Sitting of 10 June 1879

MINUTES.
SELECT COMMITTEE—Third Report—Commons [No. 219].
PRIVATE BILL (by Order)—Second Reading—Felixstowe Railway and Pier.
PUBLIC BILLS—Ordered—First Reading—Metropolitan Board of Works (Water Expenses)* [204].
Second Reading—Conveyancing and Land Transfer (Scotland) Act(1874) Amendment* [198].
Committee—Army Discipline and Regulation [88]—R.P.
Committee—Report—Local Government (Highways) Provisional Orders (Dorset, &c.)* [186]; Local Government (Highways) Provisional Orders (Gloucester and Hereford)* [185].
Considered as amended—Metropolis (Little Coram Street, Bloomsbury, Wells Street, Poplar, and Great Peter Street, Westminster,)

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Improvement Provisional Orders Confirmation* [175]; Local Government Provisional Orders (Aspull, &c.)* [151].
Third Reading—Local Government Provisional Orders (Castleton by Rochdale, &c.)* [160]; Local Government (Ireland) Provisional Orders (Killarney, &c.)* [178]; Elementary Education Provisional Orders Confirmation (Brighton and Preston, &c.)* [177]; Elementary Education Provisional Orders Confirmation (London)* [176]; Local Government (Ireland) Provisional Orders Confirmation (Cashel, &c.)* [141]; Local Government (Ireland) Provisional Order Confirmation (Downpatrick)* [140]; Metropolis (Whitechapel and Limehouse) Improvement Scheme Amendment* [184]; Inclosure Provisional Order (Matterdale Common)* [171]; Inclosure Provisional Order (Redmoor and Golberdon Commons)* [172]; Inclosure Provisional Order (East Stainmore Common) * [174], and passed.
The House met at Two of the clock.

PRIVATE BUSINESS.
  FELIXSTOWE RAILWAY AND PIER BILL [Lords] (by Order).

    SECOND READING.
    Order for Second Reading read.
    Motion made, and Question proposed, "That the Bill be now read a second time."
    COLONEL JERVIS, in moving, as an Amendment, that the Bill be read a second time upon this day three months, said, he regetted that it was his duty to object to the second reading of the Bill. In 1874, a Bill was introduced for the construction of a railway from Ipswich to the sea coast on the east side. That Bill was not approved by Parliament, on the ground that it gave no accommodation whatever to the district through which it was proposed that the line should pass. In 1875, a fresh Bill was brought in, with a new plan; and a railway was to be made which was to give the fullest accommodation to the whole of the district. A number of witnesses were brought up from the County of Suffolk and from the town of Ipswich, including mayors and ex-mayors, solicitors, traders, and others, who gave evidence that the line, as then proposed, would give the fullest accommodation to the district; and on the strength of the evidence given before the Committee, Parliament approved of the Bill. But before the line was completed, it was disputed by an Inspector sent down from the Board of Trade, who found
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    that no stations were erected on the line; that the accommodation which was to be given to Ipswich was something more than a mile off from where it was to have been; and that the final station was in the middle of an agricultural district, a couple of miles out towards the sea. A deputation then waited upon the Board of Trade. The deputation consisted of the Members for the Eastern Division of Suffolk, the town of Ipswich, the hon. and learned Member for the County of Cambridge (Mr. Rodwell), who thoroughly knew the locality, various mayors and ex-mayors, of Ipswich; and, what was still more striking, it was accompanied by the country rectors of all the parishes, while no other inhabitants besides the rectors were asked to go with the deputation. The Board of Trade stated, in reply to the representations made to them, that they extremely regretted that they had not the power to interfere; that the Act was passed, and that their only power was to see that the line was constructed in a manner consistent with the safety of the public. Beyond that, they had no power whatever. It was also found that the Railway Commissioners had no power to interfere in the case; and, therefore, it was deemed advisable to wait until the Company came forward for additional powers, or to obtain fresh capital. The Company now came to Parliament for that purpose, and he must say that when a Company had taken such extreme liberty with the Forms of the House as to obtain an Act of Parliament under the plea of giving accommodation to the public, and then to prevent any accommodation being given to the district, it became his duty, for that and other reasons which it was not necessary now to enter into, to ask the House to inquire into the matter, and to interfere. He had brought the matter under the notice of the Board of Trade, and they had agreed to undertake, in the event of a clause being inserted in the Bill, to ascertain what stations were required and what accommodation ought to be given to the district. If the promoters of the Bill were willing to accept such a clause, and to allow the matter to be settled by the Board of Trade on behalf of the public, he would not further oppose the second reading of the Bill; but if they refused to accept such a clause, he should certainly divide the House

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    against the second reading of the Bill. He had felt it his duty to bring the circumstances of the case under the notice of the House. During the 20 years he had been a Member of the House he had never known a similar case. He had appealed to every official of the House, and to some of the most learned counsel who had been in the habit of practising at the Parliamentary Bar upstairs, and they all told him they never remembered a similar case—where a railway had been obtained under the pretence of benefiting the public, but where every attempt had been made to prevent the public from obtaining any accommodation whatever. He begged to move the Amendment of which he had given Notice.
    Amendment proposed, to leave out the word "now," and at the end of the Question to add the words "upon this day three months."—(Colonel Jervis.)
    Question proposed, "That the word 'now' stand part of the Question."
    MR. RODWELLsaid, he should like, as he had been interested in the question before, and as he had attended the deputation to which his hon. and gallant Friend (Colonel Jervis) had alluded to, to state that he entirely concurred in what his hon. and gallant Friend had stated. While he disclaimed any intention of throwing an obstacle in the way of the passing of the Bill, he thought, on public grounds, that this was a legitimate opportunity for the House of Commons to interpose, and to ask that the accommodation which was promised to the public should be given to them. It was a well-understood rule that when the promoters of a Bill came to Parliament for an extension of time, or for power to increase their capital, they brought the whole of their proceedings under the review of some tribunal. The only tribunal in this case was the House of Commons. The Board of Trade was powerless in the matter, and the Railway Commissioners were equally powerless. Up to the present stage, the promoters of the Bill had defied the public. They were now obliged to ask for fresh powers, and, without going further into details, he thought the House would do well to see that the Company now gave proper accommodation to the public. Nothing could be more reasonable or
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    more fair, and he could not conceive upon what ground the promoters of the Bill could decline to entertain the proposal of his hon. and gallant Friend, that the Board of Trade should be the parties to say what, in the interests of the public, was required. He understood that if the promoters assented to this course, his hon. and gallant Friend would withdraw the proposition he had made for the rejection of the Bill. He (Mr. Rodwell) took part in the matter simply upon public grounds. He was well acquainted with the locality, and he knew the line; and he thought it was a great scandal that the public did not possess the accommodation which they so well deserved, which was agreed to be given to them, and on the faith of which the Bill was originally granted.
    MR. RAIKESsaid, the course which had been taken by the hon. and gallant Member for Harwich (Colonel Jervis) might form a sound and useful precedent, though he hoped that he would not persevere with his Motion to throw out the Bill. It should be well understood by all those who were interested in railway management that when a Company came to that House for an extension of the privileges and powers which Parliament had already granted to them, they must be prepared to submit their conduct generally to the review of Parliament, and to challenge any judgment which Parliament might think fit to exercisers to the way in which they had used their powers up to the present time. But he confessed that, with regard to this particular Bill, he thought the object which the hon. and gallant Member for Harwich, and his hon. and learned Friend the Member for Cambridgeshire (Mr. Rodwell), had at heart would be best accomplished by allowing the Bill to be read a second time, care being taken in Committee to consider the objections which had been raised. But none the less was it desirable that, where a Railway Company almost avowedly neglected the purposes for which it was created, exception at the proper time should be taken in Parliament against its proceedings. With regard to this particular railway, he understood that it went almost from nowhere to nowhere; that instead of starting from the town of Ipswich, which was a large and important town, and connecting it with the rising watering place of Felixstowe, it started from

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    a point somewhere about two miles from Ipswich on the main line; that it was there almost entirely unconnected with the train service on the main line; that it proceeded then, at its own sweet will, towards the common which had been graphically described by the hon. and gallant Member for Harwich, passing, at as great a distance as it conveniently could, the town which it proposed to connect with Ipswich—and, in fact, forfeiting all title to be considered a convenient or useful means of traffic for the locality. But more remained behind; for he understood that the Company declined to make any sufficient use of any intermediate stations on the line, and, therefore, they excluded the inhabitants of the district from the advantage which they might derive from the use of intermediate stations. At the present time, therefore, the railway did not answer the purposes for which Parliament originally granted its powers; and it appeared to him a proper course for a Committee to consider how far supervision should be exercised by the Board of Trade, or by the Railway Commissioners, or by any other sufficiently strong public body, to compel the Company to perform a duty which the public had certainly a right to expect at their hands. He thought that, under the circumstances of the case, the best course both for the locality and for the general public would be that the Bill should be read a second time. If the Amendment now before the House were withdrawn, he would undertake that the points to which his hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Harwich had called attention should be considered by the Committee appointed to inquire into the Bill, and he had no doubt they would see that Ipswich and its neighbourhood was dealt with in a manner as satisfactory as that tribunal could carry out. Of course, if his hon. and gallant Friend was afterwards not satisfied with the course taken by the Committee, he would still have a remedy by opposing the third reading of the Bill. In the meanwhile, he hoped the course taken would be such as to satisfy his hon. and gallant Friend, and those whom he represented, that substantial justice would be done to the locality interested.
    COLONEL JERVISsaid, that after what had fallen from the hon. Gentleman the Chairman of Committees, he
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    begged leave to withdraw the Amendment.
    Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
    Main Question put, and agreed to.
    Bill read a second time, and committed.

QUESTIONS.
  RAILWAYS—THE BOARD OF INLAND REVENUE—SEASON TICKETS.

    QUESTION.
    MR. W. H. JAMESasked Mr. Chancellor of the Exchequer, If inquiry has been made of the South Eastern Railway Company by the Board of Inland Revenue, as promised in the letter of their Under Secretary, Mr. Adam Young, in a letter dated 4th January, quoted in "The Times" of 9th January 1879, in which Mr. Young stated that he was desired by the Commissioners of Inland Revenue to inform his correspondent—
    "That they did not know what was meant by the 'increased charges' of that Department, which were alleged to have rendered necessary the addition of the Government Duty to the rates for season tickets, but they thought it due to the Company that opportunity should be afforded them of explaining the meaning of the statement," and that "inquiry should be made accordingly;"
    and, whether that inquiry has extended also to the London, Brighton, and South Coast Railway Company; and, in such case, what has been the result?
    THE CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUER: Sir, I find that the Board of Inland Revenue did make the inquiry referred to from the South-Eastern Railway Company, and that they received an explanation in reply, that the phrase "increased charges" was not intended to imply that any addition to the duty had been made, but merely that the duty demanded of it had increased in amount. No inquiry was made from the London, Brighton, and South Coast Railway Company, because it did not appear that that Company had alleged or implied that any increase of the duty had been made.

  ITALY—THE ITALIAN POLICE.

    QUESTION.
    SIR EARDLEY WILMOTasked the Under Secretary of State for Foreign

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    Affairs, Whether the violence and arbitrary conduct of the Italian police towards "British subjects in Italy has been checked or punished by the authorities there, since the warning circular issued by Lord Derby to intending travellers in Italy; and, if not, whether Her Majesty's Government will inform the public how the question now stands, by the publication of Correspondence on the subject between the two Governments, and especially by that relating to the wrongful imprisonment of William Mercer at Castellamare in 1873?
    MR. BOURKE: Sir, since the occurrences happened, which called forth the recommendation of Lord Derby that all travellers in Italy should provide themselves with passports, no outrages of a serious kind have, to the knowledge of the Foreign Office, been committed by the Italian police, and no complaints of a serious nature have been furnished to Her Majesty's Government. Some minor complaints have been received, and the Italian Government have, upon representations being made to them, done all that could be expected of them in the matters in question. As to the Correspondence regarding Mercer's case, the House is aware that the Correspondence extended over a great number of years—from 1872 to 1876. I have myself answered many Questions on the subject, and I do not think that any public advantage would arise from the publication of that Correspondence. Therefore, it is not the intention of the Government to lay any Papers before the House with regard to Mercer's case.

    THE CUSTOM HOUSE—SANITARY IMPROVEMENTS.—QUESTION.
    MR. FAWCETTasked the Secretary to the Treasury, Whether he is aware that Sanitary improvements have not been carried out in the Tea and East India Department Offices in the Custom House; and, if so, whether he has ordered, or will order, that these improvements shall be carried out without further delay?
    SIR HENRY SELWIN-IBBETSON, in reply, said, with regard to contemplated sanitary improvements in the Offices referred to by the hon. Gentleman, he found that, after the Treasury sanction was given, the Inspector from the Board of Works discovered that
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    larger improvements would be necessary to effect the object. A Report was placed in his hands last night, and he should lose no time in bringing the matter under the notice of the First Commissioner of Works, in order that the necessary sanitary improvements, which he admitted were necessary, might be made for the comfort, and, indeed, the health of the clerks. These improvements would be carried out as soon as the plans were decided upon.

    CYPRUS—ADMINISTRATION OF THE ISLAND.—QUESTION.
    SIR JULIAN GOLDSMIDasked the Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, Whether Sir Garnet Wolseley, before leaving England, resigned his office as Governor and High Commissioner of Cyprus; and, whether Colonel Biddulph has been appointed to succeed him?
    MR. BOURKE: Yes, Sir; both parts of the Question of the hon. Baronet may be answered in the affirmative.

ARMY DISCIPLINE AND REGULATION BILL.—QUESTIONS.
MAJOR O'BEIRNEasked the Secretary of State for War, Whether, having regard to the fact that it is proposed to institute an inquiry by a Royal Commission or a War Office Committee into the whole state of the Army, it is the intention of the Government to proceed with the Army Discipline and Regulation Bill this Session?
COLONEL STANLEY: Yes, Sir; it is very much the intention of the Government to proceed with the Army Discipline and Regulation Bill this Session.
SIR HENRY HAVELOCKasked the Secretary of State for War, When he expects to be able to lay before the House the draft of the additions or adjuncts to the Army Discipline and Regulation Bill by which he proposes in the future to regulate Courts of Inquiry and to prevent the abuse of their being substituted for courts martial, which he promised on the 1st May last to bring forward at an early date?
COLONEL STANLEY: Sir, I hope to do so next week; my excuse for the delay is the pressure of other Business.

ARMY ORGANIZATION—THE DEPARTMENTAL COMMITTEE.—QUESTION.
MR. GOURLEYasked the Secretary of State for War, If he will be good enough to inform the House of the object and nature of the War Office inquiry about to be made with reference to our existing military organisation; and, whether it is intended that all branches of the Service (Regular and Auxiliary) are to be represented, or only those of the Regular Army, through officers who have hitherto failed to carry out in detail the objects intended to be accomplished under the Depôt Centre system? He should also like to know whether a Royal Commission or a Committee was to be appointed?
COLONEL STANLEY: Sir, I am afraid I should be obliged to go into a great deal of detail if I were to explain the whole object and nature of the War Office inquiry. Speaking generally, I may say that it is to ascertain all the points in the short-service and reserve system and the localization system requiring amendment, so as to make those systems work properly. With regard to the representation of the different branches of the Service, the Committee will consist wholly of officers serving in the Regular Force; but some of those officers are intimately acquainted with all the requirements of the auxiliary branches. I must demur, if I am allowed to do so, owing to the form of the Question, to the last part of it. I cannot accept that as a correct statement; but I may say that, as far as possible, I am endeavouring to obtain a Committee which shall be composed of officers wholly unconnected with the present administration of the Office. There are two officers who, owing to their positions, will be included in that inquiry who are in some degree connected with the Office; otherwise it will be a Committee composed from the outside. It will be a Committee, and not a Royal Commission.

PARLIAMENT—ARRANGEMENT OF PUBLIC BUSINESS.—QUESTION.
In reply to Sir DAVID WEDDERBURN,
THE CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUERsaid: Sir, it does not lie entirely with me as to when the East India Loan Bill shall be proceeded with; but I propose to arrange the Government Business for Thursday as follows:—We will first
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take the adjourned debate on going into Committee upon the East India Revenue Accounts. I do not know the length to which the debate will run; but as soon as it has concluded, and when you, Sir, have left the Chair, the passing of a formal Resolution upon the accounts would not take any great length of time. Of course, it is possible that a discussion of some duration may arise, and then it may be necessary for my hon. Friend the Under Secretary to offer some observations. Then I would propose to put next the second reading of the East India Loan Bill (£5,000,000). Upon that I see there are two Notices of Amendments; and, of course, I cannot anticipate what length the discussion may run to. Next to that I would put the East India Loan (Consolidated Fund) Bill. To that there is an Amendment raising a different question, and we must be guided by circumstances and the convenience of the House as to how far we shall proceed. I should be glad to make progress in each Bill.

SOUTH AFRICA—THE ZULU WAR.

  QUESTIONS.
  SIR ROBERT PEEL: I wish, Sir, with the permission of the House, to ask a Question of Her Majesty's Government about the state of affairs in South Africa. We understood, before separating some little time ago, that the Government would be in a position to make some announcement, after the Whitsun Holidays, about the state of affairs in Zululand. We expected a statement of the information in their possession. I should like to ask what is the limit of the number of troops to be sent out to the Cape? It appears that during the last few days reinforcements to the number of 2,000 troops have been sent out to reinforce the Army of 26,000 or 27,000 already lining the Frontier of Natal, under the command of a General who has been superseded in the field before the enemy. It would be desirable to know what is the limitation to be put to the reinforcements; and I, therefore, wish to ask the Secretary of State for War, Whether it is intended to send out any more troops to that part of South Africa?
  COLONEL STANLEY: Sir, I think it would be convenient if the right hon. Baronet had given me some Notice of

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  his Question. All I can say is this—with regard to the information in my possession, I have always taken the earliest opportunity of making it known to the public, who take a deep interest in this question, by means of the public Press. All the intelligence I possess was sent to the papers on Sunday night, and appeared in yesterday morning's papers. That is all that has reached me. As regards the necessity of sending out further troops to reinforce those already in South Africa, I am not aware that at the present moment there is any such necessity; but if further troops are required, it would, of course, be the duty of a person holding my position to advise that they should be sent.
  SIR JULIAN GOLDSMIDasked the Secretary of State for War, Whether he had any information to give the House as to the health of the troops in South Africa?
  COLONEL STANLEY: Sir, the last accounts I have heard are that the health of the troops is improving, and the last medical Report—I cannot remember the exact date of it—is certainly to that effect.

ARMY ORGANIZATION—THE DEPARTMENTAL COMMITTEE.

  OBSERVATIONS.
  MR. GOURLEYsaid, that in consequence of the answer which had been given to his Question by the Secretary of State for War, he wished to call the attention of the House to the depôt centre system, and to point out how he thought that the proposed inquiry should be conducted by a Royal Commission and not by a Committee. To put himself in Order, he would conclude with a Motion. When Lord Cardwell's national system of depôt centres was introduced, it was contemplated that at those centres there should be deposited a sufficiency of commissariat to meet any demand which might be made in an hour of emergency. But that object had not been carried out. The Militia and Volunteers, as well as the Regular Forces, still had their own independent Staffs. The commissariat was still deposited at Woolwich and other large centres, and the various depôt centres had no commissariat whatever. The result was that the troops which had been sent out from this country to South
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  Africa eventually landed there without a proper commissariat; and, so far from the great object of Lord Cardwell having been carried out, and a sufficiency of commissariat establishments provided at the depôt centres, the Commissariat of the War Department had entirely broken down. With regard to the Committee which was about to be appointed by the Government, he believed it would not be satisfactory either to Parliament or the country. Instead of being composed entirely of officers of the Regular Army, the Committee ought also to include officers connected with the Auxiliary Forces, with the Marines, and other branches of the Service; and he contended that unless that were done the Committee would entirely fail in its object, which was to decide upon and carry out a national scheme which would be impartial in all its details. That end, he held, would be much better accomplished by the appointment of a Royal Commission, which could travel about and collect the best evidence it could find throughout the country; whereas a Committee sitting in London would be bound, to a great extent, to procure its evidence from the Horse Guards, to whose shortcomings and want of system in details we owed in a largo measure our failure in the Transport Department, not alone in the Zulu, but also in the recent Afghan campaigns. He protested most strongly against the proposed constitution of the Committee, and maintained, as he had already stated, that it should be composed of officers representing all the various branches of the Service, including the Marines. He the adjournment of the House
  SIR HENRY HAVELOCK, in seconding the Motion, said, he believed he expressed the opinion of many hon. Members of the House, and of many persons outside the House, when he said that it would be regarded as much more satisfactory if the right hon. and gallant Gentleman the Secretary of State for War had given a little more detailed information as to the character of the proposed Committee, for it was a subject to which the public were giving considerable attention, and many were looking forward to it with some degree of misapprehension. The right hon. and gallant Gentleman said there were two distinguished officers whom he proposed to nominate on the

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  Committee, and whom he considered to be desirable representatives to be placed upon it. He (Sir Henry Havelock) understood him to refer to those two very distinguished officers, Lord Napier of Magdala and Sir Henry Norman, who were both officers of very great experience; but there were scarcely any other two in the whole Army List whose acquaintance with the existing Army system, as applied at home, was more limited than theirs. He wished it to be distinctly understood that he had no desire to reflect upon or to depreciate the knowledge and well-known—indeed, world-known—merits of those two distinguished officers; but he was within the mark when he said that Lord Napier of Magdala had no experience whatsoever of the working of the present system, except as regarded the limited number of regiments which had served under his command at Gibraltar. And in the case of Sir Henry Norman, with all his great and acknowledged merits, he had absolutely no acquaintance whatsoever with the working of the Army under the existing system, or with regard to its organization, short service, or recruitment, in any portion of their details. It was well known that he had been charged for many years with the organization of the Indian Army, and those two officers were prominently in the public mind as having been primarily concerned in the organization of the Indian Army, which, although it had gone, in a manner, through a recent war, had not had applied to it such a strain or test of its efficiency as a war would be to the British Army if it were called into the field. They laboured under a disadvantage in being connected in the public mind as being the authors of the Indian Army system, which was now, and must for many years to come be, on its trial, and had not proved a success. The Indian Army, it was well known, was not only distinguished for its costliness, but for its want of stability and want of power to resist the strain of war, to an extent that was not known in any other Army in the world. If the right hon. and gallant Gentleman the Secretary of State for War had not definitely decided upon the names he proposed to place on the Committee, he thought it was highly desirable that he should select from the large field of choice open to him the names of
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  officers who, by their previous experience, were well acquainted with the working in all its details of the system which it was proposed to put upon its trial. He hoped he might gather from one part of the right hon. and gallant Gentleman's statement, that it appeared to be recognized that the existing system, although not perfect, was sound as regarded the main lines on which it was laid down, and that it required altering, not in its great principles, but in its details.
  Motion made, and Question proposed, "That this House do now adjourn."—(Mr. Gourley.)
  SIR ALEXANDER GORDONregretted to hear the remark made by the Secretary of State for War with regard to the members of the Committee being selected from persons outside of the Departments. If that mode of selection were acted upon, those officers would be excluded from it who, from their previous experience, were most competent to advise the Government, while officers much less acquainted with the working of the present system would find a place upon it. He alluded to the omission from the Committee of the Adjutant General and the Quartermaster General of the Army—two officers who would have to carry into effect any recommendations the Committee might make, and who occupied their present offices owing to their knowledge of any details. Officers of the largest experience of the present system ought to be selected, and it was only by such a selection that any recommendation the Committee might make would be received with goodwill and respect, for it was of the greatest importance that their recommendations should be carried out with goodwill by those in Office. Some time ago a Royal Commission was appointed, at which 10,000 questions were asked and 10,000 answers were given, and yet absolutely nothing was done. He thought that a Committee would be much more useful.
  MAJOR O'BEIRNEsaid, he highly approved of the plan of selecting the members of the Committee entirely from outside the War Office. He trusted that one object the Committee would have in view would be to do away with the short service system altogether, or so to modify it as to make the Army efficient, and not to bring the Army, as it had

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  already been nearly brought, to disgrace. He trusted that they would also break up the brigade depôts, which had cost us an enormous sum—upwards of£5,000,000—and which had utterly and absolutely failed, proving the most humiliating and costly military failure we had ever had. He foresaw that the object of the Secretary of State for War was to break up the brigade system, and to do away with the linked battalion system, and he welcomed the prospect of such a result.
  COLONEL STANLEYsaid, he hoped that, as the discussion had arisen in a somewhat irregular form, he might be excused from replying in any great detail to all the points which had been raised. Hon. Gentlemen opposite had launched into quite a prophetic vein. They had prophesied many things which might or might not come to pass. The question was, however, very simple. Matters of principle must be left for the consideration of the Government and the House. There were many matters of detail which, if they affected principle, would, of course, be brought under the cognizance of the House. A great many points were points of detail important in themselves, and which would go a long way to correct the defects hitherto experienced. In introducing the Army Estimates, he had frankly explained what he conceived to be the faults of the existing system. He had spoken with some reserve as to the steps which might have to be taken hereafter; and, although he did not go back from the substance of the opinions which he had previously expressed, he could not help feeling that in a matter of that vast importance a careful inquiry and examination of facts by the best technical minds which they were officially able to command would be of advantage to the Government and the House in considering the steps which might be required to perfect our Army system. He did not wish them to express an opinion for or against the depôt-centre system; that was a matter fairly worthy of inquiry. He did not conceive that the Committee would be justified in laying aside the short service and the Reserve system; nor did he think they would be right in departing from the principles of the localization scheme. Feeling strongly on the matter himself, and knowing that many others had expressed their opinions for and
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  against the system, he had been anxious to obtain the services on the Committee of officers who, while having great knowledge of the subject, had not committed themselves strongly to pre-conceived opinions. He wanted to have as perfect and as impartial an inquiry as possible. It would then remain for the Government to consider what steps should be taken, and if they had occasion to come to Parliament, it would be his duty, or his Successor's, to make the necessary representations to the House. He wished at the present moment to keep his mind perfectly clear on the matter, and to be assisted by the authorities to whom he had referred in arriving at the best result on the evidence which would be obtained by the Committee. There appeared to be some misapprehension in the House as to the functions of a Committee; but he knew of nothing that could be done by a Royal Commission which could not be done equally well by a Committee. There would be no more difficulty in a military Committee going to different localities, if that was desirable, than for a Commission to do so. As to officers of the Marines serving on the Committee, the system of the Marines was entirely distinct; they had their own barracks, and they were not interwoven with the military system of this country at home. They had distinct functions to discharge, they were in no way concerned in the inquiry of the proposed Committee, and it would not be convenient or even right that they should be members of it. He had explained in general terms the object and scope of the Committee; and one prominent consideration which had weighed with him was that by appointing a Committee, and not a Commission, they might obtain more promptly the recommendations which the military authorities might think it requisite to make. He did not think it would be convenient or right for him to say more on the subject. As to the statement that officers had failed to carry out Lord Cardwell's system thoroughly, his Lordship did not expect his system would be carried out in a day; but it would be generally admitted that great progress had been made in carrying out the system, and still continued to be made. He was not aware that it was ever intended that the brigade depots should be centres of commissariat arrangements. It would be ab-

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  surd if regiments having their depôt in I the middle of England, and having to go to a port of embarkation, were to have their waggons and stores in the heart of England, instead of finding them nearer the port of embarkation. As to the systems adopted in other countries, it ought to be remembered that we had our own particular lines to pursue, which were forced upon us by our insular position. That position gave us great advantages, although it also had its disadvantages; and we could not blindly copy any foreign system, however good it might be. He hoped that, after those explanations, the Motion for the adjournment of the House would be withdrawn.
  MR. J. HOLMSsaid, he was glad that the officers who were to conduct the inquiry were to be selected outside of the War Office; but he thought a Royal Commission ought to have been appointed in preference to a Committee. He was also glad to hear from the right hon. and gallant Gentleman the Secretary of State for War that the Government were determined to adhere to the short service and the Army Reserve systems. What was wanted in the way of inquiry was a calm consultation between military men of large knowledge of the subject and men who were large employers of labour, so that they might come to a sound decision as to the principles upon which they ought to proceed. The present system, there was no doubt, had broken down most completely, for it was quite obvious to everybody that the men, or rather, boys, who were now being sent to fight the Zulus were not exactly the type of soldiers that wore required. He would suggest that it would be well if the Government re-considered their decision, and appointed a Royal Commission instead of a Committee.
  SIR GEORGE CAMPBELLsaid, that the right hon. and gallant Gentleman the Secretary of State for War took no notice in his remarks on what was the most important point in the question before the House—namely, that the Committee was to be composed of officers of the Regular Army alone, and that officers of the Militia and Auxiliary Forces were to be excluded from it. He thought it would be satisfactory to the country if the proposed investigation were to be of a less one-sided character than that suggested. The problem to
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  be solved was how to combine the institutions of the country so as to combine what might be called an armed nation for the purpose of defence with an Army for foreign service, and that was a problem which it seemed to him totally impossible for the members of one branch only of the Service to solve.
  MR. PARNELLsaid, that the short-service system was designed by the late Government when our foreign policy was very different from the policy pursued by the present Government. Short service gave us a large number of Reserves, as had been proved last year; but these Reserves could not be sent to Afghanistan, Africa, or Burmah, to carry on petty wars. If the present foreign policy of the Government was to be persisted in, they would require a very different, and a far more extensive, Army organization; but he warned the House not to be led away by the apparent failure of the short-service system in South Africa—not to be led away into sanctioning an organization of the Army which would enable an ambitious Minister to enter upon aggressive wars, either large or small, all over the world.
  THE CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUERsaid, whether the conversation which was now being carried on was or was not directly in Order he would not say; but it was important to call the attention of the House to the exceeding inconvenience of the course which they were now pursuing. It must be generally admitted that there was nothing of greater importance for the conduct of Business in the House than that they should know, with some degree of certainty, what Business they were called upon to discuss when they met, and especially when the meetings of the House were fixed for Morning Sittings with a special view to the discussion of particular Bills. Those hon. Gentlemen who came down to the House at some inconvenience to themselves might fairly expect that they would be allowed to proceed with the discussion of the Business for which they were assembled. He was perfectly aware that it was within the Rules of the House that any hon. Member might move the adjournment of the House, and that upon that Motion he had a right to offer such remarks as he might think necessary to justify what he had done. But it was a distinct abuse of the Motion fur adjournment, if that

  1561
  opportunity was taken to introduce subjects which had not been put upon the Notice Paper, and for which no opportunity of discussion had been regularly sought, and to bring them on in anticipation of the regular Business of the day. Hon. Gentlemen would see easily enough to what mischief that system might lead. For instance, on an ordinary day some hon. Member who had a Motion to bring forward stood first; but another who had not been equally successful in the ballot might cut in, and, saying that he was not satisfied with an answer he got from a Minister, might move the adjournment of the House and raise the whole question. If hon. Members would consider it as a matter of fairness among themselves, they would see that it was not right to resort to such a course, except in a case of emergency, which nobody would say the present case was. But beyond that, this was a mode by which Business might be indefinitely, and to any extent, retarded and, in fact, rendered impossible. The House must remember the circumstances of the Bill which was down for discussion that day. It was a Bill of very great importance; it was one to the preparation of which the Government had given very great attention; it was of considerable magnitude; and had been discussed, he was afraid to say on how many occasions, at very great length. There was still a great portion of the Bill to be dealt with, and the Government were prepared to give a large part of the time that remained of the Session to its discussion. They did not desire to limit the discussion on the Bill; but it ought to be clearly understood, not only in this House, but out of the House, that it was impossible for Business to be carried on in a way which was advantageous to the country, or creditable to the House itself, if it was not done with something of regularity. And he must say that the discussion which had been going on for half-an-hour or an hour, whatever the intention of the hon. Gentleman who had originated it, or whatever the interest which he admitted attached to the question which had been raised, was now taking a turn which would have the effect simply of obstructing the progress of the Business of the House. That might be a matter of great satisfaction to some persons. It was a course which the House might be content to condone, or even to approve; but it was
  1562
  right that the circumstances should be known which, in the present state of things, rendered it impossible for the House to make that progress with the Business of Parliament which the country expected at their hands. Of course, he admitted that the Question put to his right hon. and gallant Friend was one of great importance—one which at another time might be made the subject of a debate, or of a Question; but his right hon. and gallant Friend having given an answer, he thought they might have been allowed to proceed to the Business of the Day. But now they had had, not only further discussion upon particular Business, but the hon. Member for Meath made it the occasion for raising a general discussion on the foreign policy of the Government. It seemed to him utterly impossible, if that was the way they were to conduct Business, that they could get on with Business at all. He did not know that he could object in point of form to what had been done; but it was only right that the House and that others should be informed that it was impossible that the Business of the House could be conducted if such proceedings were of frequent recurrence.
  MR. GOURLEYsaid, that with the permission of the House lie would withdraw the Motion. At the same time, he hoped the Chancellor of the Exchequer would always act up to the good advice he had just given them.
  MR. PARNELL: Upon this question I beg to say a word or two, and I shall not take up one-fourth of the time which the right hon. Gentleman has taken up. ["Order, order!"]
  MR. SPEAKER: The hon. Gentleman has already exhausted his right to speak. Is it the pleasure of the House that the Motion be withdrawn?
  MR. PARNELL: No.
  MR. SPEAKER: Then the Question is that the House do now adjourn.
  Question put, and negatived.

SOUTH AFRICA—INSTRUCTIONS TO SIR GARNET WOLSELEY.

  QUESTION.
  MR. PARNELLwished to repeat the Question he had put to the Chancellor of the Exchequer as to the Instructions given to Sir Garnet Wolseley. The right hon. Gentleman declined to answer the Question on the plea that the Instruc-

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  tions, if communicated to the House, might, by being telegraphed to Madeira, reach the Cape before the officer who was to carry them into effect. But as there was no telegraph from Madeira, he wished to know, Whether the Chancellor of the Exchequer would state what the Instructions were after Sir Garnet Wolseley had left Madeira for the Cape?
  THE CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUER: Sir, I shall be obliged if the hon. Member will give Notice of the Question.

ORDER OF THE DAY.
  ARMY DISCIPLINE AND REGULATION BILL— [Bill 88.]
  (Mr. Secretary Stanley, Mr. Secretary Cross, Mr. William Henry Smith, The Judge Advocate General.)
  ARMY DISCIPLINE AND REGULATION BILL— [Bill 88.]

    COMMITTEE. [Progress 8th May.]
    Bill considered in Committee.
    (In the Committee.)
    Punishments.
    Clause 44 (Scale of punishments by court martial).
    SIR ALEXANDER GORDONsaid, the object of the Amendment, standing in his name, was to include in the scale all the punishments which could be inflicted by courts martial. If hon. Members would turn to page 146 of the Blue Book laid before the House, they would find that the Bill presented to the Committee contained in the scale of punishments those which he now proposed to add to the present Bill. He thought the Committee ought to be informed why the Secretary of State for War had departed from the arrangement which was laid before the Select Committee, and which was approved by the Commissioners. It was only yesterday he had read in the leading journal, that after the very careful manner in which this Bill had been considered and approved by the Select Committee, it was unnecessary further to discuss it. But if the Committee would compare the two Bills, they would find that that which was now under discussion had been almost entirely altered and redrafted; and although he was a Member of the Committee, and had paid great attention to the Bill laid before it,
    1564
    he was hardly able to find his way through the present measure, on account of the alterations which he had mentioned. The scale of punishments had been altered in this way. The former scale was made by enactment of the House of Commons, which declared the leading punishment which courts martial were to have the power to award; but by the Bill now before the Committee, Parliament did not enact all the punishments which were to be awarded by courts martial. The Bill only enacted some of the punishments, while others were put down in the form of a Proviso, or left to be awarded under Royal Warrant. This proceeding, which was an entire departure from established practice, was, to his mind, perfectly unintelligible; and, inasmuch as the Mutiny Act had always laid down the punishments which courts martial could award, he could see no reason why that course should be departed from. He, therefore, moved, in page 19, after line 7, to insert, "n. Forfeitures, fines, and stoppages," to restore the scale of punishments to be awarded on conviction by court martial to its original form—the form that was included in the Bill of last year, and the form in which he contended it should always remain. He also wished to remark that the mode of inserting the Provisos relating to exemptions, which, in the present case, were as important as the clause itself, was a departure from the course instituted by Parliament.
    COLONEL STANLEYsaid, perhaps the hon. and gallant Member (Sir Alexander Gordon) had not heard that he had said the word "agreed" across the Table of the House. The term "stoppages" might be open to the technical objection that it was not, perhaps, the right word, inasmuch as the punishment indicated was a matter of course; while the restoration, which often took place, was an act of grace. With that reservation, he accepted the words of the Amendment.
    Amendment agreed to.
    MAJOR NOLANsaid, with reference to the new punishment of reduction to a lower grade in the case of soldiers and non-commissioned officers, that its insertion was not a question of drafting, but of principle. He was not quite certain as to the meaning of the word "soldier," as employed in this Bill,

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    The Secretary of State for War had introduced the punishment of reduction to a lower rank in the ease of non-commissioned officers in a subsequent clause. It was left out of its proper place at the time the Bill was drafted; and he had some little fear that, unless the present clause was amended, they might be precluded from providing for that punishment later on.
    COLONEL STANLEYsaid, the suggestion of the hon. and gallant Member was, he believed, already noted and, in effect, agreed to. He apprehended that it would be safer to insert the punishment at the part of the Bill now reached; but would confer with those who were competent to give an opinion on the subject.
    SIR WILLIAM CUNINGHAMEhoped his right hon. and gallant Friend the Secretary of State for War would say "agreed," as he had done in the case of the last Amendment, to that which he now begged to submit to the consideration of the Committee; in which event, he begged to assure him he would give great satisfaction. He ventured to point out what, to his mind, appeared a strong objection to this clause, which was that it enacted that—
    "All officers when cashiered shall be incapable of again serving Her Majesty in any capacity, military or civil."
    The sub-section 3, therefore, which made this provision, he proposed to omit, on the ground that the Proviso was novel and unreasonable as well as unnecessary. First, with regard to its novelty. He ventured to point out that reference was made in the margin of the Bill to two sections—Nos. 76 and 87—of the Mutiny Act. Now, one of these two sections, he admitted, did refer to a similar Proviso which existed under the old Act; but it had only reference to the case of an officer who sheltered someone under his command from being brought before the civil power; but in the case of the other section, he begged to point out to the Committee that it had no reference whatever to the subject of the 3rd sub-section of the present measure. Again, as far as his recollection went, he had no knowledge that the disability to serve Her Majesty in any capacity ever did follow the sentence of cashiering by court martial; and for these reasons it appeared to him that the proposal that it should henceforward follow was en-
    1566
    tirely novel. He maintained that officers of the Army had been managed hitherto by the simple punishment of being removed from the Service, and by no other; and he could not understand why it was now considered necessary to institute a more severe punishment for the purpose of keeping them in order; and he could not, for his own part, avoid expressing his surprise that a soldier in the position of the Secretary of State for War, who had passed a long time in the Service, should have concurred in casting this slur upon officers of the Army. Again, with regard to the unreasonableness of this Proviso. He considered there was no offence which an officer could commit of a non-military character, save one, which it would be reasonable to visit with such severe punishment as that provided for by this sub-section, and that was treason, which all hon. Members would agree could not be punished too severely. But the punishment now proposed was a civil disability. He, for one, would have had no objection to it had it been dependent upon sentence of court martial; and he was certain the officers of the Army had such confidence in the justice of the sentences of courts martial that they would not object to this power being conferred upon them; but against the disability as it stood in the Bill there was the very strongest objection. It would, of course, be said that the sentence would not be imposed except in very grave cases, and in cases in which it was deserved. For his part, he thought it unfortunate that the Bill should prescribe the two sentences of cashiering and of dismissal from Her Majesty's Service. To his mind, cashiering was the only sentence possible in former times by sentence of court martial; but it appeared that this punishment was now to be regarded as something more than dismissal—it was dismissal from the Service with ignominy. He contended that the word "cashiering" ought to be omitted in all the other sections of the Bill, which could not possibly justify such punishment, if it was a fact that the sentence would only be passed in cases of great gravity. For instance, in Clause 19 it was provided that cashiering might be inflicted for the simple offence of drunkenness; but he could not admit that any case of drunkenness should be of such an aggravated character as to render a man who might be guilty of the offence

    1567
    liable not only to be turned out of the Service, but to be made incapable of serving Her Majesty in any civil or military capacity. Again, the section relating to suicide showed the propriety of omitting the word "cashiering," inasmuch as the offence contemplated could not justify the disability to serve Her Majesty in a civil capacity. The Secretary of State for War, he trusted, would favourably consider this proposed Amendment, which, in his opinion, was of great importance to the Service, an opinion which he thought was greatly borne out by the way in which his proposal had been received by the Committee. Another argument in favour of the Amendment was, no such punishment was possible in the case of privates and non-commissioned officers. The Committee had heard a great deal about the officers being affected by the Bill in the same way as the men; but, as a matter of fact, the latter could be dismissed from the Army without being rendered incapable of serving Her Majesty. It was further to be remembered that if an officer committed a crime of such a character as to render it right that a court martial should prevent him in future from serving Her Majesty in any capacity, either civil or military, there would be very little opportunity for his obtaining any such employment; therefore, the sub-section did not add to the real gravity of the punishment. But it was not the less objection able on that account, because it was quite conceivable that an officer might be seriously affected, who had not committed an act of so grave a character. Further, it was quite possible that an officer of Militia or Volunteers might be brought up for an offence of a purely military character, and, for the sake of discipline, it might be found necessary to cashier him, the result of which would be that he would find himself prevented from serving Her Majesty in any capacity for the future, and that merely for a purely military offence. Having now shown that, in his opinion, sub-section 3 was both novel and unreasonable, as well as unnecessary, he begged to move that it be omitted from the Bill, and to express a hope that the Secretary of State for War would consider his Amendment in a favourable sense.
    GENERAL SHUTEwas satisfied that hon. Members would not feel that his right hon. and gallant Friend the Secre-
    1568
    tary of State for War had, with reference to this sub-section, cast any slur upon the officers of the Army. It was to be remembered that, until recently, when an officer was cashiered from the Army, he was most fearfully fined as well; and it was formerly no joke for a man commanding a Cavalry regiment, for instance, to lose £15,000, as well as to be dismissed. With regard to the applicability of the Proviso to cases of drunkenness, he maintained that an officer who was offensive or misconducted himself under the influence of liquor was guilty of conduct unbecoming the character of an officer and a gentleman, and should be proceeded against in that light. It was not desirable to open the door to the possibility of an inferior accusing his superior officer of having, for instance, left the mess table drunk, or even a servant going to the colonel and stating that his master had gone to bed intoxicated, and demanding his trial on the plea that all ranks should be treated alike. The greatest distinction, he maintained, should be observed in every respect between the officer and the soldier. He maintained that discipline in the Army had been, in a great degree, the result of the strongest and the most marked social distinction, upon which was founded the respect which a lower class felt toward a superior class; and when this ceased, there was an end at once of what he might call natural discipline. The French Army, since it had got rid of social distinctions, had never maintained with the same facility its discipline in the field. An old soldier in the English Army would feel respect for the youngest cornet, because he looked upon him as a superior, and well educated, and would obey him with greater readiness than he would one of the oldest and most distinguished of his comrades who had been promoted from the ranks.
    SIR HENRY JAMESsaid, one result of the operation of the sub-section would be that if an officer were cashiered he would for life be prevented from being made a Justice of the Peace. A young man of 20 who had committed a practical joke might, by the means of this sub-section, be made incapable for the remainder of his life of filling any position in Her Majesty's Service; and a man who had been represented to have committed a great fault might, at a later period, be found to have committed

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    one of a venial character only. But if the sub-section were adopted, the Crown would never have the power of exercising its discretion in such a case.
    COLONEL ALEXANDERintended to support the Motion of his hon. Friend (Sir William Cuninghame). He found that in 1811 a certain officer was sentenced to be cashiered; but being recommended to mercy, His Royal Highness the Prince Regent remarked that it was not expedient to give effect to the recommendation any further than to mitigate the sentence into one of dismissal, which showed that dismissal was not so severe a punishment as cashiering. Cashiering really meant "breaking," and an officer sentenced thereto suffered social ostracism. Again, in 1816, an officer was sentenced to be cashiered and rendered incapable of ever serving His Majesty in any capacity, either civil or military. Only that part of the sentence involving cashiering was carried out, and the court was informed that it was ultra vires to sentence a prisoner to incapacity to serve His Majesty. Another case was that of Lord George Sackville, who, after the battle of Minden, was tried by court martial for having disobeyed the orders of Prince Ferdinand of Brunswick, and judged unfit to serve His Majesty in any military capacity; yet, subsequently, as Lord George Germain, he filled the office of Secretary of State. The whole of the present measure erred on the side of excessive severity; and although hon. Members were told that it was merely a consolidating Bill, it was, in fact, very much more. He did not say that the increased severity was in accord with the ideas of the right hon. and gallant Gentleman the Secretary of State for War, who was only obeying the behests of Sir Henry Thring, whose finger was apparent in every clause of the Bill; and although that gentleman might be a good draftsman, he knew nothing whatever about the feelings of the officers of the Army. He (Colonel Alexander) was sure that the Articles of War would be found to give the Secretary of State for War as many opportunities for exercising severity as he could desire, and therefore hoped that the Motion of his hon. Friend would be agreed to.
    COLONEL STANLEYsaid, that he had done his best to declare the law as he
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    considered it to exist. So far as he understood the authorities quoted by his hon. and gallant Friend, they showed that there had always been a distinction between dismissal and cashiering; and if he could point to a single case where an officer who had been cashiered had again been employed in a military or a civil capacity by the Crown, he (Colonel Stanley) would be willing to omit this section. It seemed to him that the matter cut both ways; for there was a great deal in what had fallen from the hon. and learned Member for Taunton (Sir Henry James), to the effect that what was proposed would interfere with the right of the Crown to bring any person back to its Service. Still more than that, it was plain that it might occur that an officer early in life was cashiered for some fault, and it was hard that he should not have any locus pœnitentiœ. He hoped that the Committee would understand his difficulty, and permit him to withdraw this section.
    Amendment agreed to.
    Sub-section 3 struck out.
    CAPTAIN MILNE-HOME CAPTAIN MILNE-HOME moved, in page 19, line 19, after sub-section 3, to add—
    "An officer who joined the Army before the abolition of purchase, when sentenced to he cashiered, shall not forfeit any portion of any sum of money to which he may be entitled from the Purchase Commissioners, unless the sentence of the court otherwise directs."
    The object of the Amendment, he stated, was to give to courts martial, when sentencing Purchase officers to be cashiered, a discretionary power to add to their sentence deprivation of commission money. In no authority had he been able to find that cashiering inflicted forfeiture of commission money. He knew this had been the practice in the Purchase days, and he did not wish to complain of that; because then all officers, whether they had paid for their commissions or not, served on equal terms. But in these days, circumstances were altered. For in the same regiment were men who had paid hundreds, if not thousands, for their commissions, serving side by side with others who had paid nothing; and thus one man might be fined heavily for committing an offence, while another for the same, if not a more flagrant crime, would get off scot free. To place both

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    classes of officers on the same footing, it would seem natural to assent to the proposal of the hon. and gallant Member for Leitrim (Major O'Beirne) in the Committee upstairs, which accorded to Purchase officers, on all such occasions, their purchase money. But he (Captain Home) did not altogether concur in this view; because a court martial might consider the gravity of the offence warranted their depriving the officer of his money. On the other hand, it must be recollected there were—there had been—introduced into this Bill several venial offences, for which an officer might be cashiered, and for which it would be hard to mulct him of his money. He need not multiply instances, but would simply refer to the speech of the hon. and learned Member for Taunton (Sir Henry James), the whole of which was in favour of this Amendment. He would allude to the crime of drunkenness off duty; and, without going back on the discussion over Clause 19, it was clear that that offence must often be of a venial character. He was the last person to palliate the crime of drunkenness in anyone calling himself an officer and a gentleman; but he felt there might be cases where the court might be glad to have the opportunity of acting leniently. They might, moreover, consider it best for the interests of the Service to dismiss the officer; but might pause before passing such a sentence if they felt they would be in this way depriving the man of all means of livelihood. There was one other method of placing the two classes on the same terms—namely, to fine the non-Purchase officer a sum equal to what his commission would have cost, had he bought it. But he (Captain Home) feared this proposition would not be entertained; and, therefore, he suggested his Amendment as a fair compromise. One of the principles of the Bill was the definition of Military Law, and he contended the Amendment met that view, and it was, therefore, not inimical to the principle of the Bill: whereas, if it were not passed, the accurate meaning of the word "cashiered" must remain in its present obscurity.
    MAJOR O'BEIRNEcordially supported the Amendment. In the 141 battalions now in the Service, there were 4,178 combatant officers, of whom 2,674 were Purchase officers. Considering, therefore,
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    how large a percentage they formed of the officers of the Army at the present time, he did not think it would be either wise or just to disregard their feelings in this matter. To show under what circumstances an officer went into action at the present day, he would state that the money lost at the battle of Isandlana by eight officers of the 24th Regiment being killed in action there, was£13,500. That would give a pretty good idea of the value of the money in question in regard to those 2,674 Purchase officers now in the Army. They were liable to forfeit the money to which they were otherwise entitled by the sentence of a court martial. The injustice of the matter was evidenced by what took place at the Criminal Court at Guildford, when Colonel Valentine Baker was tried and found guilty of an offence. In addition to his imprisonment, he was fined, by the Judge who tried him £500; but beyond that, the authorities of the Horse Guards thought fit to fine him £4,500 more. The law of England was that no man should be punished twice for the same offence; and he was sure that when Mr. Justice Brett, who tried Colonel Baker, sentenced him to pay a fine of£500, he had not the slightest idea that the authorities at the Horse Guards would impose any further fine upon him. Indeed, in sentencing Colonel Baker, the Judge said that, having regard to the high character which he had received, and for the sake of his family and children, he would be allowed an opportunity of continuing to serve Her Majesty, and he did not believe that the fine would have been inflicted if the Judge had known that Colonel Baker was to be cashiered. The injustice of the present state of things was that a purchase officer was punished much more severely in being deprived of his commission than a non-Purchase officer; and that, in point of fact, his wife and family were punished as well as himself. For these reasons, he thought there should be some difference made between Purchase and non-Purchase officers in punishing them for offences, and that one class should not be punished so much more severely than the other.
    COLONEL STANLEYwas not able to accede to the Amendment. He would ask the hon. and gallant Gentleman to consider how the matter stood. He had no intention to follow the hon. and gal-

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    lant Member who had last spoken into Colonel Baker's case, and of the loss by the Purchase officers at Isandlana, which he thought had nothing to do with this matter. The Army Regulation Bill of Lord Cardwell dealt with the matter in this way—it put the State into the position of the officer who formerly purchased a commission from another. They could no longer have an officer as the purchaser of the commission; but the State stepped in, and paid the value of the commission. Therefore, an officer had not now a saleable commission; and what happened was that the State stepped in and said that he should have the sum of money which he could have obtained from his brother officer in former times. When the officer was cashiered in former times, the step went as a matter of course, and no officer paid for it. They must remember that the State had simply taken the place of the officer who formerly purchased the step. There was not the slightest difference made in the manner in which Purchase and non-Purchase officers served side by side. One had paid money for his commission, and the other had not. Not the slightest difference had been made in the position of the Purchase officer, except, that whereas in former times, under certain circumstances, he was entitled to the value of his commission from his brother officer, now he was entitled to be paid that money by the State. What was now asked to be done was, that the commission of a Purchase officer, which was not saleable informer times, and for which he received nothing, should now be paid for by the State.
    GENERAL SHUTEbelieved that the Amendment of his hon. and gallant Friend was thoroughly just and proper. With regard to what had been said as to the loss of money by the deaths at Isandlana, he might say that he knew of some very hard cases which he intended to bring before the House in a Motion which he had entered upon the Paper. He would, however, mention to the Committee one instance of an intimate friend of his, who was of a most generous disposition, and who obtained high promotion upon the death of his colonel, thus obtaining his regiment for nothing. But this gentleman, being a fairly rich man, presented the money he would otherwise have given for the step to the widow of the colonel and brother, for
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    whom he and all under him had a great regard, she being left badly off. He would ask if the State would have done such an act as that?
    MR. RYLANDSwas extremely glad that the right hon. and gallant Gentleman the Secretary of State for War had refused to entertain the Amendment. He did not hesitate to say that Purchase officers had no reason to complain of any niggardliness on the part of the State; they had been treated in a manner for which, in his opinion, they ought to be extremely grateful. He supposed that the result of the Amendment, if carried, would be this—that if a Purchase officer in the Army were cashiered, he would be put into a much better position than he would have been under the old system of Purchase. And let it be remembered that the Amendment contemplated that an officer so cashiered should receive from the State not only his regulation price, but his over-regulation price. He had no hesitation in saying that the terms granted to the Purchase officers, by which they were placed under the new system in the same position as they occupied before, was a most advantageous arrangement to them, for it gave the sanction of law to what was known to be an indefensible practice on the part of the officers of the Army. The over-regulation price was paid under conditions not creditable to the Army; for every officer had at one period to take a solemn oath that he had not gone through any such transaction. Up to the last day on which the Purchase system existed an officer of the Army had had on his honour to declare that no over-regulation price had been paid. Yet, in spite of that, a constant violation of the law took place; and when the Government agreed to pay over-regulation prices—which he was very sorry they did, for he believed they were thus doing a great injustice to the public generally—they gave terms to the officers of the Army which he thought were perfectly outrageous in the generosity with which they recognized their claims. If the hon. and gallant Gentleman wished to re-open this question, then it would be necessary to consider the whole circumstances of the matter; but, for his part, he should say that it would be best not to disturb this settlement. The effect of the Amendment, if carried, would be that the Purchase

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    officer in the Army would be in a better position, in relation to the value of his commission, than he was when under the old system. The adoption of the Amendment would be a disturbance of the settlement come to by the late Government; and he hoped that the hon. and gallant Gentleman would see that, under the circumstances, it was undesirable to press his Amendment. He was fully in favour of cashiering being made not to have any effect which was not reasonable and proper; but he must say that the present proposal went far beyond that, and would be very unjust.
    COLONEL ALEXANDERwished to point out that the Crown had now a power, if it chose to exercise it, of ordering that an officer sentenced to be cashiered should receive the full value of his commission. In his opinion, the best way would be to leave the matter in its present position.
    MR. MUNTZconsidered that it would be unwise to interfere with the arrangements made in 1871. Both sides of the House had now acquiesced in that arrangement, although when under discussion he fought the matter out to the last, and he was sorry that his efforts were unsuccessful. He was convinced that the wisest course was not to interfere with that settlement. What was the condition of officers before the abolition of Purchase? If they were tried by court martial and sentenced to be cashiered, they forfeited both the regulation and the over-regulation prices of their commissions. That was all that happened now, although the Crown had the Prerogative of ordering that they should receive the value of their commission, if it thought proper.
    MAJOR O'BEIRNEobserved, that when a soldier was tried by court martial and sentenced to punishment he did not thereby forfeit his money in the savings bank. But this was a reversal of the adage of one law for the rich and another for the poor, for it was one law for the poor and another for the rich. He thought that a Purchase officer ought to receive the money which he had placed in the Military Chest in the shape of his commission, just as much as the soldier received the money which was due to him from the military savings bank.
    GENERAL SHUTEwished to know whether the Crown had the power to
    1576
    say, in case an officer was cashiered, that he should receive the value of his commission—that was to say, the same amount as in the case of his selling out would be awarded by the Purchase Commissioners?
    COLONEL STANLEYwas not able to answer the question of the hon. and gallant Gentleman; all he could say was that, so far as there was any existing right, it would not be affected by the Bill. Perhaps he would be better able to answer the question on another occasion.
    MR. PARNELLdid not think that this question was looked at in a right way. The Secretary of State for War defended the position he took up in refusing to accept the Amendment on this ground—that formerly, under the old system of Purchase, an officer who was cashiered got nothing, but the step went in the ordinary way in the regiment without purchase, and the same thing now happened. In his opinion, they ought to consider whether that was entirely a just arrangement. It was true that by the Act of 1871 the justice of that plan was acknowledged; but there was no reason why they should not rectify any injustice by the present Bill. If there were any inequality in any respect, or any injustice, he could not see why it should not be rectified. They ought to consider whether it was just or unjust that an officer of the Army, because he had given a considerable sum of money for his position, besides undergoing the sentence of the court martial, should be additionally punished by losing the money he had paid. Under the old system of Purchase, an officer could not receive this sum of money, but lost his commission; and the reason he obtained nothing was that he had no longer any step to sell. That system had now been done away with; and he thought they might fairly modify the inequalities and injustices left, if it were made plain that they existed. He would suggest to the Secretary of State for War, that they might so far modify the Act of 1871 as to give a court martial a discretion to say whether, in the event of an officer being cashiered, he ought to receive the regulation value of his commission. At the present time, a lieutenant who was cashiered was punished much less than a general officer. Why should a lieutenant be punished, irre-

    1577
    spective entirely of the sentence of the court martial and of the magnitude of the offence, in a much less degree than an officer of a higher rank? It might be that the offence for which a general officer was cashiered was of a much less grave nature than that for which a subaltern, under the new system, was cashiered. Yet, from the mere fact of the sentence of cashiering being passed, the power was taken away from the court martial to prevent the Purchase officer losing the money invested in his commission in addition to undergoing the sentence of the court. He should support his hon. and gallant Friend opposite if he went to a division upon this Motion; for he did not see that there was any right to punish a man twice over—first, by the sentence of the court martial, and, again, by the loss of his money. He thought it wrong to punish a man by a sort of Act of Parliament which did not take such a case into its consideration; and, in fact, by an additional sentence, which not only punished the person himself, but, in all probability, his wife and children.
    SIR WALTER B. BARTTELOTobserved, that a statement had been made that the Crown had the right to give the value of his commission to any officer who had been cashiered. He believed that that right existed; and he thought the wisest course would be to withdraw the Amendment and repeat it again, supposing it might be discovered that the Crown had not that right.
    SIR HENRY JAMESasked for the assistance of the Law Officers of the Crown upon this matter.
    THE SOLICITOR GENERAL (Sir HARDINGE GIFFARD)stated that he was unacquainted with the subject.
    SIR ALEXANDER GORDONsaid, that the Crown frequently remitted the punishment of forfeiture of the money. It was not a question admitting of the slightest doubt. The cases which had been put might be further exemplified. A regimental officer who had invested money in his commission, and a Staff officer who had not, might be both sentenced by a court martial for the same offence; but the sentence upon the one was much more severe than upon the other. He was sorry that the Secretary of State for War could not accept the proposal.
    CAPTAIN MILNE-HOMEsaid, that perhaps it might he more in accordance with the feelings of the Committee, and certainly with the feelings of hon. Gentlemen upon that side of the House, that he should withdraw his Amendment, pending the reply to the question of which the hon. and gallant Member for Brighton had given Notice. He might say, however, that he knew a great number of officers, not only in that House but out-of-doors, who felt very strongly upon this subject. He did not wish to enter into any of the questions brought forward by the hon. Member for Burnley (Mr. Rylands), nor did he wish to say anything with regard to the regulation and the over-regulation prices. What he asked for was simply common justice to the officer who had purchased his commission. He believed, also, that whatever opinion might be held as to purchase or non-purchase of any grade in the Army, that no greater similarity could be brought about between the two classes of officers than by adopting this Amendment. In the meantime, he begged to withdraw his Amendment.
    Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
    MR. PARNELL MR. PARNELL moved, in page 19, line 23, to leave out from the word "imprisonment," to the word "punishment," in line 25, inclusive. The hon. Gentleman said, the Amendment was in continuation of the discussion which took place on the last day when the House was in Committee upon this Bill before the holidays, in reference to the question of corporal punishment. The subject was not very fully discussed, or dealt with, on that occasion. They were asked at that time—and it was strongly pressed against them by those who believed in corporal punishment—that there was no alternative for punishing a soldier if he were not flogged. It was said that if a man could not be flogged, the only other punishment that could be given to him was capital punishment. At the time he was not prepared to answer that argument, because he wished to make inquiries amongst military men, who were better acquainted with the details of punishments which could be inflicted under certain circumstances. He had now made inquiries amongst several officers of the Army, and he had been told that there would be no difficulty in punishing a man

    1579
    sufficiently in a simple manner without flogging1 him. He was able to state that there were many punishments which could be inflicted upon a soldier that would tell in a much greater degree upon him than flogging, unless he were of a very degraded character. If a man were caught plundering, or doing any act which was prejudicial to discipline or the conduct of an army in the field, he was now usually punished by the provost marshal by flogging. But he might have his hands tied behind his back, and his rifle slung behind him, and made to carry two or three knapsacks, and the nature and quality of his offence written upon a placard upon his back. In that state he might be made to march along with his comrades in the ranks, pointed out as a black sheep, subject to the derision of everyone who saw him. That would be a sufficient punishment for the offences he had indicated in the field, without flogging having to be resorted to. There were, in fact, 50 ways of temporarily disgracing a soldier and making him an object of derision, which would be far better punishment than flogging him. If the authorities only chose to exert themselves, they would soon find out plenty of means; but it should not be thrown upon civilians to find out a substitute for such a disgraceful and degrading punishment as flogging. It was a punishment which had been abandoned amongst all foreign Armies in Europe. The Prussians did not use it, and the Russians never beat their soldiers. He was aware that Russia had acquired an unenviable reputation for the use of the lash; but he knew perfectly well that Russia never beat her soldiers—she might beat her subjects; but she never beat her soldiers. In France they did not find that the punishment of flogging was ever in use, or was necessary. He hoped that the Secretary of State for War would take one further step in the direction of the abolition of this punishment; and as he had only retained the punishment of flogging for armies in the field, and for troops on board ship not being ships of war, he would abolish it altogether. If he did so, his rule in his present Office would be one which would be looked back upon with satisfaction by everyone who wished well to the British Army. He begged to move his Amendment.
    Amendment proposed,
    In page 19, line 23, to leave out from the word "imprisonment," to the word "punishment," in line 25, inclusive.—(Mr. Parnell.)
    Question proposed, "That the words proposed to be left out stand part of the Clause."
    COLONEL STANLEYwas not quite sure whether the hon. Member saw the effect of the Amendment which he proposed. As regarded corporal punishment, the House considered the subject at some length on a previous occasion, and the necessity of retaining the punishment was affirmed by a very large majority. Even if he were willing to assent to the abolition of the punishment, he could not accept the alteration proposed by the hon. Member. This was not a matter in which he would be in Order in explaining, for the effect of the Amendment proposed would not be to touch the liability of the soldier to corporal punishment. He might still be sentenced to corporal punishment; there would be no power, if the Amendment were adopted, afterwards to discharge him with ignominy from Her Majesty's Service. It would, therefore, be very inconvenient to adopt any such Amendment as that proposed.
    MR. RYLANDSsaid, that when this question was before the Committee on a former occasion, it was under circumstances which led to a restriction of the opportunities which might have been desired on the part of hon. Members to express their opinions. This was a matter upon which he entertained a very strong opinion. He should be willing to retain the punishment of flogging, or any other punishment, if it could be shown that that punishment was absolutely necessary. But, in this case, he did not think any necessity had been shown for the retention of the punishment. He did not wish to look at this matter as a mere question of sentiment. He regarded it from a much wider and broader point of view. He would ask, how far did the fact that this punishment could be inflicted under certain conditions upon soldiers in the Army affect or prevent any man who wished to enlist from doing so? The matter should be looked at in a practical way. In former times, when flogging was very frequent in the Army, officers generally accustomed to flogging during

    1581
    their military experience were of opinion that the punishment could not be abolished without detriment to the discipline of the Service. He supposed that opinion was not now entertained, for the step taken in the nearly total abolition of flogging in the Army was now admitted to be the wisest thing that could have been done. There had been no evil effects resulting from it, and no detriment had been experienced to the Service; on the contrary, there could be no doubt whatever that the Service had received very great advantage. The advantage to the Service had been in two ways; first, it was clear that if a man were flogged he was degraded; and, secondly, he was made a worse soldier. Consequently, it must be admitted that if flogging were prevalent in the Service, there must be a shrinking on the part of respectable men from joining a Service in which they would be exposed to punishment of that kind. Flogging had been very much diminished; and it might be said, therefore, that they need not trouble themselves about the exceptional cases in which the punishment could now be inflicted. Let hon. Gentlemen remember that the exceptional case might be the one in which a man enlisting could be brought under. Regiments were frequently sent abroad, and they were not always sent in vessels of war; and if a man were sent abroad in a ship not being a vessel of war, he was liable to be flogged; and he thought that the knowledge that he was liable to such a punishment would prevent many a man from enlisting who might otherwise have joined the Service.
    THE CHAIRMANsaid, he must point out to the hon. Member that the subject to which he was now referring would be more relevant to another clause of the Bill. The question now before the Committee had no reference to the infliction of this sort of punishment. The only question that arose upon the clause was whether a soldier sentenced to corporal punishment might not, in addition, be sentenced to be discharged with ignominy from Her Majesty's Service. He did not think that it was desirable upon this Amendment to consider the question of corporal punishment per se.
    MR. RYLANDSsaid, that unless this clause were re-modelled with respect to this particular punishment, there would be an inconvenience in the argument of
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    his Amendment to strike out corporal punishment from another clause.
    THE CHAIRMANwished to point out to the Committee that the sub-section k, in the earlier part of the clause, empowered the infliction of this punishment. When that was under consideration was the proper time for debating the propriety of inflicting corporal punishment. The effect of the Amendment would not be to diminish the power given by the Act to inflict corporal punishment; but only to prevent a soldier, upon whom corporal punishment had been inflicted, being afterwards discharged with ignominy from Her Majesty's Service.
    MR. RYLANDShad no doubt that the Chairman was quite right in his ruling; therefore he should reserve his point, and make the observations which he intended to make when the hon. and learned Member for Stockport (Mr. Hopwood) proposed his Amendment.
    MR. PARNELLobserved, that the effect of the Amendment would be to prevent a soldier being discharged with ignominy, in addition to receiving corporal punishment. As Mover of the Amendment, he wished to restrict further punishment, and to prevent any punishment being added to corporal punishment. Surely they were entitled to speak of the effect of corporal punishment. That was the way in which the matter occurred to him when he moved his Amendment. He had only risen for the purpose, not of continuing the discussion on the question of corporal punishment, but to point out to the Committee that the arguments made use of against his Amendment did not affect its propriety. It had been said that the effect of his Amendment would be to prevent a soldier who had been flogged being afterwards discharged with ignominy. The right hon. and gallant Gentleman the Secretary of State for War said that that was a consequence which he did not wish to see realized; but he should submit that the right hon. and gallant Gentleman had offered no argument in respect of that view. They had been told that it was necessary to punish certain offences in the field quickly and sharply. He would ask, whether the discharge of a soldier with ignominy from Her Majesty's Service was a punishment of that character? If discharging a soldier from Her Majesty's

    1583
    Service with ignominy was a suitable punishment, why was it necessary to score his back with the lash in addition? He thought that the arguments used against it tended strongly in favour of his Amendment. They might flog a soldier because they desired to retain him in the Army; but if it were desired to get rid of him, what was the reason for flogging him?
    MR. A. H. BROWNsaid, that under this clause they could only inflict corporal punishment upon a soldier when on board ship or on actual service. These two conditions were necessary before corporal punishment could be inflicted. Now, this part of the clause said, that in addition to imprisonment or any other punishment, which might be corporal punishment, a soldier might be discharged with ignominy. The question then arose, first, how could he be discharged with ignominy when on board ship on a voyage? He could not be discharged until the end of the voyage. And, secondly, when on actual service, it seemed to him that that was certainly not a time when a soldier should be discharged with ignominy, but rather that he should be kept in the Service. It was possible that when on actual military service a soldier might want to be discharged; and, therefore, it would be surely undesirable to allow him to be so. Therefore, he thought there would be harm in allowing a soldier to be discharged with ignominy after receiving corporal punishment.
    Question put.
    The Committee divided:—Ayes 160; Noes 43: Majority 117.—(Div. List, No. 116.)
    MR. HOPWOODsaid, if his opinions were regulated by the results of divisions in that House, he should be so much discouraged by the one just taken as to fear moving his next Amendment. But he and his Friends were so convinced of the good that was done by the repetition of argument, that they would not hesitate to seize every opportunity to discuss this most cruel, useless, and pernicious punishment. He, therefore, should offer no apology for again pressing this discussion on the Committee; and he could not understand how so many officers of high rank and ripe experience could sit silent and dumb when they
    1584
    must have many arguments in support of this punishment, derived from their own experience, to offer to the Committee. Why did they leave the kind-hearted Secretary of State for War to defend this punishment, and maintain that an Army of his countrymen was made of such materials that they could not be managed in the field, or during transport across the seas, without this excessive and terrific punishment? Yet that was their position at the present time. Englishmen were very Pharisaical. They thanked God that they were not as other men were—not even as those poor Russians. That was the idea which passed through the rather crude and uninformed minds of many gentlemen. They really did not know what was done in Russia; while as to other countries, he was amazed at the levity with which people said—"Oh! they don't flog soldiers in France and Germany; they shoot them." Where was the authority for it? Did anyone mean to tell him that an officer would have a man shot for the same offence for which he gave him 50 lashes? They were always talking about Russia; although lie believed that many of those who talked so glibly about the knout did not know that it had been abolished there for 15 years. In out-of-the-way parts and corners of Russia illegal acts might be done; but flogging was against the law. Therefore, Englishmen might cease comparing themselves in their inflated vanity with other nations in this respect. When he spoke of the severity of the punishment, he was told that he was talking of the good old days when the "cat" flourished. An hon. and learned Friend of his (Mr. Sullivan), on a former occasion, was supposed to have exaggerated in describing the results of the lash, and it was denied that the lash caused blood to flow. But Mr. Buxton, a former Member of that House, stated in one of his speeches, reported in Hansard—
    "At the first blow the blood spurted out some yards; and after he had received 50 lashes his hack, from the neck to the waist, was one stream of blood. The man was disabled, often for many days, sometimes even for weeks, as in the case of a man flogged last autumn at Woolwich."
    These recitals were painful, but so was the lash; and if they were to have it, do not let them put the consequences on one side with solemn contemptuous in-

    1585
    difference, and throw the blame on the military authorities. He knew there was always a natural jealousy between two Professions as to the interference of one with the other; and an hon. and gallant Gentleman the other night had talked of the tinkerings this law had received from the lawyers. He did doubt, on the other hand, whether the training of an officer was quite the training by which a man best learned the way to keep men to their allegiance, and to make them perform their duty with the smallest amount of suffering and the least need of punishment. It was not the fault of military men, but of their training, that they saw matters from a small and narrow standpoint, and had not the inestimable advantage which a training in law gave—that it taught a man to consider crime and punishment from an entirely different aspect. Therefore, he hoped the military men in that House would not altogether reject the gentle suggestions they might receive from lawyers. Civilians had discarded this punishment of flogging long ago. They tried it for a number of years, and then, with universal execration and by universal consent, they discarded it as not only doing nothing to stop crime, but as doing a great deal to injure the population; and, above all, as inflicting an irreparable injury on those who inflicted it. Though 50 lashes was the talismanic number allowed by this Bill, no Judge, even in the worst cases, now thought of giving more than 20, or at the most 25. Another person, describing a flogging, said—
    "As each was cast off after the punishment, his neck and hack presented to view a belt of livid flesh, about seven or eight inches across, and reaching, as we have said, in a slanting direction from shoulders to waist, so that no part of the back escaped the blows of the lash. Each of the prisoners appeared to suffer in much the same degree in intensity; and each gave indications of the severity of the pain by screams and cries repeated at every stroke. These cries, we are told, continued for some time after the punishment was over; and, indeed, so painful was the scene, and so distressing the cries of the prisoners, that the officials themselves had some difficulty in sustaining it."
    No doubt, the non-commissioned officers and men who had to look on while their comrade was being flogged must be deeply touched and pained. But such scenes could not be repeated before these men without depriving them of their proper feeling of sensibility. Therefore,
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    he should like to lower this punishment to the lowest possible amount. The Bill said the maximum was to be 50 lashes; but, in reality, it was 450—it was nine times 50, for each lash had nine tails. He was told, also, that the most muscular men in regiments were employed to lay on the lash. The drummers were employed, he was told, because by long practice they had acquired great muscular power of arm and wrist; while in Cavalry regiments the farrier-sergeant was told off to be the degraded executioner. In this continuation of flogging in the Army every Member of the House who did not oppose it was concerned. For that reason, he would protest as long as he was able, and whenever he could get the chance, determined to free himself, at any rate, from having any part or share in the responsibility for its perpetuation. He wished to know why, if 50 lashes were named in the Bill, the instrument by which they were to be inflicted should have nine thongs? Perhaps the Secretary of State for War would be good enough to explain this. Now, as the right hon. and gallant Gentleman asked for 50 lashes which, owing to the construction of the instrument by which they were to be inflicted, meant 450, he (Mr. Hopwood) proposed to give him six, which would, in effect, be 54; and that number he trusted the Committee would present to Her Majesty's Government as being the right number to be inserted in the Act. He, therefore, begged to move, in page 19, line 27, to leave out "fifty," and insert "six," thereby securing discipline, securing order, and securing the repression of crime—if such a punishment could secure these objects—and substituting, in reality, 54 lashes for the 450 which, by a covert falsehood, was represented by this Bill as 50.
    COLONEL STANLEYthought the hon. and learned Member had more than once apologized in the course of his harangue for his ignorance in matters relating to Army discipline; and, although he had no wish to press the point, he could not help remarking that he had just ground for excusing himself on account of that disqualification; because some of the arguments used by him could not in any way apply to the clause before the Committee. The principle of corporal punishment had been fully debated by the House a few days back, when its retention was confirmed by a very large ma-

    1587
    jority, after three hours' discussion. He was obliged to presume that the plan adopted by the hon. and learned Member, of picking holes in this portion of the Bill by the Amendment which stood in his name, was intended to make his arguments hang together with some degree of consistency. The hon. and learned Member went on to say that the prescribed number of lashes should be inflicted "with an instrument or whip of not more than one thong or tail." But it was of no use lingering on those petty points of detail. As the Act was drawn, there was nothing whatever to prevent the use of a whip of steel, or, in short, a much more formidable instrument being prepared than was at present in use. He was not aware whether there was any sealed pattern of the instrument for use in the Army, as in the case of the Navy and prisons, which prevented their being made of any excessive dimensions; but if there were not, he thought it perfectly right that there should be. He was, however, bound to say that there had never been any complaint of excessive punishment; and, so far from there being any desire on the part of the authorities to inflict the punishment more severely than was strictly consistent with what was believed to be their duty, the feeling was quite of a contrary character. It would, therefore, be his duty to oppose all the Amendments of the hon. and learned Member who had just addressed the Committee.
    MR. RYLANDSrose with the object of considering this question from an entirely different standpoint to that occupied by the hon. and learned Member for Stockport (Mr. Hopwood). He was prepared to look at this matter solely in view of its effect upon the administration of the Army and the good of the Service; and, leaving aside altogether the painful impression caused by this mode of punishment, to proceed upon a broad ground, and ask, was it or was it not desirable that this kind of discipline should be maintained in the Army? He held in his hand an annual Return from the Army, which went back to 1865, in which year he found that corporal punishment in the Army had been inflicted in 600 cases. The number of cases in which this punishment had been inflicted went on decreasing down to the year 1868, when, in fact, there were none, in consequence of the alterations
    1588
    of the Mutiny Act which took place in 1867. Further, by the Mutiny Act of 1868 the punishment was abolished, except upon active service, and on board ships not in commission, and that was the provision which it was intended to continue in the present Army Regulations. As the result of this alteration of the law, between the years 1869 and 1877 there was only one case of infliction of corporal punishment in the Army, according to the Returns. There had, however, very recently been some cases on board ships, to which allusion had been made in the House; but, practically, for several years the punishment had been done away with altogether, and the same change had been made in the Navy. Now, the right hon. and gallant Gentleman had stated—and he believed with perfect truth—that in the case of a great number of commanding officers there would be the greatest reluctance to the infliction of this punishment. He (Mr. Rylands) had already stated—and he repeated his belief—that amongst the officers of the Army there were men as humane and as anxious to maintain discipline by kindness as amongst any other class of Her Majesty's Service. But there was no doubt whatever—and the right hon. and gallant Gentleman knew it better than he did—that while this was the general character of the officers of the Army, there were officers of a very different description. There were men who were violent, and who, by their temper, were disposed to impose punishment in a manner which caused a bad impression upon the men under their command, and which was, therefore, detrimental to Her Majesty's Service. Therefore, in looking at this question, they should not set up a standard of character on the part of officers in the Army generally; but they must consider how this particular power might be exercised by men not of very good judgment, and probably by men of infirmity of temper. So far as he was able to judge, the change in the Mutiny Act, under which the administration of corporal punishment had been brought down to a minimum, had effected a great alteration in the administration of the Army, and one which hon. and gallant Gentlemen knew was very much opposed by officers of the Army before that change took place; but it was now plain that it had

    1589
    been altogether beneficial. He had never heard that there had been any objection raised since to the change which had taken place by reason of the limitation of this flogging in the Army. But was it a fact, or was it not, that the power to inflict corporal punishment in certain cases tended to produce a feeling, on the part of the people outside the Service, which would prevent their coming to our regiments? He was quite sure, from his knowledge of the working classes, that the fact of a soldier being liable to this degrading punishment, and the knowledge that when a soldier had been punished in this way his self-respect was reduced, and he was lowered in every way, had a very deterrent effect in preventing men from joining the Army. Now, he should support, during the progress of this Bill, every proposal the effect of which would be to induce a higher class of men to join the Army. In the book which he held in his hand, he found records of crime that were perfectly alarming. He found that the number of men punished for crime in the Army was almost incredible. Until the Return presented to Parliament was examined, one could not imagine there could be found such a large proportion of the men guilty of offences. In 1877 the number of punishments proportioned to offences tried by courts martial was 15,793; the offences themselves, of a serious character, numbering no less than 24,199. In addition to these offences of a serious character, there was a large number punished by the regimental officers; and he found that under that head the number of minor punishments inflicted was something enormous, the total number in 1877 being 282,687; so that what between the major and minor punishments, there existed a state of crime and disorder in the Army which was certainly of a very unsatisfactory character. That state of things, in his opinion, arose, to a great extent, from the fact that under the present condition of the Service the country was obliged to get recruits from the very lowest characters of the population. It was found that men of high character amongst the working classes shrunk from going into the Army. Now, he held that rather than resort to men of low character, men of good character ought to be induced to enlist, and not those of dis-
    1590
    orderly habits. By attracting men of this character, with naturally vicious habits, the Army was rendered a hot-bed for the rearing of men in the constant habit of committing crimes, and who were continually being held to punishment by the decision of their superiors; and this large proportion of men undergoing punishment, as hon. and gallant Members knew perfectly well, very much interfered with the efficiency and available strength of the Army. Therefore, on the grounds of economy, efficiency, and the maintenance of the character of the Service, he held that, if there was the slightest suspicion that the infliction of this punishment, or the knowledge that it could be inflicted, deterred men of the highest character from enlisting, flogging was one of the worst things that could be adopted for the interest of the Army. There was another point which, when the subject of punishment was being dealt with, it was of the greatest possible importance to bear in mind, and that was that punishments should have no reference to the rank of the offender—they should simply regard the enormity of the offence. If it was thought necessary that there should be a particular punishment for certain offences, let it be applied to all ranks in the Army—to the officer, as well as to the private soldier. He would remind hon. Gentlemen that in the days of the First Napoleon a proposal was made to introduce corporal punishment into the French Army. The Emperor resisted that view; but upon pressure from certain officers connected with the Army, he at last consented that a Committee should be appointed to inquire into the propriety of the introduction, with the condition, however, that if it was decided that corporal punishment should be introduced, it should be made to apply to all ranks of the Army alike; and the result was, that the officers who had pressed the matter on the Emperor allowed it to drop, and nothing more was heard of it. He intended to vote in favour of the abolition of this punishment in the British Army, not because he was prepared to take the position that, under no circumstances, could it be beneficial, but with the view of regarding the interest of the Army, and of securing the highest class of recruits; for he maintained that by getting rid of corporal punishment the country

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    would get rid of what, in his opinion, deterred the better class of men from joining our regiments.
    MR. BIGGARremarked, that the Secretary of State for War had said this was not a pleasant subject; but he had added that no complaints were made against corporal punishment, and that, in fact, the system gave great satisfaction. He (Mr. Biggar) presumed that this was the view of those who had to inflict the punishment, and liked to see it inflicted on others; but he was convinced it could not be the view of those who were liable to it themselves. With regard to the very important point raised by the hon. Member for Burnley (Mr. Rylands), as to whether this punishment, in the interests of the Army, should be allowed to continue, it was well known that, at the present time, the recruits were of the very worst description. Over and over again it was stated in the House, and it was notorious out-of-doors, that it was impossible to obtain the proper class of men for recruiting our regiments; the class which now joined being physically and morally unfit for the Service. Did any hon. Member think for a moment that a man of decent character and in fair employment would join the Army, while he ran the risk of having corporal punishment inflicted on him by the whim of an officer? Even, therefore, from the most selfish point of view, so far as the interests of the Army were concerned, the system was inexpedient. It was well known that the Armies of France, Russia, and Germany could hold their own in the field without this system; and not as the British Army had done in Afghanistan, by bribing the heads of the Tribes; while it was equally the fact that, in Zululand, our Army could not make its way at all. He thought the officers of the Army should unite to get rid of the punishment of flogging altogether.
    MR. PARNELLthought the Committee had every reason to complain of the tone which the Secretary of State for War had assumed with regard to the Amendments of the hon. and learned Member for Stockport (Mr. Hopwood), which he affected, to treat as entirely beneath his notice, and unworthy of discusssion. The history of this matter had been that when, upon former occasions, the annual Mutiny Act was passed as a matter of form, and
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    hon. Members had ventured to ask that some attention should be given to the question of flogging in the Army, they were told by the War Office authorities, and by the then Secretary of State for War, that this question, among others, should be inquired into, and receive the attention of a Select Committee, and that afterwards the Government would frame a Bill to deal with the subject. But the result was that, so far from the question of flogging receiving the attention of the Committee upstairs, it received no attention whatever. One of the last things which he (Mr. Parnell) had done on the Committee was to move for further evidence upon the subject, but the Motion was rejected. After this, it was felt that the proceedings of the Committee were of an useless and entirely unsatisfactory character, and that the result was not to be in any way relied upon. It was, therefore, the duty of hon. Members interested in the abolition of this punishment to see that their proceedings on the present occasion were not of the same useless character, and that the question raised by the hon. and learned Member for Stockport should receive proper consideration at the hands of the Secretary of State for War. He (Mr. Parnell) submitted that it was not in accordance with the traditions of the House to go over a series of Amendments and reject them before they had received the consideration of the Committee; it showed a desire, on the part of the right hon. and gallant Gentleman, to forestall argument, which would certainly not facilitate the progress of the Bill. The hon. and learned Member for Stockport had asked that if the punishment of flogging could not be done away with altogether it should, at least, be limited in extent of application; and, in so doing, he only went upon the precedent furnished by Government in drawing up the Act, when they showed that there were occasions upon which corporal punishment should not exceed a certain number of lashes; nay, more, they had shown, in many instances, by their practice, that it was not right to inflict this punishment to its fullest extent. He asked why, if never more than 25 lashes were inflicted in the Army, 50 should be inserted in the statute? If officers and surgeons in the Army found 50 lashes too many, why should you put more in the statute than were considered proper

    1593
    by the men who had to execute the law which had been placed in their hands? In other dads there were men who defended the infliction of 2,000 lashes—men of humane character—just as there were at the present day to justify the infliction of 50 lashes. Nevertheless, that punishment of 2,000 lashes had been gradually brought down to 50; and he hoped that the number would be further brought down until none of it remained. Therefore, he trusted the Committee would not dismiss the question too hastily, and without full discussion. The question had its human, as well as its political aspect; and on that ground it demanded the fullest consideration. Again, it was absurd to suppose that they could get a desirable class of men into the Army while the terror of the lash hung over them. From a professional point of view, it should be a matter of delight to a soldier, when war was commenced; but to the English soldier it could be but a matter of apprehension, because he knew that in time of war he was liable to this degrading and brutal punishment of flogging. The Secretary of State for War had told the Committee that it was not his desire to inflict this punishment in a brutal way; but, nevertheless, although it was not his desire, it was inflicted in as brutal a manner as it was possible to inflict it. The strongest man in the regiment was told off for the purpose; that strong man was not supposed to be able to inflict more than 12 strokes at the time; the surgeon stood by, and the sergeant said "one;" the executioner, who stood with the lash in his hands, proceeded with the utmost force to bring it down on the shoulders of the sufferer, bringing it back again to the attitude of "attention." As soon as the sergeant saw that the strong man had had time to prepare himself for another stroke, he gave the order for another lash. Now, if that was not done with the intention of giving as much pain as possible by the punishment, he would like to know what could be? He deprecated the forestalling, in anyway, of the Amendments of the hon. and learned Member for Stockport, as had been attempted by the Secretary of State for War; and, at the same time, trusted that the Committee would mark its sense of the motives of the hon. and learned Member by supporting him in the division.
    MR. HOPWOODpointed out that it was an error to assume that corporal punishment could be inflicted gently, and asserted that unless it was administered with the greatest possible severity the officer charged with its execution did not do his duty; the lashes must be of the full tale of severity. There must be no blinking of the question; the punishment was of a brutal and beastly kind; if any hon. Member thought it was not, let him stand up and say so. He should like it to be known in the House of Commons what Member would stand up and say that flogging was not a brutal and beastly punishment. But he saw no inclination on the part of any hon. and gallant Member to rise and say even that it was a punishment to be admired for its effectiveness in maintaining discipline in the British Army. It did not quite become the Secretary of State for War to remark that it was not usual to employ a steel whip in the Army; and he could not help thinking that the manner of his reply lost some of its pungency, when he undertook to say that he (Mr. Hopwood) had apologized for his ignorance in discussing this matter. In making the admission referred to, he desired the Secretary of State for War to understand that he had but done what he should do when occupying ground not usually trodden by him. But the right hon. and gallant Gentleman had done more. He had said—"You ought not to go into these matters at all." Well, he was repentant. But why did he not take his hand, as a child's, tenderly, and say—"Your experience is not like mine; let me tell you, you are wrong?" Had he done so, he (Mr. Hopwood) would most certainly have apologized, and said—"I have wronged an hon. and gallant Member; I have overstated my case; I have done an injustice." But the fact was, the Secretary of State for War had hoped, by the use of oratorical artifice, to get rid of his arguments.
    SIR HENRY HAVELOCKwas not disposed to listen in silence to charges thrown out against men who, in pursuance of what they believed to be their duty, were prepared to vote in favour of retaining for the present a mode of punishment which they considered to be indispensable to the maintenance of discipline in the Army under circumstances of war. He held that the

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    hon. and learned Gentleman had no practical acquaintance whatever with the circumstances which made this punishment necessary; and had it not been for the challenge thrown out by him, he would not have troubled the Committee with any observations on that occasion. But as the hon. and learned Member had thrown down a challenge, he would tell him that he (Sir Henry Havelock) yielded to him not one inch in his desire to remove corporal punishment from the Army as soon as it was possible to do so with safety. But it was nothing more than a perversion of language and sentiment to say, as the hon. and learned Member had said, that flogging was a disgrace to the Army. The officers of the Army argued, from a melancholy acquaintance with the facts, that in the present circumstances of the Army, and under the temptations amongst which soldiers were thrown in time of war, that the punishment in question was one which it was necessary to maintain. The difference between our Service and that of foreign countries was this—that whereas we were compelled to resort to corporal punishment in the case of certain offences, they, on the other hand, for the like offences, applied, were applying, and would, in his opinion, always in future apply, the punishment of death. Was it the desire of hon. Members, by inflicting the punishment of death, to shut out every chance of retrievement in cases where men now received a punishment which was disgraceful, certainly, but which was for that very reason efficacious? How often did hon. Members require to be told that under no circumstances could the punishment of flogging be given except by court martial? ["No, no!"] [Major NOLAN: The Provost Marshal.] He was not referring to active service. He was glad to hear the hon. and gallant Member for Galway make some remark himself, because he was often contented to act as the instigator of those around him. If the hon. and gallant Member would look at the statistics he would see that in the year 1877, while 30,000 soldiers were on their passage to and from India and the Colonies, not one single instance of corporal punishment had occurred on board ship. Again, although the country had been carrying on war for some months past, he believed that
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    neither in Afghanistan nor in Zululand had corporal punishment yet been inflicted; and he hoped that the latter war would be brought to an end without that necessity arising. Corporal punishment was mainly used during actual warfare, for crimes that were in themselves a disgrace to humanity. It was futile, as well as absurd, to suppose that men of the class of which the British Army was composed—men who were ready to risk anything and to dare anything, who carried their lives daily in their hands, to whom the risk of death and mutilation was a part of the bargain into which they had entered—would be deterred from crime by the mere physical pain of a few lashes. The efficacy of the punishment was entirely due to its disgraceful character. If this punishment was to be done away with in the few cases in which it was retained, what substitute was it proposed to supply? Amongst the various proposals which had been made was the ridiculous suggestion that a card should be hung round the neck of the offender; but he wished to point out to the hon. Member who had made that suggestion (Mr. Parnell), that though this would undoubtedly be ridiculous, the ridicule would justly fall, not on those who suffered, but on those who attempted to apply it. He could assure the Committee that there was no class of men in the world who were more glad to see improvements in the condition of the soldier than were the officers of the Army, who on that occasion had been so much maligned. He sincerely hoped that the time might soon come when corporal punishment would die out, because it was no longer needed; but he was obliged to remark that in such an event the House would owe nothing to the arguments of hon. Members below the Gangway. What monopoly of the feelings of humanity, he desired to know, belonged to those hon. Members? In conclusion, he wished to say that no class of men would rejoice more than the officers of the Army when this punishment could be done away with; but until this occurred the good soldiers knew that they were in perfect security, because there was not the slightest risk that, by any possibility, corporal punishment would be inflicted upon them.
    MAJOR NOLANsaid, he was not going to imitate the example of the hon, and gallant Gentleman who had just sat down by endeavouring to obtain a cheer from hon. Members opposite. Notwithstanding that lie had attempted to persuade the Committee that no Hogging was inflicted in the Army except by sentence of court martial, he (Major Nolan) was in a position to state that from three-fourths to nine-tenths of the floggings took place without any court martial whatever. The reason of his remaining silent during the discussion was that he desired to reserve his observations until the Amendment which stood in his name was reached, and which Amendment was intended to afford a guarantee that a man should not be flogged except by order of court martial. The hon, and gallant Member, in his speech, had made a most extraordinary statement in saying that no good soldier was liable to the lash, or could, by any possibility, be flogged; but, on the contrary, he (Major Nolan) maintained that a good soldier was just as likely to be flogged as a bad one, inasmuch as two-thirds of the floggings were for breaches of the most trivial camp rules. If hon. Members doubted his assertion, let them read the last Blue Book issued, and they would find that a number of Zulus gave it as a reason for leaving our Service that they were flogged for breaking camp rules which were not explained to them. Under such circumstances as these, if the hon. and gallant Baronet was in the position of a General commanding in the field, he would see very little flogging going on, and could, therefore, write home and say that there was no flogging in the Army, because it would go on without his knowledge. Without receiving specific orders to flog the soldiers, the provost marshal, in order to carry out the wishes of the General with regard to camp rules, caught the first man who broke them and flogged him; no returns were kept of the number of floggings that took place; and, as he had said before, the best soldier under that system was just as likely to be flogged as a bad one, because he was just as likely to break the camp rules. He had no doubt that upon this principle in Afghanistan and Zululand between 300 and 400 men had been flogged during the wars in those countries. This would be known when the men
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    came home, and would reach the places from which recruits came, by word of mouth, just the same as if it had been published in the newspapers; and the more so, because it was endeavoured to suppress it. He maintained that the class of soldiers must be raised; and one step in that direction was to remove the stigma cast upon them by corporal punishment. And he believed that if the punishment of flogging was kept up, the enthusiasm of the men would be damped when the country entered upon any great war, and that it would be very difficult, indeed, to get men into the ranks. The hon. Member for Meath (Mr. Parnell) had said that a soldier should be most pleased when a time of war arrived; but, as matters now stood, he would say—"This is the time for me to be flogged."
    SIR ALEXANDER GORDONbriefly pointed out that the discussion had been carried on as if corporal punishment was confined to the Army. It seemed to have been forgotten that it was practised in the Navy, and even to a greater extent than it was in the Army. A captain of a man-of-war could order the punishment to be inflicted if the sentence was approved by two other officers. But this seemed to have been forgotten. ["No, no!"] Yes; it had not been alluded to to-day, nor yet a few days ago, when the hon. and learned Member for Louth (Mr. Sullivan) spoke on the subject. He could not see why the retention of the punishment should be held to be so degrading in the Army and not so in the Navy. The good men of the Army did not object—they knew they were exempt from the punishment; but they also knew it was necessary to retain the punishment as the only means of keeping in order a class of men with whom they had to associate. The hon. and gallant Member for Galway (Major Nolan) talked of what happened in Abyssinia; but he (Sir Alexander Gordon) had seen larger Armies than were engaged in Abyssinia, and he knew the most important operations of war might be carried on without flogging, if the men knew there was the power to inflict the punishment. The question had been sufficiently discussed; and he only wished to say that the Navy was subject to the same punishment, and to this no objection had been raised in this debate.
    MR. O'DONNELLsaid, in consequence of the persistent and thorough manner in which military men insisted on retaining the honour of flogging for the private soldiers of the British Army, he gave Notice that in all cases where the flogging was retained for the soldier, he would move on the Report of the Bill that the honour should be extended to the officers of the Army.
    SIR HENRY HAVELOCKsaid, the discussion would soon extinguish itself; hut he desired one word to give the Committee the opportunity of judging of the value of the statements of the hon. and gallant Member for Gal way (Major Nolan). His remarks implied that under the power given by this Act the provost marshal in the field was enabled, almost whenever he liked, to inflict the punishment, and, practically, without supervision. But if he believed that, he could not have read the Bill. If he referred to the Bill he would find among its provisions one that had been in existence almost as long as the British Army, by which this power to inflict corporal punishment was strictly limited to those cases of gross and violent offences in the field of which the provost marshal had been a personal eye-witness. The provost marshal was restricted to this by his commission, which could only he varied by the General commanding. He could only exercise his power in those cases where he had himself witnessed violent or disgraceful offences; in other cases, he had to refer to the decision of the commanding General. Clause 72, on page 40, would show this; and, under the circumstances, he did not think this power of the provost marshal was in excess of the requirements of warfare.
    MR. O'CONNOR POWERsaid, two statements had been made, not very well reconcilable. The hon. and learned Member for Stockport (Mr. Hopwood) had been charged with engaging in a debate upon a subject on which he had no knowledge; and, later on, his hon. and gallant Friend (Major Nolan) had been alluded to as the instigator of certain proceedings in connection with this subject. Whatever want of knowledge there might be on the part of the hon. and learned Member for Stockport was fully made up by the practical experience of the hon. and gallant Member for Galway (Major Nolan). Why did the
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    hon. and gallant Baronet (Sir Henry Havelock) allude so positively to the action his hon. and gallant Friend had taken; and what was the meaning of the wild shout from the opposite Benches when the observation was made? The only interpretation he could put upon it was that it was an attempt to intimidate the hon. and gallant Member in the discharge of his duty. It was not the first time that intimations had been made to hon. Gentlemen connected with the Service, who chose to adopt a peculiar line of policy, that they would be marked men. If that was what was intended in the present instance, the sooner it was known and understood in Ireland the better; and he was glad his hon. and gallant Friend had met it in the spirited way he had; and, if the hon. and gallant Baronet expected to limit opposition by his remarks, he had mistaken his man. With reference to this subject of flogging, he did not intend to go over the ground occupied by other hon. Members; but it was surprising to him that when Parliament said that there should be a regulation whip used in the Prisons and in the Navy, that the authorities at the Horse Guards had not adopted a similar regulation in the Army; it was a matter to which the Secretary of State for War would do well to direct his attention. In the case of the prison rules and regulations, it was required that a copy should be laid on the Table of the House. A similar course might be adopted with the Army whip, so that Members might test the weight of the instrument; and, even if so disposed, subject themselves to the discipline, and so get practical knowledge of what the poor fellows suffered whose backs were lacerated. On whom should rest the stigma of calling the Army a collection of scoundrels and blackguards? Certainly not on those who endeavoured to get the punishment of flogging abolished in the Army. This was a most serious subject; and, as they had failed to induce the Government to make the slightest attempt to meet the Amendment, he hoped no division would be taken to-day. He trusted the right hon. and gallant Gentleman the Secretary of State for War would not press this matter any further; but that he should be allowed to adjourn the question until he had more time to give it consideration.
    MAJOR NOLANsaid, the hon. and gallant Baronet (Sir Henry Havelock) had impugned his statements, and had referred to Clause 72, which authorized the appointment of provost marshals. But the law with regard to provost marshals was extremely strained, or the facts which he (Major Nolan) had referred to would not have happened. He had been speaking of the law as it actually existed, and not of this Bill. He (Major Nolan) had carefully read the clause in this Bill, and he failed to find what had been stated by the hon. and gallant Baronet. He thought provost marshals might flog men for almost anything under the clause. He wished hon. Members to see this clause, and to examine the powers given under it. Certainly, as to the class of evidence, the clause was terribly stringent; because it said that the provost marshal himself might see the offence committed, or one of his assistants might see it; while the provost marshal could have any number of corporals, or lance corporals, or even private soldiers as his assistants. This provost marshal had it in his power to flog men for the most trivial offences; so that where they found the clause simply protecting the soldier for an offence lie did not commit, then, on the other hand, it allowed the provost marshal, pratically, to flog for almost anything. For instance, the clause said—
    "And the powers of such provost marshals shall be regulated according to the established usages of war."
    Now, that simply meant that if anyone in the camp said he had known a man to have been flogged for such and such an offence—it might be 20 years before—then that might be construed into a warranty for flogging. In another place it said—
    "The General or other officer commanding the Forces on active service shall cause the provost marshals to exercise the powers intrusted to them in such manner and under such circumstances as he may consider to he best calculated to prevent and instantly to repress offences injurious to the discipline of the Forces under his command and to the Public Service."
    On the whole, he should say there never was a clause drawn up more expressly to cover every possible case than this clause. But he would turn to the latest and best evidence that could be got—namely, the last Blue Book from Zululand, and he defied the hon. and gallant
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    Baronet to say that the men were not there flogged in large numbers for the most trifling offences. True, they were Zulus, and not European soldiers; but he had himself seen Europeans flogged for very nearly the same things, and they now found that those things were going on at the present moment. He did not see what better evidence they could have than this book, which was published on the authority of the Government. The provost marshal, it seemed, did not keep the returns; but there were statements in this Book which were supposed to be correct. He should like either the hon. and gallant Baronet, or the hon. and gallant General (General Shute)—who had been out with large Armies, and both of whom had had larger Forces under their command, and more experience than himself—to say whether five men, or even 10 men, had not been flogged every day amongst those Forces? Could they say they knew that was not the case? Had they made inquiry to satisfy themselves that in a Force, say, of 20,000 men, that was not the common average? They would not know, perhaps, unless they took the trouble to ascertain the fact. But he believed that in every British Army in the field a very fair amount of flogging usually went on—it was such a very convenient punishment. They had nothing to do but to catch a man and to tie him up to the nearest post, and give him 20 lashes, and say nothing more about it. It need not be reported to anybody, and there the matter ended. He dared say the man would not commit the same offence again. He dared say the punishment was tolerably effectual; but its great merit was that it was so extremely convenient, and because it was convenient it was used, and that was the reason of its retention. He should like to see it abolished altogether, if possible. He acknowledged he did not hope to get it abolished; but he intended to propose such Amendments as would limit it down to what had been stated in that House should be the limit—that was to say, to limit it to cases in which foreign nations used it. That, he thought, would diminish it by 9–10ths.
    MR. JACOB BRIGHTsaid, a great many references had been made in the course of the debate to the hon. and gallant Baronet the Member for Sunder-

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    land (Sir Henry Havelock), and he was not surprised, seeing that his was the only speech which had been made in the debate in favour of the necessity of flogging. Well, he (Mr. Bright) congratulated hon. Gentlemen opposite that they had left to that (the Opposition) side of the House the task of defending that unfortunate institution. But the speech of his hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Sunderland had, he thought, entirely failed in convincing anybody that flogging was necessary or desirable. If he (Mr. Bright) had previously been in favour of flogging, he thought he would have been convinced by that speech of the folly of it. Why, the hon. and gallant Baronet made a deliberate statement that in the Zulu and Afghanistan Wars not a single individual had been flogged. There had been no necessity for flogging in those two wars; and he further said that he believed that when the Zulu War had ended, it would then be found that nobody in the Army had been flogged. Surely, he (Mr. Bright) might appeal to the hon. and gallant Baronet, and ask him to give up this wretched rag which still remained, after so much had been removed and reformed. He would ask him to give that up, as we could so well do without it—that we could carry on two wars without any necessity for using the cat. When the question was last debated before the Recess, he remembered the argument relied on by those who defended, flogging was this—it was said it would be impossible on the line of march to find a substitute for it, and that, therefore, they must have flogging on the line of march. Well, the hon. Member for Meath (Mr. Parnell), in the course of this debate, had shown, he thought, very clearly that there were other deterring punishments that might be adopted; and although his hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Sunderland referred to the speech of the hon. Member for Meath, he did not deal with those substitutions which the hon. Member for Meath suggested. On the contrary, he dealt with only one of those suggestions, which he seemed to think was somewhat ridiculous; but not with the others, which were of more importance. The hon. and gallant Baronet said this was a most disgraceful punishment. Yes, it was disgraceful to the individual who received it, disgraceful to
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    the Army wherein it existed, and, in his opinion, disgraceful to the country which permitted it. He believed this country would stand better before the eyes of foreigners by abandoning this punishment, as they had already abandoned it. He trusted that when the hon. and gallant Baronet reflected a little more on the matter, he would assist those who objected to this disgraceful punishment in getting rid of it. He (Mr. Bright) believed, as the hon. Member for Burnley (Mr. Rylands) had said, that this punishment kept men out of the Army who would otherwise come to it, and that it lowered the standard of the Service.
    SIR HENRY HAVELOCKremarked, that a pointed allusion had been made to him by the hon. Gentleman who had just sat down, and for whose opinion he had a just respect. He must compliment his hon. Friend on the very marked contrast between the tone of his moderate speech and that of those very excited speeches which preceded him from hon. Members a little lower down.
    It being 10 minutes before Seven of the clock, Committee report Progress; to sit again upon Thursday.
    The House suspended its sitting at Seven of the clock.
    The House resumed its sitting at a quarter after Nine of the clock.

MOTIONS.

  LONDON SCHOOL BOARD EXPENDITURE.—RESOLUTION.
  MR. J. B. YORKE, in rising to call attention to the rapidly increasing expenditure of the London School Board, and to move—
  "That the rapidly increasing expenditure of the London School Board requires the early attention of the Government, with the view of imposing on it some more effectual checks than appear at present to exist;"
  said, it would not be necessary for him to go into the whole question of education, or beyond the financial question arising out of the proceedings of the London School Board, inasmuch as, these being hard times, and times in which they ought to look narrowly into all the

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  different items of expenditure, which pressed heavily on the ratepayers, the only matter with which it was necessary for him to deal was as to the channels into which the expenditure of the country flowed. The taxpayer had many friends, who sought a cheap popularity by pecking at small economies. The ratepayer had fewer friends, who were stauncher, and had made stubborn fights in his behalf. It was always assumed that education was a pearl of great price, and the particular branch of expenditure that affected education had not any attractions for the popular speaker; but the time had come when all real economists should scrutinize very carefully the cost of education in this country. He proposed to confine his remarks to the area of the Metropolis, and, as far as that area was concerned, he should be able to show that the expenditure for educational purposes bad been so excessive as to be dangerous, not only to the cause of economy, but to the cause of education itself. He thought a review of the Metropolis in its efforts on behalf of education in late years would show that education had not been advanced by the action of the London School Board, notwithstanding its extravagant expenditure, and there was evidence that a strong necessity existed for the Government to impose some check upon this action. He proposed to call attention to the financial position of the School Board in 1871, 1875, and 1879, and then to inquire into the causes of the absolute and relative cost of the system; how far it was due to defective machinery; or the unsound policy of the Act; or to extravagant administration; and to specify the different heads under which it showed itself, and to point out one or two ways in which it might be remedied; for it was supposed, when the Education Act was passed, that in London the School Board rate would not amount to more than from 2d. to 3d. in the pound; but this estimate had been very much exceeded. At that time, the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Bradford (Mr. W. E. Forster) said the rate would not exceed 3d. in the pound; the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Greenwich stated the same thing; and the now Leader of the House (Sir Stafford Northcote) moved an Amendment, that any sum beyond that amount should be divided equally
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  between rates and taxes. The hon. and learned Member for Oxford (Sir William Harcourt) also saw that it was absolutely necessary to limit the rate; and he (Mr. Yorke) looked forward to the hon. and learned Gentleman's support that evening. It would be well for hon. Gentlemen to bear in mind that a rate of 1d. in the pound produced £100,000 a-year. In 1871 the first School Board for London provided schools for 104,000 children, at a cost of £11 per head, which was defrayed by the imposition of a rate of 2d. in the pound. He contended that, although the Education Department was powerless to remedy the existing state of things, there was yet a means of applying legislative agency to cure what was generally admitted to be a crying evil. In 1875 the state of things had alarmed the Vestries of the Metropolis. They met together, and determined to wait upon the noble Lord (Viscount Sandon), who was at that time Vice President of the Education Department. They stated, in the first place, that the neglected classes only should be provided for, whereas at that time many other classes were provided for. The Duke of Richmond, the President, in answer to that, said that the neglected classes were those to whom the Act was in the first instance intended to apply, but that they would hardly get the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Bradford and his Colleagues to agree that it was not intended for other classes of the population. They said that sites too near to voluntary schools had been selected by the School Board. To that the noble Lord (Viscount Sandon) replied, that in many instances the Education Department had restrained the School Board from building too near to voluntary schools to interfere with their action. They also complained that the standard of education was too high. The answer was that that was a question for the ratepayers, and that the Education Department could not go into all those matters; that it had no right to restrain the action of the School Board unless it acted improperly; and that if the ratepayers thought the standard of education was too high the remedy was in their own hands. In that year the rate rose to 4½d. in the pound, and the average net cost for the education of the children, estimated for the year ending March, 1880, was £1 13 s. 6d. per head on the rates; whereas in 1875, the

  1607
  average net cost per head was £1 2s. 9d., which had to be defrayed out of the rates. Coming to the year ending March, 1880, the Board had already borrowed £3,184,500, and the rate to be levied this year would amount to £551,247, equal to 5½d in the pound on £24,000,000, the rateable valuable of the Metropolis. The increase last year was equal to £58,000. The Board stated that the total number for which accommodation was to be provided was 261,237; and, in the course of the next three years, they proposed to borrow £1,355,852, which, added to the sum already borrowed, would bring the total to £4,540,532. These figures showed that their loans had been increasing, and would continue to increase, at the annual rate of £500,000; and, looking to the future, it might be expected that in three years from the present time the rate would be 8d. in the pound. He thought he was not overstating the case in saying that, and that the expenditure of the Board would go on increasing at the rate of £75,000, for which a rate of ¾d. in the pound would be required. Indeed, the possibilities of the increase of the rate might be described as indefinite, if not infinite. If what he had stated did not reveal an alarming state of things, he did not know what would. This increase, it should be remembered, was exclusive of the present increase of the population. In these bad times, did anyone suppose that the cost of sites and buildings continued to increase? It was far more likely that it had decreased. In 1871 the cost of sites and premises averaged £11 per head of the children provided for; but now it was £20 17 s. 7d. There was no reason whatever why this should be so, as labour and materials were not more expensive now than they were in 1871. The Education Department had pointed out that in 10 schools the cost per child for premises amounted to £23, while in two schools it reached £41, and that the final cost exceeded the preliminary estimate by 38 per cent. The cost of teaching was, in 1873, 12 s. per child; in 1875, 16 s.; and in 1878, 21 s. 6d. There was no reason whatever why there should be this gradual increase. He thought it was to be accounted for by the fact that there was an impression on the School Board that no cost was too great to pay for education, and that when they had a large fund to draw
  1608
  upon it was a comfortable thing, and they might go on drawing from it without compunction.
  "Suave est ex magno tollere acervo."
  Of seven of the largest towns in England, London stood first, with a cost of £2 13 s. 5d. per child, Liverpool coming next at £2 7s. 4½d., and Sheffield standing the lowest, with a cost of £1 19 s. 6d. per head. Whichever way they looked at the matter, they would find that the cost of education under the London School Board was more expensive than the same kind of education elsewhere; while, with regard to getting in the fees, on the contrary, the case was just the reverse. In that respect the London Board schools stood far below the voluntary schools. They were at the top of the list in expenditure, and at the bottom in getting in the fees. The present system was Communistic in its working. Elementary education, like physical existence, was guaranteed to everybody by the State from motives of public policy. This was very proper; but the moment they outstepped the limits of what was reasonably necessary they trenched upon Communism. Every man had a right to live, but not to live luxuriously; and, in the same way, all had a right to be educated, but not to be educated luxuriously. The Act of 1876 laid down the principle that it was the duty of every parent to educate his child; but in London it was practically the rates that educated the children, while the parents paid only a small subsidy. The cost of education and accommodation was about 16 d. per week for each child, of which sum the parents paid on an average only 2d. Moreover, as a matter of fact, the lowest class were not educated at all, though it was their ignorance which formed the pretext for all this expenditure. The other day he had gone with his hon. Friend the Member for South Leicestershire (Mr. Pell) to visit the parish of Lime-house, in the East End of London. They found that before the passing of the Act there had existed several large ragged schools in that locality for the poorest class of children. These schools were now closed, being superseded by the Board schools, and the children who were formerly taught in them were left to run about the streets. Around an organ-grinder they were able to count

  1609
  about 50 of these children dancing to the music within 300 yards of a School Board school, which they subsequently visited and found to be filled with children belonging to quite a superior class, the parents of some occupying houses of from £40 to £50 per year rating. They inquired how this was, and were informed that even if the ragged children came to the Board schools they were dismissed on trivial pretexts, such as want of cleanliness, their places being filled by the class of children to whom he had just referred; and the reason for this was quite obvious—the master had a direct interest in passing as large a number of children as possible, and he found the better class more remunerative. They were even told—though he could not vouch for the truth of the report—that there was connivance between the schoolmasters and those who worked the public machinery in order to bring this result about. The middle-class schools ill that district were being destroyed by the Board schools, and numbers of brass plates had now disappeared from the doors, although they had reduced their fees to the lowest possible amount. In one of the schools young ladies learnt music, and drawing, and French, and they were told that some of the scholars lived beyond the London district, and actually came in by train in order to attend the school. The master, when asked if this was so, said he discouraged it as much as possible. The master of the Bethnal Green School provided some 60 books, costing about 5s. each, as prizes for his best scholars. This was a sort of mutual co-operation; the master gave the good scholars books, and the good scholars by their attainments were remunerative to the master. This was the way in which the fees were being used. They were, practically, trespassing on the ground of middle-class education, and providing for the well-to-do classes an education at the cost of the public, and the same results had occurred in other districts. In a letter to The Times to-day Mr. Rodgers said that it was ludicrous to maintain that too many schools were being built. Of course, if they continued to pursue the present system, they could not build schools enough. The more schools there were the more the middle classes would come in to fill them up, and the ragged children outside would not be touched, because it was to everybody's interest to keep them out. Their
  1610
  whole policy must be altered. Another point important to be observed was the decrease of the voluntary schools. The Marquess of Ripon had said in the House of Lords that it should be our object to maintain and foster the existing system; and the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Bradford had declared that we must take care not to destroy the existing system in introducing a new one. In spite of these declarations, there were eases now in London in which the voluntary schools were being starved out, because they were underbid by the Board schools, which, in many cases, seemed to be established with this very object. In the parish of Lime house, for example, within half-a-mile of the parochial schools, seven Board schools had been established, most of which charged only 1d. where 4d. had been charged before, and an eighth was being built. The result had been that the children in the voluntary schools had been reduced from between 2,000 and 3,000 to 500. In St. John's, Walworth, the attendance in the voluntary schools had been reduced from 1,500 to 900, and in Plum stead they were about to be given up. Their action was also detrimental to the discipline of the voluntary schools. It was a great advantage to a Board school teacher, from a pecuniary point of view, to get as pupils children whose education had been already rough hewn in the voluntary schools. In some cases there was an absolute refusal to take in gutter children. He would not weary the House with instances of voluntary schools being closed in consequence of the competition of the School Board schools. They were numerous. Only the other day he heard of a voluntary school in Westminster being closed after being in operation since 1830. It was more important to examine the relative cost of the two systems, and with that view he would premise that there were three factors in the finance of these schools—in the voluntary schools, subscriptions, fees, and grants; and in the Board schools, rates, fees, and grants. Let them omit the two last factors in each case and compare the cost of subscriptions and rates. When they had done so, the House would, perhaps, be surprised to find that the annual cost of the maintenance of children in voluntary schools was only 8s. l0¾d., while in School Board schools it was £2 7s. 10 d., or a little more than five

  1611
  times as much. In other words, for every child that could be educated under the School Board system, five could be educated under the voluntary system; and the educational results, as shown by examinations, were within a trifle the same. Hon. Members must surely be very much enamoured of the School Board system of compulsion, if they thought it worth while to undermine and destroy the voluntary system, in order to substitute one which was so expensive and troublesome, and which produced no better result. The London School Board schools cost in building £20 17 s. for each child; and they contained, as a rule, 800 places, and the certificated teachers were in the proportion of one to every 60 scholars. The average annual value of the head-master's place was estimated at £250; but many head-masters had £300, and some in exceptional cases as much as £400, £500, and £600. The average annual value of the head-mistress's place was £150, and that of the assistants from £100 to £150. A very objectionable feature of that payment was that part of it depended upon the passes at the Government examination; for the headmasters under the London School Board obtained half the education grant, which was, on the average, 15 s. per child, and the other half was divided among their assistants. Thus, the ratepayers were first rated to maintain all this expensive machinery, and then taxed Justin proportion to the success it achieved. Now, that, he contended, was a misapplication of the system of education grants, which were originally designed to stimulate voluntary effort. The schools, in his opinion, ought to receive grants, not in direct proportion to the amount of money they managed to extract from the pockets of the ratepayers, but in inverse ratio. The result of giving them indiscriminate aid was that since 1874 the education grant, which was, of course, paid out of taxation, had increased from £2,100,000 to £3,600,000, and there was no prospect of its diminishing. It appeared to him, also, that, considering the large class of Visitors and Superintendents, the compulsory clauses of the Act were not very satisfactorily carried out. The result was that the attendance of middle-class children was encouraged to the exclusion of the class which most required education. Occasionally, however, the
  1612
  agents of compulsion made themselves odious by cases of hardship. One of these he heard the other day from Mr. Serjeant Cox. A blind man's son, who had passed the 1st Standard, surreptitiously left school and took service as a page. Before he had been long in his place he was discovered by one of the School Board officers, stripped of his buttons, and sent back to school in rags to learn the higher subjects, and the blind man presumably suffered in consequence. He now came to the details of the alleged extravagance of the School Board. There was first the machinery of compulsion. The estimated increase on that head this year was from £ 18,000 to £19,000. It consisted of 11 Superintendents and 213 Visitors, and the establishment was unsatisfactory, because there was no means of supervising its action. When one came to look at the budget of the School Board, one was struck by the enormous scale on which everything was conducted. Everybody seemed to get about 50 per cent more than similar persons in other departments of life. Not to speak of the famous 400-guinea carpet or the general furniture of the School Board offices, which was said to be exceedingly sumptuous, he found that they did things in what might be thought very handsome style. For instance, they had three Inspectors at £450, one at £375, and one at £350; one singing Inspector at £300, one deaf-and-dumb Inspector at £300, one needlework Inspector at £175, one kinder-garten Inspector at £190, one Inspector of the blind at £90, one drill Inspector at £170, which was a handsome addition to the pay of a retired sergeant; one shorthand clerk at £375. Even the messenger was well paid, for he had £80, and the hall porter £75. This was an arrangement with which everybody would be satisfied, except the ratepayers. In the architect's department the architect had £1,000 a-year, with an assistant at £360; an inspector of furniture, £245, with two assistants at £139 each. The total cost of the architect's department being £4,495. He now came to the details of the Shaftesbury training-ship. It was originally called the Nubia, and the Home Secretary approved of the purchase, on the understanding that it should cost not more than £15,000. It was to receive 350 boys under the age of 12.

  1613
  The result was that the total amount expended, instead of being £15,000, was £43,474 14 s. 8d. That startled the Board, and they accordingly appointed a committee to investigate the matter; and, to do them credit, they did not attempt to screen the members responsible for the extravagance, and freely criticized some of the details of the expenditure. They reported that there had been unnecessary expense—amounting, in some cases, to extravagance—in the mode of furnishing the vessel. Referring to special items of expenditure, they pointed out that two rugs were bought for the ships at a cost of £16 each, and three carpets at a cost of more than £18 each; £36 had been spent in furnishing a seat in the stern of the ship; 12 rugs had been provided at a cost of 21 s. each, and nine Caspian rugs at a cost of 30 s. each. These rugs had been placed in various parts of the ship, and even in the quarters of the carpenters and stokers. The committee recorded their opinion that the articles mentioned above were entirely unsuited to an industrial school. They regretted that extravagant sums should have been spent on Oriental rugs, and on the fittings of two rooms intended for members of the Board on the occasions of their visits to the ship, and in the purchase of a piano for the use of the captain's wife. The cost of furnishing these rooms amounted to £273 19 s. 8½d. One of the most remarkable things, however, to which he wished to call the attention of the House was the fact that the staff of officers for the ship was complete and costing a large annual sum at a time when there were hardly any boys in the vessel. At the end of August there were on board the ship only 30 boys, 17 being the number of the officers, who were being paid at the rate of £1,758 per annum. The number of boys on board had, no doubt, increased since then; but as yet the vessel had not her full complement, although the staff had been complete ever since August. In fact, the vessel was not expected to receive her full complement of boys until 1880; and yet, with these naturally inadequate duties to perform, the salaries of these officers had already been increased. He would compare the cost of the boys on board the Shaftesbury with the cost of the boys in Greenwich Hospital School, which was a very suc-
  1614
  cessful school maintained by the Admiralty. In the ship the average cost of maintenance for 350 boys was £25 per head, the average cost at Greenwich School for 983 boys being £18 12 s. 7d. per head, a result which was highly creditable to the Admiralty. Again, the gross amount of the salaries of the staff in Greenwich Hospital School was only £2,716, or one-third more than the gross amount paid to the officers in the Shaftesbury, which was now £1,958, though the number of boys in the former school nearly trebled the number of those in the latter. What he mainly objected to, however, was the kind of teaching which was carried out. The compulsory teaching provided in Board schools should not, he maintained, go beyond the three R's. That amount of education was all that the State owed to the children. Any additional subject should be optional and paid for by the parents. Great expense was caused by the presence in all Board schools of teachers competent to teach a host of subjects in addition to the elementary ones which he had indicated; for he found the ordinary course not only included them and Bible knowledge, but also book-keeping, mensuration, elementary instruction in physical science, the history of England, elementary geography, and elementary social economy, whatever that might be. A knowledge of the last-named subject was, he thought, very much needed by the members of the Board themselves. To these might be added music, drill, and several other accomplishments. The subjects which he had named were the ordinary compulsory ones; but there were others which were discretionary, and which presented a still more formidable curriculum, as it included Euclid, Algebra, physical geography, French, Latin, chemistry, animal physiology, botany, and many other equally abstruse subjects, the understanding of which would be an education suited to the higher classes of society, domestic economy being one of them. Why domestic economy should be discretionary, when social economy was compulsory, he quite failed to see. Anyone who should go through all the subjects taught by the Board would issue forth into the world better furnished for the battle of life than many hon. Members who had received expensive educations.

  1615
  ["Hear, hear!"] Yes; but he wished those who cheered to recollect that these children were expected by the Board to learn all these subjects while they were between five and 10 years of age; but they were enough, if properly followed out, to occupy for a long time the attention of persons of mature years. The House would, therefore, be able to imagine what a hopeless hotch-potch the head of the boy would be who had drilled into him, before he was 10 years of age, the rudiments of the many different subjects to which the Board turned the attention of its scholars. He held that common sense suggested that if rudimentary education of this character was to be imparted by the Board to a child, it should have some practical reference to the object of the child's life—to the pursuit by which he was to gain his bread; that the boy who was to become a groom should learn how to manage horses, and that the boy who was to become a gardener should learn to dig. Boys who were to be artisans, and who were turned out into the world with a certain amount of knowledge of albumen and other abstruse matters belonging to organic chemistry would hardly digest the information that had been decanted into them. As instances of the confused ideas which children so universally instructed carried away with them, one was that at an examination he had heard a question asked what was a monitor, and the answer quickly given was, "an iron-clad." Then, again, in a girls' school, when the subject was "Milk as the best possible food," one girl said it was so, because God made it; another, because puppies and kittens throve on it; and, another, because it contained starch. He would go no further into that branch of the subject. What he wished to show was that, at the present time, there was no effectual check upon the action of the Board. The Education Office, the Local Government Department, and the House of Commons had left the whole thing in the hands of the School Board to do practically as they liked. Of course, he knew that the Education Department in the pre-compulsory epoch, was invented for the purpose of stimulating the action of voluntary schools; and it was no wonder that, after having so long applied the whip and the spur, they should find themselves unable to apply the curb to
  1616
  Board schools. Practically, all they had done in regard to the Board was to say—"Well, gentlemen, so long as your constituents do not pull you up, we do not feel it necessary to interfere." Lately, however, a change of policy had been adopted by the Department; and in stopping the supplies they had, he was glad to say, surprised the Board with reference to financial matters, and had placed them in a somewhat awkward position. The Board, in the correspondence in the hands of hon. Members, however, had declined to admit that they were the least in the wrong, and they gave no sort of assurance that they would confine their expenditure within proper limits. The Local Government Board had since then taken the matter in hand, and their Auditor had surcharged the Board with the charge for interest on temporary loans. The Law Officers of the Crown, who had been consulted on that proceeding, were, unfortunately, at variance; and while the Attorney General upheld the Board, the Solicitor General upheld the Department. Meanwhile, it was evident that the Board had not repented, for it was now endeavouring to borrow another £20,000 of the Bank of England for temporary purposes; and what was there to prevent them doing so—from borrowing money at interest whenever they wished to carry out any new proposal? He was glad to see that the Bill of the Government in regard to the Public Works Loan Commissioners would have some effect in checking the action of the Board, inasmuch as it would restrict its borrowing powers to £100,000 per annum, and spread the re-payments over 30 instead of 50 years. The House, however, would remember that that would impose no real check, unless something could be done to prevent them from obtaining these temporary loans. They would only go into the open market, where they would have to pay a higher interest, so that the last stage of the ratepayers would be worse than the first. He thought he had shown that the Board had indulged in excessive expenditure of which no probable end—unless it was stopped—could be seen, and that, therefore, the subject was one which urgently demanded attention from the Government. He wished to cure those evils, and thought that, in accordance with the resolutions recently adopted by delegates in the Metropolis, a limit

  1617
  ought to be placed on the amount of the School Board rate. In 1870 a limit of 3d. was suggested; but that, alas! was a limit to which there was now no chance of reverting, still he thought some limit should be fixed. Again, when the Board wished to build new schools he thought they ought to be compelled to come to Parliament in the same way as any other municipality which wished to execute public works, and before they obtained consent be compelled to prove their necessity to a Committee. He thought, moreover, the rate-defrayed educational standard ought to be limited to "the three R's," and that anything and everything beyond that standard ought to be paid for by the parents. Then, again, the payments for results should be less in rate-supported schools than in voluntary schools; and he thought undue competition with voluntary schools should be further limited by fixing the maximum fee in Board schools at 2d., as, if they got below that sum, they underbid the voluntary schools and made the Board schools practically free schools. There was one other suggestion which he would add, and that was that the School Board rate should be collected separately and not added on to the other rates, for the first necessity was to bring the situation home to the people who had to pay. If it were separate, those who paid for it would, at all events, see, not only what they had to pay, but what they were paying for. He would say, in conclusion, that he had moved in the matter as a friend of economy in the first place; but he hoped he would not be regarded as opposed to education. He was willing to admit that the London School Board had done a great deal of work; for, while it had not educated a large number of children who ought to have been educated, it had, doubtless, provided for many who would not otherwise have been touched, although it had done it at an enormous expense; but he thought that if the Board continued to indulge in such an educational carnival as had for some time been going on, they would soon witness a violent re-action in the public mind, for that educational hot fit would soon be over. In his opinion, it would be a cause of regret if the policy of 1870 had to be revised. For the reasons which he had stated, he begged to move the Resolution of which he had given Notice.
  SIR BALDWYN LEIGHTON: I beg leave to second the Motion of the hon. Member for East Gloucestershire (Mr. J. R. Yorke). It is not my intention to traverse the ground or the figures already gone over so ably by him; but rather to confine myself to a few facts and some suggestions; to concentrate the observations I shall venture to trouble the House with on them, and to be rather practical than statistical. It is quite unnecessary, I trust, to disclaim any Party feeling in this matter. Fortunately, the cause of education among the poorest classes has not yet been made the battle ground of Parties, and I trust it never may be. What discussion there has been on the subject has been chiefly on religious or denominational ground. Well, I will say at once, I do not intend to refer to that, and I trust no one else will. It has ceased, I believe, to be a difficulty in the way of education. But what I desire to premise is the ground on which I second this Motion, in which my hon. Friend agrees; but, perhaps, he did not make it as clear as could be desired. It is not expenditure, qua expenditure, if the work were thoroughly done that we find fault with. It is that the work is not done, though all this expense is incurred, and that, in some cases, even the work seems to be getting undone. In short, it appears to me, and I shall submit the facts with perfect frankness to the judgment of the House—it seems to me that the spirit of the Act is not carried out. We are not, therefore, in hostility to the School Board or the Acts, which I quite acknowledge to be an urgent necessity of the times; but I want to see it made more efficient, and, if possible, more economic. I want to see the work effectually done without any further waste of time or money, in the spirit of the Act, which should not any longer be used to undo the work of the voluntary schools. From that point of view, it might, perhaps, have been better to have asked for a Select Committee for inquiry, in which the School Board might have answered, if they could, some of the facts brought forward, and a few impartial and earnest men might have considered if the spirit of the Acts could not be better carried out; or else the Act itself amended. Now, Sir, let us see what are the Acts and their spirit; and then, what are the facts and their results. There is the

  1619
  main Act of 1870, and the two Amendment Acts of 1873 and 1876. It is hardly necessary for me to quote the words of these Acts; they are familiar to every hon. Member who has attended to the subject. The main principles are three:—First, that there shall be schools provided within reach of every child; 2nd, that the children shall be compelled to attend; 3rd, that the teaching shall be efficient. The Act of 1873 recites particularly that schools shall not be built unless the Education Department is satisfied of their necessity; and that the rates shall only be used for purposes of elementary education. The Act of 1876 provides that Boards of Guardians shall be the attendance committee where there is no school board, and particularly dwells on the responsibilities of parents and their liability to provide education for their children. But now, what is the spirit of the Act, and where are we to look for it? Why, in the speech of the Minister who introduced the Act, and who represented the mind of his Government and the purpose of his Party—the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Bradford (Mr. W. E. Forster). In taking the liberty of reading a few sentences from that speech, I should like to say I not only entirely agree in them, but I agree in every word of that speech, and if the right hon. Gentleman will allow me to say so, it is an utterance, not only of the usual ability and sound sense of the right hon. Gentleman, but shows a statesmanlike foresight of what might happen if certain courses were followed; it contains a creation and a forecast of facts which have, I fear, been fulfilled in some cases contrary to his intention. In that speech the right hon. Gentleman said—
  "First of all, we must not forget the duty of parents. Then, we must not forget our duty to our constituencies, our duty to the taxpayers … Still, we must remember that it is upon them that the burden will fall. And, thirdly, we must take care not to destroy in building up—not to destroy the existing system in introducing a new one. In solving this problem there must be, consistently with the attainment of our object, the utmost endeavour not to injure existing and efficient schools. … The main principles. … are two in number. … Legal enactment, that there shall be efficient schools everywhere throughout the kingdom. Compulsory provision of such schools if and where needed, but not unless proved to be needed. … Who are to pay for it? ….Shall we give up
  1620
  the school fees? …. I at once say that the Government are not prepared to do it. The parents paid in school fees last year about £420,000. If this scheme works. … that £420,000 per annum would have to be doubled, or even trebled. Nor would it stop there. This would apply to the elementary education chiefly of the working classes. The middle classes would step in and say—'There must be free education also for us, and that free education must not be confined to elementary schools.' … The cost would be such as really might well alarm my right hon. Friend the Chancellor. … We do not give up the school fees, and, indeed, we keep to the present proportion—namely, of about one-third raised from the parents, one-third out of the public taxes, and one-third out of local funds."—[3 Hansard, cxcix. 443–4, 454–5.]
  That is the spirit of the Act of 1870, as set forth by the right hon. Gentleman opposite, the Member for Bradford, who introduced it. Well, such are the Education Acts and the spirit of those Acts; but what are the facts? I have thought it better to confine my examination to one district which I have taken at haphazard, District A on School Board block plan, which represents Westminster. It was found that there were 8,000 children in that district, and accommodation for all but about 150 already provided by voluntary schools. Let me say a word here about educational statistics; they are thoroughly fallacious, even if the number of children exists which they compute; their deduction for absentees is very much below the right number. They allow for 5 per cent absentees, and sometimes for as much as 10 or 15; but the real number should be 25 to 30. You cannot get more than 75 per cent into the schools, experience shows, especially in a place like Westminster. But supposing we accept these numbers, the offer was made to provide the additional accommodation required, which was at once rejected, and the School Board determined to provide for 620 children. Now, that is not, I think, the spirit of the Act. Besides, it is evident that so small a number as 150, or 2 per cent on the whole number, would be certain to be absorbed by truant schools or industrial schools. But let all that pass. I maintain that, before they were entitled to build, they were bound to see that the existing schools were filled. And then a very important point arises. The London attendant officers or visitors, as they are called, do not seem to think it necessary to see to the attendance at

  1621
  voluntary schools, but only their own Board schools. That is surely a great weakness in the whole administration. It is like pouring water into a sieve. I do not see how you are ever to get the children educated at that rate, until you have covered London with Board schools and destroyed every voluntary school, at a cost of £1,500,000 a-year or more. Well, this school was built in the Horse-ferry Road, and what was the result? One school with 370 places was immediately closed, and six or seven more had half their scholars taken from them to fill this Board school. Out of the 600 children who came into that school there were only 20 who were not taken out of voluntary schools. Sir, is this the spirit of the Act? This is not supplying a demand; it is destroying a supply; it is creating a hiatus. Mean while, the "wastrel" children are still about the streets; and I believe it could be shown that after eight or nine years of expenditure there is not a single child in Westminster being educated, or being better educated, who was not being similarly educated before the Act, for there are 500 or 600 places more in the district than are required. It might be said the people are too poor to send their children. That is not the case. I visited at a ragged school, under Government inspection, which was only half full—60 children—where there was room for 120. They took in barefeet children and charged nothing. As regards these ragged schools, I would not say one word about the managers or promoters of them. They have been, as it were, the volunteers or pioneers of the educational movement, and all honour to them; but it seems to me that to maintain in the present day an inefficient school, as some of these are, is an anomaly and an anachronism. If they cannot make them all efficient, they should reduce their number. And as I desire to be impartial, and perfectly frank with the House, I should like to say here that some of the charges brought against the Board in Westminster, at least, are unfounded; the education they gave was similar to the voluntary schools; their fees nominally the same, though there were some allowances for books, &c., which offered superior attraction, and I did not notice any unjustifiable expense thrown away on the buildings. It may be different
  1622
  in other parts; but I speak only of what I have seen. But this is not all; not content with knocking up these voluntary schools, and having hundreds of places in excess of the number required, the Board next proceeded to build another school, and bought what is known as the Ebury Street site. Then, the Education Board stepped in and refused its consent. Sir, I ask again, is this the spirit and intention of the Act, as set forth in the words of the right hon. Gentleman opposite—
  "The least possible expenditure of public money, the utmost endeavour not to injure existing and efficient schools?"
  Surely, it is a travestie of the work intended. Then as to the expenditure. I must say a few words about the Shaftesbury training ship. My hon. Friend (Mr. J. R. Yorke) has gone over the items, so I shall only call attention to the form of the Report of the Committee of Inquiry. I do not wish to press this matter hard on the School Board, because I am informed that they acknowledge it has been a gross miscarriage of administration. But if the work in Westminster is a travestie of the Act, surely the Report of this Committee is a very parody of an inquiry. Out of a Committee of 10 only three sign the Report, less than one-third, and they condemn the extravagance, and point out certain informalities which I should have thought are illegalities. Two, being the principal offenders, write a separate Report of their own in justification; one, a lady—Mrs. Elizabeth Surr—with the courage and devotion of her sex, does rap out the truth in a solitary paragraph signed by herself alone, in which she says the Report conveys but an inadequate idea of the waste incurred and the conduct of the committee; and the remaining four members, including the Chairman and Vice Chairman of the School Board, decline to be responsible for anything contained in the Report. Sir, I have had some experience on Committees and as Chairman of Committees of Inquiry; but I never read such an extraordinary discussion as this. It is said, in mitigation, that this is the only case of extravagance. I should be glad to think so; but, unfortunately, several others have reached me. The central offices of the Board on the Embankment were to

  1623
  have cost £40,000; but £70,000 has had to be paid. Then one school was built so near a bone boiler's premises that £4,000 had to be spent in buying him up. A reduction of 25 per cent was made in an estimate, owing to an observation of a member of the Board, in some schools at Sydenham. And there is the case of the Ebury Street site, which will have to be sold at a great loss. Speaking as one who has given some attention to Public Business and administrative economy, I characterize these as instances of reckless expenditure. I have limited these observations to a few facts; but there are other districts just as bad. In Bloomsbury, Board schools have been built in the midst of several voluntary schools, of which five have been closed and two half emptied; while one expensive master, at a salary of £250 a-year, is employed to teach a sort of rough ragged school of the lowest class. In Wandsworth, the same sort of thing goes on, and the wastrel children are still as neglected as ever. Now, what are the cures for this? It has been said that the system is in fault, not the members of the Board, who, excepting two or three, find it impossible to look into the finance, which is left to officials. Well, surely, they could sub-divide their districts. Then, a visitor of the School Board told an informant of mine that—"You—the voluntary agencies—can deal better with those gutter children than we can." Well, that is a candid admission. It seems to me, first speaking with great deference, that the School Board should be, in the first instance, an attendance committee, and then, where the necessity existed—that is, where they have managed to fill the schools—they should proceed to supply accommodation by building. They should not be guided by theoretic statistics, but by the fulness or emptiness of existing schools. Then, secondly, they ought to charge proper fees, and not remit them or wink at their not being paid, which is demoralizing to the children. If the scale of fees adopted at Bradford and Leeds were insisted on in London, it would bring in some £50,000 a-year more, and the parents could, no doubt, afford to pay it. Then there ought, lastly, to be some better audit and control. Supposing that after the rate exceeded 3d., which we were
  1624
  told was to be the maximum, one-half was payable by the Treasury, some such financial check well devised, we should have less of the reckless expenditure, because it would be some one's interest to look after it. But, Sir, if this system of displacing all the voluntary schools with expensive Board schools is to obtain, it cannot stop with London, it must extend to every town and every parish in England; and we shall have some £15,000,000 or £20,000,000 a-year charged on the rates with no better education given than now. That is a serious consideration. This London School Board has already got to loggerheads, however, with the Education Department and the Local Government Board, and a case is now being tried in the Law Courts on a surcharge of £16,000. I should like to make one suggestion here. There is a Commission sitting on the City Charities at present, and £100,000 or £200,000 a-year will have to be re-applied. I believe no better object could be found for some of these funds than secondary education arising out of elementary schools; something just above the three R's, which ought, no doubt, to be provided by the Board or by voluntary schools. Sir, I venture to hope that Her Majesty's Government may see their way to adopting the spirit of the Motion, and taking counsel, perhaps, with the right hon. Gentleman opposite (Mr. W. E. Forster), will see their way to bringing the expenditure and administration of this School Board into harmony with the spirit and intention of the Acts. I beg to second the Motion.
  Motion made, and Question proposed,
  "That the rapidly increasing expenditure of the London School Board requires the early attention of the Government, with the view of imposing on it some more effectual checks than appear at present to exist."—(Mr. Reginald Yorke.)
  MR. W. E. FORSTERsaid, he should be glad to have given way to any member of the School Board, either present or past. Two or three of those members were now in the House; and he (Mr. W. E. Forster) hoped they would hear from them some reply to the statements, he might say the charges, of the hon. Member for East Gloucestershire (Mr. J. R. Yorke). He (Mr. W. E. Forster) was glad to have the efficient help in past times of two very responsible members

  1625
  of the School Board whom he now saw on the Government Benches. He referred paticularly to his noble Friend who followed him in the Education Department (Viscount Sandon), who had worked very hard, and who, he had no doubt, would be able to give the House a good deal of information upon the matter, and his right hon. Friend the First Lord of the Admiralty (Mr. W. H. Smith), who, they all knew, had gained the good opinion of all classes in London by the work which he had done in connection with that Board. He (Mr. W. E. Forster) was, perhaps, more than anybody else, responsible for the School Board of London. He was, therefore, watching its proceedings with the greatest possible interest, not to say anxiety, remembering what a tremendous work it had to accomplish. The hon. Gentleman who brought forward the Motion said very little on what he (Mr. W. E. Forster) should have thought would have been an important matter; inasmuch as, while the hon. Gentleman thought it necessary for that House to protect the ratepayers of that great Metropolis against their own representatives, he seemed to forget the very existence of the ratepayers themselves. At any rate, he did not assume that they were intelligent persons, well acquainted with the affair which was now brought before the House, that they were the people who paid the rates on whom this heavy tax lay, and who lived in the very centre of the intelligence of the Kingdom. They had plenty of newspapers, and plenty of gentlemen like the hon. Member who could state these matters to them in meeting after meeting. Was it necessary that the House of Commons should be called on to impose fresh checks on this Board, when the ratepayers had the best possible check already—which they had not in that House—namely, that the Board was only elected for three years, and it was in the power of the ratepayers of London, if they did not like their proceedings, to turn out their educational Parliament? He thought the hon. Gentleman ought really to have shown why it was they should protect the ratepayers against their own representatives. How did they know that the 3,000,000 or 4,000,000 composing the Metropolis would thank the House for stepping in, in the manner indicated by the hon.
  1626
  Gentleman. It would be to say to the ratepayers—"We do not consider you are capable of doing your own business, and therefore we will do it for you." It was interesting to see, considering what a large portion of the Kingdom the Metropolis represented, how educational work had been going on there for the last few years. He (Mr. W. E. Forster) did not deny that this debate was likely to be of use; but the hon. Gentleman had stated only one side of the case. There was no harm in that side of the case being strongly stated after all, and it would afford good material for discussion in every vestry and public meeting before the next election. Expenditure had been mentioned for which this House was not responsible; but he did not think in any debate on Supply the House had seen such interest as was manifested on the other side. There was this difference—hon. Gentlemen were responsible in one case, but not in the other. The hon. Gentleman who had brought forward the Motion must excuse him if he did not go through all the items of expenditure to which he had referred; but he must not suppose that the charges which he made were unanswerable. It was easy for any gentleman to take hold of a large expenditure, and condemn it; but it was not easy, without notice, to be able to reply to any allegations that might be made. One or two of the items referred to by the hon. Gentleman, however, struck him as curious. The hon. Gentleman alluded to 400 guineas having been spent on a carpet. He (Mr. W. E. Forster) was informed, however, that this £400 for a carpet was an absolute delusion. He really hoped the House would look at the question with some sort of comparison in their own minds as to what had to be done. The Education Act was brought in in 1870. It was wanted in many parts of the Kingdom; but nowhere was it so much wanted as in London, because there was no part of the United Kingdom in which elementary education had been so much neglected. He was so impressed with the fact that he knew not how to deal with it. In fact, he at one time thought it would be impossible to put the Act in force in the Metropolis, and he thought they should have had to wait until its advantages had been shown elsewhere, and then get it applied to London; but

  1627
  there were others—his right hon. Friend the First Lord of the Admiralty, and the hon. Member for Finsbury (Mr. W. M. Torrens) were among them—who had better courage, and they encouraged him (Mr. W. E. Forster) to include London in the Education Act, which he did. The result was, that in no part of England had the people more completely met the Government, acknowledging the want, and determined to do their best. An educational Parliament was, therefore, made for London—the School Board—which the House was now asked to check. The House should not forget what it was—a Parliament chosen by the freest possible suffrage—by the whole population of the Metropolis. Some respect ought, therefore, to be paid to it. It was elected by a population of 3,500,000, and was composed of very eminent persons. There was Lord Lawrence, its first Chairman; there was its present President, Sir Charles Reed, well known in that House for his ability, who had devoted almost every hour of his time for days and years to this matter. No one would deny that the ablest and most philanthropic men in London—and women too—had come forward in connection with this work, and had received the confidence of the enormous population of London. In 1871, when the School Board was formed, what was the state of things? Why, elementary education was required in the Metropolis for at least 560,000 children; but there were only places in efficient schools for 260,000 children, and the number of children on the register was 222,000, while the average attendance was under 175,000. He (Mr. W. E. Forster) must ask the House to consider what that meant. And yet the hon. Member now came forward, and said—"Stop this work; don't build any more schools." But he (Mr. Forster) contended that the work had not been completed yet, although a great deal of good had been done. Last year, on the other hand, the number of children on the register was 444,000, and the average attendance had risen to 350,000. That fact showed, as he said, that the work was still far from complete, although the number of children on the educational roll had been doubled since the passing of the Education Act; and he wanted the hon. Member to take notice of this fact—that the proportion of the average attend-
  1628
  ance of children to school accommodation now was much larger, and not smaller, as he would seem to suppose. The average attendance now was about double what it was in 1870; but the school accommodation had nothing like doubled. There were still, he believed, from 150,000 to 200,000 children to be provided for. The hon. Baronet the Member for South Shropshire (Sir Baldwyn Leighton) seemed to think that the Board schools were filled out of the voluntary schools, and he mentioned the cases of individual schools; but he (Mr. W. E. Forster) thought they ought not to go into individual cases in the consideration of the question. It might actually be as the hon. Baronet said; but the only safe ground to go upon was general results, and what were these? Since 1870 the average attendance at voluntary schools, so far from diminishing, had increased from 173,000 to 184,000, or 11,000, and 90 efficient schools, with an average attendance of 18,000, had chosen to transfer themselves to the School Board. That was to say, since 1870, the average attendance at voluntary schools had increased by 29,000. The chief reason of that increase was because more parents, when they found that they had to send their children to school, sent them to voluntary schools rather than to Board schools. That, then, brought up the question of compulsion, and he wished to say a word in reply to hon. Members who had spoken upon this question. It was an entire mistake to suppose that the School Board was not doing its utmost to bring in, or that it was not successful in bringing in, the poorest children. No doubt, if any hon. Gentleman chose to seek for them, uneducated children might still be found in the purlieus of the East End or of Westminster. The work, he would admit, was not yet complete. There were not places enough for all the children to bring them into. But, for his own part, he was perfectly astonished at the extent to which the School Board had succeeded in its work. It was supposed that the Board had not endeavoured to get the children; but he contended that this was not the case, as the following facts would prove:—During the first portion of the year 1878, which was the latest period for which Returns were given, the School Board, in the first

  1629
  place, sent out a caution to 32,529 parents who had neglected to send their children to school; an attendance of 24,497 was immediately secured. Notices were afterwards sent to 22,738 parents, with good result in more than 18,000 cases. The actual number of summonses issued was 3,705; a small fine was imposed in 2,340 cases, and the number of summonses dismissed was only three. He did not mean to say that in all these cases they had been right in summoning, for he had seen one or two cases in which he thought the Board ought not to have prosecuted. But it was impossible for all officers to be infallible; and, on the whole, he approved of the measures that had been taken to insure a higher attendance at school. He maintained that the very large increase in the voluntary schools had been mainly owing to the compulsion, which enabled the Board to put more scholars into them than was the ease before. He was, indeed, quite sure there would not be in London the feeling which still existed in favour of compulsion, if the provisions as to compulsion had not, on the whole, been well applied. With regard to the ragged schools. He believed an average attendance of 10,000 children at the ragged schools had been transferred to the Board schools. It was a great mistake to suppose that, generally speaking, the children attending the ragged schools were not now attending the Board schools, for they were; and what showed real ability on the part of the Board was that, whereas the children did not pay fees in the ragged schools, they did pay some small fees in the Board schools. He hoped the House would excuse him for occupying its time while he had endeavoured to show what was the state of things in 1870, and what it was now; how much had been done, and what was still to be done. And now he came to the question of cost. The hon. Member for East Gloucestershire used very strong words about the cost being enormous. The times were bad, and rates were heavy, and many ratepayers on reading the remarks to-morrow morning would think that their rates were school rates, and that in consequence of the School Board business they were called upon to pay very heavy rates. What was the rate after all? It was 5¼d. in the pound. What proportion did that bear to all
  1630
  the rates? As far as he (Mr. W. E. Forster) could make out, the average rates throughout the Metropolis were at least 5s., judging from the lowest total rate in Marylebone, of 4.s., to the highest in Greenwich, of 6s. 5d. The hon. Member said he wished that the School Board rate was given separate from the rest, and in that wish he (Mr. W. E. Forster) quite concurred; and this he said, too—that if it could be proved that in the effort to put a stop to the ignorance which had been the curse of the Metropolis there had been extravagance, that extravagance should be stopped. He believed when the ratepayer saw the school rate, and knew what schooling meant, in diminishing the poor rate and the police rate, and compared it with the other rates, he did not think the school rate would be the first to suffer. The precept for the School Board for 1879 was £551,000; while that for the Metropolitan Board of Works was, besides the coal dues, the rate £582,000. He would say a word about sites, as he did not think the hon. Member had fairly put the question. Ten schools had been taken from the centre of London, and he (Mr. W. E. Forster) thought ten exceptional schools ought not to have been taken. He believed he was right in saying there were 161 schools, the accounts of which had been completed. The cost of those sites was rather more than £5 per head, the cost of furniture 10 s. per head, and the cost of building just about £10; so that it was about £15 per head. In fact, the cost for all purposes had not exceeded £16 per head. Therefore, he did not believe, if there was a thorough examination into the matter, that it would be found the School Board had been extravagant as to sites. Then, as to maintenance, it was, no doubt, somewhat dearer than in the voluntary schools, and he believed it would continue to be so, for rate work could scarcely be expected to be cheaper at the outset than voluntary management. If they could have gone on working on the voluntary system, and got the people of England educated by it, that would have done very well; but they could not do it. Certainly, the voluntary system might be carried out more cheaply, and that was one reason why he had been anxious to keep the voluntary schools in operation; for he knew there was care bestowed and work

  1631
  done by the managers which would probably have to be paid for elsewhere. Then, it must also be recollected that the managers of voluntary schools, especially in large cities, did not put up their schools with the notion of supplying the educational wants of the Metropolis. That was not their primary notion. Their principal aim was to have a school connected with their own Church or denomination—a very praiseworthy object; but they erected the school just where it suited them to do it. They picked their place for the school, and they had also, to some extent, picked the chilren. But the School Board could not do the one or the other, and that made some difference. Certainly, the average in London was higher for Board schools than in other parts of the Kingdom; but he thought there might be an explanation for it. London was a dearer place than the rest of the country. It cost more to live in London than in provincial towns; therefore, he should expect the general expenses of schools would be higher than elsewhere. The very fact that there was an enormous work to be undertaken; that there were 350,000 children untaught, who were to be brought within the operation of the Act; and that there was no time to wait while so great a number of children were being left untaught, would naturally add to the expense. The schools had to be started, and masters and mistresses found for them. If any man chose to go into any manufacturing town and start there an enormous mill, he must expect to have to pay rather more than the market rates for over lookers and managers. And so it was with the London School Board, which had to start an enormous educational machinery. It was ordered to do it; it was its duty to do it, and that, too, at a time when expenses were rising. Under those circumstances, when a demand suddenly sprung up for teachers, no doubt, a good deal had to be paid; and, as he was just reminded by a right hon. Friend, it was done at a most expensive time. But the London School Board, likewise, had a great deal of work to do which the voluntary schools did not do, and which the school boards generally had not done. He dared say the hon. Gentleman opposite would insist that it should not have its Inspectors. It must be remembered, however, that
  1632
  there were 200,000 children in the schools; and, therefore, the ratepayers had a right to demand that there should be Inspectors, irrespective of the Government Inspectors. Again, the School Board had taken very expensive work in hand in dealing with special cases. He alluded to the teaching of the destitute deaf and dumb and the blind. The hon. Gentleman opposite (Mr. J. R. Yorke) had brought forward several instances of alleged extravagance connected with the Staff. He seemed to think it a terrible thing that the needlework Inspector—the chief superintendent, it was to be supposed, of the needlework for about 100,000 girls—received £175 a-year. That, however, struck him (Mr. W. E. Forster) as a very small sum indeed, and one uncommonly well spent; and he trusted that when the House voted money they might do it, generally speaking, on as favourable terms. It should not be forgotten, therefore, that the School Board had done work which neither voluntary schools nor other school boards had performed. His impression was that the School Board had had to do things in which it was most difficult to be economical. When the London School Board was compared with voluntary schools, or other Board schools, it must be remembered that it took under its charge the deaf and dumb and the blind children of the Metropolis requiring help. Then, as to the ease of the training-ship, he dared say that was a mistake. He knew nothing about it. But, perhaps it might be found that there was no more over-expenditure on that training-ship than on many of the ships for which the House was more responsible; and it was quite possible that that might be a warning and a lesson to the London School Board for the future. But, however that might be, it did not require a Resolution of Parliament to bring home that matter to the ratepayers of London. On the other hand, it was possible that when the case of the training-ship was brought before the tribunal of the ratepayers, there might be some defence offered of which they had not yet heard. He now came to the salaries of the teachers. He wished to take as impartial a view of them as he could. It was quite true that those salaries stood at a higher average in London than in the Kingdom generally-£132 for masters, £102 for mistresses.

  1633
  and £100 for infant school-mistresses, were considerably more than the sums paid in voluntary schools and in other Board schools. But there were, as compared with the voluntary schools, no residences. In the case of the masters, therefore, he did not think the salaries—£132, as compared with £117 in voluntary schools—extravagantly high. With regard to the mistresses, however, the matter was different; but it should be remembered that the salaries paid by the voluntary schools before were far too low—namely, an average of £67, added to which was the fact that they had a very rough lot of children to deal with when the Education Act was passed. He was glad, however, that Sir Charles Reed was aware that the salaries would have to be looked into. But his (Mr. W. E. Forster's) sympathy with the masters and mistresses was so great, and his feeling that they had long been a neglected class was so strong, that he could not bring himself to regret that their salaries had been raised throughout the Kingdom. He hoped, however, that neither the teachers nor their paymasters would forget that salaries must be regulated on the principle of supply and demand. In the beginning there was a great demand; but he thought, for some time to come, the masters and mistresses might have to look forward to smaller pay. Sir Charles Heed said that one of the first tasks of the School Board would be to revise the scale of salaries of the teachers. He wished to make one or two suggestions to the School Board, if he might be permitted to do so. He believed that what had been the chief ground of their expenditure, over and above that of the voluntary schools, was not so much that they had paid their teachers a higher rate of wages, but that they had a much larger number of them—more, he submitted, than might be necessary for the requirements; and he suggested that this matter should now receive very full consideration. No doubt, it was necessary to have a large number at the time of the passing of the Act, in consequence of the numbers of neglected children that were brought in out of the streets, and not from other schools, in a large Metropolis like London. On the other hand, it might be argued that the larger teaching power had been justified to a
  1634
  great extent by the result; because, though the children had been so neglected before, yet the passes in the London Board Schools were above the average in the voluntary schools. There was another point which he thought might also be considered by the Board, and that was the fees of the children. The voluntary schools got an average of 13 s. per child; the average of the Board schools was rather under 8s. He hoped the Board would be encouraged from their success in getting a fee out of the ragged school children, though of only 1d., to try to raise the average fee of the other children. The average fee in the London Board schools was about 2d., which was below the average in the large towns, and, taking the whole of the Metropolis together, he did not know why that should be so. There was another suggestion he would make, which was that the Board should try more than they had done the system of a gradation of schools. In West Ham the system worked very well, for there there was a school with a 1d., a school with a 2d., and a school with a 4d. rate, and he did not see why they should not get as much as 9d. A word or two now about the checks which the hon. Gentleman the Member for East Gloucestershire would introduce. There was one great check which the Act had established—namely, that the people who paid the money elected the persons who spent it. But as to the checks proposed to be introduced, he (Mr. W. E. Forster) took down some of the proposals made at a conference of delegates from the Vestries. He saw that the hon. Gentleman was making arrangements for introducing a deputation from this conference to the Lord President; but he must say that he had never expected to find that the lion. Gentleman would support these proposals. The first was that the rate should be limited; the second, that all School Board buildings should be stopped—that was, that the educational deficiency should be left unsupplied; and the third, that in the rate schools there should be no rate-paid teaching except for the three R's; that the rest should be paid for by the parents; and, further, that smaller State grants should be made to the rate schools than to the voluntary schools, which would soon cause an outcry to be raised by the representatives of the ratepayers through-

  1635
  out the Metropolis. For himself, he had no fear that the Government would offer such checks as had been suggested, or that the people would accept them. There had been a good deal of talk about the rate being more than was at first mentioned, and he quite granted that the expenses had been somewhat beyond what he had expected. But the Chancellor of the Exchequer himself, in any proposed estimate, or, indeed, anyone else who set to work to build a house, would find that the outlay which he had to incur was not always that which he anticipated. If, however, the ratepayers of London were to compare their position with that of the inhabitants of any of the other large towns throughout the country, they would find that, generally speaking, their rate was lower. Then they came to the question of starving the education. The hon. Gentleman said that as soon as the child had learned to read, write, and cipher, in a very elementary manner, it should be turned out of the school, unless his parents were prepared to pay more money for him. Could they fully estimate what that meant?—that they were not to have a knowledge of geography, history, or even of such subjects as that of elementary social economy, which, although the hon. Gentleman seemed to have laughed at it, might be found very useful to the working classes. A parent might have been paying for the education of his child up to the age of 10, and was quite willing that he should go on to the age of 13 or 14; but if so, the hon. Gentleman would have him pay extra. That, however, was a proposal which it would be impossible to work; and he must say in that, and other matters brought forward, he took an entirely different view from that of the hon. Gentleman. He had very little more to add. He did not mean to contend that the men who had been members of the School Board had made no mistakes. He did not mean to say that, having a very difficult work to do, they had always done it as cheaply as might have been the case; but he would say he believed they might search the whole Kingdom through, and they would not find any better work done either by Imperial or local officials. However, he hoped they would look to economy for the future—["Hear, hear!"]—Yes, he would repeat, he
  1636
  hoped they would look to economy in the future; but he also trusted that, in doing so, they would never lose sight of the fact that their main duty was to provide for education. He thought it was probable they might be able to do things cheaper hereafter; but he would say again, you might search through the Kingdom, and you would not find a better return for the money spent—5¼d. in the pound—anywhere than the hard work done by the London School Board. It was done by the indomitable, self-denying energy of those men and women who had been upon this Board. Their work was unpaid. It was not only unpaid, but obscure and unthanked; but he trusted that they would not be discouraged, and that they would go on with their work. And, after all, it was the population, the ratepayers, the parents of this Metropolis, who had to judge whether they did this work or not. He had no fear whatever that they would stop this work, or that that House would interfere to put checks upon the Board which the ratepayers did not wish to have put.
  LORD GEORGE HAMILTONdid not think anyone could be surprised at the Motion now brought forward, for it did give expression to a feeling of disquietude which certainly did exist at the expenditure of the London School Board. His hon. Friend, in a singularly able and exhaustive speech, made a series of allegations which, if true, were the justification for his Motion; while, if further justification were required, it would be found in the speech to which they had just listened. The right hon. Gentleman commenced his observations by rather deprecating the interference of that House with the London School Board. They had constituents, and therefore it was hardly the business of the House to interfere between them and their constituents, they were told. But if there had not been that Motion in the House, they would not have heard the opinion that for the future the Board must practise economy; while this theory, that no one must interfere between a majority and its constituents, applied not only to local but to Imperial matters; and, certainly, the right hon. Gentleman and his Friends, during the past five years, had not at all brought their conduct into accord with this precept. In fact, that argument must have been invented on the spur of

  1637
  the moment; because it must be remembered that this expenditure did not merely affect the ratepayers of London, but the fees and salaries affected every single elementary school everywhere, and that the raising of salaries in London had practically raised them throughout the whole of England. Before making any observations on the expenditure of the School Board, he would ask the House to bear in mind two facts. With the first point the right hon. Gentleman had already dealt. He (Lord George Hamilton) was one of those Metropolitan Members who suggested, in 1870, that there should be one Central Board for the Metropolis. After their experience of the past few years, they could say that if a School Board had been set up in any other way it would have been almost impossible to work it. The artificial boundaries of the different parishes wore difficult to ascertain; and it would have been almost impossible for each Board, with different bye-laws and different officers and children constantly passing over the boundaries from one parish to another, and from one school to another, to get satisfactorily to work. It did not escape the attention of those who recommended the creation of the London School Board that a power would be placed in the hands of that Board of levying rates such as had never been given to any local authority before. His hon. Friend had alluded to the high salaries of some of the officers of the Central Office. No doubt, they would seem high if paid by any Board but London. But the London School Board had under its jurisdiction a population almost identical in number with the total population of Scotland, and the rateable value of London exceeded by £2,000,000 the whole rateable value of Scotland. Therefore, it was only just and fair that they should make allowances for the great difficulties with which the London School Board had to contend. They had this enormous population put under their control; they were asked to furnish school accommodation for that population, among the children being a large proportion of what were called "wastrels;" they had the greatest possible difficulty in acquiring sites, and there were a variety of other difficulties in their way. It was impossible not to be struck with the ability and devotion with which they had carried out their work,
  1638
  to say nothing of the munificence with which individual members of the Board had shown that they were ready, out of their own pockets, to make donations for promoting the cause of education. He also entirely agreed with what was said about the Chairman of the Board (Sir Charles Reed). He was very well known, personally, to the House; his experience had been of the greatest use to his colleagues, and to his influence was, in a great measure, to be attributed the fact that the religious difficulty had been so satisfactorily settled. At all the Board schools at the present time religious instruction was given, and every year a greater number of children were participating in the instruction so given. All these things must be taken into consideration before they began to criticize the expenditure. They must also remember that the Board was not responsible for the system of education they had to carry out. The system was imposed upon them by the Legislature; and the House might be quite certain if there had been extravagance it was, to a certain extent, the result of a system which the Legislature imposed. This matter was of so much importance that, although the hour was rather late, he hoped the House would allow him to lay a few figures before them, especially as only by that means could they arrive at a conclusion whether the expenditure was justifiable or successful. The London School Board had a population and a rateable value very nearly equivalent to that of Scotland. The number of schools under their control was 257, as against 2,334 in Scotland; and the number of certificated and pupil teachers, respectively, in London was 1,950 and 2,250, as against 3,870 and 3,850 in Scotland. Not only were there a far larger number of schools, but there were also a far larger number of teachers in Scotland; and, therefore, the comparison was favourable to London, and it ought to be able to educate children more cheaply than in Scotland. But, on the contrary, he found the total cost of the maintenance of each, child in a London school, exclusive of the cost of site, building, &c, and counting only teaching staff, books, and apparatus, for 1877–8, was £2 13 s. 5d. while in Scotland it was but £2 2s. But the amount expended out of the rates per child in London was £1 11 s. 11 d., while in Scotland it was but 14 s. 5d.

  1639
  In one sense the result was creditable to the London School Board, because their earnings per child were 14 s. 4d., while the rate in Scotland was over 16 s. Therefore, not only was the system of education, as might be expected, more efficient, but, as regarded the results, it was also considerably cheaper. What, then, was the cause of this very heavy expenditure? It might be divided into two heads—that which related to the supply of schools and the general administration of schools, and that which related to the supply of children. With regard to the supply of schools, he had looked very carefully into the figures himself; and he could assure his hon. Friend that, so far from the supply of schools being excessive, there was, at the present moment, a considerable deficiency. He could prove that easily. At the present moment there were on the rolls of the Board and voluntary schools 600,000 children, while there was accommodation in the schools themselves for but 472,000 children; so that there was clearly a deficiency of school accommodation of 128,000 places. Moreover, London was annually increasing its population; and, therefore, if the building of schools were stopped the number of places wanted must continue to increase. It was, therefore, he thought, quite clear that unless that House chose to reverse the fundamental principle of the Act of 1870—that every district should provide sufficient school accommodation for the children in it—it was quite clear that the supply of schools must be increased. Therefore, so far as the supply of schools was concerned, he thought that part of the expenditure must continue to increase. It was absolutely impossible to think of enacting that London alone, of all the districts in England, should have an educational deficiency; and it would be an everlasting monument of parsimony and impotence that the richest capital in the world should be unable to supply sufficient school accommodation for her children. As to the question whether the supply of schools could be accomplished at a less cost than in the past, the correspondence between the Education Department and the Board was in the hands of hon. Members. No doubt, in certain cases, the expenditure had been excessive; but the attention of the Board had been called to the fact, and he was quite certain that the members
  1640
  of the Board would co-operate, as far as they could, to reduce the cost of building new schools. It was then, on the one hand, perfectly clear that the number of Board schools in London must increase; and, on the other, that the expenditure in connection with the supply of these schools and the general administration must also increase. One therefore turned with more interest to that part of the expenditure which related to the maintenance of the children in the schools; because it was perfectly clear if there were to be more schools, and the charge for the maintenance of the children was not to decrease, that there was literally no limit to the amount which the London School Board would have to levy upon the rates, in order to meet the deficiency arising between the fees and their general expenditure. The cost of maintenance, comparatively, was as follows:—The average in the voluntary schools throughout England was £1 14s., the average of the board schools throughout England was £2 1s.; but the average of the London School Board was £2 13 s. 5d. These figures were not satisfactory, and it could not be contended that they were the necessary result of low fees; because in Birmingham, where there were more schools with low fees in proportion to the others than in any other town in the Kingdom, the expenditure was kept within £2 per head. On examining the Estimates of the London School Board, it was very easy to ascertain the cause of this expenditure. Since this Notice had been put on the Paper he had made it his duty very closely to criticize their figures; and he thought they would startle the House, as they had startled him. He found that the average cost of maintenance in the school per child was £2 14 s. 7d.; and the average fees, taking all the board schools, was 7s. 6d. per head. A considerable deduction had to be made from that, because all the books, papers, and stationery were provided gratis. They amounted to 4s. 7d., and, deducting that from the fees, they arrived at the astounding result that the average cost of a child in a London School Board school was about £2 10 s., and the average contribution from that child in fees was 2s. 11 d., or much less than 1d. per week. But in a considerable number of schools the children only paid 1d. per week, and were pro-

  1641
  vided gratis with books, papers, and stationery. The result, again, was then that the average fee paid by all the children was less than 1d. per week, and that no fee whatever was paid in many schools. Of course, he knew certain hon. Gentlemen in that House were in favour of free education. It must be remembered, however, that such was not the intention of the Act. Its intention was to place within reach of the parent a sound and cheap education; but it was not the intention of the ratepayers to give free education. What would naturally occur to many hon. Gentlemen was, whether it was necessary to impose such very low fees? Were the conditions of life so exceptional as to necessitate these very low fees? A School Board alluded to by the right hon. Gentleman opposite (Mr. W. E. Forster)—that of West Ham—afforded a good answer to the question. It was a large urban district, and what was necessary in London they might assume would be necessary there. Yet there the cost, in 1877, was £2 3s. 3d. per child; and in 1878, £1 19 s. 11 d.; the amount obtained from the Government being quite equal to that obtained by the London School Board. Not only, then, was that system quite as efficient, but it was much cheaper. One cause of this greater expense was the number and the salaries of the teachers employed. Nobody objected to the teachers being adequately remunerated; but certain figures laid on the Table seemed to show that the average salaries of teachers in London were considerably higher than those paid elsewhere. Thus, there were 42 teachers whose salary was between £250 and £300; 26 under £300; 16 between £300 and £325; 7 at £325; 2 at £350; and 1 at £467. The question at once arose, was it necessary to pay these very high salaries; or was it to be considered whether parents could not afford to pay more than 1d.? A very able letter on that subject appeared in The Times from Mr. Rodgers, the Vice Chairman of the Board. He said—
  "It is urged by some that we ought not to pay a teacher more than his market price. But we want the best teachers for London, and we ought to have them, and we should, therefore, pay them above the market price."
  He did not wish to put too severe an interpretation on that expression; but,
  1642
  unquestionably, the result of the salaries paid by the London School Board had been to raise teachers' salaries all over England; and one of the great difficulties the small School Boards and districts had had to encounter in the rural districts during the last two years had been the getting teachers to accept the salaries they could afford to pay. Therefore, this paying more than the market value in London affected very hardly the ratepayers elsewhere, besides affecting the managers of the voluntary schools. That was another point which would account for the very high expenditure in the London School Board schools. He did not think that a system of low fees with very highly-trained teachers, whose salaries depended on the results of the examinations, were in any way incompatible. But what was the result in these schools? The teacher knew he was dependent upon the result. The better-dressed child; the child which was higher in the social scale, the better educated, the more intelligent, the better for his purpose; and, therefore, this system made the teacher eager to get hold of the very class of children for whom these schools were not intended. It was only fair to the School Board to say that they were endeavouring to alter this, and so to fix the salaries that a less portion of the teacher's remuneration might be dependent on the results of the examination. The question naturally asked, then, was—Is the cause of this very high rate of maintenance in the London schools entirely the fault of the School Board; or is it the natural consequence of the legislation of nine years ago? It must be remembered, also, that the annual grant was not given under the same conditions, and for the same purposes, as it was 10 or 12 years ago. Then it was given, according to the Code—
  "To promote local voluntary effort, and in order to extend education among the working classes."
  When the Act of 1870 was first introduced, the right hon. Gentleman opposite (Mr. W. E. Forster) made a proposal which would have obviated many of the difficulties which subsequently occurred, and it was that each district should be responsible for its school supply, and that no School Board should have the power of contributing to voluntary schools without the rates. That

  1643
  proposition was not palatable to the Party with which he was associated; it was withdrawn, and the right hon. Gentleman substituted a proposal by which an increase of 50 per cent was given both to voluntary as well as Board schools. The effect of the Acts of 1870 and 1876 was that compulsion extended throughout the greater part of England, and the children who were at the schools were not exclusively the children of the working classes. On the contrary, the Inspectors of the Education Department estimated that only one-seventh of the children of England had education provided for them otherwise than by elementary schools. The right hon. Gentleman opposite never attempted to define what was meant by elementary education; but, of course, the education of all children must be elementary, and the definition attached to an elementary school was a school where the fee did not exceed 9d. per week. Therefore, they had now drifted from a position in which the grant was given to promote local voluntary effort in extending education among the working classes, to a position where any person could send his child to an elementary school in which, provided the fees charged were not more than 9d. per week, a portion of the cost of that education would be defrayed by the State. That partly depended, of course, on the amount realized by the examinations. Power was given to the School Boards to raise rates for the purpose of extending education, the intention being that the rates were to be used in order to bring cheap education within the reach of those who could not afford to pay high fees. By cheap education was not meant education which should be very cheap to the child, but exceedingly dear to the ratepayer. Under the voluntary system, it was not necessary for the Education Department to place any limit on the expenditure of voluntary schools, because the balance came from private sources, and the managers knew that the larger the expenditure the better was the result of the examination; and, consequently, when the managers of the Board schools found out that by expending more money out of the rates upon the Board schools they could obtain a larger proportion of the Government grant, many of them felt justified in doing so, until, undoubtedly, the result of the system at the present moment
  1644
  was this—that certain School Boards—he did not say they did it intentionally—did dip their hands very deeply into the ratepayers' pockets, and so obtained a very large proportion of this grant from the Consolidated Fund. Now, he ventured to say that was never the intention of the Legislature. The intention of the right hon. Gentleman (Mr. W. E. Forster) and of the late Prime Minister was that in proportion as they increased the grant they should reduce the amount levied from the rates. If hon. Gentleman thought lie was in any way exaggerating, let him just tell them what the results of the examination, compared with the rate of expenditure of the London School Board, had been during the last year. It was perfectly true that the results had been, in one sense, very creditable to the London School Board, because they had succeeded in reaching 15 s. 4¼d. in London, against 15 s. 1¾d. in other schools in England—that was to say, they had got 2¾d. more than had been obtained for the children in other schools. But at what cost did they obtain this? Every one of those children had cost 17 s. 8d. more to obtain that return; and, in order to get 2⅔d. more out of the grant, the rates had had to contribute 16 s. 4d. to produce that result. The question was, whether it was necessary that they should bring the Board schools back to apply the rates in accordance with the intentions of Parliament? There were certain objects very clearly in view in this matter. In the first place, it would be most inexpedient if the House were to do anything which would in the slightest degree affect the efficiency of elementary education in this country. It must, again, be remembered that whoever was at the head of the Education Department had to exercise discretion between the Board schools and the voluntary schools; and although it might be possible to make such an exercise of that discretion as to favour a system to which he was personally favourable, yet he believed that such a course would not only be very improper, but very unwise. It would counteract against the system which it was supposed to favour, and must, undoubtedly, lead to zig-zag legislation that would be detrimental to the cause of education. Therefore, the Government had invariably endeavoured to lay down such lines of action as were

  1645
  consistent with justice and propriety, and which could be maintained by themselves, and with difficulty reversed by those who came after them. Now, keeping those objects fairly in view, let the House see whether they could possibly suggest any proposal to meet the undoubted evil which existed. There were some who suggested that the amount of the school fees should be reduced from 9d. to 6d.; and, further, that no school should be considered an elementary school which exceeded 6d., because there was no doubt whatever that, at the present moment, a very large number of children belonging to the middle classes were educated in Board and voluntary schools with Government assistance, while their parents could perfectly afford to pay for them without any assistance. But it must be remembered that they could not prevent these children from attending these elementary schools, because everybody had a right to do so; and, therefore, the only result of that plan would be that whilst the scholars would continue to attend the fees payable by them would diminish. He could not but feel, himself, that in all large Board districts they must ultimately arrive at a system of graded schools, which would, he thought, tend to efficiency and economy. They could then apportion the teaching staff to the children who had to be instructed, and there were many other obvious advantages. Still, the time had not yet arrived when it would be justifiable for the Education Office to suggest that a general system of graded schools should take place throughout the country. In the first place, one great difference was very obvious. In many parishes and school districts in England there was only one school; and, therefore, it would not be possible to have graded schools. Then, he thought, before the House attempted to do anything in that direction, they should see what could be done by secondary schools in England; and there was no doubt whatever that year by year, under the scheme of the Endowed Schools Commissioners, an excellent system of secondary schools was being established. Well, if the House should reject those two proposals, there was another which he would suggest, and which seemed to him to exactly meet the difficulty. Suppose the House were to say that, in the opinion of the Edu-
  1646
  cation Department, the maintenance of schools, as elementary schools, should not exceed a certain sum, the Return showed that, with the single exceptions of London and Liverpool, the cost of the maintenance of all elementary schools in England was under £2 2s. per child per annum. Well, supposing it was provided that if the cost of the maintenance per child exceeded £2 2s., the excess should be deducted from the grants given to the school, the result would be to show the managers of the schools the necessity of enforcing economy; and if they did not do so, it would be a question for the ratepayers to decide whether or not a limit should be imposed. This proposal had been under the consideration of the Education Department; and, without pledging himself in any way to the details, because the matter required most careful consideration, he thought he might say that the Government might act in that direction. This would effectually tend, he thought, to prevent managers from putting their hands too deeply into the rates in order to get the extra grants. It was perfectly ridiculous to say that the managers of schools had the option of spending as much as they chose of the taxes which were not collected by them. If this proposal were shortly put into practice, what would be the result as regarded London? Of course, it would be very difficult for a School Board at once to reduce its expenditure, and a certain time must be given; but if the first cost and maintenance of the London schools were reduced to £2 2s., there would be an immediate saving of £100,000. That was the suggestion which, on behalf of the Government, he was ready to make. He hoped his hon. Friend, after this statement, would not consider it necessary to press his Motion to a Division. He (Lord George Hamilton) had indicated—and he thought the figures he had quoted showed—that there had been an expenditure on the part of the London School Board which did not seem to be altogether necessary; and, such being the case, he should not, therefore, vote against the Motion; but, on the other hand, it was equally impossible for him to vote for it. It must be remembered that the London School Board was by far the most important School Board in existence; and if the Education Department had any reason to find fault with

  1647
  the expenditure of the London School Board, the proper course would be to write to them, and not by a side wind, by a Motion of this sort, to inflict upon them censure. There were a variety of circumstances which made it undesirable, he thought, for his hon. Friend to push his Motion to a Division. He (Lord George Hamilton) was sorry that he should have detained the House at some length; and if they could so shape their proposal as to make it applicable to the whole of England, he did not think anyone would have cause to complain that it would, in the smallest degree, affect either the sufficiency or the efficiency of national education; but it would show the managers of schools that it never was, and was not now, the intention of Parliament that a great and unlimited use should be made of the rates in order to obtain a larger measure of money raised by taxation. He thought it would also be a distinct intimation to any manager or any Board who took a different view, and who believed that unlimited expenditure was advantageous to the cause of education, that no greater hindrance to the cause of national education could be devised than to make the progress of primary education dependent upon excessive dipping into the pockets of the ratepayers.
  MR. MUNDELLAsaid, they had now arrived at a very late hour, yet not a single Metropolitan Member had had an opportunity of addressing the House, nor had any of the members of the School Board, who were also Members of that House, spoken. The statement of the noble Lord certainly, also, ought not to go without discussion and unchallenged. Therefore, he begged to move the adjournment of the debate.
  Motion made, and Question proposed, "That the Debate be now adjourned."—(Mr. Mundella.)
  MR. J. R. YORKEsaid, he must distinctly oppose the Motion, unless it was understood that the adjournment was not to be sine die. If, however, the Government could not give him a day, he must take a Division on the question of the adjournment, in order to obtain an expression of opinion from the House as to the conduct of the School Board.
  MR. FAWCETTwould be heartily glad if the Government could give the hon. Member a day, for the more this
  1648
  subject was discussed the better for the future of education. But to take a Division on the adjournment would be thereby to decide what would, practically, be a vote of censure on the most important local representative body in the country, without its own representatives having been heard. As a matter of fact, at 1 o'clock they had had but four speeches, no member of the Board, or representing the Metropolis, having spoken. Under such circumstances, it would be taking the House at a disadvantage to force a Division.
  MR. PELLsaid, he should vote for the Motion, not because he wished to condemn the conduct of individual members of the Board, who were the creatures of circumstances, but because he objected to the circumstances which placed them whore they were.
  MR. W. E. FORSTERthought the Motion for adjournment very reasonable. It would be most unwise to attempt to get a decision on the Main Question by dividing on the Motion for adjournment, because the case had not been nearly sufficiently debated. He should be very glad if the Government could give a day; but he feared that was not very likely at this period of the Session.
  THE CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUERsaid, the Government were fully conscious of the importance of the issue raised, and the ability with which it had been debated; but, at the same time, he feared it was a debate which, at that period of the Session, they could not hope to bring to a satisfactory conclusion. The case brought forward not only raised the question as to the conduct of a particular School Board, but introduced the whole question of our educational System; while the statement by his noble Friend of the views of the Government ought itself to be the subject of further debate. It was, therefore, most reasonable that the debate should be adjourned. The Government would give a day with the greatest pleasure if they felt they could redeem their promise, but that was quite out of their power; and he could only express a hope that an opportunity would be found to resume the debate. The proposition intimated by his noble Friend must come under the attention of the House in another form, when there might be further opportunities for discussion. He did not think the Govern-

  1649
  ment could possibly resist the Motion for an adjournment.
  SIR JOHN LUBBOCKhoped the hon. Member (Mr. J. R. Yorke) would not go to a Division, which would really indicate nothing, as those who voted for it could not be supposed to intend the condemnation of a body which had not even been heard in its own defence.
  MR. PAGETconsidered it very unsatisfactory that the debate should be closed in this way; and, therefore, hoped the Government would give them an opportunity of considering the proposals brought forward for the first time by the noble Lord that day.
  MR. RITCHIEhoped his hon. Friend would not go to a Division, for it would be most unsatisfactory to give a decision when the full case had not been heard, and when his hon. Friend himself had not had an opportunity of replying to the statements of the right hon. Gentleman opposite (Mr. W. E. Forster).
  SIR CHARLES RUSSELLalso agreed that a Division at that time would be liable to grave misconstruction; but still he thought they ought to have some sort of assurance from the Government that the subject would not be absolutely dropped.
  LORD GEORGE HAMILTONreplied, that, so far from the subject being either dropped or forgotten, he proposed to lay Papers on the subject on the Table of the House.
  Motion agreed to.
  Debate adjourned till Monday next.

METROPOLITAN BOARD OF WORKS (WATER EXPENSES) BILL.
On Motion of Sir JAMES M'GAREL HOGG, Bill to authorise the Metropolitan Board of Works to defray expenses incurred in relation to the promotion of certain Bills in Parliament relating to the supply of Water to the Metropolis, ordered to he brought in by Sir JAMES M'GAREL Hogg, Sir CHARLES W. DILKE, and Mr. RODWELL.
Bill presented, and read the first time. [Bill 204.]
House adjourned at a quarter after One o'clock.