Sitting of 13 June 1867

MINUTES.
— NEW MEMBER SWORN — Henry Edwards, esquire, for Weymouth.
SUPPLY—considered in Committee — NAVY ESTIMATES.
Resolutions [June 7] reported.
PUBLIC BILLS—Resolution reported—Courts of Law, &c. (Salaries and Expenses).
Ordered—Courts of Law, &c. (Salaries and Expenses).*
First Reading—Industrial and Provident Societies* [198].
Second Reading—Pier and Harbour Order Confirmation (No. 3)* [192]; Statute Law Revision * [194]; Christ Church Ordinances (Oxford)* [190].
Committee—Representation of the People [79] [R.P.]; Railways (Scotland)* [122]; Tyne Pilotage Act (1865) Amendment* [168].
Report—Railways (Scotland)* [122]; Tyne Pilotage Act (1865) Amendment* [168].
Third Reading—Inclosure* (No. 2) * [180].

PARLIAMENTARY REFORM—REPRESENTATION OF THE PEOPLE BILL— [BILL 79.]
(Mr. Chancellor of the Exchequer, Mr. Secretary Walpole, Lord Stanley.)
PARLIAMENTARY REFORM—REPRESENTATION OF THE PEOPLE BILL— [BILL 79.]

  COMMITTEE. [PROGRESS JUNE 3.]
  Bill considered in Committee.
  (In the Committee.)
  THE CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUER: Sir, I was in hope that I might be able to place on the table of the House this evening the Schedules which refer to the new re-distribution of seats; there is, however, no doubt that they will be in the hands of hon. Gentlemen to-morrow. I think it, however, only respectful to hon. Members that they should not remain in doubt for any unnecessary time as to the course Her Majesty's Government intend to recommend for their adoption, and should not be deprived of such information as we can give them in consequence of a mechanical difficulty in preparing the Schedules. Therefore I take advantage of our going into Committee on the Bill to make a statement of our intentions; but on the part of the Government I have no wish to invite discussion to-night, and I do not expect it. I will conclude by moving that the Chairman report Progress, which will not prevent any hon. Gentleman from making comments if he likes, but as indicating the wish on our part that after I have made the necessary communication the House should proceed with other public business. The Committee is aware

  1777
  that the result of the division which took place on the Motion of the hon. Member for Wick (Mr. Laing), was to make a considerable addition to the number of seats which the Government originally contemplated having at their disposal for re-distribution; for the Committee agreed to a Resolution that every existing Parliamentary borough which does not exceed 10,000 in population should be represented by only one Member—a principle which Her Majesty's Government entirely approve, although they do not think it possible to extend its application so far without the assistance of the Committee. The result of this decision is to add fifteen seats to the thirty which we originally contemplated having for appropriation; therefore we have to deal with forty-five seals. In considering the wisest and most satisfactory mode of appropriating them, we have felt, after due consideration, that it was not expedient merely to consider the distribution of the fifteen additional seats which, by the sanction of the Committee, were placed at our disposal; but, looking to the changes in the arrangements which we had previously recommended, to the change of relative circumstances involved in the larger number we had to deal with, we concluded that it would be wiser to consider the whole question again de novo. Requesting the Committee to forget for the moment the arrangements we proposed when we were dealing with the lesser number of seats, I will explain the plan on which Her Majesty's Government think it most expedient that these forty-five seats should be distributed. Taking the boroughs first. Her Majesty's Government think that the representation of the metropolis should be increased by four Members. We propose to divide the Tower Hamlets, as has been before suggested, and we propose that a new borough should be created which shall return two Members. It should be called, I think, for convenience, as it might be with propriety, the borough of Hackney. Hackney is not an unclassical name, for one of our great English poets has said—
  "Friendly at Hackney; Faithless at Whitehall."
  I hope, however, that the Members for Hackney will be faithful to Her Majesty's Government. That will add two Members to the metropolitan representation. On the other side of the metropolis we propose that a new borough shall be created of Chelsea and adjacent parts. That will give four additional Members to
  1778
  the metropolis. I will now name boroughs several of which have already been submitted to the Committee and have had their claims favourably received. The claims of all have been considered again with very great diligence, and, I hope, with perfect impartiality. We recommend the Committee to confer one Member each upon the boroughs of Hartlepool, Darlington, Middlesborough, Burnley, St. Helen's, Barnsley, Dewsbury, Staleybridge, Wednesbury, and Gravesend. These are names which have been mentioned before. We add to these the borough of Stockton, Keighley and parts adjacent, and Luton and parts adjacent, recommending that they shall have one Member each. We propose also that an additional Member shall be given to Salford and an additional Member to Merthyr Tydvil. This appropriation gives nineteen borough seats. We are still of opinion that the University of London should be represented in Parliament; and we recommend the Committee to consider whether it may not be expedient to connect with it in that representation the University of Durham. That will take twenty of the forty-five seats. There remain twenty-five seats yet to be appropriated. The facts of the case, the state of public opinion—I might almost say practically the previous decision of the House—will prepare the Committee for the recommendation on the part of Her Majesty's Government that these twenty-five seats should be allotted to the more efficient representation of the English counties. It is unnecessary for me to dilate at all upon the details of this question. This is not the occasion. On a future occasion opportunities will be offered to us to go into any details which are necessary. The Committee are perfectly familiar with the general merits of the case, and I will confine myself, with scarcely an exception, to expressing to them now the mode in which we think these twenty-five seats should be allotted. What we propose is that, as originally suggested, the counties of West Kent, North Lancashire, East Surrey, and South Lancashire should be divided. That would dispose of seven Members, South Lancashire having one and the other divisions two additional Members. That appears, so far as we can collect, to be a proposition eminently popular, and one calculated to meet all the requirements of the case, and we do not in any way wish to interfere with that previous arrangement. We

  1779
  then take nine of the most considerable counties in England—Lincolnshire, Derbyshire, Devonshire, Somersetshire, the West Riding of Yorkshire, Cheshire, Norfolk, Staffordshire, and Essex; and we propose that these great counties should be divided each into three parts, and that each part should be represented by two Members. The Committee will see that I have in that manner disposed of the forty-five seats, the re-distribution of which we had to consider this evening. I believe that these counties, deducting the population which is represented within the Parliamentary boroughs, contains something like 4,000,000 people. They represent on the largest scale the great industries of the country—agricultural, manufacturing, and mineral; and to an enormous extent a vast variety of trades of great importance, though of secondary importance to these three great departments of industry. In fact, I believe there are as many trades carried on in the counties of England and among their various populations as in the boroughs. I have now placed before the Committee the plan which we recommend to their adoption. The schedules, in which this plan is in greater detail explained, will be in the hands of hon. Gentlemen, I hope, to-morrow. They have been prepared by gentlemen who, from their position in life, and from the tone and tenour of their minds, are, I believe, as superior to petty party interests as any body of public servants can be. But the schedules have been prepared under the direction and personal superintendence of the Government, who on this occasion, as on all previous occasions connected with this considerable measure, have most strenuously endeavoured not to lend themselves to any arrangements of a party character. Nevertheless, I am not sanguine enough to suppose that when these schedules are considered and studied by the House they will escape criticism, or perhaps even some imputations made in the freedom of Parliamentary conversation. But that will not annoy us so much as if the Committee should be induced to waste what at this period of the Session is very valuable time in making or in refuting charges which after discussion will probably be found of a rather minute character, or to have no foundation. What we therefore recommend to the Committee is, that they should give well-defined but really large powers to the Boundary Commissioners;
  1780
  and that after the Boundary Commissioners have dealt with all these schedules, which are necessarily and avowedly of a temporary character, we should reserve our criticism for the labours of the Boundary Commissioners when they come before us in a matured shape in a Boundary Bill, taking care that no arrangement is entered into, either by negligence on the part of the Commissioners or from any other causes, which a fair treatment of the question cannot justify. On Monday next, therefore, when we go into Committee, we shall be going into Committee on the second part of the Bill, and there is no reason why, after this announcement, we should not proceed with that part of it. But I hope on Monday next to lay upon the table Amendments to the third portion of the Bill, which will define the duties and powers of the Boundary Commissioners, and I will also lay before the Committee well - prepared clauses for registration, which, in consequence of the changes made with regard to the franchise in the course of our labours, are now necessary. I should have been very glad to-night if I could have announced to the Committee the names of the Boundary Commissioners, and such was my hope and intention. But an hon. Gentleman, whose name, position, and talents would have commanded the confidence of the House and the country, has, unfortunately, from his only fault—a want of sufficient confidence in his own position and talents—obliged me to relinquish that intention. He sits upon the Benches opposite, but his name would have commanded universal confidence. I trust before going into Committee again to have completed the number of five Members, which, I think, is the most convenient number of Commissioners, and I shall then have pleasure in announcing their names. I trust that the Committee will not hesitate to give them the well-defined but ample powers to which I have referred; and I think if the Committee in the progress of the Bill will follow the course I intimate as most convenient and most conducive to the advantageous fulfilment of our duties, we shall be able to proceed with this measure in a manner satisfactory to the country. I now, Sir, end with a Motion that you report Progress, and ask leave to sit again.
  MR. LAINGagreed with the right hon. Gentleman that it would be more convenient not to discuss the merits of the proposal till Monday evening; but it was

  1781
  desirable that hon. Members should know what particular subject would be discussed upon that occasion. With one exception the Government scheme of redistribution did not differ materially from that he had himself ventured to make to the House on a previous occasion. That exception referred to an essential part of his scheme—the grant of additional representation to six or seven of the largest towns in the kingdom, coupled with an adoption of the principle of grouping to such an extent as was sufficient to obtain these six or seven scats. As regarded the new boroughs, he had never objected to that portion of the Government scheme, and would give it his support. As regarded the twenty-five Members to be assigned to counties, that was almost precisely the number he thought the counties might fairly claim; and as to the mode of distribution among the counties, that was a question for the county Members themselves. One point of importance had reference to the seven Members for Scotland. As the right hon. Gentleman had exhausted all the forty-five seats at his disposal by distributing them in England, he gathered that the just claims of Scotland would be rather met by increasing the total number of Members of the House than by taking Members away from English boroughs. That was obviously a most important feature in the scheme of the Government; because if the House came to an opposite decision it would cut away seven of the seats with which the right hon. Gentleman proposed to deal. On Monday he should move his Amendment on the 10th clause, for the purpose of giving an additional Member to the six large towns. The hon. and learned Member for Lambeth (Mr. Thomas Hughes) would thereupon raise the question of cumulative voting, and the Committee would therefore have the opportunity of deciding on Monday upon these two important points.
  MR. AYRTONsaid, he was glad to find that the Chancellor of the Exchequer had not been influenced by the views of the hon. Member for Wick (Mr. Laing), and had shown a better appreciation of his duty than by the adoption of a scheme which, he believed, nearly every one had rejected. He wished to ask the right hon. Gentleman if he would adopt the course followed last Session of re-printing the Bill with all the Amendments; for, after the extensive changes which were proposed it would
  1782
  be convenient to have them in print, so that hon. Members might be able more easily to comprehend them. The Reform Bill of last Session was re-printed, so that they could see exactly what had been done, and he hoped the same course would be followed now. It would then be much easier to understand what they were doing, and they would be able to proceed much better with the Bill in Committee.
  SIR MATTHEW RIDLEYwas glad to hear that the right hon. Gentleman the Chancellor of the Exchequer, in the contemplated redistribution of seats, had not overlooked the claims of the University of Durham. He could say, with entire confidence, that the announcement of the right hon. Gentleman's intention would be fully appreciated by that University, which had a just claim to share in the distribution of Parliamentary privileges which it was now proposed to make. Taking into account that it was intended to give representatives to the Scotch Universities, had Durham been overlooked it would have been the only University in Great Britain which would have been left without representation. The students of Ushaw College graduated at the London University, and therefore would be enfranchised. Under such circumstances it would not be fair that the students of the University of Durham should be left unenfranchised.
  COLONEL SYKESsaid, that the right hon. Gentleman, in the statement he had made, had disposed of the whole forty-five seats without reference to Scotland. Now, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, with his acuteness and sense of justice, must be quite aware that Scotland was under-represented; she was not represented within twenty-five of the number of Members to which she was entitled, both by wealth and population. If the forty-five seats mentioned by the right hon. Gentleman were appropriated according to his scheme, Scotland must look to some other source for an increase of her representation. As for increasing the Members of the House, he did not think, from the feeling very generally prevailing on the subject, that such a proposal would be sanctioned, and in that case Scotland would be thrown over altogether. They had heard in times past a good deal about justice to Ireland, and he would warn the right hon. Gentleman that the cry of justice to Scotland would soon be raised. The right hon. Gentleman had had proof of that already; he would have still further proof of it

  1783
  before Monday next, and would do well to be prepared for it.
  MR. CARDWELLsaid, that the proposal of the right hon. Gentleman that they should postpone discussion upon the subject until they had the whole plan before them was extremely reasonable. If he understood the right hon. Gentleman rightly, they were to have in their hands to-morrow schedules with full details of the places to which it was proposed to give Members, and also the schedules of a temporary character; and on Monday information with regard to the Boundary Commissioners, their duties, and the powers they would have to alter the limits of boroughs, would be placed before them. That being so, it appeared to him perfectly clear that they were not in a position to give "an opinion on the right hon. Gentleman's proposals, and it would be wise to delay giving such an opinion until they had the plan before them in detail. There was one point, however, as to which they might ask for more precise information. The seven Members which it was proposed to give to Scotland had not been included in the statement of the right hon. Gentleman. He did not wish to raise that point for discussion now; he might be permitted to say, however, that he was one of those who regretted that the number of new Members was limited to forty-five, and he hoped it would be open to the House on Monday to consider that point among others. It might not be unreasonable now to ask the right hon. Gentleman to inform the Committee from what fund the additional Members for Scotland would be provided—whether by increasing the numbers of that House, or by an enlarged disfranchisement, grouping, or some other process.
  MR. NEWDEGATEurged upon the Chancellor of the Exchequer the propriety of re-printing the Bill. It would be impossible for the Committee to consider the whole scheme of re-distribution in connection with the extension of the suffrage—questions which the House had decided last year should be taken together—unless that were done. He trusted the Chancellor of the Exchequer would use his influence with the right hon. Gentleman the Speaker to have the Bill re-printed.
  SIR FRANCIS GOLDSMIDobserved, with regard to the proposition for associating the University of Durham with that of London, and the remarks which had been made by the hon. Baronet the
  1784
  Member for Northumberland (Sir Matthew Ridley), that until a very late period the University of Durham had not been considered an example of the brilliant success which had been obtained by the University of London. He doubted that the proposed union would work satisfactorily, because the lower either of the Universities reduced its standard of examination for degrees the larger would be its share in the total of representation.
  MR. CANDLISHhoped that the Chancellor of the Exchequer would be able, by Monday next, to let the Committee have the promised definition of a "dwelling-house."
  THE CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUER: With regard to the inquiry made by the hon. and learned Member for the Tower Hamlets and my hon. Friend the Member for North Warwickshire, I am not clear as to what can be done about re-printing the Bill. I have had some conversation on the subject with the highest authority, and all I can say at present is, that I shall do all that can be done in the matter. With regard to the definition of a "dwelling-house," I have seen several definitions, and I am not at all prepared to recommend the Committee to adopt any of them. It is a subject with which, I believe, the common law of the country would best deal, and I have no doubt that the information and intelligence of the Committee will be able to elicit satisfactory conclusion on the point. With respect to the representation of Scotland, I thought I had already expressed the intentions of Her Majesty's Government so clearly that the question of the right hon. Member for Oxford might have been deemed superfluous. I am of opinion that England is not over-represented; its representation may be distributed to more effect, and we are taking very considerable steps in that direction; but I am not at all prepared, if Scotland be not adequately represented, as I believe she is not, that that adequate representation should be secured by impairing the adequate representation of England. It should be recollected that the representation of Scotland was increased in 1832 at the cost of England. That is an expedient which may once be resorted to, but I think it very doubtful whether it ought to be repeated. We have not had any intimation from the hon. Gentlemen who represent the sister island, but I am not inclined to think they are ready to make any sacrifice

  1785
  on behalf of Scotland; and therefore I think, under the circumstances, if the House of Commons is really of opinion that Scotland is not adequately represented, they ought to meet the difficulty and increase that representation. But that we should lay down the principle that the adequate representation of Scotland is to be obtained at the expense of the adequate representation of England or Ireland is a proposition that I cannot at all support.
  COLONEL SYKESreminded the right hon. Gentleman that before the Union Scotland had sixty-seven Members, and now she had but fifty three.
  Motion agreed to.
  House resumed.
  Committee report Progress; to sit again upon Monday next.

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

ARMY—ORDNANCE DEPARTMENT.

  MOTION FOR A SELECT COMMITTEE.
  MR. HENRY BAILLIErose to call attention to the present condition of the Ordnance Department and to move for the appointment of a Select Committee. He said that he had no complaint to make against his right hon. Friend (General Peel), there having unfortunately during the last few years been a rapid succession of Secretaries of State for War, not one of whom had had a sufficient tenure of office to enable him to acquire a proper knowledge of the Department over which he had been called to preside. The exterior of the War Office might be taken as a very fair typo of its interior arrangements. In the one case was presented a number of old private houses of every size and shape huddled together to constitute a Government office; in the other a number of departments of different kinds huddled together under the nominal control of a Secretary of State, but really and practically governed by men who, though unknown to the public, contrived to exercise absolute and irresponsible power. The present organization of the War Department was effected during the course of the Crimean war, when the existing system was manifestly incapable of such expansion as to accomplish the vast increase of business which a war necessarily engendered; and
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  it seemed to have been thought by those then at the head of affairs, that the best course would be to unite under one single head all the different branches of the service, and thus greatly to increase the duties and responsibilities of the Secretary for War. Now, the Ordnance Department was one of those thus united to the War Department, the management of which was, perhaps, with the exception of the Admiralty, the most difficult of any in the public service; for, like the Admiralty, it involved, in addition to ordinary business, the control and direction of vast manufacturing establishments. This amalgamation of the Ordnance Department with the War Office had operated most disadvantageously for the country. The Master General of Ordnance, who previously presided over that Department, was always selected from the most distinguished officers of the army — indeed, the Duke of Wellington once held the appointment—and he was directly responsible to the Government for its management. Who, however, he should like to know, was responsible now? He should doubtless be told that the Secretary for War was; but was he responsible in the same sense in which the Master General was formerly responsible? Could it be expected that a Minister with so many other duties to perform—often a civilian selected, perhaps, solely from political considerations—should know anything of the management of these great manufacturing establishments? He must obviously be dependent on somebody else; and as regarded the construction of warlike implements he had for the last ten years been mainly dependent upon the Ordnance Select Committee, whose decisions were arrived at by a majority of votes; so that the minority would probably not hold themselves responsible for what they might think the blunders of their colleagues. That Committee, moreover, had not acquired a very good name. They had been accused of becoming themselves inventors and manufacturers, and of having made an unfair use of inventions which had been submitted to their notice by manufacturers, and afterwards brought them out as their own; and they had been accused of unfair dealing in other respects. Though he would not offer any opinion as to whether these charges were well or ill founded, he must say that the course taken by the Government had given very great colour to them. On more than

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  one occasion, when complaints had been made by inventors and manufacturers that the Ordnance Select Committee was an unfair tribunal, the Government had appointed special Commissioners in particular cases to do the work instead of them, and thus the Government themselves seemed to be of opinion that the Select Committee was not the proper tribunal to deal with the matters with which they had to deal. He was prepared to prove that the operations of the Select Committee, during the last ten years, had been most unsuccessful, most unfortunate, and most capricious, and the consequence had been a lavish and profuse expenditure beyond anything known before, and for which we had no corresponding or satisfactory results. The Committee, as he would proceed to show, had given us a field artillery which the most experienced officers in the service united in condemning, and which was, in many points, unfit for the service; they had given no satisfactory naval guns or ordnance for our coast defences, and they had recommended a system of breech-loading arms for the infantry which, in the shape presented to the Government, had proved a failure and had since been rejected by almost every other nation of Europe. He was prepared to prove these assertions by the most conclusive official testimony. With regard to the first point, our field artillery consisted almost exclusively of breech-loading Armstrong guns, rifled upon the poly-groove system, which, though no doubt a very ingenious invention at the time it was made, was a very complicated one, and, as a foreign critic had sarcastically remarked, even the projectile was a work of art. Now, great improvements had since been made. Sir William Armstrong had himself invented what he called a "shunt gun," which he declared to be infinitely superior to the original Armstrong; while the Committee had invented a gun which they described as infinitely superior to the shunt gun; and foreign nations had invented guns which they no doubt regarded as preferable to either of these. It was under these circumstances that the late Government appointed last year a Committee to report on the state of our field artillery. It was composed of thirteen of the most distinguished Artillery officers, and in proof of the importance to be attached to their Report he would read their names:—General Dacres, General St. George, General Warde, General Arm-
  1788
  strong, General Taylor, General Dickson, General Lefroy, Colonel Wilmot, Colonel Gambier, Colonel Daguilar, Colonel Adye, Colonel Smythe, and Colonel Philpotts. They made a Report, and it was resolved unanimously—that the balance of advantages is in favour of muzzle-loading field guns, and they recommended that they should be manufactured hereafter. They declared that muzzle-loading guns were superior, and should be substituted for those we have at present. Of course this resolution only referred to the system of breech-loading adopted by Sir William Armstrong. Would the Committee have come to such an important resolution, so inconvenient to the Government, had they not been aware that the field guns of other nations were superior to our own? These officers, however, had only had experience of our field guns upon home service—at Aldershot and at Woolwich—and it was desirable the House should know what experienced officers thought of them abroad. He would therefore quote from a Report upon the subject made by a distinguished Indian officer—Colonel Maxwell, superintendent of the Royal Gun Foundry at Cossipore. He states—
  "That the Armstrong field gun is certainly not a safe gun. It is expensive, vastly complicated, requires skilled artificers in every battery armed with it, and cannot be re-produced or mended in India. That it has already undergone endless modifications and alterations; and if the Imperial Government were not so deeply committed to the Armstrong system of field artillery by the enormous amount of material in hand a more simple system would be undoubtedly introduced."
  And Colonel Maxwell went on to recommend in lieu for the Indian service that the old bronze 6-poundor guns should be re-cast and rifled. Was it possible for any officer to use stronger or more decided language in condemnation of our field guns? During the last ten years all the nations of Europe had been busily engaged in re-constructing their field artillery, but not one had thought proper to adopt the Armstrong gun. It had been offered to every one of them. It had been tried in America and had failed. It had been tried by the Government of Spain, and had failed there. It had been submitted to a committee of French officers, by whom it had been examined, tested, and unanimously rejected. What course had our Government taken with all these Reports in their possession? They had ordered very lately an additional

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  number of these breech-loading Armstrong guns to be constructed. It would naturally be asked how it happened that a gun rejected by every foreign nation had found so much favour with the British Government? This required an explanation, which he was prepared to give. A very close intimacy had long prevailed between the Elswick Armstrong Ordnance Company, the War Office, and the Ordnance Select Committee. That intimacy commenced at a time when the late Sir Benjamin Hawes was the permanent Under Secretary for War. He took great interest in the Ordnance Department, and the history of the introduction of the gun into the service was curious and instructive. The Ordnance Select Committee of 1859 was composed of two eminent civil engineers, the heads of departments, and some other influential officers. That Committee expressed great doubts whether the Armstrong gun was a fit gun for the service. The War Office thereupon appointed a sub-committee of five officers; Captain Noble was selected as the secretary; and the sub-committee decided that the gun ought to be admitted into the service. The Government confirmed that decision. The next step, in order to establish a complete monopoly in favour of the gun in both branches of the service, was to get rid of all the heads of the departments who had expressed doubts as to the fitness of the gun. Colonel Wilmot, the Chief Superintendent of Gun Factories at Woolwich, was removed, the staff was broken up, and Sir William Armstrong was appointed Chief Superintendent in his place. The House will see, therefore, that Sir William Armstrong was appointed to test and inspect the work of his own partners. That state of things could not last; and in 1860 a Committee of that House, called the Army Organization Committee, was appointed. Sir James Graham was the Chairman, and drew up the Report, and his sarcastic remarks upon the transaction compelled Sir William Armstrong to retire. But his influence had ever since remained unimpaired. He did not wish to be understood as objecting to the original introduction of the gun. It was a great and novel invention which his right hon. Friend (General Peel) was quite right to try—what he complained of was the complete monopoly which was established in both branches of the service. The House had little idea of the expense of the monopoly which the Elswick
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  Company had obtained. Little short of £3,000,000 sterling had been expended upon the Armstrong artillery, a great portion of which had been poured into the coffers of the Elswick Company. The cost of this artillery was enormous. The 13-inch guns cost £4,000 each when constructed at Elswick, yet they seemed to burst as fast as they were made. There were, he believed, only two now fit for service, the rest having been disabled. With respect to these two guns an incident occurred which showed the state of preparation of this country, as far as heavy artillery was concerned. When, a few weeks ago, there appeared to be a danger of war with Spain, it was thought desirable to send some heavy artillery to Gibraltar. These two 13-inch guns, familiarly known as 600-pounders, were sought out and ordered to be sent to Gibraltar. It was found that they were improperly rifled, and they were then sent to the factories to have the shunt rifling—which was at present disapproved of—bored out and the Woolwich rifling substituted. That operation was still going on, or was at all events proceeding ten days ago. Another circumstance that deserved to be known was that all orders given to the Elswick Company were irrespective of price, the manufacturers charging what they thought proper. He could give the House an example of this system. A short time ago a number of gun-carriages were ordered for heavy guns. It was a novel invention. He did not know their cost, because no price was stipulated for; but he was told that they would cost about £600 each. There were thirty or forty ordered. A good number of them had been made, but they had not been tested; and no one knew at this time whether those gun-carriages would sustain the weight of the guns for which they were intended. Instead of ordering one to be made in the first instance and testing it properly, and then ordering the others afterwards, they had ordered the whole to be made at once. So much for the field guns. He now came to the question of naval guns. They had always been told that the First Lord of the Admiralty was responsible for the armament of the navy. Well, he had objected to that on a former occasion, because he did not understand how the First Lord of the Admiralty could be responsible for guns which he did not make, over which he had no control, and which he was obliged to accept from the Minister

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  for War. However, as the tradition was that the First Lord of the Admiralty was responsible, he would assume that he was so, and also that the present First Lord knew what the armament of the navy was at the present time; and he would venture to ask his right hon. Friend (Mr. Corry) whether he thought the armament of the navy was in a satisfactory state, and whether he would feel comfortable in the event of our being suddenly engaged in a war. He would proceed to describe what that armament was, and he would commence with the wooden ships. By way of illustration, he would take as an example one of the finest frigates in Her Majesty's service, the Liverpool, nominally a fifty-gun frigate, and now in the Channel squadron. Her armament at present consisted of three descriptions of guns. First of all, she had a certain number of breech-loading Armstrong guns—guns which had been condemned as unfit for the naval service, and which, upon the only occasions on which they had been used, had absolutely failed. The Reports of all those failures had been laid on the table of the House; but such Reports, when the officers making them knew they would be disagreeable, were always softened down; and the private reports were much stronger than those which were sent to the Government. [The hon. Member here read an extract from the private report of an officer who commanded a ship at Kagosima, which was to the effect that in spite of all the pains and care taken with the 110-pounder Armstrong gun, it would not go off, and that but for the fact that there were a few smooth-bore guns on board, the ship must have been lost.] That gun which so absolutely failed formed part of the armament of the Liverpool. The next portion of her armament consisted of Armstrong shunt-guns—guns which the Ordnance Select Committee were now boring out the rifling from, because it was so defective, and which were altogether useless for battering purposes. The third portion of the Liverpool's armament consisted of 8-inch smooth-bore guns, which were now quite out of date, and also entirely useless for battering purposes. That, then, was the armament of one of the finest frigates in Her Majesty's navy; and it might be taken as a very fair type of that of all other wooden ships in the service. None of them were better armed; perhaps some were not armed so well.
  1792
  There might be one or two which had lately been armed with heavy guns, but they were exceptions to the general rule. That was the state of preparation in which we were at the time when we knew that the Americans were arming their wooden ships with the heaviest description of modern artillery. He knew it was the fashion with our authorities to sneer at the American guns; but the Americans had produced the best work we possessed on artillery, and which was now the textbook in all our public Establishments; and they also had guns that had been tried in actual warfare, which had not been the case with ours. The American guns had made very short work with the Alabama, armed though she was with English guns. So much for our wooden ships. He would next turn to our ironclad fleet. It was rather difficult to say what the armament of that fleet was at the present time, because it was in a state of transition; but guns were being prepared for it. They had been lately manufactured at Woolwich. The largest of those guns was of twelve tons weight; it had a calibre of only nine inches, which was a small calibre; it was rifled on what was called the Woolwich principle, and it was said that under certain conditions—that was, at very close ranges, and with the target placed directly before it — it could perforate eight inches of solid iron. That would appear to be a satisfactory result. But, unfortunately, there was another side to the picture, and that was that those guns would not stand the test of continuous firing. He believed that they had never been tested at all by rapid firing; but with the slow and deliberate practice they had at Shoeburyness they very speedily gave way. That they had on the highest official authority. The Chief Superintendent of the Royal Gun Factory, in a letter to the War Office, referred to the opinion previously expressed by him—
  "That it would be advisable to make further trial of coiled tubes for heavy guns, as he believed that steel tubes could not be expected to last with heavy charges more than 300 or 400 rounds. The failure of the 9-inch 12-ton gun of cheap construction with steel tube after 386 rounds, and the move recent failure of a 13-inch muzzle-loading gun of 23 tons with steel tube of Elswick manufacture after 50 rounds, bear out this opinion."
  Now, the guns which were there described as incapable of lasting more than 300 or 400 rounds were the very guns which

  1793
  were now being prepared for Her Majesty's iron-plated ships. The Ordnance Select Committee, in their Report, stated that they thought, as a measure of precaution—
  "The service of the 9-inch guns should be restricted for the present to 400 rounds, of which not more than 150 should be with the battering charges, and that a circular should be issued to this effect."
  So that they proposed to confine the fighting power of Her Majesty's ships to 150 rounds. It would therefore be desirable that the House should be informed whether the First Lord of the Admiralty thought that was a satisfactory gun for the navy, and what orders or instructions he had given to those captains who were going out for a four years' cruise with regard to the exercise of those guns? Now, the Chief Superintendent of the Royal Gun Factory stated that the rapid failure of the gun arose from the mode of rifling adopted at Woolwich—that was to say, the cutting of deep grooves in a steel tube. That might be easily made intelligible to the House. Steel was in some respects like glass. If they made a line or groove with a diamond on a plate of glass, when force was applied it gave way precisely in the line of the groove; and the same thing occurred in the steel tube. Therefore, the Chief Superintendent at Woolwich had suggested to the Ordnance Select Committee that they should adopt a different mode of rifling; but they had peremptorily rejected that proposition, and had declared that they meant to adhere to the Woolwich system of rifling. Now, that system of rifling had been adopted by them after a trial of the 7-inch guns. Two years ago there was a trial of the 7-inch guns. He heard at the time that the trial was not fairly conducted, and he had therefore moved in that House for the Report of the Committee on that trial. Well, the Report was presented; but it was presented without the programme. Why was the programme not given? Simply because the trials had not been conducted in accordance with it. That of itself was unfair; but on inspecting the Report he found that the figures were incorrectly given. Whether it arose from accident or design he could not say; but the figures, as given in the Report, would give a superiority to the Woolwich gun, whereas the real figures would not give a superiority to that gun. The House must form its own conclusion, whether these were subjects
  1794
  that ought to be inquired into. We had been ten years puzzling over these matters, and spending enormous sums of money with what results he had already stated. Such was the present state of the question so far as great guns were concerned, and, passing from it, he would, in the next place, trouble the House with a few remarks on the subject of small arms. On that subject his right hon. and gallant Friend the late Secretary for War had made a very plain and straightforward statement in moving the Army Estimates. He informed the House that for three years the Ordnance Select Committee had been urged by the War Office to provide our troops with a good breech-loading gun, but that they had neglected, or were unable, to comply with the request. Now, that was a fact which was, he thought, not a little discreditable to this country. The truth was, however, he believed, that our gunmakers refused to submit their inventions to the Ordnance Select Committee because they were afraid they would be pirated, and they would be deprived of the just remuneration for their talent. Indeed, one of the largest gunmakers in. Birmingham had told him, some two years ago that he could furnish the Committee with an excellent breech-loading arm, but that he objected to do so for the reason which he had just mentioned. The great superiority of the needle-gun, as demonstrated in the war between Prussia and Austria last year, compelled the Government to take immediate action in the matter, and a pressure having been put upon the Committee they produced the Snider rifle, the sealed patent of which invention the late Secretary for War had, he understood, found in his office when he became the head of the Department. The Snider rifles when made were, it appeared, sent to Aldershot, where it was soon perceived that the cartridge was liable to burst the chamber of the gun and to go out at the breech. So that the gun, as presented to the War Department by the Committee, absolutely failed. For that state of things Colonel Boxer was requested by the Secretary for War to provide a remedy. He increased the strength of the metal-tube; but the cartridge would not then fit the chamber of the gun, which consequently had to be re-bored; and then the shooting of the gun failed, so that a third cartridge had to be made with a ball of diminished size, by which the shooting was restored. The rifle, after many alterations, had been

  1795
  adopted; but it was still defective, and it had in some degree lost its power of penetration. The ammunition was moreover heavy, so that the soldier would be compelled to carry 9oz. more in his pouch than he was accustomed to do with the old ammunition. They were told that this was a cheap invention; but the ammunition was very dear, and it was of more importance to have cheap ammunition than to have a cheap rifle, because the former had constantly to be renewed and would consequently become a constant source of increased expenditure. Having stated those facts he would leave it to the House to say whether the subject was one which ought to be inquired into by a Select Committee. This was not the first time he had brought the subject under the notice of the House. Two years ago he had moved for a similar inquiry, and the occupants of the front Benches on both sides of the House united in opposing the Motion. Were they now, he would ask, prepared to take the same course? He hoped not. He trusted that right hon. and hon. Gentlemen opposite, at all events, having since regained their independence, would bear in mind that the present was no party question, and that if they desired to have the Estimates reduced, that object could be effected only by means of a thorough re-organization of our great military and naval establishments. It had been clearly shown in the late war in Germany that the supremacy of Prussia had been secured by the superiority of her military organization and the great efficiency of the needle-gun; and we might depend upon it that in the next naval war the power of that country would be in the ascendant which was able to produce the best ordnance, so that this was a question upon which the power, the greatness, and even the safety of the country must depend. These were the considerations which had induced him to bring the subject under the consideration of the House. It was a most important matter, and he felt he was only doing his duty to the country in moving that a Select Committee be appointed in terms of his Motion.
  Amendment proposed,
  To leave out from the word "That" to the end of the Question, in order to add the words "a Select Committee he appointed to consider the present state and condition of the Ordnance Department,"—(Mr. Henry Baillie,)
  —instead thereof.
  Question proposed, "That the words proposed to be left out stand part of the Question."
  SIR JOHN HAYsaid, that as the important question of the armament of the Navy had in some measure been intrusted to him since he had the honour of holding his present office, and as a considerable portion of the interesting speech of his right hon. Friend, in which he had endeavoured to show that the navy was inefficiently armed, might be regarded in the light of an attack upon the naval administration of the country, he felt called upon to make a reply to some of the statements to which the House had just listened. He thought it, in the first place, but fair to remind his right hon. Friend that in seeking to lead the House to suppose that the class of guns with which the Liverpool was now armed was the class selected by the Admiralty for adoption in the general armament of our ships he was unconsciously creating a false impression. The guns for that purpose, which had been determined on, not only by the present but by the late Administration, in concert with their scientific advisers, were those of the 9-inch, 8-inch, and 7-inch calibre, weighing 12, 9, 6½ tons, and the 64-pounder, all muzzle-loading rifled guns. Those were the four classes of guns with which, as soon as completed—and he was happy to say they were in a state of forward preparation—it was proposed that our ships should be armed, and not with such armament as that of the Liverpool, which was an obsolete vessel, now performing duties for which she was, no doubt, well adapted, but hardly a vessel we should expect to cope with the ironclad ships of other nations. In addition, almost all the frigates intended for distant service had received a proportion of Woolwich guns. He had yet to learn that the opinion of naval officers, and of those who advised the Admiralty, was adverse to this class of gun. As a matter of fact, all the countries of Europe, with the exception of three, were satisfied to adopt the Armstrong guns with the rifling, interposing a soft metal between the gun and the shot. The French, it was true, had adopted the breech-loading gun, and had succeeded in firing shot from it; but it must be borne in mind that the French powder was one-fifth weaker than the English, for a 20-pound shot, with two degrees of elevation and 2½ pounds of French powder, would

  1797
  be thrown only 829 yards; whereas, under the same conditions, the distance would be 1,034 yards if English powder were used. It was in some degree attributable to the weakness of their powder that the French were unable to avail themselves of the breech-loading system. He must at the same time observe, that at some trials which recently took place at Vincennes, for the purpose of testing a target for the construction of a ship, the French were unable to penetrate the targets with their guns, and were obliged to have recourse to the 9 and 7-inch English guns to complete the experiment. Such things were kept very close in France; but he had his information from a source on which he placed the utmost reliance. Prussia, he might add, was not as yet making many heavy guns, and had not decided on the description of gun which she should use for field service, and certainly not for her navy; much doubt being entertained as to the security of Krupp's steel, as several field-pieces had burst during the late war, and created considerable destruction among the Prussian troops themselves. Russia was still uncertain as to the course to pursue. The Government of that country commenced arming with Krupp's steel muzzle-loader, then changed to a breech-loader, and after a great number of guns were altered to breech-loaders, the system was found to be unsatisfactory, and if he were not mistaken, the Russian Government had been making inquiries in the North, not for a supply of guns from Elswick, but as to whether the Elswick Company would be prepared to set up a manufactory in Russia, with the view of munufacturing guns for the Russian Government. With the exception of these three nations—which for reasons not difficult to be understood, desired that the manufacture of artillery should be conducted on their own soil—almost all the other countries in Europe, and indeed, in the world, were customers, or in treaty to become customers, of the Elswick Company for guns made on the Armstrong principle, and rifled on the Woolwich system, or an analogous system. Austria was adopting the Woolwich system, and her officers were in this country making inquiries with regard to it; it had likewise been adopted by Italy and Spain. Egypt, which had one of the most accomplished officers at the head of its Ordnance Department, had adopted the Woolwich system exclusively for land and sea service. The same system had been adopted by
  1798
  Turkey, by Denmark since 1864, by Holland, Norway, Chili, and Peru. Brazil, it was true, had not adopted it, but he understood that a Committee of Inquiry had lately been formed in Brazil to ascertain, whether the class of guns adopted there was the most satisfactory that could be selected for the country. It was likewise true that the United States had adopted another system, the guns of that country being generally cast-iron guns. All the ships in the fleet of the United States were generally armed with smooth-bored guns; but he believed that this arose not from any desire on the part of the United States to use them in all cases, but rather from the fact of a great stock being in hand, and from the temporary pressure of circumstances, which rendered that country unprepared at the time to make the class of guns it would rather have desired. His right hon. Friend had been misinformed on the subject of the carriages for these heavy guns. [Mr HENRY BAILLIE: I spoke of gun-carriages for coast defences.] Well, he dared say that the Secretary of State for War would be able to give his right hon. Friend some information on that subject; but he suspected that the same course was taken in testing the strength of the gun-carriages for coast defences as for the navy. The course pursued was to have all parts of the carnages duly considered by competent authorities composing a committee of investigation. The strength of the various portions of the carriages was properly examined into, as well as the capability of the carriages for running the guns in and out well, and he believed that the gun carriages of the navy would be found by experience to be satisfactory and durable—though, of course, he would not say that no improvement could ever be made in them. His right hon. Friend had alluded to the Ordnance Select Committee, and had—doubtless unintentionally—left the impression on the minds of many Members that that Committee was a body of inventors, and was not therefore an impartial tribunal for deciding on the inventions of others. The fact was the Members of the Committee were not inventors, and not one of them had ever held, or had ever attempted to hold, a patent. General Lefroy, the President of the Ordnance Select Committee, had expressed in strong terms his opinion that nothing could be so unsatisfactory to the country as the notion that the gentlemen acting upon the

  1799
  Ordnance Select Committee, and who were paid by the country to be judges of the inventions of others, should themselves be inventors of the very arms on which they were called upon to judge. It was therefore too hard on the members of the Ordnance Select Committee to suggest that they acted in the double capacity of inventors and judges, and he wished the House to understand that that body assembled with clean hands to judge of any subject brought before them. His right hon. Friend had acknowledged that ten years ago the Government were right in adopting the Armstrong gun, as it was the best rifled gun then obtainable. No doubt rapid improvements had since taken place, and whenever they were satisfactorily established, the Government, doubtless, would adopt them; but it would be absurd to spend large sums of money in reversing a system already adopted until the superiority of some other system was satisfactory proved. Though certain manufacturers had produced guns almost equal to the gun now in the navy and field artillery of this country, yet the Woolwich system as it now existed was acknowledged on all hands to be superior on almost all points, and where it was not superior it still had such advantages that the country might be satisfied with the arms adopted.
  LORD ELCHOsaid, the right hon. Member for Inverness-shire had done good service in bringing this question under the consideration of the House, and asking for the appointment of a Select Committee. When the Army Estimates were under discussion last week, he (Lord Elcho) had ventured to make some statements with respect to the small-bore rifles and the Lancaster large-bore system of rifles which were questioned at the time, and he therefore wished to refer to them now; but first of all he would observe, in reference to what had been said about the Ordnance Select Committee, that the House must not look so much to that Committee as to those who had the control and command of it. If the Secretary for War judiciously exercised his authority in controlling the Committee — if the War Minister would always look carefully into the Reports of the Committee, and accept them when they were sound and right, he believed there would have been a better state of things than had hitherto existed with regard to the manufacture of guns. The statement which he made the other night, to the effect that the Ordnance Com-
  1800
  mittee on Small Arms had reported very strongly in favour of one description of rifling and against the other two used in the service, and that the Secretary for War did not act on the Report, but allowed for two years an arm not reported on as being the most efficient to be manufactured, was questioned. However, on referring to the debate which took place in 1864–5, he found that he had then stated that from the time of the Report in 1862 between 100,000 and 120,000 stand of the inferior arms had been made. That statement was not denied at the time by the noble Lord the then Secretary for War (Earl de Grey and Ripon), who gave as his reason for not acting upon the Report that a description of arms was in the course of invention which might possibly turn out better. That he (Lord Elcho) held was no sufficient reason whatever; and he certainly thought that with respect to small arms the country would have been in a better position if the noble Lord had exercised his discretion in a different way. One might state other cases where, by a judicious exercise of power on the part of the Secretary of State, good results would come, as well as cases where, by an injudicious exercise of that power, bad results had followed. Take, for instance, the premiums offered as inducements to gunmakers. In former years these premiums were so small that there was the greatest difficulty in getting them to come forward; but now, owing to the constitution of the Committee now sitting, and the change in the premiums offered, instead of there being any difficulty as to competitors there were something like ninety, and the difficulty was to sift them. Then, again, officers in departments had been allowed to patent inventions, and the result was that inventors were shy in producing inventions which they feared might be pirated. He referred to this subject last week, and he was afraid some misunderstanding had gone abroad, which had rather hurt Members of the Ordnance Select Committee; for it was supposed he had said that Members of that Committee patented inventions. He did not say that; but he said that officers in departments of the Government had done so. What he said about the Select Committee was that the Woolwich gun was a hybrid, or composite gun—as regards its grooving it was French; as regards its construction it was, he believed, a simplification of Armstrong's gun; and it

  1801
  combined with that the coating of the gun taken from the patent of Lancaster and Humes, and for which they received from the Blakeley Company an allowance of something like £1 per ton. Another thing was injudicious with reference to the gun manufacturers. It was stated by the Secretary of State for War that there would be no objection to the renewal of the oval-bore patent; but objection was raised subsequently and in the most direct terms; indeed, the Solicitor General resisted the renewal of the patent on the part of the Government at a cost to the inventor of something like £800, and this after a declaration made by the Secretary of State for War that there would be no opposition to the renewal of the patent. Then, as to the power exercised by the Secretary of State over the Committee, it should be remembered that in 1859 we had no rifled gun—nothing but smoothbores. The Italian war took place; the French had a rifled gun which, it was supposed, was very destructive in its effects; the right hon. and gallant Gentleman (General Peel) felt the necessity of our possessing a similar gun, and he adopted the Armstrong into the service. No doubt there had been defects in the Armstrong, but it was the only rifled gun almost in existence then; and his right hon. Friend was not only justified in adopting it, but would have been very wrong if he had not taken on himself the responsibility of ordering the manufacturing of that gun. His right hon. Friend the Member for Inverness-shire had spoken of rifled artillery; but he did not propose to touch on that subject. He had also alluded to the armament of the navy, which he considered defective. His hon. and gallant Friend the Lord of the Admiralty had, on the part of the Government, replied to the argument with reference to the armament of the navy; but his reply consisted in pointing out what had been done by other nations, and showing that, as regards rifled guns, England was, on the whole, as far advanced as any nation on the Continent. The House must, however, have remarked that his hon. and gallant Friend touched very lightly on what seemed a strong point in the speech of his right hon. Friend—namely, that relating to American ordnance. His right hon. Friend pointed out that the Americans had much larger guns; the answer was that they were cast-iron guns. They had a lot of the material, it was said, they
  1802
  wanted to make it up, and they made it up in this shape.
  SIR JOHN HAYsaid, he had spoken with reference to the number of guns, and they would be in no hurry to make more.
  LORD ELCHOunderstood his hon. and gallant Friend to add that they would very soon adopt the European system, or the Woolwich gun, or something of that kind. The Americans had in their possession 1,500 15-inch guns; 200 22-inch guns throwing a 1,000 lbs. shot, and carrying a charge carying from 150 lbs. to 200 lbs. We had nothing to compete with that. We had 7-inch guns rifled and 9-inch guns rifled, throwing a shot of 280 lbs.; but we had no large bore guns at all. On the 27th of April, 1866, he had moved for a Return [Parl. Paper No. 220], showing the number of rifled guns we possessed, and the injuries they had sustained in trial—a Return which he recommended to the attention of every one who wished to obtain full information on the subject. But he had here a statement, on what he considered high authority, or he would not give it to the House, of what we really possessed in the shape of large artillery. We had five 13-inch guns, of which two had burst—that is, they became so fissured as to be unserviceable. The third burst at the seventh round; the fourth had also burst; and the fifth had not been tried. There was a 12-inch gun at Paris which people admired very much; but it had not yet been tried. A number of guns had been ordered to be rifled on the British system. It would be in the recollection of the House that the right hon. Gentleman opposite had given orders for the manufacture of an oval-bore gun on the recommendation of Captain Campbell, who regarded that system as the only rifling likely to succeed with large guns. What he was anxious to point out to the House was that if the American system was right, that of this country was wrong. It seemed to him that we had fallen between two stools. The Americans had enormous guns of a superior quality of iron-cast in a peculiar manner, the interior of the gun during the process of casting being cooled by a hollow tube through which water flowed. These guns could be manufactured for £800 each, whereas those made by us of wrought-iron cost £4,000 each. Knowing that the Americans had these guns, we thought we would try to obtain a rifled weapon of greater penetrative power. The result of

  1803
  our endeavours to improve upon the American system, however, was that we had nothing to equal the large 20-inch American guns. In 1862, too, a striking instance occurred in this country of the destructive effects of powerful guns propelling heavy shot with enormous charges of powder. In the first case, one of Whitworth's guns sent a shell through an iron target, and in the second the large gun known as the Horsfall gun, smoothbore, a 600-pounder, manufactured by the Mersey Steam and Iron Works Company, sent a spherical shot through the Warrior target as if it had been a piece of brown paper, making a hole as large as a porthole, the shot passing through with such force as to make it certain it would have penetrated a second target of equal resisting power. The principle adopted by the Americans was to make enormous guns, capable of propelling shot of crushing weight by tremendous charges of powder, to be used at short ranges of 200 or 400 yards. The battle of Lissa was a hand-to-hand fight, the guns being fired at close quarters: and in such a case the American 15 or 20-inch guns would have an overwhelming superiority over our 9-inch guns. He understood that either the Ordnance Select Committee or the Government had recently sent over for one of these large American guns for the purpose of conducting experiments with it; but the fact remained, that while the Americans possessed 1,500 15-inch guns and 200 20-inch guns, this country did not possess a single gun of those calibres—although it was of the first importance that the naval force of this country should be at least equal to that of America, whose ordnance was certainly superior to that of any other country. He could not help thinking that we should take America as our standard in this matter. He had been told by practical mechanics that the best course for the Government to adopt was to ascertain the mode of rifling that was suitable for large guns; because although a system of rifling that answered efficiently for a small calibre, often failed when applied to a large calibre, yet a system that would answer with large guns was sure to answer with guns of an inferior calibre. The maximum calibre that could be rifled with safety having been ascertained, it would become necessary to have smooth-bore guns of still larger calibre. While supporting the Motion of the right hon. Gentleman opposite, he thought that
  1804
  much more might be done by energetic action on the part of those in high places than by the appointment of a Select Committee. His excuse for having occupied the attention of the House for so long was his anxiety that this country should possess the best gun that could be obtained. England was supposed to be the greatest manufacturing country in the world, and yet, somehow or another—for some unexplained reason—it was always lagging behind in such matters as these; and the First Lord of the Admiralty and the Secretary for War were continually endeavouring to show, not that this country was far in advance of the rest of the world with regard to materials of war, but that we were rather in advance of our neighbours in that respect than otherwise. In many matters other countries were showing us the way. Thus, we had neglected to try the half-moon batteries on board ship because it involved an expense of £60,000 to carry out the necessary experiments; we had rejected the Palliser system, by which a cast-iron gun was tubed with wrought-iron; and we had declined to adopt the Parsons gun, of which the Emperor of the French had directed a number to be manufactured. He hoped that public attention would be directed to the subject, and that whatever might be done the result would enable this country to occupy the position to which she was entitled, and which it could scarcely be said that she at present held.
  GENERAL PEEL: I rise, Sir, to reply to that portion of the speech of my right hon. Friend behind me (Mr. Henry Baillie) which refers to the introduction of the Armstrong gun, for which I am more immediately responsible. After the manner in which that gun was reported upon by the Committee that sat in 1863, I should have thought it unnecessary to say a word upon the subject; but my right hon. Friend has insinuated—if he has not made a direct charge to that effect—that some undue preference was shown towards Sir William Armstrong. I think it therefore right to state the circumstances attending the introduction of the Armstrong gun into the service. When I was appointed Secretary of War in 1858 the Ordnance Select Committee consisted of the Director General of Ordnance and several heads of departments. I found that although the Armstrong gun had been submitted to that Committee as far back as 1854, together with several other systems of rifling, and

  1805
  although there was in existence a Minute made by my predecessor in office (Lord Dalhousie) stating that, in consequence of the satisfactory results of the Armstrong gun, he had ordered an additional battery for trial, still we had no rifle guns in the service. I asked the Director General how long it would take to determine which was the best rifled gun. The reply was that it would take several years; and that reply was no doubt correct. But still I could not wait that time, and, moreover, I had no intention of waiting, because by so doing we should have been behind every other country in this matter. I therefore determined on the immediate appointment of a Select Committee, and the question is, whether the Members of that Committee were fairly chosen or not. I applied to the Commander-in-Chief to recommend me the most scientific officers in the artillery and engineers; and I made a similar application to the Admiralty for the names of naval officers best known for their scientific attainments. The gentlemen so returned were appointed by me; and in the course of a short time they reported that the Armstrong guns were as superior to other patterns as the latter were to the guns then in use; but the investigations extended only to field guns. They recommended that no larger pattern of the Armstrong gun should be made without further test; 180 guns were therefore ordered, and on the recommendation of Lord Derby further experiments were instituted. I think we have had a strong example this evening how careful Members ought to be before making personal accusations. My right hon. Friend (Mr. Henry Baillie) has stated that the late Sir Benjamin Hawes was personally interested in the Elswick Foundry, and that Sir Benjamin had two relatives connected with that firm. My right hon. Friend ought to be more cautious in his statements, because Sir Benjamin had no relative or any person connected with him in the firm, nor did he interfere in the matter in any way. I am enabled to state this on the authority of a member of the Elswick firm. I was, I believe, perfectly justified in adopting the Armstrong gun in the first instance, seeing that it was at the time the best gun known in any service in the world. So far therefore for the introduction of the gun. In consequence, however, of what occurred, I directed a change in the constitution of the Ordnance Committee, and I recommended that its members should be
  1806
  selected entirely on account of their scientific attainments, and that none of them should be inventors or holders of patents; and that rule has, I believe, been strictly adhered to up to the present moment. My right hon. Friend is wrong in what he has stated with reference to the conversion of small arms. He said that the change in our small arms had been adopted in consequence of the late events on the Continent. That is, however, a mistake. The fact is that its adoption had been determined on before, and provision was made in the Estimates for converting 40,000 in the last financial year. I simply carried out the recommendations of the Committee by ordering the conversion of a sufficient number of weapons for the supply of the whole of the army. The converted rifle shoots better than the present Enfield, and is, I believe, superior to any other rifled small arm. When we wished to get a new small arm we offered great prizes to induce people to come forward and submit their inventions for our examination, and if you are not satisfied with the selection we have made the remedy is not the one now suggested. I hope that the House will place confidence in my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for War. If you are not satisfied you can move a Vote of Want of Confidence; but the House will not, I hope, interfere in the manner proposed and appoint a Committee, which will in any case bear no responsibility whatever.
  MR. SHAW LEFEVREsaid, that having been in America last year, he could bear testimony to the fact that of the guns of which the noble Lord (Lord Elcho) said 200 had been manufactured only two had then been made. A third was in course of construction, and he was told that a contract existed for the construction of fifteen in all; but that that contract would never have been entered into but for the war. It was also extremely doubtful whether guns of such a size could be carried by any existing vessels. His noble Friend had recommended our following the example of the Americans; but the experience of the American war was, he thought, rather in favour of our system. The power of the 15-inch guns had been over-estimated, and no greater proof of that fact could be found than the engagement which took place between the Confederate iron-clad the Tennessee on the one side and four Monitors in Mobile Bay. In that engagement the vessels fought at a

  1807
  distance of ten to fifteen yards. The Tennessee was repeatedly struck, her adversaries carrying 15-inch guns, but no shots penetrated. One of her plates—of 6-inch railway iron, by no means so strong as those used by ourselves—was broken, but no shot entered her hull. The Tennessee ultimately surrendered, not because she was disabled by shot, but simply because she was so shaken that her crew were unable to continue the engagement. He had seen the vessel itself after the engagement, and found her unhurt. He mentioned this fact as an illustration of the inferiority of the American guns, and he trusted that the Government would exercise great caution before adopting their system.
  SIR JOHN PAKINGTON: I entirely concur with my noble Friend the Member for Haddingtonshire (Lord Elcho) in the opinion that my right hon. Friend the Member for Inverness-shire deserves great credit for the ability and perseverance with which he has brought this question before the House. I cannot, however, avoid expressing a hope that my right hon. Friend will be content with the discussion he has elicited, and will not press his Motion to a division. In fact, no better argument in favour of such a course can be adduced than those which are to be found in the speeches of my right hon. Friend himself and my noble Friend the Member for Haddingtonshire. My noble Friend the Member for Haddingtonshire devoted a considerable portion of his speech to finding fault with the Ordnance Select Committee.
  LORD ELCHOsaid, he had said nothing about the Ordnance Select Committee. He had simply said that the responsibility of their proceedings rested with the Secretary of State for War.
  SIR JOHN PAKINGTON: My noble Friend admitted at the close of his speech that we were at least adopting a sound course, and that I think may be taken as a reason for not pressing the Motion before the House, the adoption of which might be inconvenient to the public service. The present state of this question, I can assure my right hon. Friend (Mr. H. Baillie), is clearly not such as to require the intervention of a Committee—indeed, a Committee would only paralyze the exertions now being made, for it would be impossible to conclude the desired inquiry this Session, and the question would then remain unsolved until some time after
  1808
  Parliament had again assembled. With reference to the question of responsibility, I quite assent to the principle that the responsibility should not rest on Committees or Commissions, and the Minister alone should be responsible to Parliament and the country for any decision finally come to, and I have no hesitation in stating that I am this moment, to the best of my ability, considering changes which I think may tend to the public advantage; I may also assure my right hon. Friend that experiments are being continued at this moment; and as I, from the short time I have held the office more particularly concerned, can claim no credit for the fact, I may say that the conduct of the Ordnance Department shows that, it is most anxious to perform its duties with respect to this important question. My noble Friend spoke of a number of 13-inch guns which he said had burst on trial; but he was quoting from a paper which only gave the experiments which had been made, and did not give the successful results. The same remark applies to what he said of the 9-inch guns, and I think the House should infer from the whole of his remarks upon this subject that great difficulty and many failures have been experienced in the endeavour to provide the country with an effective 9-inch gun. And, although many such guns have burst on trial, we have other 9-inch guns from which upwards of 1,000 rounds have been fired; and we have now a very large and rapidly increasing supply of 12-ton 9-inch guns well fitted for the service of the country either on land or sea. My noble Friend suggested that we should test guns one against the other. My answer to that is that a comparison was made a long time ago between, I believe, a 7-inch rifled and a 9-inch smooth-bore gun, and the result of that comparison has beeen the acceptance of the 7-inch rifled gun as that best adapted for the navy.
  LORD ELCHO: I suggested a comparison with respect to the 15 and 13-inch guns, which, I believe, has never been made.
  SIR JOHN PAKINGTON: My noble Friend, however, must admit that the Department has shown that it has no objection to any fair competition. Some surprise was expressed upon a former occasion that the recommendation of the Committee with respect to the Lancaster gun had not been acted on; but the delay in this respect has arisen from the illness

  1809
  of Mr. Lancaster himself. The Department was disposed to act on the recommendation referred to; but Mr. Lancaster wished to make some alteration in the system of rifling, and the Committee acceded to the request to delay operations. Mr. Lancaster, however, has been too ill to suggest the alterations he desired, and after corresponding with an agent of his, we have been carrying out the experiment by following the system of rifling originally adopted by him. Simultaneously with that experiment three other guns are being tried in comparison with the Woolwich gun. Here I may say, with respect, to my noble Friend's assertion that the Woolwich gun is a composite affair, parts being borrowed from one invention and parts from another, that the incident shows, if it shows anything, how anxious the Ordnance Department is to procure a good gun, no matter from what quarter it may come. My noble Friend I am sure would be the last to blame the Department for excess of zeal. [Lord ELCHO: I do not blame it for excess of zeal.] I feel under some difficulty in answering my right hon. Friend, inasmuch as the notice he put upon the Paper did not exactly indicate the nature of the speech he intended to make. The Motion is for a Committee "to consider the present state and condition of the Ordnance Department," which I think points rather to the present constitution of the Department than to the results of its labours; and in the early part of his speech he seemed to entertain the opinion that the amalgamation made at the time of the Crimean war between the War Office and the Ordnance Department was an error. My right hon. Friend does not stand alone in having that opinion; but the question raised by the expression of that opinion is a very large one; it cannot be hastily disposed of, and, although I am far from saying I am in favour of returning to the state of things existing before the amalgamation, I would add that the subject is a fair one for consideration when the various recommendations of Lord Strathnairn's Committee come under consideration. The Ordnance Committee has been objected to upon the ground that some of its members are inventors; but, as I had something to do with the Committee when holding office in the Naval Department, I may be deemed competent to form a judgment of the gentlemen upon it, and I must say that I think the Ordnance Select Committee are
  1810
  entitled to the confidence of the country; I believe its members are most competent men and entirely disinterested, devoting their knowledge and experience to the public service. My right hon. Friend must excuse me if I do not follow him in his remarks upon the connection of Sir Benjamin Hawes with the Ordnance Committee. I am sorry that my right hon. Friend should have made remarks which have the character of a severe censure upon one who is now dead, and cannot answer any charges which may be brought against him. My right hon. Friend made it a subject of complaint against the Ordnance Committee that they are not to be trusted to make trials, and he touched upon a case in which I myself was concerned; I refer to the appointment of another Committee for the trial of small arms. But by assenting to that course I did not intend to throw any doubt upon the honour or competence of the Ordnance Select Committee. My right hon. Friend must know how very numerous inventors are, and consequently how prone they are to doubt both the wisdom and fairness of any decision come to. Accordingly, when I found that some of the inventors who were coming forward with small arms to be tried were persons whose inventions on a former occasion had not been accepted by the Ordnance Select Committee, and who in consequence strongly doubted the wisdom of that Committee, I thought it better, wishing to afford no possible room for any questioning of the fairness of the tribunal, that the task of deciding upon the merits of these numerous small arms should be intrusted to a newly appointed body. And I have every reason to rejoice at what I did. For, in the first place, it is impossible for any inventor, however much he may be disappointed, to question the perfect fairness and impartiality of the tribunal; and, secondly, the Committee, of which Colonel Fletcher is at the head, has conducted its inquiries in the most admirable manner, and in a mode which is above suspicion from any quarter. My right hon. Friend threw a great deal of blame on our present field artillery, and in support of his arguments referred to the Report of Colonel Maxwell, an officer now in India, of considerable experience with regard to those arms. If my right hon. Friend does not already know the fact it will be satisfactory to him to learn that the opinions of Colonel Maxwell have been by no means

  1811
  disregarded or treated with contempt. Communications have passed between the Government of India and the Ordnance Department here; and at this moment, in consequence of those representations, the whole subject of altering the character of our field artillery is under serious consideration. My right hon. Friend also made it matter of accusation that when some time since there appeared to be danger of a rupture between Spain and this country we had only two 13-inch guns ready to send out, and that these required re-rifling. My right hon. Friend must know that if we are to have our artillery defences efficient there cannot be one kind of ammunition for one gun and another for another. It certainly was in contemplation to alter the rifling of these 13-inch guns; but it was not to those the Government trusted for strengthening the defences of Gibraltar: on the contrary, there were fourteen 9-inch 12-ton guns quite fit for the service and ready to be sent out; and their departure was only delayed through the necessity of waiting for the gun-carriages, which were being supplied as rapidly as possible; and the necessity for this delay turned entirely on the recent adoption of a carriage, which is made of iron instead of wood. My right hon. Friend also committed an unintentional mistake as to the cost of these new carriages, which he placed as high as £600 apiece.
  MR. HENRY BAILLIE: I said I did not know what they would cost, but I thought they might cost that sum.
  SIR JOHN PAKINGTON: Then I am sure he will be very glad to learn that they will not cost anything like that sum. Between thirty and forty of them are being made by contract at a cost of £470 apiece, which is a good deal less than my hon. Friend supposed. These carriages are being made by the Elswick Company; at the same time a large number are being made in the Arsenal at Woolwich as rapidly as the strength of that establishment admits. I have now, I think, touched on all the material points in the statement of my right hon. Friend into which it is desirable that I should follow him; and I have only to express my earnest hope that he will not think it necessary to press this Motion to a division, but will be satisfied with the good effect which I quite admit that a discussion of this nature always produces. Another reason why I submit my right hon. Friend should not press his Motion at the present
  1812
  moment, is that in consequence of the suggestion made to me by the noble Lord opposite the Member for North Lancashire (the Marquess of Hartington), I thought it my duty to lay on the table the full correspondence which has passed with Mr. Whitworth. Of Mr. Whitworth's abilities I wish to speak with every respect; but a great deal of controversy has taken place between him and the War Department. Some days have now elapsed since I laid upon the table the Reports and correspondence fully and fairly showing what had passed on the subject; those papers will very shortly be in the hands of hon. Members, and of course additional and not uninteresting information must be afforded by their contents. Under these circumstances my right hon. Friend, I hope, will not think it necessary to press his Motion to a division.
  MR. NEWDEGATEsaid, he thought his right hon. Friend had rendered great service by originating this discussion. There had been two great instances of success in arming the country at short notice—one in 1854, when an admirable Ordnance Committee existed, it consisted of the late Lord Hardinge and the Duke of Wellington. Another had existed with almost equal success quite recently. It consisted of his right hon. Friend the Member for Huntingdon (General Peel) alone, and he was successful in providing a rapid supply of small arms. In both cases the secret of success lay in the fact that those in authority were content to provide the country with the best arm then invented, instead of incurring needless vexation and constant expenditure in attempting to arrive at an impossible perfection. The heads of Departments were so apprehensive of the imputation of having spent money wastefully, that the country was left without proper arms. He thought the Government would do well if they increased the quantity of Snider rifles, for it was the best arm that was now made, and he looked with apprehension to five or six years of insufficient supply whilst something better was invented. He trusted the days were past when Ordnance Committees would be held responsible. None could be properly responsible but the heads of Departments. He (Mr. Newdegate) was confident that the appointment of the Trial Committee would put an end to the dissatisfaction existing in various quarters among persons who believed that their inventions had been

  1813
  pirated by the members of the Ordnance Committee to which they were submitted, since these Trial Committees consisted of officers of the army, who had nothing to do with the making or altering of any arm, but were employed simply to test its usefulness in the hands of the ordinary soldier. Could any person doubt that inventions had been pirated? He himself had shot with four patterns of the Enfield rifle before it ever was christened by that name, the weapon having been invented and the patterns made by Mr. Westley Richards. The Woolwich cannon again was said to be a combination of several inventions. Why should not the authors of these gain the credit, they deserved? Under the arrangements made by the right hon. and gallant General the Member for Huntingdon, inventors would not only hereafter be compensated for their ability in the first instance, but would get the credit of their own work. The real significance and satisfaction attendant on the appointment of the new committee, however, was that the tribunal consisted, not of persons having a knowledge of mechanics, but of military men who judged of the merits of a weapon by its performance in the hands of soldiers. The War Department, he trusted, would not slacken its exertions, or begin afresh the system of waiting for other patterns than that of the Snider rifle, which had been proved efficient, seeing that this country only possessed one-half the quantity of breach-loaders which ought to be forthcoming.
  MR. HENRY BAILLIEsaid, he would withdraw his Amendment.
  Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
  Main Question, "That Mr. Speaker do now leave the Chair," put, and agreed to.

SUPPLY—NAVY ESTIMATES.
SUPPLY—considered in Committee.
(In the Committee.)
(1.) £267,067, Coast Guard Service, Royal Naval Coast Volunteers, and Naval Reserve.
ADMIRAL ERSKINE: Mr. Dodson—Sir, I rise, in pursuance of notice given at the beginning of this Session, to call the attention of the Committee, before passing this Vote, to the state of the Royal Naval Reserve, and I do so with less reluctance than I should otherwise feel to trespass on their time, because I have remarked
1814
with surprise that neither in the able and otherwise comprehensive speech of the noble Lord the Secretary of the Admiralty (Lord Henry Lennox) in introducing the Navy Estimates, nor in the various discussions to which they give rise, has one word been said on a subject which many feel must be our great difficulty in the event of again being engaged in war—namely, the having at command such an organized body of disciplined seamen as might enable us to undertake, at the earliest possible moment, either offensive or defensive operations. This omission, it seems to me, must result from one of two causes—either a feeling that the subject is so difficult a one as to make it impossible to approach it with any hopes of a solution, or a conviction that our present system is so perfect as to admit of no improvement, and, consequently, to call for no comment. It is because I cannot subscribe to either of these opinions, that I presume to trouble the Committee at all on the subject. It would be a waste of their time were I to descant on the difficulty we have always experienced in raising suddenly our peace establishment to a war footing; because we all know that in former wars, with the exception of the last which could not be properly termed a naval war, it has obliged us to have recourse to the most odious and unfair mode of conscription ever devised, that of impressment; a tradition of which still exists in the merchant navy to the prejudice of the public service, but of which I trust we have seen the last in practice. But if our difficulties were great formerly, it is not likely they should be less in times like the present, when from our great commercial prosperity and the rapid increase of our trade, rapid beyond all precedent, the services of every man who adopts a sea-faring life become the object of keen competition, thereby raising wages, encouraging strikes—a new practice among seamen—and giving rise to complaints of what I cannot but think is erroneously called a scarcity of seamen, which complaints only amount to an assertion of the not ungratifying fact, that the increase of our trade is more rapid than that of our maritime population. But although our difficulties are thus increased by circumstances which ought not to be causes of regret, but rather of congratulation, it seems to be not the less incumbent on us in these times of prosperity to attempt to devise some scheme which should enable the

1815
establishments of the country to be quickly placed on a war footing when required, and which should also tend in some measure during peace to supply the great and increasing demand for seamen for the merchant service. I pass over the Coastguard, which had been incorporated with the navy, and only allude to the Coast volunteers to express my regret that a force originally established for coast defence, so as to liberate a portion of the regular navy, has been, by the repeal of a clause which prevented the employment of the men at a greater distance than 300 miles from the shore, altogether diverted from its purpose, and is dwindling away. The Naval Reserve, therefore, is the only force to which we can look for the supply of men to the navy in case of emergency. That force was established by Act of Parliament in 1859–60, which authorized the Board of Admiralty to raise, and from time to time to keep up, a number of men not exceeding 30,000, (the number for the last four years having been 16,000), to make them a periodical payment or allowance, and to pay and provision them in addition for the twenty-eight days' drill in the year for which they were to be called out. The Act further authorized Her Majesty, when she should deem fit, to order the whole or any part of these volunteers to be called into actual service, first communicating with Parliament if sitting; or, if not, by issuing her Royal Proclamation. The annual payment was fixed by the Admiralty at £6, and the wages and allowance for provisions during the twenty-eight days at £4 4s., the former sum being considered a retainer to secure the services of the man in the event of war, and the latter a remuneration, not, the Committee will remark, for any services rendered by him to the State, but for consenting to allow himself to be instructed in the use of two or three descriptions of weapons, a sufficient acquaintance with which is thus acknowledged to be attainable in eighteen days drill—twenty-eight days less Saturdays and Sundays and two days for travelling to and fro — in all, ninety hours, in the year. The time of enlistment is limited to five years, at the option of the men, and in the seven and a half years' existence of the force, about 3,000 men had taken advantage of this provision, and having received £50 of the public money, without doing any service in return, had taken their discharge free
1816
from any future obligation. Those who have been in the force since its enrolment will have received £71 8s., and should they go on two or three years longer, a large proportion of the existing force of 16,000 men could claim their discharge, having received £101, and not having done one day's service. But in addition to the £10 4s. per man there were other expenses, including subsistence, allowance for officers, medical fees, targets, and repair of arms, which brought the whole amount for this year up to £212,561 as compared with £210,769 last year. The whole cost therefore was about £13 5s. per head, or little more than half the wages of a naval seaman who entered for non-continuous service, instead of £6 per head, which the country is led to believe is the cost of this reserve. The cost of the Royal Naval Reserve for consecutive years since its establishment has been as follows:—In 1860–1 (during which year we also paid £218,000 in bounties for seamen raised in 1859), £101,000; in 1861–2, £107,949; in 1862–3, £176,000. Up to this time the number of men enrolled is not mentioned in the Estimate; but in 1863–4 the maximum of 16,000 men, for which retainers and drill-pay were voted, was attained, the sums being, annual retainer for 16,000 men, £96,000; drill-pay, 1s. 8d. a day, for ditto, £37,333; making a total of £133,333; and this sum has been annually voted since. The whole expense, however, for 1863–4 was increased by the items I mentioned above, and the addition of pay and provisions for the means of instruction ships, building and repairing batteries for drilling the men on shore, &c., to £194,000, making a surplus for what may be called contingencies of £61,227. It might be supposed that the number of 16,000 men not having been exceeded since then, the expense would also have reached its height; but this has not been so, for in 1864–5 the contingencies amounted to £72,606, and the whole sum voted for that year was £205,939; in 1865–6, £206,627; in 1866–7, £210,797; and we are asked this year for £212,561, making an excess over retainers and drill-pay (a portion of it certainly owing to the increased price of provisions) of £79,228 against £61,227 in 1863–4. The whole expense, exclusive, however, of some small sums voted in the Civil Service Estimates, of the reserve since its formation has thus been £1,415,479, without the country having

1817
received a single day's service from any one of its members.
The first consideration which suggests itself on looking at this large expenditure is, how can we hope, whilst we are thus paying merchant seamen annually £10 4s. a head to keep out of the navy until the Queen's Proclamation shall be issued, either to supply the wear and tear of the fleet—which the number of boys we annually bring forward certainly does not do—or to increase the number of our men in the event of some contingency occurring not of sufficient importance to alarm other countries, by so strong a measure as issuing the Royal Proclamation, amounting almost to a declaration of war. A pamphlet, known to be the production of the noble Duke lately at the head of the Admiralty, in speaking of this force says—
"The measure has been attended with another good result. It has brought the Mercantile Marine into closer connection with the Royal Navy, and has tended to remove prejudices which in former years seriously interfered with the manning of our fleets."
So far from this having been the case, even the strongest advocates of the Naval Reserve allow that whatever advantages we are to look to in the event of a war, we have cut ourselves off from all supply of seamen during peace time, as Returns of enlistments from the Merchant Service will show; and we have, in fact, drawn a broad line of demarcation between the two services which, among other disadvantages, obliges us to maintain a larger force of continuous service men (enlisted for ten years) than we might in a time of profound peace require — such continuous service men, be it remarked, being paid on an opposite principle to that usually adopted in the remuneration for labour, receiving, as they do, a higher rate of wages for a continuous and unremitting engagement than for shorter and less certain employment.
The next question to consider is, supposing the Queen's Proclamation issued, and the men called out, how many can we expect to collect in a reasonable time without coercive measures? Certainly not the whole, because a large number are always absent on long voyages, and with respect to those actually in the home ports, I am sorry to say an impression prevails among many naval officers who have been employed in the duty of instructing them, that a large number would make strenuous efforts to avoid fulfilling
1818
their obligations. The late first Lord of the Admiralty in the pamphlet I have alluded to, which has deservedly attracted much attention among naval men, states, what, no doubt, he believed to be the fact—
"The high patriotic spirit of these men was evinced when the seizure of certain persons on board the steamer Trent rendered necessary naval preparations. At that crisis the seamen of the Royal Naval Reserve sent memorials and letters to the Admiralty, declaring their readiness to embark at once in defence of their Queen and country."
On this subject, an officer of great intelligence, who was most enthusiastic and active in getting up the Naval Reserve, wrote to me in January last, before I had seen the pamphlet referred to, and, indeed, I believe, before it was printed, as follows:—
"I was serving in the instruction ship at one of the Northern ports, when the news reached England of the notorious Trent affair. Our captain was very anxious that the Royal Naval Reserve at the port, including those on drill at the time, should make a demonstration by way of giving a proof of their value in time of war, and requested me to get the gunner of the ship to speak to some of the leading men amongst them, to get up a meeting on board to make an offer of their services to the Admiralty through the captain. The meeting was got up accordingly, and I attended it in capacity of reporter for the press. At the captain's request one man was quickly voted into the chair, and a capital speaker he was. He harangued them for a considerable time as to the duty that devolved on them of making an offer of their services to man one of Her Majesty's ships, and show the Yankees what stuff British sailors were made of, &c., &c., and concluded by requesting every man who was willing and ready to defend the honour of the British flag to hold up his right hand. There was just one hand held up. It was the speaker's own. For a moment he seemed as much surprised as I certainly was. Yet he had evidently been prepared for such a catastrophe, for he promptly added, 'I tell you what, men, you all know me as well as I know you, and I would no more hold up my hand to go on board a man-of-war than you, but I know very weel they don't want us and won't have us; but the other chaps have offered and surely we won't be behind them; besides I tell you that our good old captain wants us to offer, and I am sure you all trust him, so up hands; men!' Up went the speaker's hand, and slowly, one after another, till I dare say, the half of them were up, and the meeting was over. I wrote the letter to the captain embodying their hearty patriotic offer, which was duly forwarded to the Admiralty and elicited as it deserved an highly eulogistic letter of thanks from their Lordships, but declining, for the present, their services."
Another officer, who had been similarly employed, writes to a friend of his, who sent the letter to me—
"22nd January, 1867.
"I hasten to reply to your letter, more especially on the subject of the Royal Naval Reserve than on any other. However good the original promoters of the scheme thought it, lapse of time will, I think, tend to prove that the whole affair is a delusion. It is my impression, and always was, from the period of my first becoming associated with it, that were the country to require the force to man her navy, not one tithe of them would respond to the call. I do not give them credit for sufficient patriotism to voluntarily emerge from their avocations to seek service in men-of-war, and I believe it would be a matter of great difficulty to find out the residence of a very great number of Royal Naval Reserve men, as they would naturally resort to all sorts of subterfuge to baffle the authorities seeking them; amongst others, would join merchant ships, and go hence, and be no more seen, at least for a season. There can be but little doubt that the chief attraction is the drill and retainer money, accruing from embodiment in the force, always keeping in mind that it is a hundred to one against any one single man ever being called out. The money voted for the service of the Royal Naval Reserve had much better be bestowed in maintaining, as far as it would go, say 5,000 additional real men-of-war's men in addition to the present force, &c., &c."
An officer who took a great interest in the establishment of the Reserve, writes to me—
"The only good I can see arising from the vast sum of money spent, and to be annually expended on this Naval Reserve is, that it has, in a measure, legalized impressment. In the event of a war, the Admiralty will be able to say 'We have so many thousand deserters from the Naval Reserve, men who have been receiving pay for years to serve when called on, and whom we have now summoned to appear at our various rendezvous, but of whom not ten have appeared. We must, therefore, look for them on board merchant ships, in the seaports, on shore, and in their homes. We believe that thousands of them have destroyed their certificates, thus, in a measure, destroying their identity; we therefore cannot help it if the innocent be occasionally taken for the guilty.'"
He concludes—
"That this will be the state of things whenever the Royal Naval Reserve men are called on to serve—no one who has had any thing to do with it can doubt."
If these apprehensions be well founded—and that there is some foundation for them cannot be doubted—it is clear that some form of coercion, attended with an additional expense, will be required on the breaking out of a war. Another reason why the men of the Reserve would not readily respond to the call, is simply that as trade would be carried on, to a great extent, in neutral bottoms, the men would follow the course of the trade. I think I have shown that these men have a very loose notion of their obligations, and it is
1820
equally sure that the Government have a very loose hold on them. Mr. Gideon Wells, the Secretary of the United States Navy, in his Report concerning the Shenandoah, a ship fitted out in England for the service of the Southern State, complains that a large proportion of her crew were seamen of the Royal Naval Reserve, and it is quite within the bounds of possibility that the same might have been said of the crew of the Tornado. And in cases like these, involving questions of International Law, there is the additional disadvantage that foreign nations may reasonably complain of men raised for the service of the Royal Navy being allowed to swell the ranks of their enemies whilst, in fact, our Government is powerless to prevent them. Again, Sir, in the Naval receipt and expenditue of last year I remark an ominous surplus of £25,132, one which we cannot well pride ourselves on, considering that it arises from a failing off in the numbers of men who presented themselves for drill. A Return moved for by myself towards the end of last Session shows the number of actual defaulters to have been in 1865, 2,337, and in 1866, 2,919, being an increase of desertions in one year of 582 men. These men were all liable to a penalty of £20; but has it ever been exacted in any one instance, or is there any intention of putting the law into execution to stop this growing evil? I may mention, as showing the difficulty of getting any trustworthy Returns of the state of this force, that on the 1st of March the House, on my Motion, or dared a Return, simple enough it might be supposed, of—
"The whole number of Men now enrolled in the Royal Naval Reserve; distinguishing the ports, &c., at which they are enrolled, and of the whole number drilled during the year 1866."
After waiting about three weeks I was informed that the Board of Trade objected to the Return on the ground I of its expense, as it would require six clerks ten or fourteen days to make it out, adding that they could not conceive the object for which such a Return could be called. The Return was nevertheless ordered, and three months have now elapsed without its having been laid on the table of the House, and I am in consequence prevented from referring to it. Now, Sir, I ask if any reasonable man can suppose that if three months are required to make a Return so simple and so necessary, the men themselves could be collected in

1821
the same time. We have not even got an army on paper! How we are to get them in their buckram suits I am sure I do not know. Whether such a force, if they could be collected, would be calculated to inspire officers under whom they were to serve with that confidence on which success in a contest with a carefully disciplined enemy is another serious consideration. Considering that the organization and discipline of the body form no part of the plan of the Naval Reserve, but seem, from the instructions issued to the commanding officers of the training ships, to be purposely discouraged, I think it will be conceded that if this body can correctly be called a reserve, it is at best a reserve of recruits, whose real education must begin at the very time when it is most essential that habits of obedience and self-denial, which it has not been attempted to form, should come into play. If, indeed, a large body of such men had acquired an aptitude in the use of arms without the controlling power of discipline, they might be a dangerous force to their own officers if called on to perform some service disagreeable to themselves, but they would be a harmless one to any enemy. But, after all, Sir, perhaps the strongest objection to this scheme is, that this great annual expenditure—greater, it is calculated, than the whole of the impress system at a period during last century, when the navy depended solely on it for its supply of seamen—is incurred without adding a single unit to the maritime population of the country. We are, in fact, paying a bonus of about £190,000 to the merchant shipowner, without even the excuse for a system of bonuses—that of stimulating a supply of the article in demand. A sum of £200,000 a year would, on the authority of Sir Henry Pennell, if expended directly, maintain an actual force of 5,000 men, which would thus add to the maritime strength of the nation. But we are now attempting an impossibility. We are coming on a service which cannot overtake its own requirements for what it cannot give us—a sure supply, at uncertain periods, of men, not merely drilled for eighteen days, but accustomed to the discipline and habits of a ship of war, which are becoming every day necessarily more and more different from those of the merchant navy. If these objections are not very much overstated, it is clear that the present system of the Naval Reserve requires
1822
considerable modification before it can be considered either efficient or economical.
Perhaps the best scheme ever submitted to the Admiralty, and, indeed, actually put in practice for a very short time, was that suggested in 1853 by Mr. Pennell, then Senior Cleric of the Admiralty, now Sir Henry Pennell, a gentleman of great ability, when he proposed to offer discharges with pensions of 6d. a day or £9 4s. a year to men who had completed ten years' service in the navy, on the condition of their serving again when called on up to the age of forty-eight. Mr. Pennell's economical reasons were founded on the following considerations, as stated by himself:—
"At present one man yields a service of twenty-one years, and obtains a pension on an average of 1s. 1½d. a day, or £20 12 s. a year, including the allowance for time served as petty officer. As proposed, two men would yield a service of about eleven years each, or a total of twenty-two years, and receive, respectively, pensions of 6d. a day, or together 1s. a day, equal to £18 4s. a year. Thus one man's service and pension would be divided between two men, this important advantage being obtained, that instead of one worn out man being placed on the pension list, the Crown having no further claim on his services, two efficient men would be placed thereon, each liable to give some eight or nine years further war service."
It was found, however, I believe, that the ten years' continuous service system not having come into operation, there was not a sufficient number of men to enable this plan to be carried out, and it was accordingly abandoned after a few weeks' trial—a decision I cannot but regret, as had it been steadily persevered in, we should gradually have acquired something like a real reserve of seamen, open certainly to the objections that there was no security for their continuing to follow a sea-faring life, or against their throwing up their obligations when it suited them, by the mere forfeiture of their pensions. I venture to suggest, however, that an improvement might be made on Sir Henry Pennell's plan, by not necessarily discharging the ten years' men from the list of the navy when their pensions became due, but inducing them to remain in it by the offer of the 6d. a day or £9 4s. a year (being somewhat less than the amount of the retainer and drill-pay now paid to the merchant seamen), and to volunteer for single voyages in merchant ships; the time so occupied to be allowed to count either wholly or in part for their long service pension. The country would thus be saved all the contingent expenses aris-

1823
ing from the various appurtenances of the present system (at least £65,000 a year), whilst the additional men so retained in the navy would be maintained at the expense of their merchant employers. A short illustration will probably give the Committee a notion of what I propose. It is well known that naval officers are often applied to on foreign stations to assist merchant ships who have lost portions of their crews either by death or desertion; such assistance being supplied by lending a sufficient number of men to navigate the ship to her destination; the men so lent returning to the navy at the end of the voyage, having been paid by the shipowner during that time, but without prejudice to their claim for service in the navy. In 1851 I was relieved in the naval command of the Australian station, a few months after the discovery of gold in that colony. The harbour of Port Jackson was full of merchant ships, whose crews had deserted to the gold districts, and which it was found in consequence impossible to send to England, and in this dilemma some; of the merchants applied to me for assistance, which I was fortunately able, in some degree, to afford them. The Admiralty had directed me to turn over to the Colonial Government, who desired to possess her, one of Her Majesty's steamers, the Acheron, which had been employed for some years on the surveying service, and to bring the officers and men to England in my own ship. An addition of from 80 to 100 men would have been an inconvenience on board a small frigate; but being trustworthy men and perfectly suited for the service, several of the merchant ships were manned by them and sent to sea, an arrangement having been previously made that the men were to receive a sum for the run home, very much lower than had been offered to merchant seaman, but considerably higher than their own wages. The voyages were all made safely and the men rejoined the navy and received their arrears of wages, without losing any advantages of claim for pension. Four parties were thus benefited by this arrangement; the State, which was relieved from the expense of maintaining the men; the merchant, who was enabled to send his wool to England; the shipowner, who earned his freight; and the seamen, who received almost double their wages. I thus, it may be said, established a reserve
1824
of 80 or 100 men for three mouths, the usual term of the voyage, the immediate expense being nothing, and the prospective expense merely the addition of three months to the service of each man in his calculation for a long service pension, which probably only a small proportion of them would ever claim. If this could be done with 100 men for three months why not with a larger number for any period? It may be said, the case was an exceptional one, but is not the case of our merchant navy at this time somewhat exceptional? We hear much of the wretched condition of merchant ships' crews, and in the present demand for men, and the mode of entering them, it could not well be otherwise. Bat were a merchant captain assured, that instead of a crew most of whom he has never seen till a day or two before going to sea, and of whose professional qualifications and character he is profoundly ignorant, a proportion of it were composed of real seamen, who were answerable for their conduct to the Government, whose pension they received and whose uniform they wore, and had besides the strongest inducement to carry back with them his corroboration of their previous good character, it cannot be doubted that shipowners would be anxious to avail themselves of the privilege. An opportunity might soon offer to try the experiment, if the Admiralty agreed to the proposal of the hon. Member for Pontefract to reduce the prcseut force of the navy by 4,000 men. Let these men not be absolutely discharged, but retained to test this system. If unsuccessful they might all be discharged at the end of a year; and if successful, let the plan be extended so as always to keep a surplus of men during peace thus lent out to assist the trade of the country. The immediate expense would be nothing, and, as I have said before, the prospective expense—that of increased pensions—which could not be incurred before the lapse of eleven years, and of which it would not seem unreasonable that the merchant service, which had benefited by the men's services, should bear at least a part. If this expense should be considered as not too great for the object, such an arrangement would appear to admit of no limitation, and the Government would then have at their command, without pressing too hard on the wants of our commerce, the services of a body of thorough seamen all over the world, and might, in times of profound

1825
peace and prosperous trade, liberate a greater number to assist it, secure in the certainly of being able to recover any number of them whenever a disturbance, however slight, might seem to render an augmentation of the regular navy desirable.
I must apologize for detaining the Committee so long, but I wish to make one remark before concluding. I know that in these mechanical days, the country is taught to look, and does look, for success in future wars more to the strength and construction of our ships and the perfection of our weapons, than to the number and quality of our seamen, and I am the last man to undervalue the importance of our possessing the best ships and the best arms. But ships of former days, although not so complicated, were no less machines than ships of the present day, and I cannot forget the historical fact, that in former naval wars our battles were fought and our victories were gained in the worst ships in Europe. Nay, to come down to our own times and my own experience, I think I shall not be contradicted when I say that until Sir James Graham abolished the Navy Board and appointed as Surveyor of the Navy an officer not merely of high scientific acquirements, but a thoroughly practical seaman—the late Sir William Symonds—our ships were the worst designed, and if not the worst put together, they were certainly the worst equipped for war of any ships in the world. Our best vessels had either been captured from the enemy or built after their models; and as for our equipments, it is well known that our guns were of lighter calibre and of less range than the guns of corresponding ships in foreign navies; our cutlasses were little better than pieces of iron hoop; our muskets were the condemned muskets of the army. The secret of our successes was the confidence our officers had in the undeniable superiority of our seamen. I do not believe that superiority to be less certain in the case of the seamen of the present day, nor do I believe they would ask whether they were fighting behind the protection of a 4½-inch or a 6½-inch iron plate, any more than they thought of the thickness of the wooden wall, which formerly was their slender protection from their enemy. If our predecessors could perform the deeds they did with inferior ships and inferior weapons, and with crews, a large proportion of which had been collected by the
1826
hateful mode of impressment, what might we not hope to achieve with our improved mechanical advantages, if by a real amalgamation of the military and mercantile navies we could command at all times the services of men who would feel an attachment to instead of a dislike and distrust of the public service. I do not believe such an amalgamation to be either impossible or difficult, and could we but arrive at such a result, I, for one, would be content to leave the mechanical part of the question to those who have made it their particular study; but I should have no apprehension for the future efficiency of the navy.
MR. CORRYsaid, that as this was the 13th of June, and as they had only then obtained four Navy Votes in Supply, and he was anxious to make as much progress in the Estimates as possible, he hoped the hon. and gallant Admiral would excuse him if he only briefly referred to his remarks relative to the Naval Reserve. If he thought that his hon. and gallant Friend's remarks against the Naval Reserve were borne out by the facts, he should agree with him that the sooner they got rid of this force the better. But this was the first occasion on which he had heard anything approaching to a bad character given to the Naval Reserve. Whenever he had had the opportunity of visiting the training ships—and these occasions had been pretty frequent—he had always been most gratified by the appearance of the men. There was something about them which showed at first sight that they were sailors. They handled the guns with considerable skill—certainly in an infinitely superior manner to men who, however perfect as sailors, were drawn fresh from the merchant navy without having had any training in gunnery; the officers commanding the training ships had informed him that the men were generally well conducted — that they were willing to learn; and in fact they gave them as high a character as could be, expected in men in the class of life to which they belonged. He did not therefore believe that those men had that loose notion of the obligation they were under to serve their country that when they were required they would not come forward—that in short they were merely men in buckram, and could not be reckoned upon in an emergency. Such an opinion, he believed, was contrary to the truth, and he had no doubt but that should any emergency arise, they would

1827
obtain—of course not the whole number—but a great number—a number sufficiently great to facilitate very much the manning of our ships of war. The hon. and gallant Admiral had denounced—and not in too strong terms—the system of impressment. Now in his (Mr. Corry's) view he considered it one of the great objects of the Reserve to avoid the necessity of having recourse to that system; but no doubt in time of war, if the national safety required it, however odious the system might be, if we could not man the fleet without it, we must still have recourse to impressment. Another evil, only less than that of impressment, which it was sought to obviate by establishing the Naval Reserve, was that of giving bounties. In his own experience he had known two instances in which bounties had been given with a view to manning the navy, and in neither had the experiment been successful. The first occasion was in the Crimean war, and the second when the Italian war broke out, and we were obliged to increase our fleet, owing to the disturbed state of affairs on the Continent. The result was that the men we obtained were of the very worst possible description. In the first instance Sir Charles Napier said with great truth that a worse manned fleet never left these shores than that which he led into the Baltic, and the unsatisfactory results of that expedition was, he believed, in a great measure attributable to the fact that Sir Charles Napier could have no confidence in the fleet under his command. In the present state of the navy, it should be recollected, that a far less number of men was required to man the fleet than in former days, and this system of the Reserve would not only go far, but would enable us almost entirely to dispense with the systems of impressment and bounties. In fact, it would do so absolutely. With respect to misconduct on the part of the force, he confessed he had never heard any complaints on that head. In 1866 the number of dismissals for misconduct was five, the number of heavy fines was five, and the number of reprimands was 318—in other words, 328 instances of misconduct in all, which, considering that this force now amounted to 16,000 men, was not a very large number. Indeed, he had always been under the impression that the force was very well conducted. His hon. and gallant Friend (Admiral Erskine) had stated the heavy cost which this force had
1828
occasioned the country since the time it had been first enrolled, that it had never been called out, and that hundreds of thousands had been thrown away on it. His hon. and gallant Friend, however, should remember that this was like the insurance of a house—we paid this money by way of insurance for a supply of men to man our fleets in case of emergency, and the Reserve had never been called out for the simple reason that no emergency requiring it had arisen since the constitution of the force. His hon. and gallant Friend had calculated that the cost of this body had grown during the last few years to a sum of £210,000 a year, which he represented as equal to the wages and victuals of 5,000 men. He could assure his hon. and gallant Friend that he was wrong in that estimate, for he found from a calculation that had been made in the Accountant General's office, that the sum of £210,000 would provide wages and victuals for only 3,000 men. We had a reserve therefore of 16,000 men, of whom 5,000 would be immediately available, and an addition of at least 1,000 men every month afterwards, at the same cost at which we could maintain 3,000 men. With regard to the alternative which his hon. and gallant Friend had suggested, and which was first proposed by Mr. Pennell, late Chief Clerk to the Admiralty, who had great experience and great knowledge of these affairs, he did not think it would work well. The experiment of obtaining a military reserve by means of soldiers discharged after a short service had not added much to our strength in that respect. The proposal of his hon. and gallant Friend he understood to be that seamen of the Royal Navy, after ten years' service, were to be pensioned at 6d. a day, and permitted to enter the merchant service, on condition of liability to be called upon again in case of war. He thought that would be a very injudicious experiment. By the present system a boy who entered the navy was rated as a man at eighteen years of age, and therefore he would have earned his ten years' pension at twenty-eight. Now, nothing could be more foolish, when we had got a man at twenty-eight, in the very prime of life, and at the height of his efficiency, than that we should say, "We will put you on the Reserve, and you can go into the merchant service, and then we will call upon you when war becomes imminent." [Admiral ERSKINE: He takes

1829
his discharge now if he desires it.] He would not detain the Committee any longer. He believed the force to be a most valuable one. It consisted of the very cream of the merchant service, it was sufficiently trained to be of great service at the outbreak of a war; and he believed on the whole it would be a great mistake if the House of Commons were to do anything to deprive the country of the great advantage which it would derive from this body of men in the event of war.
MR. HANBURY-TRACY: Mr. Dodson—Notwithstanding what has just fallen from the First Lord of the Admiralty, I think that my hon. and gallant Friend deserves the thanks of the country for having brought forward the question of the Naval Reserve, on which the very existence of the navy in time of war must depend. I cannot help regretting, however, that his speech, so pregnant with matter, has not been made the basis of a Motion for a Select Committee to inquire into the whole subject of manning the navy, and perhaps into the wider field of our naval policy generally. At the present time, when we have no panic to alarm us, and no war in prospect, it would be impossible to choose a more favourable moment to investigate into the working of our Naval Reserve, and to see whether some more efficient and economical method could not be devised. Some of the passages in the gallant Admiral's speech will, I hope, have convinced the House that something must be done in the matter, and that our much vaunted Naval Reserve force is not quite the paragon of excellence it is so often described. There can be no doubt, and I do not wish to dispute it, that the formation of the Reserve, even with its glaring inconsistencies and anomalies, has done good service in the feeling of security it has engendered, and that its establishment has been of great benefit to the country. But it appears to me that having been in operation for seven and a half years, the time has now come when the whole scheme should be reviewed, and that the complaints which are now so frequently urged by our men-of-war's men in regard to it, as well as by all who have given any attention to the subject, should receive fair and impartial consideration. The greatest friends of the force cannot deny that there are still many difficulties to be met, which have arisen, and which were never anticipated, and even the most zealous admirer of the Reserve force will,
1830
I apprehend, not deny that the cost is far greater than they expected, while the opponents to the scheme urge that it is out of all proportion to the result. At this time of the Session I fear that it is too late for a Committee to take up fully this great question; but unless some one more able and competent than I am is prepared to move in the matter, I shall feel it my duty early next Session to move for a Select Committee. After carefully looking into the present scheme, I have no hesitation in saying that it is wholly unsuited for the object intended; that it is a reserve we cannot depend upon for any sudden emergency; that it is a scheme which tends to prevent merchant seamen joining the navy; that it is a cause of disgust and annoyance to men-of-war's men; and that it fails in the great object which any Naval Reserve ought to aim at—namely, of enabling the navy to be increased or reduced at will; that the cost is an absolute annual waste of £100,000 of public money. I firmly believe that it is quite possible to organize such a reserve as would enable large reductions to be made in the fleet, a saving of at least £500,000 to be made in our Estimates, whilst at the same time to give it such elasticity and power of lateral extension as to form a basis on which our resources might be doubled in the hour of trial. Sir, it is only a few months ago that we have seen the reserve of a great European Power put into force with a result which has astonished the world. We have seen in Prussia the working of the Landwehr system with its wise and economical organization; how, in a few days, thousands and thousands of men rushed to the national standard with a most glorious and marked success. We know full well how at any moment France-could call on 30,000 to 50,000 seamen, all of whom are men-of-wars' men, and yet we are still pursuing a plan in that service, which has and always must be the right arm of England, which its most zealous advocates acknowledge could only at the outside bring to our standard 5,000 men at the expiration of three months, by which time the war might be over, and England's navy defeated. Surely, Sir, if this can be urged at a period when wars are of short duration, when we have such, visible proof of how countries can be lost or won in the short space of a fortnight, it is high time that England should look around and not be left behind in the race. And when, Sir, to the delay of procuring

1831
the men, it is added that we are now annually paying each reserve man no less than half an A.B.'s pay for doing us no service in peace time, and with every prospect of not being in time to aid us in war, I undertake to say that a case is made out startling in its character, and demanding a searching investigation by Government and Parliament. I will not attempt to follow the gallant Admiral through the long and interesting statistics which he has laid before the House; but a few of the facts are so important that I will endeavour to recapitulate them. The first statement that a reserve man actually costs the country no less than £13 5s. a year, or half an A.B.'s pay, and that such a man can only be made available by issuing a Royal Proclamation, is of itself sufficient to raise a doubt as to the efficiency of the plan. What are we to do in the event of a small emergency such as a Chinese war, or on any of those little eventualities when for political purposes it is necessary to make a demonstration? Are we to be constantly issuing Proclamations? And if so, could we legally press the reserve men into the service unless for an imminent war. It has been demonstrated over and over again that what you want in a Naval Reserve is a large reservoir from which you can draw your men at a moment's notice, or return them into store when no longer needed. Unless you have some plan arranged and well matured in times like the present, you will be obliged to adopt measures in time of panic for raising your forces by bounty with all its attendant evils, and then for as hastily dispersing them when the danger is over. It is very well for the First Lord to say that the reserve, as at present constituted, would prevent any necessity for appealing to the bounty system, but I entirely deny it. I would ask the simple question, could you in 1858 have increased your navy without having to resort to bounty, even if you had had your present reserve force? It appears to me not, as it was hardly an occasion on which you could have issued a Royal Proclamation. You have no plan even now, with all your experience, by which you can prevent the evils which have for so long been the bane of the navy from occurring again. You have no means of dealing with your well-trained and disciplined men when paid off and disbanded, or at the expiration of their term of service, so as to have a hold on them in future years. I apprehend, Sir,
1832
what is wanted, and I say so with all deference to those who take the opposite view of the question, is some such a plan as that suggested by the gallant Admiral, and lately advocated with so much ability by Mr. Reddie in the Royal United Service Institution. A reserve formed of men who have served their five or ten years in the navy, and are well drilled, and who would accept it as a boon to be allowed to serve in the merchant service until wanted in the navy. I do not mean to say that the plan of my gallant Friend is faultless, or that it could be worked in its present shape; but I am quite certain that it is a basis on which a practical and successful measure could be framed. Not only docs the Royal Naval Reserve not attempt to meet its requirements, but it actually is gradually estranging the merchant service from the navy, and prevents a merchant seaman joining by actually giving him a premium to stop away. You practically say to merchant seamen, "If you will keep from joining the Royal Navy we will give you an annual fee of £6 and £4 4s. for drill pay, amounting to £10 4s., so that with your merchant seaman's pay you will get no less than £40, which is more by £10 than you can possibly get in the navy as "A.B." Sir, I would ask is this fair to the men-of-war's men that this annual payment should be given to a man a perfect stranger to the service, who has never passed through the trials and vicissitudes of a naval life, instead of it being given (as common sense would dictate) to your fine, well-trained, and highly disciplined blue-jacket, both as a reward for past good conduct and an inducement for him to serve his country in future years. Is it just that a man-of-war's man should be placed in such an inferior position to your merchant seamen, or that you should subsidize the merchant seamen to the extent of a fourth of his whole wages not to enter the navy? And lastly, I would ask, is it right that the taxpayers of the country should any longer be made to pay £200,000 for a reserve which it is very doubtful would prove of any help in time of need? We have the highest authority for saying that this impedes the manning of the navy, for in a paper read at the Institution by Mr. Reddie, with the permission of the Admiralty, he distinctly acknowledged it. I listened anxiously to the speech delivered by the hon. Member for Pontefract (Mr. Childers), to see if he would touch on the Reserve question, and show how he could

1833
dispense with the surplus men in order to make the large reduction he contemplates, as I cannot believe that he would wish to lessen the number of bonâ fide seamen at present employed without seeing his way to put his hand upon them at a moment's notice should occasion require. It certainly appears to me that some such scheme as the gallant Admiral advocates is a necessary and indispensable part of his naval policy scheme. I will not any longer take up the time of the House; but I must say that it seems to me, and I say so with the utmost diffidence, that if a plan of this sort were adopted you would be enabled to have, in a few years, the finest Naval Reserve in the world of at least 30,000 to 50,000 highly drilled and efficient men-of-war's men, at a cost certainly not much exceeding what you are now spending on your present reserve; you would be enabled to make the large reduction so ably advocated by the hon. Member for Pontefract; you would give contentment to your navy, security to the country, and an annual saving of £500,000 in the Estimates.
MR. GRAVESsaid, that the plan suggested by the hon. and gallant Admiral would have been more acceptable to the Committee had it been proposed as a supplement to the present system, instead of as a substitute for it. The policy on which we had hitherto acted, and to which he believed we should adhere for the purpose of obtaining the personnel of our navy, was that of keeping up as efficient a force as possible for our normal requirements, and of relying on our merchant seamen for periods of emergency. But if we adopted that system, it was vitally important that the latter service should also be efficient. He had understood the hon. and gallant Admiral who brought forward the subject to propose a scheme which he would venture to term an inverted one, beginning with the navy and ending in the merchant service—a scheme by which seamen should overflow out of the navy into the Mercantile Marine, after having acquired habits of discipline and become thoroughly efficient. That, no doubt, would tend to improve the moràle and discipline of the merchant service. The process could not, however, go on for any length of time without a large increase of the Votes of this House, for of late years the navy had never been able to bring up the number of men sufficient for its own requirements. The maximum num-
1834
ber of men allowed to flow in annually from the Mercantile Marine was, he believed, 1,000, but the number during the past twelve months had only been 500 and odd, and the maximum had never been reached of late years, though every effort has been made to attain it. He could not agree with the hon. Member who had just spoken (Mr. Hanbury-Tracy) that the cost of the Naval Reserve was out of all proportion to its results, and that the system prevented seamen from entering the Royal Navy. He joined issue with him on both points. The cost was not excessive; and notwithstanding all the inducements which some hon. Members had appraised so highly, the Reserve had not attracted more than 16,000 men from the merchant service, though it was well known that our expectations extended to 30,000, and the requirements of the Reserve were so stringent that he believed 16,000 was the maximum number of men qualified for service in the navy if an emergency arose. It was true, as the right hon. Gentleman (Mr. Cony) had remarked, that those 16,000 men were the cream of the merchant service; but he was afraid that that number was more likely to decline than to increase. As to the spirit shown during the Trent difficulty, he entirely differed from the hon. and gallant Admiral, for he believed that during that week there was a larger accession of men who came forward and enrolled in the Reserve than during any similar period since its formation. There were, if he remembered rightly, 400 within three days. This was a better proof than the mere fact of a few-hands being held up at a public meeting of the spirit which animated the British seaman when his country's flag had been insulted. Only that morning he had given instructions to one of his captains that the Naval Reserve men in his ship's crew should receive 10 s. more than any other men. The hon. and gallant Admiral had alluded to the possible embarrassment that might arise from allowing our seamen to join in questionable expeditions under other flags. But if it were true that a large number of Naval Reserve were on board the Shenandoah and the Tornado, he should draw a somewhat different conclusion from that drawn by the hon. and gallant Admiral. Surely if we found two instances in which the best men were required, and those men were selected from that service whose capabilities were now

1835
questioned, it seemed to him a proof that the men of the Naval Reserve were not the inefficient and undrilled men they were by some represented to be. It required no argument to prove that the system of drill which brought the men of the Naval Reserve into contact with the boatswains and gunners and other picked men of the Royal Navy would improve their discipline, make them more efficient, and impart something of the esprit de corps to the body. He trusted their services would never be required; but if they were wanted to serve their country they would be ready, and the nation would not be paying too large a retaining fee for their services as reserves. He wished that the Admiralty would turn their attention to the introduction of a large number of boys into the Royal Navy, so that there might be an overflow from the service into the Mercantile Marine, as suggested by the gallant Admiral. This would benefit both the navy and the merchant service. It was recommended by the manning Commission as part of the Naval Reserve scheme, and till the proposal has been carried out in its entirety, it is scarcely politic to condemn that portion of it which is most under review.
MR. BERKELEYwished to know the intentions of the Admiralty with regard to the Royal Naval Coast Volunteers. This force, founded by Sir James Graham, was never intended for the general purposes of manning the navy, but was designed for the protection of our shores. It was a force sent on board Her Majesty's ships for the purpose of drill for home service. It was for the most part composed of fishermen and others dwelling on the coast. In the Act by which the force was formed there was a clause which prevented them from being sent more than 300 miles from the coasts of Great Britain and Ireland. This clause was extremely popular with the force, and a great mistake was made by the Duke of Somerset and Lord Clarence Paget when they proposed to omit it. Having taken counsel with those who were well acquainted with the navy, and particularly with a noble Relative who was formerly connected with the Admiralty, he (Mr. Berkeley) opposed the omission of this clause, but in vain. The results he had predicted had occurred. The Volunteers, disgusted with the removal of the clause, and with the liability to be "sent foreign," had resigned to a great extent or had ceased to enter the force, and there
1836
was thus a great diminution of one of the most useful bodies of men in the service of the country. Nothing could be more futile than the reason assigned by the the Duke of Somerset for the removal of the clause—if, he said, a cruiser had on board a certain number of these men she could not chase an enemy beyond 300 miles. But was it to be conceived a British seaman would wish to stop when he saw a prize? Certain captains of ships were also opposed to the clause, because they did not like to see the Volunteers taken out of their vessels. The year following Lord Clarence Paget candidly admitted that the Act had been a failure in consequence of the omission of the clause, and that there had been a serious diminution in what he termed one of the finest forces ever created. The question for the present Government to consider was whether the Royal Naval Coast Volunteers was a force that ought to be kept up? If so, they must restore the clause that had been omitted. If they thought not, they should not go on frittering away public money upon it at all.
MR. ALDERMAN LUSKsaid, that the Naval Reserve was, for the most part, composed of men of a superior class, and expressed his firm conviction that the force if called upon, would do its duty.
MR. CHILDERSsaid, the Vote now asked for the Royal Navy Reserve was £143,000, while last year the actual expenditure upon the force was only £124,000. He wished also to know whether the number of Naval Reserve men attending drill bad increased during the; last year, and whether there was any occasion for taking between £15,000 and £20,000 more than was required?
MR. HENLEYsaid, he had listened to the conversation on the Naval Reserve with considerable interest; but while there had been much said as to the best way of getting the men and as to whether the country got value for the money, he thought that one important point had been altogether overlooked—namely, the actual state of the probable supply of men for the navy. Whether the stock of men was to be kept up either by taking them as boys into the navy, or whether they obtained them from apprentices in the merchant service, it was clear that unless the very source of all their supply of men was kept up it was useless troubling their heads about the various ways of getting them. Before they cooked their hare they

1837
must catch it. A Return obtained by an hon. Member opposite showed that the aggregate number of apprentices now in the sea service, reckoning the merchant marine and the navy together, was not one half what it used to be; and the humblest powers of calculation would enable anybody to see that if that was not soon cured in some way or other, those who lived another twenty years—that, he supposed, would not be his fate—would find the number of sea-going men in this country almost reduced to nothing. If the source of their supply thus dwindled away the stock from which they drew their men for the navy must become exhausted. Did not the case of the Naval Reserve tell the same story? When first established it went on increasing; year by year. It seemed now to have got to a level, and to have been stationary for the last few years; and why should that be if the number of youths entering the sea service was what it used to be? If the same number of youths entered the service as formerly did so, they would be continually getting an accession to the strength of the Naval Reserve, which those who advised its establishment gave a most confident opinion would reach 30,000. It had got up to little over half that number, and it had remained stationary for some years. The cause of that was not difficult to see. No one who looked for a moment at the price which the seaman—a skilled labourer of the highest degree—could obtain for his labour, in comparison with any other skilled workman in this country, could wonder that boys did not go to sea now. Moreover, the seamen could not carry on their labour so late in life as other men. He got stiff and half worn out sooner than other workmen, and few persons were able to go to sea before the mast after they were fifty years old; the majority he believed did not reach that ago. Therefore, it was not surprising that with their low wages, and their market kept down by the continual increase of foreigners, boys did not go to sea. Indeed, considering the hardships he had to suffer, and the very small wages he got after he had learnt his business, no man could honestly recommend a lad to be bound to the sea service if he had a fair chance of earning his bread another way. The hon. and gallant Admiral opposite (Admiral Erskine) had sketched out a scheme for getting boys into the navy, and letting them overflow into the merchant service but he doubted whether it would
1838
ever succeed. No doubt they would be eagerly caught up by the merchant service as petty officers and they would be excellent men. But if anybody looked at the boys trained in the navy, saw their fat cheeks, and observed how little they looked like hardworking horses, as compared with the boys trained in the merchant service, he would not think they would be content to change from that easy life to a life so much harder, and one which the habits of order and cleanliness to which they had been trained would make them regard as very uncomfortable. He could not help making these few observations, because, whatever the cause might be, no one could help seeing that the boys who now went to sea were too few to meet the wants of the mercantile service of the country; and if there were not seamen enough for the mercantile service, then there was no use in troubling themselves about the best means of manning the navy.
SIR JOHN PAKINGTON, in answer to the Question put by the hon. Member for Pontefract (Mr. Childers) — namely, why the same sum was asked this year for the Naval Reserve as last year, though part of last year's Vote had not been spent, explained that the demand upon the Vote was necessarily a fluctuating demand, and one that depended upon the number of seamen who enrolled themselves in the force. As all those men were engaged in mercantile pursuits, it was of course very uncertain how many of them would come for training in any particular year. With regard to the remarks of the right hon. Member for Oxfordshire (Mr. Henley), he had more than once expressed his opinion that the true way of obtaining their supply of seamen was to bring up boys to the Royal Navy; and he would be glad to see, and he hoped he would see, the same system applied to the Mercantile Marine.
MR. CHILDERSsaid, that his question was, whether there had been such an increase last year in the number of Naval Reserve men attending drill over those of the year before as would justify the Government in asking for a Vote so considerably in excess of the sum which had been found actually necessary last year?
SIR JOHN PAKINGTONsaid, he did not remember the exact number who were kept in training in 1865–6, but last year the number was, he believed, 12,000.
MR. CORRY, in reply to the Question of the hon. Member for Bristol (Mr.

1839
Berkeley) expressed his regret that he could give no satisfactory answer to the question which the hon. Member had put to him relative to the Naval Coast Volunteers, inasmuch as his attention had not been drawn to the subject during the short period which had elapsed since his return to the Admiralty. He should, however, make it his business to inquire whether any injurious effect had been produced by the omission of the clause to which the hon. Gentleman referred, and, if so, to introduce such an Amendment as might be necessary.
Vote agreed to.
(2) £65,106, Scientific Departments.
MR. HANBURY-TRACYasked what inspection there was of adult schools in the sea-going ships, and whether it was part of the duties of the Director of Education to inspect them. He also wished to know whether it was true that the Admiralty was about to appoint a Chaplain General of the Navy; and, if so, whether the right hon. Gentleman did not think that the Chaplain General would make a better Inspector of Schools than any Director of Education. He also wished to know whether the Director General of Ordnance was to be continued?
MR. CORRYsaid the Inspector of Education did not inspect the schools of ships of war, but only the dockyard and training ship school and the schools of naval architecture. As to the inspection of schools, he thought a gentleman like Dr. Woolley, who had been devoted to education all his life, would make a more efficient Inspector of Education than any chaplain in the navy; and if there was to be a Chaplain General he (Mr. Corry) would be very sorry to add to his duties by placing him over the schools. As to the question of a Chaplain General, it had been under the notice of the Admiralty—and under the notice of the War Office also—with a view to have one superintendent over both services, but no proceedings had yet been taken.
MR. HANBURY-TRACY: But was there any inspection of the schools of seagoing ships, or any Reports sent in as to their efficiency?
MR. CORRYsaid, the chaplain, if there was one on board, was responsible for the state of the schools, and there was also a naval instructor whose duty it was to look after the schools.
MR. ALDERMAN LUSKasked, whether it was wise to bring the Director of Schools
1840
away from his labours at Portsmouth and elsewhere to inspect the School of Naval Instruction at Kensington? He thought inspectors of other schools would be better employed in the examination of this school. He wished also to ask the right hon. Gentleman, who had supported the idea of a School of Naval Architecture, what was to become of all their naval architects? They were turning them out of the college at the rate of from fifty to sixty a year, and in the course of the next ten years they would have 500 of them. What were they going to do with them all? Then with regard to the Naval School of Portsmouth, he hoped the right hon. Gentleman was satisfied with it; but he had observed that the school had lost its mathematical teacher this year—at least his salary did not appear in the Estimate. The porter's salary was also missing from the Estimates, though he observed that the five servant girls were still there.
MR. DILLWYNwas glad this Vote was called in question. He hoped that the expense connected with the School of Naval Architecture would end with the School; but he feared these experiments went much farther, for he had been told that within the last ten years no fewer than sixty men of war had been laid down and had been torn to pieces again. He thought this was rather an expensive method of allowing the students to conduct their experiments at the cost of the nation.
LORD HENRY LENNOX, in reply, said, that in the opinion of the Admiralty the School of Naval Architecture was a great, and was likely to prove a still greater, success. The objects which the students of that School served were, as had on a former occasion been stated by his noble Friend Lord Clarence Paget, threefold. They were, in the first place, necessary to supply the permanent demand which existed in the shipwright and engineering departments of the various dockyards. They, in the second place, furnished a class of young men capable of overseeing the work done in the shipbuilding in contract yards as the representatives of the Government; and lastly, they provided draughtsmen and others who it was desirable should be brought up in the Constructor of the Navy's Department in Whitehall.
MR. CORRYalso explained, in answer to the hon. Member for Finsbury (Mr. Alderman Lusk), that the reason why the services of the mathematical master had

1841
been discontinued at the Naval College at Portsmouth was because his duties were now performed by the head Naval Instructor of Her Majesty' ship Excellent.
Vote agreed to.
(3.) £1,375,368. Dockyards and Naval Yards.
MR. P. WYKEHAM MARTINcalled the attention of the Committee to the fact that in the ropery department at Chatham the services of a large number of men in an humble rank of life had recently been dispensed with in consequence of the improvements introduced by the hon. Members for Pontefract and Halifax. These men were no doubt in a very humble position; but he maintained that by the Superannuation Act, passed under the auspices of his noble Friend the Chief Secretary for Ireland, it was intended that those men should be entitled to receive retiring allowances. Under the 2nd clause of the Act it was provided that the men should receive one-sixtieth of their pay for every year they had served up to forty years, and that if discharged at the will of the Government in order to promote the greater efficiency of the Department they were to be entitled to ten-sixtieths. Now, sixteen men had been so discharged; they had all served more than twenty years, besides their time as hired men, and he asked the Admiralty to concede to these men the extra sixtieth to which they were clearly entitled. The case of some of these men seemed very hard. Two of them were constituents of his own, who had served twenty-five and twenty-seven years respectively. What he asked for them would occasion but a very slight increase of charge — about £100 a year—which could be but for a very short period, and would constantly be decreasing. He had no reproach to bring against the present Government—the late Government were rather the worse of the two. So far as he had anything to do with the present Government, they had shown a great sense of justice and a willingness to be convinced. He hoped the case of these men, who were established artizans, would be fairly considered. There was another case which he felt bound to put. When the Achilles was being built the Admiralty of the day employed a number of iron shipwrights and gave them a high rate of pay. They were only taken on for the job, and they could therefore belong to unions which established men could not. These men struck; and their place was
1842
supplied by shipwrights who did the work to the full satisfaction of the Government. Practically they received only 4s. 6d. a day. They had at first to deal only with 4-inch plates, but afterwards with 5-inch and even 6-inch plates. It was deserving of consideration that, owing to the greatly increased use of iron plates for shipbuilding in the dockyards, the men employed in them were much more liable to accidents, and the wear and tear of their clothes was also much greater. It was hardly possible to take up a copy of a paper published in the neighbourhood of a dockyard without finding in it some account of a serious and perhaps fatal accident among the dockyard labourers. These things ought to be taken into consideration by the Admiralty, when they were asked to examine into any grievances brought forward by the men.
MR. LAIRDwished to ask a question of the First Lord regarding the smaller dockyards. A Committee was appointed in 1864, of which both himself and the right hon. Baronet the Member for Droitwich (Sir John Pakington) were members. The Committee, after great consideration, decided on enlarging Chatham and Devonport Dockyards; but they thought that some of the small dockyards might be dispensed with, and recommended that Pembroke, Deptford, and Woolwich dockyards should be given up. Sheerness, also, it was thought, might very fairly be closed as soon as the alterations in Chatham Dockyard were completed. He wished to call attention to the great expense of these smaller dockyards, amounting annually to £95,000; and he wished to know whether the Government had considered the Report of the Committee, and whether they would be prepared to recommend to the House shortly that these smaller yards should be dispensed with?
MR. MONTAGU CHAMBERSsaid, he felt it his duty to support the case which his hon. Friend the Member for Rochester (Mr. P. Wykeham Martin) had brought forward. It was the duty of every Member to remonstrate where injury had been inflicted upon any of his constituents, and especially when the parties who suffered were almost helpless. This he knew was the case with workmen who had been engaged in the roperies of the Government. They had been led to believe that if any mechanical improvements were introduced into these establishments they would receive pensions or superannuation allowances, or that other employment which

1843
they might accept would be found for them. But in April last, in consequence of the introduction of machinery, numbers were discharged. He had been informed that they had been offered the alternative, either that they should wait for some decision as to receiving some gratuity, or that, instead of receiving 23 s. or 22 s. 6d. a week, which they had been accustomed to earn, they should accept the paltry sum of 13 s. a week as labourers. He submitted that the Admiralty should take their case into favourable consideration, and either grant them the pensions they represented they were entitled to, or offer them some better employment than work at only 13 s. a week. Another matter to which he wished to refer was the case of the men employed in the steam factories. It seemed to him that there was a great want of systematic arrangement in our dockyards as regarded the employment of artizans. There ought to be some such uniform system as prevailed in private yards. Twenty-five years ago a steam factory was established at Woolwich as an experiment, and the experiment had been perfectly successful. There could be no doubt that steam factories had now attained the highest importance in the Royal shipyards; but the persons working in them as skilled artizans and labourers were not placed on the same footing as shipwrights and others employed in the dockyards, inasmuch as not being considered on the permanent civil service, they were not entitled to a superannuation allowance He thought that the time had arrived when they should be placed in the same position as those who worked ordinarily in the Royal Dockyards. That he thought was true policy—otherwise in a time of emergency, when wages were rising, the country would lose the services of some of the best workmen. In reference to another subject, some Greenwich pensioners at the outports had informed him that they were anxious to be able to ascertain from time to time their precise situation as to the allowances to be given them within certain ages, in consequence of changes made by the hon.-Member for Pontefract in the management and appropriation of the funds of Greenwich Hospital, and he suggested that the paymasters of the pensions in the different districts should be directed to afford the desired information.
MR. CHILDERSsaid, that the hon. and learned Gentleman (Mr. Montagu Chambers) had asked why the men employed
1844
in steam factories were not put upon the same footing as shipwrights and others with regard to their superannuation, and to that question he thought he could give a satisfactory answer. The men in factories did not, like the shipwrights, receive a fixed rate of pay; but their rate of pay was regulated by the market price of labour, so that Government took the risk of having to increase their wages in the same way as any private employers. Considering the customs and nature of the trade, he thought this the wiser plan; and, in fact, so far from there being any difficulty in obtaining men there was no difficulty whatever. The object of the superannuation system was to ensure the retention of established workmen in the service, and if the Government chose to run the risk of their leaving for higher wages elsewhere, and made regulations as to pay accordingly, the only effect of adding the benefits; of superannuation to the wages of the factory men would be to add about £30,000 to the expenses of the dockyards, and the 1* money would be clearly thrown away. He wished to ask his right hon. Friend whether he intended to increase the fixed number of hired shipwrights and others in proportion as the fixed number of hired labourers of the first class became diminished? The present number of these hired labourers was 550, and the number of hired shipwrights was 8,800; were the numbers of the latter to be increased as those of the former diminished?
LORD HENRY LENNOXsaid, that as the particular points to which attention had been called had been settled by the Board of Admiralty before the present First Lord of the Admiralty entered upon that office, he hoped the House would permit him to reply to the various questions that had been put in the place of that right hon. Gentleman. In reply to the statement of the hon. and learned Member for Devonport (Mr. Montagu Chambers), he had to state that when the ropemakers to whom he had referred were discharged they were offered a commuted allowance if they chose to remain in the service; and in making that offer the Board of Admiralty were merely following the precedent that had been made in the case of the sawyers. The sawyers accepted the offer—the ropemakers did not. There was certainly peculiar hardship in the case mentioned by the hon. Member for Rochester (Mr. P. Wykeham Martin); but the question was one for the consideration of

1845
the Treasury and not for that of the Admiralty. He had laid the matter before the Treasury, and it was now under the consideration of that Department. The question of the hon. and learned Member for Devon port as to the factory men had been completely answered by the hon. Member for Pontefract (Mr. Childers). The hon. Member for Pontefract had asked whether it was intended to replace as they died out the hired labourers who were entitled to pensions by artificers—a proceeding that would lead in many cases to an increased expenditure for the same amount of labour. He need only remind the hon. Member that whereas, when he was financial and civil Lord of the Admiralty, in 1864 the establishment was fixed at 9,610, the number of artificers at 8,714, and labourers at 394, the establishment was now fixed at 9,518, the artificers at 7,948, labourers at 884, labourers (pension) at 557, and wheelwrights, &c., at 129, being an establishment of 92 less than 1864, while the artificers, &c., were 766 less.
MR. CHILDERSsaid, that he was not Financial Lord at the time in question.
MR. SAMUDAwished to draw attention to the large proportion of the establishment expenses in the dockyards when compared with the total expenses in those yards. The establishment expenses in all the dockyards amounted to £161,000; while the total amount of shipbuilding during the year in those yards only represented 23,000 tons, which was equivalent to a cost of something over £1,000,000. The establishment expenses were, therefore, 16½ per cent upon the cost of the shipbuilding, and between 14 and 15 per cent upon the amount of wages paid in the dockyards, which was placed at £1,125,000. This proportion was enormously large. The amount of wages paid at Deptford, one of the dockyards in which it was proposed to discontinue certain descriptions of work, represented £50,000, while the establishment expenses there amounted to £10,800, or over 20 per cent. These establishment expenses, he thought, might be considerably diminished by economical management—at present they were certainly excessive.
MR. ALDERMAN LUSKcalled attention to the large number of workmen employed in the dockyards compared with the small amount of work which they produced. There were 25,000 people employed in the yards and 3,000 policemen; and while the salaried officials received incomes amounting to £141,000, the artificers and labourers
1846
were paid £878,000. For all this we had scarcely any results. He also wished to ask, with regard to the chymist, Mr. Hay, employed by the Admiralty at Portsmouth at a good salary, whether he was the same Mr. Hay who was engaged in several commercial speculations, and traded in "Hay's Protecting Varnish," "Prepared Putty," "Hay's Antifouling Composition," &c. If so, it was scandalous that he should receive Government pay, and at the same time take advantage of his position to trade in that way.
MR. CORRYsaid, he did not know whether the Mr. Hay referred to was the same person who held the office of chymical adviser to the Admiralty at Portsmouth; but he could say that that Mr. Hay had held office for nearly twenty-five years with much benefit to the service, and was the inventor of a composition for preventing the bottoms of iron ships from fouling, which had been used with considerable advantage. Whether he held shares in any company, he was unable to say. With regard to the number of artificers employed in the dockyards, the number of men employed in our home dockyards was not, as had been stated, 25,000, but 18,321. Hon. Members who complained that so few ships were built seemed to look upon these yards as merely manufacturing establishments; but they should remember that the number of new ships was no criterion of the amount of work done. Shipbuilding, indeed, was only a small portion of it, there being also repairing, fitting, and other work of various kinds. The same answer applied to the hon. Member for Tavistock (Mr. Samuda), who had complained that the salaries of officers amounted to £161,000, while ships to the extent of only 23,000 tons had been built; he had only to repeat that the dockyards were not mere manufacturing establishments. With regard to the remark of the hon. Member for Birkenhead (Mr. Laird), it was quite true that in 1864 he (Mr. Corry) voted as a member of the Committee for the prospective discontinuance of Woolwich and Deptford dockyards, though, at the same time, he was strongly opposed to the abolition of Pembroke yard. He was influenced in so doing by geographical considerations; it was obviously desirable to have the means of building and repairing ships on different parts of the coast, so that if one dockyard was blockaded by an enemy's fleet, others would be available; but if the Thames were blockaded, not

1847
only Chatham, but Sheerness, Woolwich, and Deptford would also be rendered unavailable. He was still of opinion, therefore, that the number of yards on the Thames and Medway might eventually be reduced. Such a measure could not, however, be carried out until the extension of Chatham yard was completed, and this would probably occupy several years.
MR. SAMUDAexplained that he had desired to express the opinion that the expenses of our dockyards was excessive in proportion to the amount of work which they performed, that it would be better to discontinue a dockyard than to keep it up an extravagant cost, with little or no good result.
MR. OTWAYnoticed that the question with reference to increasing the wages of shipwrights and caulkers had not been answered; he also desired to know when the increased pay of 13 s. a week would be paid to the ropemakers, in accordance with the promise of the noble Lord in the course of his able statement when bringing forward the Estimates.
LORD HENRY LENNOXpointed out that to raise the wages of the Deptford shipwrights and caulkers would be to do the same by all the shipwrights in other Government dockyards, and that these were not the days when the Board of Admiralty was encouraged to make increased demands upon the public purse. As for the other matter alluded to, he could only say that the hon. and gallant Member would best consult the interest of the ropemakers by assisting the Government to secure the passing of the Vote under discussion, for until the Vote was passed the ropemakers could not have their increased Pay.
MR. ALDERMAN LUSKcomplained that the explanation given with regard to Mr. Hay was not satisfactory. He thought that a person who was employed by the Government at a large salary should not be permitted to employ his time in other business and speculations.
MR. ALDERMAN SALOMONSsaid, he was unable to concur with the hon. Member in the view which he took of Mr. Hay's remuneration. If the State required the entire services of clever scientific men it ought to give commensurate remuneration. A salary of £400 a year could hardly be regarded in that light.
MR. SEELYsaid, that Mr. Hay occupied an anomalous position in connection with the Admiralty. He had a large in-
1848
terest in a company which manufactured a coating for iron vessels, and he was at the same time appointed to report upon the best coating that could be employed to protect the bottom of such ships. Now there could be no confidence in the honesty of the decision given by a person employed in the dockyard as to the particular kind of coating to be used, if the official were himself an inventor. He begged to ask the right hon. Gentleman when the navy ships' accounts for 1865–6 and the manufacturing accounts were likely to be presented, and he took that opportunity of intimating that, before the Session closed, he should take the sense of the House upon the question of superintendence in Her Majesty's dockyards as compared with the amount of wages paid and of work done.
MR. CORRYsaid, that Mr. Hay had no power to decide what composition should be applied to the bottoms of ships. That duty devolved upon the Controller of the Navy.
MR. SEELY: Is it not expressly part of his duty to recommend what particular composition shall be used?
MR. CORRY: No.
MR. SEELY: To advise?
MR. CORRYrepeated that the decision on the point in question rested altogether with the Controller of the Navy. Mr. Hay's position was that of chymical adviser generally to the Admiralty; and he could not see that the fact of his having invented a particular composition which had proved very useful incapacitated him in any way for that office.
MR. SEELYpressed for an explicit answer to this question,—Was not Mr. Hay appointed specially to advise what was the best coating for ships; and was not the coating which he had invented used mainly, if not exclusively, on Her Majesty's vessels?
MR. CORRYreplied in the negative. If the duty suggested really devolved on Mr. Hay he would naturally recommend that his own composition should be the only one used; whereas several other compositions were used in the navy.
Vole agreed to.
(1.) £86,395, Victualling Yards and Transport Establishments.
MR. SEELYpressed for an answer to his former question, as to when the navy ships' accounts for 1865–6 would be forthcoming?
LORD HENRY LENNOXsaid, they would he produced very shortly. The delay which had taken place was entirely attributable to a wish expressed by the hon. Member himself with regard to the question of pensions being included in those accounts.
Vote agreed to.
(5.) £62,686, Medical Establishments.
(6.) £17,448, Marine Divisions.
(7) £855,511, Naval Stores.
MR. CORRYsaid, that hon. Members were aware from the paper in their hands that the Vote No. 10 had undergone some modification. The original Estimate provided, among other works, for the building of a sister ship to the Inconstant. That ship was to have been one of 4,010 tons, 1,000-horse power, with a complement of 600 men. The original Estimate had also included 10 gunboats to be built by contract, he had expressed his cordial acquiescence in the policy of his right hon. Predecessor in supplying another very fast and powerful unarmoured ship for the protection of our commerce; but some of his hon. Friends opposite had objected to the building of a second ship the size of the Inconstant, and also to the building of so many small vessels; and subsequently, after a consultation with the Controller of the Navy, he himself came to the conclusion that a vessel of a smaller tonnage and horse-power than the Inconstant might be built of nearly the same speed, and with a sufficiently heavy armament, and would answer the purpose for which the new ship was intended. It having appeared, also, that some of the gunboats in China which it had been supposed were in so defective a state that it would be necessary to break them up, had been repaired, he arrived at the conclusion that the number of gunboats in the Estimate might be reduced from 10 to 8. Having discussed the matter with his naval Colleagues, they decided that, instead of building a second Inconstant of 4,010 tons, 1,000-horse power, and a complement of 600 men, they should build a vessel, to be called the Volage, of 2,250 tons, 600-horse power, and a complement of 350 men. By substituting the Volage and 8 gunboats for the second Inconstant and 10 gunboats, a sum of £73,150 would be saved, and by the consequent reduction in the Vote for engines for unarmed ships, there would be a further saving of £14,880
1850
—making a total saving of £88,030. Then came the question how they should appropriate that sum. It was stated, in the course of a discussion which had taken place on a former occasion, that the number of our armoured ships, in comparison with those possessed by the French or any other nation, was so large that the Admiralty ought not to build more. He had, all along, entertained a totally different opinion, and he was anxious to make arrangements for the building of a third armour-clad ship, in addition to the two for which provision had been made in the original Estimates. He therefore proposed to appropriate a sum of £68,000 towards the construction of the hull and engines of a third armour-clad frigate of the second-class, and to appropriate £10,000 towards advancing each of the two already provided for—which would make £65,000 for each of the latter, instead of £55,000, as at first proposed. That would absorb the total saving of £88,000. He had always been of opinion that competition was a very wholesome thing, and, acting on that principle, though no one had a higher opinion of the talent and practical knowledge of the department of the Controller of the Navy, he had thought it desirable to invite some eminent shipbuilders to send in designs for the third armour-plated ship. The firms to whom that invitation had been sent out were Messrs. Napier and Sons, Messrs. Samuda, Messrs. Laird Brothers, the Thames Iron Company, Messrs. Palmer Brothers, the Mill wall Ironworks Company, and the London Engineering Shipbuilding Company. It was left entirely to the option of those firms whether the design should be for a turret or a broadside ship. Whichever of the designs was approved by the Controller would be adopted by the Admiralty, and the successful competitor would get the order for the ship if his tender was reasonable, without being subjected to any competition as regarded price. He could not agree with his hon. Friend the Member for Halifax (Mr. Stansfeld) that the comparison which he had made between the armour-clad ships of England and those of France was a just one. He had obtained a careful comparison from two independent sources. It was a comparison between the first and second-class sea-going ships—the real force of the armour-clad navy—of each of the two countries. There was no use in comparing the small vessels—the real comparison lay between ships of the larger classes

1851
—vessels analogous in rank to the old line-of-battle ships and frigates. England had of sea-going iron-clad ships of the first-class, afloat, 18; building, 3=21; of the second-class, afloat, 3; building and ordered, 4=7. Total 28, of which 21 were afloat. To these was to be added the additional armour-clad ship recently decided on, which brought the gross number of the two classes, built and building, up to 29. France had of the first-class afloat, 16; building, 4=20; of the second-class, afloat, 1; building, 7=8, of which 17 were afloat; total of the two classes, 28. But since that Return was made up France had purchased from America a very large armour-clad ship, which made the total number 29—or exactly the same as that of the English ships. We were therefore only on an exact numerical equality: and he need not tell the Committee that it had been the policy of this country, time out of mind, to aim, and that for obvious reasons, at the maintenance of a considerably larger naval force than that possessed by France. He found, moreover, that on the 31st of March the progress made in building the English armour-clad ships, of the first or the second class, was only equal to 1¾ ships; whereas at the end of last year the progress made in building the French armour-clads was equal to 6½ ships, so that the actual work in building done by France represented nearly five more ships than the work done by England. The hon. Member for Halifax (Mr. Stansfeld) had remarked on a former occasion that we had thirty-seven iron-clad sea-going vessels of war afloat and building, while the French had but twenty-seven. In making his calculation, however, the hon. Gentleman had excluded many of the third - class French ships, which were more powerful than the small English ships which he included. Again, in making his comparison, the hon. Gentleman had included among the thirty-seven English sea-going ships every vessel which had an armour-plate on its side; whereas he had selected merely the élite of the French navy. In estimating the number of the English vessels, too, the hon. Gentleman had included the four turret-ships, none of which were sea-going vessels, two small sloops, and three gunboats — the Viper, the Vixen, and the Waterwitch. The fact was that, omitting the obsolete floating batteries and the small batteries demontables, the French had no fewer than fifteen vessels of the third-class built and building; bringing up the total
1852
number of their iron-clads to forty-four, while we had of all classes thirty-eight only, including the turret-ships, small sloops, and gunboats. Such being the actual state of things, he thought he was justified in proposing to make an increase in the number of our iron-clads. With regard to the ships which the hon. Member for Halifax regarded as sea-going, he might remark, in passing, that Admiral Yelverton had reported that the Wyvern could never have been intended as a sea-going ship. The result of the alterations which he had indicated would be that in Vote No. 10, sec. 2, instead of £352,875, as originally proposed, being asked for armour-clads and their engines, and £437,084 for unarmoured - ships and their engines, the amount required under the amended Estimate would be £440,905 for armour-clads and their engines, and £349,054 for unarmoured-ships and their engines. And here, perhaps, he might be permitted to advert to one or two statements which had been made on a former occasion, when his hon. Friend the Member for Halifax found fault with his right hon. Friend (Sir John Pakington) because the right hon. Gentleman had not carried out the programme of the late Government with respect to armour-clad ships. On instituting inquiries he had found that the deficiency in the amount of work done last year at Chatham had, in the case of one of the ships building there, been in part caused by the delivery of defective plates, the rejection of which had occasioned considerable delay; and, in the case of the other, by injury done to the caisson of the dock where she was building, which had let in the water, and suspended the work for three months. The main cause of the delay, however, was not any laches on the part of his right hon. Friend, but a miscalculation in the programme by the late Board of Admiralty. They had apportioned nine tons of shipping to each shipwright in the course of a year; whereas the amount ought to have been between six and seven tons only, which is the proper quantity in the case of ironclad ships. There were various other points which had been adverted to on a former night on which he should have liked to give explanations; but at so late an hour he was unwilling to trespass further upon the time of the Committee. He would therefore conclude by expressing a hope that the Committee would accede to the alterations which he had proposed in the Vote.
MR. STANSFELDsaid, he would express his cordial approval of the altered programme of the Board of Admiralty. It was true that the right hon. Gentleman had informed the Committee that he had not been influenced by the arguments which had been adduced on that side of the House on a previous occasion; but as the change now proposed was in the direction of those arguments, he for one did not feel disposed to find fault with the saving clause in the right hon. Gentleman's speech. The right hon. Gentleman had been opposed to the building of a second Inconstant; but he (Mr. Stansfeld) objected to having "too many eggs in one basket," and he thought it desirable to diminish, as far as possible, the risk of loss of men and loss of tonnage. He hoped the right hon. Gentleman was now convinced of the correctness of that view. His opinion had always been that it was desirable to concentrate expenditure and labour. He still adhered to the accuracy of the computation he had made of the relative strength of the English and French navies. In making such a comparison, however, they must look, not merely at the number, but at the power and capacity of the vessels brought into the calculation. He wished to ask the right hon. Gentleman a question as to one of the items of Vote 10. In the Estimates for 1867 the sum of £308,000 was taken for coal for steamships and dockyard purposes; whereas this year only £207,531 was asked for. Last year, however, £50,000 was required for coal for Her Majesty's troop ships; but in Vote 17 this year the item was increased to £75,000. This was a matter which in his opinion required some explanation.
MR. CORRY, after referring to the Estimates, said there was a net saving of £25,000.
SIR JOHN PAKINGTONsaid, that as the hon. Member for Halifax adhered to his former statement respecting the comparative strength of the French and English navies, which statement was likely to create an erroneous impression, he must adhere to his criticism of that statement, which was that on one side the hon. Member arbitrarily excluded a certain class of vessels—on what principle it was difficult to say. If a comparison was to be instituted it should be made on a plain and intelligible principle applicable to both navies. Ship for ship, weak and strong, no doubt the French naval force was stronger than ours; but on any principle
1854
which applied a test to strength, the results of a comparison were different.
MR. STANSFELDasked if it was to be implied that on the whole the French iron-clad navy was numerically stronger than ours?—for that was the real question. He had made no arbitrary exclusion, but he said that French ships of the third-class were not sea-going vessels, and therefore, as far as offensive purposes were concerned, he excluded them specifically; which could not produce any false impression.
MR. SAMUDAsaid, that one way of instituting a comparison was to take the number of guns under armour, and the French had a majority of 248, being nearly one-half more than we possessed. But to have only the same force in our navy that France had was to put this country in a position it had never before occupied. At the end of the Thirty Years War, our navy was twice as strong as that of France; and as the navy was our only defence, it was his conviction that it ought to be equal in force to the united navies of Europe. He was glad to have heard so satisfactory an explanation of the changes made in the Estimates; but he thought the change from ten gunboats to eight was a very small matter. However, he would not push inquiry too far as to the means by which the conclusion had been arrived at. His main objection to the Estimate was the great increase proposed in wooden vessels, which were altogether unsuited to the present requirements of the service. He should like to know how the Government proposed to deal with the twenty-five gunboats which were to be built in the dockyards; and he hoped in that case a reduction would be determined on proportionate at least to that referred to for the boats to be built in private yards. It would have been gratifying if his right hon. Friend had found it consistent with his notions of what was right for the public service to have contracted for the building of one of the iron-clads on the Thames. Unexampled distress there had caused repeated applications to be made to the Government, and a hope was entertained that the Estimates would have contained something to mitigate that distress; but both contracts had gone to the North, and were given to a firm carrying on business on the Clyde. No doubt the price was considerably lower than the tenders made by the London builders; but under the exceptional circumstances, ought price to have deter-

1855
mined the matter? Without wishing to insinuate anything against the highly respectable firm who had obtained the building of the vessels, there were circumstances he was bound to bring before the House. The same firm had been fortunate enough previously to obtain two contracts at much lower prices than others named; but the firm found itself so embarrassed by the loss it sustained that it felt it necessary to apply to the Government for an additional sum, and Government gave them £70,000, in addition to the contract prices, and thus finally the Government bail paid a higher price than the offers they had refused for this more favoured establishment. This was not the only firm which had been so dealt with. He could name one that had received £60,000; and there was another instance where a large additional sum had been paid as compensation for loss sustained on the contract price. His right hon. Friend would no doubt say that this should not occur again. But such a promise would not bring back work which had been diverted from a locality where great distress prevailed, and was a poor consolation to unemployed mechanics. Not one of the Thames Estimates was too high, and he should have been glad if, under all the circumstances, his right hon. Friend could have had one of those vessels built on the London river.
MR. CORRYsaid, that he sympathized strongly with the sufferings which had prevailed in the shipbuilding trade on the Thames, and if he could with propriety have diverted any of the Admiralty custom to the banks of the Thames, he should have been happy to have done so. But the Admiralty, having considered this subject, came to the conclusion that they could look only to what was most conducive to the interests of the public service. He did not know what right the Admiralty had to say, "Here is a firm which offers to build a ship for £25,000 less than another firm; but we will give the contract to the firm whose estimate is £25,000 more." The Admiralty had no right to distribute £25,000 in charity in a particular locality. His hon. Friend (Mr. Samuda) said they ought not to be influenced entirely by the question of price. No doubt that was so; and where a firm was not of eminence the Admiralty would sometimes do well not to accept the lowest tender. But when a firm of such eminence as the Messrs. Napier and Sons of Glasgow, sent in a
1856
tender which was less by £25,000 than that sent in from the banks of the Thames, he did not know with what face he could come down to the House and propose that £25,000 more should be paid. Moreover, it was not only a question of price, for the Messrs. Napier undertook to deliver the two ships, or, at least, one of them, at an earlier period than was proposed elsewhere. As to the advance which had been obtained by this firm in past contracts beyond the price originally agreed upon, they had been expressly told in this case that under no circumstance would one farthing be paid beyond the contract price. With regard to the distress in the shipbuilding trade in London, he might mention that his right hon. Friend (Mr. Gathorne Hardy), who was then President of the Poor Law Board, informed the Admiralty that a deputation had waited upon him on the subject, and he had represented their case to the Admiralty as favourably as he could.
MR. DALGLISHsaid, that the case in which more than the contract price was I paid to the Messrs. Napier and Sons occurred at an early period in the history of armour-shipbuilding, when comparatively little was known of that process either by the builders or by the Admiralty. The vessel was completed, and built according to contract; but in consequence of the necessary outlay upon it, the Admiralty felt themselves bound to give to Messrs. Napier a certain sum beyond the contract price, but much below what they gave to either of the other builders who then constructed vessels under similar circumstances, and a sum which certainly did not re-imburse the Messrs. Napier for their expenditure. With regard to the distress on the Thames, there was a considerable want of trade on all rivers where iron shipbuilding was carried on, and be thought that the Government should not lend themselves to give Government work to any particular locality merely because there was a want of trade there. The business of the Government was to get the ships built for the public service; in the cheapest and best possible way, where they believed that the work would be well and efficiently done, whether on the Thames, the Mersey, or the Clyde. The difference of price for which work could be done might depend on higher wages, on the greater cost of bringing materials to the spot, or on a variety of circumstances which the Government could not control, and which they should not try to control.
MR. GRAVESapproved the changes which were proposed, but was not aware that the suggestions for those changes came from any particular side of the House. The Admiralty had been persuaded from many quarters to throw open their designs to the shipbuilding talent of the country, and it was with great pleasure he now heard that policy followed. With regard to the gunboats he thought it bad economy to place the old machinery in them, and he hoped the right hon. Gentleman would look into this subject.
MR. CHILDERShad heard with great satisfaction the changes proposed in this Vote. His right hon. Friend had said that he did not follow their opinion in this matter; but as he had followed their advice that did not much matter. The right hon. Gentleman had mentioned a number of firms from which the Admiralty were to obtain designs, to be submitted to the Controller. He (Mr. Childers) wished to know whether the competition which was to be invited would be a competition of price as well as of plan? He did not understand his hon. Friend behind him (Mr. Samuda) to mean that a tender from the Thames, though it might be a worse tender, should be accepted in preference to one from the Clyde, but only that something else besides price ought to be looked to, and that tenders from the Thames might be in some respects superior to those from the Clyde.
MR. DALGLISHsaid, that the public showed their appreciation of the work done on the different rivers, for they went to the Clyde and the Mersey in preference to the Thames—and that was the best answer as to the supposed superiority of tenders from the builders on the Thames.
MR. SAMUDAsaid, if the right hon. Gentleman the First Lord of the Admiralty had consulted with those who were best qualified to give him advice, he would have learnt that not one of the Estimates from the Thames was improperly high. He had not asked that any unfair price should be accepted for the sake of supplying the wants of any locality; what he said was that where the distress was very great, and the price very fair, he would have been glad if the right hon. Gentleman had found it consistent with his duty to recommend that one of the contracts should have been given to that locality. No doubt the tender accepted was very much lower; but previous experience had shown that though the firm
1858
which had received the order was of the highest respectability—and, indeed, were friends of his own—they had been so mistaken as to the value of former work that they had received from the Government no less than £70,000 by way of supplement—namely, £35,000 on each of two vessels. Nor did that take place in the early stages of building iron-clad vessels, as had been suggested, for in the case of the second vessel it occurred two or three years after the first. It was not fair for the hon. Member for Glasgow (Mr. Dalglish) to say that the public went to the Clyde and Mersey in preference to London. They did, no doubt, for some class of work; but for the highest class of work they came to the Thames.
MR. ALDERMAN LUSKheld that it was a vulgar policy to proceed upon that this country should have more ships than France, and he hoped it would be given up altogether. It was no reason because one man built a very large house that another should set about building a larger.
MR. CORRY, in reply to the hon. Gentleman opposite, said, that the plan upon which the Admiralty would proceed was to give the contract not where the price was lowest, but where the price was fair and the design most approved.
Vote agreed to.
(8.) £860,559, Steam Machinery.
MR. ALDERMAN LUSKmoved that the Chairman do report Progress.
Motion made, and Question proposed, "That the Chairman do report Progress, and ask leave to sit again."—(Mr. Lusk.)
MR. LAIRDhoped the Committee would go on.
THE CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUERtrusted the hon. Alderman would not press his Motion, on the understanding that if any question arose which would lead to prolonged discussion the Motion to report Progress would be agreed to.
Motion, by leave, withdrawn.
(9.) £888,588, New Works, Buildings, Machinery, and Repairs.
MR. SAMUDAwould not oppose the Vote, but expressed a hope that the Admiralty might see the utility of having iron-clad ships built for the future to a greater extent in private yards.
Vote agreed to.
(10.) £80,664, Stores, &c.
MR. ALDERMAN LUSKagain moved that the Chairman report Progress.
Motion made, and Question, "That the Chairman do report Progress, and ask leave to sit again,"—(Mr. Lusk,) — put, and negatived.
Vote agreed to.
(11.) £21,332, Martial Law.
(12.) £168,450, Divers Naval Miscellaneous Services.
(13.) £704,937, Half Pay, Reserved Half Pay, and Retirement.
(14.) £528,667, Military Pensions and Allowances.
(15.) £218,915, Civil Pensions and Allowances.
(16.) £405,976, Freight of Ships.
House resumed.
Resolutions to be reported To-morrow, at Two of the Clock; Committee to sit again To-morrow.

SUPPLY—NAVY ESTIMATES.

  COURTS OF LAW, &C. (SALARIES AND EXPENSES) BILL.
  Resolution reported;
  "That it is expedient to provide that the following salaries and expenses should, without prejudice to the rights of persons now holding offices for life or during good behaviour under Act of Parliament, cease to be charged on the Consolidated Fund, viz:—The Salaries and expenses of the Lunacy Commissioners (England); the salaries of Inspectors of Anatomy; the salaries of the Board of Bequests (Ireland); the salaries of the Secretaries of Presentations and of Commissions to the Lord Chancellor (England); the salaries formerly charged on the Hereditary Revenues of Scotland; the salaries formerly charged on the Civil List (Ireland); the salary of the Keeper of the Tennis Court; the salary of the Preacher of the Rolls Chapel (until the demise of the Crown); the expenses of the Valuation of Rateable Property (Ireland).
  Resolution agreed to:—Bill ordered to be brought in by Mr. DODSON and Mr. CHILDERS.

  INDUSTRIAL AND PROVIDENT SOCIETIES BILL.
  Bill to amend the Industrial and Provident Societies Acts,"pretented, and read the first time. [Bill 198.]
  House adjourned at a quarter after One o'clock.