Sitting of 4 May 1875

MINUTES.
PUBLIC BILLS—First Reading—Justices of the Peace Qualification * [151].
Second Reading—County Surveyors Superannuation (Ireland) * [65].
Committee—Peace Preservation (Ireland) [77]—R.P.
Third Reading—Elementary Education Provisional Order Confirmation (Brighton) * [129]; Falsification of Accounts* [121], and passed.
The House met at Two of the clock.

BOSTON ELECTION.
The Lords acquaint this House, That Her Majesty has appointed Thursday next, at a quarter before Two o'clock, at Buckingham Palace, to be attended with the Address of both Houses of Parliament on the late Election for Boston; and that the Lords have appointed the Lord Chamberlain and the Lord Steward to attend Her Majesty therewith on the part of their Lordships; and that the Lords do desire the Commons to appoint a proportionate number of its Members to go with them.
Ordered, That Four Members of this House do go with the Lords mentioned in the said Message, to wait upon Her Majesty with the said Address.
Ordered, That Mr. Disraeli, Mr. Secretary Cross, Mr. Secretary Hardy, and the Comptroller of the Household do go with the Lords mentioned in the said Message:—
Message to the Lords to acquaint them therewith.

ITALY—TARIFF TREATIES.

  QUESTION.
  MR. POTTERasked the Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, Whether he is prepared to state to the House the information which the Government has received from the Italian Government in reference to the probable changes in the Commercial Tariff of that country?
  MR. BOURKE: Sir, Her Majesty's Government are aware that it is proposed by the Italian Government to modify the Tariff Treaties now in force between Italy and other European Powers. England has no Tariff Treaty with Italy, but we have a Treaty of Commerce and Navigation still in force, which contains the usual "most-favoured nation" clause. Under these circumstances, it is clear that British interests are affected by any changes that may be made in the Commercial Treaties which exist between Italy and other

  19
  Powers, inasmuch as we gain by any concession which. Italy may grant to them and lose by its withdrawal. The matter is felt by Her Majesty's Government to be one of importance. Sir Augustus Paget has received instructions with regard to it, and it will continue to receive the most careful attention of the Foreign Office. It would, however, be premature to lay Papers on the Table, as the matter is still under discussion.

LAW AND JUSTICE—SERJEANTS AT LAW.—QUESTION.
SIR GEORGE BOWYERasked Mr. Attorney General, Whether Her Majesty's Government have decided on discontinuing for the future the ancient degree and dignity of Serjeant by refusing to grant the coif?
THE ATTORNEY GENERAL: Sir, in answer to the Question of the hon. Member, I have to state that the selection of gentlemen for the degree and dignity of Serjeant at Law does not rest with the Government, but with the Lord Chancellor, who is alone responsible for the selection he may make. Under these circumstances, my hon. Friend will, I think, see that I am not in a position to give any more definite answer to his Question. I may, however, mention that by the 8th section of the Supreme Court of Judicature Act of 1873 it is enacted that no person appointed a Judge of that Court should thenceforth be required to take or to have taken the degree of Serjeant at Law.

ARMY—MEDICAL OFFICERS.

  QUESTION.
  MR. G. E. BROWNEasked the Secretary of State for War, Whether it is his intention to recommend an increase in the half-pay of Medical Officers of the Army after twenty years' service, as has recently been done in the Navy; and, if so, when a Warrant on the subject is likely to be issued?
  MR. GATHORNE HARDY, in reply, said, that the complaints of the medical officers of the Army were receiving full consideration, but it would be premature to express an opinion upon one part of the case. He was informed that the hon. Gentleman had not correctly represented what had been done in the Navy;
  20
  but, at all events, he was not at present in a position to answer the Question.

THE SUNDAY ACT—TERRY v. BRIGHTON AQUARIUM COMPANY.

  QUESTION.
  MR. GIBSON (for Mr. ASHBURY)asked the Secretary of State for the Home Department, Whether his attention has been drawn to the case of Terry v. the Brighton Aquarium Company, and to ask him whether he will bring in a Bill to repeal or amend the Act 21 Geo. 3, c. 49, so as to relieve the Judges of the necessity of giving decisions which they publicly state are unreasonable.
  MR. ASSHETON CROSS: Sir, the attention of the Government has been called to the decision of the Judges in this case; but the Brighton Aquarium case does not seem to go to the full extent to which the judgment may possibly be applied. I have therefore thought it right that an inquiry should be made as to how far this judgment will really take effect. Until I have received an answer to the question I cannot tell the House what the intentions of the Government are in the matter.

LAW AND JUSTICE—THE FROME MAGISTRATES.—QUESTION.
MR. WAITasked the Secretary of State for the Home Department, Whether his attention has been directed to the committal to gaol for fourteen days, by two magistrates at Frome, on the 29th of April, of a woman sixty-six years of age, and of previous irreproachable character, for stealing coal of the value of one halfpenny, such committal being based on the uncorroborated evidence of one policeman, who did not see the accused take the coal; and, whether, assuming the case to have been correctly reported, it is his intention to revise the judgment of the justices?
MR. ASSHETON CROSS, in reply, said, it was a matter of some regret that paragraphs of this description which appeared in the newspapers were taken hold of on which to found a Question without first inquiring into the true facts of the case. He had received a very large number of letters containing the same extract cut from a newspaper. His attention having been called to the case before this Question was placed upon the Paper, he communicated with the magis-

21
trates, and also with the magistrates' clerk, and he had received from the latter a statement which put a different complexion upon the ease. It appeared that the woman had been employed for some time as charwoman at the Frome schools, and that the police had received information from several quarters that it was the woman's daily habit to carry away coal and fuel under her cloak from the schools. She was accordingly watched by the police, and on the very first occasion she was watched she was seen to come away with a large piece of coal concealed under her cloak. When the policeman spoke to her she denied that she had anything, but afterwards she told him that if he would go home with her she would show him what it was, and when they got to the woman's home she produced a piece of coal, stated how she came by it, and asked for forgiveness. The magistrates, considering that these petty thefts had been going on for some time, and by a person of trust, thought it necessary to pass this sentence.

ARMY—VOLUNTEERS IN CAMP.

  QUESTION.
  MR. HICKasked the Secretary of State for War, If he intends to authorise the issuing of great coats to Volunteer Corps going into camp under canvas, or to increase the Capitation Grant?
  MR. GATHORNE HARDY: Sir, the rule is to issue five great coats per company for regimental camps, to be worn only for guard-mounting and sentry duty. At the Autumn Camps of Exercise with the Regular Forces, great coats for the full number of Volunteers are lent in accordance with regulations. There seems to be no reason for making any alteration in the present practice.

PARLIAMENT—PRIVATE TELEGRAPH WIRES—ST. STEPHEN'S CLUB.

  QUESTION.
  MR. M'CARTHY DOWNING: Sir, in asking the Question which appears in my name on the Paper, I may be allowed to state that certain rumours were afloat last night as to a particular division, and motives were attributed to certain parties whose feelings ought to be satisfied on the subject. I beg to ask the First Lord of the Treasury, Whether it is the
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  fact, that a Division wire extends to the Saint Stephen's Club; if so, is the said club to be regarded as a portion of this House; and, if it is not, is it proper that the said wire should be continued?
  MR. DISRAELI: It is not, Sir, a fact that a Division wire extends from this House to St. Stephen's Club. I have made inquiry into the matter, and I find that there is a private wire which extends to St. Stephen's Club, and which was established at the cost of that Club. But it is a privilege which is shared by other Clubs of different political opinions; and, therefore, I do not suppose that the hon. Gentleman is of opinion that it is necessary to take any further notice of the exercise of a privilege which is convenient alike to Members on both sides of the House.

ASCENSION DAY—COMMITTEES.
Ordered, That Committees shall not sit upon Thursday, being Ascension Day, until Two of the clock, and have leave to sit until Six of the clock, notwithstanding the sitting of the House.—(Mr. Disraeli.)

PARLIAMENT—PUBLICATION OF DEBATES AND EXCLUSION OF STRANGERS.—QUESTION.
MR. PEASEasked the noble Lord the Leader of the Opposition, What course he intends to adopt in reference to the Motion which stands in his name for this evening?
THE MARQUESS OF HARTINGTON, in reply, said, that in reference to the Question of his hon. Friend the Member for Durham he had to make another appeal to his hon. Friend the Member for Derby (Mr. Plimsoll.) Since yesterday he had ascertained that a very general wish prevailed that the Motion which stood in his name should be discussed as soon as possible, and he regretted to say he did not see any probability of being able to bring it on on an early day unless he had an opportunity of doing so that evening. He thought the time at the disposal of the Government was not likely to be sufficient to enable them to give him an opportunity of bringing forward his Motion at another time. The right hon. and gallant Member for Stamford (Sir-

23
John Hay) had very kindly stated that it was not his intention to bring on his Motion that evening; he understood from the hon. Member for "Wexford (Mr. O'Clery) that he would probably occupy but little time with his Motion; and he therefore wished once more to appeal to his hon. Friend the Member for Derby, and to ask him whether, considering the general interest felt in his (the Marquess of Hartington's) Motion, the hon. Member would be willing to withdraw his Motion that evening to enable his (the Marquess of Hartington's) Motion to come on. Under any circumstances, he would bring on his Motion that evening if he could do so before half-past 10 o'clock.
MR. PLIMSOLLsaid, he was very sorry to withdraw his Motion respecting the draft of water of seagoing vessels, because it touched human life, and was not a question of abstract politics; but as he had been told it would be rather prejudicial than beneficial to those whose cause he was advocating to bring on his Motion under the circumstances, he accordingly, and very regretfully, withdrew his Motion from the Paper of that evening.

THE TICHBORNE CASE—PERSONAL EXPLANATION.
MR. WHALLEY: Sir, in pursuance of an intimation which the right hon. Gentleman in the Chair permitted me to give to him, it is my intention to ask the House to allow me an opportunity of making a personal explanation. It refers to a statement made by the right hon. Baronet the Member for Tamworth (Sir Robert Peel) yesterday week, and this is the first opportunity I have had since my return to town of calling the attention of the House to it. I do not see the right hon. Baronet in his place, although I gave him Notice two or three days ago about it and again yesterday; and as he is not present it would be more satisfactory to my own feelings if the House would allow me to state that I will call attention to the subject at half-past 4 o'clock on Thursday next and give the explanation then which I was prepared to offer now.
PEACE PRESERVATION (IRELAND) BILL— [BILL 77.]
(Sir Michael Hicks-Beach, The Solicitor General for Ireland.)
PEACE PRESERVATION (IRELAND) BILL— [BILL 77.]

  COMMITTEE. [Progress 3rd May.]
  Clause 5 (Continuance of certain parts of Protection of Life and Property in certain Parts of Ireland Act. 1871.)
  SIR PATRICK O'BRIENmoved, in page 4, at end, to add—
  "Provided always, That, from and after the passing of this Act, so much of the said Act as applies to any portion of the King's County shall he and the same is hereby repealed,"
  and called attention to the fact that whilst the King's County comprised 12 baronies six of them were included in the Schedule of the Act, some of them being the largest baronies in the county, When the Act was originally introduced. he felt that his duty to his constituents obliged him to oppose it; but whatever cause there might then have existed for this most stringent Act, he felt assured that there was not now even the shadow of a reason for continuing it for his county. The Committee would be surprised to learn that during the many years of its existence not one imprisonment had occurred in the King's County under the Act. When the measure was first introduced, he had ventured to draw an illustration from surgery relating to the propriety of its imposition. He stated that the famous surgeon, Hunter, had denominated an operation as the opprobium medici, and had designated having recourse to such penal and stringent legislation without first exhausting existing law, the opprobium of legislation. Baron Dowse, who then was the Law Officer of the Government conducting the Bill, replied that Hunter's observation, though generally true, did not apply to the case then under consideration, as there was no remedy for a gangrene but excision, and that that was unfortunately the condition of Westmeath and the other counties included in the Bill. Would the Government venture to state that such was the then condition of the King's County? Was there a single Member in that House who would rise in his place and make such an assertion? He was certain there was not. It had been stated that in certain other counties there were some few ill-disposed persons who dominated over the whole neighbourhood, and cowed

  25
  the well-disposed of the community. He (Sir Patrick O'Brien) could only say if that were so, it would say little for their manhood. With reference to the King's County, no such band of marauders existed in its midst, nor could the right hon. Baronet the Chief Secretary for Ireland point out within it any individual enjoying the bad eminence attributed to Captain Duffy. He (Sir Patrick O'Brien) unfortunately, during his political connection with the King's County, had not enjoyed a political quiet life, and for the purpose of his argument he would ask the permission of the House to very shortly summarize its social and political status during that connection. On the occasion of his first contesting the county there existed, he was sorry to say, much political animosity and sectarian antagonism; but as time were on, all that was happily changed, and he might state that on the occasion of his contesting the county with an able and distinguished gentleman, now by the favour of Her Majesty's Government presiding over a most important portion of our Colonial Empire, nearly every Protestant in the county voted for the Catholic, Mr. Hennessy, whilst on the same occasion a large number of the Catholic constituency voted for Mr. King, a Protestant gentleman, enjoying a deserved popularity with all classes in that county. He mentioned the subject to them to show that mutual toleration and kindly feeling had a rapid growth in the people of that county, and that their present state was, that whilst preserving with firmness their political and religious opinions, all recognized in the fullest sense "the right to differ." He might tell the Committee that the King's County was of considerable length, and he would therefore pick out portions of it at each end and parts of the middle of the county, in order to illustrate the position he assumed, as to the kindly feeling existing amongst the upper, middle, and lower classes. On the coming of age, some short time ago, of the generous and popular young nobleman, whose untimely death the people of King's County had during this year to deplore, the people of Tullamore and the surrounding districts took occasion to give to the Earl of Charleville a perfect ovation. In Birr, the high character and great scientific reputation of the late
  26
  Earl of Rosse were regarded as an honour to the entire county, and a memorial recently erected testified to the veneration entertained for his memory by all classes of his fellow-countrymen. At the other end of the county, in the neighbourhood of Edenderry, the family of Downshire were justly regarded as amongst the best landlords in Ireland, and a lady (Miss Nesbitt) had shown her appreciation of the good feeling and good conduct of her poorer neighbours by subscribing the munificent sum of £10,000 to a local railway. So much as regards the relation between classes. Would the Committee allow him to refer very shortly to some of the towns in the county? Birr was a town selected by many families, unconnected with its neighbourhood by any ties of property, as their residence, testifying to their appreciation of the genial and kindly qualities of its people. Tullamore, the county town, had been rapidly progressing for years past, and was now at least amongst the best of Irish inland towns. Its Town Commissioners had petitioned that House against the Bill, and he would read a very few passages of their Petition, as they expressed the case for excluding the King's County, better than any words of his could do—
  "They justly refer with pleasure to the peace, order, and morality existing throughout the county, and assert the entire freedom of the county from crime of any description."
  They further asserted—
  "That from the passing of the Coercion Act to the present time not a single prisoner has been in gaol under the Act."
  They also said—
  "That the extraordinary legislation now so long imposed is having direct, tangible, and growing evil influence on the trade and property of the county, and that the discredit cast by so high an authority as the Legislature seriously affects all trading and manufacturing operations, and determines the value of landed and all other properties."
  He (Sir Patrick O'Brien) would, therefore, call on all fair men in that House not to join in casting undeserved stigma on a county which he had feebly attempted to describe. No doubt, in that debate, the awful and outrageous murder which had been perpetrated near Ferbane might be referred to. He did not wish, whilst the trial of persons were still pending, to review all the circumstances of that frightful deed; but he

  27
  might observe that this murder took place within one of the baronies included in the Schedule of the Act, and notwithstanding its operation, isolated cases—in his county he should more correctly use the singular number, and say case—might occur in the most peaceable neighbourhoods. Yet, surely, if some awful incident happened in England, in Scotland, or in Wales, they would not, from a solitary case, make the rash generalization that all the neighbourhood were impregnated with a spirit of outrage. It was not an Irishman who had written—
  "There never yet was human power,
  That could evade if unforgiven,
  The patient search and vigil long,
  Of him who treasures up a wrong."
  He (Sir Patrick O'Brien) could assure the Committee that he offered that Amendment to their acceptance from no desire to catch a fleeting popularity. In the year 1866, when the country was threatened with a revolution, he had had the courage of his opinions, and had voted for the suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act; but on this occasion there was no case. They were continuing an Act which could be productive of no good, and could only tend to irritate and embitter classes in Ireland.
  Amendment proposed,
  At the end of the Clause, to add the words "Provided always, That, from and after the passing of this Act, so much of the said Act as applies to any portion of the King's County shall be and the same is hereby repealed."—(Sir Patrick OBrien.)
  SIR MICHAEL HICKS-BEACHsaid, he hoped that the Committee would dissociate the general condition of King's County from the condition of that small part of it which was included within the provisions of the Act. As to the general condition of the county, however, he did not think it was quite such a model to the rest of Ireland as the hon. Baronet's remarks might lead the Committee to suppose; for the Chairman at the last Quarter Sessions in one of the districts of King's County had, in addressing the grand jury, described the condition of the county as not showing improvement, but signs of increasing disquiet. The special provisions of this Westmeath Act applied only to six baronies of King's County, and the hon. Baronet, on looking at the map and
  28
  seeing the relation in which those baronies stood with Westmeath, would find how impossible it was to define the limit within which the Ribbon conspiracy existed merely by a county boundary. Of course, it would be in the power of the Lord Lieutenant to exclude the county from the operation of the Act if he found he could do so with propriety. Under these circumstances, he could not consent to the Amendment of the hon. Baronet.
  Question put, "That those words be there added."
  The Committee divided:—Ayes 80; Noes 258: Majority 178.
  SIR PATRICK O'BRIENthen moved an Amendment the object of which was to repeal the provision of the Act which enabled the Lord Lieutenant to prohibit any prisoner from holding any communication, either by word of mouth or in writing, with any other person not in the service of Her Majesty or duly authorized by the Lord Lieutenant. The marginal note to this section, which he wished to have repealed, stated that the persons committed under the Act should be treated as untried prisoners, and he held that it was never intended that a man who had never been tried, but merely placed in custody for the purpose of preventing him from doing mischief outside the prison, should be deprived of any opportunity of meeting his family and friends, and communicating with them. The seclusion prescribed by the Act amounted almost to solitary confinement. He therefore moved his Amendment.
  Amendment proposed,
  At the end of the Clause, to add the words "Provided always, That so much of said Act as provides that it shall be lawful for the Lord Lieutenant, if he think fit, to prohibit any prisoner committed under it from holding any communication, either by word of mouth or in writing, with any other person not being in the service or employment of Her Majesty, or duly authorised by the Lord Lieutenant as he shall direct to hold such communication,' shall be and the same is hereby repealed."—(Sir Patrick O'Brien.)
  SIR MICHAEL HICKS-BEACHsaid, the object of the Act was to authorize the imprisonment of men who might be dangerous outside and to prevent them from doing mischief; and the persons so arrested were to be treated as untried prisoners. But if the present Amend-**

  29
  ment were adopted it might entirely nullify the intention of the Act, as it might be possible for the most notorious criminal arrested under the Act, by holding communication with visitors from his part of the country, to direct all the operations of the plot, and be just as mischievous from his prison as if he were outside. So far as members of a prisoner's family were concerned, under certain restrictions they were allowed to hold communication with him by the late Government; and no doubt if it were necessary for the present Government to arrest persons under the Act, subject to all the necessary precautions, they would also allow such communication.
  MR. BUTTsupported the Amendment. He held it to be absurd to say that if they allowed a prisoner to talk with his wife or daughter he could direct the Ribbon conspiracy from his prison and convulse the whole country. That was impossible under the existing prison regulations, and the Committee ought not to be influenced by such imaginary terrors. If the Bill passed in its present form then every old form of persecution would be set at liberty. The Westmeath men would be sent mayhap to Cork, where they would be kept apart from their families, and in many cases the family of the prisoner were not allowed to know his whereabouts. If there was any justification for these measures four years ago there was none now.
  MR. O'SULLIVANsaid, he was able to deny in his own experience the statement made by the Chief Secretary for Ireland, that prisoners were allowed to see their families; for he was himself in prison for 121 days before he was allowed to see one single member of his family, and he was imprisoned for 30 days before he was allowed to write a single letter to anyone outside of his prison with reference to his business affairs, and that although no charge had been brought against him. The prisoners were, he might add, subjected to daily insult and persecution, the gaolers in many instances boasting that they would make bankrupts of them before they were discharged from custody; and when set at liberty they were able to obtain but very little redress against these men. He would support the Amendment.
  MR. P. J. SMYTHpointed out that when the Westmeath Act was originally introduced the grounds of its enactment were grossly exaggerated, and that now that county would bear comparison for peace and order with any in England or Scotland. There was no justification, therefore, he contended, for casting such a stigma upon it as the present Bill would inflict. He had visited the reported leader of the Ribbon conspiracy when he was in prison. On going to the county of Westmeath three months after, he was surprised to find this man at liberty, and on making inquiries he found that he had been liberated upon a memorial addressed to the Lord Lieutenant by the magistrates at whose instigation they were passing this Act.
  MR. KNATCHBULL-HUGESSENwished to know whether all that was required to be done could not be effected by means of the prison regulations, which it appeared the Lord Lieutenant was empowered to make? If so, the words to which the hon. and learned Member for Limerick (Mr. Butt) objected might be unnecessary.
  SIR MICHAEL HICKS-BEACHsaid, it was believed by the late Government that it was necessary these powers should be possessed by the Lord Lieutenant, and after a careful consideration it was thought necessary to insert the words now complained of, in order to prevent an abuse of the prison regulations.
  MR. MITCHELL HENRYsaid, it was not right for the present Government to shelter itself, as it so frequently did in this matter, under the wing of the late Government; and it was no argument for them to say that they did this thing and that thing because the late Government thought this or that necessary. He remembered what happened last year when the right hon. Gentleman at the head of the Government proposed to continue these Acts. The right hon. Gentleman took a favourable view of the case, and he promised that the Acts should be solemnly considered, and that a new Bill should be brought in altogether. Well, a new Bill had been brought in, but it was so incomprehensible that, in fact, he did not believe the Law Officers of the Crown had studied the previous Acts at all. When such questions as those of the previous night, affecting the Habeas

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  Corpus Act, were asked the Government, they were unable to answer them satisfactorily. He did not believe that English gentlemen were prepared to keep persons in prison for two years before they were tried, or to allow that they might be locked up alone for 22 out of every 24 hours without communication with any human being, though the imprisonment might last for three or four years. He could quite understand their believing the necessity for very stringent regulations when Fenianism was in action in Ireland, and when the state of Westmeath was alarming; but Ireland was now in a totally different condition. All necessity for such stringent and severe enactments had passed away. If the Government had proposed this Bill in a spirit of conciliation, they ought to have known every point that would be raised. That they had not done so had been shown by the concessions which they had made upon some important points. The question raised by the Amendment now before the Committee was an important one, affecting as it did the liberty of the subject.
  THE MARQUESS OF HARTINGTONsaid, that while it was true the provisions of the Westmeath Act had been considered by the late Government, it was impossible he could recollect the reasons which led them to adopt every single provision. He thought, therefore, it was to be regretted that the Chief Secretary for Ireland should be able to give no better answer to the objections which had been raised against these provisions than that they had been deemed to be necessary by the late Government. He wished to point out that regulations issued by the Lord Lieutenant would be applicable to all the prisoners, and therefore he considered the power given by this clause to be necessary.
  MR. BUTTsaid, that neither the right hon. Baronet nor the noble Marquess seemed to be acquainted with the facts. The Lord Lieutenant had the power of making the general regulations for prisons under the Act, which were, before being confirmed, laid before Parliament. He had made the regulations, and they had been laid before Parliament. Anything more severe could not be imagined. It was impossible to give any excuse for this abominable legislation, against which the heart of
  32
  every Gentleman in that House was revolting. [A laugh.] He was sorry to hear that laugh; but he warned the House that by such inhuman legislation it was fostering the resentment of the Irish people. With respect to the remarks of the noble Marquess and the Chief Secretary, he would say that he did not make this a Party question. He hoped it would not be so treated in that House, and he would appeal to hon. Members on both sides of the House, as English Gentlemen, to treat it as a question of humanity and justice.
  MR. CONOLLY, as the Member to whom the hon. and learned Gentleman had just referred, wished to say that they were dealing with illegal societies, and if they imprisoned men without taking the precaution of preventing them communicating with persons outside, they would be acting the part of fools, and not of practical men.
  MR. SULLIVANwanted to know how a prisoner could direct a confederacy from his cell, where he could see no one, and whence he could not write a letter that would not be subject to inspection. The legislation now proposed was intended to agonize the hearts of captives, and to inflict the direst cruelty, the deepest wounds that had been inflicted upon prisoners for 500 years. [A laugh.] The laughter of hon. Members was as if they jested over their mothers' graves. Were such legislation to pass in Italy, with the name, say, of Murphy Italianized into Morfini, what exclamations of horror and indignation would ring throughout England! He himself had been subjected to imprisonment for a political offence, and was kept in the prison in which he had been a member of the Board of Superintendents. The warders treated him kindly, but there was one thing that they could not allow him. He had one child, two and a half years old, and no prison regulation would allow him to see his child. He was denied a sight of his little one until the physician of the gaol, a person differing in politics and religion from himself, by the exercise of what he might term a pious fraud, obtained for him a sight of his child by passing it in as one of his own. He protested before Heaven that he would rather have suffered the loss of one of his ears than have been denied the sight of that little child; yet a peasant confined under this

  33
  Act, and who had never been heard in his own defence, might be denied under this clause an interview with his wife or child, even in the presence of the prison warders. He denounced such legislation as an atrocity, and called upon the House, in the name of common humanity, to reject it summarily and decisively.
  SIR HENRY JAMESsaid, he thought some argument in favour of the retention of the Proviso of the Act of 1871 ought to have come from the Solicitor General for Ireland. It was scarcely a sufficient answer to say that it had been agreed to by a previous Parliament, to which some of the present Members belonged. It was no Party question, and he wished to explain his own particular reasons for voting against the Amendment. By the section under discussion two powers were given. The first power was given to the Lord Lieutenant to make general regulations affecting prisoners. These regulations had to be submitted to Parliament, and it was desirable that they should be as lightly drawn as possible. If they were made to suit exceptional cases they would be too severe. At the same time, however, exceptional cases might require exceptional rules. There might be private signals and communications between the members of an illegal confederacy, notwithstanding the presence of a warder, and it would therefore be desirable to trust the Executive with the powers demanded.
  MR. BUTTsaid, the Lord Lieutenant had the power to make general regulations under the statute for these special prisoners, and he could not therefore see what he wanted with these special powers.
  THE SOLICITOR GENERAL FOR IRELAND (Mr. PLUNKET)observed, in reference to some remarks of the hon. and learned Member for Taunton (Sir Henry James), that he had not risen before, because the reasons why the Amendments could not be accepted by the Government had been stated by his right hon. Friend the Chief Secretary. The hon. Member for Galway (Mr. Mitchell Henry) had, however, charged him with having neglected to answer important questions. He was in the recollection of the Committee, and stated that he had not declined to answer one single question. He was sure the Committee would excuse him for not replying to such an attack.
  MR. MITCHELL HENRYexplained that what he had said was "satisfactory answer."
  THE SOLICITOR GENERAL FOR IRELAND (Mr. PLUNKET)said, it was impossible for him always to answer a legal question in a manner which would fall in with the hon. Member's views. With respect to the Amendment, he had only to say that the provision of the Bill to which it referred was an exceptional one, and was meant to meet an exceptional state of things. It was absolutely necessary in special cases to provide that it should not be possible for a prisoner so to communicate with other persons as, perhaps, to counteract the whole policy of the Act. But as in other respects the persons in custody under the Act were to be dealt with as "untried prisoners," in giving this special and exceptional power to the Lord Lieutenant it was necessary to explain the manner in which it was to be exercised in this particular.
  MR. O'CONNOR POWERobserved, that the Government had failed to point out what danger would arise from a prisoner being able to communicate with his friends. The power which the Government wished to place in the hands of the Lord Lieutenant was, in his opinion, arbitrary in its character and quite unnecessary.
  MR. MACARTNEYobserved, that the whole subject now under the consideration of the Committee had been very fully and very ably discussed in the last number of the Revue des Deux Mondes—which reflected the public opinion of a great part of France and of Europe—in connection with the state of Sicily, which was just now much disturbed by brigandage, while acts of murder and rapine were rife throughout the island. That state of circumstances had induced the Italian Government to place Sicily under the operation of a special law, analogous in principle to the Bill under consideration, and in the article to which he referred that legislation was vindicated and approved.
  MR. VANCEremarked that the legislation with respect to the outrages in Westmeath had been most successful. He thought the Government had acted wisely in proposing the present measure, and he trusted that the House of Commons would assent to it. He believed the powers would be temperately exer-

  35
  cised, and would not be retained a moment longer than they were needed.
  LORD ROBERT MONTAGUthanked the hon. Member for Tyrone for his promised vote in favour of the Amendment. [Mr. MACARTNEY: No, no!] Well, the argument of the hon. Member was in its favour; for if the Westmeath Act was applicable to the state of things referred to as existing in Sicily, they were wholly inapplicable to Ireland, which was admitted to be in a peaceable condition. He thought the Government were now going too far in respect to the sister country.
  Question put, "That those words be there added."
  The Committee divided:—Ayes 121; Noes 291: Majority 170.
  SIR PATRICK O'BRIENhaving given Notice of the next Amendment, page 4, at end, to add—
  "Provided always, That nothing herein contained shall he deemed to continue in force or operation the Preamble of the said Act,"
  THE CHAIRMANpointed out that the Amendment of the hon. Baronet was irregular, inasmuch as it was not proposed by the present Bill to re-enact the Preamble of the Act.
  SIR PATRICK O'BRIENexplained that he had put the Motion on the Paper from a recollection of what happened when the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Liskeard (Mr. Horsman) was Chief Secretary for Ireland, when some portions of the previous Act having been withdrawn, the right hon. Gentleman thought it necessary that the corresponding portion of the Preamble should be omitted, and that was done with the approval of Lord Eversley and of Lord John Russell, who were both of them eminent authorities in matters of Parliamentary procedure. He bowed, however, to the decision of the Chairman.
  THE CHAIEMANrepeated that a Preamble was not matter of enactment.
  Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
  MR. BUTTmoved, in page 4, at end, to add—
  "Provided always, That nothing in the said Act contained shall authorise the imprisonment or detention of anyone, without being brought to trial, for more than one year from the date of his arrest."
  The hon. and learned Gentleman briefly
  36
  contended that nothing could be more arbitrary or more tyrannical than that a man should be allowed to remain in prison for upwards of 12 months with a charge hanging over him, and without being brought to trial.
  Amendment proposed,
  At the end of the Clause, to add the words "Provided always, That nothing in the said Act contained shall authorise the imprisonment or detention of any one without being brought to trial for more than one year from the date of his arrest."—(Mr. Butt.)
  Question put, "That those words be there added."
  The Committee divided:—Ayes 159; Noes 237: Majority 78.
  MR. MUNDELLAmoved the Amendment which had just been rejected, with the substitution of the words "13 months" for "12 months." He came down to the House that afternoon for the sole purpose of supporting the Amendment of the hon. and learned Member for Limerick (Mr. Butt). He had expected that the Chief Secretary would explain why it was necessary to detain a man in prison for two years previous to being brought to trial—why it was necessary to vote away the liberties of three counties. Ignorant as he was of the technicalities of the law, he never dreamt that men could be arrested and kept in prison for an indefinite period before being brought to trial. It might be urged that this Act only applied to three counties; but if it referred to only three men he should expose such exceptional legislation. He moved therefore this Amendment to enable the Government to make some explanation on the subject.
  Amendment proposed,
  At the end of the Clause, to add the words "Provided always, That nothing in the said Act contained shall authorise the imprisonment or detention of any one without being brought to trial for more than thirteen months from the date of his arrest."—(Mr. Mundella.)
  THE CHAIRMANreminded the hon. Member who moved the Amendment that the more usual course would have been to have proposed it as an Amendment on the last Amendment.
  SIR MICHAEL HICKS-BEACHsaid, that if he did not reply to the hon. and learned Member for Limerick, it was from no want of respect towards him, but simply because in the few words he

  37
  addressed to the Committee he gave no reason why they should fix a period of 12 months, neither had the hon. Member for Sheffield given a reason why it should he 13 months. He had understood the hon. and learned Member to object to the Act in toto. When it was urged that 12 months or 13 months was a sufficient time to keep Ribbonmen in prison, if, unfortunately, it should be necessary to arrest them, he would appeal to the facts of the case. When the Act was originally passed and the Ribbon conspiracy was in a state at which he hoped it might not again arrive, kept down as it would be by the dread of that Act, it was found necessary by the late Government to arrest and imprison a certain number of the leaders of that conspiracy; and according to a Return presented this Session of those who were thus arrested it was requisite to detain in prison at least an average of four out of five for a period of more than one year. And why was that? Because it was felt that if they were released at an earlier time the effect of their detention would have been lost, and they would have returned to their localities again to carry on the conspiracy for which they had been arrested. Why, he asked, should the Committee not give the present Government the same powers as it gave twice to a former Government, and which were practically contained in the Act? For the question was not for how long a particular person should be kept in prison, but for how long those powers of imprisonment should be vested in the Irish Government? The Committee had already decided that that period should be two years. For what reason should it be less? It was said that 12 months was enough; but he had shown that in the vast majority of cases it was not enough. If those powers were vested in the Irish Government again for two years, it would be their duty to ascertain how long it was necessary by the continuance of the Orders under the Act to keep those exceptional powers in force. He could assure the Committee that the moment they obtained information that they were no longer needed in the districts affected those powers would not be continued. [A laugh.] Hon. Gentlemen might laugh; but they were not aware of the great pains taken by the Government in administering
  38
  those Acts. The moment they could obtain information which would warrant the revocation of the Order it would be at once revoked; but suppose they should be mistaken, and the result of the revocation should be that the conspiracy was to break out in force, and they should at once re-impose the Act, they would be placed in this dilemma—they would have to deal with circumstances similar to those which prevailed when the original Act was passed, and they would be deprived of the powers they had possessed for keeping persons in prison for a period sufficient to keep down the conspiracy. From the mode in which the Government had administered these exceptional and unconstitutional powers he hoped the Committee would repose confidence in future Administrations, and would rest assured that no man would be kept in prison after his arrest for a single day longer than was warranted by the exigencies of the case.
  MR. MACDONALDcordially supported the Amendment, holding as he did that Governments should be Governments of order and not of threat. A few years ago the country was startled with the information which was imparted to them, chiefly by the late Prime Minister of this country, the right hon. Member for Greenwich, that the dungeons of Naples were filled with persons who were rotting there. A cry of indignation arose from the English people, and the doors of these prisons had to be thrown open; yet they were now asked to close the doors of some of the prisons of a part of Her Majesty's dominions against men who were to be confined at the will of the Government. He set his face against such a proposal, and hoped a majority of the British House of Commons would do the same.
  MR. BUTLER-JOHNSTONEsaid, that in this case it was the exception that proved the rule; we were obliged to pass Acts like these to justify unconstitutional acts which in Naples were committed by an irresponsible ruler. No doubt, it would be far bettor, if they could, to bring these men to trial; but it was a peculiar feature of this conspiracy that they could not get the evidence. He saw no reason for adopting the Amendment.
  LORD ROBERT MONTAGUsaid, the two cases were not so different as

  39
  the hon. Member for Canterbury supposed. In Naples they saw the end of a system, but this was merely the beginning here, and tyrannies always commenced in this way. They were not sent to Parliament to trust the Government, but to protect the liberties of the subject, and the onus probandi was upon the Chief Secretary to prove the necessity for these powers. It was unconstitutional that men should languish in an Irish Bastile for two years without being brought to trial.
  MR. MITCHELL HENRYheld that it was an outrage on the liberty of the subject to keep men in prison longer than was necessary to prepare evidence against them. If all suspected persons were promptly tried before they were condemned, then the world could judge whether or not there existed any Ribbon conspiracy.
  SIR GEORGE CAMPBELLsaid, he was exceedingly sorry to prolong this debate; but as a very new Member he felt much difficulty with regard to the vote he should give. It might be said, as a new Member, he would be justified in following older Members; but having been in an official position, and having had some experience of measures of this kind, he felt a certain responsibility upon himself in giving his vote. It was his desire to support the Government in a matter of this kind if he could consistently do so; but this was a very grave measure, which could only be justified by very exceptional circumstances. The question had not been put before the House in an intelligible shape, and he altogether objected to the manner in which the Bill had been drawn. It did not state on the face of it what was to be enacted, but referred to a number of provisions contained in other Acts of Parliament, none of which provisions were set forth. The result was that no new Member—or, in fact, any mortal man—could understand what the Bill proposed, and he gathered from what had passed that the Government themselves hardly understood their own Bill.
  THE CHAIRMANpointed out that the Question before the Committee was the Amendment of the hon. Member for Sheffield, and not a general discussion of the Bill.
  SIR GEORGE CAMPBELLsaid, his observations were designed to show that
  40
  as regarded this particular Amendment, and any other Amendment, the Committee had not sufficient material before them upon which to found an opinion.
  MR. JACKSONsaid, he thought that they were much indebted to the hon. Member (Mr. Mundella) for having given the Committee an opportunity of debating this question. The Chief Secretary for Ireland contended that it was incumbent on those who proposed to limit this power to show reason for the limitation, but he maintained that obligation lay upon those who proposed such exceptional legislation to show reason for it. He had failed to understand the grounds upon which the Government thought it necessary that the power asked for should be without limit. The power of imprisonment must be either for punishment or for precaution. If as a punishment, then, surely an imprisonment of 13 months was sufficiently long for a man who had not been, and who for want of evidence could not be, put upon his trial; if, as a precaution, the power of re-arresting a prisoner who returned to his former practices was a sufficient safeguard. He thought it but reasonable and humane that such a limit should be accepted; and, indeed, it was repugnant to all men to think that a fellow-creature might be left languishing in prison from year to year without having the opportunity of being brought to trial. The hon. Member (Mr. Butler-Johnstone) contrasted this case of Ireland with that of Naples, and happily there was a wide difference—but in both cases there was the same deep-seated objection to imprisonment without being brought before his accusers, and it was for this purpose that the hon. Member for Stafford had referred to Naples.
  MR. HERBERTsaid, he hoped the Government would give way upon this point, for such a concession would lead to the expectation that legislation of this kind would some day cease altogether. He believed that everyone on his side of the House was in favour of the Amendment.
  MR. NEVILLobserved, that he had listened carefully to the arguments used during the discussions upon this Bill; and he was anxious to support the Government in the performance of their difficult task. He had, however, felt himself bound, upon more than one occasion, to vote against the Government,

  41
  and in favour of some limitation of the powers conferred by the Bill. Upon the present occasion, also, he felt bound to vote in favour of limiting the period of imprisonment to 13 months, though he did so with the greatest diffidence.
  MR. HOPWOODcontended that it lay upon the Government to show why they should vote for a longer period of imprisonment than that mentioned in the Amendment. They were asked to give these extraordinary powers at the same time that they were told that there was not a single Ribbonman in prison under them. It was their duty to watch carefully over the liberties of the subject; and not lightly to vote that a man might be kept for a long period in prison without power of appeal of any sort.
  SIR CHARLES RUSSELLsaid, the reason why he should vote in favour of the powers contained in the Bill was because he thought he was voting on the side of mercy. He asked why it was there was not a single Ribbonman now in prison? He asserted that it was because of the powers contained and proposed to be continued in this Bill. It was because the severity of the punishment had acted as a deterrent, and it was the duty and interest of the Government to have punishments framed which were sufficiently severe to prevent misguided individuals from subjecting themselves to the penalties of the law.
  Question put, "That those words be there added."
  The Committee divided:—Ayes 171; Noes 250: Majority 79.
  MR. ENNISmoved, in page 4, at end to add—
  "Provided always, That from and after the passing of this Act so much of the said Act as applies to the county of Meath shall he and is hereby repealed."
  He thought there was no reason why the county of Meath should come under the provisions of the Act, because for sometime there had been no crime and outrage there. At Assizes after Assizes the Judges congratulated the Grand Jury upon the state of the county.
  Amendment proposed,
  At the end of the Clause, to add the words "Provided always, That from and after the passing of this Act so much of the said Act as applies to the county Meath shall he and is hereby repealed."—(Mr. Ennis)
  SIR MICHAEL HICKS-BEACHobserved that the Government could not accept the Amendment for the reasons he had already given in reference to the Amendment of the hon. Baronet the Member for King's County (Sir Patrick O'Brien).
  MR. PARNELLsupported the Amendment. He said, the Act was passed in 1871 with the object of meeting a Ribbon conspiracy which was supposed at that time to exist. The Chief Secretary had not shown that any such conspiracy now existed, and as no reasonable grounds had been shown, there was no reason why the Act should be continued.
  MR. FAYvindicated the character of the county of Meath from the charge of lawlessness so frequently made against it by alarmists, whose fears, when examined, were found to be groundless. Perhaps, however, it was useless to expect much from a Government which had refused to allow a poor prisoner to see his wife and children.
  Question put, "That those words be there added."
  The Committee divided:—Ayes 71; Noes 290: Majority 219.
  And it being after ten minutes before Seven of the Clock, the Chairman left the Chair, to report Progress.
  Committee report Progress; to sit again this day.
  And it being now Seven of the clock the House suspended its Sitting.
  The House resumed its Sitting at Nine of the clock.

SPAIN—THE CIVIL WAR—RECOGNITION OF BELLIGERENT RIGHTS.

  RESOLUTION.
  MR. O'CLERYmoved—
  "That, in the opinion of this House, it is desirable that, having regard to the extent and prolongation of the Civil War in Spain and the interests connected with this country therein involved, the belligerent rights of that portion of the Spanish population who maintain in their provinces the claims of Don Carlos to the throne of Spain be recognized by Her Majesty's Government."
  The hon. Gentleman observed, that the recognition of the belligerent rights of the Carlists was worthy of the consideration of the House, and in urging such a

  43
  step on the Government he would briefly review the history of the struggle in Spain. Three years ago, while the Duke of Aosta reigned at Madrid, the Carlists raised in the North of Spain the flag of their legal and recognized King, Don Carlos. The movement was commenced by a handful of volunteers in the mountains of Catalonia and Biscay; but now the Carlist Army numbered 75,000 well-trained, well-disciplined, and well-armed men, having at their command from 180 to 190 pieces of artillery. This was a significant fact which could not be ignored in the consideration of this subject. Again, Don Carlos had not an army only, but likewise a thoroughly organized Government in the North of Spain which directed and utilized the resources of that part of the country. Thus a new Power had sprung up in Europe, small indeed as regarded territory, but powerful enough to resist the attacks of its enemies. The relations between the Powers of Europe and this new country were of such an uncertain and doubtful character that they had threatened to disturb the general peace of the Continent. England, as a maritime Power, had much to do with the new kingdom, because it consisted not only of large inland portions of Spain, but it was master of a considerable coast line and several seaports. The Government at Madrid was virtually powerless to prevent our commerce from suffering serious injury. Several vessels while endeavouring to enter Bilbao had been fired at, because they would not recognize the Carlist authority, and he might mention particularly the cases of the Caroline, an English steamer, and the Gustav, a German vessel. The question before the House involved, therefore, matters of great interest to British merchants. It might naturally be asked what had the Carlist movement done, and what had it achieved to establish a right to be recognized? He would answer that the movement had, notwithstanding all the agencies brought to work against it, existed for three years, and not only had it existed, but it had increased materially in strength. On the other hand, what could they say of the Madrid Governments which had attempted in vain to put down this movement? In comparing the Carlist Government and the Madrid Governments, it would be found that while the same
  44
  men had remained at the direction of the Carlist movement throughout the three years of its existence, the Government at Madrid had constantly been changed. There were many reasons why the Government of Don Carlos should be recognized, and one was that the various Governments at Madrid had virtually recognized it.
  Notice taken, that 40 Members were not present; House counted, and 40 Members being found present,
  MR. O'CLERYresumed: The Government of Castelar had virtually recognized the Carlists as belligerents by exchanging prisoners with them, and the Carlists were regarded by the Spanish Government, not as insurgents, but as a Power actually at war with it. Even at a very recent date prisoners had been exchanged between the contending parties under a treaty. The Carlists had an army as strong as we had in the United Kingdom. Their bravery had won the administration even of their enemies. Vattel laid down the dictum that when an insurrectionary Power had assumed such dimensions as to utterly debar the Government of the country from acting within certain limits, it was the duty of foreign Powers to recognize the so-called insurgent Power as far as the protection of life and property in that country was concerned. England had over and over again acted upon that principle, and, taking into consideration the facts that the Government at Madrid had failed to give peace to Spain, that the Carlist King, Don Carlos, had an Army of 75,000 strong, and that the Basque Provinces were virtually a new kingdom, ruled by a regularly organized Government, it became necessary that other Powers having commercial interests in Spain should recognize the Carlists. In conclusion, the hon. Member said, he thought he had shown good grounds for presenting his case to the consideration of the House, and therefore he begged to move his Resolution.
  MAJOR O'GORMANseconded the Motion.
  Motion made, and Question proposed,
  "That, in the opinion of this House, it is desirable that, having regard to the extent and prolongation of the Civil War in Spain and the interests connected with this Country therein involved, the belligerent rights of that portion of the Spanish population who maintain in their

  45
  provinces the claims of Don Carlos to the throne of Spain be recognised by Her Majesty's Government."—(Mr. O'Clery.)
  MR. BOURKEsaid, interesting as the subject was, he did not intend to trespass upon the attention of the House for more than a few moments, because he knew they were anxious to consider the other matters that were on the Notice Paper. The question of the period at which belligerent States should be recognized by neutral and friendly States was doubtless one of a very interesting character; but, at the same time, it was a question concerning which it was almost impossible to lay down any general principles. What Mr. Canning said in 1825 had always been recognized as authoritative respecting the belligerency of certain States, and remained true at the present time—namely, that it was a question of fact rather than of principle, and depended entirely upon certain circumstances of each individual case. The first and main question to be considered in cases of this kind was, whether it was necessary that we should recognize a portion of the population of another country as belligerents? He listened with great attention and expectation to the hon. Gentleman who had just spoken, because he perceived in the Resolution the words "in the interests of this country," and he (Mr. Bourke) thought it was very probable that the hon. Member would have endeavoured to show that, so far as the interests of this country were concerned, it was desirable that the belligerency of the Car-lists should be recognized; but he had failed to hear from the hon. Gentleman anything to support such a proposition, which, after all, was the proposition which the hon. Member had to maintain. In every case it was necessary to consider the history of the insurgents, their resources, their organization, the population as compared with the parent State, and, above all, their capabilities and the probabilities of their being able to hold their own as an independent State, if left to themselves. In the case of land warfare it was almost impossible to say—where a State was not contiguous, that there was any necessity whatever in the interests of the recognizing State to recognize the insurgent State before it had completely established its independence; because it was impossible to point out any one interest
  46
  which, if the State was not contiguous, could be affected by a state of war, provided that that war was only carried on by land. In maritime warfare it was, of course, different, because if the cruiser of an insurgent State could manage to go about destroying the commerce either of the parent State, or of a neutral State, it became an important matter for all the persons interested in commence to endeavour to find out the status of the insurgent State. They must be either pirates or belligerents; and, of course, everyone knew that unless they were treated as belligerents, they could have none of those rights upon the sea which were generally accorded to belligerents, and must be treated to all intents and purposes as pirates. In the case of a maritime war all kinds of questions arose, directly the war broke out, as to the right of capture, the right of seizing goods on board neutral vessels, and as to those maritime rights which were accorded to belligerents, and which, of course, pirates could not possess. In the American War, England recognized the Confederate States at a very early period of the struggle, the reason for the recognition by this country and by other countries mainly being that the Confederates had cruisers on the seas, and that it was absolutely necessary for our own safety as well as that of other countries to recognize them as belligerents. Those were some of the considerations which must be applied in cases where it was proposed to recognize belligerent and insurgent States. How could they be applied to the present question? In the first place, the Carlists had no ships, and therefore the general inducements which acted upon this country to recognize the Confederate States could not apply to the Carlists, who must be looked upon as persons carrying on an insurgent war by land. He had failed to discover in the speech of the hon. Gentleman any reasons showing the necessity to recognize the Car-lists as belligerents. In fact, it was impossible to point out any single interest in this country which would be affected beneficially by the recognition of the Carlists, and that, after all, was the point they had to consider. When the Carlist position was considered, they must also consider the past history of Spain, and the events which had taken

  47
  place with regard to the distinguished warriors in question. In the Seven Years' War, between 1836 and 1841, the position of the Carlists was very much the same as it was now, and their position was certainly no better now than it was then. During the whole of that time they were never recognized as a belligerent Power. It was perfectly true that at the present time they occupied a very large portion of the north-east of Spain; but, at the same time, it was equally true that the Government of Madrid occupied almost all the large towns in that portion of the country in which the Carlists were strongest—Pamplona, Vittoria, Lograno, San Sebastian, Iran, Fuenterrabia, Bilbao, and one or two other large towns. It was doubtless perfectly true that the Carlist forces were exceedingly strong in the mountain districts, and he believed that the hon. Member had not overstated the strength of those forces. No doubt, also, the Carlists had a large artillery force; but it must be recollected that their great strength arose from the nature of the country, which was extremely favourable to the Carlist mode of warfare, and that they never attempted to occupy any large portion of Spain beyond the district to which for many years they had been historically attached. He did not intend to enter into the question of the age of the present Government of Spain; he did not think the question was as to a comparison between the age of the Government of Spain and the age of that of Don Carlos, because the fact was that the whole of Spain, with the exception of the part to which he had alluded, recognized willingly and cheerfully the Madrid Government. Beyond that they had nothing to do. It was not their affair which was the best Government or which was the worst; all they knew was that, with the exception of part of Biscay and Navarre and a portion of Catalonia which was held by the Carlist forces, the rest of the country willingly accorded its allegiance to the present Government at Madrid. Under those circumstances, he did not think the House could hesitate for a moment in refusing to assent to the Resolution of the hon. Gentleman. He trusted that the hon. Gentleman would be satisfied with this discussion, and would not proceed to divide the House upon his Motion. He did not wish to say one word against the Carlists, a brave race
  48
  and having amongst them some of the hardiest warriors in the world; but acting upon the principles which this country had always followed with regard to the recognition of belligerents, Her Majesty's Government did not see that they could accord belligerent rights to the Carlists.
  MR. MELDONsaid, as his hon. Friend had failed in showing any benefits which would ensue from the recognition of the Carlists, he ought not to press his Motion to a division.
  MR. O'CLERY, in reply, remarked that, in his opinion, the policy enunciated by the Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs was rather a dangerous one to follow; and urged that the recognition of the Carlists by England would be an act worthy of this country and of the position which England occupied as a civilized Power. With regard to the direct interests of this country he had already stated that our commercial interests were largely bound up with those of the North of Spain. As he conceived that the virtual recognition recorded to the Carlists, on the part of the hon. Gentleman opposite, would strengthen the resources of the Carlist Army, he would withdraw his Motion.
  Motion, by leave, withdrawn.

PARLIAMENT—PUBLICATION OF DEBATES AND EXCLUSION OF STRANGERS.—RESOLUTION.
THE MARQUESS OF HARTINGTON: The subject, or rather the two subjects, to which I propose to call the attention of the House this evening has been brought on more than one occasion before its notice within a recent date; but the House has not considered it necessary to take any action in relation to the matter, probably for the reason that no great or serious practical inconvenience was found to have resulted from the existing state of things, and from the circumstance that this House is always unwilling to alter any of its Rules or Orders merely to meet a theoretical grievance as opposed to a practical grievance. During the present Session, however, incidents have occurred which have caused the House to be of opinion that both the subjects to which I propose to call attention are in a position which requires the further consideration of the House. The Resolutions which I have

49
placed upon the Paper deal, as the House will observe, with two points. The first Resolution deals with the question of the publication of the reports of our debates, and the last two Resolutions deal with the question of the exclusion of Strangers. As to the publication of our debates, the House has always entertained—or appears to have entertained—very considerable jealousy on the subject of the publication of any reports of its debates. The reason for that seems to have been that in the time of Charles I. and his Successors, very unpleasant consequences frequently ensued in consequence of words which were spoken by Members of this House. I do not think I could give a better account of the reasons which appear to have prompted this jealousy on the part of the House with regard to the publication of its debates than by reading a short extract from a speech which was made by Lord Campbell—a much greater authority than I can pretend to be—on the occasion of the introduction of a Bill which dealt, among other things, with the present subject. Lord Campbell, on the second reading of the Bill, said—
"The reason why the Orders prohibiting the publication of the debates had been passed by both Houses was this:—During the progress of the struggle between the Crown and the two Houses of Parliament every effort was made by the two Houses to prevent the Crown from exercising the illegal power which it had usurped of punishing Members for what they spoke in Parliament, and it was then that these Orders were made. Secrecy was then of great importance, because when the Crown heard that proceedings which it disapproved were going on in the House of Commons next morning, the Black Rod would knock at the door and summon the Commons to the Upper House, and Parliament was dissolved. Sometimes matters went further than this. Members were summoned before the Privy Council and examined as to their speeches, and if they could not give a satisfactory explanation they were sent to the Tower, there to pass their time until the prorogation. It was to prevent the Crown from getting notice of what was going on in Parliament that these Orders were made, and they were chiefly directed against the publication by Members of their own speeches. On the 13th of July, 1640—not to go further back—the Commons ordered that 'No Member shall either give a copy or publish in print anything that he shall speak here, without leave of the House;' and on the 22nd of March of the same year—' That all Members of the House are enjoined to deliver out no copy or notes of anything that is brought into the House, propounded or agitated in the House.' On the 28th of March, 1642, the Commons resolved that 'What person soever shall print or sell any Act or passages of
50
this House under the name of a diurnal or otherwise, without the particular licence of this House, shall be reputed a high contemner and breaker of the privilege of Parliament, and punished accordingly."—[3 Hansard, cxlix. 953.]
Lord Campbell further stated—
"Until the year 1771 both Houses set their faces stedfastly against any publication of any part of their proceedings; but the Rule was violated by reports under fictitious names. There were reports, for instance, of the proceedings of the Parliaments of Lilliput and Utopia, in which the speeches of Bolingbroke and other great speakers of the reigns of Anne and the first two Georges were given under fictitious names. But there was great apprehension that the publisher of these might at any time be sent to prison. Since 1771, however, the Rules against the publication of reports had been relaxed, in consequence of a memorable crisis that then occurred, and of which an excellent account was given in Lord Mahon's history, when the House of Commons tried to enforce their order to prevent the publication of debates, and sent a messenger to arrest the publisher. But the messenger himself was arrested and sent to Giltspur Street Compter; and although the House of Commons sent the Lord Mayor and an Alderman to the Tower for contempt, the House was finally baffled, and from that time any person who pleased had published the debates in Parliament without fear."—[Ibid., 955.]
I might enlarge on this subject. I might remind the House that the debates as to what took place during that protracted conflict of which Lord Campbell reports merely the conclusion are now only known to us through the agency of an hon. Member who happens to have been a relative of my own. Since the House entered into that memorable conflict with the printer of a newspaper and with Mr. Wilkes, these Orders that still remain have practically fallen into disuse. We have retained on our Journals Resolutions which declare it to be a breach of the Privileges of the House for any person to report our debates; yet we have in the construction of the House in which we now sit provided accommodation especially for the use of reporters, and the House unanimously considers at this day that the publication of our debates in the public journals is of great advantage not only to the public but also to themselves. It is a convenience to ourselves to be able at all times to refer to the admirable reports of our proceedings which are given in some of the papers; and I am sure we all agree in thinking that it is of the greatest possible public importance to have the proceedings of this House faithfully reported to the public out-of-doors, that the constituent-

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cies may know what their Representatives are doing; and I believe we all concur in the opinion that the best polical education which the people of this country can have is to read accurate reports of the debates conducted within these walls. Well, if the House has retained those Orders on its Books, I conceive that it has done so with the object of retaining the power, if it should think necessary to use it, of punishing the publisher of any newspaper that should maliciously misrepresent the debates in Parliament, or commit any other offence with reference to the publication of Parliamentary proceedings. Since the conclusion of the contest to which I have referred, it has happened on more than one occasion that printers and publishers of newspapers have been summoned, or that a Motion has been made that they should be summoned, to the Bar of the House, nominally on account of Breach of Privilege committed by publishing debates, but really on account of wilful and malicious misrepresentation of what has passed here. Well, if this is the present position of affairs, it may be asked what practical object there is in proposing any alteration. Reporters are admitted within our walls, and the House is glad that its debates should be published, and only retains this power for exercise in the case of misrepresentation. Well, the practical object appears to me to be this. In the first place, the House, by its present Rules, may be placed at any time in a false position. It is in the power of any Member to call attention to the publication of our debates; and, as happened a very short time ago, the House being, perhaps, somewhat taken by surprise, may have no alternative but to affirm the principle that the publication of the debates, which the House at all times considers to be a useful and salutary proceeding, is a breach of its Privileges. There is another practical object that can be attained. In case of it being necessary to take proceedings against the publisher of a newspaper for wilful misrepresentation, it seems to me to be of the highest importance that in a case where a conflict may occur between this House and the Press or as has occurred before now with Courts of Law—that this House should occupy a perfectly clear and logical position, and should not be placed in the condition of assuming to prosecute
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the printer or the publisher for a Breach of Privilege, when what the House really complains of is not the publication but a misrepresentation of its proceedings. A further question may then be asked why, if any alteration is to be made, I do not repeal the Orders referred to in Lord Campbell's speech, and change our definition of the word Privilege? Well, my answer to that is this. I am perfectly well aware the House would regard with very great jealousy any proposal to modify in any respect the Privileges which have been maintained by its predecessors, and which it still maintains itself; and, further, that this being a question which we desire to keep in our own hands, and to deal with as a matter of Privilege, and not as a matter of law, it is impossible for the House to create new Privileges. It will be far easier for us to deal with questions which may possibly arise, and which we cannot altogether foresee, upon the Privileges obtained for us by our predecessors, and which we still assert, than to abandon them and attempt to create new Privileges. The Resolution, therefore, which I have to propose does not, in the least, trench on the Privilege which the House has asserted for such a length of time, and which we still maintain. It is rather a rule for the guidance of the House than an alteration of the law as affecting the relations between Parliament and the Press. The Resolution which I have to propose amply preserves the power of the House to deal with any misrepresentation, or other offence against the Privileges of the House. When I placed the Notice on the Paper, I had some doubt that the terms of the Resolution were almost wider than the occasion requires. The Resolution is to the effect—
"That this House will not entertain any complaint, in respect of the publication of the Debates or Proceedings of the House, or of any Committee thereof, except when any such Debates or Proceedings shall have been conducted with closed doors, or when such publication shall have been expressly prohibited by the House, or by any Committee, or in case of wilful misrepresentation, or other offence in relation to such publication."
Well, these words are certainly wide; but I must say I have seen with some satisfaction that they have generally been accepted by the Press as affording a reasonable and satisfactory solution of the difficulties which have occurred, or

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which might occur; and I do not think, on consideration, the House will be of opinion that they are wider than the occasion requires. It is impossible to foresee all the cases that may arise; but if the form which the reports of our proceedings have assumed be persevered in it is quite possible the House might wish to interpose some check on the mode of reporting adopted by some of the public papers. Unfortunately, as I think, several newspapers of the day have recently greatly restricted their formal reports of the debates in Parliament, but indulged to a very considerable extent in a somewhat sensational description of the proceedings of the House. I have never, however, seen any account of those proceedings to which I could for a moment suppose the House would desire to take exception; but still it is possible that this system might be developed to such an extent as might tend to bring the House into contempt, when it would be necessary for the House to take notice of them; and, therefore, I think that the words I have proposed, if the House is willing to restrict the Privilege by Resolution, are not too wide to meet the occasion. I have said my Resolution is rather a rule to guide our own proceedings than to establish a different law in relation to the papers. The benefit I think the House would derive from such a rule would be that it would be saved being placed in a false position, such as I think it occupied the other day on the Motion of the hon. and learned Member for Londonderry (Mr. C. Lewis), when it passed a Resolution that the printers of two newspapers had committed a breach of Privilege in reporting the proceedings of a Committee, the proceedings of that Committee having been held with open doors, and it being perfectly well known to the Members of the Committee and the House, that the proceedings were being reported by the Press. The House, it appears to me, has shown somewhat greater jealousy about the publication of the proceedings of Committees since 1771 than in regard to the publication of its own proceedings. Within recent years the House passed a Resolution that the publication of the proceedings or the Report of a Committee before it was presented to the House was a breach of Privilege; and it is perfectly conceivable that such a proceeding might be, on the ground of public convenience,
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extremely objectionable, and I think that the Resolution I propose will meet this case also. It cannot be expected that the proceedings of Committees will be kept out of the newspapers, unless the Committees determine to sit with closed doors, or unless it is determined in particular cases that particular answers given by the witnesses shall not be reported. This case is entirely met by the Resolution I propose, and I think Committees and the House will retain all the authority over the publication of their proceedings which may seem necessary. The second point to which my Resolutions refer is the exclusion of Strangers. Up to a very recent date the Orders of the House have been as peremptory in relation to the exclusion of Strangers as they have been in relation to the publication of its debates. In the speech of Lord Campbell, to which I have referred, he gives an account of our proceedings in that respect. He says—
"Until 1845 there were positive orders of the House of Commons against the admission of strangers:—'Ordered, that the Serjeant-at-Arms attending this House do from time to time take into his custody any stranger whom he may see, or who may be reported to him to be, in any part of the House or galleries.' It was forbidden to any stranger to come into any part of the House or gallery belonging to the House. It was also ordered 'that no Member of this House do presume to bring any stranger into any part of the House or galleries.' "—[3 Hansard, cxlix. 955–6.]
In 1844 a Motion was made by Mr. Christie for a Committee to inquire into the matters to which I have now called the attention of the House. That Motion was negatived; but the discussion which took place was not without some result, because in the next year both Orders to which I have referred were modified by the House, and they now stand in this shape—
"That the Serjeant-at-Arms attending this House do from time to time take into his custody any stranger whom he may see, or who may be reported to him to be in any part of the House or gallery appropriated to the Members of this House.
"That no Member of this House do presume to bring any stranger into any part of the House or gallery appropriated to the Members of this House while the House or a Committee of the Whole House is sitting."—[Ibid. 956.]
By that Order, and by the accommodation which has been provided for reporters, we practically recognize the presence of Strangers during our de-

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bates; but though practically recognizing the presence of Strangers during our debates, we have, as the House is aware, retained without alteration the former usage—for I believe it is a usage, and not a Rule of the House—under which the Speaker is obliged to order that Strangers shall be excluded as soon as any single Member takes notice of their presence. This is a power which has been used and inconveniently exercised on several occasions in recent times. In the year 1849 Mr. John O'Connell more than once made use of the power of excluding Strangers—on account, I believe, of the opinion which he entertained that his speeches were inadequately reported. That led to the appointment of a Committee. That Committee does not appear to have taken evidence; at all events, no report of evidence is preserved; but it came to the conclusion that there was no adequate necessity for the alteration of the Rule, and nothing was done in consequence. I presume they came to that conclusion believing that no other Member of the House was likely to exercise the Privilege of the House in the inconvenient manner in which Mr. John O'Connell had done. I am not aware that the power was exercised again for a considerable number of years; but in 1870 it was used for a different purpose by the hon. and learned Member for Ayr (Mr. Craufurd). A debate of a particular character came on in the House, and the hon. and learned Member for Ayr—not capriciously, but for an object—proposed that Strangers should be excluded from the Gallery. That poposition, owing to the peculiar nature of the regulations of the House, could not be debated, and what may have been the opinion of the majority of the House I do not know; but having taken notice of the presence of Strangers, it was in the power of the hon. and learned Member for Ayr to exclude, and he did exclude, Strangers from that particular debate. The subject was then brought to the notice of the House by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Oxfordshire (Mr. Henley.) He particularly objected to the occasion on which the power was used, and called on the Government of the day to appoint a Committee, or take other steps, by means of which the question might be placed on a more satisfactory footing. My right hon. Friend
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the Member for Greenwich (Mr. Gladstone), then at the head of the Government, stated that, if it were the wish of the House that a Committee should be appointed, he had no objection to the appointment of such a Committee; but he did not seem then to consider that it would be necessary that any steps should be taken. A Committee was subsequently appointed to consider several questions affecting the business of the House, of which my right hon. Friend the Member for the University of London (Mr. Lowe) was Chairman. That Committee passed a Resolution—I believe only by a narrow majority—to the effect that the existing rule ought to be altered, and that Strangers should not be excluded, except on the Question put and agreed to without Amendment or debate. My right hon. Friend, as Chairman of that Committee, moved a Resolution to that effect in this House. Two objections appear to have been taken to that proposal. In the first place, it was necessary in cases of disorder or disturbance of any kind, the House should retain its power of summarily excluding Strangers. It was argued that every other Assembly except our own had, at some time or other, more or less been disturbed in its proceedings by strangers in the galleries, and that, as it was impossible to know what might occur in our own House, it was essential that some summary mode of removing strangers should be retained in case of necessity. The second objection was that the power of exclusion, as proposed by the Committee, might be used for the purpose of delaying a debate. I admit there is considerable weight in both objections, and I venture to think the proposals I have placed on the Table have some advantages over those moved by my right hon. Friend. In the first place, I think that the power of excluding strangers in cases of disturbance and disorder may very advantageously be left in the hands of the right hon. Gentleman who does now, and we must assume in all cases will, possess the complete and entire confidence of the House—that it might be left in the hands of the Speaker to give directions to the Serjeant-at-Arms, in case of disturbance of any kind whatever, to take what measures may appear to him necessary to preserve the order, tranquillity, and quiet of our proceedings. The only objection I can conceive to my Resolu-

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tion is that already the right hon. Gentleman has the power to take what measures may be necessary for that purpose. But, the power of excluding Strangers being in the hands of any single Member, there could be only very rare occasions for the exercise of that power by the Speaker. I therefore do not think it superfluous when the circumstances are somewhat altered, that the right hon. Gentleman should have the power to direct the officers of this House to take such steps as may be necessary for the preservation of order. As for the objection that the employment of this power may be used for purposes of delay, I cannot think there is much in it. Our Forms already give ample opportunity of delay if a Member or a minority of Members are disposed to take advantage of them for that purpose, and we therefore rely more on the good sense and good feeling of hon. Members than upon positive enactment to prevent our proceedings from being unnecessarily delayed. Nevertheless, if the House should be of opinion that the Resolutions which I propose might be abused, I should be perfectly willing to defer to the opinion of the House; and if it thinks fit to adopt the Amendment of the hon. Member for Cambridge University (Mr. Beresford Hope), that this power should be used only once in the course of a Sitting, I shall not be disposed very seriously to object. It seems to me, however, that to restrict the use of this power to one occasion during a Sitting of this House might possibly lead to inconvenience. I would suggest to the hon. Member it might be better to propose that the Motion to exclude Strangers should not be made more than once during the progress of the same debate. [Mr. BERESFORD HOPE intimated that that was his proposal.] If the hon. Member should think that proposition an improvement, I would make no objection. There is another point in which I have somewhat departed from the recommendation of the Committee. The Committee recommended that in all cases when it was proposed that Strangers should be excluded the question should be decided without Amendment or debate. That does not seem to me altogether a proper Resolution. If the necessity for the exclusion of Strangers can be seen beforehand it appears unreasonable that the Member who proposes it
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should not have an opportunity of stating his reasons, and that the House should not have an opportunity of debating it. I need refer only to the occasion to which I have before alluded, when the late Member for Ayr (Mr. Craufurd) proposed to exclude Strangers. It seems to me that the House would consider it perfectly reasonable that any Member who thought it for the public interest or for the interest of morality and decency that Strangers should be excluded should have an opportunity of stating his reasons, and that there should be debate upon it. But if, on the contrary, the question arises suddenly, then I should think it would be unreasonable that the Business before the House should be delayed by discussions. I have now, before I sit down, only to refer to the Amendments of these Resolutions which have been put on the Paper. As to the Amendment of my hon. Friend the Member for Galway (Mr. Mitchell Henry), I can see no reason why the House should delay its decision upon the two questions referred to until another Committee has been appointed. As I have already shown, this question has been already considered by two Committees, and the results arrived at from their deliberations have not been so encouraging, I think, as to induce the House to consent to the appointment of another Committee. I understand the object of my hon. Friend to be that a Committee should consider the question of what are known as official reports. That, no doubt, is a question which may very well receive the attention of the House; but it is not directly or immediately connected with the subject I have brought before it. There are certain inconveniences to be removed, with which the Resolutions I have placed on the Paper deal, and I do not see that it is in the least necessary to mix these questions with the consideration of the very different one of official reporting. I have a very strong opinion myself upon the subject, and when the occasion arises I shall ask leave to state why I am strongly opposed to a system of official reporting. However, that is a subject which it is perfectly competent for my hon. Friend to bring before the House whenever he pleases, and to move for a Committee; but the question which I submit ought not to be delayed until a Committee be appointed to report on an entirely dif-

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ferent subject. Then as to the Amendment of the hon. and learned Member for Salford (Mr. Charley). I do not see that it any way differs in principle from what I propose. I naturally prefer the form adopted in my Resolutions; but if the hon. and learned Member can show there is any advantage in the form which he has chosen, I should of course submit to the judgment of the House. I think the first of his Resolutions is objectionable for a reason I have already stated. I do not think it desirable that we should rescind any of our Rules which relate to Privilege. The Privileges which we possess have been established by the unbroken practice of centuries; and though it is easy to get rid of a Privilege, it is impossible for us to restore it when once it is given up. There is, however, one suggestion in the Amendment of the hon. and learned Member for Salford, which I shall be glad to adopt in the Resolutions I propose. The Chairman of Committee of the Whole House for the time being ought to have the same power as to the preservation of order and the exclusion of Strangers as the Speaker when the House is out of Committee. I have already stated that if the House should consider it necessary, I should not resist the adoption of a part of the Amendment to be proposed by the hon. Member for the University of Cambridge. I will not trouble the House any further. Hoping that the House will excuse me for the lengthened time I have occupied in the consideration of this important subject, and convinced of the extreme desirability of setting these somewhat troublesome and vexatious questions at rest, I humbly submit the Resolutions which I have placed on the Paper. The noble Marquess concluded by moving the first Resolution.
Motion made, and Question proposed,
"That this House will not entertain any complaint, in respect of the publication of the Debates or Proceedings of the House, or of any Committee thereof, except when any such Debates or Proceedings shall have been conducted with closed doors, or when such publication shall have been expressly prohibited by the House, or by any Committee, or in case of wilful misrepresentation, or other offence in relation to such publication."—(The Marquess of Hartington.)
MR. MITCHELL HENRYsaid, the Amendment he had placed on the Paper
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indicated the view which he thought ought to be carefully pressed on the House before it altered those fundamental privileges which had belonged to it from time immemorial. It indicated that they ought not to do in haste that which they might have to repent at leisure. There was a saying that hard cases made bad law, and this House itself had had experience of the fact that legislation under circumstances of temporary excitement sometimes led to inconvenient results. He would not refer at length to what had occurred in the present Session; but he thought there were few Members of the House who did not believe that if more time had been given for consideration, some of the Re-solutions of the House this Session would not have been taken—he referred especially to the Motion of the hon. and learned Member for Londonderry (Mr. C. Lewis). It surely was essential that the House should not legislate on an important subject of this kind under the influence of panic. All he now asked the House to do was to pause for a moment, and consider if it had before it all the information which it ought to have in its possession in reference to those two important subjects—the Exclusion of Strangers and the reporting of the Debates. These two subjects were not necessarily connected with each other; but in the practice of the House they had a most intimate connection. The fact was that the power to exclude Strangers had necessarily excluded the reports of debates for many years. Gradually there had been a relaxation in the practice, so far as the presence of Strangers was concerned, and there was now a quasi-legal sanction of the reports of the proceedings of the House. But the right to exclude Strangers had done more to preserve the liberties of the subject in this country than any other measure. Without, therefore, offering any opinion at that moment as to whether the rule ought to be relaxed or altogether abrogated—on which subject possibly he had an opinion in accordance with that of the noble Marquess—he held that it would not be becoming in the House, suddenly and in consequence of what had taken place of late years, without adequate consideration, to make fundamental alterations in the laws of Parliament. What had occurred? His hon. and learned Friend the Member

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for Londonderry, in the exercise of his undoubted right, brought under the notice of the House certain circumstances that occurred in a Committee upstairs, and called upon the House to come to an immediate decision upon the question. The House did so; and the right hon. Gentleman the Prime Minister supported the Motion of the hon. and learned Gentleman to call the printers of certain newspapers to the Bar of the House. A little reflection, however, showed the right hon. Gentleman that it would be much better to take another course, and the result was that the printers in question were not called to the Bar of the House. This induced his hon. Friend the Member for Louth (Mr. Sullivan) to exercise the privilege which pertained to every Member of the House, and for the purpose in reality not of excluding Strangers, but of securing protection to those who reported the proceedings of the House, he directed attention to the presence of Strangers, and Mr. Speaker, having no option in the matter, Strangers were ordered to withdraw accordingly. The noble Lord the Leader of the Opposition then showed a desire to take up the subject, which had been in the minds of hon. Members for years past, but which no one had ever taken up in a serious spirit on account of the great difficulties attending it; and his hon. Friend the Member for Louth said at once that he would cease from putting his privilege in force in any manner that might be considered vexatious by the House. His hon. Friend the Member for Cavan (Mr. Biggar) next, thinking that the threat—if he might use the term—of his hon. Friend the Member for Louth to repeat his Motion constantly had been dropped without adequate consideration, made a Motion for the exclusion of Strangers. The Motion was made at an inconvenient time, and very much against the feeling and spirit of the House. His hon. Friend the Member for Cavan had not repeated the Motion, and he (Mr. Mitchell Henry) thought he was able to say that, if this subject were really considered by the House, it was not his intention to do so. What did this show? It showed that for the preservation of the liberty of debate, and of the other privileges which were greater in the English House of Commons than in any other Assembly in the world, they
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must depend upon the good feeling of Members. The hon. Member for Cavan came from the North of Ireland. He belonged to that body of Protestants who were rightly considered to have a share of the virtue of persistency amounting, perhaps, sometimes to a suspicion of a shade of obstinacy; but the privileges of Englishmen had repeatedly been preserved by the exhibition of those very qualities of which they now complained. Nobody could deny that in Parliament, as elsewhere, individuals did sometimes trench upon the privileges with which they were entrusted as Members of that Assembly to an extent which a wider experience would not justify; but he doubted very much whether there was a single example in the history of Parliament of an individual entering the House of Commons, with no matter what prejudices against the House, who did not in the course of a very short time conform himself to the manners and customs of the House; and he did not believe that any hon. Gentleman would deny that a spirit of fair play governed their proceedings. It was that circumstance which had enabled them to preserve the liberties they enjoyed. Repeatedly Motions were made for the purpose of delay, both by individual Members and by Parties, and when the position of the two Parties in the House was reversed, he had frequently been in the division lobby until daylight was streaming through the windows. Under what circumstances? Because hon. Gentlemen opposite thought it their duty to offer all the opposition in their power to such questions as the abolition of Army Purchase. A few years ago, also, the right hon. Gentleman lately at the head of the Government, feeling very strongly in reference to the Divorce and Matrimonial Causes Bill, thought it right, in the discharge of his duty—as might be seen, on reference to Hansard—to make up wards of 70 speeches, many of them long ones, in the course of the few weeks which elapsed during the progress of that measure. Were there any complaints of factious opposition at that time? Why, the very life of Parliament depended on factious opposition. It was repeatedly asked that they should adopt the practice which was followed in the French Assembly for limiting the time of debate by voting

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the clôture; but the House had had the good sense not to adopt any such restrictions, and he appealed to the House whether that liberty had been so abused as to become license;—whether, indeed, it had not preserved the life of Parliament, and in reality been used in conformity with the institutions and genius of the English people? In the American Congress they had adopted a rule, which was called the Five Minutes Rule. There, no Member was permitted to speak longer than one hour in introducing a measure, nor more than five minutes when the House was in Committee. This limitation was the result of not putting confidence in the good sense and good feeling of the Members, and he should strongly deprecate its adoption in this country. ["Question!"] All these limitations on the privileges of the House had been advocated on former occasions, in consequence of the privileges having been put into inconvenient action on particular questions. ["Question!"] He was about to show that although the exclusion of Strangers might be productive of inconvenience, other limitations on Parliamentary liberty elsewhere had resulted in great inconvenience, and he was asking the House to pause before consenting to limit its own privileges. He submitted, therefore, that what he was saying now was perfectly in Order. He contended, then, that it was not advisable, under the circumstances which had been brought before them suddenly, to alter the Rules of the House in reference to anything that had recently occurred in the House. Why was it that strangers were originally excluded from the House? He was not going to detain the House by reading extracts from constitutional histories on the subject; but everybody knew, or ought to know, that the jealousy which Parliament had shown at the presence of strangers was in consequence of the constitutional battle which the House of Commons fought against the Stuart Kings. They knew that at that time the King used to limit the subjects on which Parliament was to be allowed to speak its mind; and if anything was said that was disagreeable to the King, strong measures were the result. James I tore out pages from the Journals of the House, and Charles I went so far as to endeavour to seize five of its Members.
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No wonder, then, that the House of Commons, which required to deliberate without fear as to what the Crown might do, should have been extremely jealous of its power to prevent the publication of its debates, and consequently of the presence of Strangers. But the battle had been fought out many years ago; they were not now afraid of the interference of the Crown, and did not maintain the privilege which their ancestors had handed down to them on any such ground as that. There were other reasons, however, why they ought to preserve their privileges; but before going into that, he would say that there was this objection to the Resolutions of the noble Marquess—that the privilege to exclude Strangers did not belong to the House of Commons alone. It was a privilege of Parliament, and all their privileges were privileges dependent upon the action of Parliament—that was, both Houses of Parliament, confirmed by the Sovereign; and he held that it would not be a seemly thing to make a fundamental alteration in that privilege without some conference with the other House of Parliament. The other House had a right to know something of the proceedings of the House of Commons in this matter. He did not deny, indeed, that this House possessed the right of deciding how it would exercise its privilege; but it could not create a new privilege, and it did not possess one which was not equally shared by the other House of Parliament. That view of the question might or might not commend itself to the approval of hon. Gentlemen; but, at any rate, it commended itself to considerable constitutional authorities, and that was another reason why the House should pause.
He now came to another matter which was intimately mixed up with this—that was, the reports of their debates. If he excepted Mr. Craufurd's Motion two or three Sessions ago, the privilege of excluding Strangers had not been exercised in modern times save for the purpose of insuring adequate and correct reports of the debates. In every instance in which it was proposed to exclude Strangers, including, of course, the reporters, it had been made because individual Members thought they had a right to complain of the reports of their speeches. Was there any foundation for that? In former times, there was nothing for which the

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public had so great an appetite as the reports of the proceedings of Parliament. Those were the days when questions of Constitutional Law or great reforms in the customs of this country were under consideration. At the close of the last century the greatest efforts were made, in spite of perils, to give the public reports of the proceedings of the House of Commons. The Times, The Morning Chronicle, The Morning Herald, and other newspapers, established their reputations in very great measure by the fullness and accuracy with which they reported Parliamentary debates. Lord Campbell, Charles Dickens, and a great many other distinguished men had been Parliamentary reporters, and though he did not mean for a moment to say that there were not equally distinguished persons now engaged in that occupation, yet he certainly must state that, as a general rule, the reports of the debates had entirely changed in their character. The leading journal, The Times, gave very full reports, and so did one other morning paper. The other papers, however, rightly considering that they ought not to occupy space, which to them was money, with matter which would not be generally interesting to the public, cut down the debates to the very smallest dimensions. Moreover, there had crept into the House of Commons the practice of sensational reporting. Sketches of what occurred, or of what was supposed to have occurred, were given to the public. The appearance of Members and their manners were described, although, God knew! Gentlemen who worked till 2 or 3 o'clock in the morning might be excused if sometimes they were a little ungainly in their manners. These matters were, however, made the subjects of sensational sketches. [An hon. MEMBER: Caricatures.] Yes, caricatures, as his right hon. Friend observed. He did not object to this for a moment; but he asked the House of Commons to consider the position in which it was placed. When the Corn Laws were in debate, one of the strongest complaints made by Mr. Cobden was that the arguments of those who spoke on his side of the question were never fairly put before the public, and he complained as much of The Times as of any other newspaper. He said that the arguments of those who opposed Free Trade were put fully before the public,
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whilst those which were in its favour were condensed to the utmost. It was even in contemplation to try to prevent such things as summaries of the debates in which the arguments were placed so much on one side, whilst the reply was almost suppressed. This was one of the strongest arguments for the "freedom of literature" as it was called, and the repeal of the duty on paper. It was then said—"If you establish a cheap Press, you will have full and accurate reports of the debates in Parliament. Those reports will be diffused throughout the length and breadth of the land, and people who read the arguments on one side will then have an opportunity of reading those on the other." The very reverse had happened. Owing to the great extension of telegraphic enterprize; to the rapidity with which everything was done now-a-days; to the short time people had at their disposal; and to the appetite which of late years had been created for sensational writing, the reports of the debates in Parliament were, with very few exceptions, most farcical, and, as he thought, not altogether creditable to the taste of the people of England. The newspapers, which were multiplying everywhere, and doing so much good, gave condensed reports of what took place in Parliament; not in the shape of reports, however, but as sensational sketches. People in the country received these reports in the morning in their local newspapers, through the medium of the telegraph. Those paragraphs satisfied their appetite for political information; the consequence was, that they never referred to the debates which took place in this House, never read the other side of the question, and thus their views were altogether warped on great public questions. Perhaps some hon. Members might say this was an evil which corrected itself, and might ask—"Do you mean to assert that we ought to publish our reports in order to educate the people?" Well, he meant to say that the expectations of those who instituted the cheap Press in the hope of widely diffusing political information, founded on the debates of this House, had been disappointed. He meant to say that the cheap Press of this country did not give to the people those full reports of the debates in Parliament which it was expected they would do when the

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Press laws were reformed. He had made this matter the subject of very-careful inquiry, because he regarded it in a serious light, and he had not made these observations in any spirit of hostility to the Press; but the House of Commons ought to know what it was going to do before it proceeded to legislate on the question, and he thought the statements which he had made, and which, if the House would bear with him, he would yet make, were worthy of being inquired into by a Select Committee of the House. Of late years there had sprung up a system of Telegraphic Press Agencies. Two of these agencies had seats among the reporters of the proceedings of this House: one was the Central Press; the other the Press Association. "What happened?—and here he begged the attention of the House to what he was going to say. Both these extensive organizations had their own reporters, who wrote out in manifold, and telegraphed to different provincial newspapers the reports of the debates of the House. The Central News—another association—had a list of hon. Members whose speeches were to be carefully and accurately reported. [Sir HENRY JAMES: Name!] The lists of the Associations extended to upwards of 200 Members of the House, whose speeches were to be telegraphed at full length to various provincial newspapers; and he did not complain of that; but he would observe that a speech made by an hon. Member would appear at full length in the local paper which was the organ of his views, and with which he was en rapport, whilst the speech of the Prime Minister on the same subject would be compressed into the smallest possible space. Thus the people of England got very imperfect political information. Some surprising things had occurred of late in connection with the return of a particular Member to this House; and he verily believed that the working men of Stoke, and others who had petitioned the House in a certain notorious case, were influenced in the conduct they had pursued by the fact of their political information upon many subjects being altogether one-sided. He had no doubt, however, that hon. Members had read the articles which had appeared in the newspapers—and especially in The Spectator—upon the subject, or could imagine for themselves
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what was the constitutional argument respecting it. But he came now to another point. The Reporters' Gallery was occupied exclusively by the representatives of the London Press, and the London Press had changed its views with regard to the debates of the House. Two or three of the London daily newspapers gave very full and accurate reports of the debates; the others found it was better for their own interest—and no doubt they thought conscientiously that it was for the interest of the public also—to compress their reports into the very smallest dimensions, and to substitute personal sketches for full reports of the arguments which were used. But he contended that as long as the dimensions of the Reporters' Gallery were restricted, and as long as the Provincial Press was prevented from coming into that Gallery, a responsibility was imposed upon those who enjoyed the privilege of entrance into the Gallery which carried with it a very sacred obligation. If the House of Commons adopted the principle that reports of the debates were to be carried on in the interest of newspapers, he would not object in the smallest degree, because he thought it was the only true principle; but if that principle were adopted, it would necessitate something else—namely, an authentic record of what occurred in that House for the information of its Members. Theirs was perhaps the only Assembly in the world which had not something in the shape of an official record of its debates and proceedings; and it was a matter of pride and boast with them that the Parliament of England had, with the aid of the Press, for so many years achieved that which other countries had only been able to accomplish through the assistance of their Governments. A great many persons believed that Hansard's Debates were a kind of official record of the proceedings of that House. He was quite certain that that was the impression out-of-doors, and he believed it to be the impression of a great number of Members of that House. Now, Hansard's Debates originated in the year 1803, and through the enterprize of a son of the late Mr. Luke Hansard, who had been so long connected with the printing of the House, these Debates had supplied Parliament with a very accurate record of its proceedings. They were cited continually in the House, and so great

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was their reputation that even in Prussia they had a Preussiches Hansard; there was also a Hansard's Debates both in Canada and Australia. But was the House aware that the private enterprize in this country known as Hansard's Debates had not a single reporter in the Gallery of the House? Hansard's Debates were made up in this way:—The best report that could be obtained from a newspaper of a Member's speech was taken by the able proprietor. He carefully collated it with the reports in other newspapers, printed it, and sent it to the Member who delivered the speech for correction. Hon. Members who valued what they said—and every body ought to speak with deliberation in that House—having given thought beforehand to the subject under discussion, would take the pains to correct those reports, where necessary, and return them to the proprietor of Hansard, who would then publish them. But it was well known that these Debates were carried on for many years at an actual loss to the proprietor, and at the present moment he understood—and he was stating nothing that he was not entitled to state—the remuneration derived from them was not such as would induce anybody to continue Hansard's Debates unless he were imbued with that esprit which was so characteristic of Englishmen—the desire of a man who had inherited a reputation for a great work from his father and grandfather to carry on that work, though almost at a loss. Now, the House of Commons subscribed for 120 copies of Hansard's Parliamentary Debates; and that was all the assistance which it gave to that publication. Suppose, then, that these Debates came to an end to-morrow; suppose the present proprietor, who derived so little pecuniary emolument from them, but certainly in the opinion of this and foreign countries a great amount of honour for his laborious and patriotic enterprize; suppose that honourable gentleman were to discontinue the publication of the Debates, or if he paid the debt of nature, and they were not continued by some one else, in what position would the House of Commons then be placed? Where would they have any authentic record of the proceedings of the House so far as debate and argument were concerned? They could not bring in and cite
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the reports of newspapers, because there was a Standing Order against it. True, they might suspend the Standing Order; but the newspapers would not supply them with the materials which were now contained in Hansard. It was impossible that the newspapers could report the proceedings of the House at sufficient length. ["Divide!"] He presumed that the Gentlemen who cried "Divide!" subscribed to the Press Associations, and he commended them for it; but he was stating facts which he had laboriously and carefully collected, and he thought it was hardly becoming in hon. Members to endeavour to silence him at that early hour. Well, if these Debates came to an end, the question would be brought to a crisis, and they would be obliged to find a substitute. He had referred to various points which he thought might with propriety be inquired into by a Committee. He did not offer a complete plan to the House; but he would briefly indicate what he considered might be very fairly done. He was of opinion that private enterprize should be left exactly where it was, and that the debates and proceedings of the House ought to be free to the newspapers to report at as great length or as shortly as they pleased; but he thought they ought also to have—and that the time had come when it was essential that they should have—a distinct official record of their proceedings. The House might be deterred from entering into that question from a fear of the expense which it would involve. Now, in the United States of America they had a Congressional Record which cost an enormous sum. Congress distributed not less than 13,000 copies amongst its own Members, and the expense was very recently upwards of £50,000 a-year. But if the House of Commons desired to have official and authentic reports of the debates for itself, it would be quite feasible to obtain them in this simple manner:—One reporter, sitting somewhere in the House, could take down everything that occurred in the course of debate, just as fully and accurately as the proceedings before Committees were taken down. The shorthand notes would be taken away and transcribed by assistants, as was now done in Committees, and next morning there might be placed on the Table of the House an exact record, in manuscript, of everything that had taken**

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place of a public nature, exactly as the Journals of the House were now placed on the Table; or, if it were thought desirable to have it in print, it might be printed at a small expense. He had made inquiries on the subject, and believed he was within the mark when he said that £8,000 or £9,000 a-year would be sufficient for supplying accurate records of the debates and proceedings of the House, and giving every Member of the House a volume of the Debates at the end of each Session; and that record might be sent to every hon. Member just as early as were the reports published by the newspapers. If that were done, he believed that the newspapers themselves would take their reports from that accurate official record, and would subscribe to the expense of it; for the House must know that the newspapers did not value the privilege of reporting its debates. ["Oh!"] He repeated, and he had it upon the highest authority, that the newspapers themselves did not value the privilege of reporting the debates of that House. ["Oh!" and "Divide!"] They said that it did not pay; that the public desired to have some other kind of information, and that they must find what the public wished to have. Therefore, it was quite possible, it had even been threatened by newspaper proprietors, that they might agree to cease reporting the debates. The House must not then go on upon the supposition that the liberty of reporting its debates was a privilege that was greatly valued by the newspapers on account of any pecuniary advantage which it gave them; and he thought that the public were greatly indebted to those public-spirited proprietors who did in some instances continue the publication of accurate reports. That remark, however, applied to two or three of the leading journals only: it did not apply to the cheap Press generally, and the cheap Press did not desire that it should apply to them. They did not think it their duty to give full and accurate reports; they did not profess to do so, because it did not pay. He had shown clearly—["No, no!"]—he had shown clearly—["No!"]—well, he had endeavoured to show clearly, that the whole conditions of reporting had changed; and if the conditions of reporting had changed, he was of opinion that the House of Commons ought to inquire carefully into the matter.
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With that object, what harm could the appointment of a Select Committee do? Such a Committee, if it made careful inquiries, would collect information that would guide the House in arriving at accurate conclusions. If they considered that no change was necessary, the House could but allow the thing to go on as it did at present. If, on the contrary, they recommended that a change should be made, the House would at any rate be in a position to decide with full information before it. ["Divide!"] Of course, the 200 Gentlemen who were certain of having their speeches reported in their local newspapers were quite entitled to cry "Divide!" when this important subject was under consideration; but there was something more concerned than placing the reports of those hon. Members before their constituents, and that was the supplying of political information to the country, the diffusion of which had hitherto tended so much to the prosperity of this Kingdom. He had shown, at least, that the conditions of reporting had changed, and he contended that until the reports of the debates and proceedings of the House were placed on some definite footing, it was absolutely essential that the power should be left in the hands of individual Members of exercising some control over the reports that appeared of their speeches. The only control that could be exercised was that old constitutional one of excluding Strangers, which had only been enforced on rare occasions and that for a few moments of time. They might abrogate that privilege if they liked, and afterwards discover that they had done so without adequate information, and he thought that they were now asked to do it without that adequate information before them. The privilege relating to the exclusion of Strangers, and that which concerned the reporting of their debates, were mixed up with each other, and there were circumstances which affected each that the House ought to be thoroughly acquainted with before it came to what might otherwise be a premature decision on the subject. He therefore begged to move the Amendment of which he had given Notice.
Amendment proposed,
To leave out from the word "That" to the end of the Question, in order to add the words

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"it is not expedient to make any permanent alteration in the Rules relative to the Reports of the Debates or Proceedings of the House, or of any Committee thereof, or as to the presence of strangers in the House, until the House has more fully considered the present system of reporting its proceedings with the aid of information to he obtained by the appointment of a Select Committee,"—(Mr. Mitchell Henry,)
—instead thereof.
Question proposed, "That the words proposed to be left out stand part of the Question."
MR. NEWDEGATE: Mr. Speaker, I am not disposed to differ from the opinion expressed by the hon. Member for Galway—that this House ought to consider maturely before parting with a Privilege which has been declared by your immediate Predecessor in the Chair to be an inherent Privilege of Parliament not dependent upon a Rule of this House. It is this Privilege so declared to be inherent in Parliament we are now asked to modify, if not to abrogate. I cannot think that the circumstances on which the noble Lord (the Marquess of Hartington) rests his proposal adequate to the occasion. What has happened in the present Session to render the proposal necessary, except that there has been an abrupt disregard of the Rules and customs of Parliament not confined to this ancient Privilege? At the beginning of the Session, in order to admit the hon. Member for Stoke (Dr. Kenealy) to a seat in this House, the House was induced to suspend a Rule as to a new Member appearing with sponsors, which has existed for 200 years, and that Rule was suspended without Notice. I was a Member of this House when a great question arose with regard to altering the oaths which were taken, first, in the case of persons belonging to the Jewish persuasion, and afterwards in the case of Roman Catholic Members. I have seen the Rules of this House and the Privilege of Parliament tested over and over again, and wherever a question of this sort arose, which seemed to threaten the abrogation of a Standing Order or to involve a question of law, it was the custom of the House to adjourn the consideration of such question in order to search for precedents, so that the House might not be led to adopt a hasty decision. That was done when Baron Rothschild presented himself at the Table to be sworn.
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It was also done in the case of the late Sir David Salomons. Again, we have had a question of Privilege raised, and this House found itself in a difficulty owing to having arrived at a premature decision. Had the ancient custom of the House been observed, and the question of Privilege arising out of the publication of a scandalous letter, which was tendered to one of our Committees, been adjourned, the painful fact of this House having to reverse its decision could not have occurred. Again, in the case of the hon. Member for Cavan (Mr. Biggar), when he called attention to the presence of Strangers in the House, if he had been permitted to assign his reasons for doing so in the first instance, it would have been found that his reasons were inadequate, and the Speaker would have been desired to recall the Strangers. Instead of which the House was asked, without Notice, and on the spur of the moment, to suspend its Standing Orders so far as this Privilege was concerned, because it was presumed that the hon. Member for Cavan was about to behave himself in a contumacious manner. I then rose in my place and suggested to the hon. Member that when any hon. Member exercised his privilege of calling your attention, Sir, to the fact that Strangers were present, it was always customary for that hon. Member to assign his reasons for doing so. The hon. Member for Cavan immediately complied, and, in complying, showed that there was no adequate occasion for his having used his privilege, and that the usual practice would have been amply sufficient, for that hon. Member's reasons were deemed inadequate, and you, Sir, would have been requested to direct the Serjeant-at-Arms to open the Galleries and re-admit Strangers. The whole of these difficulties have arisen from abrupt and premature action on the part of this House, and would not have occurred had the former practice of the House been observed, and the House had taken time to consider the question which had arisen. I am not inclined, therefore, to be hasty in adopting the Resolutions of the noble Lord, though in saying this I do not mean to imply that he is acting without having received advice. But, in my opinion, the recurrences of these abrupt proceedings, endangering at once the privilege of hon. Members and the Rules and

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Standing Orders of the House, demands the grave consideration of a Committee chosen from among the leading Members of the House. The Privilege of causing the exclusion of Strangers has, it is true, on some few occasions been abused. It was so by the late Mr. John O'Connell was a Member of this House. But the case in which the hon. and learned Member for Ayrshire (Mr. Craufurd) used that Privilege was very different. The consideration of the Contagious Diseases Act was to come before the House. The hon. and learned Member for Ayrshire used his privilege; but he assigned, as a reason, his belief that the debate which was about to arise, must be of a nature detrimental to public morality, and dangerous to the character of the House. There might be, and there was, a difference of opinion upon this; but no one could pretend to believe that there was no ground for that opinion. I cannot consider that the hon. and learned Member for Ayrshire abused his privilege, nor can I think ground sufficient for abrogating that Privilege exists. I must say that the reasons given by the hon. Member for advocating the modern abuse of this Privilege are to my mind very unsatisfactory. It would be the establishment of a vicious practice if the House were to countenance such an idea as that any hon. Member who deemed that his speeches were not sufficiently reported would be justified in using his privilege of calling attention to the presence of Strangers, and thus excluding all reporters from the Gallery. That would be a manifest abuse of the Privilege. But, then, we have our remedy; and if a Member were to assign such a reason as that for the exercise of his privilege, the House has an ample remedy. If a Member acted against the sense of the House and in abuse of this Privilege, the first remedy would be that you, Sir, should be instructed to reprimand that Member by name. Then, if he proved contumacious, the next process would be that you should be instructed to order the Member to be taken into custody. And the third remedy, in the event of his continued contumacy, is that the House, after due deliberation, might expel him from the House. Having such ample remedies in our hands, I am unwilling, without calm deliberation, to part with a Privilege which has been declared by one of
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the highest authorities that ever adorned the Chair of this House to be an inherent Privilege of Parliament, anterior and superior to any Standing Orders, and even to any Privileges conferred by Statute. But the hon. Member for Galway has touched upon another question—the manner in which the debates of this House are reported. Well, Sir, a great change has taken place in the reports of our debates. I hold in my hand the declaration made only yesterday on this subject by one of the leading newspapers of this country—I mean The Daily News. I quote from this article in order to show that the conductors of the public Press no longer intend to report our debates so fully as formerly. The Daily News has now for some time ceased to report our debates in extenso; and thus writes in explanation of the purpose of its conductors—
"Mr. Mitchell Henry intends, we take it for granted, to call attention to the necessity of providing full reports of the debates of the House of Commons. This, we need hardly say, the daily newspapers do not do, do not pretend to accomplish, and could not possibly accomplish consistently with their general purposes as purveyors of news and representatives of opinion. The speeches of the leading statesmen on both sides of the House are reported, and what we may call fully reported, on almost all occasions when the lateness of the hour does not render such a report impossible in morning papers which are almost immediately about to go to press. But all ordinary Members of Parliament find that, except on very remarkable occasions, their speeches are compressed into mere summaries. Debates of great interest to localities, and even to kingdoms, are often summarized in a few lines of a London paper. This is simply unavoidable. No London paper could exist which inflicted upon its readers a full report every morning of the proceedings of Parliament to the exclusion of other matter. Take, for example, the debates on the Irish Peace Preservation Bill."
Here, then, is a clear declaration; and I am informed that with the exception of two leading newspapers, it is highly probable that the system of summarizing our debates will be carried still further. The writer goes on to say—
"At all events, it is certain that this habit of commenting is growing into fuller development day by day, and in all free countries.…. The idea that the Press Gallery is only or even especially a gallery where persons are to sit who are to report the debates ought to be frankly given up in our days. Such was the case really at one time, but such certainly is not the case now."
This, Sir, is information which comes to

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us from no doubtful source. It is information which I find contained in a leading article in one of the most talented papers in the country, and it brings before the House the fact that the system of reporting our debates as heretofore practised so greatly to the advantage of Parliament, and the country is, in the case of several newspapers, if not in all, to be given up. I am fully sensible of the fact myself; and who can be surprised at it? True, we may hope to have still the speeches of the Prime Minister and of the Leader of the Opposition, also of other right hon. and hon. Gentlemen who are or may have been in office, well reported; but The Daily News states the plain truth, when it says that Parliament must not look forward to the continuance of the system of reporting its debates which has heretofore prevailed. The reports of our debates have to compete with the acceleration of intelligence by means of the railways, through which news from the most distant countries reaches London in one-third of the time it formerly did; whilst the system of telegraphing, if it has not annihilated space, has positively annihilated time in the transmission of intelligence. Each daily paper, therefore, if it is to compete with its fellows, must furnish news from every quarter of the globe. Telegrams giving information as to the policy and diplomacy of foreign countries, as to the prospect of war or the hope of peace, as to the transmission of bullion, as to the state of the markets for various products, as to the whereabouts of ships on different parts of the ocean, and even as to the circulation of storms. These are all subjects of the deepest interest to various classes of the community, and this is additional matter which competes for space in the columns of newspapers with the debates of this House. This House owes an enormous debt to the gentlemen who have occupied that Gallery. Amongst them has sat one who was afterwards Lord Chancellor of England—the late Lord Campbell—and I might enumerate the names of many gentlemen who once occupied seats in the Gallery, but who have risen to the greatest eminence in literature, and other pursuits. I believe that they would willingly do us justice; but whatever their talents, they cannot overcome the commercial necessities of the newspapers, while competing with each other,
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which forbid their reporting the debates in Parliament so fully as is desirable, and as was formerly done. I would, therefore, urge upon this House that the time has come when, warned as we have been by Mr. Hansard that his valuable publication has ceased to be remunerative, the House should consider how it can hereafter preserve an adequate record of its debates. I do not desire that the House should follow the example of the Legislative Assembly in France, where a most elaborate system of reporting the debates is carried on, nor even adopt the system of Austria, nor the system of Italy, nor the system of the United States, which, having formerly been conducted by contract, has within the last few months been vested in an executive appointed by the House of Assembly. All the House ought to consider is this—whether it will not appoint a staff of qualified reporters, who should be at liberty to assist the Press; but, at the same time, should be bound to preserve for Parliament—not for this House only, but for both Houses—a reliable record of their debates, and so supply, if necessary, the place which Hansard has so long and so ably filled. I do not for one moment lend myself to the idea that these reports are to be used merely for the gratification of the constituents of hon. Members. But I say that the value which is attached to Hansard both in England and in our Colonies, proves that a record of the debates, opinions, and proceedings of the Imperial Legislature is essential to the preservation of free institutions, as well as a valuable work of reference. My belief is that we can have no better security against speeches made in this House for the mere purpose of delay or obstruction than the preservation of a reliable record of what is said on such occasions by hon. Members, who seek to interrupt or delay our proceedings. It is thus, and thus only, I believe, that public opinion can be brought in support of the order and the dignity of this House.
MR. DISRAELI: Mr. Speaker, the House is indebted to the noble Lord the Leader of the Opposition for having introduced this question to its notice. I view the course he has taken with no envy, although I was appealed to in the first instance to undertake the task. Having served upon one or two Committees of the House, by whom this sub-

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ject has been investigated, and having had the advantage of doing that in the days and under the auspices of very eminent men, some of the most learned Members of Parliament with regard to the great subject of Parliamentary law and privilege who have hitherto adorned this Assembly—in the days of Lord Eversley and Lord Ossington, and I might say in the days of men still living, whom we greatly respect, and deplore that they are not Members of this House at present—I mean such men as Sir George Grey and Mr. Bouverie—I confess I declined the task from a conviction of my inability to meet the difficulties which have baffled spirits of so much higher temper than myself, and not having that confidence in the easy solution of this question which the noble Lord has recommended to our attention to-night. Having examined these Resolutions, I find that they deal with two subjects, one being the publication of our proceedings, and the other our recognition of the presence of Strangers. These are the two subjects to which the noble Lord has given his particular attention, and it is upon these he asks to-night not only for the deliberation, but for the determination of the House. With regard to the first—the publication of our proceedings—I observe that in the first Resolution the noble Lord, while he calls upon the House "not to entertain any complaint in respect of the publication of the debates or proceedings of the House," makes so many exceptions and so many conditions that, when practically considered, I think the House may be induced to believe that the carrying of the first Resolution of the noble Lord would not debar any Member from the Privileges to which it refers, and which are by some deemed inconvenient, while at the same time it might add fresh obstacles to the freedom of our conduct in respect to the management of our debates. The noble Lord asks us to determine—
"That this House will not entertain any complaint, in respect of the publication of the Debates or Proceedings of the House, or of any Committee thereof, except when any such debates or proceedings shall have been conducted with closed doors, or when such publication shall have been expressly prohibited by the House, or by any Committee, or in case of wilful misrepresentation, or other offence in relation to such publication."
Surely under such an enactment as that
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there is scarcely a publication made under those circumstances which an hon. Gentleman might not challenge. For instance, who is to decide as to what is wilful misrepresentation? Any hon. Gentleman who would bring forward a complaint of that sort would himself be convinced that the misrepresentation was wilful; and therefore no Resolution of this kind would debar him from seeking the justice which he demanded. Who is to annex any definite idea to the words "or other offence in relation to such publication?" If any Member is to have the right of bringing up this question of Privilege, he may have no great difficulty in asserting it. Then, again, under this first Resolution, although it seems to me no Member would be debarred from taking that course which has excited so much attention, and which was exercised by an hon. Member the other night, the House would be fettered by language such as that "this House will not entertain any complaint in respect of the publication of the Debates or Proceedings of the House." Is it wise under a Resolution which seems to leave untouched the power which each Member has of standing on his privilege that we should seek to fetter the general authority of the House, and agree, by this limiting language, that we will not entertain any complaint with respect to the publication of our debates and proceedings? I think myself the House should pause before assenting to a proposal which would add to our restrictions, while at the same time it would not save us from any of the inconvenience of which some hon. Members had occasion recently to complain. So much for the first Resolution; and now I come to the second, which relates to the presence of Strangers, the exercise of the Privilege of excluding whom has within the last few days excited some disquiet in the House. In the first place, with respect to a recent instance, I cannot altogether admit that the inconvenience caused by that exercise of Privilege was very great, or that the House was taken by surprise. So far as I am concerned, I had not much time to consider the particular case to which I refer; but I had received an intimation that the difficulty connected with it would be promptly and easily removed by some Member of the Committee making a communication to the House, without

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violating any of the Rules with reference to not making public what had occurred in the Committee beyond that which related to the document in question. In consequence, however, of a misconception on my part, and on the part of many others, we were landed in a momentary inconvenience. But how did we rescue ourselves from that? By asserting the power which rests in the House—by passing a Resolution which removed the difficulty just as in the case of the notice of the presence of Strangers, which is the subject of the second Resolution, we extricated ourselves from difficulty by appealing to the power which we have of suspending the Standing Orders. In both these cases, therefore—the publication of reports of our proceedings or the presence of Strangers—it seems the House has a power in its hands which will extricate it from any difficulty. With regard to the presence of Strangers, I may say, in case the House should decide to mate any alteration with respect to the exercise of Privilege, I should be most anxious that the power of the Speaker and the Chairman of Committees should be asserted and established in no ambiguous manner. On this subject I must refer to what occurred in the Committee of 1871. That question was discussed and the Committee divided in equal numbers. I would refer the House to the names of those of the Committee who were in favour of retaining the present system. Among those names were those of Sir George Grey and Mr. Bouverie, men of considerable station in the House, and both of them voted for the maintenance of the present system. Now, it is Highly important that the House should have a clear conception of what they are going to decide upon. When you come to analyze what we have to decide upon, the House will find that there really are only two points—one as to the restrictions with regard to the publication of debates; and the other as regards the presence of Strangers in the Galleries. Now in neither of these cases—and these are practically all we are called upon to decide—does it appear to me that it is necessary to interfere with the present state of things. I say this with great diffidence, because this is a question on which we ought, undoubtedly, to endeavour to obtain the opinion of the House, and to draw from the expe-
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rience of its Members some results which will carry universal concurrence. But if you come to either of these two points, I think the House must feel that they have the power of redress in their own hands if there is any abuse of Privilege; and it is extremely desirable that when we are dealing with subjects of this kind we should not take any rash step. We should remember that these are Privileges which we have possessed long—which we have often exercised, which may have been sometimes exercised with some inconvenience and not always with sufficient reason, but that the general result has been favourable to the order and decorum of the House of Commons. Now, there is another question connected with this matter which has been developed at considerable length, and with great variety of illustration, by the hon. Member for Galway (Mr. Mitchell Henry), and the hon. Member for North Warwickshire (Mr. Newdegate), appears to sympathize with his observations. It concerns the mode by which an ample and correct report of all speeches in this House shall be secured. What those hon. Members want, I presume, is a Speech Preservation Act. I know from experience in these matters that it is an extremely difficult subject to deal with, and that it would take so much time in carrying that the probability would be, as has happened in other matters, that we might not be successful in carrying any other measure during the Session. I am not prepared at present to support a Speech Preservation Act to meet the difficulty experienced by the hon. Member for Galway and re-echoed by the hon. Member for Warwickshire. The real point which the House ought to consider at the present moment is this—Will you do that which I hold is one of the un wisest things you could do in legislation? Will you attempt to codify the common law of Parliament? As a general rule it is most unwise to attempt to codify common law. These privileges belong to the common law of Parliament. They are the result of the experience of many generations—I might say of many centuries. There is wisdom embalmed in them which may not be at the moment evident, but which we find out sooner or later in practice. It is by the observance of these Rules—it is by the jealousy with which all the most eminent

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Members of this House for a long period have watched any attempt to tamper with those Privileges, that we have a common law of Parliament so powerful and beneficial as the present. I do not mean to say that it may not be a question some day for the House to consider whether it may or may not be in the power of an individual to notice the presence of Strangers, or whether we should not, under the circumstances, make some restrictions in the exercise of that Privilege; but, so far as I can judge, the remedy being ready and prompt, if the House chooses to exercise it, I should hesitate, for a doubtful benefit, to make any change. There is one point which I wish to put before the House on this subject, and that is that this House should perfectly recollect that with regard to the presence of Strangers you could not have a debate as to whether Strangers should withdraw without entering at the same time into a discussion upon the subject upon which Strangers were requested to withdraw, and I do not think anything would be more inconvenient than an occurrence of that kind. Upon the whole, therefore, I hope the House will not agree to the Resolutions which have been laid before it. I give credit to the noble Lord for the effort he has made to meet the difficulties of the case. He has come forward to assist us, and if he has not solved the Gordian knot he has failed only where men equal to him in station and ability have failed before him. Remembering the labours of the great Committees which during the last quarter of a century have been nominated by the House to consider this subject, I confess myself that on both points—as to the publication of our proceedings and the presence of Strangers—it would be wise for us, without greater experience of inconvenience than we have yet seen, not to assent to any change of the common law of Parliament.
MR. LOWE: The right hon. Gentleman has made a very clear and definite deliverance on this subject, and I am happy to say it is impossible to misunderstand or misrepresent it. He is clearly of opinion that the state of the law of Parliament is so satisfactory that no alteration of it is required. The question is, whether the law is in that satisfactory state? If the objections taken to the law be vexatious, frivolous, and unsuited to the
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dignity of the House, of course the right hon. Gentleman's opinion will prevail; if, on the other hand, they are founded upon grounds so commanding and convincing that it is hardly possible to state them without bringing conviction to the mind, then, notwithstanding the opinion of the right hon. Gentleman, I cannot help hoping there is patriotism enough in Parliament to make them succeed. What is the first proposition of the right hon. Gentleman?—that there is no necessity for alteration of the law of Parliament as regards the publication of our debates. He says this is a common law of Parliament, and it has been framed with great wisdom and judgment by the great men who have gone before us. It is quite true it was so framed, but with what object? Why did they declare it a breach of Privilege to report the debates of Parliament? Because it enabled the King, or the men who surrounded him, to send the great and able men who took part in those debates to prison and leave them to perish there. It was to protect Members of the House from the fate of Sir John Eliot, for instance, who, for defending the liberties of the country, was thrown into prison in 1628, and kept there until he died. For that purpose nothing could be better than saying that a publication which would produce a peril to the liberty of Members was a breach of the Privileges of the House. But the times have changed. So far from wishing our proceedings to be kept secret; so far from fearing any overbearing power to call us to account for what we say, the House has no greater desire than that its proceedings should have the greatest possible publicity. It is not from any feeling of vanity on the part of hon. Gentlemen in reading the reports of their speeches; it is because we have here a power by which we can influence the country, by which we can propagate those beliefs which we regard as being calculated to advance the common good. What was to our predecessors a fear and a dread has become to us a delight and an honour, that which they used all their efforts to repress and control we use all our efforts to extend; and, therefore, though they were wise in using every effort to keep the proceedings in Parliament secret, it does not follow that we are not equally wise in a diametrically opposite position in

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seeking to make them public. That, I think, disposes, without any degree of irreverence, of the arguments of the right hon. Gentleman. Let us go a little further. What is the present state of the case? It is actually this—that while our most earnest desire is that our proceedings should be published to the British nation and to the whole world, and while we are conscious of deriving from it a power perfectly astonishing even to ourselves, the law and wisdom of Parliament are that the very doing of that which we all desire is a crime, for the doing of which a man can be dragged as a criminal to the Bar of this House, for which he can be interrogated as he can be interrogated in no other Court in this Kingdom, and can be cast into prison. That is the system under which we agree to promote that which we all agree in desiring. We take these persons; we call them before us; we take them away from the jurisdiction of the Common Law, and we submit them to this interrogation, admitting all the while that they have done nothing wrong at all. I am not going to allude to anything that was said in this House with respect to the Committee of which I am Chairman. But look at what was done. It was wished to extract some information which could not be got from me, for they could not send me to prison. And so a happy device was hit upon. Something was published, and we all admit for the benefit of the whole country, and without the slightest discredit or blame to the persons who merely did their duties in publishing it. Therefore, one person being guilty and another quite innocent, it occurred to an hon. Member that this rule, which the right hon. Gentleman says ought on no account to be altered, could be applied with some effect. That is to say, we were to treat persons who were perfectly innocent as if they were criminals, drag them here from their business, and obtain evidence from them by a process unknown to any other Court, which evidence was to be used for some other purpose. Then we are told that there is nothing in all this which needs amendment, and that this is the way in which the dignity and the character of Parliament are to be preserved. Now, the people of this country have no great respect for legal fiction, and I think they will understand clearly that if it is true that it is a great benefit
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to us all that these things should be published, it cannot be a crime to publish them. If we build Galleries to enable our proceedings to be published, if we give facilities for doing so, if you, Mr. Speaker, allow quotations from the newspaper reports of Parliament to be made, how can we maintain any sort of dignity or character before the eyes of the people of this country if we allow any gentleman who wants to extract any information to be used against any one, to drag these people to the Bar and extract it from them upon pain of imprisonment when they have committed no crime whatever. This, I think, is an answer to the statement of the right hon. Gentleman as to there being no necessity for change in respect of the laws relating to the breach of Privilege. Since the right hon. Gentleman objects it is quite useless for me to go into detail, because he is content with things as they are. The only thing, therefore, that I have to do is to put it to the House whether it agrees with the right hon. Gentleman on the subject. Then comes the second case. The right hon. Gentleman sees no occasion to alter the law, which says that any Member of Parliament may desire Strangers to withdraw, and that they should withdraw accordingly. I venture to say that the way in which the law has been acted upon has not been creditable to the dignity of Parliament. The Strangers who have been turned out have immediately been allowed to come back again—and that is not a dignified connivance on the part of this House. If this is a rule to be insisted upon by Parliament it ought not to be evaded in this manner. Now, this law is traceable to the same source, to prevent the report of proceedings in Parliament lest Parliament should be prejudiced. But the whole nature of things has been changed, and it is not conceivable that human wisdom can be such that framing certain measures to meet one evil, they can be applied to meet an evil exactly contrary. But what has happened? An hon. Gentleman takes it into his head that he will exercise this Privilege. From that moment he is our master; he brings every one of us on his knees. Whatever the Member may be, whether important or otherwise, matters nothing; he becomes our King for the time being, and everyone begs and entreats that he will not exer-

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cise his power. But who gave him that power? What induces us now to place ourselves at the feet of any man who chooses to exert his mastery over us? If the whole of this House wishes that its proceedings should be open except one man, what sense or reason is it that one man should be able to prevent it? There is nothing that I am aware of in our Constitution or history which should induce us to give to one single man the power to do what was done the other day—on the approach of a most interesting and harmless discussion to stop our proceedings and absolutely to turn out the Heir Apparent. We have been told that we were gentlemen first and Members of Parliament afterwards; but if every Member has the right properly vested in him of excluding Strangers, what business has the right hon. Gentleman or anyone else to challenge him for the exercise of it? That one single Member should be allowed to overrule 650 Members of a contrary opinion, and to put upon the House this injury and degradation is to me utterly inconceivable. The right hon. Gentleman has given us no reasons except the wisdom of our ancestors, and that was exercised in reference to a state of facts entirely different from those which exist at the present moment; therefore, it seems to me most desirable that the House should, if it be possible to do so—for this is no Party question—take the matter into their own hands, and consider whether they will tolerate what, probably, will happen to-morrow, when another hon. Gentleman will again stop our proceedings. How many days will it take to convince you that you cannot go on in this way? The right hon. Gentleman is Leader of the Conservative Party, and is he prepared to go on from day to day suspending the Standing Orders without Notice? Does he not think that by so doing he is making a greater breach in the Privileges of Parliament than would be made by abrogating the rule? The rule of exclusion had a most excellent and obvious purpose when made; but change of time and circumstance has made it in the present day one of the most ridiculous and galling fetters and insults ever imposed upon a free people. The right hon. Gentleman commands many legions, and he may on the present occasion be able to overpower us; but I hope the House will consider that
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we are not here engaged in fighting a Party question—["Oh, oh!"]—but that we are considering a matter in which the honour of Parliament is involved. I disclaim all Party feeling in the matter, and the right hon. Gentleman is too firmly rooted for a storm of this kind to disturb him. This power of exclusion has been used once in the present Session; it may be used again and again, and it is equally certain to be abused. I therefore ask the House to say whether it is prepared deliberately to show itself to the country as willing to maintain a rule which no other Assembly in the world ever has maintained, and to be governed by one man rather than by a majority, or whether it will awake to a little common sense on the subject, and say that the House will once for all take into its own hands the government and management of its own proceedings. I therefore hope that the House will not give way on this subject, but will exercise its own impartial and clear judgment as to whether it is desirable that these things should again and again occur and the Standing Orders should be suspended, or whether it does not think we have done enough of that kind of thing. My noble Friend does not ask the House to sacrifice any of its Privileges, but merely to forbear from abusing them, and to free itself from the trammels which can do nothing except involve us in unseemly contentions among ourselves, and lower the House of Commons in the estimation of the country.
MR. GATHORNE HARDY: The right hon. Gentleman says that we should trust in the——
MR. SULLIVAN: Mr. Speaker, I espy Strangers in the Gallery behind your Chair.
MR. SPEAKER: Notice having been taken of the presence of Strangers, I have no alternative but to call upon them to withdraw.
It is believed that the following is a substantially accurate report of what took place during the Exclusion of Strangers:—
MR. GATHORNE HARDYsaid, that in consequence of the disposition of one hon. Member to interrupt the proceedings he would move the adjournment of the debate.
Moved, "That the debate be now adjourned."—(Mr. Gathorne Hardy.)
MR. SULLIVAN, who spoke amid great disorder, said: I have been at nominations. I intend to show my admiration of the Prime Minister by putting the Rule in force to-night. I am a journalist, and feel on this question. I dare, though unreported, to speak for my profession—we will not submit to ignominious sufferance in that Gallery. The sun has set upon the last day of Press slavery. Either we wield a beneficial power, or the day has come when you must say Yea or Nay. I am not afraid of being called "no gentleman." I and my fellow journalists—the Members for Newcastle and Glasgow—held our peace. I am incapable of mistaking a fact. I am not speaking for out-door purposes. No reporter is here. The rule which the Prime Minister says shall not be reformed must be reformed. [Much disorder.]
MR. GOLDSMID: It would be better to abrogate the Rule quietly than to allow this disturbance to occur again. I am in favour of Lord Hartington's Resolutions; but I think the hon. Member for Louth has some reason for his conduct. The hon. Member for Galway is aggrieved because his speeches have been from time to time delivered against the feeling of the House.
THE MARQUESS OF HARTINGTON: The hon. Member for Louth has taken an extreme course which has excited great indignation in the minds of the majority. His course is not unprecedented. [The noble Lord quoted a speech of Mr. Henley, in which he threatened to take the same course, and "to make himself a nuisance," until the House took some action in the matter.] He believed that he did afterwards, on one occasion, put his threat in execution. The grievance complained of by the right hon. Gentleman (Mr. G. Hardy) is the very evil of which we complain. I do not defend the hon. Member for Louth; but there is no cause for a burst of indignation. He has done what the right hon. Gentleman (Mr. Henley) formerly proposed. I am in favour of adjournment; but I hope the Government will consider the matter, for the question must now be settled.
MR. GATHORNE HARDY: I beg to make a personal explanation. I was taken by surprise. I took what I thought was a proper course—["Order!"]—I was going to say, had I been allowed to speak, that if the grievance rose to such a height that it was necessary to interfere the Government would interfere.
MR. MITCHELL HENRYaccused the hon. Member for Louth of a breach of faith with the House; because when the noble Lord (the Marquess of Hartington) took up the question he promised not to clear the House. The hon. Member had now exercised his privilege while the House was debating the question. The hon. Member for Louth had forgotten his promise, and had been guilty of a coup d'etat.
MR. SULLIVANdenied that he had pledged himself.
MR. MITCHELL HENRYsaid, he was not actuated by any private feelings in the course he had taken, in consequence of his speeches not being fully reported. He had never complained of any report of his speeches except during the last Parliament. He thought that Irish feelings were denied a proper representation.
LORD ESLINGTONsaid, that the worst mistake a Member of Parliament could make had been made by the hon. Member for Louth, who had attempted to overawe an intelligent Assembly by a threat. The hon. Member for Louth might become a very eminent Member—he had given proofs of his capacity to become such—but he wanted discretion. The House would never submit to a threat, and would not be overawed. Hon. Members would maintain their privileges in spite of the hon. Member's threats. He suggested that the House had better now adjourn. "A wise man sleepeth upon his wrath." The House had better let twenty-four hours elapse to think over the hon. Member for Louth's threats.
MR. SULLIVANrose to make a personal explanation, but being met by cries of "Order" and "Spoke" sat down.
MR. NEWDEGATE: The hon. Member for Louth says he is a member of the Press. He forgets that he is also a Member of this House. He uses his privilege to coerce the majority of hon. Members in obedience to the demands of the Press. This is a distinct abuse of his privilege. I shall invite

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the House to express its opinion on his conduct. We cannot submit to individuals attempting to coerce a majority.
MR. SULLIVANwished to correct a statement of the hon. Member for Galway, whose narrative was taken from one of those imperfect reports of which he had complained.
MR. MITCHELL HENRY: The hon. Member told me himself.
MR. SULLIVAN: I do not recollect anything of the kind. I will state my reasons. ["Order!"] I gave Notice of my intention to enforce the Rule. I was waited upon and asked not to enforce the Rule on that night, because it would be said to be "a Jesuit conspiracy;" but when I was told that the noble Marquess would make a Motion, I said if such an assurance would be given we would not shut out the Press on the Tichborne debate; but I always reserved my right to take this course. There is no reason why the debate should not proceed.
SIR RAINALD KNIGHTLEYthought that something must be done. He approved of the appointment of a Committee, and thought that the Rule should be suspended meanwhile.
MR. CALLANsaid, that the Home Rule Party repudiated the conduct of the Member for Cavan (Mr. Biggar); but the action of the hon. Member for Louth was taken without concert with that Party, which was in no way responsible for it. The hon. Member added—I was asked three years ago by Mr. Sullivan in the lobby to "espy Strangers." He said I should immortalize myself; I think the hon. Member for Louth has immortalized himself. I do not think any reporters in the Gallery have authorized Mr. Sullivan to act on their behalf.
MR. STACPOOLEthought the proposal of the hon. Member for Galway was a proper one.
SIR GEORGE BOWYERsaid, the hon. Member for Louth had exercised his right, but without judgment or discretion. There was no privilege that could not be so abused as to be a nuisance—it was so in private life. If gentlemen exercised their rights without regard to other people the world would be uninhabitable. The hon. Member for Louth had used a practical argument; but such an argument was fallacious. He (Sir George Bowyer) did not care for the historical arguments of the right
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hon. Gentleman the Member for the University of London. The privilege might some day be extremely useful; but the privilege must be used with discretion. The hon. Member for Louth had exercised it for a very bad reason. He exercised it to make it a nuisance, and in order to enforce his views as to the rights of the Press. The reporters had told him they repudiated Mr. Sullivan's assistance.
MR. DODSONsaid, the House would derive no benefit by the continuance of this debate. He recommended the adoption of the Motion for adjournment.
MR. HORSMAN: The hon. Member for Louth, from inexperience as a young Member, has placed us in a false position. He says the feelings of the House and the Press are antagonistic, and says that, as a member of the Press, he will coerce the House to make a change. The feeling of the House is manifestly in favour of giving the Press every facility. We are dependent on the Press. Every Ministry has wished to deal with this question; but there are difficulties not apparent to the hon. Member for Louth. The whole House repudiates the ground on which the hon. Member for Louth has put the matter. He dislikes coercion in Ireland. We dislike coercion in the House of Commons.
MR. DISRAELI: I regret that the debate was interfered with. I think the House would have arrived at valuable results. My right hon. Friend (Mr. Hardy) has devoted great attention to the subject, and had opinions I did not altogether agree with. I wish he could have brought them before the House. I am not favourable to any further Committees. It is the duty of the Government to put a Motion on the Table of the House. The hon. Member for Louth has got hold of a privilege of which he thinks he can avail himself; but these privileges may be abused. There is not a privilege of the House that may not be so abused as to produce disorder, for even Motions for the adjournment of the House or a debate may be brought forward by any two Members who, proud of their privilege, might bring the House into disgrace. I thought the hon. Member had made an engagement not to disturb the debate. He may settle that with the hon. Member for Galway. I must fix a day for the resumption of this debate. I think the 25th of May

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will be the best day to continue it, as that is the day for which the hon. Member for Swansea (Mr. Dillwyn) has a Motion on the subject. Hon. Members will find Parliamentary Privilege a delicate thing to deal with.
MR. CHILDERSasked the Prime Minister whether he would make a distinct Motion?
MAJOR O'GORMAN: For the last week we have been under Coercion Acts. How long are we to be—morning, noon, and night—under Coercion Acts? Our observations—mine and the Prime Minister's—are unheard, and that is a great loss. I move that the Press be re-admitted.
MR. COWENsaid, that the hon. Member for Louth represented the profession to which he (Mr. Cowen) belonged. The Press had no wish to come into the House against the wishes of hon. Members. The vestry-like proceedings of that Chamber were not remunerative to report. The Press would not be subjected to ignominy if they did come. He took upon himself a full share of the odium.
MR. MELDONaddressed the House.
THE MARQUESS OF HARTINGTONclaimed the right to say something as to the day of adjournment. As an Order of the Day, it would come on too late on May 25.
MR. DISRAELIthought an united appeal to the hon. Member for Swansea would not be resisted.
MR. DILLWYNsaid, he would not stand in the way.
Motion for the adjournment of the debate agreed to.
Debate adjourned till Thursday.
Upon Strangers being re-admitted, it was found that the House, after transacting other Business on the Paper, had adjourned.
House adjourned at half after One o'clock.

MINUTES.
PUBLIC BILLS—First Reading—Vivisection Regulation * (85); Sea Fisheries* (86); Local Government Board's Provisional Orders Confirmation (No. 2) * (87); Inns of Court (89); General School of Law (90).
Second Reading—Bishops Resignation Act (1869) Perpetuation* (74); Bank Holidays Act (1871) Extension and Amendment* (76); International Copyright (73).
Committee—Saint Paul's Cathedral (Minor Canonries * (60); Pacific Islanders Protection (33–88).
Committee—Report—Local Government Board's Provisional Orders Confirmation * (53); Public Health (Scotland) Provisional Order Confirmation * (54); (£15,000,000) Consolidated Fund*.
Report—Public Entertainments (Hour of Opening), now Public Entertainments* (77).

PACIFIC ISLANDERS' PROTECTION BILL,—(Nos. 33–88.)
(The Earl of Carnarvon.)
PACIFIC ISLANDERS' PROTECTION BILL,—(Nos. 33–88.)

  COMMITTEE.
  House in Committee (according to Order).
  THE EARL OF CARNARVONmoved, after Clause 5, to insert a new Clause to empower Her Majesty to exercise jurisdiction over British subjects in islands of the Pacific Ocean not within the jurisdiction of any civilized Power; by Order in Council to create and constitute the office of High Commissioner in and over such islands, with authority to make regulations for the government of British subjects therein; to erect a Court of Justice for British subjects with civil, criminal, and Admiralty jurisdiction, corresponding with the authority

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  of the High. Commissioner; giving power to Her Majesty in Council to mate ordinances for the government of British subjects being within these islands; and conferring on the High Commissioner certain powers.
  THE EARL OF KIMBERLEYsaid, he was glad the noble Earl had explained the clause—not for the purpose of anticipating any objection that might be made to it, but that their Lordships and the public should understand its meaning. It was necessary that power should be given to control British subjects in these parts, in order to prevent their committing acts that produced great difficulties. The clause would prevent such a state of things from growing up as had been the case in the Fiji Islands.
  Clause agreed to, and added to the Bill.
  Further Amendments made: the Report thereof to be received on Friday next; and Bill to be printed, as amended. (No. 88.)

INTERNATIONAL COPYRIGHT BILL.
(The Earl of Derby.)
INTERNATIONAL COPYRIGHT BILL.

  (NO. 73.) SECOND READING.
  Order of the Day for the Second Beading, read.
  THE EARL OF DERBY, in moving that the Bill be now read the second time, said, it was a very small Bill on a very large subject. It dealt with only one portion of the law affecting international copyright; it had passed without opposition through the House of Commons—it was supported by the literary interest in this country, and, indeed, he believed there was no objection to it in any quarter. The object of the Bill was to remedy a defect in the International Copyright Act of 1852. Their Lordships were familiar with the history of that Act. In 1851 a Convention on the subject of international copyright was concluded between England and France, and in the following year legislative form was given to that Convention by the passing of the Act now proposed to be amended—namely, 15 & 16 Vict., c. 12. The Convention and the Act following it reserved to foreign authors of dramatic pieces the copyright of translations of their works, with a Proviso respecting "fair imitations or adaptations," which was embodied in Section 6 of the Act, which ran—
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  "Nothing in the said Act contained shall he so construed as to prevent fair imitations or adaptations to the English stage of any dramatic piece or musical composition published in any foreign country."
  It was this section which the Bill now before the House would repeal. The reason for this proposal was that it had been held by our Courts that a translation of a French dramatic piece would be a "fair imitation or adaptation," and consequently no longer a piracy, when there had been made some trifling alteration, such as the change of a title, of the names of the dramatis personæ, or of the scene of the play. Although the passing of the present Bill would remove from the consideration of our Law Courts the question whether a translation was a "fair imitation or adaptation," the question as to what was or was not an imitation or piracy of a foreign dramatic piece would always be left to their decision. If Parliament gave its sanction to the measure, French authors would have the same protection in English Courts as English authors had in French Courts. French authors had not that protection at present. A Bill identical with this one had been proposed by the late Government. The present Government took it up last year, and it passed through the House of Commons, but by a misunderstanding it was allowed to drop. The noble Earl concluded by moving that the Bill be now read the second time.
  Motion agreed to; Bill read 2a accordingly, and committed to a Committee of the Whole House on Friday next.

INNS OF COURT BILL-GENERAL SCHOOL OF LAW.

  BILLS PRESENTED. FIRST READING.
  LORD SELBORNE, in rising to call attention to the subjects of the Inns of Court and Legal Education; and to submit a Bill to make provision for the better regulation and government of the Inns of Court, and a Bill to establish a General School of Law in England, said, it would be in their Lordships' recollection that on the 10th of July last year he laid on the Table of their Lordships' House a Bill on the subject first referred to in his Notice. To that Bill some exception was taken by his noble and learned Friend on the Woolsack, who expressed his own views as to the proper manner of dealing with the subject.

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  For this expression of opinion he felt very much obliged to his noble and learned Friend, and in the Bill which he now proposed to lay on the Table would be found embodied the suggestions then made by his noble and learned Friend. The Inns of Court were ancient and very important public institutions of the country. The fact that they were public institutions in the sense that Parliament could properly deal with them as such had been disputed in some quarters; but, as he could not help thinking, on superficial and erroneous grounds. They were sometimes called voluntary Societies. No doubt, they were not originally constituted by the public law of the land, nor were they incorporated by law; but surely it was not a correct mode of expression to describe as voluntary Societies institutions into some one of which every man was compelled by law to enter, if he was to exercise one of the most important professions in this country. No man could practise at the Bar without having been called to the Bar by one of those Societies, and no man could be called to the Bar by one of those Societies unless he first became a member of the Society which was to call him. In numerous Acts of Parliament the public interest in those Societies was recognized. He would mention but one. By the first statute passed in the fifth year of the reign of Elizabeth it was enacted that the Oath of Supremacy should be taken—
  "By all manner of persons that have taken or hereafter shall take any degree of Learning in or at the common laws of this realm, as well utter-barristers as benchers, readers, ancients in any House or Houses of Court."
  The Inns of Court held their property from very ancient times, and had never used it except in a manner strictly consistent with the supposition that they held it as a public trust. There had, indeed, been in some of the Inns a privilege of chambers enjoyed by the members of their Governing Body; but that practice had, he believed, ceased. The whole history of the Inns of Court showed that their property had never been dealt with as private property. He held that all the four Inns of Court were institutions of the same nature and character; and as regarded two of them—the Inner and the Middle Temple—the Royal Commission appointed in
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  1854, by their Report in 1855, distinctly stated that the property of the two Temples was held upon a direct trust by the acceptance of a grant made by James I., which recited that "the Inns of the Inner and Middle Temple, London, being two out of those four colleges the most famous of all Europe," were dedicated to the study of the law, and contained this provision—
  "Which said inns, messuages, &c., for ourselves, our heirs, and successors, we strictly command shall serve for the entertainment and education of the students and professors of the laws aforesaid, residing in the same Inns, for ever."
  He ought almost to apologize for having said so much on the point to which he had been referring, but he had thought it well to do so in order to meet an objection that had been raised in some quarters. In 1854 a Committee of the House of Commons, which was composed of able men, and conducted its inquiries in a most careful manner, expressly recommended that the Inns of Court should be united and made to constitute a legal University, each retaining its separate collegiate character. The Royal Commission of 1854, to which he had already referred, made a similar recommendation; and in 1863 his noble and learned Friend on the Woolsack obtained from the Society of Lincoln's Inn a resolution in favour of the creation of a Legal University to which the various Inns of Court might be affiliated. On subsequent occasions resolutions, involving not less clearly the principle of public regulation in respect of these Societies, were adopted by Committees appointed by two of the other Inns of Court. Some years since, also, a Bill was introduced in the House of Commons by Sir George Bowyer, which passed through most of its stages without serious—if any—opposition from the Inns of Court, and would doubtless have been sent up to their Lordships' House but for a dissolution of Parliament, by which its progress was interrupted. That Bill, in accordance with another recommendation of the Royal Commission, proposed to give greater powers to the Inns of Court with respect to the discipline of the Bar than they now proposed, and to place the exercise of their powers under legal safeguards. He himself, while Chancellor—having for several years before interested himself in an Association for

  7
  the Promotion of Legal Education, which, however, did not contemplate any interference with the internal affairs of the Inns of Court—caused to be prepared, and circulated among the benchers of the different Inns, the draft of a Bill, which would have dealt, in one measure, with the Inns of Court and with legal education. The plan, however, which he then proposed did not meet with the approval of the Governing Bodies of these learned Societies; and he received no suggestion from any of them as to any other plan which they might prefer. Under these circumstances, separating the question of the Inns of Court from that of legal education, he thought it best to make his own proposition. He did so last year, and his noble and learned Friend on the Woolsack took exception to it. He had not a word to say to his noble and learned Friend's exceptions. On the contrary, he thought his noble and learned Friend had assigned valid reasons for them, and he had prepared the present Bill in strict accordance with his noble and learned Friend's suggestions. He proposed that the Inns of Court should have full liberty to take the initiative themselves in such charges as might be desirable; and Commissioners were to be appointed, by whom any ordinances which they might make were to be approved or disallowed, and who might themselves make ordinances—if none sufficient were made by the Inns of Court—subject to the approval of Her Majesty in Council, as had been provided by the Acts relating to the Universities of Oxford, Cambridge, and Durham. The Bill did not pledge the Commissioners to draw up any plan of organization defined in the Bill itself—the question of the particular plan was left open. All he now proposed to do was to lay the Bill on the Table, and to ask their Lordships to give it a first reading. He was unwilling to throw additional duties upon his noble and learned Friend, but having discharged a duty which he considered had fairly devolved upon him, he was ready not only to defer to his noble and learned Friend's judgment, but to surrender the Bill to him if he was willing to take charge of it.
  Bill to make provision for the better regulation and government of the Inns of Court presented by The Lord SELBORNE.
  THE LORD CHANCELLORsaid, he was glad that his noble and learned Friend had not lost sight of this very important subject. He would examine the Bill with great attention, and should rejoice if something could be done. He rejoiced that his noble and learned Friend was willing to propose that legislation on the subject should take the course he had just indicated in his speech; and so far from wishing to take the matter out of his hands he thought it could not be in better, and was extremely anxious to give his noble and learned Friend every assistance in his power. If the Bill on examination proved to be of the character he expected to find it, he was sure the Inns of Court would come to the conclusion, not only that it was not hostile to their interests, but that it would be for their interest to promote the legal learning of their students.
  Bill read 1a; and to be printed

GENERAL SCHOOL OF LAW BILL.

  BILL PRESENTED. FIRST READING.
  LORD SELBORNEsaid, he had now to bring under the notice of their Lord-ships a subject quite distinct from that regarding which he had previously addressed them—namely, the subject of Legal Education. It was now many years since a very general current of opinion had set in, in condemnation of the system of Legal Education pursued in this country. The opinion of those who had considered the matter was that the position of Legal Education in England was inferior to that of Legal Education in any other civilized country of Europe. The Incorporated Law Society, which was composed of gentlemen practising as solicitors and attorneys, was entitled to the credit of having taken the first steps in the direction of improvement. So far back as 1836—with the concurrence of the Judges—they established an effective system of compulsory examination, to be undergone before admission of students to the practice of their branch of the Profession. In 1846, a Committee of the House of Commons inquired into the whole subject of Legal Education as affecting all branches of the legal profession. They made a valuable Report, which recommended the establishment of a Legal University for the purpose of a well-organized system of Legal Edu-

  9
  cation, contemplating, indeed, that in that system the Inns of Court should take the leading part, but so, that some parts, at least, of the instruction afforded by them should be made available, not only for the benefit of barristers, but also for that of the members of the other branches of the Legal Profession. In 1854, a Royal Commission was appointed, and that Commission affirmed the views of the Select Committee of 1846 as to the deficiency of our system of Legal Education. One consequence of these movements was that in 1851 the Inns of Court organized, for the benefit of students for the Bar, a Council of Legal Education, which appointed Readers on different branches of the law, who were paid out of the funds of the four Societies. That plan was a narrow one, and had been attended with only small results. He did not mean to say it was not a good beginning, but he did say that it would be a very unsatisfactory end. In 1870, there was formed an association of persons desirous of establishing a larger and better system of Legal Education. They desired to have a University or General School of Law founded on comprehensive principles, in which students for whatever branch of the Profession might be instructed, and the Bill which he now desired to introduce contained provisions to that end. Three principles had been adhered to in the propositions he now made to the House, and in the Bill which he laid on the Table last year. The first of those was, that it was desirable that a General School of Law should be established in the Metropolis, by public authority, in the government of which the Crown should have some share of authority, and both the great branches of the Legal Profession should be fairly and impartially represented. The second was, that it was desirable, in the establishment of such a school, to provide for examinations, to be held by examiners, impartially chosen; and to require certificates of the passing of those examinations which might respectively be deemed proper for the several branches of the Legal Profession, as necessary qualifications—after a time to be limited—for admission to practice in those branches respectively. The third was, that the benefits of the course of study and of the examinations conducted in the Legal University should be
  10
  open to all students, whether their intention was to follow the profession of the law or not, and in whatever branch of that Profession those who meant to follow it might intend to practise. Those propositions had received the concurrence and support of a very large number of persons interested in Legal Education—of many Judges, and leading and junior members of the Bar, and of the great body of solicitors throughout the country. They were communicated to the Inns of Court, and also to the Incorporated Law Society—which latter body expressed its approval of them, with the condition that in the management of the proposed institution there should not be an undue preponderance of either branch of the Profession over the other. As to the Inns of Court, Committees of great weight and learning, appointed by two of them—Gray's Inn and the Middle Temple—gave in their adhesion to the main principles of those propositions; but the Committees of the other two—Lincoln's Inn and the Inner Temple—dissented from them, expressing a wish to keep their education for the Bar entirely distinct, and in the hands of the Inns of Court: and the narrower opinion eventually came to be adopted by majorities among the Benchers of all the four Societies. On the 11th of July, 1871, he moved a Resolution in the House of Commons embodying those propositions; he was supported by a Petition numerously signed by members of the Profession and, among other eminent persons, by favourable opinions from some of the leading Members of the Royal Commission of 1854. No conclusion was arrived at on that occasion. And here he begged permission to refer to a matter which was a little personal to himself. In January last, in a periodical of some note—The Quarterly Review—there was an article on this subject, which, after stating that many persons had at first expressed their concurrence with the objects of the Association to which he had referred, without understanding them, proceeded to remark—
  "Even the venerable Lord St. Leonards sent a contribution to its funds of 300 guineas, which has not yet been returned to him—"
  meaning, he (Lord Selborne) supposed, that faith had not been kept with that learned, excellent, and venerable man. Now what were the facts? Three

  11
  days after he spoke in the House of Commons and moved the Resolutions to which he had adverted, he received, unsolicited in any way whatever, this letter from Lord St. Leonards, dated the 14th of July, 1871—
  "I have been considering the proposal to establish a Legal College, in which you take so great an interest. No one is more hound than I am to support such an institution. I request you, therefore, to put down my name as a subscriber of 400 guineas—half to the foundation, and the other half to establish a prize for merit in such a manner as you and those who act with you may direct."
  He felt much gratified and encouraged by the support of so eminent a person, and one so highly qualified, after considering them as he had done, to judge of and appreciate the character of the proposals which he had made. Shortly afterwards, Lord St. Leonards appeared to think that his benefaction would not be useful unless efforts were made to collect general subscriptions for the object contemplated, and on October 2, 1871, having paid the money, which was duly invested, he wrote to inquire what was doing in that respect. It was then explained to him that it was not proposed to apply to the public for subscriptions, because in the view of many of those who supported the plan it would probably be found capable of being carried into effect without subscriptions; and if they should eventually be thought necessary, it was, at all events, considered advisable to defer any effort of that kind till the principles of the scheme should have received the sanction of the Government or of Parliament. Lord St. Leonards's reply, dated the 11th of October, 1871, was this—
  "As I have perfect confidence in you and your judgment, I wish you to act as you think right in regard to the funds in question."
  So matters then remained. But on the 1st March 1872, he again moved two Resolutions in the House of Commons. The Government then spoke in terms which were very encouraging as to the future, though they were not disposed to commit themselves to a vote in favour of the Resolutions at that time, and, accordingly, it was their wish that a division should not be taken; but, after consulting with those with whom he acted, it was thought proper that a division should be taken, when 103 voted for the Resolu-
  12
  tions, and 116, including Members of the Government, against them. He did not himself feel discouraged by that result; but the venerable Lord to whom he had referred (Lord St. Leonards) appeared to think, under those circumstances, that the foundation of the School of Law for which he had given his benefaction would have to be indefinitely postponed; and, accordingly, he wrote to say that after the division he no longer thought the scheme could be regarded as immediately practicable: he therefore suggested that it might be proper that the money should be returned to him. As soon as possible after receiving that communication—on the 4th of June, 1872—the stock in which the 400 guineas, with its accumulations, had been invested—namely, £454—was re-transferred to him; and, contemporaneously with that—on the very same day—Lord St. Leonards sent a draught for 200 guineas to be used for any purpose connected with the objects of the Legal Education Association, which he (Lord Selborne) might think proper: intimating that he then contemplated dedicating the other half of his original gift to similar purposes, in connection with the system of Legal Education conducted by the Association. Their Lordships would now see how very well informed this writer in The Quarterly Review must have been. In point of fact, the whole original benefaction was returned, and a new benefaction of half the original amount was then deliberately made for the general purposes of the Association. In 1872 his (Lord Selborne's) position became materially altered by his acceptance of the Great Seal, and he retired from the Presidency of the Association. The Government of Mr. Gladstone never had the opportunity of taking the matter up, but, of course, he (Lord Selborne) was desirous of submitting to them his scheme. He accordingly prepared a draft and circulated it—with what result he had already stated. Last year, being out of office, he introduced a Bill with such amendments as his communications with individual Benchers of the Inns of Court, and with the Council of the Incorporated Law Society, had led him to make. His noble and learned Friend on the Woolsack was good enough to a certain extent to express his views on that subject also; and with regard to one very

  13
  main principle of that Bill—that the education to be given in the School of Law should be comprehensive and not exclusive, and should aim at opening as far as possible the education and instruction in law to everybody who might be desirous of taking advantage of it, without any reference to the question whether it was his intention to go to the Bar or to practise as an attorney or solicitor, or not become a lawyer at all, his noble and learned Friend intimated very clearly that he, at least, did not differ from that principle. On that point also he (Lord Selborne) had been repeatedly and strangely misrepresented. It had been imputed to him and to those with whom he acted that they wished to break down the lines of demarcation which now separated the barrister from the attorney and solicitor, and to introduce the American principle of indiscriminate practice. But on every occasion on which he had the opportunity of expressing himself in public on this subject, either in Parliament or at the meetings of the Association while he was their President, he had uniformly stated, not only that this was in no way an object of the Association or of his scheme, but that his opinion was strongly and decidedly in favour of maintaining the distinction between barristers and attorneys and solicitors. As to the education of the two branches of the Profession—while he considered that the same instruction should be open to all students—it was not intended to require that any students should necessarily receive any part of their instruction from the Professors or Lecturers of the General School of Law, or go through any examination except those qualifying them for a particular line of practice. All that he contended for was that an institution like this would lose half its value if it were narrow or exclusive, and that whatever instruction was was given, whatever examinations were conducted by it, should be open to all, leaving men to choose for themselves what instruction they would receive and where they would receive it, and not attempting to draw a line between those who were preparing to be barristers or solicitors and those who were not intending to practise at all. That was his principle—that Legal Education, to be put on a proper basis, should not run narrowly into two grooves of mere pre-
  14
  paration for the Bar and mere preparation for attorneys and solicitors. He apprehended that was a sound view. So thought the Committee of the House of Commons in 1846. They said that a system of Legal Education to be of general advantage must comprehend and meet the wants not only of the professional, but also of the unprofessional student; that for the further education of the solicitor it would be highly advisable he should also have, even while an articled clerk, opportunities for attendance on certain classes of lectures in the Inns of Court, and also on others of a nature more special to his own profession in the Law Society of which he might happen to be a member. Mr. Lowe, before the Commission of 1854, said this—
  "I think legal education is a much larger question than the education of the Bar or even of the Bench. I think it is exceedingly desirable that every English gentleman who is independent and whose time is at his own disposal should be educated in law to a much greater extent than is now the case."
  Everyone who had given his mind to this subject had taken the same view. He might quote from the well-known work of Mr. John Austin as to the inestimable advantage it would be if a sound and legal education could be acquired, as he at that time proposed, by the establishment of a Faculty of Law in this metropolis—how it would promote improvement in the form and substance of the law, in legislation, and in juridical literature. These were advantages which could only be derived from a large and comprehensive system. With respect to the present more narrow system, although during the time this question had been in agitation, the Inns of Court had added largely to their contributions and in many respects had improved their rules, increased their teaching staff, and made considerable efforts to prove themselves worthy of the exclusive position which they claimed, he was bound to tell their Lordships that, according to the information he had received, the attendance of students in the private as well as public classes had been and was declining, and so far from the scheme succeeding in proportion to the efforts made to sustain it, the result was very different. He hoped there was no man living who upon proper occasion would stand up more

  15
  firmly for the honour, advantage, and importance of the Bar of England than he would. Certainly no man was under greater obligations to them than he was. But he could not see, as respected the honour, advantage, or importance of the Bar of England, what could be gained by the depression or disparagement of the other branch of the Profession. That branch was much more numerous, and in its own way certainly not less important. It was entrusted with the dearest interests of society throughout the Kingdom; it comprised as a rule men of high honour and integrity—and he would have thought, if the great body of solicitors desired to have a system of Legal Education established to which those who might hereafter join their ranks should be admitted on equal terms—and 8,000 out of the 10,000 solicitors had petitioned the House of Commons in favour of the Resolutions which he proposed in 1872—that there was no body in England who had a greater interest in promoting in every way the honour, dignity, and importance of the other branch of the Profession than the Bar. If anything was to be done, he could not think it would be wisely done upon principles so narrow as those which now found favour with the Inns of Court. But he did not at all despair of progress in that quarter. In 1871 Committees appointed by two of the Inns of Court, as he had stated, expressed themselves in favour of the leading principles which he advocated. Down to 1869, compulsory examination was resisted by Lincoln's Inn; and yet, afterwards, when this Association was formed, Lincoln's Inn agreed to compulsory examination, which was now the rule. And now he wished to refer to a point upon which he had not the advantage of agreeing with his noble and learned Friend on the Woolsack—namely, the expediency or inexpediency of establishing a School of Law or an Examining Body only. His noble and learned Friend spoke strongly in favour of the latter; and, undoubtedly, if that should be the decision of Parliament, there would still be advantage in applying those principles of comprehensiveness and liberality of which he had spoken, although there might be only an Examining Body. But he never had been one of those who thought there was wisdom in the attempt to divorce in a University the
  16
  function of examination from the function of teaching. Great care should, of course, be taken to prevent the Examiners from being chosen by or from those who conducted the teaching. But everyone who had ever admitted the importance of Legal Education in sub-stance meant that there should be not merely examinations, but also the means of good instruction in the principles of law. That the institution which he proposed to establish should be a teaching body was not an essential principle of the Bill, though it was one to which he attached importance, and he hoped their Lordships would adhere to it. He now asked their Lordships to read the Bill a first time; it was in some respects altered from the Bill of last year, upon the suggestion of the Incorporated Law Society, but its leading principles were the same. The Bill proposed to incorporate a School of Law to be governed by a Senate, partly nominated by Her Majesty, partly by ex officio members filling important positions in the Law, the principal Judges, the Law Officers of the Crown, and the President and Vice President of the Incorporated Law Society; partly by members to be nominated by the Inns of Court and the Incorporated Law Society; and partly by members to be elected by barristers and solicitors. That body was to superintend the examinations and the instructions to be given in the School of Law. No one was to be required to pass a preliminary course of instruction in that or any other school. No one was to be admitted to practise at the Bar or as a solicitor who had not passed a suitable examination in the School of Law. What certificates were to be required for qualification and for practice in each branch of the Profession were to be determined with the concurrence of those who governed that particular branch, with appeal to the Judges. Power was also given, if funds should come in, to establish a teaching system. These being the leading principles of the Bill, he now begged to present it to their Lordships.
  Bill to establish a General School of Law in England presented by The Lord SELBORNE.
  THE LORD CHANCELLORsaid, he would not now enter into any detail on this subject. He would only say that he

  17
  was not obstinately wedded to his own opinion; but he had seen no reason to change the opinions which he expressed in that House last Session. He did not see how his noble and learned Friend proposed to provide funds for teaching in his School of Law—if it was to be made anything beyond an Examining Body, where were the funds to come from? His own opinion was that if Parliament attempted to establish a School of Law as a teaching body it would paralyze all the efforts at teaching made by the Inns of Court and the Incorporated Law Society—that the work would not be so well done, and that it would not be for the advantage of the public that it should be undertaken. His own opinion was that in Law as in Medicine, we should have examination only. If they provided only an Examining Body, all that would be necessary to procure funds would be to take care that everyone who presented himself for examination should pay a fee sufficient to cover the expense. But these were details which would be better discussed when their Lordships saw the specific measure which his noble and learned Friend laid on the Table.
  Bill read 1a, and to be printed.

  BOSTON ELECTION.
  The LORD CHAMBERLAINacquainted the House that Her Majesty had appointed Thursday next, at a quarter before Two o'clock, at Buckingham Palace, to be attended with the Address of both Houses on the Boston Borough Election. A message sent to the Commons to inform them thereof, and that the Lords had appointed the Lord Steward and the Lord Chamberlain to attend Her Majesty therewith on the part of this House, and to desire the Commons to appoint a proportionate number of its members to go with them.
  Message from the Commons that they have appointed Mr. Disraeli, Mr. Secretary Cross, Mr. Secretary Hardy, and the Comptroller of the Household to wait upon Her Majesty with the Address respecting the last Election and Return for the Borough of Boston.

  VIVISECTION REGULATION BILL [H.L.]
  A Bill for regulating the practice of Vivisection—Was presented by The Lord HENNIKER; read 1a. (No. 85.)
  House adjourned at a quarter before Seven o'clock, to Friday next, half past Ten o'clock.