Sitting of 8 May 1871

MINUTES.
— SELECT COMMITTEE — Nineteenth Report—Public Petitions.
WAYS AND MEANS—considered in Committee—TEA DUTIES.
PUBLIC BILLS—Resolution Committee—Ordered—First Reading—Tramways Provisional Orders Confirmation* [130].
Ordered—First Reading—Police Courts (Metropolis)* [131].
First Reading—Protection of Life and Property in certain Parts of Ireland* [129].
Second Reading — Postage* [124]; Pier and Harbour Orders Confirmation (No. 2)* [127]; Gas and Water Provisional Orders Confirmation* [128].
Committee — Army Regulation [39], debate adjourned.
Committee—Report—Income Tax and Inhabited House Duties [126]; Lunatics (Scotland)* [117].
Withdrawn—Intoxicating Liquors (Licensing)* [157]; Local Taxation* [105]; Rating and Local Government* [106].

PARLIAMENT—PUBLIC BUSINESS.

  QUESTIONS.
  SIR ROBERT ANSTRUTHERasked the Secretary of State for the Home Department, Whether, having regard to the objections that have been made to some of the provisions of the Licensing Bill, and the statement made on the introduction of the Bill by the Home Secretary that he would gladly consider any suggestions that might be made for the improvement of the measure, the Government are prepared to make any changes therein; and, if so, whether they will be so good as to state them to the House?
  MR. GLADSTONE: I rise, Sir, for the purpose of relieving my right hon. Friend of the duty of answering this question, because I think it will be better, considering the period of the Session at which we have arrived, that I should state for the convenience of the House the intentions of the Government with respect to the progress of Public Business. We believe it to be the duty of the Government to give what light and knowledge we can on the subject, and make as fair and reasonable an estimate as possible of our powers. The remarks, therefore, refer not only to the Question asked by the hon. Baronet, but to the Questions 7 and 8 on the Paper (relating to the Bills on Local Taxation and the Resolutions of the Select Committee on the Business of the House), as well as to the Question relating to the Ballot Bill, of which an hon. Friend behind me has given notice. What I have to say refers almost entirely to the Bills mentioned in the Queen's Speech. There is, however, one exception, with which I will begin—a Bill which has grown out
  400
  of circumstances not before us for official consideration, as far as Parliamentary action was concerned, at the time of the Queen's Speech—I refer to the Westmeath Crime and Outrage Bill. We propose not to bring that Bill on in the ordinary course of evening business, but to ask for a Morning Sitting on Friday next for the purpose of reading it a second time. There is one other subject which it may be convenient to dispose of before Whitsuntide in the same manner—namely, the consideration of the Resolutions arrived at in Committee on Public Business. I may here, perhaps, be permitted to say that, as to one of the Resolutions arrived at by the Committee, the commencement of business at a quarter-past 4 o'clock, I have consulted Mr. Speaker, and learn from him that, putting aside the case of Private Bills, such as the one we have just been considering, and subject to any final decision of the House, the state of Public Business is such as to warrant our commencing at that hour, and in the meantime, pending the decision of the House, that course will be taken. There are three of the measures mentioned in the Queen's Speech that may be considered as either actually or virtually passed through this House. One of them is the Trades Unions Bill; the second is the University Tests Bill, which stands for discussion in the House of Lords this evening; and the third is the Ecclesiastical Titles Bill. Then, Sir, the next Bill is the Army Regulation Bill, with which we are to proceed to-night; and in case no unforeseen necessity should arise, it is our intention to go forward with that Bill upon the ordinary Government nights until we are through Committee. After that, as has been said before, we shall proceed to the Ballot Bill. That Bill stands for Mr. Speaker leaving the Chair; but it will be recollected that before Easter hon. Gentlemen opposite very courteously allowed the second reading to be taken, almost without discussion, on the understanding that the debate which usually occurs on the second reading should be taken upon Mr. Speaker leaving the Chair. In fixing the day for that Bill care will, of course, be taken that hon. Gentlemen opposite shall have due notice. After that will come the Scotch Education Bill. Then there are the Bills relating to the important subject which we have described generally under the name of

  401
  Local Rating, which were introduced after a prolonged and comprehensive statement by my right hon. Friend the First Lord of the Admiralty. It is not possible for us to proceed with these Bills during the present Session, and we should not, therefore, proceed with either of those two Bills. Then there are the Bills which are called the Lord Chancellor's Bills, which were before Parliament last year. With regard to those measures it is extremely desirable that they should be discussed in the House of Commons, and that the opinion, especially of the legal profession, should be elicited with respect to their provisions. I am not, however, able to announce any resolution on the part of the Government respecting them. Whether we shall be able to bring them forward will depend upon the state of public business; but we will give the House as early information on the subject as we possibly can. There still remains a very important Bill—the Licensing Bill. That Bill, which is briefly called the Licensing Bill, is susceptible of a rough division into two parts—one referring to the subject of Licensing, and the other to the subject of Regulation; the granting and condition of licences on the one hand, and the actual regulation and jurisdiction on the other. With regard to the first of these subjects, we have been obliged to come to the same conclusion as with regard to Local Rating. It is not in our power to bring that subject fairly to issue in a manner to do justice to the subject and to all parties in the House of Commons, and, consequently, with regard to that most important portion of the Bill, we think the most regular course will be to withdraw that Bill; but allow me to add that, as regards that portion of the Bill dealing with the question of Regulation, it is by no means our intention to abandon it. We hope it will be in our power to embody those clauses, or a great portion of those clauses, in another Bill, and we hope not only to be able to introduce that Bill, but to pass it into law in the course of the present Session. I could not give any minute definition of the nature of these portions of the Bill beyond saying that they are what may be called the police clauses relating to the hours of closing and to adulteration; and also those relating to the difference of jurisdiction over beerhouses and publichouses. I have, I think, mentioned
  402
  the whole of the Bills named in the Queen's Speech. There are others of great importance, not mentioned in the Queen's Speech, which we also hope to pass. Among them are the Tables of Lessons Bill, which we are engaged in considering before asking the House to go into Committee upon it; the Mines Regulation Bill, the Pilotage Bill, and the Merchant Shipping Bill.
  MR. CRAWFORDasked, Whether the Chancery Funds Bill would be proceeded with?
  THE CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUER: Certainly.
  MR. HUNTasked, Whether the Government had come to any decision about the Game Laws Bill introduced by the Lord Advocate, and whether they would support his suggestion to read all such Bills a second time, and refer them to the same Committee?
  MR. BRUCEsaid, he would gladly adopt the suggestion of his right hon. Friend.

NATURAL HISTORY MUSEUM, SOUTH KENSINGTON.—QUESTION.
MR. CAVENDISH BENTINCKasked the First Commissioner of Works, Whether Her Majesty's Government have approved any design for the exterior architectural elevation of the proposed Natural History Museum at South Kensington; whether the approved design is substantially the same as that now exhibited by Mr. A. Waterhouse at the Royal Albert Music Hall, and numbered 3,673; and, if so, upon what grounds a design has been adopted which is at variance with the style of the adjacent buildings of the South Kensington Museum; and, whether, before the Vote for the Natural History Museum is proposed, he will exhibit Drawings or a Model of the approved design within the precincts of this House?
MR. AYRTONsaid, in reply, that the design now being exhibited in the Hall of Arts and Sciences at Kensington for the proposed Natural History Museum at South Kensington, was prepared some three years ago for the information of the Commissioner of Works; various improvements were being made in it, and as soon as those improvements were completed he would exhibit it in the Library of the House if desired. With regard to the design conforming to any other building in the neighbourhood he

403
presumed that must be an architectural canon, as it was insisted on by the hon. Member, and, if so, no doubt the architect would conform to it; but, if not, the architect would, no doubt, exercise his professional discretion.

INDIA—COST OF DRILL, INDIAN SERVICE.—QUESTION.
COLONEL SYKESasked the Secretary of State for War, Whether the cost of drilling a Cavalry recruit for ten months for home service to fill up vacancies in the Cavalry in England, and the cost of drilling for seven months of an Infantry recruit in England is the same as the charge upon the Revenues of India for recruits for the Cavalry and Infantry, namely £136 13 s. 11 d. for the Cavalry, and £63 8s. 5d. for an Infantry recruit sent to India?
MR. CARDWELLreplied that the cost of drilling for the Indian service was made up as follows:—For the cavalry the pay, clothing, forage and all charges for a recruit for 10 months was £58 5s. 9d.; the charge for the depôt troop, £44 4s. 8d.; and with one-third added for deaths, desertions, and men unfit to go to India, £34 3s. 6d., the items gave a total of £136 13 s. 11 d. For infantry the charge for pay, &c., per recruit was £30 9s. 4d.; company charges, £17 2s.; and the one-third, £15 17 s. 1d., making £63 8s. 5d.

EDUCATION—THE NEW CODE (1871.)

  QUESTION.
  MR. DIXONasked the Vice President of the Council, Whether his attention has been called to the following paragraphs in the monthly paper of the National Society for May, pp. 75, 76:—
  "Then with respect to the time for admitting children who object to the religious teaching given in the School, and who wish to take advantage of the protection afforded by the Conscience Clause, we would say, in all cases, when it is practicable, require them to enter School at the same time as the others.
  "If there is no Class Room they would be obliged to remain outside till prayers were concluded. … With such an arrangement cases of conscience would probably be found to have no existence; all the children would readily join in the prayers and in the religious lesson;"
  and, if so, whether he will state, for the information of Teachers and Managers, whether they have the power to make such arrangements as will "oblige" the children "to remain outside till prayers were concluded?"
  MR. W. E. FORSTERsaid, in reply, that if there was an endeavour to compel children to attend at a certain time, and keep them outside until prayers or any other religious ordinance was finished, it would be contrary to the spirit and letter of the Education Act, and it would be the duty of the Government to interfere and prevent its being carried out. It was only fair to add, that having carefully read the whole of the document to which reference was made, and filled up the gaps which the hon. Member had left, he did not think, although the words were open to objection, that the object was to defeat the spirit of the Act, or to attempt to prevent children from being withdrawn from religious instruction, and at the same time receive the advantage of secular instruction.

ARMY—MARTINI-HENRY RIFLE.
  EXPLANATION.
  COLONEL BARTTELOTwished to make a personal explanation. A letter had been put into his hand written by Dr. Pole, in which that gentleman expressed himself rather aggrieved by some remarks he (Colonel Barttelot) had made in his speech a few nights ago in the discussion on the subject of the Martini-Henry Rifle. He therefore wished publicly to state that he had no intention whatever of casting any imputation on that gentleman or on any of the other mechanical engineers who gave evidence before the Committee; and if he had said anything which could be construed it that way, he begged to withdraw it.

INCOME TAX AND INHABITED HOUSE DUTIES BILL— [BILL 126.]—COMMITTEE.
(Mr. Dodson, Mr. Chancellor of the Exchequer, Mr. Baxter.)
Order for Committee read.
MR. HUNTsaid, he wished to call attention to the circumstances under which the Bill had been read a second time. On Friday an appeal was made to the right hon. Gentleman at the head of the Government not to proceed with the second reading, on the ground that the Bill was not in print, when that right hon. Gentleman said that the Bill was a mere formula, and that its not being in print was not a sufficient reason for not proceeding with it. In consequence of that statement, he (Mr. Hunt) had dissuaded some of his Friends

405
from objecting to the second reading; but, on perusing the Bill he had since received, he found it had reference not only to the income tax—as might be supposed from its title—but also to the inhabited house duty, and likewise that it contained some entirely new provisions in regard to assessors, substituting Government officers as surveyors in place of the present officials. He did not suggest that the right hon. Gentleman opposite had intended to mislead the House, but greater care ought to have been taken before making such a statement; and, at all events, the House had lost an opportunity of expressing its opinion on the change proposed in the Bill. He also thought it a question whether there ought not to be a Standing Order that no Bill should be read the second time unless it was in print; and if, in any particular case, such a rule would prove inconvenient, it might be suspended.
MR. GLADSTONEsaid, the right hon. Gentleman was perfectly justified in raising the question; but it would not be convenient to adopt such a rule as that just suggested. As a matter of fact, the Bill was in print some hours before the second reading, and perfectly accessible to hon. Members; but he admitted that it was only by the indulgence and the general concurrence of the House that a Bill which was not on the Table could be read a second time. The part of the Bill which the right hon. Gentleman said did not answer to the description of a mere formula certainly did not appear in it every year, and therefore, so far, it was not an absolutely uniform formula; but it was a clause that was regularly inserted when a new assessment was about to occur.
Bill considered in Committee, and reported, without Amendment; to be read the third time To-morrow.
House resumed.

ARMY REGULATION BILL— [BILL 39.]
(Mr. Secretary Cardwell, Sir Henry Knight Storks, Captain Vivian, and The Judge Advocate.)
ARMY REGULATION BILL— [BILL 39.]

  COMMITTEE.
  Order for Committee read.
  Motion made, and Question proposed, "That Mr. Speaker do now leave the Chair."—(Mr. Secretary Cardwell.)
  COLONEL ANSON, in rising to move—
  "That in any scheme for the abolition of Purchase in the Army the State as well as the Officers must forego the advantages hitherto derived from that system, and in order to give the State that unrestricted power over the Officers of the Army which it is desirable it should possess, and also in justice to the Officers of the Army themselves, the regulation value of their Commissions shall be at once returned to them,"
  said, that objection had been taken to the form of his Resolution, and regret expressed by some hon. Members that he had not dealt with the Bill in a larger manner than his Resolution permitted. If he had had to deal with a Resolution on the second reading of the Bill, he should certainly have moved one to the effect that the Bill should be read the second time that day six months; but when they reached the stage of Committee, other considerations had to be taken into view. So great were the principles and interests involved in the measure, that it would be almost impossible to deal with the Bill as a whole, and it seemed to him that when the Secretary of State drew it up, he could have hardly understood the vastness of the interests it involved, and he thought it was a pity the right hon. Gentleman had not adopted the suggestion he had thrown out very early in the Session—that the Bill should be divided into two parts—the one relating to purchase, and the other embracing the remaining portions of the measure. The principal part of the Bill was the question of the abolition of purchase; and it was a curious fact that although they had had many Motions brought before the House as to the advisability of abolishing purchase, they had never yet had any discussion whatever on the mode in which it ought to be abolished, or on the interests involved as regarded the officers. Now, they had to consider not only the interests of the officers, but the discipline of the Army, which had always been the pride of this country, for one of the best features of our Army was the marvellous morale which had always existed among the officers and the extraordinary discipline of the service—matters which would be materially affected by that Bill. The Government Bill professed to do away with purchase in the Army, and he would admit that its proposals were fair, so far as officers intending to leave the service within the next few years were concerned; but it was grossly unjust to those officers who wished to remain in

  407
  the Army, and to whom they must look for the maintenance of the future discipline of the Army and the education of its officers. No alteration was proposed to be made by the Bill in regard to the position of the officers remaining in the service, and the scheme was, in fact, neither more nor less than a scheme of retirement. Hitherto officers had enjoyed a peculiar system of promotion, the effect of which had been that, after they had made themselves efficient, their promotion was perfectly independent of all exterior influence—either political, aristocratic, or other influence; and in this consisted the real secret why the purchase system had been so popular; yet the Government proposed to substitute for this system one of selection, which, however attractive it might be in theory, was utterly impracticable—a system antagonistic to the instincts of a soldier, and consequently hateful to him. Beyond, this, moreover, the Government proposed to interfere with other powers which officers had hitherto enjoyed—the power of exchanging, for instance. Now, this had proved of the utmost value to officers who, as in the English Army, were liable to serve in every quarter of the globe and in every variety of climate, and it was one of the points in which the Government Bill would unjustly interfere with the professional prospects and social life of officers in the Army. This was not proposed to be done in the non-purchase corps only, but also in that branch of the Army which had been described from the Treasury benches as being mortgaged to the officers for £8,000,000 sterling. He (Colonel Anson) must venture to think that the Prime Minister was altogether wrong in supposing, as he affirmed he did, in his speech on the second reading of the Bill, that the property which officers held in their commissions acted as a bar to Army reform; and that, notwithstanding the feeling of property, officers were always ready not only to submit to, but to assist in promoting real reforms in the service; but passing on to touch upon the pecuniary interest involved in the measure before the House, he should consider first the responsibility of the Government with regard to the purchase system, and explain what that system really was. Last winter several speeches on the subject were made by the hon. Member for the Border Burghs (Mr. Trevelyan), and the result of those deliverances
  408
  was simply to mislead the country upon the whole question, and to leave it in a far greater state of ignorance than it was before. The effect of the speeches upon the minds of the hearers of the hon. Gentleman was to lead them to suppose that, under the purchase system, whenever a vacancy occurred in a regiment, or an officer wished to leave the service, his commission was put up and sold to the highest bidder, than which nothing could be a more exaggerated view. Again, in The Edinburgh Review of January last, there appeared an article on the same subject, generally supposed to have been inspired by Lord Sandhurst, but containing no single word that was founded upon the slightest shadow of truth, in its description of the practical working of the purchase system. These were two illustrations of the way in which people were misled on this question, and he never could understand the object people had in view in acting as they did in this manner, until he heard the speech of the right hon. Gentleman the Prime Minister, in the debate on the second reading of this Bill, from which it appeared there was a reluctance to explain the principles of the Bill, or what the purchase system really was. That speech showed him that the object of those who took the line of the hon. Member for the Border Burghs and the writer in The Edinburgh Review was to place, if possible, the whole responsibility of the purchase system—whatever was bad or immoral in it—upon the shoulders of the officers, and so to relieve the Government from the responsibility of retaining what they hoped to persuade the country was an abuse, in the creating of which Parliament had had no hand. The Prime Minister had stated that the mortgage of £8,000,000 to the officers in the Army had originated by the incoming officers paying to the outgoing officers the worth of their places; but there could scarcely be a greater misapprehension of the case, or a more complete begging of the question. With regard to over-regulation prices, the simple passing of money from officer to officer had nothing immoral in it, beyond the mere fact of the State having nominally forbidden it, and if he had to deal with only one class of officers, he should be able to repudiate all desire to receive the over-regulation money provided they were at once paid the regulation price; but unfortunately there

  409
  were two classes of officers—those in the infantry and those in the cavalry—and by no fault of the present men, the over-regulation prices in the cavalry were far larger than in the infantry. It might have been thought, that when the question of regulation prices was disposed of, an appeal might be made to the generosity of the House of Commons to make some compensation to officers as regarded over-regulation money, or they might be dealt with according to the proposal of the hon. Member for Birmingham (Mr. Muntz), which was the most statesmanlike that had yet been made. With respect, however, to regulation prices, which was the more important subject, as affecting the interests of all those officers who were to remain in the service, and upon whom the future efficiency of the Army would depend, the Prime Minister had endeavoured to make out that they stood in exactly the same relation as over-regulation prices—as transactions between officer and officer. It would be his duty to completely upset that theory of the right hon. Gentleman, because on that point much depended. What were regulation prices? One of the first duties of the State towards a standing Army was to insure the efficiency of the officers, and not the least important matter was to secure men in the prime of life, who could undergo the fatigue of military duty in any climate. In this country, and in this country alone, had they succeeded in obtaining such officers, and they had done it at a cost of £1,200,000 a-year; yet year after year had the Government come down to the House of Commons and asked for £300,000 only, in order to provide for the expense. How was this accomplished? The Government went to the officers of the Army and said—"If you like to subscribe for what the State ought to provide, you shall be allowed to go over the head of all the seniors in your regiment." That was an arrangement between the Government and the officers in the Army, and the officers in the Army could not say it to their fellow-officers; and that fact alone, he considered, fixed the responsibility of the transaction upon the Government. As his case, however, would be a poor one if it had to rest on that point alone, he would strengthen it by referring to another—namely, that of allowing officers who had not purchased
  410
  their commissions to sell them at the regulation prices. That was first permitted by a Royal Warrant of Queen Anne in 1711, and since then the system had been gradually extending. That was the first instance on record he could trace of the Government taking these purchases in their own hands, and since that time they had, year by year, taken more to the system, until, in 1766, Lord Barrington wrote an able letter protesting against its continuance; in 1823 and in 1833 the matter was the subject of discussion; and in 1839 a Royal Commission, which was presided over by the Duke of Wellington, went very fully into the subject, and decided against Lord Barrington's letter, and in favour of allowing non-purchase officers to sell their commissions. In 1838 or 1839 there arose the custom of allowing non-purchase officers to sell for £100 per annum, if on foreign service; and £50 per annum, if on home service. But this could not be a transaction between one officer and another officer, for the Government said to the non-purchase officer—"If you like to leave the service, we will give you £100 a-year for foreign, and £50 for home service;" and then they went to the officers who wanted to purchase and bargained with them, or, in other words, they bought of one officer at one price, and they sold to another at a different price; thus, the whole transaction was not between officer and officer, but between the Government and one officer, and then the Government and another officer. The first time that the Government began to make a profit out of the purchase system of the Army was in the year 1795. In that year, in order to provide for certain expenses, there was established the Half-pay Fund, which now existed under the name of the Reserve Fund, and by a Return which had been issued that day, it was shown that since 1840 that fund had amounted to £1,712,829, but, as far as he could trace — without having official documents at command—the profits of the purchase system had been £3,000,000 sterling since 1795. The system of making a profit out of the purchase and sale of commissions was never fully developed until 1854, when there was in office the first of a long succession of amiable Secretaries for War, not the least amiable of whom was the present right hon. head of the Department.

  411
  Well, what was done by Mr. Sidney Herbert, when the Crimean War broke out? The English Army was a small one; when war broke out it had to be rapidly increased, and, at the conclusion of hostilities, it had to be speedily diminished. Instead of providing transports for the soldiers, or making commissariat arrangements to keep them alive in the Crimea, Mr. Sidney Herbert was engaged in preparing a scheme for the reduction of the expenses at the close of the war, and with that view commissions were sold by the Government to the amount of £45,000. He himself had to pay, while serving in the Crimea, £1,100 to the Government, not to an officer, for his company, although he might have been shot the next day. Shortly after the Crimean War, great difficulty was experienced in providing officers for the cavalry regiments, and the Government, arriving at the conclusion that that difficulty was occasioned by the regulation prices being too high, determined to reduce it at a cost of between £300,000 and £400,000; but did the Government come to the House of Commons for the money? No; they made the purchase officers of the Army bear the expense not only of that, but of the other reforms effected in the Military Train, in the corps of the Gentlemen-at-Arms, in the corps of the Beefeaters, in the Royal Artillery, and in the Engineers. And lastly, although not least, an Under Secretary for War—not a Parliamentary Secretary, however—a captain in the Engineers, holding an appointment of £1,500 per annum in the Civil Service, and, therefore, unable to draw his half-pay, wishing to receive the sum of £1,800 for his commission, three wretched subalterns in a purchase corps were made to pay it. In order to raise funds necessary for these various reforms, death vacancies, which in fairness ought to have fallen to the chance of the non-purchase officers, had been sold by the Government, as well as full-pay retirements, and the commissions of 66 colonels commanding regiments, who had gone on half-pay during the last nine years, had been sold by the Government for £276,000. And this was what was called by the Prime Minister as being merely stewards in the transactions that occurred between the officers—if the Government took the part of a steward in
  412
  the matter at all it was that of an unjust steward. He need scarcely remind the House that the purchase officers of the Army were not fools—they were perfectly aware of the vast profit that the Government made out of the existing system, for the immoral part of which, at all events, the Government was wholly responsible. The purchase officers had borne in silence all the abuse that had been heaped upon them during the agitation that had arisen during the past winter with regard to this question, in consequence of the excellent discipline that was always maintained in the ranks of the Army; but when the Prime Minister came down to the House and endeavoured to shift the responsibility in the matter from the shoulders of the Government on to those of the officers, the last straw was added to the weight upon the camel's back, and they felt bound to come forward in their own defence.
  MR. GLADSTONE: I deny that the Government ever attempted to throw the responsibility on the officers.
  COLONEL ANSONsaid, that the statement of the right hon. Gentleman, that in the transactions between officers and officers the Government merely acted as a steward, was equivalent to throwing the responsibility for the system upon the officers. The Bill of the Government did not deprive the officers of what was called vested interests in the regulation value of their commissions, and, therefore, it was a hypocritical Bill, not doing that which it professed to perform; moreover, the right hon. Gentleman at the head of the War Department had said that an unpaid service was the dearest, and that the system of traffic in a generous service ought to cease, and yet he proposed by his Bill to sell the rank of major-general, and to trade upon the lives of the officers. The fact was, that the Government refuted their own arguments by their Bill, for in dealing with the pecuniary injustice to the officers which would result from this Bill, he would point out, in the first place, how this measure would affect purchasing officers. When a purchasing officer paid various sums at different times for his commissions, he regarded all those payments as forming part of one large transaction, by which he hoped, on the faith of the agreement he entered into with the Government, to eventually

  413
  attain the object of his ambition—the command of his regiment; if such was the case, was he entitled to no compensation, when the agreement he had entered into in that hope was put an end to? Take the case of the wretched ensign who had just paid £450 for his commission—was he to be told that unless he retired at once he was to lose the whole of that amount, and that the value of his commission would be confiscated, in addition to his hopes for the future being destroyed? The case of a non-purchase officer was nearly as bad, because he had entered the service on the faith of a definite understanding that he was to receive £100 per annum for foreign, and £50 per annum for home service, and that at the end of 20 years he was to receive the full value of his commission, should he wish to sell, and now the Government told him that he was no longer to serve upon those terms, but upon others which were materially different. The Government said to him—"The value of your commission shall no longer be cumulative; we will not pay you what you have already earned; but we will take the chance of your dying." There never was a greater breach of faith on the part of any Government than in repudiating the payment of the £100 a-year, and the £50 a-year, without compromising the matter, and, at all events, paying down what the officer had already earned. Many of these men had allowed themselves to be purchased over, because they would not put themselves to personal inconvenience; and because they preferred waiting a few years longer and having the power of selling their commissions for full value, on the faith of the Royal Warrant; but by the new scheme they were deprived of their future chance of selling. There were very few men who went into the Army with the intention of purchasing all their commissions, and many poor men, with wives and families, had borrowed the money, in order to purchase their one commission, in the hope of recouping themselves by the sale of their commission on the attainment of a higher rank. This prospect was now destroyed, and it was a gross injustice to those men. The discontent the Bill had created among the officers of the Army had been very serious; and, if the Bill were carried in its present form, the discontent existing now was nothing to the discontent which
  414
  would exist 10 years hence, when officers, the value of whose commissions the Government had retained, would be serving side by side with officers who had come in under the new system. Fortunately, up to the present time the punishment of officers was almost unknown; but a case might arise in which two officers serving side by side might be tried for the same offence, dismissed the service, and disgraced, and one would lose the value of his commission, and the other would suffer no such loss. Again, how were they going to adapt the system of selection in future? Suppose, for example, that in a particular regiment the senior captain had purchased over the heads of three or four other captains, and had paid his £1,800, whereas the captains beneath him had paid nothing, under the system of selection at the will of the Secretary of State for War the position of these officers might be reversed, and the senior captain might see one of those beneath him promoted over his head; but was it not certain that such an occurrence would breed infinite jealousies and heart-burnings, tending to the utter extinction of the existing discipline and morale of the Army? Again, in regard to selection between our present and future officers, how would they be able to select officers to go over the heads of the present officers, if they were not going to return the money value of their commissions? Lastly, supposing war was to break out, and they had their Army half officered under the old system and half under the new, what would be the result? It was impossible to believe that there could be good feeling between officers serving side by side on the field on totally different terms. The Surveyor General of Ordnance had admitted in a speech he had made that officers on active service did not enter the field without thinking of the risk they ran in connection with the price of their commissions—that these vested interests presented themselves at every turn, and that no reform could be effected until the difficulty was removed. What was the meaning of that, but that the difficulty to be removed was the thought of risk present to the mind of the officer when he entered the field? As an officer of some experience in active service, quite equal, he thought, to that of the right hon. Gentleman, although he was greatly his (Colonel Anson's) superior

  415
  in rank, he must enter his most emphatic protest against such language, for he had never known an officer's pecuniary interest in his commission have the slightest effect upon the manner in which he discharged his duty; but he feared that the opinions expressed by the Government would also be the opinions of officers in future; and it must be remembered they ran risks from exposure and disease equal to, or greater than the dangers of actual hostilities. He had got nearly to the end of all that he had to say, and he thought he had shown that, under the proposed mode of abolishing purchase, great sentimental grievances would arise; and that the only rational, honest, straightforward, and sensible way of dealing with purchase was to get rid of the responsibility of regulation prices, and to put them down at once. His proposal was the foundation of almost every other Amendment on the Notice Paper, including those that stood in the names of the late Judge Advocate, of the hon. Member for Birmingham (Mr. Muntz), the hon. Member for Caithness (Sir Tollemache Sinclair), the hon. and gallant Member for Norwich (Sir William Russell), and the hon. Baronet opposite (Sir George Jenkinson). The right hon. Gentleman, in introducing the Bill, made a poetical quotation, to the effect that officers of the Army were not "covetous of gold;" but he had not that confidence in his cause which would enable him to say with Henry V.—
  "Rather proclaim it, Westmoreland, through my host,
  That he which hath no stomach to this fight,
  Let him depart; his passport shall be made,
  And crowns for convoys put into his purse."
  No; the right hon. Gentleman knew that the scheme he proposed was so unjust that he had to put in a limitation clause; and unless he had done so the officers would have departed, and the Consolidated Fund would have disappeared. The right hon. Gentleman had since seen the error of his way, and consequently by the withdrawal of this limitation clause the whole of his calculation of the cost of his scheme fell to the ground. He (Colonel Anson) believed, indeed, that if the Bill passed in its present form, half the officers of the Army would retire. No control over the expenditure consequent upon the Bill would be possible; and if
  416
  there should be a large amount of retirement, the taxation to meet the cost of abolition would all fall upon the ratepayers of the next two or three years, although the country would not receive any benefit for the next 25 years; whereas, if the Government decided to pay down the regulation price of the commissions, the exact amount could be ascertained, and distributed equally and justly over a space of 20, or 30, or 40 years. Besides that, we should get rid of what the Government condemned as a vicious system. He had trespassed so long upon the attention of the House, that he would abstain from touching upon some other points that he had intended to refer to; but there was one argument that had been made use of which required a moment's observation. It was said that the officers of the Army had no legal claim to the price of their commissions. He frankly admitted it; the officers had no legal position: and if the Secretary of State for War chose to deprive an officer of his pay, he had no legal ground of action whatever to recover it; but surely that fact ought to make the Government and the House all the more careful to deal with the subject in an equitable manner. He most sincerely hoped that they would have no threats from the Government, such as they had uttered in reference to other Motions this Session. The whole subject was one that ought not to have been approached, except after the most careful consideration both on the part of the Government and of the House. He trusted, therefore, that they would hear no threats of abandoning the Bill, and none of the character dropped the other night by the hon. Member for the Border Burghs, who threatened that if the officers refused the terms now offered, they would get worse ones next year. He would only say that he did not consider that hon. Gentleman to be the exponent of justice on the part of the nation; and for himself, he certainly should not diverge one jot from the line he had marked out for himself, on account of any threats from the hon. Member. He hoped that the Government would deal with this matter in a liberal spirit; because not only the pecuniary interests of the officers, but the character and tone of the Army were at stake, and he was quite satisfied now to leave the whole question in the hands of the House of

  417
  Commons. The hon. and gallant Gentleman concluded by moving the Amendment of which he had given Notice.
  COLONEL BARTTELOT, in seconding the Motion of his hon. and gallant Friend, said, he thought that the House would agree with him that a more clear and lucid statement had never been heard there than that which his hon. and gallant Friend had just given them. His hon. and gallant Friend had gone so minutely and so clearly into the details of this most complicated subject, that if he had spoken at even greater length the House would have been repaid for listening to him, as many hon. Gentlemen, up to a very late period, had little knowledge, if any, of the purchase question; and he would venture to echo the hope his hon. and gallant Friend had expressed, that the subject would be considered exclusively on its merits, and in no party spirit; for it affected far too deeply the interests and efficiency of the officers and the Army, to be made the occasion either of party action or bigoted feeling. Now, in regard to the over-regulation price, he gladly admitted that there was a wide difference between that and the regulation price; but, nevertheless, he was not prepared to admit that, in justice to the officers, it ought to be withheld, seeing that the Government had recognized their right to receive it, and a Royal Commission had reported that it could not be ignored. In such a case, the sense of justice of the House of Commons would tell them that the officers who, as a body of men, had, on all occasions, proved themselves worthy of the confidence of the country, ought not to be deprived of that which they had a fair right to receive. The abolition of purchase was now proposed, not in the interest of the officers, but of the public at large; and, for his own part, he would like to have seen the whole of the money paid down; but as that could not be done, let them at least pay the regulation price which had been exacted by the State from every officer before he received his commission. The plan of the Government, he must say, was singularly injudicious and unjust in another respect. The officer who decided to retire could be paid down; but upon the officer who preferred to remain—and who, in the majority of cases, would by that mere act prove himself attached to his profession
  418
  and hopeful of rising in it—upon him would fall the whole injustice perpetrated by the Bill; and suppose he went abroad and died, would the officers beneath him be benefited? Not at all; for the price of the commission was to go into the pockets of the State, to pay for that scheme of retirement of which they had as yet heard nothing. Surely, in bare justice, the officer had the right to expect that, if he died, the price of his commission would be paid to his relatives, instead of being absorbed for the benefit of the State. It had been said that it would be unjust, if they were to return to an officer the money which he had paid in purchasing over the heads of other officers; but a more fallacious statement could hardly be imagined. Suppose, for example, that Major A had purchased over Captain B, would he have obtained the superior post unless he had been a man of good character and fit for the position? Certainly not. Was it not a fact, also, that Captain B had risen to that position by this very purchase system? How, then, could it be argued that Major A ought to be placed on the same footing as Captain B? Now, he wished to point out that the Bill must be considered as a whole, and especially in regard to its effect upon the future position of our Army. If a war was to break out 10 years hence, their Army would be commanded by a large number of officers who had not purchased, and by a larger number that had. What sort of feeling could exist between them? Would the officers who had to face the perils of the battle-field, with the whole price of their commissions round their necks, feel no discontent when they compared their position with that of the officers who had absolutely no pecuniary interests at stake? It was well known that officers were very loth to make a parade of their grievances; but he could assure the House that in every regiment and in every mess-room the injustice of the Government Bill was keenly felt, and that feeling would gather force as time rolled on. Then, again, the question of selection was so mixed up with that of purchase that they could not be separated. Let the Secretary of War look back a moment, and see how the principle of selection had worked. Was there a single instance in regard of an officer commanding a regiment having

  419
  failed to do his duty in the face of the enemy? But were there not many cases of the higher officers having not failed in their duty, but failed to do it to complete satisfaction? When promotion went by selection, the men who stood the best chance of favourable notice were those who were on the Staff, or under the eye of the general; while many a poor commanding officer of great capability had no witness to see or to report his deeds of successful skill and valour. Now, in regard to selection, he would only mention one instance, and that one had been afforded him by the right hon. Gentleman (Mr. Cardwell) himself. He was not going to say a word against the individual whom the right hon. Gentleman had thought fit to promote; but he only wished to show how easy it was, when a man had the opportunity of doing a special service, to promote him over the heads of his fellows. He would take the case of a certain gentleman in the War Office, who had been of the utmost use to the right hon. Gentleman, who was, in War Office parlance, called an ensign, or one of the third class of clerks. He was promoted to be lieutenant-colonel—namely, a superior over the heads of all the other clerks in the War Office, simply because he had been of service to the right hon. Gentleman. In saying what he had said, he believed that gentleman to be a man of great ability and experience, and merely mentioned the circumstance to show that it was easy to see the merits of one man who was close at home, and not to see the merits of another who was at a distance. Therefore he submitted that the system of selection might be carried to such an extent as to be very prejudicial to the service. Now, he would, go back for one moment to the Crimean War. Before that war the strength of a regiment was something like 850 men; but when the war broke out the regiment was raised to 1,000, or 10 companies of 100 men each. There was one particular regiment—the 2nd battalion of the Rifle Brigade—which went out to the Crimea, and it received 150 volunteers from the 1st battalion of the Rifle Brigade, many of them being old and disciplined soldiers. What happened? The regiment was discontented at having 15 per cent of a different regiment placed amongst the 850. He now came to what happened in July last. The right hon. Gentleman
  420
  made a statement, after the celebrated "Flying Column" had been to Wimbledon, to the effect that the Army was never in a more efficient state than it was at that moment. Now, he believed that if the right hon. Gentleman had spoken in August he never would have made that statement at all, for what occurred immediately afterwards? He came down to the House and asked for an increase of 20,000 men, and an expenditure of £2,000,000 for that purpose and for the Navy. The object was to make the regiments, which were 500 strong instead of 850, up to the fighting quantity. Now, what would happen in the course of five years if we were called upon to go to war? We should have officers in regiments who had still got the purchase money hanging round their necks; we should have the system of selection in force; and we should have regiments 500 strong. But composed of what? Why, of lads from 17 to 20, totally unfit to do their duty before an enemy. And how were the regiments to be made up to 1,000? The right hon. Gentleman hoped to get them from the Reserve; and by that means we should have 500 men, drawn from all parts, sent down to different regiments. He had no fear of any invasion of this country, but we might have to send an Army to Canada or to India; and in what position should we be if we had to send out, without warning, men under 20 years of age, and Reserve men, who knew nothing of the officers commanding them, and under a colonel, perhaps, just selected? It had been said that the Prussian system was perfect; no doubt it was. But could we carry it out? Conscription was repudiated; but unless we had that or longer enlistment, we must signally fail. How did Prussia act? She brought her men together, they knew each other and their officers, and were formed into one homogeneous mass, which the right hon. Gentleman had not attempted to do in the case of our Army. Would our case be at all the same? The Reserve men he might think of getting would probably be married, or men with lucrative appointments, who would try to evade their obligations when they knew they were about to be sent to distant parts of the globe. The whole question was one of so serious a nature that he had ventured to bring it briefly before the House, as

  421
  he thought it demanded, and would, he hoped, receive the fullest consideration. Early in the Session the right hon. Gentleman made a speech which was well thought of both by the House and the country, and if he had carried that speech into practice there would have been nothing to complain of; but the Bill of the right hon. Gentleman failed in any way to correspond with the sentiments of that speech, and it would not, if passed, weld into one homogeneous whole the Army of which they were all so proud, but which was still capable of improvement in some particulars. He had two situations to choose from—the rock and the sand. He had chosen to build on the sand; and it was to be hoped that when the wind should blow and the waves should rise, it would be to drive the right hon. Gentleman from the post which he now occupied, and not end in the ruin of the Army and the humiliation of the nation.
  Amendment proposed,
  To leave out from the word "That" to the end of the Question, in order to add the words "in any scheme for the abolition of Purchase in the Army the State as well as the Officers must forego the advantages hitherto derived from that system, and in order to give the State that unrestricted power over the Officers of the Army which it is desirable it should possess, and also in justice to the Officers of the Army themselves, the regulation value of their Commissions shall be at once returned to them,"—(Colonel Anson,)
  —instead thereof.
  CAPTAIN VIVIANsaid, no one in that House, or out of it, had a greater right to speak for the officers of the British Army than was possessed by the hon. and gallant Member for Bewdley (Colonel Anson), who had gained the right by distinguished service both in peace and war, and had proved himself a gallant soldier and an able and accomplished officer; if, therefore, he should combat the views of the hon. and gallant Gentleman, he should do so with great diffidence, as the subject was one involving great technical complications. It was not his duty to follow the hon. and gallant Gentleman into the question of the abolition of purchase, for that question had already been fully debated, and had been unanimously determined. ["No, no!"] He said he had a right to assume that to be the case; because, although individual Members might have raised their voices
  422
  against the proposals, not one had challenged a division on the second reading of the Bill, which was agreed to without a division. He would not enter into the history of purchase, for the House had only to deal with the question as it existed; and having decided on the abolition of purchase, the question was how to carry it out with equity both to the officers and to the State. He was glad to hear the hon. and gallant Gentleman admit that the officers had no legal rights in relation to their commissions, because a good deal of indignation had, both in that House and out of it, been heaped upon the present scheme, on account of its interference with certain alleged rights of property. Now, on several occasions, and under many circumstances, what had been called the rights of officers had been interfered with when the interests of the State required it; but the hon. and gallant Member for Bewdley had never raised his voice on behalf of the officers at the time the changes were made. This was the case when, in 1854, the professional rights of certain colonels were interfered with; it was the case in 1858, when what was called the Distinguished Service Warrant was issued; and it was the case again in 1862, when alterations were made in certain allowances made to officers serving at home and abroad. Although the officers of the Army had no legal right when the Government contemplated such a change as that proposed by the Bill, the Government was desirous of insuring that the interests of officers of the Army should not be unfairly interfered with; and it was the duty of the Government to conceive such a measure in a fair and generous spirit, and he believed he could show that this Bill was so conceived. The question which the House had now to deal with was simply this—not that of organization, but that of compensation. There were two propositions before the House—that of the Government, and that of the hon. and gallant Member for Bewdley; and he wished to explain the effect of these propositions, both on the officers of the Army and on the public. In carrying out the abolition of purchase it was necessary to consider what were the pecuniary interests of the officers. They were four. In the first place, there was the regulation price; and it did not matter, for the present purpose, whether

  423
  the commission had been obtained from an officer or direct from the Government; nor did it matter whether the Reserve Fund had been well or ill-applied. The second point was the £100 and £50 for foreign and home service; the third matter for consideration was the over-regulation price which had been paid; and the fourth, the interest which might have been obtained in the over-regulation price in respect of commissions obtained for regulation price, or without any payment. In weighing the position of any officer of the Army with regard to this Bill, it was important to consider what his position would have been had it never been introduced. To obtain the regulation and over-regulation money, an officer would have had to retire absolutely from the Army, and he would not have received it one moment before retirement. If he desired to retain his connection with the Army so as to go again upon active service if occasion offered, he would obtain only the over-regulation price, and he could not obtain the regulation price without going on full pay again and leaving the service. That was the precise position of officers of the Army, provided things went smoothly; but contingencies occasionally arose to interfere with this course of things. If the officer next below that one desiring to sell out announced his intention of "sticking to the regulations," as the phrase went, the officer desiring to sell out would be obliged either to remain in the service against his will, to sell at the regulation price and lose the over-regulation money, or to exchange into another regiment, where his proposals would be more acceptable, and sell out for regulation and over-regulation money. The next contingency that might arise was that of war. In case of war, as was notorious, the over-regulation price was very much depreciated in value, if it did not become entirely worthless. The third contingency was that of climate; and here, also, the over-regulation price went down, for instance, on a regiment being ordered to the East or West Indies. These were the various contingencies under which officers might suffer. Now, what had the Government done with regard to these precarious interests? Why, the Government proposed to convert these precarious interests into a guaranteed interest, based on the good faith of Parliament
  424
  and the country. The Government said to the officers of purchase corps—"Instead of leaving you in doubt as to what your commission maybe worth, we tell you that in future you may sell, whether there be war or not, and no matter in what part of the world your regiment may be, at the full price, including over-regulation money, and you may sell at your own time and without the trouble of exchanging." The Government also promised under the Bill to secure everything a man could get under the Warrant granting £100 and £50 for foreign and home service; and more than that, to count an officer's time of service in this respect after the passing of the Bill. For instance, a lieutenant, having purchased his commission before the passing of the Bill, and having had 12 years' foreign service, on becoming a captain would get £1,200 for his commission, instead of £700. In the same way, a captain who had purchased his commission on the passing of this Bill, and had served only 12 years, would be entitled to only £1,200; but, if he put in six years more of foreign service, the Bill proposed to give him his full money, £1,800. It was also proposed that a Commission should be appointed to appraise the full value of every officer's commission and over-regulation, and pay that, irrespective of all contingencies. Under these circumstances, how could it be maintained that the Bill had been conceived in a spirit of gross injustice? He defied the hon. and gallant Member for Bewdley (Colonel Anson) to prove that it had been conceived in any other than a spirit of generosity to the Army; or, that the banking account of any officer would be affected by the Bill injuriously. The Bill would be most beneficial to officers of every rank in the Army, who might be placed in three categories: the lieutenant-colonel, who was at the head of the purchase officers; other officers, who could purchase their commissions; and those officers who could not purchase their commissions. To the lieutenant-colonel the Bill gave everything he could have obtained had no Bill been introduced; but it would be given to him exactly when he desired it, and without any rebate, on account of contingencies at present likely to affect his position unfavourably. To the next class the Bill said—"If you are pro-

  425
  fessionally fit you shall succeed your superior officer at about the time you would otherwise have done, and you shall have promotion without paying for it." And to the non-purchase officer, the Bill said—"Whereas the vacancies by which you might have obtained promotion were few and far between, henceforth poverty shall be no barrier to you, provided you are professionally fit for the position open to you." The Bill, in fact, proposed that the country should do for non-purchase officers what a good and considerate guardian would wish to do for his ward. One hon. Member had stated that the Bill would be unprofitable to the Army; but if it had been announced some months ago, in bare words, that purchase was to be abolished, the first feeling would have been one of alarm, and the question with them then would have been—"What should we lose?" But now it would seem that the question had changed, and the hon. and gallant Member on their behalf would be disposed to say—"What can we make?" ["No!"] That was, in effect, what his arguments and his Amendment came to. They were told that that Bill was causing great discontent among the officers of the Army; but why was that? Because certain gentlemen—perhaps not actuated by such disinterested motives as the hon. and gallant Member—were agitating the Army. Some weeks ago the hon. and gallant Member for Bewdley asked the Secretary of State for War whether officers of the Army might communicate with Members of Parliament, and criticize the Bill on points affecting their pecuniary interests and future prospects in their profession; and the Secretary of State for War replied that he trusted the hon. and gallant Member would give no countenance to anything that would prejudice the good order and military discipline of the service; and that it was quite possible for any officer to communicate with a Member of that House on the subject of the Bill without incurring the reproach of being party to any such breach of discipline. Upon that the hon. and gallant Member for Bewdley sent a circular round to the officers of the Army generally, a copy of which he held in his hand. [Colonel ANSON: Is it not marked private?] It is; and if the hon. and gallant Member objected, he would not read the circular.
  426
  [Colonel ANSON: I do not object.] The circular was as follows:—
  "Dudley House, Park Lane, March 3.
  "(Private.)
  "Sir,—There is considerable discussion going on just now as to whether the officers in the Army would, in the event of purchase being abolished, willingly accept the regulation value of their commissions, to be paid on the day appointed for purchase to cease, waiving all future rights to sell, and all claims to over-regulation money. Would you kindly inform me whether such a compromise would meet with your approval, or whether you would prefer the Government scheme, taking your chance of being able to sell and leave the service on some future day, receiving the present value of your commission, with any over-regulation price you may have paid?—I remain, yours faithfully,
  "A. ANSON."
  "P.S.—I have the sanction of the Duke of Cambridge and Secretary of State for War for communicating with officers on this subject. It is most important that the feelings of officers should be ascertained.
  "A. A."
  On that document he (Captain Vivian) had only one or two observations to make. He entirely acquitted the hon. and gallant Member of any such intention; but most persons on reading that circular would infer that its author was the authorized agent of the Secretary of State in sending it round. Moreover, the circular did not state the case of the Government quite fairly, because it said the officers were to take their chance of getting any over-regulation money they might have paid for their commissions; whereas the actual proposal of the Government was to pay to the officer the customary over-regulation price, whether he had paid it or not. The hon. and gallant Member further said the officers of the Army approved his scheme, and preferred it to that of the Government. Well, the hon. and gallant Member's proposal, in simple words, was this—Whereas the Government would pay the officers £2,000 at some future day, would they not rather prefer to take £1,000 now? He was not surprised at officers accepting such an offer, for they all knew the fascinations of ready money to many men, whether rich or poor, and even rich men sometimes felt that fascination most strongly. That was not the first time that crisp banknotes had been flaunted in the face of officers of the Army. ["Oh, oh!"] He acquitted the hon. and gallant Member of any such intention; but the officers of the Army had been and were tempted by offers to forego prospective interests for the sake of immediate and present

  427
  pecuniary advantages. When, however, Government were proposing their scheme that was not the way in which they could go to the officers of the Army; they could not go and try to barter with them for their pecuniary interests. The Government said that if the House and the country were prepared to accept such a great change as that, they must also be prepared to pay every farthing to which the officers were entitled; and could not deprive them of the large sums they had invested in their commissions. The hon. and gallant Member had especially referred to officers of the cavalry and the Guards as being affected by this proposal.
  COLONEL ANSONsaid, it might save the hon. and gallant Gentleman some trouble if he stated that he sent out his circular for his own information, and because he was anxious for a compromise. He had understood that Members of the Government held that if there was to be a compromise it must come from the officers.
  CAPTAIN VIVIANsaid, he did not know what the hon. and gallant Member had heard attributed to him, nor did he question his right to send the circular round; but he asserted that the circular did not fairly describe the scheme of the Government, and that many men would, no doubt, be willing to sacrifice a large future advantage to obtain a sum of ready money. The hon. and gallant Member knew that his own first proposal was not so popular, because he had changed his front.
  COLONEL ANSONsaid, he had never made a proposal. He had merely asked for the expression of opinion, without pledging himself in any form whatever.
  CAPTAIN VIVIANsaid, he was not alluding to the proposition of the hon. and gallant Member to the officers, but to his proposals to the House; the first of which had been a Motion clearly stating that the sums to be returned to the officers of the Army should be payment of the regulation price; but his second Motion was very different. In his Resolution the hon. and gallant Member said—
  "That in any scheme for the abolition of purchase in the Army the State as well as the Officers must forego the advantages hitherto derived from that system, and in order to give the State that unrestricted power over the Officers of the Army which it is desirable it should possess, and also in justice to the Officers of the Army themselves,
  428
  the regulation value of their commissions shall be at once returned to them."
  That did not say that the over-regulation price should not be returned to the officers at some future day, nor that the regulation price to be returnable was to be returned to officers on full-pay only. The effect of the Motion would be that they would pay every officer the regulation price of his commission at once; that they would pay each officer on his leaving the service the over-regulation price; and that they would pay to officers on half-pay the regulation price of their commissions that day. He was anxious to show the House what would be the effect of the proposition of the hon. and gallant Gentleman upon the officers and upon the country as compared with that of the Government proposal. By the latter proposal, whenever an officer desired to obtain the price of his commission, he could only do so by retiring, and thus creating a vacancy which would enable the officers beneath him to advance a step; whereas by that of the hon. and gallant Gentleman, the officer would not only get his money, but he would retain his commission, and thus the officers beneath him would not obtain their promotion. And how would the plan of the hon. and gallant Gentleman answer with regard to half-pay officers? Why, if it were adopted, hundreds of officers on half-pay would receive money to which they had not the slightest just claim, while the country would still be saddled with their half-pay. Take the hon. and gallant Gentleman's own case. It was unnecessary for him to say that the hon. and gallant Gentleman was, of course, too high-minded to have brought forward this Motion in his own personal interest, and that he merely referred to his case as an illustration of what might occur with regard to others, without, for a moment, intending to impute any selfish motive to the hon. and gallant Gentleman in drawing the attention of the House to this matter. The value of the hon. and gallant Gentleman's commission was £2,300, which he would at once obtain under the Government scheme if he chose to retire when upon full-pay; but under his own proposal the hon. and gallant Gentleman would not only get his £2,300, to which as being on half-pay he had no right, but the country would have to pay him his half-pay

  429
  for life in addition. And, further, if the colonels who were upon half-pay were to receive the value of their commissions, why should not the generals over them be entitled to equal consideration: in fact, the hon. and gallant Admiral opposite (Sir John Hay) had given notice of his intention to ask the right hon. Gentleman the Secretary for War, why he was not going to recoup these generals as well as the other officers of the Army the value they had paid for their commissions in the course of their career. Then as to the cost of the respective schemes. The capitalized sum required under the Government scheme to buy up the interests of the officers, including the over-regulation prices, would be £7,214,646; whereas the sum which would be required under the scheme of the hon. and gallant Gentleman would be £12,074,384, being a difference in favour of the Government scheme of £4,859,738. [Major General Sir PERCY HERBERT: What is the basis of that calculation?] That calculation, of course, included the over-regulation as well as the regulation prices, and was based on the supposition that the Motion of the hon. and gallant Gentleman was to be carried out; for he (Captain Vivian) considered it was his duty to show what would be the effect of that Motion if adopted. The hon. and gallant Gentleman said that the scheme of the Government would only benefit those officers who wished to leave the service, and that it would entail hardship upon the working men in the Army. He admitted that those officers who retired from the service would receive exactly the same sum as they would if the Bill were not to be passed; but, on the other hand, the working men in the Army were to be encouraged by making their future promotion dependent upon zeal and ability, and by rendering their poverty no bar to their advancement. The hon. and gallant Gentleman had stated from his own personal knowledge that the Government scheme was unpopular among the officers in the Army; but that view of the case was not supported by the state of the commission market. Although the intentions of the Government on the subject were well known, being made in February, and publicly discussed within a fortnight afterwards, yet he found that the prices for commissions were not only not less,
  430
  but that they were actually more than they were before the Bill was introduced; and he defied the hon. and gallant Gentleman to prove his statement dependent upon this fact. In one instance the commission of a lieutenant-colonel in a cavalry regiment had fetched the large sum of £15,500, and he knew of two cases where the lieutenant-colonelcies of two infantry regiments fetched £1,200 more than the ordinary over-regulation price. If officers believed that their pecuniary interests were about to be so injuriously affected by the Government measure as was supposed by the hon. and gallant Gentleman, it was strange that they should be willing to risk these large sums with their eyes open. He, therefore, asked the House of Commons to resist this Amendment of the hon. and gallant Gentleman: first, because if adopted it would operate unjustly upon the interests of a large number of officers in the service, and, secondly, because it would involve the application of a large sum of public money to purposes to which it ought not to be applied; and he asked them, on the other hand, to accept the proposal of the Government, because he believed that it would prove, as it was intended to be, a wise, an honest, and a generous scheme.
  VISCOUNT ROYSTONsaid, he was unable to give his assent to the opinions which had been urged by the hon. and gallant Gentleman (Captain Vivian). In his opinion, the Motion of the hon. and gallant Member for Bewdley was simple and straightforward, for he had never understood that the hon. and gallant Member meant by his statement to imply that the over-regulation money was to be paid at the present moment. The Government scheme, according to the calculation of the hon. and gallant Gentleman the Financial Secretary, would involve the cost of £7,214,646 capitalized money; whereas the scheme of the hon. and gallant Member for Bewdley would cost £12,074,384, making the Government scheme apparently the cheaper one by about £4,800,000. He thought the figures thus given were calculated to mislead, rather than to enlighten; because the statement seemed to imply that the hon. and gallant Member was demanding the over-regulation money to be paid down at the present moment.
  CAPTAIN VIVIAN: No; I said that the scheme of the hon. and gallant Gentleman would commit the House to pay the regulation money down, and to pay the over-regulation money when the officers left the service.
  VISCOUNT ROYSTON: The hon. and gallant Gentleman had anyhow argued that point on assumption, because there was not one word of it in the Resolution before the House. He (Viscount Royston) simply wished to clear away the illusion and mystification which the hon. and gallant Gentleman (Captain Vivian) had thrown around the Motion. The hon. and gallant Gentleman's (Colonel Anson's) scheme was simply this—if the Government took the whole onus arising from the abolition of purchase on themselves, they ought to be prepared to pay down the regulation claims at once, and then to start de novo for the future: that was but a fair and just arrangement under the circumstances. The hon. and gallant Member the Financial Secretary, on the second reading of this Bill, said that the system of purchase had invariably stood in the way of any improvement the Government might think it necessary to introduce into the Army. If that was the case, why not at once do away with that system, and pay off every claim of the officers of the Army? He (Viscount Royston) would go the length of saying that the whole sums invested by the officers of the Army should at once be paid by the Government; that he believed to be the feeling, not only to the country generally, but of the officers themselves. He considered that the taunts of the hon. and gallant Member the Financial Secretary were just as flimsy as the bank notes of which he spoke, and unworthy of any Minister of the Crown. Were officers to be taunted, because they simply wished to get their own money back which they had invested? That was a money question from beginning to end, and must be treated as such, and he could not, moreover, agree with the Government, that the abolition of the purchase system would have the effect of renovating and improving the ranks of the Army. The hon. and gallant Gentleman spoke of the proprietary rights of officers, to which he had the greatest objection. Well, by declining to pay the money down, the Government were practically leaving the officers in the possession of those proprietary
  432
  rights to which they so much objected, He (Viscount Royston) endeavoured to procure the best information he could as to the money cost of the scheme of the hon. and gallant Member for Bewdley, and the calculation was, that they would get in 25 years, by the sinking fund, sufficient to pay off the whole amount by £600,000 a-year. A major in the Army who served 18 years—namely, nine years on foreign service and nine years at home, would receive, when he retired, his £900 for the foreign service and £450 for the home, making altogether £1,350. Now, under the old system, he would receive something like £3,000 or £4,000. Further, as to the non-purchase officers, he denied that this measure would prove a boon to them, for under the old system, those officers had always something to look forward to. He thought that the House had reason to complain of the scanty information given by the Bill itself, for they would have been in the dark as to its precise meaning, but for the many supplemental statements made from time to time by the Members of the Government. He did not know, until he had entered the House that day, that the Government had withdrawn their propositions in regard to the limitation of sales. He thought that withdrawal would be a source of great relief to the officers generally; and the Government, in his opinion, had raised a difficulty to themselves, in their proposition, for which there was no necessity. He had entered the Army with the intention of not making it a durable profession, and during his service he had witnessed one of the most extraordinary campaigns in India that had ever taken place; and though he had gained very little by the actual service he had undergone, yet the society of the distinguished officers into which he was thrown had been a great benefit to him. He thought that the advantage of the present system was, that it admitted into the Army gentlemen who had no wish to make it a permanent profession, and he thought the system of short service was a good one both for officers and men. Sir William Napier had expressed an opinion highly favourable to the purchase system, if it were not pushed too far; it had done much to make the British Army one of the best that ever entered the field, and the British officers superior to those of any other Army. In

  433
  conclusion, the noble Lord expressed his belief that the Government were not likely to maintain the superiority of the British Army by breaking down a system which had been of so much benefit to the country.
  MR. RYLANDSsaid, he could not support the Amendment of the hon. and gallant Member for Bewdley (Colonel Anson). Two distinct propositions were involved: the paying down at once for regulation prices; and at once or at some future time for over-regulation prices. He admitted that those who had purchased for over-regulation prices had not been guilty of an immoral act; but the fact that, by so doing, they had acted contrary to the law was a sufficient reason why the House of Commons should not condone that violation of the law. He was of opinion that they could not disturb the present system of purchase, without making some immediate arrangement with the officers of the Army which would satisfy them and promote the public interests. It would be, no doubt, a great boon to the officers of the Army to have the price of their commissions paid down, because it would give them a sum of money which in some after time they might not receive. By paying the regulation price at once, they more than compensated them for any loss from not being compensated for over-regulation price. They ought, however, to go into Committee on the Bill, and carefully consider it and the Amendments on the Paper; but, in voting for the measure of the Government, he had not much confidence as to the result. He expressed the opinion entertained by a great number of persons out-of-doors, when he stated there was no confidence that anything that might be done in connection with the Bill would be of a satisfactory character unless they struck at the head of our Army administration, and removed the supreme control from the present Commander-in-Chief. He voted against the Motion of his hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Bewdley, because he objected to their dealing with the question of compromise piecemeal. It should be known that, if the money was paid down for regulation prices, it must be on the distinct understanding that no money was to be paid for over-regulation prices. If that compromise was accepted, it would be only reasonable that the money required for
  434
  regulation prices, to secure what was considered would be a great benefit for the country, should not be raised at once, but should be spread over a number of years by means of Terminable Annuities.
  COLONEL NORTHsaid, the speech delivered that night by the hon. and gallant Gentleman the Financial Secretary of the War Department showed how necessary it was that the Government should have given to the House some idea what it was intended to be carried out by the Bill, considering that no one appeared to know what the details of the Bill were. His right hon. and gallant Friend the Surveyor General of Ordnance had spoken of professional officers—he supposed those who did not purchase, and who were more likely to remain in the Army than others; but the manner in which they had been hitherto treated by the Government did not give them any very great encouragement for the future. His right hon. and gallant Friend mentioned, amongst others, the case of Lieutenant Wright, of the 9th Regiment, who had been passed over, he believed, 11 times. Now, it so happened that Lieutenant Wright was one of those officers he did all he could to befriend; but he utterly failed, and he was bound, to say that up to that moment, this officer had met with every possible discouragement; not only that, but some four years ago he brought before the House the case of five officers, and moved to the effect that no money consideration should interfere with their prospects; for those officers had the mortification of being purchased over several times. He was glad his hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Bewdley had called in question the term "highest bidder," so that the minds of some persons might be disabused of the idea that commissions in the Army were bought like a horse at Tattersall's. That expression was not in accordance with fact; for instead of selling to the highest bidder, an officer disposed of his commission to the first who was prepared to purchase it. He rejoiced, also, to find that the question of limitation had been completely set aside, and that an officer would be at liberty to do what he pleased, as he had hitherto been. As to the Motion before the House, he hoped the Government would meet the views of his hon. and gallant Friend, for it was

  435
  only fair that the payment should be made at once, and that every officer should be on the same level one with another. Unless that were done great dissatisfaction would be the result. He wished to say a few words about the block of promotion in the scientific corps of the Army. There were 620 subalterns in the Royal Artillery; of these 15 were of 14 years' service, 18 of 13 years' service, 46 of 12 years' service, and 68 of 11 years' service; last year there were five subalterns out of the 620 promoted to companies in the Royal Artillery, and four this year. He had sat on a Committee, which had recommended certain things to be done for the officers of the Artillery and the Engineers, and the officers were perfectly satisfied with what the Committee recommended; but it had not been carried out, because it was said to be so expensive. Now, the Artillery and Engineers were supposed to be about one-eighth of the whole Army; and if the country could not afford to do common justice to the officers of the scientific corps, how was a block of that kind ever to be removed when the remaining seven-eighths of the Army was placed in a similar position? Then again, in corroboration of what he had stated, a Royal Commission, composed of all parties, had reported on the subject of over-purchase, to the effect that it had existed so long, and had been recognized by so many Governments, that to ignore it was utterly impossible. He should, therefore, support the Motion of his hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Bewdley.
  MR. M. CHAMBERSsaid, he took exception to the terms of the Motion, which, to his mind, were not explicit enough; and, in regard to over-regulation prices, he would say that there was a great moral question connected with their consideration. For many years whenever an officer sold his commission he and the purchaser had to sign a statement declaring, on their honour, that they did not receive nor give above the regulation price; yet it was notorious that commissions and even promotions were bought and sold even in violation of even the Army regulations, and it was difficult to understand how this practice could be reconciled with that strict sense of honour for which the military profession were remarkable. Now, if we wished to learn a lesson—a
  436
  lesson of caution in altering our system of appointment and promotion—we might look to the French and to the Prussian Armies. The Prussian officers, it appeared, were not particularly distinguished for their good breeding towards foreigners, and he had heard that in the last dreadful campaign, the French officers were afraid of their soldiers, and the soldiers despised and disobeyed their officers, and that there was a fearful state of insubordination, such as had never hitherto been known. There was no similar instance to be met with amongst British troops, even in the Peninsular War, where they were exposed, more than once, to the greatest hardships and sufferings in retreats calculated to disorganize any but a well disciplined force. The Motion proposed that forthwith, as soon as the Legislature said that purchase should be abolished, the officers should receive the regulation price which they had paid for their commission or their promotion. Now, every officer who entered the Army with honourable expectations knew that he would be exposed to all the perils of war and disease belonging to a soldier's life, and that consequently his money might be suddenly sacrificed, by his death in battle, or by his perishing from sickness; and the same thing occurred when he purchased his promotion. For instance when he purchased his lieutenant-colonelcy, he knew that he might be called into actual warfare, or ordered into a dangerous or unhealthy climate, and that this would give a chance of promotion to the juniors in rank. Supposing that every officer who had purchased had his money returned to him, what a magnificent speculation that would be? Every officer would be playing on velvet, and might say—"I have got my promotion by purchase; now give me my money back." But what would be the position of the non-purchase officers? The old officers, instead of retiring, would remain in the Army and thereby stop promotion, and so the bargain would be a good one for the purchasing officer—a very bad one for the State. But the real question was this—whether the officers who had purchased should be paid, not only the regulation price, but the extra sum given; but it was impossible to know at present the amount of this extra money; and he believed that when it had been ascertained, the sum

  437
  would be far larger than had been anticipated. He hoped that hon. Members would not divide on this preliminary Motion, which did not pledge the House to give no more than the regulation price, for he thought it would be a pity to do so.
  MR. GOLDNEYsaid, the Bill declared that every officer who wished to remain should have paid to him as much as he could possibly get from the Government if the Bill had not passed. The 3rd section of the Bill said that where officers were permitted to retire they should be entitled to receive a sum equal to the price of their promotion as if this Bill had not passed. He did not consider that it would be just to repay to the officers the amount of their commissions, seeing that there were thousands of young men who would be anxious to hold the position; and seeing also that the officers would continue to receive all the benefit of the social and other advantages which a commission in the Army conferred. It was also clear to him, in regard to the purchase money, that the Government really had received nothing. In 1833, the Duke of Wellington, in a letter to the Royal Commission that sat on the subject, wrote that—
  "The great advantage of giving permission to sell was this—that, in the sale of their commissions younger and, perhaps, better qualified men were able to enter the service."
  And, in a subsequent passage, the Duke of Wellington said that under the existing system an officer had but little hope of promotion, except by purchasing it. Those two passages were highly significant, and, to his mind, were a sufficient answer to meet all that the hon. and gallant Gentleman opposite (Colonel Anson) had said. He could not see that the Motion of the hon. and gallant Gentleman would be for the advantage either of the Army or of the officers; but thought that if the Government undertook to pay to officers on their retirement all that they could justly require in a monetary point of view, they would have done all that could be reasonably demanded of them.
  MR. O'REILLYsaid, that the speech of the hon. and gallant Gentleman who had brought on the Motion was, in effect, a complete answer to all the arguments that used to be brought forward when the propriety of abolishing purchase was submitted to the House.
  438
  The hon. and gallant Gentleman had distributed among hon. Members of the House a statement of the "injury that would accrue to the officers of the Army" if the Government scheme was carried. It would, it was stated, deprive officers of the present independent regimental system of promotion; it would deprive them of the right of exchange—he had never heard it spoken of as a "right" before—and it would also interfere with their expectations. He objected to these "rights" claimed by advocates on the side of the officers in the course of the present debate, and denied that Parliament was bound in any way to guard against interfering with speculations upon which officers might have entered in regard to the disposition of their commissions. The kind of right claimed was aptly illustrated by one of the Amendments placed on the Paper, to provide for the payment of compensation to officers, if, previously to the 1st of January in the present year, they may have had money left them by will or under settlement to enable them to purchase their steps in promotion. His hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Bewdley carefully avoided saying anything in his Amendment about over-regulation prices; but his intention probably was that the over-regulation prices should remain payable at a subsequent period, either by the Government or by anybody who was willing to give them. The course of promotion was to remain substantially as it was before, and therefore it would, be as well worth while, in the future as in the past, to pay the over-regulation price in order to get promotion. The course proposed by the Government was, in his judgment, not only just but generous. It was to repay to the officers all they had paid, at the same epoch at which they might realize it now; and whereas they were now subject to four contingencies leading to the total loss of their money, they would henceforth be left liable only to the danger of loss by death. It was unwise for officers to prolong the discussion; if this measure failed, they would be offered mere justice.
  COLONEL STUART KNOXsaid, the officers of the Army had higher motives than their own pecuniary interest in the view they took upon this matter, and opposed the Bill because they considered that it was against the interests of the

  439
  service and of the country. It seemed from the statement of the Financial Secretary for War (Captain Vivian) that there was a document in the War Office showing that the value of commissions was £12,000,000, and that this was the sum Government really intended to hand over to the Army. He protested against this wanton expenditure altogether; but if the purchase system was to be abolished Parliament was bound to do justice to the British officer. The right hon. and gallant Gentleman (Sir Henry Storks), who was brought into Parliament to pass this measure, had previously shown himself an angel of destruction, having been originally employed to destroy the connection between the Ionian Islands and this country, he was then sent to Jamaica when it was thought necessary to destroy Governor Eyre; and now, after various encounters with the women of England, he had landed in the pocket-borough of Ripon, ready to destroy anything, even the profession to which he belonged. He believed that this Bill would be the means of destroying the regimental system of the Army.
  COLONEL WILMOTsaid, although he did not advocate the purchase system as a system, and was sensible of its defects, he was yet conscious that under it our Army had gone on from one series of triumphs to another, which had not been equalled by any other Army in the world, and he should be sorry to see the good fellowship which existed in our Army destroyed—a result which must follow from the abolition of purchase, if the regulation money was not paid down at once. As one of the oldest regimental officers in the House, he should like to know what would be the position of officers who had purchased, when they found themselves side by side with officers who had been appointed without purchase. He would have been disposed to support the abolition of purchase on three conditions—first, that every officer received what he was entitled to, and no such ill-feeling was left in his mind as would be left under the proposals of the Government; second, that they should be made aware of what would be not only the immediate, but the eventual cost of the system of retirement; and, third, if it had been indicated to them what was to take the place of purchase, and what was to be the system of amalgamation
  440
  between the Line and their Reserve forces which rendered the abolition of purchase necessary. These conditions, however, were not fulfilled in the scheme of the Government; they had had nothing put before them to induce them to lay out that enormous sum of money; and, if a division took place, he should feel it his duty to go into the same Lobby with the hon. and gallant Member for Bewdley.
  MR. CARDWELL: Sir, it seems to me that it is now nearly time to bring this discussion to a close; I shall, therefore, limit my attention to the question immediately before the House, which relates to the amount of compensation officers may be entitled to. The hon. and gallant Member for Bewdley (Colonel Anson), in the course of his interesting speech, addressed a great many remarks to the House, which I agree with the hon. and gallant Member for Longford (Mr. O'Reilly) would have been very cogent in favour of the abolition of purchase if we had been discussing the purchase system; but it has happily been agreed to-night that we shall not go at large into the discussion of the purchase question, therefore I shall not follow my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Bewdley into those parts of his speech that would have told on my side, in which he described many of the evils of the purchase system, and particularly dwelt on the abuses in the management of the Reserve Fund. The greater the abuses in the management of the Reserve Fund, the stronger the argument for terminating the system of which the Reserve Fund is only an adjunct and a supplementary part, and I think, therefore, the arguments of my hon. and gallant Friend on the system of purchase and the Reserve Fund, are arguments, not against, but in favour of this Bill, and have little to do with his Motion. Giving us the history of the system of purchase, my hon. and gallant Friend says that the Government, and not the officers of the Army, have been responsible for the introduction of that system; in saying that, I do not know whether he has taken the pains to read the evidence appended to the Report of the Royal Commission which sat last year; but if he has, he will have seen that from the very first the Government have struggled with all their might against the introduction of the system

  441
  of purchase; and the whole history is given in the document that lies before me as to the mode in which that system was introduced. My hon. and gallant Friend says his next objection is, that a pecuniary loss will be entailed on the officers by the arrangements made in the Bill; now, if there is such a loss entailed on any officer in respect of his present rights, I shall, upon that being shown to me, admit that that is an imperfection in the Bill which ought to be redressed. I will proceed to state with brevity, my arguments against the Resolution before us. Now, what do we propose to do? Let it be understood, if there is injustice in any part of the purchase system, as I believe there is, it is no part of the duty of the Government to put their hand into the Consolidated Fund to remedy that injustice; our object is to remove that system, with all its defects and injustice, at once and for ever; and, because we desire to do that, we desire to give an ample and complete indemnity for every officer whom it may affect, but we do not wish to do more; therefore, all the arguments drawn from any injustice which may belong to the purchase system are not arguments against the Bill, but, on the contrary, in its favour. What course do we propose to take in regard to indemnifying officers? We abolish purchase at once and for ever. It has been stated in the course of the debate that if the Bill passes purchase will continue for 20 or 25 years; but that is an entire mistake, for purchase will be abolished from the day the Bill comes into operation. From that day every claim will be ascertained, and compensation for it provided, consequently all the evils attributed to the purchase system will come to an end, and the difficulties in the work of organization, which are introduced by having interests that you cannot value to deal with, will terminate also. In future, you will not have a single interest that is not valued, and for which compensation has not been provided. The hon. and gallant Member for Bewdley admits that the Bill is liberal and generous towards those officers who retire from the service, but says it is unjust towards those officers who remain. But, what is the argument on which all the alleged benefits of the purchase system are founded? Why, that it induces officers to retire. That is the one sheet-anchor
  442
  in favour of the purchase system. Well, but if we are liberal and generous to those who retire, what part of our duty is it to find compensation, which the purchase system never found, for those officers who remain? At present there is no clear distinction between a purchase officer and a non-purchase officer. My hon. and gallant Friend said that very few working officers are either wholly purchase or wholly non-purchase officers; that the man who is a purchase officer to-day, is a non-purchase officer for, perhaps, his next commission tomorrow. But what becomes of the argument of my hon. and gallant Friend that when a man purchases his first commission he purchases the right to purchase all the rest, that it is part of one transaction, and he is deprived of his just rights if you cut him short at that period? My hon. and gallant Friend himself has shown that there is not that distinction between a purchase and a non-purchase officer, and that they all stand together. When purchase is abolished, what is the pecuniary injury inflicted on a purchase officer. For what did he give his purchase-money? Why, that he might obtain a priority of promotion—that he might supersede his seniors in the service, and gain a step which he could gain by no other means than by that expenditure of money. He has had his advantage. Are you going to give the officer what he has purchased, and also to return him the purchase money he has paid for it? We do not desire to improve the position of the officer—that is not our object, and we take no credit for such an intention; but in a great settlement of this kind some points naturally arise in which the balance of advantage inclines to one side or the other, and in all such cases we have made the balance turn in favour of the officer. And what has been the result of our determination upon the position of the officer? We have secured him the full value of his commission, including the over-regulation prices; although, as it stands now, that value might be reduced considerably in the event of a war being declared, of his regiment being sent to an unhealthy climate, or of the officer below him refusing to give him more than the regulation price, and instead of his having to look about for a purchaser we have provided him with the most certain of

  443
  all purchasers in the form of the Consolidated Fund. Taking all these circumstances into consideration, how is it possible to say that we have inflicted any pecuniary loss upon the purchasing officer? Then, how is the non-purchasing officer affected by the measure. He will be entitled to claim the full value of all the service he has earned within the limits of his present commission. [Major General Sir PERCY HERBERT: Which clause of the Bill gives him the right?] I do not recollect exactly which clause contains the provision, but I think it is the 3rd. I am, however, glad to find by the question, that I am right in my supposition that the provisions of this Bill have not been thoroughly understood by those who oppose it on behalf of the officers. The non-purchase officer will be left with all the pecuniary rights which he has acquired by service, and for which he has not paid a shilling; he will have a fair start given to him in the way of promotion, pay, and rank, and he will be secured against supersession, which we have been told is the greatest grievance that can be inflicted upon him. So much for the respective positions of the purchase and the non-purchase officers under this Bill. The operation of the measure is not limited by the regulation price, but by the full over-regulation price, and the officer will receive the latter at the time and under the circumstances when he would have received it from an ordinary purchaser, if we had not introduced this Bill. But what does the hon. and gallant Gentleman propose by his scheme? He says, "Pay the regulation price down." The hon. and gallant Gentleman who last spoke (Colonel Wilmot) says, that it will be a great hardship for an officer who has paid for his commission to serve side by side with an officer who has obtained his commission without purchase. Under these circumstances, if they are correct, I can only wonder that the Army is not discontented now. But now I ask the hon. and gallant Member (Colonel Anson), if he has not kept us in the dark as to whether he intends by his proposal, that the over-regulation prices are to be paid as well as the regulation price? The hon. and gallant Member who seconded the Motion (Colonel Barttelot) did not disguise that such was the view he took of the hon. and gallant Gentleman's proposal.
  444
  Some hon. Gentlemen have suggested the possibility of a compromise being effected; but we do not ask for a compromise. We do not know who, on the part of the Army, is able to speak the language of compromise; and we do not know who would undertake that what would be agreeable to one portion of the Army, say the infantry, would be agreeable to another portion of the Army, say the cavalry. We have nothing to do with compromise in any way; our business is to do justice, and justice we are determined to do; and by the proof that we are doing justice we desire to stand. If the proposal of the hon. and gallant Gentleman goes to the extent that the over-regulation price is to be paid as well as the regulation price, then, as has been shown earlier in the evening, he is asking for nothing less than a grant of £5,000,000 from the Consolidated Fund. Thus, besides receiving everything that he has paid for, the officer is to get all his money back again, and is to receive £5,000,000 out of the pocket of the British taxpayer. Then, whereas, by the scheme of the Government, we shall insure rapid and continuous promotion, if we take the plan of the hon. and gallant Gentleman, we shall stop promotion, because those officers who have received their purchase money back will not be in a hurry to leave the service to make room for others. Then, look at the position of the half-pay officer, who in some cases would have a present made him out of the pocket of the taxpayer of £4,500. [Colonel ANSON dissented.] All I can say is, that is the proposal contained in the Motion. But if the hon. and gallant Gentleman does not intend that the over-regulation prices are to be paid at all, what becomes of the Commission of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Morpeth, and what will those officers in the cavalry and in the Guards say, to whom the over-regulation money is of such great importance, and to whom this so-called compromise will be nothing more nor less than an absolute injustice? And, if this plan should be adopted, what rule of promotion is it proposed that we should adopt? Are we to adopt the system of selection as the rule of promotion, or are we to be thrown back upon the bare and naked system of seniority? I believe it is the intention of the House, as has

  445
  been shown by its decision, that selection is to be the general rule, and that merit is to be the passport to advancement. The Royal Commission said that if you make seniority the rule, it would produce disastrous results, and that you must rely upon selection as the rule; I believe that to be the intention of the House; and, if that be done, how can it be harmonized with a system of over-regulation prices? If the Government are to select officers, over-regulation price will of itself die out, and the day after selection becomes the rule over-regulation prices are gone. Have you done justice to those officers to whom over-regulation is the principal portion of what they expect to receive? Look to the history of what has passed about over-regulation prices. I hear arguments used glibly in this House as if there was no evil in the system of over-regulation prices. Hon. Members frequently speak as if they imagined that the reglation price was something paid to the Government, and over-regulation price a sum of money paid to the retiring officer. The regulation price is not paid to the Government, although it is paid under regulations laid down by the Government. [Major General Sir PERCY HERBERT: To the Government agent.] We are speaking now not of a matter of fact, but of a matter of opinion; and my opinion is not that of the hon. and gallant Officer. My opinion is that the Government, so far as it interferes at all, interferes in a supplementary and subordinate part of the purchase system, and that the regulation money is paid to the retiring officer. The great efforts of Governments from the time of Queen Anne down to the present, has been to check the evils which the system of over-regulation has introduced. I am only repeating what has been said by the highest authority, when I say that if you abolish regulation and leave over-regulation you will have paid your £8,000,000, and you will not have attained your end; you will have incurred the burden, and the system you desire to extinguish will remain in full force. If you permit the thing to be sold at all, it will fetch its value in the market; if it is worth regulation and over-regulation now, when you have compensated for regulation and left over-regulation, the price of over-regulation will rise to the amount that regulation and over-regulation
  446
  were before. You will have sacrificed your money and you will not have accomplished your object. I submit, then, my hon. and gallant Friend has entirely failed to make out the grounds for his Motion. The scheme which we invite the House to adopt is complete in equity; it throws the balance in favour of the officer wherever it is necessary to throw the balance on either side; it accomplishes, immediately, the abolition of the purchase system; it puts a present and fixed value upon the pecuniary right, and provides a compensation which he will receive at the time and under the circumstances when he would have received it if this Bill had not passed.
  MAJOR GENERAL SIR PERCY HERBERTsaid, he admired the courage of the right hon. Gentleman the Secretary of State for War in using an expression about the House being left in the dark by the hon. and gallant Officer who moved the Resolution, for the Government never left the House more completely and intentionally in the dark on any question that it submitted to Parliament, seeing they had no information as to what the scheme of the Government would cost, or what the nature of it might be. Non-regulation prices were paid by one officer to another as private transactions; but regulation money was paid under orders; there was an official letter to say where an officer must lodge the money, and a Government agent was required to say he had lodged it; and, in a large number of cases, the officer succeeded did not receive the money. The Prime Minister, the other night, said the Government received the money only in exceptional cases, and that it would be idle to detain the House by speaking of these minute exceptions; but a Return distributed to-day showed that since 1841, these minute exceptions made up a total of £1,712,829, which had been paid to and spent by the Government, principally in diminution of the Army Estimates. He denied the assumption that officers would receive under the Bill as much as they would receive if it had never passed at all, for the Bill stereotyped things as they were, and prevented officers rising into positions in which they would be entitled to more, for the 3rd clause said that an officer who, but for this Act would have been permitted to retire by

  447
  the sale of his commission, should be entitled to receive not the value of his commission, but a sum equal to the estimated price at which the commission held by him would have been saleable if the Bill had not passed. The change made by the Bill in the terms of service would be a great injustice to the officers of the Army, and to illustrate that injustice, he might mention the case of a lieutenant-colonel who, after having served for a period of 20 years, would be entitled to receive the sum of £4,500 for the several commissions he had purchased; but under this Bill he would only get £2,000. If a firm of merchants who had encouraged clerks to enter their service, and to pay money for promotion, on the understanding that they were to have a retiring allowance equal to half their salaries after 25 years' service, should deem it proper to change that system for their own benefit, they would be regarded as the meanest people in the world if they did not return the money which had been paid. His hon. Friend the Member for Chippenham (Mr. Goldney), to his astonishment, quoted the Duke of Wellington in support of the Bill; but if the hon. Gentleman had read a little further on, he would have found that the Duke of Wellington said, it was obvious that in calculating the remuneration to which any officer was entitled, the interest of the sum he had paid ought to be taken into account, and that, in point of fact, promotion by purchase was a saving of expense to the public, and highly beneficial to the service, as younger and more qualified men entered the Army, and relieved the State from the necessity of making provision for officers who were worn out by prolonged service. How, he would ask, was the promotion proposed by the Bill to be carried on? Not one word had been said about that. No one who took a dispassionate view of the case could fail to perceive that a material change would be introduced into the terms of service. The right hon. and gallant Gentleman opposite (Sir Henry Storks) put forward a preposterous claim the other day, when he said that he could have obtained his full purchase-money and still have retained his rank. His words were—
  "When I was a lieutenant, I purchased over four lieutenants and became a captain; when I was a captain, I purchased over four captains
  448
  and became a major. Now, according to the theory laid down in the course of this discussion, I ought, under these circumstances, to get all my purchase-money back and still retain my commission, pay, allowances, prestige, and everything."—[3 Hansard, cciv. 1738.]
  SIR HENRY STORKS, interposing, explained that that was when he held the grade of major, and not when he became a general officer.
  MAJOR GENERAL SIR PERCY HERBERTthought the right hon. and gallant Gentleman had introduced no such stipulation in his argument.
  SIR HENRY STORKSsaid, his argument applied only to the position he occupied when he purchased over the heads of four captains and became a major. He asked what those four captains would have thought, if he had been repaid his money and been allowed still to retain his rank of major?
  MAJOR GENERAL SIR PERCY HERBERT, while accepting the right hon. and gallant Gentleman's explanation, said he thought the words used by him conveyed a different impression. With respect to the general question of retirement he thought this was a most unjust and ungenerous Bill, and the details of the scheme, he believed, had been kept dark by the Government, because they thought the House might be frightened by them. He thought he had proved that certain Members of the Government displayed some little want of knowledge, when they argued that the Government did not receive the regulation money, for the purpose of diminishing their liability to meet claims for half-pay from which they could not have escaped otherwise. He asked the House, in conclusion, to hesitate before refusing to consider the just claims of 6,000 officers who had certainly not received any very great reward for their military services, who had always done their duty gallantly, and had never been niggardly of their blood whenever their country's service had called upon them to expend it. Under these circumstances, considering the technical character of the subject, and that the defence of the officers was thrown on hon. Members less practised in debate than those who sat on the Government bench, he trusted to the generous feeling of the House to hesitate before they did so great an injustice to the officers as to ask them not to pass the Resolution.
  COLONEL WHITEsaid, he trusted that all who took an interest in this question would agree with him, that it was a matter of intense gratification that such a Motion had been brought forward by the hon. and gallant Member, whose extraordinary energy, whose devotion to the subject which he had undertaken to study, and whose thorough knowledge of details must make any opinion coming from him worthy of the attention and respect of the House; but, at the same time, he thought it would have been better, if he had so worded his Motion, that he need not have laid himself open to the suspicion which had been expressed frequently outside the House as well as within its walls—that he would have thrown over, so to speak, over-regulation money, because he, for one, and those who stood on the same platform, insisted that over-regulation money must be considered as a sine qua non in the same ratio as regulation. The platform on which he stood was regulation money down, and over-regulation upon retirement. He did not ask this as a boon; he did not ask it as an act of generosity on the part of the Government, but he claimed it as an act of bare justice to the English Army. He had endeavoured to turn over the facts and arguments in his mind, and the conclusion to which he had been irresistibly drawn was, that by no other means could they hope to act with justice unless they recognized the terms of the Motion then before the House; in no other way could they avoid the conclusion of a flagrant breach of contract; in no other way could they, with any shadow of fairness, venture to ignore the claims of seniority, and to substitute a system of indiscriminate selection and rejection. Nay, more, he asserted that if in anyone instance of applying that system of rejection to any individual officer who entered the Army under the purchase system, unless they previously annulled the whole of the contract which they made with him, they could not, without breach of faith so flagrant as almost to deserve the term dishonourable, deal with him according to this principle of selection and rejection. He had spoken of contract, and he said there was a direct compact between the officers of the Army and the State. When he entered the Army, under the purchase system, he entered into a direct bargain, with the State; on
  450
  the one hand, he agreed to give a ready and obedient service at all times and under all circumstances, and he paid a sum of money down which was required of him by the State, and without which he would, not have obtained his commission; and, on the other hand, the State undertook, if he did not forfeit his position by any disgraceful act or gross in-competency, that when he came by seniority and service to be the first on the list for promotion, he should receive that promotion. That bargain still remained, and he could not alter its terms; but if it were for the good of the country that the Government chose to alter part of that bargain, he was justified by every principle of equity to demand that they should annul the whole and start on a new footing. When a bargain was made between two private individuals, and one of them chose to repudiate one-half of the bargain—that half which most affected himself—he was called, and with some shadow of truth, dishonest and dishonourable. He had yet to learn, why it was that the State should not be under the same terms which affected private individuals. It would be grossly unjust to apply a system of selection and rejection to an officer who came into the Army under the purchase system, unless they previously annulled the contract between him and the State; in saying that, he must affirm it, was the argument of one of those who sat on the Ministerial bench, for his hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Truro (Captain Vivian), for instance, on the 9th of March, said it was proposed that officers of the Militia should, under certain conditions, get commissions in the Line; and he would like to know how it would be possible to take officers under the non-purchase system and place them side by side with officers each of whom had paid £450 for his commission? That was precisely what he said. Then, the right hon. Gentleman at the head of the Government made a speech, which had been already quoted to-night, asking how it was possible, when the offices were their own property, that they should be subject to that unrestricted handling, with regard to which it was necessary for the Government to have unrestricted power? He trusted that Ministers, for the sake of common consistency, would be persuaded to re-consider this point, and not have to eat their own words. But there were

  451
  arguments which had not been touched upon. Take, for instance, the case of two officers who had arrived at the grade of captain in the Army—a non-purchase captain and a purchase captain. In a money point of view how did they stand? The non-purchase captain received a pay of £240 per annum; the purchase captain received nominally £240; but having paid £2,000 to arrive at that rank, he, in fact, received £240 minus £80, the interest at 4 per cent on the outlay. While the non-purchase captain received £240, the purchase captain received £160. Again, there was the difficulty that when the "purchase" captain died, his widow would lose the value of the commission; the widow of the "non-purchase" captain nothing. Was it so very unusual a request, that the Government should pay down on the nail a portion of the sum that would have to be paid? Was England, in 1871, so much poorer than she was in 1833, when she voted £20,000,000 to abolish the slave trade? All that the Government was asked to do now was to put down a quarter of that sum, to compensate a body of public servants who had certainly some claims on the lenient consideration of the House. He had supported the Government all through the divisions on the Budget, partly from his natural desire to vote with his Friends, and partly, because he was resolved that, as far as he was concerned, the Government, when they came to deal with this question, should not be able to plead poverty; but if this Motion of his hon. and gallant Friend were agreed to, he would consent to acknowledge that purchase was to be abolished; but if it were not agreed to, he would join with that party—and it was neither few nor weak—which was resolved to oppose the Bill clause by clause, step by step, and by every means which the forms of the House placed in their power.
  Question put, "That the words proposed to be left out stand part of the Question."
  The House divided:—Ayes 250; Noes 187: Majority 63.
  Original Question again proposed.
  Motion made, and Question proposed, "That the Debate be now adjourned."—(Major Arbuthnot.)
  MR. CARDWELLsaid, the hon. and gallant Gentleman, not having been long a Member of the House, was, perhaps, not aware that when an Amendment like the one just disposed of had been rejected, it was usual for the Speaker to leave the Chair at once, and for the House to go into Committee.
  Question put.
  The House divided:—Ayes 178; Noes 243: Majority 65.
  Original Question again proposed.
  Motion made, and Question proposed, "That this House do now adjourn."—(Colonel Jervis.)
  MR. GLADSTONEsaid, he could not agree to the Motion. The Bill had been most amply discussed, five nights having been spent upon it—a debate almost unexampled upon a subject not political; the second reading had been taken without a division; and, in fact, nothing now remained to be said about it. Nothing could be more flat and unprofitable than to attempt to keep up a discussion when the subject had been so thoroughly exhausted.
  SIR JOHN PAKINGTONsaid, if no division was taken on the second reading, it was owing to peculiar circumstances. The right hon. Gentleman must be aware that a large party in the House felt the greatest possible objection to the Bill. To-night the debate had been entirely confined to the discussion of the Motion of his hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Bewdley, with reference only to the pecuniary interests of officers, and there were many Members who still desired to have a fair discussion of the general principles of the Bill.
  MR. CARDWELLsaid, the second reading had been discussed for five nights, and nobody could say that those who were opposed to the Bill had not had ample opportunity for expressing their opinions. The reason why there was no division on the second reading was best known to the right hon. Gentleman opposite; but it was probably owing to the excellent adviced received from the Leader of his party. He trusted they might be allowed to proceed with the real business before them.
  COLONEL SYKESsaid, he would suggest that opponents of the Bill could attain their object by resisting it clause by clause in Committee.
  Question put.
  The House divided:—Ayes 127; Noes 223: Majority 96.
  Original Question again proposed.
  COLONEL STUART KNOX, amid cries of "Oh, oh!" and considerable excitement, moved the adjournment of the debate.
  LORD GARLIESseconded the Motion.
  Motion made, and Question proposed, "That the Debate be now adjourned."—(Colonel Stuart Knox.)
  Question put.
  The House divided:—Ayes 105; Noes 207: Majority 102.
  Original Question again proposed.
  Motion made, and Question proposed, "That this House do now adjourn."—(Colonel Corbett.)
  Question put.
  The House divided:—Ayes 99; Noes 189: Majority 90.
  Original Question again proposed.
  Motion made, and Question proposed, "That the Debate be now adjourned."—(Sir William Bagge.)
  Question put.
  The House divided:—Ayes 98; Noes 178: Majority 80.
  MR. GLADSTONEsaid, he was always ready, individually, to go through with a contest of this kind; but in consideration for others who were concerned in the divisions—as the Speaker and the officers of the House—he would agree to a Motion for the adjournment of the debate.
  Original Question again proposed.
  Whereupon Motion made, and Question, "That this House do now adjourn,"—(Sir William Verner,)—put, and negatived.
  Original Question again proposed.
  Debate arising.
  Debate adjourned till Thursday.

  WAYS AND MEANS.
  Considered in Committee.
  (In the Committee.)
  Resolved, That towards raising the Supply granted to Her Majesty, the Duties of Customs now charged on Tea shall continue to be levied and charged on and after the first day of August, one thousand eight hundred and seventy-one, until
  454
  the first day of August, one thousand eight hundred and seventy-two, on importation into Great Britain or Ireland (that is to say:

  s.

  d.

  Tea

  the lb.

  0

  6

  Resolution to be reported To-morrow;
  Committee to sit again upon Wednesday.

  TRAMWAYS PROVISIONAL ORDERS CONFIRMATION BILL.
  Considered in Committee.
  (In the Committee.)
  Resolved, That the Chairman be directed to move the House, that leave be given to bring in a Bill for confirming certain Provisional Orders made by the Board of Trade under "The Tramways Act, 1870," for the construction of Tramways in the City of London, in the Metropolis and certain parts of the county of Middlesex without the Metropolis, and in Cardiff, Leeds, Yarmouth, and Wallasey.
  Resolution reported: — Bill ordered to be brought in by Mr. ARTHUR PEEL and Mr. CHICHESTER FORTESCUE.
  Bill presented, and read the first time. [Bill 130.]

  POLICE COURTS (METROPOLIS) BILL.
  On Motion of Mr. BAXTER, Bill to transfer to the Commissioners of Her Majesty's Works and Public Buildings the property in and control over the buildings and property of the Police Courts of the Metropolis; and for other purposes relating thereto, ordered to be brought in by Mr. BAXTER and Mr. WILLIAM HENRY GLADSTONE.
  Bill presented, and read the first time. [Bill 131.]
  House adjourned at Two o'clock.

MINUTES.
— Sat First in Parliament—The Lord Elgin, after the death of his father.
PUBLIC BILLS—First Reading—Adjutants (Jury) Exemption* (101); Bills of Exchange and Promissory Notes* (102); Metropolitan Commons Supplemental* (103).
Committee—University Tests (26–104).
Third Reading—Ecclesiastical Dilapidations* (92), and passed.

ARTILLERY—PERSONAL EXPLANATION.
THE EARL OF CARNARVONsaid, he did not often trouble their Lordships with any personal explanation; but he now felt bound, in justice both to the House and himself, to do so. On Friday night he (the Earl of Carnarvon) in calling attention to our artillery force dwelt on the relative strength of batteries of artillery under a peace and a war establishment. There was no difference between himself and his noble Friend opposite (Lord Northbrook) as to the peace establishment; but a very great difference as to the war establishment; and thereon his noble Friend took him more severely to task and impugned his figures more severely than he thought had been his general practice; and therefore he thought that it was not only due to their Lordships' House, but also to himself, that he should endeavour to show that he did not make his statement lightly, or without full and careful consideration. His own statement was that a horse artillery battery on a war establishment consisted of 228 officers and men; while his noble Friend contended that its strength was 169 officers and men; the difference between that and a peace establishment being, according to his own statement, 80, and, according to his noble Friend's, only 21. Again, his own statement was that a battery of field artillery on a war establishment consisted of 277 officers and men, while his noble Friend gave the number as 169, the difference between this and a peace establishment being stated by himself as 128, and by his noble Friend as 20. Now, he had known his noble Friend long enough to feel sure that he was incapable of any intentional mis-statement. On the other hand, he hoped his noble Friend would acknowledge that he was not in the habit of making assertions which he (the Earl of Carnarvon) had not carefully endeavoured to verify. He would quote authorities which he thought would vindicate his accuracy in the present case. A book published by the Topographical Department of the War Office, under the editorship of Sir Henry James, entitled Strength of the Army of Great Britain, gave 228 as the number of officers and men of a horse artillery battery under a war establishment, and 227 as the number of officers and men

337
of a field artillery battery—this agreeing with his own figures. Again, the Army Equipment Book, issued by the Statistical Department of the War Office, gave the same figures. So also did the Soldier's Pocket Book, which was drawn up by a distinguished officer, General Wolseley, who had the command of the Rod River Expedition. He had not a recent copy of the Handbook of Field Service, which had a quasi-official authority; but he was told that it gave the same numbers. Moreover, a War Office Return, dated August 9, 1870, and signed "Edward Cardwell," giving the numbers to which each battery was being made up, gave 185 as the strength of a battery of horse artillery, and 35 as the further number which would be requisite to put it on a war establishment, the total being 220. This differed only by eight from his own statement, this difference representing the eight officers who formed the complement of each battery of artillery, whether field or horse. The Return gave 269 as the strength of a battery of field artillery on a war footing, which, again, was eight less than his own figures, for a reason he had just explained. He thought the House would see that his statements were not made lightly or without ample justification. His noble Friend drew a distinction on Friday between a battery of artillery placed on a peace establishment and a battery placed on a war establishment for home defence; but the latter term he had never heard before; and, on inquiry, he had found that nobody could give any information on it or was able to tell what it meant, for a battery must either be on a peace or a war establishment.
LORD NORTHBROOKdisclaimed any intention of imputing to his noble Friend statements which he did not at the time think justifiable; but he must repeat that he was rather in the habit of asking for information, getting what information he could beforehand, and making a speech before he was supplied with reliable information upon the subject of it. The Returns appealed to by his noble Friend represented at the time of their publication the strength which, under certain circumstances, had been laid down for batteries of artillery; but last winter, as he explained the other night, a Committee, presided over by General Haines, and comprising among its members General Adye, and other
338
high authorities on artillery, laid down the future strength of batteries for peace, for home defence, and for foreign service. If the noble Earl thought other information of greater value than the opinions of those responsible officers, which had been approved by the Commander-in-Chief and the Secretary of State, his statements must necessarily differ from those made by himself on behalf of the War Office.

UNIVERSITY TESTS BILL—(Nos. 26, 104.)
(The Earl of Kimberley.)
UNIVERSITY TESTS BILL—(Nos. 26, 104.)

  COMMITTEE.
  House in Committee (according to Order.)
  Clause 1 (Short Title) agreed to.
  Clause 2 (Interpretation of Terms).
  Amendment moved, in page 1, line 26, after ("professorship") insert ("other than professorships of divinity").
  Amendment agreed to; Clause agreed to.
  THE MARQUESS OF SALISBURY: My Lords, I rise to move the principal Amendment which has been recommended by the Committee to which your Lordships referred this important Bill; and in doing so I shall enter into the general question at issue between the two parties before the House, and into the objects which the Committee had in view in their recommendations. This measure has come up to us recommended by a large majority of the House of Commons and by a considerable agitation out of doors—which no doubt is a consideration calculated to have weight on your Lordships' minds; but it will not have escaped those who have followed the course of this agitation during many years, both in the motives which have actuated it and in the persons by whom it has been carried on, that it is divisible into two distinct parts. The most numerous of those who have urged the relaxation or abolition of the Tests are what are commonly called the orthodox Dissenters. To them the question at issue was not strongly a religious one, but rather one of political equality, of social standing, and of conflicting claims to certain endowments, some of which have descended from very ancient times. We think they are wrong; but they hold firmly and strongly that they have an equal claim with all Churchmen not only to these colleges, which had been dealt with summarily at the

  339
  Reformation, but they hold also that as to the Universities, which possess national privileges, they have claims not only for equal education but also for an equal enjoyment of all their emoluments. These persons form the mass and strength of the agitation for this Bill; but they do not take the direction of it—its leadership and guidance are in the hands of men of very different aims and temperaments. Those who now direct the movement and the forces by which it is carried on desire something very different from an equal share of education and emolument between Church and Dissent. They desire that the dogmatic theology which has hitherto been considered identical with Christianity shall not be taught as of necessity in these national places of education, and that secular objects of study shall be put in a far superior position, and be treated as of more account than any religious instruction with reference to dogmatic belief. There is no doubt that this party, though very scanty in numbers, is distinguished by the ability of its leaders, and by the intellectual power it can bring to bear on the objects which it seeks. The result of this double impulse is represented in the Bill. The first apparent object of the movement, the first apparent aim of the Bill, was religious equality; but that was only the apparent object. The effect of the Bill, long after it had satisfied all claims to religious equality, was to do something far wider, in our belief far more important and disastrous—to banish distinctive religious teaching from the Universities altogether. These were the two different effects of the measures, and these are the two different policies between which it has been our duty to draw a strongly marked and decided line. This feeling has governed the recommendations which the Committee have made to your Lordships. Whatever justification there may be for the claims which the Church has set up and in past years maintained for the exclusive enjoyment of the emoluments of the Universities, we are ready to concede two things—first, that in the existing political constitution those claims are hardly maintainable; and, secondly, that they are of infinitely smaller importance than the other matters involved in the issue before us. We value, of course, the secular rights of the Church, but we treat
  340
  them as mere dirt compared to the paramount object of securing the supremacy of religion in the education of the young. That is the feeling that has guided us in making the recommendations that have been laid before you. Our recommendations are briefly these. We desire that all honours and emoluments, all fellowships and scholarships, shall be thrown open without distinction to all subjects of the Queen. We are further willing that all offices involving teaching shall be thrown open to all those who agree upon the essential points of Christianity—that is to say, to 99 out of every 100, and, indeed, a much larger proportion—of the population of these islands. We say, however, that the office of teaching rests upon a very different footing from the enjoyment of emoluments. In distributing emoluments you may merely consider the claims of those who seek them; in distributing offices you must consider the claims of those on whom those offices are to be exercised. Supposing that there are no proprietary rights in the way, which at present are put aside, it is fair to give equal enjoyment of mere money; it is not fair to give to all, without consideration of their qualifications, the right to take part in the education of the young. I have heard it said sometimes that it is unjust on account of differences of opinion to exclude people from the honourable and lucrative office of teaching. I will not say whether it is lucrative or not; but I say that the tenant of the office is not to be considered in the least degree compared to the persons towards whom the office is to be exercised. It is the rights of the pupils which we have to consider; and with regard to the tutors we have to consider only whether they are fit for the office or not. Our proposals are mainly directed to the maintenance of religious teaching. We propose that the tutors should be required to make a declaration—that is, a promise, that in the exercise of their office they will teach nothing contrary to the Divine authority and teaching of the Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testament. That is the Motion which I shall place in the hands of the noble and learned Lord in the chair (Lord Redesdale) when I sit down. We also propose that the chapel services shall be obligatory; that sufficient religious instruction shall be given to those

  341
  members of the Church of England in each college who desire it; that no one shall be forced against his conscience to attend any kind of lecture; and that the head of the college shall be excluded from the operation of the Bill. There are some other provisions reserving the decision of Parliament on the controverted question of clerical fellowships. As to the heads of colleges, they do not take a very active part in education, but the importance of the provision principally turns on the selection of the Vice-Chancellor. Unless you exclude heads of colleges from the operation of the Bill, you will place the Chancellor of the University of Oxford in a very invidious position. It will be impossible for him to select the Vice-Chancellor by rotation, as at present, and for the sake of avoiding that invidious choice this exemption is proposed. Of course, the main point is the question whether tutors are by promise to be prevented from teaching doctrines contrary to the Divine authority and teaching of the Holy Scriptures. I must deal with the objection which will probably be the first raised by the noble Earl opposite (the Earl of Kimberley.) The noble Earl will probably say, "Your object is a very good one, but this test is wholly ineffective for its purpose;" and to prove that he will probably point out the various holes which an ingenious litigant could pick in it, and how he could drive a coach-and-six through it. Now, I freely admit that this or any other declaration which you might frame, if tested as a conveyancer tests the words put into a deed, is of no value whatever;—anybody could break through it. I do not, however, propose to bring such a declaration to the interpretation of a court of law, or to support it by the agency of a court of law. Such powers already exist in the Universities. But the truth is such powers are in their very nature exceedingly difficult to assert, and the Universities perhaps will seldom or never use them. The value of the test is something totally different. It is not a legal security, but it is a security in the court of honour or the court of conscience. We have not arrived at such a point that we are to suspect the generality of those who reach high academical position of a deliberate attempt to deceive or evade by subterfuge. I feel certain that there is no such
  342
  danger. All the evidence we have received leads us rather to believe that any indication of the will of Parliament is received by those in the Universities with a devotion and an obsequiousness which to us of the outside world appear rather superstitious. I feel sure that when Parliament has indicated its intention, and when these men have pledged their personal honour to the promise that they will not teach anything contrary to the Scriptures, you are in the vast majority of instances absolutely secure against any breach of your confidence. It is not merely their personal feelings that you have to appeal to—and I believe in the majority of cases that would be quite enough. But all their teaching is carried on in public, in the presence of those who are sufficiently prone to criticism as it is, and they would certainly be looked on with little respect in their college or by their pupils if they deliberately, for the sake of proselytism, broke a solemn declaration deliberately made. In these days, when feelings of honour are very much stronger than, I regret to say, feelings of conscience are, I am sure that a declaration of this kind will not err upon the side of weakness, and that when you have obtained this promise from the tutors you may be quite certain that in the vast majority of cases it will not be broken. The great fault of our existing tests—it is admitted that they have failed—is that they are too minute, and that they were drawn up by a past age. The consequence is that persons can salve their own consciences — and persuade themselves in the fashion that the Endowed Schools Commissioners have done—that the framers of the tests, if they had lived till now, would have altered them entirely. That is a species of sophistry very common, and which has impaired the effect of former tests; but I do not believe that a similar danger attends this declaration, and my belief is supported by the opinion of those who know the Universities best. Well, supposing it to be admitted that this test is efficacious, you will ask—"Have we a right to enforce it?" It will be said—"You are interfering with liberty of conscience." I do not suppose anybody in this House will say—"We do not want the teaching to be religious;" but it will be said—"The colleges will make the teaching religious if they are

  343
  only left to themselves." Now, I quite echo that sentiment if you only leave them alone; but that is precisely what you are not doing. The responsibility ought to be left to the colleges if you had left to the colleges the correlative of responsibility—namely, unrestricted liberty; but you have tied them up in every way. You have told them that they are no longer, as they did 20 years ago, to select fellows at their will, but are to be tied by the result of a competitive examination; and now you are about to tell them that they shall apply no test whatever to ascertain the religious or doctrinal fitness of those whom they select. If you thus set the Universities aside you put yourselves in their place; you accept their responsibility, and are bound to do that which they would have been bound to do—namely, to satisfy the parents who send their children there that you will fulfil the duties which the colleges formerly undertook. You have forcibly brought the colleges under control, and you stand as their representative and share their responsibility before the nation—or, rather, before the parents whose children you receive. I am conscious that in mentioning parents I am introducing what is deemed rather an ungenial element in the question of University education. Among University Liberals the popular view is that a parent is nothing but an inconvenient appendage to an undergraduate. I do not share their view. They repel with extreme irritation the idea that their magnificent philosophies and splendid researches are to be subjected to anything so prosaic as the wishes of the parents whose children they educate. I take a different view, and look at all this grand machinery as merely representing the relations of employer and employed. Parents employ the University to educate their children. If you left it free, I have no doubt it would consult their wishes; but if you deprive the colleges of their liberty and force them to educate as you like, you then assume the same responsibility towards the parents. You are the employed, and it is your business to bring up the children in the manner desired by the parents. The question narrows itself to this—Is there any danger in the present state of the Universities that young men, if the Bill passes, will be brought up in a manner to which the parents will object? If there is any
  344
  moral infection that taints the air—if there is any spiritual evil creeping over the Universities or threatening to do so—it is your duty, having accepted the responsibilities of the colleges and Universities, to take sufficient measures of precaution that this infection shall not spread, and that this poison shall not infect those committed to your care. Is there any such poison? Nobody who watches the literature of the day can be unaware that in a very narrow, though influential, class of society there exists a strong tendency to extreme speculation—that there is a bitter hostility to Christianity itself, and that that hostility has reached such a point that they will rather advocate the most bizarre and extravagant propositions than accept Christian belief. That is the state of things to a terrible extent on the Continent. I am happy to say that it prevails to a much smaller extent in this country; but still we all know that we can lay our hands on half a dozen influential publications of recent times which have for their principal objects to destroy the beliefs on which the hopes of Christians rest. If this was merely a general phenomenon I do not say that a case for much special precaution would arise; though perhaps even then it might fairly be required of those who have assumed to govern the Universities to take care for the special evils of their time, and try to make this poison innocuous, and to shield those who are little fitted to bear it from its influence. It is not true, however, that it is merely the general tendency of a particular class of thinkers towards infidelity with which you have to struggle. One of the most striking facts brought out by the investigation of the Committee has been that in one of the Universities, at least, not only is there a full response to whatever infidel invitations modern literature may hold out, but that the studies of the University itself are affected in a manner which, if it had the free course given to it by this Bill, would lead to the most terrible and dangerous results. The most important evidence on this point is that of a gentleman who is in favour of the Bill, and whose evidence, therefore, is all the more entitled to weight. Mr. Charles Appleton, a fellow of St. John's College, Oxford, and a gentleman of distinguished literary reputation, gives this evidence—

  345
  "I think it is quite impossible for any man to throw himself into the system of education for the final classical school at Oxford at the present time, as so much knowledge, but really to assimilate it, I mean not only to study it ab extra, without having the whole edifice of belief shaken to the very foundation. At the same time the agencies which are brought to bear upon him, the philosophical ideas and modes of criticism, not only destroy but ultimately re-construct belief; and what I should say with regard to tests is this, that the test intervenes with a definite proposition which a man has to subscribe just at the time when he is beginning to re-construct the edifice of belief naturally out of the ruins which had been undermined."
  I may point out in passing that the test we propose intervenes with no definite proposition, and is, therefore, not open to objection on that ground. The witness adds, in another place—
  "So far as I know, the strictest and most delicate reticence is always observed in approaching the mind of a young man, so as not to upset his beliefs; but I believe the upsetting of his beliefs, and the entire loosening of them from all their moorings, is an inevitable consequence of the system of education which now exists in Oxford."
  [Ministerial cheers.] I think I can interpret that cheer. It means that even under a system of tests these things will happen. This, however, is not the deliberate action of the fellows of colleges, or tutors, or examiners. This is, so to speak, the automatic and mechanical result of the mode of study, the subjects of study, and the time allowed to study. Within three years it is expected that a man is to master most difficult subjects of metaphysical study. He is expected, according to the same witness, to—
  "Read Spinoza, Hobbes—I do not say all, of course, but portions of their writings—portions of Locke, of Berkeley, and of Hume are also read, and the First Principles and Psychology of Mr. Herbert Spencer are beginning to be very widely studied."
  Kant and Hegel are also among the authors studied. The natural result is that, having to master these things within a limited time, and being forced to complete his line of study before the examination comes on, he has no time to enter into the opposite arguments. Negative philosophy is the easiest to master, and will carry most honours in the schools, and that is all which the young man, or those who press him forward, care for. Whatever the cause, here, at all events, is the result, as stated by a liberal witness favourable to the Bill—that the present system of education tends to unloosen all belief. What
  346
  happens? The colleges are tied up within the iron bonds of competitive examination—they must elect to fellowships those men in whom all belief is loosened, and in a few years they become tutors, teachers, the educators of the youth of England. This is a serious danger; and if you take the responsibilities of the Universities and colleges, you are bound to meet it. Do not imagine that the case rests on the evidence of Mr. Appleton alone. There is the evidence of Mr. Ince, sub-rector of Exeter College, Oxford — a gentleman who is on the other side of the question—to the same effect. Canon Liddon, also, with whose name, and probably with whose words, many of your Lordships are well acquainted, says—
  "Cases have come within my own experience of men who have come up from school as Christians, and have been earnest Christians up to the time of beginning to read philosophy for the final school, but who, during the year and a-half or two years employed in this study, have surrendered, first their Christianity and next their belief in God, and have left the University not believing in a Supreme Being."
  With that knowledge and that testimony I think I may well say that the question raised by this Bill is not a question between Church and Dissent, but between Christianity and infidelity. Now, I think none of your Lordships will doubt that the parents of England, if their opinions could be collected, would strongly object to submit their sons to teaching of persons of this kind. Some persons, I know, entertain a notion that the proper way to educate a young man of 18 is to put before him all the arguments and systems of belief which ever have been or can be devised, and let him take his choice; but I am quite convinced that no such notion will ever commend itself to the general mass of parents in this country. They are well aware that thorny questions of controversy are not fit for men of unripe and unpractised minds, and that the only effect of asking them to choose impartially between all beliefs is to make them think that no belief is of much importance, and that at an age when temptations are strongest they may come to the conclusion that the moral maxims which rest on belief and belief alone are mere ancient and valueless superstitions. I am sure that no more certain method, not only of dechristianizing, but demoralizing the youth of the classes who send their children to the Universities

  347
  could be found than subjecting them to the influence of tutors who would start with the idea that all beliefs should be submitted for free selection to the consciences and intelligences of their pupils. The only argument that remains in support of this Bill is the common phrase that public opinion has decided in its favour. I utterly deny it. Public opinion has never decided the issue as we have put it, and has never had that issue before it. Hitherto, in all parts of the country, this controversy has been looked upon as merely one between Church and Dissent, and as a mere fight for proprietary rights:—the deeper and more intensely important question has never been brought to the surface—and therefore the opinion of those who have children to educate has never been brought fairly to bear upon the question. We are laying a new issue before the country; we are asking for a new decision—and the issue is practically this—Will the constituencies of the country give effect and sanction to that determination which was so determinedly displayed at the school board elections of last year? Will they or will they not sustain the doctrine that the first and most important point of education is religion, and that education which is not Scriptural is worse than no education at all? That is the issue we have to lay before them. My Lords, I hope I shall be pardoned for making one other quotation to show what is the result of the system of University teaching which this Bill will encourage, and what is the danger which parents have to avoid. It is from some letters re-printed from The Times, which appeared last autumn, with reference to the state of religious thought in Germany. I do not know by whom they were written; but they were evidently written by a man of great ability, and one certainly not prejudiced in favour of Christianity. He says—
  "It is true there is a sprinkling of believers left in every part of the country, and there are whole districts in which Protestant or Catholic orthodoxy may be said to prevail to this day. But these are exceptions—rari nantes in gurgite vasto. The Wapperthal, on the borders of Westphalia, is a tower of Lutheranism; the adjoining Münsterland is more Catholic than Rome itself; but who expects belief on the gay Rhine, or in latitudinarian Brunswick, although situated in such close propinquity to these stricter localities? To take a broader view, who that knows modern Germany will call it a Christian land, either in the sense Rome gives to the term, or in the meaning
  348
  Luther attached to it? Scholars have begun to denominate Christianity an Asiatic religion, and the public, proud of their vaunted European enlightenment, accept the degrading name."
  Then follows a sentence pregnant with meaning to those about to vote on this Bill—
  "Already things have gone so far that men who have had a University education scarcely dare go to Church lest they be taken for hypocrites or sentimental enthusiasts."
  That is the result of University education in Germany, where the tutors are chosen without reference to religion. University Liberals, I dare say, would look complacently on such a prospect; but I do not think parents would—for the school board elections showed that they intensely appreciate the importance of Christian education. That is the issue we have to face. We have to ask you whether you will sanction a system which leads to the results which Germany has reached; whether you will sanction a system in which, as was said in the House of Commons the other day, the Church ought to be looked upon as an intruder; a system under which literary excellence is regarded as everything, and religious instruction as nothing; or whether you will rather sanction the ancient system of this country, a system under which religious instruction was regarded as the most important, the most precious gift which the old could give to the young, a system which is founded on the belief that "the fear of God is the beginning of wisdom." That is the issue we have to place before your Lordships to-night, and which we fearlessly leave to the verdict of the country.
  Amendment moved, after Clause 2, to insert the following clause:—
  "No person shall be appointed to the office of tutor, assistant tutor, dean, censor, or lecturer in divinity, in any college now subsisting in the said universities, until he shall have made and subscribed the following declaration in the presence of the vice-chancellor, or, in the University of Durham, of the warden, that is to say: 'I A.B. do solemnly declare that while holding the office of [here name the office] I will not teach anything contrary to the teaching or divine authority of the Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testament.'"—(The Marquess of Salisbury.)
  THE EARL OF KIMBERLEY: My Lords, I venture emphatically to deny that the issue before us is that which has been put by the noble Marquess—namely, between Christianity and infidelity.

  349
  He knows well the value of the old proverb "give a dog a bad name," and that nothing is more likely to raise a prejudice against those whom he calls "University reformers" than to seek to identify them with certain views of German philosophical thought described in the letter which he quoted from The Times. The real issue is this—Is it advisable to retain the existing tests, and, further, is it advisable to adopt a new test, which the noble Marquess has invented? Knowing his great ability and ingenuity, I was somewhat curious to hear how he would defend something so novel and startling in the present day as a new test. We have been accustomed to regard tests, political or educational, as things to be dropped one by one as a matter of course; but the noble Marquess thinks such a test not only advisable but practicable. He used, however, a rather singular argument, or paradox as I think it, in support of it—namely, that the existing tests have failed. He asks us to look at the condition of the Universities as proved by the evidence taken before the Committee. He showed us how at the Universities young men read dangerous philosophy, and that, notwithstanding the present tests, a state of things is growing up in Oxford contrary to our system of religion, and that this has arisen from the study of the German metaphysicians. Now, what would be the proper mode of avoiding the danger which he apprehends? Clearly it would be to establish in the Universities a censorship, and to place these dangerous authors on an index expurgatorius. Even Professors who have taken this test may be imprudent enough to give their pupils the very books against which it is directed. There is no man more skilled in metaphysical learning than the Dean of St. Paul's (Dr. Mansell), and no man to whose teaching at the University I am more indebted; but I was surprised at his laying stress on such arguments as these. I never heard that he hesitated to place metaphysical works before his pupils; yet, unless young men are forbidden to study works of modern philosophy, I do not see how you are to prevent their sometimes drawing conclusions which you may not altogether approve. Unless, however, they are acquainted with the opinions of the greatest thinkers, young men would hardly be fitted for
  350
  the storms and difficulties of after-life. For I do not believe in a hothouse religion. I believe men are fortified by the frank and careful study of all the best thinkers on all sides, and I have sufficient confidence in the truth and vigour of religion to think that, at all events, the majority will come forth from the ordeal unscathed and strengthened in faith and character, and that they will in after-life bear testimony to the soundness of the principles of Christianity. Apart from this general objection to the test proposed by the noble Marquess, the question arises, how is it to be interpreted? The noble Marquess says it should be interpreted not as it would be by a conveyancer, but in a broad and general sense. That, however, is surely the gravest objection to which a test can be open. It is to be loosely taken by men of loose consciences, while it is to be a rigid bond on those with tender consciences. It is to be capable of all manner of interpretations; and it will subject a man to the reproach of having broken it who may yet honestly believe that his teaching is in accordance with it. Its language is—"I do solemnly declare that I will not teach anything contrary to the teaching a Divine authority of the Holy Scriptures." Now, what is teaching contrary to the Divine authority of the Old and New Testament? For my own part, I should have the greatest difficulty in interpreting it, and taking it I would not undertake to teach any species of learning, for it would be open to anybody to come forward and brand men as dishonest, and as teaching geology or astronomy in a manner contrary to the Divine authority and teaching of the Scriptures. This is no imaginary case, for the varieties of opinion on geology, and how far they impugn what some persons consider the Divine authority and teaching of Scripture, are well known. You ought not to impose a test which will give rise to accusations of having broken it and to loose interpretations. Are we, moreover, to have such little faith in those who are to teach in the Universities? The noble Marquess thinks that if parents only knew the present state of things they would not send their sons to Oxford or Cambridge; but are we to suppose that they are unaware of the teaching which has existed there, to my own knowledge, for 20 years? Is it not singular, too, that little

  351
  if any evidence was offered to the Committee showing that parents ever object, or have ever objected, to University teaching? The fact is that the Universities, if they are vigorous institutions, will be a reflex of the general thought and opinion of the country; and if they are dwarfed into institutions with narrow views they will lose the place to which they are entitled. If they are to be the greatest educational institutions in the country there must be some freedom of thought and a certain power of discussing all the doctrines prevalent at the time; and I maintain that you will find nothing in the Universities but what is more or less connected with current opinions of the times. I do not believe that the introduction of a new test will be more acceptable than the old tests. I do not believe this new test, if it could be imposed, would have the effect of preventing the teaching which my noble Friend is so much alarmed at; and I do not believe that the other House of Parliament or the country would accept any such contrivance. I should therefore see with extreme regret the adoption by this House of the Amendment of the noble Marquess.
  THE BISHOP OF GLOUCESTER AND BRISTOL, as a member of the Committee, desired to make a few observations relative to what had fallen from the noble Earl who had just sat down, and to the general question of the present Amendment. He must begin by acknowledging the dexterity with which the noble Earl had addressed himself to the arguments of the noble Marquess, and the general skilfulness of his reply; he must, however, at once call attention to the extremely light way in which he had passed over the very dangerous ground as to the effect of the system now pursued at Oxford in the final school for classical honours upon the interests of religion in that University. The noble Earl considered it to be raising an entirely false issue when the present state of things was represented as a conflict between Christianity and Atheism, and he charged the noble Marquess, not only with raising such an issue, but with bringing up prejudices by means of the usual and much abused arguments founded upon the real or supposed evils of German philosophy. Such charges, however, called off attention from the very grave state of things which the
  352
  evidence had disclosed; so before he noticed the specific objections urged by the noble Earl against the present Amendment, he must recall their Lordships attention somewhat in detail to the very serious state of things in regard to religion, or rather irreligion, which existed at one of our great Universities. He must point out the area over which this evil influence extended; he must go further, and show that those who were most affected by it were the present teachers, and even in apparently increasing measure, the teachers of the future. If this state of things were brought before them by some legislative accident, they would be bound to take notice of it; but being brought before them by the formal inquiries of a Commission, and just at a time when they were about to remove ancient, and certainly not wholly inefficient safeguards, it was the duty of the House and of the nation to do their utmost to stem this rising flood of infidelity, and to make provisions which, at any rate, might seem likely to mitigate and modify the almost certain evils of the future. The noble Marquess had substantiated the grave view he took of religious opinion at Oxford by three very serious quotations. Two of those quotations amounted to this—that the tendency of the education at Oxford in the final school for honours was in many cases to vitiate all belief. Now, it had been urged that these quotations did but represent the opinions of one or two prejudiced witnesses, and that rebutting evidence could be produced from the examination of others, especially from that of the Master of Balliol. It had been said that the evidence alleged had been and was exaggerated. How did the case really stand? He had himself tested these statements before the Committee. He had taken the words of Mr. Appleton and put them in the shape of questions to Canon Liddon, who, as their Lordships well knew, was one whose knowledge of young men was very great, and in whose evidence great confidence might justly be placed. He did this, as he was anxious to arrive at the exact truth. And how did it come out? Thus: the serious statement of Mr. Appleton was this—that the vitiating of belief was the inevitable consequence of the system of education which now exists at Oxford. He put that in the shape of a question, and what was

  353
  Canon Liddon's answer? He said he could not adopt the word "inevitable." He again asked if, rectifying the statement by leaving out "inevitable," what he had described was sometimes a consequence of the present state of things; and what was the answer of that thoughtful and experienced man? It was this—"Certainly; and I fear I must add it is not an unfrequent consequence." He ventured to think that answer was one which might very well call for their Lordships' serious notice. He then put before Canon Liddon the second of the two answers of Mr. Appleton, formulated, as he had already said, in the terms of a question—whether it would not be impossible for any man to throw himself into the system of education for final classical honours without having every belief in his mind loosened for the time? Canon Liddon most properly took exception to the word "impossible;" but that word being withdrawn, his answer was that it was only too possible for a man throwing himself into the system of education for final classical honours to have every belief in his mind loosened for the time being. This was an answer given on consideration, after weighing the terms of the question, which he could not deem otherwise than especially significant and monitory. There was another point in the evidence of Mr. Appleton to which he must call attention. It was the statement that moral philosophy was wholly disconnected, in present teaching, from religious questions. He put the question also to Canon Liddon, who expressed his cognizance of the fact, and his profound regret that it was so; and he added that it was one of the things that now most sadly marked the teaching of moral philosophy in the University of Oxford. Mr. Ince, a well-known tutor of Exeter College, made similar statements relative to the state of religious opinion at Oxford. Nor were these all. A thoroughly practical man, Mr. Neate, stated distinctly his conviction that the unsettling of belief at Oxford was due to the philosophical school. After such evidence, was it not time to take some steps with regard to such teaching, especially at such a crisis as the present? Let no one think that this affected but few. More than one witness assured them that the area over which the influence extended was wide; that it
  354
  was not only those few who might be directly brought in contact with this teaching, but the many that were influenced by these few, who must all be considered to be sufferers from the present state of things. Further, let it be remembered that they who were thus affected were those who had received higher education and who thus formed some of the teachers of the present, and, in a greater degree, would become the teachers of the future. This line of study was pursued not only for the final schools, but for fellowship examinations, in which, it was clear from the evidence, much stress was laid upon modern philosophy. Thus, unless some decided safeguards were now interposed, the whole teaching of the future would seem to be in danger of becoming sceptical and irreligious. What, then, would seem to be the best course to be pursued in this anxious matter? What suggestions were offered by those who were consulted? Several of them gave the not very hopeful answer that there was nothing left but to trust in public opinion; but what was this public opinion, and where was it to be looked for? It was very difficult to find out whence this public opinion was conceived to emanate. One witness stated it to be the general feeling of the Universities; another looked upon it as the current of feeling in the colleges; while a third regarded it as the view of honest men through society generally. It came, however, all to this—that public opinion was to guide the Universities. Now, he had thought that the Universities were intended to guide public opinion, and to assist in giving it a healthy tone, and not that public opinion and public prejudice were to influence the teachers of our ancient Universities. But what was the remedy suggested by the Committee? The declaration now before their Lordships. Well, he admitted that it was not by any means a perfect remedy. It might be said that it could easily be evaded, and that it might be made and teaching still be as loose as before. But had sober declarations such as the present no force over honourable men? Were they to think that the teachers at the Universities—men of high intellectual culture and of elevated character—were insensible to plain moral obligations? No; he was fully persuaded it would be otherwise. The men who would be

  355
  asked to make the declaration were honourable men, not one of whom would make such a declaration without resolving faithfully to abide by it. Every one of them would say—"I am warned against abusing my opportunities in regard to the tender minds of the young committed to my charge; I acknowledge that to be the spirit of the declaration I have made, and take it in that spirit without cavilling as to the interpretation of the words." Further, the declaration would be the mind, he trusted, of the majority of the House, and as such would not fail to carry with it all the weight which such an approval could not fail to give. If it were rejected, especially after the evidence submitted to them, would there not be a danger of their being supposed to be indifferent to the religious teaching at the Universities? But he must now pass on to notice the second argument used by the noble Earl. The argument was inapplicable. The noble Earl really could hardly have read the clause he referred to with sufficient accuracy. The noble Earl referred to the case of a teacher of geology as one that might illustrate the case before them. He pointed out that such a teacher might feel himself in considerable trouble when, on the one hand, he had to give a lecture on the fossil remains of some supposed pre-Adamite man, and when, on the other, he remembered the nature of the declaration which he had signed. But that objection was utterly illusory, for the declaration was not to be taken by Professors or public teachers, but by the college staff—by the tutors, assistant-tutors, Deans, Lecturers in Divinity—observe the restriction; those, in fact, who were mainly concerned with a young man's religious teaching, and stood to him in loco parentis. The noble Earl's objection was pointless. Before he sat down he wished to call their Lordships' attention to the evidence of two of the witnesses before the Committee. He would not otherwise specify this evidence than as describing it as that which commenced on page 255, and on page 294 of the volume of evidence taken during the present year. He did not wish to speak hardly; but he could not refrain from saying that the evidence of the first of those witnesses showed an utter recklessness as to all consequences. Several times that witness was pressed as to
  356
  what was likely to be the result of changes proposed, and his reply in substance was—"All I am concerned for is the repeal of the tests—the consequences must take care of themselves." That, surely, indicated the utmost recklessness with regard to issues of the greatest moment. Tests must be repealed; let the young and the future take care of themselves. The evidence of the second witness alluded to was nothing more than a deification of public opinion. It was useful, however, as also showing the programme of the future. That programme seemed to be this—that as this was only a period of transition, the tests of Divinity Professors should, be tolerated for a time, but simply as something belonging to the past and to be ultimately got rid of. One of the witnesses before the Committee was asked—"If Divinity Professors are to be absolved from tests, how about the tests of the clergy generally?" The distinguished gentleman to whom the question was put made a little protest about being called upon to answer it, but he ultimately admitted with the greatest frankness that he thought the tests of the clergy might hereafter be dispensed with. But if their Lordships went a little further in their study of that very startling evidence, they would see that it was hoped that the services in the chapels might be materially altered. The first of the two witnesses referred to—doing, he thought, a great wrong to the honourable body of men whose name he used—went so far as to say that the Dissenters would not be contented unless other religious services were allowed in the chapels. But the Nonconformist ministers used very different language, more than one of them expressing the view that Churchmen and themselves had ends in common, though they might differ about the means. The programme appeared to go yet one step further, and that was to secure the complete secularization of all money set apart for religious endowments. That was to be the culminating point, and then the fate of the Universities was settled; irreligion would then have become part of the national system. But would their Lordships allow irreligion ultimately to claim a national endowment in our ancient Universities? He had always understood that the Universities were places for religion, learning, and education;

  357
  but it seemed that religion was to be deposed from her supremacy, and, as one witness very ingenuously admitted, learning and education were to occupy the foreground, and religion to take care of herself. In that case the Christian land of England would have brought a heavy judgment upon itself, for it was a judgment of the most serious kind to have permitted in any way, whether directly or indirectly, by action or inaction, the rise of an irreligious, a creedless, and, it might be, a Godless University.
  THE ARCHBISHOP OF YORK: My Lords, I rise with great pain on this occasion, because I shall differ from some others of my right rev. Brethren, and may appear to some to be striking a blow at one of those institutions which, above all others, are beloved and revered in this country, and which I myself hold in the greatest respect and affection. But I wish to recall your Lordships to the exact question before the House. We have been a good deal diverted from the question by being told that the Universities were originally places of religion, learning, and useful education, and that if we fail to pass the Amendment they will cease to have that character. The Amendment, however, says nothing about the Universities, and neither the Bill nor the Amendment of the noble Marquess says anything about the Universities, and the words which have been quoted as to religion, learning, and education, are contained in every college statute. These statutes require that—
  "The Master and Fellows shall elect (as Fellow) that candidate (being otherwise duly qualified according to the statutes in force for the time being) who, after such examination, shall appear to them to be of the greatest merit, and most fit to be a Fellow of the college as a place of religion, learning, and education."
  These words remain written in every college statute, and I hear of no intention to remove them, or to qualify or alter them in the least degree. Every college is intended to continue a place of religion, learning, and liberal education. The true state of the case, to speak with perfect frankness, is, that we have all undergone considerable changes of opinion in this matter; and instead of the noble Marquess being able to contend that this is of all tests the best and most complete, we are endeavouring to keep this last fragment of a test,
  358
  seeing that the time has come when we must remove almost all tests whatever. I have then a right—and it is, indeed, my duty—to examine this test, and see what is its nature; and I find that it would carry us a great deal further than the scope of the Amendment. If Oxford is, as it is said to be, sunk in infidelity—though I deny the truth of the statement—then that is a strong comment upon the system of tests already existing. If, moreover, this test be a grand panacea for all those evils of irreligion and infidelity, why retain other tests in the government of the Universities? Why does not the Church of England, with the Bishops at her head, proceed to abolish the other tests, and take this one only as the instrument for protecting religion? Let us look at the truth of this matter. In and out of the Universities there is at this moment a great searching of the mind upon the question of religion. I regret many of the developments of that inquiry; but tests are not responsible for causing it, and tests are not capable of curing it. It is a mental state which exists now; but it is not one which will or ought to continue. You have had it from time to time heretofore. It existed in the last century, and then passed away; it exists now; but will, I believe and trust, also pass away. As long as this country values religion, so long will the Universities teach religion; and as soon as the country ceases to attach a value to religion, so soon, and no sooner, will you have at the Universities a state of things which no tests you can devise will prevent. I deny that the state of Oxford is as bad as it has been represented. I have read the evidence of Canon Liddon, but I have also seen something in the University to which he belongs. I was lately in my own college on a Sunday evening, and the college hall was lent for a voluntary lecture upon the Greek Testament. The lecturer was Canon Liddon himself, and it was calculated that one-ninth of the whole of the members of the University in statu pupillari were present. Surely that is not infidelity. It is said that the young men have taken to reading Hegel. I believe it was Hegel who said, when he was dying, that there was only one man in the world who understood him, and that man did not understand him. Such studies may produce some confusion of

  359
  thought, but will not exercise a strong and lasting influence in a country where common sense for the most part prevails. I object, then, to this Amendment, because we are about, for a temporary purpose, to erect a new test, which, if it is good for anything, ought to have a much wider application. And now I come to the inequality which haunts the proposed application of this test. It is to be applied in the colleges, but not to the University Chairs. That is to say, persons who teach in the colleges the same things which are taught outside—the same chemistry, logic, geology, and history—for it is now the fashion to have assistant teachers and lecturers in all the colleges—are to be restrained by tests if they teach in the colleges, but not otherwise. There is no sort of justification for such a distinction. You will certainly be able to see how the two systems work side by side, for you will curb one man and let another man in precisely the same position go free. My last objection to the proposed test is that it will be useless for the purposes for which it is designed. I do not believe that, except under great pressure of circumstances, the noble Marquess would have proposed it as the best remedy that could be found for the evils besetting us.
  THE MARQUESS OF SALISBURY: Not as the best remedy.
  THE ARCHBISHOP OF YORK: It does not protect the teaching of the Church of England, and that is the ground on which we have always gone before. I have been reminded that, some years ago, I signed a Petition, emanating from the University, for the maintenance of tests. I did sign it; but, on reflection, I saw that the great contract which was made between the country and the Nonconformists so long ago as 1855 had never yet been fulfilled, and until the Universities are thrown open never will have been fulfilled; and on this ground I have seen reason to change my mind on this question. But this test before us is a new test, which may at first please some Nonconformists, but which I believe they too, on reflection, will perceive does not answer their purpose. It is useless, because it is a test which everybody can take. Mr. Voysey does not object to take it; the most extreme Rationalists do not object to take it. The nationalist would say—"Yes, I believe the Scriptures to be in a certain sense
  360
  divine; Homer and Plato, and every work of genius, is divine," and so he would sign the test. But, on the other hand, to a conscientious man it is a test of the most powerful grasp and the most enormous reach. I can imagine many men of tender conscience stopped at the gate by this test—which meantime is failing to do the work for which it is intended—and saying—"I will not appear to do, either by word or deed, that which is dishonourable, and I will not therefore sign a test which is a snare to my conscience." I trust I shall not be accused of any indifference to the interests of religion or to the University in which I have passed the greater portion of my life if I give your Lordships, before I sit down, one piece of advice. We are not about to change the status of the Universities with reference to the Church of England; that point has been already settled. The Amendment of the noble Marquess is a virtual abandonment of Church of England ground. We shall do very ill if we legislate from panic and in the fear of a certain temporary state of things. I grant the state of religion at this moment is a cause of anxiety to us all—to noble Lords on my own side of the House, as well as on the other. We are all anxious about its relations with science. I see no hope for religion if this test is to be our only protection for its teaching. A better security is that every man who takes an interest in our great national institutions should do his best to strengthen as much as possible the religious teaching in them. Not by means of tests which have been tried for ages, but by stirring up religious thought and by endeavouring to assist those who are engaged in stirring it up can you best attain this great object which we all have in view. There are three or four later Amendments, too, which are intended to act as safeguards; but, whether they pass or not, I deny that the teaching in our Universities is likely to sink into irreligion in its teaching:—because every fellow of a college is bound in conscience in electing a new fellow to choose a person fitted to occupy that position in his college as a place of religion, learning, and education; secondly, because the Universities being places of education for the people of this country, three-fourths of that education has hitherto been in the hands

  361
  of the Church of England. How can we, I would ask, suppose that those parents to whom allusion has been made will stand still and allow the great schools of this country to be turned into irreligious schools? Whether they be Nonconformists, or whether they be attached to the Church of England, they have a common interest in preserving inviolate the instruction on the common vital doctrines of Christianity—they will be anxious that the colleges should give their sons a liberal education, and at the root of such education religion is to be found.
  EARL BEAUCHAMPsaid, the most rev. Prelate who had just sat down had been a Member of the Select Committee on this Bill, and he thought he would better have fulfilled the duties of his august office if he had lent the Committee the benefit of his knowledge in framing some more efficient test than the present instead of showing how that test might be evaded.
  THE ARCHBISHOP OF YORK: I asked that my name might be removed from the Select Committee on the ground of diocesan engagements.
  EARL BEAUCHAMP: He felt bound to observe that, in his opinion, it was due to the House when a Member placed his name on a Committee that he should not permit even diocesan engagements to prevent him from attending deliberations in which Imperial interests were involved. So far, however, from the plea of diocesan engagements standing the most rev. Prelate in stead, he might add that on the very day on which the Committee were considering their Report, the most rev. Prelate was engaged—very usefully no doubt—in delivering a lecture in another part of the metropolis; and he thought that something was due to their Lordships from persons entrusted with the high and august position which the most rev. Prelate held. The most rev. Prelate had stated in 1870 that he had always been in favour of some such Bill as the present; but, so far from that being the case, he had in 1863 given his adhesion to a Petition condemning in toto the Bill of that year, so that as the most rev. Prelate had changed his mind on the subject before the House between 1863 and 1870, he (Earl Beauchamp) had not before he rose been without a hope that he might have changed it again, and that he
  362
  might rank him among the supporters of his own views on the present occasion. The most rev. Prelate told them now that though he had formerly been in favour of some such test as was proposed by the Amendment, that he had changed his mind, and was in favour of the present Bill because the contract of 1855 had not been fulfilled; but that he (Earl Beauchamp) could not help thinking was a most flimsy pretext on which to rely. The University legislation of 1854 and 1855, which opened the University of Oxford to Dissenters in statu pupillari, was passed in that House as a final settlement of the question, and as removing the bone of contention which existed between the Church and the Dissenters. Experience, however, proved that each concession was simply regarded by Dissenters as a starting-point for demanding others, and the contract of 1855 was not, at all events, fulfilled in 1863, when the most rev. Prelate had signed the Petition to which he had referred. The most rev. Prelate, however, went on to say that fellows of colleges were bound, in the election of new fellows, to choose men who were best fitted to the position in our Universities as places of "religion, learning, and education." These words, he granted, existed now; but if religion were removed from the consideration of the electors, and no regulation was provided which, though not binding when submitted to the ingenuity of Archbishops or conveyancers, was, at all events, binding in foro conscientiæ, could it be doubted that it would be said that the contract of 1871 had not been fulfilled so long as those obsolete words remained in the college statutes? For his own part, he felt confident that the present Bill would not be a final measure, and that, if passed, it would be impossible to maintain the provisions to the effect that the colleges existed as places "of religion and learning," to which the most rev. Prelate attached so much value. The question was too serious to be dealt with by the mere retention of such words in the college statutes when Parliament had deprived them of all meaning? He would now turn for a moment to the noble Lord the Secretary for the Colonies, who said that if the Amendment became law he, for one, could not undertake to teach anything whatsoever; that he would find it impossible to teach geology, philosophy,

  363
  or history with the fear of such a test before his eyes. That argument was surely a sufficient answer to the most rev. Prelate, who regarded the test as idle and nugatory. The test was a declaration on the part of the person who made it that he would not teach any opinion opposed to the teaching or Divine authority of the Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testament, and he did not think the declaration would fail of its purpose. The noble Earl seemed to suppose it would banish from the Universities those books to which exception had been taken. So far as he (Earl Beauchamp), however, understood the matter, there would be nothing to interfere with inquiry to the utmost limits of metaphysical speculation, while the teachings in the Universities would be carried on under the overshadowing and beneficial influence of religion, and the idea that there were other duties beyond the indulging in speculation of the kind, such as those which we owed to our neighbours. This declaration was a solemn reminder that there were other things paramount beyond the mere acquisition of human knowledge; and their Lordships might safely appeal on this subject from those factious combinations of the political friends of the Dissenters to the overwhelming belief which the people of England had on the authority of the Bible and the teaching of religion.
  THE DUKE OF SOMERSET: My Lords, having sat as a Member of the Committee of the noble Marquess (the Marquess of Salisbury) for two Sessions, I wish to say a very few words on this subject. I will not take up your Lordships' time by citing those Blue Books which I spent so many months in helping to fill—I am too tired of them for that:—but I wish, in the first place, to express the gratification with which I heard the speech of the most rev. Prelate. My Lords, it was indeed a pleasure to me to find that the Church of England, as represented by the most rev. Prelate, was not opposed to education. That is the line that we want to see taken, and not that of fear, timidity, and alarm at all education and all science—a charge continually made against the Church, and, I believe, made most unjustly. My Lords, let us look at what this test is that we are to send down to Oxford. Send a test down to Oxford! Why, my
  364
  Lords, I am old enough to remember when Oxford found the way to take tests in a non-natural sense. The test would be useless. Everybody knows it. If the House of Commons were weak enough to accept this Amendment, and send such a test as this to Oxford, the Bill would be worth nothing. The noble Marquess comes forward and says—"We propose this test to protect Christianity." Do you think your Lordships' House is the only security for Christianity? Your tests are to protect Christianity! Why, my Lords, Christianity may survive even your Lordships' House. But "See," says the noble Marquess, "what terrible things Canon Liddon told us about the infidelity of the young men." My belief is that many of those things are monstrously exaggerated. Witnesses like sensational evidence. They came to astonish the Committee, and they certainly did astonish it. They showed that the young men would begin by losing their belief, and would then have to build it up again. But anybody who knows anything of young men must know that is a monstrous exaggeration. If you pass this Bill there will be no danger of the kind—the danger will be entirely different. The "coach" will be the man who will influence the young men who have not their opinions "crystallized," as it is called. The tutor takes the test; but the "coach" who teaches the young man takes no test at all. Now, is it wise when you are passing this Bill to try and hamper it in this manner? We are told it is only young men of the Church of England who want this protection, and that the Dissenters are all orthodox and do not need it at all. But I do not know what an orthodox Dissenter or an orthodox philosopher means. I asked many questions to find it out; but at length I gave it up. I ask again, my Lords, is it wise, having got rid of all other tests, to hamper the Bill with this? I hope that your Lordships will not accept the Amendment.
  THE EARL OF HARROWBY(who was almost inaudible) begged to protest against the declaration being considered as a test. A test was an inquiry into a man's opinions, and in some cases it would be a hardship on a man and undesirable to make him descend into himself, as it were, and force him to declare the extent of his opinions and convictions; but this did nothing of the sort,

  365
  and surely it was not at all unfair to ask him to say that he would not teach what the Parliament of his country required him not to teach. It was to his mind no argument to say that because a protection was insufficient there should therefore be no protection at all. It might not do everything; but it did something, and when they appealed to the honour of men, and told them what was expected, he could not think the appeal would be quite in vain. In passing a Bill of this kind it was an imperative duty—to take care as far as we could that our young men should not receive instruction of an irreligious character. It was not as a test that he relied on what was now proposed so much as on a declaration of what Parliament thought fit, and expected from those who were to be placed in the position of teachers. Voluntary institutions would not need any such protection, for the support of subscribers would be withdrawn; but endowments, of which a man cannot be deprived without cause shown, needed some such provision.
  THE BISHOP OF LINCOLNsaid, he was convinced that this was a question that would affect the moral and religious character of the middle and upper classes of the community which were trained in our ancient Universities, and would affect the religious and moral character of the Universities themselves. He was therefore of opinion that this question must exercise a great influence on the future destiny of the English nation, and he presumed to express his opinion that its principles should have been debated before it was presented to the House in Committee in its present shape. He knew that this measure had been brought before their Lordships with a most laudable intention of removing disabilities which pressed upon persons very eminent in literature and science, who were debarred by their conscientious scruples from taking those tests which were pre-requisites for the attainment of emoluments and endowments in our colleges. He should rejoice if those disabilities could be removed without injury to our colleges; but the removal of them as proposed would impose pains and penalties on the nation at large. This Bill, if it should receive the sanction of their Lordships, would be of the nature of a Bill of Pains and Penalties upon the parents of the great
  366
  majority of the upper classes of society. This was not a question which their Lordships should consider with reference to the few, but with reference to the nation at large. Our colleges and Universities were not founded in order to give prizes to a few. They were founded to educate the English nation in sound religious learning. The Universities and colleges were very dear to the English nation, and if the House injured their religious character, they would—no doubt unintentionally—inflict a very severe wound upon the dearest affections of the great bulk of the English nation. If the Universities were deprived of their religious character, the attachment of the nation to those Universities would be very much weakened. He entreated their Lordships to pause before they entered upon such a course as was proposed. If this Bill were passed into law the young men in our colleges might be called upon to listen to lectures on religion and on the New Testament by men who might insinuate doubts with regard to the inspiration of the very Book on which they lectured. Would not that be a great hardship? And that hardship would be inflicted if their Lordships adopted this measure. If it was true, as their Lordships had been told, that the time of tests had passed, then they must abolish the tests of the clergy of the Church of England. That might be called the liberty of the clergy—he would rather call it licentiousness—and the licentiousness of the clergy would be the slavery of the laity, who might have to listen to infidelity preached from the pulpit. Reference had been made to the statutes of the colleges as safeguards; but they were not safeguards, because the Governing Bodies of the colleges—who were a small and despotic oligarchy who sat within closed doors, and whose debates were not reported in the Press—could frame certain resolutions, which, when sanctioned by the Visitor and by the Crown, became the law of the college for all posterity. Though he did not think this declaration was the most perfect that could be devised, he earnestly entreated their Lordships to accept it as the best thing they could adopt in the present circumstances.
  THE MARQUESS OF LANSDOWNEsaid, he had one broad objection to the test which the noble Marquess opposite

  367
  proposed—that it was a test. He disbelieved in the possibility of devising machinery so accurate and so self-adjusting as to produce the results for which the noble Marquess looked, without producing also an amount of evil wholly exceeding the advantages, if there should prove to be any, which he expected from his Amendment. No test of the character proposed could possess any real and vital importance—it could do mischief, but no good. He had this further objection to the test proposed by the noble Marquess—that it was absolutely unintelligible who was to be entrusted with its interpretation. The right rev. Bench itself admitted its inability to understand its actual import, and upon whom were the Universities to fall back? Again, it would only act upon a small number of those on whom it was intended to be imposed, and, as regarded that small minority, it would afford a temptation to casuistry. If their Lordships consented to the imposition of this test, the tutors and assistant tutors on whom it would be inflicted would say—
  "Necessity will make us all forsworn
  Three thousand times within this three years' space."
  At Cambridge, offices had been created in order to secure the admission into the University of gentlemen who were unable to subscribe to any existing test. At Oxford there were recognized and paid assistant tutors of whom no test or any other kind of safeguard was required—upon all of these the noble Marquess's test would be inoperative. The issue before their Lordships would have to be decided according to the view that was taken of the functions of a University. Views changed with the times; but that expressed by the noble Marquess (the Marquess of Salisbury) was an extraordinary one, for he seemed to think that the teaching body in a University stood towards the general body in the merely commercial relation of the employed towards their employers. Instead of simply throwing out temptations to parents to induce them to send their sons to the Universities, the duty of the Governing Bodies ought to be to raise the standard of education, to make the Universities into centres of intelligence and of truth. That was the direction in which changes had been steadily going on for some
  368
  years. A wider extent of studies was pursued, more natural science was being taught, a different class of students was being admitted, in every way education was being popularized at the Universities, which were being given back to the nation whose property they were. At such a time tests of whatever kind were an anachronism and an intolerable one. A distinguished member of that educational Parliament which had recently been elected in London under the Act passed last year had said, that it was the duty of all who had the cause of education at heart to attempt to co-ordinate the different educational resources of the country in such a manner that they might form a continuous chain, of which, the highest link should be in the Universities and the lowest in the gutter. That was, he was happy to say, a view which was gaining ground every day, and it did so because it was the only true view of the position and province of the Universities, which would never have that position assured to them in the eyes of the country, or in their own estimation, until Parliament had swept away, without reservation or regret, the last remnants of this old abuse.
  LORD STANLEY OF ALDERLEYsaid, he desired to call the attention of their Lordships to the evidence of the five Nonconformists who were examined before the Committee; because it had been set aside and met by a conspiracy of silence, and he considered it of great importance in legislating on this question. All of them stated that the feeling of the Dissenters was in favour of the maintenance of religious instruction at the Universities; there were, however, among those who desired to see this measure passed some persons who were not Dissenters, but ought, more properly, to be called sceptics, because they did not recognize the divine authority of the Decalogue. One of the witnesses, Mr. N. E. Hartog, was asked—
  "Does the objection which is entertained to tests to be taken by each individual man extend to provisions controlling the nature of the teaching to be given—that is to say, controlling it in a prohibitory sense?"
  To that he replied—
  "The same objection would certainly not apply, because no man could conscientiously object to being forbidden to teach a certain subject. Of course, it is another question how far it is advisable to control the teacher's liberty, and whether

  369
  a man would accept the office of teacher under such conditions. But it can hardly be called a 'test' in the sense in which the word is used at present."
  That was the evidence of one who had been prevented from trying for a Fellowship at Cambridge owing to the existence of tests: he was a Senior Wrangler and an Israelite. He begged leave to differ from the observations of the most rev. Prelate (the Archbishop of York), since of the young Oxford men that he had known, every second man was a sceptic.
  THE BISHOP OF OXFORDsaid, he should be unworthy the office he held if he did not contradict the statement of the noble Lord who had just sat down (Lord Stanley of Alderley). His experience of the state of religious opinion in the University had brought him to a conclusion widely different. He had no reason to plead guilty to the charge of having changed his opinions, because he had always desired that the education in our Universities should be a religious one. At a former period, however, it seemed to him that the maintenance of tests was the best way of keeping up that religious character; but he was now satisfied that such would not be the case. He had carefully examined the facts—he had considered in what way tests would possibly act—and he had been unable to find any class of persons that would be prohibited or restrained by them. The net result of the Amendment, should it pass, would be to affect the Jews, and they were the only persons who did not seek to proselytize. From the point of view in which he regarded the Bill, he implored their Lordships not to send down to the Universities a fresh cause of discord, for the inevitable consequence of the clause which had been proposed would be to raise a new and most disagreeable controversy as to the sense of the proposed declaration, and how far certain persons might conform to it. It would be utterly impossible to define what was the scope and meaning of the declaration; and he hoped our great seats of learning would never be placed in the position of being called upon to decide how far a person was conforming, or not conforming, to this declaration. He did not share that excessive scrupulousness which some displayed in reference to tests, nor did he understand why a man should be unwilling
  370
  or unable to give an account of the faith that was in him; but he could not be blind to the fact that the great body of those who desired the passing of this Bill regarded every sort of declaration as a test. The objection was to having any test whatever, and that objection would remain in full force to the test they now proposed to impose as much as to those tests they all agreed to remove—for no one had proposed to maintain existing tests as they were. But it might be asked what they were going to do for religion if they did not provide for it by tests? As to that he would make a statement. An experiment had recently been tried at Oxford with most marked success. Two years ago a college was founded at Oxford with no tests, with no endowments, no opportunities for social extravagance, none of the objectionable features of the old colleges of which critics complained—a college conducted with admirable efficiency and simplicity, and with an entire absence of tests. Yet that college was eminently religious, and the great bulk of liberal-minded persons connected with the University had held out to it the right hand of fellowship, rejoicing to see it do its work intellectually, morally, and religiously. There had, no doubt, been opposition to the new college; and if that opposition had come from the great body of holders of liberal opinions, he should well nigh have despaired of the University; but he ventured to state that the great body of liberal persons connected with the University had fairly and honourably accepted that college with a determination to give it fair play. It was, therefore, possible to have free religious institutions without the infliction of a test. He trusted their Lordships would not send down this test to the University of Oxford, and that they would solve the problem of the connection of religion with education in some other way than that proposed by the noble Marquess—by the influence of good men finding their way to the hearts of those whom they had to teach, and by the influence of fair freedom offered to all religious teaching. He was sure that might be done without a test; he was certain it would not be done by such a test as that proposed by the noble Marquess.
  THE EARL OF CARNARVONsaid, there had been several but not very clear

  371
  objections to the proposal of his noble Friend. It had been objected, on the one hand, that this was a revival of the old attempts to interfere with religious freedom, and on the other that this was a new test. So far he agreed that the proposal was new; but he differed entirely in regarding it as a test. The objection to this proposal on the ground of its being a test was not very fair. The object of his noble Friend and of those who voted with him in the Committee was, if possible, to arrive at some common ground which they could all occupy. He distinctly repeated this was in no sense a test. A test was something imposed before the acceptance of office; this was a declaration to be taken after office was accepted. Not only was this not a test—not only was it a declaration, but it was a negative declaration, and not a positive one—a declaration not to teach anything contrary to the teaching and authority of Holy Writ. There was still another distinction:—this was a declaration, not to be made to the University, but to the collegiate authorities, who stood in a totally different position. More than this—it was a proposal that had never been before their Lordships before. He himself made a proposal on the subject two years since, and he still thought it was one that might have recommended itself to both sides;—but somehow the proposal fell through. There were two sets of persons to whom he would earnestly recommend the proposal now made, and it was upon their decision more than upon the decision of Parliament that the determination of the question must in the end depend. That decision rested first of all on the parents who sent their sons to the University; and, secondly, upon the great body of the Nonconformists of England. He said it was a question for parents to decide whether or no henceforward the teaching at the Universities was to be in any sense at all religious. It was not a question of denominational teaching—it was not a question of the Church of England; it was simply and solely whether they would have the education given in the Universities in any degree tinctured with religion. The answer of the question in reference to the constitution of the school boards had been singularly plain and almost unanimous—it had decided the question as regards the education of the children of the poor, and it remained to be seen whether
  372
  a different rule should be applied to the children of the wealthier classes. He could not conceive upon what principle it should be decided that the children of the poor should be taught religion, whilst that privilege should be denied to the wealthy. Then, with regard to the great body of Nonconformists, he would ask them to look at this question, which came before them for the first time altogether in a new light, calmly and dispassionately; not in the heat and glare of political action, but in the light of those considerations which after all were above politics. Let Nonconformists ask themselves this simple question—Did this proposal give them what they had sought on former occasions? His answer was it did. It gave them free admission to the Universities; it gave them an open career as regarded honours and endowments, as regarded teaching and the Governing Bodies; it gave them what they had over and over again contended for—the power of teaching; and, lastly, it gave them what he ventured to state the great body of Dissenters in this country would prize—it gave them the power of co-operation in spiritual and educational matters with the Church of England. The first question which the Nonconformists had to ask themselves was this—whether if by their influence they rejected this proposal in company with whom would they reject it? They would reject it in co-operation with that party which called itself the Secularist party, and which objected to all religious teaching, and who contended that the mind of a child should be left a sheet of blank paper to be afterwards written upon as chance might direct. There had been little real love between the Nonconformists and the Secularists, and the Nonconformists could even now hardly forbear occasionally from uttering some very hard words of their allies. On the other hand, the Church of England offered to the Nonconformists a greater degree of freedom than had ever been offered them before; and would they reject it simply because the offer was made them by the Church of England? That Church might have been in former times exclusive, and even oppressive; but would it be prudent or wise for the Nonconformist Body now to reject the proposal because the Church was once exclusive, and had now become conciliatory? It appeared to him that the Nonconformists

  373
  had to consider in this matter whether they would throw their lot in with those with whom they had many points of agreement, who were not so much their antagonists as rivals in the great work of educating the people; or whether they would join those who stood on an entirely different platform from them, whose principles were antagonistic to theirs, and who consented for a time to act with them only for the purpose of afterwards destroying them.
  THE BISHOP OF CARLISLEsaid, he was much indebted to the noble Marquess (the Marquess of Salisbury) for the pains he had taken in this matter; and, feeling the great value of two or three of the Amendments which he was about to propose after the present clause was disposed, of, he wished to explain why he could not support the particular Amendment now under consideration. One or two speeches had been made which he thought more suitable to the Motion for the second reading of the Bill; but, as the second reading had been passed, it was now proper not to enter upon the general principle of tests, but to consider the particular declaration proposed by the noble Marquess. The noble Earl (the Earl of Kimberley) seemed to throw overboard the argument with respect to the check which the declaration would put on teachers. The effect of this Amendment would be that it would subject equally those who taught theology and history and the tutors and assistant tutors to a test. Now, he would state that in the University with which he was connected the action of the proposed declaration would certainly be in that direction, as regarded subjects connected with philosophy and some other subjects. The declaration was to be made by Lecturers in Divinity; but he apprehended that it would be almost an insult to tell such men that they must declare that they will not teach anything contrary to the Divine authority of the Holy Scriptures. The office of Dean at Cambridge was of an entirely religious character, the Dean having to do with the regulation of the chapel services, and it seemed again an insult to tell such a person, an ordained priest of the Church of England, and charged with the conduct of her services, not to teach anything contrary to the Divine authority of the Holy Scriptures. It might, indeed, be a question whether
  374
  tutors and assistant tutors should not be subject to some declaration or test, because they might have perhaps to teach Divinity, though the great bulk of their teaching would be mathematics and other things in which no body could find anything either for or against religion. They would, no doubt, teach philosophy, history, and the natural sciences; and, in reference to these, he thought that any test would be mischievous. He believed that Archbishop Whately had said that if he were an arbitrary Sovereign, one of his first laws should be that, in discussing scientific matters, no reference should be made to Scripture; and, no doubt, the principle was a correct one. They had better leave tests alone, and let their great object be to get holy and religious men who were fit to stand in loco parentis to their students. Let men who could be trusted be appointed, and no such declaration as that proposed would be wanted from them. It had been said that this was a negative declaration. Well, he objected to it on that very ground—because he thought that it was not at all worthy of any sincere and educated man that he should make a negative declaration. He thought that such was one of the worst kinds of declaration that they could inflict upon any man. It was sometimes said that if their Lordships did not pass a particular measure, they would have a very much worse measure submitted to them at some future time. He protested against an argument of that kind, as being most unworthy to be used in that House. As an indication of opinion, however, and with no wish to frighten their Lordships, he could not shut his eyes to that which occurred two years ago in the other House of Parliament; when Sir Roundell Palmer moved an Amendment which was, in some respects, a great improvement on that now submitted to the House. It required that every person hereafter appointed Professor or tutor or lecturer in any college should solemnly and sincerely declare that he as such Professor, tutor, or lecturer would never, directly or indirectly, teach or inculcate any opinion opposed to the Divine authority of the Holy Scriptures, or to the doctrine or discipline of the Church of England as by law established. Eight speeches were made upon this Amendment, but only one was in favour of it, and the Amendment

  375
  was withdrawn without a division.—[3 Hansard, cxcvii. 1090.] He wished that the present Amendment might also be withdrawn. If he believed it would produce even a small fraction of the results expected from it—if he thought it would help the cause of religion in the Universities—he would support it; but being of opinion that it would insure none of those results, he must record his vote against the Amendment.
  THE BISHOP OF SALISBURYsaid, that as an old tutor of Balliol, and for more than 30 years Head Master of one of our public schools—and having also sent five of his sons to the University—he might claim to possess some experience on this question. Though he did not think the proposed declaration would have so great an effect as he could wish, he should support it, as far as it went, with all his heart. He had sent thousands of his own pupils to the Universities, and for many years past had sent them with a heavy heart, feeling that they were going to a place where their young and immature minds would be exposed to an amount of infidelity shocking to think of. From a large experience of Oxford, he believed that—not in consequence of tests, nor likely to be removed by tests—there had swept over the University a wave of scepticism and infidelity which had produced the most grievous and fatal results. If undergraduates went to Oxford, really young men of 21 or 22 years old, he should be content to leave them there without requiring any security whatever. But we really sent youths of 18; and though they went there well-grounded in religion, their minds were not so well matured that they could be trusted to resist the widely-spread scepticism which now reigned in the University, and therefore he thought they were bound to provide some protection for them. The tutorial system was an essential part of the Oxford method. He wished every Professor to be uncontrolled; but the tutors discharged quasi-parental duties towards these immature youths, and there should be some security that their teaching was at least in general sympathy with, and obedience to, the religion which their Lordships held most dear, and which the tutors, he presumed, mostly professed. The most rev. Prelate (the Archbishop of York) said that parents might cry out in some wonderful
  376
  way against irreligious teaching. But how were parents to cry out? How were they to make their voice heard? What security were they to have?
  THE ARCHBISHOP OF YORK: They need not send their sons.
  THE BISHOP OF SALISBURYsaid, this surely pointed his observation. Parents were to deprive their children of a high social and educational privilege because Parliament would not try to save them from the danger of irreligious teaching! He had sent many young men of high powers to the University, and they had passed under instruction which he did not like. At the same time, he could not help saying that some of the instruction, which, he regarded as the most dangerous, had been the most kindly, industrious, and loving, and had produced the greatest amount of love on the part of those who had undergone it. Less than this he could not say, speaking particularly of his own College, Balliol. On the part of parents, of schoolmasters, and youths proceeding to the University, he asked for some security against irreligious teaching. He admitted that this security was not much; but he did desire the tutor to give at least so much. Of course, neither this nor any other test would bind a dishonest man; but such an argument against tests—that they did not bind wicked men, while good men were restricted from accepting them—rested on the transparent fallacy that it was possible to divide all men into bad and good—quite regardless of the fact that mankind were of very varied characters, and acted from very mixed motives.
  LORD WESTBURY: My Lords, I have listened with sincere regret, and with some alarm, to the dreadful picture which has been drawn of the moral and religious condition of the University. If that picture be true, I regret there is no warning voice to dispel the notion that the University is a temple of religion, and to proclaim instead that it is a den of infidelity and hypocrisy. Now, how has this result been produced? Has it been produced by the want of tests? Has it been produced by the want of bigotry? I tell you how it has been produced. You have for centuries insisted that the University of Oxford should be deemed the special inheritance of the Church of England. You have insisted that nothing but dogmatic

  377
  theology should be taught there. And now the human mind, rising up against that system, takes its revenge by inculcating a greater amount of liberality in proportion to the fetters you have imposed upon it. What the noble Marquess (the Marquess of Salisbury) proposes is a sheer mockery, and worse than a mockery. Just consider for a moment what will be the operation of this test. By whom is a tutor appointed now? Either by the heads of colleges or the Governing Body. If he takes from the men who appoint him this obligation, who is to determine when the obligation is fulfilled? Primarily the persons who appoint. But then the person who is appointed, appealing from the judgment of those who appoint, goes to the Visitor of his college. Now, instead of furnishing any real security, the words which the noble Marquess has selected will, in my opinion, serve no other end but to raise a difficult question, on which hardly two of those to whom the appeal may be made will ultimately be found to agree. The law, therefore, to which the tutors are to be subjected will be uncertain and unknown. But misera est servitus, ubi jus vagum aut incognitum. Again, consider for a moment who it is whom you will drive from the office of tutor by requiring that this test should be taken. You will drive from it the conscientious man, because he will say—"I am called upon to take on myself a solemn obligation, and I know not by what standard the fulfilment of that obligation is to be measured." The independent man also will say—"I am called upon to fulfil a solemn duty; but whether I fulfil it or not is to be determined first by the judgment of one and then by the judgment of another." The tutor of College A will be subjected to a different judgment from the tutor of College B. What, then, will be the result of the noble Marquess's provision? To drive men from the office of tutor who are worthy of it, and to place in it those who care nothing about it or the mode in which it is administered. Is this the sort of provision with the view to the security of religion which comes from the noble Marquess the Chancellor of the University of Oxford? Will it not be a mockery, and will it not end in introducing a miserable hypocrisy into our Universities? What is its object unless
  378
  it is to secure religious teaching? But in order to have religious teaching you must have religious teachers, and you cannot bind men by this form of words; nor by a standard which in truth is no standard at all, and which allows it to be decided by every feeble man's judgment, whether the obligation has or has not been complied with. I quite concur with the noble Marquess in the opinion that the foundation of all teaching should be the sanctions of religion; I entirely agree with him in his desire that religious teaching should be carried into effect in our Universities:—and I am happy to say that having spent yesterday and the antecedent day at the University of Oxford, and having visited St. Mary's and some chapels in Oxford, I observed there nothing to justify the strictures which the noble Marquess has passed on the state of religion in that University — strictures which, were it not for the source from which they have proceeded, I might almost be tempted to designate as a slander. Let us trust the Universities freely. For my part I am not afraid of the tutors of our Universities, either in point of religion, morality, or acquisition; but if you rely upon this miserable substitute for better things, you may depend upon it that while you get men in whose case it will be no security, you will shut the door against men animated by the highest motives, but which highest motives can be found only in company with great liberty of thought and great liberty of conscience. I trust the noble Marquess will have more confidence in the University over which he so worthily presides than to insist upon this test, which is unnecessary, unworthy, and incomplete—which will serve only to generate endless controversies, instead of producing that harmony which it is so desirable should exist.
  LORD COLCHESTERsaid, that having been a Member of the Select Committee on this subject, and paid much attention to its proceedings, he begged leave to offer a few remarks on the subject before the House. He had heard it said by a noble Marquess opposite (the Marquess of Lansdowne) that the Amendment presented no difference of importance from the existing test. He ventured to think that they who had hitherto opposed the abolition of existing tests were, in deference to public feeling and

  379
  the opinion, of leading men in and out of Parliament, making large concessions on that subject, and that they were therefore entitled to some consideration in the small limitation for which they now asked. It had been often urged in these discussions that the University was a national institution; but the colleges, at least, owed their existence to the liberality of private individuals, deeply attached to the ecclesiastical institutions of their country, and they had become national because in a great measure they had drawn the nation into them. To the former tests two objections were raised—no doubt not without weight, though other considerations might outweigh them. One was urged years ago with great force by Mr. Goldwin Smith—that it was an unfair temptation to a man to ask him for his assent to a number of detailed dogmatic statements as a condition of obtaining what was a post of great importance to himself; the other urged by the witness so often referred to to-night, Mr. Appleton—that a man whose religious opinions had been disturbed in the period of his University studies was unwisely required to accept or refuse a strict theological test before he had time to re-construct definitely his religious belief. It was because the declaration proposed was a negative declaration that it was not open to these objections. It required no declaration of personal belief whatever; but it did require that a college officer should not impugn what was generally felt by the people to be religious truth, or disturb the belief of young men of immature mind, to whom he stood in a quasi-parental relation. As to the philosophical studies of the University of Oxford, to which allusion had been made, he was as anxious for a wide range of studies as anyone, and if the Amendment proposed to limit the studies of the University, or, as the noble Earl (the Earl of Kimberley) said, establish an Index Expurgatorius, he would be the last to support it. But he did think that the wider the range of study the more important was some security that such study be not turned by those under whose auspices it was conducted into a weapon against the religion in which the young men who entered the University had been brought up. He supported the Amendment as a recognition of the principle that religion should
  380
  have its acknowledged place in the University. We were going to dissolve the ancient bond uniting the Church of England to the University and to the colleges, whether founded before or after it assumed its present character at the Reformation, by persons attached not less to ecclesiastical than secular interests; and what they asked was that by this moderate declaration the colleges might remain as their founders desired—places of religion as well as of learning.
  THE EARL OF AIRLIEsaid, he should regard it as a misfortune if this very moderate measure, which had been framed with just regard to the feelings of the friends of the Church, should not pass. He should like to hear from the noble Marquess and those who supported him what benefit they anticipated Christianity would gain from the Amendment being carried? Judging from the description given by the noble Marquess and some noble Lords who followed on the same side of the condition of things at Oxford under the stringent tests now in force, he did not think there was anything to encourage them, having got rid of other tests, to adopt the one before the House. He did not go so far as to assume that infidelity was rampant at Oxford; but it appeared evident that all the tests that Parliament had been able to frame had been of no effect in checking the spirit of free inquiry. It was said that the wishes of parents ought to be respected, and that it was very hard that infidel opinions should be taught to the children of parents who objected to those opinions. But it should be remembered that this question of tests had not come up now for the first time; and if parents generally anticipated any serious evils from the relaxations contained in the Bill, it was reasonable to think they would have made their influence felt in the House of Commons, and that the question now would have been in a very different position from what it was. There were, in his opinion, special objections to this particular test when looked at from the point of view of those who did not object on principle to the imposition of tests. If there was one thing more than another which a test ought to be, it ought to be specific, clear, and precise, and such that everybody could know what it meant. But no one could tell what this test meant:—and who was to interpret it?

  381
  Would the proposed declaration answer the purpose? The noble Marquess attempted to impose it on a certain number of men; but why did he exempt private tutors? Their Lordships had it on the authority of the Dean of St. Paul's that the influence of the private tutor was much greater than that of the college tutor; another witness had given the same evidence almost in the same words—and both these gentlemen were in favour of tests, or at least of a declaration. If that were so, how could the noble Marquess expect that this declaration would be effective for his object? In his opinion, the view taken by the most rev. Prelate and by the right rev. Prelates who had spoken after him was much more correct, for they held that it was not to tests we were to trust for the security of Christianity, but to the vitality that was in Christianity itself.
  LORD DENMAN(after "Question" had been loudly called for) remarked that if in exchange for giving up all tests in our Universities, the very small condition proposed by the noble Marquess was required from those entrusted with the education of young men, the question would arise whether the Bill should be carried with such a condition or be again rejected. It had been said that private tutors or coaches would not be in any way controlled by the proposed declaration; but it would be very easy to put it, as it were, as a dragchain upon those coaches, and such a condition, in lieu of tests, would bind the consciences of those who might make a declaration of an appeal to the Bible as an authority, and in voting for it their Lordships would do nothing derogatory to their character as legislators. He regretted that he had acted as a dragchain in retarding the time for a division.
  THE BISHOP OF MANCHESTERsaid, that having given this question much consideration, he feared he should have to go into the opposite Lobby to the noble Marquess, should he think fit to press his Motion to a division. It seemed to him that the legislation to which their Lordships were invited by the noble Marquess was legislation under the influence of panic: and he considered that all legislation under the influence of panic was likely to miss its proper scope, and he emphatically considered that legislation under the influence of a panic touching so sensitive and delicate a subject
  382
  as intellectual opinion—particularly when occupying itself with religious matters—was as unstatesmanlike as it was unwise. The evidence of Mr. Appleton seemed to have frightened the noble Marquess and the Committee. Mr. Appleton was, apparently, a young man of the Positive School, who believed that the human race was to go through various stages of progress, and that the human mind was to do the same—beginning with the loosening of all belief, then going on to a process of reconstruction, and, finally, settling into something like a creed again. He thought that the representations which had been made of the present condition of the University of Oxford were over-coloured, and the evidence on the subject more or less of a sensational kind. It had been said that a "tidal wave of thought" had come over from Germany and flooded our Universities; but he had read the evidence, and he found that this "tidal wave of thought" had not reached Cambridge. He took comfort, moreover, from the expression "tidal wave of thought," because he remembered that when tidal waves reach their highest they have a tendency to recede. He thought, then, he was not using disrespectful language when he said that they had been discussing this question under the influence of panic. The object of the Bill, as he understood it, was not to exclude sceptics, but to include Nonconformists. Now, he (the Bishop of Manchester) ventured to think that our colleges would be very much improved by the admission of Nonconformists, who would bring with them habits of thrift and study, not too marked at present in University life, and that such admission would be a gain to the nation, to the Nonconformists themselves, and to the Church of England, which hitherto had suffered in the minds of the Nonconformists by the exclusive possession of these privileges and prerogatives. It would give a more earnest tone of thought to the studies of the colleges, and would disabuse the Nonconformists of many prejudices against the Church of England. We were living in an age in which it was not wise to tie the tongue of any teacher on any subject. He believed the truth of Christianity would stand examination. He had no fear for Christianity; but he had the greatest fears for the interests of religion

  383
  if it were subjected to objectionable and unnecessary tests. It was argued that if they destroyed these tests in Universities they must also destroy them in the Church of England; but he utterly denied that there was any analogy between the two cases. A definite religious body must have a definite creed and a definite discipline; but they were all agreed that the Universities should be institutions which should include those who professed various external forms of faith; and that constituted the essential difference. He did not believe that the Nonconformists, who under this Bill would be admitted to the benefit of University education, would be one whit behind the most earnest and most faithful members of the Church of England in making the colleges places of sound religious, as well as of sound secular education.
  On Question, Whether to agree to the said Amendment? their Lordships divided:—Contents 71; Not-Contents 66: Majority 5.
  Resolved in the Affirmative.

  CONTENTS.

  Northumberland, D.

  Hawarden, V.

  Richmond, D.

  Lifford, V.

  Rutland, D.

  Sidmouth, V.

  Strathallan, V.

  Bristol, M.

  Hertford, M.

  Chichester, Bp.

  Salisbury, M. [Teller.]

  Ely, Bp.

  Gloucester and Bristol, Bp.

  Abergavenny, E.

  Amherst, E.

  Hereford, Bp.

  Bathurst, E.

  Lincoln, Bp.

  Beauchamp, E.

  Llandaff, Bp.

  Brooke and Warwick, E.

  London, Bp.

  Brownlow, E.

  Rochester, Bp.

  Carnarvon, E.

  Salisbury, Bp.

  Cawdor, E.

  Dartmouth, E.

  Arundell of Wardour, L.

  Devon, E.

  Buckhurst, L.

  Doncaster, E. (D. Buccleuch and Queensberry.)

  Cairns, L.

  Chelmsford, L.

  Churston, L.

  Ferrers, E.

  Colchester, L.

  Graham, E. (D. Montrose.)

  Colonsay, L.

  De L'Isle and Dudley, L.

  Harrowby, E.

  Denman, L.

  Kellie, E.

  De Ros, L.

  Lanesborough, E.

  De Saumarez, L.

  Lauderdale, E.

  Digby, L.

  Powis, E.

  Egerton, L.

  Romney, E.

  Eliot, L.

  Stanhope, E.

  Fitzwalter, L.

  Stradbroke, E.

  Foxford, L. (E. Limerick.)

  Strathmore and Kinghorn, E.

  Hartismere, L. (L. Henniker.)

  Verulam, E.

  384

  Heytesbury, L.

  Skelmersdale, L. [Teller.]

  Hylton, L.

  Lyttelton, L.

  Sondes, L.

  Ravensworth, L.

  Stanley of Alderley, L.

  Sheffield, L. (E. Sheffield.)

  Strathnairn, L.

  Tredegar, L.

  Sinclair, L.

  Wynford, L.

  NOT-CONTENTS.

  Hatherley, L. (L. Chancellor.)

  Belper, L.

  Boyle, L. (E. Cork and Orrery.) [Teller.]

  York, Archp.

  Brougham and Vaux, L.

  Devonshire, D.

  Calthorpe, L.

  Saint Albans, D. [Teller.]

  Camoys, L.

  Somerset, D.

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

  Ailesbury, M.

  Congleton, L.

  Lansdowne, M.

  De Tabley, L.

  Dunning, L. (L. Rollo.)

  Abingdon, E.

  Ebury, L.

  Airlie, E.

  Elgin, L. (E. Elgin and Kincardine.)

  Albemarle, E.

  Camperdown, E.

  Houghton, L.

  Chichester, E.

  Kenry, L. (E. Dunraven and Mount-Earl.)

  Cowper, E.

  Dartrey, E.

  Lawrence, L.

  Derby, E.

  Leigh, L.

  Granville, E.

  Lurgan, L.

  Grey, E.

  Lyveden, L.

  Jersey, E.

  Meldrum, L. (M. Huntly.)

  Kimberley, E.

  Methuen, L.

  Morley, E.

  Monson, L.

  Nelson, E.

  Monteagle of Brandon, L.

  Russell, E.

  Mostyn, L.

  Sommers, E.

  Northbrook, L.

  Ponsonby, L. (E. Bessborough.)

  Halifax, V.

  Sydney, V.

  Robartes, L.

  Torrington, V.

  Romilly, L.

  Rosebery, L. (E. Rosebery.)

  Carlisle, Bp.

  Manchester, Bp.

  Rossie, L. (L. Kinnaird.)

  Oxford, Bp.

  Sefton, L. (E. Sefton.)

  Sundridge, L. (D. Argyll.)

  Abercromby, L.

  Acton, L.

  Vernon, L.

  Ashburton, L.

  Westbury, L.

  Barrogill, L. (E. Caithness.)

  Wrottesley, L.

  Clause 3 (Persons taking lay academical degrees or holding lay academical or collegiate offices not to be required to subscribe any formularies of faith, &c.).
  THE MARQUESS OF SALISBURYsaid, the Committee were more agreed on this point than on any other, because the Heads of colleges had the special duty of supervising not only the religious teaching in the colleges, but also the services in the college chapels, and in reference to the latter point it was important that the Headship should be confined to members of the Church of England. As matters stood at present it would not make any great change if

  385
  the headships were included in the scope of the Bill, because, as regarded the majority of the colleges at Oxford and many of those at Cambridge, the headships must be held by persons in holy orders. From these heads of colleges the Vice-Chancellor must be selected, and if the heads were persons of various religious opinions the selection might be a cause of much heartburning.
  Amendment moved, after ("aforesaid") insert ("except the headship thereof.")—(The Marquess of Salisbury.)
  THE EARL OF KIMBERLEYsaid, he was unable to see why, in a Bill the object of which was to relieve Nonconformists from special disabilities, the headships of colleges were to be excluded because Dissenters were thought to be unfit to be intrusted with the duties. That seemed to him to be a gratuitous insult to the whole Nonconformist Body, and one which he trusted the House would not sanction. With respect to the argument about the heads of colleges having the control of the chapel services, that would be better argued when the Amendment respecting that matter was proposed. If that were adopted, he could not see how any prejudice would be created by the head of a college being a Nonconformist. When disabilities were being removed generally, it would be impolitic and unadvisable to create further jealousy and agitation by reserving particular offices for members of the Church of England.
  On Question? their Lordships divided:—Contents 57; Not-Contents 49: Majority 8.
  Resolved in the Affirmative: words inserted.
  LORD LYVEDENproposed to omit Proviso 1 to Clause 3, and put an end to clerical fellowships. The noble Lord quoted the evidence of Professor Jowett, in answer to a question of the noble Marquess (the Marquess of Salisbury)—
  "Do you consider that the clerical fellowships act in any manner as a safeguard to religious teaching in the Universities?—No; I think not at all. The clerical fellowships are open to great objections. In the first place, you are compelled to elect an inferior man because he happens to be in orders, or because he expresses a willingness to take orders, and you reject superior men. That has a bad effect in many ways. In the colleges you have thus two classes of persons, one who are elected for merit, and another who are only half elected for merit—that is to say,
  386
  they are elected for merit, combined with the condition of going into orders, and they have an equal vote at elections, and an equal voice in the education of the colleges. Again, it is difficult in any case to get a good tutor in a college, and if you are obliged to add the further condition that you can only take a person in orders, the difficulty is greatly increased. With regard, also, to the Church of England, I think the clerical fellowships have the worst effect. Men constantly go into orders, or profess their willingness to go into orders for the sake of obtaining a fellowship. I know instances of men who have done so, and of men who have stood for clerical fellowships, and not afterwards gone into orders, because they did not get a clerical fellowship. I think that the effect of clerical fellowships is injurious both upon the minds of the electors and upon the minds of the candidates; and I also think that the injury to the Church is very great in another way, for no religious society is really benefited by holding an invidious position."
  In this opinion he so entirely agreed that he need scarcely add any argument of his own; but, to show the importance of the subject, he would state that at Cambridge there were 11 headships in holy orders, and eight not. At Oxford there were ten in and six not, and at either University about half of the fellowships must be clerical. He must also say a few words upon the circumstances of this case. The subject was introduced in the House of Commons, and only objected to by the Prime Minister, as it might influence the House of Lords; for this reason 50 Liberals voted against it, and the division was 160 to 182, which announcement was received with loud cheers from the Ministerial benches. The compromise now, as it was called, was ended; and there was no reason why the Lords, to whom it was offered as a boon, might not reject it. It had certainly not been accepted by the noble Marquess, and therefore need not be maintained by the Government. As surely as the next Session succeeded this, so surely would this measure be again proposed; and why should not this proposal be anticipated by the Lords? Why were their Lordships always to lag behind public opinion? Why not, for once, take a step in advance, and thereby place themselves in a popular position with the country. The right rev. Bench could not wish themselves to appear as gaining members to the Church by the assistance of Mammon; and they also might set themselves well by discarding these means of getting hold of the tutors of the country. For all reasons he was

  387
  most anxious to see the Church of the public disentangled of these obstacles to religion, and education being placed on fair and wholesome grounds.
  Moved in line 28. to leave out from ("that") to ("(2.) Nothing") in line 39."—(The Lord Lyveden.)
  THE EARL OF KIMBERLEYsaid, he thought it was not desirable to go beyond the scope of the present Bill, and he consequently hoped the noble Lord would not insist on dividing upon his Amendment. Feeling bound to accept the measure as a whole without any material alteration, he should ask his noble Friend not to press the Amendment.
  THE EARL OF ROSEBERYsaid, he must deny that the compact entered into between the Government and the Opposition was in any way binding on the House; and if Amendments like that of the noble Marquess in one direction were sent down to the other House they might be sent down in another. It seemed to him that clerical fellowships were objectionable on three grounds—first, that they admitted — or at least were the means of admitting—inferior persons into the educational body of the Universities, and thereby injured them as places of learning; secondly, that they admitted reluctant Professors to the priesthood, thereby injuring the Universities as places of religion; and, thirdly, that they acted as a stumbling-block to the scrupulous and were no barrier whatever—if they were not even an attraction to the unscrupulous — thereby injuring the colleges as places of morality. According to the evidence taken by the Select Committee, a short time ago, at one of the leading colleges at Oxford, possessing a considerable number of lucrative clerical fellowships, there was an election to a clerical and another to a lay fellowship. There were seven candidates for the lay fellowship, and the Examiners reported that they were all distinctly superior to all the candidates for the clerical fellowships: they were obliged, however, to elect a clerical candidate though they had to pass over six better men; and the college distinctly felt that to them, as an educational establishment, such a proceeding was a great wrong. In another case, upon a competition for two clerical fellowships, the Examiners unanimously
  388
  protested against the filling up of the second fellowship, owing to the inferiority of the candidates. Under these circumstances, the colleges had sometimes been driven to the greatest straits, and had made overtures to the lay candidates to induce them to take holy orders. On one occasion the telegraph was employed to bring back a man to accept a clerical fellowship. A fellow writing to him as to one of the colleges, said—
  "Merton is much oppressed by these restrictions, inasmuch as no such restriction was imposed in the ancient statutes by the founder, and this curtailment of our freedom was gratuitously imposed upon the college by the Commissioners, acting under the Act of 1854. Practically, the restrictions have injured us much. Over and over again we have been obliged to elect men decidedly inferior to other candidates on the open list. The effect of this is felt in the composition of the Governing Body, and especially in narrowing our field for the selection of tutors."
  It was a common speculation at Oxford as to how long a man would be able to hold out if unsuccessful for a lay fellowship. After trying in vain a few times he was pretty sure to go for a clerical fellowship, accepting it as a pis aller. Was the Church much benefited when such men joined the ranks of the clergy? Again, Lincoln's Inn had opened its doors, on certain conditions, to clerical students; and there were cases in which men had taken clerical fellowships who intended to follow the law. Did the Church gain much when such men obtained clerical fellowships? The law might gain, and it was possible that one day a clerical successor might—he hoped at a very long interval of time—follow the noble and learned Lord on the Woolsack. He had received a letter from the head of one of the greatest colleges of Oxford, who occupied a leading position in the University, but whose name he was not permitted to give. The writer said—
  "As to clerical fellowships I should have been well content to let them sleep at present and devote myself to the abolition of tests. Colleges can abate clerical fellowships, and most of them are willing to do so. Colleges cannot touch tests, which are imposed by Act of Parliament. But I think this restriction of clerical fellowships an evil. I believe that now and for a long time as many fellows will go into orders voluntarily as are now compelled by the statutes to do so. But the obligation irritates, and prevents many young men from pledging themselves beforehand who would, if left to themselves, feel no objection. Several of our senior fellows who were elected to lay fellowships have been ordained."

  389
  These clerical fellowships often operated as an irresistible temptation to a poor scholar, who might well look forward to an easy intellectual life in the cloisters of his college till the falling-in of a fat living offered him domestic peace. Such a system produced a very demoralizing atmosphere, when the talk of the common rooms was how many unsuccessful attempts a man would make for a lay fellowship before he became persuaded that his vocation, after all, was the Church. He did not know what the Church gained either from men like these or from the clerical lawyers who fed on ecclesiastical fleshpots in the recesses of Lincoln's Inn. In arguing in favour of the abolition of clerical fellowships he felt he was pleading on behalf of the Church itself. The power of the Church did not lie in compulsory tests and compulsory priests; which, like the mean buildings abutting on a great cathedral, did not strengthen or embellish the building they adjoined. He hoped their Lordships would support the Amendment.
  THE MARQUESS OF SALISBURYregretted the charges which the noble Earl (the Earl of Rosebery) had brought against the clerical fellows now at Oxford, especially as he had produced no authority in support of them. Such charges were not to be made simply on anonymous communications. It seemed to him that the noble Earl must have been living in strange society, seeing he had been intrusted with a letter making dishonourable accusations, yet the writer of which durst not give his name. He was, indeed, very curious to know where the noble Earl got his story. A great deal of gossip, no doubt, went about in such places as the Universities—that gossip, too, was of various kinds, There was the gossip of the common room, the gossip of the undergraduates, and the gossip of the scouts. He wondered, at first, to which of those three authorities the curious selection of facts mentioned by the noble Earl was to be attributed; but, on consideration, he thought it most likely it emanated from the third of those sources. He must also remark that the noble Earl was a member of the Select Committee on University Tests, and that he had an opportunity of producing before that Committee witnesses as to the truth of his allegations, who might be subjected
  390
  to cross-examination; but he had not thought proper to take that course. The charges should therefore be treated, as he felt himself justified in treating them, and that was as being of no value whatsoever. He should, under those circumstances, abstain from entering into details with respect to which the noble Earl appeared to have been thoroughly misled. As to clerical fellowships themselves, as the Government were not about to support the Amendment, he should say very little: he might, however, observe that those fellowships were regarded in the light of indemnifications which the Church of England had received for the large amount of bequests and donations specially made for her benefit, of which the University of Oxford was now in possession. If, he might add, they were interferred with, it would be necessary that the advow-sons which belonged to them should be sold also; and he was of opinion that the feeling of the country, which trusted very much to the education of the clergy, would be greatly outraged by such a course of proceeding.
  EARL GRANVILLEsaid, he thought the noble Marquess had somewhat departed from the rule which enjoined the exercise of some forbearance when replying to the remarks of a young Member of the House, and who, having made a speech remarkable for its point and general ability, he might well have deemed a foeman worthy of his steel. The noble Marquess complained that his noble Friend (the Earl of Rosebery) had not brought forward in the Select Committee the particular statements to which he referred; but it should be borne in mind that the present discussion went somewhat beyond the scope of the Bill, and that the noble Earl might hardly feel himself justified in raising the question before the Committee, although it was perfectly natural that he should do so on speaking on a Motion such as that which was being debated, and which had been made by another noble Lord. It was, he might add, somewhat painful to him to speak in opposition to that Motion, supported as it had been by arguments of great weight used in a Liberal sense: but he entertained to it objections of a practical character, which would, he hoped, have weight with his noble Friends. It seemed to him that there had been indications

  391
  furnished in the course of the debate which would render it unwise on the part of the Government to take any step which might lead to there being a collision between the two Houses of Parliament on the important subject under discussion. Besides, there was a tacit understanding in the House of Commons on the particular point relating to clerical fellowships and the headships of colleges by which the Government were entitled to have the Bill sent to their Lordships' House at an early period; thus avoiding all that delay which might be interposed to its progress through its various stages. That being so, and the real object of the Motion relating to a matter collateral to the Bill, and which, he believed, did not excite the same interest in Oxford as other points connected with it, he must appeal to his noble Friend not to put their Lordships to the trouble of a division of which there could be no doubt as to the result.
  THE BISHOP OF OXFORDsaid, he could not refrain, after the statements which had been made, from rising to defend the clerical fellows of Oxford from the imputations which had been thrown upon them. He had himself examined many of them, and had found them to be men of superior ability, and who did full justice to the profession which they had selected. It had been asserted that the colleges as places of education suffered in consequence of the existence of clerical fellowships. He was, he must confess, astonished to hear that statement. In several colleges the clerical fellows were the only persons who could be depended on for residence; two-thirds of the lay fellows devoted themselves to various professions, and went down to the University once or twice a-year, in some instances only to reverse the decisions of the resident body. He though the could make out a very good case for the clerical fellows so far as education was concerned. He did not believe that these fellowships were any particular gain to the Church, and he repudiated the insinuation that they were making use of Mammon for the support of religion.
  EARL GREYsaid, he would support the Amendment if his noble Friend went to a division, and his reason was because he held it to be a profanation to induce men to enter into holy orders from any low or secular motives. In the
  392
  Ordination Service candidates were compelled to make a most solemn declaration that they did not take on themselves the charge of the ministry from any motives of that kind, and he did not think Parliament was justified under such circumstances in placing in the way of young men strong temptations to induce them to take orders, not because they were actuated by strong religious feelings, but because that was the condition attached to their gaining certain rewards for proficiency in University studies.
  THE DUKE OF SOMERSEThoped his noble Friend would not press the Motion to a division. He should be very glad to support it if he saw a chance of success; but there were now more difficulties than before. The Government stood in the way, and on the other side of the House he saw no signs of relenting.
  On Question? Resolved in the Negative.
  THE MARQUESS OF SALISBURY THE MARQUESS OF SALISBURY moved an Amendment in line 38, after ("office") insert ("nor shall any such statute or ordinance be repealed, except by authority of Parliament"). This, he said, would be in accordance with the opinions of witnesses on both sides, for they urged on the Committee that all contentious questions should be settled within the walls of Parliament. Whatever might be the advantage of permissive legislation, he thought that on subjects like this it would be outweighed by the disadvantage of throwing down the gage of battle in every college.
  LORD HOUGHTONhoped their Lordships would not agree to the insertion of these words. It was bad enough that they should have the odium of the transaction which had occurred to-night; it would be extremely repugnant to every good feeling to be always referring every small contest about fellowships to Parliament. The colleges should be left to decide those questions of detail themselves.
  THE EARL OF KIMBERLEYthought the words proposed to be inserted were retrograde in their object. The Bill at present did not deal with clerical fellowship and headships; but a great many who supported this movement were strongly in favour of their removal. The Bill left them precisely in the position in which they now were. He therefore put it to the noble Marquess whether it was wise to throw out a direct challenge to those who were in favour of

  393
  the removal of the existing tests as affecting such offices by taking them out of the power of the colleges, and resting them on Parliamentary statute. The inevitable result would be an immediate appeal to Parliament to remove the statutory prohibitions which now existed.
  On Question? their Lordships divided:—Contents 56; Not-Contents 54: Majority 2.
  Resolved in the Affirmative: words inserted.
  Clause, as amended, agreed to.
  Clause 4 (Act not to interfere with lawfully established systems of religious instruction, worship, and discipline.)
  THE MARQUESS OF SALISBURY THE MARQUESS OF SALISBURY moved, in line 7, after ("discipline") to add—
  ("or the powers of supervision and control over the same possessed by the authorities of the said universities and colleges.")
  THE EARL OF KIMBERLEYfeared that there might be some tremendous power behind those words. He believed there was some ancient dormant power in the Universities to punish heresies, and if there were it would be too much to give any legislative sanction to it at the present time.
  On Question? Resolved in the Negative.
  Clause agreed to.
  THE MARQUESS OF SALISBURY THE MARQUESS OF SALISBURY moved, after Clause 4, to insert—
  "It shall be lawful for the University of Cambridge by statute to provide that a degree in divinity shall be a necessary qualification for the Hulsean and Norrisian Professorships of Divinity and the Professorship of Moral Theology in the said university.
  "The Morning Prayer and Service according to the order of the Book of Common Prayer shall continue to be read as heretofore daily in the chapel of every college; but nothing herein shall be construed to prevent the use of any abridgment of the same authorized by the head of the college."
  THE ARCHBISHOP OF YORKobjected to the clause. He objected, not that shorter services should be used, but to the possibility of a new Liturgy being drawn up under sanction of the clause.
  THE EARL OF KIMBERLEYdoubted whether the words were the most convenient.
  THE BISHOP OF GLOUCESTER AND BRISTOLsuggested that the power of shortening the service should be limited to weekdays.
  Motion (by leave of the Committee) withdrawn.
  THE MARQUESS OF SALISBURY THE MARQUESS OF SALISBURY moved the following clause:—
  "The governing body of every college shall provide sufficient religious instruction for all members thereof in statu pupillari belonging to the Established Church."
  THE EARL OF KIMBERLEYwas still of opinion that it was not desirable to enact this clause by authority of Parliament. He was ready to admit that it was not inconsistent with the removal of tests that a provision of this kind should be made; but when they were admitting Nonconformists to the Universities there was something invidious in Parliament selecting one body of the undergraduates, even though connected with an institution so important as the Established Church, and requiring by statute that every college should provide religious instruction for them. He was afraid that if one portion of the undergraduates were placed in that privileged position a certain amount of jealousy and heartburning might be perpetuated among the Nonconformists, for whose children Parliament omitted to provide religious instruction. This matter he thought might fairly be left to the governing bodies of the colleges. Their Lordships had heard a great deal about the necessity of maintaining the religious character of the Universities; but if one portion of the education of undergraduates was more neglected than another at the Universities it was just that religious instruction which the noble Marquess now proposed to make obligatory by statute.
  After a few words from the Earl of HARROWBY, who was understood to support the clause,
  THE BISHOP OF CARLISLEsaid, he had some difficulty in knowing what the clause meant. What did the noble Marquess mean by "sufficient religious instruction?" Did he mean that there should be a course of lectures upon the Articles and upon the various doctrines of the Church of England? If so, the clause should distinctly provide to that effect. But if the college chapel was to be regarded as the place to which members of the Established Church were to go for religious instruction, then if the chapel were to be kept up on its present footing sufficient religious instruction was already provided by the present arrangements for members of the Established Church.
  THE MARQUESS OF SALISBURYthought the objection of the right rev. Prelate belonged rather to the class of objections that one might expect from a conveyancer than from the bench of Bishops. Nobody reading that clause would say that instruction in Buddhism was to be given. He thought the noble Earl pressed rather hard on Dissenters when he said they would resent a clause of the kind. Nothing struck him more during the examination than the tenderness shown to the Church of England by Dissenters.
  Motion agreed to; Clause added to the Bill.
  THE MARQUESS OF SALISBURY THE MARQUESS OF SALISBURY moved to insert the following clause: —
  "No person shall be required to attend any college or University lecture to which his parent or guardian shall object, or which shall be contrary to the tenets of the religious body to which he belongs."
  THE EARL OF KIMBERLEYopposed the clause. Nothing could be more difficult to determine than whether a particular lecture was contrary to the tenets of the religious body to which a student belonged. Who was to be the judge in such a case? Was the undergraduate himself to decide or the Vice Chancellor, or was the matter to be solemnly argued before the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council? He could scarcely conceive any question which could better engage the attention of the acutest legal intellects. In the Committee this clause was suggested as being analogous to the conscience clause that was enforced in private schools; but that was not the fact. Power might be given to any parent or guardian to withdraw his son or ward from attendance at any particular college or University lecture, and that would be perfectly intelligible and practicable; but it would introduce a great amount of confusion if they went further, and enabled the student to withdraw himself from some lecture which might be contrary to some tenet of the religious Body to which he belonged. There were very strong reasons against the Amendment, and he suggested that the clause should stop at the word "object."
  EARL STANHOPEsaid, it was on his Motion that the Committee accepted the words at the end of the clause. It seemed to him that young men of 20 years of age were not incapable of forming opinions on religious subjects, and that,
  396
  therefore, they ought not to be controlled by their parents or guardians. If a young man had conformed to the Roman Catholic Church it was very probable that his parents or his guardians would still desire that he should attend the Divinity lectures of the Established Church; and under the clause as it stood at first the young man would be compelled to do so. But would not that be a violation of the rights of conscience? With these views he had proposed to the Committee, and the Committee had adopted that part of the clause to which objection had been taken, and he continued to be of opinion that the clause as thus amended protected the liberty of young men and did not expose them to the caprice of parents or guardians.
  THE DUKE OF RICHMONDthought the suggestion of the noble Earl (the Earl of Kimberley) would meet the difficulty of the case. The argument of the noble Earl (Earl Stanhope) could scarcely be borne out in fact, because if an undergraduate became a Roman Catholic, his Protestant parent or guardian would cease to maintain him at the University.
  THE BISHOP OF LONDONasked if the clause was really intended to apply to any college or University lecture?
  THE MARQUESS OF SALISBURYsaid, the clause was intended to apply to the case of lectures in which there were expressed opinions that were distasteful to parents or guardians. It was clear that the object in view would not be attained by confining the operation of the clause simply to lectures on Divinity, for it was not generally in lectures on Divinity but in lectures on scientific subjects that opinions of an objectionable character were expressed. He was quite willing, however, to accept the alteration of the clause suggested by the noble Earl opposite.
  The clause was then agreed to as follows:—
  "That no person shall be required to attend any college or university lecture to which his parent or guardian shall object,"
  and added to the Bill.
  THE MARQUESS OF SALISBURY THE MARQUESS OF SALISBURY moved the insertion of another clause relating to the standing at which fellows should be deemed fit to take part in the government of their colleges. The extreme youth of those who took part in the government of the colleges was felt

  397
  to be a considerable evil, and it was brought to the attention of the Committee in the course of their investigation. Half the resident teaching members of the University were under 30 years of age, and it was therefore proposed by the present clause that no fellow should take part in the government of his college until he had held his M.A. degree for three years.
  Moved to insert the following clause:—
  "No fellow elected after the passing of this Act shall become one of the governing body of his college, unless he have been appointed tutor therein, until after the expiration of three years from the time of his taking the degree of Master of Arts or Bachelor of Civil Law, Medicine, or Music."
  EARL GRANVILLEopposed the clause on the ground that it was most objectionable both in form and substance, that it was irrelevant and that it did not come within the reference to the Committee. One of the Oxford witnesses spoke of the great difficulty of keeping fellows in residence at that University; and it must be obvious that if this Amendment were carried residence would be still further discouraged, because to allow three years to elapse before a graduate could take part in the government of the body to which he belonged would be likely to lead to great indifference on his part. He altogether objected to a factitious arrangement of this sort. It would be exceedingly undesirable, as driving away some of the best men from residence. On general principle it was most objectionable, without deliberate inquiry, to diminish the number and interfere with the constitution of Governing Bodies in this way, unless proof could be shown that the proposal would be advantageous instead of disadvantageous, as he most firmly believed it would be to those bodies.
  EARL COWPERadmitted that the Committee had not exactly examined into this subject; but a great deal of interesting information bearing upon it had been brought before them. His impression was it would be better that some few years should be allowed to pass after taking the degree of M.A., in order that young men might know their opinions before they took part in the Governing Body.
  THE ARCHBISHOP OF YORKthought the adoption of this proposal would be apt to engender a feeling that there was some want of generosity in their treatment
  398
  of the young, and it would be better to admit them at once wholly and freely to all the privileges of their position.
  EARL BEAUCHAMPsupported the clause.
  THE LORD CHANCELLORregarded the Amendment as not only offensive in its character, but also positively mischievous. The abler men were to be kept back practically till the dullards got their fellowships, after the lapse of five years, and that was the pernicious way in which talent was to be handicapped! It was certainly not the way in which the flower of the University could be retained in the service of their respective colleges. Suppose an able young man were told that he must wait four or five years before he could get into the Governing Body of his college, he would probably go to the Bar or to some other occupation where his talent would command a market, and his services would be lost to the college.
  THE EARL OF POWISsaw no necessity for putting Masters of Arts under the disabilities proposed.
  THE EARL OF CARNARVONsuggested the withdrawal of the clause for re-consideration. He thought it would not be wise to press it to a division.
  THE MARQUESS OF SALISBURYsaid, he would withdraw the clause.
  Motion (by leave of the Committee) withdrawn.
  The last Clause read, and agreed to; Schedule read, and agreed to.
  The Report of the Amendments to be received on Thursday next; and Bill to be printed as amended (No. 104).

  ADJUTANTS (JURY) EXEMPTION BILL [H.L.]
  A Bill to exempt Adjutants from liability to serve on Juries—Was presented by The Lord STRATHEDEN; read 1a. (No. 101.)
  House adjourned at Twelve o'clock, till To-morrow, half past Ten o'clock.