Sitting of 24 March 1871

MINUTES.
SUPPLY—considered in Committee—Resolutions [March 23] reported.
WAYS AND MEANS—considered in Committee—Resolution [March 23] reported.
PUBLIC BILLS—Ordered—Mutiny *.
First Reading—Consolidated Fund (£5,411,900) *.
Committee—Report—Oyster and Mussel Fisheries Supplemental * [79]; Consolidated Fund (£462,580 9s. 11 d.) *; Bank Holidays * [50–88].
Third Reading—West African Settlements * [57], and passed.

WALES—EDUCATION—BUILDING GRANTS.—QUESTION.
MR. RAIKESasked the Vice President of the Council for Education, Whether he has any objection to lay upon the Table of the House any Memorials or Communications addressed to him by which he has been induced to refuse Building Grants to Church of England Schools in Wales during the last six months; and whether, in the event of there being an objection to producing such Communications in extenso, he will

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state to the House generally the reasons urged therein for the refusal of such grants?
MR. W. E. FORSTER, in reply, said, he really could not lay on the Table the various memorials, communications, and addresses on the subject of those building grants. He had received a great many, both in favour of those grants and against them. The hon. Member was mistaken if he supposed that it was in consequence of these memorials the grants were refused. Every memorial or communication received by the Department he endeavoured fully to consider; but the grants were given upon established principles. No grant for a new school was given to applicants on behalf of any religious denomination unless the Department was satisfied that the majority of the parents of the children likely to attend that school belonged to that denomination. That was the principle which he found in action when he came into the Department, and which he had carried out very carefully and especially in Wales, on account of the denominational feeling which he was sorry to say prevailed there so much on both sides.

FRANCE AND GERMANY—THE WAR—CAPTURE OF BRITISH SHIPS.

  QUESTION.
  MR. WHITEasked the Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, Whether he has any objection to lay upon the Table of the House the Official Despatches from China and Saigon with reference to the capture by the French of two British vessels the "Sophia Rickmers" and the "Robert Rickmers?"
  VISCOUNT ENFIELD: Sir, the Sophia Rickmers and the Robert Rickmers were two German vessels, sold to a Mr. R. Rickmers, styling himself a British subject, and were captured by the French during the late war between France and Germany in the Eastern Seas. Mr. Rickmers, in complaining to the Foreign Office, stated that his parents belonged to Heligoland, but did not mention whether he had been born in British dominions; he had, however, disqualified himself from becoming the owner of a British ship by taking the oath of allegiance to the Free State of Bremen. These ships are now before the Prize Court at Saigon, and Her Majesty's Government
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  would not consider themselves justified in asking for the release of these vessels from the French authorities, as their Prize Courts have long since decided that the sale of an enemy's ship to a neutral after the commencement of a war does not entitle it to exemption from capture on the high seas. There would be no objection to produce the Correspondence if the hon. Gentleman would move for it.

EDUCATION—BALANCE SHEETS OF SCHOOLS.—QUESTION.
MR. CARTERasked the Vice President of the Committee of Council on Education, Whether he is willing to direct that the Balance Sheets of all Elementary Schools receiving Government Grants should be published in the local newspapers, in order that the inhabitants of the district in which such schools are situated, and for whose benefit they are erected and maintained, may have a full knowledge of their financial position and resources?
MR. W. E. FORSTERsaid, in reply, that no power was given to the Department by the Act of last year to require that those balance-sheets should be published, as the hon. Gentleman wished. He was not sure whether they had such a power or not; but, even if they had, he confessed he did not think it desirable to exercise it, for three reasons. First, because it would be a great inconvenience to make any further alteration in the Code this year; secondly, if the Department required such a thing to be done it would be necessary to see that it was done correctly, and that would impose great labour on the Office; and, thirdly, because it was not necessary. There were more than 8,000 of those schools in England and Wales, and no doubt it would be a very good thing for the local newspapers to have the advertisements; but it was an universal order to the Inspectors to see those accounts and ascertain that they were correct.

FRANCE AND GERMANY—THE WAR—COMPENSATION TO BRITISH SUBJECTS.—QUESTION.
MR. CADOGANasked the Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, Whether there has been any Correspondence between British Subjects residing in France and the Foreign Office, or with Her Majesty's Ambassador in

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France, in reference to the loss of, or damage done to their property since the entry into France of the German Army; and, if so, whether there is any objection to produce this Correspondence; and, whether the opinion of the Law Officers of the Crown has been taken upon the liability of the French Government to compensate British Subjects resident in France for loss and damage to their property during the late war?
VISCOUNT ENFIELD: Sir, Correspondence of the nature referred to in the Questions of my hon. Friend has passed between certain British subjects residing in France and the Foreign Office, and a despatch has been addressed to Lord Lyons on the subject. There will be no objection to produce this Correspondence if moved for. The opinion of the Law Officers of the Crown has also been taken as to the liability of the French Government to compensate British subjects resident in France for their losses during the late war, and that opinion has been unfavourable as to the legal claims of such British subjects.

METROPOLIS—HYDE PARK.

  QUESTION.
  MR. BROGDENasked the First Commissioner of Works, Whether it is intended to provide for the safety of the public desiring access to Hyde Park from the neighbourhood of Brompton by constructing an underground communication from the south to the north of Rotten Row?
  MR. AYRTONreplied that the subject had been more than once under the consideration of the Office of Works. When the time arrived for examining the expenditure on account of Hyde Park, if it was the general wish of hon. Members that such a communication should be made, he should be happy to take the necessary steps.

ARMY—HOUSEHOLD TROOPS.

  QUESTION.
  MAJOR GAVINasked the Secretary of State for War, If the principle of selection is to be adopted in the regimental promotion of the Foot Guards and the Household Cavalry?
  MR. CARDWELLreplied that the same rule would be applied to the Guards as to the Line.

MEAT SUPPLY—THE ORDER IN COUNCIL.—QUESTION.
MR. ALDERMAN W. LAWRENCEasked the Vice President of the Council of Education, Whether his attention has been directed to a statement made at a meeting of the Metropolitan Meat and Poultry Market Association on Tuesday last, That, in their opinion, the Order in Council of March 10th prohibiting the importation of fresh meat from France and Belgium is a measure of unnecessary precaution which is calculated to interfere injuriously with the supply of animal food to this country, and to materially enhance its price more especially to the poorer classes of the community?
MR. W. E. FORSTERsaid, in reply, that he had seen the statement in the newspapers to which the hon. Gentleman referred; but he could not help thinking it was very exaggerated, and calculated to create unreasonable alarm. It was based on the supposition that the importation of all fresh meat had been prohibited by the recent Order in Council; but the directions given applied merely to beef and veal. He did not know whether it was thought to be an "unnecessary precaution" to limit the supply of meat in that way; but it was the opinion of the Privy Council, after careful consideration, that it was absolutely necessary to take that precaution with regard to the carcases of cattle. The cattle plague was still raging in France, and seemed to defy all the efforts which were being made there to put a stop to it. He was, however, convinced that there was no ground for apprehension that the price of meat in England would in consequence be raised. The number of cattle arriving from France and Belgium was very small; and while he was of opinion that it was absolutely necessary to take the precaution in question, he was glad to think that its result would not be at present to interfere with the price of food. There was no reason for supposing that more meat would come this year than last year, when only 136 cwt came from France to London, and 12 cwt from Belgium. The regulation was obliged also to be applied to fresh, though not to salt, hides.

INDIA—RAILWAYS.—QUESTION.
MR. WATERHOUSEasked the Under Secretary of State for India, What progress has been made in the construction of the Government lines of Railway in India towards giving effect to the announcement, made at the close of last Session, that it was the intention of the Government to commence laying down Railways to the extent of 800 miles; and, whether any and what lines have already been commenced; and, if not, what are the present intentions of the Government?
MR. GRANT DUFF: Sir, no such announcement was ever made. The statement alluded to by the hon. Member is, I presume, one made by me on the 3rd of August last, to the effect that Lord Mayo had announced in the Budget debate of April, 1870, at Calcutta, that he hoped to open—not to lay down—800 additional miles of railway in the present financial year. Of these, 645 only have been opened, so far as we are aware; but as the financial year is not quite concluded, it is possible that the hopes of the Viceroy may be even more completely fulfilled than they have been. On only one long State line—the Lahore-Peshawur line—have works been actually commenced; but several other lines have been, or are being, now surveyed, and with all of these it is the intention of the Government of India to proceed with all possible speed—the important question of the gauge, with regard to which some interesting Papers have been laid on the Table, being now settled.

ARMY—ORDNANCE MAPS.—QUESTION.
MR. H. B. SHERIDANasked the Secretary of State for War, Whether the Barracks and Stations for troops throughout the United Kingdom are supplied with Ordnance Maps of the locality in which they are situated and its surrounding districts, for the ready inspection and study both of officers and men?
MR. CARDWELL: A two-inch survey of the neighbourhood of Aldershot is being prepared by the Office of Works for the use of the officers at Aldershot. There is no general regulation for the supply of maps of the locality of stations in which troops are serving; but it has been the custom for the Horse Guards
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to recommend applications when forwarded by general officers, and the applications have been complied with.

LONDON REPUBLICANS.—QUESTION.
MR. G. BENTINCKasked the First Lord of the Treasury, Whether his attention has been called to the report in "The Times" of a meeting held on Wednesday at the Wellington Music Hall, at which the following Resolution is reported to have been put and carried by acclamation:—
"That we, constituting the present meeting, having watched attentively the many fruitless attempts made in the House of Commons to economise the reckless expenditure of the people's money, which has always resulted in a more lavish outlay, and feeling convinced that any Government formed under the present system, is so much under the influence of the few privileged families now monopolizing place and honour in the nation, and is therefore incapable of the broad and comprehensive legislation urgently demanded in the interests of the industrial community, declare that a republican form of Government is the only one capable of developing the great resources of the Country, and worthy of the confidence and support of all true democrats;"
whether, if the report be correct, the First Lord of the Treasury will consult the Law Officers of the Crown as to whether, in their opinion, such language is of a treasonable or seditious character; and, whether, in the event of such being the opinion of the Law Officers of the Crown, the Government is prepared to take any steps for dealing by law with those who have held this language?
MR. GLADSTONE: My attention, Sir, has not been called to the report in The Times of a meeting held on Wednesday at the Wellington Music Hall. I was not aware of the existence of the Wellington Music Hall, and my knowledge of it is confined to the subject-matter of the resolution which is quoted by the hon. Member. He asks me whether, if the report be correct, certain steps will be taken by the Government. I cannot say whether the report is correct or not, nor do I apprehend that is a point it would be at all easy to ascertain. Looking, however, at the question as it stands, I have no hesitation in saying that it is not the intention of the Government to consult the Law Officers of the Crown, or "take any steps for dealing by law with those who have held this language." In this country there is a great and just unwillingness to interfere

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with the expression of any opinion that is not attended with danger to the public peace. Now, I do not see on the face of this case anything which need excite apprehension. We shall think it right, therefore, to proceed on the double principle, which it seems to me is founded on wisdom, that it is the best course to pursue, except where the public peace is endangered, to trust to the notorious good sense and loyalty of the great mass of the people for the repression of wrong and foolish opinions; and, secondly, that public notice taken of those opinions, except in cases of absolute necessity, has a tendency to give them an importance to which otherwise they would not attain, and to prevent them from sinking into that oblivion which is their destined and proper course.

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

IRELAND—LABOURERS' RESIDENCES.

  RESOLUTION.
  MR. W. H. GREGORYsaid, he wished to bring under the notice of the House and of the Government the condition of the most helpless and hopeless class in the United Kingdom—namely, the agricultural labourers of Ireland. Last year, during the passing of the Land Bill, he had been anxious to make some provision for the encouragement of the erection of suitable habitations for these unfortunate people, but he was unable to do so. The right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary for Ireland (Mr. C. Fortescue), who had charge of the Bill, opposed the proposals made by him (Mr. W. H. Gregory) not on the merits or demerits of the proposal, but that the subject was too large to be fully and fairly entered into in a Land Bill. The right hon. Gentleman admitted that it deserved the fullest consideration, and gave the House to understand that it was the intention of the Government to legislate in the coming Session for the evils which he fully acknowledged. He (Mr. W. H. Gregory) considered that no land-lord-and-tenant legislation could be complete which left the misery of this large portion of the population of Ireland un-
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  touched, and he regarded a Bill for the improvement of the Irish labourers' condition as the corollary and complement of the Land Act. He, of course, did not look forward to Utopian schemes of finding constant employment and high wages for these people; all that he wished to do was, what legislation could without difficulty effect—namely, to encourage the erection of suitable habitations for labourers, and to discourage those habitations which at present were occupied by human beings, but which would not be considered in England as fit for brutes. There was a Report drawn up last year by the Irish Poor Law Inspectors, on the condition of the Irish labourers. Their testimony was almost unanimous, and it was to this effect—that discontent was general among that class, chiefly owing to the miserable habitations in which they were condemned to dwell; that the sense of their degraded condition and their constant privations made them hopeless, and, in some cases, reckless and desperate; and that, almost without exception, they despaired of rising to anything approaching to decent comfort in their own country; and, consequently, that all their thoughts were directed to America. On the other hand, it was stated that where they held directly from the landlord they were generally cheerful and contented. Now, let the House hear the numbers that were included in this class. There were 479,000 agricultural labourers in Ireland. Of these, 336,000 were occupiers of what are called cottages, but of what would in England be called hovels, and 80,000 were living with their families in one room. He (Mr. W. H. Gregory) would quote only one or two passages from these trustworthy Reports, to show the condition and feelings of this large portion of the population. Mr. Robinson, writing of Dublin, Wicklow, Carlow, Kildare, Kilkenny, Meath, Queen's County, and Wexford, some of the most prosperous and civilized counties in Ireland, says—
  "Labourers are discontented, because of the manner in which they are housed. Those who work for owners cultivating their own lands are often provided with suitable well-built cottages. Labourers so circumstanced are contented."
  Mr. O'Brien, writing of Louth, Armagh, Cavan, Dublin, Fermanagh, Monaghan, and Tyrone, says—"Discontent appears unquestionably to be the prevailing sentiment amongst the class in question." He

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  shows that though wages have risen, prices have largely risen also—the cost of living in the workhouses for the year ending September, 1869, being double that of the year ending September, 1849. But his account not only from his own experience, but from the reliable statements of medical officers of different Unions of the condition of labourers' habitations is lamentable. Here is one testimony—
  "The house accommodation of the labourers is simply wretched. Their houses are seldom fit to keep out the rain; the floors are damp; the windows do not deserve the name—mere holes frequently stuffed with rags; they have very rarely built chimney braces, and in nine cases out often are filled with smoke every time a fire is put on. No matter how large the family, there is never more than one sleeping place off the kitchen, in which they are just huddled together. Nothing can be more miserable than the habitations of the agricultural labourers, for they cannot be called houses. They are a disgrace to the Christianity and civilization of the country. If the farmers have claims for an improvement of their status, the labourers have a hundred times stronger claims."
  Another medical officer writes—
  "Their cabins are the most wretched in the world, being small and without ventilation or light—some not having chimneys, and all with damp clay floors. Some let in the rain. Their furniture and their bed-covering are on a par with their houses. The atmosphere of these cabins, combined with the other privations they are subjected to, has made this class particularly susceptible to low fever and pulmonary complaints."
  Mr. Burke, writing of Galway, Clare, Kerry, King's County, Limerick, and Queen's County, says—
  "The labourers are discontented … … The labourer occupies a miserable cabin, for which he pays 1s. a-week to the farmer on whose land it happens to be. When repairs are wanted he must execute them himself, receiving an allowance only in rare instances. In the case of labourers employed by the gentry or higher classes, the service of the workman is lighter, and his relation to his employer more cordial. Moreover, he finds in his master and his master's family sure friends when sickness or misfortune overtakes him."
  He (Mr. W. H. Gregory) wished this passage to be borne in mind, for it tallied with the reports received from all quarters, and determined him as far as possible in any legislation to place the labourer under the landlord rather than under the farmer; for this he well knew, in spite of all the hard things said of Irish landlords, that there was no discontent on the part of labourers living under them and working for them; and that if all the labourers in Ireland were polled, there would hardly be found a single
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  man who would not pray to be under the landlord in preference to being under the farmer. He (Mr. W. H. Gregory), therefore, would recommend, in the first place, that every encouragement should be given to landlords to erect cottages for their labourers—and one of the first objects was to enable them to construct them with the minimum of expense. The terms offered by the Board of Works were extremely liberal; but, unfortunately, the conditions of that, in other respects, most excellent Act of Parliament, Sir William Somerville's Cottier Tenements Act, were so multifarious and onerous that landlords were unwilling to avail themselves of public loans. The consequence was that only £51,000 had been taken from the Board of Works for labourers' cottages. This was, however, no criterion of what was doing, as many landlords were erecting this class of house at their own expense, and putting other cottages into creditable condition. There was an interesting treatise written by Mr. Kebbel, on the condition of the English agricultural labourer, which throws some light on this subject. He says—
  "One of the difficulties, if not the main difficulty, connected with the building of cottages is that of rent—one-seventh of the labourer's income is computed at what would be a fair rent."
  If a cottage could be built for £60 in Ireland—and his (Mr. W. H. Gregory's) experience proved that it could be so built—at 6 per cent, the labourer would have to pay £3 10 s. a-year. Thus 1s. a-week would go near to give an owner a fair return for his money, though not to a speculator. Mr. Kebbel goes on to say—
  "If the cottager holds from the farmer, he cannot carry his labour to the best market—he must take the wages offered to him, and, perhaps, part of the year be without employment."
  He quoted Mr. Boyle and Mr. Hunter, who, in their Report to the Privy Council, gave as their opinion, from their experience of that part of England which they inspected—
  "That the worst cottages were small freeholds, inhabited generally by persons too poor to make the necessary repairs. The next in the scale of badness were those of small proprietors and speculators, who invested in them as a money speculation, and who charged a high rent and spent little in repairs. The best were those belonging to large proprietors, who charged a rent without actually looking to repayment of the outlay."
  And both these gentlemen conclude—

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  "That a cottage ought to be considered in the light of farm buildings, from which the landlord expects no return, except in the shape of part of the rent of the farm."
  All these reasons applied to Ireland; but there were other reasons, too. If the tenants on an estate were allowed to take the initiative in building cottages, you would have a widespread system of division and subletting, against which your legislation has been deservedly directed; and things would be even worse than before, for legislation would be giving encouragement to, and actually affording the means for the propagation of unmitigated evil. There was no doubt also that the labourer would become a mere serf to the farmer, dependent on him for employment, and obliged to accept whatever wages he might offer. The first provision, therefore, should be to encourage the landlord to build the labourers' houses necessary for the property. Cases, however, might arise where a landlord would do nothing. He had been furnished with an instance in the case of Kanturk. That town belonged to Lord Egmont. He had levelled a large number of houses; but he absolutely refused to grant a lease, or to allow cottages or buildings to be erected in the town, as being "contrary to the rules of the estate," and over 400 people evicted from their former habitations were now crowded together in misery and squalor, and to the great danger of the health of the locality. Such was the statement made to him. He (Mr. W. H. Gregory) was bound to add that he heard that the persons ejected were compensated by the agent. In that case it might be permitted to the tenant of a farm of a certain size to build the cottage, under restrictions as to the character of the building, and with clear provisions that it should not be made a vehicle for subdivision and subletting, and encouragement might also be given for the building of cottages in towns. Now, one word as regards subletting. A certain amount of agricultural land should be attached to the dwelling; but a limit should be placed upon it, or the worst state of things would arise by the labourer ceasing to be a labourer and becoming a small farmer; but it would be absolutely essential that this condition should be relaxed so far as a plot of grazing land was concerned, to enable him to keep a cow, the great object of desire to every
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  labourer in Ireland, and which made the whole difference to him between comfort and misery as regarded his own nourishment and the health of his family. The annual value to the labourer in England of a cow is computed at £12. These, then, were his recommendations—that the labourer's cottage should, if possible, be built by the landlord; that the over-stringent regulations of the Cottier Tenements Act should be relaxed—though a check as to the character of the structure should be required; that only a small portion of agricultural land should be attached, but that the restriction maybe relaxed in favour of grass for a cow; that the landlord may grant to an undoubted labourer a larger amount of land than that contemplated by the Land Act, without constituting him a tenant under the Act; that the tenant, in case of the landlord's refusal, may be allowed to build, but only on holdings of a certain size; and that he should be obliged to give ample proof that the transaction was of a bonâ fide character, and not with a view to evade the law, and subdivide the holding. There was, however, one more recommendation, even more important than all these, without which, in his (Mr. W. H. Gregory's) opinion, legislation would be absolutely hopeless, and that was this—that all rent-paying cottages should be subject to inspection, and that no rent should be recoverable from any habitation till it was fit for the housing of human beings. Who was to do this? The relieving and sanitary officer might be called on to report to the Board of Guardians of each Union on the condition of the houses in each townland, and a notice might be served on the landlord and receiver that, unless the habitation be placed within the shortest period in habitable condition, no demand for rent should be valid. It was impossible to reach the existing state of things without some such remedy. Good houses might be erected for many labourers; but it would be impossible to get at those horrible hovels which made a stranger's heart grow cold within him, and which were a disgrace to our Christianity and civilization, and which were, moreover, the propagators of pestilence throughout a district. He would detain the House a few minutes while giving an example of the horrible misery which was allowed to exist, against every remonstrance, on some estates in Ireland.

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  On a property in the Union to which he (Mr. W. H. Gregory) belonged in Ireland, there were two or three villages which were reported by the relieving officer to the Board of Guardians to be in a shocking condition of misery, and the hot-beds of fever. The medical officer, a most trustworthy, conscientious gentleman, sent in his report. He described the houses as devoid of thatch—that the rain poured in upon the floor—that the unfortunate inhabitants had not even a bed, but were lying on wet straw; and that in one village alone there were over 30 cases of typhoid fever and eight deaths during a short period of the commencement of last year. The estate was in Chancery, and the Guardians requested, in more than one communication, the receiver to do something to assist these poor people to put their houses in order; but no reply came. He (Mr. W. H. Gregory) did not blame the receiver, who had the character of being a kind, humane man. His hands were clearly tied. In last September the disease again broke out, and the medical officer again reported the condition of these villages to the Board. His report was forwarded to the Master in Chancery, and this was the answer—
  "Let the receiver call on the Guardians to state precisely what they require him to do, and state also the Act of Parliament under which they claim authority to interfere with the property of the minors in this matter, and with the receiver acting under the Court."
  The Guardians sent the following reply:
  "A copy of the Master's ruling with reference to a letter forwarded by this Board to him having been brought before them, they have to state they did not ground their application on any Act of Parliament, under which they could claim authority to interfere with the property of the minors, their only desire being to alleviate the painful state of things brought under their notice by the medical and sanitary officers of the Union; and if the Master and receiver cannot be influenced by the feelings of humanity which have prompted this Board to appeal to them, things must, of course, remain in their present scandalous position."
  The Master's reply was to return the resolution, with this comment—
  "I have to inform you that I do not consider it consistent with my official duty to exercise feelings of humanity at the expense of minors, whose property is, by the Court, placed under my official care, without any legal right or authority to incur such expense, and that my refusing to do so until a proper authority was first obtained, as expressed in my ruling, does not appear to me a justification for transmitting to me, what I am sorry to be
  582
  obliged to regard as an impertinent communication, which I return."
  It is well the House should know the name of this official, "who does not consider it consistent with his duty to exercise feelings of humanity," who says he has no legal right to incur any expense in the case of these unfortunate tenants. His name was Master Fitzgibbon. This was the same Master who recently, in his management of the property of Fagan's Minors, insisted on the tenant signing agreements that he would not avail himself of the provisions of the Land Act; and he (Mr. W. H. Gregory) considered his conduct as disgraceful to his private character as to the high and responsible position which he occupied. It was notorious that this correspondence was the result of obstinacy and ill-humour; for he (Mr. W. H. Gregory) never knew of a case in which a Master did not order necessary works to be done on a property; and he wished most cordially that Master Fitzgibbon might be forced to occupy, for one rainy night, one of these hovels to which he had condemned so many of his fellow-creatures to abide in till fever and ague removed them to a better and a happier world. Now, bear in mind that these poor wretches were not squatters, but payers of rent. Here is an authentic account of them—
  "There are 14 houses in the village where fever existed, and of these 13 paid rent, one only being occupied by a squatter. There were 36 cases of fever altogether in Shehanagh village, and of these 11 are dead. The great majority of the houses are in wretched repair, and, to my own knowledge, rain falling down on the bed of a fever patient was not uncommon."
  This was from the medical officer of the district. If his proposals for inspection, and that no rent should be exacted in such cases as these, which were too common, alas! such men as Master Fitzgibbon would not be entreated in vain to indulge in feelings of humanity—they would be compelled to do their duty. They were now holding an inquiry as to the state of Westmeath and Meath. The Reports of the Poor Law Inspectors had informed the House that the miserable condition of the labourers of Meath was one of the causes of discontent and outrage in that district; and he was determined, for one, to ascertain from every competent witness whether this statement was not correct, and whether

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  remedies for, as well as repression of, crime were not still essential. Were the legislation which he now advocated to involve a great consumption of time, he would not feel justified, after the kindness of English and Scotch Members in permitting Irish business to occupy the whole of two Sessions, to press this subject amid so many other claims on the attention of the Government. But a Bill embodying all the provisions he had alluded to would involve no protracted deliberations. He was sure that if the hon. Baronet the Member for Londonderry (Sir Frederick W. Heygate), and the hon. Member for Kendal (Mr. Whitwell), and the hon. Member for Cork (Mr. Maguire), were to meet together with the noble Lord, they could in half an hour frame the heading of a Bill. It was urgently required. These poor men, so helpless and so hopeless, had no particular power; they commanded no votes; they had not the self assertion, the means of co-operation, or the education of a town population. All the more reason, then, for Parliament to listen to their cry. The old saying of "Qui laborat orat" was, indeed, true with them. They pray you to do something to raise their condition, and their habitations above—aye, or even equal to—that of the cattle of the field; they pray you to be allowed a seat at Nature's table in their own land, and that their gaze may not ever be turned from Ireland to America as the only chance of changing that which is now but existence into life and hope; and if you grant that prayer, you may rely on it that their prayer in return will be not for anarchy and confusion, but for peace, plenty, and employment; and that, in return for good treatment, they will give you the best return in their power—namely, good conduct and honest work. The hon. Member concluded by moving the Resolution.
  SIR FREDERICK W. HEYGATEsaid, he had great pleasure in seconding the Resolution. He could not agree with everything the hon. Gentleman had said; but, still, his object must commend itself to the common sense of everyone interested in the welfare of Ireland. The question was not, in any degree, a political one; for, as the hon. Gentleman had stated, that part of the population who would be benefited by a measure of this kind had no votes.
  584
  They numbered, however, 400,000, so that this proposal involved the happiness, with those connected with them, of more than 2,000,000 persons, or about two-fifths of the whole population. Their condition was in no way improved by the legislation of last year; but he understood that a positive promise had been given by the late Chief Secretary that a measure would be brought before Parliament to ameliorate their condition. When he (Sir Frederick Heygate) last year had given Notice of a clause in the Irish Land Bill, which he was convinced would have had a most beneficial effect, he was met by the Government by a point blank refusal to consider it, and the Prime Minister said that the question had nothing to do with the Land Bill, and that it was not the duty of the Government to provide a nostrum for agricultural labourers. If this were a nostrum it was an important one, for much of the disaffection in Ireland was due to the miserable houses in which a large portion of the population lived. Improvement had been made in their education, their food, their wages, and their clothing; but in their habitations there had been little or no improvement. According to the Census Returns of 1861—which, it was true, were somewhat old—there were 377,742 families living in first and second-class houses; 593,496 in third-class houses; and 197,062 in fourth-class houses, or nearly double the number of those dwelling in first and second-class houses. The description given in the Census of these dwellings was that a third-class house was a mud cabin of one, two, three, or four rooms, with a door and windows; a fourth-class house was a mud cabin with a door, but without a window; and there was a total of 750,558 families living in these two classes of houses. It might be that the number had slightly diminished since these Returns were made, but still it was not materially reduced; and it was almost useless to try to raise the condition of the country while the people occupied hovels of so miserable a character. The matter was a most difficult one to deal with. He could not go so far as the hon. Member for Galway in proposing direct legislative action against this evil, because there was danger lest they should reverse the natural order of things, and make the habitation of the

  585
  labourer better than that of the farmer who employed him. He (Sir Frederick Heygate) was never able to obtain anything like a return from these cottages; because when he had paid rates, repairs, and taxes, and exercised humane considerations, there was very little, or none, of the rent left. It was said that loans for cottage improvement were advanced on very reasonable terms under Sir William Somerville's Act; but there were many objections to applications for them. The total amount wanted must be applied for all at once; it must be stated where the cottages were all to be built; the application must be accompanied by complete plans; and the cottages must be built within a certain time and under certain conditions; and when all the conditions had been complied with, you would probably have cottages out of all proportion to the means of the labourers, and, perhaps, better than the house occupied by the farmers. Easy as the terms were, it was difficult to find labourers at all anxious to pay additional rent for additional accommodation. In fact, old people did not like to live in better houses than they had been used to; but their children generally appreciated improved dwellings; and this was an illustration of the gradual way in which the condition of the country in this respect could be ameliorated. People could not be forced to adopt a mode of living foreign to their habits; but, at all events, they might be tempted to make improvements, and in order that they might be encouraged to do so, he would suggest that loans should be offered in such a manner as to make it to the interest of both landlord and tenant to obtain them. The Amendment which he proposed last year in the Land Bill would have enabled the landlord and tenant together, or the tenant with the consent of the landlord, to borrow small sums from the Board of Works for purposes of improvement of farms, draining, and building; the interest being charged upon the farm and repaid by the landlord or the tenant, or both jointly. Such loans he recommended should be accompanied by a condition that a certain proportion of cottages must be built out of the money advanced. It was with this object that he attempted unsuccessfully to introduce provisions for the building of cottages into the Irish Land Act. However much landlords were respon-
  586
  sible for the condition of labourers, he would remind the House that their position was very much altered by the Act of last year. In taking from landlords much of the power over their property, Government had, to a certain extent, assumed responsibility, which formerly devolved on the landlords, with reference to the habitations of labourers. A measure of the kind now advocated was a matter which exceeded all political measures—he had almost said all religious measures—in its effect upon the loyalty and contentment of the people, for nothing could have a greater tendency to make a people contented and loyal than an improvement of their comfort and condition. He hoped the Government would not regard this as a question interesting one party more than another; and if they took it up with the view of devising a remedy, he would gladly afford them all the assistance in his power.
  Amendment proposed,
  To leave out from the word "That" to the end of the Question, in order to add the words "in the opinion of this House, it is expedient that measures should be taken, in the present Session of Parliament, to improve the condition of agricultural labourers' habitations in Ireland,"—(Mr. William Henry Gregory,)
  —instead thereof.
  Question proposed, "That the words proposed to be left out stand part of the Question."
  MR. SYNANsaid, he concurred generally in the views of the hon. Member for Galway (Mr. Gregory); but it was important to avoid doing anything which should destroy identity of interest and feeling at present existing between tenants and labourers; to separate them would be to sow the seeds of discontent, particularly upon the estates of absentee landlords, who could not do justice as between labourers and tenants when differences arose, and which an agent might not be able to settle to their satisfaction. The conditions of Sir William Somerville's Act were such that few proprietors availed themselves of it. Reference had been made to the rents which might be imposed upon the occupiers of cottages, and it was said that, to induce the building of cottages, they must return a rent of from £2 10 s. or £3 10 s. a-year; but he knew of no class of agricultural labourers in Ireland who could afford to pay out of their wages of from 5s. to

  587
  10 s. per week such an amount of rent as was paid by the like class in England. If the Government lent sums of money for 35 years at a low rate of interest, farmers who desired that labourers should live on their farms would borrow the money, and be able to give cottages to their labourers rent free. The labouring class in Ireland had been divorced from the land, and driven into the towns and villages, where four families might be found living in a small cottage of only one or two rooms. He did not concur in the opinion of the hon. Baronet (Sir Frederick Heygate), who seemed to think that the Land Act of last year had relieved landlords from all responsibility, nor did he think that the landlords themselves took that view, for he believed they felt as strongly as ever the duty they owed towards their tenants. The question of labourers' cottages was before the Devon Commission; and they recommended a system of out-door relief and increased employment to raise the condition of labourers. The agricultural population of Ireland numbered 988,529, and the number of those who were interested in the subject now before the House was 479,000. He therefore asked the Government to legislate for those who were unaffected by the Act of last year. The right hon. Gentleman, now President of the Board of Trade, but then Chief Secretary for Ireland, said last Session that—
  "Legislation on this subject ought to be positive, and there were several ways by which the condition of labourers in Ireland might be improved."
  What the right hon. Gentleman then said was taken as an assurance of legislation on the subject at the earliest possible opportunity, and he asked the noble Lord, who was now Chief Secretary for Ireland, to redeem the pledge of his predecessor. Let hon. Members consider how the want of cottages affected the agricultural interest. He knew instances where agricultural labourers lived four or five miles away from their work, and he knew one instance where a farmer had to go with a horse and cart six or seven miles to fetch his labourers. Now, such a state of things must seriously retard the development of agriculture in Ireland. He gave the Motion his heartiest support, and hoped the Government would immediately bring in a Bill to protect the interests of the labourers.
  MR. MAGUIREsaid, that though it might be necessary for the Government directly to interfere in the matter, still indirect legislation was also a matter of the greatest importance. It was necessary to hold out inducements to the owners of property to build labourers' cottages. There was a large factory five miles from Cork, the proprietors of which being desirous of preventing their operatives having that distance to walk morning and evening, desired to obtain some land near the mill on which to build cottages for those whom they employed; but the owner of the land, though a most amiable man, for a long time refused, fearing that if the mill should fall out of work, and the occupiers of the proposed cottages should become paupers, he would have to pay for their support. The obvious remedy for this was, that they should follow the example of England, and have Union rating. In Ireland they had electoral divisions of rating, and this system had inflicted upon the people great evils. He looked upon the Land Act of last Session as one of enormous advantage; for the tenants now felt a new security that the law would protect their industry and their outlay, and this would inevitably cause more energy in cultivation, and more speculation in outlay, and furnish increased employment for labour.
  MR. BRUENprotested against the statement of the hon. Member for Galway (Mr. Gregory), that the cottier tenants had no advocate in that House; and, indeed, the hon. Member's own speech disproved his statement. The debate on the Land Bill of last year also showed that hon. Members on that side of the House were most anxious that the condition of the labourer, and the means for his improvement, should be most fully considered. The hon. Member for Galway recommended that the labouring classes should hold their cottages direct from the landlords and not from the farmers; but that was a question of the greatest difficulty. If the labourers were made to hold direct from the landlords, that would frequently saddle upon the latter the disputes which might arise between the farmer and his labourers. He quite admitted that labourers preferred to hold direct from landlords; but, still, he thought that farmers were entitled to retain some control over their own labourers. He

  589
  was happy to say that the condition of labourers in Ireland had very much improved of late years; for the rate of wages had been considerably raised, and the cost of living had not increased in the same proportion. He hoped that the restrictions in reference to giving facilities to tenants to build would be strictly enforced; for otherwise a state of things would probably arise in which the labourer would be worse off than he was at present. He generally concurred in the recommendations of the hon. Member for Galway, and he hoped that the Government would speedily direct their attention to the subject.
  MR. O'REILLYjoined the hon. Member for Carlow in hoping that, although there was much difficulty in the case, the Government would take into consideration the best means of fulfilling the hopes that were held out last year. He fully agreed with the hon. Member for Cork (Mr. Maguire) that the limited area of Poor Law rating had tended to prevent the erection of labourers' cottages, and that an increase of the area of taxation would greatly tend to promote them. For the last 10 or 15 years there had been a steady improvement in labourers' cottages in some parts of Ireland, and he did not think that there was now any large proportion of fourth-class houses occupied by families in Ireland, though in the South and West there would be found most miserable abodes. In the county of Louth there were in 1861 large numbers of these wretched fourth-class hovels; but now, in the whole district in which he lived, he only knew of three or four such, and they were in the centre of a bog, and were occupied by squatters. He discovered them with some difficulty, and he now showed them to visitors as a specimen of a past state of things. There were active causes at work throughout the country to which we might with confidence look forward for improvement. He believed the legislation of the last year, which had done so much to improve the position of farmers, and given them greater wealth and greater interest in the improved cultivation of their farms, would induce them to give better wages and to provide better cottages for their labourers; while, as the labourers became more independent, they would be in a better position to insist upon that accommodation being supplied them.
  590
  He wished to correct an impression conveyed by the hon. Baronet opposite (Sir Frederick Heygate) that it was impossible to get rent out of an Irish labourer for anything like a decent habitation. He knew Irish labourers could not be expected to pay rent on an expenditure of £60 or £70 or £100 for building a house. They were able to pay a rent from 9d. to 1s. a week; which, taking into account the taxes on the land, was sufficient to allow of something like a reasonable habitation being provided for them without any loss to the farmer. He and many others thought that the solution of the difficulty of getting rent from the labourer in Ireland lay in adding to each cottage a small portion of land. The only further suggestion he would make was that in any loans to be given for the improvement of labourers' cottages too high a standard of accommodation should not be put up as the condition of their erection. It might be that this standard was very desirable; but the practical question for the Irish labourer was, whether it would not be better for him to have a second-class house, something like a human habitation, than to leave him in one of those wretched fourth-class habitations in which he resided at present. And the assistance to be given should not be confined exclusively to the erection of new dwellings, for it was often better to renovate an old than to erect a new one.
  THE MARQUESS OF HARTINGTONsaid, the hon. Member for Galway (Mr. W. H. Gregory) had done good service in calling attention to this subject. He had listened—as, indeed, the House had done—with great interest to the discussion which followed, and were it not for technical reasons he did not know that he should think it necessary to ask his hon. Friend to withdraw the Motion. However, as it had taken the form of an Amendment to the Motion that the Speaker do leave the Chair, he hoped, in the event of his being able to give a satisfactory assurance on the subject, his hon. Friend would withdraw the Amendment and be content to leave the matter in the hands of the Government. He had no difficulty whatever in promising on the part of the Government that legislation on this question should be undertaken in the course of the present Session. The measure which was known as Sir William Somerville's Act, which had

  591
  been frequently referred to in the course of the debate, would expire this year, and it would be absolutely necessary that it should be renewed; but, instead of asking simply for its renewal, it would give him the greatest pleasure to take advantage of the offers which had been made to him that evening by the hon. Member for Galway (Mr. W. H. Gregory), and the hon. Member for Londonderry (Sir Frederick Heygate), and consider what Amendments might be introduced into the Act in order to make it more useful than it had hitherto been. Not that he wished to suggest that the Act had not been of considerable advantage. He found from the Report of the Commissioners of Public Works that loans amounting to £66,000 for the purpose of building labourers' dwellings had been advanced. On that sum loans to the amount of £23,355 had been closed, and of the remainder, over £31,000 had been authorized and was in course of expenditure. There was no doubt, however, that, owing to certain causes which had been pointed out by the hon. Member for Londonderry, the Act had not been taken advantage of to the extent that was desirable, and it would give him the greatest possible pleasure to receive any suggestions in order to make the Act more valuable. His hon. Friend the Member for Galway (Mr. W. H. Gregory) had recommended, in the first place, that assistance should be given to landlords for the erection of cottages; and, in the next place, in case the landlord was not willing to come forward, that assistance should be ex-extended to the tenant. Here they had probably come on some difficult ground. His hon. Friend himself had given several reasons why it was not very desirable that the question of housing the labourers should be left in the hands of the tenants; and, certainly, it was very doubtful whether, where the landlord did not consider himself bound to provide proper habitations for the labourer, the tenant would be in such a prosperous state, or would feel such confidence in the relations subsisting between himself and his landlord, as to make him willing to do so. Still, if any practical suggestions should be made for the advance of money to the tenant as well as the landlord, or to the landlord and tenant jointly, with a view to provide labourers' dwellings, he should be glad to consider
  592
  it. His hon. Friend had next suggested that there should be an inspection by certain local authorities, such as the sanitary or relieving officers of the Poor Law Unions of all the labourers' dwellings, and that where such dwellings were not certified fit for human habitation there should be no power of recovering any rent. He (the Marquess of Hartington) was sorry he could not agree as to the desirableness of that suggestion. If it came to be worked out in practice he did not think it possible to intrust to any local authority such a responsibility as that of deciding whether a tenant should pay rent for his cottage or not. Although he would be unwilling to pledge himself on the subject, he thought it possible that some inspection should be made; that there should be a power in the country districts, as there was now in the towns under the Local Government Act, of summoning the owners of houses which were unfit for human habitation, and that there should be some authority for inflicting certain fines upon them. As had been well remarked, the process of improvement must be gradual, and would be more effectually carried on by tempting landlords and tenants to improve these cottages than by any coercive measures whatever. Before sitting down he wished to say that, though he attached as much importance to this question—as much importance as had been attached to it by any previous speakers—he did not think it would be right for the House to look to any legislation or any Government assistance which could be given for permanent and extensive improvement in the condition of the labourers. He quite agreed with what had been said by the hon. Member who had just spoken, that in this, as in other respects, we must look to the general improvement in the condition of the labourers. Let their wages be raised, their education improved; let the social standard among them generally be elevated, and improvement in their dwellings would ultimately follow. But as long as labourers in Ireland received—as they were told they sometimes received—only 4s. or 5s. a-week, as long as they were in such a state of dependence and wretchedness that they were unable to transfer themselves from a district where they were unable to obtain work to another, at a short distance, where there might be a demand for

  593
  labour, no real and permanent improvement would be effected, even if legislation should secure that they should be lodged in very much better cottages. It would be nothing but a mockery to build good and substantial cottages for labourers who had scarcely the simplest article of furniture to put into them. Let the improvement of the labourer be a general one. He believed that the legislation of the past year would have a certain effect in improving the condition of the labourers, as well as in improving the condition of the tenant-farmers themselves. He would not believe that the distrust and dislike which were said to exist between the tenant-farmers and the labourers in Ireland could be anything but temporary. After all, their interests were the same, and as the condition of the farmer improved, so would he be able to spend more capital in promoting the welfare of those in his employ. That must be an advantage to the labourer. There was one other observation which he wished to make, and it was this. He did not think that the remarks which had been made by the hon. Member for Cork (Mr. Maguire), and by another hon. Member (Mr. M'Mahon), upon what the hon. Member for Cork called indirect legislation on this subject, were altogether out of place. As to the merits of the proposal for Union rating, he did not wish to say a word, but whatever opinion might be entertained on the subject, whether Union rating or electoral division was the better system, it was very closely connected with the question at present under the consideration of the House. In the Report from which the hon. Member for Galway had quoted relating to the county of Waterford, it was stated that labour had not as yet found its level in that quarter, and that the labourers were obliged to resort for shelter to the towns. If that was so, it was extremely likely that the system would have the effect of depreciating the quality of the labourers' dwellings remaining in the country. He had simply to add that he would have great pleasure in consulting with Irish Members on the subject before the Bill, which must be brought in, would be laid on the Table.
  MR. M'MAHONsaid, he was anxious as anybody could be that the labourers should have proper dwellings, but he very much doubted whether the adop-
  594
  tion of such a proposal as that of the hon. Member for Galway (Mr. W. H. Gregory) would lead to any great improvement in that respect. We had been lending money for years to landlords to enable them to improve the labourers' dwellings, and as yet not the slightest improvement was visible. He hoped it would be different in the future. Farmers were allowed to build cottages on their holdings under the operation of the law of last year, and when they found that their interests were protected against the landland they would not fail to do so. The Westmeath Committee and its results were, he was afraid, likely to occupy no small portion of the time of the House during the present Session, to the exclusion of such questions as that of Union rating; but he wished to take that opportunity of giving Notice that he would, on the 26th of April, take the sense of the House on the subject.
  COLONEL FRENCHsaid, that his hon. Friend the Member for Galway had made a most eloquent speech depicting the misery of the habitations of the class who were generally termed squatters, more than even the circumstances of the case would justify. He deprecated these constant attempts, in and out of Parliament, to render the peasantry of Ireland discontented with their present position; they were daily rising in the social scale, and if let alone their progress would be a rapid one. He himself had built slated houses, and had assisted in building thatched houses; but it had never entered into his imagination to charge house-rent from a tenant for a cottage, nor did he, in all his experience, know any person who had done so. He protested against the unfounded attack made by the Mover on so able a lawyer and so distinguished a man as Master Fitzgibbon, and must declare his opinion that his hon. Friend, and the Board of Guardians over which he presided, richly merited the reproof they received from the learned Judge. He was, however, quite satisfied with the statement of the Chief Secretary for Ireland, and was content to wait with patience for the measure he intended to propose; but he must decline to enter on the subject of Union rating, which was not before the House.
  MR. WHITWELLsaid, the hon. Member for Galway (Mr. W. H. Gregory) had not in the least exaggerated the

  595
  condition of these dwellings in Ireland, and the necessity of improving them. There was scarcely any subject which excited more interest throughout Ireland than that of the dwellings in which the poorer classes of the population were compelled to live. There had been a decided advance in the character of labourers' dwellings, and an improvement in their general condition, but much remained still to be done in the way of improvement. Sir William Somerville's Act had confessedly been, to some extent, a failure—it would expire this year; what was to replace it? As the Act of last year had given to the tenant a right of occupation of merchantable value (the tenant-right having been in one case recently sold for 28 years' purchase), why should not the tenant have the same privilege in receiving advances as the landlord himself, seeing that he could now give the same security as the landlord? He congratulated the House, and especially the Members representing Ireland, that a subject so important had been so well discussed, and he hoped the noble Lord the Secretary for Ireland would find a mode by which the object in view would be carried out more satisfactorily. He thought it was an object to be kept in view to see if a more real use could not be made of the tenants' right of occupation. A number of works upon which money was advanced were at a standstill because labour could not be found, there being no fit dwellings for the labourers to occupy. It appeared from the Returns that the recent emigration from Ireland reached 73,000, of whom not less than 53,000 were able-bodied labourers; and he had no doubt that much of this large emigration was owing to the sad condition of the labourers' dwellings in that country.
  MR. M'CARTHY DOWNINGthought that if the clause which was in the Land Bill when introduced last year, enabling a tenant-farmer to give his labourer a cottage and half-an-acre of land, was retained, there would have been little if any need for further legislation. Such an enactment would be more satisfactory than any other that could be proposed. He did not see why, if a labourer's cottage were unfit for habitation, the occupier should not be able to cite the tenant-farmer before the magistrates at Petty Sessions, the Court being empowered to order the cottage to be put into proper con-
  596
  dition, and, in default, deprive the tenant-farmer of the power to recover any rent. Taking an interest in the condition of the labouring population of Ireland, he should feel bound to give all the assistance in his power to enable the Government to give satisfaction to the country on the subject.
  Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

EDUCATION—NATIONAL SCHOOL TEACHERS (IRELAND).

  OBSERVATIONS.
  MR. RAIKES, who had given Notice of a Motion for a Copy of the Memorial presented by the Teachers of Irish National Schools to Her Majesty's Government during the present year, said, he rose to call attention to the hardship inflicted upon the Masters of National Schools in Ireland by their liability to capricious or arbitrary dismissal by the patrons or managers of the schools. It might appear as if some apology were needed on his part for bringing forward a question which might have seemed more properly to belong to one of the special representatives of the sister country; but he would observe that this was a difficult question for Irish Members to treat, inasmuch as it was not easy to avoid mingling with it some sectarian feeling, and he desired, in dealing with it, to observe that moderation of tone which was desirable in treating a subject which required very delicate handling. He disclaimed the desire to make any party or religious capital out of the question before the House. It had been stated in a leading Irish journal that he had taken up this question as a means of damaging the Roman Catholic hierarchy in Ireland. Nothing could be further from his wish. He recognized most fully and most gratefully the persistent endeavours made by the Roman Catholic clergy to improve the education of the people under their charge; and he thought it would come with an ill grace from one not of their communion to slight what they had done, when many Protestant landlords, possessing equal opportunities, had not availed themselves of them. In considering this question it became important to remember the difference existing between the systems of education in Ireland and in England. In England schools were supported by large subscriptions, from school fees, and

  597
  from Government grants, whereas in Ireland national education was supported almost wholly by grants from the Imperial Government. He believed he might state upon authority that the amount contributed towards education in Ireland by the State was £340,000 a-year, while the school fees were £42,000 a-year, the amount received from subscriptions and endowments not exceeding £12,000 a-year. In this country we were familiar with a denominational system and a committee of management. In Ireland, on the contrary, the management of the schools was vested, in almost every case, in a patron, who had constituted himself patron simply by an application to the National Board for a school to be established in his parish. The patrons, as a rule, rarely contributed to the support of the schools they managed; but they exercised over them an authority which, when vested in a single individual, if it did not lead to acts of despotism, induced, at all events, a suspicion that such acts might be committed: and those who were placed under an irresponsible patron felt that a sword was continually hanging over them and ready to fall. Out of 6,240 schools in Ireland about two-thirds were under the patronage of the Roman Catholic clergy, and of the remaining third about 1,700 were under Protestant patrons, and 300 in the hands of lay Roman Catholic patrons. It was creditable to Protestant patrons that they had been much actuated by a wish to consider the religious predilections of those for whom the schools were built. Since he had given Notice of this Motion, however, he had been in daily, and almost hourly, receipt of letters calling attention to the arbitrary exercise of power on the part of patrons; and he believed that in many cases the charge might be established. The great majority of the Irish school teachers felt it as a grievance that they might at a moment's notice be turned out of the schools they occupied, and cast adrift upon the world. The information which he had received left no doubt that the feeling of the teachers was very strong against the continuance of this arbitrary power of sudden dismissal. They did not wish to set themselves up as judges of the course of conduct to be observed in the schools; but all they asked was that they might, as schoolmasters, have
  598
  that security which the Government gave to the cottiers and peasantry whom they saw around them. The wishes of these teachers had been already expressed by themselves; and, therefore, he was not under the necessity of detaining the House by any statement of his own. The Congress of National Teachers in 1869 and 1870 had passed resolutions, laying the greatest stress on something being done to abate the arbitrary power of dismissal. A deputation then waited on the Prime Minister, and placed in his hands a memorial signed by 2,140 Irish teachers, urging that steps might be taken by the Government to make their tenure of office more secure. But it was said that the teachers were no longer anxious to agitate the question of managerial grievance. It was quite true that the Central Executive had passed a resolution advising the provincial associations to suspend their agitation of this grievance; and the Dublin Association of Teachers passed a resolution, laying stress on the fact that some of the best friends of the teachers had expressed their disapprobation of the agitation, and their hope that it would not be pressed at the present moment. The hon. Member for Cork (Mr. Maguire)—a great authority on all matters relating to the class from which the teachers were drawn—said, in 1869, that fair notice should be given of complaint to the teachers, and they should not suddenly be thrown helpless and desolate on the world. That was a sentiment which would find many supporters on both sides of the House. The Freeman's Journal, so recently as the 1st of January last, had a strong article on the subject expressing the views of a very influential section of Catholic opinion in regard to it, saying that this was an intolerable grievance, and that measures should be taken immediately to put an end to it. In a short time, however, The Freeman's Journal changed its tone. A letter was written on the 18th of January, 1871, by the Right Rev. Dr. Donnelly, Roman Catholic Bishop of Clogher, to a parish priest in his diocese, calling attention to the fact that a Mr. Cassidy had attended the meeting of national teachers recently held in Dublin, and supported a resolution which was subversive of the fundamental principle of Catholic teaching; and that if this had not been Mr. Cassidy's first offence he should have called

  599
  for his dismissal from any school in the parish; but he should be severely admonished, and must give a guarantee that he would avoid participation in such agitation for the future. [The hon. Member, having read the letter, proceeded to say]—Now, the resolution this condemned was the one to which he had referred, requiring some protection against arbitrary dismissal. Surely after such a letter it was no wonder if Irish teachers were shy, and had in some instances receded from the attitude they had generally taken up on this question. The teachers had a right to demand that they should be treated fairly, justly, and openly, and not become the victims of a tyranny which might assume a most obnoxious character. One of the Assistant Commissioners, Mr. Patrick Cummin, in his Report made a most remarkable observation, that it was dangerous to neglect the education of a people, but at the present time it was not less dangerous to call into existence a multitude of schools, and to place in them teachers with inadequate salaries, uncomfortable homes, and precarious tenure of office; they would be filled with discontent and even tempted to disloyalty; and so long as the school teachers were dissatisfied, the pupils would imbibe the bitterness of their instructors. A similar opinion was given by another Assistant Commissioner, Mr. Jack. Nor was there proof wanting of the state of things which was thus referred to and described, for 47 national schoolmasters had been arrested on suspicion of Fenianism. He was convinced that as long as we dealt with Irish difficulties bit by bit, we were likely to undo a great deal of what we were doing, and we were likely to have to supplement our work by other work which might cause trouble. Here was a simple matter, easily within reach, and yet at the root of much trouble, and he hoped the Government would take steps as early as possible to deal with it. It had been said that the present Government was "charged with a message of peace to Ireland," and he did not think anything would conduce more to peace than the placing of scholars under contented and secure schoolmasters. He was quite aware that there were other matters which were important as affecting the schoolmaster—such as the possession of a house and a garden—but this point was one which urgently required the
  600
  immediate attention of the Government. He did not wish to deprive managers of the control they now had, for it was above all things important that the system of education in Ireland should possess the confidence of the Roman Catholics, who believed that education and religion must go together; but he wished to commend to the attention of the Government the recommendation of the Primary Education Commissioners, which was that teachers should receive three months' notice of dismissal—he (Mr. Raikes) would be content with one month—and that a teacher should not be treated worse than an ordinary footman, or, say, a Controller of the Admiralty. The teacher ought to receive notice of dismissal, and a copy of it ought to be sent to the Board; and, if the causes alleged were found insufficient or unreasonable, the person who had given that notice ought to be bound to pay some compensation—say three or six months' salary—something, at all events, which it would not be impossible for a man to pay if he conscientiously wished to get rid of a teacher, and at the same time something which would make a man careful how he gratified an outburst of temper. Of one thing he was confident, and that was, that so long as the Irish schoolmasters were disaffected so long would the people of Ireland be disaffected too. We might disestablish churches and interfere with landlords, but no good could be done in a country the educated classes of which smarted under a sense of oppression, which it was the duty of Parliament to remedy. As the Resolution of which he had given notice referred to a Return which the noble Lord the Chief Secretary had kindly given him, he did not now propose to move it.
  THE MARQUESS OF HARTINGTONsaid, that after carefully listening to the speech of the hon. Member for Chester, he was unable to discover upon what grounds he had thought it necessary to call attention to the subject on the present occasion. The hon. Member deprecated dealing with Irish difficulties bit by bit, yet he had taken up a part only of one subject affecting Ireland; and as it was certain that attention must be called to the Report of the Royal Commission on Primary Education, and also to the grievances which had been urged by schoolmasters, he was at a loss to

  601
  discover why the hon. Member should have seized this opportunity to urge one grievance only, and that a grievance respecting which a considerable number of the schoolmasters were anxious to withdraw their complaints. He (the Marquess of Hartington) declined to be drawn into a partial discussion of this question. As he had stated in reply to a Question some time ago, the Government had under their consideration the memorial presented by the teachers, and the suggestions which had been made upon it by the Board of National Education in Ireland; it would be his duty either in moving the Education Vote, or upon some other and earlier occasion, to state the views of the Government upon the subject; and he did not think there would be any convenience, but rather the contrary, in anticipating now what it would be his duty to state hereafter. Certainly the conclusion at which the hon. Member arrived was far more moderate than the tone of his speech had led him to anticipate. Having spoken of the power of dismissal by managers having been used in a harsh and improper manner, and of the existence and exercise of such power being inconsistent with the independence of school teachers, the hon. Gentleman ended by supporting the recommendation of the Commissioners, who, on the whole, thought it best that effective control over schoolmasters should remain in the hands of the managers. There was very little difference of opinion among the Commissioners, who all thought that the powers of managers should remain very much what they were now, and also that national school teachers should not be treated harshly any more than any other classes of Her Majesty's subjects. The question was, were they so treated? He (the Marquess of Hartington) was astonished at the extreme absence of evidence on this point. The hon. Member said that since he gave notice of his Motion he had received numerous complaints from schoolmasters. Well, he should like to know what class of public servants could have notice given of an intention to ventilate their grievances without the hon. Member who had given the notice being inundated with their complaints. The whole subject of primary education had been inquired into by a Commission; and one would have supposed the hon. Member would have been able to
  602
  strengthen his case by reference to a mass of evidence taken by that Commission. But the hon. Member had been obliged to confine himself to the Reports of one or two of the Assistant Commissioners; Mr. Jack, one of the witnesses of the hon. Member, did not go any great length in speaking of the hardships of teachers; and of the other Commissioners, most of them alleged no case of capricious treatment; and all concurred in the opinion that power should remain substantially in the hands of managers. He should be ready to consider any suggestions for improving the position of the teachers without materially impairing the control exercised by the managers; but he must express his strong opinion that any measure which would weaken the interest and the effective control of the managers, upon which the efficiency of the national system must depend, would be an unmixed evil, and would, therefore, be one to which the Government could give no countenance or support.
  SIR FREDERICK W. HEYGATErose because he feared, from the remarks of the Chief Secretary, that another year might pass without any substantial improvement having been made in the position of teachers, although, in his opinion their case was one which required immediate consideration. The hon. Member for Chester had merely touched upon the fringe of an immense subject, and had ministered in homœopathic doses to patients who were suffering severely. There could be no worse policy than to give these teachers insufficient salaries, and to take no steps for their comfort and for their ultimate superannuation. He hoped the managers of these schools would have some limitation placed on their power of dismissal, and that at any rate three months' notice should be given. At the same time he could not approve of any scheme by which the managers would be forced to give up all control over the teachers. It was important that something of a substantial character should be done in this question, and that it should be done during the present year.
  MR. SYNANsaid, the hon. Member for Chester (Mr. Raikes) seemed to have discovered a mare's nest, for he had made the grand discovery that the principal grievance of the Irish schoolmasters was that the 47 who were ar-

  603
  rested for Fenianism did not receive a month's notice. It seemed to him that the principal object of the hon. Member was to read to the House the letter of the Roman Catholic Bishop of Clogher, asking the managers of a school to call to account a teacher, and the article of The Freeman's Journal supporting the Bishop. He wished to ask the hon. Gentleman whether the Bishop would not be justified in writing that letter in case the teacher had moved a resolution in opposition to the Report of the Commissioners. The evidence contained in that Report showed that the authority of school managers over teachers was exercised in a fair and just spirit. It did not disclose a single case of hardship; and he thought that the school managers, who had very frequently themselves founded and maintained their schools, and who were deeply interested in defending the public from misconduct on the part of the masters, ought not to be deprived of their rights as managers.

POST OFFICE—MAILS BETWEEN BRISTOL AND CORNWALL.—QUESTION.
MR. R. N. FOWLERrose to ask the Postmaster General, Whether he was prepared to expedite the night mails between Bristol and Cornwall. The present state of the postal communication in that district formed a great practical grievance, and an amount of delay and inconvenience was occasioned which ought to be put a stop to. At present letters leaving Bristol at 6.30 a.m. reached Plymouth at 12.25 p.m., and then they were detained there until 2 o'clock, occasioning a loss of an hour and 35 minutes in the very middle of the day. But the most important point was found in the arrangements with reference to the night mail. The limited mail, which left London at 9.0 p.m., arrived in Bristol at 12.20 a.m., but it did not carry the letters any further on the road to Penzance; they were left to be carried on by an ordinary passenger train, which lost 50 minutes in the journey between London and Bristol, 35 minutes between Bristol and Exeter, 25 minutes between Exeter and Plymouth, 20 minutes at Plymouth, and half-an-hour between Plymouth and Falmouth, when compared with the journeys made by an express train. The up train from Fal-
604
mouth lost an additional 20 minutes before it arrived in London. This caused great inconvenience in Cornwall. In Penzance, for instance, letters were delivered between 10 and 12 o'clock in the day, and as the mail went out at 2.30 p.m. there was only a very short time left for sending replies; while as to the night mail, the letters came in at 7 in the evening, and had to be answered by 5 next morning, so that people had either to sit up all night to get their replies in the post or else lose more than 24 hours. In a large shipping port it was particularly important that letters should be delivered early, because a packet might arrive with letters late in the day—too late for letters to be posted the same day, and the consequence might be that 24, or, in the case of a Friday, 48 hours might be lost—a matter that might be of the greatest moment to commercial men. He would venture to ask the right hon. Gentleman carefully to look into this subject, and to consider whether he could not, with due regard to the interests of his Department, facilitate the delivery of letters in the West of England, and by so doing confer a great boon on commercial men.
MR. A. W. YOUNGsaid, he could fully corroborate the statement of the hon. Member. It was most desirable that the present state of the postal communication in Cornwall should be improved.
MR. MONTAGUE CHAMBERSprotested—not for the first time—against the Post Office being regarded as a department for raising revenue rather than as one established for the purpose of providing for the delivery of letters, not only in the large towns, but in the small villages and remote districts.
MR. MONSELLsaid, he need scarcely assure the hon. Member for Penryn that any wish he might express would receive his most careful attention. The hon. Member would, however, feel the difficulty of the position in which he was placed, having to decide between conflicting claims for additional postal accommodation, urged by a number of districts, not only in this country, but in Scotland and Ireland. As regarded the observations of the hon. and learned Member for Devonport (Mr. M. Chambers), he thought that his conduct since he had succeeded to his present office had shown in the most practical manner

605
that he entirely agreed with him that the Post Office should not be regarded merely as an institution for raising revenue, and that the convenience of the public was the main object which that Department sought to carry out. He must observe that it was not true that the whole postal revenue was spent in this country, for, unfortunately, no less a sum than £466,000 per annum of it was expended in providing postal communication with the Colonies and foreign countries. With regard to the question of this particular district, the speed at which the mails travelled from London to Bristol was 35 miles an hour, from Bristol to Exeter 32 miles an hour, from Exeter to Plymouth 24 miles an hour, and below Plymouth 21½ miles an hour. In fact, the speed of the mail train was in accordance with the amount of the trade and population of the different districts through which it passed. The same was the case in the remoter districts of Ireland and Scotland. He was afraid it would be impossible to carry out exactly the project of his hon. Friend—namely, to have a limited mail travelling the whole way from London to Penzance at the same speed as it went from London to Bristol. [Mr. R. N. FOWLER: The mail travelled at express speed from London to Bristol. He wanted it to go all the way at express speed.] At any rate, his hon. Friend wished the mail to travel at a considerably increased speed. The hon. Member complained of a detention of one hour and 35 minutes at Plymouth; but the reason for that was that it did not suit the people of those places to have their trains running at the same time as would best suit the mail; and an additional train for the mail would involve a considerable extra expense. Moreover, between Plymouth and Falmouth there was only a single line of rail, and that in no small degree increased their difficulty. However, the attention of the Post Office had already been directed to that matter, and would continue to be so; negotiations on the subject had been opened with the railway companies, and if they could enter into fair arrangements with those companies they would be happy to meet to a certain extent the views of his hon. Friend. They recognized the importance of the town represented by his hon. Friend, and also of the great mining population of Cornwall—a county the postal revenue of which
606
was considerable, and which had a right to increased postal advantages.
MR. EASTWICKdesired to express towards the right hon. Gentleman who had just sat down that gratitude which mainly consisted of a lively sense of favours to come. As regarded the past and the present, the people of Cornwall had no reason to be grateful to the Post Office authorities, who seemed to have looked upon them as "remote, unfriended." The rest of the line—"melancholy, slow"—would apply rather to the Post Office authorities than to Cornishmen. The mails travelled between London and Edinburgh—a distance of full 400 miles—in 11 hours and 10 minutes; whereas they took 11 hours and 25 minutes in the journey from London to Falmouth—a distance little over 300 miles. The present unsatisfactory state of things was entirely owing to the Post Office, which had shown constant hostility to Falmouth, in depriving that port of the mails, and in other respects. Now that they had a new Postmaster General he hoped a better state of things would arise.

METROPOLIS—COMMUNICATION BETWEEN ST. JAMES'S AND WESTMINSTER.

  MOTION FOR AN ADDRESS.
  VISCOUNT ROYSTONcalled the attention of the House to the unsatisfactory state of communication between St. James's and Westminster, and to move a Resolution. In the first place, he desired to remind them of the Question which a few weeks ago he had asked of the First Commissioner of Works with reference to a communication between St. James's and Westminster by the east-end of St. James's Park. The First Commissioner of Works said that unless it was absolutely necessary to enable hon. Members to come to the House he could not entertain the question; but he (Viscount Royston) had thought that the Government would have had the generosity to concede the right of way by the east-end of St. James's Park. The hon. Member for Whitehaven (Mr. Cavendish Bentinck) brought the subject forward when Mr. Layard was First Commissioner; and the question was then not only deprecated by the First Commissioner, but also by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for South Hants (Mr. Cowper-Temple), who had pre-

  607
  viously held that office, and who said the road would lead to nowhere, and that he considered the proposition a monstrous one. He (Viscount Royston) did not agree that the road would lead to nowhere, for it would form a communication between two important spots in the West of the metropolis. The strongest reason, however, that was urged against granting the request was that it would cost £25,000. Last year the hon. Member for Whitehaven (Mr. Cavendish Bentinck) called attention to the subject, and was promised by the present First Commissioner that his proposal of a roadway round the east-end of the park out by Storey's Gate should be considered; a promise which was renewed later in the Session in a more definite manner, when the First Commissioner said that, although he could not promise to make a permanent thoroughfare through St. James's Park, yet, as King Street was about to be closed, the proposal to make a temporary road round the east-end of the park was a fair subject for consideration. This was in May last year; but from that time to the present nearly 12 months had passed, and the plan had not been carried out. Later last year the hon. Member for Cricklade (Mr. Cadogan) asked the right hon. Member whether he intended to carry out the statement that he had made to the House; and the reply was that he intended to construct a temporary road. This was in July; but later in the Session the hon. Member for Christchurch (Mr. Haviland-Burke) brought the subject again forward, when the answer of the First Commissioner was that it was too late in the Session to do any good, as it would be too late to get an Answer from Her Majesty to an Address. He knew what inconvenience it was in Mayfair to have to go round to Westminster either by Whitehall or by Grosvenor Place. The proposal he made would involve little more than the unlocking of a gate, while it would not in any way interfere with the rights of private persons. Under these circumstances he did not think it would be out of place to move that an humble Address be presented to Her Majesty, praying that she would be graciously pleased to direct that the road by the east-end of St. James's Park might be opened for carriage traffic from Marlborough House Gate to Storey's Gate.
  Amendment proposed,
  To leave out from the word "That" to the end of the Question, in order to add the words "an humble Address be presented to Her Majesty, praying that She will be graciously pleased to direct that the road by the East end of Saint James's Park may be opened for carriage traffic from Marlborough House Gate to Storey's Gate,"—(Viscount Royston,)
  —instead thereof.
  Question proposed, "That the words proposed to be left out stand part of the Question."
  MR. AYRTONtrusted the House would agree with him in thinking that it was not desirable to trench upon the present privacy of the Parks without ample necessity. Every new road necessarily deprived the Parks of some of the privacy and quietness which was their main attraction to those who wished to escape from the crowded and noisy streets, and therefore it was right to approach this subject with hesitation and caution. He could only judge of the necessity of any such invasion from the expression of opinion of hon. Members representing the public feeling in the matter. When, in the first instance, it was proposed to run a road through the ornamental portion of St. James's Park, and so admit a great London traffic, he deprecated the suggestion as being inconsistent with the reasonable enjoyment of the Park on the part of the public; but, at the same time, he had thought it his duty to point out that though the Government could not recognize any urgent necessity for converting St. James's Park into a public thoroughfare, the question might have to be considered owing to the changes which were being made in one of the thoroughfares by which hon. Members were in the habit of coming down to the House. On that occasion he had suggested the possibility of making a temporary arrangement as long as the inconvenience lasted, and he had pointed out that the arrangement might depend upon two contingencies—the blocking up of King Street on the one hand, and the opening of the Thames Embankment on the other. Up to the end of last Session, however, nothing had occurred to cause any serious obstruction in the traffic, and they were, therefore, unable to form any practical opinion on the subject before the breaking up of Parliament. During the Recess he had probably had greater experience of the state

  609
  of the thoroughfares than any other hon. Member, and he had failed to perceive that any such difficulties had arisen in the way of obstruction to traffic as should necessitate a change. There was, therefore, no present necessity for making a road through the Park. When the Session met and the noble Lord (Viscount Royston) asked him a Question on the subject, he had stated to the noble Lord that he had received no communication upon the subject. But now that King Street was shut up he believed that the contingency he had referred to last Session had arrived, and as far as he could gather from the expression of the opinion of hon. Members the opening of such a road would be a convenience. He, therefore, proposed to make the road, and might state that Her Majesty had already given her sanction contingently on its being required. But he was anxious that it should be understood that he proposed to carry out this arrangement on the conditions he had mentioned last year. He ventured to suggest that the noble Lord should rely upon this statement, and refrain from pressing his Motion for an Address, because some of its terms were ambiguous and might be misunderstood as referring to general traffic. The road would only be open to special traffic for the convenience of hon. Members.
  Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

PARLIAMENT—PRIVATE BILL LEGISLATION—COURT OF HUSTINGS (LONDON) ABOLITION BILL.

  MOTION FOR A SELECT COMMITTEE.
  MR. W. H. SMITHrose to call attention to the Court of Hustings (London) Abolition Bill, and to move—
  "That it be referred to the Select Committee on Standing Orders to consider and report whether any further Standing Orders are necessary to protect the public against abuse of the Private Bill system."
  The hon. Member said, that in calling the attention of the House to the circumstances attending the introduction of the Court of Hustings Abolition Bill, and its withdrawal a few nights ago, and in pointing out a great abuse of our system of Private Bill legislation, he had no desire, in any remarks he might make, to reflect on the conduct of any officer of the House, or, indeed, of any person outside the House. But
  610
  the circumstances themselves were such as to demand the consideration of the House, and especially of those hon. Members who constituted the Standing Order Committee. The Bill in question, which was introduced upon Petition presented in the ordinary way by the Sheriffs at the Bar of the House, was entitled the Court of Hustings Abolition Bill, and from its title any hon. Member might naturally have conceived that it was a Bill proposing merely to abolish the Court of Hustings of the City of London. But, upon examination, the Bill turned out to be one for the accomplishment of several objects, one of them being the establishment of a new Court, with powers extending over the whole of the metropolitan district, having concurrent jurisdiction with the superior Courts of Law, and, further, having like powers of foreign attachment to those which, at present, were exercised exclusively by the Lord Mayor's Court, and which in practice had of late years been very much questioned. Under the guise, therefore, of a Private Bill, powers of the most extensive and exceptional character were sought to be acquired over the whole of the metropolis—powers which even in a Public Bill would be open to very grave doubt and questioning, and which in a Private Bill he regarded as wholly out of place. The most singular part of the transaction, however, was that when, in the first instance, he drew attention to this Bill he was informed by the gentlemen concerned in its preparation that they were as greatly amazed and as much, alarmed at the powers sought under its provisions as the Attorney General himself had been when he put a Question to him upon the subject. Not a single person, directly or indirectly, connected with the Bill, would avow or acknowledge that these proposals were in any way sanctioned or proceeded with under his direction. It was a Bill which had grown up, so to speak, without any one being responsible for its paternity, and had arrived at the stage of Committee as an "unopposed Bill," simply from the fact, that being introduced as a Private Bill, no notice had been given of its contents, or of the strange powers which it contained, and no opportunity, accordingly, had been afforded to those who would be interested in opposing it to come forward. There was no

  611
  doubt, he presumed, that the customary notice in the case of a Private Bill had been given, under which, in an ordinary case, individuals interested in opposing would be warned of what was in contemplation and entitled to appear; but the peculiar feature of the Bill was that there was no single person who could be served with the notice of the powers which it was sought under these provisions to obtain. The whole public of London were interested in the Bill. Every individual throughout the metropolis owing money, or who might at any time become liable to be sued in a Court of Law, was affected by the provisions of this Bill; and yet, as often happened, what was everbody's interest in general was nobody's duty in particular; and accordingly nobody appeared in opposition. He believed he was right in saying that no notice had been given to any local jurisdiction in the metropolis, to any Vestry, to any Board of Guardians, or to any authority of any kind of the intentions of the promoters of the Bill. He refrained from speaking of the City as the promoters, for they, he believed, disclaimed all intention of asking for the powers which were sought in their name. He did not wish to make matters unpleasant to anybody—he accepted in perfect good faith the disclaimer of the City; but he put it to the House—was it expedient that Bills containing such extraordinary powers should, in the ordinary course, come on for second reading without notice of their contents, and be sent down to Committee as "unopposed Bills." He had no doubt the Chairman of Committees would ultimately have stopped the Bill, or drawn attention to its provisions in Committee; but it was too great a task to impose upon any Member of that House, without the aid of counsel, to discover and point out the danger and impropriety of proposals like these in private Bills, and it would be imposing on the Chairman of Committees too great a responsibility to expect that he could check matters of principle, or of abuse of principle, such as those disclosed in the present case, without the advantage of that opposition which might have pointed out to him the danger or impropriety of granting the powers asked for. Yet this Bill was matter of serious concern to a very large population equal in number to the population of the whole of Scotland. The
  612
  mere abolition of the Court of Hustings might be a very judicious measure in itself; upon that he pronounced no opinion; but what affected the public was that, under a title calculated to mislead, an entirely new Court might be established, with powers so novel, so extreme, and he ventured to think so unwise, as those contemplated by this measure. An impression appeared to exist on the part of Gentlemen promoting Private Bills that it was perfectly immaterial what was put into those Bills in the first instance; for that when they came into Committee they could put them into such a shape as would meet the views of the Gentleman acting as Chairman of the Committee of Ways and Means. ["Hear!" "No!"] That was the statement made to him, and he was assured that a similar impression prevailed in the mind of the general public. If there were any such impression, it was most desirable that it should be removed at once. The House, he thought, would be disposed to concur in this general principle—that a Bill, when it reached its final stage, should, at least, resemble the shape in which it was originally introduced; that there should be no great or material alterations in its framework, and that the promoters should be bound to introduce and conduct the Bill in good faith from beginning to end. It would be a great disadvantage if the public were compelled to go to "another place" to obtain alterations in a Bill of the real nature of which they had been kept in ignorance while the Bill remained in the House of Commons. Something plainly was requisite to prevent the possibility in future of proposals being made in a Private Bill, which, if carried into effect, would work a silent, but no less radical change in the character of our legal system and of the powers of the existing Law Courts.
  Amendment proposed,
  To leave out from the word "That" to the end of the Question, in order to add the words "it be referred to the Select Committee on Standing Orders to consider and report whether any further Standing Orders are necessary to protect the public against abuse of the Private Bill system,"—(Mr. William Henry Smith,)
  —instead thereof.
  Question proposed, "That the words proposed to be left out stand part of the Question."
  THE ATTORNEY GENERALsaid, he was much obliged to his hon. Friend for having brought this matter before the House. The Bill was surrounded by a mystery which he had vainly endeavoured to penetrate. Here was a Bill which, under the guise of a measure simply for the abolition of the Court of Hustings, would practically create a superior court with unlimited jurisdiction in the City of London, while it further proposed to extend the law of foreign attachment beyond its original and existing limits—a provision which appeared somewhat to derogate from the prerogative of the Crown. His efforts to ascertain how these clauses found their way into the Bill had been wholly unsuccessful. At the back of the Bills were the names of his hon. Friend the Member for the City of London (Mr. Crawford) and several worthy Aldermen; but not one of them had the remotest idea how the Bill came to be framed thus. He thought that perhaps the City Remembrancer would be in a position to give some information on the subject; but that learned gentleman also declared he had not the slightest idea how the clauses had crept into the Bill. This Bill, which in its germinal form was a small measure for the abolition of the Court of Hustings, had illustrated the Darwinian theory, and spontaneously developed itself into a Bill for the creation of a superior court of law. Its further progress had been stopped; and he hoped no such attempt would be made again. Whoever drew the clauses he had just referred to made a very gross attempt to abuse the Private Bill legislation of this House. With respect to the suggestion made by his hon. Friend (Mr. W. H. Smith), as to the amendment of the Standing Orders, that must, of course, be dealt with by the Chairman of the Standing Orders Committee; but he certainly thought that some safeguard should be devised to prevent proceedings of this sort. It might be desirable, for instance, to make a provision to the effect that Bills of this sort should be submitted to the consideration of the Home Office. Formerly, no doubt, the courts which were established by Private Bills were courts with very limited jurisdiction; but now it had come to be regarded as a maxim of legal reform that the administration of justice should be regarded as a whole, and that
  614
  every court should be in harmony with all the other courts in the kingdom. He could not help thinking, therefore, that the establishment of any court of justice, however small, was a matter of public concern, and that precautions should be taken in order to prevent great innovations being introduced under cover of a Private Bill.
  MR. DODSONagreed with his hon. and learned Friend that the hon. Member for Westminster had rendered good service by calling attention to the circumstances connected with this Bill. Had the hon. Member been in a position to offer to the House on a second reading the remarks he had addressed to it now, in all probability the measure would not have passed that stage. Speaking for himself, he might say that if at that time he had been acquainted with the provisions of the Bill he should certainly have voted against the second reading. The hon. Member for Westminster had stated that a belief was prevalent among some persons that anything might be deposited as a Private Bill, and that Amendments to any extent might be introduced in Committee. This, however, was not the case, even with an unopposed Bill. Indeed, the present Bill was a proof of his assertion; for as soon as he became aware of its provisions he sent for the gentlemen who were acting for the promoters, and having informed them that, in his opinion, it would not have passed the second reading if the House had been aware of its nature, he intimated that it ought to be withdrawn. In answer to their proposal that the Bill should be amended in Committee, he said it could not be so amended without being practically transformed into another Bill. The hon. Member for Westminster proceeded in his remarks on the supposition that a Private Bill had an easier passage through this House than a Public Bill; but this was just the reverse of the fact. A Private Bill had to go through as many stages in the House as a Public one, and was subjected besides to peculiar ordeals of its own. Notices must be given by advertisements in the local newspapers in the months of October and November as to its intended provisions; and it had to go before the Examiners in order that they might ascertain whether the Standing Orders had been complied with. Even if it

  615
  were an "unopposed Bill," it must go, after the second reading, before a Committee, which would examine it clause by clause; and, while under the consideration of the House, it was subject to examination by officers appointed for that purpose, whose duty it was to inform the House of any provisions in the Bill that might appear objectionable. In the Lords, the Bill would, have to pass through the same stages, and undergo the same scrutiny. It would, besides, be sent to the Judges to be examined. It was, then, next to impossible to introduce objectionable clauses in a Bill without discovery. The hon. Member had stated that a Bill of this character could not possibly, as a Private Bill, meet with opponents. This, however, was not the case. It was true that Private Bills for the amendment of local courts were not of very frequent occurrence; but several had been introduced in the course of the last few years, and had been opposed either by communities or bodies of practitioners who had interest in the proceedings of the courts sufficient to give them a locus standi. The circumstances connected with this Bill had drawn his attention to a casus omissus in the Standing Orders of the House, which, if supplied, would meet the objections of the hon. Member. By Standing Order No. 41, it was provided that printed copies of certain Bills should be deposited before the meeting of Parliament, not only in the Private Bill Office, but also in the Department of the Government with which their scope and character most naturally connected them; but, curiously enough, there was no provision that Bills relating to local courts should be deposited with any Department. He would, therefore, venture to suggest that, as an Amendment to this Standing Order, it should be provided that every Bill for the establishment or the amendment of the procedure of local courts should, at the time it was deposited in the Private Bill Office, be also deposited in the Home Office. If the hon. Member for Westminster would withdraw his Motion, and confer with him and the Chairman of the Committee on Standing Orders, he believed they would be able to amend the Standing Order No. 41, so as to remove the blot which the hon. Gentleman had pointed out.
  MR. SCOURFIELD, as the only Member of the Standing Orders Com-
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  mittee present, would say that they would be perfectly willing, by amendment of the Standing Orders, to get rid of any blot that existed in the way thought most expedient. He was not at all surprised at cases of this kind occurring, when he considered the solicitation that was used to induce hon. Members to allow their names to be put upon the back of Bills. Backing Bills, however, was a dangerous operation in any way, and the danger seemed to extend to Bills in that House. He thought it would be affording a necessary protection to hon. Members themselves if the House were to put a stop to the efforts being continually made to induce Members to put their names on the back of a Bill on the statement that it was a mere formal matter involving no responsibility whatever.
  MR. JAMESsaid, that it seemed to be supposed that this was an inferior court seeking to attain the powers of a superior court with extensive jurisdiction. It should be borne in mind, however, that the Lord Mayor's Court was, without doubt, the oldest court in this country. It existed before the Courts of Queen's Bench and Common Pleas, and he believed even before the time of the Saxon Heptarchy. It existed when there was only a Port-Reeve in London, before there was a Mayor. It possessed the peculiar power of foreign attachment, and had now the advantage of being presided over by so distinguished a Judge as his right hon. Friend the Recorder. Some years ago, before the judgment of the House of Lords very much curtailed the jurisdiction of the Lord Mayor's Court, a Bill was prepared to be submitted to the House as a Public Bill upon this subject, and he believed the present one had been introduced as a Private Bill by mistake instead of as a Public one, and there was no one connected with the City of London who was not glad that the mistake had been discovered.
  MR. CRAWFORDsaid, that as his name was on the back of the Bill, he wished to state that he knew nothing whatever about it. He was applied to with the other Members for the City, including the right hon. Gentleman the First Lord of the Admiralty, to put his name upon the back of it, and he said—"Certainly," as he had done on former occasions. He had not, however, been bored to do so in the Lobby.
  MR. STEPHEN CAVEwas surprised that his hon. Friend the Governor of the Bank should put his valuable name upon any paper without knowing what was inside it. That was a very dangerous practice. He rose, however, for the purpose of suggesting that Private Bills should be revised after they had passed through Committee for the purpose of ascertaining whether any provisions affecting the public interests had been slipped in. There were many instances, especially in such Bills as Gas and Water Bills, in which clauses very adverse to public policy were almost surreptitiously introduced. He thought such Bills should receive official examination before being read a third time.
  MR. WATKIN WILLIAMSsaid, that this Bill was nothing less than a gross scandal to the legislation of the country. The attempt to bring it forward as a Private Bill arose from the conviction that if it were brought forward as a Public Bill it would be scouted at once. The Bill attempted to confer on this Court a jurisdiction far exceeding any that existed in this country or in any country in the world. There had been for many years past an attempt to extend the process of foreign attachment against the opinions both of lawyers and politicians, until the attempt was put an end to by the judgment of the House of Lords in "Cox v. the Lord Mayor of London." Further, this jurisdiction, until it was stopped, was continually drawing this country into serious complications with foreign Powers. Foreign potentates were sued in this Court—the Pacha of Egypt was recently sued there under a process of foreign attachment. This Bill would reverse the decision in "Cox v. the Lord Mayor of London," and it would give a jurisdiction extending over the whole world wherever they could bring in foreign attachment. There was also this extraordinary provision, such as no civilized country in the world had ever adopted—that no defendant should be allowed to plead to the jurisdiction of the Court. He might observe that attempts such as these were not confined to Private Bills—there were some things in connection with the passing of Public Bills which were scandalous and astonishing. In 1869 a Public Bill was brought forward which he was requested to oppose, and having intimated that intention to those in charge of the Bill it
  618
  was withdrawn. Yet, towards the end of the Session, in July, whilst the parties opposed to the Bill were passing a resolution congratulating themselves upon its withdrawal, at that very time the Royal Assent was being given to a Bill in another form, which carried out the objects of the original Bill. Something really should be done to prevent Bills slipping through the House at 2 or 3 o'clock in the morning, in such a way that the most vigilant persons might be deceived.
  MR. JESSELsaid, that during the short time he had been a Member of the House he had been instrumental in stopping more than one Public Bill which had been brought in by private Members to alter, or, as it was called by the promoters, to amend, the law. He was astonished to find that no means were provided by the Government to examine Bills brought in by private Members affecting the law and jurisprudence of the country. Any private Member might, without check, introduce a Bill, however absurd, making the largest alterations in the law. He had drawn the attention of the Law Officers of the Crown to several Bills of that character, and in consequence they interfered and stopped the Bills. But the Law Officers of the Crown were not appointed for that purpose. He thought that every Bill brought in by a private Member which would alter the law ought to be examined by a competent person, and that a Report upon it should be made to the Government, so that the Law Officers might be able to advise the Government on the propriety of allowing the Bill to proceed. Such a course would stop these amateur attempts at legislation. He could mention an instance similar to that just stated by the hon. and learned Member (Mr. W. Williams). A Bill was brought in, the result of which would have been to effect a revolution with regard to the law of mortgages. He mentioned the matter to the Solicitor General, who stopped the Bill. A very short time afterwards a Bill was brought in under another name, and in the same Session, to effect an object similar to that aimed at by the Bill which had been stopped; and that Bill also had to be stopped. Such matters should not be left to mere accident.
  MR. W. H. SMITHsaid, he would withdraw his Resolution, on the under-

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  standing that the course suggested by the Chairman, of Ways and Means should be adopted.
  Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
  Main Question, "That Mr. Speaker do now leave the Chair," by leave, withdrawn.
  Committee deferred till Monday next.

SUPPLY—ARMY ESTIMATES.

  REPORT.
  Resolutions [March 23] reported.
  First Resolution read a second time.
  LORD ELCHOrose to move that the number of men be reduced by 10,000. The Motion of the hon. Member for Sheffield (Mr. Mundella), to reduce the Estimates by the lump sum of £3,000,000, followed the rule of thumb, and thus left it open to the Prime Minister to reply that the hon. Gentleman had failed to show how the proposed reduction could be effected, and though 91 Members voted with him the Motion came to nothing. The hon. Member's proposals were threefold:—in the first place, that we should cut off the honorary colonels; in the next place, that by doing away with Army agency and making paymasters do much of the work of quartermasters we should save £60,000; and, thirdly, that we should remove from the Army all men who were either morally or physically unsound. The Resolution of the hon. Member for Huddersfield (Mr. Leatham) appeared to be of a more practical character; it was that a reduction of 20,000 men should be made. It was more practical, because, as the hon. Gentleman observed, 20,000 men more or less mattered very little; in other words, it was not a point which affected our position in Europe or our security at home. In that he (Lord Elcho) was very much disposed to agree. But what he himself proposed was that we should reduce our Army by 10,000 men in order, paradoxical as it might seem, to improve it and give it greater efficiency. Last year his right hon. Friend (Mr. Cardwell) had proposed to add 20,000 men to the Army, and the artillery had already received 5,200 of that addition. But his right hon. Friend the other night complained that he (Lord Elcho) had accused him of giving erroneous information to the House. What, however,
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  he (Lord Elcho) said was that erroneous figures had been put into his mouth, inasmuch as he had stated that which was not borne out by the facts. His right hon. Friend said last Session that we had artillery enough for 60,000 men; and so we had if we took the proportion of three guns for every 1,000 men, for the number of guns was 180. He denied, however, that the right hon. Gentleman was justified in taking that proportion. According to our Field Equipment Book we had not guns last year, according to the English proportion, for 40,000 men. We could not at the time have found the proper proportion of artillerymen for 180 guns on a war establishment. His right hon. Friend stated to the House this Session that we had 336 field guns, capable of expansion to 408 guns, equivalent to artillery for 150,000 men, and he gave as his ground for making that statement that Colonel Hamley, in some work or other, had given certain proportions of guns to armies, and that the Prussian proportion was of a certain standard. But his right hon. Friend was not justified in basing his argument upon such data; for since last year a Committee had been appointed by the War Office, which had laid down certain proportions of guns to men, and that was not the Prussian proportion of 2·7 to every 1,000 men, but three guns to every 1,000; so that his right hon. Friend, tested by the proportion laid down by his own Committee, had guns not for 150,000 but only for 136,000 men. His right hon. Friend, however, said that he had the means of expanding his 336 guns into 408; but he (Lord Elcho) held in his hand figures to show that we had not men to man these guns. Now, the right hon. Gentleman the Prime Minister had, the evening before, stated that hitherto a bad custom had prevailed of reckoning guns for which there were no carriages. [Mr. GLADSTONE: For which carriages were only made the year after.] That was to say that we had no means of using those guns at the moment, inasmuch that the carriages for them were not made until the following year. But what was the Government doing now? It should be borne in mind that, although we could manufacture carriages to almost any extent, we could not deal with soldiers and artillerymen in the way we could manufacture carriages. And had we, he would ask, artillerymen at the

  621
  present, even taking the depôt garrisons into account, to man 408 guns on the war establishment, even on home service, if necessity should arise for doing so? His impression was that that could not be done even though we were to take the whole of our depôts—which, it should be borne in mind, were required for the purposes of India and of our Colonies. Were we even to starve every other service we should still be under the requisite complement. As he (Lord Elcho) had stated, he thought it would be well, when they heard so many complaints made about the increase of something like £1,000,000 for supplying material of war to our Army, that the House should understand the sort and amount of stores in the way of guns and men which were necessary. We had not in this country artillery for more than 136,000 Regular troops according to our English proportion of men to guns; to man those guns was the utmost we could do, and that by starving other services. But then we had made no provision in the way of field artillery for the Militia—none for the Volunteers. He wished, therefore, to know from the Government whether they were taking even the simplest steps to provide field artillery for our Reserve Forces? Now, there was a very valuable system in existence in this country which he would recommend to the attention of his right hon. Friend the Secretary for War. He alluded to a system which had been devised by Mr. Darby, who was formerly Member for Sussex, by means of which agricultural horses and waggoners in their smock frocks were organized to draw 18-pounder guns 30 miles in the course of a day, besides manœuvring over steep ground such as that at Brighton, in a manner which was the admiration of all artillery officers who witnessed the manœuvres at that place. Now, that was a description of force which would cost the country nothing except the guns and ammunition, and if the farmers were willing to use their horses for the purpose, there was no reason why the system should not be established throughout the whole country with the greatest facility. Information on that point might easily be obtained by means of letters addressed to Lords Lieutenant of counties. Now, the number of guns which we should require if we were to
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  have anything like the proportion of guns to men which existed in foreign countries would be about 1,400 or 1,500 guns, and a proportionate number of artillerymen. He held in his hand an extract from a work which had been recently published by the Archduke Albrecht of Austria, who was Generalissimo of the Austrian Army, in which he stated that Germany, including North and South, had for its first line 1,794 guns, and for its second line 54 guns, which gave a total for Germany of 1,848 field guns. In this country we had only 408, all told, and these, he maintained, we were unable to man; and if we were to lose men or guns, we had no means of replacing them. The late war, he would add, had clearly shown that the force which it was most effective and most desirable to keep up was the artillery; and we should, he contended, do all in our power to recover our lost position in that respect, or rather to establish a position which we had never held by keeping an ample supply of artillery to meet an invasion, or in case we should want to send a force abroad. He was anxious that, of the 20,000 men voted by this House last August as an increase of force, 10,000, instead of 5,000, should be given to the artillery. This would add infinitely more to the strength and efficiency of the Army than by giving the 5,000 to the cavalry or infantry; and he would remind the House that 4,800 men were equivalent to manning, on a war establishment, 170 additional guns. He hoped the House would look mainly to the artillery in this re-organization of the Army, and would insist that the field batteries were properly kept up; and that some provision was made, of course in the cheapest form, for the Reserve Forces. His other proposal was to knock off 10,000 from the cavalry and infantry, and strengthen our military system upon something like a principle which should be enduring, and really ensure for us a greater number of men in the end. This proposal might appear paradoxical; but all who were interested in military matters knew that the number of men voted by this House varied from year to year. From below the Gangway constant Motions were made to reduce the number of men, and, if the Division were a close one, or a strong feeling were expressed by the usual supporters of the Government, though it

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  might not affect the Votes of that year, a material influence was exercised over the Estimates of the following year. For example, unless there was reason to believe in 1872 that the peace of Europe would be disturbed, he should be greatly surprised if these 20,000 men found a place in the Estimates after last night's minority of 91. His Parliamentary experience told him that the mere addition of men to the Army rested on no solid foundation; the men put on this year were, if political convenience or necessity required, taken off again next year. We had, therefore, no certain system upon which we could rely. A Return, moved for by the hon. and gallant Member (Colonel Sykes), showed the variations in the Estimates from 1815, and the ranges of figures looked like the tables of the heights of mountains, sometimes very low and sometimes very high, proving that successive Governments were guided by no principle in framing their Estimates, except what was supposed to be public opinion for the time being. The Surveyor General would not have the face to stand up and say that 10,000 more men on the year's Estimates would settle the question whether England was or was not safe from invasion. He dared the Surveyor General to say that these 10,000 men, who were neither here nor there, would enable us to fulfil treaty engagements, or go to war with France, or Prussia, or Russia. It would be nonsense to say so. Therefore, it was necessary to have something like a system for the strengthening of the Army. The Secretary of State dwelt much upon the system of short service, and seemed to think that the Government had taken out a patent for the short-service system as an invention which no one had ever heard of before. Well, everybody felt that short service would be a good thing if you could only get the men. The whole question turned upon whether the men would enlist under the short-service system, and then go into the Reserve. He hoped they might; but at present the results were not very satisfactory. The prospect which the right hon. Gentleman had held out of having 178,000 men in 12 years depended entirely on an ugly but very small word in the English language—"if." His right hon. Friend said we would have that number "if the recruits were willing to come." But an hon.
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  Gentleman who last night spoke from behind the Treasury Bench, and who spoke more ad rem than those in front of him, alluding to the First Army Reserve, who alone were liable to foreign service, said he would be inclined to wipe out the Second Class Reserve altogether, and that the men were not coming forward as we might reasonably expect. He (Lord Elcho) would state to the House what the result of the short service had been between 1st July and 1st February. In July, 1870, we had a first-class Army Reserve—it was of it only he spoke—they were the only men that could be used for foreign service; and we had a Second Class Reserve, which was mostly composed of pensioners. What was the state of that Reserve? Now, on July 1st the number of men was 2,397 of the First Class, on the 1st August it was 2,632, and on the 1st February last it was 3,695; so that, according to this Return, instead of their having 9,000 men, as was calculated upon, they would only have about 5,000. Now, why did not men enter the Reserves? Because the inducement was insufficient. The right hon. Gentleman said that Scotchmen, who were generally cautious and knew what was for their own interest, were entering readily upon the short-service system. He had reason to believe, however, upon the best authority, that a large proportion of the men who had thus entered did so under the belief that their service was counting towards pensions, and that in a Highland regiment enlistments were made under this misconception. The Recruiting Inspector said the reason why recruiting was so slow, was that inducements were not held out to men to enter the Army. His right hon. Friend and the Financial Secretary (Captain Vivian) had made merry over something which he (Lord Elcho) had not said in this House, but had written in some letters, reprinted, not by himself, but by a publisher in London. They taunted him with the length of time during which he had intruded upon the House. They did not touch upon anything he had said in that House, but referred to something written in a newspaper in the winter, and sneered at some plan which they called his, and which they had submitted to some actuaries at some office. Now, if the calculations of their actuaries on the plan were no more trustworthy

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  than the calculations on the purchase system, he did not think much of them.
  CAPTAIN VIVIANsaid, he had told the noble Lord that his scheme had been referred to Mr. Finlaison, whom the noble Lord would admit to be an actuary of some reputation.
  LORD ELCHOhoped, then, that the calculation with respect to the purchase system would be referred to the same actuary. But the plan was not his own, but was that of Sir Hope Grant, the Quartermaster General, and with the view of getting men to join it appeared to him a most reasonable plan. The plan rested on the principle than in order to get men by voluntary enlistment, inducements must be hold out, either in the shape of sufficient pay or something like a pension or benefit for the service they went through. A great deal had been said to the effect that under the system of short service a much better class of men would be obtained for 14 d. a day, and that they would be glad to give three years' service and then be liable for nine years more to be called on for £6 a-year; but the Recruiting Officer said that it did not appear that the men obtained for short service were of a different class from those enlisted for long service; the men taken appeared indifferent as to the term of service, but the majority of recruits looked forward to eventually obtaining a pension, and enlisted with that prospect before them. That was the case on the showing of the Recruiting Officer, and, therefore, the prospect of getting an Army of Reserve by short enlistments was very uncertain. There was one system of Reserve, and only one, which had been successful—that initiated by General Peel—and that was the Militia Reserve, or, as it should be more properly called, the Army Militia Reserve. That was a system under which men who enlisted into the Reserve received a bounty of £1 a-year, and during the five years of their engagement they were liable, in the event of war, to be mobilized, and sent to join the Army. That system, as regards the number of men, had been a success when everything else had failed. It was limited to 20,000 men, and they had been got. There was in that Reserve something like a system of economy—something like a way of making one shilling go three times further than by any other means.
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  The fault of this Militia Reserve was that the men were too young possibly and too old, and in order to get them the medical examination was reduced; and the doctor who passed recruits into the Reserve got 2s. 6d. for rejecting a man, but 4s. for passing one. That seemed to be offering the doctor a premium for passing into the Army men who were physically unfitted for the service. It appeared to him that the House would do well to consider this question of the Militia Reserve, for he believed the Militia to be the backbone of the military system. This Militia Reserve was first suggested by General Peel, and no man stood higher in the opinion of the House and the country. That gallant Officer went out of office on the Household Suffrage question, and the right hon. Member for Droitwich (Sir John Pakington) afterwards passed the measure, which originated in the brain of General Peel. It was, however, General Peel's intention that for every man who volunteered for the Army Militia Reserve the officers commanding Militia regiments should be entitled to raise another man, so that the actual strength of the home Militia should not be diminished. The object was to insure a ready supply of men for the Militia Reserve, by not setting the Militia colonels against it, for no officer would like to lose his men. They were told that they had at this moment 139,000 Militia. They had nothing of the kind. Deducting the permanent Staff and the Army Militia Reserve, the Militia would number only about 100,000 men. Now, he ventured to think that, instead of raising these 10,000 additional men for the Regular Army, who might be here in this year and not in the next, let them establish General Peel's measure on an extended basis as he intended it to be, and then let them apply such rules and regulations to the Militia, that they might be sure of having trained and physically trustworthy soldiers. He would not have men in the Militia Reserve under 20 years of age, nor allow them to remain after 34 years of age. If they were admitted after a proper medical examination, 4s. being given for passing them and a like sum for rejecting them, and if they were then properly drilled, a useful body of men would be obtained. While keeping their cadres

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  they would have 30,000, instead of 10,000, to fill up their attenuated regiments. The cost would be less. They would get 30,000 of the Militia Reserve for £100,000 less than 10,000 men of the Regular Army cost. The one would cost £278,000, the other £153,000. That was his paradox, and he hoped he had explained it satisfactorily to the House. Instead of reducing our strength, it would increase our strength. He wanted to add 5,000 men to the Artillery, and would establish something like a system of Reserve which would be found to work well. His object was totally different from that of the hon. Member for Huddersfield (Mr. Leatham), who spoke last night. He wished to see the country strong. He wished to see the military system of this country properly organized on a sound and economical system, that would give the means of filling up the Army in the cheapest way. The Gentleman who spoke last night took a totally different view. The remedy of the hon. Member for Sheffield (Mr. Mundella) was to spend £3,000,000 not in breech-loaders, but in technical education. The hon. Member for Manchester (Mr. Jacob Bright) naturally sneered at everyone opposed to him—he furbished up the old rusty family sword, the swish of which had so often before been heard in this House when it was wielded by a more powerful hand. He said these panics were got up; that the outcry for larger armies was raised by a class in its own interest. ["Hear, hear!"] He wondered hon. Gentlemen below the Gangway were not ashamed of countenancing such statements; in their conscience they could not believe them. These Gentlemen, however, made a profession of sneering at what they called panic-mongers, and were always, both on the hustings and in the House, showing their superior courage by crying—"Who's afraid?" As to the eloquent peroration of the hon. Member for Huddersfield (Mr. Leatham), in which he told them that if England were to disarm "wise men," by whom he supposed he meant Prince Bismarck—
  "Would smile, and angels would descend,"
  by which he concluded he meant a Prussian Army, he (Lord Elcho) could not derive much comfort from it. But as regarded panics, he thought they had most ground of complaint against
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  the Prime Minister himself? What did he say in the speech which he delivered last night? He began by saying that these increased Estimates were owing to two causes—one the state of the world, the other the desire of the country for extensive change of its military system. He must say if that desire existed they had failed to meet it in any satisfactory manner. But he went on to say that these panics were a discredit to this country, little worthy of the masculine character of the people. Now, he (Lord Elcho) maintained that the discredit did not belong to the country, but to those who governed it. We had a military organization, with this frightful expenditure going on for years, which was in such a miserable state that it was a discredit, and rendered panic unavoidable when one looked narrowly into matters. His right hon. Friend the Minister for War made a speech on the 1st of August, in which he said that England never was so strong as she then was; yet, at the same time, he added 20,000 men to the Army; and he also boasted about the artillery, and said we had artillery for 60,000 men—not knowing, although there were those who ought to have informed him, that there was such a thing as the Field Equipment Book, and according to that he should have known there was not field artillery for 60,000 men. But, after saying England never was so strong, he not only added 20,000 men to the Army, but between August and the 1st of February he doubled our artillery. His calculation might have done for Lord Castlereagh's time; but it was out of date now. He repeated, such was the state of our military organization that it was an absolute discredit to those who governed the country, he did not care on what side of the House they sat; and the Prime Minister was not justified in saying that the people of this country were to be blamed for these periodical panics. He begged to move that this Vote be reduced by 10,000 men.
  Amendment proposed, to leave out "135,047," in order to insert "125,047,"—(Lord Elcho,)—instead thereof.
  MR. CARDWELLsaid, the noble Lord (Lord Elcho) had taken great, but he thought unnecessary, pains to convince his hon. Friends on this side of the House that his object was very different

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  from theirs. If those hon. Members would follow out the noble Lord's arithmetic, the result would be that they would arrive at very different conclusions from his. The noble Lord had no objection to quote very freely the speeches of those whose conduct he attacked; but he was not always very well pleased himself when his own speeches and letters were quoted against him. Now, he (Mr. Cardwell) thought he remembered passages in those speeches and letters which were quite inconsistent with the proposition with which the noble Lord concluded his speech. The noble Lord now proposed to reduce the numbers of the standing Army; but his great complaint in the autumn and winter was that—"Nothing had occurred within the last two years that could justify the reduction of our Regular Army;" that "the Secretary of State had begun at the wrong end, and the way in which he dealt with our small standing Army cannot be viewed as other than a very great, dangerous, and practical error in the application of a sound principle." That is, because in profound peace they had reduced Colonial regiments, and established the principle of larger numbers of cadres with a smaller number of men in each cadre, and, consequently, had not recruited up to the numbers of the regiments, thereby effecting a great reduction of men, they had begun at the wrong end, and adopted a very dangerous application of a sound principle. Then, speaking of the Regular Army, the noble Lord said—"It should be borne in mind that a force should not be lightly parted with which it takes so much time to raise." Now, the object of the noble Lord was not to save expenditure. It might be very well to say that 30,000 Militiamen would cost a little less than 10,000 of the Regular Army; but when the object of making the change was to effect a large addition to field artillery, and to introduce a large expenditure in the matter of horses, adding that cost, the balance would not be found on the right side. In the framing of the Estimates for this year, in obedience to the wish of the country and of the House, the considerable addition of £524,000 had been made to the expenditure upon the Reserve Forces, as compared with the Estimates for 1868–9; and as compared with the same Estimates, there was a diminution in the cost
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  of the Regulars of £293,000. He (Mr. Cardwell) had made a mistake the other evening in overstating the latter amount. The decrease on the whole Army was 3,449 men, while the increase on the Militia was 53,000, and provision was made for an addition to the Militia Reserve of 10,000 men. He thought that 30,000 men out of the Militia, intended for the Militia Reserve, was as large an amount as it would be judicious to have; it was the amount provided for by the Act of Parliament—namely, one-fourth part of the whole Militia. [Lord ELCHO: Why not alter the law?] No doubt, it was quite easy for the House, if it wished, to alter the law; but it was not desirable to do it. He assumed that the House thought so when it passed the Bill limiting the Militia Reserve to the present number of men. If we add 30,000 men to our present Militia, we must do one of two things—we must either have many of our battalions so numerous that they would be too large to be commanded when the Reserve was with them, or they must be so much diminished when the Reserve was withdrawn from them, as to be too small. The truth was that the House, in adopting the present proposition of Militia Reserve, were guided by a conviction of what was expedient, and not by haphazard suggestions. With great deference to the noble Lord, the men of the Militia Reserve were not the best men it was possible to have; and what we wanted, and what the Government desired to obtain, were men who had had the advantage of a training in the Regular Army. The noble Lord complained of the Financial Secretary (Captain Vivian) criticizing a proposal contained in a published book, and not in any speech; but that was not the first time it had been heard of, for it had been made in the House a year before. It was proposed to him (Mr. Cardwell) to adopt the plan; and he ventured to say, on the spur of the moment, that the plan must necessarily be so costly that it would be impossible to entertain it. When it came to be examined by actuaries, according to the data furnished by the authors of the plan, it was found that the Reserve would have cost half as much again as all the Votes for the pay and provisions of the men in the present Estimates. The proposal, then, was expensive and not very efficient, for it would not give us a single

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  Reserve man for seven years. When such plans as these were proposed, it was well to submit them to criticism, in order to show that they were undesirable as means of adding to the defence of the country. To his great surprise, he had been challenged again on the subject of artillery. Being a civilian, he did not pretend to give the House his opinions on the subject; but what he said he stated on the highest artillery authority. It was quite true there was a Meld Equipment Book in print, that these figures did not correspond with them; but the noble Lord, in one of his letters, had criticized the field equipment laid down, and had said that its proportions were excessive. He (Mr. Cardwell) was himself of that opinion, and had appointed a Committee to revise the book; they were revising it, and arriving at different proportions, and the proportions, which he stated on authority, were literally true.
  LORD ELCHOsaid, his criticism was based entirely on the "English Field Equipment Book."
  MR. CARDWELLsaid, he declined to be judged by the book; he must be judged by the general practice of our Army, which had continued from the commencement of this century down to the present time. Colonel Hamley, a high military authority, said that a surplus of artillery was worse than useless; that it hampered the movements of a column, destroyed roads, perplexed a general, and embarrassed a retreat; and that an army of 60,000 might well be content with 180 guns. Now, the statement for which he had been subjected to so much criticism was that 180 guns was artillery enough for 60,000 men. The proposed addition of 5,224 men to the artillery and of 2,834 horses was based on the very best military advice, and with it we should have a full artillery equipment for 150,000 men. That was the highest number we could at any time expect to put into the field, and with an effective organization of our artillery Reserves we did not want artillery for garrison duty. To adopt the proposal of the noble Lord would be to defer passing men through the infantry in order to place them in the Reserves; it would not be an economical nor an efficient plan, and he trusted, therefore, that the House would adhere to the Resolution of the Committee, and would
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  not pass the Amendment of the noble Lord.
  MR. MUNTZsaid, he regretted that a question of so much, importance should be discussed with any semblance of party spirit. The noble Lord (Lord Elcho) had attributed no blame to the Government, but had only stated what was well known, that during the last 15 years £220,000,000 had been spent on the defences of the country for the Army, and yet we were in almost a defenceless position. He agreed that the Estimates were too large for peace and not enough for war. Before going into the question of panic, which was mentioned the other night, he would ask, what had been the cause of the extraordinary change that had taken place in the public mind during the last 12 months? They appeared to have been existing in a fool's paradise, for in reality they had not that means of defence which they imagined. He regretted that the panics which from time to time arose should have been attributed to the Clubs. They seemed to him rather to have arisen from a kind of instinctive feeling that came over the people that they were defenceless—it was a sort of phantom begotten by panic out of misrule. They were distinctly informed in July last, on good authority, when on the point of sending 20,000 men to Belgium—and it was the whole we could have sent—that we had guns for 30,000 men in an efficient state; but the question was, how many guns could have been actually embarked for Antwerp on 48 hours' notice? On every recurrence of these panics we voted men and voted money, and thrown it into the sea in fortifications, and then sank back into our original condition. Then another panic arose, and we went again through the same process. We wanted more and complete organization, and until we had it this country would be subject to constant panics and excessive expenditure. He did not find fault with the Government, but rather with the system at the War Office, which, without increasing our efficiency or our power, had increased our expenditure from £6,000,000 in 1835 to £16,000,000 at the present time; while in 1835 we had 129,000 men, and in 1871 134,000 men. He had no desire to find fault with the increase in the cavalry and artillery; but he did object to the increase in the infantry. Why did we

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  require the 12,650 more infantry that appeared on the Estimates? It was said we had guns for 150,000 men; but, besides them, we had 139,000 Militia and 170,000 Volunteers, who were paraded as a part of the national force. They either meant something or nothing.—if they meant something, they ought to be properly equipped; and if they meant nothing, they ought to be wiped out as useless. If they were to be made available in case of difficulty, how were they to get their guns? 1,000 guns would be wanted if the whole enumerated were called out for service. This being the case, why should more men be enlisted? If the 7,000 who were still required were obtained they would be found good for nothing, because they would be raw recruits. If his right hon. Friend were short of infantry, would it not be more economically, as well as more constitutionally, to embody 15 or 20 battalions of Militia, and send, them to Aldershot for six months to be made into soldiers? He was not sure whether the existing law would sanction the right hon. Gentleman in doing that; but in case it did not, he felt convinced that the House would not hesitate to give him power to do so in case of necessity, for there was a great and wise objection on the part of the country to a constant increase of our standing Army. The First Lord of the Treasury said last night that one year we bought guns, and the next year horses. He presumed that in the following year the right hon. Gentleman would get the harness, and in another year the men; but the proper way would be to get the men and the horses first, and then the guns, yet the present system had existed ever since he had watched the course of public affairs. He, however, saw no reason why we should increase our armed force, and thereby incur an unnecessary expenditure, and he should, therefore, support the Motion of his noble Friend.
  SIR HENRY STORKSsaid, the noble Lord the Member for Haddingtonshire (Lord Elcho) had made a vigorous and dramatic speech which he looked upon as a revised and corrected repetition of his contributions to current literature, and of his addresses on other occasions. Everyone must recognize the industry and energy with which the noble Lord had applied himself to obtaining information on the important subject to which
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  he had devoted his attention. The noble Lord had told the House that what he called his "facts" were acquired from sources that did not admit of being denied, explained away, or controverted. [Lord ELCHO said, he spoke of the facts, and not of the sources.] He accepted the noble Lord's explanation. With respect to the sources from which the facts were obtained he (Sir Henry Storks) confessed to having had some conversation with the noble Lord on military matters; but evidently the noble Lord had either derived very little information from him, or at all events he had misunderstood that which he wished to convoy. Last September the noble Lord stated that in the Prussian Army the proportion of field artillery was 4·5 per 1,000 men, and on that assertion he based his arguments as to the necessities of this country, holding that these figures could not be denied or controverted. The statement, however, was not correct; but in a recent speech the noble Lord accurately stated the proportion at 2·7 per 1,000 men. Then what became of the argument based on the former assertion?
  LORD ELCHOwas sorry to interrupt, but all this discussion was made to turn, not upon what he said in the House, but upon quotations from letters which he had written to the newspapers.
  SIR HENRY STORKSsaid, he naturally referred to what his noble Friend had written to the newspapers, because it was in those letters that he had persistently held up the War Department to so much reprobation, and he therefore thought himself justified in referring to them. With reference to what had fallen from his hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham (Mr. Muntz), no doubt last autumn the Secretary for War stated that we had field artillery sufficient for a force of 60,000 men, giving three guns for every 1,000 men, or rather more than the proportion allowed in Continental armies, and he (Sir Henry Storks) had no hesitation in saying that if it had been necessary to send a force to Belgium that force would have gone perfectly equipped in every respect. With respect to the Royal Artillery of the United Kingdom we had at the beginning of 1870, 10 batteries of horse artillery, 20 field batteries, 12 depôt garrison batteries, 52 garrison batteries, and a Coast Brigade, making 94 batteries, 180 guns, manned and horsed, 13,885 officers and

  635
  men, and 2,966 horses. It was proposed that the Royal Artillery in the United Kingdom should in the present year consist of 16 batteries of Horse Artillery, 40 field batteries, 12 depôt batteries (two of which were Horse Artillery, three field artillery, and seven garrison artillery), 35 garrison batteries, and the Coast Brigade; making 103 batteries, consisting of 366 field guns, 18,392 officers and men, and 5,800 horses. It would therefore be observed that, instead of a total of 180 field guns, there would be 336 field guns, manned and horsed, exclusive of 30 guns in the depôt; and that the total number of men in the garrison brigades would be somewhat increased and the depôt largely so. The noble Lord remarked, a few nights since, that the alteration made by the Secretary for War in the field artillery consisted of bringing home horses and men from India and converting a certain number of garrison batteries into field batteries, at which, in one of the most sensational parts of his speech, the noble Lord said the House would "shudder." The noble Lord, had he investigated the subject thoroughly, would have found that the gunners of the Royal Artillery, except the Horse Artillery, were interchangeable, that the drivers were trained drivers, and that the gunners, who were dismounted gunners, had nothing to mount but the limbers. His right hon. Friend the Secretary for War had pointed out that when more field guns were wanted the men could be obtained from the garrison batteries, and the garrison batteries could be re-inforced by the Militia and the Volunteer Artillerymen. In view of the large augmentation of the field artillery the cadres had been reduced; but the right hon. Gentleman in reducing those cadres had acted upon the best advice—that of the Director of Artillery and the Adjutant General of Artillery. The present battery establishments of this country were in excess of those maintained in time of peace by the Continental Powers. For instance, the peace establishment of a French field battery was 137 officers and men, 83 horses, and 6 guns, and of a Prussian field battery 112 officers and men, 40 horses, and 4 guns; while that of an English field battery was 149 officers and men, 88 horses, and 6 guns, being only 3 men less that that of a Prussian battery in time of war. But it was said—"You have a force of 300,000 or 400,000 men, and,
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  therefore, taking the proportion of 3 guns per 1,000 men, you ought to have 1,200 guns." He should like to know, however, whether any Continental Power kept such a force of guns on foot on a peace establishment. Every Power, and certainly England above all, should keep on foot a force of artillery sufficient for a manœuvring Army; but a large portion of our forces would necessarily have to be placed in our fortresses, and, therefore, could not be regarded as being in any way a manœuvring Army. The House would agree with him that under these circumstances the right hon. Gentleman had acted wisely in proposing to place our Artillery force on the footing mentioned in the Estimate. He (Sir Henry Storks) had also heard it said that we should have no guns in reserve; but the fact was that we should have equipped, and in store no less than 692 guns. In addition to those guns actually in existence it must be remembered that the gun and carriage factories at Woolwich could turn out field batteries at the rate of two per week, and that, in case of emergency, recourse could be had to the trade. Sir William Armstrong had informed him that at his works one, if not two batteries per week could be produced. If, therefore, four batteries of guns could be turned out every week, looking to the nature of guns, and to the expense incurred in looking after them and keeping them in order, it would simply be extravagance to keep more of them in store than was actually necessary. At the present time we had 80 guns of position which, with their harness, were ready to take the field—40 being at Woolwich and the others being distributed about the country at different places. It had been asked where was the harness and equipment for all these guns? In reply he begged to state that there were in store no less than 5,000 saddles, besides 10,000 sets of harness. Looking at the facility of producing these articles in any quantity, and to their perishable nature, he did not think it would be wise to keep a larger quantity in store. He must say, therefore, that he did not think that the Secretary of State, or the Department with which he was connected, deserved the criticism—should he say the hostile criticism—of the noble Lord—[Lord ELCHO: No.]—then he would say the advice of his candid Friend. He hoped that he had

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  satisfied the House that neither the one nor the other had been as negligent as the noble Lord had represented them to have been.
  MAJOR ARBUTHNOTsaid, there were differences of opinion as to the manner in which the Army should be rendered efficient, but there was one point on which they all agreed, and that was that this country ought to have a formidable force of artillery. The Government had shown their desire to render the artillery formidable by the augmentations which had already been made. But his complaint was that the augmentations had not been made in the right direction. They wished to effect their purpose by three means. They had withdrawn a certain number of batteries of Horse Artillery from India, and reduced a brigade of garrison artillery—by whose advice it was difficult to say—Certainly it was against the advice of the present Commander-in-Chief in India. He had heard it stated that it was by the advice of a distinguished General who had recently been elevated to the Peerage. But if that was the case, it was contrary to the spirit of the Memorandum which he issued immediately before his departure from the office of Commander-in-Chief in India. However, the thing was done, and the batteries were on their way home. Then, they had created a number of dummy batteries by taking garrison artillerymen and sending them into the field with recruit drivers and non-commissioned officers, who were utterly inexperienced with regard to mounted duties. The garrison gunners and officers were good in their way; they consisted of men who had selected that branch of the service because they had a partiality for it—they were highly intelligent men, who had undergone a great amount of training, but they knew nothing of the duty of mounted soldiers. He wished also to refer to the way in which the batteries of Horse Artillery were reduced. It was most mortifying to the officers of that branch of the service to be so starved for men as they were; and the measure was also breaking the hearts and ruining the morale of the non-commissioned officers and men. He ventured to state that the reductions which had been made in the Royal Artillery with the very best intentions on the part of the Government were very injurious indeed to the interests of the service, and they
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  would be conferring a very great benefit on the officers of the Royal Artillery, and the service generally, if they took some steps to increase the numbers of those branches of the Army, the field batteries and the Royal Horse Artillery.
  Question, "That '135,047' stand part of the Resolution," put, and agreed to.
  Resolution agreed to.
  Subsequent Resolutions agreed to.

TRADES UNIONS BILL— [BILL 28.]
(Mr. Secretary Bruce, Mr. Solicitor General, Mr. Shaw Lefevre.)
TRADES UNIONS BILL— [BILL 28.]

  COMMITTEE.
  Order for Committee read.
  MR. BRUCEsaid, he did not intend to proceed with the measure at that hour; but he wished to acquaint the House with the resolution he had come to as to the conduct of it; and that was to give notice that it be an Instruction to the Committee on the Bill that they have power to make the said Bill into two Bills, the effect of which would be to carry on concurrently the two Bills, separating the criminal from the civil provisions. The Bill, however, would still be precisely to the same effect as it now was, subject, of course, to any Amendments that might be introduced in Committee. He desired to fix the Bill for Tuesday.
  Committee deferred till Tuesday next.

  MUTINY BILL.
  On Motion of Mr. DODSON, Bill for punishing Mutiny and Desertion, and for the better Payment of the Army and their Quarters, ordered to be brought in by Mr. DODSON, Mr. Secretary CARDWELL, and The JUDGE ADVOCATE.

  WAYS AND MEANS.
  Resolution reported;
  "That, towards making good the Supply granted to Her Majesty, for the service of the year ending the 31st day of March 1872, the sum of £5,411,900 be granted out of the Consolidated Fund of the United Kingdom."
  Resolution agreed to:—Bill ordered to be brought in by Mr. DODSON, Mr. CHANCELLOR of the EXCHEQUER, and Mr. BAXTER.
  Bill presented, and read the first time.
  House adjourned at a quarter after Twelve o'clock till Monday next.

MINUTES.
PUBLIC BILLS—First Reading—Local Government Supplemental * (58).
Committee—Report—Stamp Act (1870) Amendment * (45); Income Tax Assessment * (48).
Third Reading—Prison Ministers * (53), and passed.

CHINA—THE TIEN-TSIN MASSACRE. TREATY OF 1858.

  ADDRESS FOR PAPERS.
  THE EARL OF CARNARVON, who had given notice to call the attention of the House to the Parliamentary Papers issued with reference to the Tien-tsin Massacre, and the relations of this country and China; and to move for Copies or Extracts of Correspondence relative to the revision of the Treaty of 1858, said, he would have been glad had any other noble Lord undertaken the task of calling the attention of the House to the Papers which had been published respecting the massacres at Tien-tsin; but since no other of their Lordships had undertaken to do so, and considering the importance of the subject and the mention of it in the Speech from the Throne at the commencement of the Session, he would crave the indulgence of their Lordships while he drew their attention to it. In doing so he would, in the first place, refer to some of the circumstances of the case, and then to the inferences naturally to be drawn from them. The former were probably so fresh in their Lordships' recollection that he need only briefly recapitulate them. Prior to the 21st of last June there had been rumours afloat of an unsatisfactory nature and some excitement prevailed. On the 21st, without warning, the gongs sounded, and a large number of Chinese, armed with weapons, rushed tumultuously to the French Consulate and afterwards attacked a religious establishment occupied by some Sisters of Mercy of French, English, Belgian, and Irish nationality. The French Consul was killed, as also his assistant and two French gentlemen and ladies, while the unfortunate Sisters of Mercy were murdered under circumstances of a revolting and fiendish nature. Not content with this, the mob wreaked their vengeance on the helpless bodies of the victims, and exhibited
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  more of the passion of animals and devils than of men. Meanwhile, disciplined Chinese troops, with their officers, stood by, the local authorities were at least passive, and the Governor of the place, if not an actual participator in the crime, at all events attempted no kind of opposition. For some days afterwards the European community of Tien-tsin was left to itself, the local authorities being entirely quiescent, and it was probably owing only to their courage, and to the friendly assistance of an American captain, who showed the greatest humanity and courage, that the mischief spread no further. Such were the briefly stated facts of the case. The opinions as to the cause of these proceedings were very conflicting. Four theories had been started. It was attributed by some to a superstition on the part of the Chinese that the Sisters of Mercy were in the habit of kidnapping children for the purpose of using parts of their bodies in their materia medica. Others—and he thought the noble Earl opposite rather leant to this view, threw blame on the acts of the missionaries—whose general conduct was said to be such as to provoke the Natives to their deeds of violence. The third theory ascribed it to the general hatred of foreigners prevailing in China—some facts detailed in the Papers went to strengthen that suggestion—that the official classes were engaged in, and instigators of, the offence. The first of these suggested causes was obviously untrue—Mr. Wade, our chargé d'affaires at Pekin, who at first believed there might be some foundation for it, had entirely abandoned it. Moreover, the Chinese authorities admitted that no child had been kidnapped or purchased, or was missing. As to the second, he was quite aware that missionaries in China, like many other zealous people, sometimes acted imprudently; but it was only due to them to say that rather more blame had frequently been imputed to them than they deserved, and there was nothing in the Papers to warrant the belief that they were at all responsible in this case. As to the general hatred of foreigners, there were facts stated in the Papers which appeared to strengthen this theory. During the last year or two there had been outbreaks against foreigners at different places, sometimes successful, sometimes suppressed. In

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  one instance the Governor of a Province issued a proclamation for the purpose of encouraging the belief that a drought had been caused by foreign trade in the rivers. Indeed, the decrees and proclamations put forth by authority had often been animated by feelings of the worst character. In the present case hatred of foreigners in general was manifested, for French and Russians both fell victims, and a day or two previously Dr. Fraser was mobbed, but being mounted escaped serious injury. In one of the few cases where the Chinese authorities had exercised a firm repression, one of them was assassinated in his public office. As to the fourth theory, it must be remembered that manifestations of animosity against foreigners had occurred both at Tien-tsin and in other parts of the Empire. For some time past placards had been put forth, with official connivance, if not authority, denouncing foreigners, and insinuating the grossest charges against them; pamphlets had been issued containing the vilest calumnies, and fans had been printed representing mandarins standing over the corpses of Europeans. There had, in fact, been that atmosphere of suspicion and animosity which generally preceded such outbreaks. Mr. Wade, who was certainly not prejudiced against the Chinese authorities, had himself stated that the Governor of Tien-tsin must have been aware that some such outbreak was in contemplation. Then the conduct of these officials was anything but satisfactory after the massacre had taken place. The officer appointed to conduct the inquiry arrived late at his post; the inquiry commenced late, 19 days, at least, being allowed to go by, and the first day's proceedings consisted of a charge against the Sisters of Mercy. What, meanwhile, was the action of the local authorities? The Mandarins immediately seized some native Chinese, and for 20 days subjected them to horrible tortures, in the hope, it must be assumed, of obtaining some exculpatory evidence. After this act of the drama had been completed, the magistrates themselves were called in question for their conduct, and were virtually allowed to escape with impunity. Mr. Wade anticipated that, when committed to prison, their sentence would be commuted to banishment, and that this would before long
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  be remitted. What was the penalty inflicted on the undoubted murderers? Seven days were allowed to pass before any of the criminals were arrested. They were then brought to some kind of trial, and, finally, after a delay of three months, 15 were proposed to the representatives of the foreign Powers as fit and proper objects for execution. Mr. Wade protested against this as altogether inadequate, and the Chinese Government then proposed that four or five additional persons should be executed. Indeed, so unsatisfactory were the whole proceedings, that prior to the execution of the 15 criminals the representatives of England, the United States, Prussia, and Russia drew up a joint Protest, in which they said—
  "The undersigned think it their duty to say that this decision, taken after a delay of three months, is in no way satisfactory."
  The execution was conducted in a manner at least suspicious. The criminals were not required to kneel, as was usual, and they were taken to the place of execution amid the plaudits of their friends, being considered, as victims offering up their lives as public sacrifices to the hatred of foreigners. He was not surprised that Mr. Wade, in winding up the history of the case, should have commented on the final decree in these terms—
  "It is neither in substance nor form calculated to satisfy the representatives of foreign Powers, who, having acted throughout as the friendly counsellors of China, can hardly fail to consider themselves as having been trifled with."
  These being the facts of the case, there arose the perhaps still more serious question—what was the present relation between ourselves and the Chinese? On the one hand we were struck with the important commercial position which we held, and the still vaster fortunes in store for us on the opening up of the Northern regions, which were wholly undeveloped and abounded in resources; and on the other with the limited spirit of enterprize of the Natives, and their readiness to carry on trade with Europeans, provided they were allowed by the official classes to do so. It was a remarkable fact that during our numerous wars with China our trade in tea had not been suspended; and why? Because the people were so anxious to maintain it that even though one-half of the Empire was at war with the foreigner the other half remained at peace. This justified the

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  hope of a vast expansion of our trade if the existing obstructions were peacefully and gradually removed. Our position in China depended on our maintaining that spirit of enterprize among our commercial community which had had a footing for so many years, and had so largely extended our commercial relations. Lord Russell once stated that the fewer the points of contact between Europeans and Chinese, the safer and better it would be. With great deference to this opinion, he (the Earl of Carnarvon) believed that the converse was the fact, and that the more points of contact were multiplied, provided this was done fairly and discreetly, the better in all respects it would be. Our position also depended on our recognizing the fact that the community at Tien-tsin was not merely an English, but a European one. The American captain to whom he had referred as placing his ship at the disposal of the women and children entered with heart and soul into the cause, and though he found no fault with the noble Earl the Foreign Secretary, he could not help wishing that our co-operation with the French in this matter had been a little heartier. He was no advocate for a vehement or high-handed policy with regard to the Chinese. He thought that in former days that policy was strained too far; but during the last few years he could not help thinking that we had, to a certain extent, passed from one extreme to the other. It seemed as if we were now inclined to trust solely to diplomacy; but he feared that by keeping the idea of force wholly in the background we had deprived ourselves of a most useful instrument of influence in our relations with the Chinese. The people of that nation were good diplomatists—perhaps better than ourselves—and when they found that despatches such as some in the recent Blue Book, in which it was hinted pretty broadly that unless they reversed their line of action we should proceed to hostilities, had as a matter of fact no result, they soon became inclined to turn an indifferent ear to our remonstrances. The House was, perhaps, aware that a very able Englishman, Mr. Hart, was now Inspector General of Customs in China, and it was no exaggeration to say that he was the adviser of the Chinese Government in these matters. Mr. Hart had told him that when he had been called upon to read
  550
  such despatches to the Chinese officials, the first thing they always asked was—Does it mean peace or war? Mr. Hart, acquainted as he was with European notions, would reply that it meant peace; whereapon the statements of the despatch were disregarded and its objects fell to the ground. There were several points in which there seemed a danger of our losing ground in our relations with the Chinese Government. There was the delicate and difficult question of enforcing audiences from the Emperor. To this we were entitled under Lord Elgin's Treaty; but the demand had hitherto been evaded. It might seem an idle form, but it was still the prevailing notion in China that there was only one sovereign ruler in the world, the Emperor of China, and that all other nations were tributaries and vassals, standing in the light of foreigners and savages. He did not press this point on the noble Earl, but it was one which required consideration. Another point, and that vitally affecting our position, related to the instructions given at various times to our naval officers on the China station. He was not prepared to say that those instructions bore the interpretations placed on them by the officers, but there appeared ample ground for misconception, and the sooner this was set right the better. Mr. Matheson, a name well-known in China, writing to the noble Earl in September last, stated that the naval officers, it was understood, were forbidden by the Admiralty to land their men under any circumstances, even when life was threatend, and were to confine their assistance to British subjects, to receiving on board their vessels those who might, when attacked, be compelled to seek an asylum. In answer to this Mr. Otway wrote—
  "The standing instruction to Her Majesty's Consuls and naval officers in China as to the employment of Her Majesty's ships of war are in cases of great emergency to protect the lives and properties of British subjects if placed in peril by wanton attacks directed against them, either on the part of the local authorities or by an uncontrolled popular movement."—[Correspondence No. 1 (1871), No. 26]
  This answer was a very guarded one, and though the subject, he was aware, was a delicate one, he thought the expressions should have been a little plainer, for it was evident that great misapprehension on the subject existed in the minds of British residents in

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  China. Almost immediately afterwards the subject was again brought forward, and Mr. Medhurst, our Consul at Shanghai, undertook to give an interpretation of the instructons. He stated—
  "One of the special purposes for which Her Majesty's ships of war are stationed in Chinese ports is to afford protection in cases of great emergency to the lives and properties of British subjects when imperilled by wanton attacks, either on the part of the local authorities or of uncontrolled masses of people; but this general definition is qualified by the warning that the interference of a naval force in any emergency is alone likely to receive the subsequent approval of Her Majesty's Government, if it can be clearly shown that without such interference the lives and property of British subjects would in all probability have been sacrificed, and even in such a case Her Majesty's Government will expect to hear it established to their satisfaction that the alternative of rescuing the British subjects by receiving them on board was not available."
  He still thought the instruction was so cautiously explained as to be calculated to mislead, and sometimes to discourage officers in the discharge of their duty. In another letter it was stated that although the instructions did not absolutely and under all circumstances interdict commanders of ships from protecting life and property on shore, the interpretation put on them by the officers was such that half a foreign settlement might be burnt down before they actively intervened. Mr. Hammond writing to the Shanghai Chamber of Commerce on the 28th of December, stated that if an attack on the British settlement at any of the ports was imminent, a body of marines might be landed, and if these were insufficient a detachment of troops from Hong Kong or Japan. He also wished to draw the attention of the noble Earl opposite to the Treaty of 1858. In spite of Lord Clarendon's efforts the revision of that Treaty had broken down in consequence of the hostility of our commercial interests in China; but the sooner it was revised the better it would be for all parties, and it would then be seen how far the restrictions on trade might be relaxed. The position of our Minister at Pekin should also receive consideration. At the present moment we had no Minister in China, the British interests in that country being looked after by a chargé d'affaires; but under ordinary circumstances our Minister was confined to Pekin, and never left that capital during the term of office, and he thought it advisable that this restriction should no longer exist. There were evi-
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  dences, on all hands, that the unfriendly spirit towards foreigners was spreading in China; and it was worth noticing also that the Chinese military authorities not only possessed a large number of arms of precision of the best manufacture, but they had established manufactories of them for themselves. In justification of what he had stated, he wished to point out that throughout these Papers there was a remarkable concurrence of opinion among those who were best qualified to judge with reference to the attitude that we should adopt in China. Thus, Consul Lay, writing from Tien-tsin on the 20th of June, 1870, said—
  "We do want a man-of-war here. These troubles increase when one is absent."
  Consul Medhurst, writing from Shanghai, on the 16th of July, said—
  In my despatch dated the 13th inst., I had the honour to report that a general uneasiness prevailed in the minds of the Natives of this port, brought about no doubt by the disturbing influence of the intelligence received from Tien-Tsin. I am happy to state that this feeling has to a great extent subsided during the last twenty-four hours, and that the bearing of the people has lost much of that aggressive character which it certainly showed a few days ago. I attribute the change to the prompt turn out and thoroughly prepared condition which the French exhibited on the occasion of the alarm on the night of the 12th to the active drilling of the volunteers on our side every day, and to the fact that two vessels of war, the "Barossa" (British) and "Ashurlot" (American), opportunely came into port."—[Parl. P., p. 46.]
  Admiral Sir Henry Kellett, the Admiral on the station, writing on the 21st of July, said—
  "Though the aspect of affairs has greatly improved since I last wrote, the condition of China is very critical, and requires a temperate but firm attitude of the great Powers."
  And, lastly, Mr. Wade, who had consistently opposed any high-handed course being taken by us with reference to the Chinese, said, on the 13th of October—
  "Had there been a gunboat, English or French, at Tien-tsin on the 21st of June, I doubt greatly that the atrocity of that day would have been perpetrated."
  He did not wish it to be supposed because he had laid stress upon the importance of the presence of a gunboat that he was in favour of this country taking a high-handed course with regard to China. He thought that we could not do the mercantile community interested in the Chinese trade a more cruel kindness than to adopt towards China an attitude likely to result in hostilities. But we must remember that since the

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  Treaty of 1858 the wall of separation that had hitherto existed between China and the outer world had been forcibly beaten down, and that we could not now escape from the difficulties of our new position. He believed it to be the duty of the British Government, in the first place, to insist—temperately, if you please, but at all events, firmly—upon the terms of the Treaty of 1858 being carried out in their integrity; and, in the next place, they should endeavour, whenever opportunity offered, to remove those artificial restrictions which had undoubtedly hindered, to a great extent, trade communication between China and other countries—that they should revise the instructions to the naval commanders on that coast; and that they should act towards the Chinese in a spirit of temperate firmness. He also trusted that, while keeping up our communications with the Central Government of China, we should not permit the local authorities, in the event of the occurrence of outrages of this kind, to shelter themselves behind the Central Government, but should hold them responsible to a certain extent for such breaches of the terms of the Treaty. In making these remarks, which were intended to draw attention to the critical—he would not say unsatisfactory—state of our relations with China, he trusted that he had not exceeded the bounds of fair criticism on Papers of this kind, regard being had to the importance of the subject.
  Moved, "That an humble Address be presented to Her Majesty for Copies or Extracts of Correspondence relative to the revision of the Treaty of 1858 with China."—(The Earl of Carnarvon.)
  EARL GRANVILLEsaid, the House was much obliged to the noble Earl for the interesting speech he had made, which had evidently involved a very careful study of the Blue Book on this subject, which was issued the other day. The noble Earl (the Earl of Carnarvon) had called their attention, first, to the outrage at Tien-tsin, and, secondly, to the policy which he thought this country should adopt with regard to China. He entirely agreed with the noble Earl that that outrage was utterly inexcusable—and, in fact, nobody could think of saying a word in its defence. But at the same time, if he might offer any criticism on the speech of the noble Earl, it would be that it was conceived rather too much
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  in a strain of feeling hostile to the Chinese generally—a tone which he was afraid characterized much of the opinion of this country, and certainly that of the English residents in China. With regard to the cause of the massacre, he should be sorry to give any decided opinion; but he should be disposed to agree with the noble Earl that there were four causes which had contributed to bring it about. The first of those causes was undoubtedly the superstitious feeling that existed among the lower orders of Chinese, who believed that their children were kidnapped into the convents for the purpose of their being put to death and their bodies made into drugs. He believed that some such feeling did exist; and they all knew how the wildest notions sprung up in the breasts of semi-civilized and uneducated nations respecting the practices of strangers whose religion they believed to be false. The second cause was the course adopted by the missionaries. He remembered that two years ago there was a discussion on the subject in that House, and they were nearly unanimous in bearing testimony to the high and noble motives which animated the men who incurred hardships and risked their lives for the sake of spreading the knowledge of Christianity. But he thought there was a very general opinion that any imprudent conduct on the part of the missionaries, particularly in an empire like China, was likely to produce not the progress of Christianity, but very unfortunate secular results. The Protestant missionaries in China stood on a different footing from the Roman Catholic missionaries established there; they were few in number; they had received no encouragement from the Government; there were no supposed treaty rights on which they relied—and, generally speaking, they were under the superintendence of some large missionary societies in this country who had given them very good and judicious advice, that they should not interfere in matters connected with commerce and manufacturing industry. Again, Great Britain had also important temporal interests in China in connection with her commerce and her manufactures, whereas, on the other hand, Roman Catholic countries had hardly any trade there, and their great object had been to propagate that form of the Christian creed which they themselves

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  professed. There was no doubt that a great deal of harm had been done by the missionaries of foreign countries claiming treaty rights which other Europeans did not possess in China, and extending a sort of protection not merely from persecution, but of a special character over their Chinese converts, which naturally excited much disgust among their fellow-countrymen, and exposed them to insults and misunderstandings. Although the stories about their buying children, and encouraging others to kidnap children with a view to the salvation of their souls could not be substantiated, yet there was great danger in respect to the position of Europeans generally in China unless the French and other Roman Catholic Governments exercised some more direct control over the missionary and other religious bodies of their respective countries. Another cause adverted to by the noble Earl as one of the causes of the massacre was the hatred of foreigners. Now, that there should be some dislike to foreigners in China was almost an obvious truism. They all knew that an exclusive system had for hundreds of years prevailed there; and it was not very surprising if certain circumstances connected with the intercourse of Europeans with that country should be calculated to excite among its people fear rather than love. They knew the prejudice that existed among the literary class in China against foreigners, and especially among the lower orders, who had not the advantage of education to give them a better feeling in regard to them. But the moral he drew from that was that, it being our desire to maintain and extend our friendly relations with the Chinese, we ought not to be hostile in our language towards them, nor too intolerant of the habits and customs handed down to them from generation to generation, and which must necessarily take much time and patience totally to eradicate. Our true course would be to do all we could to conciliate them without departing from our own principles. Then came the question as to the supineness of the Chinese authorities. He was far from saying that there had been no such supineness, or that greater activity and vigour in taking precautions might not have prevented the massacre. But that sometimes happened, unfortunately, in other countries besides China; and all that we had a right to require was
  556
  that compensation should be given, proper amends made, and the best measures adopted to avert the recurrence of such lamentable events. No doubt that event had filled the country with horror. It was a calamity which it was too painful to dwell upon; certainly it created a great panic in China last summer, which had its rebound in this country. And he must say that great credit was due to the official representatives of Her Majesty in China, who were quite alive to the gravity of the situation, and did all they could to calm the exaggerated alarm of their fellow-subjects. While pressing in the strongest manner on the Chinese Government the necessity of granting redress, they also endeavoured to inspire some feeling of courage and hopefulness among the Europeans. He quite admitted that the noble Earl's criticism had been offered in a very fair and conciliatory spirit with regard to the policy of both the present Government, and the Government which preceded it. Considering, however, that there was an armed vessel in every Chinese port of the least pretension, and that only 11 years ago we took Pekin and destroyed the Emperor's summer palace, he could not think there was any great reason to fear that the Chinese—a singularly shrewd nation—would think that we meant to trust absolutely to diplomacy alone, and would refuse to resort to force in any emergency whatever. The noble Earl had expressed a hope that the ambiguity in the instructions issued to our naval officers on the China station would be removed; but he (Earl Granville) could not see how he was to set about removing any such ambiguity, because he did not conceive that any really existed in the instructions sent to those officers and to our Consuls by Lord Clarendon. What could be clearer than instructions which, while allowing them to protect the lives and property of British subjects, stated that they were not to try by force to insist on reparation, but were to refer to the central power, and to the Minister at Pekin, for the redress that was necessary? The noble Earl (the Earl of Carnarvon) talked as if that was a new policy suddenly inaugurated; but it was inaugurated by Lord Elgin and Sir Frederick Bruce, and had been followed ever since we had a Minister at Pekin. It was true—and the noble Earl had

  557
  laid too much stress on the fact—that they had one letter from a Consul who would have liked to have a man-of-war in the port where he was stationed. Now, our Consuls were a most excellent class of men, who discharged their duties with great fidelity to their country; but if the British Consul had one weakness in the world, it was his wish for the presence of a British man-of-war in front of his official residence. It was exactly to prevent that accumulation of ships of war, and to prevent that authority being invested in all these local officers—acting sometimes under the pressure of panic, sometimes on the representations of a missionary body, or of a few merchants congregated together, and who desired to have the knot of some difficulty cut—that that policy was adopted, and Her Majesty's Government had no intention of departing from it—the policy that our Consuls were not to have in their hands what was practically the Queen's prerogative of declaring peace or war in every great port of the Chinese Empire. With respect to any misapprehension as to the possibility of our naval officers landing men for the protection of the lives of British subjects, it rested entirely on two letters which gave no proof whatever of the fact. These officers were informed by Mr. Wade, before he got his instructions from this country, that he was in communication with Admiral Kellett as to the landing of marines for the protection of life and property. Now with regard to the Treaty, the noble Earl had alluded to our Embassy at Pekin. Now, our policy was to make the Chinese Government themselves understand that we looked to them, with whom we had made the Treaty, to see that its stipulations were carried out. That principle possessed every advantage both for ourselves and for China. It was for our interest to strengthen rather than to weaken the authority of the Central Government of that country; and it was also for the interest of the Chinese Government itself that we should adopt a course which would strengthen their control at the extremities of their Empire; and although this might sometimes involve a little delay, and there might be occasions on which we should be obliged to offer the assistance of our naval force to co-operate with the Chinese authorities in redressing what ought not to have existed, yet he thought that in
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  the long run we should obtain any just demand we had to make, much better by that regular mode of proceeding than by pursuing the decentralizing policy of giving back to the local authorities some of that power which had been, as he believed, wisely taken from them by different Ministers. In December, 1868, Lord Derby, as Foreign Secretary, gave positive instructions to the effect that the complaints of missionaries were to be dealt with not upon the spot, but by a reference to our Minister at Pekin. The noble Earl opposite had adverted to the maintenance and revision of treaty rights. Sir Rutherford Alcock, acting under instructions from Lord Clarendon, succeeded in obtaining a revised treaty which he sent home from China, and which was thought by Lord Clarendon to be a great advance on the existing state of things. A different opinion, however, was entertained by the commercial classes in this country and in China; and Lord Clarendon, without changing his own opinion, felt that the opposition of those classes to the new treaty was so universal that one of his last official acts was to recommend to the Cabinet that it should not be ratified; and his advice was taken accordingly. But Mr. Wade, in the absence of Sir Rutherford Alcock, had shown almost every quality they could wish to see in the representative of this country in China; and their Lordships might count on Her Majesty's Government doing all that was in their power to obtain becoming conditions at the hands of the Chinese Government.
  THE MARQUESS OF SALISBURYsaid, he thought that, according to the statement of the noble Earl himself, there was some ambiguity at least in the view which the Government took of the instructions sent to our naval officers in China. He would not trouble the House more than a single moment by reading extracts to show that orders had been sent to China that guns and men should not be disembarked for the protection of British subjects in China. On page 174 of the Blue Book, Mr. Wade, writing of an application by Acting-Consul Lay for assistance in anticipation of an attack, said such an attack was, of course, a possibility, and he promised to call on the senior officer in the North "to relax or obtain relaxation of the Standing Orders so far as to admit of the debar-

  559
  kation of guns and men within the settlement." To what Standing Order did Mr. Wade refer? Whoever had issued them, they were obviously dangerous to the lives as well as the property of every English inhabitant of a Chinese port. The noble Earl had departed from his usual good taste in ridiculing the desire of the Consuls for protection by attributing their wish for gunboats to the common desire of officials to have an armed force at their command. But it should be remembered that these Consuls had been witnesses to, and almost sufferers from, what might be called one of the most frightful catastrophes ever heard of. Surely, then, it was no matter for ridicule if, after such a calamity, he saw indications of another attack, he applied for such assistance and protection for British subjects to which they were entitled, and which he in his official position had a right to expect. The Blue Book showed that the Consul was right in seeking protection from his Government. Acting-Consul Lay, in a letter to Mr. Wade, on page 175, gave a description of the state of Chinese feeling which justified the gravest apprehensions. He wrote—
  "You are aware that there is still a strong feeling against us in the city—I mean borne by the people themselves, and not confined to the rowdy class. It was stated that these troubles were caused by these rowdies, and that when they were punished all would be well. I trusted such might be the case, but it does not seem to be so. Upwards of 2,000 of these blackguards have run away from Tien-tsin; hundreds have been seized by the authorities; and yet, with the city clear of them, peace between foreigners and Chinese has not yet been established. Excitement still reigns and ill-feeling still exists."
  It was hard, indeed, that a Consul, confronted by this state of things, should be censured for seeking assistance. He would not criticize the policy announced by the noble Earl; no doubt centralization would be a very good thing, and it would be eminently satisfactory if European Powers could induce the central authority in China to keep its people in order at the several ports; but, in the meantime, while the ideal policy was being carried out, horrible catastrophes might recur again and again. The state of things in China corresponded with the state of France at the present time. A Government existed in both countries unable to insure the lives of those committed to its care, while the foreigner protested against the breach of treaties,
  560
  and threatened that if the breach were continued he would attack, not the central government, but the place in which these breaches had occurred. Count Bismarck had threatened to take the place of the Government in Paris, and this policy must always be pursued where society was thoroughly disorganized. The Government of China had not the power, if it had the will, to prevent the feeling against the foreigner culminating in outrage; and the only way of preventing such outrage was by inspiring fear in the very place where it occurred. It was right that missionary difficulties and all disputes not involving danger to life should be settled with the central Government; but the desire to fix responsibility upon the Chinese authorities should not hinder us from giving by our own acts the utmost possible protection to those European inhabitants who might otherwise be horribly slaughtered before the Chinese Government had awakened to a sense of its duty.
  EARL GREYsaid, he would ask the noble Marquess (the Marquess of Salisbury) whether he was prepared to say that the feeling of hostility on the part of the Chinese against our countrymen was altogether unnatural, or to be wondered at? No honest man could examine the history of our relations with China for the last five-and-thirty years without coming to the conclusion that China had very great wrongs to complain of. Wars of the most cruel kind, involving the infliction of the most frightful suffering, had been waged against them. It was not our own acts alone that had embittered the Chinese against us; the indirect mischief we had caused them was very great. The Taeping rebellion, which had desolated a large part of the Empire, and caused more deaths and suffering than any other rebellion in history, he had been assured by one of the most distinguished missionaries who ever served in China, could be directly traced to the disorganization of the Chinese Government in consequence of the wars with us. Their central authority was for a time completely destroyed. Besides the evil which they had suffered from the disorganization of the Government, which was the natural consequence of our acts, the compulsory opening of China to Europeans by our means had brought upon them other evils also—among them he would ask their Lordships to

  561
  look at that most horrible traffic in Coolies, in which atrocities equal to those perpetrated in the African slave trade were committed, which was carried on by Europeans in spite of the efforts of the Chinese Government to prevent it. No doubt the British Government had given that new slave trade all the discouragement in their power; but it was not the less true that it owed its existence to what we had done, and it was justly regarded in China as one of the consequences of our having compelled them to depart from their traditionary policy of excluding foreigners from their country. We ought not to forget these things when we complained of the conduct of the Chinese, and he would ask could it be a matter of astonishment that, with such circumstances as these to justify it, a feeling of hostility to England should exist among the Chinese, who distinguished as little between foreigners as Englishmen distinguish between Chinamen? He did not favour the policy of keeping a large number of ships of war in the neighbourhood of the Chinese ports. He regretted to say that, in former years, their presence had led to much evil; for when our countrymen saw themselves supported by such a display of force they were apt to show a disregard for the feelings of the people among whom they lived, which they would not do if they felt they must rely upon their own good conduct for their safety. The far more prudent course would be to cultivate a good understanding with the Chinese Government and people, and dispense with the gunboats. And when the Chinese authorities were blamed for not having quelled disorder, he was inclined to ask whether they were singular in this? Was England perfectly successful in preventing violence against those who rashly and foolishly outraged the feelings and prejudices of the people? Had we been able to prevent serious outrages in Birmingham upon anti-Roman Catholic lecturers; and could it be supposed that if a Buddhist lecturer were to make his appearance in the streets of London, denouncing Our Saviour as an impostor, belying the Christian religion, and ridiculing all that we hold most sacred, that such a man would not receive summary punishment at the hands of an outraged people? Was it then a matter of surprise if the
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  same thing happened in China? It was not right that we should induce Englishmen to suppose that they could so act with impunity in China, under the protection of the naval force in those waters. Before sitting down he desired to add a word or two on another matter—namely, the importance of not taking up matters locally, but of always going to the Imperial Government for redress for any wrongs that might be suffered. It appeared to him that the reasons for adhering to this policy had been very inadequately considered by his noble Friend behind him. If they took the redress into their own hands, as was too much the practice 30 years ago, they might possibly succeed for the moment; but in so doing they inflicted a blow of the most fatal character upon the Imperial Government. By persevering in that policy they would gradually break down the Imperial authority altogether, and by degrees reduce China to the state of anarchy which prevailed during the Taeping rebellion. If they destroyed the authority of the Chinese Government, when they considered how many millions of that people there were, were they prepared to set up any authority in its place? To destroy that authority, he believed, would be very easy for a small force sent from this country; but he believed, also, that the result of such a policy would be as great a misfortune to ourselves as it would be to the Chinese, who for ages had enjoyed under their existing system of government a very high measure of peace and happiness, and had been able to carry on with us a trade lucrative and beneficial to both parties. Destruction of the authority of the Government might be easy; but to place in its stead a Government capable of maintaing order would prove a more difficult undertaking. For these reasons he could not but confess that he viewed with sincere satisfaction the policy which the Government had pursued.
  THE DUKE OF SOMERSETsaid, he concurred with his noble Friend who had just sat down (Earl Grey) that the policy pursued by Her Majesty's Government was wise and prudent, and one in which, as shown in the Blue Book, he, at all events, failed to see any ambiguity. At page 220, for instance, he found the following passage written from the Foreign Office to the Shanghai Chamber of Commerce:—

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  "The general purport of those Instructions was that Her Majesty's naval forces are only actively to be employed in China for the protection of British life and property, when actually imperilled by acts directed against them by Chinese authorities, or by the violence of the Chinese populace, which those authorities might be unable or unwilling to control."
  That he believed to be the right line to lay down as to the interference of Her Majesty's naval force; for, from his own connection with the Navy, he was perfectly aware that it was impossible to give any loose instructions to the officers commanding on the station. A young officer in command of a gunboat would, for instance, be ready enough to take a Chinese town, for he would only be too delighted at the idea of having something to do. It was therefore necessary to impress some moderation in the instructions which they gave. He also concurred in the remarks made by Consul Robertson, who, in answer to a letter from the Rev. J. Chalmers, giving an account of the destruction of a chapel at Fatshan, said—
  "In reply, I have to express my regret at the event, but am not at all surprised at its following so ill-judged an event as that of opening a chapel at a time when a strong anti-missionary feeling is agitating the minds of the Chinese, and at a place, too, which has always been turbulent and ill-disposed towards foreigners."
  Again, Consul Robertson, in a letter to Mr. Wade, said—
  "Such outbreaks as at Tien-tsin, or elsewhere' may be settled for the time; but certainly the feeling of the Chinese, high and low, is strongly aroused in defence of their ancient institutions and religious tenets, which they consider in danger from foreign missionary intervention."
  Was it surprising that the people should be easily excited when they saw their ancient customs and religion attacked by the missionaries? But the despatches showed how this chapel at Fatshan was destroyed, for the Consul said—
  "My own information leads me to believe that the outbreak was caused by the injudicious prominence given to the opening of this establishment at a time when the feelings of the people are strongly excited against missionaries."
  If our countrymen in China would defy the feelings of the people, there would, of course, be outbreaks; but he thought the Consul had throughout given wise and prudent advice. He concurred in the opinion that the policy pursued by the Government was a sound one, and trusted that they would resolutely adhere to it in the future.
  EARL GRANVILLEdesired to say but one word in explanation. It had not in any way been his intention to cast any reflection on the conduct of our Consuls in China—on the contrary, no one who read these Papers could, he thought, fail to see that when they were in difficulty Her Majesty's Government had rendered them every assistance in their power, and had thoroughly approved their conduct. But he did not attach much weight to the pleas of those who, clamouring for men-of-war and gunboats, urged in support of that plea the opinion of our Consuls, who of course were, naturally enough, favourable to their presence. In saying this, he was not in any way attaching blame to the Consuls, for if he were himself a Consul he should probably do exactly the same thing.
  THE EARL OF CARNARVONasked what the Standing Orders were that were referred to in the Correspondence, and if the noble Earl would lay them on the Table of this House?
  EARL GRANVILLEsaid, his impression was there were no Standing Orders, but only Admiralty Instructions; and if they had not been already produced they should be laid on the Table of their Lordships' House.
  In answer to the Earl of CARNARVON,
  VISCOUNT HALIFAXread the following extract from the Blue Book relating to the massacre of Tien-tsin, observing that, as would be seen from a footnote, the instructions therein referred to had already been published in a Parliamentary Paper of 1869—
  "The general purport of those instructions and of that letter was, that Her Majesty's naval forces are only actively to be employed in China for the protection of British life and property when actually imperilled by acts directed against them by Chinese authorities, or by the violence of the Chinese populace which those authorities might be unable or unwilling to control; and although it is not expressly stated, yet it is clearly to be inferred, from the tenor of the instructions, that it would be consistent with their spirit, and with the policy of Her Majesty's Government, that the Senior Naval Officer on the spot, if satisfied that an attack on the British settlement at any of the ports, and specifically at Shanghai, was imminent, should disembark and maintain on shore, till the danger was passed, a body of Marines, which, however, it would be desirable, if possible, to relieve daily from the ships, so as to avoid the appearance of a foreign occupation."—[Correspondence No. 47.]
  Motion agreed to.

VOLUNTEER ARTILLERY—ARMS.

  QUESTION.
  EARL VANE, in asking the Under Secretary for War the Question of which he had given Notice, Whether it is the intention of Her Majesty's Government to introduce an improvement in the Arms supplied to Volunteer Artillery, and, if so, when; and to call attention to the Arms now used by the Volunteer Artillery, said, he would not occupy much of their Lordships' time by going into any arguments which would doubtless be raised when the whole question of the Reserve Forces came before Parliament; but he was most anxious to ascertain from Her Majesty's Government how much longer the Artillery Volunteers were to be provided with antiquated and, when compared with modern improvements, almost useless weapons. As their Lordships were well aware the Rifle Volunteers had had as good an arm given to them as the country could produce; while, on the other hand, many of the Artillery Volunteers had now for 11 years been obliged to content themselves with the old muzzle-loading carbines and smooth-bore 32-pounder. He held in his hand a circular which had been sent to many commanding officers in the North of England, himself included, by one of our most efficient Volunteer Artillery officers, and he would, with their Lordships' permission, read one paragraph of it, as showing the feelings of many Northern Volunteers—feelings which, he felt sure, were shared by many others in many counties—
  "The united object of the Volunteers should now be to obtain—not from Her Majesty's Government, but from Parliament—a straightforward answer to this straightforward question—'Is the Volunteer force to be maintained in a state of efficiency or is it not?' Either let Parliament impose discipline, provide equipment, defray expenses, and reduce the nnmerical strength, if necessary, or let existing corps be disbanded at the earliest possible date. Temporizing measures would do more harm than good, because they would lull the public into an idea of false security, and cause improvements of vital importance to be deferred to a period commonly termed too late."
  LORD NORTHBROOKasked whether his noble Friend had any objection to mention the name of the officer from whose circular he had quoted?
  EARL VANEsaid, it proceeded from Colonel Allhusen, of the 1st Newcastle-upon-Tyne Volunteer Artillery. Colonel Allhusen said—
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  "The question at issue is not one of politics, but of national common sense. It is essential we should all pull together so as to raise the Volunteer force from its present ridiculous position. Look at your men, after 11 years' outlay and trouble, armed with muzzle-loading carbines, and old smooth-bore 32-pounders. Many of us are quite tired of playing the fool and being compelled to pay for being laughed at by military men and civilians. One thing or the other; let us be prepared fairly to meet all comers, or strike us out of the defensive muster-roll."
  LORD TRUROregretted that this matter had not been brought forward in the form simply of a Question. What he would desire to ask was whether it was the intention of the Government to arm the Volunteer Artillery with such weapons as would qualify them to perform their duties efficiently? An impression prevailed, some years ago, that the Volunteers generally were not fitted to serve with field Artillery. But the opinion having been taken, first of Sir George C. Lewis, then of Earl de Grey, and finally of Lord Palmerston himself, it was determined that a fair and reasonable proportion of light field Artillery should be conceded to the Volunteer forces. It was now rumoured that it was the intention of Her Majesty's Government to withdraw these guns, although, according to his experience, they were much better suited to the height and physique of Volunteers than the heavy guns to which the Royal Artillery were trained.
  VISCOUNT HARDINGEsaid, that when his noble Friend opposite came down to distribute the prizes to the National Artillery Association, he encouraged the Volunteers by the announcement that, as soon as arrangements could be made, they would be armed with guns of precision. He therefore wished to take this opportunity of inquiring whether it was proposed to give rifled guns to the Artillery Volunteers; and, if so, of what description? In this country it would be almost impossible even to hope for a force of Regular Artillery proportionate to our wants; it therefore became necessary to look to the Reserve Artillery, to the Militia, and to the Volunteer Artillery to supplement the deficiency. He had been informed that it was intended to arm the fortifications with the discarded breech-loading Armstrongs; if that were so, he wished to know whether there were a sufficient number available for the

  567
  different batteries of Volunteers and Militia along the sea-coast? It was of the utmost importance that those two branches of our Volunteer forces should be encouraged by giving them arms of precision, instead of the smooth-bore muzzle-loaders of days gone by, in the practice of which the men took no interest. As to a supply of breech-loading carbines, he, for one, was disposed to look upon the time spent in practising with them rather in the light of time lost; and to believe that the true weapons for Artillery Volunteers to work with was the big gun itself. He was compelled to differ from the noble Earl who had last spoken on the subject of Volunteer Field Artillery, for he believed that it entailed great expenditure both on officers and men in the line of horses, &c. At the same time, he was not by any means an advocate for putting down any Volunteer field batteries which might actually exist.
  LORD NORTHBROOKsaid, it was proposed that the Volunteer Artillery should be armed with the 40-pounder breech-loading Armstrong gun, and the delay which had occurred had arisen in consequence of some proposed alterations in the organization of the force. It was proposed that in future the Volunteer Artillery should be placed under the command of officers of the Royal Artillery in the different districts; and by this means it, as well as the Militia Artillery, would be brought into closer connection with the Regular service. As to the armament of the Volunteer Artillery with breech-loading carbines, since a Question on this subject had been asked by his noble Friend near him (Lord Truro), he had ascertained, as the result of further inquiry, that it would be possible to issue them before the date he (Lord Northbrook) then mentioned. He was rather surprised at the strong expressions used by Colonel Allhusen in the circular quoted by the noble Earl, for the corps which that officer commanded had been supplied with 40-pounder Armstrongs, and large guns and not carbines must be admitted to be the proper arm of Artillery; so far, therefore, from having been neglected, Colonel Allhusen's corps had been treated with particular favour. As soon as the arrangements had been completed, guns of a similar kind would be apportioned to the various districts—the numbers
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  being determined by the requirements of each district. He agreed entirely with what had fallen from the noble Viscount (Viscount Hardinge) with respect to Volunteer Field Artillery.
  EARL GREYsaid, that what was really required was that there should be in the hands of the Volunteers a sufficient supply of rifled guns. He hoped there would soon be a sufficient number of large and powerful guns on all our coasts to afford our Volunteers opportunities of practising with those arms.
  In answer to the Earl of MALMESBURY,
  LORD NORTHBROOKstated that the Militia Artillery had been by no means overlooked in the arrangements which had been made. The same attention would be paid to the Militia Artillery as to the Volunteer Artillery. Indeed, the former would even have to deal with larger guns, because they would, in time of war, be placed in garrisons where guns of great calibre were used.
  House adjourned at a quarter before Eight o'clock, to Monday next, Eleven o'clock