Sitting of 4 May 1869

MINUTES.
PUBLIC BILLS—Resolution in Committee—Election Commissions [Expenses].
Ordered—First Reading—Recorders' Deputies * [107].
First Reading—Greenwich Hospital * [105].
Second Reading—Municipal Franchise * [85]; Local Officers Superannuation (Ireland) * [87].
Committee—Irish Church [27]—R.P.
Committee—Report—Libel * [17–106].
The House met at Two of the clock.

SAVINGS BANKS.—QUESTION.
MR. WELLSsaid, he wished to ask the Secretary to the Treasury, When the Savings Banks Returns, moved for on the 1st March, will be laid upon the Table?
MR. AYRTONsaid, in reply, that the Returns in question were not furnished by the Government, but by the savings banks themselves; and as there were 511 savings banks the hon. Member would see that it it took a considerable time to collect them. The Government had received Returns from about 400 banks.

ARMY—BRANDING DESERTERS.

  QUESTION.
  SIR ROBERT ANSTRUTHERsaid, he would beg to ask the Secretary of State for War, Whether, under instructions from the War Office, the authorities at the Horse Guards have issued any Order forbidding the marking of Soldiers a second time with the letter D; and whether there would be any objection to lay a Copy of such Order, if issued, upon the Table of the House?
  MR. CARDWELL MR. CARDWELL, in reply said, the Question of the hon. Gentleman correctly described the state of the case, and if the
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  hon. Member would move for a Copy of the Circular it should be laid on the table.

IRELAND—RIOTS IN LONDONDERRY.

  QUESTION.
  MR. W. JOHNSTONsaid, he wished to ask the Chief Secretary for Ireland, Whether the Government will institute an inquiry into the conduct of the constabulary in firing on the people on the occasion of the visit of his Royal Highness Prince Arthur to Londonderry?
  MR. CHICHESTER FORTESCUEreplied, that he could only repeat what he stated the previous day, that it would be premature to give an answer to the Question now, but that he hoped to give a positive answer either to-morrow or next day.

IRELAND—MAYOR OF CORK.

  QUESTION.
  MR. DAWSONsaid, he had given ample notice of the Question he had to ask with regard to the language attributed to the Mayor of Cork, in order that the Government might give a definite and deliberate reply. He had no intention to repeat the nauseating words, which were by this time known to every hon. Member in that House, and which had been published in every newspaper in the Kingdom. He had seen no satisfactory retraction of the phrases in question. ["Order."] He would therefore ask the Attorney General for Ireland what course the Government intend to pursue, and whether, if the present state of the Law does not permit the summary dismissal of an official occupying so responsible a position, some means and measures would be taken to satisfy the just expectations of the nation in regard to the withdrawal of an authority which had apparently been abused by the first magistrate of the City of Cork, and against the honour and dignity of the Crown? He also begged to ask, whether the account given in the newspapers of yesterday and to-day of a popular demonstration in favour of the Mayor of Cork is substantially correct according to the information received by the Government?
  THE ATTORNEY GENERAL FOR IRELAND (Mr. SULLIVAN): Sir, I have no doubt whatever that the deplorable language attributed to the Mayor of

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  Cork, in the Question the hon. Member has asked, was used by him on the occasion referred to. Before the hon. Member put his Question on the Paper the Government had thought it their duty to institute the strictest inquiry into the subject, and the result is as I stated. These words having been used, and other matters having occurred in the police court in Cork, in which the Mayor of Cork sits ex officio as a justice of the peace, I have to state that the Government is of opinion that the office of chief magistrate of Cork City cannot, consistently with the dignity of the Crown, be any longer continued in his hands. And inasmuch as neither the Executive Government of this country, nor the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland has any power to remove him from the office of justice of the peace, it his my intention to-morrow to ask leave to introduce a Bill to disable the present Mayor of Cork from holding the office of mayor or justice of the peace, or any office of magistracy in the City of Cork or elsewhere in Ireland. It is right to state further that Her Majesty's Government is of opinion that he cannot consistently with the duo administration of the law retain his office. By the Charter of the City of Cork the mayor of that city is a Commissioner of Oyer and Terminer, and could sit with Her Majesty's Judges of Assize; and that is an additional reason for removing him. I shall, to-morrow, in asking leave to introduce the Bill, state fully how the law stands, and the reasons why the Bill should receive the acceptance of the House. With respect to the latter part of the Question of the hon. Member, as to a popular demonstration in favour of the Mayor, I beg to say that it is most incorrect to attribute that meeting to the inhabitants of the City of Cork. It was a meeting which, having regard to the numbers and the class of persons who attended it, does not require any attention whatever. I shall to-morrow assign full reasons why the course which I have pointed out is necessary, and why no other course is open to us.
  SIR HERVEY BRUCEsaid, that after the answer which had been given by the right hon. Gentleman, he would not ask the Question, of which he had given notice, as to whether the Act of Charles II., regulating the election of magistrates in Ireland, had been repealed.

PARLIAMENT—WHITSUN HOLIDAYS.

  QUESTION.
  MR. J. G. TALBOTsaid, he would beg to ask the First Lord of the Treasury, Whether it has escaped his notice that the Secretary of State for the Home Department, in fixing the Second Reading of the Habitual Criminals Bill, named Monday 31st May, and described that day as the first Monday after the Whitsun Holidays; and whether, therefore, he will reconsider the announcement just made, that he proposes the House should reassemble on Monday 24th May?
  MR. GLADSTONE: I presume, Sir, my hon. Friend wishes that we should resume our sitting on a day which will make Monday the 31st, the first Monday after the adjournment. I must confess that my statement of yesterday was founded upon an inadequate appreciation of the state of public opinion in this House. The only answer I can make is that I consulted the usual organs of information upon the subject, and on this occasion they have not proved so entirely faithful to me as I have generally found them. If there is to be a recantation it is better it should come at once, and I therefore state that if our progress with the Irish Church Bill is considerable, and we dispose of the Report within the time I mentioned, I shall be prepared to propose that the House do adjourn from Thursday till that Thursday fortnight. I wish to give notice with regard to the statement made by my right hon. and learned Friend the Attorney General for Ireland that I will to-morrow move that his Notice of Motion take precedence of the Orders of the Day.

IRELAND—PROCLAMATION OF DERRY.

  QUESTION.
  SIR HERVEY BRUCEsaid, he wished to ask the Chief Secretary for Ireland, Whether it is true that the Government has proclaimed the City of Derry; and, if true, whether it received any requisition from the local magistrates for such proclamation; and, if not, whether he will object to state the information on which the Government acted?
  MR. CHICHESTER FORTESCUEsaid, in reply, that it was perfectly true the Lord Lieutenant had thought it incumbent upon him to proclaim the City

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  of Derry; whether he had received a requisition from the magistrates for such proclamation he could not say. No doubt the noble Earl acted on the facts of the case, such as the unfortunate loss of life caused by the use of fire-arms in the streets of Derry between the two opposing parties, and upon the knowledge which the Lord Lieutenant possessed, that arms were in the possession of many persons who upon any exciting occasion might be too much disposed to use them.

CANADA—DOCKYARD EMIGRANTS.

  QUESTION.
  SIR HARRY VERNEYsaid, he wished to ask the Under Secretary of State for the Colonies, Whether the Government of Canada have taken any steps, by grants of land or otherwise, to induce the Dockyard Arti2ans who are leaving England for Canada, to remain in the dominions of her Majesty?
  MR. MONSELLsaid, in reply, that a few days ago, in answer to a Question put to him by the hon. Member for Perth (Mr. Kinnaird), he stated that the tax on the emigrants for the Emigrant Hospital would probably be remitted in the case of the Dockyard emigrants, but that in all other particulars they would have the same facilities as were enjoyed by ordinary emigrants. They had received a Despatch from the Governor General of Canada which contained that assurance, and that Despatch should be laid on the table at once. Since the question had been put to him he had received a Despatch from the Lieutenant Governor of New Brunswick, stating that several miles of the line of the Intercolonial Railway would be in course of construction during the summer, and that there was excellent land which would be given in lots to artizans who should work for five days a week during the next three years on the railway and had actually settled on the land. And he further remarked that the railway when completed in this part would give an ample market to the surplus produce of labour. That Paper would be at once printed and placed in the hands of Members.

CUBA—CAPTURE OF AN AMERICAN SHIP IN BRITISH COLONIAL WATERS.

  QUESTION.
  SIR JOHN HAYsaid, he wished to ask the Under Secretary of State for
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  Foreign Affairs, Whether it is true that a vessel under the Flag of the United States of North America has been captured in British Colonial Waters by a Spanish Gun-vessel, and condemned as lawful prize in a Cuban Prize Court; and what course Her Majesty's Government have taken in consequence?
  MR. OTWAY MR. OTWAY, in reply, said, it was true that a vessel had been captured under the flag of the United States and taken to Havannah, where she had been condemned as a good prize by the Cuban prize court. The Government had every reason to believe that the vessel was captured in British colonial waters, but this was denied by the Spanish Government. No time had been lost in communicating with that Government, but in the imperfect state of the information possessed by Her Majesty's Government it was not desirable to state the nature of that communication.

ABYSSINIA—COST OF THE WAR.

  QUESTION.
  MR. CANDLISHsaid, he would beg to ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, If he has ascertained, and can now state, the total cost of the War with Abyssinia which will have to be paid by the United Kingdom?
  THE CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUER: Sir, I am sorry to say that I have not yet ascertained the exact cost of the war, as some of it still remains a matter of estimate. I will, however, state all I know on the subject. Mr. Turner, our agent, anticipates that the expenditure in India will be reduced to £6,800,000, but there may be charges and also credits that he does not take in. I cannot say, therefore, that I have ascertained the amount, although I do not think that the estimate I gave will be very much deviated from. The rest of the expenditure is as follows:—£461,000 paid by the War Office; £1,262,000 paid by the Admiralty; and £250,000 paid by the India Office. The total is £8,773,000. The House will remember that, on moving the Estimates on the 4th of March, I anticipated that the amount would be £8,763,000, and that in my financial statement I stated that it would be somewhat tinder £9,000,000. So that, on the whole, I am encouraged to hope I am pretty nearly right in the amount I have now stated.

  IRISH CHURCH BILL— [BILL. 27.]
  (Mr. Dodson, Mr. Gladstone, Mr. John Bright, Mr. Chichester Fortescue, Mr. Attorney General for Ireland.)
  IRISH CHURCH BILL— [BILL. 27.]

    COMMITTEE. [Progress 3rd May.]
    Bill considered in Committee.
    (In the Committee.)
    Clause 39 (Repeal of Maynooth Acts. Compensation on the cessation of certain annual sums).
    MR. WHALLEYdisclaimed any feeling of hostility or jealousy towards his Roman Catholic fellow-subjects in the course which he felt bound by duty to take. His object in moving the Amendment was to carry out more effectually the objects announced by the right hon. Gentleman the First Minister of the Crown in introducing the Bill—of promoting peace and tranquillity in Ireland, and establishing something like equality between the several religious sects. Whatever might be the result of the measure in satisfying and pacifying their Roman Catholic fellow - subjects, it was not in the slightest degree from sharing in this expectation that he had taken the part he had on this subject. The Protestant population of Great Britain had systematically opposed the endowment of Roman Catholics for years past; and unless the endowment of Maynooth College was put to an end to, in accordance with principles of sound justice, the organized opposition to the Roman Catholics in this country would be prosecuted with still greater vehemance. It was said that it would be ungenerous to refuse a sum of £300,000 to Maynooth, looking at the much larger amount preserved by the Bill to the Protestant Church, which was at present the Established Church of Ireland; but he, for his part, would have willingly consented that not a single shilling in the way of endowment should have been preserved to it. He reminded the Committee that they were not levelling up, but levelling down. Under Head No. 4. the clause proposed to confer upon the Roman Catholic College of Maynooth about three tunes as much in proportion as was conferred upon either the Presbyterians or the members of the Church of England. It had been calculated that £143,000 would fully meet the personal claims and vested interests in the Parliamentary Grant to that College.
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    He, however, would have most freely conceded that triple compensation had the Maynooth Grant been repealed, and the one object of the Amendment he had to submit to the Committee was to secure the repeal of that Act. The clause as it stood proposed to repeal all of that Act with the exception of the first three sections. Now, the whole country had understood, after what passed last Session, after the repeated assurances of the right hon. Gentleman, and after the letters which the right hon. Gentleman had written to the country upon the subject, that the Maynooth. Act was to be repealed. All that he had read in the newspapers upon this subject was that Maynooth was to receive a larger sum than it could fairly have expected, but it had never been suggested for a moment that the Maynooth Act was not to be repealed; it had never been anticipated that, instead of that Act being repealed, it was to be confirmed, strengthened, extended, and that its powers were to be rendered beyond all comparison greater than ever. That Act was divided into three important parts; by the first, which was all comprised in the first three sections which were to be retained, the Trustees of the College were constituted a body corporate, and dispensed in their favour to a certain extent with the Law of Mortmain, by enabling them to hold land to the amount of £3,000 per annum and personal property to an unlimited extent. The second part, which related to the number of students and other matters, it was unnecessary for him to refer to more particularly; but the third part, without which the Maynooth Act would never have been passed, and which it was now proposed to repeal, required that the College should be visited annually by visitors, five of whom were to be appointed by Her Majesty. By the repeal of this part of the Act, therefore, the objectionable part was left without qualification, and the foreign power of the Papacy would be left entirely without control. He spoke in this matter as much in behalf of the Roman Catholic laity as he did in the interest of justice. On the 7th of May the right hon. Gentleman the First Lord of the Treasury, in replying to a Question from the hon. Member for Kirkcaldy (Mr. Aytoun), said that the Maynooth Endowment Act must be repealed, and he further stated that, in

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    his opinion, the Regium Donum must come to an end. The right hon. Gentleman made a similar statement in reply to a Question from him, and promised that, on a future occasion, he would answer him more fully. But there was still considerable anxiety on the subject, and in the Recess a gentleman wrote to the right hon. Gentleman stating that among certain electors there was an impression that he did not intend to take away the Maynooth Grant and the Regium Donum. The right hon. Gentleman stated, in reply, that not only his own declarations on many occasions, but a Resolution unanimously passed by the House of Commons bound him in honour as he was bound in purpose and conviction; and he added that the Regium Donum and the Maynooth Grant should be wound up and cease. Could words go farther? [Mr. GLADSTONE: Hear, hear!] The right hon. Gentleman condescended to turn round and raise his voice in exultation. Perhaps the right hon. Gentleman meant to say that words could go further, and he had no doubt that, if he thought it worth while to do so, he would succeed in showing that words could go further. He (Mr. Whalley) had come forward with great reluctance with this Amendment: but he felt it his duty. Some years ago a number of persons conferred with him, in conjunction with the hon. Member for North Warwickshire (Mr. Newdegate), and asked him to continue the agitation on the Maynooth question which had been surrendered by Mr. Spooner. Some 9,000 persons, including the hon. Gentleman, signed a requisition asking him to take up the matter, and nothing which had since been insinuated, or which the hon. Gentleman might say, would excite in Ms mind an emotion of anger, or mitigate his admiration of that hon. Gentleman's great ability, or his earnest desire to give the hon. Gentleman all the support in his power. The people of this country had never been remarkable for great quickness of intelligence; but he believed that a remarkable impression had been made on their minds by the promises of the right hon. Gentleman. He had the greatest admiration of the right hon. Gentleman's talents, and regretted to be obliged to differ from him; but he believed that in passing this Bill he was leaving the roots of Maynooth in the institutions of this country, and giving the stamp of
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    Imperial sanction to that armoury by which the Roman Catholic Church had at one time dominated over the world, and by which, according to Dr. Manning, she was to dominate over it again, taking Ireland as her starring point. Chrurch of England Protestants were opposed to the College of Maynooth, and ordinary Protestants like himself [A laugh] were opposed to it. By ''ordinary Protestant" he meant national Protestants—those who represented the Protestantism which was to be found in the records of our history long before the Reformation. The Bill as it stood would not satisfy them; it was not in accordance with the pledges given by hon. Members to their constituents on the hustings with the Resolutions of last year, or with the expectations of the electors of the country, and its effect would be disastrous to the character of the Liberal party. He, therefore, under the circumstances, moved the Amendment of which he had given notice.
    Amendment proposed, in page 18, line 85, to leave out the words "except the three first Sections thereof."—(Mr. Whalley.)
    MR. GLADSTONE: When I turned round towards my hon. Friend and cheered him, I assure him it was not so much with exultation as with satisfaction. That satisfaction was founded on two grounds—first, that I thought the pledge he quoted from me was a pledge i which I had completely redeemed; but I will postpone the argument on that subject until we come to the other branch of the question. The other ground for my satisfaction was that I really desired to pay a compliment to the liberality of spirit with which the hon. Gentleman had addressed the Committee. I am convinced, whether I agree with him or not, that his speech indicates that he has endeavoured to approach this question in a spirit of conciliation, and to go as far as he could with us, stopping at that point where his conscience bids him stop. I am sorry that I shall be under the necessity of declining to admit the Motion of my hon. Friend; but, perhaps, I can explain the clause in such a manner as may, if it does not remove, at least diminish the objection of my hon. Friend. The hon. Gentleman—I know not whether from his concealing astuteness under the guise

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    of ingenuousness, or through some accidental cause—did not refer with perfect accuracy to the nature of the pledge given by the last House of Commons to the country with regard to Maynooth. It might be inferred from the hon. Gentleman's speech that the pledge given by the last House of Commons was to repeal the Maynooth Act; but I will read the 4th [Resolution passed on the 7th May, last year—
    "Resolved, that when legislative effect shall have been given to the First Resolution of this Committee, respecting the Established Church of Ireland, it is right and necessary that the Grant to Maynooth and the Regium Donum be discontinued, due regard being bad to all personal interests."
    That Resolution shows that we are under no pledge whatever to make an absolute repeal of the Act. So far I may trust the hon. Gentleman's candour goes along with me. Now, how does this matter stand? We propose to repeal the Maynooth Act, except as to certain clauses which continue to Trustees as an incorporated body, certain powers attaching to them by Act of Parliament. When we came to deal with this question we found we had to make arrangements for the Established Church. Out of those arrangements there grew up an absolute necessity, for practical purposes, that if the existing ecclesiastical corporations were dissolved, some one new centre should be created, and incorporated by Act of Parliament, in order to hold those portions of property which, by universal agreement, the Bill was to hand over to the Church when disestablished, and to manage them with convenience. It was not out of deference to any abstract principle, or to a desire of favouring the Church, that we introduced a clause incorporating the Church Body; but it was because there was a necessity for some machinery for holding and transmitting property. That machinery is provided by the existing law in the shape of a multitude of corporations both sole and aggregate; but those corporations we are about to destroy, and therefore we erect a new machinery in their place. When we came to the case of the Presbyterians, desiring to deal on equal principles with all, we were under the impression that the machinery possessed by that body, although it did not amount in law to an actual incorporation, was probably sufficient to enable them to hold and to ma-
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    nage such monies at they take under the Bill; but, as we were not perfectly certain of being right in this view, we intimated to them that, if there was any necessity or convenience in the privilege of incorporation for them, we should be ready to propose that such incorporation should be granted to them exactly as it had been granted to the Established Church. Then we came to the case of the Roman Catholic Church, and we found there a similar necessity, that monies of some kind should be granted in respect of the College of Maynooth, especially because, so far as Maynooth is concerned, we, the State, have no relations whatever with individuals. Under the Church arrangements we do deal with individuals who are direct recipients of what we hold to be a public fund, and it is the same with regard to the Presbyterians; but it does not hold good with regard to the Roman Catholics under the Maynooth Grant, because Parliament deals wholly and exclusively with the Maynooth trust incorporated by the Act. There is the same necessity in the case of Maynooth, as in the case of the Established Church, to have some body which, whatever title may be bestowed upon it, should have a corporate existence with a view to the management of those monies, and to the arrangements in connection with the winding up of our own pecuniary relations with them. The only difference between the cases is this, that for the Church we had to create such a body, because we were bound to destroy all the existing corporations, as the only mode of divesting the Church of the character of a national Establishment. In the case of the Presbyterian Church, we are, as I have said, willing to give them such an incorporation if it was necessitated, or even desired. But in the ease of Maynooth College we found a corporation already existing. Would it not have been highly irrational if we had repealed the Maynooth Act entirely, and destroyed that corporation which we found existing, with the obvious occasion that would arise at once for creating some new incorporation in its stead to manage and control the disposal of this money? This is the whole case with regard to that incorporation. If you give the money, even if simply for the purpose of disposing of the cases of the persons now in the College, you must

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    still continue that incorporation; and on that ground it is impossible for us to agree with the Motion of the hon. Gentleman.
    MR. NEWDEGATE: The hon. Member for Peterborough (Mr. Whalley) has been pleased to recall a circumstance in connection with this question of Maynooth that occurred some four or five years ago and the hon. Member has adverted to me in connection with that circumstance. The circumstance was this—After the death of my late Colleague I was asked, what I would do with respect to Maynooth. I said that if any hon. Member of this House was prepared to take up the question I should be happy to support him. I had never at this time had the honour of seeing the Member for Peterborough; but he was introduced to me by a very influential deputation as a Member of this House ready to take up the Maynooth question. Of course, Sir, I expressed my willingness to support the hon. Member on the question of Maynooth. For three or four years I did my best in that direction; but I found that the attempt on my part to support the hon. Member for Peterborough was totally hopeless and useless. Whether through any deficiency or any other peculiar condition, which is incident to his position on Protestant questions, he brought the question into total disrepute. He rendered it the laughing-stock of the House. And, Sir, at last I found the question in such a position, that I had to abandon both ray support of the hon. Member for Peterborough, which I have done emphatically, and the idea of raising this question before the House of Commons. I regret exceedingly that the question had not fallen into other hands. Having thus explained that which relates to my previous conduct upon this subject, I would ask the permission of the Committee to make a few observations upon what has fallen from the right hon. Gentleman the First Lord of the Treasury. The right hon. Gentleman has said, that, finding it necessary in his opinion to dissolve the existing corporations, which are connected with the property and with the management of the Established Church, and having found it necessary to deal also with the conditions under which the Regium Donum was distributed, that therefore he finds it necessary to continue this corporation of Maynooth. The right
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    hon. Gentleman will recollect—because I believe he was a party to the passing of the Act, he will remember—that in the Session previous to the passing of the Maynooth Act the Bequests Act touching all Roman Catholic property was passed, and that there was a Commission established, competent to deal with all questions arising out of Roman Catholic property. If, therefore, the Maynooth Act is to be repealed, the Commission under the Bequests Act ought to hold the property of Maynooth, as well as all other property connected with Roman Catholic establishments. It has never been explained to this House or to Parliament why, if it decided to abolish the numerous ecclesiastical corporations, and corporations connected with the arrangement and distribution of ecclesiastical property of the Church, the Maynooth Act should not be repealed, and why the management of the property should not be transferred to the Commissioners under the Bequests Act who hold all similar Roman Catholic property in Ireland. That has never been explained to the House of Commons; the continuance of the corporate powers of the Maynooth Trustees is. I conceive, as I stated yesterday, highly objectionable for the same category of reasons, which the right hon. Gentleman himself adduced against the incorporation of a Roman Catholic University. I hold that all those reasons apply as recommending the dissolution of the corporation of Maynooth; and I hold also that, unless the right hon. Gentleman and the Government have some reasons for considering the Commissioners under the Bequests Act of 1844 are not trustworthy, there is no earthly reason why the property of Maynooth, and any property assigned to Maynooth, to its Professors, or its students, should not be placed in the hands of those Commissioners. For that reason, now that the question is in your hands, if there is a division I shall vote against the retention of these clauses of the Acts previously regulating Maynooth, for they are not clauses only of the Act of 1845—the Maynooth Act, as it is commonly called—but clauses imported into that Act front previous Acts, under which the property of Maynooth was held. And I wish at once to state that, during the whole period of my opposition to the establishment of Maynooth, I have never

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    yet consented to any measure that should touch or invalidate the title of those who are interested in the property of Maynooth, either to property under lease or to real property which they hold in fee simple. Had I done so, my conduct would have risen up against me when I oppose, as I do oppose, the principle of this Bill as calculated to spoliate the Church. And therefore what I am now saying is not with a view in any underhand manner to deprive those interested in Maynooth, of the property they hold under lease or real property; but what I say is this—that if the principles enunciated by the First Lord of the Treasury and acted upon by the House are good for anything—if it is wholesome to disconnect the State from all connection with religion, then that principle demands that the Maynooth Act and these clauses embodied in the Maynooth Act should be repealed as well the rest of the Act, and that the property should be made over to the Commissioners under the Bequests Act of 1844; because it is specially provided that those Commissioners shall exercise no control over the religious dispositions or teachings of any establishment whose property they hold, that they shall have no connection with it, but that their functions shall be to see that the Law of Mortmain, or the principle of the Law of Mortmain—that I may avoid a technical distinction that was once used against me—is not violated by these Roman Catholic priests. I produced to this House a Petition signed in 1844 by fourteen Roman Catholic Bishops and 1,000 priests, objecting to the Bequests Act after it had been passed; not one sentence of that Petition, which was well considered, objected to the Act as an interference with the religion. They objected to it because it prevented their acquiring, as a Church, corporate property. It has been contrary to the policy of this country now for centuries to permit the Roman Catholic Church to acquire property in its corporate capacity. And, therefore, the retention of these clauses is contrary to the whole policy of this country with reference to the Roman Catholic Church. Ever since the Reformation it has always been provided that, when that. Church acquires property, it shall be held not by that Church in any corporate capacity, but by a corporation created for the purpose of holding that
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    property. Such is the corporation under the Bequests Act of 1844, and such are the analogous functions assigned under the Roman Catholic Charities Act of 1860 to the Charity Commissioners. The intention of the Legislature in not including the Roman Catholic property in England under the Charities Act of 1853 was this—that they might be included, as, to a great extent, they subsequently were, tinder the Roman Catholic Charities Act of 1860, the provisions of which were analogous to those of the Bequests Act of 1844. I have shown the House that hitherto the tenure of the Maynooth property, and the powers of the Maynooth Trustees in their corporate capacity constitutes an exception to the whole policy of this country with respect to Roman Catholic property. And I say that now, when you have decided as far as the votes of the House of Commons can go, that all the corporations connected with the Church of England and that its corporate rights, shall cease, that you may create a new body to hold that corporate property in in a great measure analogous to the Commissioners appointed under the Act of 1844—I say that consistency demands that you should finally abolish the corporation of Maynooth and entrust this property, like ail other Roman Catholic property in Ireland, to the Commissioners under the Bequests Act of 1844.
    MR. HADFIELDreminded the hon. Gentleman who had just addressed the House that in the last Session an Act was passed that all the purchases of real estate made for a full and valuable consideration should be exempt from the operation of the Mortmain Act. If the Act which thus enabled Protestants to purchase freeholds for the purposes of charity were sound in principle, there was an end to all discussion on the subject because their Roman Catholic fellow-subjects were entitled to the same civil rights as the members of other denominations. They could not stop there; they must incorporate them. What objection would there be to the Wesleyans, with their 6,000 places of worship, being incorporated? What objection was there to give the Free Church in Scotland an Act of Incorporation? He referred to a Bill introduced into the other House by Lord Romilly, this Session, to facilitate the incorporation of religious, educational, literary, scientific, and other charitable

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    societies or bodies, by which it was proposed to give the Charity Commissioners powers to incorporate even the trustees of any particular charity. Let them make no distinctions between one religion and another, for the law had nothing to do with those denominational distinctions. This Bill, in which all friends of religious liberty gloried, would produce a new state of things in this country. It would enable them to do away with all those foolish and ridiculous distinctions which had occupied the attention of the House for years past, to the wasting of most valuable time which might otherwise have been devoted to the promotion of the welfare of the country. It was his ambition to see the day come when the controversy would not be respecting the persons who belonged to the Church or did not be-long to the Church; but when every man—acting on the advice of the late Karl of Carlisle—instead of finding fault with other persons' religion, would, improve and adorn his own—and prove his attachment to it by showing the excellence of the moral and religious principles that actuated the hearts and minds of those who professed it. he exulted in the idea that the time was coming when the question would simply be—Who is the best Christian? Each man should show the excellence of the doctrines he professed by the excellence of his life, and by its world-wide usefulness in seeking to remove every obstruction to the progress of Christ's kingdom upon earth.
    MR. WHALLEY MR. WHALLEY, in reply to the remarks of the hon. Member for Sheffield (Mr. Hadfield), observed that this was not a question of religion at all. What they had now to consider was an attempt to establish a dominion under the pretence of a religion, and the hon. Member should have discriminated between what was really a religion and a system which had never been found compatible with civil and religious liberty, or national prosperity. It was said that it was necessary to create a body corporate in whom the property belonging to the Roman Catholic Church at Maynooth should be vested; but the Trustees of the College, who existed before 1845, were quite sufficient for its management up to that period. The Committee would perhaps allow him to proceed to reply to certain remarks which had fallen from the hon. Member for North Warwickshire (Mr. Newdegate). On all oc-
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    casions when he had been made the object of the notice of the hon. Member, he had been content to enjoy, with the rest of the Gentlemen around him, the affectation of superiority and supremacy which the hon. Member assumed, desiring only the prosperity of the cause in the name of which they were assumed, and which was worth superiority, supremacy, and every element of respect that a man in the position the hon. Member had thought fit to occupy could desire. When the hon. Member had said something of which he was bound to take notice, he waited until the next morning to read it in the columns of The Times, and when he found that the hon. Member was reported to have said something not in accordance with his character as a Gentleman, or something that was not true, he considered whether the hon. Member's remarks were worth notice, and if they were, addressed a letter to The 'Times in reply to what had been reported. He was charged by the hon. Member with having brought the cause of Protestantism into ridicule. If that were so, he took the present opportunity of suggesting to the hon. Member that he was to a great extent, responsible for it. Although the hon. Member had declined to accept the ridiculous position of the opponent of Maynooth, he had joined in requesting him to take that position. The hon. Member, however, since he had accepted that position, had never given him a single word of advice; neither in any respect had he given him the least assistance, although he had frequently been solicited to do so. Until he had got to the bottom of the thing, and had found that there were Protestants and protestants, he had been greatly puzzled at the conduct of the hon. Member. He did not know to that hour on what point he and the hon. Member differed, except that the hon. Member had invariably avoided affording him any assistance, and this, too, notwithstanding the hon. Member had told him, when he took up his position as the opponent of Maynooth, that he should be covered with ridicule. The hon. Gentleman told him that such was the organization of the Press by the Roman Catholic party, not only out-of-doors, but in the Reporters' Gallery in that House, that it was not possible for anybody to place himself in a prominent position as an advocate of Protestant principles without a certainty of bring-

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    ing down upon himself obloquy, misrepresentation, and misreporting. That was the position in which the hon. Gentleman told him that he should be placed. But he had not felt that ridicule; he had been thrice armed, because he knew his quarrel to be just. He was sorry the hon. Gentleman should have felt ridicule and obloquy on his account; and he also regretted that the hon. Member should have made remarks conceived in a temper different from the gentlemanly spirit which usually characterized the course of their proceedings in that House. He might add that the hon. Gentleman further told him that, although he had retired from that prominent position in the year 1861, he had had his speeches fully reported, by employing gentlemen in the Gallery expressly for that purpose.
    MR. NEWDEGATEsaid, that he thought it must have escaped the attention of the Chairman of the Committee that the hon. Member for Peterborough had accused him of conduct unworthy of a, Gentleman. Since such expressions were not usually permitted in that House he thought it due to himself, and to the Committee, to make a brief reply to some of the statements of the hon. Member for Peterborough. The hon. Gentleman, referring to the period when he first, unhappily, took up the question of Maynooth, said that he had never given him any advice; but he had afterwards told them, that, at the commencement of his career as an opponent of the grant to Maynooth, he (Mr. Newdegate) had warned him that he was rendering himself liable to ridicule. He certainly could not exonerate the hon. Member for the damage he had done to that cause. The hon. Member was then pleased to accuse him of assuming an undue supremacy on this question; but how was that reconcilable with his having first and for years supported his late Colleague as the exponent of Protestant opinion on this subject; and then having undertaken to support the hon. Member himself in that position? He had always supported his late Colleague (Mr. Spooner) upon that subject; but when the cause fell into the hands of the hon. Member for Peterborough, the same attempts to cast ridicule upon the question, which, at one time, directed against his late Colleague, but totally failed, were renewed against the hon. Member, and then they succeeded. Whatever failure there had
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    been, had resulted from the deficiency of the hon. Member for Peterborough as compared with the late Mr. Spooner. He protested against the imputation that he had done anything unworthy of a Gentleman. From a sense of duty he had, for years, persevered in supporting the hon. Member; and if he had given him advice, it was not with the intention that it should be re-produced to the House in the manner it had been that day, for he had given that advice in confidence.
    MR. A. EGERTONsaid, he wished before the Committee divided to say a word or two on the question they had to decide—namely, the propriety of continuing the Maynooth Trustees—and which had no connection with the dispute that was going on between the two hon. Members. The Government assumed that it was advisable to disestablish and disendow the Church in Ireland; but the Committee had to consider whether they would not, by that clause, place the Roman Catholics in Ireland in a better position than that in which they would leave either the Presbyterians or the members of the Anglican Church. It appeared to him that such would be the effect of that proposal by which the Maynooth Trustees were to be continued, and a Parliamentary title was to be given to the money which was to be handed over to those Trustees, while no corporate body to which the Church property could be entrusted was to be created for a period of two years or more. He believed that, under those circumstances, an advantage would be given to the Roman Catholics in Ireland over the members of the Established Church, and upon that ground he should vote in support of the Amendment of the hon. Member opposite (Mr. Whalley).
    MR. GLADSTONEsaid, the hon. Member, who had just addressed the Committee, laboured under a misapprehension in supposing that two years must elapse before the new Church Body was created. The members of the Church might, if they pleased, create that body the day after the Act passed, and it would immediately be recognized by the Queen in Council. He should also observe with regard to the Roman Catholic Bequests Act, that it was not a religious body at all which had been created; it was a body in sympathy with the members of the Roman Catholic Church, and the Government had de-

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    clared their willingness to allow the Presbyterians to establish a body by whom they would be similarly represented.
    MR. NEWDEGATEsaid, he thought the right hon. Gentleman had misunderstood his argument. There was a precedent for the creation of a body in connection with the Protestant Church in England and Ireland, and there was also a precedent, he believed, for the creation of a Presbyterian body in Ireland; but there was no precedent, except the Maynooth Act itself, for departing from the principle of the Bequests Act of 1814 in reference to Roman Catholic corporations.
    MR. FIELDENsaid, it appeared to him that the chaise embodied the endowment of the Roman Catholic College of Maynooth. The right hon. Gentleman at the head of the Government had quoted from the 4th section of the Bill which passed that House last year, and he then said that the College of Maynooth would cease to have any endowment, but that vested rights would in in that case be respected. But the College of Maynooth would by that means be really endowed, and endowed out of money to be taken from the Established Church in Ireland. Now, he put it to any Member of the House whether the country understood that this was to be the operation of the Government measure? During the late election he and other Members of the Conservative party had endeavoured to ascertain from their opponents what they were going to do with the property of the Disestablished Church, but they never could get an answer to the question. The right hon. Gentleman the Prime Minister had given them no answer, and the right hon. Gentleman the President of the Board of Trade had also very carefully avoided answering the question. But what was specifically stated on behalf of the Liberal party was, that no part of the property to be taken from the Established Church of Ireland was to be applied to the endowment of any religious denomination. He would ask whether, if the present proposal had been before the country during the General Election, Scotland and Wales would have returned Members pledged to endow the Roman Catholic Church in Ireland; He maintained that the clause would endow the Roman Catholic Church,
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    because Maynooth College was under the control of the Pope of Rome, and it was a seminary for the education of priests, who were to devote themselves to the teaching of the Roman Catholic religion. He would like the Committee to ask themselves for a moment what they would really be doing by this clause if it were passed. The very principle upon which the Bill was founded was that all State establishments and State endowments were to cease. But what, he would ask, was the Roman Catholic Church; Why, it was a Church Establishment on a gigantic scale, whoso priests, Bishops, and Cardinals all over Ireland, all over Europe, and all over the world, were under the control of the Roman Pontiff. If anything were an Establishment, therefore, the Church of Rome was one to all intents and purposes, quite as great in its way as the Church of England or the Church of Ireland. But there was this difference between the Roman Catholic Church and the Church of England—that whilst the latter, with the view of preserving religious toleration and religious freedom, always upheld the doctrine that the ecclesiastical ought not to be supreme over the civil power; the former, on the other hand, maintained that her priests wore superior to all civil officers whatever. He was totally opposed to disestablishment and disendowment, because he believed that Church establishments kept the ecclesiastical power subject to the civil power, and both civil and religious freedom was thereby promoted. But whilst the Bill proposed to abolish both establishments and endowments, the clause under discussion really endowed the Church of Rome. ["No, no!"] The Government proposed to hand over a round sum to Maynooth, and that was surely endowing it. What was so easy or so just as to pay out of the Consolidated Fund to the priests during their Life-time the sums they now received, and to continue the teaching until the students now at the College had completed their education. No one would contend that Maynooth ought to be carried on for all time. He was satisfied that when hon. Gentlemen opposite came to consider this question calmly, when years had passed away, and when party feeling had died out, they would remember with regret that they had affirmed the principle that establishments and endow-

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    ments were to cease as far as the Church of England was concerned, but that the Roman Catholic Church was to be endowed. A good deal had been said with regard to religious equality. The term was scarcely ever out of the mouths of the Prime Minister and the President of the Board of Trade. Now, if they analyzed these words, they would find that there could be no such thing as religious equality. They could not have religious equality any more than they could have political equality or social equality. What they could have, however, was religious toleration. He put it to hon. Gentlemen opposite, whether, even if it were possible, they would have religious equality by the passing of this clause. Let them go to Italy and to Spain, and study the state of affairs there. ["Oh, oh!"] No doubt the subject was very unpalatable to hon. Members opposite; but he would ask them candidly whether it was not a fact that the Pope of Rome, whose religion they were endowing by this clause, had not over and over again declared that religious equality was opposed to all the ideas of Christianity as entertained by the Roman Catholics, and that he would do all in his power to put it down; On the showing of the Roman Catholics themselves, therefore, there could not be religious equality, and this could not rightly be advanced as an argument in favour of the clause. He hoped the Committee would not affirm the principle contained in the clause, for it would be, as he said, endowing the Roman Catholic Church whilst disendowing that of England.
    MR. GILPINsaid, he had carefully abstained from expressing a single opinion in the course of the long debate, being willing that the discussion should be carried on, as in the main it had been, by Gentlemen on the front Benches across the table. Hut he thought the time had come when those hon. Gentlemen on whom undeserved calumny had been heaped should say a word in self-defence. He said this on his own behalf and on behalf of Protestant Dissenters in the House. The hon. Gentleman who had just sat down (Mr. Fielden) invited them to go to Rome and to Spain; but if he (Mr. Gilpin) went to either of those places it would be to see an example to avoid, and not to follow in a dominant religion the principle of which he abhorred. The lesson he would learn
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    from this was a very different one from that which the hon. Gentleman had learned. Hon. Gentlemen on the opposite side seemed to think that the Nonconformists were doing damage by supporting a Bill containing such a clause as that under discussion. Now the truth was that these hon. Gentlemen supported the Bill because they believed that it would promote the cause of Protestantism. They supported the Bill because they believed there was a difference between Protestantism and pelf. They believed that Protestantism was quite able to hold its own against any hierarchy in the world, Roman or otherwise, that might be opposed to it. All that was requisite for the achievement of this object was to give Protestantism a fair field and no favour. No such insult had recently been offered to Protestantism as was embraced in the words recently uttered by the Leader of the Opposition, when he declared that, if State support were removed from the Church of England and Ireland, that Church would be overshadowed by the Church of Rome, on account of the learning of her priests and the superior discipline and organization which prevailed among her members. For his own part he anticipated no such tiling—quite the reverse. The hon. Gentleman who had last sat down declared that there was no such thing as religious equality; but he begged to tell that hon. Gentleman that there was, there must be, and there should be such a thing. The hon. Gentleman was himself a Dissenter, and must know that religious equality was possible. He would not have troubled the Committee with any words upon the clause had he not been anxious, as far as one honest voice could do it, to remove the stigma that was being constantly cast upon Dissenters by hon. Gentlemen on the other side, as if Dissenters could not, whilst denouncing the dogmas of their Roman Catholic brethren, still recognize these brethren as fellow-subjects entitled to the same privileges as themselves. For himself, while heartily supporting the Bill, he dared in all modesty to put his Protestantism on a par at least with that of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Buckinghamshire.
    MR. STEPHEN CAVEsaid, as the House seemed disposed to debate the principle of the clause on that Amendment, he should like to say a few words.

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    He had taken no part in these discussions since he had, on a former occasion, expressed his views on the principle of the Bill. That principle having been unfortunately carried he had preferred leaving the details to be debated by those who had more practical knowledge of the subject than himself. He was well aware that all protests would, at this time of day, be fruitless. But he could not reconcile it to himself, as a strong Protestant, nor would it be respectful to his constituents—a great majority of whom felt very deeply on this question—that he should give a silent vote on what was a question of principle rather than a simple matter of detail. He passed by the mere amount of the payment, though this certainly appeared excessive when compared with the proportion of property restored to the Protestant Church. Upon that he would merely remark that, when the tenure of the two bodies was considered, the arrangement seemed much as if a railway company taking land compulsorily compensated on the same terms a freeholder and a yearly tenant. Nor would he enlarge upon the objectionable plan of parting with all control over the money, but pass by these as minor though important points, and come to the propriety of endowing openly, and almost ostentatiously, out of the property of a Protestant Church, an establishment for the formation and maintenance of a body of men, who, if true to their creed and their vows, would be the bitterest enemies of that Church. He was not alluding, of course, to individuals. He was well aware that, in the case of individuals, Christian charity neutralized, or at least modified, differences of religion, but no Roman Catholic priest, if he agreed with the supreme head of his Church—who he was ready to believe was himself more severe in doctrine than in practice—no Roman Catholic priest who carried out literally the orders of the head of his Church could exercise toleration or feel anything but abhorrence for those of other creeds. Therefore, it was a very strong measure, not only to cut short the Protestantism of Ireland, not only to deprive her of the means of grappling with her opponent, but to furnish that opponent out of her spoils with materials for fresh triumphs; spoils not fairly won, but wrested from her by these who profess, no doubt with
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    all sincerity, to be her best friends. It would have been at least some mitigation had the surplus been paid at once into the Exchequer, and the arrangement with Maynooth made a separate and independent transaction. Had hon. Members considered what a grievous blow and heavy discouragement this measure would be to Protestantism and Protestants all over the world; These would not understand or inquire into details; they would simply hear that funds which had hitherto maintained a Protestant clergy had been handed over for the maintenance of Roman Catholic priests. An argument had been founded on the case of Trinity College. That case might be answered when it was brought before the House; but there was a great difference between them, a difference which had made many Roman Catholics desire a Roman Catholic College, freed, in some measure, from the influence of the priesthood, in which priests and laymen might be educated together. Whatever might be said about Trinity College, it was, at any rate, free from that narrow exclusiveness which was the invariable characteristic of establishments confined to pupils who were in training for one profession alone. It seemed to him that those who pressed forward these measures for religious equality with the object, in which all must sympathize. of allaying discontent, forgot that by constitution this was a Protestant nation, and that our Protestant constitution never had and never could take cognizance of religious majorities or minorities in particular districts; and that, to make equality absolute, the Bill should go much further, because it was undoubtedly a grievance, though perhaps a sentimental one—but they had been warned not to disregard sentimental grievances—and a badge of inferiority that a Roman Catholic should be the subject of a Sovereign who could never under any circumstances be a professor of the same religion as himself. If he might say one word to the Presbyterians and Protestant Nonconformists, through whose aid this measure was being carried, and who used to feel so strongly on this question of Maynooth, it would be this—Let them consider whether in pulling down an Establishment they disliked they were not setting up another which regarded them with far more hostility than it did the Church over which

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    they were triumphing—the Church which had hitherto stood between the two extremes. Let them remember the fable of the horse and the stag, and let them beware lest, in consenting to the permanent endowment of Maynooth, they should be taking the most effectual means of recruiting the army of devoted, though mistakenly-devoted, men, who would issue from her walls resolved to sweep, not Episcopalianism, not Prelacy, but every form of Protestantism from off the face of the country.
    MR. PEASEsaid, he would not have spoken in this debate had he not been struck with the remarks which had fallen from the right hon. Gentleman who had just sat down (Mr. Stephen Cave). He would remind the Committee of the speech of the present Governor General of India last year. If he recollected rightly, the noble Lord (the Earl of Mayo), as the mouthpiece of the late Government, proposed to endow a Roman Catholic University, with the stipulation that the governing body of the University was to be partly of laymen and partly of priests, but exclusively of Roman Catholics. He added that the State was to be appealed to for the payment of the officers and Professors of that University, and probably hereafter for the endowment of scholarships within it. Now, forsooth, the Opposition raised a great cry at the proposal to keep up the establishment of Maynooth. The only point against the clause which had weighed with him was the alleged impropriety of taking Protestant funds to endow a Roman Catholic Church. But, on consideration, he had come to the conclusion that it would be more proper to divide the Church funds among the Christians of every denomination in Ireland than to keep them exclusively in the hands of that branch of the Christian Church now enjoying them. Besides, he was glad to find means proposed of bringing the annual contest on the Maynooth Grant to an end; no better or more consistent means for the end could be suggested than that of handing over to the College a lump sum as compensation, as was proposed in the Bill.
    SIR JOHN PAKINGTONsaid, he did not intend to enter upon the general question, but merely to explain in a very few words the vote which he intended to give upon the Motion now before the House. If he voted for the Motion of
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    the hon. Gentleman opposite (Mr. Whalley), he did so not upon the ground of any effect which he thought the clause would produce upon the Roman Catholics of Ireland, but because, in his opinion, all the provisions with regard to Maynooth contained in the Bill were distinguished by undue favouritism of the Roman Catholic Church and undue injustice to the Protestant Church of Ireland. He thought the right hon. Gentleman opposite had altogether failed to justify the principle upon which the clause had been drawn. He referred to the 4th Resolution passed last year, but he (Sir John Pakington) begged to remind him that the concluding words of that Resolution referred to the personal interests of those who held office in the College of Maynooth. There was nothing in the wording of that Resolution pointing to a general provision of the kind embraced in the clause, and providing an endowment for the Roman Catholic College of Maynooth at the very moment they were withdrawing all endowments from the Protestant Church. If one word more than another characterized this Bill it was its injustice. Only the other night the Prime Minister, in tones of peculiar emphasis, said—"If this Bill is not just, in God's name let it perish!" He called upon the right hon. Gentleman to prove that this proposition was just. He (Sir John Pakington) contended that the measure was unjust above all in its provisions with respect to the College of Maynooth. The question was whether the College of Maynooth was to receive a sum of money fourteen times the amount of the annual sum now voted. To what purpose was this amount devoted? He believed it was devoted to the College in various respects, for assuring salaries to Professors, and for maintaining and educating pupils in the College. It was proposed to compensate the pupils on the scale of fourteen years' comulation, but that was a longer time than the students spent in the College, and, as regarded many of the pupils, their term was drawing to a close. Why should the Roman Catholic body be treated on a totally different footing from that accorded to the Protestants of Ireland; Then there was the question of the allowance of the building expenses. A different mode of treatment was manifested again between the treatment of the Roman Catholics

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    and of the Protestants. To the Roman Catholics there was to be a remission of the building debt, but the Protestant, clergy were to be compelled to purchase their glebes. The Protestant Church was to be called on to pay every shilling spent on their glebes, while the charges in the case of Maynooth were to be remitted. He called, therefore, upon the Government to answer the charge he made against them—that their conduct was characterized by gross partiality and injustice. The building of Maynooth was to be given up to Roman Catholics; but the Protestants were to be deprived of their glebes, unless they purchased them. Therefore, he said, this was not a just provision. The arrangement did not bear out the language which was used by the right hon. Gentleman at the head of the Government, and, both in this respect and in other respects, it was so unjust, that, to use the language of the right hon. Gentleman, it ought to perish.
    MR. CHICHESTER FORTESCUEsubmitted to the Committee that the most convenient course would be to dispose at once of the Amendment of the hon. Member for Peterborough, from which they had allowed themselves to be, drawn away for more than an hour past. The question of giving a lump sum to Maynooth College was dealt with in a subsequent part of the clause. The question before them was simply—"Is it our duty to destroy the corporate character which Maynooth has for many years enjoyed?" He thought not. The Government thought that having severed for ever all connection between themselves and Maynooth, it was not desirable to deprive the College of that corporate character bestowed on it by Parliament many years ago. That was the whole question the Committee had to decide. The Government would be quite prepared to meet the right hon. Gentleman (Sir John Pakington) on the general question of equality when that arose. He thought the right hon. Gentleman had made that confusion which characterized the speeches of hon. Gentlemen opposite—that of mixing up the question of compensation to a clergy ceasing to be endowed, with that of compensation to a College and theological institution. The Government contended that if its Bill had left Maynooth absolutely untouched, and in possession of all its ad-
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    vantages, there would have been no inequality in the mode of treating the two Churches. They would simply have reduced the clergy to the condition of a disestablished and disendowed clergy, which was the condition in which the Roman Catholic clergy had been and continued to be; and the Established Church was left in the full possession of the advantages for the education of their clergy which they derived from the rich endowments of Trinity College, Dublin. Maynooth was not a College in possession of ancient endowments; for they knew that the endowments of the Catholic Church had been taken away, and that Maynooth had been cast, so to speak, on the charity of the British Parliament. If it had not been for that connection of Maynooth with the State there would have been no occasion for Parliament to take notice of Maynooth. He maintained that there was no inequality in the mode of dealing with the two Churches. The question now, however, was whether, having put an end to all connection between Maynooth and the State, Parliament should deprive Maynooth of that corporate character which she possessed by Act of Parliament.
    MR. WHALLEYsaid, that if Members of the Government had used the language at the late elections which they had used since their accession to the House the result of the elections would have been different. The right hon. Gentleman at the head of the Government had said, in the most emphatic manner, that he would not do that which the right hon. Gentleman opposite had asserted that it would have been quite reasonable for them to do. The issue was this—that Parliament understood from the right hon. Gentleman last year that the Maynooth Grant Act would be abolished. ["Oh, oh!"] He asserted that the right hon. Gentleman used that language. Did the country understand that the Act for endowing Maynooth would be abolished; He said that the country did, and that it trusted to the faith of Parliament and to the statement of the right hon. Gentleman.
    LORD JOHN MANNERSsaid, that, in former years, when the Governments of the day proposed what he conceived to be a just and liberal course towards Roman Catholics in Ireland, he had been ready to support them, and had not

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    shrunk from vindicating that policy on the hustings, because he conceived it to be compatible with the maintenance of the rights of the Church. Therefore he approached the question raised by the hon. Member for Peterborough without the slightest prejudice; indeed, had the Government given a satisfactory reason for opposing the Amendment, he would have been prepared to follow the Prime Minister into the Lobby; but he could not believe that the Established Church and the College of Maynooth had been treated with impartiality. He ventured to suggest that the analogy instituted by the Chief Secretary for Ireland was not correct. There would be no continuing corporation in the case of the Irish Church, simply because he had destroyed every ecclesiastical corporation existing in Ireland in connection with the Established Church, and had by that operation made it necessary to establish the Church Body. The Government had sought to restrict within the narrowest bounds the powers accorded to that new corporation. Of what sort were the terms upon which it was proposed that the Church Body should be enabled to hold property; They were of the most stringent description; and the holding of land in connection with glebes was to be restricted to ten acres, and in connection with episcopal residences to thirty acres. Unless he was much mistaken, Maynooth would stand in this position hereafter—that all bequests of money might be made to it to an unlimited extent, and bequests of landed property might be made to it to the extent of £3,000 a year. He was not saying that Maynooth ought not to stand in this position; but he did say that they ought to mote out the same measure to the Established Church. If equal justice was to be done to all parties, why did not the Government propose to abolish the existing corporation of Maynooth, and bring forward a scheme for the creation of a new corporation, with such powers as Parliament and the Sovereign might be advised to grant it; He thought that equal justice was not done by this Bill, and that the Amendment of the hon. Member for Peterborough was one that could not be resisted.
    THE LORD ADVOCATEsaid, that whatever the amount of money was that should be paid into Maynooth, the imme-
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    diate question before the Committee was whether Maynooth was to be made a corporate body or not. The noble Lord (Lord John Manners) was a party to the Act of 1845, incorporating the College of Maynooth, and authorizing it to hold property and to receive bequests. Now that Maynooth was to be dissociated from the Government, was it reasonable or was it unreasonable that the College of Maynooth should have the same powers of management, the same powers of holding property, and of administering the funds, whatever they were to be, that were granted to similar institutions throughout the country of far inferior magnitude; No injustice was done to the Church Body, which, under this Bill, would have a power of holding property to a larger extent than Maynooth. The proposal of the Government was not only not an endowment to the Roman Catholic Church, but it had not the slightest resemblance to such an endowment. It was simply a commutation or compensation to an institution for funds hitherto voted by Parliament and paid out of the Consolidated Fund. He hoped the Committee would have no hesitation in negativing the Amendment.
    Question put, "That the words proposed to be left out stand part of the Clause."
    The Committee divided:—The Tellers being come to the Table, reported the numbers Ayes 323; Noes 196.
    Whereupon Mr. Synan, one of the Members for the County of Limerick, stated that he had been in the House, and having heard the Question put, had declared himself with the Ayes, but had been accidentally shut out from the Division Lobby:—The Chairman accordingly added his name to the Ayes, and declared, the numbers Ayes 324; Noes 196: Majority 128.
    MR. GLADSTONE MR. GLADSTONE moved, to insert in line 38, after "repealed," the following words:—"save in respect of any pecuniary and individual interests at present existing." The introduction of the words would not make any difference in the clause; but would merely explain its true legal construction, because gentlemen connected with the College of Maynooth required a more distinct expression of it.
    MR. HENLEYsaid, that, as he understood the Bill, in a year or two's time the Maynooth Acts would he repealed, and it was proposed to give a lump sum of money instead of the annuities secured under the Maynooth Acts. He should be glad if the right hon. Gentleman would explain what interests were to be kept alive, and out of what source they were to be paid hereafter.
    MR. GLADSTONEsaid, that they looked upon the Maynooth Act as having created vested interests which it was difficult to take notice of individually, as they were not in communication with the parties concerned, their dealings only being with the Trustees. The Act by the 4th section prescribed that a sum of £6,000 should be set apart for the salary of the president, vice-president, and officers, and in the Schedule there was a provision for certain pecuniary payments on behalf of the senior students and of a large number of free students. The life interests were not confined to money payments, because the interests derived in kind were just as real as those derived in money; all these were kept alive by the terms of the Act, and there was no fund out of which they could be satisfied of which Parliament had cognizance, except the fund to be provided by the Bill.
    MR. HENLEYsaid, that, for anything he could see to the contrary, the money it was proposed to grant might be sent to the Pope or anyone else; and the question might naturally arise, if the Act kept alive certain pecuniary interests, whether they had not given some pledge to those persons for whom they had provided means to satisfy their claims, that Parliament should still acknowledge them as quasi vested interests. To whom were those parties to come whose interests would be thus kept-alive for payment of their demands?
    THE ATTORNEY GENERAL FOR IRELAND (Mr. SULLIVAN)said, that at present the president, vice-president, and Professors, had, in respect of the money voted by Parliament, a claim for their salaries, as against the Trustees, to whom the money was paid. The annual grant was to be commuted into a bulk sum to be paid by the Trustees, who, no doubt, would take it settled with a trust for the purposes of the institution. The president and vice-president wished the proposed addition to be made in order to
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    show that the individual interests were a charge upon the bulk sum.
    MR. HENLEY: Would the right hon. Gentleman pledge himself to Parliament that no claim on the country should afterwards arise on account of this provision? [The ATTORNEY GENERAL for IRELAND: Hear, hear!] He (Mr. Henley) confessed, as far as he could read the proposed Amendment, it appeared to him to raise a great doubt as to the extent to which those claims might be hereafter pushed.
    MR. SINCLAIR AYTOUNwished for an explanation of the explanation of the Government. The right hon. Gentleman said that, by inserting the proposed words, they would preserve the interests of certain officers provided for under the Maynooth Act by Sir Robert Peel. He (Mr. Aytoun) saw nothing in that Act to preserve the rights of such gentlemen. It only said that the president and vice-president should receive money; but had not the Trustees the right to change them whenever they liked?
    MR. NEWDEGATEremarked, that a serious question arose out of the words quoted by the right hon. Gentleman at the head of the Government. It appeared that the operation of those words would not be confined to the mere Professors of Maynooth, but would extend to the senior and life students—to the Dunboyne establishment and the free students. Although he might be told that the rights under vested interests would not extend beyond the lump sum that might be granted, nevertheless the possibility of those rights being claimed by a far larger number of persons than at present apprehended might raise a question of considerable doubt and difficulty.
    MR. CONOLLYsuggested that it would be the better course to re-enact a clause to remove all doubts upon this matter.
    THE ATTORNEY GENERAL FOR IRELAND (Mr. SULLIVAN)said, by the present Bill it was proposed to repeal the 4th and every other subsequent section of the Act of 1845; therefore, if the Bill passed, no further sum would be payable under the Act of 1845 to the Trustees of Maynooth. The 4th section of that Act in substance set apart a sum not exceeding £6,000 for the payment of the president, vice-president, and Professors. If their individual and pecu-

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    niary vested interests were not preserved in the annual sum, the Trustees would not be answerable to the Professors for their salaries—that was, they would not take the bulk sum charged with the trust for the payment of the salaries; and the object of introducing the words "save in respect of any pecuniary and individual interests at present existing" was to enable the Professors, who had a claim against the Trustees, to the extent of £6,000 a year at all events, to obtain their salaries. The only claim they could get under these words was the claim they had without them. It was considered they were entitled to the protection which these words would afford them for the continued payment of their salaries out of the bulk sum.
    MR. SINCLAIR AYTOUNasked, whether the Maynooth Act gave any such security; He understood it simply said that £6,000 a year should be devoted to maintaining certain officers, and it did not say they were not to be changed.
    THE ATTORNEY GENERAL FOR IRELAND (Mr. SULLIVAN), replied, that the words of the Bill gave the Professors no higher right than they had under the Act of Parliament. If they had a right the Bill would give it to them—if they had not, the Bill would not give it.
    MR. CAWLEYparticipated in the doubts entertained as to the words not going considerably further than was suggested by the hon. and learned Gentleman. This was a repealing Bill, and it would repeal the Act, save in respect of any pecuniary and individual interests at present existing. There might be interests, held to be such, as against the Consolidated Fund, and. if so, it was clear, they were not repealed. He would suggest that the present difficulty would be cleared up by addding to the proposed Amendment the words. "against the Trustees."
    THE ATTORNEY GENERAL FOR IRELAND (Mr. SULLIVAN)said, there was no objection to add them.
    MR. CONOLLYsaid, he did not think that the Amendment would prove satisfactory; the Professors should be named in the Bill if they were to receive this compensation.
    MR. PERCY WYNDHAMsaid, if the words would carry out, what they professed to carry out one of the principal objections he entertained to the
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    present proposal would be taken away. He concurred with the hon. Member for Kirkcaldy (Mr. Aytoun) in thinking it important that they should clearly understand what those existing interests were which were protected by the Maynooth Act.
    MR. GLADSTONE: Whatever protection they have will be kept alive by these words against the proper parties—namely, the Trustees under the Act. Perhaps it would be well that these words should be further considered by the Government at their leisure. I believe the words will be found to be perfectly safe and unobjectionable; but, before the Report, we will take care to arrive at a perfectly clear conclusion.
    MR. HENLEYsaid, he was glad the right hon. Gentleman would take that course, because it was clear the words had not been designed to give the parties a claim as against the Trustees. All he (Mr. Henley) wanted was that no claim should arise hereafter, and he believed the right hon. Gentleman was as anxious to stop that game as he was.
    THE O'CONOR DONsaid, there seemed to be a misconception as to the actual powers under the Maynooth Act. The Trustees had the power of passing statutes to be approved of by the visitors and the Lord Lieutenant. The statutes, once adopted, became binding upon the Trustees, and he believed they had no power to remove the Professors, save for misconduct.
    Words added.
    MR. SINCLAIR AYTOUNconsented, at the instance of the right hon. Gentleman at the head of the Government, to postpone some verbal Amendments, of which he had given notice, for the purpose of allowing the Committee to proceed at once to the discussion of the more important portions of the clause.
    MR. GLADSTONEexplained that the Government had been under the belief that there were only two Widows' Funds in existence in connection with the Protestant Nonconforming bodies. They found, however, that there were four, or even more, Widows' Funds existing, and certain verbal Amendments accordingly became necessary. The right hon. Gentleman moved, in page 19, line 3, after "Association," to insert—
    "(2.) In respect of the several annual sums paid out of the Regium Donum to the said Asso-

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    ciation, and also to the trustees of the Widows' Fund of certain Protestant Nonconforming bodies, commonly called the Secession Widows' Fund, respectively, on account of vacancies in the office of minister in their several congregations respectively, such sums to be ascertained on such average as aforesaid, by payment of the capital sums hereinafter mentioned to the said Association and trustees of the said Secession Widows' Fund respectively. (3.) In respect of the several sums paid annually by ministers in receipt of Regium Donum to the said Widows' Fund respectively out of their first year's income derived from the Regium Donum, on an average of seven years next before the passing of this Act, by payment of the capital sum hereinafter mentioned to the said Association and the said trustees respectively."
    Amendments agreed to.
    MR. GLADSTONEsaid, he proposed to insert words to make up for the 37th clause, which was struck out last night. He moved the following:—
    "In respect of the buildings of the said College, a sum not exceeding fifteen thousand pounds to trustees to be appointed as last aforesaid."
    MR. NEWDEGATEasked the right hon. Gentleman the Prime Minister to explain the first part of the Amendment with respect to the £15.000.
    MR. SINCLAIR AYTOUNasked for some information as to what was going on at the table. In the part of the House where he was sitting neither he nor his Friends could hear one word of what was passing.
    MR. GLADSTONE: My hon. Friend.. I am quite sure, heard the Chairman perform his part, because he read out the clause with his usual clearness. I did refer to these words, and explained their general object in the opening speech on the Bill, and, therefore, I was unwilling to inflict on the Committee a second explanation. The state of the case is this—this is a grant given to Presbyterians—not the Roman Catholics—in respect of the College of Belfast. But when I say in respect to the College of Belfast, I must not be supposed to do more than indicate that its acknowledgment on the part of the Government who make the proposal—and I think it will be on the part of the Committee if they adopt it—that the conditions of this educational establishment do require some allowance to be made in order to enable those who are interested in it to effect the transition they have got to make in a satisfactory manner, over and above the mere payment of the life interest of the Professors, because the sum
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    of £15,000 which we understand is not very far from the cost of these buildings—and those who are so disposed may make out a parallel if they like to the buildings of Maynooth—a great part of which was erected originally at the cost of the State. But if the Government is asked why they thus apply this money, their answer would be that, with respect to an establishment like the Presbyterian College, it would be very hard, we think, at a time when the Presbyterians are called upon to make provision for themselves more than they have heretofore had to make, we were not to give them something so as to smoothen the process of transition.
    MR. SINCLAIR AYTOUNsaid, he did not acquiesce in this capital sum being given to the Presbyterians; and if his Amendment with respect to the Roman Catholics were carried, he should propose to extend it to the Presbyterians.
    MR. WHALLEYsaid, he was, in no sense, authorized to speak in behalf of the Presbyterians: but, from the discussion of last night, it appeared there were two classes of Presbyterians—one the Liberal class, who had put themselves in communication with the right hon. Gentleman and others on the Ministerial side of the House, and another class who adopted the views of hon. Gentlemen opposite. ["Divide!"] He might fairly be allowed to say a word in favour of the former. He protested against the Amendment as a reflection on their want of confidence in their own power of maintaining their own form of religion, and he repudiated for them any assistance from the State. The proposal was a very serious defection from the principle upon which the country had accepted this change. It was, in fact, a kind of levelling up.
    MR. PERCY WYNDHAMsaid, he thought it somewhat remarkable that they had heard nothing of this proposal before, and that at the eleventh hour they were called upon to agree to this grant to the Presbyterian College of Belfast. It appeared that this proposal was a makeweight to the policy of the right hon. Gentleman with regard to the Roman Catholics, and a justification of the manner in which he proposed to treat them. He believed he spoke the sentiments of those around him, when he stated that it only brought out in

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    more glaring contrast the manner in which he proposed to treat the interests of the Protestant Church in Ireland.
    MR. GLADSTONEsaid, that the hon. Gentleman did the Government an injustice if he supposed that their intention had been suppressed. Not only in the Bill, but in his opening speech, he stated that, if the principle of the capitalization of the sums granted to educational establishments were admitted, it would be necessary to give the Presbyterians the same consideration in respect of the money invested in buildings in Belfast, subject to a maximum of £l5,000.
    MR. HENLEYwished to know whether the effect of the Amendment would be to increase the whole amount of the Parliamentary Grant that had to be capitalized;
    MR. GLADSTONEsaid, there would be no increase of a sensible character. It was quite possible that the fourteen years' purchase would create an increase of £1,000, and the provision for the Widows' Fund might lead to a small increase of £200 or £300 a year. But there would be no substantial increase.
    MR. WHALLEYsaid, that all these alterations were confounding and confusing. He complained that the Amendment would be objectionable to the Presbyterians.
    MR. GLADSTONEsaid, it was proposed at their own wish.
    MR. WHALLEYsaid, he must enter his protest against the Amendment.
    Amendment agreed to.
    MR. GLADSTONE MR. GLADSTONE moved the addition of the following words:—
    "In respect of the annual sums granted by Parliament for the salaries of the Theological Professors of the non-subscribing Associations of Presbyterians, by payment of the capital sum hereinafter mentioned to trustees to be appointed in each case by the Professors and Presidents of such Associations."
    MR. WHALLEYsaid, that this clause, as amended, would work an-extreme injustice. The Government took this course in order to cover their mode of dealing with the Roman Catholics, He believed that the extension of the principle to the Presbyterians was an afterthought.
    Amendment agreed to.
    SIR GEORGE JENKINSON SIR GEORGE JENKINSON moved, in page 19, to leave out first part of
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    section 4, from line 15 to line 20, which required the Commissioners to pay a capital sum to the Trustees of Maynooth, instead of the annual grant. Although he desired to act up to the Resolution of last Session, requiring the grant to Maynooth and the Regium Donum to cease, due regard being had to personal interests, he objected to the capital sum being paid out of the funds obtained from the Protestant Church. Was it just to give £400,000 to Maynooth, after the protestations of the right hon. Gentleman of last year that none of the Church property should be given to other religious bodies;
    MR. C. DALRYMPLEsaid, that nothing on the part of Her Majesty's Government was more dextrous than the manner in which the arrangements about Maynooth and the Regium Donum were made to stand or fall together. If the proposals about Maynooth were pronounced too favourable, they were liable to be met with charges of bigotry and of being enemies of religious equality; and if, on the other hand, objections were made to the arrangements in the Bill about the Regium Donum, they might be accused of grudging the compensation to Presbyterians. Neither of the charges was justly founded, for the real complaints were, as to the source from which the compensations in each case were to be drawn, and the insufficiency of the provision for the clergy of the Established Church. Upon more than one occasion the silence of Roman Catholic Members on the Government side of the House had been commented upon; but why should they speak when the Government was promoting all those objects which Roman Catholic Members must necessarily favour, at a time, too, when the Protestant Church looked in vain for the slightest consideration; Although the Roman Catholics, in this matter of silence, showed their companions below the Gangway on the other side an example of good taste, he could not understand why anyone should expect them to take part in the debates. The proposals of the Government professed to be in the interests of religious equality; but, in his opinion, there was great danger, amid the clamour for religious equality, of imperilling what was much more precious, and that was religious toleration. This they had already, and he trusted they would always have it;

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    but religions equality in the sense in which it was now demanded, he doubted if they could ever have, so long as this was a Protestant country, with a Protestant Crown and a Protestant people. The Committee had been making free to a very great extent with other folks' money—to use an expression of the Chancellor of the Exchequer—and had been setting an example, in their mode of dealing with the rights of property, which the Government would perhaps see imitated in a manner they did not at present anticipate. On the subject of the building charge on Maynooth, he reminded the Committee of a declaration of the Prime Minister on Monday week, when he said the charge arose from a breach of faith on the part of Parliament, and that doubtless an allowance of a charge for the repairs of Maynooth was a part of the arrangement, made by Sir Robert Peel. It had been granted to some men to be extremely far-seeing; but was it to be supposed that Sir Robert Peel ever anticipated the Irish Establishment would be so despoiled and stripped that Maynooth could be furnished out of its funds with a capital endowment and have its building debt discharged besides? He supposed that the Bill of the Government did not profess to be consistent with its Preamble, and no one, he hoped, would suppose the grants made to the Presbyterians and Maynooth were consistent with repeated pledges of the Government that the money of the Establishment should not be given to other religious bodies. Notwithstanding these repeated declarations and the wording of the Preamble of the Bill, the Chief Secretary for Ireland had said he was almost ashamed of the small pecuniary advantage which the Roman Catholics derived under the Bill. Small pecuniary advantage! when that which was promised again and again was that no portion of the funds was to be given to any religious body. Nothing, he believed, had a greater effect towards producing the majority for the Government than the security felt by the Protestants that the money of the Church would not be devoted to the Roman Catholic Church. Much had been made at the General Election of the subject of Maynooth, and many persons were deceived into believing that the grant to Maynooth was to be withdrawn altogether, an
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    error for which there was much excuse. The Prime Minister had never stated explicitly what would be done with the funds; he had dealt in generalities. As an intelligent man, a baker, had said to him when canvassing in the autumn, he had read the speeches of the right hon. Gentleman from beginning to end, and had been unable to discover what he proposed to do with the funds of the Church; but he expressed satisfaction in the belief that none of the money would go to the "endowment of the Papists." He charged those hon. Members who had allowed such a belief to be entertained, for the sake of a spurious counter-Protestant cry, with having dug up a root of bitterness which he had been led to think had been buried. The audacity of inconsistency in this matter would be ludicrous were it not disgraceful. Much as he deplored the probable results of the measure, and greatly as he wondered at the views of justice and of injustice of which the right hon. Gentleman—no doubt with all sincerity on his part—was night after night the patient and eloquent advocate, he would be almost content to see it successful but for the misrepresentation and shuffling which formed the most unlovely phases of the treatment of this great question, upon which the country had been invited to pass judgment, amidst the unseemly turmoil of a General Election.
    THE O'CONOR DONsaid, that the hon. Member who had just sat down had so pointedly alluded to the Roman Catholic Members in that House that he must be excused for saying a few words upon the Amendments now before the Committee. The clause was so long that it was difficult to know in which part of it the question of the Maynooth compensation was directly involved; but he thought that the clause had now arrived at such a stage that the general policy of the proposal of Her Majesty's Government with respect to the Maynooth compensation might be conveniently discussed. It appeared to him that considerable misapprehension existed, both in that House and in the country, with respect to the terms upon which this clause proposed to treat the Roman Catholics. It was supposed that those terms were to be of the most favourable character, and it had been stated that the right hon. Gentleman dare not treat the Roman Catholics as

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    he had treated the Anglicans and the Presbyterians. He, however, emphatically denied that the Roman Catholics were to be shown any favour whatever in the matter; and. more than that, he asserted that they would decline to accept and such favour. The sterner, the more strict, and the more rigidly just the measure was, the more satisfactory would it be to the Roman Catholic, who only desired equality of treatment for all parties. This clause the Committee should remember was a disendowing clause; and, so far from the Catholics being treated with any peculiar advantage in this disendowment, he maintained that they were treated with exceptional unfairness in having the grant to Maynooth included at all in this Bill. The question now before the Committee was not one relating to a religious, but to an educational endowment, and the particular partiality shown to the Catholic body by this Bill, was that the educational endowment of the Catholic College of Maynooth was to be withdrawn, whilst the educational endowments enjoyed by Trinity College and the University of Dublin were to be left untouched. Trinity College and the University of Dublin afforded to the Anglican Church the means of educating their clergy. Trinity College possessed enormous endowments, it had attached to it a divinity school, in which nearly all the Protestant clergy of Ireland were educated, it possessed large Church patronage; and this Bill not only leaves it in possession of all its endowments, but proposes to hand over a large sum as compensation for the loss of the Church patronage, which the carrying of this measure necessarily entails. If favour were shown to any religious body in this treatment of endowments for the education of the clergy it was not to the Catholics but the Anglicans; and, considering that Trinity College was left intact whilst Maynooth was sacrificed, he felt surprised at hearing so often the statement that the Catholics, as regards Maynooth, were treated with exceptional kindness. He was not, however, going to open up the question whether the Maynooth Grant should be included in this Bill. That question had been settled last year; and no matter how much he might consider the settlement partial and unfair to his co-religionists, yet neither he nor they would raise the question if it in any way
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    imperilled the success of this Bill, which they considered a great measure of justice. Admitting then that the grant to Maynooth should be withdrawn, the next question was whether the Catholics were treated with undue favour in the mode by which this was accomplished. It was stated that they were. It was stated that more than vested life interests were respected in their regard, whilst, as regards the Anglican Church, the hard line of respecting nothing but personal interests was strictly adhered to. But was this the fact either in the one point or the other? In the first place he denied that, with regard to the Anglican Church, vested rights alone had been respected. If these only had been respected the clergy of the Church would merely have received their incomes during their lives, and as they died off the undiminished Church revenues would have passed away to public purposes. But was that the proposal of the Bill? Under the Bill every facility was to be afforded for the formation of a Church Body, which body would have the power of dealing with the Government for the commutation of life interests, and thereby means would be afforded for preserving a permanent, though it might be small, endowment for the Church. Again, did hon. Gentlemen forget what was to be done with respect to the churches and the glebes? Was nothing respected here but life interests? He denied it; and, therefore, even if something more than mere life interests had been respected as regards Maynooth, the same principle had been carried to a far greater degree in the case of the Anglican Church. What was the proposal of the Government as regards the Maynooth Grant? He at once admitted that the amount of the compensation to be awarded for the withdrawal of that grant was calculated on a different principle from that adopted in the case of the Anglican clergy. This difference arose out of the very necessity of the case. It was a very easy thing to determine the value of the life interest of a country clergyman having a freehold interest in a certain income for his life, and bound in return to discharge certain duties. The cases of the Professors and students in an endowed College were very different. What, for instance, was the interest of one of these students? Recollect the principle of the Bill as regards

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    the clergy of the Established Church was that they should receive the full value of their freehold interest, but should, in return, be bound to discharge all the duties attached to it. How was that to be applied to the students and Professors of a College, which, so far as the State was concerned, was to be abolished? The vested interest of the student was a light to be maintained, lodged, and educated free during a certain number of years, and how could he be compensated except by paying him that amount of money which would provide for him outside the College, all that was provided now for him within it. And what cost would this entail? He believed that, if sent into the world to provide for himself individually, it would cost the Maynooth student at least throe times as much as Ms present maintenance in Maynooth. The ordinary Maynooth course is eight years, but taking the average course for all the present students at five years, the Committee would see that three times five or fifteen years' purchase should, if he were right in his calculation, be paid to the students for the withdrawal of the grant. But, supposing this were agreed to would the principle of the Bill be carried out? If the money was given in this way the student might squander it away on his own pleasure and not devote it to his education. The payment in this way could not be accompanied by any condition of a discharge of any duty, yet this was an essential principle in the treatment of the Established Church clergy. Neither the Professors nor the students in Maynooth had any right to compensation, except upon fulfilling the conditions upon which the grant was made, and it would be impossible to attach these conditions to annuities paid to individuals when the institution was broken up. The only possible way of carrying out the same principle as regards Maynooth which was proposed with respect to the Anglican Church was the proposal in the Bill—namely, to calculate the gross amount that should be paid by way of compensation and to hand it over to the Trustees of the College—the only body with which Parliament had anything to do, and then let them be bound to see that the funds were administered for the purposes for which they were granted. The Trustees a night be able to require the discharge
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    of a duty as a condition of the payment, but the Government certainly could not, and therefore he said that to compare the position of the Maynooth Professors and students with that of the clergy of the Anglican Church was to compare two positions not in any way similar. Then, again, there was no right more clearly recognized than the right of the Church Body to enter into arrangements which might be advantageous for its own interests; and he wished to know whether the Roman Catholics were not to be allowed the same rights. Further, he would remind hon. Gentlemen opposite that though Trinity College was not in this Bill, yet the case of that College was postponed, not decided, and if objections were made to the course of the Government, they would be raising ugly questions, which would be brought against that institution at some future time. He thought hon. Gentlemen ought to be cautious what course they took in this matter; they ought to remember that this was not a religious but an educational endowment, and that, while it was interfered with, other similar endowments in Ireland were left untouched. He expressed his belief that the Roman Catholics were not treated with any partiality, and that they would be willing to exchange positions with the Anglicans. Believing that the proposal of the Government was not only a reasonable one, but the only one which could have been adopted in conformity with the other clauses of the Bill, he should give it his support.
    MR. GLADSTONEsaid, he did not know whether it was the intention of the Committee to prosecute the debate, and decide the question upon the Amendment of the hon. Baronet (Sir George Jenkinson), or whether it was the desire of the Committee rather to take the debate and the division upon the Motion of his hon. Friend the Member for Kirkcaldy (Mr. Aytoun). It was desirable that they should come to an understanding upon that point, because the groundwork of the two debates would be precisely the same for every substantial purpose; and he rather believed his hon. Friend intended to move his Amendment. [Mr. SINCLAIR AYTOUN signified his assent.] He would suggest that this Motion should now be disposed of, that he should then move one or two verbal Amendments which were neces-

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    sary to put the clause into shape, and that then they should report Progress on the Motion of the hon. Member for Kirkcaldy.
    SIR RAINALD KNIGHTLEYwished to know what was the order of discussion. Suppose the Motion of the hon. Member for Wiltshire were rejected, would the hon. Member for Kirkcaldy be in a position to move his A which was included in it?
    THE CHAIRMANexplained that though the Motion of the hon. Baronet the Member for Wiltshire was the omission of four lines which went over the words objected to in the Amendment of the hon. Member for Kirkcaldy, yet that Amendment would be so put from the Chair that when disposed of, it would still leave room for the hon. Member for Kirkcaldy's Amendment and for another that was on the Paper.
    MR. NEWDEGATEsaid, if they were to decide the hon. Baronet's Amendment now, it would virtually cut the debate,, because the speech of the hon. Gentleman opposite (The O'Conor Don) covered the whole ground of the Bill. He presumed that the Committee did not intend that this question of Maynooth should be decided without a fair debate. He did not know whether the hon. Baronet would withdraw his Amendment; but he thought the Committee ought now to report Progress.
    MR. SINCLAIR AYTOUNappealed to the right hon. Gentleman the First Minister to consent to the adjournment of the debate.
    MR. GLADSTONEconcurred with the hon. Member for North Warwickshire that this question ought to be fairly discussed. Nothing could be more desirable than that there should be a discussion, but nothing could be more flat or more unsatisfactory than two discussions following one another upon what was virtually the same subject. Therefore, what he suggested was that the hon. Baronet the Member for Wiltshire should allow the Committee to at once dispose of his Amendment, or that he should withdraw it. Then, as he had said, he would move some Amendments of a formal character, and report Progress, and his hon. Friend (Mr. Aytoun) might bring forward his Amendment on Thursday next at half-past four o'clock.
    SIR GEORGE JENKINSONsaid, he was as anxious as any one that this question should be fully debated. His Amendment was one of principle He objected to any portion of the funds of the Irish Protestant Church being taken to endow the College of Maynooth. These were his principles, and he was not ashamed of' them. The Amendment of the hon. Member for Kirkcaldy (Mr. Aytoun) differed from his. That hon. Gentleman proposed to take some of those funds and to partly endow that College with them. There they were at issue. He wanted some expression of opinion from the front Bench on the Opposition side of the House. It was of importance to have an expression of opinion from those who led that party. To that opinion he would defer.
    MR. GLADSTONEsaid, the hon. Baronet evidently thought it desirable to proceed with his Amendment. [Sir GEORGE JENKINSOX: I did not say that.] He could not deny that the Motion of the hon. Baronet raised the whole principle; and, therefore, he thought the only course open to them was to take the debate on the Motion he had made.
    SIR JOHN PAKINGTONsaid, there could be no doubt that this subject ought to be fully and fairly debated, especially after the speech they had just heard from the hon. Member for Roscommon (The O'Conor Don). He thought the course suggested by the right hon. Gentleman at the head of the Government would be the better one—namely, that his hon. Friend (Sir George Jenkinson) should withdraw his Amendment, and that the hon. Member for Kirkcaldy (Mr. Aytoun) should, more his on Thursday. ["No, no!"]
    MR. CONOLLYcontended that the question raised by his hon. Friend the Member for Wiltshire and the question raised by the Motion of the hon. Gentleman opposite were not the same. The large question was raised by his hon. Friend the Member for Wiltshire, to which the other question was entirely subordinate. Therefore, if the hon. Member for Kirkcaldy chose to address the House, he would be within the question before the House, and entirely in Order.
    MR. GLADSTONErose to move that the Chairman report Progress. He had no choice, and he would only say this—that if they should have to continue the

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    discussion, and conduct it fairly and fully throughout upon this Motion, he trusted to his hon. Friend's kindness that he would not unnecessarily raise a fresh discussion after the Committee had decided the Motion of the hon. Baronet. He wished to give notice that, on the postponed clause, No. 3, he would propose to insert the names of the Commissioners under the Dill. The three names were—Viscount Monck, the Eight Hon. James Anthony Lawson (one of the Judges of the Court of Common Pleas in Ireland), and George Alexander Hamilton, Esq.
    House resumed.
    Committee report Progress: to sit again upon Thursday.

    LIGHT DUES.—RESOLUTION.
    MR. HEADLAM,in rising to move the [Resolution of which he had given notice, said, that the subject he had to bring forward was one which deeply concerned a class which was designated the shipping interest, and which comprised as well all those who had invested their money in the construction of our mercantile marine, as those who in the language of the Psalmist—"Go down to the sea in ships and ply their business in deep waters." The grievance of which they complained was, that, whereas this country more or less effectually discharged the duty common to all civilized nations—namely, the duty of lighting the promontories and dangerous rocks upon our coasts, of sounding the shoals and placing beacons and buoys upon them, and thus marking out the pathway of the ocean, yet—not following the example of other great maritime nations—it imposed the whole cost of the performance of this great duty to mankind partly upon foreign ships and partly upon the ships of our own country. His complaint was two-fold. In the first place, without questioning the merits or demerits of the Trinity House, the shipping interest had good reason to complain—that this great national duty was not undertaken by the Executive, but intrusted to a private body, subject to no control, and upon whom little responsibility was cast—and, in the second place, they had a right to complain that this great duly was not in this country discharged by
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    the country at large, but imposed upon one particular interest. What he asked for was that the Government should, on its own responsibility, undertake this duty; and, secondly, that the cost of the Lights upon the shores of the country—contradistinguished from the lights in particular harbours—should be defrayed out of the general revenue of the country. It was impossible to exaggerate the value to the country of the sums expended by the shipping interest in lighting the coast and sounding the ocean along the shores. Prom the earliest times all the expense of making lighthouses—many of them very costly—all the expense of sounding the ocean had been wholly imposed upon and defrayed by this great interest. But the matter did not rest there. Through the carelessness of the country, the legitimate costs had been increased four-fold. The particular body to whom this trust had been confided had spent sums almost beyond calculation, which had not been invested in the regular discharge of this duty. Moreover, the Government itself had been a party to the most lavish expenditure. He would give a few illustrations of the infinite value of the investments made by the shipping interest for the benefit of the community at large. Let them go back to the past and consider what would have been the navigation round our coasts had it not been for the sums thus invested. Now, a summer voyage round the coast was as easy and pleasant a thing as could be imagined—it was in reality an adventure for any luxurious gentleman in his own yacht, without danger and without difficulty. The coast was made clear for him by night and by day; and were it not for this modern institution—for in some respects it was modem—it would be impossible to conceive the difficulty incident to a voyage of this nature. There was a description, and a most graphic one, given by the greatest of ancient historians, Tacitus, of a voyage made by Agricola round the shores of this island, which showed what it was in those days, when they had to grope out their way in darkness, and how great were the horrors and difficulties of the navigation. Suppose that any hon. Member of that House were to come in his yacht across the Atlantic and were to enter the English Channel he would find that, partly by lights on his left

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    hand and partly by lights on his right, everything was made clear: by knowing a little of the art of navigation he would be able to distinguish exactly where he was, and might by the aid of a good chart, almost know how many fathoms of water he had beneath him: let him turn to the right or to the left and enter any harbour on either side, no charge would be imposed upon him for this great benefit, because the vessel in which he was sailing was constructed for pleasure and not for profit. Or suppose he made his voyage in a vessel of war—a kind of bird of prey, constructed at infinite expense merely for doing mischief to mankind.—whether again he entered into any harbour on the right or the left, no charge whatever would be made. But suppose he came in a merchant vessel, or in one of those great ocean steamers which unite the ends of the earth, and which bring kindness and good-will wherever they go, if he turned to the right and entered the French ports no charge would be made; if he passed further on to any of the shores of Europe the case was the same; but if the vessel turned to the left and entered the Thames or any other of the ports of this country, as soon as the cargo was cleared a bill of cost for the lights would be sent in. How did this state of things grow up? The history of the lighthouses was eminently characteristic of the country. It showed no forethought on the part of the Executive. The Government did nothing to contribute to it. They commenced by granting the privilege of erecting lights along the coasts to the Lord High Admiral. On its surrender by Lord Howard of Effingham means were taken to vest it in one of the great City companies—the Trinity House. They had the power of putting up lights along the coast, and no doubt they did some valuable service, and they spent their money like gentlemen: but they charged the shipping infinitely more than the cost; the surplus they employed partly in badly-administered charity, and partly in very magnificent hospitality. They were subject to no control; no account was taken of their funds, and they acted in the spirit of the times in which they lived. The Government never controlled or investigated the expenditure; but from time to time they made special charters to friends of their own for the
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    erection of private lighthouses along the coast, with powers of indefinite taxation over the ships that passed them. This custom having sprung up, the next question came to be how these proprietors of private lighthouses were to be got rid of, and Government, which had made such improvident grants, considered them as vested rights which ought to be bought up; and the unfortunate shipping interest had to pay not only for the bonâ fide work done, but for all the charities of the Trinity House, for all the improvident leases, and for all the hospitality of the Board. Such was the state of things down to 1834, when the subject was taken up by the late Mr. Hume, who well deserved a tribute of admiration for the sincerity, earnestness, and perseverance of his exertions in relation to the lighthouses of this country and the charges on the shipping interest. Mr. Hume grappled most successfully with the subject. He obtained the appointment of a Committee in 1884, which did eminently good service. Then first commenced the improvement of the system. They made a Report well worthy of perusal, from which it appeared, among other things, that certain lights in parts of the United Kingdom were conducted on a different principle to others. There was a division between the public general lights and the local and harbour lights. He followed the distinction made by that Committee; and it was with the public lights alone that he proposed to deal, and with respect to which he asked the decision of the House. The expenses of these lights were paid for by British and foreign shipping, whereas harbour lights were paid for by local bodies. The Committee recommended that the improvident leases should be bought up, and that, power should be given to the Trinity House to buy up the private lights. This state of things continued from 1836 to 1845. During the interval the Trinity House had bought up many of the private lights, and brought things into a better state. The recommendations of that Committee were embodied in the Act of 1846, which gave ample powers to the Trinity House. Mr. Hume, not satisfied with the great been which had been conferred on the trading portion of the community by the exertions he had made, returned to the subject in 1845, and got a most important Committee appointed to investigate the subject. The

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    first Resolution to which it came was this—that the charges paid for light dues pressed very heavily on the commercial shipping of the country, especially on the coasting trade, and sound policy required that every practicable relief should be given. The next Resolution was still more important—that all expenses for the erection and maintenance of lighthouses, floating lights, buoys, and beacons on the coasts of the United Kingdom should henceforth be defrayed out of the revenue of the United Kingdom. The authority of the Committee of 1845 was, therefore, in favour of the proposition he was about to submit to the House. The recommendations of that Committee were not carried into effect, and another Committee on the same subject sat in 1860. This last Committee affirmed the Resolutions of; the previous Committee, and expressed an opinion that the lighting of the shores of this country was an Imperial duty, and recommended that the nation generally should take on itself the payment of the light charges, assuming at the same time the management of the lighthouses. They stated that the value of the Act of 1836 was shown by the fact; that £1,250,000 had been paid by the; shipping interest in buying up the improvident grants made by the different Governments of this country; and they also observed that the mere interest of the money paid by the shipping interest on account of lights would be sufficient to keep up all the lighthouses, It did not seem to him unreasonable that the House should act upon the recommendation of these Committees. He begged the House to consider the position which this country assumed in the; eyes of foreign nations in consequence of the practice now pursued. Other great maritime nations did not adopt the same course as England in respect to this matter. They performed the duty of lighting the shores of their territories for the benefit of their own people, and for the benefit of mankind in general; and yet this country, the greatest commercial nation in the world—lagged behind other maritime countries, which adopted a more liberal policy on this subject. He knew by experience how the existing system of dealing with lighthouses worked against this country. The question had been brought under the consideration of Lord Palmerston
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    by Mr. Abbot Lawrence, the American Minister, two years after the repeal of the Navigation Laws. France had acted in a manner similar to America, and had taken all the charges off their shipping. His friends in Newcastle, the other day, took advantage of the presence of the American Minister amongst them, to ask him to do all he could to promote Free Trade in America. The Minister, however, in reply, took advantage of the manner in which we treated foreign ships in this country by our light dues, as a reason for not extending to us the benefits of Free Trade. He (Mr. Headlam) thereupon said he would undertake to do his utmost to place our lighthouses on a better system, and he hoped that his Excellency would do his best in favour of Free Trade in the United States. It was not easy to get at the precise amount of the charge thus levied upon shipping. There was such an absence of system, and we trusted so implicitly to the Trinity House, that we had no very accurate accounts; and the present income and expenditure of the light funds were not given with minuteness, but merely as an item in the general accounts of the mercantile marine fund. In 1867, the amount actually received in England, Scotland, and Ireland, in respect of this impost, was £326,000; the expenditure was £301,000, and there were works in that year which absorbed the sum of £50,000. He did not wish to lead the House to suppose that he stated this with perfect accuracy, but the precise amount was not material to his case. Many lighthouses, of which the receipts were included in this Return, would, in reality, come under the head of harbour-lights, so that the amount would not be quite so much as he had stated; but it might be taken at somewhat above £300,000, with the same general tendency to increase as belonged to all such imposts. Let them now consider what was likely to be our position if the produce of this tax were transferred as a charge on the Consolidated Fund. Upon whom did the tax fall at the present moment? According to the Returns of the Trinity House, 28 per cent was paid by foreign ships. Some persons might say it was a good thing to have the cost of our lighthouses defrayed by foreigners. It seemed to him to be about as wise a tiling as if a shopkeeper were to impose

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    a tax on the customers who came to his shop in order that they might pay for facility of access to his door. The immediate effect of the tax thus imposed on foreign ships necessarily was to drive them away from our harbours. We should know beforehand that it would be so; but he was in a position to prove, by instances within his own knowledge, that it had that effect, and was constantly producing it. He held in his hand a complaint made to a foreign consul at Newcastle under these circumstances. A vessel had gone from France to Antwerp, where she discharged her cargo, and not having facilities for getting a return cargo at Antwerp she came to the Tyne for that purpose. She had two or three boxes on board, which she was going to take to her ultimate destination; and the fact that she had these two or three boxes on board—though they were not to be evened—was held to take her out of the category of vessels in ballast, so that even when she was taking in her cargo, she was charged the full amount of light dues. The shipmaster very naturally made a complaint to the consul of having to pay a heavy-sum, which quite did away with all the profits of the transaction. We got our money—the light dues were paid—but we might depend upon one thing, that we should not have that ship back again. The Trinity House took such a case as in reality an argument in its favour. A vessel came to Havre, and would, in the natural course of things, conic to this country for a return cargo; but, frightened by the light dues, she stayed in Havre, and got a certain amount of goods sent to her from this country. This, which in fact kept a vessel from resorting to our harbours, was quoted by the Trinity House as an argument on its side, and we might be certain that if this took place with one ship, it took place with many. As to the incidence of this tax, it was paid partly by the people of this country, and partly by the shipping interest; undoubtedly, in the first instance, by the shipping interest, and was therefore a great hardship to them, though they might get a portion of it back. He would not quarrel with his right lion. Friend the President of the Board of Trade, or with the Chancellor of the Exchequer, on this subject, but he found that the Chancellor of the Exchequer himself declared that "part
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    of it undoubtedly fell on the shipping interest, and part on the consumers." What he wished to impress on the House was, that if these charges were placed on the Consolidated Fund, there would be no additional burden upon the people of this country, and for tin's reason—At The present moment the price to the consumer of every article imported by a ship must necessarily cover the whole of the charges upon it—not only the original cost of the article, but freight and light dues, as well as the dealer's profits. If his right hon. Friend were to raise his imposts slightly, so as to meet all the charges now placed on the consumer, it would not increase the price, since the consumer already paid them in a roundabout way, and if the amount of £.300,000 were taken on to general revenue of the country, the change would, in reality, be beneficial to all parties. The House would be surprised at the inequality and injustice of the distribution of this tax. It came chiefly upon the poorer class of shipping—the coasting trade—and it was charged by the tonnage, which had little reference to the value of the cargo; consequently, a vessel of considerable tonnage, but laden with a cargo of small value, paid an amount which increased its freight immensely. Upon bulky articles, such as coal and corn, the tax operated most oppressively, though on valuable cargoes from foreign countries it was little felt. Again, it was very heavy on steam vessels as compared with sailing' vessels. Harbour dues were only paid six times in a year, but light dues were paid on every voyage, and in respect of lights which were of little use to the steamer. The Trinity House said that all these things might be rectified, but such a body had really no power to rectify them. The Chancellor of the Exchequer, in bringing forward his Budget, spoke convincingly of the advantage of making this country the general entrepôt for the trade of the world, and asked them for that purpose to take off, not the comparatively small amount of £300,000, but the much larger sum of £900,000, produced by the registration or 1s. dues on corn. The right hon. Gentleman had pointed out very truly the magnificent geographical position we occupied for a trade of this description, and said that if corn were entirely free, England would probably be the centre from which

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    corn would be distributed. He (Mr. Headlam) supported that proposition; but, at the same time, he would tell the right hon. Gentleman that those petty light dues were infinitely of greater consequence than the registration duty on corn, inasmuch as the effect of the former was to drive away ten foreign vessels from our shores for the one driven away by the registration com duty. If, therefore, he voted with the Chancellor of the Exchequer—as he hoped to do—for remitting £900,000 a year on corn, he asked the right hon. Gentleman to support him in placing this £300,000 on the Consolidated Fund.
    Motion made, and Question proposed,
    "That it is the opinion of this House, that the practice of charging upon the shipping of this Country and the shipping of Foreign Nations the cost of maintaining the Lights, Buoys, and Ben-cons which light and protect the shores of the United Kingdom should cease, as being a practice unworthy of a great maritime nation whose ships are afforded the use of the Lights of other Countries free of all expense."—(Mr. Headlam.)
    MR. EASTWICKsaid, that he represented a constituency which was greatly interested in this question. He need not tell the House, that few ports, if any, wore more resorted to by merchant shiping than Falmouth, and extreme dissatisfaction was expressed there with regard to lighthouse dues and the mode in which they were levied. The Trinity House had, in his opinion, laid themselves open to animadversion, because they had failed to publish intelligible accounts, which, as trustees of public money, they ought to have done, and because they had for a long period allowed the surplus accruing from those dues to be paid over in charity. He thought that a very objectionable and anomalous course. Had the money been funded we should now be in a position to pay a considerable portion of the expenses of our lighthouses out of the interest which would be derived from that source. For several reasons the lighthouses ought, he contended to be maintained out of the Consolidated Fund. The funds, if administered by the Government, would, he thought, be likely to be administered more economically, and in the next place, he did not see how it was possible that unfairness could be avoided under the present system, under the operation of which vessels of the Royal Navy paid no dues, while
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    steamers and sailing vessels paid at the same rate. The charge could not be apportioned fairly, too, on merely coasting vessels and those which took long voyages. He understood the right hon. Gentleman, who introduced this question, to say that Lord Palmerston had been opposed to exempting vessels from the payment of light dues; but, if he remembered right, that noble Lord had, on one occasion at least, expressed himself as favouring such a proposal. Lord Palmerston said, in fact, that so far as the keeping up of lighthouses was concerned, the country ought to be looked upon as one great parish, and ought, in his opinion, to pay for their maintenance. He quite agreed in this view of the matter, and he felt bound, therefore, to support the Resolution of the right hon. Gentleman.
    MR. SAMUDAsaid, the question really brought before the House by his right hon. Friend was who should pay for the maintenance of those lights. He did not gather from him that he thought it possible to do away with the lights themselves. Maintained they must be, and the only question was the source from which the expenses of maintaining them were to be gathered. His right hon. Friend contended that they were paid for from the wrong source, and that the right source was the Consolidated Fluid of the country. It appeared to him, however, that if such an alteration were made, instead of obtaining Free Trade they would actually obtain its reverse, and that every foreign country which brought ships to our shore would, be excluded from paying those charges, which were admitted to be necessary charges, whilst the ships of this country itself would be the only ones which, would have to contribute to that sum. That, he thought, would be Free Trade run mad; and he felt that it would be much better to leave matters as they now stood than to have such a change as his right hon. Friend proposed. The Trinity House had no power whatever of obtaining any advantage by those dues, for all surplus was now paid over to the public fluids.
    VISCOLUNT BURYdiffered altogether from the observation of the hon. Gentleman who had just sat down. He had said that if those light dues were charged to the Consolidated Fund the British shipowner would have to pay his quota

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    of those light dues and the foreigner would have the advantage of the light without paying. The hon. Gentleman scorned to forget, however, that when the British shipowner went abroad and used the lights of other countries he obtained the very advantage which the foreigner would have on coming to our shores, under the system proposed by the right hon. Member for Newcastle. The argument of Free Trade run mad which was used by the hon. Gentleman was not maintainable; and even if he did object to those expenses being paid from the Consolidated Fund, he had placed his argument entirely upon the wrong footing. For his own part he (Viscount Bury) agreed with the right hon. Gentleman, who had brought forward the Motion, that it was unworthy of a great nation to collect by dribblets in that manner the funds required for the lighting of its coast; he thought so because England ought to be the foremost and not the hindmost in all questions like that, and because there was hardly a civilized nation in Europe which did not charge the expenses of its lights upon its general Budget; and there was no single nation which raised a tax of the kind upon shipping instead of relying upon funds raised within its own dominions. He also thought the way in which our lights were at present administered was radically wrong. He did not wish to run a tilt against the Trinity House. He believed that that body discharged its duty as well as any body similarly constituted could do, but the position in which that body stood was anomalous, and he did not think the House would continue to leave matters as they were. The Trinity House, ought he thought, to become a Department of the Government, and more specially responsible to the Government than it was. The management of the lights of the United Kingdom was vested in three different bodies—the Trinity House, the Commissioners of Northern Lights, and the Ballast Board of Ireland. Every one of these bodies proceeded on an entirely different system, the result being such a muddle and division of responsibility that very little was done, and even that little was only done at a very great cost. It would be seen from the Report of the Royal Commission on this subject, that every maritime country except ours charged the expense of its lighthouses on
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    funds raised every year from its internal resources. In the United States the lights of the country were managed by a board specially constituted for the purpose at an expense which might cause Englishmen to stand aghast as they contrasted it with the expenditure at home. In Norway they were governed by an inspector under a Government Department, and the cost borne by the common fund of the country. In Sweden, Hamburgh, Spain, France, Russia, America, Austria, Denmark, and Holland, the lights, buoys, and beacons were under the superintendence of Boards, consisting of naval and scientific men, and the cost was defrayed out of the general budget of the country. It could not be denied that it was most essential, when a public object of such importance was to be attained, that such a tax should be levied with the widest possible incidence, and with the least possible interference with the due course of trade. The second point he wished to advert to was this—He did not think the Trinity Board was the proper body to administer the funds and manage the lights, buoys, and beacons of this country. Other great bodies their congeners had disappeared, and the last surviving charter was that of the Hudson Bay Company, which was approaching its extinction, and he could not see why the Trinity Board could be maintained simply on account of its antiquity. On the whole, however, the Trinity Board, barring its wasteful expenditure of public money, for which he could not forgive it, had done its work very well, though not on any system, and of late years without jobbery, though there was a time when the funds were administered with considerable malversation. He only now imputed to it incapacity to carry out that for which it had no machinery. He should like to see the Trinity Board converted into a great office of State, under the control either of the Board of Trade or First Commissioner of the Navy; because from its constitution it was not a proper tribunal to which matters of this kind ought to be referred. Of the long list of members of the Trinity Board the greater portions of them were commanders of the mercantile navy. There were a few members of the Royal Navy, and during the lifetime of Professor Faraday, who was paid a small salary, he was the only scientific man connected with the Board;

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    whereas, to effectually light our coasts, a large preponderance of the Board ought to be men conversant with science. The Commissioners of Northern Lights in Scotland consisted of the Lord Advocate, the Solicitor General for Scotland, and the Lord Provosts of Edinburgh, Glasgow, and Aberdeen, and a number of provosts and baillies, whose nautical knowledge did not probably extend beyond a visit to the sea-side during a summer vacation. And, again, the administrators of the Ballast. Board of Ireland consisted almost exclusively of the members of the Corporation of the City of Dublin, and he was unable to say if there was anyone connected with science on the Board. Having shown that the three great bodies of the country were not the proper persons who ought to be entrusted with the administration of our lights, he had next to call attention to the local authorities. These were the Harbour Conservancy Boards on various parts of the coast, and each of those bodies did exactly what seemed right in its own eyes, not acting on any regular or uniform system, but making, between them, the whole tiling one mass of confusion. In some instances, unless they happened to have a book with the sailing regulations of a particular harbour, it was impossible to toll when it would be safe to enter it. With all that uncertainty and confusion, the clearness and simplicity of the French plan contrasted most favourably. On approaching the entrance of a French harbour they saw a mast, with a yard and two or three balls upon it, which by their position indicated at once the depth of water on the bar, and informed seamen whether it was safe to enter the harbour; but when they contrasted the simplicity of that system with the one adopted in this country they at once saw its inferiority. Again, with regard to the buoys and beacons, they found on entering a French harbour that a red buoy was invariably placed on the starboard side and a black buoy on the port side, and that, consequently, they could always enter with safety. In this country, however, they had sometimes a red and a black buoy on the right hand, and a checkered buoy on the left. In Scotland it was black and red, exactly the reverse of that of England, and the Ballast Board of Ireland reversed that of Scotland. The Admiralty plan also differed in every
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    part in which they had jurisdiction; and he was much struck with the recent observation of one of the Cowes steamboat men, who said the Admiralty were continually changing the buoys—that he had gone by them for the last thirty-five years, but that he should give them up for the future because the Admiralty were continually muddling them. It was high time that some system worthy of the country should be inaugurated. His third point was that that most imperfect system, as at present administered, was extremely wasteful. A few figures would prove this beyond all doubt. The total annual expenditure of the Trinity House was £172,000; of the Commissioners of Northern Lights, £59.000; of the Ballast Board, £46,000; total. £278,000, to which had to be added the expense of maintaining steamers. £26,000. or in all about £304,000. Then there were salaries of the home establishment, law charges, salaries and wages of the district establishment, and also salaries and expenses connected with the three central offices. These amounted to £04,807, or nearly one-fourth of the whole expenditure on lights. When that was contrasted with the expenditure of the American Headquarter Office, which only amounted to £2,000 a year, instead of £64,807, they could not but stand aghast at the wasteful expenditure of Trinity House Office. He thought everybody would agree that that expenditure would be enormously reduced if, instead of three distinct Boards—the Trinity Board here, the Ballast Board in Ireland, and the Commission of Northern Lights in Scotland—we had one compact Board, consisting; of naval officers and scientific men, and sitting in London. What he wished! particularly to impress on the House was this—that there ought to be one great central authority, that that central authority ought to be the First Lord of the Admiralty, or else the President of the Board of Trade, with a re-constituted Trinity Board under him, to which all those points relating to the buoyage and the lightage of our shores ought to be referred; and that the whole system ought to be conducted upon one great plan, worthy of our position as one of the first maritime nations of the world.
    MR. SHAW LEFEVREsaid, that when he read the Notice which his right hon. Friend laid on the table he thought

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    he had exercised a very wise discretion in founding it mainly on the international part of the subject, instead of resting it on the rather unsound basis of the grievances of British shipping. But his right hon. Friend had not confined himself to the terms of his Motion, and had referred at length to the hardship inflicted on British shipping. He would point out first what was the nature of the charge in respect of the light dues, and then discuss the real nature of the hardship complained of. The whole amount paid by the ships of this and other countries was £350,000 a year, of which not more than £55,000 was paid by the coasting trade in respect of 28,000,000 of tonnage. But that sum might be considered as a charge which, like many other charges of the kind, such as insurance, fell upon the consumers. Take, for instance, the case of the coal conveyed from the Tyne to the Thames. There was something like 3,000,000 tons of coal carried from the North of England to the Thames, and it paid about £12,000 a year in light dues. Now, he ventured to ask whether that money was paid by the owners of the colliers or by the consumers in London. As it was manifestly paid by the consumers, the only other argument which could possibly be used was that this £12,000 was a weight upon the colliers in competition with the railways; but if a comparison was made between the local or other burdens imposed upon the owners of ships and the railway companies, he ventured to say that the balance would be found to be in favour of the shipowners. The whole amount paid by the foreign-going vessels was £271,000, of which £86,000 was paid by foreign vessels. Of this £271,000 £124,000 was paid by vessels importing into this country, £08,000 by vessels importing into other countries, and £48,000 by vessels which brought merchandize to this country, and afterwards exported it. This last paid twice over, both when coming in and going out. His right hon. Friend drew a comparison between this burden and that of which the Chancellor of the Exchequer was about to relieve the corn trade; but it would 1MS found that it bore but a very small ratio to the latter. And by whom was this amount paid? By the consumers of the country. With respect to that portion which was paid by the export trade it would be more
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    difficult to trace its ultimate incidence. It operated probably as a very small export tax; but he ventured to say, with great confidence, that it was not paid by the shipowners. He now came to the more important argument of his right hon. Friend, in regard to the international question. His right hon. Friend had stated that all other countries paid for these lights directly, or, in other words, they did not raise any special tax from ships for this purpose. Up to very recent times, however, France did raise tonnage duties. But, in 1867, they reduced those dues from upwards of 3 francs to 75 centimes per ton, and he believed they would be lowered still more in 1871. But he believed the tonnage dues levied by the French Government were still not far different from our light dues. A case had been laid before the Trinity House by the North German Lloyd's, in which they stated that they paid£2,373for light dues; but that if they sent their vessels to Havre instead of to Southampton they would have to pay only £162 instead of £185 for a vessel like the Hansa. The House would see that the difference was very small. In 1871 the dues at Havre would be still further reduced, and then no doubt it would be a very serious consideration for vessels like those of the North German Lloyd's whether they should not make Havre their port of call rather than Southampton. But when the tonnage dues of France were lowered to a point which made the difference serious, then an important question for our consideration would arise; but at present the difference was hardly worth speaking of. There was another point which had been mentioned—namely, that vessels which merely called at Cork or at Falmouth on their way up Channel had to pay dues, and it was said they might hereafter call at foreign ports for orders; but at present we had no reason to believe that vessels were driven from our coast by these dues. His right hon. Friend had mentioned the case of a vessel that came to Newcastle which was charged in consequence of having two boxes on board, and he thought the vessel would never come again. But he (Mr. Shaw-Lefevre) ventured to draw a different inference—namely, that it would not come with two boxes, but either with a good cargo or without any cargo at all. Further, it appeared from the statement of the

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    Minister of Marine of France that when France reduced her tonnage dues she did so not with reference to any international duty, but from regard to her own interests; and, therefore, when it was proved to its that it would be our interest to throw the light duos on the Consolidated Fund, the argument would be a very strong one. He would now deal with another branch of the subject to which his right hon. Friend had called attention, though not strictly relevant—namely, the management and expenditure of the Trinity House. His right hon. Friend in his very able statement had entirely passed over the legislation of 1854. But in that year the Trinity House, as far as expenditure was concerned, was placed under the Board of Trade, and from that day to this not one single sixpence could be or had been spent by the Trinity House without the authority of the Board of Trade. Therefore, for any wasteful or injudicious expenditure it was not the Trinity House, but the Board of Trade, that was to blame. The position of the Trinity House, however, in other respects remained the same. For example, it could appoint and dismiss its own officers; but as the conscience of such Boards was said to reside very much in their purse, and the Board of Trade had complete control of that, it had also full control over the conduct and actions of the Trinity House. In fact, the Trinity House had become a sort of department of the Board of Trade, though in some respects, perhaps, the connection was not so close as might be desired. In the Report of 1861, which had been alluded to, he believed that more complaint was made of the economy of the Board of Trade in respect of light houses than of anything else. Since 1861, however, large sums had been expended in building new lighthouses and improving those which already existed. The hon. Member for Liverpool (Mr. Graves) was a member of the Royal Commission, and he believed, that hon. Gentlemen would allow that the Trinity House had brought up the lighting of this country to an equality with that of any other country in the world, Great credit was due to the present management of the Trinity House, and more especially to the Deputy Master; but he must admit, that in some respects, his opinion coincided with that of his noble Friend (Viscount Bury) as
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    to the present organization and relation, of Trinity House and the other Boards of management. As he had stated, there were four bodies that had to do with lighthouses. The Scotch and the Irish Boards were independent bodies, but they were subject in some respects to Trinity House, because they had no nautical men upon them; and if there were any difference between them and the Trinity House the Board of Trade acted as arbitrator; and, as the Board of Trade had complete control over the purse of Trinity House, it decided any financial question. It had always seemed to him that there was great perplexity in the present arrangements, and that it would, be better if there could be an amalgamation of these bodies, and that one Board should have authority over the lighthouses of the country. This had been the opinion of successive Governments, and attempts had been made at different times to remedy the evil; but it had been found difficult to do so, mainly on account of the jealousy displayed by the Scotch and Irish Boards when it was proposed to amalgamate them with Trinity House. The constitution of the Trinity House Board must be admitted to be unsatisfactory. It was too numerous, consisting of twenty members, who received £300 a year each; and it could not be doubted that it would be far better that there should be fewer members, who should devote themselves wholly to the business of the Board, and that they should be better paid. The Board of Trade was now in correspondence with the Deputy Master of Trinity House, and it was hoped that arrangements would be made which would to some extent remedy the existing evil. He had himself already pointed out that the accounts of the Trinity House were not sufficiently explicit, nor rendered in an intelligible form; but he hoped the next accounts presented by the Board of Trade would be more satisfactory. At present dues were paid into the Mercantile Marine Fund, out of which, the expenses of the lighthouses were paid; but it was a question whether it would not be better that the dues should be paid directly into the Exchequer, and that the estimates submitted yearly by the Trinity House and the Scotch and Irish Boards should be submitted to the House and votes taken i upon them. In that way the expendi-

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    ture on the lighthouses would be subject to the direct control of the House. Whatever might be the opinion of the House as to the policy of raising the means to maintain the lighthouses by light dues?, and however desirable they might think it to throw the cost of the lighthouses on the country, he hoped they would not assent to the terms of the Motion. When other nations did not treat us generously; when almost every other nation put protective duties on the import of our manufactures; when the United States charged 45 per cent upon them, and thereby levied millions; while American shipowners did not pay more than £10,000 of our light dues, he thought the House would not express the opinion that the practice of levying light duos was unworthy of us as a maritime nation. When other nations dealt with our manufactures as we dealt with theirs, then it would be time to put on record such a Motion as this; but other countries were not in a position to accuse us of want of generosity, and therefore it was not right that we should commit ourselves to the declaration proposed.
    MR. STEPHEN CAVEsaid, it would not be right if he did not to some extent corroborate what his hon. Friend had said with regard to the Trinity House. Considering all things, the Board discharged their duties as well as could be expected. The constitution of the Board might be changed with advantage; but, at the same time, those who had the administration of its funds, and who were engaged in the active Performance of its duties, had acted admirably during the last two or three years. At the Paris Exhibition of 1867 he heard both the Americans and the French agree that, however much they had advanced since preceding exhibitions, we had taken far greater strides as to lighthouses, the vividness of lights, and fog signals of various kinds than they had done: and any one who knew the works constructed by the Douglasses, the well-known engineers of Trinity House, at Wolf Rock and at Bishop's Rock, could not doubt that we maintained a proud pre-eminence' in the lighting of our coast, so as to make its navigation safe. No one could say that we had made slight advance in the excellence of our lights. He recollected the time when the lights of Dungeness and Cape Gris Nez were compared to our disadvantage; but any
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    one who had seen them then would now have reason to change his opinion. He concurred with his hon. Friend that it was one thing to say what ought to be done in regulating such matters, and another tiling to do it. More than once when he was at the Board of Trade suggestions were made for bringing together these different authorities, and introducing something like order and regularity into their proceedings; but there was the greatest jealousy of the slightest interference; and whoever undertook to bring order out of this chaos, to introduce a uniform system, and to establish one Board, would have an unenviable task. In this particular instance, this incidence of taxation was certainly upon the consumer, and he had no doubt that the shipping interest was able to recoup itself for what was paid under the head of these duties. But, as the right hon. Gentleman at the head of the Government had often stated, in bringing in measures for the reduction of taxation, a tax, although not actually burdensome, and not actually borne in the long run by the person from whom it was at first collected, might yet be a hindrance to trade, by leading persons to employ means to escape that taxation. It was, no doubt, a great disadvantage and a great waste for ships to go in ballast, which they would hardly ever do if it were not to avoid charges of this sort. It would be a national gain if they were able to carry any quantity they could get, without extra charges—even the two boxes mentioned by his right hon. Friend opposite. There could be no doubt that, by the operation of these duties, foreign ships and steamers were frequently prevented from calling at our ports. It might be a short-sighted policy upon their part, but still their refusal was based upon what they considered to be opposition to an unjust impost. When in Paris, two years ago, in relation to the Fishery Commission, he found it a frequent subject of conversation, that, although we spoke so much of Free Trade, and asked foreign nations to relieve us from various duties, we, at the same time, were imposing charges upon them. No doubt, those allegations could be satisfactorily answered, but still they prejudiced us in our negotiations with foreign countries; and we should be doing a good thing if we could get rid

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    of the impost and the objections. That, however, was more a question for the Chancellor of the Exchequer than anybody else. He certainly thought it would have been better to remove these burdens from shipping than to deal with the corn duty in the manner proposed, for he did not believe that we should ever make this country an entrepótfor foreign corn. Ships might call for orders, but it was hardly to be supposed that they would tranship their cargoes here. The question was not one which he should recommend his right hon. Friend (Mr. Headlam) to press upon the Government. The had accomplished a great deal by merely raising this discussion; for a debate of a similar character had not arisen in the House of Commons for several Years, and he was certain that its effect must be to turn the attention of the country to this subject, and thereby to facilitate the reduction and eventual abolition of this tax upon shipping.
    MR. STEVENSONsaid, the pressure of light dues often operated very prejudicially in cases where small beginnings of trade were attempted, for the bringing of a single bale of goods to a particular port exposed the vessel to light dues just as much as if it carried a whole cargo. The reply of the Trinity House to the memorial addressed to the Board of Trade upon the subject, admitted that some modification was necessary. And the Trinity House, acting under the Board of Trade, did not seem altogether to approve the way in which the surplus dues were dealt with, for they preferred to relieve those ports where a surplus had accrued, the Board of Trade, on the oilier hand, adopting what he considered the more Imperial view of the question—that of applying the surplus equally to all parts of the coast. It would seem that increased perplexity in working out these difficult questions was imminent, for there had been communications between the two bodies which held the destinies of the shipping interest in their hand, as to establishing differential rates between steamers and sailing vessels, in regard to lighthouse dues. The Elder Brethren alleged that this course would, to a great extent, moot the objections which had been urged; he, on the contrary, maintained that it would double the existing objections and vender the anomalies complained of more unequal and unjust than
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    ever. An arbitrary rule, for instance, was adopted, tinder which vessels sailing from the Tyne to Norway were subjected to a differential tax of £5 a voyage, as compared with vessels sailing to the same ports, but starting a few miles south of the Tyne—the assumption, which was a mere assumption, being that in one case vessels had the benefit of the costly lights on the East coast of Scotland, and that in the other case they did not require them. Again, vessels carrying coals to France from English coal ports were at a disadvantage equal to 2 per rent on the freight as compared with vessels from Belgian ports which paid no light dues. Since 1854 the whole of the light dues collected in the different parts of the United Kingdom had been thrown into one single fund, called the Merchant Seamen's Fund; and he asked the House to consider whether the distribution of the burdens was equitable under that arrangement? If Scotland and Ireland were out of the question, there would be a surplus revenue from the English lighthouses of £82,000. Upon the Scotch lighthouses by themselves, however, there was a deficiency of £8,200: and upon the Irish lighthouses of £47.400, so that England suffered by the partnership to the extent of close upon £56,000 a year. The Trinity Brethren took credit for the promptitude that was shown in placing buoys over wrecks, and quoted one case where a vessel was wrecked off the port of Hartlepool, and a buoy was sent, by a special steamer, all the way from Yarmouth to mark the spot. But, in his opinion, this only helped to explain the enormous cost at which the system was carried on. The Trinity Board complained that those who found fault with them did not understand them, or give them credit for their good intentions. But this was always the case with a close corporation, and it never could be otherwise. The complaint was that the Trinity House, although levying large taxes, was not a public Board. They said they were a very independent body, but that was always the excuse for bodies which were not representative. In advocating the change that light houses should be made a national charge, he would say that it was the only course to make them stand well with foreign nations. In other countries where communications were mostly by land, the

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    lighthouses were made the subject of Imperial cost and care; but here, where our insular position led to all our intercourse with foreign countries being by sea, it was discreditable that the lighthouses should be left in the hands of an irresponsible body. The change proposed was the only remedy for the anomalies of the present system, and the only states man like mode of settling the question, and if it were not adopted the Government must address itself to meet the difficulties and remedy the anomalies complained of.
    THE CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUER: No one who has listened to the speeches delivered upon this question can doubt that it relates to a subject of very great complexity, and I fear it J is impossible to adjust these matters so as to avoid anomalies. That is a fault which this subject shares with many others when you levy money on the public. I cannot recognize it as anything peculiar to the subject of light dues. I am quite of opinion that it is exceedingly desirable that the whole business of these light dues should be placed in one hand—in the hand of a responsible Minister, and that these different Boards should be constituted under one head. But when the hon. Member talks of the Trinity House being an independent body he can hardly have considered the great change in its organization. It was an independent body once. It is now really nothing more, than a Department of the Government, perhaps not very well organized—as I fear may be said of many other Departments—a Department for whose action the Board of Trade are responsible, and it is very right to hold that Board responsible for the manner in which these duties are performed. But that is really not the subject of debate—the whole question is one which belongs to my own Department—whether or not we ought to accept this burden—to transfer this £32.5,000, now levied in the shape of dues on shipping, to the Consolidated Fund. In dealing with that question I need not repeat the arguments of my hon. Friend the Secretary to the Board of Trade. I will, however, state how the matter strikes me. I shall avoid details. The question depends on large principles, and must be dealt with in a large way. It cannot be influenced by either classes
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    or anomalies the first question is, what is the nature of this payment? It is called a tax. It is not really a tax. It is a payment received for service conferred. The money that is spent on these lighthouses is spent for the benefit of the shipping interest—to save the property and the lives of seamen. It has been spent not to make dearer, but cheaper the commodities brought by the ships. Therefore, these dues are not a tax levied for the benefit of the Government, or for purposes of protection, but one which is directly for the benefit of the parties who pay it. In fact it is a toll paid by the ships of the country without the inconvenience of their being compelled to pull up to pay it. That being so, the next question is, upon whom does the burden fall? Of course, in the first instance, the dues are paid by the shipowner. This being an indirect tax, ultimately paid by the consumer, the money must be advanced by some one, and the person advancing it is the shipowner. There is nothing harsh or unfair in that. The shipowner does derive a benefit above all other classes, because it is mainly for the protection of his property and servants that the lighthouses are maintained; but he must know that he does not ultimately pay this tax, because these dues form part of the freight, and the freight forms part of the price of She commodities, and they must, therefore, necessarily be paid by the consumer. The shipowner advances them, but he is sure to get them back. These dues are not collected from persons whose ships are in ballast only. They do not apply to freight unless freight is earned, and therefore the shipowner will have them restored to him in the freight. No doubt it has been represented—as by the deputation headed by my right hon. Friend (Mr. Headlam) which waited on me—as an iniquitous tiling that shipping should be taxed for the benefit of the whole community. That was the ground taken by the deputation. I pointed out to them that it was not a tax wholly paid by the shipowner, but by the consumer, and that ground has now been abandoned; for the Motion before the House is not that the shipowner is unduly or unfairly taxed, but that such conduct is unworthy of a great nation. So that my right hon. Friend has now left the ground of justice and taken up that of chivalry.

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    Well, then, is there any hardship in levying such a duty as this? People talk of taking money out of the Consolidated Fund as if it found its way there of itself. But if you take £325,000 out of the revenue you must get it from: some other quarter; and it would be; exceedingly difficult to get that sum collected in a way that would operate more justly. Of course, you cannot get £325,000 without a great deal of difficulty and suffering, and without doing a great deal of mischief to industry one May or another; but, practically, it would be exceedingly difficult to point out any tax that could be imposed with less inequality or injustice. There is this practical advantage in this tax, it forms a test of its own experience. If this tax were to be imposed and paid out of the general revenue, the Government would be urged by all manner of representations to put up lighthouses in all available plates. No doubt great influence would be brought to bear upon them, and they would often be induced, perhaps, to put up lights in wrong places. But now what is done? Shipowners apply for lights. The Government are willing to put them up if the shipowners are willing to pay the dues, and in this way the Government have every security that the lights are needed. "Whereas if the money came out of the general revenue, it would be nobody's interest to find fault with anything that was done, and we might have a most unprofitable expenditure, and the grossest political jobbery. Let us test this impost by the ordinary criterion of taxation. Adam Smith says that a tax should be equal. Now, could anything be fairer than this tax? It is advanced in the first instance by the persons who are immediately benefited by its application, and it is recouped from the persons consuming the commodities brought by the vessels. A tax should be certain. "Well, nothing could be so certain as tin's tax. Its amount is perfectly well known, and is taken in1o account by the shipowner in the freight. Then, as for the collection of the tax nothing could be cheaper or more convenient; for it is collected at the end of the voyage when there is the general settlement of accounts. It therefore appears to me that this tax fully realizes all the elements of a sound tax; and it is wholly expended for the benefit of those who are wholly or more imme-
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    diately interested in its expenditure. There is another point worthy of consideration. This tax may be divided into two parts. It amounts to £325,000. Of that sum £179,000 are dues paid by ships importing' goods into this country, and £146,000 are paid by ships exporting goods to countries abroad. As the consumer pays the tax at last, nearly one-half is paid, not by the natives of this country, but by the inhabitants of other countries, and I am unchivalrie enough to consider that a considerable advantage. I do not see why we should desire to pay £146,000 now paid by other countries, and place the charge on the people in this country. Against this argument nothing is urged that I know of, except that it is unworthy of a great nation not to reciprocate the treatment we receive from foreigners. This is not a question of removing obstacles from commerce; but it is really a question of bribing commerce to come to our shores by paving out of the taxation of the country those persons who ought to come to us for their own advantage. If you relieve foreign shipping from the light dues, you hold out a greater inducement for it to come here, just, in the same way as you would, if you relieved it from dock dues. The same argument would apply for opening the docks free as for removing the light dues. I know of no limit to such an argument. Such a course of proceeding might, induce foreign captains to come to this country, but it really would be a system of benefits to foreign commerce. In like manner a tradesman might try to induce customers to go to him by saying—"If you come, to my shop I will pay the turnpike for you;" but who would be so simple as not to know that he would take it out in the first pound of tea? We take the best means of bringing shipping to our ports when we throw our trade open, imposing no protective duties, but making it pay for lighthouses. Foreign countries acted in a reverse way. They are liberal in respect to their bights, paying for them out of the general revenue, but indemnifying themselves by putting on enormous protective duties. Take the case of America. She does not make any charge for lights; but she racks her ingenuity in every way to prevent the commodities which our ships carry there from finding their way into the country. These are the grounds on which

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    I entirely object to placing this sum' on the Consolidated Fund. It appears to me that the tax is just and fairly imposed; and I only wish other countries would deal with us in the same spirit in which we deal with them, and, taxing us for their lights, would for bear taxing us for our commodities. I shall feel it my duty to resist the Motion of my right hon. Friend, but I trust it will not be pressed.
    MR. GRAVES MR. GRAVES, having been on the Commission which had been alluded to in the course of the discussion, said it-was satisfactory to him to find that all the recommendations of that Commission had been adopted except one, which related to the maintenance of the lights. With regard to the system of management, he thought that a more cumbrous and unsuitable machinery could not be devised. It created constant irritation between the Boards, and the greatest care was required to prevent things from coming to a dead-lock. It was, therefore, most desirable that some change should be made in the system. He was bound, however, to say that, since 1861, there had been a. great improvement in the executive, of the different Boards, and the Trinity House deserved credit for the attention it had paid to the recommendations of the Commission, for the security of its lightships, and for the rapidity with which displaced buoys were re-set in the proper situation. As the system of lights now extended all round the shores of the country, and would shortly be completed, it would now be requisite to direct attention to the augmentation of the illuminating power of the lights rather than to the increase of the number of the lights. He would leave the President of the Board of Trade to reply to the Chancellor of the Exchequer, because he thought that so ardent a Free Trader could not share the opinions expressed by the right hon. Gentleman. Anything more fallacious than to say that, an impost should not be remitted because the foreigner would share in it he could not conceive. The Secretary to the Board of Trade (Mr. Shaw Lefevre) was not far wrong when he said that possibly in a short time this subject might become a serious question for consideration; because, by the tax which we laid on foreign shipping visiting our ports, we were preventing other countries from extending to us the free-
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    dom which we have been so long seeking. In France a great change had taken place this very year, and a vessel in Havre which last year paid £225 for dues, now only paid £36. The question as to the proportion borne by the outward tonnage of the country was not a question for the English consumer—it was an export tax on the consumers of our produce in other countries, and to that extent was prejudicial to our manufactures. The Chancellor of the Exchequer said the tax was an equal and a just one, and was fairly distributed. Now, in Liverpool, the shipping interest paid last year £92,000 as their contribution to lighthouse duos. One-third of that sum would represent the value which the shipping entering the port derived from the lights on the North and South Channel, and, taking every light which could by any possibility be used by shipping frequenting Liverpool, the fact was that the shipping at Liverpool paid some £40,000 a year to maintain lights on the East coast or the North coast of Scotland, where, in passing along the coast, he had seen more lights than vessels, and which were of no service to Liverpool vessels. He denied that this was a fair or proper distribution of the tax. But the question had been argued as if it were something new, while every year the identical principle was affirmed by Parliament. In this year's Estimates there was an item of £38,000 for the erection and maintenance of lights around our colonial coast: last year it was £40,000, and the year before £42,000. That was an admission of the principle. The question would, probably, have to be again opened when the Civil Service Estimates came to be considered. What the toll is to traffic on the turnpike or the bridge the light dues are to our foreign trade—the former are fast disappearing, and I hope the latter will soon follow. Then there was the question of local lights. Why were these not embraced in the general lighthouse system of the country? Because the State said to the local authorities—"It is your duty to light your own ports;" and, surely, what the State said to the local authorities other nations might with equal justice say to us with regard to the lighthouse dues. To show how much the whole question bore upon our trade with other countries, he might mention that when America was asked to admit us to a share in their valuable coast trade, the

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    answer if the Chamber of Commerce of! New York was that when we abolished' these lighthouse charges America might consider the question of the coast trade. He know of no reduction of taxation which would be so generally useful as the remission of this £300,000. He admitted that the Resolution ought not to be forced that night. It was a question for the Chancellor of the Exchequer to: consider when he had an available surplus, and he did hope that when another year came round the right hon. Gentleman would have such a surplus, and would be inclined to deal with this question more largely and more generously than he now seemed inclined to deal with it.
    MR. BRIGHT: I am rather surprised that the right hon. Gentleman (Mr. Headlam) has placed this Resolution on the table of the House; because, even if I agreed with him as to the general question in regard to the light dues. I think the wording of the Resolution and the reasons given for proposing it, ought not to have been offered to the House as the motive for the change which my right, hon. Friend desires. He invites us to say—
    "That it is the opinion of this House, that the practice of charging upon the shipping of this Country and the shipping of Foreign Nations the cost of maintaining the Lights, Buoys, and Beacons which light and protect the shores of the United Kingdom should cease, as being a practice unworthy of a great maritime nation whose ships are afforded the use of the Lights of other Countries free of all expense."
    That I hold not to be a reason upon which the House of Commons should act in the removal of a considerable charge, find in transferring from a special portion of the population a tax of this magnitude and laying it upon the Consolidated Fund. My right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer spoke of the chivalrous nature of the Resolution. I rather think it is one which is not put forward quite honestly. I do not believe that the shipowners of the Tyne really ask the House to make this change on the ground that set forth in this Resolution. Therefore, whenever the House chooses to come to any decision affirming: that this change should be made. I hope it will do so for reasons and on principles more consistent with its character and with the interests of those whom we represent. After what has been said, I should feel a difficulty
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    in defending any tax. The Chancellor of the Exchequer boldly acknowledges that all taxes are burdensome, irritating, and unpleasant: therefore he does not feel it necessary to defend any particular tax having given, generally, a bad character to all taxes. In this case we are asked to remove to the general taxation of the country a special tax, levied on a special class for special purposes. There can be no doubt that every argument as to the general question of the removal of the tax would be just as good and unswerable if the Resolution applied to port or dock dues as to lighthouse dues. That. I think, will be acknowledged. Therefore, the House must take care what it is doing in this matter; because it is quite possible that, if this tax were got rid of this year, our friends from the shipping ports would, in another year, put in a plea that some other tax, levied for a special purpose upon a special class, should be removed from that class and be placed upon the Consolidated Fund. But, although this Resolution refers to one question, quite as many speeches have been made upon another question as upon that, and the noble Lord (Viscount Bury has made an animated speech on the management of the light dues. Now, the first and the main question is a Treasury question, and the Chancellor of the Exchequer has given—I will not say a final and unanswerable answer, but he has done this—he has given a complete answer to any one who asks the House to say that this year, or at present, this tax shall be removed. My own impression is, that the real difficulty of the tax arises from its irregularity and its inequality. But, then, that itself arises from an attempt to make the tax bear more easily upon a portion of our shipping. The coasting trade pays much less than the foreign trade. If we wore to attempt to equalize these two classes, and raise the light dues upon the coasting trade, the persons interested in that trade would be at the Trinity House, or the Board of Trade, or the House of Commons, to prevent such an infliction. If, on the other hand, the dues on foreign-going ships were reduced, the revenue of the Trinity House would be reduced to so low a point that, in all probability, it would be impossible to maintain the present lighthouses, and certainly there would be no chance of extending the

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    system of lights. The equalization of the burden of those dues us between coasting and foreign vessels does not, therefore, appear to mo to be practicable. Another question has been raised by the hon. Member for South Shields (Mr. Stevenson) who has referred to the great inequality of the tax as levied upon sailing vessels and steamers. He says that to alter it would be to reduce the tax upon steamers, and would be only to make the difficulty of the ease greater than at present. That, I presume, is true; because steamers are constantly gaining on sailing vessels, and to increase the burden, comparatively speaking, on the latter, would be a very undesirable mode of proceeding. I admit that—I admit all that needs to be admitted. I agree in the general proposition that the tax itself on shipping is not, open to complaint; but then I admit that there are just complaints to be made as to the irregularity with which it falls on different kinds of shipping, and on ships which go long and short voyages. Entertaining that view, I, as representing the Board of Trade, have been in communication with the most intelligent, member of the Trinity House, Sir F. Arrow, for the purpose of ascertaining whether some considerable mitigation of that which is a real grievance could not be effected; and, although I do not anticipate that the grievance can be remedied within a short period, yet I hope that considerable relief may be given to some portion of the shipping-interest by certain changes made in reference to this point. As to the Trinity House itself, an ancient corporation, which the noble Lord the Member for Berwick (Viscount Bury) seems anxious to send after the East India and the Hudson's Bay Companies, I would remark that it does not, I am glad to say, deserve to be classed, at all events, with the former. The Trinity House has, within the last few years, undergone great reforms, and many of the charges now brought forward against it were charges that were partially true in past times, but are only to a small extent true now. To show the extravagant nature of some of these charges I would only refer to one statement which was made by the noble Lord the Member for Berwick. He said, quoting from a Return, i hat the cost of its management amounted to £65,000, and what that sum includes,
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    I am not, without the Return, able to tell; but surely the noble Lord does not mean that it includes simply the expenses of the twenty-one Elder Brethren, who are members of the corporation. He told us, moreover, that in the United States six or eight naval and engineer officers discharged the similar duties, and that the expenses of management in their case were only £2,000 a year. Now, it appears to me that, if the noble Lord were as anxious to ascertain accurately what is true in this matter as to make accusations, he would have seen that it was not possible that the work of which he speaks could be done in the United States for the sum of £2,000, and that there, is no such discrepancy between the rates of expense in the two countries as he has mentioned. The noble Lord is, perhaps, not aware that in the United States, where the Government bears the whole cost of lighting the coast, that cost is £50,000 a year more than the charge for lighting the? coast of the United Kingdom. I do not know what the difference between the number of lighthouses is, or between the mileage; of the coast in the two cases; but it is impossible to argue from what the noble Lord has told us that the management of the Lighthouses in the United States is placed on a more economical footing than it is in this country. I have said that the Trinity House was an ancient corporation, and that it had been greatly reformed of late. I may add, although it may be a very foolish thing for me to say, that its composition is the best possible at the present moment. My experience, since I have been at the Board of Trade—and in that view I think I shall be corroborated by my predecessors in Office—leads me to believe that it very satisfactorily performs the duties with whose performance it is entrusted. No one can, of course, deny that it would be a good thing to bring the Irish, Scotch, and English management under one head. Many inconveniences would by that means be avoided—though not to as great an extent, I think, as has been pointed out by the hon. Member for Liverpool (Mr. Graves)—and the whole business of that department would no doubt be carried out at somewhat less expense. As things at present stand, the influence of the Board of Trade with the Trinity House is considerable; it is of that nature which a

    181
    person holding the purse-strings can always exercise, and so far as I can see the Trinity House is anxious to adopt any suggestion or take any reasonable course which the Board of Trade should propose. I have already said that the question of equalizing in some degree the rates of the dues levied was under consideration. Beyond that, the question of a further change in the constitution of the Trinity House has also recently been the subject of constant discussion. It seems to me that it may be possible to maintain the Trinity House as it is with a smaller number of members, better paid, and. as a consequence, I should hope in some respects better qualified, for the performance of the work which they have to do than the average of the twenty-one Elder Brethren. It is, however, very difficult to make that change and to preserve the ancient constitution of the body: but, before very long in all probability, it will be the duty of Government and Parliament to consider whether any attempt should be made at any further half-way reform, whether we should stay where we now are, or whether the whole question should be thoroughly dealt with and an alteration effected by which the three departments for England, Ireland, and Scotland should be brought, by means of a well-organized system, under the Board of Trade. The House will, I am sure, excuse me if I do not give a confident opinion on that point. I have been at the Board of Trade only a short time, and I do not think I am so well-qualified as some men to form an opinion on a question of this nature. I shall have to consult the opinion of others, and I shall be, very happy if in that decision on a matter of such great importance—and I consider it so—I shall have the benefit of the advice of some one more competent than I am to go upon. I state this to show that, at the present moment, the whole of the question is being considered most anxiously, with a view to some good result, if that be so—if ware endeavouring to relieve in some degree the unequal pressure on shipowners—to levy the light dues in a more equal and a more just manner, the House will agree with mo there is no wisdom at this moment in adopting a Resolution which must embarrass the Government, especially with regard to a proposition in which there is involved a change in taxation. I will
    182
    put it to my right hon. Friend, after the explanation I have made—and which I have made in all sincerity—whether he does not think the discussion has sufficiently advanced the views of all Gentlemen concerned without bringing the House to a division, and making the discussion and consideration of the question by the Government more difficult than the thing would have otherwise been?
    MR. HENLEYsaid, that after the speech of the noble Lord the Member fur Berwick (Viscount Bury), who seemed to think it desirable that the Trinity House, like the East India Company and the Hudson's Bay Company, should be done away with, he felt considerably relieved by what had fallen from the right hon. Gentleman who had just spoken. The reply of the Secretary to the Board of Trade, he might add, gave him the notion—but that he knew such a tiling was impossible—that the House was being engaged in something like a "put up" debate, because the discussion ran away altogether from the Motion of the right hon. Member for Newcastle (Mr. Headlam), and turned upon questions quite as large, if not more important; but everyone who had listened to the right hon. Gentleman the President of the Board of Trade must, he thought, feel satisfied that the whole subject would receive at his hands the most careful consideration. As to the question immediately before the House, he would remark that everybody considered it a very undignified proceeding to pay anything. The owners of ships had always thought they would rather not pay these light duties; but, in his opinion, those who derived an advantage ought not, as a general rule, to be above paying for it. He did not agree with the statement of the noble Lord that the lights would necessarily be better managed if they were paid for by the public; still loss did he think they would be more economically managed by a Board consisting of naval officers and scientific men under the superintendence of the Admiralty. Their experience of dockyard management was rather against the success of such an experiment.
    MR. CANDLISH, as a representative of a large maritime constituency, desired to say a few words on this subject. If this were merely a question of management the statement of the President of the Board of Trade would be eminently satisfactory;

    183
    but the real point at issue was whether the owners of vessels should be called on to pay the dues for sustaining the lights around our coasts. He would give an illustration of the manner in which the levying of these dues on the shipping operated, on the trade, of the country. There was a Liverpool firm who traded between Antwerp and South America, and during the last fifteen months their vessels had been in the habit of calling at Southampton. Since January, 1868, seven voyages had been made; the gross amount of freight earned was £1,029; and the amount paid for lights in consequence of calling at Southampton was £80 18 s. 5d., or 8 per cent on the gross amount of freight earned. Another firm trading between Baltimore and Bremen, during 1868, had nine ships which called at Southampton with passengers. The amount received for carrying the passengers was £1,736, while the amount of light duties payable, by reason of their putting into Southampton, was £313 12 s. 3d., or 18 per cent of the gross freight carried. It was clear that these dues were a serious hindrance to trade, and, indeed, he knew of two, if not three, companies who, in order to avoid them, now called at Havre, instead of Southampton. The right hon. Gentleman the Chancellor of the Exchequer had maintained that the tax ought to be retained because its incidence was equal; but the President of the Board of Trade had shown conclusively that this was not the case. He (Mr. Candlish) maintained that the incidence of the dues was very unequal, and pressed more heavily upon some parties than upon others. If the right hon. Member for Newcastle pressed the Motion to a division he should certainly vote in favour of it.
    SIR HEDWORHT WILLIAMSONsaid, he had been of opinion that this question was not likely to be considered by the Government in a proper manner; but since the President of the Board of had acknowledged the inequality of the mode in which the dues were levied, he should not have the slightest hesitation in voting against the Motion of his right hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle.
    MR. HEADLAMassured the President of the Board of Trade that he fully appreciated the spirit in which he was about to grapple with the question, and sincerely hoped that his right hon.
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    Friend would be successful in his endeavours to reduce the inequalities of the tax, and to bring the different bodies into something like harmony. The manner in which the proposal had been met by the Chancellor of the Exchequer gave him no hope, and as the shipping interest had, however, requested him to bring the, subject forward on a broad and general principle, he must ask his Friends to support him, as it was his intention to press his Motion to a division.
    MR. GLADSTONEregretted that after the speech of his right hon. Friend the President of the Board of Trade, in which he referred to his recent accession to Office and his desire to make himself master of this question, his right hon. Friend (Mr. Headlam) asked them to go a division, in which the House was to commit itself to the opinion—
    "That the practice of charging upon the shipping of this country and the shipping of Foreign Nations the cost of maintaining the Lights, Buoys, and Beacons which light and protect the shores of the United Kingdom should cease, as being a practice unworthy of a great maritime nation whose ships are afforded the use of the Lights of other Countries free of all expense."
    Now, if the House wanted to offer their opinion on the subject, these were not the terms which it ought to adopt; and there were many Gentlemen who, agreed with the opinions of his right hon. Friend, who would yet hesitate before they went into a Lobby in favour of this proposition. His right hon. Friend stated that the Chancellor of the Exchequer said this was a good tax. What, then? The negative of the Motion committed the House to no opinion, and left the Government quite free to propose what might be necessary when his right hon. Friend the President of the Board of Trade should have time to deal with it. But if the right hon. Gentleman could induce the House to vote with him it would be foreclosing the question, while those who voted with the Government would remain unpledged.
    MR. NORWOODsaid, he was not altogether satisfied with the attitude taken by the Treasury Bench. The Chancellor of the Exchequer had laid down the dictum that England was not to relieve her trade of certain duties until certain other countries had relieved us from paying import duties on our goods. This was totally at variance with the principles of Free Trade.
    Motion, by leave, Withdrawn.

    RECORDERS' DEPUTIES BILL.
    On Motion of Mr. DENMAN, Bill to extend the power of Recorders to appoint Deputies in certain cases, ordered to be brought in by Mr. DENMAN and Mr. WEST.
    Bill presented, and read the first time. [Bill 107.]
    House adjourned at One o'clock.

MINUTES.
PUBLIC BILLS—First Reading—Justices of the Peace Qualification * (93).
Select Committee—Fine Arts Consolidation and Amendment (No. 2) * (51), The Duke of Saint Albans, The Viscount Stratford de Redcliffe, and The Lord De L'Isle and Dudley added.
Committee—Sea Birds Preservation (54–92).
Committee—Report—Civil Service Pensions (53).
Third Reading—Militia (S3); Lands Clauses Consolidation Act Amendment (90); Consolidated Fund (£17,100,000), and passed.

THE MAYOR OF CORK.—QUESTION.
THE EARL OF STRADBROKErose to put a Question to the noble Earl the Secretary for the Colonies, of which he had given him private notice—namely, Whether any, and, if any, what, steps Her Majesty's Government intended to

77
take in consequence of the violent and disgusting speech lately made by the Mayor of Cork at a public dinner, at which he presided, given in honour of two convicted Fenians lately released from prison by the clemency of the Grown. It would not be necessary for him to refer to the various passages of that speech, which had excited so strong a feeling in this country and among the loyal inhabitants in Ireland, as the were so well stated last week by a noble Viscount (Viscount Lifford) on the cross-Benches: but he would mention one, where the Mayor greatly eulogized O'Farrell, who had been guilty of shooting at with intent to kill a member of our Royal Family, which sentiment was loudly cheered by the assembled company. Having for more than forty years paid annual visits to the South of Ireland, and being intimately acquainted with the feelings, character, and temper of the middle and lower orders there, he was confident that such language would greatly encourage them, or some one of them, to make a similar attempt against the brother of that Royal Prince, who at the time was travelling through the country. He should indeed regret that the Mayor of Cork should be prosecuted, unless the Law Officers of the Crown felt that a conviction was more than probable; but if this were doubtful, our course was clear: Parliament ought not to separate till a Bill had passed insuring punishment for the future to all men who might be guilty of such treasonable conduct, and to give the Crown power instantly to dismiss any public officer from his appointment.
EARL GRANVILLEsaid, he had no hesitation in answering the Question, though the noble Earl had not given the usual notice of it, for it was not likely to lead to any argument. It was the intention of the Government—as he believed had already been announced in "another place"—to bring in a Bill dealing with the case of the Mayor of Cork. THE MARQUESS OF SALISBURY asked whether the Bill would be of general operation, or whether it would be limited to the case of the Mayor of Cork?
EARL GRANVILLEreplied that the Bill would be confined to the case of the Mayor of Cork.

SEA BIRDS' PRESERVATION BILL.
(The Duke of Northumberland.)
(NO. 54.) COMMITTEE.
House in Committee (according to Order).
Clause 1 (Definition of terms).
Clause amended by the insertion of various local names, and agreed to.
Clause 2 (Season during which sea birds shall not be killed).
THE DUKE OF RICHMONDproposed that "shoot or attempt to shoot" be substituted for "kill, wound, or attempt to kill or wound." He thought these words, which would limit the operation of the Bill to prohibiting the shooting of these birds during the close season, leaving persons to kill them in any other manner, would effect the object of the Bill better than those at present in the clause. That object was, he presumed, to check the practice of large; numbers of persons going down by excursion trains and shooting these gulls during the breeding season for what they called "sport," but which he could only regard as wanton destruction, for no benefit accrued to anybody from it. This would be sufficiently accomplished if the clause were limited to "shooting;" for, if the inhabitants of the coast were allowed to capture birds by snares and other ingenious but difficult contrivances, there would be no fear of their numbers being sensibly diminished. In the islands off the coast of Ireland and Scotland the inhabitants maintained themselves for a considerable portion of the year on the eggs and food of these birds, and at St. Kilda this had been the case for tip-wards of 200 years, without having had the effect of diminishing their numbers. The noble Duke (the Duke of Northumberland) proposed, indeed, to exempt that island from the operation of the Bill, but there were other islands off the coast of both Ireland and Scotland to which the reasons for exemption equally applied.
THE ARCHBISHOP OF YORKthought the Bill might as well have been rejected on the second reading, if so serious an alteration were to be made in it. The principle of the Bill was to prevent these birds being killed in any way during the breeding season. He under- stood that one of the reasons why these

79
birds were destroyed in such large numbers was because their feathers adorned the hats of the fair sex.
THE DUKE OF NORTHUMBERLANDobjected to the Amendment. The adult bird was not an article of food except at St. Kilda; and this being far removed from the mainland he was willing to exempt from the operation of the Bill.
THE DUKE OF RICHMONDsaid, that, with regard to ladies' hats, fashions sometimes changed, and the feathers of these birds would not always be in demand for that purpose. He would not press his Amendment as the feeling of the House appeared to be against it.
Amendment withdrawn.
Clause amended by striking out after the words "this section shall not apply where the said sea bird is a young bird, and unable to fly;" the words "and is taken bonâ fide for the purpose of food."
Clause, as amended, agreed to.
Clause 3 (Home Office on application of justices, may vary such period), agreed to.
Clause 4 (Penalty for selling eggs of sea birds).
THE DUKE OF RICHMOND THE DUKE OF RICHMOND moved that this clause be struck out. It would cause much suspicion and annoyance to hundreds of poor people who took eggs for the purpose of food, and who might be repeatedly brought before a magistrate to state that the eggs in their possession were taken for that purpose. In ninety-nine cases out of every 100 the eggs were so taken, and in the hundredth case a man would naturally assert that, he intended to eat the eggs. How was the magistrate to be satisfied of this intention unless the man ate them then and there in his presence? Moreover, the clause would impose a penalty on a person who had received the eggs from a friend, while that friend, though the real offender, would escape. He felt bound to take the sense of the House on this clause.
Moved, "To leave out Clause 4."—(The Duke of Richmond.)
LORD HOUGHTONsaid, that among scientific men were some rejoicing in the peculiar name of "Oologists," to whom the collection and classification of eggs was a subject of great interest.
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Under the clause a learned Professor of one of our great Universities might be taken up by a policeman for having a sea bird's egg in his possession for scientific purposes. The number of eggs taken for purposes other than those of food was so small that it was hardly worth while to legislate on this point.
THE BISHOP OF OXFORDpointed out that the clause might operate harshly on the owners of collections of eggs. An ornithologist might have had a valuable egg in his possession for fifty years. Now, it would be very hard to insist on his showing that it was intended for food by eating it.
THE DUKE OF NORTHUMBERLANDdefended the clause, which had stood the test of considerable discussion in the House of Commons.
On Question, That the said Clause stand part of the Bill?—Their Lordships divided:—Contents 40; Not-Contents 54: Majority 14.

CONTENTS.

York, Archbp.

Gloucester and Bristol, Bp.

Northumberland, D. [Teller.]

Oxford, Bp;

St. David's, Bp.

Rutland, D.

Aveland, L.

Bristol, M.

Camoys, L.

Normanby, M.

De L'Isle and Dudley, L.

Egerton, L.

Amherst, E.

Fitzwalter, L.

Cowper, E.

Foley, L.

Granville, E.

Heytesbury, L.

Grey, E.

Lyveden, L.

Harrowby, E.

Meldrum, L. (M. Huntly.)

Romney, E.

Ormathwaite, L.

Stanhope, E. [Teller.]

Redesdale, L.

Tankerville, E.

Sheffield, L. (E. Sheffield.)

Eversley, V.

Sherborne, L.

Exmouth, V.

Silchester, L. (E. Long-ford.)

Halifax, V.

Powerscourt, V.

Sundridge, L. (D. Argyll.)

Sidmouth, V.

Wharncliffe, L.

Durham, Bp.

Wrottesley, L.

NOT-CONTENTS.

Cleveland, D.

Camden, M.

Grafton, D.

Lansdowne, M.

Marlborough, D.

Salisbury, M.

Richmond, D. [Teller.]

Saint Albans, D.

Airlie, E.

Somerset, D.

Annesley, E.

Bathurst, E.

Abercorn, M. (D. Abercorn.)

Cadogan, E.

Camperdown, E.

Ailesbury, M.

Clarendon, E.

Bath, M.

Cottenham, E.

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De Grey, E.

Clandeboye, L. (L. Dufferin and Claneboye.)

Feversbam, E.

Fortescue, E.

Clifton, L. (E. Darnley.)

Graham, E. (D. Montrose.)

Colchester, L.

Delamere, L.

Kimberley, E.

Dunboyne, L.

Lauderdale, E.

Foxford, L. (E. Limerick.)

Lucan, E.

Minto, E.

Gage, L. (V. Gage.)

Morley, E.

Houghton, L.

Nelson, E.

Monson, L.

Verulam, E.

Mostyn, L.

Northbrook, L.

Hardinge, V.

Ponsonby, L. (E. Bess-borough.)

Portman, L.

Bolton, L.

Romilly, L.

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

Somerhill, L. (M. Clanricarde.) [Teller.]

Cairns, L.

Tredegar. L.

Castlemaine, L.

Vernon, L.

Chelmsford, L.

Westbury, L.

Clause struck out.
Clauses 5 to 8 agreed to.
THE DUKE OF NORTHUMBERLAND THE DUKE OF NORTHUMBERLAND moved a new clause to follow Clause 8. "The operation of this Act shall not extend to the island of St. Kilda."
THE DUKE OF RICHMONDsuggested that no sufficient reason had been shown for the special exemption, by this clause, of the island of St. Kilda from the operation of the Bill, as policemen were certainly unknown in that neighbourhood. The Bill would probably not, in any case, make much, alteration in the habits of the people; but if there were to be any exceptions, there were probably several other places that had an equal title to be exempted.
THE DUKE OF ARGYLLthought there was a reason for treating St Kilda exceptionally. He doubted whether there was any other case where the people practically lived on sea birds.
Clause agreed to.
Remaining other clauses agreed to.
The Report of the Amendments to be received on Monday next; and Bill to be printed as amended. (No. 92.)

CIVIL SERVICE PENSIONS BILL.
(The Marquess of Salisbury.)
CIVIL SERVICE PENSIONS BILL.

  (NO. 53.) COMMITTEE.
  Order of the Day for the House to be put in Committee read.
  Moved, "That the House do now resolve itself into a Committee on the said Bill."—(The Marquess of Salisbury.)
  THE DUKE OF SOMERSETsaid, that while agreeing with the remark of
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  the noble Marquess (the Marquess of Salisbury), on a recent occasion, on the desirability of the business of the House being transacted in public, he must express surprise that he should have pressed forward this measure to its present stage without having given any explanation of its scope and purpose. Both sides of the House would agree that it was desirable in a representative Government to place the permanent servants of the Crown in a distinct position, from its Parliamentary servants; because it was essential that whichever party happened to come into power, they should find a set of able and experienced men, generally free from party feelings, ready to assist them in the duties of their Departments. But for this, indeed, we could not go on under a representative Government. A step, however, in the direction of this Bill, had been made by the Legislature last Session, by conferring the voting power on the permanent servants, and it was now proposed to make them eligible for seats in the House of Commons. Now, if these gentlemen were allowed to enter Parliament, with all the knowledge gained in the Ministerial Departments,—perhaps, while the confidential servants of the Minister themselves—he apprehended that it would be detrimental to the public service: because it would diminish those relations of confidence which now existed between the Ministerial heads and the permanent heads of Departments. Then he wanted to know whether the Bill was to apply not only to persons who had retired after a long tenure of Office, but to those whose Offices had been abolished under schemes of re-construction? Were such men to gain seats in Parliament, and to speak with the advantage of the information they had become possessed of—an advantage which would naturally give weight to their speeches, even though some of that information might be incorrect? Constituencies, it was urged, should be free to elect whom they liked; but there must be some limit to this liberty of choice; for they could not be allowed to elect men who were still permanent servants of the Crown; and, if men who had just retired from Office were returned, they would be liable to use, even unintentionally, the information which they had confidentially obtained. Anyone

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  who had been in Office during the last twenty years must know that things of this kind had sometimes occurred, greatly to the disadvantage of public servants: and if a man, while working in an office, was looking forward to establishing a Parliamentary reputation hereafter, he might be tempted to communicate with those who would assist him in that object, and to use his official knowledge for the purpose of his future carper. Our Civil Service was now admittedly excellent; why, then, should we run any risk by making this change? These were the objections to which the Bill seemed to him to be open; but it was quite possible that the noble Marquess, who could explain any matter he took in hand with so much ability and precision, would be able to show that they were unfounded.
  THE MARQUESS or SALISBURYsaid, he had been sometimes censured for making too long speeches, but he had not before now been found fault with for not speaking at all. The fact was that a very interesting subject was impending on the evening fixed for the second reading of this Bill, and having ascertained from the noble Earl (Earl Granville) who represented the Government in that House, and from the noble and learned Lord the Leader of the Opposition (Lord Cairns) that neither side objected to the measure, and knowing their Lordships' disinclination for unnecessary speeches, he proposed the second reading without remark. As, however, the noble Duke (the Duke of Somerset) desired an explanation of the Bill, he was, of course, bound to give him one. The object of the statute of Anne, on on which the present regulations on this subject were mainly based, was to limit the power and influence of the Crown by preventing too large a number of persons holding offices or pensions at the pleasure of the Crown from sitting in Parliament; but as pensions fixed by process of law and to which the holders had an indefeasible right did not then exist, their case was never contemplated In course of time such pensions, under the name of superannuations, were established, being earned by an annual deduction from individual salaries, and so becoming the right of the persons who earned them, not by favour of the Crown but by virtue of the duties they had performed. The statute of Anne it was then
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  found had an operation which had never been contemplated—such, at least, being the judgment of some lawyers—for it excluded from the House of Commons persons who had retired from the Civil Service on superannuations. There was therefore a primâ facie case for removing an accidental and undesigned disability. He was told that some very distinguished persons had been excluded from the House of Commons by the operation of this statute—among them being the late Mr. Hallam; but it would be invidious to refer to men still living. He could not see the slightest objection to their presence in Parliament, for there was not such a superfluity of public experience that persons should be excluded because they knew too much of public matters. Their Lordships would all understand the noble Duke's speech, but it was likely to have an unfortunate effect out-of-doors, giving people the impression that the main object of those who held high offices in the State was to enter into a kind of conspiracy to keep from Parliament the knowledge of what was going on within the walls of their offices. The noble Duke dreaded the possibility of a former subordinate revealing what had occurred in a public office; but it was proposed by the Life Peerages Bill to introduce into this House, inter alios, persons who had held these very permanent offices which were now regarded as an absolute disqualification for sitting in Parliament. The inconvenience which he dreaded was a purely theoretical one, for he did not believe the noble Duke could adduce a single instance in which the discretion always observed by servants of the Crown had been departed from, and in which knowledge obtained in a confidential capacity had been used to injure a former superior. Until a ease of this kind was adduced, such an imputation was a libel on a service which had not deserved it, and was no reason for re- tabling a special disability. If the noble Duke's view were correct, such men ought to be excluded as jealously from this as from the other House; but the most recent addition to the Roll of this House was a man who had held high office under the Crown with great distinction, and nobody had ever supposed that the gift of a peerage to such a man was an injury to Secretaries of State for India. The House of Commons did not

  85
  enjoy such a superfluity of political knowledge as to justify the exclusion of distinguished official men; and a possible breach of confidence which had never yet occurred did not justify the exclusion from Parliamentary honours of a deserving class of Her Majesty's subjects, who were eminently fitted to instruct and guide the action of Parliament.
  THE DUKE OF SOMERSETreminded the noble Marquess that these pensions were not in all cases matters of rule, but were sometimes settled between the head of the Department and the Treasury, according to a great variety of circumstances. He could mention many eases of the kind.
  EARL GRANVILLEsaid, that while thinking that any Peer rendered great service to the House by scrutinizing these small Bills, which often passed without investigation, he had not anticipated any objection to this measure, having understood that it was a declaratory Bill rather than one introducing any now principle. The special cases to which the noble Duke had just referred were very exceptional; and even where increased allowances were given on the recommendation of the head of the Department these would have been settled before the Bill came into operation; so that the person who had been granted a larger or smaller pension would be perfectly independent with regard to the future. He did not quite agree with the noble Duke as to the injury which retired official persons might do, for the presumption, in the case; of a man who had held office for many years in the Civil Service was that the information he possessed might be of great use to Parliament. As to any improper use of that information, he did not believe them capable of such conduct: but if anyone was so, he had ample facilities of doing it now by means of the public Press or by communicating with a Gentleman already in Parliament. He did not see how the Bill could make this more harmful; while, on the other hand, persons of this class might take a useful part-in the discussion of public questions.
  Motion agreed to; House in Committee accordingly; Bill reported, without Amendment; and to be read 3a on Monday next.

MILITIA BILL.—(No. 83.)
(The Lord Northbrook.)
MILITIA BILL.—(No. 83.)

  THIRD READING.
  Order of the Day for Third Reading, read.
  Moved, "That the Bill be now read 3a"—(The Lord Northbrook.)
  EARL GREYsaid, he desired to call the attention of their Lordships to the general subject of this Bill. He thought that the Bill, though an improvement on the existing law, would not fulfil the purpose of providing an efficient Army of Defence. What was wanted was some machinery, which, without unduly burdening the country, would provide for such a rapid increase of our means of defence when war broke out that we should not be exposed to sudden danger. That was the important object which should be had in view; and it had become of more importance of late years than at any former period. He need hardly remind their Lordships that Prussia had so organized her military system that she had been enabled during the late German war, to the great surprise of Europe and of the most experienced persons of the military profession, to call into immediate action such a, numerous and highly trained force as utterly to, defeat what was considered one of the most powerful Armies in Europe. More recently the Government of France, seeing what had been effected by Prussia, had followed her example. A law was not long ago passed in France which placed a largely increased proportion of the inhabitants at the disposal of the Government for the purpose of military training: the number of young men who would escape the necessity of performing some military service to the State was very small indeed, and France would in future possess the command of a very numerous trained Army, which, at a moment's notice she could bring into the field. During the discussion of the Budget in the Legislative Assembly, the French Minister of War pointed out the immense advantage which the new organization of the Army would give to France; she could under that organization, without doing anything to attract the attention of neighbouring Powers, in a very few days put an enormous Army in the field. Now, when our nearest and

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  most powerful neighbours pursued this policy—when they deliberately adopted measures by which they could, at any moment, assemble enormous Armies either for offensive or defensive operations—it certainly did seem to him, that for the safety of this country, they were bound to adopt the best means of having a trained force of a. similar kind, and he asked them to consider whether it was possible that the Militia, as now constituted, could effect that object. He had no fault to find with either the officers or men of the Militia—he believed both zealously performed to the utmost of their power the duties assigned to them; and it was really wonderful, all things considered, how much efficiency our Militia regiments had acquired—the utmost credit was, in his opinion, due both to officers and men for what they had done in this respect; but, after all, was it not universally admitied that the Militia, as it now stood, was utterly incapable of meeting a trained Army in the field? In the discussions that were held in that House not long ago on the general position of the Army, that opinion was avowed on both sides; all that was claimed for the Militia being that in six months after they were embodied they would become a really efficient Army. But in the present circumstances of Europe, if we should ever again unhappily be engaged in war, a force that would only be ready in six months would be of no use to guard against our real danger—it was in the first week of the war that our danger would arise. People made a great mistake who reasoned in favour of the Militia as at present constituted, from the experience of the great Revolutionary War with France. During that war, when the Militia was said to have rendered such useful service, the Militia was permanently embodied. It was kept embodied from the commencement of the war; and the consequence was that in name, indeed, it was still a Militia, but it became to all intents and purposes a second Army of the Line, quite as costly, but necessarily somewhat less efficient than the first. But that was not what was wanted now. "What was wanted was some force which would enable us to meet a sudden and pressing danger. One of the objects of this Bill was to meet the deficiency of officers for the Militia. Increased pay
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  was to be given to the officers in the Militia and in order to extend the field of selection, the property qualification was to be done away with. Both those measures so far as they went he approved. But they would do little or nothing towards meeting the want of properly trained officers in order to make the Militia effective. The profession of arms, like every other profession, could only be acquired by time, labour, and study. The advance which had been made in military science, the improvement of arms used in modern warfare, and the more complicated nature of modern compared with ancient warfare—all these required much higher instruction both in officers and in privates, but especially in the officers, in order to make an Army more really effective; than was necessary in former times, when a simpler system of warfare prevailed. But how was it possible that an officer of Militia, who was employed only one month in the year, could acquire the necessary qualifications? With the pay of only one month in the year he could not follow the Army as his principal occupation; so long, therefore, as peace lasted the Militia was necessarily officered by men whose military duties were only secondary, and subordinate to their civil occupations. Nor was it much better when war broke out. If the Militia was permanently embodied, a large portion of the officers who had other, and to themselves more important, avocations, would be compelled to retire, as occurred during the Crimean War, while all the more energetic of the officers who were willing to devote themselves to a military life and follow it as a profession would seek to get transferred to the Line, where all the distinction and rewards of the service were to be obtained; and the result would be, as he had stated, that the Militia would become a second Army of the Line, as costly, but inferior in efficiency. That was the inevitable character of the Militia under the existing system; and what was true in 1852 was more so now. He thought, considering the great change which had occurred in the organization of the Continental Armies, that if this country desired to make its means of defence proportionate to the increased means of offence which neighbouring nations were preparing, it must to some extent act on the same principle as they

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  do. That principle was to train to arms as perfectly as possible a very large number of men, and, having done that, to allow them to leave active service after a short service, the country, at the same time, retaining the power of recalling them to their colours whenever they might be wanted. By this means, without imposing a very heavy burden on the country during peace, the Government were able to command the service of an exceedingly efficient Army at a very little notice. As he had said, we ought to act on the same principle. He therefore heard, with great satisfaction, the Under Secretary of State (Lord Northbrook) declare on a former evening that this was, to a certain extent, the view of the Government; that unless they had a large number of men, who, after having so served and after having been so trained, were released from active employment, it would be impossible to make any sudden augmentation of the military force: this object, however, might be attained by a great abridgment of the period for which the men served. He trusted that he had understood correctly that it was this purpose which the Under Secretary for War stated the Government had in view. He hoped that the effect of the projected measure would not be embarrassed by an alteration of the law as it stood. Two years ago their Lordships passed a Bill which prolonged enlistment from ten years to twelve years. He (Earl Grey) objected at the time to the proposal, and he still retained the objections he then expressed; but he was persuaded that grievous evil and inconvenience arose from frequent changes in the law with respect to the conditions on which the soldiers were enlisted, and he trusted, as the Bill he had referred to had been passed by Parliament, that it would not be hastily repealed. It was not necessary either to repeal or alter it in order to obtain the desired force. The object could be effected by mere departmental arrangements. It might be notified to the soldiers that, on being perfectly and efficiently trained, such of them as desired their discharge would be allowed to have it on condition of entering the Army of Reserve. That plan might be tried as a tentative measure, as, in the course of a few years, it would be seen whether or not such an Army of Reserve would be obtained as it was de-
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  sirable to maintain. Of course, this plan would he mainly applicable to the Army at home; but he believed that, in some of the foreign stations, the same principle might be acted on under certain conditions. He was persuaded, however, that no attempt of this kind to enable troops to obtain an early discharge could be successful unless they combined with it means for the more effectual training of the soldiers. It was nearly thirty-four years ago since he began, when he held the Office of Secretary at War, very fruitlessly to preach this doctrine to the military authorities at, the Horse Guards. He regretted that he never succeeded in persuading them to adopt it, and he had not the power to over-rule their objections to it. But he was more than ever persuaded that Napoleon, that great master of war, was right in his doctrine that the training of the soldiers should be carried to the highest point—and not only military training, but industrial training also. They should be taught the use of the spade, and they should be employed, as far as possible, in public works of all lands, and especially in military works. The mistake committed at Aldershot of making by contract roads, drains, and all kinds of works, which might have been executed at a small expense by the troops, who would have gained instruction by being so employed, ought not to be repeated. Education at the military schools should also be attended to, so that every soldier might be able to read and write shortly after enlistment. All this would make the Army more efficient in case of war, and the soldiers, when they got their discharge, would be the better able to command good employment in civil life. By these means the Army might be converted into a great industrial school, and the propensity to intemperance—the cause of so many offences and so much sickness among the troops—would be checked. With regard to the shorter term of service, it was a great recommendation of any arrangements of this kind that it would cost no money whatever. On the contrary, by allowing men to leave the Army earlier, you would effect a great economy by a reduction in the pension list. After a few years service, not, of course, during war, but during peace, a sort of tedium and disgust came over a soldier, and the repetition of the same dull round of military duty made

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  a soldier's life intolerably irksome. This was another argument in favour of short enlistments. He did not dispute the advantage of having men of experience in the ranks during war; but there would never be a lack of old soldiers as non-commissioned officers; and then the terms of enlistment should be so settled that soldiers should only be allowed to take their discharge during peace. His firm conviction was that future wars would generally be of short duration; they would be speedily decided, and while a war continued, few old soldiers would desire to take their discharge. He was aware that the formation of an Army of Reserve would be a tiling of gradual growth; and he would ask the Government whether it would not be advisable—until an efficient Army of Reserve in connection with the Regular Army could be formed—to endeavour to apply part of the large sum -which was now annually wasted upon the Militia to make our Regular Army more complete. An increase might be made in the rank and file, the Reserve might thus be filled up; and, so soon as the Reserve was complete you might check recruiting. He believed it would be for the public advantage to spend in this manner the money wasted upon the Militia. The expense of the Militia, during the current year, would be more than £1,000,000. That was a, large sum to employ in maintaining a force which, as at present constituted, was ineffective for the purposes for which it was designed. Of this large sum no less than £287,000 a year was spent upon the Staff—that is to say, you employed an adjutant and non-commissioned officers during twelve months, for service rendered only during one month, at the cost of the sum he had mentioned. Such an arrangement was unsatisfactory and expensive. He was quite aware that the Militia, as now constituted, would not be worth much without a permanent Staff. But could there be any necessity for paying men for twelve months' work and only giving them one? Besides, those men were taken from active employment and placed in a country town, where, for eleven months out of twelve they had practically nothing to do. The adjutant left the Regular Army in order to obtain his adjutancy; there was no employment in the Militia which it would pay him to
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  accept in place of it; and, therefore, he was animated by none of those motives which ordinarily stimulated a man to exertion to make him energetic in the performance of the duties which were imposed upon him. For his own part, he thought it quite marvellous how well, under circumstances so disadvantageous, those duties were discharged, but there could still be no doubt that the inevitable tendency of the present system was gradually to produce slackness and inefficiency; and of the justice of that view he felt convinced, while he did not wish to impute the smallest fault to those who were now serving in the positions of which he was speaking. But, passing from that point, he would beg the House to observe how completely, if we had a large Reserve, which might at any moment be called upon to assist the Regular Army, it would save the country from sudden danger from any attack which there need be any reason to apprehend. He cordially concurred in what had fallen from his noble Friend the Under Secretary for War (Lord Northbrook) the other evening to the effect that we must look upon our Navy as our principal means of defence; what we required in addition was to be able to assemble at a moment's notice such a force on land as would make it an act of madness for any foreign Power to invade this country without such a considerable Army that it would occupy a great deal of time to put it in motion, and thus afford us ample notice of the attack with which we were threatened. He need hardly say that to carry 100,000 men across even the narrow sea which divided us from the Continent would necessitate a good deal of preparation, and that transports filled with troops would be an easy prey to our fast-sailing iron-clads. We might, therefore, feel perfectly secure if we had such a Reserve as would enable us to place in the field an Army capable of contending with any force which might be landed suddenly on our shores; and he certainly was no advocate for keeping up a Reserve to take the field in a foreign aggressive war, while he thought it most essential that we should be provided with the means of repelling invasion. He had stated that a number of men going into the regular Army from the Reserve would at once fill up the numbers of the depôts of the several regiments, and con-

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  vert them into efficient second battalions. The additional officers of the higher ranks that would be wanted would be obtained by the promotion of those already in the service, and all that remained to be done would be to give commission to ensigns, and, perhaps, lieutenants, to fill up the places of those who had been promoted. There would be a great advantage in thus promoting a number of young officers to the higher regimental ranks; and if that were not found to be sufficient nothing could be more easy than to make an arrangement by which a certain number of high regimental officers might be placed on half-pay, and in that way the current of promotion increased. He had now to apologize to their Lordships for having trespassed so long upon their time. The opinions which he had expressed were, in the main, those which he had adopted when he had the honour to hold the office of Secretary at War, thirty-four years ago, and which all the experience which he had since had only served to confirm. He had avoided entering further than was necessary into detail in endeavouring to elucidate the important principle which he was advocating. That for which he was contending was that we ought to have a Reserve connected with the Regular Army, and that steps ought to be taken to put an end to that frightful waste of public money which the present system involved. In conclusion, he had merely to express a hope that, be-fore the Estimates for another year were prepared, the Government would look attentively into the subject, and consider whether the Militia, as now constituted, was calculated to meet the real wants of the country, and whether the public money might not be economized, and the public safety at the same time better secured by the adoption of some measures founded on the principles which he had imperfectly endeavoured to bring under their Lordships' notice.
  LORD NORTHBROOK: The noble Earl who has just sat down is better entitled than, perhaps, any other Member of your Lordships' House to call attention to the subject which he has brought under our consideration. I feel, without any affectation, great difficulty in replying to the noble Earl, who has had, in administration and in Parliament, so large an experience in deal-
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  ing with that subject; but the difficulty has been greatly diminished by the observations which fell from him towards the close of his speech, in which he laid down the principle which he laid down in 1852, and which very much narrows the question which we are discussing. In that year, as now, the noble Earl stated that, with the superior naval force preserved by this country, it is not necessary for us to be in a state of immediate preparation to meet those enormous Armies which he says, truly, can be brought into the field by some Continental Powers. He admits that, in his opinion, it would be sufficient—and I think it is sufficient in the opinion of the country—that while we rely on our naval superiority for the first line of defence, we should have such a respectable force of trained soldiers as might prevent any Power with which we might happen to be at war from being tempted to send an expeditionary force to the shores of England which might possibly escape the naval forces of Her Majesty. I venture to say that the observations of the noble Earl on this point, in which I entirely concur, put out of the question any comparison which can be drawn between the forces of France or Prussia and those of this country. Far be it from me to express an opinion on the policy pursued by the Governments of those countries; but I may remark that it has been stated on no mean authority that those large armaments, and the pressure which they bring to bear on the populations, are not likely to last long. In a remarkable pamphlet written lately by Count Hamilton, and referred to in the Swedish Chambers, an opinion to this effect is expressed by that distinguished officer, who was present in the late Prussian campaign, and who possesses an intimate knowledge of the organization of the forces of the Continent. Dealing with this question on the basis that we ought to have a sufficient trained military force, what does the noble Earl ask us to do? He asks us to get rid at once of the present Militia, and to substitute for it an Army Reserve. Now, I confess that, with respect to the Militia, I cannot think the experience we have had of that force since 1852 justifies the condemnation of the noble Earl, who contends that it ought to be destroyed root and branch. Since the year 1852

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  the Militia has been called upon, during the Crimean War and the Indian Mutiny, to render assistance to the Regular Forces of the Crown. There were 100 Militia regiments embodied in 1854, and 145 in 1855, while a smaller number were embodied during the Indian Mutiny. Ten of those regiments of Militia volunteered their services to reinforce the garrisons in the Mediterranean, and during their stay there they were in a state of the highest efficiency, and might have been placed on a level with the regiments of the Line. In addition to the great services rendered by the Militia on the two important occasions referred to—in the seven years from 1854 to 1861—no fewer than 78,357 recruits for the Army were obtained from the Militia. Between the years 1803 and 1815—during the Great War—the number of recruits obtained for the Line from the Militia was 103,933. It will be seen, therefore, that the number of recruits per annum was greater during the more recent period than it was during the time of the Great War. Have the anticipations which the noble Earl formed of the Militia when the Act of 1852 passed been realized or not? The noble Earl feared that the Militia would interfere with recruiting for the Army. The fact, however, is that during the last few years the Militia has been recruited in full, but this has not in anyway interfered with recruiting for the Army. The noble Earl also anticipated that, as the Militiamen are only called out for a short period in each year, they would not be available when called upon. At one time, it is true, there were a great number of absentees from Militia regiments. In 1859, for instance, there were more than 42 per cent of absentees; but, in consequence of the recommendations of a Royal Commission appointed to inquire into the state of the Militia, considerable amelioration was made in the condition of that force, and the result has been eminently satisfactory. In 1867, the last year for which the Returns have been completed, the percentage of absentees in the number of privates enrolled was not 6. Nor is that by any means a solitary instance, for in no one year, between 1860 and 1867, has the percentage been higher than 12. In most of those years it has has been 7 and 6 per cent. Therefore there has been found no difficulty in
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  treating the Militia in such a way as to insure the attendance of the men at the time of training. The noble Earl has truly said it is more than ever necessary for officers of the Army and Militia to receive an efficient training in order that they may be able to instruct the men in their duties. As I mentioned, the other night, when called upon to address your Lordships, that subject is at the present time under the consideration of the Secretary of State, and it has been also very carefully considered by Major-General Lindsay, the Inspector General of the Reserve Forces. The noble Eai-1 may therefore rest assured that the subject will not be overlooked by Her Majesty's Government. Another remark made by the noble Lord, in his criticism of the Militia, is with respect to the cost of the permanent Staff. I certainly concur in what fell from the noble Earl on that subject, because it appears to be a very great waste of power to have officers and non-commissioned officers paid all the year round, and only performing-duty for a short period in each year. This subject is under the consideration of a Committee, which is now sitting at the War Office, at the instance of my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State, for the purpose of ascertaining whether some system cannot be contrived by which the services of the permanent Staff of the Militia may be utilized for other purposes than that simply of training the regiments when out at drill. I entertain a confident anticipation that the re-organization, or rather, the bringing together of the Reserve Forces of the country, will not be inconsistent with a considerable economy of expenditure. Such, then, being the criticism which the noble Earl has made on the Militia, I now come to the alternatives which he has asked us to adopt. And, first of all, I wish to say a word or two on what fell from the noble Ear1 with respect to shortening the term of enlistment with the view of establishing an efficient Army Reserve. As your Lordships may recollect, it is the opinion of my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State—which opinion he has expressed in the other House of Parliament—that, provided we could obtain men who would enlist in the Army for a shorter time of service and afterwards continue their services in an Army Reserve, the effect would be the establishment of the sound-

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  est system of Reserves which could be devised for the Army of this country. At the same time, no doubt, there are great difficulties in the way of establishing such a system, and I can assure the noble Earl that the suggestions he has made on the subject will receive the consideration which is due to them on the part of my right hon. Friend. The noble Karl has remarked that the alternative ought to be given to soldiers of leaving the Army and joining the Army Reserve. That plan has already been tried to a considerable extent, and has failed. General Peel, when Secretary of State, established a system of Army Reserve, and part of that system was that a soldier might, after seven years' service, leave the Army and serve the rest of his enlistment of twelve years in the Reserve; but I am not aware of any single case of a soldier having taken advantage of that option. At all events, there have not been more than three or four men in all the Army who have done so. I do not mean to say that the system has had a complete trial, and i certainly think there is a good deal of hope that a system of shorter enlistments may be carried out and an efficient Army Reserve produced. Still, it must be borne in mind that a considerable number of years must elapse before anything like a tangible force can be produced by this means. Considering that we must depend entirely on voluntary enlistments, and that it must be left to the feelings of the men as to whether they will join the Reserve or not, it will be impossible to calculate how many men would be obtained under such a system in a certain number of years; therefore, I cannot agree with the noble Earl in thinking such a system would in any sense be able at once to replace the Militia as the Reserve of this country for home service. The other alternative suggested by the noble Earl was an increase of the Regular Army. Now, there are great difficulties in the way of such an increase; one of these was forcibly made by the noble Earl in the speech to which he has referred, and which was delivered on the 15th of June, 1852. He then said—
  "If a considerable increase were made in the Army, I am convinced that, in a little time, the country would get tired of seeing a large force kept up with apparently little to do, and there would be such a pressure for the reduction of the
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  expense that it would be absolutely inevitable to give way to it."
  I entirely concur in that opinion. But I will assume that the whole of the £1,000,000 which the noble Earl mentioned as likely to-be spent in the present year on the Militia was spent in increasing the Regular Army. Say, for argument's sake, that 20,000 men might be thus added. I venture to contend that the Militia, in its present state, would be a better force to have in this country than an addition of 20,000 to the Army; and for this reason—your Lordships must know that the first thing to be done in time of war would be to take care that your garrisons were efficient. It was stated in this House by a high authority that 30,000 men would be necessary for your garrisons in time of war. What would then be the effect of an increase of 20,000 men to the Regular Army as compared with the present Militia? If the Army were increased by 20,000, you would have no more than those 20,000 men in addition to the troops available in this country for service in the field, after providing for the garrisons. But if the Militia of 120,000 were embodied, you would at once be able to relieve the Regular Forces in the garrisons; you would have available for the garrisons 30,000 men of the Militia, and the remaining 90,000 would also be of great assistance to the Regular Army. Sir John Burgoyne, in his recent pamphlet, says that a number equal to one-third of the Army in the field might very properly consist of Militia. Therefore, under the present system of Militia, supposing you had a Regular Army of 40,000 men in this country, you would have the whole of those 40,000 men disposable, to which you might add one-third of that number of Militia; whereas, if you increased the Regular Army by 20.000, and abandoned the Militia, you would have only 60,000 men in all, of which number 30,000 would be required for the garrisons. Therefore an increase of the Regular Army to the amount now spent upon the Militia, so far from increasing the strength of the country in time of war, would place us in a positively worse position than we are at present. I have now touched on most of the points brought under your Lordships' notice by the noble Earl. I have expressed my concurrence to a considerable extent

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  with the argument used by the noble Earl with respect to the introduction of shorter terms of enlistment, although I am not insensible to the difficulties attending it; but I cannot in any degree concur with him when he asks your Lordships to subvert altogether a force which I believe is to be regarded as the most important Reserve that this country possesses for a time of war, and which has been recognized as such by the Royal Commission which sat only two years ago to consider the subject of recruiting. Lastly, my Lords, I must be permitted to say that I believe at no former period did this country stand better than it does at the present moment in regard to its defensive position, if by any misfortune we should be placed in a state of war. All that appears to be desirable to the Secretary of State is that the different Reserve Forces of the country should be brought more into harmony and consolidated together, so that an organization may be prepared to enable them to act harmoniously if their services are called for; and also that, if possible, a plan of an Army of Reserve should be framed which would not only enable us to rely on the Militia to recruit the cadres in time of war, but also give us a large number of men who, having passed through the Army, would be immediately available to fill up the cadres of the infantry battalions, and render their services to the country in any part of the world.
  THE DUKE OF NORTHUMBERLANDsaid, he wished to call the attention of the Government to the extreme danger of diminishing the numbers of the permanent Staff of the Militia. he could only say he believed that if anything could he done to give the Militia greater efficiency than it now had it would be secured by an efficient permanent Staff. He earnestly trusted that no step would be taken that tended in any way to diminish either the number or the efficiency of the permanent Staff of the Militia; and he believed that any economy which would render these men's services less available, or which would reduce their energy and zeal, would be very detrimental to the public service.
  LORD DE ROSsaid, it had been proposed that the soldier should be relieved from any very long term of service; but the fact was he was relieved front it at present. The noble Earl (Earl Grey)
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  had stated that a man behaving respectably, and who had served as a soldier for a certain number of years, should be allowed to take his discharge; but the noble Earl forgets that such a soldier is already allowed to do so; provided he had prudence and self-denial to save up his pay with that object. As to the British soldier returning, as he did in Prussia, to his former agricultural habits, and being ready to be called out and brought into the ranks at once, there was no analogy between the Prussian and the English soldier. The English soldier, when discharged, seldom went home and resumed his original employment. He generally got a situation on a railway, or some domestic or Government employment. In his belief, the discouragement of long service would be about the greatest mischief that could be inflicted on the Army and on the country. He very lately read a statement made in the Chamber by Count Moltke, the celebrated Prussian general who organized the late campaign, in regard to the proposition for shortening the service of the soldier, and that distinguished authority had stated most distinctly that, although the Prussians had gained a great triumph over Austria, and had much reason to be proud of it, they should remember that that success had been obtained over troops, the greatest proportion of whom had not been eighteen months in the Army; that if they diminished the term of service of the British soldier, gain what they would by it in economy—they would have an armed mob, and not an Army; and he earnestly cautioned them against so great a misfortune. To advert to the matter of the Militia Staff so judiciously mentioned by the noble Duke. The adjutants in the Militia had been referred to disparagingly by persons not very conversant with that subject; but he happened to know many of the Militia adjutants, and he believed they were most active and energetic men, who deserved the greatest credit for the perfection to which they brought their regiments. He had very lately seen the Berkshire Militia at field exercise, and he was quite surprised at the efficiency and activity of the adjutant and the non-commissioned officers of the permanent Staff of the corps.
  Motion agreed to; Bill read 3a accordingly (with the Amendments), and passed, and sent to the Commons.

  JUSTICES OF THE PEACE QUALIFICATION BILL [H.L.]
  A Bill to repeal the Qualification required by the Act eighteen George the Second, chapter twenty, for the office of Justice of the Peace—Was presented by The Earl of ALBEMABLE; read 1a (No. 93.)
  House adjourned at a quarter before Eight o'clock, to Friday next, half past Ten o'clock.