Sitting of 7 March 1882

MINUTES.
PRIVATE BILLS (by Order)—Second Reading—Accrington Extension and Improvement; Blackburn Improvement *; Bolton Improvement *; Central Northumberland Railway; Chadderton Improvement *;
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Dundee Police *; East and West Yorkshire Union Railways *; Macclesfield Corporation*; Manchester Corporation *; North Eastern Railway (Additional Powers); Padiham and Hapton Local Board*; Regent's Canal, City, and Docks Railway.
PUBLIC BILL—Report—Pilotage Provisional Order (Tees) * [1].

PRIVATE BUSINESS.
  ACCRINGTON EXTENSION AND IMPROVEMENT BILL (by Order).

    SECOND READING.
    Order for Second Reading read.
    Motion made, and Question proposed, "That the Bill be now read a second time."
    MR. HOPWOODsaid, he feared that it might be thought, in the eyes of those whom he opposed, that he had taken upon himself a somewhat unpleasant task in rising to move the rejection of the second reading of this Bill. It was a duty unpleasant to himself to come forward as the quasi-champion of what he conceived to be the public rights in the matter, when there were many other hon. Members who would have been much more justified in assuming that position. He had, however, arranged with some hon. Friends, who agreed with him upon the subject, that he should endeavour to put a stop, for a time, to the further progress of certain Private Bills which had been introduced this year, and the first on the list was the one now before the House—the Accrington Extension and Improvement Bill. As there were a number of other Bills in the same category, he trusted that the general remarks he might be permitted to make would be looked upon as dealing with the whole number, and thus obviate the necessity of going into a minute examination of each of the other Bills in succession. He trusted, therefore, that the House would give him its indulgence, to some extent, in regard to the width of the remarks he was about to make, as his only object was to save the public time. In opposing the Accrington Extension and Improvement Bill, he did so entirely upon public grounds, and he should have been very pleased if some other hon. Member had assumed the duty he had undertaken. His right hon. Friend, whose absence at that moment and the

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    cause of it they all deeply lamented—the right hon. Member for Halifax (Mr. Stansfeld)—would, if he could have been in the House, have had much more authority and weight in discharging this duty than he (Mr. Hopwood) could pretend to have. He knew, however, that the course he was now taking had the thorough concurrence of his right hon. Friend, and his right hon. Friend was no mean authority in the matter, because, when the right hon. Gentleman presided over the Local Government Board, he was in the habit of exercising a strong and strict supervision over the kind of legislation to which objection was now taken in the present Bills. The right hon. Gentleman invariably declined to allow any alteration in the general law of the land to slip through in the shape of a Private Bill. He (Mr. Hopwood) had already said that he opposed these Bills upon public grounds. He did so because he was anxious that the principle he desired to assert, and which he contended was infringed upon in the present Bills, should not be infringed upon in future. It was right to say that a former Member of that House—then Member for Cambridge, and more recently the Member for Wigan (Mr. F. S. Powell)—took a very similar view from the other side of the House to that which he (Mr. Hopwood) now took. It was evident, therefore, that all parties in the House were equally interested in asserting the principle he was labouring to have settled. He might say at once that he admired the principle of Local Government as much as any Englishman could do; but he was not disposed to say that, wherever it was practicable, all Local Government should be centralized in a Corporation, or in a set of Improvement Commissioners. In all Local Government he thought that, per se, when a case was made out for the jurisdiction of the local authorities, that jurisdiction should be the same in all the localities, and that in one locality a different principle should not be acted upon from that which prevailed in the rest of the country. He entertained the highest respect for the corporate bodies that were established all over the Kingdom, and he had no desire either to thwart or to mortify them in any legitimate object they might have at heart. At the same time, he was of opinion that all matters connected with Local
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    Government should receive full discussion and be fully threshed out. If the questions involved in the present Bills had been completely and fully discussed, first before the Corporations themselves, and then before the central authorities, there would have been less occasion for him to raise any objection; but the House would see that, in the form in which legislation of this kind acted—namely, in the shape of a Private Bill, it acquired the status of a Statute, and the matters prescribed in it went down from the Legislature, not to be debated in the Town Council, and ordered as it thought fit, but to become at once the future rule of right in the locality. If anyone said—"Why is this the law? Is the law so severe as this? I certainly was not aware of it;" he was answered at once by the assertion—"It is the law, and therefore you must obey it." If any question arose which was a matter of doubt, and it could be made a question of discussion and discretion upon which the full collective representative capacity of the borough could be called into play, he should have very little to say; but that was not the case. These Bills proposed to alter the law in various ways. They placed very arbitrary powers in the hands of certain local officers, and they empowered such officers, from the time the Bills left that House, to exercise the powers conferred upon them in a most arbitrary manner, without providing any power of supervision over them. No doubt a Corporation was a fit body to form a judgment upon many matters that arose within its precincts, and such matters would probably be well threshed out before they were determined upon. Parliament had already conferred upon the local authorities very large powers in respect of the arrangement of buildings, the question of police, the employment of hackney carriages, and a number of other matters. But they were matters that had been well ascertained years ago, and were regulated by such Public Acts as the Towns Improvements Acts, the Towns Police Acts, and the like, which formed the best authority at this moment for the general legislation of the country. Parliament had laid down a rule that upon certain questions the legislation of the country should be general. The varying way in which

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    these powers were inserted in Local Acts was an evidence that they were liable to adoption in a capricious manner. If there happened to be a particularly active Chairman of Committee, who thought that a certain view might be permitted, although it might be capable of a most arbitrary application, his whim was generally gratified. The propriety of allowing the local law to be altered in this manner came before the House, upon such Bills as these, with very great force. They were now about to discuss a proposal, in regard to which they had been talking among themselves for some years, and which at length was about to assume a more practical form—namely, whether or not the House should refer all such matters to a Grand Committee. And yet it seemed to have been their practice of late to refer matters of great and vital interest connected with Local Government to some five Gentlemen sitting upstairs, who settled such questions as a Select Committee in a manner in which probably they never would have been settled if they had been brought before a Grand Committee, or discussed in open debate in the House. He had very little doubt in his own mind that the House, as a collective body, would never have consented to some of the decisions which had been arrived at by these small select tribunals. He came now to another point. Having treated the subject, to some extent, from a general point of view, he came to the particular class of complaints he had to make against the provisions of the Bills now before the House. The House would, of course, remember that there were Acts of a wide and general application applying to the whole of the country. For instance, there was the Public Health Act. But these Bills gave a particular form of administration to that Act, apart from that which the Statute itself gave, notwithstanding that the Act was passed after the deliberative wisdom of the House had been brought to bear upon it. Parliament not only laid down the general law, but deliberately defined the extent to which sanitary precautions and regulations in regard to infectious diseases should be carried; and yet of late a number of Private Bills had been introduced, some of which were successful last Session, in which other and different regulations had been au-
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    thorized. This was a fact very greatly to be deplored. He did not know who was responsible for it; but he hoped to hear some good reason assigned for allowing these extraordinary provisions to appear in a Private Bill. He was informed that one or two of the provisions sanctioned last year were of so arbitrary a character that the local authorities intrusted with them had not dared to carry them into effect. It was a most serious matter to allow the inhabitants of any locality to be oppressed by enactments so arbitrary that there was great fear, if they were attempted to be carried out to the full extent, a riot would be provoked. He should not feel at all surprised if, in some of the large towns, an attempt to enforce some of the sections of Private Acts to which his attention had been called should provoke a display of anger which it would be difficult to conciliate. He therefore asked the House to pause before it allowed further legislation of this description. The questions dealt with by the Public Health Act were treated of, and amplified, in this manner. For instance, the notification of diseases was one of the subjects in regard to which these Private Bills proposed to add new clauses to the Public Health Act, notwithstanding the fact that there were at this moment three public measures before the House awaiting deliberation upon the self-same subject. Whenever an opportunity was afforded for discussing them, a very considerable contest would be provoked; and he wanted to know by what authority a mere Select Committee on a Private Bill should be allowed to dispose of such questions, seeing that the House itself was anxiously awaiting an opportunity of dealing with them. Surely it was a most objectionable practice, in such important matters, to permit a serious alteration or addition to the general law of the land to pass through a Select Committee of the House, probably unchallenged, and without opposition or discussion. He thought the House ought to be protected by its own officials against Parliamentary sanction being given, without the knowledge of the body of the House, to the eccentricities of local bodies in derogation of the law of the land, animated by a desire to make the people happy through the aid of the policeman and local medi-

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    cal officer. One clause in the Bill now under discussion enabled the Corporation to supplement the Contagious Diseases (Animals) Act of 1878 by making bye-laws for the regulation of dairies, cowsheds, and milkshops. Parliament had already given to the Privy Council such powers as were deemed safe to intrust to a great public body responsible for its actions under special legislation; and yet in the present Bills the local authorities assumed to themselves the right to govern in accordance with their own individual notions as to such matters in different parts of the country. The proposal was that Parliament should confer upon these local bodies the power of inspecting the situation and arrangements of cowsheds and milkshops, and regulating various matters appertaining to the supply of milk. All these powers were to be taken out of the hands of the central authority and placed in those of local bodies; and not only so, but the existing powers were to be greatly enlarged. He wanted to know by what authority a mere Select Committee upstairs was empowered to sanction such important alterations of the general law? He thought it would be preferable for the House to refuse the proposed legislation, and to strengthen the hands of the Privy Council, so that it might act as an intermediate strainer, as it were, between the Legislature and the fancies and vagaries of Town Councils in derogation of the law of the land. No such extensive powers should be intrusted to any circumscribed locality. His contention was that in carrying out such legislation they were allowing local bodies to steal a march upon Parliament, and that it ought not to be allowed. He would contrast London with these Provincial towns. London had large powers; but he would undertake to prove that they were more moderate than most of those which these Town Councils had asked for, and obtained. How was it, then, that London had been more moderate in its demands? It was because the Acts which applied to London were public, and were obliged to be debated. They had been debated, and had been adopted by Parliament with full knowledge. Hence it arose that any extraordinary power speedily reached the eye of somebody, and was rejected if it were considered of an arbitrary
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    character. Some of these Bills entered into the question of police, and created entirely new offences. Some of the clauses would, he thought, make the hair of some hon. Members stand on end if they read them. There were not only clauses affecting public health and contagious diseases in animals, but dealing with places of public entertainment, the regulation of pawn broking, and electric lighting. In regard to most of these purposes there were Acts of Parliament of a public nature and of a stringent character already in force; and all he ventured to submit was that the House should refuse, with its eyes open, to intrust fresh powers to these Corporations. The best way of dealing with such extraordinary proposals would be to adopt the precedent already set in connection with the Private Bills which had been introduced in regard to electric lighting. Everybody knew that electric lighting was a matter of great public concern, and that it was only fit and proper that some Act of a general character should be passed. Accordingly, his right hon. Friend who represented the Board of Trade (Mr. Chamberlain) had come forward, as it was his duty to do, and said at once—''These are matters of public importance, and should receive the attention of the Government and the responsible authorities, in order to prevent hasty and improper legislation. Therefore, we propose that the progress of these Bills should be stayed, in order that time may be afforded for deciding upon some general principle to apply to them." He ventured to think that the Department had taken a proper course, and that the right hon. Gentleman the President of the Board of Trade deserved credit for his prompt action in the matter. If any other course had been taken, the public would have been left quite unprotected. Some of the provisions contained in the Bills now under discussion specially affected the artizan classes. The House would be aware that when all the means of warning the inhabitants of a district were gone through, the means at present provided for making public all the changes proposed by a Private Bill, they did little to inform the artizan classes what the Legislature was providing for them in the shape of arbitrary restrictions. Of course, the plea put forward for the restrictions was that of securing the public health—

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    e.g., the prevention of the spread of infectious diseases. But it struck him that Parliament had already well considered that question, and there had been a general manifestation of opinion that much must be left to the individual action of the members of the community. It was felt that they must be trusted to take precautions for their own safety, because otherwise it would be urged that the result would be to place the whole population under the eye of the police and the medical officers. No one would object to that if it had not a tendency to create a feeling of apathy and indifference. When infection broke out and disease became prevalent, the public, instead of having been taught to take precautions for their own safety and preservation, would look round for the medical officer or the policeman to go to their aid. The way in which the artizan classes were informed under the present Bill of the manner in which their liberty was about to be affected was this. An advertisement was inserted in the local paper to the effect that a meeting was about to be held under the Borough Funds Act, to take into consideration a Bill for lighting the streets with gas, or for improving the sewage, and "for other purposes." In that way the watchfulness of everybody in the place was lulled, for the most part, to sleep; and if no inquiry was made as to what was proposed to be the nature of the legislation, the artizan might ultimately find himself interfered with in his personal liberty, and in his home comforts, in. a hundred different ways. He was liable to find himself, all of a suddon, placed entirely at the beck and call of the policeman, who would simply tell him that he had incurred a fine of 40s. One great objection to all this kind of legislation was this. A man who had been labouring in London went down to live, for instance, in one of the great manufacturing centres. In London he was practically free from vexatious interference or restraint, and he was all the happier for it; but because he sought to change his residence for the privilege of living in one of these large towns, he found himself incurring a penalty of £5 on the right, and £10 on the left, for the infraction of laws he had never heard of. As the House must itself be responsible for the enactment of these arbitrary powers, he was anxious to show
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    how much importance Parliament had attached to protective and precautionary measures before sanctioning any legislation of the kind. In the case of Ireland there was a distinct Standing Order of the House that, before provisions such as these were introduced into any Bill, a certificate must be obtained by the promoters from the Local Government Board, stating that they were introduced with their approval, and upon their advice. There, again, they had a public body made responsible for the nature of the Bill that was introduced, and some precautions, at any rate, were taken against improper procedure. Nothing of the kind was done in regard to the present Bills. He would take the Accrington Bill as a test. The House would remember that he had referred to the Public Health Act. He contended that that Act went as far in the direction of interfering with the life of a family, with home existence, and with the arrangement of the dwellings of the people as Parliament could desire, or, at any rate, was disposed to intrust, to any local authority. In the first place, he would direct attention to Part 13 of the Accrington Bill, which related to sanitary arrangements. It stated that—
    "For the purposes of this Act, the expression 'infectious diseases,' means and includes all or any of the following diseases (that is to say, small-pox, cholera, scarlet fever, scarlatina, diphtheria, typhus fever, enteric or typhoid fever, and puerperal fever)."
    "The Corporation may, from time to time, order public or private schools situated in neighbourhoods affected by any infectious diseases to be temporarily closed or suspended."
    What did "Corporation" mean? It probably meant the Corporation as a body, or the active Chairman of a Committee, to which the question of public health was referred. The Bill went on to say—
    "The Corporation may order any shop, dairy, or other place, for the sale of beverages by re-tail, or for the sale or storage of provisions, or of clothing or other articles liable to communicate or retain infection, or any common lodging-house, to be temporarily closed whenever, from the appearance of infectious disease therein, or in rooms connected therewith, such action appears to the Corporation to be necessary; and may take all such means as seem to them desirable for preventing the entrance of the public therein, or the issue therefrom of food, clothing, or any of the articles or matters aforesaid,"

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    The next provision was—
    "In case of the existence of infectious disease in any house within the borough, the Corporation may issue an order declaring such house, or any rooms therein, or part thereof, an infected place, and forthwith, until such order has been determined by another certifying it free from infection."
    Then followed certain regulations to be observed in respect of such house or part of a house. Further on it was provided that—
    "When the room or rooms occupied by the person or persons suffering from infectious disease can, in the opinion of the medical officer of health, be effectually separated, and are so separated from the other parts of the same house or building, the rooms so occupied only shall be deemed to be affected by such order and regulations."
    There, again, the medical officer had complete control. But there were medical officers and medical officers. Some of them were wise; some of them were not. He objected to be handed over to somebody, in whose judgment there was nothing like leather, to say what precaution should be taken according to his will and pleasure. The full extent of his arbitrary jurisdiction really rested on himself and his assistants. Another provision was that—
    "No person dwelling in any such house or part of a house shall work at any other place in the same room with healthy persons, except with the written permission of the medical officer of health, and after disinfection of the person and clothing."
    It would appear from this that the medical officer of health was to be the sole arbiter of the rules under which the working classes were to carry on their daily labour. The House would observe that this legislation applied equally to the house and family of the wealthy man as to that of the artizan. But did anyone suppose that the medical officer of health, or the most fussy member of the Corporation, would venture to challenge conclusions with anybody who was able to protect himself? At the foot of the proposed sections appeared the following Proviso:—
    "Provided always, that the Corporation shall make compensation to any person who shall have complied with the provisions of this section, and who has thereby sustained loss by reason of the exercise of any of the foregoing powers; but such compensation shall be in regard only of direct material and pecuniary loss, and not in respect of any consequential loss or damage. And any person wilfully, or
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    without reasonable excuse, offending against any of the foregoing provisions, or against any order or regulation made under any of such provisions, shall be liable to a penalty not exceeding five pounds, and, in case of a continuing offence, to a further daily penalty not exceeding forty shillings for every day on which such offence continues."
    There were other clauses with which he would not trouble the House, with one exception. He was sure the House would realize that he had undergone considerable labour, in order that he might fully understand the bearing of these Bills; and the fact that he was only discharging a duty must be his apology for the length at which he was compelled to detain the House. The next clause—Clause 191—related to the notice that was to be given of all cases of infectious disease, and it laid down that—
    "If any such inmate be suffering from any infectious disease, the occupier, or person having the management or control of such building or of such occupier or person, be prevented by reason of such disease, then the person in charge of such inmate shall, so soon as he or she shall become aware of the existence in any such inmate of any such disease, forthwith give notice in writing to the sanitary officer of the Corporation, at their sanitary offices or at the chief police station, of the existence in such inmate of such disease."
    Did anybody suppose that such a regulation would ever be carried out? And if it were capable of being carried out, let the House take into consideration the nature of the cases of disorder which would come within the question of fever or infection, and which might affect a man, or his wife, or his children, and then suppose that they would immediately be made known at the headquarters of the police or the medical officer of health. Why, under this clause, the Town Clerk and the Corporation, and the medical officer of health would really have power to interfere in almost every case of sickness, and virtually to overrule the authority of the medical man employed by the family. How long would such a system of arbitrary interference with a man's freedom of action be tolerated? It might be said by the local authorities—"We do not propose to carry such powers into effect generally." His answer was—"If you do not intend to carry them out, you do not want them;" and, therefore, he protested against Parliament being asked to sanction them. So much for the notification of infectious disease, under which—

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    "Any person who shall wilfully offend against this enactment shall for every such offence be liable to a penalty not exceeding ten pounds."
    He observed, further, that—
    "The Corporation shall pay to every registered medical practitioner who shall, in pursuance of this section, duly make and give any such certificate or declaration, a fee of one shilling for each such certificate, but only one such certificate need be given, and only one such foe shall be payable within an interval of thirty days to the same medical practitioner in respect of the same disease occurring in the same building."
    Certainly the amount fixed in the Accrington Bill was not large; but in most of these Bills the medical officer was not satisfied with a fee of 1s., but was to receive as much as 1s. 6d. The matter might be looked upon as a very small one; but he objected to the substitution of any such provisions for that which the wisdom and experience of Parliament had laid down as the general law of the land. The Bill went on to provide that other diseases might be declared to come within the supervision of the medical officer of health. Clause 192 said—
    "The Corporation may from time to time by resolution, on the report of the medical officer of health, order that measles, German measles, erysipelas, whooping cough, or splenic fever, and (with the sanction of the Local Government Board) any infectious or contagious disease other than those specifically mentioned in this Act, shall be deemed to be an infectious disease within, and subject to the provisions of, this Act."
    There could be no doubt that the Medical Profession possessed a fascinating power in being able to use scientific terms and phrases which were suggestive of death; and by that means they not unfrequently arrested and overpowered a man's judgment, and compelled him to accept their intervention. He did not think that Parliament should—at any rate without special deliberation and discussion—consent to grant to any medical officer such arbitrary powers. Then, by the 195th section, it was directed that—
    "The provisions contained in Sections 116 to 119, inclusive, of the Public Health Act, 1875, shall extend and apply to all articles sold or exposed for sale, or deposited in any place for the purpose of sale or of preparation for sale within the borough, and intended for the food of man."
    The Public Health Act stopped short at certain well-known articles of food. It
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    stopped short at animal meat, poultry, game, fish, vegetables, fruit, bread, flour, and corn meal. But this section proposed to take the whole range of our food supply, and to include the whole number of articles sold, or exposed for sale as food. He did not propose to argue the question at length. He would simply point out that the Public Health Act was drawn up with great care, and in the provisions which it contained precise limits were laid down; and if Parliament in a general Act refrained from giving power to the local authorities which would enable them to interfere with a man's liberty and freedom of action, surely Parliament ought not now to be called upon to extend the provisions of the Public Health Act, and to confer these extraordinary powers by a mere clause in a Private Bill. He came next to the 197th section of the Bill. That section gave further powers for the removal to the hospital of infected persons. It said—
    "On the certificate of the medical officer of health of the borough or other legally qualified medical practitioner that any person within the borough is suffering from any dangerous infectious disease, and is without proper lodging or accommodation enabling the case to be properly isolated, so as to prevent the spread of the disease, or to be properly treated, the Corporation may give notice to the head of the family (resident in the same building) to which the person is suffering belongs requiring the removal forthwith of such person to any hospital belonging to them or under their control: Provided, that if there is no such head of the family, or if such head of the family is absent from the borough, or cannot be found, such notice may be given to the person so suffering."
    Now, that section placed a man living amongst his family entirely under the arbitrary control, not only of the medical officer of health, but of any legally qualified medical practitioner who might give a certificate; and in the event of a certificate being given, then the Corporation was empowered to give notice to the head of the family, requiring him to remove the sufferer forthwith to any hospital belonging to them or under their control. He knew it was pleaded that the local authorities were animated by the best intentions in desiring to have these powers; that they were to apply to everybody for their own good, and for the good of the community generally, and that the authorities were only asking for the power conferred by the clause without intending, in

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    every instance, to avail themselves of it. But surely there was something in the nature of responsibility attaching to the parents. Some consideration ought to be paid to the rights of the family; and no Corporation or medical practitioner should be intrusted with the arbitrary power of doing what the passing of this Bill would enable them to do. The limitation of the Public Health Act in this respect was convincing proof that, in the opinion of the Legislature, it was not desirable to enact such arbitrary provisions. The powers of the local authorities and medical officers were circumscribed within proper limits; but, if the Accrington Bill were passed in its present shape, any Member of that House, every person belonging to the wealthiest and highest class of society, if he happened to live in one of these boroughs, and, in the opinion of the medical officer, was suffering from a dangerous or infectious disease, and not properly isolated, might be taken away from the midst of his family, who were nursing him, and removed to a hospital belonging to the Corporation, or under their control. By the exercise of a violent act, the Corporation or medical officer were empowered to do exactly as they pleased with him. Here, again, he might have the assurance that such things never would be done. His answer was that the Bill rendered them possible to be done, and he altogether objected to the possibility. In no case would he have any objection to the use of persuasion in convincing poor people that they were not properly attended, and that it would be better to remove them to a place where they would be property caved for. That would be infinitely preferable to the violence and cruelty done to their feelings, and to those of their relatives, by putting in force an arbitrary power of removal. He believed that in many cases the idea of the danger of infection was much exaggerated. He was corroborated in that assertion by the testimony of the Medical Profession itself. The medical statement was that three or four persons might be shut up in a house with one who was infected, and yet not one of them would take the infection. No doubt, it was equally, and, perhaps, more probable that they would; but he protested in such a matter against an appeal being made to the House, to
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    extract from its fears in regard to the dangers of infection such exceptional and extraordinary powers. He came now to the end of the provisions of the Bill, and the only clause he wished to refer to was the 199th, which said—
    "The Corporation, for the better prevention of the spread of infectious diseases, may from time to time make bye-laws with respect to dairies, cowsheds, and milkshops, for all or any of the following purposes (that is to say): For regulating the situation and arrangements thereof; the inspection thereof by an officer of the Corporation at all reasonable times; for insuring the purity of the water supply thereof."
    The words "for regulating the situation and arrangements thereof" conferred entirely new powers of a very wide character; and, if they were inserted in the Bill, the Corporation of Accrington would in future have a right to say with regard to dairies, cowsheds, and milk-shops, even where a man had an established business—"You must remain here no longer. You must give up your business and remove to some other part of the town." The section was entirely in conflict with 41 & 42 Vict., under which the Privy Council might authorize the local authority to make regulations. He could understand such a provision as that, because it insured that the regulations were carried into effect under the authority of a responsible body entitled to the confidence of the public. There were other matters contained in the Bill which he would not weary the House by specifying, except Clause 216, which related to the keeping of disorderly houses, and provided that—
    "If any person keeps or acts or assists in the management of a brothel or other disorderly house, room, or other place, he shall be liable to a penalty not exceeding ten pounds, or, in the discretion of the justice before whom he is convicted, to he imprisoned, with or without hard labour, for any term not exceeding six months."
    There were many more clauses of the same kind, against which he protested that they were monstrously arbitrary; and he did trust that they would be excised from the Bill. He might add that one of the Bills—that for Manchester—proposed to deal with children styled ''street Arabs"—a matter which, no doubt, demanded the inquiry of the House, but ought not to be regulated by the insertion of a stray clause in a Private and

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    Local Bill. The subject was not dealt with in the Accrington Bill now under the consideration of the House; and he only mentioned the circumstance by way of illustrating his argument in reference to the curious category of promiscuous subjects that were now-a-days sought to be brought within the scope of Private Bill legislation. The proposal he referred to was one that would alter the Factory Acts. It was a proposal to deal with the case of vagrant children; and, in the first place, he was told that similar powers were already conferred upon the local authorities in Scotland. That, however, was no justification, because, to his mind, some of the Scotch proceedings were of an exceedingly arbitrary character; and the fact that certain powers were given to the local authorities in Scotland by no means modified or did away altogether with his disinclination to adopt similar provisions in England. But the clause to which he referred in one of the present Bills very much exceeded even the Scotch law. It gave power to take up any children who might be found in the streets selling newspapers and endeavouring to earn a few pence in order to supply themselves with food. The Bill gave power to the local authorities to take up such children and put them in some place whore, it was imagined, they would be better cared for and looked after. But he was satisfied that the House would look upon the question in a very different spirit. He had no doubt that every benevolent person would, if it were possible, consent to a proposal to this extent—that if, for instance, the children of Manchester were found in the streets after dark, at a later hour than was considered to be consistent with their tender years, hungry and unwashed, they should be taken care of by the police, fed, washed, and put to bed. But the proposal now made was to take from the parent his right to derive any assistance from the labour of his child, or if a child did as he was told, as many children in London were in the habit of doing, invest a few pence in the purchase of newspapers and sell them at a profit, then Parliament was to put a stop to such a proceeding by an arbitrary Act of legislation. At this very moment the Legislature was discussing how the condition of vagrant children could be best ameliorated. At this
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    moment they found the Industrial Schools broken down; at this moment they were referring all these matters for discussion before a Royal Commission; and yet at such a moment it was seriously proposed by some persons—the Liverpool Bill raised the same question; but the authorities had, on his opposition, withdrawn the clause—that the local authorities should be entrusted with extraordinary powers to enable them to decide the whole matter. Upon such an important subject he contended that it was of national and general importance that there should be direct Parliamentary legislation, and that no Private Bill, dealing with such matters, should be passed in the way now suggested. Having borne with patience, more than he deserved, the lengthened statement he had considered it his duty to make, he trusted the House would feel that he had made out a strong case for the proposition he submitted, that in future greater care should be exercised in the supervision of Private Bills promoted by corporate bodies and municipal authorities than was now manifested. Of course, he was not aware that these Bills had yet passed through the amending hands of any of the authorities of the House, and he had made no reference to the action of those authorities. All he had attempted was to make out a case for the supervision and control of the House itself; and he believed he had shown that the Bills now standing on the Paper required very material alteration and amendment. All that it was necessary to add was that he had no personal hostility to these Bills, and he had no desire to interfere with their progress, except so far as they proposed to carry out legislative enactments that might interfere with the comforts and convenience of the people. In other respects they were, no doubt, useful Bills, and he had no wish to oppose them or contribute towards their rejection. He proposed to await the discussion that would probably take place on the Amendment he was about to submit, and then to deal with it in the manner that would be most satisfactory to the House. If it should be necessary to persist with his opposition to the second reading of these Bills he should not shrink from doing so; but he was willing, in conjunction with those who were acting with him in. the matter, to content himself with a reasonable

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    assurance from the Government that the question would receive due attention, because he and they knew that at a later stage, either upon the Report or the third reading, they would be able to move the excision of any provision which might have been incautiously admitted, either by the authorities of the House or by the Select Committee, and which, in the judgment of the House, had been improperly admitted. If it should appear that these objectionable provisions had been retained, he would certainly be prepared to resort to every legitimate and Parliamentary means in order to defeat them and prevent them from becoming law. He begged, in conclusion, to move that the Bill be read a second time on that day six months.
    Amendment proposed, to leave out the word "now," and at the end of the Question to add the words "upon this day six months."—(Mr. Hopwood.)
    Question proposed, "That the word 'now' stand part of the Question."
    SIR R. ASSHETON CROSS: I think the House is very much indebted to the hon. and learned Gentleman for having brought this matter forward. I have no doubt that no one wishes, in any shape or form, to interfere with the desire of the great Corporations of the country to prosecute any Bills they think fit for the purpose of providing for the wants of the inhabitants of the towns they represent. But in this Bill, and in certain other Bills that are before us at the present moment, there are undoubtedly very great pains and penalties inserted in various clauses, both in reference to children and also in regard to infectious diseases and other matters which ought not altogether to be left to the judgment of a Committee upstairs, but which, in reality, form matters of public and general interest, and require to be settled by this House. Anyone who has had, as I have had, anything to do with the clauses of Local Acts and General Acts also will have found that there are provisions in some Acts of Parliament under which pressure and oppression have been permitted to be carried out. It is important to know what the House of Commons is to do with these Bills. I do not want to take up the time of the House, but rather to save it if I can, and I would make a suggestion to the hon.
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    and learned Member who has brought the subject before us. There are a great number of these Bills, I believe, and some of them contain provisions which are different from those contained in others. I would therefore suggest that they might all go to a Committee upstairs, whose duty it would be to deal with those portions which belong to the Private Business of the House. But I think that there ought to be a special Instruction from this House to the Committee to report to this House on all the particular clauses to which objection is taken upon general grounds. Further, there ought to be a distinct understanding that the third reading of these Bills should not be taken until the House has had an opportunity of discussing the Report of the Committee, so that the House itself may be able to pass an opinion upon the general principles involved in these different measures. I venture to throw this out as a suggestion to the House generally. I think we shall save time by taking such a course, and I also think that the object of the hon. and learned Member who has brought the question forward would be obtained as much by that means as he could expect by any other. I deeply sympathize with all that the hon. and learned Member has stated. I listened to his speech with great attention, and I think he deserves the thanks of the House for the course he has taken.
    SIR WILLIAM HARCOURT: I quite concur with what the right hon. Gentleman has said in regard to the great utility of the discussion which my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Stockport (Mr. Hopwood) has raised. But the questions which he has entered into give rise to very different considerations; and we must all feel how difficult it is, seeing the multitude of Private Bills that come before us, to give that attention to every point which is absolutely necessary. In point of fact, the machinery of this House is not calculated for any such purpose, nor can I go quite the entire length of my hon. and learned Friend in saying that there should be no local Board in any great community, which should possess powers differing in any respect from those conferred by the general law; because it seems to me that it might be very necessary for great communities like those of Manchester and Liverpool, for instance,

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    to have special provisions which would he appropriate to such communities, hut would not necessarily apply to any other parts of the country. I think that is a reason why, under proper safeguards, you may have a system of local law which should be applicable to different communities. I am, however, quite certain that almost the only alleviation of the difficulty in which the House is now placed in the transaction of Public Business is to be found in an extension of the principles of Local Government, and in intrusting the various communities with the power of making provision for meeting the wants of the people. But I entirely agree that this matter ought to be very carefully watched, and that we ought not to grant powers to local bodies which may become oppressive. It seems to me, therefore, that the suggestion made by the right hon. Gentleman opposite (Sir R. Assheton Cross) is a very excellent and satisfactory one, because it will enable us to remit to the Committee upstairs for careful examination and consideration questions which we cannot here undertake ourselves when the House meets at 4 o'clock. When these various matters have been sifted upstairs, and all matters extracted from them which involve general principles, we should be in a better position to consider and discuss their bearing. I therefore hope that my hon. and learned Friend will consent to accept the proposal of the right hon. Gentleman opposite. It is one in which, for my part, I entirely concur; and I think there should be an Instruction to the Committee which may sit upon those Bills in which exceptional powers are contained that they should make a special Report to the House. I think that such a proposal will meet the views of my hon. and learned Friend, and will relieve this House from attempting the difficult task of pronouncing an opinion upon the merits of these various schemes.
    SIR R. ASSHETON CROSS: I propose, further, that these Bills should not be read a third time until this House has had an opportunity of considering the Report of the Committee.
    SIR WILLIAM HARCOURT: Certainly.
    MR. THOMAS COLLINSsaid, he thought the House ought to be grateful to the hon. and learned Member for Stockport (Mr. Hopwood) for having
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    brought these Bills under the notice of the House. He did not think that the local authorities in different localities should have power, by inserting a few clauses in a Private Bill, to alter the law which applied to the general population of the country. If such a system of legislation were sanctioned they might have in one town—Leeds for instance—one particular set of rules and regulations, and in another town, such as Manchester, where the conditions were similar, a totally different set of rules. He was sorry that the hon. and learned Member had gone so far as to move the rejection of the Bill. He thought the wiser course would have been to consult with the promoters of the Bill, and then to have taken steps to secure that some uniform course should be laid down by Parliament as to the shape which legislation should take in regard to these matters. He entirely objected to the principle of allowing important changes in the general legislation of the country to be introduced through the medium of Private Bills, and then referred to a Select Committee upstairs composed of a few Gentlemen necessarily holding different views in regard to the public policy of the regulations recommended. The hon. and learned Member had not touched upon the question of the borrowing powers contained in some of these Bills; and, therefore, he (Mr. Collins) was desirous of saying a few words on that subject. He had always held strong opinions in reference to the borrowing powers asked for by different localities. He had always held that this generation ought to pay for its own fancies, and that the money which any Corporation sought to raise for the purpose of improving its own town ought to be paid off in 30, 40, or 50 years, or any other term which the wisdom of Parliament might fix. Personally, he was of opinion that 30 years were quite long enough; but a Committee upstairs might feel disposed to fix a longer period. The Accrington Bill proposed 70 years; but why should four hon. Gentlemen sitting upstairs have the right to say that Accrington should have the power of borrowing money for 70 years, while another Committee sitting, say, upon a Bolton Bill should limit the power to 30 years? In every case of the kind there ought to be a specific Report from the Committee; and it ought not to be left to any

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    Committee, no matter how distinguished the Members of it might be, to lay down what ought to be the borrowing powers. There could be little doubt that a principle that affected Bolton would equally affect Oldham; and it ought not to be left to four Gentlemen sitting upstairs to say what should be the powers given in the one case, and what in the other, to borrow money on the rates. What were the ratepayers likely to do when a long term for repayment was allowed? There was every likelihood that they would indulge in a profligate expenditure of money, because they knew that as ratepayers they only had a temporary existtence, and whatever the extravagance of the expenditure, the only question with them was—"How little shall we have to pay year by year?" It was not "What will this new Town Hall cost us?" or "How much shall we be required to expend on these tramways?" But "How can we so arrange matters as to pay as little as we can?" Knowing that the period of payment was far distant, the local authorities were always in favour of borrowing; and it must be borne in mind that the owner had no voice in the matter, and even if he had, the occupiers being ten to one, any objections he might urge would not receive the slightest attention. The interests of the owners and of the occupiers were entirely opposed. He had not read through the whole of the 64 Bills which had been deposited, and which introduced exceptional powers; but he had gone through the Accrington Bill. He had no doubt, however, that all of these Private Bills contained different proposals, and that many of them were of a contrary character. The Accrington Bill provided that the annual instalments of the principal and interest of the money borrowed should be paid off in 70 years; and it then went on to state what the money was to be spent in. But in many of these Bills it was to be expended upon objects which in 30 or 40 years would be good for nothing. The Blackburn Bill—a very long Bill of 220 pages, and containing about 1,400 clauses—as far as he could see, made no provision whatever for the payment of its debts. It proposed to take power to borrow money in perpetuity. He might be wrong in his reading of the Bill; but that was the only conclusion he could arrive at. According to page 119 of the Bill, the Cor-
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    poration of Blackburn proposed to take power to raise money for objects of a purely temporary character—£20,000, for instance, to be expended in street improvements, and no provision whatever was made for the repayment of the principal. Surely that was a power which ought never to be conceded. It amounted to the imposition of a fixed charge upon the inhabitants which was never to be paid off; and among the works to which the expenditure was to be applied were the erection of police buildings, which, like all other buildings, must in the end decay. He confessed that he had never before heard of such a proposition as that contained in the Blackburn Bill—namely, that the Corporation should have the power of borrowing without being subject to any provision in regard to repayment. He sincerely trusted, if this Bill was sent to a Select Committee, that the special attention of the Committee would be drawn to these borrowing powers, and that the House would lay down definite and clear instructions to the Committee without attempting to shirk its responsibility. The House might lay down the principle, within certain limits, that no borrowing powers should be sanctioned which should extend over a period of 30 or 50 years; and they ought not to pass Bills year by year in which these very important powers were made to vary in some cases from 30 to 40 years, in others to 100 years, and in others, like Blackburn, to perpetuity. The principle involved a great question of public policy, which ought to be decided by the House itself, and not by a Committee upstairs. He hoped that the hon. and learned Gentleman the Member for Stockport (Mr. Hopwood) would withdraw his Amendment for the rejection of the Bill, and move instead that the consideration of the measure be postponed for two or three weeks, so that in the meantime an arrangement might be come to with the promoters, which would give a certain degree of uniformity to the legislation proposed; and the House be enabled, before reading the Bill a second time, to lay down certain bases of principle which should guide the Committee upstairs as to the mode in which the question was to be dealt with. He did not think that in vital questions of this kind the Select Committee of the House should be left entirely to their own dis-

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    cretion. It was for the House to lay down the principles that ought to guide their decisions.
    MR. SCLATER-BOOTHsaid, the right hon. and learned Gentleman opposite (Sir William Harcourt) had adopted the suggestion of the right hon. Member for South-West Lancashire (Sir E. Assheton Cross) that this Bill should be allowed to go to a Committee upstairs, with certain instructions as to what was to be done with it, and with directions to report to the House. But he (Mr. Sclater-Booth) thought that such an Instruction would be of very little use unless the House took care that the whole of these Bills went to the same Committee, or, at all events, be grouped together so that they might be considered on some common plan of supervision. He thought that his hon. and learned Friend below the Gangway (Mr. T. Collins) made a proper suggestion when he asked that the consideration of the whole of these Bills should be delayed for a fortnight, and that in the meantime the right hon. Gentleman the President of the Local Government Board, or the Chairman of Ways and Means, who would, perhaps, be the most proper person, should take some step with a view to secure that the Bills should be grouped together, and the Committee directed to present special Reports upon them, and the extent to which they ought to be allowed to interfere with the existing public law. He gathered from the debate which had taken place that it was proposed very materially to alter and amend—first, the Public Health Act; secondly, the Industrial Schools Act; and, thirdly, greatly to extend the powers of borrowing. It seemed to him quite impossible to allow the confusion to go on which would be introduced into the general law of the land by sanctioning many of the provisions contained in these Private Bills.
    MR. LYON PLAYFAIRsaid, the House was indebted to the hon. and learned Member for Stockport (Mr. Hopwood) for having drawn attention to the extravagant provisions in some of the Local Bills of this Session. There were already 24 Local Acts containing provisions of the kind which the hon. and learned Gentleman had brought under their notice; and though many of those provisions were useful, some had been extravagantly extended in
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    the Bills promoted this year. He thought the proposal of the right hon. Gentleman opposite (Sir R. Assheton Cross) was a good one, and especially when coupled with the suggestion of the late President of the Local Government Board (Mr. Sclater-Booth), that the Bills should be grouped together and go before one Committee. If that were done an Instruction might be prepared, and the Committee would be able to report generally as to how far the Acts were going in the direction already sanctioned by precedent, and how far they had the extravagances pointed out by the hon. and learned Member for Stockport, especially with regard to police matters and sanitary arrangements. Much good might be done in showing to what extent the House approved, or disapproved, of proposals for local government which had been made in the Bills of this year.
    MR. DICK-PEDDIEsaid, there was an important clause in some of the Bills to which reference had not been made; it, nevertheless, required very close attention. He had carefully read one of the Bills, and he found power given to the Corporation, which, if exercised, would amount, in many cases, to the confiscation of one half of the property in a borough. For instance, in the Dundee Bill power was given to the Corporation to prevent any person erecting tenements or houses in flats more than four storeys high. Now, proprietors had bought property entirely unrestricted, and with the intention of building upon it to its greatest extent. What would be thought if it were suggested that such a restriction should be enforced in London, where there were so many noble mansions of six and seven storeys? He need not say anything more to show hon. Members what a grievous interference with the rights of property was now proposed. No compensation was provided in case of such restrictions being enforced; and he hoped the House would take the matter he had referred to into careful consideration before assenting to the passing of the Bills.
    MR. BRIGGSsaid, he only wanted to interpose between the House and its decision for one moment. Inasmuch as his name appeared on the back of the Blackburn Improvement Bill, he might be allowed to correct a misapprehension into which the hon. and learned Member

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    for Knaresborough (Mr. T. Collins) had, no doubt, unwittingly fallen. The hon. and learned Gentleman said he had not had time to read the Bills through. He (Mr. Briggs) was afraid some Members did make speeches without having, first of all, properly studied the subject. He said the Blackburn people wanted to borrow money, and did not intend to pay it back; at least, there was no provision in their Bill concerning the repayment. He (Mr. Briggs) simply wished to say that the term they were allowed for repayment was 80 years. Of course, that would seem a long time to hon. Members; but it must be remembered that in the North of England there were a great many new communities springing up who had to spend enormous sums of money, and it would be distinctly unfair to make the present, or even the next, generation pay the whole cost of the public improvements. He would add that the hon. and learned Member for Stockport (Mr. Hopwood) had taken, for those who were interested in the Bills under consideration, a somewhat inconvenient course. He had lumped the good and the evil together, and had taken as his type, perhaps, the Bill to which he entertained the greatest objection, and had founded his sermon upon that text. He did not rise for the purpose of objecting to the very useful suggestions which had been thrown out by hon. and right hon. Gentlemen, but simply to correct a misstatement made by the hon. and learned Member for Knaresborough.
    MR. GRAYapproved of the proposal to refer all the Bills to one Committee. It was clearly not the intention of the House to read the Bills a second time now, because if the Bills were sent to different Committees with instructions to report upon the questions upon which such difference of opinion existed, such as borrowing powers, management of police, and so forth, they would have as many different Reports, based upon different principles, as they would have Committees. He could not understand the violent objection that some Members of the House had taken to some of the sanitary provisions of the Bills. The Sanitary Acts had imposed upon sanitary authorities very serious and onerous duties; and when the authorities discovered they were not able effectually to perform their duties they naturally at-
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    tempted, by the only method open to them, to relieve themselves of the duties they found impracticable. He had had his attention directed to the question of the notification of diseases, and he found there were some 25 or 30 towns which had obtained Private Acts to deal with such matters. He made an attempt to introduce a reform on the subject for Ireland; but the Bill was blocked, as was the fate of many other measures intended for the good of his country. As to the borrowing powers, it was very easy to find the great difficulty which existed. Parliament must remember that it had imposed certain duties upon local authorities, and those authorities must find some method of carrying out their duties, hence the borrowing powers that were sought. The Government promised to facilitate the borrowing powers of the sanitary authorities, but they never did it; on the contrary, they took away certain facilities and did not replace them with others. They must not press too hardly upon the local authorities, who, it must be remembered, were only endeavouring to discharge the duties which Parliament had imposed on them.
    MR. HASTINGSsaid, that it was his opinion that sanitary provisions should be embodied in a general Act, especially the provisions with regard to the notification of diseases. Last year he introduced a Bill with that object, and he had again introduced it this Session. He had taken very great pains to ascertain what was the effect of the provisions for notification in upwards of 20 cities and boroughs in which they had been in force for some time; and he had been unable to discover one in which they were not regarded with approbation. For some period a large portion of the Medical Profession of Edinburgh resisted the enforcement of notification; but he found that now in that city every one, from the Lord Provost downwards, was in favour of these provisions; everyone declared that they had been productive of great benefit to the population in the way of stopping the spread of disease. He had received similar reports from Bolton and Leicester. He had just got a long letter from the Town Clerk of Leicester, stating the enormous good to the population by the operation of the provision regarding the notification of diseases; and when the hon. and learned Member for Stockport (Mr. Hopwood) said there

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    were some towns or some Corporations which had not ventured to put a measure of this kind into operation, he could inform him he only knew of one, and he could give him the history of that one. It was the Corporation of Nottingham. He was there the other day, and he found it was true that having obtained a measure of this kind some three years ago, they had not put it into operation until a very short time ago; and the consequence was that, three days before he was there, a violent outbreak of smallpox took place, owing to the fact that the first case had not been notified to the officer of health. The local authorities immediately met, and resolved to put the Act into operation. He thought experience ought to count for something in these matters. Wherever the Act had been carried out good had been done; and he should rejoice if the House should think fit to refer the Bills under consideration to a Committee, to thoroughly examine them, and report upon the way in which similar provisions had been carried out in different towns. He was convinced the result of that inquiry would be that the House would see the necessity of extending some general measure of notification of disease to the whole population.
    MR. HOPWOODsaid, he would explain what he proposed to do, and that was, of course, to accede to what had been suggested on both sides of the House. His conception of the suggestion was this—that the Bills be allowed to be read a second time to-day, upon the understanding, in the face of the House, that they be referred to a Committee, collectively or individually, at the discretion of the Chairman of Ways and Means, with an Instruction from him embodying what was now clearly the sense of the House in the matter—namely, that the Committee should report specially upon the different clauses indicated, and that finally the House should have an opportunity, before the third reading, of considering the Report, and of expressing its approval or otherwise. He would, of course, withdraw his Amendment.
    MR. THOMAS COLLINSsaid, that, before the Amendment was withdrawn, he would like to say it was desirable that the Chairman of Ways and Means should frame the Instruction to the Committee. In his opinion it would be
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    wise to postpone the second reading of the Bills for a fortnight, or even a week, and that in the meantime the Chairman of Ways and Means should lay on the Table of the House the Instruction he proposed to frame for the benefit of the Committee. Unless he got some satisfactory answer from the Chairman of Ways and Means on this point, he should propose the postponement of the second reading for a fortnight.
    Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
    MR. RITCHIEsaid, that under the circumstances he would move the adjournment of the debate.
    Motion made, and Question proposed, "That the Debate be now adjourned."—(Mr. Ritchie.)
    SIR WILLIAM HARCOURTsaid, that if the Bills were read a second time they could not go to the Committee, except by the sanction of the Chairman of Ways and Means; and the House might rely that his right hon. Friend would not allow the Bills to go to Committee until the Committee was properly instructed. Under such circumstances he thought the Bills might be read a second time.
    MR. SCLATER-BOOTHsaid, he was under the impression that the matter of Instruction rested with the Committee of Selection.
    MR. LYON PLAYFAIRsaid, if any expression of opinion was required the Chairman of Ways and Means placed himself in communication with the Committee of Selection. The Chairman of Ways and Means and the Committee of Selection were always willing to work together; and the Committee of Selection, knowing the wishes of the House, would take care that the Bills were referred to one Committee. With regard to the Instructions to the Committee, he ought to point out that it was not his duty to prepare the Instructions, for, as an Executive Officer of the House, he had to obey them. They would, no doubt, emanate from the Government after consultation with himself and the hon. and learned Member for Stockport (Mr. Hopwood), and the Instructions would then be moved in the House.
    VISCOUNT FOLKESTONEsaid, he understood that what his hon. and learned Friend (Mr. T. Collins) wished was that the Instructions should be laid upon the Table of the House, so that

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    hon. Members who were interested in the question might have an opportunity of considering them, and, if necessary, of making some Motion or some remarks upon them. He did not know whether there was any objection to such a course.
    SIR R. ASSHETON CROSSsaid, it was clearly the understanding that the Government should prepare the Instructions and lay them on the Table of the House.
    MR. W. H. SMITHsaid, he understood the Instructions would form the subject of a Motion in the House, by the right hon. Gentleman the President of the Local Government Board or the Chairman of Ways and Means. It was clear that the Committee could not act upon Instructions simply laid on the Table. The Instructions must be passed by the House before they could reach the Committee.
    SIR WILLIAM HARCOURTundertook, on the part of the Government, to consult the Chairman of Ways and Means and the hon. and learned Member for Stockport in framing the Instructions, and to formally move them in the House.
    Motion, by leave, withdrawn.
    Main Question put, and agreed to.
    Bill read a second time, and committed.

CENTRAL NORTHUMBERLAND RAILWAY BILL (by Order).

  SECOND READING.
  Order for Second Reading read.
  Motion made, and Question proposed, "That the Bill be now read a second time."
  MR. BRYCEsaid, he had placed a Notice on the Paper of his intention to move the rejection of this Bill, on the ground that it interfered with a very valuable and important common—namely, the town moor of Newcastle-on-Tyne, a large portion of which it proposed to take. The promoters of the Bill, he was glad to say, had recognized the objections raised to the Bill, and had agreed to run through the moor in a tunnel, and to restore to the moor as much common land as they proposed to take from it. Under those circumstances, the objections which many hon. Members felt to this Bill had been fairly met, and he had no further opposition to make to it.
  LIEUTENANT-COLONEL MILNE HOMEsaid, that after so protracted a debate as that which they had just had, he would not weary the House by trespassing long upon its time. But after what had transpired on Thursday, when the Bill was last before the House, he thought it his duty not to let the second reading pass without saying a very few words. On that occasion neither of his hon. Friends whose names were on the back of the Bill were present to explain its provisions, and the second reading was moved by the hon. Gentleman the Member for Stockton (Mr. Dodds), who subsequently stated that something had been done with the provisions of the Bill, and that he believed all opposition was withdrawn. He (Lieutenant-Colonel Milne Home), therefore, took the opportunity of stating that his constituents were opposed to the passing of this Bill; and he felt it his duty to come and support the hon. Member who had just sat down (Mr. Bryce) in his opposition. The hon. Member himself was not in his place on Thursday; and he thought it was due to him, as well as due to his hon. Friends the promoters of the Bill, to allow the discussion to be postponed until this day. He now found that the opposition of the hon. Member for the Tower Hamlets (Mr. Bryce) was withdrawn, and the House had heard from him that his objections had been met by the promoters of the Bill. He only trusted that the objections he (Lieutenant-Colonel Milne Home) had to take would be equally met. Without going into the nature of the objections raised by the hon. Member for the Tower Hamlets, it was enough to observe that they arose at the Southern end of the proposed railway; whereas his (Lieutenant-Colonel Milne Home's) objections were entirely with regard to the Northern portion of the line, and they might be very shortly stated. They were, it was true, only of a local nature; but he contended that they involved a principle which it was fair to bring before the House of Commons. The principle was simply this—that if the Bill were passed in its entirety, he believed it would unwarrantably interfere with the existing commercial interests of the borough of Berwick-upon-Tweed, which was at the Northern section of the line. He need not go into any detail upon that subject, because he had presented

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  two Petitions to the House from the Town Council of Berwick and the Harbour Commissioners; and he might say that on two points it appeared that the commercial interests of Berwick would be interfered with. First, as to the direction of the line—the Northern portion of it. If it were carried out as proposed, it would divert the traffic from the existing route, and the traffic would have to go by a circuitous route and would be taken away from the present channel at Berwick, which was the out-port of that part of Northumberland and the principal market towns connected with that district. He could not help contending that it was wrong in principle to interfere, without some sort of compensation, with those existing interests. More than that, a Bill had already passed a second reading in the House, which was promoted by the North Eastern Railway Company, which already possessed the Northern part of Northumberland. The line laid down in that Bill went through almost identically the same district of country, although he was free to admit that it did not confer such special advantages on two or three landed proprietors as the Central Northumberland Line did. But they ought to preserve the rights of the community rather than improve the personal interests of two or three landed proprietors. He did not mean to take upon himself at this stage the sole responsibility of so strong an action as moving that the Bill be read a second time six months hence; but he did hope that his hon. Friends who had charge of the Bill would give effect to the views which he had ventured to express. All that he had further to say was this—that if the Bill came downstairs unaltered in the direction he had ventured to point out, he should reserve to himself the right of moving the rejection of the Bill when it reached the House again.
  Motion agreed to.
  Bill read a second time, and committed.

NORTH EASTERN RAILWAY (ADDITIONAL POWERS) BILL (by Order).

  SECOND READING.
  Order for Second Reading read.
  Motion made, and Question proposed, "That the Bill be now read a second time."
  MR. J. LOWTHERsaid, he had an Amendment down upon the Paper against this Bill, which raised, to some extent, the identical principle which had been under the consideration of the House for the last hour and a-half; but the House would be glad to learn that it was not his intention to detain them more than a few moments, as he only desired to point out what he thought wore the very objectionable provisions of the Bill. There was only one clause to which he took exception—namely, the 25th clause, which provided for the extension of time beyond that allowed by the Lands Clauses Consolidation Act for the disposal of surplus lands by the North Eastern Railway Company. He should not detain the House by reading the clause in detail; but in the Lands Clauses Act, which he need not remind the House was a general Statute, the limit of 10 years was proscribed during which surplus lands should be disposed of in the manner provided by that Act. This Bill, however, gave another 10 years during which these lands should be disposed of. The ground of his objection was that if it was necessary to amend the Lands Clauses Act, which was a Public General Act, that amendment should take the shape of a Public Bill. The promoters of the Bill had issued a statement of the reasons for it. It was not his intention to controvert those reasons. The proposal in the Bill might be an improvement—and he would concede, for the sake of argument, that the proposal in the Bill might be an improvement—in the existing law; but still he said that even an improvement of the Lands Clauses Act should be introduced into this House as a Public Bill. It was no answer to his objection to say that the Lands Clauses Act was faulty in any respect. He would assume that it was faulty. The same principle which was discussed at some length just now applied far more forcibly to the present Bill—namely, that it was sought by means of a Private Bill to modify, or, if they liked to say so, to amend and improve a public Statute. Now, among the reasons given by the North Eastern Railway Company why Parliament should adopt their proposal was one which he thought was a very good argument against the Bill—namely, that certain other Bills which they mentioned had had similar provisions in-

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  serted. The North Eastern Railway Company said that in 1849 and in 1851 they succeeded in obtaining the introduction into Private Bills of provisions of this kind. Now, he thought that a reason why the House should, upon that occasion, mark its disapproval of that practice. If Railway Companies, or any other persons, desired to amend the Public Statutes, they should bring their proposals before Parliament in the shape of a Public Bill. It was a great hardship to owners of property. Owners of property relied upon the provisions of the Public Statutes, and they were not, in the first instance, disposed to put themselves to the expense of opposing a Private Bill. He was not himself personally affected by that Bill, although many of his neighbours were; but in some cases those who were in the possession of ample means had availed themselves of the opportunity of petitioning against the Bill. He knew one Petition which had been lodged; but those who were not so well able to deal with cases of that kind would not incur the expense, and were now without any protection for the defence of their interests. He ventured to say that it was a hardship upon private persons to be driven to the expensive machinery of petitioning against Private Bills when they held their property in reliance upon the provisions of the General Statute. He should not detain the House, especially as he had the disadvantage of following a lengthy and exhaustive discussion upon a Bill which raised, to some extent, a somewhat similar principle. The House must, however, be very careful how they deliberately allowed themselves to be drawn into a precedent in the matter. What had occurred before was only a quasi-precedent, which had escaped the notice of Parliament. The House had now before it an attempt to override a General Statute. But he was not without hope that the attention of the promoters of the Bill would be called to it, and that they would modify the Bill and strike out this clause. But there was another provision to which he would draw the attention of the House. In the Lands Clauses Act provision was made for the right of pre-emption, and the rights of certain parties within the 10 years prescribed by the Statute. The person from whom the land was originally severed,
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  and other persons, had a right of preemption; but this Clause 25 did away with that. He was told that the clause as drawn very distinctly overrode the right of pre-emption, which was distinctly preserved in the Lands Clauses Act. Apart from that the clause was most objectionable, and he hoped the House would firmly put its foot down upon the principle involved—namely, that a Public Statute could be amended by, as he thought, an insane clause in a Private Bill. He protested against such a thing, and he would venture to hope that the Representative of Her Majesty's Government, whoever he might be, who had this matter in charge, would support the proposition that he laid down; and even conceding, for the sake of argument, that the proposal was an improvement upon the Lands Clauses Act, he held that the improvement ought to be brought in as a Public Bill.
  Amendment proposed, to leave out the word "now," and at the end of the Question to add the words, "upon this day six months."—(Mr. James Lowther.)
  Question proposed, "That the word 'now' stand part of the Question."
  MR. J. W. PEASEsaid, that as one of the Members who had charge of the Bill, perhaps the House would allow him to reply to the remarks of his right hon. Friend. The Bill was a most important Bill for the North of England. It was a Bill which contained a great many provisions for works which were calculated to promote specially the public safety. This Bill went into several matters which had been delayed for several years owing to the depression of the times. It was a Bill which was looked upon with great interest in the districts served by the North Eastern Railway Company; and, therefore, he begged that the House would not jeopardize a Bill, on the allegations of his right hon. Friend, especially when it contained so many provisions that were of interest to the community. His right hon. Friend said that that was a matter of principle, and that the Railway Companies ought not to come to the House and ask for an extension of time. He would ask his right hon. Friend when he first discovered this great principle, because ever since his right hon. Friend and he (Mr. Pease) came into that House—for he thought

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  they came into it at about the same time—year after year Railway Bills had been passed containing that very clause, or something to a similar effect. Only the previous evening the House passed the second reading of a Bill containing a clause drawn on these very lines; and during this Session of Parliament four Railway Bills had been passed, and he asked why the North Eastern Railway was to be singled out to be made a martyr of for the sake of a principle which had already been admitted? What he wished to draw the attention of the House to was that he was quite prepared to abandon that clause, and substitute another clause, one which had already been inserted in the North Western and Midland Railway Bills, and which limited the power of the Railway Company to hold surplus lands not adjoining Railway Stations or Railways to two years. That clause had been most carefully settled by the Earl of Redesdale, and had been approved by his counsel; and he (Mr. Pease) suggested that that clause would be an improvement upon the clause in the North Eastern Railway Bill. But in reference to his right hon. Friend's remark, he would say that the North Eastern Railway Company had had that same clause in several Railway Bills. It was brought forward from the old Bill. The North Eastern Railway Company had never offered land to anyone but to the adjoining owners, and they had always concluded that they were bound so to do by the Lands Clauses Consolidation Act, in dealing with the clauses alluded to by his right hon. Friend. But if there was a railway in the world to which the period for holding surplus land should be continued, he thought it was the North Eastern Railway. During the last 10 years that Company had laid down, in promoting public safety, 325 miles of siding; they had considerably increased their rolling-stock; and in order to place their servants near their work, and in order to avoid accidents, they had built nearly 1,000 cottages for their platelayers and signalmen. It was impossible to say to what good purpose the surplus lands might be applied. They who were on the North Eastern Board knew no one who was aggrieved by that action of the North Eastern. His hon. Friend the Member for Stockton (Mr. Dodds) had some
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  private interest which he supposed was affected. There were other persons whose private interests were also affected; but he thought that those private interests must come before a Committee of the House, but not before the House of Commons, because that House was not a proper tribunal to look after those interests. All he asked the House was to pass the second reading of the Bill, and he would undertake to put in a clause on the lines of the clause inserted in the North Western Bill. And as to the difficulty which his hon. Friend had regarding selling lands to adjoining owners, he would give him his word that there was no intention to override the Lands Clauses Consolidation Act. He trusted, under those circumstances, the House would deem it right to pass the second reading of that most important Bill.
  MR. DODDSsaid, he could not agree with the reasoning of his hon. Friend the Member for South Durham with reference to the Bill; but he entirely agreed with his right hon. Friend opposite. ["Hear!"] It was gratifying to him, and it was a gratification that was evidently shared by the great majority of the Members of the House, that he—on this occasion, at least—agreed with his right hon. Friend opposite (Mr. J. Lowther). He agreed also, with pleasure, with some of the remarks which had fallen from the hon. Member for South Durham. He (Mr. Dodds) thought that the Bill was of considerable importance, and he was in favour of many of the propositions which it sought to authorize. But the clause to which objection was taken had no reference whatever to any of these propositions. The hon. Member proposed to abandon the form of the clause to which objection had been raised. He had admitted the force of the argument of the right hon. Gentleman opposite, and admitted that the clause ought not to be sanctioned as it stood; but he (Mr. Dodds) trusted that the House would insist on his either withdrawing the clause absolutely and unconditionally, or refuse to read the Bill a second time. His hon. Friend the Member for South Durham said that private interests only were affected; but the House would remember that when private interests were affected by Private Bills, the requirements of the law should be adhered

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  to as to notice to the owners and occupiers of all lands taken, and if the North Eastern Company desired to extend the time required by them under the provisions of the various Acts, they had only to give notice to the several occupiers and owners. Instead of this, they were seeking to take lands in six or seven different counties, and in 120 different townships, which had been acquired by 26 different Railway Companies now incorporated with the North Eastern system, and they sought to affect every one of those owners and occupiers without giving them any notice. He trusted that the right hon. Gentleman opposite would insist upon the entire omission of the clause from the Bill, or would divide the House upon the question of the second reading.
  MR. WARTONsaid, he thought that the House ought to thank the right hon. Gentleman the Member for North Lincolnshire for his opposition, which was based upon the clearest principle, that that was an attempt of a Railway Company to evade the provisions of the Lands Clauses Act. He did not rise for the purpose of adding anything to the argument of the right hon. Gentleman. He only wished to remind the House that last year it set its foot down when an attempt was made by the Metropolitan Railway to deal with another clause of the Land Clauses Act, and it enjoined that if a part of a house were taken the whole ought to be taken. They tried to evade that and failed, and he begged to remind the House of the fact, and hoped the House would be consistent, and set its foot down firmly against the demand of the Railway Companies to evade the principles of the Land Clauses Act.
  MR. CHAMBERLAINpointed out that the right hon. Gentleman opposite said he hoped the Member of the Government specially charged to look after that Bill would express the opinion which had been formed upon it. As that Representative, he should endeavour to do so in a few words. The position which the House had taken up in reference to these matters was, that they would not interfere with the functions which they had voluntarily committed to the Committees upstairs, unless there was some great principle of public policy, or other great principle, at stake. He had carefully considered the Bill, and did not think that it was a case of the
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  kind. The only point was whether the Company should be allowed to vary the provisions of the Lands Clauses Act so as to obtain an extension of time for the re-sale and redemption of surplus land. Surely that was a matter of detail, and a matter of evidence, which could not be properly decided by the Houses; but which could be decided, after full inquiry, upstairs. The right hon. Gentleman said that the promoters were seeking by a Private Bill to alter a Public Act; but that statement was a little misleading. It was a Public Act which it was usual to incorporate in all Private Bills, power being given to modify its provisions when special circumstances required their modification. The modification of the provisions of the Lands Clauses Act was a matter of frequent occurrence. Only within the last few days a Bill of the North Western Railway contained exactly the same provision as was in the Bill now before the House; and it certainly would be inconvenient if the House were to take the matter into its own hands and interfere with the work of the Committees upstairs.
  MR. GREGORYventured to think that that was a matter for the House to take into consideration. The principle of the Lands Clauses Act was that a Railway Company should have the power, for 10 years, to say whether they required the land they had purchased for the purpose of their works or not. During these 10 years they had to give the adjoining owner the right of preemption; and if they did not sell within the 10 years, then the land reverted to the persons originally entitled to it. Now, the Bill entirely set aside that. He ventured to think that there was a very important principle and policy in the Lands Clauses Act, because, if it were not for these provisions, the Railway Companies might acquire the right to get lands into their hands, and they might set up to be not only Railway, but Land Jobbing Companies. It was said that there were several Acts containing similar provisions to those in this Bill; but he doubted if any one was of so wholesale a character as that Bill. The Bill sought to take lands which were in 126 different parishes, and acquired under no less than 26 Acts of Parliament, and no particulars were given of what these lands were, or how

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  long they had been held; and he could not help thinking that much of the land comprised in the Bill had been in possession of Railway Companies for years and years beyond the period. That was a matter with which the House ought to deal, and that was a point to which he wished to call the attention of the House.
  MR. J. LOWTHERsaid, that the hon. Member for South Durham (Mr. J. W. Pease) had stated that he would withdraw the clause, and would substitute for it another clause which was found in the Bill of another Railway Company. He had not had the opportunity of studying the clause, and he could not be expected to commit himself to a clause he had not read, and still less to commit the House in the matter; but he had no doubt the hon. Member would allow the second reading to stand over until, say, Friday. He would withdraw his Amendment if the hon. Member would thus give him time to examine the clause and see if he could agree to it. He should like to hear the hon. Member say something on that point.
  SIR MATTHEW WHITE RIDLEYsaid, he hoped his hon. Friend opposite would not accept the offer of his right hon. Friend, who would only move the rejection of the Bill when the second reading again came on.
  MR. J. LOWTHERsaid, he distinctly stated that he would withdraw his Motion for the rejection of the Bill, because he wished to have an opportunity of examining the clause it was proposed to substitute for the one now contained in the Bill.
  SIR MATTHEW WHITE RIDLEYsaid, that meant that if he thought proper he would again move the rejection of the Bill. It was not reasonable that exception should be taken to one particular clause and the Bill rejected on that account. His hon. Friend opposite had done as much as he could in having said he was willing to substitute a clause which had been already approved by the Speaker's Counsel, and which had also met with the approval of the Chairman of Ways and Means; and he thought his right hon. Friend (Mr. Lowther) ought to agree to the second reading, and allow the clauses to be submitted to the proper tribunal upstairs. He must correct his right hon. Friend in another point. He had said that this
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  was an attempt to override the Lands Clauses Act. Why, the Lands Clauses Act specially provided that any further period beyond 10 years might be prescribed; and surely it was obviously impossible for a Railway Company always to say exactly what use they would be able to make of their land. It appeared to him the promoters of the Bill asked nothing unreasonable, and he hoped the House would agree to the second reading of the Bill.
  Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
  Main Question put, and agreed to.
  Bill read a second time, and committed.

REGENT'S CANAL, CITY, AND DOCKS RAILWAY BILL (by Order).

  SECOND READING.
  Order for Second Reading read.
  Motion made, and Question proposed, "That the Bill be now read a second time."
  MR. ARTHUR PEELsaid, that he ought to apologize to the House, after such a long discussion on a Private Bill already; but he must say that the Bill which he was about to oppose also involved a principle of great public importance. This was a Bill proposing to transfer the Regent's Canal to a Railway Company. Now, he could quite understand a great number of objections being taken from different quarters against this Bill. He could quite understand the objection being taken that it interfered, if he might use the expression, with the privacy of a public park. He could understand the objection that it displaced houses, and otherwise interfered with the poor inhabitants of the Metropolis; and he could also understand a strong objection coming from the School Board, in consequence of the great number of children who would be ousted from their homes, and obliged to be taken far from the schools they had been in the habit of attending. He could also understand the objection that it interfered with private rights. He did not propose to trouble the House with any of those heads of objection. The objection he took was entirely on a different ground. He had no private interest to serve. He was not connected with either Canals or Railways; but he took his stand solely upon the public principle

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  involved, and on the great fact that if this Bill passed a crushing blow would be dealt to the competition between Railways and Canals. Now, observe that there was a very important point of view to look at in this Bill, and that was the engineering point of view. He had been told, upon good authority, that over the area of the Canal which was proposed to be restricted in its width—over the area of, perhaps, 30 acres in all—no less than one-fourth was permanently taken away from the navigable area of the Canal. And he need not remind the House that to restrict the navigable waterway of any Canal was seriously to interfere with the traffic through its whole length. Now, this principle of the competition of Railways and Canals had been insisted upon over and over again by this House; and he respectfully submitted to the House that if this principle was infringed now, they would be transgressing the recommendations of Committee after Committee and Commission after Commission of this House, and flying in the face of the Joint Committee of Lords and Commons in 1872. The Act of 1845, in its Preamble, recognized expressly the importance of maintaining the competition between Railways and Canals. Then there came the Act called Mr. Cardwell's Act of 1854, expressly providing that through communication should be established on the Railway and Canal systems. In 1858, at the instigation of the Canal Companies themselves, there was an Act passed for the protection of Canals and against their absorption by the powerful Railway Companies of the Kingdom. The combination of Railway Companies which was then in existence was so powerful that it was necessary for the State to interfere. He need not say that from the period of 1858 to the present time the threatened monopoly of the Railway Companies was becoming more and more severe, until at last they would be face to face with a dominant and domineering power, against which no remedy would be available unless the State stepped in to undertake the sole control and management of the Railways. He would state very briefly what were the recommendations of the Joint Committee of Lords and Commons of 1872. They expressly recommended that it was most important to maintain the competition between
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  Railways and Canals. They recommended that inland navigation in the hands of a public trust should not be transferred to, or placed under, the control of a Railway Company. They recommended that no Canal should be transferred to, or placed directly or indirectly under, the control of a Railway Company, nor should any temporary lease to a Railway Company be renewed until it had been conclusively ascertained that the Canal could not be amalgamated with an adjacent Canal or with a trust owning an adjoining inland navigation. Now, he was perfectly aware that the promoters of this Bill offered all sorts of compensations, and were ready to submit to all kinds of conditions. He might say that, without offence to them, they were profuse in the conditions which they offered, and in the limitations of their own powers, and he did not question the good faith of the promoters of the Bill. But this he did say—that when they once placed a Railway Company in the commanding position in which this Railway sought to be placed by absorbing within its system a great Canal, he said that it was against human nature that that great Company, after a time, should not consider rather its own interest than the separate interests of the Canal; that they would come afterwards and apply to Parliament, saying—"Our traffic is enlarged; we are unable to carry the goods submitted to us; let us have a little more—a slice of this Canal;" and so gradually the process of deglutition would go on, and they would absorb the whole existing waterway of this Canal. What was this Canal? There was a vast system of inland navigation extending from the Severn and Staffordshire on the West to the Docks at London on the East. The Warwickshire Canal Companies poured their traffic into this Re-gent's Canal, and a short time ago the Warwickshire Canal—in which he begged to repeat that he had no personal interest—sought to obtain before the Railway Commissioners through rates upon the line of the Regent's Canal. He had heard the objection since stated that the traffic of the Canal Company was diminishing, and that, therefore, in the interests of the public, the Canal ought to be transferred to the Railway Company. But this was not true. On the contrary, the fact was that the traffic

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  on the Canal was in an increasingly flourishing condition. He was not there for a single moment to contend that if the Canal really were in an impecunious condition, it would be wise and politic on the part of the State to say that it should not be transferred to some solvent body—it might be to some Railway Company. He thought, however, that a case might be made out in which the State might be called on to interfere and declare that, in any event, such a Canal, having been once established, ought to be maintained as a waterway. But he did not wish to insist on this point. What he did insist on was this—that the Canal was not only a solvent, but was a really profitable concern. He had already alluded to the conditions which the promoters were willing to impose on themselves, so that the public might disabuse themselves of the idea that there was danger of the Canal being allowed to become useless. He would refer the House to what had been said by the Joint Committee of the Houses of Lords and Commons in 1872; and, for his own part, he thought that any conditions that might be sought to be imposed on the promoters would, in the lapse of time, be found perfectly fruitless. The Report of the Joint Committee, which he had just mentioned, set forth—
  "That the tolls wore fixed by Act of Parliament at a remunerative rate. It is stated in some cases that the Railway Companies holding the Canals not only do not make improvements, but that, by neglecting repairs, by closing the Canal locks, and by failing in the supply of water, they suppress the traffic on the Canals. The amalgamation of the Canals above mentioned with the Bail ways has been strongly opposed, and Parliament has in many cases desired to annex conditions to those amalgamations compelling the Companies to maintain the Canals in an efficient working state; providing for other Canal Companies making through rates. These provisions, however, have almost uniformly failed; and the present state of things appears to be that obligations of this description are much more easily evaded by the owners of the Canals than they can be enforced by the traders."
  The Committee added this remark—
  "It is difficult to make a Company maintain an effectual competition with itself."
  Before sitting down he should like to make a remark as to what had been the process of absorption of Canals by Railway Companies, either by temporary lease or in perpetuity. Of 4,000 miles
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  of canal and river communication in England and Wales, there had been 1,500 miles and upwards amalgamated, in some shape or other, with Railway Companies—or, at least, transferred more or less under their control—up to the year 1865. No amalgamations appeared to have taken place between 1865 and 1872; but in 1872 the process of amalgamation began again. At that time the Midland Railway Company sought to acquire the Worcester and Birmingham Canal. Since then various attempts had been made to acquire Canals, and the result uniformly had been that the Canals had been practically rendered useless, tolls to such a high rate having been charged as to divert the traffic of the waterways to the Railways. If it had ever been necessary for the House to step in and prevent the continuation of that process, it was necessary now. The fact was that amalgamations had been going on to an extent that had been highly detrimental to the public interests. The legitimate and honest com-petition between Canals and Railways had thereby been undermined; and what he now asked the House to do, by rejecting the second reading of this Bill, was to assert a great public principle, founded on public policy, that it should not be permitted that a Railway Company should make arrangements with a Canal Company for the absorption of a Canal into its Railway system in such a way that the great system of inland navigation could be materially injured or disturbed. He begged to move that the Bill be read a second time upon that day six months.
  Amendment proposed, to leave out the word "now," and at the end of the Question to add the words ''upon this day six months."—(Mr. Arthur Feel.)
  Question proposed, "That the word 'now' stand part of the Question."
  MR. E. W. HARCOURTdesired to support the arguments advanced by his hon. Friend the Member for Warwick, and to endorse what he had stated to the House. He considered that the Regent's Canal was placed in rather a peculiar position, and one differing from that of most other Canals in the Kingdom, as it was the means of gathering up the threads of all the existing Canals in the country, so that those Canals which passed through Oxfordshire and other

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  counties could carry their goods by means of it to the Docks and other points with which it was connected. He was aware that the promoters said they were not going to fill up the Canal. It was very possible that they did not mean to do that; but there were other ways of shutting up a Canal besides filling it with earth. He held that one of the greatest protections they had against Railway monopoly was to be found in the Canal system of England, a system which certainly was of the greatest importance to the agriculturists of the country, whose interests would be materially affected if the Canals were allowed to be absorbed into the Railway system. He had been told by some gentlemen in London that one thing which they wished particularly to avoid was the agriculturists bringing their manure along the Canal, and dropping it into the water in the neighbourhood of London. All he could say in answer to that was that the agriculturists would be very glad to receive that manure back again, if they could get it. But, of course, he only referred to this matter by way of joke. He thought that if the Bill were allowed to pass without question, they would soon see, as had been pointed out by the hon. Member for Warwick, the goods that were now brought by Canal from different parts of the Kingdom transferred to the Railways, to the entire destruction of the Canal system. He, for one, therefore, could not allow this measure to pass without uttering his strong protest against it; and if the hon. Member for Warwick should press his opposition to a division he should certainly give him his support.
  SIR THOMAS CHAMBERS, as one who had put his name on the back of the Bill, desired to make some answer to what had been said by the hon. Member for Warwick. From what the House had just heard from that hon. Gentleman, it might be supposed that the Regent's Canal was about to be absorbed by the Railway, and that, in point of fact, an end was to be put to the Canal. This, however, was not at all the case. The Resolutions of the Joint Committee of Lords and Commons of 1872 pointed to the contingency of powerful Railway Companies absorbing and putting an end to the Canals; but this was not the proposal made by the Bill. The pro-
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  posal was merely that Parliament should give power, by passing the Regent's Canal, City, and Docks Railway Bill, to the incorporation of the Canal with the Railway, for the double purposes of Railway and Canal. Every word that had been uttered by the hon. Member for Warwick as to the disadvantages that would arise if the great system of internal navigation which communicated with the Docks in London and the Grand Junction Canal were put in peril was totally without foundation. The provisions contained in the Bill sought to impose upon the Railway Company the most stringent obligations to maintain the Canal as a navigable waterway—provisions just as stringent as were those requiring them to maintain the proposed Railway as a Railway. By the provisions of the Bill—which the Railway Company would modify in any way that the Committee to whom it might be referred might think fit, in order to meet the objections taken on the part of the Canal system of Great Britain—the Railway Company had an overwhelming interest in maintaining the Canal. It was said by the hon. Member for Warwick, and it was quite true, that this Canal was not a declining property. On the contrary, it was a very valuable property. As much, he believed, as £60,000 a-year was earned by the Canal; and he asked—was it to be supposed that a new Company, constituted for the purpose of taking up this Canal and making a Railway alongside it, would be willing to sacrifice such an enormous income as that? The Railway was to start from Paddington, communicate with the Great Northern and Midland lines, and run down to the Docks—not only to the Limehouse and Victoria Docks, but also to the immense new Docks further down the Thames, known as the Royal Albert Docks—mainly for the purpose of taking up the goods traffic, which now had to be conveyed through the streets of London, and which helped to render the streets almost impassable. He thought there would be a double communication for a certain district; but for three miles of the Canal the Railway would not interfere with it at all, and where it was close to the Canal it was only because there the surplus land might be had at a price that would make the speculation remunerative. Would a Committee

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  sitting upstairs be inadequate for the comprehension of the arguments advanced by the hon. Member for Warwick? Certainly not. All the Canal proprietors, whose locus standi might have been disputed by the promoters of the Bill, were to be admitted, and would have the opportunity of offering their evidence upstairs. Would they, he asked, be unable to impose upon the Railway and Canal Company the necessary obligations to maintain the Canal and prevent its being destroyed? If the arguments that had been used against the Bill had any foundation in fact, they would constitute reasons for its rejection, but they were nothing of the kind; on the contrary, every objection raised by the hon. Member for Warwick was not supported by the facts.
  MR. ROBERTSONrose to support the second reading of the Bill, and he did so on the ground of public policy, the same ground as that which had been alleged by the hon. Member who had moved the rejection of the Bill. He did not think that anyone who was conversant with the terminal accommodation of London and its requirements, and also the terminal accommodation of the vast system of Railways throughout the country, could look at this measure without seeing that it was not a scheme to diminish, but rather to increase public accommodation. It had been stated that the proposed Railway would interfere with the Canal navigation of the country. Having seen the vast number of Petitions presented against the Bill he had, as a mere matter of professional interest, been to the Private Bill Office to examine the details of the scheme, and he was of opinion that it provided amply for the continuation of the navigation afforded by the inland system of waterways. He said this as the result of his own observation. But surely it was, after all, a question of fact, and the question of fact was a matter for inquiry; but if the House accepted the Amendment of the hon. Member for Warwick they would be refusing inquiry. It was a matter of evidence as to whether the Canal traffic was to be interfered with, or as to what amount of additional competition would be afforded to the public by means of the railway. There was a great deal of public traffic that the Canal could not carry. He was connected with a mining property in North
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  Wales, which sent a large quantity of coal to London, and if they were sent by the Great Western Railway to Padding-ton they could then be carried by the proposed line, should it be made, down to the Docks, thus giving the owners of the mine the benefit of the terminal accommodation that would thus be created, and which the Canal did not give. Again, if, as an engineer, he was sending a locomotive for shipment to India, of what use was the Canal to him? None at all; but if there were a Railway added to the Canal, and running alongside it to the Docks, a beneficial competition would be set up with other Railways. Every one who knew what need there was for it would appreciate the advantage of having another Railway running from Paddington into the City—a Railway which, it should be remembered, would present the advantage of being made without any large interference with property in London. He had said he supported this Bill on the ground of public policy; and he would put it to the House—supposing the Canal Company were a large and powerful body, and came to Parliament to ask for additional capital to enable them to make a Railway alongside the banks of the Canal, where then, he asked, would have been the question of public policy that had now been raised, and would they then have heard of the Report of the Joint Committee on Railway and Canal Amalgamation? The House would have made no objection to the Company's request that they should have the power to help themselves by making a Railway. But in the present case they would have two forms of competition on one property. The object was not to destroy the Canal, or to divert traffic from it; but to create two distributing sources of traffic by adding a Railway to the Canal, with the intention that each should be made to do the best it could in furnishing the means for this distribution. For these reasons he begged to support the second reading of the Bill.
  MR. WIGGINsaid, if he thought for one moment that the interests of the public could be endangered by the passage of this Bill, he should have given his cordial support to the Amendment of the hon. Member for Warwick (Mr. A. Peel); but having been engaged in transactions similar to that before the

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  House, he knew that, so far from the interests of the public being injured, they would be very largely benefited if the measure were allowed to pass. He remembered their narrowing the Worcester and Birmingham Canal, which had been already referred to, and the effect of that had been that instead of damaging the navigation, the navigation had been improved. He conceived that the Regent's Canal was made in a similar manner to that of which he had spoken, with shelving sides, so that there was a difficulty in getting close to the towing path; and what was done in the case of the Worcester and Birmingham Canal was to wall up the sides, by which means, while leaving sufficient space for the navigation, enough land was obtained to make a railway by the side of the Canal, a Railway which came into the centre of the town of Birmingham, and brought in goods and merchandize that could not be so conveyed before, thereby proving a decided benefit to the town, while, at the same time, the canal traffic was still kept open between the Trent and the Severn. With regard to the present measure, as there was no intention to close the Regent's Canal, the Railway would be the means of conferring great additional benefit on the inhabitants. There was plenty of spare land alongside the Canal for the purposes of the Railway; and as he held that the proposed line would be very useful instead of detrimental to the public interests, he should give his support to the Motion for the second reading of the Bill.
  MR. TORRENSsaid, he had put an Amendment on the Paper with a view of enlarging the scope and composition of the Committee to which the Bill, if it passed a second reading, would be referred; and he should be glad if the Government could see their way to the adoption of his proposal. Although he could not move his Amendment at the present moment, he would suggest to the right hon. Gentleman the President of the Board of Trade whether it would not meet the exigencies of the case to appoint a Committee composed, as he had indicated in his proposal, of 15 Members, 10 of whom should be nominated by the House and five by the Committee of Selection. He certainly could not think it sufficient to leave to the discretion of an ordinary Committee
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  on a Private Bill the question of compensation for the damage that might be done to hundreds of houses in the Metropolis if this Bill were passed. He also thought that the occupants of these houses, who could not possibly obtain a hearing under the ordinary Rules of the House, ought to be able to go before the Committee.
  MR. CHAMBERLAIN: The question before the House is one of great importance and also of considerable difficulty. This Bill has been under the consideration of the Board of Trade for some time, and I have seen both the promoters of the measure and some of those who are its opponents. I hope my hon. Friend the Member for Warwick (Mr. A. Peel) will rest satisfied with having raised the points he has submitted to the House at this stage, and will not press his Amendment to a division. There is no doubt that the Bill does raise a question of public policy of the highest kind; and the hon. Member for Warwick has stated with accuracy the conclusions that were arrived at by the Joint Committee of the Houses of Lords and Commons in 1872. In my opinion, those conclusions are still in entire accord with the views entertained by the House of Commons and by the commercial class generally, which are to the effect that the amalgamation of Canals with Railway Companies, or the giving to Railway Companies the control over the Canals of this country, ought as far as possible to be discouraged, and, whenever permitted, all necessary precautions should be taken to secure the maintenance of our inland water navigation. I must say that the present case is a strong one, and is in flagrant opposition to the policy so laid down. This is not one of the cases in which Canal navigation has been conducted under great difficulties, and in which, if amalgamation be not permitted, it will probably be impossible for the navigation to be carried on; it is, on the contrary, the case of a really profitable and going undertaking which has been maintained for a long time, and might, apparently, be maintained for any length of time in profitable existence. Under these circumstances, if this were the first time such a Bill had come before the House, I should be inclined to object to it; but I cannot leave out of view the fact that many similar amalgamations have been

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  conisidered by the House, allowed to go before a Select Committee, and then passed into law. The Joint Committee of 1872 contemplated a set of exceptional circumstances—namely, where it is conclusively proved that the Canal in question cannot be amalgamated with any other system of water navigation; and it does not appear to me that the House is in a position to decide without hearing the evidence whether this is one of the cases in which such an amalgamation as suggested by the Joint Committee could or could not be brought about. It is a question of evidence as to what are the facts, which I think ought to be referred to a Select Committee. For my own part, though I do not venture to offer any advice to the House on the matter, I have come to the conclusion that I ought to vote for the second reading of the Bill. With regard to the suggestion of the hon. Member for Finsbury (Mr. Torrens), I think that, considering the importance of the matter, it would be desirable that the Bill should go before a Hybrid Committee; but I regard the number stated in his Amendment as too large, and am of opinion that seven, or at any rate nine, Members would be quite sufficient. If it is the pleasure of the House that the Bill should go to a Committee, it will be the duty of the Board of Trade to make a full and particular Report to that Committee, setting forth the facts which I have already stated, quoting the remarks made by the Joint Committee of the two Houses of Parliament, calling special attention to the particular circumstances of the case, stating what are the exceptional conditions, if any, to justify the proposals of the Bill, and what in their opinion will be necessary in order, if the proposed amalgamation be allowed, to preserve an independent and navigable waterway.
  SIR SYDNEY WATERLOWsaid, that one reason why this Bill should be allowed to pass was this—that in order to develop the trade and commerce of the City, and to secure public improvements, something must be done. People were migrating out of the City year by year, going further and further away, and there was not only the labour and difficulty of bringing them to their work in the morning, not only in tens of thousands, but hundreds of thousands; but there was the further
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  difficulty of taking them back again, and that was constantly and weekly increasing. They all recollected that a sad accident lately occurred near Canon-bury, which was caused by the pressure in trying to bring the people in with sufficient speed by means of trains running behind one another every two minutes. Beyond all doubt that was a dangerous proceeding; but still it was almost necessary. What was proposed by this Bill? The Company proposed to construct 13 miles of Metropolitan Railway, running through the North Eastern suburbs of London, and they would bring the people up to the very edge of the City—namely, to the borders of the Barbican. If any Company bonâ fide proposed to do that work, the House ought not, in the interest of the public, and in the interest of the people who had to go in and out of the City, to stop a Bill by which this could be accomplished, but ought, in the interests of the public necessity, to allow it to have a fair hearing before a Committee upstairs, in order to see whether such a line could be constructed. In some way or other, means must be taken for getting the people into the suburbs. He ventured, therefore, to think that the House should allow the Bill to go through a second reading.
  MR. BRYCEsaid, he did not wish to address the House at any length. He only desired, as a Metropolitan Member, to call attention to one point of considerable importance, which was closely related to that which had been mentioned by the hon. Member who had just spoken (Sir Sydney Waterlow). This Bill proposed to displace a very large part of the population of London, he believed no less than 11,000. He was not certain of the exact figure, but that was the number which had been given to him; and, considering the line that the Railway took, it was not at all improbable. Now, there was a Standing Order which required that every Bill which proposed to take labourers' dwellings should have a clause providing for the accommodation of the same number that would be displaced under the provisions of the Bill. It was important, then, to consider whether the Clause required by that Standing Order was one that was sufficient for the occasion. Now, the clause was

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  Clause 70. It was a clause sufficiently familiar to those who studied Private Bill legislation; but he contended that it was altogether illusory, and that it did not give sufficient protection. It was a clause which the Companies, when formed, were able to wriggle out of and evade, and something more strict and precise was required. He took this opportunity of saying that unless the promoters of the Bill, when they got upstairs, brought up a better clause, and made more adequate provision for the labourings classes, it would be the duty of himself, or some other Metropolitan Member, to move that the Bill be recommitted, for the purpose of introducing a satisfactory clause.
  COLONEL MAKINSsaid, he thought that the hon. Member (Mr. Bryce) had been about to raise another objection to the Bill, as he had on former occasions, on the ground that the line proposed to run through open spaces. The hon. Member had taken Epping Forest and Wimbledon Common in hand, and only that afternoon he had said a good word for the Newcastle Town Moor. But the hon. Member had forgotten Regent's Park. There were people living near Regent's Park, to whom it was quite as necessary to have an open space to go to, as it was to those who lived in the East End of London. He (Colonel Makins) hoped, therefore, that the hon. Member would do something to preserve the quietude of Regent's Park, by the usual provision which he sought for other open spaces—namely, requiring the Railway to be carried through a tunnel. He (Colonel Makins) thought that this proposed Railway was objected to by the poorer portions of the community, who were not able to appear before the Committee.
  MR. BRYCEasked the permission of the House to make one remark in answer to what had fallen from the hon. and gallant Gentleman who had just sat down. He had satisfied himself that in the whole of this Bill there was no such interference with Regent's Park or Victoria Park, or any other open space, as called for the intervention of those who were concerned to preserve commons and open spaces.
  MR. SALTsaid, he had some knowledge of the requirements of the inland navigation of the country, and he believed that the necessities of that kind
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  of business would be sufficiently met if, as proposed by the hon. Member for Finsbury (Mr. Torrens) and the right hon. Gentleman the President of the Board of Trade, this Bill were read a second time and sent to a Hybrid Committee. The great object with regard to the inland navigation of the country was that the communication with London should be maintained absolutely free and unchecked. Therefore, he was in favour of this going to a strong Hybrid Committee, which would take a wider view than an ordinary Select Committee of the matter. If he received such a guarantee, he should not object to the second reading of the Bill.
  MR. ARTHUR PEELsaid, his Amendment had elicited from the right hon. Gentleman the President of the Board of Trade the admission that this was a flagrant violation of the policy of the Committee of 1872. The question he had to ask the House was, whether a division should be taken? He should be inclined himself to accept the offer which had been made to refer the Bill to a Committee of the nature indicated by the right hon. Gentleman; and he (Mr. A. Peel) must rely upon a Report being made by the Board of Trade, which he trusted would point out, in unmistakeable terms, that this was a departure from the avowed policy of Parliament. If the Bill passed, another blow would be dealt at Canal competition. He did not propose to put the House to the trouble of a division.
  MR. O'DONNELL(who was received with cries of "Oh!") said, that he did not come there to speak on behalf of any body of capitalists; but he came there to call attention to the strange fact that, it having been admitted that this Bill was, generally speaking, in flagrant violation of public policy, there was to be no division taken to express the sense of the House upon the question. He confessed that he saw many objections to leaving a question of public policy to the consideration of a jury of experts—for a jury of experts a Committee of the kind proposed undoubtedly was. There were many advantages in having the opinion of experts on various occasions; but he was not in favour of taking the opinion of experts on a question which ought to be one of broad common sense and broad public policy. He was sorry

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  to see that so little attention was apparently given to the very important question raised by the hon. Member for the Tower Hamlets (Mr. Bryce)—namely, the point as to the provision for the housing of the very large number of persons likely to be rendered houseless and homeless by this Bill The Artizans' Dwellings Act had, by the operation of Bills of this kind, been rendered practically, in many cases, a mere dead letter. Railway Bills offering tempting opportunities and promises to the capitalists were, year by year, brought to that House. They met the applause of the capitalist class; tens and scores of thousands of poor people were rendered homeless and. placed in a most disadvantageous position in consequence. As a matter of general policy they had their Irish experience, which showed them that they had allowed the Irish Canals to be sacrificed to Railway enter-prize. He thought that the agricultural constituencies would have just cause to complain if the agricultural Representatives did not make a vigorous protest, expressed in a proper form—namely, by taking a division against the Bill. He objected to this growing tendency to hand matters of public policy over either to private Committees or mongrel Committees. It was not the way to test questions of public policy. Not only theoretically, but practically, one man was quite as good as another in matters of this kind. When they appointed a Committee of experts these experts must be biassed, more or less, in the direction of the enterprize in the prosecution of which they had gained their special experience. It was precisely a class of authorities of that description which at all times had been, with the best of intentions, the most dangerous to the public interests. Capital had too much weight in that House; and he objected just as much to delegate the powers of the House to a jury of capitalists as he would object to delegate the interests of justice to a special jury of lawyers. He was additionally inclined to press the proposal that a jury of experts or a Hybrid Committee should not be employed, in view of the threat impending over the House, that a large portion of the House would be practically deprived of its powers if certain proposals of the Government were carried out, and that a permanent jury of experts should be ap-
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  pointed for dealing with a large class of Public Bills instead of the House of Commons. This was not a Private Bill. It was a Public Bill, which went to the root of public interests of the very gravest importance. The very fact that it had been admitted by the President of the Board of Trade, who had at heart, to such a large extent, the capitalist enterprize in that House—the very fact that the Board of Trade had admitted that the Bill was, in its general character, a flagrant violation of public policy, was quite enough to justify the throwing of it out, for this year at any rate. There had been no sufficient public preliminary discussion; the question had not been before the London public; it had not been before the agricultural constituencies, who were vitally interested in the matter; and there was no sufficient reason why a Bill of this magnitude, involving a fundamental violation of public policy, should be hurried through the House, even on the ipse dixit of the President of the Board of Trade. He had listened with admiration to the speech of the hon. Member who opposed the Bill, and he would not by any means decry the valuable character of that speech; but if the hon. Member who opposed this Bill was aiming at no other object than to get the opinion of highly respectable Members of the House, he could have got that opinion just as well somewhere else, in the Committee Rooms of the House, or in the Library, or in any other room of the House. Here they had been occupied for an hour in getting the opinions of half-a-dozen highly respectable Members of this House, and, after all, there was to be no division. He should oppose the withdrawal of the opposition to the Bill; and, as far as he could do so, he would see that the House should have an opportunity of expressing its opinion upon these questions.
  MR. HICKSsaid, he wished very shortly to draw the attention of hon. Members who represented agricultural constituencies to the remarks which had fallen from the hon. Member below him (Mr. O'Donnell). There had been great complaints, and complaints well founded, of the way in which agricultural produce had been treated by the great Railway Companies. This Canal, with which they were now called upon to deal,

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  was by itself a very short Canal extending over a short distance; but it was the last and most important link of the great Midland waterway of the country. It was the last link of the series of Canals which extended from Hull in the East to Liverpool in the West; and if this Canal was handed over to the Bail-way Companies, and if it was no longer to be useful to the great Canal traffic, it would be not a loss simply of four or five miles of Canal, but it would have the effect of shutting up the whole Canal communication of this country between the Port of London and the Ports of Liverpool and Hull on the East and West. He certainly hoped the House would go to a division.
  Question put.
  The House divided:—Ayes 244; Noes 50: Majority 194.—(Div. List, No. 40.)
  Main Question put, and agreed to.
  Bill read a second time, and committed.

QUESTIONS.

  JUDICATURE ACT—VACATIONS OF THE SUPREME COURT OF JUDICATURE.
  MR. H. H. FOWLERasked Mr. Attorney General, Whether the Statutory Rules which regulate the length of the vacations of the Supreme Court of Judicature are still in force; and, if so, whether the Judges of the Chancery Division have power to extend the vacations beyond the periods prescribed by the rules or to create additional vacations not authorized by the rules; and, whether the Lord Chancellor has jurisdiction to prevent the expense and delay occasioned to the suitors by the closing of the Superior Courts of Justice during the time when by Law they ought to be sitting?
  THE ATTORNEY GENERAL (Sir HENRY JAMES): It is quite correct to say that the Judges have no power to lengthen the statutory vacation, and, therefore, no power to shorten the Sittings; but, at the same time, there is no legal obligation upon them to sit every day during the periods in which the Sittings are held. For many years, both before and since the passing
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  of the Judicature Act, the Judges in Equity have suspended their Sittings for a short time between the beginning of the Hilary and the Easter Sittings. This was in consequence of the great strain upon the Judges of Sitting continuously, and also in consequence of their having to perform various duties in Chambers. I think that if my hon. Friend will inquire he will find that the Judges have done only what is usual, and, I have no doubt, necessary.

  CUSTOMS—THE NEW WAREHOUSING SCHEME.
  MR. CORRYasked the Financial Secretary to the Treasury, Whether Customs clerks transferred to the warehouses under the assimilation scheme will be continued as clerks, and have a separate classification, or if it is intended to amalgamate them with the surveyors, examining officers, and gaugers; and, whether such amalgamation will not grievously injure the promotion and prospects of said surveyors, examining officers, and gaugers?
  LORD FREDERICK CAVENDISH: The transfer to the Outdoor Department of the clerical duties connected with the warehousing of bonded goods will cause a considerable addition to the outdoor establishment. The new situations will be offered to as many of the displaced clerks as are judged eligible for them. They will not be placed upon a separate classification, but will be amalgamated with the existing surveyors, examiners, and gaugers, although some may be employed on clerical duties only. If the whole of the new offices be not thus filled up, members of the outdoor service will be selected to fill the remainder in accordance with the usual rules. It is not expected that the promotion and prospects of the existing outdoor staff will be injured; but every care will be taken to prevent their being so.

  STATE OF IRELAND—ALLEGED CONSPIRACY TO MURDER (MARYBOROUGH).
  MR. ARTHUR O'CONNORasked Mr. Attorney General for Ireland, Whether his attention has been directed to the following statement, which appeared in the "Freeman" newspaper of the 28th ultimo:—

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  "A long special investigation was held in the Courthouse at Maryborough here to-day, before Mr. M. Sheffield Capan, into a charge of alleged conspiracy to shoot Colonel H. D. Carden.… After a full and searching investigation the two farmers accused, Larkin and Williams, were discharged, and Scully, the informer, placed in the dock on a charge of wilful and corrupt perjury. Larkin and Williams were then sworn, and proved that everything that Scully had testified against them was wrong and utterly false, and Head Constable Walsh, of Mount-mellick Station, and Mrs. Margaret Smith, of Acragar, gave further important evidence, quite sufficient to fix the charge of perjury on the informer. The prisoner was then committed to take his trial…. His worship expressed an opinion that the two men, Larkin and Williams, should be indemnified for the expenses they were put to;"
  whether the facts of the case are as therein stated; whether the informer Scully was led by the police to believe that he would receive a pecuniary reward for lodging the information he swore to; and, whether he is prepared to recommend that Mr. Larkin and Mr. Williams be indemnified?
  THE ATTORNEY GENERAL FOR IRELAND (Mr. W. M. JOHNSON): What occurred was this. Scully came to the Constabulary and informed them of an alleged conspiracy to murder; he was not led by the police or anyone else to believe that he would receive any reward; his information was voluntary, and he made a deposition before a magistrate against Larkin and Williams. During the investigation of this charge the Sessional Crown Solicitor (who was conducting the prosecution) considered it proper to make a special Report of the case to me, on which I directed him to withdraw the charge against Larkin and Williams, and prefer a charge of perjury against Scully. This was done, the Sessional Crown Solicitor informing the magistrate in open Court that this course was taken by my direction as Attorney General. Scully was committed for trial, and I have since directed his prosecution at the Assizes. Meantime, I suspend my judgment on Scully's guilt or innocence. I merely have decided that there is a case proper to be submitted to a jury. In answer to the last paragraph of the Question, I can only say that there is no indemnity fund at my disposal; and, therefore, I am not, nor, I believe, is the Chief Secretary, prepared to recommend an indemnity.
  MR. SEXTONwished to know whether this man Scully, before his com-
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  mittal, made any application for a reward in pursuance of the Circular issued by the Executive?
  THE ATTORNEY GENERAL FOR IRELAND (Mr. W. M. JOHNSON)repeated that no application to such an effect had been made to the Constabulary or other authorities.

  ARMY ORGANIZATION—MILITIA OFFICERS (UNIFORMS).
  MR. GRANTHAMasked the Secretary of State for War, Whether he has considered the question of expense to which Militia Artillery Officers will be put by the changing the silver lace at present worn by them to gold lace; and, if so, whether he will allow them such sum as will recoup them for the expense to which they will be put?
  VISCOUNT EMLYNalso asked, Whether the Secretary of State for War will lay on the Table or state to the House the estimated expense to officers of each rank in each branch of the Militia in consequence of the new Regulations as to change of uniform, lace facings, or accoutrements; and, if he will state to the House the reasons for restricting any allowance to certain regiments, and not making a proportionate allowance to all?
  MR. CHILDERS: I believe that I have already, in this and last Session, answered these Questions four or five times; but out of respect for the noble Lord and the hon. and learned Member I will ask the House to allow me to repeat that as the change, which was strongly urged on us by Militia officers, from silver to gold lace need not be carried out until the present uniforms require replacing, I could not with propriety burden the public with any allowances to these officers. Where the change has been compulsory an allowance has been made which I am satisfied is a fair one, and provision for this will appear in due course in the Estimates. There are no Papers which it would be of any practical use to lay on the Table.
  EARL PERCYasked whether the right hon. Gentleman was aware that some colonels of Militia had given orders to their officers to change their uniforms at once?
  MR. CHILDERS: If that is the case it has not been reported to me, and it has been done without authority.

  PROTECTION OF PERSON AND PROPERTY (IRELAND) ACT, 1881—ARRESTS.
  MR. LEAMYasked Mr. Attorney General for Ireland, If he will state to the House the number of arrests which have been made under the Coercion Act of last year, from the beginning of its operation up to the first day of the present month?
  THE ATTORNEY GENERAL FOR IRELAND (Mr. W. M. JOHNSON): Seven hundred and ninety-four persons have been arrested since the passing of the Protection of Person and Property Act up to the end of February, of whom 587 were in custody on the 1st of this month, 15 of them having been re-arrested.

  PROTECTION OF PERSON AND PROPERTY (IRELAND) ACT, 1881—DUNDALK GAOL.
  MR. ARTHUR O'CONNORasked Mr. Attorney General for Ireland, If it is a fact that the portion of Dundalk Gaol in which the suspects are confined consists of a long corridor with cells on each side; whether there is a warder on duty in this corridor from 5.45 p.m. till 8 a.m.; whether a suspect prisoner is prevented from passing from his cell into the adjuncts of the corridor, and is refused even a drink of water between the hours named, though an ample supply of drinking water is within reach of the warder; and, whether such regulations are reasonably necessary for the security of the prisoners?
  THE ATTORNEY GENERAL FOR IRELAND (Mr. W. M. JOHNSON): The description given in the Question of the construction of this portion of Dundalk Prison is correct, and warders are on duty in this corridor the entire day and night. Prisoners detained under the Protection of Person and Property Act are let out of their cells at any time when necessary on their ringing for the warder on duty. They have a sufficient supply of drinking water placed in the cells, and on no occasion has any prisoner been refused a drink of water. These regulations of the prison are reasonably necessary for the security of the prisoners.
  MR. ARTHUR O'CONNORasked whether, if he substantiated his statement, the grievances complained of would be removed?
  THE ATTORNEY GENERAL FOR IRELAND (Mr. W. M. JOHNSON:)If the hon. Member will communicate with the Chief Secretary I am perfectly sure that any regulation which is unnecessarily stringent will be at once relaxed.

  FRIENDLY SOCIETIES ACT, 1875.
  MR. CROPPER (for Mr. ROUNDELL)asked the Financial Secretary to the Treasury, Whether he will be prepared to give a direction for the embodiment in the forthcoming Report of the Registrar of Friendly Societies of information showing which of the Societies in Great Britain and Ireland have or have not made returns of their valuations, under "The Friendly Societies Act, 1875," together with the results of such valuations?
  LORD FREDERICK CAVENDISH: The suggestion of my hon. Friend is a good one. Directions will be given for carrying it out in Part II. of the Report for 1880 so far as relates to Societies, and in that for 1881 so far as relates to branches.

  FRANCE AND ENGLAND—THE TREATY OF FEBRUARY 28—ADVANTAGES TO FRENCH VESSELS.
  MR. GOURLEYasked the Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, If, under the favoured nation clause, French shipowners, in addition to their own Government bounties, will possess trading advantages in the coasting and Colonial trades over Foreign vessels; and, if he can inform the House of what these advantages will consist?
  SIR CHARLES W. DILKE: There has been no change whatever made in this respect by the Treaty of the 28th of February, and the situation remains the same as under the Treaties which have now expired.
  MR. GOURLEYasked what the differences were?
  SIR CHARLES W. DILKEsaid, it would take him half an hour to state what the differences were.

  POST OFFICE—MAIL SERVICE IN THE LEVANT.
  MR. GOURLEYasked the Postmaster General, If the contract for the conveyance of mails between Cyprus and Alexandria has been finally ratified; whether the subsidy is the result of public or

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  private tender; and, if the existing postal charge for letters, &c. exceeds the total expenditure or otherwise?
  MR. FAWCETT, in reply, said, that a new contract for the Cyprus mails had been entered into, but would not be acted upon until it had been approved by Resolution of the House. It was offered to public tender. He was sorry to be obliged to state that the service had been attended by a heavy and serious loss up to the present time.

  POST OFFICE—CONTRACTS FOR CLOTHING (IRELAND).
  MR. W. J. CORBETasked the Postmaster General, Whether his attention has been given to Clause 6 of the "Conditions of Contract" for the clothing of the Irish Postal Service, from which it appears that contractors residing in Ireland are bound to deliver the made-up clothing for inspection and approval at the Royal Army Clothing Depôt, Grosvenor Road, Pimlico, the cloth from which the articles are made having been previously approved at the same place; and, whether it would be deemed sufficient to send samples of the made-up clothing for inspection and approval, the clothing to be strictly according to such samples, and subject to the approval of the authorities at the General Post Office, Dublin?
  MR. FAWCETT: The regulation to which the hon. Member refers applies not only to Irish, but to all contractors in the United Kingdom. After making inquiry, I am glad to be able to state that the suggestion contained in the Question of the hon. Member can be adopted.

  CITY OF LONDON—THE LIVERY COMPANIES AND TECHNICAL EDUCATION.
  MR. B. SAMUELSONasked the honourable Member for Gravesend, If he can state whether the City and Guilds of London Technical Institute, of which he is the treasurer, or the Livery Companies, have made any communications to the Royal Commission on Livery Companies, of which he is a member, showing the extent to which the large funds at the disposal of those Companies are at present and may be hereafter applied to the promotion of technical instruction in London and the provinces; and, whether
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  he is able to state when the Commission is likely to make its report?
  SIR SYDNEY WATERLOW, in reply, said, the Livery Companies had, in the Returns forwarded by them to the Royal Commissioners, clearly set out the amounts which they had already contributed and promised in support of the City and Guilds of London Technical Institute, and of technical education in the Provinces. Remembering that those large grants had been voluntarily contributed, it might, he thought, be assumed that the Livery Companies would not only keep them up, but increase their grants and subscriptions in furtherance of technical education from time to time as they might find increased funds available for the purpose. The Royal Commission would doubtless feel it part of their duty to inquire and report as to the desirability and practicability of strengthening by Parliamentary sanction the existing connection between the Livery Companies of London and the various industries of the country by some scheme for developing a system of technical education, such as the Companies had themselves initiated and brought into partial operation. The Commissioners were continuing their inquiries, and it was impossible to say when their Report would be ready.

  PARLIAMENT—PUBLIC BUSINESS.
  SIR JOHN HAYasked the Prime Minister when the Supplementary Navy Estimates would be taken?
  MR. GLADSTONEsaid, he hoped to be able to state that on Friday.
  MR. GORSTasked if the right hon. Gentleman could tell the House on Friday whether he could make the annual Financial Statement before Easter; and, if so, on what day?
  MR. GLADSTONE: No, Sir; I am not at all sure that I should be able to state that on Friday. At the same time, my present impression is, that, viewing the fact that Easter comes upon the 9th of April, I am extremely doubtful whether I will be able to make the Financial Statement before then.
  SIR R. ASSHETON CROSSasked after what hour that evening the debate on the "House of Lords and the Land Act" would not be resumed?
  MR. GLADSTONE: It is most important for Public Business that the

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  Irish debate should be brought to a close. Her Majesty's Government have not contributed, I hope, unreasonably in their own persons to its prolongation, and we are still inclined to act upon the principle of sparing the infliction of our own orations upon the House as far as we possibly can. We had hoped to save a fraction of time to-night for the purpose of that debate; but, in view of the fact that important questions have arisen, which have delayed till 8 o'clock the commencement of Public Business, and though, on the whole, most anxious to get forward with that debate, which I earnestly hope will close on Thursday night, I do not think it would be fair to hon. Gentlemen to keep them to-night upon so slender an expectation of getting time as we now entertain. Consequently, I would propose that the debate should not come on tonight.

  IRISH LAND ACT—OPERATION OF THE ACT—PERSONAL EXPLANATION.
  LORD CLAUD HAMILTON: Mr. Speaker, with your permission and that of the House, I should like to make an explanation with regard to what occurred last night between the right hon. Gentleman at the head of the Government and myself during the debate on the Irish Question. I stated that the right hon. Gentleman had, during his tour in Mid Lothian characterized a statement in a letter addressed by Lord Grey to The Times as the "apprehensions of an old woman." The right hon. Gentleman denied the accuracy of my statement, and so I said I should feel bound to substantiate it. I have gone through the revised and published speeches of the right hon. Gentleman delivered in Mid Lothian, and I am bound to say I cannot find in them any trace of the statement in question. Fortunately, however, there are other sources of information open to me, and I find on referring to The Times newspaper a speech which has been carefully eliminated from the published speeches of the right hon. Gentleman, and I will, with your permission, in my own justification, read an extract from it to the House. The meeting was held at the Liberal Club in Edinburgh on the 31st of March, 1880, and was reported in The Times of the 1st of April of that year. In that
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  speech the right hon. Gentleman dwelt entirely and solely on that letter of Lord Grey, and he is reported to have spoken thus—
  "He did not agree with Earl Grey as to the enormity of this danger. There was a great deal of difficulty still to contend with in the state of Ireland; but as to the apprehension that the people of Ireland wanted to tear Ireland away from its connection with this country, he told them frankly that he did not share it. He put it away as an old woman's apprehension. Not that he wanted to apply the term 'old woman' to any person! He employed it strictly to qualify the character of the apprehension."
  MR. GLADSTONE: Mr. Speaker, I am not able to admit either the courtesy of the noble Lord's proceeding, or the correctness of his assertion that he was about to substantiate his allegation; and I am obliged to him, in particular, for his statement that I had taken pains literally to eliminate from a set of speeches this particular speech which the noble Lord thinks he has discovered. Sir, I took no such pains. I did not make the collection of speeches, and I did not eliminate any speech from them, or introduce any speech into them. Sir, the noble Lord stated last night that I had described the warnings of Lord Grey, in his letter to The Times, as the utterances of an old woman. I stated that I had not done anything of the kind.
  LORD CLAUD HAMILTON: "Apprehensions," not "utterances."
  MR. GLADSTONE: The noble Lord is reported to have said "utterances;" but that does not signify in the slightest degree. He quotes the reports to the letter against me; but he does not seem to like them as against himself. I said that I had stated nothing of the kind. When such a denial is given by a Member the usual course is for the hon. Member who has made the statement to express regret for having fallen into an error. Instead of that, the noble Lord, entirely rejecting my disclaimer, said he should proceed to substantiate his allegation. [Mr. BIGGAR: Hear, hear!] He has not substantiated his allegation. He has omitted from the report in The Times a passage which would show that he had not substantiated it. In the first place, Sir, as regards this meeting. It was not a public meeting at all. It was not a meeting of the Liberal Club. It was a meeting of my committee in a

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  private room, and I greatly doubt whether a reporter was present. My reason for that doubt is that I do not remember being cognizant of, or observing any such thing; and that the report, differing in this from, I think, every other report of a speech which I made in Mid Lothian—where, I must say, the reporting was most admirable—is a report in the third person. Well, Sir, what happened was this. I referred to Lord Grey's letter, and I ascribed to Lord Grey two allegations. I said—
  "Lord Grey added, in relation to the past Government, that two glaring instances showed what a dangerous man Mr. Gladstone would be."
  They were these—the abolition of the Irish Church and the reform of the Irish Land Laws. These, he said—
  "Were carried by the Government of which he (Mr. Gladstone) had the honour of being a Member; and they had been the cause of the present great danger which the country had to undergo, which he found in the state of Ireland. He did not agree with Lord Grey about the enormity of this danger."
  That was the mode in which I treated the allegation of Lord Grey. I then went on to deal with the apprehension, which I did not say Lord Grey had expressed, and I am not at all aware that he did express it. I hardly believe he did. That apprehension I described as "a most irrational apprehension," and as "an old woman's apprehension"—namely, the apprehension that the people of Ireland wanted to tear Ireland away from its connection with this country. That was the apprehension, Sir, to which I applied that expression, and I did not apply it to any statements that, as far as I know, were made by Lord Grey. And not only so; but when I had done this, fearful that there might appear to be a connection established between my use of that phrase and the name of Lord Grey—which is a name I hold in honour, and have always held in honour—I went on to say, or, at all events, am reported to have said—
  "Not that he meant to apply the phrase 'old woman' to any person, but to use it strictly as qualifying the character of the apprehensions."
  Then again—
  "He had now done with Lord Grey, and he wished not to be tempted to say a word derogatory in any degree"—that was after an
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  interval—"to a politician who was a most able man—a man of great talents and undoubted honesty."
  Then I go on further—
  "He was so anxious about his personal respect for Lord Grey, that if he had said anything that would hurt or wound him in any degree he would wish it retracted."
  It is in these circumstances that the noble Lord, overlooking the fact that I was speaking of a different allegation from any made by Lord Grey, charges me with having described the utterances of Lord Grey as the "apprehensions of an old woman."

  PARLIAMENT—THE HOUSE OF LORDS.
  MR. SCHREIBER: I rise, Mr. Speaker to a point of Order, and to invite your ruling upon the terms of a Notice of Motion, which appears to-day for the first time upon the Paper, and which I will now read to the House—
  "Mr. Labouchere—House of Lords: That the House of Lords is useless, dangerous, and ought to be abolished."
  The questions I wish to submit to you, Sir, with all respect, are these—Is it competent for one Branch of the Legislature to discuss the abolition of the other? Is the Motion one which you, Sir, ought to be asked to put from that Chair; and is the Notice one which ought to be permitted to remain one day longer on the Paper? With respect to the good taste and propriety which dictated it—["Oh, oh!" and "Order!"]
  MR. LABOUCHERE: Perhaps, Sir, I may be permitted to explain. The words are words which have already—["Order!"]
  EARL PERCY: I rise to Order. The Chair has been appealed to on the point of Order. I do not apprehend that the hon. Member has any right to explain.
  MR. LABOUCHERE: I may be permitted to explain that the words of the Motion are precisely those which were submitted to a Parliament in England—the Long Parliament—and that they were passed by that Assembly. As, however, it has been pointed out to me by some hon. Friends of mine that the word "useless" may imply some sort of reflection upon the Members of the House of Lords, I have modified that word, and have put instead, "unnecessary, obstructive, and dangerous."
  MR. SPEAKER: In answer to the questions of the hon. Member, I may say

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  my attention was drawn to the terms of this Notice of Motion; and I was informed that the precedent of the words had come from the days of the Long Parliament. I am bound to say that I considered that certainly one expression in that Notice was inadmissable. The hon. Member for Northampton spoke of the House of Lords as "useless." Now, had any hon. Member spoken of the other House of Parliament in terms of that character, I should have felt it my duty to call him to Order; and I am glad to find that the hon. Member for Northampton, as I understand him, has withdrawn from his Notice of Motion that particular expression. The hon. Member also asks me whether it is competent for this House to raise the question of the abolition of the House of Lords? The hon. Member must be aware that that proposition has frequently been before the House.
  MR. NEWDEGATEremarked, that, according to his memory, the decisions of the Long Parliament had not been regarded as binding by the Predecessors of the right hon. Gentleman in the Chair.

  PARLIAMENTARY OATH—MR. BRADLAUGH.
  MR. LABOUCHERE: With your permission, Sir, I wish to put a question which I have already submitted to you. Referring to the fact that Mr. Bradlaugh is ready, in compliance with No. 26 of the Rules and Orders of this House, to produce to the Clerk of this House the certificate of his return as the new Member for the borough of Northampton, and to the fact that the return has been certified by the Clerk of the Crown; and also referring to the fact that two Members—the Member for Morpeth (Mr. Burt) and the senior Member for Northampton—are ready to introduce Mr. Bradlaugh to the Table, in accordance with the Resolution of the 23rd of February, 1688–1 wish to ask you, Sir, whether the Resolution of the 6th of March forbids Mr. Bradlaugh and his introducers from coming to the Table for the purpose of claiming his seat for Northampton according to law; and to ask whether, as Mr. Bradlaugh is forbidden to take the Oath of Allegiance, you will inform me how he is to proceed to perform his duty to his and my constituents, by sitting and voting in this House?
  MR. SPEAKER: In reply to the first question of the hon. Member, I have to state that I have no hesitation in saying that, in my judgment, in view of the Resolution agreed to by the House yesterday, that Mr. Bradlaugh be not permitted to go through the form of taking the Oath of Allegiance prescribed by law, it would be irregular and disorderly for the two hon. Members referred to to introduce him to the House and conduct him to the Table for the purpose of his taking the Oath. I may add that it is a well-known Rule of this House that no hon. Member is to come to the Table to be sworn until he has been called upon to do so by the Speaker; and, having regard to the Resolution of yesterday, I consider myself bound not to call upon the hon. Member for Northampton to come to the Table to be sworn. As regards the second question put to me by the hon. Member, I have only to point out that it forms no part of my duty to advise hon. Members as to the course which they should pursue in asserting their title to take their seats.

MOTION.

  TRADE AND COMMERCE—FREE IMPORTS.—RESOLUTION.
  MR. STORER, in rising to move the following Resolution:—
  "That, owing to the heavy duties imposed upon our manufactures by so many Foreign nations, whilst all Foreign manufactures are admitted into this Country duty-free, and to the depression of the rural Home trade caused by the free import of Foreign agricultural produce at prices with which our own farmers are unable to compete, the interests of all classes of producers in this Country are vitally assailed; and that the time has arrived when it is necessary to reconsider the policy of free imports, with a view to the relief of our Home industries, and the more equal distribution of the heavy burden of taxation now pressing upon them,"
  said, that this question, though a very important one, had not yet risen to the dignity of a Party one; and, therefore, he trusted that it would be discussed in a calm and temperate manner, and not treated with invective or as a foregone conclusion. He would remind the House that the question of import duties stood in a very different position now from what it did in 1846. At that time there was a probability of famine among the

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  greater part of the community, and manufactures were in a very depressed state; and a certain class of politicians seized upon the opportunity of persuading the working classes that the question of Free Trade was one between themselves and the landlords. He admitted that the theory of Free Trade was perfect; but it pre-supposed two things—first, that everybody agreed to it and adopted it; and, second, that all parties were in an equal or similar condition. These two conditions, however, did not exist. It had been supposed by those who introduced the system that the example of England would speedily be followed by the whole world; but that anticipation had not been realized, and other countries, instead of following our example, had gone in a diametrically opposite direction. The originators of the system had believed that cheap corn meant cheap labour, a consequent extension of the manufacturing interest, and, above all, cheap size for their calicoes. There might be some reason for the latter belief, as the manufacturers were accused of using 30 per cent of size. They, however, had soon discovered their mistake. Instead of getting cheap labour, they had had to deal with trade unions. The prosperity of the country was due, not to Free Trade, but to discoveries of gold and the introduction of railways and telegraphs. The proof of the truth of this assertion was found in the fact that other countries which adhered to protective duties had prospered even more than we had. He declined to argue this question as a matter of exports and imports. But he gathered from the Board of Trade Returns that our imports, which in 1866 were £295,000,000, were in 1880, £411,000,000; and the exports, which in 1866 were £188,000,000, in 1872, £236,000,000, were in 1880 only £223,000,000. Ever since 1873 there had been a gradual but certain declension in the value of our exports, and a corresponding increase in the value of the imports. He would ask the attention of hon. Members to a letter which had appeared in The Morning Post, signed "One of a City Firm," in favour of Fair Trade, and to a further letter respecting the advantages American iron manufacturers had derived from Protection. Men of all classes with whom he had come in contact had agreed that trade
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  had never been so stagnant, particularly in those towns which depended on agricultural custom. As an illustration of this, he would mention the fact that a large shopkeeper in a town of this kind had informed him that for several years past he had been in the habit of taking £150 over the counter on market days, but that now he could only take £50. The effect of American competition was, and must always be, to decrease prices obtained by the farmer for his produce. He would then refer to the question of agricultural depression. Even those who were in favour of Free Trade would admit that bad harvests were not the only cause, though doubtless one of the causes, that led to that depression. Mr. Farrar said in his book, which had been issued with the sanction of the Board of Trade, that the present condition of things could not compare with that of 10 years ago, and that the farmers were worse off by a sum approaching £200,000,000 or £300,000,000. He went on to say—
  "Bad harvests are only one of the causes. The rise in rents, the increase in the cost of labour, and the heavy fall in the price of agricultural produce, owing to foreign competition, are also causes which have led to that result."
  With regard to foreign competition, the following facts were worthy of observation:—From 1862 to 1877, corn was at 54 s. a quarter, while in the three years, 1878–80, it averaged only 44 s. per quarter. At the same time the imports were, from 1862 to 1877, 42,000,000 cwt., and from 1878 to 1880, 67,000,000 cwt. Those figures showed that the effect of foreign competition on the English producer was not only to increase immensely the importations, but to diminish the price in the home market. Another fact worthy of notice was that the cultivated area of corn had greatly declined during the last few years. With regard to the remedies for this state of things, he should himself be inclined to propose a small duty on foreign corn; but he supposed that if he did so he should be shouted down, though he was not by any means sure that that was not the direction in which they must seek relief. If a better way were put forward, he should be satisfied to adopt it; but he thought the position of the case required some remedy to be applied, and that speedily.
  Notice taken, that 40 Members were not present; House counted, and 40 Members not being present,
  House adjourned at half after Eight o'clock.

MINUTES.
PUBLIC BILLS—First Reading—Consolidated Fund (No. 1) *; Parliamentary Declaration (32).
Second Reading—Settled Land* (19); Conveyancing * (20); Married Women's Property (13).
Committee—Report—Post Cards (Reply) * (23).

THAMES AND SEVERN CANAL (RAILWAYS) BILL.

  SECOND READING.
  Order of the Day for the Second Heading read.
  Moved, "That the Bill be now read 2a."—(The Earl of Redesdale.)
  THE EARL OF DALHOUSIEsaid, the Government did not oppose the second reading. On the reference of the Bill to a Select Committee, the Board of Trade would make a Report to the Select Committee.
  Motion agreed to; Bill read 2a accordingly.

MARRIED WOMEN'S PROPERTY BILL.
(The Lord Chancellor.)
(NO. 13.) SECOND READING.
Order of the Day for the Second Reading read.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR, in moving that the Bill be now read a second time, said, it was the result, with merely trifling alterations, of the deliberations of a Select Committee of the House of Commons, which sat last Session, when the Bill was referred to that Committee. It would consolidate two Acts passed in the years 1870 and 1874, and introduce some innovations and new provisions into the law. The principal new provisions were these:—The 1st clause proposed that without the intervention of any trustee a married woman should be capable of acquiring, holding, and disposing of any real or personal property as her separate property, and that she should, in respect of her separate property, be capable of entering into and rendering herself liable on any contract, and of suing and being sued, either in contract or in tort, or otherwise, in all respects as if she were a feme sole, without her husband being joined with her as plaintiff or defendant, or being made a party to any action or other legal proceeding. If a married woman carried on a separate trade, she would be subject to the Bankruptcy Laws as if she were a feme sole. The next material provision was the 2nd clause, which enlarged the provisions of the Act of 1870, but applied only to women married after the commencement of the Act, By the Act of 1870, it was provided that a woman married after that Act should be entitled for her separate use to personal property without any limitation of the amount to which she might succeed in ease of intestacy, but with a somewhat arbitrary limitation to £200 in the case of succession to personalty under a will; but by the present Bill she would be entitled to hold as her separate property all real and personal property which belonged to her at the time of marriage, or should be acquired by or devolve on her after marriage. The 3rd clause of the Bill was similar in principle—though more absolute and unconditional—to the provision of the Scotch Act, which passed last year—namely, that property ac-

317
quired after the Act by a woman married before the Act should be held by her as a feme sole. The clauses which followed related to investments in stocks and shares, and were similar to, but abridgments of, the provisions of the existing law. There were in the existing law some qualifications of these provisions which the present Bill did not repeat, but as to which he would undertake carefully to consider before the Bill went into Committee whether they ought not to be retained. The remaining clauses were, in substance, consolidation clauses and a repetition of the existing law, with this difference—that in any question between husband and wife, civil or criminal, either he or she might be a witness; but no criminal proceeding could be taken by a wife against her husband under this Bill in respect to property claimed by her while they were living together. When they got into Committee he would be glad to explain the clauses more fully, and to receive suggestions for the amendment of any of them.
Moved, "That the Bill be now read 2a. "—(The Lord Chancellor.)
EARL CAIRNSsaid, he thought that the Bill was a most useful consolidation of the present law; but he pointed out that the Bill repealed the existing Statute, under which a woman was entitled to certain rights with regard to property acquired by her, whereby questions might be raised hereafter. The 3rd clause was open to considerable objection.
LORD STANLEY OF ALDERLEYsaid, that this Bill went beyond the Act of 1870, in encouraging criminal proceedings between husbands and wives, and that, in order to complete Clause 11, it should provide that a conviction under it should be taken by the Divorce Court as evidence of cruelty and desertion, without that Court having to go into the whole matter again.
Motion agreed to; Bill read 2a accordingly, and committed to a Committee of the Whole House on Tuesday the 21 st instant.

PARLIAMENTARY DECLARATION BILL.

  BILL PRESENTED. FIRST READING.
  THE EARL OF REDESDALE (CHAIRMAN of COMMITTEES): I propose to intro-
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  duce into your Lordships' House a Bill which, I think, is one of very great importance. The question has been discussed in the other House. It is that of the admission of Atheists into Parliament. Now, I hold, and most distinctly hold, that it would not be expedient in this country to sanction the admission of Atheists into Parliament for the purpose of legislating for the people of this country; and the alteration I propose to make is for the purpose of getting rid of the difficulty which has arisen in regard to this matter; for I maintain that it is no part of the duty of Parliament to sanction the admission of Atheists for legislation or any other purpose. The Bill I propose is a very short one, and its purport is in the Preamble. The Preamble says—
  "Whereas it is expedient that provision should he made against Atheists taking part in legislation for this country: Be it enacted as follows:—That, from and after the passing of this Act, every Peer and every Member of the House of Commons on taking his seat in Parliament shall, before making the oath of allegiance or affirming the same in accordance with the provisions of the Parliamentary Oaths Act, 1866, make and subscribe the following declaration: 'I, A. B., do solemnly, sincerely, and truly declare and affirm that I believe in an Almighty God.'"
  I do not believe that there is anyone in this House who objects to making any such declaration; and I believe it is very necessary that such a declaration should be made. We all know—we know it from Scripture—that, as time goes on, in all probability infidelity to a large extent will prevail, and we ought, therefore, to be very careful that nothing shall be done in this country in any manner tending to do away with the religious feelings and character of the Parliament of this country. The declaration in the existing Parliamentary Oath is for the purpose of sustaining allegiance to the Queen, as Sovereign of this country, and it has been thought necessary that every Member should take such an Oath. What I propose is, that we should make some allegiance with regard to our reverence to our God, and that no person should be admitted to take part in the legislation of this country who does not believe and accept the doctrine of an Almighty God. The proposal I now make would relieve Parliament from the whole of the present difficulty, and not offend any man. In conclusion, I wish to say that I desire

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  that the question should be approached in no Party spirit, and that I have brought the Bill in from a deep sense of what is due to Almighty God.
  Bill to make provision to exclude Atheists from taking part in legislation for this country—Presented (The Earl of REDESDALE).
  EARL GRANVILLEasked the noble Earl whether he proposed to fix a day for the second reading of the Bill?
  THE EARL OF REDESDALE (CHAIRMAN of COMMITTEES)replied, that he would not at present fix a day for the next stage, though he should like the Bill to pass through Parliament as speedily as possible. He would not name a day now, as he might have to make a postponement; but when he did fix a day, he should like to proceed with the measure without delay.
  Bill read 1a; and to be printed. (No. 32.)
  THE EARL OF REDESDALE (CHAIRMAN of COMMITTEES)said, he desired to add one word, and it was that he had not consulted any noble Lord on the one side of the House or on the other in regard to the introduction of the Bill, as he wished to keep the matter entirely free from anything of a Party character; and he believed that, on a question of this kind, every Member of their Lordships' House would take that course which he thought expedient, independently of any Party considerations. He had brought in the Bill from a deep sense of what he believed to be due to Almighty God, and he trusted it would be discussed and adopted by Parliament in the same spirit.
  House adjourned at a quarter before Six o'clock, to Thursday next, half past Ten o'clock.