Sitting of 18 May 1863

MINUTES.
SUPPLY—considered in Committee—CIVIL SERVICE ESTIMATES—POST OFFICE PACKET SERVICE.
PUBLIC BILLS—Second Reading—Vice Admiralty Courts (Lords) * [Bill 129].
Committee—New Zealand Boundaries (Lords)* [Bill 112]; Land Drainage (Provisional Orders)* [Bill 85]; Salmon Fisheries (Scotland) Act Continuance * [Bill 117]; Offences (South Africa) [Bill 113].
Report—New Zealand Boundaries (Lords) * [Bill 112]; Land Drainage (Provisional Orders)* [Bill 85]; Salmon Fisheries (Scotland) Act Continuance * [Bill 117]; Offences (South Africa) [Bill 113].
Third Reading—Prison Ministers [Bill 24], and passed; Thames Embankment (North Side)* [Bill 94], and passed; Vaccination (Ireland)* [Bill 70], and passed.

THE COTTON DISTRICTS.—QUESTION.
MR. FERRANDsaid, that on that day three weeks, when he brought under the
1836
notice of the House the condition of the operatives of Lancashire, the right hon. Gentleman the President of the Poor Law Board stated that an Engineer had already been sent down to the distressed districts, and he had no doubt the Report of that gentleman would be made in about three weeks' time. He now wished to ask the right Gentleman, If he has received the Report from the Engineer sent down into the Cotton Districts, and if he will lay it upon the table?
MR. C. P. VILLIERS: In answer to the hon. Gentleman's Question, I hare, Sir, first to observe that he misunderstood the statement made by me on the occasion to which he refers. I do not know that I gave any ground for the misapprehension. I could not have said that I had already sent down an Engineer, for the proposal to take such a step was one which I made in lieu of the proposition made by the hon. Gentleman himself, and of the proposition of another hon. Member, as I thought it more suitable; but I said I did not think that more than three weeks would be required for a competent person to complete the inquiries. I have now to answer that the Civil Engineer who was directed to make these inquiries has this day forwarded to me a Report. He has not concluded his inquiries, but by means of great industry and energy the Report is very nearly complete. Such as it is, it will be laid on the table to-morrow.

THE AUDITOR OF THE PRIZE ACCOUNTS.—QUESTION.
MR. LIDDELLsaid, he wished to ask the Secretary to the Admiralty, Whether it is true that the late Accountant General has been in the receipt of £300 per annum from the funds of Greenwich Hospital; and, if so, what duties on account of the Hospital he performed; whether his successor continues to receive the same salary and to perform the same duties; and, if not, what arrangements are made for the proper auditing of the Prize Accounts, and under what authority the remuneration for the performance of such duties is charged upon the Revenues of Greenwich Hospital?
LORD CLARENCE PAGET: In answer to my hon. Friend, Sir, I have to say, that Sir Richard Bromley late Accountant General of the Navy, enjoyed a sum of £300 per annum on account of duties, which I believe were onerous, performed by him in connection with auditing the

1837
Prize Accounts; but that money was not taken from the funds of Greenwich Hospital, but from a fund created by a charge on all Prize Monies for various contingencies, future claims, and other matters.
MR. LIDDELL: But those funds belong to Greenwich Hospital?
LORD CLARENCE PAGET: No; they had nothing whatever to do with Greenwich Hospital. They were naval prize monies, bounties, and other monies, of which an annual account was laid before Parliament; and if the hon. Member will look to that paper, he will find amongst the items a sum of £300 paid to the Auditor of the Prize Accounts. That was the sum paid to Sir Richard Bromley. My hon. Friend also asks what are the intentions of the Admiralty in respect to the future. The question who should be the Auditor of the Prize Accounts, and likewise what salary he should receive, is now under the consideration of the Government.

RELATIONS WITH BRAZIL.

  QUESTION.
  MR. POLLARD-URQUHARTsaid, he wished to ask the Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, Has the Brazilian Minister demanded his passports, or made any communication to Her Majesty's Government to the effect that he has instructions which may require him to suspend Diplomatic Relations between England and Brazil; is any correspondence pending; and will it be laid upon the table of the House when complete?
  MR. LAYARDsaid, in reply, that the only answer he could give to the hon. Gentleman's question was that the correspondence between Her Majesty' Government and the Brazilian Minister was still pending, and therefore it would be highly inconvenient to lay it at present upon the table of the House.

MODEL SCHOOLS IN IRELAND.

  QUESTION.
  MR. O'REILLYsaid, he rose to ask the Chief Secretary for Ireland, When the Returns relative to Model Schools in Ireland, which have been ordered, will be laid upon the table of the House?
  SIR ROBERT PEEL, in reply, said, the Returns would be ready next Thursday, and would be laid on the table immediately after the Whitsuntide holidays.

THE SCOTCH UNIVERSITIES—ARMY COMMISSIONS—QUESTION.
MR. DALGLISHsaid, he would beg to ask the Under Secretary of State for War, Why, in the recently published Regulations for Commissions in the Army the Universities of Scotland have been omitted from the list of Universities whose Graduates holding the degree of B.A. or A.M. were enabled to get commissions without passing the usual examination?
THE MARQUESS OF HARTINGTONsaid, in reply, that if there had been an omission, it had been one rather on the part of the Scotch Universities than on that of the Horse Guards. No communication had been received from these Universities stating that they were desirous of the privilege to which the hon. Member referred. If they wished to avail themselves of those regulations, and satisfied a Military Council that they possessed the necessary requirements, he believed there would be no difficulty in bringing them within the rule.

VOLUNTEERS BILL.—QUESTION.
MR. HUMBERSTONsaid, he wished to ask the noble Lord, If he proposes to proceed with the Volunteer Bill this evening?
THE MARQUESS OF HARTINGTONsaid, it was not his intention to ask the House to proceed in Committee with the Volunteer Bill till that day fortnight.

THE CASE OF MR. JAMES.

  QUESTION.
  In reply to Mr. ROEBUCK,
  MR. CHICHESTER FORTESCUEsaid, that the delay in producing these Papers was owing to the pressure of business in the Colonial Office and in the printer's office. They were now in the hands of the printer, and he hoped to be able to lay them before the House very shortly. The Government were in expectation of receiving some further information from Sierra Leone respecting the case, but had not yet received it.

THE NEW COURTS OF JUSTICE.

  QUESTION.
  MR. ARTHUR MILLSsaid, he would beg to ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, Whether Her Majesty's Government have arrived at any decision as to the course to be adopted with reference to the building and concentration of

  1839
  Courts of Justice, and the sites to be chosen for that purpose; and, if so, whether he will state what measures it has been determined to adopt?
  SIR GEORGE GREYsaid, in reply, that it was the intention of his right hon. Friend the First Commissioner of Works to ask for leave to bring in a Bill for the appropriation of certain funds for the purpose referred to in the question of the hon. Gentleman. If he succeeded in carrying that Bill, a measure would be brought in next Session to enable the Government to effect what was desired in relation to the Courts of Justice. Such a Bill as the latter could not be brought in this Session, as the necessary Standing Orders had not been complied with.

MAIL SERVICE BETWEEN DOVER AND CALAIS.—QUESTION.
SIR STAFFORD NORTHCOTEsaid, he wished to ask the Secretary to the Admiralty, Whether any personal or written communications have taken place between the Post Office and the Admiralty, or between any Officers of the Post Office and the First Lord of the Admiralty, with reference to the employment of Admiralty Vessels for the Mail Service between Dover and Calais, or Dover and Ostend?
LORD CLARENCE PAGETreplied, that the only communication that had taken place on the subject within the last few weeks was a personal one. A gentleman from the Post Office had come to see his noble Friend the Duke of Somerset, and likewise himself, to ask whether, in the event of any difficulties, the Admiralty could give their assistance in carrying the mails between Dover and Calais and Dover and Ostend. The Duke of Somerset said it would be highly inconvenient to the public service that the Admiralty should be called upon to furnish any such assistance.

THE GLASGOW MURDER—CASE OF JESSIE MACLACHLAN.

  QUESTION.
  MR. BLACKBURNsaid, he would, in the absence of the hon. Member for Perthshire (Mr. Stirling), beg to ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, When the Papers on the Maclachlan case, moved for as an unopposed Return on the 4th of May, will be laid upon the table?
  SIR GEORGE GREY, in reply, said, that the Papers referred to by the hon. Member were very voluminous, including as they did the whole of the proceedings at the trial, and therefore a considerable
  1840
  time had been required for their preparation. They would, however, be laid on the table to-morrow.

THE DEAD MEAT MARKET IN THE CITY.

  QUESTION.
  SIR MORTON PETOsaid, he would beg to ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, If he can inform the House why the Corporation of the City of London have not proceeded to construct the Dead Meat Market in Smithfield, for which an Act was obtained in the year 1860?
  SIR GEORGE GREY, in reply, said, he had possessed no means of answering the question, or giving the hon. Baronet the information he required; but that afternoon he had received a letter from the City Solicitor, written in consequence of that gentleman having seen the hon. Baronet's notice; and if the hon. Baronet moved for the letter, he would produce it.

MR. ODO RUSSELL AND THE PAPAL GOVERNMENT.—QUESTION.
LORD JOHN MANNERSsaid, he wished to put a Question to the noble Lord at the head of the Government. The noble Lord said that he would look through the despatches of Mr. Odo Russell and see whether there was anything in them which should be laid before the House for their information. He wished now to ask the noble Lord, Whether he is prepared to say whether those despatches can be produced or not?
VISCOUNT PALMERSTON: The statement made by my hon. Friend the Under Secretary of State was not founded upon a despatch, and there is no despatch that will bring out the point the noble Lord wishes to elicit. From time to time my noble Friend at the head of the Foreign Office lays before Parliament despatches which explain the course of various transactions, but in this case there is nothing at present that we are prepared to lay on the table.
LORD JOHN MANNERS: Then I understand that the statement made the other night by the Under Secretary is not founded upon any despatch at the Foreign Office from Mr. Odo Russell?
MR. LAYARD: I wish to explain. The noble Lord appears to labour under a misapprehension upon this subject. When a similar assertion was made the other evening, I refrained from saying anything,

1841
though it was my conviction that I said nothing whatever about a despatch, or anything to produce an impression upon the mind of the hon. Member for the King's County (Mr. Hennessy) that there was such a despatch. I have since referred to every report of what I had said, and I find my impression confirmed, that I never said there was a despatch, or that what I had said was founded upon a despatch.
MR. HENNESSY: I wish to ask, then, if there was no despatch, whether there was any communication or letter on the subject? When, in the course of the debate, a statement is made by one of the Ministers contradicting what has been stated in a publication which has been laid on the table by one of the diplomatists of Her Majesty's service, it is to be supposed that the Minister makes the contradiction upon authority, and certainly we all, I believe, understood that the authority the hon. Gentleman alluded to was a despatch.
MR. LAYARD: My hon. Friend, in his Question to me, said that there were three despatches, two of which had been placed on the table, and the third, which had not been produced, was referred to by me in my speech. As I have just stated, that was an entire misapprehension. What I said and repeat now is that there is a moral conviction on my mind and on Mr. Odo Russell's mind that the facts he had stated were true. I did not refer to any despatch, nor can I find that any of the reports of what I had stated will hear that construction.
LORD JOHN MANNERS: Perhaps I may be allowed to mention what the hon. Gentleman did really say. The hon. Under Secretary said—
"Mr. Odo Russell well knew upon what authority he had made the statement, and he would now state solemnly to the House that Mr. Russell had justified his statement, and showed that what he said was true."
SIR GEORGE BOWYER: I wish the Under Secretary would inform the House what were the grounds of the moral conviction which he stated to be on his mind. Has the hon. Gentleman received any communication on the subject?
VISCOUNT PALMERSTON: I must be allowed to answer the Question of the hon. Baronet. Her Majesty's Government entirely decline to furnish him or any one else with any materials out of which a quarrel can be got up and perpetuated between Mr. Odo Russell and either the French or Papal authorities.

PRISON MINISTERS BILL— [BILL 24.]

  THIRD READING.
  Order for Third Reading read.
  Motion made, and Question proposed, "That the Bill be now read the third time."—(Sir George Grey.)
  MR. BLACKsaid, that the Bill was a flagrant violation of the principles of religious liberty; and in allowing it to proceed thus far the House had made a false step, which he hoped they would at once retrace. The Roman Catholics were the only Dissenters for whose advantage the Bill was introduced, and the proposals to appoint Roman Catholic chaplains to gaols would be sure to lead to frequent angry discussion at the county meetings. It was not to be expected that sturdy Nonconformists who objected to pay church rates would willingly pay a rate which was to defray the salary of a Roman Catholic chaplain. Those who opposed church rates made a fatal blunder in supporting this Bill, and the sooner they retraced their steps the better. One effect of appointing Roman Catholic chaplains to gaols would be that they must be appointed to workhouses, for it would never be endured that chaplains were to be appointed to minister to the criminal, and not to the unfortunate and the sick and the aged. No class of Dissenters excepting Roman Catholics would ever have ministers of their denomination appointed as chaplains in gaols. His own notion of the proper plan was, that a chaplain should be appointed of the faith of the majority of the country—namely, that in England the chaplains should be Episcopalian, in Scotland Presbyterian, in Ireland Roman Catholic, with permission for the visits of the priests and ministers of the minorities, and of those other religious and benevolent persons who devoted themselves to the welfare of the prisoners. Of all the persons who visited the prisons he believed none did more good than those benevolent sympathizing Christians who went into the cells and road with the prisoners, and gave them good counsel and instruction. The practical working of the present Bill would, of necessity, interfere with all this. If a second Mrs. Fry were to wish to visit the prisoners, the Roman Catholic priest might prohibit her visits. Believing that the Bill would be a violation of religious liberty, that it would lead to angry debates, that it would be injurious to the Protestant Dissenters in England and Scotland, and that it would

  1843
  not benefit the prisoners themselves, he begged to move that it be read a third time on that day six months.
  Amendment proposed, to leave out the word "now," and at the end of the Question to add the words "upon this day six months."
  SIR GEORGE GREYsaid, the subject had been so much debated that he would detain the House for a few seconds only. The fact upon which the Bill was grounded had not been controverted—namely, that there were among the inmates of the gaols of England and Scotland several thousands of Roman Catholic prisoners, for whose religious instruction no provision had been made beyond the special request clause, the practical effect of the law being that those prisoners were altogether without religious instruction. The principle of the Bill had up to that stage been sanctioned by the House, and he trusted that they would confirm their decision by agreeing to the third reading.
  MR. NEWDEGATEsaid, the right hon. Baronet had reminded the House that there were several thousand Roman Catholic prisoners in the gaols of this country. It was to be regretted, that in proportion to the numbers of each denomination, the largest number of prisoners should be prisoners professing the Roman Catholic religion. But had one instance yet been adduced in which a Roman Catholic prisoner desiring the attendance of his priest had remained without it? Not one solitary instance. And such had of late been the increase of Roman Catholic establishments in the country that it would be most astonishing if there had been one. The fact was, the Bill did not profess to supply an absolute deficiency, but it did profess to exclude the Roman Catholic prisoners from the teaching of any but the priests of the Romish Church; and he (Mr. Newdegate) said advisedly that it did that against the will of the prisoner. That he asserted with knowledge of the fact. The point taken by the hon. Member for Edinburgh was a very valuable one. There had been no provision hitherto made for payment of Roman Catholic priests out of the rates; and when this payment was supplied from the county rates, it would rouse a determined opposition. At present, there was opposition enough to church rates; and if the Bill passed, they would not long be without opposition to county rates. On the part of the visiting justices, he would only adduce this fact. There was not one petition from visiting justices in favour of
  1844
  the measure; there were sixty-eight against it. Besides, seventy-two boards of guardians had petitioned against the Bill. They saw, as they could not fail to see, that if the measure passed with respect to prisons, the fact would be used as a ground for claiming similar legislation with respect to workhouses. It was announced by the Roman Catholic body in 1859 that they then expected the establishment of Roman Catholic chaplains for union workhouses and that step once obtained would lead to a further and larger demand. Surely that was unexceptionable testimony as to the character of the Bill. It was only a step in legislation; it was so regarded by the Roman Catholics; it was so avowed. The right hon. Baronet had stated that the Estimates of the year contained a proposal for payment of Roman Catholic visiting chaplains in convict prisons; and that the proposal was sanctioned for the first time. But how was it passed? The Estimate was taken the first night after the Easter recess. When the House met, it was very thin; and it was urged that the Estimates which stood first on the Orders ought not to be passed under the circumstances. Well, the Government postponed those Estimates, and substituted another clause, including the Estimate for visiting priests of convict prisons. The Vote thus passed the House totally without notice, and without a single Member of the House except the Government being acquainted with the circumstance. Had not such been the fact, the objection to the Vote would have been as strong as ever. But even that Vote was not so objectionable as the Bill. A Vote in the annual Estimates did not imply the establishment of an office, and yet he never knew, till the accident he alluded to occurred, that Vote to be passed uncontested. A short time since he drew the attention of the House to the fact that the right hon. Baronet had been obliged to dismiss one of these visiting priests. The right hon. Baronet refused the House the information asked on the subject. The House divided on the question late one evening, and so great was the strength of the Government that the Motion for information was rejected. But he (Mr. Newdegate) had heard more of the case since, and no Member of the Government would contradict him when he said that the clerical personage in question had urged, that in the exercise of his religious functions, he ought not to be subject to the authority of the civil Government. And this assertion was but analogous with

  1845
  the repeated assertions which had been made by Roman Catholic prelates of late in this country, that their authority was superior to, and ought not to be controlled by any secular authority of the Government of the Queen. There was another point to which he would advert. Mr. Oakeley, a very distinguished member of the Roman Catholic Church, and once a Protestant, said the Roman Catholic Church was beginning to feel her true position in this country, and that they would no longer consent to be herded with other Dissenters; and the other day Mr. Wilberforce, also once a Protestant and now an Ultramontane Catholic, stated at Liverpool that the Roman Catholic Church was already dominant in several of the Colonies, and left the inference that she would soon be dominant here. It was clear, therefore, that every hon. Member who voted for the Bill voted for a long stride in the direction of raising up an antagonistic authority in this country, and placing that authority in a position of antagonism which could not but lead to collisions, heartburnings, and strife, as it had done before. Such was the nature of the Bill. The House were proposing to inflict upon the visiting justices of the gaols a jurisdiction which it was scarcely in the power of Government to exercise—that was, to control the rapidly increasing assumptions of the Roman Catholic hierarchy. They were doing that in the face of circumstances in Europe which had proved how intolerable was the domination of that Church under the influence which now guided her, and they were doing it on the plea of humanity, when the prisoners would far rather remain, as at present, free to claim the service of their priest if they wished it, but free also to avail themselves of the assistance of the Protestant chaplain should they be so minded. And let the House remember that these men dare not declare themselves Protestants; for, if they did, circumstances had come to his knowledge which prompted him to state to the House, that on leaving prison they would find impediments interposed against their getting employment amounting to a terrific penalty. The House were about to place these Roman Catholic prisoners under that penalty—to declare themselves adherents of a Church from which he knew that many of them would be glad to escape.
  MR. ADDERLEYsaid, he could not but complain of an assumption of liberality and religious toleration on the part of the supporters of the Bill, an assumption at all
  1846
  times ungracious, and in that instance singularly ill founded; because if there was any difference as to liberality and consideration of others between those who supported and those who opposed the Bill, it would be entirely in favour of those who opposed it. The promoters of the Bill took no care of the smaller numbers of Catholic prisoners or Dissenters whose religious requirements might be unprovided for. There might be a dozen here and half a dozen there, but they might all go to perdition for anything the Bill would do for them. But whenever a certain number were congregated in one prison, who could derive no comfort from the ministrations of a chaplain of the national religion, then for the first time the Bill came with a very pretentious provision. For his part, he should wish to see some provision made for all whose consciences would be violated by the religious ministrations offered, whether few or many, and that, he thought, might be done by means of a short and simple amending Bill. If, for instance, what was called the special request clause in the existing statute of George IV. were repealed, and responsibility was thrown upon the visiting justices of saying when special spiritual attendance was required, they being, at the same time, enabled to give such remuneration from time to time to the special minister attending as they might think fit, but without establishing for him that status which the present Bill contemplated, the Legislature would, he thought, he pursuing a more satisfactory course than in establishing rival officers to those of the national Establishment in public institutions which would create mischiefs far greater than those which it was intended to remedy. In Wales the Dissenters were 90 per cent of the population, and the Bill would enable a chaplain to be appointed for every shade of Welsh dissent in every Welsh prison by the side of the Church minister. It was, he might add, quite clear that the clergy of the Roman Catholic Church in this country considered themselves and their flocks in some sort in the position of aliens, recognising, as they did, a foreign jurisdiction; a view in entertaining which he was strengthened by a case which occurred a short time ago, in which two Sisters of Charity—members of the Roman Catholic faith—having been brought before a police magistrate for begging, pleaded in excuse the permission of the Pope. That being so, it would be seen how unfit a body of men the Roman Catholic priesthood were to be paid and

  1847
  salaried officials in the public institutions of this country. Another objectionable feature of the Bill was, that it would raise a Maynooth discussion annually in every county of England to which the provisions of the Bill should be attempted to be applied, and the grounds of discussion would be always changing. The Bill, in his opinion, went far beyond the occasion, and he hoped the House, though it had arrived at its last stage, would see the expediency of throwing it out, and substituting the specific Amendment of the existing law, which was all the case required. If, however, the Bill was passed, its principle must in justice be extended to all other public institutions.
  MR. BRIGHT: Sir, as I have not troubled the House during the discussions on the previous stages of this measure, I may perhaps ask the attention of the House for a few minutes while I give my opinion of it. I agree with a great deal of what has been said by the hon. Member for North Warwickshire and the right hon. Gentleman who sits on the opposite bench (Mr. Adderley). I believe that one effect of the Bill will be to create a great deal of uncomfortableness among the class which the hon. Gentlemen represent; and it may stir up angry feeling in some counties when-the Act shall be put in force. I hope it will not; but if it should do so, it will be attributable to the very foolish excitement that was raised in this country ten or twelve years ago on the Catholic question. The right hon. Gentleman says it is the pretentious nature of this Bill he so much dislikes. I presume he would wish the Roman Catholic prisoners should have as much spiritual assistance from their ministers as the Protestant prisoners have from the clergy of their church. I do not charge the right hon. Gentleman with anything so cruel as the wish that Roman Catholic prisoners should be left without religious care while under the care of the Government; but he wishes to see this done in the kind of way that the Church—asserting its supremacy—generally desires to see Catholics and Dissenters treated. I presume he wishes that the Catholic priest shall not come to the prisoner when he thinks proper, but only when the prisoner shall think proper, and shall be paid a fee of so much as the visiting magistrates shall determine, and shall occupy a status quite different from that given to the minister of the Established Church. Understand me, I bring no charge against the right hon. Gentlemen; I do not say that they wish the Roman Catholic prisoner to be ill-treated, but that they are,
  1848
  during this discussion, leaving out of view the real wants of the Catholic prisoners, and are looking only to maintain the supremacy of their own Church. The hon. Gentleman opposite says, that in proportion the Roman Catholic prisoners are more numerous than the protestant prisoners. That arises from this simple fact, that they are a poorer class of the population, exposed to greater temptation, probably on the whole less educated, and therefore a greater number of them are under the charge of the Government, and in the public prisons. I cannot under stand the liberality of the right hon. Gentleman, who keeps his eye so fixed upon the supremacy of his own Church and the status of his own ministers, that he is ready on their account to sacrifice the obvious and plain right of those prisoners and the obvious and plain duty of the Government in regard to them. I do not want to pay I the ministers of the gaols at all; I could I recommend a better plan than that which is embodied in this Bill, or than that of the right hon. Gentleman. I do not believe that there is in this country a city in which there is a gaol in which there are Protestant and Catholic prisoners in which city you might not find benevolent and Christian men who would devote to the teaching of those prisoners all the time that is necessary, and that without any Act of Parliament to enforce it, or any regular stipend for it. But that is not a plan which the Government recommends or to which this House would be likely to consent. You adopt the other plan—that of having a minister of your own Church, to whom you give a stipend, and to whom you appoint his duties. You have within the walls of many prisons a considerable number of Catholics; upon every principle of justice and equality, as among the population of this kingdom, these prisoners have a right to be treated with the same constant care, with regard to their education and their moral and religious training, while under the care of the State, as are prisoners of any Protestant denomination, and the members of your own Church. Therefore, I who do not want to pay either Church minister or Catholic priest, cannot, in my conscience, leave things as I now find them, and am bound to vote for this Bill. I was extremely pleased to find, from the report of a former debate, that my hon. Friends the Members for Leeds and Sheffield, than whom no two men in this House better comprehend the principles of Nonconformists with regard to religious

  1849
  equality, or are better entitled to speak on behalf of that great class who are not in connection with the Established Church, proved their genuine knowledge of their own principles and their sense of what is due to Catholic prisoners by giving their support to this Bill; and I am very glad to have the opportunity of saying these few words and giving a vote in its favour.
  Question put, "That the word 'now' stand part of the Question."
  The House divided:—Ayes 196; Noes 167: Majority 29.
  Main Question put, and agreed to.
  Bill read 3°, and passed.

SUPPLY.
Order for Committee read.
Motion made, and Question proposed, "That Mr. Speaker do now leave the Chair."

THE CONVICT STUART FARQUHARSON.

  QUESTION.
  COLONEL NORTHsaid, he wished to put a Question to the right hon. Gentleman the Secretary of State for the Home Department with regard to a convict supposed to have lately returned to this country. William Stuart Farquharson, alias Frederick William Stuart, having been tried at Oxford before Mr. Baron Martin, and pleaded "Guilty" to a charge of forging the indorsement to a bill of exchange, the Judge, in passing sentence, referred to the fact that the prisoner had served as an officer in two or three militia regiments, and, by means of forged credentials, had obtained a curacy, which he held for some time, and in that capacity performed the baptismal, burial, and marriage ceremonies. Believing that his offence had been aggravated by the education and intelligence which he possessed, the Judge sentenced him to twelve years' penal servitude, at the same time expressing his regret that he was unable to award a severer punishment. The convict having been sent out to Bermuda, the right hon. Gentleman the Home Secretary, of course believing that such was the case, informed the House early in the present Session that Farquharson, with a large gang of convicts, had proceeded to Western Australia. But about ten days ago he learned, through an anonymous letter, that the Sir George Seymour, having this very Farquharson on board,
  1850
  had arrived in the Channel; and as much excitement existed in the part of the country where these evil practices had been carried on, he wished to express a hope that so dangerous a character should not obtain a ticket of leave, and be allowed to go at large. He would therefore conclude by inquiring of the Secretary of State for the Home Department, If it is true that a convict named William Stuart Farquharson, alias Frederick William Stuart, has lately arrived from Bermuda, and is now in Millbank Prison; and, if so, what is proposed to be done with him.
  SIR GEORGE GREYsaid, he did not know the history of the case till he heard it from the hon. and gallant Member opposite, but on inquiry he had learned that the man was in Millbank Prison. He did not remember stating on a former occasion that the convict, by name, had been sent to Australia, because the names were not then known to him, the selection resting with the local Government at Bermuda; but on the breaking-up of the convict establishment there 200 convicts were sent to Western Australia, and the rest had been brought home. The hon. and gallant Gentleman, however, might rest assured that Farquharson had certainly not received a ticket of leave, nor under the regulations would be be entitled to one for several years to come. He would be dealt with precisely according to the same rule as other convicts undergoing sentences of similar duration.

MALTA EXTRADITION ORDINANCE.

  QUESTION.
  SIR GEORGE BOWYERsaid, he rose to ask a Question of the Under Secretary of State for the Colonies, or the First Lord of the Treasury, regarding the circumstances under which the Royal assent was given to the Extradition Ordinance lately passed by the council of Malta, after papers relating thereto had been laid before Parliament. The proposition he wished to maintain with regard to colonies with a mere constitutional form of government, which were practically governed by the Crown, was that a reasonable time ought to elapse between the laying of the papers relating to an Ordinance passed by the Colonial Government before Parliament and the Royal assent being given to that Ordinance. In the island of Malta a constitutional form of government existed, but in reality it wan a mere form. The Governor was assisted by a Council, having legislative powers, and

  1851
  composed of a few elected members, but the majority of its members were persons holding official positions under the Crown. An Ordinance passed by the Governor in Council remained suspended for four months; and if the Royal assent were given to it within that period, it came into operation; and, on the other hand, if there was no disallowance of the Ordinance by the Crown, it by the mere lapse of time acquired the force of law at the end of the four months, and could only be repealed by another Act of Council, or by an Act of Parliament. The general practice had been not to give the Royal assent immediately, but to allow some time for consideration. Shortly before the meeting of Parliament he received intelligence that an Ordinance for extradition had been proposed by the Governor of Malta for the consideration of the Council. He was informed that it was an Ordinance of a very remarkable and unusual character, though he had been told by the noble Duke at the head of the Colonial Office that it did not include political cases. It appeared to him to be one liable to great abuse, as it included offences which might be charged merely for the purpose of obtaining the extradition of political refugees, bat at any rate it comprised many offences not to be found in treaties as to extradition between this and other countries. Under the extradition treaty with France the crimes comprised were murder, attempt to commit murder, forgery, and fraudulent bankruptcy. Under the treaty with the United States the crimes included were murder, assault with intent to commit murder, piracy, arson, robbery, forgery, and utterance of forged paper. But the offences comprised in the Malta Ordinance were fourteen in number, of the most varied description—namely, unlawful arrest, detention, or confinement for the purpose of extorting money; rape, bigamy, taking away or concealing an infant or suppressing its birth, or substituting one infant for another; wilful homicide, or an attempt to commit wilful homicide, or wilfully inflicting severe bodily harm; abortion, malversation of public officers, any offences against public credit, fraudulent bankruptcy, theft, when aggravated by violence, by means, by person, or by place; fraud, in the cases contemplated in any one of the Articles 276 to 282 inclusive of the criminal laws of Malta; arson, wilfully sinking or destroying a vessel, or exhibiting any false light or signal with intent to bring any vessel into danger; and escape from a place of punishment when
  1852
  the fugitive was under sentence for one of these offences. Considering the number and variety of these offences, there would be no difficulty, if an abuse were intended to be made of the Ordinance, in getting up a charge in Italy against some political refugee in Malta, and obtaining the surrender of the person, who might then be tried in Italy, or not tried at all, but detained for an indefinite time, until, as the hon. Gentleman (Mr. Layard) or the Chancellor of the Exchequer had observed, the people of Italy had become thoroughly prepared for trial by jury, and were able to try persons according to the forms of English law. He would remind hon. Gentlemen, that though at present his friends were political refugees from Italy, the day might come when their friends might be in that condition. He did not therefore bring the subject forward from any party motive, but simply from a conviction that such a law was liable to great abuse. If the Italian Government wished to lay hold of a political refugee in Malta, what was easier, for example, than for the police to get some abandoned woman to swear a rape against him? There were women who would swear such a charge, if necessary, against the most respectable Members of that House; and if a deposition to that effect on oath were taken before a magistrate in Italy against a political refugee in Malta, that person must be delivered up to the Piedmontese or the Italian Government, to be dealt with as they chose. It might be said, that when a person was delivered up by virtue of the Ordinance, he was not to be tried for any offence except that for which he was delivered up. But that clause was a complete delusion, for the man might be sent to a dungeon, and might remain there—as Count Christen and many other persons long remained—without any trial whatever. And then, as the Italian Government did not bind themselves to try any person surrendered for no other offence than that for which he was surrendered, this country would have no right to interfere at all. On the 10th of February he asked for the papers regarding the Ordinance, but was told he could not have them, as the matter was under discussion by the Council of Malta. He applied to the Under Secretary of State about it, and he told him that the Extradition Ordinance was of the same character as those of other countries. The Duke of Newcastle told him the same thing. He afterwards moved an Address for the papers, which was agreed to, and on the 16th of March they were laid on

  1853
  the table. His hon. Friend had full notice that he intended to bring the Ordinance before Parliament; but he found a notice in the Gazette of the 31st of March, that the Royal assent to the Ordinance had been signified in Malta, and it therefore must have been given about a week after the papers were presented to Parliament. The result was, that the Ordinance had now passed out of the hands of Parliament. Any hon. Member wishing to interfere with it must bring in a Bill for that purpose, He thought the House was entitled to some explanation from the Government as to why the Royal assent should have been given to the Ordinance before Parliament had been afforded a reasonable opportunity of objecting to it.
  MR. CHICHESTER FORTESCUEsaid, he was sorry if the hon. and learned Baronet imagined he had been deceived by any action of the Colonial Office. The real state of the case was this. Some time back the subject was brought under the notice of Her Majesty's Government by the Government of Malta, who, finding that from the position of the island they were exposed to an influx of criminals from the neighbouring countries, especially from Sicily and Italy, applied for an Extradition Ordinance. The matter had received careful consideration in the island and in the Foreign and Colonial Departments of Her Majesty's Government, and it had also formed the subject of negotiation at Turin, it being necessary that a corresponding decree should be made by the Government of Italy. The negotiations at Turin, on the part of the Maltese Government, were conducted by Dr. Dingli, a Maltese official and lawyer of the highest distinction. The result had been that in February last the Ordinance received the almost unanimous approval of the Council of Malta. About the same time the negotiations at Turin came to an end, certain modifications having been accepted. There had been no hurry in giving the Royal assent to the Ordinance; but the Government of Italy had a right to expect that such assent should be given without needless delay. The hon. and learned Gentleman urged that the mere fact of one Member of Parliament moving for a copy of such an Ordinance ought to have been sufficient to induce the Government to delay giving the Royal assent to it until he had had an opportunity of bringing the subject before the House. The hon. and learned Gentleman would not find many persons to agree with him in that doctrine. The Go-
  1854
  vernment would have been stultifying themselves if, after their long negotiations with the Government of Turin and the Colony they had longer delayed to give the Royal assent to the Ordinance. The Ordinance was passed at the request of the Government of Malta, and the Council of Malta, containing members elected by the inhabitants, had agreed unanimously to the greater part of the Ordinance. The only two points on which there was any question was, first, whether it was to be retrospective; that is, whether it should apply to persons who had committed offences before its promulgation; and next, whether the delivery of a criminal to the Italian Government should operate as a discharge of all other offences than that for which he was delivered up. The first point was settled by a clause in the Ordinance which provided that a notice of four months should be given to any person residing in Malta before it could be applied; and next, it was provided that the Ordinance should not come into effect until the Government of Malta had received from the Government of Italy a declaration protecting the person given up from prosecution for any other offence than the one for which he was delivered up. That was a protection entirely unknown in other cases. The list of offences was certainly unusually numerous; but it must be remembered that Malta was a place peculiarly exposed to be turned into an asylum for all manner of offenders. The greatest care had been taken to include in the list only offences of the gravest character, and that they should be all strictly defined. The hon. and learned Gentleman seemed to imagine that it would be easy for the Government of Italy to get hold of a political refugee by trumping up a criminal charge against him; but some degree of confidence was essential in these matters, and any Government which would act in such a way could not be dealt with by any form of treaty. The hon. and learned Gentleman's objection to the Ordinance arose, he was afraid, entirely from his unconquerable suspicion of the Italian Government. Her Majesty's Government did not believe, with the hon. and learned Gentleman, that it was necessary to provide greater safeguards against the Government of Italy than against any other Government, and they saw no reason for the suspicion and alarm which he expressed.
  MR. DARBY GRIFFITHsaid, he was very glad that the hon. Baronet the Member for Dundalk (Sir G. Bowyer) had

  1855
  turned his attention to that subject as the manner in which the Royal prerogative was exercised, with respect to the Colonies, was by no means satisfactory. It was worthy of consideration whether matters of the kind Complained of were to be done in an almost clandestine manner at a time when they might be brought under the notice of the House of Commons. He (Mr. D. Griffith) had occasion lately to ask the Prime Minister and the Solicitor General how far the prerogative of the Crown would enable them to give up any possession of a Colony without the opinion of Parliament being taken thereon. The noble Viscount at the head of the Government stated that it was the prerogative of the Crown to give up any possession without the consent of Parliament: but the Solicitor General introduced an important qualification, that Parliament was to be consulted in the case of a settlement of a country by emigrants from this country, where the colonists carried out with them the laws and institutions of the mother country, and also in the case of a Colony for which this country had legislated. This would seem to introduce a very important modification of the doctrine of the noble Lord, since it might probably be presumed that there were few Colonies or possessions of the Crown the condition of which may not have been materially affected by Imperial Legislation. It was time that the country should know what the Prime Minister could do by the use of the prerogative of the Crown without the authority of Parliament.
  Motion agreed to.

SUPPLY—CIVIL SERVICE ESTIMATES— PACKET SERVICE.
Supply considered in Committee.
(In the Committee.)
MR. PEELsaid, he rose to move a Vote on account of £250,000, as part of the year's Estimate for the packet service, and he would call attention to the circumstance which affected equally the Vote on account and the entire Vote, that not only did the Estimate enumerate in the usual manner the various services among which the sum voted was to be appropriated, but it also named one particular service for the purpose of stating that no portion of the sum to be voted would be applied to payment for that service. He would endeavour to explain why the Government had considered it their duty to take such an unusual
1856
course, but he first wished to state that among the services enumerated were four in respect of which new contracts had been either agreed to or were proposed to be entered into. Those four services were the Galway, the Brazilian, the West Indian, and the Cape. It was intended that the new contracts for all those services should not be binding until, in accordance with a Resolution of that House, they had lain on the table for the period of a month without being disapproved by the House. The Government had not been able to lay those contracts on the table up to that moment, and they trusted that, without inconvenience, it would be possible to defer taking that part of the Estimate until the contracts had met with approval. The Galway Contract was still the subject of correspondence with the company. The contracts for Brazil and the Cape were in draught, and would be shortly signed, and instructions had been given to prepare the West Indian contract. With regard to the Cape service, the old contract expired in September or October last, and the Government being dissatisfied with the amount of contribution which up to that time they had received from the Government of Cape Colony, refrained from advertising for a contract to commence from its expiration. The service was expensive, and the amount received from the Cape was inconsiderable. The Government therefore informed the Cape Government that they were not prepared to continue the service, unless the Cape would agree to bear one-half the net loss; and understanding that the requisition would be likely to be assented to by the Colony, the Government authorized the old contractors to continue the service temporarily. Upon receiving a definite answer of assent from the Cape, they advertised for tenders; and as the offer of the old company was the most favourable, they accepted it; but the Government had stipulated that the service then going on, voyage by voyage, should be paid, from the time of acceptance, at the rate of the new contract, by which a saving to the public of £1,000 a voyage would be effected. He stated this, because it was possible that a portion of the Vote on account would be applied to payments under that agreement.
He would then proceed to explain the circumstances under which the Government had introduced the special words into the Estimate to which he had referred. They had been introduced for the purpose of giving effect to a Vote of the House which was tantamount to a declaration that it

1857
did not consider that the contract of Mr. Churchward ought to be fulfilled, having regard to the circumstance that he had resorted to corrupt expedients for the purpose of inducing the Government to prolong it. As far as Mr. Churchward was concerned, it did not matter at all that the late Government was not in the least influenced by those expedients, or that the Members of the Government upon whom the responsibility of deciding rested were not even cognizant of his having resorted to those expedients. If there had been no opinion of the House upon record, it might have been objected that the Government was taking the initiative for the purpose of relieving themselves of a contract which was binding on them, and that the proper and regular course would have been to submit a Vote for services to be performed by Mr. Churchward under his contract, leaving it to the Committee to adopt or reject that Vote, having reference to the Report of the Select Committee which had had the subject under its consideration. But the case was otherwise. The opinion of the House had been pronounced, and that opinion, deliberately and solemnly pronounced at the time, had not since been reversed. It must therefore be viewed as embodying the settled conclusion of the House upon the subject, and it became the duty of the Government, as they stated at the time would be the case, to follow the course which was indicated to them by the House. Having received no intimation of any desire on the part of the House to change the opinion at which they arrived when the subject was last under discussion, the Government had prepared the Estimate conformably to that opinion.
To explain the circumstances which led the House to come to the Vote to which he had referred, he must recur to the beginning of the year 1859. At that time, Mr. Churchward was the contractor for the services from Dover to Calais, and from Dover to Ostend, under a contract which, supposing a previous year's notice had been given, would have expired in the month of June 1863. He was paid for the ordinary services £15,500 a year; and for extra services at a rate fixed by the contract Mr. Churchward, at the beginning of 1859, appeared to have been dissatisfied with the rate of remuneration which he received for the extra service. He complained that the number of Indian mails which he had to bring over from Calais by special boats had considerably increased, and also that the
1858
bulk of the Australian mails had become so large, that once a month he was obliged to provide special vessels for the purpose of transmitting them from this country to Calais. Under those circumstances, he made a further claim on the Government in January 1859. He was then asked to state what arrangements would meet the views for the future which he entertained, and he stated that what he desired was, first of all, that his contract, which was to terminate in June 1863, should be prospectively extended from that year to 1870; and next that he should have for his extra service a commuted fixed pay at the rate of £2,500 a year. Those proposals were favourably entertained by the Admiralty. They were forwarded to the Treasury with the recommendation of the Board of Admiralty that they should be accepted, and after some delay the sanction of the Treasury was given; a new contract was made, annulling that in existence, and taking effect from April 1859 to the middle of 1870, and providing also that Mr. Churchward should be paid a subsidy of £18,000 per annum. Now, it happened that the proceedings of that gentleman, to which he had just adverted, had taken place on the eve of a general election; and when the new Parliament met, a Committee having been moved for the purpose of investigating the general subject of packet and telegraphic contracts, and the relative authorities of the Executive and Parliament over those contracts, an hon. Member (Mr. Rich), now no longer in the House, called attention to the manner in which Mr. Churchward had negotiated for the extension of his contract. The consequence was, that the Committee which was appointed in 1859 proceeded in the first instance to investigate the subject of the extension of the contract, and made a Report before the end of the Session, from which he would ask permission to read an extract referring to Mr. Churchward himself. It was as follows:—
"It is in evidence before your Committee, that Mr. Churchward, one of the contractors, on the eve of the last general election, at the time when the extension of his contract was under consideration at the Treasury, volunteered his support as an influential elector for Dover to the hon. Captain Carnegie, one of the Lords of the Admiralty, if he should become a candidate for that borough, on the expectation that his contract was to be extended; and expressed his intention, if required, to vote for two Government candidates for Dover. Your Committee think it right to add, that the renewal of the contract had been recommended by

1859
the Admiralty to the Treasury at least six weeks before the date of the conversation referred to."
The Committee then went on to exonerate the Government from all blame, and proceeded to say—
"While most anxious for the fulfilment of all engagements entered into in good faith between the Government and individuals, the Committee submits for the consideration of the House whether Mr. Churchward, in having resorted to corrupt expedients, affecting injuriously the character of the representation of the people in Parliament, has not rendered it impossible for the House of Commons, with due regard to its honour and dignity, to vote the sums of money necessary to fulfil the agreement to extend his contract from the 20th of June 1863 to the 26th of April 1870."
That Report was presented to Parliament by the Select Committee in the month of August 1859, just previous to the termination of the Session. Shortly after the commencement of the next Session, an hon. Gentleman, now no more—Captain Leicester Vernon—who was a Member of the Committee, moved the following Resolution:—
"That this House, having considered the Report and the Evidence presented by the Select Commitee on Packet and Telegraph Contracts, is of opinion, that the contract entered into on the 26th of April 1859 between the Commissioners of the Admiralty and J. G. Churchward ought to be fulfilled."
That Resolution was very fully discussed, and was negatived by a majority of forty-five in a House consisting of nearly 300 Members. He did not think it, on that occasion, necessary to argue the question, whether the decision at which the Committee of 1859 arrived was or was not right. He would simply say, that the Committee was composed of Members of position and authority; that it was presided over by the hon. Member for Rochdale; that it was constituted in equal parts from the two sides of the House; and that its decisions, though not unanimous, were still carried by such large majorities as to show, that these majorities consisting of Members from both sides of the House, the decisions come to were not merely the expression of party or political views, but the result of the judgment of Gentlemen dealing with the question submitted to them for investigation in a spirit of justice and of reason. He must further observe that the conclusion at which the Committee arrived was not opposed to the probabilities in the case. There could be no doubt that it was a great object with Mr. Churchward to obtain the extension of his contract. The subsidy which he was paid, though
1860
not excessive, was certainly liberal. He had entered into a contract with the French Government, which was to last up to the year 1870, and he had frequently stated that it was impossible to work that contract profitably to himself unless he could obtain the extension for which he asked of his contract with the English Government, so as to make it conterminous with that between him and the French. The decision of the Committee under those circumstances, though there was undoubtedly conflicting testimony given before it with regard to the language used in conversation between Mr. Churchward and Captain Carnegie, yet had the advantage of having been based upon testimony which the Committee themselves heard, while they had the whole case in all its bearings and relations under their notice in one view. Hon. Members were therefore, he must say, justified in assuming that the view of the matter taken by the Committee was the true one—namely, that Mr. Churchward did offer, in conversation with Captain Carnegie, to sell his political influence in the borough of Dover as the price of the extension of his contract. The House of Commons, in 1860, had that Report before it; and being invited by a Member of the Committee to declare that the contract ought to be fulfilled, had, as he had before stated, negatived the proposal by a large majority. Now, he need not say that it could be no ordinary circumstance which could induce the House of Commons—always so anxious to give every contractor the benefit of all the engagements into which he happened to enter with the Government, even in cases where it might deem those engagements disadvantageous to the public—to decide that they would not fulfil the particular contract in question. But if there ever was a case in which the House was morally and legally right in the course which it adopted, it was the present. The offence with which Mr. Churchward was charged was a breach of the privileges of the House; it was an attempt to interfere with the freedom of election, and with the independent choice of a Member of Parliament. It was, moreover, an attempt to make that interference a groundwork for a corrupt bargain, by which he was to bind not only the Executive, but the Parliament of the country. Was it, then, natural that the House of Commons, unless obliged to do so, should give any assistance to Mr.

1861
Churchward to carry to a successful issue a contract for the attainment of which he had resorted to so corrupt an expedient? It was not a case which the House could ignore. They must cither distinctly support Mr. Churchward or as distinctly refuse to take that course, because the words of the contract were that the payment for the services to be rendered should be made out of monies to be provided by Parliament, and were inserted for the express purpose of reminding contractors that they must depend for the payment for their services upon annual sums to be freely voted by that House. It appeared to him that the House might, under the circumstances, fairly refuse to make any further provision for the services to be rendered under the contract. There were in the contract itself many conditions, the breach of any one of which would justify the Government in annulling and setting it aside. Would, then, the House of Commons require too much if it insisted upon the fulfilment of that condition which was a vital and essential part of every contract—namely, that the parties entering into it should be free from any charge of having resorted to corrupt expedients?
Some hon. Gentlemen might be disposed to observe upon the circumstance that the vote of the House of Commons to which he had been referring was pronounced in the beginning of the year 1860, and that it was now 1863; and to ask for some explanation as to what had taken place in the interval between those dates. It should be remembered that in 1859, when Mr. Churchward entered into the present contract, he had another, which would have lasted until the month of June 1863, and it was clear that he would not have surrendered that contract except in the expectation of receiving a better one in its stead; and the passage from the Report of the Committee, which he had read, showed that all they desired was that Mr. Churchward should not have the benefit of the extension of his contract from the 20th of June 1863 to the 20th of April 1870. That being the case, shortly after the vote of the year 1860, the Treasury placed themselves in communication with Mr. Churchward and the Post Office, with the view of coining to an understanding as to the manner in which the service should be performed between that date and the present time. That correspondence, which he would read, would show that the ques-
1862
tion had not been prejudiced by the contract remaining in operation up to the present time, but that the Committee was as free to deal with the matter as it would have been if it had come before it immediately after the vote in 1860. The first letter, which was from the Post Office to the Treasury, dated 19th May 1860, was to this effect—
"My Lords,—In accordance with the wish expressed verbally by Mr. Laing to Mr. F. Hill, Mr. Churchward was requested to call at this office for the purpose of discussing the course to be pursued in reference to the mail service between Dover and Calais and Dover and Ostend, under the late decision of the House of Commons; and in consequence of the personal communication which took place he has addressed a letter to this Department, in which he states that he is willing to continue to perform all the services specified in his contract of April 1859, upon the terms of that contract, up to the time when the contract of June 1855 would have expired—that is, June 1863, without prejudice to his right to submit the question of the validity of the contract of 1859 to a court of law, should the Government then offer him new terms or propose any alterations which he is unwilling to accept."
To that letter the following answer was given:—
"Write to the Post Office that my Lords have no objection to the arrangement recommended by the Postmaster General—namely, that the services between Dover and Calais should continue up to June 1863, as it would have done if the renewal of the contract in 1859 had never been obtained; with this single exception that the payment of the extra services should be made at the commuted rate of £2,500 a year, instead of by the piece, as agreed to in 1859; such a commutation appearing to be more convenient, and, on the whole, not more burdensome for the public. Under this arrangement Mr. Churchward will, of course, retain whatever legal right he may consider himself to possess in June 1863; but it must be understood that Her Majesty's Government do nothing to admit the validity of any such claims, or to prejudice the decision of the House of Commons. It must be understood, also, that the Government can only pledge themselves to propose and support in Parliament a Vote for the services as proposed up to June 1863, and cannot bind the decision of the House of Commons, though they see no reason to anticipate any difficulty in obtaining such Votes for the period in question."
That correspondence showed that the Dover and Ostend service had been carried on, up to the present time, under the contract of 1859 and the agreement made by these letters. That agreement was about to terminate, and it therefore became n question for the House to decide whether it would provide funds for the continuance of Mr. Churchward's services under this contract. He was quite aware that that question would be decided by the

1863
House upon considerations of the highest character, affecting the integrity and interest of the public service, the honour and dignity of that House, and with a due regard to what was required with a view to discourage contractors from relying upon any expedients except straightforwardness and fair dealing in negotiating with the Government to obtain contracts which they might desire.
At the same time, it might be convenient that he should state to the Committee what steps the Government had taken in anticipation of the House declining to provide funds for the continuance of that contract of Mr. Churchward after the following June. In the first place they gave a year's notice to Mr. Churchward that they should take the course which they were adopting. At present the two services from Dover were combined in one contract, but it was thought that it would be more convenient that they should be separated, and upon that footing they advertised for tenders. With regard to Dover and Ostend, they had received a tender from the Belgian Government offering to perform the service which was performed by Mr. Churchward. That service was one of three nights a week. The Belgian Government performed the service of the other three nights. They had lately established a day service on every day of the week, and they had now offered to perform the whole service for a subsidy of £4,000 a year. That was a proposal which was advantageous to this country, and it had been accepted; the acceptance being made conditional upon the refusal of the House to continue Mr. Churchward's contract after June next. [An hon. MEMBER: What did Mr. Churchward get?] It was usually estimated that about two-thirds of the subsidy paid under Mr. Churchward's contract was paid for the Ostend service. With regard to the Calais service, the Government had received several tenders, and had accepted one of a Mr. Harrington, who undertook to perform the service for seven years at the rate of £5,000 a year, receiving a premium of £5 on every occasion in which the journey was performed in less than the time allowed, and being paid for any special packets which might be employed to convey the India, China, and Australian mail. The number of special boats so required had, owing to the improved arrangements of the French railways, been greatly diminished; and therefore, at a liberal calculation, these extra payments would
1864
not amount to more than £3,000 a year, making altogether £8,000. Adding to that sum the amount to be paid to the Belgian Government, they should in the future pay £12,000 a year for what was now costing £18,600. Mr. Harrington's tender had been accepted on the same terms as that of the Belgian Government. Mr. Harrington at first said that he could not rest satisfied with a conditional contract, but he had since written to say that he did not intend to withdraw his tender, but that he was anxious that he should not be required to commence his service from the month of June, but should be allowed an interval of a few months to prepare his vessels. He had made all the observations which he thought it necessary to offer to the Committee in explanation of the Vote. His object was not to influence the judgment of the Committee, but simply to recall the necessary facts to their recollection, and to place the question in a convenient form for them to decide whether they would or would not provide funds for the future performance of services by Mr. Churchward under his contract of 1859. With these remarks, he would conclude by placing his Motion in the hands of the hon. Gentleman.
Motion made, and Question proposed,
"That a sum, not exceeding £250,000, be granted to Her Majesty, on account, towards defraying the Charge of the Post Office Packet Service, which will come in course of payment during the year ending on the 31st day of March 1864, which sum includes provision for payments to Mr. Joseph George Churchward, for the conveyance of Mails between Dover and Calais and Dover and Ostend, from the 1st day of April 1863, to the 20th day of June 1863, but no part of which sum is to be applicable or applied in or towards making any payment in respect of the period subsequent to the 20th day of June 1863, to the said Mr. Joseph George Churchward, or to any person claiming through or under him by virtue of a certain Contract, bearing date the 26th day of April 1859, made between the Lords Commissioners of Her Majesty's Admiralty (for and on behalf of Her Majesty) of the first part, and the said Joseph George Churchward of the second part, or in or towards the satisfaction of any claim whatsoever of the said Joseph George Churchward, by virtue of that Contract, so far as relates to any period subsequent to the 20th day of June 1863."
SIR STAFFORD NORTHCOTEsaid, the Vote, as explained by the right hon. Gentleman, was a very novel and peculiar one; and there had been some doubt upon his own mind and the minds of those with whom he had conferred, both as to the effect with which this Vote, if passed, would be attended, and the mode in which

1865
those who objected to the course proposed by the Government should take of giving their objections effect. But he thought, that after the answer which the right hon. Gentleman gave the other night, he might assume that by moving the omissions of all the latter part of the Vote having reference to Mr. Churchward—that was to say, of all the words following the simple appropriation of the money to the cost of the Packet Service up to the year ending the 31st March 1864—he should substantially raise the issue which those on that side of the House desired to take, and which the Government had declared they would accept as a challenge of the merits of their policy in reference to this contract. He would therefore move the omission of all words after "1864." The right hon. Gentleman the Secretary of the Treasury, in the speech he had just delivered, had rendered his task easier to himself, though not, perhaps, more satisfactory to the Committee, by resting his whole case upon the Report of the Select Committee of 1859 and on what he called the Resolution passed by the House on the 27th of March, 1860, but which was in reality no Resolution at all. [Mr. PEEL: The Vote.] The right hon. Gentleman now corrected himself; but he had spoken of it once or twice as the Resolution passed in March, 1860—resting his whole case on that Vote and that Report, the right hon. Gentleman abstained from going into the grounds on which the Committee founded its Report, or those on which the House came to its decision on the 27th of March following. Hon. Gentlemen, who had not paid any great amount of attention to the subject, might have been led by the way in which the right hon. Gentleman put the question before the House into the supposition that the proceedings of that Committee and the Vote of the Home had virtually decided the question, and that nothing was now left to the House but either to confirm or reverse a decision already arrived at. But he begged to remind the right hon. Gentleman, and to inform such Members as were not acquainted with the facts, that such was by no means a fair account of the state of the case; and in proof of that assertion he would gladly have referred to one of the Colleagues of the right hon. Gentleman, but he was sorry to see that the Chancellor of the Exchequer had just left the House without waiting to hear the answer to the speech which he had delivered from the Government
1866
Bench. In order to show that Parliament was not concluded by anything which had hitherto taken place, he would refer to the debate on Captain Leicester Vernon's Motion, brought forward on the 27th of March, 1860, which was to the effect—
"That this House, having considered the Report and Evidence presented by the Select Committee on Packet and Telegraphic Contracts, is of opinion that the Contract entered into between the Admiralty and Mr. Churchward ought to be fulfilled." [3 Hansard, clvii. 1331.]
Mr. Laing, at that time Secretary to the Treasury, resisted the Motion on the part of the Government, and contended that the question at issue was the continuation of the contract from 1863 to 1870, and he said that Mr. Churchward would be no loser by the course which the Government proposed, as the payments to him at the specified rate would be continued on the footing of the contract of 1859 till 1863; and Mr. Laing then went on to say—
"At the end of 1863 Mr. Churchward would be in as good a position as any one else, able to compete with others; or his contract might be renewed from year to year until the Government chose to call for new tenders." [3 Hansard, clvii. 1371.]
The expressions made use of by the Chancellor of the Exchequer were still stronger; for, in the course of the debate which followed Mr. Laing's speech, different Members expressed their opinion, that if Captain Leicester Vernon's Motion were rejected, the effect would be that Mr. Churchward would be punished, and punished far more severely than he deserved. The Chancellor of the Exchequer said—
"It is a mistake to suppose that Mr. Churchward is suffering in his receipts in consequence of any proceedings of the present Government. The difference between the old and the new contract is this—that the new contract gives Mr. Churchward a claim to a fixed sum, whereas under the old contract he was to charge for the special services which he performed." [3 Hansard, clvii. 1408.]
The chancellor of the Exchequer went on to say that there was no foundation for the assertion that the payment to Mr. Churchward, under the Resolution of the Committee, for services he was actually performing, would be less than that which he would be entitled to claim under the new contract; and he added—
"The real difference lies in the renewal of the contract from 1863 to 1870, and the course which Parliament may think fit to take upon the point is a matter hereafter to be decided."
In that passage all that had been said by Mr. Laing was confirmed and strengthened

1867
by the Chancellor of the Exchequer—a point which was extremely important in its bearing upon the result of the division, because if hon. Members had understood in 1860 that the question on which they were really asked to vote at the time was, whether Mr. Churchward's contract should or should not be finally put an end to, a different conclusion might, and he believed would, have been arrived at. What the Government then contended for was, that in adopting Captain Leicester Yemen's Resolution the House would be passing censure upon the Committee of 1859, and reversing the sentence of the majority of that Committee by a special vote, at the same time that they would be doing this without necessity, because Mr. Churchward was to be no worse off at the time, and his subsequent position was to be a matter for future consideration. That was the position of affairs in 1860, and the House consequently approached the subject now, not concluded by any vote, as the right hon. Gentleman the Secretary to the Treasury would have them believe, but as perfectly free to act in any way they thought proper as they were the day before Captain Leicester Vernon made his Motion. The case rested, then, upon that Report of 1859; and though it was perfectly true that the House ought to treat with every proper respect a Report emanating from a Committee so constituted, they ought not to accept its conclusions blindly. He would presently inquire into the grounds upon which those conclusions rested; at present he denied that the vote upon Captain Leicester Vernon's Motion added one feather weight to the authority of that document. In the discussion on that Motion, the Government not only chose to place the question on a false issue, but the whole course which they had since pursued, and, to use an Hibernicism, the course they had refrained from taking, told strongly against them. What was the natural and proper course for them to pursue, if they thought it a necessary consequence of the Report of 1859 that the contract should be set aside? They ought to have taken some positive definite course for placing that view before the House, and eliciting an expression of its opinion. They knew perfectly well that this contract was legally binding, and that if it were brought into a court of law they would find very great difficulty in opposing it. But the Government said, "We know it to be the desire of the House that the contract shall be put an end to." If that
1868
desire weighed so strongly with them, they ought to have brought in a Bill putting an end to the contract, and relieved themselves by an Act of Parliament from the necessity of making the payments for which it stipulated. [A laugh.] The Solicitor General laughed—he was not going to put his legal knowledge in comparison with that of the hon. and learned Gentleman; but he would ask him whether he was perfectly satisfied with the course the Government were about to pursue, and whether he thought the Vote now proposed would place the Government in an unimpeachable position in a court of law? If the Government were convinced that it was necessary to set aside this contract, in justice and in fairness they ought to have taken steps to procure from the House a positive and definite and not a mere negative decision, obtained on false pretences and false issues. So far from that, they allowed Mr. Churchward to continue operations, not under the contract of 1855, but under that of 1859. They were willing to take advantage of anything in the terms of the contract which the previous Government had concluded for them; they called on Mr. Churchward to build ships under it; they had even called on him within the last twelve months to procure two new ships at an expense of £40,000, in order to carry out the terms of that contract:—and then at last they turned round and said, "We will throw you over; we mean to give the contract to somebody else." But what became of the assurance made in the face of the House of Commons that in 1863 Mr. Churchward should be in as good a position as anybody else? Mr. Harrington, Mr. Maples, and other parties had sent in their tenders, and they were before the House. The Government knew very well that Mr. Churchward was precluded from tendering, lest his doing so might be taken hereafter in an action at law as an admission of the invalidity of his present contract. If the question had to be tried in a court of law, the Government were quite aware that they had no good and valid defence, and therefore they were desirous—he did not wish to use the word "entrap" in any offensive sense—but to lead Mr. Churchward into some act, or to induce him to make some slip, which would have the effect of placing him at their mercy. Mr. Churchward was not, as Mr. Laing said he would be, in as good a position as anybody else. He was absolutely thrown overboard, and after

1869
having served the Government well and faithfully, he now found the contract taken out of his hands and given to somebody else. The House was perfectly free to deal with the question as it thought right.
And now he would venture to say one or two words upon the inconvenience of the particular form in which the Government proposed to deal with it. There existed a legal, valid, and binding contract between Her Majesty, on the one hand, and Mr. Churchward, on the other—the Solicitor General sneered at his law, but would hardly venture to question this—and the contract would be in force until 1870. What was the defence of the Government in case Mr. Churchward, by a petition of right, sought to recover from the Crown upon a breach of contract? According to the Government, the contract provided that the money which Mr. Churchward claimed should be money voted by Parliament, and that if Parliament voted no money, then there would be no fund out of which he could claim to be paid. Now, this was a point which he (Sir Stafford Northcote) would not attempt to argue as a lawyer, but as a man of common sense, knowing something of the practices of this House; and he would ask, whether this was not the state of the case—that this House could not vote money except upon the proposal and initiative of the Ministers of the Crown? If, therefore, the Ministers declined to bring forward a Vote, how was it possible that money could be provided by Parliament to meet a claim? Or were the House to understand that the Government set up a right to act in this way with Mr. Churchward or any other contractor, for reasons which seemed to them good—first to engage that he should perform certain services, to be paid out of monies voted by Parliament, and then to decline to submit a Vote to pay for those services? Did they think that they would be able to make good such a position in a court of law? He apprehended not. The fact was, that the Government ought to have done what the right hon. Gentleman himself admitted was natural. They should have come forward and proposed this Vote on behalf of Mr. Churchward, at the same time, if they thought it necessary, calling attention to the fact, that the House of Commons had, by means of its Select Committee, and also, to a certain extent, by the rejection of Captain Vernon's Motion, shown a dis-
1870
inclination to provide the money; and having made this proposal as Ministers of the Crown, they should have left it to the House of Commons to decide whether they would vote or refuse the money. But what would a court of law say to their defence that no money had been provided by Parliament to meet Mr. Churchward's claims, when they themselves had taken no means to provide the requisite funds? He did not pretend to say what view a court of law might take; but the probable result would be a verdict for Mr. Churchward, and an awkward collision between this House and the courts of law. He hoped the House would well weigh the possible inconvenience and danger of such a result, before the termination of this debate. But there was another point to which he would refer. There was nothing whatever in this particular form of Vote which, if it were adopted, would at all prove that the House declined to give any money to Mr. Churchward. It was said, indeed, that the money now asked for was not on account of Mr. Churchward's contract; but there was nothing to prevent the Government from proposing a Vote on account of that contract to-morrow. Therefore, until the House passed the Appropriation Act, it would be impossible for Mr. Churchward to know that the House really refused to provide this money. Then what would be his position? His contract came to an end on the 20th of June. The Appropriation Act could not be passed for at least a mouth afterwards, and meanwhile Mr. Churchward would have no right to recover in any court of law until he could show that the contract was broken. His action, therefore, must be brought later in the year; but if meanwhile he failed in performing any part of his services, this would be used against him. From the 20th of June, therefore, until the Appropriation Act passed, and perhaps longer, he would have to run his boats in order to show his readiness to fulfil his contract, or the Government would have a remedy against him, though there would be no money to pay him with. Did the House intend that Mr. Churchward should run his boats empty until the Appropriation Act passed, or until he had obtained the verdict of a court of law, or even until 1870?—because it must be remembered that the refusal of the House to vote the money this Session did not prove that it would not be provided before 1870. These were some of the in-

1871
conveniences of the course proposed. And now what were the advantages put forward on the other side as resulting from the termination of this contract? He was quite aware that a more important question was behind; he would deal with that by-and-by; but, supposing that no corruption was imputed, what were the advantages of the new arrangement which the Government offered? The right hon. Gentleman had paraded them before the House, and had said that he was going to propose arrangements which would save the country £6,000 out of £18,000 a year. Now, in the first place, he (Sir Stafford Northcote) complained very much of the extreme disadvantage at which the House was placed by the conduct of the Government. What, after all, was the main object which the Committee of 1859 and 1860 had in view with regard to these contracts for mail packet services? It was to bring all the details of all contracts as much as possible under the notice of the House before the Government came to any conclusion respecting them. Yet on that very evening the Government had been on the point of asking the House to vote the money for four new contracts of which the House knew nothing. Had it not been for the notice of the hon. and learned Member for Greenock (Mr. Dunlop), the Government would have taken this objectionable course, and would have given the go-by to the Resolutions of the Committee upon which, for this particular purpose, the Government set such store. With respect to Mr. Churchward, the House was in possession of no correspondence; there was not a line to show how the Government had been dealing with Mr. Churchward since 1859. The House had, indeed, been put in possession of one or two letters which had passed between the Treasury and the Post Office, but it had none of the communications with Mr. Churchward himself, and none relating to these tenders—nothing to give the House the information they ought to possess. They had heard of Mr. Harrington having made and withdrawn a tender, and of Mr. Harrington having not withdrawn it, or having withdrawn his withdrawal. In point of fact, after the right hon. Gentleman's statement, he was utterly at a loss to know what Mr. Harrington had or had not done, and he hoped that this information would be given to the House in a way in which it might be understood. This much was pretty clear
1872
—that on the 21st of June there would be mails to carry and no contractor except Mr. Churchward to carry them; because Mr. Harrington, if his tender were accepted, would not be ready for at least six months from that time. Mr. Churchward's readiness to assist the public was so well known that, no doubt, the Government reckoned upon getting his services for nothing; and unless they so reckoned, what else did they look to? He had asked the noble Lord the Secretary to the Admiralty that evening, whether any communications had taken place between the Post Office and the Admiralty on this subject; and the effect of the noble Lord's reply was, that there had been such communications—that the Post Office authorities wished to know whether the Admiralty would provide vessels to help them out of the scrape; to which the Admiralty said, "It would be very inconvenient; they could not do so at all." Then what was to be done? All sorts of sinister rumours prevailed, though he did not himself attach too much weight to them. It was said that communications were going on with the French Government; but he did not know whether this was possible, because it happened that Mr. Churchward was the contractor with the French Government, and the Government would hardly ask him to do as a contractor with the French Government what as an English contractor they would not permit him to do. Or were the Government going to cut off a mail, and to reduce the service from two mails a day to one, for that was reported to be their idea? Persons who were interested in the postal communications between England and France were becoming very uneasy, and all the more so because of late those communications had grown to be of great importance and necessity, partly in consequence of the commercial treaty, and partly also owing to the acceleration of the postal services across the Channel, which was due to Mr. Churchward. Probably the right hon. Gentleman had not thought it worth his while to read the blue-book further than the Report of the Committee; but the evidence of Mr. Hill and of other officers of the Government, who were by no means very favourable to Mr. Churchward, contained a distinct acknowledgment that it was owing to Mr. Churchward's exertions, his public spirit and ingenuity, first, that a contract service had been established at all between Dover and

1873
Calais, instead of the old Admiralty packet service which used to cost £25,000 a year, which Mr. Churchward persuaded them to give up, but to which the Government now seemed willing to return; and, next, that it was also owing to Mr. Churchward that the mails between England and France had been accelerated by twelve or, as to some parts of the country, by twenty-four hours. Now, he asked the Government, what were they going to do? They said they had made a good bargain with the Belgian Government, and another good bargain with Mr. Harrington, which had never come before the House. He (Sir Stafford Northcote) admitted that the bargain with the Belgian Government, as it appeared on paper, might be a good one; for if a person already performed half the service, he was in a better position to perform the other; half than an independent party could be. This subject was mooted on a former occasion, and Mr. Churchward, having the English half of the service, had offered to take the Belgian half on the same terms as those now spoken of; but the Belgian Government declined to have their mails carried by another Government; they said they looked on the carriage of their mails as a national undertaking. However, in this country, mail contracts were at present out of favour with a certain class of politicians who had great influence with her Majesty's Government, who said that we ought not to keep up such a service when we could get our mails carried without it. But he asked whether this matter of carrying the Belgian mails could not have been arranged with Mr. Churchward himself? This point was one that had long been thought of as connected with that gentleman's contract. On a former occasion, when the question of renewing Mr. Churchward's contract was under consideration, it was one of the reasons the Postmaster General gave for not supporting a renewal—that the Belgian Government might be desirous to take the matter into their own hands. That did not escape the notice of the Committee in 1859; and in his evidence before that Committee he himself (Sir S. Northcote) referred to it as a matter of speculation, alluding at the same time to the fact that Mr. Churchward had proposed to come to terms with the Belgian Government in the event of such an offer being made, or to make arrangements with our Government on the question of withdrawing from that portion of the service. That was the position taken by Mr. Churchward in
1874
1859, and to that position he had adhered up to the present time; but the Government had not allowed him to occupy as advantageous a position as that held by any independent person, and he had not been able to come forward in the manner he would otherwise have done. If his right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer were present, he should appeal to him as to whether Mr. Churchward had not expressed his willingness to discuss with the Government any proposal they might like to make for the purpose of revising or altering any part of the service. If they had any feasible proposition to make on this point, it would have been perfectly possible for them to make it to Mr. Churchward; and he undertook to say it would have been met in the most friendly and liberal spirit by him. He set aside that branch of the case, because they could not look to any saving as regarded the Belgian service. It was to the Calais contract they must look for the saving. The two services did not stand on the same footing. In the evidence given by him in 1849, Captain Baldock gave an account of the relative cost of the two services. He said that the Calais service represented two-fifths, and the Ostend service three-fifths, of the whole. That was for the mere ordinary service, without the additional services which of late years had been paid for by the Government. Those additional services related to the conveyance of the Indian mails. Mr. Churchward's contract was £15,500 a year for the two services. Two-fifths of that was £6,200, which would be the cost of the Calais service without the extra services. The payment for the additional services brought that amount up to £8,700. The tender of Mr. Harrington was £8,000, as against £8,700; but the Indian mail was to be specially paid for, which would make a difference of £360. It was also to be observed that Mr. Churchward performed, within his contract, twelve voyages a year to carry distinguished personages, the value of which was represented by £240 a year. Adding those two sums to the £8,000, Mr. Harrington's contract was brought up to £8,600—so that there was only a difference of £100 between the two contracts, which would be the whole saving on the Calais service. [Mr. PEEL: The £8,000 is for one year. It is not that amount for seven years.] Well, but which of these two alternatives had been accepted? If

1875
£8,000 were to be paid, there were in addition premiums which the right hon. Gentleman proposed to give for fast passages. Mr. Churchward informed him, that taking the voyages he had performed last year, or, at all events, taking what he was able to do now, he could earn £1,200 a year by the proposed premiums on quick voyages. That, of course, was a matter of speculation; but Mr. Harrington, or any one else, might reasonably look forward to making a good deal of money by those premiums. There would, therefore, be not only no saving, but an actual loss on Mr. Harrington's contract. Was this contract to be for a year, and was that year to include the six months during which Mr. Harrington was to do nothing? He conceded to the right hon. Gentleman that Mr. Harrington might have made a tender somewhat under that of Mr. Churchward; but what assurance had they that the former gentleman would be able to carry out his contract? They knew that before now contractors had come forward and made ridiculously low offers, which in practice they had not been able to carry out. He remarked that the late Mr. Wilson came down to that House, and boasted when he made, what he called an extremely good bargain with the European and Australian Company, and set aside the well-known Peninsular and Oriental Company. What had been the result? The company to whom the contract was given had not a single vessel ready. They were in the position which Mr. Harrington appeared to be now placed in. They had to ask for time; they could not begin when they ought to have commenced; and when they did begin, they almost at once broke down. At last the thing was given up in disgust, but not until the colony had been almost driven to rebellion by the way in which the mail service had been performed; and the Government had to go back to the Peninsular and Oriental Company and give them higher terms to conduct the service than they had offered to do it for originally. When such contracts were first entered into, and before they were put to the test, they answered very well for the purposes of parade, and to afford matter for speeches on the hustings; but should not the Government look for an assurance that the work would be done? Mr. Churchward had overcome his first difficulties. It was true, that when he commenced the service, he was obliged to come and ask for an extension of time and for more assistance, and that for a long time
1876
his contract had been kept on its legs by the assistance of the Government; but those difficulties having been overcome, and he now having the French contract as well as the English, and being able to work them together, there was every guarantee that he would perform the service in the highly efficient way it was at present carried out, and make the contract beneficial to himself and to the public. The Postmaster General had acknowledged in the most public manner in Parliament that the service was most admirably conducted. They knew nothing of Mr. Harrington, but his withdrawals and re-withdrawals showed that he had no great confidence in himself. He was certainly causing a momentary inconvenience to the public service, and it might lead to much greater inconvenience in future. And what, besides, were the Government going to do? For such a saving as was to be effected in this case they were going, as far as possible, to bring about a collision between the House of Commons and a court of law. They were going to subject Mr. Churchward to the extreme inconvenience of running his boats without payment—they were going to establish a precedent which would render it impossible for Government contractors to enter into contracts for the public service; and, further, they were going to run the risk of all these inconveniences without the prospect of any solid advantage. He quite understood the nature of the answer which the Government would probably make, and he should not shrink from grappling with it. No doubt they would admit all the inconveniences, all the detriment, and all the possible dangers, and then would turn round and say, "It is no fault of ours; it is the fault of the Government which made this contract, and of Mr. Churchward, who entered into this contract in a corrupt manner. It is better for the House of Commons to run all this risk and inflict all this injury than to sanction, even in an indirect manner, a transaction tainted with fraud and corruption." He admitted that that would be a perfectly good answer, but he denied that there was the slightest evidence to bear out this charge of corruption. The right hon. Gentleman did not appear to have read the Report, and he denied his right to come down, and in that off-hand manner make a charge against Mr. Churchward, as if it were proved, and everybody admitted it—he denied the right of the right hon. Gentleman to get up and fling the Report in

1877
their faces, and at the same time ignore all the evidence published with the Report. After having quoted the Report, the right hon. Gentleman went on to say that it was perfectly clear that Mr. Churchward had offered to sell his vote to Captain Carnegie for an extension of the contract. But where was the evidence of that? Taking every word of the evidence of Captain Carnegie to be strictly and literally true it amounted to this—that Mr. Churchward, before a word was said about the contract, had offered his support to Captain Carnegie, and after telling him what support he was likely to obtain at Dover, and advising him as to the sort of opponents whom he would have to meet, he went on to make an allusion to his anxiety about his contract, and, added Captain Carnegie, "I thought the matter so imprudent that I left the room, and the subject dropped." Viewing Captain Carnegie's statement in the most unfavourable light, it was simply this:—Mr. Churchward wished to support the Admiralty candidates. Some people said that he intended to give one vote to Captain Carnegie and the other to Mr. Osborne, so that he might have a friend on both sides; and his reference to the contract was simply to interest Captain Carnegie in pressing forward the settlement of his contract, which it had been proposed to defer till after the election. Where was the evidence of a corrupt bargain having been made, or attempted to be made? The facts of the case were very simple and straightforward. In the beginning of January, long before a dissolution was thought of, an application was made by Mr. Churchward for payment in respect of his additional services. The question whether he ought to be compensated for those services was discussed between the Admiralty and the Post Office and the Treasury, towards the latter part of January, long before the dissolution; and Mr. Churchward, having been asked by the Government to name the form in which he would take compensation, asked for a sum of money smaller than that to which the Government thought he had a right, and requested to have his contract extended to 1870. The Admiralty considered his proposition, reported favourably of it, and recommended it to the Treasury. This was long before the dissolution was thought of. The Postmaster General referred the matter back to the Treasury early in March, and his report was against the extension of the contract; but all Postmasters Gene-
1878
ral, since Lord Canning's time at least, had opposed the extension of contracts which had some time to run. This, too, was long before the dissolution. The report was then considered at the Treasury by the Chief Clerk, who made a minute approving of the Post Office view of the question, and it then went to the Permanent Under Secretary, who took the Admiralty view. All these steps were taken long before Lord Derby's Government was supposed to be in peril, and before a dissolution was thought of; and the matter was considered entirely on its merits. But just at the moment when the question came before him (Sir Stafford Northcote) as Financial Secretary, the division took place in that House which ultimately led to the dissolution. That was the state of the case when the matter came before him as Financial Secretary of the Treasury. It came before him with this even balance of opinion on one side and the other. He looked hastily at the papers, and his first impression was to take the view of the Post Office. Just at that time his right hon. Friend the Member for Petersfield (Sir William Jolliffe), who was then busily engaged in the conduct of the business of the elections, understanding that Mr. Churchward had some sort of business in hand at the Treasury, but not knowing what it was, warned him (Sir Stafford Northcote), that as Mr. Churchward was a man closely connected with electioneering politics, it would be better to get his business done, if possible, before the dissolution came on, or else to put it off until after the election, so that people might not be able to say that it had any connection with the election. He then made a minute to the effect that the reasoning of the Postmaster General against the contract was apparently right, and that he thought it was desirable that Mr. Churchward should take the larger sum and relinquish the extension. He requested Mr. Hamilton to communicate with Mr. Churchward, and see whether some arrangement could not be come to with him on this basis. Some days elapsed, and Mr. Churchward wrote back pointing out that the extension was the only thing that would serve his purpose, and that the other arrangement was not suitable. Bearing in mind, then, the advice which had been given him by his right hon. Friend the Member for Petersfield, and feeling that any thing done in the matter at that moment might be misconstrued, he put the papers aside and

1879
did nothing on them for a week. Of course, he had heard nothing whatever at this time of the conversation between Captain Carnegie and Mr. Churchward in the private room at the Admiralty. At the end of a week he had a conversation with Mr. Churchward at the Treasury, in which he stated to him, as one reason for not proceeding with the matter at once, that there was an election going on, and that what took place during the election was likely to be misconstrued. Mr. Churchward said then to him (Sir Stafford Northcote), as he had said to Captain Carnegie, that that was very hard upon him; and certainly a more reasonable remark for him to make could not be conceived. It did seem hard on Mr. Churchward, that after he had been urging the matter on for months, and when, after the long delays of the public offices which had annoyed and injured him, it was just arriving at a solution, he should be told that it was to be put off for another five or six weeks on account of an election with which it had nothing in the world to do. It was that consideration which decided him to take up the matter again, and to endeavour to come to a decision upon it. He felt that he could not justify to himself the injury which he was doing Mr. Churchward by delaying the settlement of a matter which was in no way connected with the election. He felt, too, that if he had put off the decision, he would not have avoided the imputation of corrupt motives. If he had at last granted the extension, his doing so would have been attributed to electioneering motives, and he would have been accused of trying to conceal them by the delay. If, on the other hand, he had said that he could not recommend the confirmation of the contract, it would then have been said that he was playing Mr. Churchward false—that Mr. Churchward was tempted to vote for the Government candidate by this matter being held in suspense, and then, when that service was got from him, his request was in the end rejected. Under all the circumstances, he fell that he should be doing a great hardship and injustice to Mr. Churchward, and serving no purpose whatever, if he had acted in that manner. He should not have cleared his own character from any suspicion which might attach to it, or have been able to separate the matter from the election in the minds of those who were determined to connect them. This was a case in which he stood before
1880
the House of Commons and the public. If the Members of that House thought that he was actuated by a desire to tempt Mr. Churchward to serve his party, he ought to be stigmatized; but if they thought he did not deserve to be stigmatized, then he could not see how Mr. Churchward should be stigmatized. It appeared to him that the whole matter turned on that point. If the Committee which sat in 1859 had reported against him, his course would have been plain. He should have appealed from the Committee to that House; and if the House had confirmed the Committee's Report there would have been no other step for him to adopt but to resign his seat in that House. The Committee, however, were just enough, after hearing all the evidence, to pronounce a clear and unanimous verdict, acquitting himself and other Members of the Government. At the same time, there was connected with that acquittal that which was to his mind most painful—an accusation stigmatizing a man who could not be regarded as guilty, unless he (Sir Stafford Northcote) likewise was guilty, and who must be innocent if he was regarded as innocent. Let the House take the conversation which Captain Carnegie said took place between him and Mr. Churchward, and see what it amounted to. According to one hypothesis it was perfectly consistent with innocence for Mr. Churchward to say, that deferring the matter of the contract until after the election was too hard; but if it was meant to imply that by deferring it until after the election some one meant to secure Mr. Churchward's services for the election by keeping this matter as a bait for those services, then a case of guilt was established; but not so much against Mr. Churchward as against those who held out the bait. If wrong had been done, it had not been done by Mr. Churchward, but to Mr. Churchward. There was nobody in a position to defer the contract but himself and the then Chancellor of the Exchequer; and as that right hon. Gentleman acted on his report, he (Sir Stafford Northcote) alone was guilty of this gross breach of public duty, if it was committed at all. Let the House consider what allegations were made, and what were proved. The allegations made by Mr. Rich and the Member for Kilmarnock (Mr. Bouverie), resting merely, as they stated, on reports which they had heard, were of the most serious character. They reflected on the Government of Lord Derby, and

1881
on certain officers of that Government, and they went to the length of representing that those officers who intended in the first place to refuse, or who had refused, this contract, were induced afterwards to grant it, in order to obtain the services of a political partisan during the election. That was said, but it was not proved. He had never seen Mr. Churchward except in connection with this contract, and he was not likely to see him again, but he felt that injustice was done to the man. He had often and often thought the matter over, and cross-questioned himself frequently as to the motives with which he and Mr. Churchward acted, and he was perfectly satisfied that Mr. Churchward acted with entire good faith from the beginning to the end. That gentleman argued his case extremely well, and a great deal was to be said on that side of the question. He was satisfied at the time, and to this day he remained satisfied, that the bargain made by the Government with which he was connected was a good, fair, and reasonable bargain; at any rate, he protested its being upset in a manner which condemned and cast a stigma on a man on whom he did not believe that in this respect any stigma should rest. The right hon. Gentleman (Mr. Peel) had appealed to the House to decide this question on high ground, declaring that a regard for the purity and good character of that House should be superior to all other considerations. But could they, he asked, determine the matter in the way proposed? They had already passed a vote of acquittal on those, who must have been the tempters, and a vote of censure on the man who, if there was any temptation, must have been the tempted. How would this be regarded by foreign countries and the English public when they saw the House of Commons, after investigating a matter involving so serious a charge against Members of the Government of the day, having seats in that House, come to a verdict absolving those Gentlemen who were members of their own assembly, and at the same time practically reverse that sentence by passing a vote of censure on the contractor, who was not there to defend himself? The course pursued struck him as being most unfair and un-English. Mr. Churchward was never allowed to come before that House, or to go before a court of law to make his defence. Mr. Churchward had expressed his readiness to have the case argued in a court of law, and to
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have witnesses examined on oath; and it was the case that in the Dover Election Committee, where witnesses were examined on oath, the allegations of corruption against the former Government were not proved. Within the last few months Mr. Churchward had offered again to refer this matter either to a court of law or to the arbitration of Sir John Coleridge or Mr. Stuart Wortley. If they allowed Mr. Churchward to be thus ousted and thrust aside, they would throw a stain upon the character of the House which it would be difficult to wipe away. He should apologize to the Committee for saying that the only case which he could compare with such a proceeding was one which happened when he was at school. A boy threw a book across the schoolroom at another boy, and hit him on the head; the schoolmaster, who did not see who threw the book, seized the boy who was hit—"Because," said he, "as I cannot find the boy who threw the book, I will punish you at whom it was thrown." So it was with the Government; as they could not find the proper person to punish, they said they would punish the man of whom they only knew that he had been their faithful contractor for a number of years, that he had done good service, that he was pressing his claim at a moment when he was in considerable difficulty—and pressing it in perfect good faith, because, at that moment, an election took place with which he had nothing more to do than any other man in England. He would appeal to the justice of the House of Commons against such a proceeding. He begged to move to omit all the words in the Resolution after "1864."
Amendment proposed, to leave out all the words after the words "March 1864," to the end of the Question.
Question, "That the words proposed to be left out stand part of the proposed Resolution,"
MR. E. P. BOUVERIE: I think, Mr. Massey, this is a very unusual proceeding. I never remember a case in which an Amendment on the object or destination of a Vote has been moved in a Committee of Supply. I always understood that a Committee of Supply might refuse a Vote or diminish it; but the proposal on the part of the hon. Baronet is to amend the Resolution; and if we once allow a Vote of Supply to be amended, we shall then embark in a career which will enable us at any

1883
future time to alter the financial constitution of this House. The hon. Baronet said it was the rule that no money should be granted except upon the application of the Crown; but if we are to amend the destination of Votes of Supply, then in point of fact we altogether vary the destination of the Votes, and may grant money for purposes for which the Crown never asked it. But I must say I do not look upon the hon. Baronet (Sir Stafford Northcote) as the original offender in this matter. I think the offence consists in proposing a Vote on such conditions as these. It is inconsistent with the functions of a Committee of Supply to be asked to express an opinion on a matter upon which it is the duty of the House itself to express an opinion. All the functions of a Committee of Supply are to grant a Vote, to refuse it, or to diminish it. But what has been sought in the present case is to obtain a definite expression of opinion as to what shall be done with respect to a particular contract with a particular person. Now, that is not one of the constitutional functions of this Committee. Such an opinion might be fairly sought from the House for the purpose of guiding its actions or deliberations, but it is not one which we as a Committee of Supply can be called upon to give. Was it ever known that a Resolution in Committee of Supply like this was ever reported to the House? Supposing this Resolution carried, and that you, Mr. Massey, bring up the Report from the Bar, and that the Clerk read it at the table, and the House be asked to agree to it. In that case the House would be asked to agree, not to the grant of a sum of money, but to something which is absolutely irrelevant. There is really a blot on this proposal. I must say I think the proposal in this shape involves a question far more important as regards the functions of this House than any matter relating to Mr. Churchward. I would submit then, to the authorities of the House, whether it will not be worth while to deliberate on this matter before we are asked to do that which has never yet been done in Committee of Supply, and before we adopt a course which is a manifest departure from the recognised usages of Parliament.
MR. WALPOLE: There is a great deal of force in what has fallen from the right bon. Gentleman (Mr. E. P. Bouverie); but he made one observation in which I do not concur. The right hon. Gentleman says the Amendment is one to which we
1884
ought to take exception, though my hon. Friend (Sir Stafford Northcote) was not the original offender, inasmuch as the offence—if offence it be—consists in the proposal of the Government. Now, I think that my hon. Friend, by his Amendment, will set the Committee of Supply right, because, by leaving out all the words after "1864," he thus puts the Resolution in the proper shape. I entirely concur with my light hon. Friend as to the unconstitutional course of taking a Vote in Committee of Supply in this way. You are asking a Committee of Supply to decide a question which the House ought to decide. What will be the consequence of taking the Vote in that way? The Vote will be reported; and when it is reported, are you going to embody it in the Appropriation Act? Here we are in Committee of Supply, to discharge certain functions as to the way a particular sum of money is to be voted. But you are indirectly asking us to decide as to a particular course. The best way, perhaps, for us to act would be, to put it to you, Mr. Massey, to say whether, without moving the Amendment, we ought not to take notice at once that the question ought not to be put in that form. But if you, Sir, think it ought—and upon that point I think my right hon. Friend's speech conclusive—I would submit whether you have any precedent of a Resolution having been put in that way; and if you have no precedent, the Committee of Supply would do well to pause before it passes the Resolution.
MR. MASSEY: The Vote proposed by Her Majesty's Government is certainly one of a very special character; but I do not consider it any part of my duty to pronounce an opinion as to the discretion of Her Majesty's Government in submitting such a Resolution to the Committee. The question I have to determine is whether the Amendment which has been moved by the hon. Baronet the Member for Stamford is in order. Her Majesty's Government proposes a Vote which would include a sum of money for a service to which they desire no part of the sum to be applied; and to effect that object they have appended to the Resolution certain words restricting the appropriation of the money. The object of the Amendment is to remove that restriction; it does not enlarge the Vote or divert the Vote from any purpose to which it would otherwise have been applicable. Therefore, so far as the Amendment is concerned—and that is the only

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question I have to deal with at present—I have no hesitation in saying that it is admissible.
SIR MORTON PETOsaid, that when he stated that in 1860, when the question of the contract was before the House, he had voted with the majority, it would not be supposed that in the observations he was about to address to them that he had any particular sympathy for Mr. Churchward. But he felt that the question submitted for consideration was far removed from party or political considerations. That they should be called upon to go into a question which ought to have been settled three years ago was not fair either to the House, the late Government, or to Mr. Churchward. The Government, from the way they had acted, had practically shut the door against themselves. If they said to Mr. Churchward, "We will not recognise in any way your contract of 1859, but will take the opinion of the House upon it," their conduct would have been straightforward. But they did nothing of the kind. They made payments under the new contract, gave orders to their officials to act upon that contract, and, moreover, they were perfectly prepared to take the benefits which the new contract gave them over the old. That being so, the Committee ought not to have heard anything more of that contract that night. It had not been shown that Mr. Churchward had been a defaulter, or that he had not fulfilled his contract. He thought that the Government would have exercised a sounder discretion in burying the heartburnings and political animosity of a previous election. He was sorry that the Government had thought it necessary to put the question before the House of Commons. If the Government had considered it right to bring any substantive Motion before the House of Commons, it ought to have been done three years ago.
MR. AYRTONsaid, he wished to ask the hon. and learned Attorney General whether a Vote taken in the manner proposed, would interfere with the assertion of any legal right which Mr. Churchward might be supposed to possess against the Government.
THE ATTORNEY GENERALsaid, that any legal right which Mr. Churchward might have under the latter contract would remain unaffected by any decision of the House, except in so far as upon the proper construction of the terms of the contract the refusal of the House to vote the money for payment of Mr. Churchward would afford a defence in a court of law.
MR. AYRTONsaid, that if the effect of the proposed proceeding would be to prejudice Mr. Churchward's rights before a court of law, the House ought to hesitate to adopt it. Whatever the merits or demerits of the case might he, Mr. Churchward ought to be able to assert his rights unembarrassed by the decision of the Committee. Apart from that objection, it was both perplexing and embarrassing to propose a Vote for the packet service and then to introduce into it a parenthesis about Mr. Churchward. The Government had an obvious course to pursue if they wished to raise the question. They should have brought in a separate Estimate for that particular service, and allowed the Committee to proceed with the usual estimate for the general service. There was another very great objection to discussing the question at that time, inasmuch as the Committee were passing a Vote on account. If they were voting the Estimate itself, there would be a proper mode of raising the question on two items—one of £8,000 for the mail service from Dover to Calais, and one of £4,000 from Dover to Ostend. The House would then be told that it was a new contract, and they could ask to see it. He would recommend that the Government should be content to take a Vote on account, and then, when the Committee came to the Estimate in detail, it would be competent to any hon. Member to move to omit the items relative to a new contract, as a violation of good faith. If the Government declined to adopt that suggestion, he should vote for the Amendment.
THE ATTORNEY GENERALsaid, he differed from the hon. Member for Finsbury (Sir Morton Peto) in this—that while he took part in the discussion and the division when the proposal was made to the House three years ago that the contract of 1859 ought to be carried out, his opinion remained unchanged. But he had not risen for the purpose of discussing the evidence upon which the Report of the Select Committee was founded, or the sufficiency of that evidence to warrant the conclusion at which it arrived. His object was simply to point out why the present form of bringing the matter before the House of Commons had been adopted. The Report of the Select Committee was entitled to be much respect that the matter could not be permitted to rest there. The proposal to which he referred was also rejected, and the Government thought it unbecoming, in the face of that double expression of opinion, to proceed to ask for Supply in the ordinary

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form, with the intention that money should be voted to Mr. Churchward in prolongation of the contract until 1870. The correspondence read by his right hon. Friend (Mr. Peel) clearly showed that all the arrangements under which, from the time of the Vote in 1860, Mr. Churchward had carried on the packet service, were arrangements to which he was a consenting party. That being so, the question remained, if the terms in the contract to which reference had so frequently been made—if the words "monies to be provided by Parliament," had any force, did it not follow that Parliament in one form or other must have the opportunity of expressing its opinion upon the question? If that was nut intended, then the terms he had quoted were a mere waste of words, and were a semblance and pretence of a condition, without being a condition at all. That brought them to the question, was that the proper form? Well, unless it was, be confessed that he was at a loss to imagine what form could be the proper one for submitting the matter to their consideration. He would admit that it was a special and unusual form, as special and unusual as the transactions out of which it sprang. Following a special Report by a Committee and a special Vote of that House, it would be very wrong indeed if the Vote taken under these special circumstances did not present some special features.
MR. MALINSsaid, that he also took part in the debate of 1860. Like his hon. and learned Friend, he retained the opinions he expressed then, but he was happy to say they were totally different from those of his hon. and learned Friend. He was sorry that his hon. and learned Friend had committed himself to the opinion that the course proposed was a proper course, for he (Mr. Malins) thought it was as shabby and unbecoming a proceeding as ever was adopted by any Government. The Committee would perhaps allow him to draw attention to the fact that the Vote was a Vote on account; and when they were taking a Vote on account on the 18th of May, one might have supposed that the Government would have been satisfied to take a Vote which would clear them from all payments up to the 20th June. The contract of Mr. Churchward of 1855 lasted until the 20th June. The Government, in taking a Vote on account, went out of their way, and adopted a course which he believed to be thoroughly unconstitutional. While making a provision for the payment of Mr. Churchward for
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the conveyance of mails between Dover, Calais, and Ostend to the 20th June 1863, they went out of their way to ask the Committee to do what was not its function—to pronounce a judicial decision against Mr. Churchward—before the Estimate for the services performed subsequently to the 20th June were brought under consideration. The precise dates were important. The question was thoroughly discussed in 1860, on that memorable 27th March; and although there was a majority of forty-five against the hon. Member who then brought forward the question, and in favour of the Government, yet there was an explicit declaration made by the Government that the discussion was not in any way to prejudice Mr. Churchward. [The CHANCELLOR of the EXCHEQUER: What declaration?] He supposed the right hon. Gentleman was not in his place when it was read that evening. He did not wonder that the Chancellor of the Exchequer was taken by surprise. [The CHANCELLOR, of the EXCHEQUER: Hear, hear!] The Chancellor of the Exchequer would be surprised when he referred to that debate, and read his own words. But, under these circumstances, he asked if that was a fair course for the Government to take? He never for one moment supposed, until he received a note that morning, that the question of Mr. Churchward was again to be brought before the House, because if any result was to flow from that debate on the 27th March 1860, he, as a reasonable man, thought that contract was either to be accepted or repudiated; and if the contract was to be repudiated, he should have expected an immediate repudiation, and not that the Government would have acted upon it for three years before any attempt at repudiation was made. Now, let them recall to recollection that the whole of that most ridiculous and trumpery charge which had been made against the Government constituted by his hon. Friends sitting below him, with regard to the corrupt contract, rested upon a conversation alleged to have taken place between Captain Carnegie, a temporary Lord of the Admiralty, and Mr. Churchward. His hon. Friend the Member for Stamford had gone generally into the question, but he had not stated the dates so precisely as he (Mr. Malins) was able to do. The Government of the Earl of Derby came into office in the month of February 1858. It continued in office uninterruptedly till an adverse vote was given against it on the 31st March 1859.

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He had stated on a former occasion that which he begged to repeat, that it was not until the middle of March 1859 that the noble Lord, then Member for the City of London, and now Secretary for Foreign Affairs, gave notice of that Motion, which drove that Government from power. Now, it was in evidence in the blue-book that Mr. Churchward made an application to the Government, when there was no election contemplated or expected, at the end of the year 1858. On the 6th January 1859 he made a formal application to the Government to renew his contract. That led to a correspondence. He was invited to make a tender to the Admiralty, and finally, on the 13th February 1859, Mr. Churchward sent a formal proposal for the renewal, or rather extension, of his contract, from June 1863 to the year 1870. That proposal was formally accepted by the Admiralty on the 23rd February. Now, on the 23rd February nobody had a general election in contemplation. Nobody expected that the Government were about to be turned out. The Government were conducting their business without any apparent immediate danger, though, being in a minority, they were necessarily placed at the mercy of their opponents whenever they thought it expedient to take an adverse vote. All the business was concluded on the 23rd February. His proposal, having been made to and accepted by the Admiralty, became to all intents and purposes a binding contract. It was true that it had to be submitted to the Treasury, but that was merely a formal matter, and in due time the Treasury ratified the contract. In that state of things the noble Lord the Member for the City of London gave his notice of Motion on Reform. The Motion came on for discussion on the 31st March, and the Government of the Earl of Derby were outvoted in that House. That event occurred on a Friday, and on the following Monday it was announced that the Government would appeal to the country by a dissolution of Parliament. The conversation with Captain Carnegie, of which so much had been heard, took place on the 2nd of April, after the dissolution had been announced, and six weeks after the contract had been made with Mr. Churchward. That gentleman obtained his contract originally from the Liberal Government at £15,500 a year, which was increased by the Earl of Derby's Government to £18,000 on account of the extraordinary exertions of Mr. Churchward and the expenses he
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had been put to; and he was to build two new steam-vessels, costing £16,000 each. Upon the faith of that contract Mr. Churchward incurred fresh expenses, and upon the 26th of April the contract was signed, sealed, and delivered. Then came the discussion in that House on the 27th of March 1860. Did the Government intend to act upon the Resolutions of that date? If so, it was incumbent upon them to have given notice to Mr. Churchward that he was acting under his contract of 1855. But on the 1st of July 1859, after the Earl of Derby had left office, the present Government paid Mr. Churchward £4,500, the first quarter's allowance, and they had continued to pay at the rate of £18,000 per annum up to the present time. No repudiation of the contract had been made, and he asked the Solicitor General to explain upon what legal principles the Committee were now invited to express a judicial opinion upon the conduct of a man who had never been put upon his trial. Was it because a Committee had reported that of two contradictory statements they believed one, which was different to that of a gentleman who had performed great public services, as the Government had admitted? But it must not be forgotten that there was a conflict of evidence, and he considered that Mr. Churchward was as worthy of credit as Captain Carnegie. He had the authority of the hon. Member for Dover to state, that although he received Mr. Churchward's support, the subject of the contract was never mentioned between them; and, indeed, any other course would have been the act of an idiot, for Mr. Churchward was at the time in possession of the contract. He (Mr. Malins) challenged the Government to state to the House any one fact that was misrepresented by Mr. Churchward when he obtained the renewal of the contract in 1859; and if that gentleman desired to exercise any corruption over the Government, it was not likely he would have gone to the new Lord, a man scarcely warm in his seat, and not conversant with the duties of the office; but he would rather have gone to the First Lord of the Admiralty, the right hon. Member for Droitwich. But on the strength of a conversation alleged by Captain Carnegie to have taken place, but denied by Mr. Churchward, the Committee was asked by a side wind to give a judicial opinion on a matter within the province of a judicial tribunal. In the language of the Secretary for the Treasury, the contract was not to be allowed to go on,

1891
on account of the corrupt and fraudulent conduct of Mr. Churchward. It was admitted that the form of the Resolution was irregular. The Chairman declined to say whether it was regular; but he (Mr. Malins) declared that the form of the Resolution was condemnatory of itself. It could not be proper for the Secretary to the Treasury, when proposing a Vote in Supply to Her Majesty, to support that Vote by charging one of Her Majesty's subjects with fraud in obtaining a certain contract. If such a charge were well founded, that was not the place for inquiring into it. If it were intended to make such a charge, why had not the Government repudiated the contract, and furnished Mr. Churchward with an opportunity of bringing the subject before a judicial tribunal? The Attorney General had been asked what effect the decision of the House of Commons, if unfavourable, would have on the question when brought before a court of law, and had replied in vague language, which seemed to imply that Mr. Churchward would not be prejudiced further than this, that it was the opinion of the House of Commons not to pay him the money; and that because the contract to Mr. Churchward was to be paid out of monies to be voted by Parliament. He (Mr. Malins) would ask his hon. and learned Friend the Solicitor General if he was prepared to endorse the opinion, that if the money was not voted by Parliament Mr. Churchward was not to be paid; and he would also ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer if he was prepared to abide by such an opinion; so that if a person devoted his lifetime to the fulfilment of a contract into which he entered with Her Majesty's Government, he was not to be paid if the Government would not ask Paliament for the money? If that were a contract between individuals, the Government would not have a leg to stand upon; and the Committee would not, he trusted, sanction the course which they now proposed to take.
SIR GEORGE BOWYERsaid, he must protest against so much of the public time of the House being taken up with Mr. Churchward's affairs. He had been asked to postpone some public business on the ground of the Vote, but he repudiated it. He did not think the House of Commons was the place to discuss Mr. Church ward's private claims. It was nearly ten o'clock, and they ought to be in Supply. The impression produced upon his mind was, that Mr. Churchward had a good many friends in that House, who had come down primed
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and loaded to support his clause. His case ought, however, be thought, to be left in the hands of the Government, who, though he differed from them on many points, might safely be intrusted to do justice in the matter. He should therefore deem it to be his duty to vote against Mr. Churchward in the present instance.
MR. COBDEN: —Mr. Massey, I have but a few words to say, as it is not my intention to enter at all into a discussion of the legal question; but having been intrusted with the responsible post of Chairman of the Committee by whom this subject was considered, I wish to be allowed to make a few observations. The truth is, the whole question is one which lies in a nutshell. It turns entirely upon the evidence of one gentleman. In the year 1859, on my return from America, when I had been two years out of Parliament, and had taken no part in the general election which had just come off, and was wholly unconnected with the previous discussions on this subject, which might be supposed to have assumed somewhat of a party character—I was made Chairman of that Committee, composed of many abler and more experienced men than myself, probably because I was supposed to occupy an unbiassed position in the matter. The first thing I encountered was a personal question, which it is at all times very disagreeable to find mixed up with a public transaction. It appears that early in 1859, a remark made in this House by, I believe, the right hon. Baronet the Member for Droitwich (Sir J. Pakington), reflecting on the conduct of Captain Carnegie, who had been connected with the Government and was involved in some electioneering or political controversy, drew from Captain Carnegie a letter to the public papers explaining the reasons why he refused to stand for the borough of Dover. He stated that he could not, in justice to his own sense of honour, become a candidate for Dover on the terms on which it was desired he should do so. I found that the matter was in some way mixed up with the Dover packet contract, and one of the first things into which the Committee entered was an inquiry into the circumstances connected with the renewal of that contract. The whole point at issue turns on the evidence given by Captain Carnegie; almost everything which can be said on the subject is mere surplusage outside of this gentleman's testimony. Captain Carnegie came before the Committee an unwilling witness—for we had

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almost to compel his attendance—and nobody who reads his evidence can fail to perceive that it was given with the utmost reluctance. His statement was, that at the time of the general election in 1859 he filled the office of a Lord of the Admiralty; that it had been thought desirable he should seek a seat in Parliament, and that it was proposed he should try Dover. He described how, being in a public office, in the presence of a gentleman whose name it is unnecessary to mention, Mr. Churchward came to him and spoke of his being possibly a candidate for that borough. He added that Mr. Churchward then proposed to give him his support at Dover, and coupled with that proposal the condition of having the contract renewed for his postal service from Dover to Calais. That is the whole question; there is nothing outside it which we need trouble ourselves about. The point is, whether Captain Carnegie's evidence in the matter can be trusted or not. He passed through the most searching examination. But what other motive could Captain Carnegie have had, situated as he was as a Lord of the Admiralty, in refusing to go to Dover but a repugnance to the connexion with Mr. Churchward? He said he was astonished at the indiscreet way the proposal was made to him, a proposal which in itself was as undisguised and indiscreet as any human being could make, that he could not have imagined it possible it would have been made to him. It must be borne in mind that Captain Carnegie, as a Lord of the Admiralty, would be called upon to exercise a surveillance over Mr. Churchward. [Cries of No, no!] I heard hon. Gentlemen opposite say "No." Now, I beg to say I know more about the matter than they do. I have served upon more Committees of the House than those hon. Members; and I know that every packet on its arrival and departure has to be examined by an inspector, which inspector is appointed by the Admiralty; and therefore, of course, he has the power of fining a contractor or otherwise; of administering rigid justice in these cases or being lenient and allowing the party to escape. That was the scruple which Captain Carnegie had. Holding the high position which he occupied, he said to himself, "Here is a proposal made to me undisguisedly to forward the scheme of this gentleman for a renewal of the contract, and then he will in return give me his support, as having great influence at Dover." We had to-night a very candid statement
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from the hon. Baronet the Member for Stamford on the subject. He said he decided in his own mind against the renewal of the contract, and gave us the reasons why he had been induced to change his opinion. I do not enter on the question of motives, because the Committee carefully avoided impeaching the conduct of the Government; but it did so happen that the Government decided to take the course which Mr. Churchward wished. What was it that Mr. Churchward wished at that time? It was to renew in the spring of 1859 a contract that did not expire until 1863; and it was to renew that contract in 1863 for seven years—that is, up to 1870. Now, if it had been a question of renewing a contract for a packet service from England to the West Indies, or even between Liverpool and New York, there might have been some kind of excuse for looking a few years before, because in a great service like cither of these, there are great preparations to make; but the postal service between Dover and Calais requires no such provision as that. Every one knows that you may in six months organize a postal service sufficient to carry on communication between Dover and Calais; and therefore I say that at that actual moment of the election there was no motive for pressing that question in the way in which it was pressed. I am not going to read any of the evidence of Captain Carnegie, which extended over a considerable time, but I will read what is stated in the Index—the substance, as given by those who sum up the proceedings of our Committees. At page 486 it says, under the head "Carnegie"—
"At the interview early in April, Mr. Churchward spoke freely and openly on the subject of the contract, and seemed anxious that it should be renewed before the Dover election was over. Examination as to the actual words used—witness clearly understood that Mr. Churchward's support of him at the election was contingent upon a renewal of the contract."
And then it gives a long list of pages to which the Index refers. Again it says:—"Remark by Mr. Churchward, that 'they' were anxious." I may mention that the word "they" is put between inverted commas because Captain Carnegie was cross-examined as to the meaning of that word, and declined to interpret it. It had no antecedents, and he declined to define it further—
"Remark by Mr. Churchward that 'they' were anxious to defer signing the renewal of the contract until after the election; and that if 'they'

1895
wanted him to return two Government candidates, he should feel obliged to do so, but that he would rather support witness and Mr. Osborne."
There was a painful discrepancy, indeed a painful contradiction of testimony, upon the point; but I think I shall not be contradicted by any Member of the Committee when I say that we were unanimously disposed to believe Captain Carnegie rather than any witness that was opposed to him. ["No, no!"] I did not think that there would be anybody who would say otherwise. That seemed to be the opinion of the Members of the Committee, because no one attempted to set up the testimony of any one else in opposition to that of Captain Carnegie. Well, now, what does this amount to, if Captain Carnegie spoke the truth? Why, it was undoubtedly an attempt to suborn a high functionary, to induce him to dispose of public money, and to accept a bribe. It amounts to that, or it amounts to nothing. The right hon. Gentleman the Member for Stamford says, "But why not stigmatize roe? If you stigmatize Mr. Churchward, I ought to be stigmatized; because if he is guilty, I must be." ["Hear, hear!"] Some one said "Hear, hear!" If he had not, I should not have said that this was the most shallow view in the world. Suppose that a contractor went into one of your public offices with his pockets well lined with bank notes instead of promises of votes; suppose he offered some of those notes to one of your functionaries, and offered to bribe him for a contract; should you consider that it was a less criminal act on the part of that person because the bribe was not accepted? It is not necessary that the hon. Gentleman the Member for Stamford should have yielded to this temptation in order to constitute what I should call an offence on the part of Mr. Churchward. He did not succeed. The reason was that Captain Carnegie was a very conscientious man, and rather than go to Dover on the understanding that he was to receive the support of Mr. Churchward under circumstances that might lead to the suspicion that he had a corrupt motive, he declined to stand at all. Then the question arises, what are we to do now? I think, that when these facts are brought before us, there cannot be any doubt or hesitation as to what we should do. The Committee suggests that we should consider the con tract null and void; but I hear that there are legal difficulties. Some people argue that we cannot legally refuse to pay the money. Well, then, I would not pay it
1896
in any way but a legal way. I quite join with hon. Gentlemen in that view. If they think that Mr. Churchward has a legal claim, let him establish that claim; and, for my part. I would vote money to enable him to establish his claim—to pay all the legal expenses of a trial—rather than I would agree to grant the money for this contract after the Report of the Committee. What will the public say out of doors? Really we ought to affect a virtue if we have it not. A Committee of this House reports that a person goes to a public office, wanting to bribe a Lord of the Admiralty to assist in bestowing a contract by the most corrupt I means; and what is the sort of bribe that is offered? Why, it is the very kind of bribery that ought to be most repugnant to this House. On the one hand, we have before us, as the House of Commons, a case in which an attempt is made upon the virtue of a public functionary whom we are here especially to superintend and watch; and, on the other hand, the bribe offered us is an attempt to dispose, by corrupt means, of, the votes of constituents, in whose purity and independence I should think that we, as the House of Commons, ought to be most deeply interested. Therefore, standing as we do in the face of the country, we have every motive to show that we are disposed to do our duty in the matter. There is nothing before the House but the question, "Is Captain Carnegie entitled to credit?" If he is, there is no doubt what the House ought to do. It ought to act upon the Resolution of the Committee. Let the party enforce his claim by a court of law if he can; but do not let the House of Commons, in the face of the Report of its Select Committee, take a course which will be virtually condoning both corruption and bribery.
SIR HUGH CAIRNS: There are some questions into which the hon. Member who has just sat down has entered, in regard to which I shall in a moment ask leave to say a word or two; but, before doing so, I will ask the Committee, which I am glad to see is more numerous than it was a short time ago, to consider two questions, which seem to me to be of vital importance, with regard to our forms of procedure and with regard to the duty of the executive Government, First, with regard to our forms of procedure in Committee of Supply. A question has been raised of which no solution has yet been given, and which, I am convinced, is of the gravest importance, with regard not not only to this, but to future cases of the

1897
same kind. We are asked by the Government to pass in Committee of Supply a Vote which the Government themselves, and every one who has spoken, acknowledge to be utterly and entirely without precedent in the annals of the House of Commons. The Attorney General has said very frankly that the Government have been advised to propose a Vote of this kind, by which I conclude that the hon. and learned Gentleman means that they have been advised by the Law Officers, for whom he spoke. I shall consider by-and-by what end was proposed to be attained by that advice; but first let me ask the Committee to consider to what a Vote of this kind would lead us. As I understand it, there is no rule more sacred in the practice of the House of Commons than that it is the Appropriation Bill, and the Appropriation Bill alone, which can appropriate, either negatively or affirmatively, the Supplies of the year; and that you cannot by any device anticipate the enactments of that Bill. So far is this carried, that I remember an instance in which an attempt was made by the Government of the day to anticipate the Appropriation Bill, not by a Vote in Committee of Supply, for no one ever thought of that before, but by a clause inserted in another Bill proposed to Parliament in the usual way; and by whom was the objection taken to that? By the Speaker of the House, who said that—
"Before the question was put, he was anxious to call the attention of the House to what appeared to him to be an irregularity in its proceedings. The clause now before them was a clause of appropriation introduced into a Bill to provide for the ordinary ways and means of the year. Now, it was quite unusual and unprecedented to introduce a clause of appropriation into a Bill of this description at this period of the Session."
The sacred rule of the House of Commons is this:—You may have an Appropriation Bill in the year, but you can only have one, and you cannot even in another Bill introduce a clause of Appropriation of Supplies; much more cannot you introduce a clause of appropriation into a Vote of Committee of Supply. Let me ask the Committee to go a little further. If the Government are right in this proposal, what is the consequence? If the Government can propose a clause of appropriation, of course every hon. Member can propose what he thinks would be convenient, either in affirmance or negation of their appropriation. If the Government can say, "We ask the Committee for £100,000 on account, and we ask the Committee to resolve that no part
1898
of that shall be applied in the discharge of a particular contract," what is the result? Any hon. Member who entertains a particular view in regard to any contract with which the Government may have entered, may propose a similar pendant to the Vote so asked on account. Every Member may raise such an issue as well as the Government, and we shall therefore have issues raised by this and that other Member in order to strike at some particular contract or appropriation of money to which he may object, if the precedent be once set which is now sought to be established. Besides, I want to know what the Committee of Supply has got before it on the subject of this contract with Mr. Churchward at all. What does the Committee know about that contract at all? The Committee of Supply has no more to say to the contract of Mr. Churchward than it has to say to the Reform Bill or any other document whatever. The Committee of Supply has no Report of the Committee before it. It has no issue before it but one, and that is whether it will grant or refuse the amount submitted to it by the Government. I therefore warn the Committee against being led into a proceeding full of irregularity and inconvenience—a proceeding which, if it pass now, must become a precedent to the House and fatal to the business of the Committee of Supply. What is all this done for? I will tell yon what is the object. I think I know it as well as if I saw it explained in writing before me. The Attorney General as good as confessed it. Mr. Churchward is told he may bring his notion at law; and here I must say I admire the caution of the hon. Member for Rochdale (Mr. Cobden), who said, "Mr. Churchward, as far as I am concerned, should have every assistance to bring his action at law; nay, more, I would rather vote the money if it could be recovered, and let a court of law decide the question." [Mr. COBDEN: I said I would rather pay the expenses of the suit.] I did not know that the offer had been so personal a one. Mr. Churchward is told. "You may bring your action at law." Well, Mr. Churchward says, "I want to bring an action at law; and I will complain that the Postmaster General has broken the contract which binds the executive Government; that he has terminated, rescinded it; that he won't allow me to continue to carry the mails, and has given me notice to cease doing so. I will bring my action against him, and claim damages for the profits I should have made if the

1899
contract had not been terminated in that summary way." Of course, it occurs to the executive Government that this is rather a serious proceeding, and they take the advice of the Law Advisers of the Crown. What will they say, "Be so good as to tell us what ground of hope there is for a successful issue if such an action is brought." They know, if nothing he done by the House of Commons, Mr. Churchward is certain to recover. [The SOLICITOR GENERAL: Hear, hear!] My hon. and learned Friend the Solicitor General concurs. Then Mr. Churchwhrd is certain to recover damages for the breach of contract, and for being interrupted in the performance of the service; and what is to be the defence of the Government? I will tell you. If the Appropriation Bill for the year is passed before the action is brought, it will be held up, and it will be said, "You don't mean to say you have lost anything by the contract being at an end? Look at what the House of Commons has done; they have appropriated all the money for the year, and therefore it was rather a kindness to you that the contract was stopped on the 20th of June; for if you had carried the mails till now, you would not have received one farthing of money for it." That would go to the reduction of damages. But the Law Officers say, we must remember that the 20th of June is coming very close. On that day the Postmaster General has threatened Mr. Churchward that his contract will be at an end. The action will be brought immediately; the Appropriation Bill will not be passed, and we shall be at Mr. Churchward's mercy. Therefore, says the Attorney General, I advised the Government to do what has never been done before—to bring in a clause which shall anticipate the Appropriation Bill. Now, I challenge my hon. and learned Friend who sits opposite me—is not that the object? Now, I appeal with confidence to the hon. Member for Rochdale, does he think that consistent with an offer to Mr. Churchward to bring his action to establish his claim in a court of law, and get what damages he can? And the House of Commons and the Committee of Supply are asked to depart from established practice and create a precedent—for what? In order that we may make ourselves parties to a proceeding which, if carried on elsewhere, would be called sharp practice, unworthy of the name of law. I trust we shall not lend ourselves to any proceeding of that kind. Let the action
1900
be brought, let it be tried, and let the right succeed; if not established, let it fail; but do not let us, to accommodate the Executive, who feel and see that they must be cast in that action in the present state of things, pass a Resolution to mitigate the damages on the part of the Government.
There is another point of equal importance, not merely as regards the practice of the House, but as regards public faith, the convenience of public contractors and the course taken by the executive Government in regard to contractors. We have heard from the Attorney General that the payment to contractors is to be made out of monies to be provided by Parliament; and he says there can be no doubt, if Parliament refused these monies, they would not be paid. But how is Parliament to have the option of refusing the monies unless Parliament be asked whether it will refuse or grant them? I want to hear from the Attorney General, how can the House of Commons refuse to grant money unless it be asked by the Government? The constitutional doctrine is this, that just as it is in the power of the House of Commons to refuse to vote any particular sum of money in fulfilment of any contract, the bounden duty of the executive Government, for the time being, is to propose to Parliament the sum which is adequate to fulfil that contract. And so, as was stated by the hon. and learned Member for the Tower Hamlets' (Mr. Aryton), or by the right hon. Member for Kilmarnock (Mr. Bouverie), the course of the Government was perfectly open and clear—to lay on the table an Estimate with reference to the contract in question, to tell the House or the Committee that the Government did not pledge themselves to that money or did not entreat it, but would leave it to the judgment of the House whether it should be voted or not. But the peculiarity in this case is that we have here a legal contract—the Government do not deny it. The contract bears that it is to be satisfied out of monies to be voted by Parliament; Parliament cannot vote the monies unless the Executive ask for them; and what I want to know is, when this particular view entered into the mind of the Government with regard to this Vote; because I have had put into my hands a letter which I suppose is a genuine one; it came from one part of the Government, and perhaps another part of the Government may not be aware of it. That is one of the incon-

1901
veniences of this case. The right hon. Gentleman the Secretary to the Treasury read to us a correspondence which appeared to be mere minutes of instruction for letters to be written, and was, in fact, no correspondence at all. The letter to which I refer was written by the Secretary of the Post Office no longer ago than the 25th of March of the present year. It is written to Mr. Churchward and has reference to the Belgian contract. And what does Sir Rowland Hill say? He says he is directed by the Postmaster General to inform Mr. Churchward that the tenders which have been accepted "will only come into force in the event of Parliament declining to enable this department" to make the necessary payments for carrying out the existing contracts. But what does a letter of that kind written to a contractor mean? Does it not convey this as plainly as possible, "We, the Government, will propose to Parliament the necessary Vote; remember that Parliament may decline to grant it; but if it does not decline, then your contract goes on as before." I have no doubt it will be said on the part of the Government, that the opportunity of voting or of refusing to vote the money would have been given to Parliament, if it had not been for the decision of the House in March 1860. I say that decision had nothing at all to do with the question. I confess I always thought Captain Leicester Vernon's Motion most mistaken and ill-timed. [The CHANCELLOR of the EXCHEQUER: Hear, hear!] And I will tell the Chancellor of the Exchequer why. Captain Vernon's Motion declared that a contract entered into for a specified period ought to be fulfilled; whereas the Act of 1854 says that at all times, from year to year, no matter how long may be the duration of a contract, the monies set aside to fulfil that contract are to be provided by Parliament, and the payments are only to be made out of monies so appropriated by Parliament. The object of that Act was to make Parliament the dominus of the contract. But by asking Parliament to declare beforehand that a particular contract shall be fulfilled throughout the whole of its duration, you neutralize and put an end to that Act of 1854; and the Motion therefore, in my humble judgment, was mistaken. But I do not rest the case upon that ground. We heard to-night some of the reasons which led to the majority on that occasion. The hon. Baronet the Member for Finsbury (Sir M. Peto) has stated that in the Vote
1902
which he then gave he by no means meant to prejudge the question as to the mode in which the service might be performed in 1863; all he intended was, to express disapproval of a Motion reversing the decision of a Committee only a few days after it had concluded its deliberation upstairs. And what were the words of the Chancellor of the Exchequer. He said—
"The real difference lies in the renewal of the contract from 1863 to 1870, and the course which Parliament may think fit to take upon the point is a matter hereafter to be decided. If any case is made to show the sufferings of Mr. Churchward, in consequence of that renewal being withheld, out of proportion to the offence he has committed, that case is entirely open to consideration."
The language of the Chancellor of the Exchequer clearly recognises that in 1863 Parliament will be called upon to consider the subject; and therefore, I say, the Vote of March 1860 in no way absolves the Government from the duty otherwise devolving upon them of putting forward an Estimate providing for the service of the year in such a shape as to enable Parliament either to consent or refuse—in the words of Sir Rowland Hill "to decline"—to make the necessary provision.
I will not go into the labyrinth of evidence taken before the Committee of 1860, but I venture to think that the time will come when the Report of that Committee will be looked on with amazement. They reported that the Dover contract was not advantageous in a pecuniary point of view, but in the most complete and absolute manner they, at the same time, absolved every Member of the Government which had entered into the contract from the imputation of corrupt or improper motives. Their Report was based on the evidence of three witnesses, principally with reference to a conversation at which all three were said to have been present. Mr. Murray, however, did not hear the conversation at all, and Mr. Churchward and Captain Carnegie are directly opposed in their recollection of what took place. Mr. Churchward was only examined as a witness—he was no party to the investigation, and he had no means of defending himself beyond that sort of fair play which Members of the Committee were inclined to give him. How, then, does the matter stand? Mr. Churchward denies the conversation which Captain Carnegie says took place. The bearing of this alleged conversation was, that if Captain Carnegie would go to Dover, Mr. Churchward offered to support him, and that he referred to his contract with the

1903
Government, expressing anxiety to have it expedited and completed. Captain Carnegie admitted before the Committee that he did not know when this conversation took place that the contract had already received the approval of the Board of Admiralty some six weeks previously, and hinted, that if he had been aware of that fact, he should probably have gone down and stood for Dover. That was the man on whose testimony, opposed to Mr. Churchward's, the Committee arrived at their Report. And what is that Report? I leave it to the sense and justice of the House to say whether a man was ever condemned on a statement of this kind—
"It is in evidence before your Committee, that Mr. Churchward, on the eve of the election, volunteered to support a particular candidate, in the expectation that the contract was to be extended."
The Committee do not pledge themselves to a word as having passed directly on this subject between two persons, or to anything which would bind them to a positive finding; but they take refuge in the statement that "support was volunteered upon an expectation." Is there any other case in which a parallel expression is used? I confess, that whenever I look at this Report, I do so simply with astonishment. I can understand the view taken by the hon. Member for Rochdale (Mr. Cobden); it was logical and plain. He prepared a draught Report, in which it was declared, in the strongest terms, that there had been improper practices. But that Report was negatived; how, then, can the Committee insinuate that such practices did really exist? At the time men felt warmly, and their minds were excited; but, in calmer moments, I entertain no doubt that those who come after us, if not we ourselves, will feel that this Report was a mistake. For the rights of any man to be prejudiced by such a visionary statement as I have just read, would be to suppose the House of Commons capable of an act of gross injustice, such as I should never expect to see them perform.
What, however, is the position of the Committee with respect to this question? I submit that it is wholly irregular to ask us to come to a decision upon the materials put before us by the Government. Where are the papers describing all that has taken place between Mr. Churchward and the Government since 1859? Where is the correspondence, fragments and scraps of which the Secretary to the Treasury has
1904
read us out of that box? Where are the letters from the sureties, asking the Government whether they consider the contract binding or not, and whether they consequently are to be held to their engagements, and where the answer of the Government to those letters? Where is the correspondence with Mr. Churchward, fixing the duties which he is to perform, and the steamers he is to build, under the stipulations of the contract of 1859? Above all, if the Committee of Supply are now to form a judgment on the expediency of this contract and its advantage for the public service, I want to know where are the materials for enabling them to do so? What of those tenders we have heard about? Where is Mr. Harrington's tender? I am afraid few hon. Members were in the House when that remarkable tender was described, It appears the Belgian Government have notified that they intend to perform the service between Dover and Ostend, and that we shall perhaps have our own mails carried in and out of our own ports by the Belgian Government. But what about the service between Dover and Calais? Mr. Harrington, it seems, has made a tender, and a most mysterious tender it is, because it is to be £8,000 if for one year, and £5,000 if for five, six, or seven years. But that is not all. There are to be bonuses given, as the Secretary to the Treasury tells us, by which, although there is a certain sum named per annum, the amount may be run up £3,000 more; so that you do not know whether the whole charge will be £8,000 or £11,000. But there is another circumstance to be noticed. Mr. Harrington withdraws his tender; but then, says the Secretary to the Treasury, Mr. Harrington has written a letter stating that he did not mean to withdraw it. But he wrote another letter in which he explains that his withdrawal of his withdrawal depends upon the Government giving him six months of an interval to think over whether be should withdraw his withdrawal or not. The noble lord the Secretary to the Admiralty tells us that the Post Office in their extremity appealed to the Admiralty to be kind enough to perform the service during this little interval of breathing time, for Mr. Harrington to make up his mind whether he will accept the contract or not. And what said the Admiralty? "Oh, no! we are very fond of sailing our steamers; but we do not like to sail them if they are to arrive at a particular hour, for they are not punctual, and we don't want their per-

1905
formances to be judged by the quickness of the passage between Dover and Calais; so we won't carry the mails at all." The matter, therefore, stands thus, that the public at this moment are at the mercy of Mr. Harrington, who may or may not decide to withdraw his withdrawal. Again, who are Mr. Harrington's sureties? And is there any assurance, that if at the end of six months he makes up his mind to take the contract, he will really perform the service? In coming to its conclusion, then, let the Committee bear in mind that we have the evidence of the Postmaster General and everybody else that the service has been admirably and efficiently performed; that it is a service which brings in to the Government a clear gain such as it has never had before; and further, that if this contract is discontinued, we have not the least certainty that we shall have the mails carried at all. The simple question I would ask the Committee is, "Ought we not to have the option of considering whether we shall refuse or grant the supplies for the carrying on of this contract?" The Government says, "No; we don't ask you to refuse the means of providing for Mr. Churchward's contract, I but we ask you to declare in the shape of an anticipatory appropriation, that no part of this money shall be applied to the purposes of that contract." I hope, therefore, for the sake of order, for the sake of fair dealing between the Executive and its contractors, for the sake of the public advantage and public expediency, and lastly for the sake of that which I am sure the House of Commons will never overlook—namely, justice for a man whom I believe to be wronged and injured, that the Committee will accept the Amendment now before it.
MR. HUBBARDsaid, that having had the honour to serve on the Committee appointed to consider the Question, he was anxious to make a few remarks. The interest of the taxpayers had, he thought, been somewhat overlooked in the hasty arrangements made with Mr. Churchward. In all the correspondence on this matter, Mr. Churchward had assumed that the conveyance of the mails, before the service was conducted under contract, had cost the Government £25,000 a year, and had caused it to be inferred that by his undertaking it for £15,500, the difference between the two sums—namely, £9,500, had been annually saved to the country. That assumption had never been questioned by
1906
any Administration, and the Treasury Minute relating to the contract of 1859 was based upon it. It was, however, very far from being accurate. Indeed, if it were true that Mr. Churchward performed the service for £9,000 less than it had hitherto cost the Government, how did it happen, that whilst he asserted it to be an exceedingly losing contract, he should be also so excessively anxious to obtain a renewal of it? In an appendix to the papers relating to those contracts, there was a statement of the subsidies that were paid in 1853 by the Government. It therein appeared that the cost of the packet service between Dover and Calais and Ostend, according to the contract then existing, was £24,657, and that he took to be the source of Mr. Churchward's round figure of £25,000. Looking at the Report made on that matter, and bearing the signatures of Lord Canning and the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Stamford (Sir Stafford Northcote), he found the remark that the service had been satisfactorily performed as regarded both the mails and passengers; but as the lines were those upon which the passenger and parcel traffic was very great, the services might be considered self-supporting; and therefore they recommended that tenders should be publicly invited for its performance. Well, what did he (Mr. Hubbard) infer from that? Why, that the receipts from the passengers and parcels upon those lines of communication were so great, that they were of themselves sufficient to support the service; and that in order to carry out the principle of economy, the compilers of that Report recommended tenders to be invited. The Parliamentary papers of 1848 contained a Return of the Post Office service from Boulogne, Calais, and Ostend, which gave the number of vessels engaged. It appeared the gross expense of the service was then £18,566, and the net expenses £6,224. The receipts from passenger and parcel traffic were therefore £12,342. If, then, so large a sum was received from the traffic in 1848, he should like to know in 1852, when the gross expense of the service was £25,000, what was the average amount received from passenger and parcel traffic? He thought that that was an important question, which ought clearly to have been answered before the Government had entered into the contract with Mr. Churchward and now before they consented to extend it. Until that fact was satisfactorily answered, he thought that the country would remain under an

1907
entire delusion as to the cost of the service. It appeared to him, that so far from Mr. Churchward saving the country upwards of £9,000, he had been drawing largely upon its resources. But, apart from that point, he must say, if the bargain were an improvident one, and that it were shown that the contract could be cancelled in a fair and honourable manner, he should be delighted, in the interest of the taxpayer, to see it cancelled. But when he heard the speech of the Secretary of the Treasury, and was told the grounds upon which his (Mr. Hubbard's) vote was challenged, viz., that Mr. Churchward should be punished for his political intrigues, he (Mr. Hubbard) felt that the way to punish a man for political immorality was certainly not by breaking a bargain solemnly entered into with him, when the services which he had undertaken to render had been well and efficiently performed. He believed that Captain Carnegie, when examined before the Committee, gave his evidence with the utmost earnestness and sincerity, and said nothing which was not based on his honest convictions. But it must also be admitted that the charge against Mr. Churchward rested entirely on that gallant officer's evidence. Where the evidence of one man had to be balanced against that of another, the charge, whatever it was, could not be said to be proved; and he thought that in a case like the present, where mercantile honesty was concerned, the Committee would be going beyond its province if it attempted to be the administrator of public morality. The offence was entirely one of intentions, for it was admitted that Mr. Churchward, whatever he might have said, made no impression on those to whom he addressed himself, and nothing could be more certain than that the Government had committed itself to the renewal of the contract six weeks before the reported conversation with Captain Carnegie. It had been truly stated that in the Select Committee the crucial clause of the Report was adopted by a majority of two; but he might add that on that occasion the hon. Baronet the Member for Stamford and a noble Lord who had likewise been a member of the Derby Administration refused to take any part in the division: had they attended the adverse report must have been carried, if at all, by the casting vote of the Chairman, and they were absent only because, with a delicacy highly honourable to them, they declined to interfere with a decision
1908
which involved a judgment on their public conduct. On the whole, then, although he looked upon the Dover contract, in a commercial point of view, with great disapproval, believing it to be against the public interest, and although he should be glad of a fair opportunity of cancelling it, yet he could not consent to the breaking of a contract against which there was nothing more to allege than that there was some reason to suspect the political honesty of the contractor.
Two Members, Mr. SOLICITOR GENERAL and Mr. NICOL, both rising in their places to speak, the CHAIRMAN called upon Mr. SOLICITOR GENERAL, as being first in his eye, but several Members calling upon Mr. NICOL to speak;
Motion made, and Question proposed, "That Mr. Solicitor General do now speak,"—(Mr. Serjeant Pigott.)
MR. DISRAELIsaid, he understood that the hon. Member for Dover (Mr. Nicol) did not wish to trespass upon the Committee at any length; and as he probably desired to speak upon some personal point, perhaps the Committee would not object to hear him first.
MR. SERJEANT PIGOTTsaid, he would withdraw his Motion, his only object had been to relieve the Committee from an embarrassment.
Motion, by leave, withdrawn.
Whereupon Mr. Nicol proceeded to address the Committee.
MR. NICOLstated that he was invited to stand for Dover at the same meeting with Captain Carnegie, and he could solemnly declare that Mr. Churchward never addressed him directly or indirectly on the subject of his contract. The fact was, that the contract had been settled two months before, and it could not have been affected in any way by anything which Mr. Churchward might have said to Captain Carnegie. It was admitted on all hands that Mr. Churchward had performed the service satisfactorily, and surely the Committee would not allow the Government to reward him with the repudiation of his contract? He might also add, that he felt sure, if his hon. Colleague were present, he would also say that Mr. Churchward had never addressed a single word to him on the subject.
THE SOLICITOR GENERAL: The Committee will believe me when I say that

1909
it was with great unwillingness I stood in the way of the hon. Gentleman who has just spoken. On all occasions I am most ready to give place to any hon. Member who wishes to address the House. In the present instance my difficulty was, that while there appeared to be a desire on the part of some hon. Members that I should proceed, I was not at the moment aware of the peculiar claims of the hon. Member for Dover. Having thus, I hope, put myself right with the Committee, I shall endeavour to deal with the question before us. Various questions of form, more or less important, have been raised, and also various personal questions; but to my mind there is one question of greater importance than all, which lies at the bottom of this discussion; and it is, whether the control of Parliament over public expenditure on contracts of this description, and entered into under these peculiar circumstances, is to be a substantial or a sham control. I quite agree that, as a general rule, contracts entered into by the executive Government ought to be adopted and honoured by Parliament. I also agree that, as a general rule, contracts bonâ fide entered into, and under ordinary circumstances, will be adopted and ratified by Parliament, although they may be in such a form as that now before us. But I protest, on the part of the public, against the idea that it is, or ought to be, in the power of any Government to enter into any contract on behalf and in the name of Parliament, to be carried out by means of monies to be provided by Parliament, and then that Parliament is to be told, when the question is whether it shall supply the requisite funds, "Oh, if you reject the contract, you will be guilty of a breach of faith." I say that this particular contract was entered into under circumstances which rendered it peculiarly necessary that Parliament should stand upon its right to determine the question on its merits, and not as prejudged by the executive Government. Under what circumstances was the contract made, in what form, and why did it assume that form? The contract was made, as we know, in the heat of a general election. [Cries of No!] The contract was made in the heat of a general election. ["No, no!"] Those hon. Gentlemen who cry "No!" will perhaps permit me to remind them of the dates. The Treasury Minute, until which there was no engagement in any sense whatever, was not made till the 15th of April. Parliament was
1910
dissolved on the 19th, notice of the dissolution having been given some time before. The contract itself was made on the 26th of April, while the election was going on. [Mr. MALINS: It was made in February.] The hon. and learned Member for Walling-ford repeats the oft-told tale that the contract was made in February. All that happened then was this, that one of the officials of the Admiralty, the First Lord not having been so much as consulted, forwarded Mr. Churchward's proposal to the Treasury, recommending it for their favourable consideration; and, as my hon. Friend the Member for Stamford has informed us, the matter was under the consideration of the Treasury during the month of March and the early part of the month of April. It was not until the 15th of April, four days before the dissolution, that the Treasury came to any conclusion on the subject, and the contract was made, as I have said, on the 26th of April, during the heat of the general election. I have not, at present, said a word about the preliminary circumstances, I am only vindicating the right of the House to say that it will not be trifled with on this matter. We are not to be told that it is a breach of faith not to vote this money if, on the merits of the case, the Committee should still think that it ought not to be voted. The contract is drawn up in a particular form, and the Resolutions which we propose are the legitimate and natural results of that form, if it is the opinion of the House that the money ought not to be provided. There are, of course, two parties to the contract, Mr. Churchward and the Government. Mr. Churchward agrees, for a certain length of time, to perform certain services, and to keep up a sufficient number of ships, &c., for those purposes. The Government, on the other hand, agree, to do only one thing, and that is to pay Mr. Churchward so much a year for those services out of money to be provided by Parliament. Had Parliament authorized the Government to take from them the power of judging whether they will provide that money or not? ["No!"] No; but nine-tenths of the argument seems to say so. We have been told repeatedly that we are not free judges of this question, that we are not to determine the question on its merits, and that we are guilty of a breach of faith if we do so. I say the words were deliberately inserted in the contract, and, moreover, we were informed, by the Ministers who made the contract themselves, that the effect of those words was to

1911
make the contract subject to the revision of the House. I may remind hon. Members of the origin of the phrase. My hon. Friend the Member for Stamford had his attention directed to the subject in consequence of the House having refused to ratify the expenditure of a certain sum for a chapel at Paris; and he suggested that the words, "to be paid out of monies provided by Parliament," should, for greater caution, be introduced into the Galway contract, which preceded that made by the same Government with Mr. Churchward. The Galway contract was the subject of discussion in the House on the day when the Committee on the Packet Contracts was appointed, 7th July 1859. Upon that occasion the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Bucks (Mr. Disraeli), referring to some observations of the present Lord Camperdown, said—
"With regard to the contract which appeared to have excited so much alarm in the mind of the noble Lord who last spoke, it might be satisfactory to him to learn that it would be in the power of the House, when a Vote of money was proposed, to reject it entirely. Formerly, when contracts of this nature were concluded, inasmuch as the expenditure was defrayed from the Post Office revenue, they were not subject to the pleasure of Parliament; but speaking from recollection, he believed that in the present instance it was for the first time specially provided that the contract should depend upon the approval of Parliament, and the House of Commons would therefore have a fair and complete opportunity of expressing its opinion upon the policy recommended by the late Government." [3 Hansard, cliv. 821.]
Again, on the 14th of July, in the same year, my hon. Friend the Member for Tewkesbury (Mr. Lygon), then the Civil Lord of the Admiralty, stated that—
"Certain words were introduced into the contract, signed on the 6th of April for Dover, as had been done also in the case of Galway, providing that the contractors should be paid out of money to be voted by Parliament; thus, in fact, rendering the contract subject to ratification by the House." [3 Hansard, cliv. 1222.]
Therefore, it has been distinctly admitted that the contract is subject to revision by the House, and no one can impute a breach of faith to the House for not ratifying it. As soon as the new Parliament met, and the Government was changed, the Committee of Inquiry was appointed. The Report of that Committee, which was made at the end of the same Session, being distinctly against the contract, it was brought before the House on the earliest opportunity by an hon. and gallant Member who is now no more. It has been said that the duty of the Government, tinder the present cir-
1912
cumstances, is to propose that the money should be voted for performing the contract. What might have been the duty of the Government if the House had pronounced no opinion on the subject, it is not now necessary to speculate. But the hon. and gallant Member of whom I have spoken distinctly raised the issue that the contract ought to be fulfilled. That was a recognition that the House was the proper judge of the question; and when the House decided that the contract should not be fulfilled, there was no moral claim to override its conclusion. I differ from some of the observations of the hon. Member for Stamford, and I am rather surprised to hear them fall from him, because nothing could be more becoming, graceful, or honourable than the latter part of his speech, in which he took blame to himself, which no one desired to cast upon him, in order that Mr. Churchward should be sheltered. The earlier part of his speech was, however, such as I should rather have expected to hear on a different occasion than in a debate in this place. A pleading more at variance with the documents on which it was founded I cannot conceive. My hon. Friend interprets quite wrongly what passed on the occasion of the former debate. He says that my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer made a sort of appeal to hon. Members not to prejudge the question, to defer the whole matter till 1863, and to throw no discredit on the labours of the Committee. My understanding of the debate is totally different. Mr. Laing said—
"There was a distinct assertion by a great majority of the Committee, and one not confined to any political party, that it was proved by the evidence that Mr. Churchward did attempt to exercise corrupt influence on the Government, in the hope of obtaining the renewal of his contract." [3 Hansard, clvii. 1365.]
Mr. Laing was willing to rest the whole matter upon that ground, and upon the ground derived from the effect of the words which stated that payment was to be made out of monies to be provided by Parliament. Mr. Laing added, that if Mr. Churchward gave up this agreement, he would be in just as good a position as any one else for the purpose of competing for any new contract in 1863. On the same occasion my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer said—
"Does not every man, woman, and child know, that the monies so voted by Parliament are freely voted, and can it be supposed that Mr. Churchward, in accepting that contract, was not aware that it was subject to the free exercise of the discretion of Parliament? We are now arrived at the time

1913
when it is necessary to exercise that discretion, and I will grant that we are bound to exercise a just, wise, and liberal discretion. But does wisdom, justice, or liberality bind us to support a contract of this nature by our own free voluntary vote, when an impartially-selected Committee of this House has reported that the party, in order to obtain that contract, has resorted to corrupt and degrading considerations? That is, in point of fact, the whole question; and on that question the House will vote. The Government do not wish to influence the vote of the House; they look rather for an indication of its will, and by that indication their future course will be directed." [3 Hansard, clvii. 1412.]
This question is really more for the Committee than for the Government. It is for the Committee to consider whether or not they will reverse the previous vote of the House. But, as my right hon. Friend stated during the former debate, the course of the Government was necessarily guided by that vote, and they had, accordingly, not felt themselves at liberty now to disregard it. Now, I really ask whether my hon. and learned Friend opposite seriously thinks, that after this House deliberately negatived that Motion by a majority of forty-five, the Government could with propriety have come down, and laid on the table a proposition to supply the money for Mr. Churchward's contract? Why, the conclusion from such a proceeding would be that the Government should not only propose the Vote, but support it. ["No!"] My right hon. Friend says "No;" but would the Government be keeping faith with the House, or giving any satisfaction to Mr. Churchward, by proposing the Vote and then asking the House to reject it? I apprehend that the Government took that course which best became them, in deference to their own engagements, to the authority of the House, and to what was due to Mr. Churchward himself. They have proposed a Vote which differs from that recommended on the other side of the House in this respect—that, instead of contradicting, it adopts the decision of the House; whereas the proposed Amendment, if carried, would be a declaration on the part of the House that it would place no restriction on the payment of monies of this kind. The House has as much the opportunity and the power to reverse its former decision, and to provide money for the performance of the contract, by adopting the Amendment now before it, as it would have had if the Government had asked it directly to do the same thing. I do not agree with the hon. and learned Member for Belfast (Sir Hugh Cairns) as
1914
to the object of the Vote as proposed by the Government. That object is to take care that the House is not entrapped into doing that which the contract does not bind it to do without its own consent. If the House voted money for the packet service generally, without any specific appropriation to, or exclusion of particular services, Parliament then would be said to have provided means for the fulfilment of this contract. But we understand that Parliament does not mean that; and if the House does not mean to ratify the contract by providing the means for carrying it out, then the House will take care to mark on the face of the Vote that the money is not intended for any general purpose, and is not to be available for the fulfilment of the contract now under discussion. I do not pretend to be so familiar as many other hon. Members with the form in which Votes for money are taken, but I think my hon. and learned friend opposite fell into an error in his remarks with regard to what he supposed to be the impropriety of anticipating the Appropriation Act by Votes in Committee of Supply. Now, I thought that all Votes in Supply were Votes in anticipation of the Appropriation Act, and were afterwards transferred into that Act. If it is meant that the money provided by this Vote should in no part go towards Mr. Churchward's contract, the House should say so now; for this is the proper time to state for what purpose the money is to be voted, and that purpose is to carry into effect the intention of Parliament as declared in 1860. If carried, we in our conscience believe that it will be a complete answer to any action on account of the contract, because there would be no breach of contract, as the contract itself provided for no payments except out of monies to be supplied by Parliament.
The hon. Baronet the Member for Finsbury (Sir Morton Peto) has expressed his intention to take a course different from that which he took in 1860. If my hon. Friend had said that he had re-considered the question, and found that he was in error before, it would be quite right, and in no degree surprising, that he should alter his course; but my hon. Friend gave a totally different reason for his change of conduct. He said that the Government had acted on the contract in the interval, and that the question ought to have been determined before. But if Parliament did not mean to ratify the contract of 1859, it would not take

1915
advantage of that to deprive Mr. Churchward of the advantages which he would have had if that contract had not been made. The recommendation of the Select Committee had reference only to the period subsequent to the 20th of June 1863. After the House came to the Vote on the subject, Mr. Churchward was invited without delay to call at the Treasury, and then the proposal was made to him to go on until the 20th of June 1863, when his former contract would have expired, upon the terms of the contract of 1859, which were the same with the terms of the former contract, with this difference only—that payments for extraordinary services should be commuted into the payment of a fixed sum of money, according to Mr. Churchward's own desire. The Government said, that if Mr. Churchward was willing to go on upon those terms until the former contract would have expired, they would apply to Parliament to make the necessary payments, upon the understanding that the position of neither party was to be prejudiced when June 1863 arrived. Then both parties were to be entitled to insist on whatever rights they might conceive themselves to possess. Mr. Churchward wrote a letter accepting the proposal, without prejudice to his legal claims under the contract of 1859, and with the understanding that in June 1863 he would have the right, if he thought fit, to submit the validity of the contract of 1859 to a court of law. A Treasury Minute was then drawn up, to the effect that there existed no objection on the part of the Treasury to the arrangement; and it was distinctly expressed, that under this arrangement Mr. Churchward would, of course, retain any legal rights he might consider himself to possess in June 1863; but, at the same time, it must be understood that the Government did nothing to admit the validity of any such claims, or to prejudice the decision of the House of Commons. Any legal rights which Mr. Churchward has were reserved, with the knowledge, on both sides, that his only right would be, to be paid out of monies to be provided by Parliament, and that Parliament had said that it was not prepared to provide these monies from June 1863 to 1870. In substance, then, it was the old arrangement—there was no advantage taken on the part of the Government of the contract of 1859. And so faithfully have the Government acted that they gave Mr. Churchward a year's notice, so that in all respects his position
1916
might be the same as it would have been if the former contract had continued.
And now a few words upon what may be called the general merits of the case. But, first, I cannot help thinking that there are considerations of importance involved in this matter more than have received justice from those who have spoken on the other side of the House. I ask the Committee just to follow me through the principal dates upon which this case mainly depends. In 1857 there had been a cessation of a former correspondence which Mr. Churchward had carried on with the Admiralty for the purpose of obtaining a similar renewal of the contract. In January 1859 that correspondence was revived, and on the 23rd of February the Admiralty, under circumstances which I have already mentioned, without the knowledge of the First Lord, without any real inquiry into the facts at all, expressed an opinion in favour of the renewal of the contract. What followed when the matter got to the Treasury was this. Upon the 10th of March it was referred to the Post Office, and the Postmaster General made a strong report against the extension of the contract. Mr. Stephenson endorsed the memorandum and expressed his entire concurrence in the objections which had been taken. Mr. Hamilton, the Permanent Secretary to the Treasury, made a memorandum expressing a difference of opinion and giving his reasons. Just then there was a critical time; the Government had been defeated on the Reform Bill, dissolution was resolved upon, and in the interval Mr. Churchward and his friends urged the matter forward. Before the 1st of April a letter was written by Mr. Murray, a gentleman with whom I have the honour to be acquainted, and from that acquaintance I am sure whatever he has stated may be taken as the statement of a man of honour according to his belief of the facts. Mr. Murray, shortly before the 1st April, wrote a letter to my hon. Friend the Member for Bridgnorth (Mr. Whitmore), then one of the Lords of the Treasury. In that letter Mr. Murray said, "We are anxious to expedite Mr. Churchward's matter, as we want him to go down to Dover to canvass." Now, I ask the Committee to observe the critical position of things at that moment. And here let me observe that my apprehension of this matter does not depend simply on the particular conversation with Captain Carnegie, as to which there is some difference of recollection

1917
among three gentlemen, whom I assume to be, all men of honour. Mr. Murray thinks that Captain Carnegie's memory may be in error, because something had passed in conversation between himself and Captain Carnegie which the latter might have confounded with a conversation which he held with Mr. Churchward. It was evident from that very thing that Mr. Churchward was pressing his influence with everybody in office that he could apply to, to get the matter expedited. Well, I say that is a very serious matter. The whole case stood thus. Mr. Churchward's proposal was disapproved by the Post Office; it was disapproved by Mr. Stephenson, and by the hon. Baronet the Member for Stamford himself. It was not until the 13th of April that the difficulties which my hon. Friend experienced were removed. We all know my hon. Friend, and I am bound to say, that if there were a case infinitely stronger against other people, one single word from my hon. Friend would convince me of the purity, sincerity, and honour of everything which he himself did. But does that determine the question before us, if we find the contractor and his friends set in motion indirect means, among persons of inferior importance, in order that at that critical time the contract might be extended? It is impossible to trace the ins and outs of this kind of influence. It is impossible to tell what wheels within wheels there might be. If in this case we were to acquit Mr. Churchward of endeavouring to mix up political with other considerations, merely because he was obliged to obtain the assent of some who could not be influenced by those considerations, it would be impossible in many instances to get over the obscure boundary line between that which is corrupt and that which is honest in public affairs. But there are principles of our law which should guide us here. We know, that when a corrupt agency is employed, no evidence whatever that the person on whose behalf it was employed derived no actual benefit from that agency will release him from the consequences. Mr. Churchward's position in this particular case was perfectly clear. He tells us he was able to command, and did command, fifty votes at Dover, not one of whom failed him in the result; and, according to Captain Carnegie, he said, "They want to throw over the contract until after the elections. I want to vote for you and Mr. Osborne." That would be entirely neutralizing the vote; and that
1918
statement, coming from a gentleman of such loose politics, that he himself tells us he always votes for the Government—a gentleman who, himself, says he has one eye to his own interests and another to the interests of Dover—is quite sufficient to fix him with corruption. Well, Sir, we say now we will not hold ourselves bound by a contract obtained under those circumstances. The House has always exercised a most wise jealousy as to the mixture of Government contracts with Parliamentary influence. We know that any person who accepts a Government contract is ipso facto disqualified from sitting in this House while he holds it, because the constitution is jealous lest the political influence which belongs to a Member of Parliament may be employed to obtain the contract, or to affect the interests or the obligations of the contractor under it. But where is the difference between such a man and a Government contractor seeking an extension of the contract, when there is no pretence of urgency as to time, when four years of his contract are yet to run, taking advantage of the pressure of a general election, in a political crisis on which the fate of the Administration depends, in order to effect the immediate settlement of his claim; and doing all he can, whether successfully or not, to enlist the influence of those Members of the Government who are at once watching over the contract and over the elections? It is for the Committee now to determine whether they continue of the same mind as before or not. But this, at least, I do say, that the Government have done their duty in pursuing the only course which it was open to them to pursue—in, bringing the matter under the consideration of the House, in a form and manner consistent with, and necessarily resulting from, the former decision of the House itself.
COLONEL DICKSONsaid, that the hon. and learned Gentleman who had just sat down had favoured the Committee with a dissertation on "loose politics," but such a dissertation could not possibly come with a worse grace from any one than from the Solicitor General himself. The question was, whether this contract was entered into by the late Government from corrupt motives. No proof of these corrupt motives had been attempted to be given. Two matters were involved in the Resolution—one, the character of the gentleman who entered into this contract; the other, the

1919
character of the Government by which it had been granted. He trusted that the Committee would not be guilty of such a breach of faith with a public servant who had faithfully performed the duty intrusted to him as the passing of the Resolution would involve.
Question put, "That the words proposed to be left out stand part of the proposed Resolution."
The Committee divided:—Ayes 176; Noes 168: Majority 8.
Original Question put, and agreed to.

AYES.

Adeane, H. J.

Ellice, E. (St. Ands.)

Agar-Ellis, hn. L. G. F.

Enfield, Viscount

Angerstein, W.

Ennis, J.

Antrobus, A.

Esmonde, J.

Atherton, Sir W.

Evans, T. W.

Aytoun, R. S.

Ewart, W.

Bagwell, J.

Ewing, H. E. Crum-

Baines, E.

Fermoy, Lord

Baring, rt. hn. Sir F. T.

Finlay, A. S.

Baring, T. G.

Fitzroy, Lord F. J.

Barnes, T.

Fitzwilliam, hon. C. W. W.

Bass, M. T.

Baxter, W. E.

Forster, C.

Beamish, F. B,

Forster, W. E.

Beaumont, S. A.

Foster, W. O.

Bellew, R. M.

Fortescue, hon. F. D.

Berkeley, Col. F. W. F.

Fortescue, C. S.

Black, A.

Gavin, Major

Blencowe, J. G.

Gibson, rt. hon. T. M.

Bonham-Carter, J.

Gilpin, C.

Bouverie, rt. hon. E. P.

Gladstone, rt. hon. W.

Bouverie, hon. P. P.

Goldsmid, Sir F. H.

Bowyer, Sir G.

Gower, G. W. G. L.

Bright, J.

Greene, J.

Briscoe, J. I.

Gregson, S.

Bruce, Lord E.

Grenfell, H. R.

Bruce, H. A.

Grey, rt. hon. Sir G.

Buchanan, W.

Gurdon, B.

Buxton, C.

Hadfield, G.

Caird, J.

Hanbury, R.

Cardwell, rt. hon. E.

Handley, J.

Cavendish, Lord G.

Hardcastle, J. A.

Cholmeley, Sir M. J.

Hartington, Marq. of

Clay, J.

Hayter, rt. hon. Sir W. G.

Clifford, C.C.

Clifton, Sir R. J.

Headlam, rt. hon. T. E.

Cobbett, J. M.

Herbert, rt. hon. H. A.

Cobden, R.

Hibbert, J. T.

Colebrooke, Sir T. E.

Hodgkinson, G,

Coningham, W.

Hodgson, K. D.

Cowper, rt. hon. W. F.

Holland, E.

Crawford, R. W.

Howard, hon. C. W. G.

Crossley, Sir F.

Hutt, rt. hon. W.

Dalglish, R.

Ingham, R.

Davey, R.

King, hon. P. J. L.

Denman, hon. G.

Kingscote, Colonel

Dering, Sir E. C.

Kinnaird, hon. A. F.

Dillwyn, L. L.

Knatchbull-Hugessen, E.

Dodson, J. G.

Douglas, Sir C.

Layard, A. H.

Doulton, F.

Lanigan, J.

Dundas, F.

Legh, Major C.

Dunlop, A. M.

Locke, J.

1920

Lowe, rt. hon. R.

Ramsden, Sir J. W.

Mackie, J.

Ricardo, O.

Mackinnon, W. A.(Lymington)

Robartes, T. J. A.

Russell, H.

Mainwaring, T.

Russell, A.

Marjoribanks, D. C.

Russell, Sir W.

Marsh, M. H.

Scott, Sir W.

Martin, P. W.

Seely, C.

Martin, J.

Shelley, Sir J. V.

Merry, J.

Smith, J. B.

Mildmay, H, F.

Smith, M. T.

Miller, W.

Smith, Augustus

Mills, J. R.

Somerville, rt. hon. Sir W. M.

Moffatt, G.

Moncreiff, rt. hon. J.

Stacpoole, W.

Monsell, rt. hon. W.

Stansfeld, J.

Morris, D.

Sykes, Colonel W. H.

Morrison, W.

Talbot, C. R. M.

Norris, J. T.

Thompson, H. S.

North, F.

Thornhill, W. P.

O'Conor Don, The

Tite, W.

Ogilvy, Sir J.

Tomline, G.

Onslow, G.

Turner, J. A.

Paget, C.

Vane, Lord H.

Paget, Lord A.

Vernon, H. F.

Paget, Lord C.

Villiers, rt. hon. C. P.

Palmer, Sir R.

Vivian, H. H.

Palmerston, Viscount

Walter, J.

Pease, H.

Watkins, Colonel L.

Peel, rt. hon. Sir R.

Western, S.

Peel, rt. hon. F.

Westhead, J. P. Brown-

Pigott, Serjeant

White, J.

Pilkington, J.

White, L.

Pinney, Colonel

Williams, W.

Ponsonby, hon. A.

Wyvill, M.

Potter, E.

Price, R. G.

TELLERS.

Pritchard, J.

Mr. Brand

Pugh, D.

Sir W. Dunbar

Puller, C. W. G.

NOES.

Adderley, rt. hon. C. B.

Cochrane, A.D. R. W. B.

Addington, hon. W. W.

Codrington, Sir W.

Annesley, hon. Col. H.

Cole, hon. H.

Archdall, Captain M.

Cole, hon. J. L.

Astell, J. H.

Collins, T.

Bailey, C.

Corry, rt. hon. H. L.

Barbour, J. D.

Cox, W.

Barrow, W. H.

Cubitt, G.

Barttelot, Colonel

Damer, S. D.

Bathurst, A. A.

Dickson, Colonel

Beecroft, G. S.

Disraeli, rt. hon. B.

Bentinck, G. C.

Du Cane, C.

Beresford, D. W. P.

Duncombe, hon. W. E.

Bernard, hon. Col.

Edwards, Colonel

Blackburn, P.

Elmley, Viscount

Bond, J. W. M'G.

Elphinstone, Sir J. D.

Bovill, W.

Fane, Colonel J. W.

Bramley-Moore, J.

Farquhar, Sir M.

Bridges, Sir B. W.

Fellowes, E.

Brooks, R.

Fergusson, Sir J.

Bruce, Major C.

Ferrand, W.

Bruce, Sir H. H.

Filmer, Sir E.

Bruen, H.

FitzGerald, W. R. S.

Burghley, Lord

Forde, Colonel

Cairns, Sir H. M'C.

Forester, rt. hon. Gen.

Cave, S.

Gard, R. S.

Cecil, Lord R.

George, J.

Chapman, J.

Gilpin, Colonel

Clive, Capt. hon. G. W.

Goddard, A. L.

Cobbold, J. C.

Gore, J. R. O.

1921

Graham, Lord W.

Noel, hon. G. J.

Greaves, E.

North, Colonel

Greenall, G.

Northcote, Sir S. H.

Gray, Captain

O'Neill, E.

Grey de Wilton, Visct.

Pakenham, Colonel

Grogan, Sir E.

Pakington, rt. hon. Sir J.

Hamilton, Lord C.

Papillon, P. O.

Hamilton, Major

Parker, Major W.

Hamilton, Viscount

Peto, Sir S. M.

Hardy, G.

Pevensey, Viscount

Hardy, J.

Potts, G.

Hay, Sir J. C. D.

Powell, F. S.

Hennessy, J. P.

Powell, J. J.

Howes, E.

Redmond, J. E.

Hubbard, J. G.

Repton, G.W. J.

Humberston, P. S.

Ridley, Sir M. W.

Hunt, G. W.

Rowley, hon. R. T.

Jermyn, Earl

Sclater-Booth, G.

Jervis, Captain

Scott, Lord H.

Jolliffe, rt. hon. Sir W. G. H.

Selwyn, C. J.

Seymer, H. K.

Jolliffe, H. H.

Sheridan, H. B.

Kekewich, S. T.

Smith, M.

Kelly, Sir F.

Smith, S. G.

Kennard, R. W.

Somes, J.

Ker, D. S.

Stanhope, J. B.

Kerrison, Sir E. C.

Stanhope, Lord

Knatchbull, W. F.

Stanley, Lord

Knight, F. W.

Setwart, Sir M. R. S.

Knox, Colonel

Stuart, Lieut. Col. W.

Lacon, Sir E.

Sturt, H. G.

Laird, J.

Sturt, Lt.-Col. N.

Langton, W. G.

Sullivan, M.

Leader, N. P.

Talbot, hon. W. C.

Legh, W. J.

Tempest, Lord A. V.

Lennox, Lord G. G.

Thynne, Lord E.

Lennox, Lord H. G.

Thynne, Lord H.

Lennox, C. S. B. H. K.

Torrens, R.

Lever, J. O.

Trefusis, hon. C. H. R.

Liddell, hon. H. G.

Trevor, Lord A. E. H.

Lindsay, hon. Gen.

Trollope, rt. hon. Sir J.

Longfield, R.

Turner, C.

Lovaine, Lord

Vance, J.

Lyall, G.

Vandeleur, Colonel

Lygon, hon. F.

Vansittart, W.

Lytton, rt. hon. Sir E. G. E.L. B.

Walpole, rt. hon. S. H.

Whiteside, rt. hon. J.

Maguire, J. F,

Woodd, B. T.

Malcolm, J. W.

Wyld, J.

Malins, R.

Wyndham, hon. P.

Manners, rt. hn. Lord J.

Wynn, Sir W. W.

Mills, A.

Wynne, C. G.

Montagu, Lord R.

Yorke, hon. E. T.

Morgan, hon. Major

Mowbray, rt. hon. J. R.

TELLERS.

Colonel Taylor

Naas, Lord

Mr. Whitmore

Nicol, W.

MR. DISRAELIsaid, he wished to inquire when the Resolution would be reported?
THE CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUERsaid, it had better be reported on the following day.
MR. WALPOLEsaid, he considered it important to raise the general question on the merits, according to the usual practice of the House. A new mode of taking Votes had been introduced, a Resolution
1922
having been agreed to on a subject which was not a matter of Supply, and the Committee would do well to consider whether an opportunity should not be given of determining the real merits of the question. Nothing could be more simple. The House ought to have an opportunity of considering the new contract which had been substituted for the old one; but at that moment the new one was not even before them.
MR. DISRAELIsaid, he had mentioned the subject, not with a view to try the merits of the question again, though he did not hold himself precluded from that course, but merely with reference to the expediency of discussing the mode in which the Vote had been brought before the Committee. The House had before them an important question, upon which there would probably be a lengthened discussion, and it would be most inopportune at the close of such a discussion to call upon the House to inquire into the propriety of retaining certain constitutional forms of great importance.
THE CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUERsaid, the difficulty was that the service had to be provided for. It was true that an important question would come before the House on the following day, and probably it would not be in the power of the House to discuss the Report of the Resolution until a very late hour. With reference to the state of the service, he did not think the Government would be justified in naming any later day than Thursday in the following week.
House resumed.
Resolution to be reported on Thursday 28th May.
Committee to sit again on Thursday 28th May.

OFFENCES (SOUTH AFRICA) BILL.

  [BILL 113.] COMMITTEE.
  Order for Committee read.
  MR. CHICHESTER FORTESCUEexplained that the object of the Bill was to amend an Act passed in the 6th and 7th of William IV. for the prevention and punishment of offences committed by Her Majesty's subjects in South Africa. Its chief provision related to Natal. At present, it was necessary to send parties who committed outrages there to Cape Town for trial, a distance of many hundred miles; but it was represented by the Governor of

  1923
  Natal that it would conduce much more effectually to the ends of justice if these parties could be tried in the courts of Natal. In the Bill, accordingly, it was provided that these parties should be tried in the courts of that Colony.
  Bill considered in Committee.
  House resumed.
  Bill reported, without Amendment; to be read 3° To-morrow.

ADMIRALTY COURT (IRELAND) BILL.

  [BILL 45.] COMMITTEE.
  Order for Committee read.
  MR. MAGUIRErose to address the House, when—
  Notice taken, that 40 Members were not present; House counted, and 40 Members not being present,
  House adjourned at half after One o'clock.

MINUTES.
Sat First in Parliament—The Duke of Grafton, after the death of his Father.
PUBLIC BILLS—First Reading—London Coal and Wine Duties Continuance* (No 104); Sale of Mill Sites &c. (Ireland)* (No 105.)
Committee—Duchy of Cornwall Management* (No 90); Marriages, &c. (Ireland)* (No 93.)
Report—Duchy of Cornwall Management* (No 106), and re committed.

DUBLIN METROPOLITAN RAILWAY BILL.—THIRD READING.
Moved, That the Bill be now read 3a.
THE EARL OF CLANCARTY: My Lords, I feel it my duty to ask your Lordships to defer the third reading of this Bill for six months. Although in delegating to Select Committees, the duty of taking evidence and reporting upon what are called private Bills, which are very often Bills of the greatest public importance, your Lordships are wont, as a general rule, to attach such weight to their decisions as practically to invest them with legislative power, I do not think that those decisions ought to be regarded as so conclusive, that when strong and sufficient reason is shown, they should not be reviewed. No five Members of your Lordships' House, however selected and however respectable, can be properly regarded as forming an infallible tribunal. Even the Judges of the land, fitted as they are by education, by learning, and by tried abilities for the judicial office, have, as your Lordships are well aware, their judgments often called into question, appealed from, and reversed. Is

1805
it, then, unreasonable to suppose that a Select Committee may form an erroneous judgment? Is it nut rather to be apprehended, that though acting with the best intentions, they may sometimes come to conclusions injurious to the public, from having before them only those who have their own interests to serve, and by whom reference is only made to the interests of the public so far as they may be subservient to their own? Is it not, in fact, manifest that such is often the case, when we consider how many ill-devised railway schemes, sanctioned by the Legislature on the sole recommendation of Select Committees, have involved individuals and public companies in ruinous expenses of no public advantage, and of times preventing the undertaking of works that would be of service? It certainly appears to me that you cannot, with due regard to the interests that may be involved, exclude, where reasonable grounds are shown for it, examination and review of the Report of a Committee upon a private Bill; and if this may be said in the case of an ordinary Railway Bill, how much more, when, as in the present case, the question arises with regard to a metropolitan railway, affecting the interests of the second capital of the empire, displacing thousands of its inhabitants, and disfiguring its most beautiful thoroughfares, and all for an object which, as I shall presently show, the Bill will not accomplish? Having attended very much to the proceedings of the Select Committee, and been present during the last day of the inquiry, I can truly say, that when I left the room after hearing the important evidence given, regarding an alternative line of railway, suggested as preferable to that before the Committee, and the speeches of counsel on the whole case, it was with the firm conviction that the Bill would not be allowed to proceed; great, therefore, was my astonishment when I afterwards heard that it had been favourably reported on. My surprise was, I believe, shared by every one acquainted with the cases, and it was I think, a significant circumstance, that when I rose to give notice of my opposition to the third reading of the Bill, notice was at the same time given by a noble Lord, not now in his place, of a Motion to have the evidence printed. I regret, that when last Friday that Motion came on, it was opposed by two such high authorities in this House as the noble President of the Council and the noble Lord the Chairman of Committees.
1806
The ground of their opposition, I must say, appeared to me very unconstitutional. It was, that the decision of the Select Committee should be implicitly and without examination accepted. Such advice, after what had been urged against the Bill, was an ignoring of the duty of the House to act on the best information within its reach; it was calculated to shake public confidence in the soundness of your decisions, and it must have the effect of depriving your Lordships, should you give a third reading to the Bill, of the power of doing so with that knowledge of its having any claim to acceptance which alone could command respect for such a vote in the face of the objections that have been urged against it. My noble Friend the Chairman of the Select Committee objected to the printing of the evidence on the ground of its being unnecessary, inasmuch as the whole proceedings of the Committee had been regularly reported in the Irish newspapers. I should have expected from my noble Friend the manifestation of greater readiness to have the proceedings of his Committee examined into, for he must be aware that your Lordships have no file of any Irish newspaper to refer to. But he is very correct in saying that the Irish journals had made full reports. The inference is that the public took a very deep interest in the inquiry, and it is very much from the perusal of those reports that so much consternation and indignant feeling has been awakened that such a Bill should have passed through a Committee of this House. Should it eventually become law, my noble Friend's name will be immortalized by it, for it is known in Ireland under the title of the Llanover Disfigurement Bill. I hope my noble Friend is not ambitious thus to connect his name with a great public work, but that be will rather consent to have the Bill, and any other scheme for carrying out those public objects which in the course of his inquiry he has ascertained to be desirable, referred to a Commission sitting in Dublin. It is not very long since your Lordships put a stop to the progress of several Metropolitan Railway Bills for London, and appointed a Committee of eighteen noble Lords, selected as the most capable of forming a correct judgment, to inquire and report in what, manner provision could best be made for "securing a comprehensive plan of metropolitan railway communication, with the greatest advantage to the public, and least inconvenience to the local arrangements of the metropolis." Yet

1807
even to these no power was given beyond that of inquiry and report. Why not do the same by the Irish metropolis? Is it reasonable or just, while you deal thus tenderly with the interests of London, which undoubtedly are important to the community at large, that you should ignore those of Dublin, not less important; and with regard to its architectural beauty much more highly prized by the whole Irish nation? I do not charge the noble Lords that composed the Select Committee with acting intentionally wrong. I believe, on the contrary, that they were animated by the desire of doing what was right, but they have committed a great error in reporting such a Bill to the House. I will trouble your Lordships with but a very brief statement of facts upon which I would move its rejection. The Bill as it was originally brought forward, and passed the Standing Orders, though unsupported by any portion of the Irish public, and especially disapproved of by the Corporation and citizens of Dublin, was founded on a principle the importance of which was established before the Committee, of uniting, by means of a metropolitan railway, with a central station, all the railways, five in number, having their termini in Dublin, whereby a through communication would be provided for passengers landing at Kingstown to every part of Ireland; but the Bill, as reported to your Lordships, provides only for the junction of two railways—namely, the Kingstown and Great Southern and Western, thereby limiting the advantages of a through communication to persons travelling to the districts opened by the latter railway, and cutting off from the benefit of such accommodation, and from any chance of ever obtaining it if this Bill should pass, the whole of Ireland North of Dublin and two-thirds of the West. The cause of this curtailment of the original undertaking was that the Board of Trade interposed in the interest of the Liffey navigation against the river being crossed in the manner proposed in the Bill. The Board very reasonably supposed, looking at the preamble of the Bill, that the crossing of the Liffey was an essential condition of the passing of the Bill, for their Report thus concludes—
"So far, therefore, as the interests of navigation are concerned, there would appear to be objections to the scheme. Whether there are advantages such as to outweigh these objections will be a question for the Committee. If, however, the Committee should decide upon allowing the bill to pass, it appears to my Lords that clauses
1808
should be inserted for securing the following objects, viz.:—
"1. The bridge across the Liffey to be constructed upon such plans and with an opening span of such dimensions as the Board of Trade shall approve of.
"2. The Board of Trade to be empowered to order a local survey of any works affecting tidal waters, and to remove any such works if abandoned.
"The clauses for these purposes which my Lords would recommend to be inserted, will have been furnished by the Board of Trade to the agents of the promoters before the Bill is considered in Committee. (Signed)
"JAMES BOOTH."
The Committee appear not to have concurred in the views of the Board of Trade, for they decided upon passing the Bill without any such clauses as the Board recommended, and without its providing for what, by its preamble and title, it purported to effect—namely, the uniting of the different railways radiating from Dublin. Had the original scheme been adhered to, there is no doubt it would, though at the sacrifice of the architectural beauties of the city of Dublin, and otherwise in a manner open to much objection, have accomplished some important objects. It would have united by railway the north and south divisions of the town; it would have opened to the whole of the city, as well as the country, the extensive and growing trade of the port of Dublin, and it would have provided through communication from England with all parts of Ireland. As the Bill now is, the so-called Metropolitan Railway will be confined to the south side of the river, while the whole of the trade of Dublin, except in coals, is on the north side; and for the single purpose of effecting a junction between two railways, the most beautiful parts and most striking features of a metropolis of which Irishmen are justly proud will be irremediably disfigured, and thousands of the population displaced. This, my Lords, is the more to be regretted, as a scheme was suggested that would have accomplished all the objects to be looked for from a metropolitan railway by the construction of a line in great part subterranean, and that without injuring the appearance of the town, without any material interference with property and the habitations of the citizens, and presenting a most eligible site, in proximity to the General Post Office, for a metropolitan station. After such a scheme had been suggested and a survey submitted, in support of which the most eminent engineers were examined, I

1809
cannot acquit the Committee of having come to a very hasty and unfortunate conclusion in reporting for your adoption the very crude, imperfect, and mischievous measure projected in the Bill. Many objections of detail might be urged against the Bill, but I will not trespass upon your attention by noticing them. I must, however, advert to one circumstance in the proceedings of the Committee which appeared to me particularly unfortunate. It is, that when only one side had been heard, and even before the engineer of the proposed railway had been cross-examined, the Committee, through their Chairman, declared that they had made up their minds that the Metropolitan Railway Station should be on the south side of the Liffey. This, my Lords, was a prejudging of the whole question; and although the decision was, I am sure, announced with the best intention, it placed the opponents of the Bill in the difficult and hopeless position of having to contend against what looked like a foregone conclusion. Let me, in conclusion, entreat your Lordships to pause before you give your sanction to this Bill. It is due to the interests and feelings of the Irish people that great caution should be used in sanctioning a work of the kind proposed; and I believe that the interests as well of the promoters of it as of the public will best be served by its being postponed. I therefore beg to move that the third reading be deferred for six months.
Amendment moved, to leave out ("now") and insert ("this Day Six Months").
LORD LLANOVER:—My Lords, as Chairman of the Select Committee to whom the Bill was referred, I beg to assure your Lordships that we gave not only to the Bill referred to us, but to the other schemes put forward, the fullest and most careful consideration. It is now said that your Lordships ought to refer the whole matter to a Royal Commission. I confess that for my part I think that the experience we have had with respect to Royal Commissions in Ireland does not give me much encouragement to adopt that course. In the year 1860 a most important question was agitated in Dublin—namely, the supply of water to that city. Representations were made to the then Chief Secretary, Mr. Cardwell, to the effect that the issue of a Royal Commission would produce harmony on that disputed question. Accordingly, a Royal Commission
1810
was appointed; but what was the result? The Commissioner, the most eminent man in his profession, sent in his report, and a Bill to carry out the recommendations was prepared, but that Bill was vigorously contested. For more than a month it remained under the consideration of the House of Commons, but even then the opposition did not end, for it was hotly opposed before a Committee of your Lordships' House, and I can bear witness to that fact, as I was selected by your Lordships to be the Chairman of that Committee. It is said that we excluded evidence which was tendered in opposition to the Bill we are now discussing. This statement is so far correct that we excluded that on behalf of the Midland Railway Company, of which the noble Earl is an active director. I thought the Committee were right in deciding that this railway company had no locus standi. But wishing to be fully assured upon this point, and supposing that the question might be raised again in your Lordships' House, or elsewhere, we determined, before excluding the Midland Railway, to have the opinion thereon of the greatest authority in your Lordships' House, and I consulted with the Chairman of Committees; I am glad to say we were supported by that noble Lord. It has been objected also that the Bill was curtailed. That is quite true; the Bill was curtailed in consequence of the decision of the Admiralty and of the Board of Trade; and when my noble Friend says we did not concur with their opinions, he is in error: we did concur with them; we did not go into the whole Bill as originally drawn, but into the Bill as submitted to us, the branch across the Liffey having been withdrawn before our Committee sat; but any one of your Lordships might suppose from the observations of the noble Earl (the Earl of Clanearty) that he approved of the Bill in its original state. Not at all; the Midland Company, of which the noble Earl is a director, objected to it, though the noble Earl now says, that if the Bill passed in its original shape, it would have been all that was to be desired. The noble Earl objected to it in its entirety. Let us see the nature of the opposition offered to it. I will read to the House an extract from a speech made by Mr. Ennis at a meeting of the Midland Railway Company, on the 19th of March. Mr. Ennis said—
"It was because that line left the Midland Railway out of the running that he was opposed to it. Was it to be supposed, that if the line gave the

1811
Midland line the accommodation which it proposed to give to other lines, his company would be mad enough to oppose it?"
I may say we regard this scheme as a trunk line to connect the several lines running into Dublin, which made provision in the 39th and 40th clauses under which the Midland Company would have power to join this line and use the central station of the company, any differences between the two companies to be settled by the Board of Trade. It has been said, my Lords, that there was great opposition to this Bill from the citizens of Dublin; but we had from that city a petition in its favour, signed by 2,000 persons. One of the Members for the City came forward and said he was strongly against it, but admitted that his brother was as strongly in its favour. In fact, in reference to this as to all great works, there were opponents as well as supporters. But the real question is, will not this scheme be a great gain to Ireland and the United Kingdom, to have a through communication direct from England to Cork and Galway? We also took evidence with regard to the manner in which other lines might be made. Any noble Lord who has sat on railway Committees must know that engineers are in the same category as mad doctors on a lunacy question; one will say the patient is stark mad, and the other he is of sound mind. So with regard to engineers; one pronounces a scheme to be bad, the other declares it good. But in all the schemes of which I have had experience as Chairman of a Committee of either House, I never heard such evidence as the opponents of this Bill produced. In opposition to this scheme, which went right through the city, with good gradients, it was seriously proposed to put forward one which would run under the Liffey, with a gradient of one in fifty or one in sixty, then run horizontally, ascend the other side into open day, of a gradient again of one in forty, and take a circuit round the city; and in order to get those gradients, the engineer, with the example of the Thames Tunnel before us, said that we should run under the Liffey with two feet of soil between the navigable river and the crown of the arch, and eighteen inches, or two bricks of thickness, for the arch itself. I do not think any of your Lordships would venture into such a tunnel. From the evidence submitted to us we came to the conclusion to recommend your Lordships to pass this Bill, and I am sure your Lordships will see, from the clauses to which I
1812
have referred, that not only will the railway companies which are directly connected with it have access to it. But all other companies will have the power of joining and making use of the line, which will form the connecting link between Kingstown and the great ports on the southern and northern coast of Ireland.
THE EARL OF BANDONsupported the Bill, which would, he believed, be productive of great national advantages. If this line were made, in four hours and a half the Government could send troops from Kingstown to Queenstown.
THE EARL OF BELMOREsaid, that as a general rule it was better that the House should not reverse the decision of a Select Committee on a private Bill, because it was only fair, that when the House appointed five noble Lords to undertake the onerous duty of examining into a measure, that their decision should be supported. But this was altogether an exceptional case. Here was a scheme for traversing Dublin from end to end, crossing thirty-five streets, and stopping nine more altogether—and amongst the streets so to be crossed were two of the most important in Dublin—Westmoreland Street and D'Olier Street—and that by means of bridges only about fourteen feet from the level of the roadway. These streets were to be spanned by railway bridges, and at the end of Westmoreland Street, which he might call the Regent Street of Dublin, was situated the Bank of Ireland, which was considered the finest building in Dublin, perhaps in the United Kingdom; and if the bridge across this street were to be made, the view would be obstructed to any person standing on Carlisle Bridge. Now, as to the traffic; as his noble Friend had stated, the House had, as he (the Earl of Belmore) thought very properly, refused to go to the expense of having the evidence printed; but he had very carefully gone over it, as it was fully reported in the Dublin papers, as well as the speeches of the counsel and the remarks of the noble Chairman. The promoters proposed to have a central station close to Westmoreland Street. This was to be a high level station, to be reached by sixty steps, and, as he understood the evidence, would be a very inconvenient one, nearly as had as the present one at Westland Row. The promoters proved that there was at present a great amount of traffic passing through the streets of Dublin from the various railway termini, to be shipped at the quays. They

1813
admitted that the place at which by far the largest amount of shipments took place was from the North Wall, and he could not understand how the promoters could pretend to say that their scheme was to relieve the streets. The place of shipment was on the north side of the Liffey, and their station was to be on the south side, and above the navigation; so that all the cattle and all traffic they would bring from the South of Ireland would have to pass along Westmoreland Street, one of the most important, and Carlisle Bridge, one of the leading thoroughfares of Dublin, and so to the quays at the North Wall. But the greatest blot in this scheme was that it left the communication with the North of Ireland unprovided for. As the Bill was originally introduced, there was proposed to be a branch from the Central Station to what is called the Amiens Street Station, the terminus of the Northern lines; but this, in consequence of the opposition of the Admiralty and the Ballast Board, was withdrawn. There were three ways by which this communication might be effected—one, by the scheme already alluded to by the noble Lord opposite (Lord Llanover), and which was proposed to be accomplished by means of a tunnel under the Liffey; but this was one which he might say was quite out of the question, for it was proposed to go from the terminus on one side by a gradient of one in forty to a point seventy-two feet below the quays of a navigable river, and then to rise with the same gradient on the other side, which, in his opinion, would be a very dangerous scheme to sanction. Another plan that had been suggested was to form a communication with the Broadstone terminus of the Midland Railway, by means of a junction with what was called the Liffey branch. This was all very well, but the Midland Railway Company worked a system of railways which were competing for the traffic of certain districts with railways in the north of Ireland, which were in Dublin by means of the Drogheda terminus, and it was not natural that the Midland Railway Company should be willing to allow the Northern lines to have access to the central station by means of the powers secured to them (the Midland) of forming a junction with it. The only remaining plan for uniting the stations was by means of a high level line and a bridge across Sackville Street—a street which was considered to be one of the finest in Europe. A great deal of the traffic of Dublin was connected with trade, and the point of ship-
1814
ment for that was in Dublin. The passenger traffic went from Kingstown, but the goods and cattle traffic from the port of Dublin. There was one other point to which he wished to draw attention, one which had before been adverted to in that House. As the Bill was introduced originally, no less than 5,619 persons would, according to the Report of Mr. Reade, the Inspector of Lodging Houses under the Corporation of Dublin, he deprived of their homes; and as the Bill now stood, 2,846 persons, mostly of the labouring class, would be turned out of their houses; or, taking the population of Dublin at 200,000 persons, rather better than 1¼ per cent of that of the whole city. It was quite true that at the instance of the Committee a clause had been inserted to provide for a daily cheap train for the benefit of the labouring class, but unfortunately it did not appear where the train was to run from. And now, as to the remarks which had fallen from his noble Friend behind him with reference to the conduct of the Committee: he felt bound to say that in what was decided on by the Committee, and what fell from the noble Lord (Lord Llanover) there was nothing to be objected to. It was quite clear that the parties who were excluded from being heard had not locus standi. He begged their Lordships' pardon for having troubled them with these remarks, but he felt it to be his duty as an Irish Representative Peer, considering the national interests which were involved, to ask their Lordships to interfere to prevent an irreparable injury to the metropolis of that kingdom.
THE MARQUESS OF CLANRICARDEsaid, he wished to take this opportunity to point out to the noble Earl the President of the Council the fallacy of the argument used by him the other night, when he said that Dublin was not to be compared with London; in the same spirit he would say that the trade of Ireland was not to be regarded with the trade of England, and did not require such extraordinary lines as that proposed under this Bill. It was unjust to the citizens of Dublin to treat the measure as a mere ordinary railway Bill, more especially as the railway companies had not been allowed to appear before the Committee. But the Irish Government had taken no steps in the matter, though they had an impartial tribunal in the Board of Trade to advise them. He hoped that Dublin would be allowed to reap the benefit of the experience which Parliament had derived with respect to metropolitan railway schemes.
LORD STRATHEDENdeprecated hasty legislation on this subject, and thought the inhabitants of Dublin should be allowed the penefit of the doubt before their Lordships passed the measure.
LORD REDESDALEsaid, the objections to the Bill were now too late; they ought to have been urged on the Motion for the second reading, or before the Bill was referred to a Select Committee. The Committee heard evidence on the question of the disfigurement to the city, and had reported in favour of the Bill; and it was the safest course to abide by the decisions of that Committee. Under these circumstances, he thought it would be better to take the usual course and allow the Bill to proceed; and then the opponents of the Bill would have an opportunity of raising the same points in the other House, and there urge that the measure might be referred to a Select Committee.
THE MARQUESS OF WESTMEATHsaid, more time should be given for the consideration of a Bill which interfered with so many streets and made such extensive changes.
THE EARL OF DERBY: My Lords, I confess that I never gave a more reluctant vote than that which I must give on the present question. On the one hand, I am of opinion that a much better plan might have been introduced. It is quite true that the objections which I have heard to the Bill I have heard from its opponents; but these objections carry with them considerable weight, and show to me that the Bill, in its present shape, is imperfect, and in many respects objectionable. According to the promoters, the line will cost £150,000 a mile; according to the opponents, it cannot be made for less than £250,000. Now, my Lords, if there was an actual necessity in the City of Dublin, as there is in the City of London, for through communication and a central station, I do not think the course taken the most advantageous one, for it will destroy valuable property, and this, too, by connecting the Dublin and Kingstown and the Great Southern and Western lines. Then I find that the majority of the inhabitants are opposed to the disfigurement of the city. There are great objections to the Bill. But, on the other hand, I am told that those very objections were weighed by the Select Committee, who were unanimous in their adoption of the Resolution at which they arrived. Your Lordships declined to allow the evidence to be printed; and as the Committee had the entire of
1816
that evidence before them on coming to the conclusion, and your Lordships have refused to have that evidence, it would be contrary to the ordinary practice of the House, and contrary to reason and justice, to set aside the verdict of the Committee. In deference to that practice, rather than in approval or support of the Bill, I shall be compelled reluctantly to vote for the third reading, if the noble Earl presses his Motion to a division.
EARL GRANVILLEhad come to the same conclusion as the noble Earl. In voting for the third reading he did so without reference to the merits of the scheme, and simply because he believed that such a question could best be considered by a Select Committee. He would recommend the noble Earl not to go to a division, were it not that the last time he gave that advice he found himself in the minority.
THE EARL OF CLANCARTYsaid, he did not think the House should pass a measure so crude, so superficial, and so mischievous, and he should certainly take the opinion of the House.
On Question, That ("now") stand Part of the Motion? their Lordships divided:—Contents 65; Not-Contents 11: Majority 54.
Resolved in the Affirmative; Bill read 3a accordingly, and passed, and sent to the Commons.

CONTENTS.

Westbury, L. (L. Chancellor.)

Strathallan, V.

Sydney, V.

Somerset, D.

Bangor, Bp.

Durham, Bp.

Ailesbury, M.

Oxford, Bp.

Bristol, M.

St. Davids, Bp.

Salisbury, M.

Abercromby, L.

Airlie, E.

Aveland, L.

Bandon, E.

Belper, L. [Teller.]

Camperdown, E.

Berners, L.

Cathcart, E.

Blantyre, L.

Chichester, E.

Bolton, L.

De Grey, E.

Calthorpe, L.

Derby, E.

Carew, L.

Devon, E.

Chelmsford, L.

Granville, E.

Churchill, L.

Grey, E.

Churston, L.

Hardwicke, E.

Cranworth, L.

Lonsdale, E.

Dartrey, L. (L, Cremorne.)

Pomfret, E.

Russell, E.

Ebury, L.

Saint Germans, E.

Egerton, L.

Stanhope, E.

Foley, L.

Tankerville, E.

Heytesbury, L.

Verulam, E.

Llanover, L. [Teller.]

Lyveden, L.

De Vesci, V.

Mont Eagle, L. (M. Sligo.)

Hardinge, V.

Hawarden, V.

Northwick, L.

1817

Polwarth, L

Saltoun, L.

Ponsonby, L. (E. Bessborough.)

Stanley of Alderley, L.

Strathspey, L. (E. Seafield.)

Portman, L.

Raglan, L.

Taunton, L.

Redesdale, L.

Walsingham, L.

Saltersford, L. (E. Courtown.)

Wodehouse, L.

Wynford, L.

NOT-CONTENTS.

Bath, M.

Castlemaine, L.

Westmeath, M.

Minster, L. (M. Conyngham.)

Belmore, E. [Teller.]

Silchester, L. (E. Longford.)

Clancarty, V. (E. Clancarty. [Teller.]

Somerhill, L. (M. Clanricarde.)

Stratheden, L.

Boyle, L. (E. Cork and Orrery.)

Wharncliffe, L.

METROPOLITAN RAILWAYS.

  QUESTION.
  LORD STRATHEDENrose to put a Question to Her Majesty's Government with regard to the Appointment of a Commission to inquire into the Subject of Metropolitan Railways. He would remind their Lordships that the subject of the projected encroachments of the railway companies on the streets and squares of the metropolis had already occupied much of their attention, and that during the de-hates that had occurred there had been a great union of opinion among practical authorities, that a Commission of Inquiry, similar to that of 1846, ought to be appointed before any considerable progress should be made in the railway works affecting the metropolis; but, as matters now stood, their Lordships had no security whatever that such a Commission would be appointed. The Government had, indeed, expressed an opinion that possibly the Select Committee to which the Metropolitan Railway Bills had been referred might recommend a Commission; but inasmuch as it formed no part of the Instructions to that Committee to give an opinion whether or not a Commission should be appointed, there was no reason to anticipate any recommendation from it on the subject, either favourable or unfavourable. The question, therefore, which he had to put to the Government was, Whether they intended to appointed a Commission of Inquiry, similar to that of 1846, on their own opinion of the merits of the case, or only in the event of the Select Committee recommending the appointing of a Commission? Should the reply be that the Government would, upon their own opinion of the merits of the case, appoint a Com-
  1818
  mission, that answer would be satisfactory. If, on the other hand, the Government should answer that they would wait until the Select Committee had reported, that answer though less satisfactory, would not be useless, as it would show a large portion of their Lordships, who desired a Commission of Inquiry that some further Parliamentary proceedings were essential.
  EARL GRANVILLEsaid, he could not hold out any hope to his noble Friend that Her Majesty's Government would appoint a Commission on the subject of Metropolitan Railways until they had had time to examine the Report of the Select Committee now sitting. As Chairman of the Committee, he could inform their Lordships that they had taken all the evidence they required; but all noble Lords who were present would agree with him in thinking that he was not at all in a position to tell them what the Report of the Committee would be.

UNITED STATES—PROCEEDINGS OF THE PRIZE COURTS.

  MOTION FOR PAPERS.
  THE MARQUESS OF CLANRICARDErose to move for Copies of any Reports from our Consular or Diplomatic Agents in North America of the Decisions or Proceedings of the Prize Courts of the United States. In making this Motion, he was as sensible as any man could be of the gravity of the subject and of the difficult and delicate nature of some of the propositions which must be adverted to in the few observations which he should think it his duty to make. But it was exactly because the subject was so important—because it was one which might have the gravest consequences, both now and for all future time—because it might affect not only the commerce, but the peace and best interests of this country, that he believed that some Parliamentary notice ought to be taken of it. From what he had seen in the public papers, arid in the papers which had been presented to Parliament, he thought that it was absolutely necessary that the question should be brought forward, and that Government should take more action in the matter than they had hitherto done if it were to have a peaceable solution. What was the state of the case? It was this:—A large and important portion of our commerce was at present paralysed by the action of a Government which professed to be at peace and

  1819
  amity with us. No legitimate justification had been advanced on the part of that Government of the acts which had been done, and which had been complained of as inconsistent with the recognised law of nations. The result was that nearly the whole of our trade with the Gulf of Mexico and in the West Indian seas was arrested or put in jeopardy. Of this fact there could be no doubt; for at this moment it was impossible to effect, upon vessels trading to the West Indies, insurances on terms which would allow the merchant and shipowner any remuneration for his adventure. He had a letter from a gentleman, one of whose ships had been seized, and he asked—
  "What am I to do? Here was a ship trading in a legitimate way, her papers were perfectly regular, her conduct unimpeached and unimpeachable, and yet she has been seized and carried off, my cargo has been taken ashore and damaged, about £40,000 of my capital is locked up, and I lose my market. I make an appeal to the Government, and I am told that the matter has been referred to Lord Lyons to make a representation on the subject."
  If this were a solitary instance, he should not mention it, but treat it as a case of oversight and as a wrong which must have redress. If there were any hope that these things would pass away, and that the tone of the Government of the United States would be characterized by respect for the recognised law of nations, he should wish our own Government not to be hasty or rash, nor to stand out for the utmost rights which we were privileged to enforce, but rather to make every allowance for the present embarrassments of the United States Government. But these things had gone on for a considerable time; and from the documents which had been laid before Congress, and which had also been laid before their Lordships' House, it was plain that the Government of the United States had advanced pretensions and had asserted them in a manner that was totally unheard of, and that the mercantile community and the people of this country would not stand. If such things were allowed to go on, it must come to war. It was by noticing them now, and acting in a firm but temperate manner, that we should avoid war. He had no fault to find with the language which the Government had held in the papers which had been laid before the House, and which most clearly exposed the wrong-doing of the United States Government and their officers. The noble
  1820
  Earl at the head of the Foreign Office, in the clearest way, and from their own American authorities, had convicted them of their wrong-doing, and they had no answer but that it suited their position to exclude our ships and commerce from a legitimate trade. They did not attempt to justify their course by law, and yet they did not hold out the slightest hope that that course would be abandoned. He would give two or three illustrations of what he meant. The first case to which he would refer was that of the Labuan, which occurred as long ago as the April of last year. He did not know the particulars of that case further than this—that Mr. Seward acknowledged that the ship was illegally seized, and even went the length of giving orders that no British ship should be seized under similar circumstances. But did he order the release of the ship? Not at all; he ordered that she should be sent to a Prize Court, and told the noble Earl, who in his turn told the merchants of this country, that this remedy of a Prize Court was to cure all evils, and with the decisions of that court they were to be content. Upon those grounds, he (the Marquess of Clanricarde) thought he had a locus standi in asking what were the rules and decisions followed in those Courts in America. The next case was that of the ship Adela, which sailed from Liverpool for Bermuda last February. No fault could be found with her papers. She went to Bermuda, and thence cleared for Nassau with a legitimate cargo—though any cargo would have been legal, for she was sailing from one British port to another—but she was seized near Porto Rico. The next case was that of the Springbock, which sailed from London for Nassau in February. She was seized about 200 miles from Nassau, and about 400 from the American coast. The fourth case was that of the Dolphin, which sailed from Liverpool to St. Thomas, and from thence for Nassau, and was seized off Porto Rico on the 25th of March. The fifth case was that of the Peterhoff, which sailed from Liverpool for St. Thomas and thence for Nassau. She was boarded when going into St. Thomas; her papers were found to be perfectly regular, but she was afterwards seized when coming out, by orders of Admiral Wilkes, within sight of port. He had named those ships, because the cases, however different in degree, were similar in character, and there had not been a shadow of irregu-

  1821
  larity imputed to the vessels—their papers were admitted to be in regular order, and it was not alleged that they had deviated from their course. He therefore asserted, that they had been taken, not because, contrary to the rules of international law, they were attempting to run the blockade, or to run contraband of war to an enemy's port, but under a design of the Government of the United States and their officers, to stop the legitimate trade of this country, not only between England and foreign ports, such as Matamoras, but actually also between our own ports. It the Government of this country submitted to these things now, or allowed such acts to be done with simply a verbal remonstrance, they were submitting, not only to an indignity to the British flag and an injury to British trade, but they were creating precedents of the most grievous nature. None of the conditions which Lord Stowell laid down in the case of the Betsy, as justifying capture, could be pleaded in the case of the Labuan, which had never made any attempt to run the blockade. Mr. Adams, in adverting to the ground on which the Labuan was seized, stated, that "she was, involved in the suspicion not unfairly attaching to all British vessels sailing under British colours in the neighbourhood in which she was seized." This neighbourhood, be it remembered, was that, of the Havannah. The same claim was set up in Mr. Seward's despatch, in which it was laid down that the Federal cruisers had a right to seize every ship found in these seas trading to Matamoras and the West Indies; and if they sent her into a Prize Court, no complaint of such seizure could be made. In the case of the Adela the intervention of Her Majesty's Government was invoked, and the matter was brought under the notice of the United States Government. There was a dispute whether she was seized within two miles or ten of the coast (although that he considered unimportant in reference to the present argument). The captain of the Federal cruiser was, thereupon, ordered to send in a second and supplementary report. The captain and crew of the Adela declared that she was captured in British waters, not two miles from shore; but this was in dispute. The captain of the Federal cruiser, in his second report, said, that "from the speed she was making she was evidently endeavouring to escape us;" as if a British vessel were not allowed to prosecute her voyage at her own rate of
  1822
  speed. The captain then described the course his ship took to cut off the Adela, when she should put about, so as to "cross the channel going en route to Nassau!" Here was a ship seized when going from one British port to another, on the showing of the Federal captain himself. Where was this to stop? They might just as well have seized a vessel going into Portsmouth. It was said, that sending to Prize Courts was to be the justification of all these proceedings; but the Adela was taken before the Prize Court, and what was the decision?
  LORD KINGSDOWN: What Court was it?
  THE MARQUESS OF CLANRICARDE: Key West.
  LORD KINGSDOWN: Is it a provincial court or a supreme Court?
  THE MARQUESS OF CLANRICARDEpresumed it was a provincial Court. He had often heard it said that certain Judges should not give reasons for their decisions, but in this case they had the reason for the decision. The Judge said, he condemned, on the ground that whatever way he decided an appeal would be had. This as the precisely contrary rule to that which prevailed for sixty years in our courts. The justification required in a condemnation for breach of blockade was clearly laid down by Lord Kingsdown in the case of the Ostee. Lord Kingsdown said—
  "In order to justify a condemnation for breach of blockade, three things must be proved,—first, the existence of an actual blockade; secondly, the knowledge of the party; thirdly, some act of violation, either by going in or coming out with a cargo laden after the commencement of the blockade."
  Before he reverted to the decision of Lord Stowell in the case of the Betsy, he would remark that Lord Stowell's judgments had sometimes been considered somewhat harsh towards neutrals, and Lord Stowell himself complained of the difficulty he experienced in finding exact precedents to guide him, and that he was therefore compelled to arrive at a decision from the application of sound and just principles to the cases before him. Since this time, however, the whole civilized world, including America, had come to the conclusion that the maritime code and international law ought to be modified in favour of neutrals. He might observe, with reference to a point that had been much spoken of lately—the right of captors to open mails found on board vessels they had seized, with a view to obtain evidence to justify their

  1823
  capture—he found in Lawrence's edition of Story of 1846, the learned editor deduced—very justly and properly, it seemed to him—from Judge Story's judgment, that it was absurd to claim a right to open mails so seized for the purpose of impeaching the character of the ship by which they were conveyed. In America, as in Europe, the tendency had been in Prize Courts to decide with greater liberality towards captured vessels than was the practice in Lord Stowell's time. That learned Lord, in the judgment to which he had referred, in the case of the Betsy, said—
  "The law which we are to lay down cannot be confined to the British navy. The rule must be applied to captors of all nations. No country can be permitted to form an exceptional rule in its own favour. Whatever is held in England to justify an officer of the British navy will be held by the tribunals of every country, both on this and on the other side of the Atlantic, to justify or excuse the captors of their own nation. By the usage of all countries captors have a great interest in increasing the number of prizes. The temptation to send in ships for adjudication is sufficiently strong. Is it too much to say, that where no ground of suspicion can be shown, and all that the captor can allege is that he did wrong under a mistake, he should make good in temperate damages the injury which he has occasioned? Ought a captor to be permitted to say to the captured, 'True, nothing suspicious appeared in your case at the time of seizure, but, upon further inquiry, something might have been discovered. I had a right to take my chance. You have nothing to complain of. I subjected you to no unnecesary inconvenience. Go about your business, and be thankful for your escape.' We cannot think that this would be a satisfactory answer to a British neutral ship seized by a foreign belligerent."
  That was the case of a ship seized only twenty miles from a blockaded port, and the noble and learned Lord felt himself bound to condemn the captors in damages, as well as to restore the vessel. Another high authority, Dr. Lushington, as late as 1856, in the case of the Olive and Fanny, captured by us during the Russian war, said—
  "It is true, as has been urged by Her Majesty's Advocate, that circumstances have been somewhat changed, that captors now run greater danger of being condemned in costs and damages than they did formerly; but although that may be a sufficient reason for the Judicial Committee to depart from the authority of the Haabet, I do not think it competent for me to adopt such a course."
  The decree was that the prayer of the captors for admission of their evidence be rejected and ship restored, &c., but the Judge added—
  "My decree is founded on the conviction that no doubt arises upon the primary evidence—
  1824
  namely, the depositions and the ship's papers. This ship was, according to the evidence, taken twenty miles from the coast of Finland. If that vas a cause of detention, and justifies the introduction of captor's evidence, any vessel navigating that gulf may be detained on similar presumption.
  He wanted to know whether it was the intention of Her Majesty's Government to overturn the law as laid down by the best late and highest authorities both of Europe and America, to vary the practice that had obtained for so long a period, simply to suit the exigencies of the United States Government at this particular moment? He repeated that there did not appear to be a shadow of law or equity to sustain the acts which had been committed by the American Government, and they almost avowed that there was no such authority. There was a virtual, if not a declared determination to put a stop to British trade in those waters. He might refer to another matter, in which an attempt had been made to set aside all the obligations of international law, of direct treaties, and of usage, under the pretence of a municipal law. The New York customs officers refused to give clearance to vessels trading to the Bahamas or West India Islands. Complaints were made to Lord Lyons, who communicated with Mr. Seward, who, in reply, forwarded the report of the Collector of Customs, in which that functionary said—
  "In the exercise of the discretion devolving upon me as an officer of the Government of a sovereign people, I have prohibited the shipment of coals, of dry goods, of shoes, of quinine and other drugs, of tinware, of munitions of war, and sundry other articles to Nassau and the West Indies, and other foreign ports, when I had reason to suspect they were intended by individual enterprise, or the special contracts of British subjects, to directly contribute to the welfare of the enemies of the United States."
  Thus, if the collector thought that goods carried by a British ship might possibly contribute, directly or indirectly, to the welfare of the Southern people, he, in defiance of all law and of all treaties, took upon himself to prohibit the exportation of all such goods. It was said, that if those vessels were not themselves intended to run the blockade, yet their cargoes were destined to ports which were entrepôts for the supply of blockade runners. Matamoras had become a place of great importance in the western world, and the trade of Nassau had enormously increased. But could it be endured that the United States should say, because the Con-

  1825
  federates or others might run the blockade, the liberty of the seas and our commerce with a port of our own should cease? Such a pretension could not be allowed. No doubt it might be said, that according to the case decided in 1856, by Dr. Lushington, the parties injured would get costs to a large amount from the United States. Why, no man could seriously believe that any costs would be given. What had been the nature of their proceedings? He had shown what had been done with ships, with respect to which their conduct had been utterly unlawful; but how had they dealt with the owners of ships they had seized? A very curious case had appeared in The Times of this very morning. It was as follows:—
  "In the case of the Peterhoff, on Saturday, a motion made on behalf of the owners of the vessel to admit the testimony of Captain Jarman was opposed by the district attorney and the counsel for the captors. Upon this motion the Court took the papers, and reserved its decision. An order to allow Mr. Redgate, one of the owners of the cargo, to testify in his own behalf, was then applied for. Mr. Redgate's counsel stated that his client was born a British subject; that he was an enemy of the Confederate Government; that his portion of the cargo had been legitimately consigned to his partner at Matamoras; and that he desired to be and remain a citizen of the United States, provided he could thereby receive the restitution of his property and damages for unlawful capture and detention; but if he were to be treated as an alien enemy, he demanded that he be regarded as a British subject, and as such he should claim protection from the British Government."
  Probably their Lordships would agree with him that Mr. Redgate would not be a very valuable accession to either country, for he offered himself to any one from which he might get back his property. But "the Court decided, that as Mr. Redgate was resident in a rebellious State, he was to be considered an alien enemy," although he was an Englishman. The whole transaction was illegal, and was sustained by the United States, not upon law, but entirely on expediency. It was laid down in instructions to the Collector at New York that British ships should not take British goods—not merely munitions of war, but any, even dry goods, into the Bahama waters and the waters of the West Indies, because they were liable to be taken to the Confederate States; and now it was decided by these Prize Courts, that because they happened to be resident in Confederate States when the rebellion broke out, British subjects were to be deprived of their undoubted rights. Was that to be allowed? Was he not justified in calling
  1826
  on their Lordships to look at the proceedings of these Prize Courts with great jealousy? These transactions commenced a year ago; they had continued up to the present day, and were British merchants to be terrified into giving up their trade, or were they still to cherish that confidence in the protection of their Government to which they were entitled? If such proceedings were not checked, they would render it impossible to avoid war. He was told by his noble Friend the other day, when he recommended a squadron to be sent to the Gulf of Mexico, that that would be war. But did the present state of things amount to peace?—our ships seized, our commerce stopped, and our flag insulted on the high seas! If war was to be avoided, the sooner such proceedings were checked the better. In July last a deputation from Liverpool waited on his noble Friend, and complained to him of their commerce being interfered with, and his noble Friend then stated that this country could not allow our commerce to be harassed in an illegal manner; but he added that Her Majesty's Government had no reason to doubt the adherence to legal requirements by the United States Government. He should be glad to hear from his noble Friend a similar assurance now. If Prize Courts were the sole resource of British merchants for justice, they ought to have full information respecting them. He begged to move for the Papers of which he had given notice,
  EARL RUSSELL: My Lords, my noble Friend the noble Marquess has made a speech bringing very grave charges against the American Government and the American prize courts. He has brought, in effect, a charge that the American Government and the American courts appointed for the purpose of judging these questions of capture and prize have set aside the whole international law of the world—that they have given orders quite inconsistent with that international law; and he more than once stated that they had publicly stated their determination to interrupt British commerce. That commerce might be as lawful as they pleased, it might be as fair commerce as could be carried on upon the seas, but the American Government had decided that they would interrupt and put an end to it in the Transatlanic Seas. Certainly, in one of the sentences in which he made these charges, my noble Friend put in the word "almost," and that, like the word "if," is a great peacemaker; so that after all, even according to my noble Friend, the American Government have

  1827
  almost decided, but they have not yet quite decided, to put an end to British commerce. But when my noble Friend came to give proofs of his assertion, I thought he very much failed in so doing. Where are his authorities for these charges? There were, I think, three proofs on which he relied. One was in regard to the case of the Labuan. That ship was taken in the neutral waters of Mexico, and therefore Lord Lyons asked that both the usual and ordinary course of sending it before a Prize Court should not be pursued, but that it should be set free. But it was stated afterwards to us that the American Government did not claim a right to seize ships in neutral waters, but that there were great doubts thrown upon the facts; it was asserted that the particular position in which the Labuan was found was not in Mexican waters, but in the waters of the United States, off Texas; and that therefore the question must go before a prize court. Another proof of my noble Friend related to an assertion of Mr. Adams. Mr. Adams, speaking in this country, and not concerned with the particular details of capture, it appeared, said on one occasion that it was no wonder certain merchant ships had been taken, because they were in the position in which many ships had been found intent on breaking the blockade, and on carrying contraband goods to the enemies of the United States. Well, of course Mr. Adams did not mean that that was a sufficient ground of capture; and his own Government, on a representation which had been made to Mr. Seward, have said that they would direct that no merchant ship should be stopped in neutral waters, and also that it should be no sufficient ground for capture that information had been given that a ship was about to break the blockade or was carrying contraband to the enemy, but that there must be a regular search, and there must be, as the result of that search, a legal cause of capture, before the vessel could be taken and sent before a Prize Court. So far from denying the principles of the law of nations, Mr. Secretary Seward fully and completely acknowledged them. The only doubt I had was whether the officers of the United States navy were in every case instructed according to the declarations of the Secretary of State, and to the instructions he had given, by order of the President, to the Secretary of the Navy; and for that reason, having had some doubts on the subject in the case of the Labuan, I desired the Admiralty to instruct Admiral Milne to send a ship or ships of war to Mex-
  1828
  ican waters, that British merchantmen in those neutral waters might be protected from unjustifiable seizure. Well, it does not appear that there have been since that time in the waters of Mexico any seizures of which any great complaint can be made. There certainly was a report which the Admiralty sent the other day to the Foreign Office from one of the captains of our men-of-war who had been at Matamoras, and which said that that port was crowded with merchant vessels engaged in carrying on a commerce which now exists between this country and various countries of Europe, and the Mexican side of the Rio del Norte. The next proof that my noble Friend gives, is the assertion of a United States captain with respect to the ships which he should take. But I submit that the assertion of a captain as to what he should do—that any idle boast or loose words of such a person about what he feels authorized or intends to do—do not bind the United States Government or the United States prize courts to his doctrine; and I must hold that it would be a most unjustifiable inference if my noble Friend, having nothing to prove his case but the assertion of some naval captain, should say that the United States Government and the United States tribunals, being bound to do justice according to the law of nations, have entirely thrown aside the law of nations, and are prepared, against law and against justice, to interrupt British ships carrying on a legitimate trade in those waters.
  THE MARQUESS OF CLANRICARDE: I quoted, not what the captain said he would do, but his official report of what he had done.
  EARL RUSSELL: Well, that was his report of what he had done and his justification of it. Then my noble Friend went into various cases, into which I certainly do not mean to follow him. But he referred to certain decisions which he said had been made. The case of the Adela has been brought under the notice of the Foreign Office with respect to the judgment stated to have been given—a judgment which, if true, would be a very improper one. But, on consulting the Law Officers of the Crown, and receiving their report as to the legal effect of the matters submitted to them, I desired Mr. Hammond to write a letter to the owners of the Peterhoff, in which there was this passage—
  "As regards the allusion which has been made to the case of the Adela, before Her Majesty's Government can form any opinion as to the judgment stated to have been given in that case, they

  1829
  must have before them a correct report of that judgment, it being impossible to rely upon' the general representation of its effect contained in a newspaper paragraph, founded on printed letters, especially as none of the other judgments of the United States Prize Courts, which have been reported to Her Majesty's Government during the present war, evince any disregard of the established principles of international law."
  I desired Mr. Hammond to write that letter, because such was the substance of the report of the Law Officers of the Crown. I have been careful to refer every case of complaint that might come to us, whether through Lord Lyons or from the owners of vessels, to the Law Officers of the Crown; and they, after attentively watching all these decisions, say there has been no rational ground of complaint as to the judgments of the American Prize Courts. My noble Friend, reviewing the proceedings connected with the trial of the case of the Peterhoff, declares on his own authority that the decision, pronouncing a certain person to be an alien enemy of the United States, is a wrong decision, and he wishes the Government of this country to proceed upon his judicial determination that that decision of the United States Court is erroneous. Well, it may have been erroneous, but I confess myself totally unable to judge whether it was right or wrong. But this I say, that a great country like the United States, having tribunals constituted under its own laws for the determination of these questions of prize, those tribunals are not at once to be held to be of no value, and to have decided against the law of nations. On the contrary, our presumption must be, that as their knowledge of international law is very great, so their impartiality and their desire to do justice must be for the present unquestioned. We may be told, and it has been very often repeated, that a Judge, sitting in a national Court, and bound to decide according to the law of nations, decides for all other nations interested in these questions of international law—that he does not decide solely for the benefit of England or of any one other country. Lord Stowell, in the great Swedish case, said—
  "I am saying in a British Court what I would have said if I had been a Judge in a Swedish Court, and have felt myelf compelled to decide according to the law of nations, and the authority of great jurists and established precedents."
  Are we to suppose, that the Judges of the United States Courts, who are always quoted with respect and often with admiration by the great text writers on international law, whether in Europe or Ame-
  1830
  rica—are we at once to conclude, because a navy captain has given a very faulty account of his captures, and because in one or two cases wrong has evidently been done, that the Courts of the United States have sunk into such a state of degradation that they will not do justice to the subjects of another country? My noble Friend says that many of these vessels have been taken on very slight suspicion, and that this shows a foregone conclusion to interrupt British traders proceeding from this country to our Colonies or to Matamoras on lawful voyages. With respect to that matter, I must ask this House to attend a little to circumstances which have evidently escaped my noble Friend. Those circumstances are these:—It has been a most profitable business to send swift vessels to break or run the blockade of the Southern ports, and carry their cargoes into those ports. There is no municipal law in this or any country to punish such an act as an offence. The acting Consul at Charleston, I understand, states, that every cargo which runs the blockade and enters Charleston is worth a million dollars of profit upon the transaction. Now, it being well known that these large profits may be made, it is well known that this trade has attracted a great deal of attention in this country from those who have a keen eye to such gains, and that vessels have been sent to Nassau, which have afterwards been engaged in breaking the blockade at Charleston, Wilmington, and other places, and carry contraband of war into some of the ports of the Southern States. Well, is it wonderful—is it a matter of which we can complain—that the cruisers of the United States look with suspicion upon vessels that are bound to Nassau, or are going from Nassau—that they should very frequently stop them to ascertain from their papers whether they are not intending to break the blockade, or carry contraband of war to the Southern ports? Well, there are two positions in which some of these vessels are placed. They are sent out with a view to an attempt to break the blockade, and directions are given in the captain's papers that he is to attempt to break it, and insurances are effected against the risks of capture or destruction that may attend the attempt. There is one position, in which they very often make a most fortunate voyage and lucrative trade; and they exult exceedingly on the immense gains they make. But there is another position in which the owners of such a vessel sometimes find themselves—namely, that their

  1831
  vessel is captured, when the owner immediately comes to the Foreign Office with fill the air of injured innocence, declares that nothing was further from his thoughts than the breaking of the blockade, and asks that the strongest representations may be made to the American Government on his behalf, and that reparation may be demanded. There are some instances in which, I have no doubt, the American cruisers have acted upon slight suspicion, and had no claim to seize the vessel; but that they should look with jealousy upon such cases as I have mentioned is by no means wonderful. We must be somewhat slow and cautious in believing all the reports which are made to the Foreign Office by the owners of ships. Above all, I certainly am not prepared to declare, nor is there any ground for declaring, that the Courts of the United States do not faithfully administer the law, that they will not allow evidence making against the captors, or that they are likely to give decisions founded, not upon law, but upon their own passions and national partialities. Another case, into which I need not enter, is that of certain cargoes going from New York, and alleged to be contraband of war. The American Government say they will not allow American ships to leave New York with certain goods, bound for certain ports; and that because they will not allow their own vessels, therefore they will prevent British ships. We have argued, on the other hand, that the municipal law is not sufficient in the case of British vessels; and I think our argument is conclusive. My noble Friend having introduced this subject very generally, I may state, in justice to Mr. Adams, that he thinks that what he did lately with respect to vessels going to the Mexican coast has not been accurately represented by me in the statement I addressed to your Lordships some time ago. He says it would appear from my statement as if he had proposed to interfere with British vessels, giving an advantage to one British ship over another, supplying a sort of certificate of character to some merchants as against others. Now, Mr. Adams assures me he never intended to give any such advantage to one British vessel over another, but he thinks he had a perfect right to give certificates to American citizens with a view to a trade with Mexico. I do not know, of course, whether any person supposed from my statement that British vessels were to be interfered with by Mr. Adams. Upon that point his own letter was not quite clear; but I con-
  1832
  fess my own opinion is, that the letter of licence given by Mr. Adams was one which ought never to have been given. I may mention that the French Government were somewhat surprised at seeing an enterprise against the French in Mexico spoken of rather in terms of praise by the American Minister in this country; but they were satisfied the American Government did not know anything of the matter, and therefore did not think it necessary to take those measures which, in other circumstances, they might have adopted. With respect, then, to the complaint of the noble Marquess, although in some cases we have reason to think the American cruisers were wrong, yet, on the whole, the indictment of my noble Friend is not borne out, and there is certainly nothing to justify his charges against the American Government, as represented by the President and the Secretary of State, or against the American Courts of Prize. We must wait and see what is the whole proceeding in the case of the Peterhoff and other vessels before we can judge fairly whether those Courts have acted rightly or wrongly. Meanwhile, I do not think it would be right, in compliance with the request of the noble Marquess, to lay before Parliament such loose reports as we have from newspapers of the proceedings of the American Prize Courts. If we are to give anything to Parliament at all—and, for my own part, I confess I think it extremely doubtful whether we should publish the proceedings of foreign courts—we should at all events take care that the reports are full and authentic. When we get authentic reports, there may, perhaps, be no objection to their production, should your Lordships desire to see them; but, in the mean time, we have no papers to lay on the table. A few words more, and I have done. Let it be remembered that there is immense excitement in America about the proceedings of the Alabama and Oreto, and another vessel, which the Americans pay have been fitted out and armed with the connivance of the British Government, and which are preying upon American commerce. I do not think that charge can be justified. The Foreign Enlistment Act is liable to be evaded by a ship being built here as a merchant ship and then taken elsewhere to be armed; but still there is a strong opinion in America that the British Government intends to prey upon American commerce, and take part in the war; while here, on the

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  other hand, there is just as strong, and, I believe, quite as justifiable an opinion that the American cruisers are preying upon British commerce. I cannot help thinking that the two nations are somewhat in the case of the two respectable persons who last winter, when great alarm prevailed about garotting, met and attacked each other in the belief that each was a garotter. Your Lordships will recollect reading in the newspapers how one of them, calling upon a friend later in the same evening, complained of having been attacked by garotters, and how his friend condoled with him, saying that his own son was in bed upstairs suffering from a similar assault. Then, you will remember, it turned out that the two had mutually taken each other for garotters, and hail punished each other rather severely. So it is, I think, with America and this country. They are a little excited in the same way; but I am convinced the American Government do not really intend to disturb our commerce; while I am certain that neither the British Government nor the British nation have any wish to interfere in the contest now going on in America. I hope that, as in the case of the sham garotters, they will eventually be reconciled to each other; and that, seeing they are old and respectable friends, the little passing excitement under which they now labour will speedily end in the restoration of their ancient amity.
  THE EARL OF DERBY: My Lords, I think the noble Earl has satisfactorily answered the remarks of the noble Marquess. I quite concur in his opinion that we ought not rashly to assume that the Courts of the United States will give decisions contrary to law and justice, and I also quite agree with him as to the temper in which both parties ought to look upon this question, and that we should make every allowance for the provocation which the Americans must feel from the large extent to which a contraband trade has been carried on with Confederate ports. I do not wish to enter into a discussion of the general question, but there are two points upon which I should be glad to have a word of explanation. In the first place, did I understand the noble Earl to say that there are captains who had instructions from their owners to break the blockade, and that the very papers showed those instructions on the face of them. I can hardly imagine that such is the case. Apart from the utter folly and absurdity of placing on
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  the ship's papers such a statement, which must result in her detention and inevitable condemnation, I think it is so glaring a case in itself that my noble Friend must have been misinformed. I admit that a strong feeling has been excited in America inconsequence of the extent to which contraband trade is carried on, and I have no doubt that a large amount of the trade to Matamoras is intended to be made the subject of illegal traffic between that port and the Confederate States. It may be suspected that a large portion of a cargo proceeding to Nassau and Matamoras is intended for the Confederate States. But does the noble Earl say that on account of that suspicion an American cruiser would be justified in doing more than ascertaining what was the immediate destination of the vessel? If a vessel were proceeding bonâ fide from this country to Nassau, whatever might be the nature of her cargo no American cruiser has a right to interfere with her; and, no matter what may be the ultimate intentions of her owners, even though it were meant that she should herself subsequently proceed from Nassau to the Confederate States, and endeavour to break the blockade, that would afford no justification for her seizure by an American cruiser previously to her entering the harbour of Nassau. I hope the noble Earl has not conceded to the American Government anything like an acknowledgment that under these circumstances they are justified in interfering with a vessel sailing from one neutral port to another, whatever grounds of doubt there may be as to her future course. I am sure that it will be a satisfaction to your Lordships, and to the country, if the noble Earl is able to clear away any misconception on the subject.
  EARL RUSSELL: It is quite true that in one case at least an American captain found among the papers—not the regular, but the private papers—of a captured ship an order to break the blockade. In regard to the other and more serious matter referred to, the noble Earl certainly misunderstood me when he supposed I meant to say that a vessel going to Nassau, intending afterwards to make another voyage, might be captured on her way thither. What I alluded to was a case of simulated destination—that is, a vessel pretending that she is going to Nassau when she is in reality bound for another port.
  LORD CRANWORTHsaid, that the question to which the noble Earl had just referred had been raised in a celebrated case which was decided by Lord Stowell.

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  In the course of our war with the first French Empire a ship proceeded from Lisbon, which was a neutral port, with a cargo apparently destined for China. She, however, carried a number of French officers, and she was seized in the Eastern seas on the ground that she was proceeding with them—they being, of course, contraband of war—not to China, but to some French or Dutch island. Lord Stowell, in deciding upon the case, stated that if she were going to China, he had nothing to do with her but inasmuch as he had come to the conclusion that the alleged destination was but a pretence, and that she was really on her way to a French or Dutch port, he declared the seizure to be justifiable and legal. There could be no doubt that that was the law of the case, and that a neutral vessel carrying contraband of war could not be legally stopped on her way to a neutral port, whatever might be her subsequent destination.
  THE MARQUESS OF CLANRICARDEsaid, if any inconvenience would be occasioned by the production of the papers he had asked for, he would withdraw his Motion.
  Motion (by leave of the House) withdrawn.
  House adjourned at a quarter past Eight o'clock, till To-morrow, half past Ten o'clock.