direct tax upon education. It appeared probable that a great change was about to be made in the education of the army, and he trusted the Government would consider the hardship he had just pointed out.
  MR. HENLEYsaid, he had the same complaint to make of this as of the Vote discussed on Friday night, for distinct and separate items were so lumped together
  1344
  that it was not possible to discuss them without a cross debate and a good deal of confusion. The Vote comprehended items for the education of the army, for the Hibernian and Chelsea Asylums, and for the Ordnance survey of Scotland, which some people pretended was a very ugly job, and other matters, which it was impossible to discuss in one Vote. There was another matter to which he also wished to call the attention of the Committee. The hon. and gallant Member for Calne (Sir W. F. Williams) made an assertion the other night which, considering the large sums our army had cost the country, was not very satisfactory. That hon. and gallant Member said that if a Russian or a French general wrote a despatch to a brother general he could accompany it with a military sketch of the ground to which it related, but that an English general had no one attached to his staff who could do that service for him. That statement came from a military man of no small reputation; and if it were true, considering the many millions we spent upon our army, he thought we could hardly be said to get our money's worth for our money. This statement was made during the debate on Aldershot, and he had consulted the usual sources of information the following morning, to see whether he had correctly understood the hon. and gallant General. Sometimes Members were not able to catch across the table what was said, but he found on looking to the papers that he had taken a right impression of what the hon. and gallant General had said. All he could find in this Vote towards remedying this defect was a small item towards the expenses of fifteen gentlemen studying at the Royal Military College. It would be well that the deficiency in question should be provided for in some way or other. He trusted that his suggestion relative to the better classification of the Votes might meet with the consideration of the Under Secretary for War, for by the present form hon. Members were not afforded a fair opportunity of raising a question on a particular item, which they might think objectionable, though mixed up with other votes which they wished to see granted.
  MR. BLACKcalled the attention of the Government to the Scottish Military Academy, which, he said, had a claim on their consideration. It was founded by private individuals, for the purpose of providing a course of instruction for the sons of officers in the army, and had hitherto been entirely

  1345
  carried on at their own expense. He believed the instruction given at it was superior to that which could be obtained at other military schools in the kingdom. It had sent forth 1,000 officers—many of whom had distinguished themselves; 100 of them were in the Crimea; and Major Nasmyth, one of the defenders of Silistria, had been educated at the school. He did not ask the Government to make any grant of money to the institution, but to give it a proper standing in the country, by enabling the managers to certify that those who passed the periodical examinations were properly qualified for posts in the army. The Academy did not care how stringent the examinations were made, so that the pupils got a share of the commissions annually given away by Government.
  MR. G. D. WARBURTONsaid, it appeared that a vehement competition for staff appointments took place in other countries, and that this emulation was followed by the best possible results. In our Army there was a remarkable contrast to this state of things. Out of 216 who had obtained certificates in the senior department at Sandhurst, only fifteen were employed on the staff during the late war. A system of appointment and promotion by purchase, seniority, and interest would not be very successful in other professions, and no one would think of adopting it in the Senate, on the Bench, or at the Bar. There were certain appointments upon the general staff which he thought might be thrown open to competition among officers of a rank to qualify them for such appointments, and he believed that the emulation and energy thus developed would tend greatly to elevate the character of the profession. It might be urged that the system of high military instruction for officers had not always produced the best effect—that the principle of competition which had been adopted for the last year-and-a-half had not led to unalloyed success—and that, in the competition for commissions in the Royal Artillery and Engineers, already more than one successful candidate had shrunk from the chilling atmosphere of a higher social grade than that to which he had been accustomed. But in a competition for staff appointments the same difficulty would not arise, because the candidates would all be of the same social rank. He would impress on the attention of the Government that the principle of competition ought to be introduced
  1346
  in some shape into this service. It would tend to raise the intellectual standard of all officers who entered the British army, and would remove from a gallant profession the odious reproach to which it had hitherto been exposed; namely, that it presented the only sphere, in an eminently industrious and energetic country, in which indolence suffered no rebuke and genius or ability could lay claim to no reward.
  MR. E. ELLICE (St. Andrew's)said, he did not intend to move, as he had done on a previous occasion, for any reduction of the Estimates. Last year he had stated his objections to the extravagant mode in which the Ordinance survey in Scotland was being conducted, but the House had declined on a division to accede to his views. He very well understood that the Government was all but opposed to this mode, but the gentlemen in a certain Governmental Department were very much actuated in the matter, and it was the plan of these gentlemen which the House had backed up. Each proprietor was to be furnished with an accurate survey of his own estate on the 25-inch scale; but it was obvious that a map of that kind, to be of any use, would require to be revised every two years. They had been promised that this survey would be finished within the time originally contemplated for executing a map of Scotland on a smaller scale. The Committee which sat on this subject reported that the survey for Scotland could be completed in ten years, and they recommended a Vote of £50,000 per annum for its execution. The Vote had, however, been reduced to £36,000—a breach of bargain of which the people of Scotland had a right to complain. But as the nation had been saddled with the extravagant plan, it ought now to be prosecuted with at least sufficient despatch to enable hon. Gentlemen to have a map of the country during their lives. The survey for Ireland had been completed—that for England also was all but complete; while in Scotland the survey proceeded at the tardiest pace, because of the absurdly large scale on which it was framed. In the aggregate the expenditure already charged against the country was £963,000; which was £46,000 in excess of the sum that the Committee stated was necessary last year to complete the survey. If the 1-inch scale—that of England—had been adopted for Scotland, a map could have been obtained for £250,000; but the House had preferred the plan which

  1347
  would cost one million. The enormous scale—that of six inches—on which the wildest districts of Scotland were to be surveyed, was perfectly monstrous; and when the whole was completed, not only would the high estimate abovenamed, in his opinion, be exceeded, but they would be landed in the colossal scheme advocated by Sir C. Trevelyan, by which England and Ireland, as well as Scotland, would be surveyed on the 25-inch scale, at an estimated cost of £6,000,000 or £7,000,000 sterling. Moreover, Sir C. Trevelyan's plan would necessitate the creation of a new Governmental Department, with a costly permanent staff of surveyors to revise the Ordnance maps every few years. The present rate of progress made in Scotland might be judged of from the fact that last year only 407,000, out of an aggregate of 20,000,000 acres were completed.
  SIR WILLIAM WILLIAMSsaid, with regard to some observations which had been made by the right hon. Gentleman opposite (Mr. Henley), in which he had referred to a statement made by him (Sir W. Williams) the other night, that there were no doubt officers in the British army quite able to make plans. There were always such persons to be found on the head Quartermaster General's Staff; but there was not attached to our army, as there was to the foreign services, a topographical corps, who might be detached with any Major General or Brigadier General. In foreign armies, wherever officers equivalent to our Major Generals or Brigadier Generals were stationed, they were always attended by an officer who was constantly surveying the ground, and who made an elaborate report of the same, accompanied by a plan, without which no mere verbal or written description could be intelligible. He only hoped that upon the reconstruction of the army, a bonâ fide staff corps would be appointed, and that each member of it would attend one year with the artillery, one year with the cavalry, and one year with the infantry, so that officers of one arm of the service might be better acquainted with the duties belonging to others. He quite agreed in the opinion that had been expressed, that soldiers in camp at Aldershot ought to be employed on field works without extra pay, which only led to drunkenness and insubordination, and that they should be made conversant with the method of making fascines, with sapping, and other matters of field fortification. It was his earnest wish
  1348
  that every one of the soldiers might be there made conversant with everything relating to war, and he was perfectly sure that if this course were adopted, England would never regret a single shilling that had been laid out at Aldershot.
  SIR DENHAM NORREYSsaid, that, as the attention of the Committee had been drawn away from the Ordnance Survey of Scotland to a totally different subject, and it was his wish to confine himself to the question of the Ordnance Survey, he would at once resume his seat if any hon. and gallant Gentleman desired to continue the subject adverted to by the hon. and gallant Baronet (Sir W. F. Williams). The noble Lord below him (Lord Elcho) complained of the hon. Member for St. Andrew's (Mr. E. Ellice) for having introduced a question which had been definitely settled by the House—namely, the Ordnance Survey of Scotland; but he (Sir D. Norreys) denied that the House had ever had an opportunity of expressing its opinion upon that question, nor did he think that it was then prepared to do so. As he did not think it was fair to make any Motion upon that subject without notice, he would reserve his observations until the bringing up of the Report, when he intended to raise the whole question of the 25 inch Ordnance Survey, in order that the opinion of the House might be finally taken upon it.
  MR. WEGUELINsaid, he wished to direct the attention of the Under Secretary for War to the engraving department of the Ordnance Office, which required the appointment of a practical engineer to prevent the mistakes and alterations which were constantly made under the present system. Great expense was caused to the country in consequence of the engraving of the maps being intrusted to persons who were not regular engravers.
  After a remark from Colonel SYKES, which was inaudible in the gallery,
  SIR JOHN RAMSDENsaid, that he declined to make any reply to the observations on the Ordnance Survey of Scotland until the subject was brought before the House on the Report, in pursuance of the notice just given by the hon. Baronet (Sir D. Norreys). The Vote, however, had better be taken pro formâ at once, subject to the final decision of the House on bringing up the Report. He assured the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Oxfordshire that the instruction of staff officers in military drawing had engaged the most careful attention of the Government. By

  1349
  one of the general orders recently issued by the Horse Guards, it was laid down that after the 1st of January next no officer was to be appointed on the staff who was not able to pass an examination, and who was not well qualified in the different branches of military knowledge which were requisite for a proper discharge of a staff officer's duties. Practical instruction of that nature was being given at the present moment at Aldershot. An artillery officer went down there for several days in the week, and took about with him a class of officers to instruct them in the principles of military sketching, &c.; and so great was the anxiety to obtain instruction that that officer could not attend to all the applications that were made to him.
  MR. W. WILLIAMSregretted that the hon. Baronet (Sir D. Norreys) did not think that the present was an opportune moment for the discussion of the question as to the Ordnance Survey of Scotland. It had been said that that was not a Scotch but a national question, but he (Mr. Williams) denied that that was so, because the Ordnance Surveys of England and Ireland had been settled. It appeared that the Survey of Scot land had been proceeded with, to a great extent, upon three distinct scales—a 1-inch scale in some counties, a 6-inch scale in other places, and a 25-inch scale elsewhere, He wished to know whether it was intended to persevere with these three surveys upon different scales? Ail the cost of these surveys would have to be paid for out of the taxes of the people, and he had a right to complain that, whereas the surveys of England and Ireland had cost only about £250,000 each, it was intended to expend £1,000,000 upon the survey of Scotland. What was intended to be done with the Vote of £36,000 now asked for? Was it to be expended in continuing the 25-inch scale survey, or was it intended that the public money should be perpetually expended in surveying Scotland on one scale, and then surveying it on another?
  LORD ELCHOsuggested the advisability of following the course recommended by the hon. Baronet (Sir D. Norreys), and of having a thorough discussion on this subject upon bringing up the Report.
  MR. W. WILLIAMSwas of opinion that no fair debate could take place upon the mere bringing up of the Report, and that the Committee ought to have some explanation before they agreed to the Vote.
  SIR JOHN RAMSDEN(in reply to Mr. Williams's previous question) said, that nearly all the cultivated districts south of the Forth and the Clyde were now surveyed on the 25-inch scale, and they were now proceeding with the survey of the cultivated districts only upon this scale.
  SIR HARRY VERSEYexpressed himself strongly against the unsystematic manner in which the survey of the country had been carried on. They had been promised a uniform survey on the 8-inch scale, which would have served for all the railways and other great public works. That plan was rejected, and no less than £2,500,000 had been spent on surveys for the purposes of the Tithe Commissioners. He protested against the 25-inch scale as unnecessary and extravagant. He thought that the Vote should either undergo discussion or be postponed.
  Mr. E.ELLICE (St. Andrew's), said, the hon. Baronet had not exactly stated the present position of the survey in Scotland, because in four or five of the more important counties where it had been completed on the one-inch and the six-inch scale it would have to be entirely recommenced, according to the system now in progress, upon the 25-inch scale.
  THE LORD ADVOCATEwished to understand whether it was the intention of the Committee to discuss this question now? Hon. Gentlemen seemed to forget that the subject had been most fully discussed before. Not only was it debated previously to last year, but a Select Committee then sat upon it, which pronounced in favour of the plan proposed, while a large majority in that House came to the same decision.
  SIR WILLIAM JOLLIFFEdid not wish to discuss the scale upon which the survey should be conducted, but thought the Government were proceeding without system in this matter. Even in Scotland no system had been adopted which would ultimately secure a good survey, while in England they were wholly neglecting that which it would be but common sense to do. There were populous districts in this country which possessed only the most incorrect map possible upon the 1-inch scale, and the survey for which was made at a very early period. Now, if a new survey of these districts were made, he believed, upon the authority of scientific men, that the sale of maps would be so great as to be perfectly remunerative. But, instead

  1351
  of doing this, they were proceeding with surveys for which there was no demand, and the greater part of which would be useless.
  LORD ELCHOobserved that the course adopted in Scotland was not that which the hon. Baronet had stated. At the present moment the Scotch survey was proceeding on a regular system, and it was in consequence of the many changes which had taken place, of the Motions for Select Committees, and the speeches made in this House, if doubt and uncertainty existed on the subject. He felt confident that much of the misunderstanding prevalent throughout the country arose from the want of a thorough discussion of this question. Before such a discussion took place he hoped that hon. Gentlemen, notwithstanding their horror of blue-books, would read over, however cursorily, the correspondence respecting the scale for the Ordnance survey published in 1854, and the Report of the Select Committee, dated May 6, 1856, upon the Ordnance survey of Scotland.
  MR. WYLDsuggested that these surveys should be made useful as a great scientific school for the instruction of our officers. In other countries officers were allowed to pass a certain portion of their time in making these surveys, the consequence of which was that upon every occasion where such officers were employed in making reconnaissances they were found capable of doing so satisfactorily. During the late Crimean campaign, however, it was well known that the authorities were indebted to railway engineers for a really good, scientific, and accurate plan of the ground before Sebastopol. He thought that if officers in all branches of the service were allowed to volunteer for a short time, and engage in this work of surveying, their expenses being included in the costs of the surveys, the experience they would thus acquire would prove invaluable to the country at some future period.
  SIR FREDERICK SMITH: For the purpose of making a good and useful survey experienced surveyors were required, not youths. Where youths had been employed, as was the case with the Ordnance survey of Cornwall, re-surveys had been subsequently found necessary, and the work had been done over again. He thought, therefore, that no good result would follow the sending officers to this survey.
  SIR WILLIAM CODRINGTONsaid,
  1352
  he thought that as affording a means for cultivating accuracy of observation there could be no possible objection to the suggestion of the hon. Member for Bodmin (Mr. Wyld). With respect to his observation, however, that the army before Sebastopol had been indebted to those engineers who went out to construct the railway, for the survey of the ground, he thought that the hon. Gentleman was in error, for he remembered a very excellent and very accurate plan having been made by an officer of the 93rd Regiment, who was then on the Quarter Master General's staff. No doubt the more education that could be given both to staff officers and to officers of the army, in order to qualify for the staff, the better; but in contrasting the education of officers abroad with the system pursued in England, it must be remembered that abroad officers were separately educated for the staff—that they were instructed at a separate establishment, at a separate cost, and that they were taken away from all regimental duties; and that the system in this country would have to be entirely altered probably if the staff were to be taken exclusively from one set of officers. With regard to the topographical question there was no doubt that if a general officer wished to send home a plan with his despatch, he had the Quartermaster General's Department to assist him; but the officers of that department had very important duties to perform, independently of map drawing; they bad to do with the moving and quartering of the troops, to look to the general features of the country, and to make a general view upon paper of the position. The topographical department would be able to put in proper language, as it were, those conceptions of the Quartermaster General's Department, and it would, no doubt, prove a very useful addition to any military staff.
  MR. W. EWARTsaid, he understood that it was the intention of the Government to allow the Military Commission now sitting to investigate the whole question of Military Education, and, as it was a subject in which every one must feel deeply interested, he should like to know from the Under Secretary for War when public attention was to be called to it through the instrumentality of the Government.
  GENERAL WINDHAMsaid, he should be sorry if it were to go forth to the public that there had been no officers at head

  1353
  quarters in the Crimea who could make a good map. He remembered to have seen two charts, one made by an engineer officer and another by an officer in the Quartermaster General's Department, and he believed that the latter was by far the best plan that had been made.
  MR. WYLDexplained that what he had suggested was that officers of the British army should be allowed the advantage of acquiring a good knowledge of ground and of mapping, which these Ordnance Surveys would afford. He did not say that officers of the army were not generally well educated, but it was notorious that in topographical knowledge they were inferior to the officers of France, Russia, Austria, or Prussia, and that if they were sent to make a reconnaissance, and to bring it back to the Commander in Chief, they would not be able to do so.
  GENERAL WINDHAMadmitted that there was much truth in what the hon. Gentleman said, and added that many officers who drew well as boys lost the art from want of practice. He repeated his unwillingness, however, that it should be supposed that there had been no persons employed at head quarters at Sebastopol who were capable of making a map.
  SIR JOHN RAMSDEN, in answer to the hon. Member for Dumfries (Mr. Ewart), stated that the whole question of military education had for a long time engaged, and did still engage, the most serious attention of the Government, who were fully aware of its great importance, The first recommendation of the Commissioners upon the subject, and one on which they laid the greatest stress of all, was, that a Board or Council should be appointed to consider the whole question. That step had already been taken by the Government, A Council had been appointed, and their duties were to draw up a general scheme of military education, giving more particularly their opinion as to what should be the examination to which gentlemen should be subjected when candidates for their first commission in the army; also, as to what examination officers should have to pass through upon promotion through the different steps up to the grade of captain; and, also, as to what should be the qualifications required of staff officers. That Council had only recently been appointed; those were the duties which its Members had to perform, and when they should have
  1354
  drawn up their scheme of education, that scheme would be submitted to Parliament before being adopted.
  MR. W. WILLIAMSagain urged the postponement of the Vote, or, at all events, of that, portion of it which related to the survey.
  SIR JOHN RAMSDENsaid, he hoped that the Committee would not postpone the Vote, although there appeared to be a general desire to discuss the question of the Ordnance Survey on the bringing up of the Report. It should be remembered that a Committee which sat last year had fully inquired into the subject, and that the present expenditure was merely for the purpose of carrying out the recommendations of that Committee.
  Vote agreed to; as were also the following Votes:—
  (2.)£17,305, Rewards for Military Service.
  (3.) £41,994, Pay of General Officers.
  (4.) £378,706, Pay of Reduced and Retired Officers.
  (5.) £127,378, Pensions to Widows, &c.
  (6.) £31,863. Pensions for Wounds.
  COLONEL NORTHsaid, he begged to call attention to the manner in which pensions for wounds were awarded. In some cases officers were desperately wounded, but unless their wounds were considered equivalent to the loss of a limb, they were not considered eligible for pensions. He thought there ought to be some other sort of classification. In some of the regiments which recently left for the China war, officers were obliged to leave the service on account of their wounds, although those wounds had not resulted in the loss of a limb. He thought the manner in which the future prospects of an officer were affected by a wound should be more considered than whether the wound was equivalent to the loss of a limb.
  MR. W. WILLIAMSsaid, he must complain that it was almost impossible to keep pace with the Votes from the manner in which they were arranged. He had wished to make some observations on the last Vote, but, in consequence of the vast mass of matter contained in each of the Votes, he had been unable to tell what Vote the Committee were upon. He trusted, when the Estimates were next brought forward, that a number would be put to each Vote and named by the Chairman, so that hon. Members might be able readily to find it and follow it up.
  LORD ADOLPHUS VANE-TEMPEST, in reference to the wounds of officers, said that many officers were so severely wounded in the Crimea that they were obliged to leave the service. They could not, however, get a pension, because their wounds were not equivalent to the loss of a limb. This was not a principle on which a great country like this ought to act. He wished to know from the hon. Baronet whether the Government would make any alteration.
  SIR JOHN RAMSDENsaid the noble Lord must be aware that this was a most difficult and complicated question. If they once passed the line which had necessarily been adopted, it would be almost impossible to know exactly where the granting of a pension should stop. He was afraid it would be out of his power to give any answer to the questions of the noble Lord or to the hon. and gallant Member for Oxfordshire. The regulations under which the Government acted had been in force for a great number of years, and they were originally taken from the Admiralty regulations, which would require to be altogether revised if the subject were disturbed.
  COLONEL NORTHsaid, he had not expected any answer at the moment. He merely mentioned the matter that the attention of the Government might be directed to it.
  SIR CHARLES NAPIERsaid, the line which had been laid down was a very bad line. It was true that inquiry should be made into the cases of officers severely wounded. There were other wounds besides the loss of a limb, which might vitally affect a man's prospects for life. The hon. Baronet had said that he followed the example of the Admiralty—it was a very bad example. The Order in Council empowered the Crown to give pensions for wounds whenever the case seemed to deserve it. This was never carried out, and it was high time that inquiry was made. The officers of both services had served their country well, and deserved more consideration. An officer might be struck, and all the difference as to his pension would depend whether he was struck, in the leg, for instance, a few inches higher or lower.
  VISCOUNT PALMERSTONsaid, that nothing could be more desirable than that the Government should have the means of laying down rules which would be attended
  1356
  with the effect of rewarding officers who suffered severely in the service; but, on the other hand, nothing was more essential than that the regulations appertaining to the matter should be such as to exempt the individual was duty it was to administer the pension from the charge of partiality or injustice. Now, unless the regulation was such as to admit of a clear distinction between several cases, he was afraid it would be impossible to give satisfaction to the service. He himself knew something of the matter from the offices he had once occupied. As long as a pension was to be given for the loss of a limb, or a wound equally prejudicial, there was clear ground to stand on; but if they went beyond that, and undertook to measure the injury to the constitution caused by different wounds, it would be impossible to lay down a line satisfactory to every one. Again, what difference could they draw between incapacity arising from wounds, and incapacity arising from disease? An officer might be incapable of service if his regiment were ordered abroad, but quite capable if it remain at home; so that there might be two officers suffering from wounds of a similar character, while their pensions would depend on the contingency of their regiment being ordered abroad; that was, that if the regiment of the one was ordered abroad, that officer would receive a pension as having been incapacitated for service; while the other officer, suffering from a similar wound, would not receive a pension because his regiment was at home. Unless some line was laid down the War Department would be accused of partiality in every case in which a pension might be refused.
  SIR CHARLES NAPIERsaid, that the Queen's regulations specified that Her Majesty reserved to herself the right of conferring a pension on account of wounds and services. Now, the noble Lord talked of a fixed rule; but if there were to be a fixed rule, and that rule was that no one should have a pension who had not lost a limb, that power of granting pensions ought not to be retained by Her Majesty, because it was only holding out false colours.
  MAJOR STUART WORTLEYsuggested that the close of a severe war, like the war with Russia, was a very fitting opportunity for a Government to take the matter into consideration.
  COLONEL NORTHsaid, that in many instances the officer was incapacitated for

  1357
  service both at home and abroad; but unless their wounds were considered equivalent to the loss of a limb they did not receive the reward to which they were entitled. It was to these cases he referred.
  LORD ADOLPHUS VANE-TEMPESTsaid, that there was great injustice in the present system; and he hoped that the noble Lord would consider whether some modification of it was not practicable. A friend of his was wounded at the Alma; he was very much attached to his regiment, but he was obliged to leave it at a very great sacrifice, being totally incapacitated from remaining. That officer received a pension at present, but he was in a great state of doubt and uncertainty as to its continuance, because he had not lost a limb.
  MR. ROEBUCKthought the evil arose from adhering too much to a preconceived rule. Instead of judging by that, they ought to take each case into consideration, and decide on its merits. Suppose a man were shot in the lungs, and another lost an arm—well the man who lost an arm would receive a pension, although lie could still perform his duty, while the man who was shot in the lungs, although unable to do anything, was not entitled to a pension. The army had done its duty nobly, and he appealed to the House not to act towards it in a niggardly spirit.
  MR. BRISCOEsaid, he considered that an officer who had been incapacitated by wounds from the performance of his duty, either at home or abroad, was a fit subject for a pension, even although be might not have suffered the loss of a limb.
  VISCOUNT PALMERSTONsaid, each case was considered on its individual merits, as suggested by his hon. and learned Friend (Mr. Roebuck), but then their merits were measured by the predetermined regulations. If it were not so, and the matter were left to his noble Friend at the head of the War Department without any reference to a fixed standard, he was sure a clamour would be raised in every case where a pension was refused, which would be exceedingly prejudicial to the service. There was no mode of dealing with the matter except by fixing some standard. In any case, such as that put by the hon. and learned Gentleman, where an officer had been so badly wounded as to be incapacitated for service, either at home or abroad, he should
  1358
  suppose the report would be that the wound was fully equivalent to the loss of a limb, and consequently a pension would be granted. It appeared that the officer to whom the hon. and gallant Gentleman (Colonel North) opposite alluded was in the receipt of a pension, and certainly if a pension were once granted it was not likely to be withdrawn.
  MR. ROEBUCKsaid, he considered that if the rule was a bad one it ought to be altered, without any regard to clamour which might be raised in individual canes. The standard of the loss of a limb did not appear to him to be a reasonable standard, because the loss of one limb might be more severe than the loss of another, while a wound without loss of limb might be more likely to render a man unfit for service than the actual loss of a limb.
  SIR WILLIAM CODRINGTONsaid, there was in each case a separate consideration under the Medical Board. But what he felt most was the rigidity by which the authorities were bound not only by the mere Regulation, but by the habits of England, which bound down the Government to particular rules for fear of giving them irresponsibility over one sixpence, and thus rendering them afraid of exercising any discretion. The evil referred to was felt not only in granting pensions of this sort, but extended to other matters. This jealousy of Executive Officers took away from the Government the responsibility due to them.
  SIR CHARLES NAPIERwished the law to remain as it was, if it were only carried out. The Government reserved a right to give pension to officers whose services and wounds entitled them to it; and he wished to see that discretion carried into practice.
  ADMIRAL WALCOTTobserved that he was desirous of knowing what were the precise instructions under which the Medical Board acted. At present he was wholly unable to discover upon what principle its officers decided the amount of pension which was granted as compensation for the loss of a limb. It must be borne in recollection that the effects of many wounds were more serious than even a disabled body or mutilation, when they resulted in mental derangement. As the system was now administered, a considerable degree of distrust and dissatisfaction very justly prevailed among members of

  1359
  the naval and military professions. He, therefore, on every account trusted that the existing regulations would be communicated to the House.
  SIR JOHN RAMSDENsaid, the regulations under which the Medical Board acted were to be found in the War Office Regulations, at page 185.
  MR. ROEBUCKasked whether the loss of an arm and the loss of a leg meant the same thing at the War Office? The words "loss of a limb" were a mere phrase; it might mean an arm or a leg, but they were different injuries.
  VISCOUNT PALMERSTONsaid, it was impossible to estimate particular injuries. The loss of a leg or an arm was a severe injury; yet the severity depended on circumstances; and both affected the constitution. It was not only that there was a bodily loss to the officer, but that the necessity for assistance was entailed upon him thereby. But he hoped the Committee would not expect him to catalogue particular injuries.
  MR. ROEBUCKwished the Government to judge each case by itself.
  LORD ADOLPHUS VANE-TEMPESTsaid, pensions were granted for one year, and at the end of it the officer was ordered to present himself to the Board. The whole system of pensions was so exceedingly uncertain, that officers did not know whether they were entitled to a pension or not, and he hoped the Government would reconsider the subject, or that some nonmilitary Member would move for a Committee to do that which the Government refused to do.
  SIR JOHN RAMSDENsaid, the cases alluded to were of a doubtful description, and the officer was presented with a gratuity of one year's pay, and ordered to come up again at the end of the year. If the injury were then permanent a pension was granted, but if not, the country was not burdened with a pension.
  SIR WILLIAM CODRINGTONsaid, the question was one of very great difficulty. He felt that instead of limiting the Executive Government to a certain rule the House ought to give them a certain discretional power to be lodged in the Head of the War Department, and a power of reference also to the Medical Board. That would be a great advantage.
  Vote agreed to.
  (7).£20,941, Chelsea and Kilmainham Hospitals.
  SIR CHARLES NAPIERasked, whether the major at Chelsea Hospital, who received a salary of £360, and the adjutant, who received £210 per annum, were also in receipt of their half-pay.
  SIR JOHN RAMSDENsaid, he was not prepared to answer the question then, but would make inquiry upon the subject.
  MR. W. WILLIAMScomplained that the charge for Kilmainham amounted to over £6,000, in addition to £4,000, which latter sum was, he perceived from the Estimates, not then under discussion, also to be laid out on the erection of buildings connected with that hospital. The total expenditure, therefore, for the present year would be over £10,000, while the number of the inmates appeared to be not more than 142, out of which number forty-three were officers and servants of the establishment. These in-pensioners cost the country £100 a man, and if they had half that amount, and were allowed to live with their friends, they would be more comfortable.
  COLONEL NORTHsaid, the hon. Gentleman (Mr. Williams) seemed to assume that these poor pensioners were not comfortable. Now, he (Colonel North) had the honour of being acquainted with the officer who was at the head of this establishment, and he might safely say, therefore, that they were as comfortable as they could be. If the men were not comfortable, they could leave the establishment; and at the same time he begged to remind the hon. Gentleman, that as long as one-half of the army was composed of Irishmen, it was not too much to maintain an asylum in that country for our superannuated soldiery,
  MR. W. WILLIAMSrepudiated the notion that he had complained of these pensioners not being comfortable. What he had stated was, that if each of them was paid over the £100 which they individually cost the country, they could be maintained with much more comfort amongst their own friends than at present.
  Vote agreed to, as were the two next Votes.
  (8).£776,688, Out Pensioners, Chelsea Hospital.
  (9).£83,000, Superannuations.
  MR. JOSEPH LOCKEsaid, he wished to remind the House that his statement with reference to Netley Hospital, on Friday night, had passed quite unnoticed by

  1361
  either the noble Lord at the head of the Government or the hon. Gentleman the Under Secretary at War. He did not complain of personal discourtesy, but the public interests were concerned, and he thought that some explanation ought to be given. He had asked for an explanation as to the discrepancy which had appeared in the different Estimates on account of this hospital. They had, in the first instance, been asked for a sum of £150,000 on account of the building of the hospital, and then they were afterwards told that the real estimate was £110,000 in excess of that, which would make the total outlay amount to £260,000, or at the rate of £260 per patient, as the hospital was to be built for the accommodation of only 1,000 men. For that sum a good house might be built for each of them, He had heard it stated, that it was the intention of the Government to discontinue the erection of this hospital—was this true? Above all, he should like to know the cause of so sensible a difference in the various estimates, as well as the name of the architect who was responsible for such discrepancies.
  SIR JOHN RAMSDENsaid, he was obliged to the hon. Gentleman for giving him the opportunity of correcting an involuntary omission. The discussion on Friday night embraced a variety of subjects, and the questions put by the hon. Member were lost sight of. The discrepancy in the estimates of £110,000 arose from the circumstance that, when it was first intended to build the hospital for £1,000 patients an estimate of £150,000 was put into the Votes upon the usual computation of the cost of constructing an hospital upon the old plan, without the modern improvements. In the War Office £150 a bed was considered a proper estimate, and as soon as it was arranged that the building was to hold 1,000 men the sum of £150,000 was put down in the Votes. However, before any steps were taken to construct the hospital, a Committee of able medical and scientific men was appointed, who reported that great modifications were required in the original plan. There was no time before preparing the first estimate for the House of Commons to go into the elaborate detail and inquiry which had afterwards been made, and the result was, that a much larger estimate for the construction of the hospital was found necessary. The hon. Member appeared to think this an exorbitant charge.
  1362
  He could only say, that a grave representation had been stated to Lord Panmure relative to the improvements required, and that a Committee of scientific men, engineers and medical men, was appointed to consider that memorial The Committee made a Report, in consequence of which certain alterations and improvements were made in the plan, He would add, that it was the intention of the Government to proceed with the construction of the hospital.
  ADMIRAL WALCOTTsaid, that, in reply to a question put on a late occasion, in reference to the defences of Woolwich, the noble Lord at the head of the Government observed very justly, that on the land side were hills of varying elevation incapable of a regular system of fortification, but tenable to a considerable extent by troops. On the water side, towards the river, the only possible defence which could be offered to the approach of an enemy must consist in the presence of block-ships and gun-boats. Now, at Woolwich upwards of 20,000 pieces of ordnance were collected besides material of war to the value at least of £20,000,000. It was, therefore, a subject deserving the most mature consideration to determine whether it was prudent to continue the present system of centralising stores of such magnitude and value in a position so exposed as Woolwich. Weedon was at a distance of from sixty to seventy miles from London, but it possessed the advantage of a railway and water-carriage by canal. In Portsmouth and Plymouth also, as possessing strong fortifications, might be established convenient depôts, He would, moreover, observe that the present number of ships, of the description to which the noble Lord had alluded, was quite insufficient to meet the demands which would be made upon them in the event of an emergency by ports of the highest national importance, He did not think that block-ships, such as we now employed, were adapted for this service, but he could entertain no doubt that scientific men would readily devise a floating battery equal to any fortification on shore, taking into account the extreme lowness of the land on either bank of the river. He would conclude with the hope that before the next Estimates were brought forward the Government would take the subject into their most serious consideration.
  SIR JOHN TRELAWNYsuggested that the Government should reconsider the

  1363
  Estimate for the Hospital at Netley before the expenditure was incurred. The hon. Gentleman also pointed out some discrepancies between the cost of barrack accommodation at Cambridge, Dovor, and other stations. At Dovor Castle an extra sum was charged for the adoption of the midiæval style of architecture for the barracks.
  House resumed.
  Resolutions to be reported on Thursday.
  Committee to sit again on Wednesday.

FRAUDULENT TRUSTEES, &c., BILL.

  SECOND READING.
  Order for Second Reading, read,
  MR. SEEJEANT KINGLAKEsaid, it was not his intention to obstruct the progress of this measure, the importance of which could not he exaggerated. On the contrary, he wished to give it his fullest support, believing that in its general complexion the Bill was a good one. The attention of the country having been painfully directed for some time past to the gross and scandalous frauds connected with certain Banking Companies, the House would no doubt be disposed to receive with great favour any measure directed to the prevention of such reprehensible transactions. There was, no doubt, that many of the clauses of the Bill were directed to such frauds as had recently so much astounded the public mind, and those clauses had his entire approbation. But one of the clauses of the Bill dealt, for the first time, with what were called ordinary breaches of trust, not such as might be committed by Bankers or persons of that description, but by ordinary trustees with reference to the management of property. There was this great anomaly in the English law that, while a parish lad for stealing a loaf of bread, or an humble clerk for wrongfully appropriating a shilling belonging to his employer, to meet some sudden and pressing necessity became amenable to the criminal law, a Trustee, however flagrant and criminal might be his act, could not be touched by that law. But he (Mr. Serjeant Kinglake) doubted the prudence of the course proposed by one of the clauses for the repression of breaches of trust. The shades and differences of breaches of trust were so various that it was impossible to classify them, but, no doubt, there were many recognized as such by Courts of Equity, which might be committed, nevertheless, without any criminal
  1364
  intent whatever. For instance, a Trustee might, without any fraudulent intent, lend the money of his cestuique trust, and by the loss of that money the cestuique trust might be ruined. A Trustee might use the money of his cestuique trust for his own benefit. That was a wilful breach of trust, although no loss should accrue to the estate. If a loss did occur, the Trustee would be obliged to make it good out of his own property. He (Mr. Serjeant King-lake) should be rather disinclined to make that a subject of criminal law. On the other hand, a Trustee might use the money of his cestuique trust with an intent to defraud him, and it was to this latter case he presumed that the Bill of his hon. and learned Friend the Attorney General was intended to apply. But the objection to the first section of this Bill was this—that while it attacked fraud, and fraud alone, it did not attempt to interdict the act which was the source of the fraud itself. Would it not be better to apply the axe to the root of the evil, to inquire what it was that induced the fraud and enabled and encouraged persons to do that which finally ended in fraud? Great facilities were afforded by the laws of this country to trustees to apply trust moneys to their own purposes, and the first clause enacted that only in the case of a fraudulent intent should the trustee be guilty of a criminal offence. This Bill only dealt with the fraud, and a trustee might employ the trust money, but would not be amenable, if he stopped short of fraud, He would suggest whether it would not be wise to introduce a clause, making it a criminal offence for any person to apply the funds of his cestuique trust to his own use, if the result was that a loss accrued to the cestuique trust. The first clause was in these general terms:—"That every trustee who should either appropriate or use or employ money belonging to the cestuique trust for his own use, with intent to defraud, should be liable to an indictment for misdemeanour and to seven years' penal servitude." Now, after a long experience in the criminal courts, he undertook to say that it was impossible to define what was an intent to defraud. If the first clause were passed as it stood, that want of preciseness would hang in terror over trustees, and there was not an honourable or sensitive man who would not at once give up his trusteeship. A jury would have to be appealed to in order to ascertain whether

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  there had been an intent to defraud, and the character and liberty of every trustee in the country would thus he put in an extreme jeopardy. If, then, the House meant to protect honest trustees they ought to interdict the act which led to or permitted fraud, and not to deal with cases of fraud alone. Again, the twelfth clause showed that the framers of the Bill had no confidence in it, because that clause enacted that no prosecution under this Bill should be commenced without the sanction of one of Her Majesty's Judges of the superior courts of law or equity or of the Attorney General. Against that clause he protested, as it was manifestly in direct opposition to the whole spirit of the English law. It was the office of the Judge to act rather as the advocate than the prosecutor of a prisoner brought before him for trial; but it might be, if this Bill were passed as it stood, that a trustee might be arraigned for trial before the very Judge who had sanctioned his prosecution. If the hon. and learned Gentleman would consult the common law Judges, he would find that the great majority of them would be very much disinclined to undertake the duty which he sought to impose upon them. The minds of the Judges ought to be free upon the trial of a prisoner, and not biased by having expressed at a preliminary stage an opinion of his guilt. He hoped the fifteen Judges of the common law courts would never be placed in the invidious position of being supposed to have prejudged a case in which they were sitting in judgment. In conclusion, he trusted that the Attorney General would introduce a clause into his Bill to stop the source of crime by interdicting the facility with which trustees might now use the money of the cestuique trust, subject only to the interference of a court of equity.
  MR. NEATEsuggested to those hon. Gentlemen who were members of the Bank Charter Committee whether it would not be well to abolish that rule of the Bank by which they refused to take notice of private trusts. That was a rule which opened the door to fraud; and as it was better to look to the prevention of such offences as those with which this Bill proposed to deal, than to punish them after they were committed, he thought if this rule were relaxed, and regard were had to the fact of whether stock was held in trust or otherwise, accounts would be placed on a sounder footing, and much would be done towards excluding the possibility of the
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  alienation by trustees of the money of the cestuique trust.
  Mr. ROLTsaid, that it was not his intention to oppose the second reading of the Bill, but it was a measure requiring great consideration, and he thought it in its present form open to such grave objections, that, unless it underwent considerable alterations in Committee, he should feel it his duty to oppose it at some future stage of its progress. The Bill embraced several classes of offences—offences by trustees, by bankers, brokers, and other agents, and by directors of joint-stock companies, He should only trouble the House, how-over, with some observations by way of illustrating his objections to the measure, in reference to that part of it which affected to deal with the offences of trustees. His objection to this part of the Bill was that it would infallibly tend to deter gentlemen of character, station, and responsibility from accepting any office or duty connected with an important or complicated trust; that it would necessarily tend to throw those offices and duties upon persons of inferior responsibility and station, or to place the administration of this property in the hands of some legal tribunal or of some Government Department; and which of these alternatives would be the worst he could not say. The offence on the part of trustees provided for by the Bill was, as he understood it, this—the appropriation of money or other property for his own benefit by any person who was rightfully the owner of it at law, but who in justice and in conscience held it for the benefit of some other person. The Bill did not attempt to impose a punishment for any breach of trust not committed for the benefit of the trustee. This was quite clear. But what would be the consequence even upon this clear construction of the Act? An attempt was made to fence round the breach of duty by defining the wrongful act. This act was not only to be for the advantage of the person doing it, but it was also to be "against good faith and with intent to defraud." Now, he did not quite agree with the hon. and learned Member for Rochester (Mr. Serjeant Kinglake) in his view of these words; but he certainly thought they would either reduce the Bill to a nullity or would be of no meaning and effect at all. In legal consideration, if you proved that money belonging to another had been appropriated, you proved "the intent to defraud." If this view were not to hold good he knew

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  not how "the intent to defraud" was to be proved, because he ventured to say it was not in one case out of a hundred that you could establish by evidence, over and above the commission of the act itself, that there was any intent to defraud. The wrongful act was generally done in the confident belief that the next week or the next year the trustee would be able to replace the funds confided to him; and he apprehended the intention of the Bill was, not that the crime should depend upon the result, or that the restoration of the property should remove the offence. If a trustee, then, appropriated money to his own benefit, this would be an offence which under the Bill would subject him to seven years' penal servitude. Now, let the House consider the cases to which that would apply. He did not mean to represent that in those cases the parties were innocent; but, though they might have committed an offence, he thought the House should hesitate before it decided to deal with them criminally. For his part, he should desire to draw a distinction between cases in which parties were intrusted with money and those in which they were intrusted with stock or chattels which might be converted into money. In the one case, by misappropriating the trust fund, and not satisfying the obligations of the trust when he was bound to do so, a trustee was guilty of criminal insolvency; in the other case he was guilty of a crime which resembled theft or forgery, and should be punished accordingly. Now, he did not intend to enter into the question whether the law at present was of sufficient stringency in its bearing upon criminal insolvency. If, however, the offence they were dealing with—namely, that of having money confided to your possession and not performing the solemn obligation of paying it when it was due—if this offence belonged to criminal insolvency, he objected to take it out of that category and to deal with it by some exceptional law merely because of some recent instance which had produced a panic in connection with this subject. He would submit one or two cases which would show the consequences of taking this particular class of offence out of the category of crime to which it properly belonged. He would suppose the case in which it was the duty of the trustee to receive money and when it amounted to a certain sum to invest it in a particular way. In that case it was the duty of the
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  trustee to keep the money separate from his own; yet, talk and preach as they might to the contrary, the most innocent person would at the outset place the money which he so received in small amounts to his own account at his own bankers; and there would be nothing criminal in that—it might be a breach of trust, an error, and if the banker failed he would be responsible, but there would be no criminality. The next step easily followed. The trustee wanted to draw upon his banker—he knew that if this money were not there his banker would accommodate him, but as it was there he drew upon that. It might be that that was an irregular act, though scarcely a criminal offence, but let them follow it a step further. The trustee took the money intending to replace it in a few days from securities which he had in his possession—the securities might fall in value, the man might fail, and he would become criminally insolvent. Now, how did that case differ from that of a man who, engaged in commerce, entered upon some speculation in which he knew that if he won the gain would be his own, and that if he lost the loss would be another's? He would be criminally insolvent. So, if a man incurred debts which he had no reasonable prospect of paying, he was criminally insolvent. Let that class of offence, then, be properly defined, and he contended that the crime with which the Bill was intended to deal would come within the category of criminal insolvency. He would cite one more case which was of common occurrence, and it should be the last. A man in trade made his will, and directed that at his death his property should be realized for the benefit of the adult and infant members of his family. Death happened earlier than he expected; the elder branches of his family were the trustees, and the trusts of the will were, that his assets should be realized, and should be divided as he had stated. The trustees knew that in the then state of the assets, if they were realized, there would only be a few hundred pounds for each of them, while, by carrying on the trade for their mutual benefit much greater advantages would accrue. They might be told that if they did so, they would be guilty of a breach of trust; but nobody could say that they would be morally wrong, and the advice generally offered to them probably would be, "If you like to take the responsibility, do it." He

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  (Mr. Rolt) was not sure that that would not fall within the category of crime as laid down in the Bill; but, even suppose that it did not, what possibility would there be of persuading sensitive and honourable men to undertake trusts of this description when there was any doubt in the matter, and when actions perfectly innocent upon their part were liable to be looked upon as criminal? It was vain for that House to endeavour to draw distinctions between offences which really belonged to the same class of crime; they could not weigh the niceties of intent and of moral effect; the distinction was so fine that they could not do it; and, if upon the occasion of any panic being created, or of some crime being committed characterized by more than usual enormity, they were called upon to pass some extraordinary measure of legislation to meet it, he submitted that that was not, to say the least of it, a scientific mode of dealing with the amendment of the law. Let them clearly ascertain and define to what class of crime offences belonged; let them fix plainly the punishment for each class; let their views be general and universal—not exceptional—and they might hope to pass a law which would repress crime, and which would not defeat its own objects by undue stringency and severity. He thought, however, that there were many parts of the Bill which might be made useful, but there were other portions to which he strongly objected, and he did not think that the provision which referred the matter to the Solicitor or Attorney General, or to one of the Judges, would relieve the objections which he entertained to those particular portions. On the whole, the Bill, in his opinion, required the most anxious and careful consideration, and unless such objections as he had urged—which applied not only to trustees, but to bankers and agents also—could be remedied in Committee, he feared that it would lead to some great scheme of a Government Trust Board; perhaps the Board of Trade might be requested to undertake the whole subject; or the execution of trusts might be referred to some legal tribunal, possibly; and he was satisfied that neither of those measures would be beneficial to the country. Still, if the objections which he entertained could be removed, he would gladly assist in passing a measure which would really and effectually repress crime, and prevent persons from enjoying the fruits of their fraud with impunity.
  THE ATTORNEY GENERALsaid, that this was a Bill which required the most scrupulous and careful attention was no more than he had stated to the House when he obtained leave to bring it in, and that he should have the assistance of all sides of the House in the consideration of it he then expressed his confident hope; but he begged to point out to his hon. and learned Friends that that assistance would be given in the most creditable and effective manner if they would only take the trouble to embody their objections, and to give expression to their doubts and difficulties by framing Amendments on the Bill as it stood, and by the introduction of clauses which would be necessary in their judgment to give a more safe, cautious, and effectual operation to the measure. He confessed that he had been quite unable to attain to the meaning or to understand the purport of the arguments of his hon. and learned Friend the Member for Rochester (Mr. Serjeant Kinglake). No doubt his hon. and learned Friend had favoured them with a good deal of eloquence, with many appeals on behalf of the Judges, with much excellent advice, and with a pretty long sermon upon a text which was no doubt familiar to all of them—namely, that prevention would be better than cure. The hon. and learned Serjeant had told them that they had much better "interdict the source of the crime" with which the Bill proposed to deal. What the meaning of those words was his stupidity had rendered him unable to ascertain. He did not know how to interdict that source of crime except by stopping altogether the relations between trustees and cestuisqui trustent. As long as those relations existed there would be that source of crime, and the only way in which he could interdict it would be by doing that which would incur the pointed reprehension of his other hon. and learned Friend, whose great difficulty and alarm was lest the Bill should interdict the source of crime which the hon. and learned Serjeant was so exceedingly anxious to interdict. He might interdict the source of crime if he annihilated the office of trustee and substituted for these private obligations the appointment of some general office or board to superintend all trusts, and to take upon themselves the duties of trustees. Now, undoubtedly, he should not desire that—he never should wish to see a Government Board perform these obligations and duties of private life. As

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  long as there were guardians there must be trustees; as long as a man who died committed to some friend or relative the charge and custody of his children and his property, so long there must of necessity exist that relation and that obligation; and he did not know, therefore, how he was to accomplish the object which the hon. and learned Serjeant had inculcated; but if his hon. and learned Friend would only do him the favour to try his hand at legislation, and would embody that interdict of the source of crime in a palpable enactment, he should be most happy to consider such a measure, and if it should prove effectual, he was sure that the House would be most grateful to him. With respect to another point on which the hon. and learned Serjeant had dwelt—the extreme impropriety of the twelfth clause—and which he had approached with so much horror and alarm, he (the Attorney General) had really imagined that that was the clause which would have rendered the Bill most acceptable to those hon. Gentlemen who were anxious beyond measure that no enactment should pass which would interfere with the discharge of an ordinary relation of life; and unquestionably he had a great number of precedents for the introduction of such an enactment. But for that clause a disappointed cestuique trust might go to the Police Court at Bow Street, and drag his trustee before the magistrate upon a charge, perhaps, which was totally unfounded, and he might expose a sensitive, honourable, and respectable man to a public accusation of which, at the moment, possibly he might not have the materials about him to show the utter groundlessness. The consequence would be that there would be considerable danger lest sensitive and honourable men might be prevented from undertaking duties of this description. But one must not be deterred by the fear of difficulties from endeavouring to legislate in order to put down great and grievous crimes, which, passing unpunished, were a reproach to our jurisdiction. He did not know, therefore, how to meet the difficulty except by placing upon one of the Judges of the land, or on the Attorney General, the obligation of examining, first, what he would call the affidavit for a criminal proceeding, in order to see that there was something like a reasonable ground for the charge. The House would remember in how many instances the sanction of a Judge, or a law officer, had first to be obtained before
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  proceedings were taken. In introducing the Bill, he drew particular attention to this enactment, representing that the subject would require great consideration; and he thought, therefore, that it would be as well to defer further observations on it until the Bill went into Committee. His hon. and learned Friend the Member for Gloucestershire (Mr. Rolt) spoke of this Bill as something brought in on the spur of the moment and under the influence of recent events. In moving for leave to introduce the Bill, he carefully guarded himself against the supposition that he was actuated by such feelings. The absence of remedy in the cases to which the Bill referred had undoubtedly been regarded for a considerable time as a blot on our legislation, and the best proof that this measure was not brought in on the spur of the occasion was that, with respect to the greater number of the gross and most distressing exhibitions of fraud which, to the opprobrium of the country, had recently occurred, the law had met the transgression and punished it. This evil, however, still remained, which for reasons he had previously stated had not been included in the definition of larceny, and had, therefore, escaped punishment. He was perfectly well aware of the difficulties attending the introduction of the measure. Many had desired to meet the evil, but few had been bold enough to submit a proposition on the subject. The necessity for legislation, however, was universally felt. Let not the House, then, be deterred by representations that there might be this or that danger from endeavouring to deal with the subject. If there were evil in the way, it must be met and surmounted, and he was perfectly confident that the Members of that House, when they applied themselves in committee to the Bill, which he admitted might need amendment, would be able to put the Bill in a shape which would make it worthy to be added to the legislation of the country as a means of meeting great and scandalous fraud, and removing a blot which was now an opprobrium to the jurisprudence of the country.
  Bill read 2°, and committed for Friday.

SAVINGS-BANKS (No. 2) BILL.

  SECOND READING.
  Order for Second Reading read.
  MR. TURNERsaid, that he felt it his duty to make a few observations with regard

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  to this Bill, as it was of so much importance to Manchester, and he trusted the House would receive his remarks with the consideration they always afforded to a first, speech. The establishment of savings banks had been a measure of the greatest benefit to the population of the country, and he approved highly of the principle involved in the Bill, namely, that the Government should give security, not only to the depositors to the extent of the money placed by the conductors of savings banks in the hands of the Commissioners for the Reduction of the National Debt, but that that security should be extended to all deposits made in the sayings banks. There was a mutual obligation between the Government and savings banks, for if the one gave the benefit of security, the other afforded a fund to the amount of £35,000,000 or £36,000,000, which placed an immense financial power in the hands of the Government. While the Government gave security to the depositors, they were entitled to exercise the power of investigating the management and affairs of the banks; but he feared they might carry that power of interference too far. He knew there were instances of defalcations, such as those in the Dublin and Rochdale Banks, in respect to which some blame was attached to the Government that they were not sooner discovered; but if interference under the present Bill should be carried so far as to disgust the conductors of well-managed banks, great mischief would be the result. In Manchester the savings bank was managed in a manner perfectly satisfactory to the depositors by gentlemen who devoted to that purpose a great amount of ability and talent, and it would be a great evil if such men should be disgusted by unnecessary interference on the part of the Government. He knew that the present Chancellor of the Exchequer, and the present Comptroller General, did not wish to interfere unnecessarily in the management of savings banks; but there were clauses in this Bill which gave large powers; and which future Chancellors of the Exchequer and future Comptrollers General might use unnecessarily, He wished the Government had complied with the prayer of the numerous petitions which had suggested that the Bill should be referred to a Select Committee in order that a measure might have been agreed on satisfactory to all parties. He did not wish to oppose the second reading of the Bill, but he trusted that the Chancellor of the Exchequer would state
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  publicly, as he had done in private, that he did not wish to interfere with those Gentlemen who took an active part in well managed banks. That would have a salutary effect in allaying the apprehensions which were entertained by the local managers and committees of these banks. For if such unnecessary and vexatious interference on the part of the Government officials did take place, its effect could but be to disgust the managers, to diminish the number and amount of deposits, and to impede the prosperity and usefulness of the institutions. Let the Government insist on some mode by which the accounts could be checked, but when a savings bank was well managed, let there be no interference on the part of Government officials.
  MR. GROGANsaid, he would inform the hon. Member that in the case of the Dublin bank referred to the Government neglected their duty; for, according to the blue-book, the Government were perfectly aware of the irregularities, but for public purposes it was convenient to connive at them, and the consequence was, that the depositors were deprived of their just rights. Any measure, therefore, to prevent the occurrence of such an evil must be a great boon to depositors, but the Government must take care not to disgust the gentlemen who took on themselves the management of savings banks by unnecessary interference on the part of Government officials. The Government should arrange a scale of salaries and of interest, and beyond that they should not unduly interfere in the management of these banks. The Chancellor of the Exchequer had stated on a previous occasion that he would attempt, before the second reading of the amended Bill, to put in a distinct form the conditions necessary to be complied with, in order that these banks should have the full benefit of the present Bill, and he hoped that the right hon. Gentleman would on the present occasion state to the House what those conditions were.
  MR. AYRTONsaid, that he considered that the objections to the Bill were so serious that, were it not for the general desire which appeared to exist in the House that it should be read a second time, he would have felt bound to move that it be read a second time that day six months. The period had arrived when the attention of the House and the country should be called to the state of these savings banks, and more especially to the constitution of the Government Board

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  which had attempted to undertake, but which had not really undertaken, the duty of watching over the funds of those institutions, for of all the Boards ever constituted by Parliament none had exhibited such an entire absence of all those qualities which might be expected from a public body. Many Members might be aware of the large deficiencies which had been brought under the notice of the House by an hon. Gentleman opposite (Sir H. Willoughby) on a previous occasion; but perhaps few had taken the trouble to inquire into the cause of that deficiency, and for his own part he could say that when he came to inquire into the cause he had been startled at the neglect which had been exhibited by Commissioners in keeping these banks on such a footing. Savings banks were first established in the year 1817, and the Parliament of that day had begun upon the erroneous principle of allowing the depositors a larger rate of interest than the funds in the hands of the Commissioners could produce. It soon became manifest that there was a considerable deficiency between the interest which the Commissioners received and that which they allowed, and in the course of a few years that deficiency amounted to no less than £588,216. In the year 1828 the Commissioners had thought fit to bring the subject under the notice of the House of Commons, and the rate of interest allowed by the Commissioners was then reduced to £3 16 s. per cent. It soon appeared, however, that from various causes it was impossible to pay that rate of interest without incurring a loss, and in 1843 the deficiency had amounted to no less than £2,171,192. Another attempt was then made to meet the difficulty by reducing the rate of interest to £3 5s. At that time it would have been possible by proper investments to obtain a rate of interest sufficient to pay the depositors and leave a surplus, but the Commissioners did not examine fully into the circumstances of the times, and they having retained some of the funds at the old rate of interest, the investments which they made did not return a sufficient rate of interest to pay the depositors, so that the deficiency had gone on accumulating, until, in 1855, it amounted to £2,962,000, which might be looked upon as a capital debt. Such had been the results of the dealings with regard to interest, but the dealings with the capital fund had been no less unsatisfactory. In 1817 there had been a surplus of nominal
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  capital of £232,550. In 1827 the surplus of nominal capital was £1,291,170. In the year 1828 the Commissioners obtained power to invest the capital in Exchequer bills, and in 1843 the surplus of nominal capital had been reduced to£135,480, and the deficit since 1843 had been £1,680,000, the total result being that there was a deficiency from 1843 to 1855 of £1,000,000. Such had been the result of the management of these banks by the Commissioners; and the very serious question then arose as to whether they were fit to be trusted with the management of the affairs of the savings banks, and certainly it was a marvellous thing that they should have managed in twelve years to create a deficiency of £1,000,000. Even since 1855 the management of the Commissioners had not in any degree improved, and it certainly had not been calculated to increase the confidence of the public. What had been the nature of the dealings of the Commissions since 1855 was seen from a return which had been laid upon the table of the House, and certainly it was entirely at variance with what he had always understood to be the mode of dealing with regard to investments. He found that in July, 1854, the funds were at 91; in December they had fallen to 87, and then the Commissioners sold to the extent of nearly half a million of money. No doubt the Chancellor of the Exchequer might have seen things in a different light from the public, and from what he knew of the state of affairs, might have anticipated a further fall; but certainly no further fall occurred. On the contrary, a turn took place; the funds rose to 89, without any impression prevailing that they were likely to sink again, or that they were likely to remain so low. They sold £1,200,000 and £470,000 of new three per cents. The money was applied in purchasing Exchequer bills, and the result was a loss of 12 or 13 per cent. It was by such means as that that from time to time, up to the present day, a sum of £1,200,000 had been lost to the public. It might be contended that the money had been laid out for the benefit of the country; but the question then arose whether it ought not to have been kept apart as a guarantee for the amount deposited in the savings banks, and whether it was ever meant to be placed at the disposal of a body of Commissioners, to be made use of, perhaps, in order to prop up a system of finance which might otherwise have failed, because it had not been based upon

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  sound and legitimate principles? Now, his first objection to the Bill under the notice of the House was, that it did not deal with the important question whether those Commissioners were to be allowed to use the capital of the savings banks without making effectual provision for the annual interest due to the depositors. That, however, was not his only objection to the measure. The Bill was put forward as affording a guarantee to depositors and the opportunity had been taken of introducing a new principle. He was also opposed to it, therefore, upon the ground that it proposed to establish Government savings banks throughout the country—a proposition which he regarded as pernicious in principle and calculated to be still more pernicious in its effects. He felt bound to protest against the Bill as one of a series the tendency of which was to increase the control of the Government over the action of the people. If the House was prepared to legislate in that direction, if it was prepared to do the business of stockbroker for the public he did not see why the principle should not be carried still further, and why the sale of bread should not, as at Paris, be regulated by means of a Government agency. The Bill was, in fact, in principle a measure of the purest Socialist character, and, he having studied the works of the Socialist writers of France, must say that while he derived pleasure from the beauty of their composition he had become perfectly sensible to the necessity which existed for refusing to act upon the views which they advocated in any legislative measure in that House. Their idea was that it was the duty of a Government to discharge every function for the people which they imagined could, by the aid of a certain machinery, be better performed than each individual could accomplish it for himself. Before the Parliament of this country embarked upon such a course they ought, in his opinion, to be well satisfied that an imperious necessity for its adoption prevailed. No such necessity, he must contend, existed in the present instance. So far as his experience went, savings banks were in the greater number of instances most efficiently managed by the aid of the local gentry, and the principle of that management was one which he should be delighted to see encouraged. There was, in his opinion, nothing more conducive to bind the humbler to the more influential and wealthy classes than a system of that
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  nature, and he could conceive no course more calculated to destroy that sympathy which it was so desirable to see prevail between the higher and the lower classes than that by which the free action of the gentry should be superseded by a stipendiary agency maintained out of the revenues of the State. Such a stipendiary agency it was proposed to establish under the operation of the Bill under discussion. It was simply a secondary feature of the measure, but it provided that banks now in existence might or might not accept the guarantee which was held out to them. Once having accepted that guarantee, however, they would be subject to such rules as the Government might deem it desirable to lay down, and the result would be a step in the direction of the system which obtained on the Continent, where every function of the community was usurped by what was called the civil service of the country. To any such system as that he for one was most strenuously opposed. [Cries of "Divide, divide!"] Some hon. Members, no doubt, objected to all comment which was adverse to the Government; but happily the location of those hon. Gentlemen in the House pretty clearly indicated the spirit by which their interruption was occasioned. There was, besides those which he had already mentioned, another most serious objection to the Bill. It was to be the manual of action for every man interested in managing the 600 savings banks in the country. Now, in legislating on this subject, the terms of legislation ought to be clear and precise, and the House ought not to accept a Bill which was not clear enough to be read in connection with existing Acts. In his opinion, therefore, before any great change in the law relating to savings banks was effected, those laws which were already in existence upon the subject ought to have been consolidated. Instead of that course having been taken, however, the Bill simply set forth that all the existing Acts should be deemed to be altered so far only as they were inconsistent with the present measure. Now, inasmuch as the various clauses of the existing Acts were extremely numerous it would require the exercise of no ordinary intelligence to ascertain how the law after the passing of the Act would really stand, and such he must maintain was not the mode in which a Bill dealing with a subject so important ought to be framed. He should be disposed to remit this Bill back to the Government

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  in order that some of the clauses might be reconsidered, and the whole of the law on the subject of savings banks consolidated. Very few provisions would be sufficient to secure the depositors against loss. If an audit were necessary, the trustees and managers might be called upon to appoint a local auditor. It would be impossible, without an enormous expense, to send these stipendiary auditors about the country. A large staff of Government auditors would be required, and more money would be spent in their wanderings about the country than would be spent in the discharge of their duties upon the spot. What objection could there be to allowing the trustees of savings banks themselves to elect a Board in London for the purpose of taking charge of the aggregate funds of the banks? Such a Board would be greatly preferable to any Government Board. It would do everything that could be expected from a Government Board, and it would make the savings banks independent of the Government. At present, when the funds were high, the Chancellor of the Exchequer for the time being was tempted to tamper with the interest. The last time the funds were at par the Chancellor of the Exchequer proposed to reduce the interest to little more than £2 10 s. per cent for the depositors. If, instead of being obliged to invest the savings banks money in Consols, such a Board as he had described were allowed a larger discretion, they might discover perfectly safe investments, which would enable them to allow an interest of probably three or four per cent. At present the depositors complained of the low rate of interest. If other hon. Members had appeared likely to support him he should have been inclined to move that the Bill be read a second time that day six months.
  MR. M'CANNsaid, that he believed that the public, who knew their own interests better than they were supposed to do, were unanimous in applauding the measure of the Chancellor of the Exchequer. He had seldom known a measure which had been received with such universal approval, and he trusted it would shortly pass into a law. He could by no means approve the scheme of the hon. and learned Gentleman to transfer the management of the funds of the savings banks to a body of gentlemen such as he had described.
  SIR HARRY VERNEYthought it
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  reasonable, if the Government were to guarantee the depositors their money, that they should have the appointment or control of the officers of the banks. He did not, however, wish to see the House devolving upon others the powers of legislation which the House itself ought to exercise. Instead of giving the Comptroller of the National Debt and the Treasury the power to make rules, the House ought at once to embody the conditions in the Bill to which the deposits were to be subjected. The depositors in savings banks at present put their money in those institutions from their confidence in those trustees and managers whom they knew. It was to the interest of these institutions that they should do so, and great good was done by the advice given by these gentlemen to their servants, labourers, and dependents to invest their money in savings banks. He should like to see the whole question referred to a Select Committee. It would be said that it was desired thereby to defer the Bill for a year, but it was so important to legislate wisely on such a subject, that he should be happy to support a Motion for referring the Bill to a Select Committee.
  MR. BARROWsaid, that he quite agreed in what the hon. Member who spoke last had said, except when he expressed a wish to refer the Bill to a Select Committee. He thought the people ought to be fully made acquainted with the actual state of the law, and not left in any doubt on the subject. If any alterations were necessary, let them be made in the law, and be properly defined. The principle of the Bill was objectionable, for it transferred the power of making laws and regulations to an individual or a board. Now, he was unwilling to give any individual or any board such an arbitrary power, for the rules which would be made by these persons would be ex post facto laws, and would be so great an interference with the management, that he, although he had been a trustee for forty years, would be obliged to give up his connection with such institutions altogether. He thought the right hon. Gentleman ought to consider how many of the depositors would withdraw their deposits if this Bill passed. At all events, he could not give his assent to the Bill in its present shape.
  MR. SOTHERON ESTCOURTsaid, he would venture to put the question in another shape. Let the depositor be consulted. Take him under the old Act of

  1381
  Parliament which did not give him any security for his savings, and then let him be asked whether his condition would be improved under a new law which did give him security. The new system would afford such a security, that under it the Government would be responsible for the last farthing of the deposits. If they were approaching this subject for the first time, the plan proposed by the Government might not, perhaps, be the most prudent that could be devised. They had, however, to deal with a practical difficulty; and what was that difficulty? Why, some thirty or forty years ago, a number of gentlemen established banks in various parts of the country for the savings of their poorer neighbours. After a certain time Parliament stepped in, and established certain regulations. If the trustees and managers, who now spoke in the names of the depositors, would engage to become personally responsible for all deposits entrusted to them, he would rather have their responsibility than have a law which put these banks under Government. Centralization was, no doubt, the chief object of this measure; but could they avoid this when the practical difficulty they had to deal with was, the want of any solid security for the poor depositor. It was all very well to condemn Government interference; but what had been their experience without it? Had there never been such a thing as a defalcation in savings banks? Had they never heard of Rochdale or Dublin? He had a return which he had moved for, and he found that there were eleven savings banks in which there had been defalcations within the last five or six years. Now, any gentleman who looked into this matter would find that these defalcations arose, for the most part, through the roguery of some officer in whom the most implicit confidence had been placed, and whose integrity was supposed to have been tested by long service. There was actually a case in which an officer absconded at the very time when a correspondence was pending between the managers of the savings bank and the National Debt Commissioners, with a view to procure for him an additional gratuity for his long and faithful services. But that was not all. These defalcations took place, for the most part, in banks the books of which were the best kept, where there was the least appearance of fraud, and where the managers thought they had had, year after year,
  1382
  a most complete and satisfactory audit. The books of the Rochdale bank were allowed by the actuary sent down from London to inspect them to be well kept, and its audit to be satisfactory; but, in consequence of the nature of the business transacted, the most praiseworthy efforts of the local managers failed, under the present law, to insure a perfect audit. He was sorry to see the strong feeling that had been manifested against the Bill by hon. gentlemen who had been managers of these institutions in the country. He trusted they would recollect that, let them be as good managers as they pleased, they could not keep up an efficient superintendence. Each manager took only one day in one week; he served for a year, and was then discharged from his duty. The next manager could know nothing but what was told him by the actuary. He thought that the law of savings banks, as at present established in this country, was a disgrace to Parliament. He had been in Parliament more than twenty years, and in almost every one of those twenty years defalcations had taken place, and the Government was constantly applied to for a remedy in the name of the industrious classes. The working classes had thought that Government provided them a security, and nothing but repeated acts of insolvency had at last disabused them on this subject. What was their remedy? They must either let the gentlemen in the country who managed these banks give the security, or they must leave the matter in the hands of the Government. There were two parties interested—one the poor man, the other the Government. He was for from agreeing with the censure that had been cast on this Bill. So far from fearing that the interference of Government under this Bill would be too great, his only apprehension was lest the Government did not arm itself with sufficient power. Government was about to take on itself a great responsibility, in undertaking to repay the depositors to the last farthing all they put in the savings banks. It would require very cautious inspection; and he did not know whether the right hon. Gentleman had reserved to himself sufficient power of interference. But what fear need any manager in the country, or any actuary who carried on the affairs of a bank honestly, from the, interference of Government, which would have enough to do in looking after really suspicious cases, to think about meddling vexatiously with

  1383
  banks conducted on tolerably sound principles? For his part, he looked on the Bill as a boon to the poor, as giving a sure guarantee in the place of that which was now a mere sham. If they faltered in carrying this Bill into execution, if they did not give security, how did they know but that the depositors, their attention having been called to the subject, learning that Government was not bound, and that the trustees were not bound, would withdraw their money, and cease to have confidence, not only in the Government, but in Parliament. It was because he earnestly wished that this Session would not pass without a Government Savings Bank Bill becoming law, that he hoped the right hon. Gentleman would persevere with this Bill; but, even if this Bill did pass, he joined his voice with that of others in entreating the Government, after giving to the poor man the guarantee which he did not now possess, to give to the public generally more accurate information on the subject, a more clear account of how the money had been applied, and how the great difference between the money paid in and the assets to meet it, and which was called a deficit, had arisen. That information ought to be given, if only for the purpose of showing the groundlessness of those suspicious observations which had been made against this Bill; and therefore, though he heartily concurred in giving his voice for the second reading, he joined with other hon. Gentlemen in entreating the Government to give them a Select Committee, not in order to shelve the Bill for the Session, but next year, for the purpose of assisting the Government, and giving to the public that information which they ought to have.
  MR. ATHERTONsaid, however various the opinions of hon. Members might be as to this Bill, there could be but one opinion as to its importance. It concerned the interest of so vast a number of their fellow-subjects that he was quite sure that House—the poor man's House—would grudge no time in considering it, with a view to frame such a Bill as would attain the object they desired. He objected to certain portions of the present Bill, but, as he was anxious that it should become law, he would heartily vote for its second reading, and endeavour to amend it in Committee. The savings bank was the poor man's bank, managed by volunteers from the wealthier classes, and he apprehended, therefore, that in any legislative
  1384
  action on this matter there were two parties to consider—the depositor on the one hand, and the manager on the other. His objection to the Bill in its present shape was twofold, for it appeared to him to endanger the stability, the perpetuation, the efficacy of these establishments in each of these two respects. First, with regard to the depositor himself. They must always bear in mind that there was no compulsion on any man, rich or poor, to deposit his money in the hands of any other man. The 11th clause of the Bill made it incumbent on the depositor to take his book from time to time to the bank for the purpose of inspection find comparison by a Government officer. No objection could be made to the most ample opportunity being given to the depositor to avail himself of the security which the comparison of his book with the books of the establishment conferred; but when they bore in mind the comparatively small sums which stood in the names of the respective depositors, and the distance at which many of them lived from the bank, it struck him that the clause in its present compulsory shape would deprive many well-meaning persons of the advantage to be derived from these institutions. The next reason why he apprehended that the Bill as it stood would endanger the existence of those banks was, that there was a general impression amongst the managers that the interference authorized by the present Bill went beyond what the necessity of the case required, and if it passed in its present shape many gentlemen in different parts of the country, whose support was required for the continuance of these banks, would withdraw from them. He agreed with those hon. Gentlemen who thought that the Bill in its present shape, as well as the whole matter, should be referred to a Select Committee. It would be in the memory of many who were Members of the late House that a cognate matter—the Friendly Societies Bill—was referred to a Select Committee, and he was happy to say that the results of the labours of that Committee, in legislation, had been most satisfactory, so satisfactory that he could not but think that in a matter like this the better course would be to refer it to a Select Committee, even if so doing did shelve the Bill for the present Session, because he felt that in a matter which so much interested the working classes every care should be taken to legislate as perfectly and satisfactorily as possible.
  MR. HENLEYsaid, the hon. Member for Wiltshire (Mr. S. Estcourt) had omitted to show in any one particular how this Bill would remedy the defects in the existing savings banks [Mr. S. ESTCOURT I alluded to the proposed Government security.] But the hon. Member had stated as emphatically as possible, that every effort which the Government might make to ascertain whether a savings bank was solvent or lint would fail. And the hon. Member gave the true reason—that they could not get in the books of the depositors. The Bill before the House was intended to make the audit perfect, but it did not point out how that was to be done. The hon. Member, who was, no doubt, well affected towards the Bill, said that it did not contain powers enough, and did not go far enough; but the people who were to be subjected to its operation were anxious to know what was the nature of the powers which the Government had already asked for with reference to savings banks. By what means did they propose to ascertain the solvency of a savings bank? The public bad a right to know on the face of the Bill what the regulations were which the Government meant to impose. He (Mr. Henley) could understand the of his hon. Friend the Member for South Wiltshire, that ii would be better for the Government to take these things into their own hands, and employ their own agents to go about the country to carry out their own regulations; but he could not understand how they should say to institutions already established with staffs of their own that they were to be governed entirely by a new code of arbitrary rules. The question was one of great difficulty. Depositors could not be made to bring in their books; and therefore the solvency of any savings bank could only be approximated. There might be 75 or 80 per cent of the depositors' books brought in annually, and it was only from those which were so brought in that the solvency of the bank could be judged. The country, therefore, had all the greater right to know what were the regulations to be proposed by the Government, and how they meant to get a better audit than that which already existed. It was no trifling matter to create distrust among the depositors of savings banks; and he (Mr. Henley) could not conceive how, with the subject before them for two or three years, the Government and those who managed the national debt—for they were the real parties who bad the scheme
  1386
  in hand—should not have laid the knowledge they possessed on the subject before the House. If they had no scheme in all that time, then he (Mr. Henley) had a right to assume that the Government were about to make an experiment to the manifest inconvenience of all parties. He would not oppose the Bill if the Government put on the face of it the conditions which they intended to propose for the regulation of savings banks, but he would in Committee give it his best assistance. But if they did not, he would oppose the measure until at least the House was made better acquainted with it than they were at present. He did not object to the nature of the Bill, but to the absence of that information which it was necessary to have on the subject.
  COLONEL SYKESsaid, he wished to call the attention of the House to the resolutions of a meeting of managers of savings banks recently held at Huddersfield, which involved suggestions of great importance. They stated that, according to the last general balance sheet of the whole of the savings banks in the United Kingdom, and which was made up to the 26th November, 1856, there was, as between the liabilities of the savings banks of the United Kingdom and their assets, a deficiency in the latter to the extent of £5,201,458 8s. 3d., for which the Government was responsible, and the causes of the deficiency should be ascertained. The meeting in question recommended that the deposits in savings banks should be employed for the interest of the depositors only, and should be kept apart from every other branch of the public service; that, inasmuch as during the last seven years there had been a constant deposit of upwards of £30,000,000, it was desirable that half that sum at least should be lent out on landed security to pay the depositors 3½ and 4 per cent., instead of 3 percent., the present interest on their money. There were several other suggestions which might fairly be considered by a Select Committee, but which could not be advantageously discussed in a Committee of the House. The proportion of failures to the entire number of savings banks in forty years was very small, namely, eleven in 584. There was not any necessity, therefore, for hasty legislation on account of the present insecurity of the savings banks. The interests of the Government, as well as those of the working classes, were involved in the proposed

  1387
  Bill, and he should consider it his duty, when the Order for going into Committee was read, to divide the House on the question that it be referred to a Select Committee.
  SIR HENRY WILLOUGHBYapprehended nothing but evil from the operation of the Bill as it at present stood. He thought the preamble was quite untrue. It stated that there had been considerable losses to the depositors, but the fact was that only eleven banks had failed, in ten of which there had been no loss to the depositors; for the trustees and managers had made up the defalcations by voluntary subscriptions. In the case of Newport there had been a considerable defalcation, but 17 s. 8½d. in the pound had been ultimately paid, and there was still a small balance in hand. These facts spoke volumes for the integrity of the country and the character of the trustees. In fact, the defalcations of all the savings banks of the kingdom did not amount to a farthing in the pound on the deposits since the year 1817. Such losses certainly did not justify the remodelling of the whole system. There had been one serious case of loss—that of the Cuffe Street Bank, in Dublin, but that arose entirely from the proceedings of the officers of the National Debt Office, who went on year after year registering a defalcation, and allowed the bank to go on, knowing that it was not solvent. The defalcations beginning with £4,000 had ended with £64,000, while its assets were only £94, and the taxpayers of the kingdom had paid a fine of £32,000, for the neglect, out of the public Exchequer. It was proposed that the Commissioners for the Reduction of the National Debt should have the management of all the savings banks in the country. Now, who were these Commissioners? Did they exist as a body? Why, they had long since ceased to exist as an active Commission. They never met now. If, as he supposed, the Chancellor of the Exchequer was the Commission, why not put him into the Bill eo nomine, and then you would come to the real state of the case? But ought the Chancellor of the Exchequer to have the power of establishing these banks throughout the whole kingdom wherever he pleased? Let the House consider the present position of things. It was now avowed that £35,500,000 of money was a fund which might be jobbed by the Chancellor of the Exchequer. The right hon. Gentleman
  1388
  did not conceal the fact at all. Surely, however, it was a monstrous proposition that the Chancellor of the Exchequer at his own sole will and pleasure should buy and sell any amount of stock, operate at any time on the market with a view, as he said, to prevent injurious depression, and, in fact, become a regular stock-jobber. In all the eight statutes which had passed on this subject there was no mention of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, and it never entered into the mind of the Legislature to hand over the administration of the fund to that official. He trusted that the House would be cautious how it legislated upon this question. The depositors were becoming alive to the principle involved, and many of the trustees and managers would, he believed, immediately resign their offices if this Bill passed. These gentlemen knew what it was to be troubled, and teased, and pestered by officials from a department in London; they knew that the operation of the Bill would be disagreeable to them, and, perhaps, disastrous to the interests of the depositors. It was on these grounds that wishing well to savings banks in this country, he entreated the House to take care lest they destroyed these institutions, for he really believed there was serious danger of such a result if they passed this measure. He objected to the Bill, because it dealt in sham names, and attached responsibility to a body which had no real existence, instead of imposing it upon some one whose position was clearly defined and who could easily be got at. Another objection was that the conditions for the regulation of these banks were not clearly laid down, the result of which would virtually be to intrust legislative power to subordinate officials, He would not, as he had intended, move that the Bill be read a second time that day six months, but he trusted some hon. Member would move to refer the Bill to a Select Committee.
  MR. GLYNsaid, he was not one of those who thought it necessary to refer this Bill to a Select Committee. He had received numerous communications from various parts of the country concerning it, and speaking on behalf of the depositors, he maintained that the principle of the measure received the general sanction of that body of persons, for they were very anxious to receive the security of the Government. He agreed with the right hon. Gentleman (Mr. Henley) in the difficulty of the question relative to trustees and ma-

  1389
  nagers, but the House was bound to consider that the Chancellor of the Exchequer had shown every desire to meet the requirements of those individuals. The right hon. Gentleman had also stated that he was willing to lay on the table the regulations under which the savings banks were to be conducted. Now, if the right hon. Gentleman did that when the Bill was in Committee, every objection arising out of this point would be answered. At the same time he (Mr. Glyn) confessed that the Bill did not carry out all the objects which he thought ought to be carried out. In his opinion, the existence of a deficit of £5,000,000, as shown in the account connected with these savings banks, was positively disgraceful to the country. This question, however, was not necessarily mixed up with the present Bill; it must be considered by itself. He did not think the Treasury should he altogether tied down as to the amount of funds of this description left in its hands, for they might be used advantageously for the public; but he thought Parliament was to blame for the lax way in which it had allowed the power given to the Treasury to be employed. He thought that the Commissioners should every year report the operations on which they had engaged, and their reasons for entering into them; that these Reports should be laid before that House, and then it would be in the power of Parliament to impose, if it was necessary, a check. He approved the Bill before the House, and thought it would be for the interest of the country that no delay should dike place in passing it into a law.
  MR. MAGUIREsaid, there was a general opinion in Ireland in favour of this Bill, for the people wanted Government security instead of no security. In reference to audits of banks, he had to say that there was an excellent system in the Cork Savings Bank, and that when that bank was closed eight times annually, the officers were able to ascertain the state of the bank to a single farthing, and he advised the Government to put themselves in communication with the managers of that bank. For his own part, he was willing to allow the Government a little tyranny if it would only preserve the property of honest labour from the hands of rascally officials.
  THE CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUERsaid, that the object he had exclusively in view in proposing this Bill to the House was the interest of the depositors
  1390
  in savings banks. It had been admitted on all hands that, for many years, the present state of the law on the subject was not satisfactory. Several Bills had in successive years been brought under the consideration of the House, but no one had hitherto been so successful as to obtain its assent. Nevertheless, it was an admitted fact that the state of the law was unsatisfactory; that the responsibility of managers and trustees for the deposits which once existed had ceased; that no other guarantee had been substituted for it, and chat loss had in many cases accrued to depositors. In that state of things he felt it his duty to propose this measure to the House. Unquestionably he had no thought of interfering with the legitimate influence of managers and trustees, or of diminishing those useful labours which they had for so many years exercised in their respective establishments; but, for the purpose of guarding, not the interests of the Government, but the interests of the Exchequer, he had felt it his duty to propose a certain control over the paid officers of these establishments. The power thus taken was embodied in the third and fourth sections of the Bill now before the House, and it had undergone revision with the view of reducing it to such an amount as should be sufficient for the protection of the country. The hon. Member for the Tower Hamlets (Mr. Ayrton), who spoke at length against the Bill, raised up a man of straw which it was not very difficult to demolish. In the first place, he stated that the Bill created a number of stipendiary officers under the absolute control of the Government; but if he referred to the clauses of the Bill he would find that the Government had not the power of appointing any of the local officers of savings banks. That power was expressly reserved to managers and trustees, and the only officers the Government took the power to appoint were the auditors, who were not local officer at all. That was one essential misconception as to the intentions of this measure. The hon. Member further overlooked the fact that this was not a compulsory but a voluntary measure, and that it did not interfere with any existing bank. No existing bank that objected to the provisions of this Bill was bound in any way to come under its provisions, so that any bank now existing might, if it thought fit, continue as at present, without the slightest reference to the Government or the inspection of

  1391
  the Comptroller General, even if the Bill should become law exactly as it now stood. Much has been said of the financial part of the question, which was not necessarily involved in the measure before the House, and whatever objection might be made to the management of savings-banks money would equally apply if this Bill was not proposed. He did not think it necessary at that hour to follow the hon. Member through all the figures he had quoted. He would only say that if this Bill became law he would be prepared on a future occasion to offer the fullest information on the subject that could be desired, and to submit the whole of the management of the savings-banks money to the investigation of a Select Committee. He wished to remark, however, that the chief part of the deficiency which appeared in the accounts of savings banks had arisen from money being over credited to the banks—that was to say, it had arisen from the banks having received more money than they had paid in, and not from the variations of securities made by successive Governments. He did not know how the hon. Gentleman arrived at the conclusion that about £1,000,000 had been lost by variations in the securities, but according to his (the Chancellor of the Exchequer's) calculations less than half the sum would be nearer the mark. He wished to advert to one point alluded to by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Oxfordshire—namely, the conditions on which a bank would be admitted to the benefits of this Bill, as these were now defined. He did not apprehend that any further definition would be necessary; but, with regard to the regulations contemplated by the second section, these related to a matter which represented the actual difficulties of this measure. The right hon. Gentleman asked, first, whether, if he had not matured such regulations, he was not proposing a measure blindly; and, in the second place, whether, if he had matured them, he was prepared to produce them to the House? Now he had not proceeded blindly, as he had prepared a set of regulations which had already been submitted to some of the most experienced actuaries and officers of savings banks. It was his wish in framing regulations to act on the advice of those who possessed the greatest experience. Nothing was further from his intention than to interfere with the management of well-conducted banks—such as that of Manchester, alluded to by the hon. Mem-
  1392
  ber for that town, who had addressed the House: nor was he disposed to give any arbitrary powers to the Government; but the difficulty was, that some banks were well managed, and some less well managed; some were large and some small, and it was no easy matter to frame such a set of regulations as could be made applicable to all. If a set of regulations were inserted in the schedule of the Bill they would be beyond the power of alteration, and great difficulty and disadvantage might arise from attempting to apply an inflexible rule to the varying circumstances of so many different savings banks. That was the reason for not embodying those regulations in the Bill. He should wish to see the power now held by the trustees and managers of well-conducted savings banks exercised as it had hitherto been; but he did not feel justified in proposing any measure making the Public Revenue responsible for a large amount of deposits without assuming such a control as would prevent the placing of so great a portion of the public income annually in serious jeopardy. With this explanation he trusted that the House would read the Bill a second time.
  Bill read 2°, and committed for Monday next.

  JOINT-STOCK COMPANIES ACT AMEND- MENT BILL—COMMITTEE.
  Order for Committee read.
  MR. FORSTERwas understood to appeal to the Vice President of the Board of Trade on behalf of a Bank and Company which he named.
  MR. LOWEsaid, the case alluded to would be more properly provided for in a Bill which he should introduce with respect to Joint-Stock Banks. At the same time, he must say that the formation of the company in question was running a very considerable risk, because, although the promoters had obtained very eminent legal opinion, and although the registrar was quite justified, with that opinion, in registering the Company, yet if it should turn out that the opinion was after all wrong, the parties would find not only that they had not limited liability, but that their association was not a legal company at all.
  House in Committee.
  Bill considered in Committee.
  House resumed.
  Bill reported. Recommitted for Thursday.

  MARRIED WOMEN'S REVERSIONARY INTEREST BILL—SECOND READING.
  Order for Second Reading read,
  Motion made, and Question proposed, "That the Bill be now read a second time,"
  SIR ERSKINE PERRY SIR ERSKINE PERRY moved, as an Amendment, that it be read a second time that day fortnight, on the ground that another Bill on the same subject which he had introduced had been postponed to that date, and that it was desirable before passing either of the measures that the general principle of the subject should be discussed.
  Amendment proposed, to leave out the word "now." and at the end of the Question to add the words "upon this day fortnight."
  MR. MALINSdenied that there was any similarity between the two Bills.
  Question put.
  The House divided:—Ayes 151; Noes 6: Majority 145.
  SIR ERSKINE PERRYwould not oppose the wishes of the House, but wished to express his objection to the Bill, which was one that would enable husbands to pocket the last shred of property which the law allowed to married women. At the same time he should give notice that on going into Committee he should move a clause to retain to married women that interest in reversionary property which now belonged to them by law.
  Main Question put, and agreed to.
  Bill read 2°, and committed for Monday next.
  House adjourned at a quarter before One o'clock.

MINUTES.
Took the Oaths.—Several Lords.
PUBLIC BILL.—2a Cinque Ports Act Amendment.

CASE OF MR. SHEDDEN.

  PETITION. SELECT COMMITTEE MOVED FOR.
  EARL GREY EARL GREY rose to present a petition from Mr. W. P. R. Shedden, complaining, that by a Decision of the Court of Session in Scotland in 1803, and of this House in 1808, obtained in his infancy, he has been deprived of his Status of a natural-born Subject of this Realm, and as the legitimate child of his parents, and of the means of duly investigating in any Court of Law the Question of such Status, and causing the same to be recognized, and praying for such Relief and Redress as to this House may seem meet. The noble Earl said that it was with no ordinary anxiety that he asked their Lordships' attention to the petition which he was about to present. He was persuaded that if he obtained that attention their Lordships would be convinced that the petitioner had the strongest claim, not merely on their compassion and sympathy, but also on their sense of right and justice. The petitioner complained that by an iniquitous fraud on the part of those relations to whose care he was intrusted as an infant on the death of his father he had been unjustly stigmatized as an alien, and as the illegitimate son of his parents, and had thereby been deprived both of his rights as

  1277
  a British subject, and of the inheritance to which he was lawfully entitled. He further complained that by a cunning abuse of the technicalities of the law on the part of those by whom this wrong was perpetrated he had been shut out from ever obtaining a fair hearing of his case on its own merits. He asked their Lordships to take this statement into their consideration, and if they found it to be well founded, that they would obtain for him a fair investigation—for that was all he asked—either by their Lordships or in some court of law. The statement made in the petition he was about to present to their Lordships in support of these allegations was one of so extraordinary a nature that it might well be termed almost incredible. But nevertheless he was persuaded that if their Lordships would grant an inquiry they would find that every word of that which the petitioner asserted could be substantiated. The case afforded another example of that oft repeated saying, "Truth is stranger than fiction." His chief difficulty in bringing this case before their Lordships was the enormous complexity of the materials with which he had to deal, because the credibility of the petitioner's statement depended in a great degree upon the manner in which different converging lines of narrative were brought together to support his conclusion, and in which many circumstances apparently immaterial were, by their connexion with each other, made to form unanswerable evidence in support of the petitioner's case. It would be difficult even for the noble and learned Lord on the cross-bench (Lord Lyndhurst), on whose support he greatly depended that evening, with all his marvellous power of lucid arrangement and of stating complicated details with unrivalled terseness and clearness, to give their Lordships even a faint sketch of this most intricate narrative; but for himself, with his far weaker powers it would be madness to attempt to enter into all the circumstance of the case. He should be compelled, therefore, to pass by many important series of events, and give merely an outline of the main case, and a specimen of some of the proofs by which that case was supported. He had been most reluctant to undertake to bring this case before their Lordships, not only because he felt unequal to the adequate exposition of it, but still more because he should be compelled to bring charges of the gravest description against those persons by whom Mr. Shedden asserted that
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  he had been wronged. The chief actor in these iniquitous transactions, as he deemed them to be, was a Mr. Patrick, a gentleman of great age, who had always held a high position in society, and in the honourable profession to which he belonged. It was painful to have to charge a gentleman of Mr. Patrick's age and station with such conduct as be should be obliged to impute to him; but if he really had been guilty of such conduct, it was due not merely to the petitioner, but to the highest interests of society, that that conduct should be exposed. He did not bring this case forward without having studied it to the utmost of his power. He had devoted great labour to it, and he had gone carefully through the case of the petitioner and the evidence by which it was supported, and he had also read the printed answer to that case which had been put forward on the part of Mr. Patrick, and he had heard the observations which that gentleman's agent had addressed to him on the subject. He was bound to say that his conviction of the truth of those allegations was not less founded upon the clear evidence brought forward by the petitioner, than on what he was reluctantly compelled to call the obvious want of ingenuousness and candour displayed by Mr. Patrick in meeting the charges made against him, and the palpable misrepresentation and misstatements, as he conceived them to be, which he detected in that gentleman's answer. But to proceed without further comment to the petitioner's case. The petitioner's father Mr. William Shedden, left Scotland, as a young man of twenty-two, in the year 1770, to take the management of a mercantile house into which he had entered in Virginia. He carried on the business of this house prosperously for five years, until the commencement of the troubles of the American Revolution; when having espoused the Royalist cause he was, in the year 1777, compelled to fly for his life on board one of Lord Howe's frigates, and an Act was passed by the Legislature of Virginia confiscating his property and declaring him an alien enemy. In 1778 he went to Bermuda, and there established a mercantile house under the title of William Shedden and Co., a first cousin of his own, Mr. Robert Shedden, and a brother-in-law of this gentleman, being partners with him in the firm. This house was successfully carried on until the year 1783, when its affairs were brought to a close, Robert Shedden going to London and William Shedden to

  1279
  New York. His going to New York arose out of this circumstance:—By the treaty of peace with the United States it was agreed that compensation should be made to all British subjects who had lost property by reason of their loyalty to the British Crown, and in 1783 an Act of Parliament was passed appointing a Commission to arrange these compensations. Mr. Shedden accordingly went to New York for the purpose of bringing his claim before this Commission. It appeared from the correspondence that when he went his intention was to remain there only a short time; but the business of arrangement and compensation proved to be tedious and embarrassing—in point of fact, it was not settled until the year 1802, four years after Mr. Shedden's death. Shortly after his arrival in America the war of the French Revolution broke out, and he was largely employed by the British Government in affairs of the greatest importance and of the greatest delicacy. He had to purchase supplies for the British army and navy in the West Indies, and to make arrangements for their transmission under the neutral flag of America. Being thus detained at New York, he formed a new commercial house, the partners in which were himself, Robert Shedden (who had been previously his partner in Bermuda), and William Patrick the nephew of Robert Shedden. He ought to have mentioned earlier that soon after leaving Scotland for America Mr. Shedden had succeeded, by the death of his father, to an estate called Roughwood, in the county of Ayr. Upon succeeding to this estate he appointed as his factor Mr. John Patrick, his brother-in-law—the husband of his sister, to whom he gave a power of attorney, in conjunction with two other persons, to act for him in his absence. It appears that in establishing the house at New York, of which himself, Robert Shedden, and William Patrick (who was a near relation of John Patrick), the chief object was to launch William Patrick into business. In 1785 Mr. Shedden married in New York, a Miss Rachel Kennedy, who died in a very short time, leaving him one daughter only. In 1790 he married again, by civil contract, a lady named Ann Wilson, and by this marriage had two children—a daughter born in 1792, and a son, the petitioner, Mr. W. P. R. Shedden, born in 1794. The estate in Scotland had been left in the hands of John Patrick, who had three sons. The eldest of these was Robert, a doctor of
  1280
  medicine and a surgeon in the army; the second, John, a merchant trading in New York; and the third, William, who was admitted as a writer to the Signet in Edinburgh in 1793. This last-named person, whose conduct was implicated in this transaction, was still alive. In 1795 Patrick, senior, died, and his son William got into his own hands the entire management of the Scotch estates, which, indeed, he had managed for two years before. It was now necessary that he should call their Lordships' attention to the position in which the several parties stood at this time. In 1798 Mr. Shedden was living at New York as a highly respectable citizen, with his wife, Mrs. Shedden. Mrs. Shedden was received as his wife in the best society of New York, and was engaged with ladies of the highest character in the charities and other engagements of the place. Robert Patrick, the eldest son of Patrick, senior, was serving as a surgeon in the Mediterranean, John Patrick was trading on his own account as a merchant in New York, but mainly depending on the credit of his uncle, Mr. Shedden; and William Patrick, as he had already stated, was carrying on business in Scotland as a writer to the Signet, and managing Mr. Shedden's estates. He had omitted to mention that before his father's death William Patrick wrote to John at New York, urging him to obtain a transfer of the powers possessed by his father with reference to the estates to himself and his brother Robert. There was some difficulty about this at first, but ultimately Mr. Shedden consented, and the power required was sent over to Scotland. It would be clearly proved that at this time the three brothers Patrick possessed very small pecuniary means—John was desirous of entering into various speculations with a gentleman of Greenock, named Hugh Crawfurd, but was unable to do so from the want of means. In 1798 Mr. Shedden was taken dangerously ill, and, after a long and severe illness, died on the 13th of November of that year. Previously to his death he executed a deed of entail on his Scotch property, by which it was directed that the rental of the property should be allowed to accumulate for the use of his son when he came of age. What became of that deed of entail was not accurately known. It was the belief of the petitioner that it came into the hands of William Patrick; but he must frankly admit that this was merely his be

  1281
  lief, and that there was no evidence of the fact. Still more nearly before his death—on the 7th of November—he also executed a will by which he directed that his whole property in America should be taken possession of by his executors, of whom John Patrick, his nephew, was one. They were charged, after paying his debts, which were very few, to pay to his widow an annuity of 400 dollars, and such further sums as might be necessary for the support and education of his daughters, He then directed that subject to these, charges his property was to remain in the hands of the executors, and that when his children attained their majority it was to be divided equally among them. His son he directed to be sent to Scotland, and William Patrick he appointed his guardian. It was necessary to state another event on which much turned. Before his death Mr. Shedden thought fit to have another marriage between himself and his wife. The first marriage had been merely one by civil contract, performed in the presence of witnesses. That form of marriage was perfectly valid by the law of New York, and it was then, as now also, perfectly valid by the law of Scotland; but there was no registry, and it was supposed by Mr. Shedden that there might be some difficulty in proving his marriage in Scotland. He believed that the legitimacy of his children would be better established if he was married according to the forms of the Episcopal Church, and that thereby his son's succession to his Scotch estates would be made more safe and more certain. Unfortunately this step, coupled with the choice Mr. Shedden had made of the Patricks as the persons to whom the interests of his widow and children should be committed, had precisely the opposite effect to that which was intended. The petitioner stated that a deep-laid conspiracy was entered into between the Patricks for the purpose of getting possession of their uncle's property, and affixing to his children the stain of illegitimacy. The nature of the plot he would state to their Lordships on the allegations of the petitioner. The very existence of the petitioner, the son of Mr. Shedden, was, in the first place, to be concealed in Scotland till William Patrick placed his brother Robert, the eldest of the Patricks, who would have been heir at law in the event of Mr. Shedden dying without issue, in possession of the estates. Then the petitioner and his sister were to be shown to be illegitimate, and the
  1282
  annuity to the widow, given under the husband's will, was to be refused. John Patrick was to avail himself of his power as an executor, and of his knowledge of his uncle's mercantile affairs, to make it appear that there were not any funds in America for the payment of the annuity, and at the same time all about the Scotch estates was to be concealed from the widow, as well as the claims which, under the Scotch law, she would have to a dower from those estates. He would now show what great facilities the parties had for carrying out their plans. In the first place William Patrick was the factor for Mr. Shedden, and had the complete management of the Scotch estate, and possession of all the accounts relating thereto. Singularly enough, it happened that William Patrick in Scotland was in possession, not only of those accounts which would naturally come to him as factor, but of those papers which ought to have been a check upon him, and which should have been in the possession of Mr. Shedden. It would be remembered that when Mr. Shedden first went to New York he had joined in the power of attorney with William Patrick two other persons—their names were Fullarton and M'Clellan. The first named never acted, but the latter did to some extent, and had possession of the papers proving the payments made on account of the estate, and also those from Mr. Shedden to William Patrick as factor. Mr. M'Clellan, however, died before 1798, and by a will which, singularly enough, was written by William Patrick, he made the elder Patrick his executor, and thus, through Robert Patrick, William Patrick came into possession of all those important papers. Mr. Shedden had not been in Scotland for twenty-eight years; very few persons there knew anything of him, and their Lordships were aware of the difficulty of communication between America and Scotland at the time, especially during a period of war. Then, again, John Patrick, the brother and associate in this conspiracy of William Patrick, was the executor, and in possession of all Mr. Shedden's papers in America. It was true that two other gentlemen had been associated with him in that trust; but if it could he shown that the moment Mr. Shedden was dead, John Patrick, without waiting for the will to be proved, without waiting for the company of the other executors, went immediately to his uncle's house, and in the character

  1283
  of representative of the family ransacked all the repositories, carried off, as was believed, many important papers, and also, as was believed, a considerable sum of money; the fact of their being co-executors would be admitted to have been no bar to these plans. The evidence to prove these facts could only be slightly alluded to, as it consisted mainly of a most curious correspondence, which only came to light a few years since, and it would be impossible to do more than briefly allude to it. Those letters were so voluminous, and facts could only be ascertained by a careful comparison of different passages, that it would be impossible and useless to read them all. He was, therefore, compelled to state merely what he conceived to be the substance of those letters, which, if the House thought fit, could afterwards be more closely examined before a Committee. He found the correspondence bore a double character—some letters being obviously written for the purpose of being publicly seen, which were of the fairest character. There were other letters, which appeared to have been written for the private information of the brothers to whom they were respectively addressed. There were others of a mixed character, which, while giving no information to strangers, were couched in terms which were quite intelligible to those who possessed the key to them. In, that correspondence were to be found instructions that the widow "must be cut down;" the actual expression used by William Patrick. "She must not receive her annuity:" "You must exhaust the funds in America." Hints were thrown out to raise fictitious claims against the estate to excite alarm in the minds of the other executors, so that they might be led to decline interfering in the matter. Then it was said, "You must get the widow to ratify the will, without hinting anything about the Scotch property—the object being to bar her dower." Such was the construction which he (Earl Grey) had been compelled, after a careful perusal of the major portion of the documents, to arrive at. In the course of that correspondence, William Patrick suggested that the widow should be prevented from coming to Scotland, as she might there be exceedingly troublesome. These schemes were to a great degree successful. The widow was prevented from receiving her annuity; a portion was dealt out to her in small sums, and she was utterly unable to take any effective measures to assert her son's
  1284
  rights. She did, however, make an attempt to assert those rights, for she transmitted to a respectable solicitor in Scotland a certificate of her marriage with Mr. Shedden on his death-bed, together with affidavits alleging the fact of a prior marriage by civil contract, and also alleging that the object of the second marriage was to render the proof of her son's legitimacy more easy in Scotland. When William Patrick found that in spite of all his efforts to prevent the widow from bringing forward her son's claims, she was yet doing so, he proceeded to take measures on his part to establish the claim of his brother, Dr. Robert Patrick. With that view he took certain proceedings called in Scotland serving a person "heir." The nature of that proceeding was that the sheriff of the county held an inquest, upon which a jury was empanelled to try the title of the claimant. In cases where I the opponents of a claim were represented the proceeding was fair enough; but where there was no opposition, the jury, as a matter of course, accepted the claimant's story as true, and finds him entitled to the character he claims. That state of things, however, had been found to open the door to such great frauds, that the law had, a few years since, been altered by Parliament, and the old proceeding was no longer followed. As there was no one, of course, to oppose the pretended claimant, William Patrick succeeded in serving his brother heir to the estate. Who was to appear against him? There was probably no man in Scotland at that time aware of the existence of the petitioner, or of any person who had a claim to the estate, except William Patrick; and he, the confidential agent of his uncle, the guardian of the son of the person from whom he and his family had received the greatest kindness through their lives, and the interests of whose child he was bound by every principle of duty and of honour to protect, was the man who swore to the inquest at Ayr that Mr. Shedden had died in America without issue, having made a settlement of his estate in favour of certain persons, not mentioning who those persons were, though he well knew they were those whom Mr. Shedden, at all events, considered to be his lawful wife and children, and that Robert Patrick, as nephew to the deceased, was heir-at-law. That statement, coming from such a quarter, necessarily obtained credit; and it was one of the most remarkable facts, in the present

  1285
  remarkable case, that when it was last brought before the Court of Session, a few years ago, the Lord President at the time —Lord President Boyle—had been the chancellor of the jury by whom the inquest was held at Ayr, and he distinctly recollected that no mention was made of any child of Mr. Shedden. But William Patrick was not only the agent of his uncle and the guardian of the petitioner, but also the judicial factor appointed to manage the estate for the benefit of all concerned, and in that capacity likewise it was his duty to take care that no injustice was done. Another circumstance showing the animus with which he acted was, that when he swore that his uncle and benefactor had died without leaving issue, he knew, whatever might be the case with respect to the petitioner, that there was a daughter by a prior marriage. It was true that Mr. Patrick, for his own purposes, represented that daughter to be illegitimate also, implying that his uncle, who bore a high character in New York, had lived first with one mistress and then with another; but he knew well, though he put forward that statement, that the first daughter was legitimate—that the first Mrs. Shedden, like the second, had been received universally in Now York as the lawful wife of her husband—and he knew also that their infant daughter had been registered in the principal church of the Protestant Episcopal communion in New York as the daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Shedden. It might be said that Mr. Patrick was bound to support the interests of his brother in preference to those of his cousin. That was true; and if he had endeavoured by fair and legitimate means to show that the child was not entitled to the estate, but that it belonged to his brother, there would not he a word to say against him. What, however, in that case was the line of conduct which he should have pursued? He ought to have written at once to Mrs. Shedden and the executors that he had interests opposed to theirs, that he could not support the claim of the infant to the estate, and that he felt it his duty to assist his brother. But he proceeded far otherwise. He no doubt declined to act as the guardian of his nephew, but not until six months after he had served his brother as heir-at-law, and, during the whole time that he found it for his advantage to do so, be, without accepting the guardianship, exercised the powers of that office in such a manner as to pre-
  1286
  vent any other person from watching over the interests of the child. He also managed to keep the child out of Scotland where his presence would have been troublesome, and so dealt with the money, which by his own showing he had received for the benefit of his cousin, as to deprive the solicitors, to whom Mrs. Shedden had applied, of the means of supporting the suit they had raised. At a subsequent period Mrs. Shedden was re-married to a certain Captain Vincent, the re-marriage taking place by the advice of her friends, as the only means of obtaining protection in her almost destitute condition, and as Mrs. Vincent she followed up, as far as she was able, the claims of her son. But, what with the difficulties of communication with Scotland, the circumstance of her being entirely unknown, while Mr. Patrick was a man of some influence, and the fact that Mr. Patrick represented her as a woman of bad character entirely unworthy of credit, the proceedings which she took were altogether ineffectual, and she died about the end of 1802. Afterwards, though nothing was done by the mother, legal proceedings were instituted by other persons. But the petitioner stated that those proceedings were not to promote his interests. They were instituted, he stated, with the deliberate purpose of barring his claim to the property when he came of age; and their Lordships would presently see that there was good ground for that allegation. The proceedings originated in a letter from Mr. William Patrick to the executors in New York, suggesting that somebody should bring forward a claim to the estate on behalf of his cousin, but leading the executors to infer that whoever did so would incur great pecuniary responsibility. That letter, of course, led to nothing. Mr. Patrick then put forward certain parties in Scotland, who made an application to the Court of Session, stating that Mr. Patrick had declined to act as guardian, and that it was for the interest of the child that his right to the estate should be tried as soon as possible, and recommending that Mr. Crawfurd, a merchant, should be appointed to take charge of his affairs. The persons who made the application were entire strangers to Mr. Shedden and his father, but were all clients of Mr. W. Patrick and under his immediate control—in fact, his mere puppets. In consequence of the application, the Court of Session appointed Mr. Hugh Crawfurd factor loco

  1287
  tutoris, and it became his duty to endeavour to set aside the "retour" by which Mr. Robert Patrick was declared heir at law. Mr. Hugh Crawfurd was a merchant at Greenock, and had carried on speculations jointly with Mr. John Patrick in America. It could be shown that during the whole time of those proceedings Mr. Hugh Crawfurd was in great pecuniary difficulties and was constantly applying to Mr. William Patrick for money, pending the suit which he brought on behalf of the child. He thought their Lordships would admit that such an appointment as that of Mr. Hugh Crawfurd to take care of the interests of the child was one of most damning suspicion; but the manner in which the case was conducted by Mr. Crawfurd made it far stronger than the original appointment. If there had been any boná fide intention to support the real interests of the child, would not Mr. Crawfurd at once have gone to the very respectable solicitors in Edinburgh to whom the widow had sent her own case, or would he not have made some application to persons in America, in order to obtain information? He did nothing of the kind. Instead of employing those very respectable solicitors, who were at the time in possession of the widow's papers, he employed another man—a certain Mr. Millar, a friend of Mr. Patrick—against whom there was nothing to impute, save that he had no means of knowing anything about the subject except what Mr. Patrick thought fit to tell him. As another proof of want of good faith, when Mr. Crawfurd came to draw up the case for counsel, and to bring the subject before the courts of law, he rested the sole claim of the infant upon the ecclesiastical marriage which was solemnized on Mr. Shedden's death bed, and said not a word about the prior marriage, although the certificate which was put in to prove the ecclesiastical marriage was the identical certificate which was sent over from America, having annexed to it affidavits as to the prior marriage. It could be clearly demonstrated that the certificate used was the same certificate separated from the important documents to which it belonged. That was not all. While the claim was vested upon the ecclesiastical marriage, and not upon the prior marriage, the ostensible promoter of the interests of the child stated that marriage not accompanied by a religious ceremony was not valid by the law of New York. He was enabled to state to their Lordships, upon the highest authority, that at
  1288
  that time, at all events, if not now, the law of New York was precisely the same as the law of Scotland—that declaration before witnesses constituted a perfectly valid marriage, that there was no registration, and that nine-tenths of the most perfect marriages in New York could be established on no other kind of evidence than Mrs. Shedden could produce in favour of her own marriage; but he who called himself the guardian of the child put gratuitously into the case the false assertion, that marriage not accompanied by a religious ceremony by the law of New York was not valid. But, further, upon the question of domicile, it was of importance to show whether Mr. Shedden intended to come back to Scotland, or to remain in America, and the guardian of the child said, in the case which went to counsel, that Mr. Shedden never intended to come back, the fact being that Mr. Patrick was in possession of many letters from Mr. Shedden, expressing his full expectation of coming home, ordering a pipe of Madeira for his use, and giving directions not to grant leases, because, on his return, he wished to have the power in his own hands. Counsel had no reason to doubt the case put into their hands. They had no reason to suspect entire collusion from first to last—that it was meant and wished they should fail. They could have no such suspicion; but the procedure was a gross imposture, and under such circumstances the case failed, and the Court of Sessions, by decree in 1803, affirmed the right of Mr. Robert Patrick to the estate. But the case did not stop there. An appeal was brought to their Lordships' House, but with the same want of good faith as had marked the whole proceedings. In a letter written in December, 1803, by Mr. H. Crawfurd to Mr. W. Patrick, the writer, alluding to the decision of the Court of Session, said the decision was very strong, and not likely to be set aside; but, as he understood that, without appeal, a challenge on the part of Mr. W. Shedden would be open, he thought his duty would be best discharged by appealing to the determination of the House of Lords. The person who suggested the appeal would not allow matters to rest until the child had grown up and could judge for himself, but advised an appeal, because "he understood that without it, a challenge on the part of Mr. W. Shedden would be open." Their Lordships could judge from that with what degree of good faith the appeal was prosecuted.

  1289
  Now, there was this remarkable circumstance, that pending the appeal the estate was sold by Robert Patrick to William Patrick. By his own showing, William Patrick purchased it before the appeal was decided; therefore, what did their Lordships find? Why, that those three brothers Patrick were all notoriously in low pecuniary circumstances, before Mr. Shedden's death—that, in a very short time afterwards, Mr. Shedden's estate entirely disappeared, and the three Patricks were converted into wealthy men, Mr. William Patrick being put into possession of the estate which, a short time previously, it was notorious he had no means of purchasing. There the case ended for some years. The petitioner, Mr. Shedden, was sent for from America by the executors. He arrived in this country in 1800, and in 1810 he entered the Royal Navy. His ship, however, was paid off in 1815, and he then wished to enter the profession of the law, but his uncle, William Patrick—and that was a significant circumstance when taken in connection with others—decidedly objected to his doing that, on the ground that it would he a dangerous thing for him to study the law. The result was that he went to India, Where he entered into trade, and eventually realizing considerable property, returned to this country in 1833, having previously paid two short visits to Scotland. Soon after he returned, in 1833, he entered into negotiations with his cousin, William Patrick, with respect to the purchase of his father's estate, Those negotiations, however, went off, but in the course of them the petitioner, Mr. Shedden, for the first time, was made to entertain a suspicion of the fairness with which he had been treated. Those suspicions being once raised, he eventually obtained such information as induced him to believe that he had been wronged by his cousin, and in 1847, under the advice of counsel, he commenced proceedings for the recovery of the estate, He also entered what was called in the law of Scotland a declarator of legitimacy, the object of which was to prove his legitimacy. At that time the petitioner had no suspicion of his mother's prior marriage, nor any doubt as to the domicile of his father. In answer to the first suit a preliminary defence was put in by Mr. Patrick; but before that came on to be argued some additional information was obtained which led to the petitioner, Mr. Shedden, being advised to put in a supplemental
  1290
  summons. He received, at the same time, certain information from America, which resulted in a commission being sent out to that country, at his instance, to obtain evidence on the question of his legitimacy, and Mr. Shedden himself accompanied the commission to New York for the purpose of being present at the inquiry. Almost the first thing they did was to examine certain papers in the possession of a Mr. Van Hook, a lawyer in that city, and he (Earl Grey) should call their Lordships' attention to a remarkable circumstance by which the whole iniquity of this complex fraud was brought out. When proceedings were instituted in Scotland, Mr. William Patrick wrote to Mr. Van Hook for all the papers in his possession relating to the affairs of his brother; but Mr. Van Hook, to his great credit, having heard something of the proceedings in Scotland, wrote in reply that it was not for the interests of justice that the papers in question should be placed in the hands of one of the parties to the suit, and he would therefore not part with them. It was in consequence of that most correct decision that the papers were retained by Mr. Van Hook in New York, and that the commission was sent there to take evidence. It was also in consequence of the course which Mr. Van Hook, to his infinite honour, took on that occasion, that the transactions on which the petitioner grounded his case were brought to light. When the commission arrived in New York, Mr. Patrick's agents declined attending, and they therefore proceeded to examine the documents in the possession of Mr. Van Hook; and among other important papers they found a letter from Mr. William Patrick, in his own handwriting, dated in April, 1800, and enclosing, in the handwriting of his clerk, copies of the notarial certificates of the certificate of the ecclesiastical marriage, and of the important affidavits annexed to them, referring to the civil marriage, which was anterior to the ecclesiastical. Therefore their Lordships had it in the handwriting of Mr. William Patrick himself, who had previously professed to the petitioner to have acted towards him with the utmost fairness and justice, and to have given him all the information in his power touching the matters in dispute that before commencing those proceedings at all he was in possession of those affidavits which Mr. Van Hook, a lawyer in New York, had deemed amply sufficient to prove the prior marriage. Mr. Commissioner

  1291
  Kay's evidence proved conclusively that the connection, between Mr. and Mrs. Shedden was a real and valid marriage, which ensured their admission to the best society in New York, and that she was universally received as a married woman. Various technical proceedings, which it was unnecessary for him to describe, took place in the Scotch courts, and in 1852 the Court of Session was called upon to determine whether Mr. Shedden should have the opportunity of proving facts which, he alleged, showed that the whole of the legal proceedings were fraudulent, and ought to be set aside. Hereon, Mr. Richard Patrick took steps which were similar to a demurrer in the British courts. Mr. Shedden contended that the decree of the Court of Session in 1803, and the judgment of the House of Lords in 1808, affirming that decree, had been fraudulently obtained, and ought to be set aside; and he alleged that the executors of his father were parties to the fraud, and that Mr. Crawfurd, who had brought an action in his name, was really in the interest of his opponents, and had brought the action, not with the view of establishing his (Mr. Shedden's) right to the estate, but really in order to bar his claim. The Court held, however, that, even if all the facts alleged could be proved—if Mr. Shedden was incontestably legitimate, and ought to be declared the heir to the estate,—and if it could be proved that the Patricks had used their power to prevent the facts from coming before the Court below or their Lordships' House—these facts were in the terms of the Scotch law "irrelevant," or insufficient grounds for setting aside the final judgment of a legal tribunal, because it was not shown that Mr. Crawford was acting collusively, or that he was really in the interest of the petitioner's opponents. Upon appeal to their Lordships' House this decision of the Scotch Court was confirmed. The result was that not only was Mr. Shedden debarred from attempting to recover the estate of his father, which was left in, the tranquil possession of Mr. Patrick, but he was completely shut out from the opportunity of establishing his legitimacy, upon which his character in this country depended. If he was legitimate, he was a British subject. [The LORD CHANCELLOR was understood to observe that if Mr. Shedden was born after marriage he would be a British subject.] His (Earl Grey's) argument was that the prior marriage, which constituted the
  1292
  ground of claim, had never been inquired into by any British court of justice; and that, if such prior marriage were established, Mr. Shedden was undoubtedly legitimate and a British subject. Mr. Shedden was, however, debarred from bringing the question before any court of justice in this country. He (Earl Grey) maintained that the legitimacy of Mr. Shedden had been fully established. The subject had been brought before an American court. Since the appeal to their Lordships' House, Mr. Shedden had discovered that there was certain landed property in the State of New York which had belonged to his father, which had subsequently been occupied by one of the Patricks, but the greater portion of which had eventually fallen into the hands of squatters, who had gained a legal right to it by more than twenty years' possession. There was, however, one of the squatters who had not held his portion of the estate for so long a period as twenty years. Against him Mr. Shedden brought an action, which was substantially contested. On the trial of that action witnesses were called who were well known to the present and the late American Ministers as persons of unexceptionable character, and they one and all declared that Mr. and Mrs. Shedden were man and wife, and had always been considered to be so. That evidence was considered to be so irresistible that the jury, without hesitation, returned a verdict for Mr. Shedden, and in that verdict the judge expressed his unqualified concurrence. Two of the persons who were examined stated that nothing was ever said against the character of Mrs. Shedden, and that if she had been only Mr. Shedden's mistress, it must have been known all over the town, and Mr. Shedden would have been scouted by every man in the city. New York was at that time but a comparatively small town. The manners of its inhabitants were characterized by something of puritanical strictness, and it was inconceivable that, if not married, Mr. and Mrs. Shedden should have been admitted into the best society, and that her name should, among the ladies, have been quoted as that of a person whose assistance might always be depended upon in all cases of charity. It was not too much to assert that if this evidence did not prove the legitimacy of Mr. Shedden, he knew not what evidence could be sufficient to prove the legitimacy of any one of their Lordships. Under these circumstances he

  1293
  asked, was not Mr. Shedden entitled to claim, not from their compassion, but from their sense of justice, relief at least from the hardship of being branded as illegitimate and being deprived of his status as a British subject? Was it unnatural that the descendant of an ancient Royalist of the American war should attach value to the character of a natural-born English subject? Was it unnatural that the bearer of an honourable name descended from a long line of ancestors should be anxious to prove that he was legitimately entitled to bear that name? Above all, was it unnatural that a man whoso parents had been vilely slandered should be anxious, even after an interval of half a century from their deaths, to rescue their characters from the calumnies which had been heaped upon them, and to prove that his mother was from the first, not the mistress, but the wife of his father? Even this scanty measure of justice Mr. Shedden could not obtain unless their Lordships did something to open the doors of the courts which were shut against him. He (Earl Grey) was not asking them to reverse by a legislative measure a decision solemnly pronounced in their judicial capacity, He was not contesting the correctness in point of law of that decision. Considering the eminence of the Judges by whom it was pronounced, and his own utter want of legal knowledge, it would be worse than presumption in him to do so. He did not even say that the law which made that decision right ought to be altered. Difficult as it was to reconcile the operation of that law in the present instance with the principles of justice, he was still, in deference to authority, ready to believe that, in order to avert the great evils of protracted litigation, and to protect the holders of property from vexatious suits, it was proper to maintain that state of law. But, granting that that, must not be disturbed, he asked again, was the fact that Mr. Shedden had, under these unexampled circumstances, been by a cruel and heartless fraud stripped of his property any reason for refusing him the opportunity of proving that he was the legitimate son of his father, and was entitled to be considered a British subject? That question bad never to this moment undergone any investigation whatever, and he claimed from their Lordships that there might be a proper and due inquiry into the fact of the prior marriage of Mr. and Mrs. Shedden. That was the object of the Motion which
  1294
  he was about to make. When he had presented this petition, he should move that it be referred to a Select Committee. He should take that course because, while be was quite certain that some relief ought to be given to Mr. Shedden, he was not prepared to say in what form it would best be afforded. The Committee might recommend either that a private Bill should be passed declaring Mr. Shedden to be legitimate, or, which he thought more probable, that there should be some general legislation providing that where the right of a person to be considered a British subject was at stake, he should be entitled to bring before a court the question of his legitimacy, although no property might be involved in the question. It might he that some other and better course than either of these would be adopted; but whatever else might be done, he maintained that their Lordships were, upon all principles of justice, bound to inquire whether the statement which be had made could be substantiated, and in what manner relief could be afforded. He earnestly hoped that his noble and learned Friend upon the woolsack would not resist the appointment of a Select Committee; and, above all, he trusted that no opposition would be offered to his Motion on the part of Mr. Patrick, or by those who called themselves his friends; because, if there was any one who was deeply interested in having this inquiry, it was Mr. Patrick himself. The charges which he had brought against Mr. Patrick were of the gravest description; and he thought he might venture to say that he had made out a primâ facie case of suspicion against that gentleman. If, therefore, he shrank from inquiry,—if, by the mouth of any friend of his in that House he should object to inquiry—he would at once convert that which was now suspicion into conviction in the mind of every impartial man. If he felt himself innocent, he must necessarily court inquiry, for the feeling of an innocent man would be to take every means to set himself right in the estimation of his fellow countrymen. He understood that Mr. Patrick had intimated to some of their Lordships that if Mr. Shedden could be subjected to cross examination, evidence must be drawn from his own mouth which would explain away a great part of the statement just made. But on the part of Mr. Shedden he was authorized to say that there was nothing which he so ardently desired as to be subjected to the ordeal of the most searching

  1295
  cross-examination. His wish was that every document, every paper which bore upon these transactions should lie laid before their Lordships, that every witness who knew anything of them should be thoroughly examined, and he was persuaded that the result would be to prove beyond all doubt the accuracy of that statement which he (Earl Grey) had now so imperfectly laid before their Lordships. The noble Earl then presented the petition, which was read, and the noble Earl then moved to refer the said petition to a Select Committee to consider and report.
  THE LORD CHANCELLORsaid, that though this Motion, as far as regarded its immediate purport, was one relating exclusively to the private interests of two individuals, yet in the principle which it involved it was, in his opinion, one of the greatest social questions which had ever been laid before their Lordships. He could well conceive why they might refer the conduct of public men, or of any men in connection with public transactions, to a Select Committee; but it was, he believed, absolutely unprecedented that their Lordships should be asked, even after there had been almost interminable litigation upon the matter, to refer it to a Select Committee to inquire whether the petitioner had any legal ground of complaint-and asked, too, after a speech in which absent persons were charged with an unmitigated system of fraud—a speech which would be circulated throughout the country, and to which it was impossible that any answer satisfactory to the feelings of the gentleman who had been accused should he at once given. If this individual had any legal ground of complaint the courts were open to him; if not, a Committee of their Lordships' House was not the proper tribunal to give him redress. Let their Lordships observe how greatly this case differed from the ordinary course of a legal proceeding. In a legal proceeding a party might advance gross charges against an opponent; but those charges could only come before the world at the same moment with the answers which were made to them. The bane and the antidote were, in fact, brought together under the notice of the public. But the speech of his noble Friend would circulate through every county to which the British press penetrated before any opportunity of giving an answer to that speech could be afforded to the person against whom it was directed. On public grounds alone that was an all-sufficient reason for
  1296
  resisting the inquiry, and he should have hesitated to say another word were it not that he felt it due to the gentleman accused in some slight degree to show how a portion of the charge made against him could be explained away. The facts of the case had been pretty correctly stated. Mr. Shedden was a Scotchman, who went to America in the year 1764, when only seventeen years of age. There he lived the remainder of his life, except for a year and a half, which he passed in Scotland in his father's house—with the exception of that time, and of another period which he spent at Bermuda during the American war, he passed all his life, from his seventeenth year, in America, and in America he died. He was engaged in commerce, and made a fortune more or less large—that was a matter of question—and he had a small estate in Scotland, to which he succeeded on the death of his father, which his brother-in-law, and after his death his brother-in-law's brother, managed in his absence. Mr. Shedden died in November, 1798, and at that time Mr. William Patrick was in the management of his property. With regard to this gentleman, of whom he knew nothing except what he had gathered from the papers in the case, he felt bound to say that, after having made himself thoroughly master of these papers, his impression was that he was an upright, honest man; and he was informed by several noble Lords who came from that part of the country that that was the character which he had borne through life, and which at the age of eighty-seven he had hoped to retain without further molestation. A very short time before his death, Mr. Shedden married a woman named Ann Wilson, and on the same day he made his will. All that the Patricks knew of this part of the case was derived from correspondence which they received from America. It was now suggested by the Sheddens that this correspondence was forged; but it was remarkable that it was all stated by them as part of their own case. The first intimation which the Patricks received of Mr. Shedden's marriage was by a letter written by Mr. Robert Patrick, who had formerly been engaged in business in New York with Mr. Shedden, to Mr. William Patrick in Scotland, in which he states that Mr. Shedden's illness was rapidly hurrying him to his grave, and that he had just married a woman who had been long living with him as his mistress, for the purpose of conferring

  1297
  the rights of legitimacy on his children by her. About the same time a letter was written by John Patrick to Robert Shedden, a merchant in London, in which he spoke of his uncle having married just before his death a woman "with whom he had long lived in another relation." On the 12th of November, 1798, William Shedden himself wrote a letter to his nephew, William Patrick, in which he stated that he had "married Ann Wilson," a thing "which was approved of" by his friends in New York, and which "restored her and the two fine children she had had by him to honour and credit." Was it possible that a man could have written in such language of his marriage if he believed that the woman was really his wife by a civil marriage that had previously taken place? The letter proceeded to say that his son was to be sent to Scotland to his nephew to be educated; that he had granted a sum for that purpose; and that he wished his son to be put to a profession suited to his position. A letter was also received by William Patrick from his brother John, stating the above particulars, and informing him that the boy had been left by his father to his (William's) guardianship. These letters, and many others which might be quoted, went to show the estimate which all parties at the time had of the connection that existed between William Shedden and this woman. As soon as these matters came to the knowledge of William Patrick, he felt himself placed in a delicate position; he had been entrusted by Mr. Shedden with the duty of educating his son; but if the marriage was a valid one, the question arose whether the law of Scotland applied to persons married in America; and if the marriage was valid, then according to the law of Scotland the son of William Shedden was entitled to the Scotch estate; but if not, then his brother Robert, as the heir at law, was entitled to take possession, inasmuch as the marriage of Mr. Shedden, under these circumstances, would not legitimate his offspring. The correspondence that took place between William Patrick and the executors at New York clearly showed the embarrassment he felt, and that he was most explicit in pointing out the propriety of some other person than himself taking up the case of the boy Shedden. An application was made to the Court of Session, and the result was the appointment of Mr. Hugh Crawfurd in loco tutoris.
  1298
  It was very easy to talk of conspiracy now; but what proof was there? William Patrick wrote to America to say that he was embarrassed by the guardianship imposed upon him, as his own brother's interests were involved in it, and recommending that an independent person should be appointed. A more natural course than this could not possibly have been, taken by him under the circumstances of the case. Shortly after the death of her husband the widow married a person named Vincent, and on the 3rd of September, 1799, she wrote a letter to Robert Patrick, asking him to interest himself in the case of her children. Before stating the contents of this letter he would remind the House that the relations of Mr. Shedden never at any time looked upon her as a trustworthy woman, but, on the contrary, regarded her as a disreputable person. In the letter to which he had referred she stated that her late husband had made his last will and testament a short time before his death; that he had in the most affectionate terms recommended his son to the guardianship of William Patrick; that the small property in Scotland would be required for his support; and that she trusted he would stand forward as his protector; that she had heard a report that her late husband's relations meant to claim the estate on the pretence of the illegitimacy of the child, but that the fact was "the marriage was solemnly performed and the will as regularly executed as any two acts of this nature could be." Now, he called their Lordships' attention to the circumstance that no reference was here made to any previous marriage. Could any human being suppose that if this woman believed she had been married eight years before she would have kept it concealed on an occasion of this kind? She added that she could give the most ample testimony to the facts she had furnished. Of course all the evidence adduced in the case would become utterly worthless if it could be proved that that evidence had been fraudulently concocted. But he believed that any person who carefully read these documents would come to the conclusion that they bore irresistible marks of authenticity, and that it was impossible they could be mere forgeries. There was furnished a certificate by the officiating clergyman of Trinity Church, Now York, setting forth that W. Shedden and Ann Wilson were regularly married by him on

  1299
  the 7th of March, 1798, and on that certificate Ann Wilson relied for its being a valid marriage. There were two affidavits in proof of the marriage, in which the deponents stated that Mr. Shedden and Ann Wilson had previously lived together as man and wife; but, in fact, although it might be true that Ann Wilson had borne Mr. Shedden's name, yet it was impossible there could have been any prior marriage, for had there been she would not have been married again in the name of Ann Wilson. That being the case, many opinions were taken both in the United States and Scotland as to the effect of the subsequent marriage upon the children. Mr. Patrick then suggested that a factor loco tutoris should be appointed by the Court of Session to protect the interests of the infant. That was done, and the question was elaborately argued before the Court of Session as to what was the effect of the marriage subsequent to the birth of the infant, such marriage being contracted abroad, and not in Scotland. The question turned upon the point whether the person so marrying abroad was domiciled there, or only temporarily resident cum animo revertendi. The conclusion of the Court of Session was that Mr. Shedden's marriage did not make the children legitimate, and was incapable of doing so. The noble Earl had put forward as a mark of great fraud the fact that it was at the instance of Mr. Patrick that an appeal was prosecuted to their Lordships' House. Assuming that to be the case, he (the Lord Chancellor) could see no fraud at all in such a proceeding, which was a common and unobjectionable one, and was intended to obtain a confirmation of the judgment of the Court of Session. When the case came before the House of Lords, Lord Eldon and Lord Redesdale, after having carefully considered the point in dispute, which they felt to be one of great difficulty, confirmed the judgment of the Court of Session, and decided that the estate belonged to Robert Patrick. If there had been any fraud at all it was impossible to conceive how that gentleman could have been mixed up in it, seeing that he was serving abroad the whole time. It was true that he subsequently sold the estate to William Patrick, but that did not alter the fact that the person benefited by the judgment of the Court of Session was Mr. Robert Patrick, then in the Mediterranean.
  1300
  The matter might have been supposed to have terminated. The boy was educated, the money properly applied, and he went to sea. It had been stated that the lad was urged by his uncle, William Patrick, not to become a lawyer. That perhaps was very good advice, and was the advice which he (the Lord Chancellor) frequently gave to persons who consulted him on the subject; and to charge fraud upon a person for giving such a recommendation to a lad, who was perhaps ill-adapted for the profession, was absurd and unjust. The lad, however, went to sea, came home, and went out several times, and made a considerable fortune in India; but it was not until 1848 that he was advised by some person to reopen the whole case which had been concluded forty years previously. Mr. Shedden instituted a proceeding in the Court of Session, and, in order to give himself a locus standi, he alleged that the former proceedings in 1803 had been fraudulent, and that documents bearing upon his case had been intentionally kept from the Court, which would have shown that although the deceased Mr. Shedden had been resident in America he had always retained a domicile as a Scotchman; but there was no suggestion of a former marriage. In the first summons fraud was alleged against the Patricks only, but afterwards when it was found that such a fact even if it could be established would not suffice to set aside the judgment, there came a supplemental summons of eighty pages, in which it was for the first time alleged that Mr. Crawfurd had been a party to the fraud practised upon the petitioner. That was a very gross charge to make against, a man for the first time twenty-six years after his death, and, moreover, when, as far as he (the Lord Chancellor) could see, there was not one title of evidence to support it. At the end of 1850, just as the record was about being closed and all further evidence excluded, it was alleged that the petitioner had discovered that Mr. and Mrs. Shedden had been previously married by civil contract, and was allowed by the Court of Session to amend his summons in that respect. With all deference for the Court of Session, it appeared to him (the Lord Chancellor) an absurdity to call that an amendment. The suit had been instituted fur the purpose of setting aside all the former proceedings on the ground of fraud; while

  1301
  in the altered summons it was contended that there had been a prior marriage which rendered the birth of the children legitimate. It was an averment that prior to the birth of the children Mr. and Mrs. Shedden had been married according to what was called in Scotland habit and repute. It was the law in Scotland that if two persons lived together as man and wife, and were generally received as such, that afforded pregnant evidence that they had been married, but it did not constitute marriage, because it could he rebutted by evidence that they had not been married. Such was the opinion of Stair, Erskine, and other authorities on Scotch law into which he had looked. The object of the suit was to get rid of everything that had been done, and, inter alia, a final decree of the House of Lords. The Court of Session, after much deliberation, decided that there was no ground for the reduction of the proceedings, and the case was again brought before their Lordships. The argument lasted a month; he (the Lord Chancellor) had done his best to make himself master of the facts, and then felt it to be his duty to move their Lordships to dismiss the appeal on the ground that the decision appealed against was correct. As to the grievance that the boy had been declared an alien and incapable of succeeding to property in this country, that question did not call for consideration. During all these proceedings not a word was said of a prior marriage in the sense in which the term was used now. The statement made then was quite consistent with the bastardy of the child—namely, that people understood them to be married because they always passed as man and wife; but the fact that they were not married was proved by the clearest evidence, and if the child at the moment of birth was a bastard he was also an alien, and no subsequent act of his parents could invest him with any other character. It would be a most dangerous precedent if, after a case had been litigated with a degree of pertinacity without example in any court of justice, a person was to be allowed, through the instrumentality of the great talents and high influence of his noble Friend, to attack the character of a man sinking into the grave at the age of eighty-seven, after a life of reputation and honour, inviting him to a new course of litigation which might involve him in ruin, and which probably could not be terminated before his death. As to the
  1302
  notable suggestion to pass a Bill to declare the petitioner a natural-born subject on account of the prior marriage. Now, supposing there was a prior marriage, there was nothing in the decision of their Lordships' House to make the petitioner other than a natural-born subject. All that their Lordships had decided they had decided upon the facts there stated; and the facts did not include the marriage of 1790, according to the laws of Now York, before witnesses. If, then, the fact of that marriage could be proved, the petitioner wanted no Act of Parliament to enable him to assert his rights. Not as the advocate of Mr. Patrick, but as the advocate of the people of England, and as the advocate of every one to whom property and character were sacred, he trusted he had succeeded in inducing their Lordships to resist this attempt, which was entirely unprecedented, and likely to lead to consequences impossible for their Lordships to foresee.
  LORD BROUGHAMagreed that they had engaged in a difficult and painful inquiry, but he believed that no person could have done more ample and entire justice to a case so complicated than had been done in the clear, elaborate, and lucid statement of the noble Earl who opened the debate. Two matters were now before their Lordships for consideration—first, whether an error of fact was committed, and an erroneous decision come to in consequence of that error of fact—namely, ignorance of the marriage of 1790; and, secondly, whether, supposing an erroneous judgment to have been come to, after long adverse possession and several judgments, they had the means of redressing the grievance of the party injured. His opinion was, that there was a marriage in 1790, and that the children were born in Lawful wedlock—lawful, not by the second marriage, but according to the law of the country in which they were born—America. The noble and learned Lord on the woolsack had taken no notice of the most material point in the petitioner's case—that decisions of competent courts of America were in his favour. Those cases were strongly contested, and the decisions established legitimacy by force of the marriage of 1790. It was argued that the ecclesiastical marriage of 1798 threw doubt upon the former marriage. When engaged in Solly's case, before the twelve Judges in Westminster Hall, he remembered stating, in answer to an observation upon irregular Scotch marriages,

  1303
  that at the time the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Lord Chancellor, and the Lord Privy Seal, were amenable to censure, if censure upon such a ground were due. All those three noble persons had been married in Scotland, but they went through the form of a second marriage in England, though validly married according to the law of Scotland; their wives, no doubt, being remarried in their maiden names, because it would be very difficult to get a clergyman to solemnize marriage between a man and a married woman; they were therefore married in England as bachelors and spinsters. It was precisely the same case here—the marriage of 1790 followed by the marriage of 1798. If they believed in the marriage of 1790, that disposed of the question of alienage. Then came the question whether, after such a lapse of time and so many decisions, they ought not to require fraud to be proved before granting relief. As to the question of fraud, if he was illegitimate he was therefore an alien, not having been naturalized by the naturalizing statutes. But there was never an inquiry, either in their Lordships' House or in the Court below, as to the validity of the original marriage, or touching the question of fraud. He (Lord Brougham) was therefore, on the whole, strongly inclined to think that it would be an advisable course for their Lordships now to undertake the inquiry in the manner proposed by his noble Friend (Earl Grey). He (Lord Brougham), indeed, did not sec how they could get rid of an inquiry of that sort. His noble Friend (Earl Grey) might, indeed, present a Bill, as he had a right to do as a Peer, and by the courtesy of their Lordships' House, alleging the legitimacy of the petitioner, and the rights springing from that legitimacy, and reversing the judgment with the view of letting in the party to a new trial of his claim. That Bill would probably be read a first time as a matter of course; and on its second reading, he (Lord Brougham) was inclined to think their Lordships would hear the parties on either side on the merits of the case. He threw out that suggestion, but on the whole he thought his noble Friend (Earl Grey) had taken the proper course in bringing the case before their Lordships in the way he had done.
  LORD ST. LEONARDSsaid, remembering that he assisted his noble and learned Friend on the woolsack for eighteen days in deliberating on this case when it was last before that House, he could not
  1304
  withdraw from the duty which he felt incumbent upon him of addressing their Lordships on the present occasion. Voluminous as the papers relating to the case immensely were, he could conscientiously say there was not a single document among them that he did not read with the deepest attention when the appeal came before their Lordships' House; he believed he had made himself perfectly master of the facts of the case; and after the most deliberate investigation he came to the clear conviction that—first, in point of law this gentleman was illegitimate, and therefore an alien; secondly, that there was no fraud on which the Court could act; and, thirdly, that there was no marriage in 1790, such as was now spoken of as an absolute fact. It was important that their Lordships should see how the matter stood, because it went by steps. When the marriage took place on the 7th of November, 1798, Mr. Shedden was on his death-bed, and the marriage was solemnized when he was in bed, but it was duly solemnized. It was a marriage well calculated to excite much observation, from the very circumstance that the clergyman who performed the ceremony knew when he was called on to do so that Mr. Shedden was on his death-bed. Besides, Mr. Shedden wrote a letter which, if words could express any clear notion of a man's mind, deserved to be received with the most implicit faith, and in which he stated that he then married Ann Wilson, in order to give his children the status to which they were entitled. The case of the petitioner in every different stage had been always represented in a different manner, so as to meet the particular difficulty with which it was beset. The petitioner himself at one time relied on that letter to show that the deceased believed that he was domiciled in Scotland and a Scotchman, and that his marriage would make the children legitimate from their birth; but when the petitioner and his advisers found that that letter did not answer their purpose they declared that the letter was a forgery from beginning to end. He stated, without hesitation, that there was no more doubt of the truth of that letter than there could be of the fact that he was addressing the House at that moment. Beyond the general allegation that a marriage by civil contract had taken place in 1790, and a statement in support of it put forward for the first time, sixty years afterwards there was no evidence that such marriage had

  1305
  taken place—no document or writing of the period had been produced in corroboration of the general allegation. He (Lord St. Leonards) was of opinion that the former judgment of the Court was a sound judgment, as one marriage, and one marriage only, had been put forward and proved. If a marriage took place in 1790 between Mr. Shedden and Miss Wilson, was it not natural to suppose, when she found that the legitimacy of her son was to be contested, that she would have said— "Although I was married to my husband upon his death-bed in a proper and regular manner, I had been previously married to him by civil contract, and before witnesses, in 1790?" Miss Wilson was represented to have been the daughter of a gentleman of good position in society, who objected to her marriage with Mr. Shedden on the ground of her youth; and was it likely that a man in such a station of life would have allowed his daughter to be married in his drawing room by what was called a civil contract, without the existence of any document which would show that such a ceremony had taken place? The difference between the law of Scotland and that of America was this—that in Scotland there was an assumption of marriage, although no marriage had actually taken place, while by the American law there must be a marriage either by civil contract or regularly by the Church. When the case came by appeal to this House, no mention was made of the marriage in 1790. Nothing was said of that marriage as a civil marriage until it was alleged in this petition. More than that, when Mr. Shedden himself commenced proceedings in the Court of Session in 1848, after he had had plenty of time to make inquiries, he set forth in his statement that "during Mr. Shedden's last residence at New York he formed an intimacy and connection with Miss Ann Wilson, the mother of the pursuer, of which connection there were born the pursuer and a daughter, and with the avowed purpose of legitimating the pursuer and his sister he married the said Ann Wilson at New York on or about the 7th of November, 1798." He died at New York on the 13th of November, of that year. It was admitted that a civil marriage would in America have been perfectly binding, but no such marriage was alleged either in 1808 or in 1848. After this Mr. Shedden obtained leave from the Court of Session to put in a new statement—in fact, a new
  1306
  case; and in that he set up a marriage, not by civil contract, but by habit and repute, cohabitation, their living as man and wife, and people believing them to be so. Such a marriage would satisfy the law of Scotland, but it would not hold good in America. The Court of Session was of opinion that it had not jurisdiction, and the matter came by appeal to their Lordships' House. The course there taken was, that they first heard arguments as to whether the case could be reopened, and then came to the conclusion that they could not decide that point of law without hearing the facts. In no case that had come before their Lordships' was there a greater multitude of facts than in this; and after hearing them he (Lord St. Leonards) came to the clear and decided opinion that upon the facts the plaintiff was not entitled to relief, and that had he been so he was wrong in the course which he had taken; and therefore he should, so far as his vote went, have decided against him. If the House agreed to the suggestion of the noble Earl, every man who could make out a new case would come to their Lordships, and upon an ex parte statement ask for a new trial. In every other court of justice, when a man alleged that he had found out new facts, and asked thereon for a new trial, the answer he got was, that he ought to have found them out in time; and there was nothing to show here that the petitioner had been taken by surprise, or that he had not all along known of the new facts which he now brought forward. What was to be done if the petition were referred to a Select Committee? Surely it was not intended that a Select Committee of their Lordships' House was to re-try a question which had already been decided twice in the Scotch Courts and once in their Lordships' House. It I was remarkable how the petitioners had shifted their ground. At first they rested on the marriage of 1798, then on the cohabitation merely, and now the marriage of 1790 was brought forward. What was now attempted to be set up ought to have been brought forward in 1848. It was quite impossible to accede to the proposition of the noble Earl without striking a fatal blow at the administration of justice and at the jurisdiction of their Lordships' House as a Court of Appeal. With regard to Mr. Patrick—though it was no business of his to defend him—he was bound to say that he was of opinion that the case had not been

  1307
  made out against that gentleman which it had been attempted to make out. He was a gentleman of advanced age, and it was rather hard that he should be exposed to such a powerful attack as that which the noble Earl had made upon him without having a single voice raised to say a word in his favour.
  LORD LYNDHUESTsaid, that after the very able and searching speech of the noble Earl who had introduced this Motion, and the discussion which had ensued upon it, it would not be necessary for him to trouble their Lordships at any great length. It would, no doubt, be great presumption in him to question the correctness of the judgment, either in the Court below or in their Lordships' House, as he was not present, and did not hear any of the arguments; but he felt it due to the petitioner, who had laid some papers in the case before him, to express his opinion of it. He should begin by stating to their Lordships what he conceived to be the position of the petitioner, because that was most material to a proper understanding of the case. In its first shape when it came before their Lordships' House, the question was one of law only—for it was never supposed that there was any other marriage than the second regular marriage. The petitioner supposed that that marriage would have had a retrospective effect, as it would have in Scotland,—but it had no such effect, and the consequence was that, being born in a foreign country and illegitimate, he was pronounced an alien and incapable of recovering the estate. But where was the petitioner all this time? He was a boy at school, of six years of age, and the present defendant, William Patrick, was his guardian, and had the charge of him. He was in a state of pupilage during the whole time of the trial, and was wholly ignorant of what was taking place. On arriving at the age of twelve he was put into the navy. It was not convenient that he should remain in England, and still less that he should be brought up to the profession of the law, as he might have been led to examine the facts, and bring the whole transaction to light. Having no knowledge whatever of the case, being entirely ignorant of the facts, it was not till 1833, on his arrival in this country, and on going down to Scotland, that he was led to take up the case. He took advice, and instituted new proceedings to set aside the former proceedings on the
  1308
  ground of fraud. The case in due course came to that House, when, as his noble and learned Friend on the woolsack knew, it was held insufficient to allege general fraud; the nature of the fraud, it was said, must be specifically stated, in order to justify the House in setting aside the former proceedings. The Court were of opinion that the allegation of fraud was not proved, and it was on that ground the appeal was dismissed. But in the progress of the case some light broke in upon the mind of the petitioner as to the first marriage of his parents, and he began to have reason to believe that it was a perfectly regular marriage. Up to that time it had been assumed by all parties that there was only one marriage—that of 1798 on the deathbed of his father, but William Patrick knew otherwise. A certificate of the first marriage had been handed over to him as well as the certificate of the second marriage. He therefore knew it, but suppressed it—he brought forward the evidence of the second marriage only. On inquiry the petitioner found that his father and mother had boon previously married by civil contract in a manner perfectly valid by the law of New York. Chancellor Kent said that it was not necessary that a clergyman should be present in order to make a marriage valid, though doubtless it was a very becoming practice and suitable to the solemnity of the occasion; that the consent of the parties only was necessary before witnesses, or a subsequent acknowledgment of the fact; and that a marriage might even be inferred from continual cohabitation, except in cases where there might be a civil action for adultery, &c. In addition to this definition of the law by Chancellor Kent he had the certificates of four lawyers of the highest eminence in New York to the same effect. This gentleman, then, finding he had reason to believe that his parents had been married before the ceremony took place to which alone reference had been made in the case, applied to the Court of Session for a Commission, which was granted. That Commission examined witnesses in America, whose evidence proved the marriage beyond a doubt, and having discharged its duty returned to this country. But was the evidence taken before that Commission produced? No; it was held in retentis; it was said you cannot prove this marriage till the question of fraud is disposed of; when that is done then the evidence may

  1309
  be read. The fraud was not disposed of, and in so far, therefore, all the evidence has never been produced, though it would most satisfactorily prove the reality of the marriage. But that was far from being the whole evidence of the marriage. The lady who was the mother of the petitioner was the daughter of a British officer who had distinguished himself very much in the war, and she was living in the immediate neighbourhood of her father. Was it likely that a British officer would surfer his daughter to be living in a state of concubinage with a merchant in his neighbourhood. The whole probability of the case was against such a thing. Again, the entire evidence went to show that this merchant was a man of respectability and of excellent character, living in the best society, and that his lady moved also in the best society of the place. That society consisted in great part of Presbyterians, persons of strictly religious and moral character, and the House might be assured that they would never have received the lady unless they were satisfied that she was the wife of Mr. Shedden. His noble and learned Friend on the woolsack suggested that all these things look place after the decision in their Lordships' House. This was by no means so; they were discovered while the case was in progress. After the decision the petitioner went to New York to make further inquiry, and ascertained from a gentleman named Wood—a lawyer of great eminence and for whose respectability Mr. Dallas vouched—that he was now in a condition to prove his status and bring an action of ejectment for a property at New York. He accordingly brought an action of ejectment, which was tried in the Supreme Court before a jury; a great number of witnesses were examined, and the evidence was so conclusive that, after a few minutes' consideration, a verdict was found in the petitioner's favour, and that verdict was approved of by the presiding Judge.
  THE LORD CHANCELLOR: Were all the facts that were brought before this House laid before the jury?
  LORD LYNDHURST: The sole question was the consideration of the marriage. The point was whether the marriage was according to the law of New York, and the Judge decided that it was. What facts were necessary beyond proving that? When he adverted to the character of Mr. Wood, it was sufficient to show that the ease must have, been conducted in a perfectly
  1310
  fair and honourable manner. The case proved that there was a previous marriage, quite valid, according to the law of New York, and that the legitimacy of the children was established. His noble Friend had alluded to a document of great importance—a notarial certificate made immediately after the death of Mr. Shedden, which was sent over by the mother, and which contained upon one paper the certificate of the second as well as the certificate of the previous marriage. What did William Patrick do? What would their Lordships say of a man who cut off the evidence of the previous marriage, and produced in court only the evidence of the second? It might be asked how was that known? Mr. Van Hook, who was the administrator of William Patrick, was in possession of all his papers, and upon a search being made copies of those certificates were found in William Patrick's handwriting. It was therefore clear that he did cut off literally the evidence of the first marriage, and made use only of the evidence of the second marriage, he being at the time the guardian of the orphan boy who was thus disinherited, hound to protect the interests of the widow and children. The noble and learned Lord upon the woolsack had made a point of the questions—why was the second marriage in the name of Ann Wilson when, if the statement of a previous marriage was true, the lady's name was, not Wilson, but Shedden; and why was there a second marriage at all if the second was not bad? The reason for the second marriage was, that it would have been attended with great expense and difficulty to have proved the first marriage, and therefore a course was adopted which was not an unusual one to establish the fact more easily. As to the re-marriage in the name of Ann Wilson, it must be remembered that she could not have been married in any other name, and of that fact there was a remarkable instance in their Lordships' House. Lord Eldon, who had married Miss Surtees in Scotland, was afterwards again married to the lady in England, not as Mrs. Scott, but as Miss Surtees. Then came another document, which, if a true document, was decisive. He referred to the letter of the 12th of November, which was supposed to have been written by Mr. Shedden upon his deathbed, acknowledging the fact that he had not been previously married. If that letter was a genuine document, it destroyed the petitioner's case, but if it

  1311
  were a fabricated letter, then it was equally destructive of his opponent's. The noble and learned Lord on the woolsack said the petitioner made that letter a part of his case. That was true; but what were the circumstances? He used it in support of the averment of the second marriage, and, indeed, as such it was forced upon him. But he afterwards denounced it as a fabrication, and called upon his opponents to prove it. They retorted that the document had been handed to the petitioner, who denied that he had ever received it, and invited the other side to prove that it had ever been given to him, at the same time challenging proof that it had ever been shown to or had been seen by any person. That challenge had been declined, and up to the present moment no proof of that letter had been given. Was it likely that a skilled lawyer like Mr. Patrick would have given up an original document so important in its nature without taking some receipt, or having the presence of some witness to prove the fact? Then, again, looking at that letter itself as put forth in evidence, its contents were in contradiction of the great mass of evidence which had been referred to—discarding that letter, the evidence of the first marriage was overwhelming. Moreover, the letter was dated the 12th of November, Mr. Shedden's death taking place on the 13th, while on the 10th it was stated that he could not turn in his bed, would never be able to transact business again, nor to open a single letter. Then, again, the contents of the letter were false. It stated that it contained two bills of exchange for £417, to be applied for the education of the boy; but it appeared from entries in Mr. Shedden's ledger that the £417 was not remitted for any such purpose, but was intended to discharge a mercantile debt. Again, the bills were stated to be sent by the Fairy—then they could not have arrived at the time pretended. More than that, the original of those bills never arrived, and the papers produced were only copies, not signed by the deceased. That evidence had not been heard by that House or in the court below; and if the petitioner's legitimacy were established, beyond doubt he had been unjustly deprived of his estate. He contended that a Committee should be appointed to inquire whether any relief could be given, and what that relief should be. If after inquiring they found that they could give no relief they would so report
  1312
  to the House; but if, on the other hand, they found that without infringing any rule of justice they could afford relief, they would not only be ready, but be happy and most anxious to grant it. For these reasons he would support the Motion of his noble Friend.
  LORD CAMPBELLsaid, he was sure that their Lordships must have heard with pleasure the able speech of his noble and learned Friend, and would not be surprized if, with the deference which they felt for such high authority, they should agree to the appointment of a Select Committee. But he felt it his duty to enter his solemn protest against a proceeding which was wholly unprecedented, and which he was satisfied would lead to the most serious results. He was not an advocate for Mr. Patrick; he never saw that gentleman in his life; and he knew nothing of the case except what he heard during the hearing of the last appeal, and then only for a day or two. In what state, then, was the case now? In his opinion it was res judicata, and if injustice had unfortunately been done it was irremediable. The Court of Session in 1803 decreed that the estate in dispute belonged to Robert Patrick, and not to the petitioner. That decree was confirmed by the House of Lords, the Court of last resort, in 1808. His noble and learned Friend who spoke last said that he concurred in the decision of their Lordships in 1808, and also in that of 1852. [Lord LYNDHURST: I was not there.] His noble and learned Friend said that if he had been present he should have concurred. But if there was fraud—if Mr. Patrick forged and suppressed, being the guardian of young Shedden, and an infamous man, surely his noble and learned Friend would not concur. Nothing could be easier than to demonstrate from those concessions that a Committee ought not to be appointed. The decisions of the House of Lords were to the effect that the suit had been conducted without fraud, and that the judgment of the Court below could not be impeached, but must stand as a lawful and rightful judgment. By that judgment, so confirmed by the House of Lords, under the advice of Lord Eldon and Lord Redesdale, the estate was declared to be the property of Robert Patrick. It was plain, therefore, that the decision of 1808 could not be reopened. The main argument in the subsequent suit was that what was called the second marriage had a retrospective effect and rendered the

  1313
  children legitimate; but he maintained that even supposing the second marriage had been proved it would have been impossible to set aside the former decision. After a solemn decision the discovery of fresh evidence was unavailable, and there could be no redress. What did they now propose to do? The present was not a judicial proceeding. There were no parties; no new suit had been commenced; there was no appeal before their Lordships, and they could not originate a cause. Supposing it had been a judgment of the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council. What mischief would follow such a proceeding! His noble and learned Friend said that he had communicated with the petitioner, and evidence had been laid before him; but that was not a course that could be followed. He had a sincere respect for their Lordships, but he could not contemplate without alarm the consequences which would follow if, at the instance of parties who had adopted the reprehensible system of personal solicitation, they proceeded to disturb a solemn decision of the court of last resort by the appointment of a Select Committee. It was impossible to take the estate from Robert Patrick; it was his by the law of England; and if Mr. Shedden could establish the prior marriage, for which a Parliamentary inquiry was not necessary, every privilege of legitimacy would belong to him, and he did not profess to want more. He would not be liable to the alien laws, he might sit in Parliament, and even hold the office of Chancellor; but he could not get the estate which belonged to another. The comparison of Mr. Shedden's marriage with Lord Eldon's was perfectly preposterous. There was no letter from the distinguished lady whom Lord Eldon married, stating that the second marriage was contracted to make her an honest woman and her children legitimate; but the letters of Mr. and Mrs. Shedden proved that they had only cohabited together, and that they knew their children were illegitimate. If he were to enter upon the merits, he might show that the merits were against the petitioner; but he had said enough to satisfy their Lordships that the law of the land had irrevocably given the estate to Mr. Patrick, and that no good whatever could arise from yielding to the prayer of the petition.
  THE EARL OF EGLINTONsaid, he wished to touch only on that part of the case which concerned Mr. William Patrick,
  1314
  with whom he was acquainted, and whom he knew to be a man of irreproachable character. It appeared to him that his character had been most unfairly and cruelly attacked. The three brothers were charged with fraud. Of John he knew nothing. Of Dr. Robert he only knew that he was very much respected in his profession, that he was a surgeon in the army, and that he was afterwards appointed Surveyor General of Hospitals. Looking at the whole case, he could see no grounds for imputation upon Mr. William Patrick. Mr. William Patrick could do no otherwise than he did. Believing that Mr. Shedden had been living with a woman, and had had two children by her, and on his deathbed had married her, be took steps to raise the question whether such a marriage contracted in America would hold good in Scotland. It was decided by the Court of Session that the marriage did not legitimatize the children, and the decision was confirmed by appeal to the House of Lords. As it seemed to him, Mr. Patrick had done everything that an honourable man could do. Great stress was laid upon the affidavits of the prior marriage having been cut off from the certificate of the ecclesiastical marriage; but he had been informed by a noble Lord within the last few minutes that the affidavits were not cut off by Mr. William Patrick; that they were sent from America by Mrs. Vincent; that Mr. William Patrick sent them to his brother in America, stating his opinion that such documents must be forged. When such a fact was capable of being clearly and easily explained, it proved how unfair it was to asperse the character of a man of eighty-seven upon transactions which occurred many years ago. He was ready to admit that the position of Mr. Shedden was now very different from that which he occupied when the appeal was brought, and to give the benefit of his conviction that Mr. Shedden might consider himself legitimate.
  THE EARL OF ALBEMARLEdid not see how the Patrick family could be justified, except at the expense of the Shedden family, who, he thought, had been most cruelly treated. The witnesses in America swore that Mr. John Patrick was one of the greatest rogues that ever came from Scotland.
  THE EARL OF EGLINTONhad distinctly said he knew nothing of Mr. John Patrick.
  THE EARL OF ALBEMARLE: He was

  1315
  the associate of William in the conspiracy. But he would turn to transactions of William, which extended over a period of three years, when the Patricks were in the greatest state of poverty. The assistant surgeon had cost his father £500. The second son had drawn on his father for £600. The two demands together had such an effect on John Patrick, the father, that he was driven into a state of imbecility, and in that state he died. William, the subject of such eulogy, became the agent in the place of his father. In 1795 he (the Earl of Albemarle) found him agent to two young women named King for an estate in Ayrshire. The noble Earl was proceeding in his remarks—when
  THE LORD CHANCELLORsaid, he would put it to their Lordships whether the noble Earl could pursue the course he was taking. He (the Lord Chancellor) would be the last man in their Lordships' House to attempt to interrupt the course of a debate properly conducted; but he must say the licence in which some noble Lords had indulged that evening—charging as they did the grossest fraud in the most unmeasured language to persons who had no opportunity of answering them—would leave room to doubt the propriety of the attempt recently made in their Lordships' House to legalise the privilege of reporting their debates.
  THE EARL OF ALBEMARLEsaid, he bowed to the correction of the noble and learned Lord on the woolsack, and would only further say that, after looking through the whole of the papers bearing on the subject under discussion, he thought it impossible for any one to read that evidence and not see that a great wrong had been committed. He had always understood that it was a maxim of our law that there was no wrong without a remedy; and, as he believed, that this was a wrong without a parallel, he hoped their Lordships would adopt the Motion of his noble Friend as a means of repairing it.
  LORD LYTTELTONsaid, he was prepared to support the Motion of his noble Friend (Earl Grey), but he confessed the case was so complicated and was involved, not only in law, but also in Scotch law, that he could not hope to address the House with any confidence upon its merits. He would only, therefore, say that, as it had all along appeared to him, not on the general merits of the case, but on the single question whether their Lordships' House was misled and misinformed by
  1316
  fraudulent means, that there was a primaâ facie case for inquiry, he thought that inquiry should be conducted by a Select Committee, as was now proposed.
  LORD REDESDALEsaid, he had had the whole of this case brought before him in the strongest manner by the parties concerned, but he had kept himself free from expressing any opinion upon it. Having now, however, heard that night all that could be said on both sides, he confessed he could not but come to the conclusion that there was so much danger in opening a case of this sort, he did not feel justified in voting for the Motion of the noble Earl. At the same time, if it was true that there was no remedy for a party placed in the position of the petitioner in this case, and as other persons might hereafter be put in a similar position, he thought it was desirable that a remedy should be supplied, not by special, but by some general legislation.
  EARL GREY, in reply, said, the noble and learned Lord on the woolsack, in calling his noble Friend (the Earl of Albemarle) to order, had expressed himself in a manner which he (Earl Grey) confessed had surprised him. The noble and learned Lord said, the turn which this debate had taken made him almost doubt the propriety of protecting the publication of their Lordships' debates, as had been recently suggested by a Member of their Lordships' House. As, however, his noble Friend (the Earl of Albemarle) was stopped before he got into the matter which the noble and learned Lord on the woolsack thought objectionable, he (Earl Grey) was bound to say he thought the interruption was made before occasion had been given for it. He must further say that when he was asked to state to their Lordships a case fraught with such great grievances as this, he felt himself bound to undertake the duty, and he still thought he had taken the right course in bringing it under the consideration of the House in the way he had done. If Mr. Patrick should suffer any damage from the accusations which had been made against him, let him meet the petitioner before a Select Committee, where his answer would be heard, and produce the documents which were at this moment in his custody. He (Earl Grey) could not help adverting to the manner in which the letter of Mr. John Patrick had been brought under the consideration of the House, in which he spoke of the petitioner's mother as a woman cohabiting with the petitioner's father, and

  1317
  so forth. Undoubtedly, if, as the petitioner alleged, this was a conspiracy against him, that was exactly the sort of letter which Mr. Patrick would have written; and if the petitioner could establish that what Mr. Patrick had stated with reference to his mother and to the relation in which he stood to his father was directly at variance with the testimony of witnesses of unimpeachable character, he (Earl Grey) thought that would be one of the strongest proofs of a conspiracy that their Lordships could have. On that point it so happened that the petitioner could produce the evidence of persons of the most respectable character, who were vouched for by the President of the United States, by the present American Minister in this country, and by the Protestant Bishop of New York; and those witnesses one and all said that of their own personal knowledge Mrs. Shedden lived as the wife of her husband, respected by all who knew her, and that there was never, so far as they knew, the slightest imputation cast upon her character, or upon her relations with her husband. His noble and learned Friend (Lord St. Leonards) had urged that the widow had not brought forward evidence of the prior marriage; but the fact was that her first communication to two respectable solicitors in Scotland enclosed affidavits with reference to both marriages. Those affidavits, however, were subsequently separated, and only that which related to the second marriage was adduced before the Court. He would venture to offer a few observations with respect to the mode of proceeding which, in his opinion, ought to be adopted. His noble Friend who had just spoken said that while he was not prepared to support the motion for the Committee he thought primâ facie grounds had been established for some redress, which, however, ought rather to be afforded by general legislation than by legislation applicable to the particular case of Mr. Shedden. He (Earl Grey) had, at the outset, expressed his opinion that the proper mode of redress would be by general legislation; and he asked for the appointment of a Committee as the only practicable means of obtaining such legislation. He admitted the practical difficulties of re-opening a case which had been judicially decided; but, although Mr. Shedden had been deprived of his estates, that was no reason why some steps should not be taken for removing the
  1318
  stigma affixed to the origin of Mr. Shedden, who was more anxious for the reputation than for the recovery of the state of his family.
  LORD CAMPBELLinquired whether the noble Earl proposed to call witnesses and to inquire into the question of fraud before the Select Committee?
  EARL GREYsaid, the course he would suggest was, that the Committee should examine the documents carefully and ascertain whether there was a primâ facie case of fraud; that they should call for certain very important papers which were in existence, but which the petitioner had not yet been able to obtain; and that if they thought those documents afforded primâ facie ground for the investigation of the matter by a court of justice they should recommend a measure which was calculated to open the doors of some court of law to Mr. Shedden.
  LORD BROUGHAMobserved that, from his recollection of the case, the question of fraud had been considered immaterial, for there was another ground which rendered any decision upon that point unnecessary.
  On Question, that the said Petition be referred to a Select Committee, their Lordships divided:—Contents 11; Not-Contents 19: Majority 8.
  Resolved in the negative.
  Then the said Petition was ordered to lie on the table.

  CONTENTS.

  Manchester, D.

  Calthorpe, L,

  Cloncurry, L.

  Albemarle, E. [Teller.]

  Lyndhurst, L

  Grey E. [Teller.]

  Lyttelton, L

  Talbot, E

  Sondes, L

  Dungannon, V

  Truro, L

  NOT-CONTENTS.

  Cranworth, L. (L. Chancellor]

  Churchill, L.

  Clements, L. (E. Leitrim.)

  Ailesbury, M.

  Foley, L. [Teller.]

  Gray, L.

  Derby, E.

  Leigh, L.

  Fortescue, E.

  Monteagle of Brandon, L.

  Granville, E.

  Panmure, L.

  Eversley, V.

  Polwarth, L.

  Redesdale, L.

  Ardrossan, L. (E. Eg-)

  Rossie, L. (L. Kinnaird.)

  lintoun.,

  [Teller

  Campbell, L.

  Stanley of Alderley, L.

  House adjourned at a quarter past Eleven o'clock, till To-morrow, half-past Ten o'clock