rose, at the desire of his right hon. friend, Mr. Tierney, to state on his behalf, that on account of ill health, he was prevented from being able to continue to attend the sittings of the Finance Committee. He was also desired to assure the House, that it was only on account of ill health, and by the advice of his physician, that his right hon. friend was prevented from attending.

having expressed his regret at the cause of the absence of the right hon. gentleman from the committee, proposed that in his place the name of the hon. gentleman (Mr. Calcraft) should be added to the finance committee. The proposition being agreed to,

said, he would give his attendance on the committee, since it had pleased the House to nominate him in the room of his right hon. friend, and would do his best to promote its objects.

said, he held in his hands two petitions on the subject of the Poor Laws, and he wished to call the attention of the noble lord opposite to these petitions. He could assure the House from his own knowledge, that the statements in them were in no wise exaggerated. They were from two parishes in Dorsetshire: one of them was from the parish of Langton Matravers, consisting of 575 inhabitants, and 419 of these inhabitants were at present receiving parochial relief. The rate amounted at least to 18s. or 19s. in the pound. The other was from Swanage, where the population was larger, about 1,500, and the number of inhabited houses about 300. Of this population there was not one in seven able to support themselves. In this parish, the rate amounted to a guinea in the pound, and every occupier of land but one had given notice to abandon. Four or five in the other had also given such notice; and the land in a short time would thus all be thrown on the hands of the owners. If it had not been for the persons who had come forward and subscribed largely towards the relief of the poor, at the head of whom was lord Eldon, it would have been impossible to go on; but he was sorry to say, that the whole of the funds subscribed would be exhausted by the 22d of the present month. These parishes would have applied for a rate in aid, which the magistrates, if they thought proper, could allow them from the rest of the hundred; but of the five other parishes in the hundred, there was not one which paid less than 7s. in the pound on the rack rent. The other mode which the statute of Elizabeth left open to them, of applying to the magistrates at the sessions who might rate in aid such other parishes in the county as they thought fit to fix on, was a course attended with almost insuperable difficulties. He should move that the petitions be first read, and then referred to the committee on the poor laws. He hoped that committee would not separate, without settling the mode in which rates in aid could be efficaciously obtained. Persons of the largest funded property were at present, contrary to the intent of the statute of Elizabeth, enabled to escape entirely from the poor laws. If the names of the stockholders were published, there could be little difficulty in making them contribute equally with others; and he did not see why the names of the public creditors, and the amount of stock held by them, should remain a secret any more than the amount of the debt.

said, that the House and the country ought always to keep in view, that a great proportion of the wages of labour of the country were paid out of the poor rates. The farmers, from a system, the bad effects of which had been already too much felt, had been long in the habit, in many parts of the country, of paying a great proportion of the wages of farming labour in the shape of poor rates. This accounted in a great measure for the rapid rise in the amount of those rates from one and a half to upwards of 7 millions. He was convinced, that in cases where 19s or 20s in the pound were paid for poor rates, 15s. of that would be found to be wages paid in the shape of poor rates. A system like this ought to be discouraged as much as possible.

was glad that the noble lord had made the observation, as it gave him an opportunity of stating, that though it might apply to parishes purely agricultural, it could not apply to the parishes in question. The persons obtaining relief from them were nearly all engaged in the stone trade. He did admit that a great part of the wages of labour in many parts of the country were paid out of the poor rates. He was decidedly of opinion that the political state of the country had, in a great measure, increased the poor rates to what they at present were, and not the idleness of the people.

agreed with the noble lord in reprobating the pernicious practice which existed in many counties of mixing the wages of labour with the poor rates; but there were many parts of the country where the increase of the poor rates was not to be accounted for in this way. With respect to the fundholders, it was indeed true that a great part of the property of the country, for want of means of coming at it, had hitherto escaped from bearing its share. The more he considered the subject, the more he was convinced that the House ought, before they separated, to take some measures for subjecting the fundholders to their fair share of the burthens of the poor rates, without which it would be found impossible to continue to relieve the distresses of the country. From every thing he had seen of the noble lord in the committee, he was convinced that he would heartily concur with them in recommending such measures as, after a minute investigation, should appear best calculated to lighten the pressure of this evil.

said, that he could not suffer the petitions to be laid on the table without stating a circumstance of a most interesting nature, and which, in some degree, had induced him to give the notice which he had done that night, relative to the equalization of the interest paid by the public, for the loan of depreciated paper, to the diminution which had taken place by the operation of that paper on all landed property and stock in trade. He would give it as his decided opinion, founded on all that he had read and heard on the subject of the poor laws, that legislative enactments, confined to their operations alone, would prove wholly unavailing. The House must look deeper for the cause of the evil. The circumstances to which he particularly alluded was, the state of the Manchester manufacturers of goods for foreign markets, all of which goods he could prove were paid for, not by the consumer abroad, but by the landed interest here, in the shape of poor rates. He had only to mention in proof of this, that a piece of cotton stuff, for which the weaver was formerly paid 29s. by the master manufacturer, now cost that manufacturer only 7s. a sum scarcely sufficient to indemnify this weaver for the expense of his loom, paste, candles, and rent; the remainder being paid out of the pockets of the land owners in the form of poor rates. Was this a system that could last? No. It was a transfer of the produce of our land to America in the shape of merchandize—of the original cost of manufacturing which the consumer paid no part. The accounts of exports delivered to the House were the means of delusion. Under such circumstances it would be better to cease manufacturing, and even to burn the useless vessels employed in so ruinous a trade—a trade only beneficial to our rival, and upon which that rival levied a heavy duty, derived also from the pockets of the landholders of England. An end must be put to evils of such enormous magnitude, and this could only be effected by a reduction of the interest of the debt. No man could say that the poor laws occasioned the increase of misery, and that they had produced the state of wretchedness which called for the assistance of those who still possessed property. It was the taxes which reduced the people to want. It was the taxes which deprived the manufacturer of a foreign market, by enhancing the value of his goods, and enabling foreign countries to rival and undersell him in every market. He repeated, that an end must be put to this state of things by a fair and equitable reduction of the interest of the funded debt, and he hoped for the concurrence of every honourable man in that House to the attainment of that object. It had been contended by various members that the able bodied part of the lower classes were not entitled to relief; he (lord C.) thought otherwise; he felt that those capable of working, but destitute of employment, were even more deserving of pity and assistance than the aged and infirm, inasmuch as their feelings, under such circumstances, with a starving family around them, must be more acute. It was in vain to imagine that they would quietly lie down and die in a ditch. He expressed an anxious hope that the House would dispassionately weigh and consider the perilous circumstances in which the country was placed. The present system mutt soon cease; and if his majesty's ministers continued to oppose every change, it would come at last in that dreadful form which would not only sweep away the landed property, but involve the whole kingdom in confusion and utter ruin.

said, he felt it his duty to protest against the doctrine held out by the noble lord. He was convinced, that when the fundholder was trenched upon, and through him honour and public faith were violated, the present distress would be increased ten-fold. He augured much from the present state of the funds, which held out a reasonable expectation that the monied interest would assist the landholders by way of mortgage, which could not be hoped for when the funds afforded 5 per cent, on money invested. He was convinced that any interference with the fundholder would therefore be an injury to the landholder also. He was surprised that the member for Carlisle, who was re- markable for sound sense, should have joined in so wild a theory as the proposal for breaking faith with the creditor. Great exertions had been made in the district he was connected with, to employ the poor, even those scarcely able to work, for the purpose of avoiding idleness and the appearance of pauperism. He thought it would be most desirable to increase the circulating medium, which would give a facility to the employment of the labouring classes throughout the kingdom, and would do more to restore prosperity than any remedies which had been proposed.

said, he was anxious to correct an erroneous idea which the noble lord (Cochrane) had either expressed or implied, namely, that it was in contemplation by way of reform in the poor laws, to propose to refuse relief to able bodied men, who were without employment. No such idea was entertained, he believed, by any member of the House, and certainly not by any member of the committee on the poor laws; the idea entertained by the committee, was to encourage industry, but by no means to refuse relief when industry was found unavailing. He agreed in what had been said by the noble lord (Castlereagh) as to the bad effects of mixing up poor rates with the wages of labour, but he denied that this system had been voluntary on the part of the landlords. When the population increased, and so many poor applied for parish relief, it was found impossible to give the same sum to the single and married men. If the unmarried men received as much as would support a; family, they would have spent more than they had any need for; but as it was impossible to make any distinction between single and married men, in the actual rate of wages, the price of labour was fixed at a low rate, and an additional sum was given to those who had families out of the parish rates. It was not often he agreed with the noble lord (Cochrane), but he must say, he concurred with him in thinking, that if that system was not put an end to, by which one species of property was exempted from all rates and taxes to which others were subject, and that too to an amount equal to all the rents of the kingdom, it must render all trade and industry wholly unproductive, and thus cut up the roots on which it depended. He did not wish to see any compulsory measure adopted, but he looked to the good sense of persons holding all species of property, and trusted to their conviction of the expediency of making some sacrifices for the security of their property and every other.

said, be allowed that in many instances in Manchester the weavers got no more than 7s. for a peice of cloth, for which they formerly got 29s. and that the rest of what was necessary for their subsistence, was made up from the poor rates. The average rate of wages was, he thought, so low as 7s. 6d. a week. But the poor rates, from which their subsistence, was supplied, could not, in that instance, be considered as a tax on the land-holders; the merchants had warehouses, and rateable property in the town and its neighbourhood. He was himself a proprietor of land in that town, and he by no means considered those rates as pressing unfairly upon him.

said, he agreed with his hon. friend who had last spoken as to the manner in which the poor rates operated, lie could not let this opportunity pass without protesting as well against the proposal of the noble lord (Cochrane), as that of the hon. baronet (sir C. Burrell), who had professed so much abhorrence of the noble lord's proposition. The difference between the noble lord's project for reducing the interest of the debt, and the hon. baronet's proposal for increasing the quantity of the circulating medium, was only the difference between two modes of bankruptcy, or as had been well expressed by a celebrated writer on these subjects, the difference between secret fraud and open violence. For what distinction could there really be, between taking boldly a certain proportion of his annuity from the creditor, and making that annuity worth so much the less, by an increase of the paper circulation? He, for his own part, did not see more good faith or justice in one proposition than in the other. Though it was with hesitation that he differed from so respectable an authority as that of his hon. friend (sir O. Moseley), he was afraid that he had under-rated the distresses in the manufacturing districts; for, from the inquiries which he (Mr. B.) had felt it his painful duty to make on this subject, he was persuaded that the average rate of wages was not more than 3s. or 4s. a week. This subject was a most interesting one, and the more it was inquired into, the more it would be found that distress existed, to a degree to which the House had scarcely a conception.

said, he had a petition to present on this subject from Horsham, in Sussex. He was not acquainted with that borough, but he understood that it had been adopted at a most orderly meeting, which had been assembled by individuals, in consequence of the bailiff refusing to call a meeting. The Petition was brought up and read. It complained of sinecures and unmerited pensions, of the evils arising from a fictitious paper currency, of the immense standing army in time of peace, and of the state of the representation; and prayed the House not to pass new acts, infringing the liberties of the subject, as the existing laws were, in their opinion, sufficient to preserve the peace.

bore testimony to the orderly character of the meeting, but he was authorized to say that the bailiff had not refused the use of the town hall on the occasion.

said, it was true, that the persons who convened the meeting had applied for the town hall. The bailiff then requested that the requisition should be shown him in writing, and a requisition was accordingly shown him couched in general terms, whereupon he consented to grant the use of the hall. This having been done, the framers of the requisition published it with an addition to this effect —"We invite all labourers, mechanics, and apprentices to attend the meeting, as they are equally interested in its objects while they pay taxes on coals, candles, &c." On looking at the petition he found that there were from ten to twenty signatures in the same hand-writing. Whether that was an objection to receiving the petition he should not pretend to decide. As to the good order of the meeting, which had been praised, it was not very remarkable. A blue flag had been brought out of a public house; and when a gentleman present attempted to address the meeting, his voice was drowned in the clamour which often prevailed at such meetings. He was authorized by the magistrates, clergy, and the most respectable inhabitants of Horsham, to disavow their connexion with the petition, or the sentiments it contained.

said, that as to the point of order on which he was appealed to, all petitions presented to the House must be signed by the hands or marks of the petitioners themselves; and if they were not, it was contrary to the rules of the House to receive them.

said, the fancy of any hon. member as to the hand writing of signatures, could not, he conceived, be a sufficient ground for the rejection of a petition. As to the disorderly conduct of the meeting, what had it amounted to? A blue flag had been displayed which the hon. member stated to have created much noise. Without something more solid to support his allegation, the hon. member should not have brought it forward.

said, there were many respectable signatures to the petition, though he had not thought it his duty to examine the whole of them. There were certainly many different hands, and if half a dozen names were written by one person, it would not certainly vitiate the whole. What had been said by the hon. member rendered the petition worthy of some consideration. He had said, that all the magistrates of that district were hostile to the petition. If the bill before the House had passed, no such meeting could have been held, and consequently no such petition could have come up to the House.

read an extract of a letter, by which he was informed that many names were affixed in the same hand-writing. He thought it rather singular that the people of Horsham should complain of the state of the representation, seeing that a burgess of Horsham, being a freeholder, had a right to vote for no less than six members of parliament—two for Horsham, two for the Rape of Bramber, and two for the county of Sussex.

thought it would be hard on the petitioners to reject the petition because more than one name was in the same hand writing.

thought it would be more advisable, as there were certainly many real signatures, to suffer the petition to lie on the table. The noble lord had referred to a bill before the House to prevent seditious meetings; but he was mistaken in the object of the bill. It would at any time be competent for seven householders to call a meeting; and consequently such a meeting as that at which the petition was adopted might have been held, even if that bill had passed into a law.

said, that in many petitions which had been presented to the House for reform, there had been a great many signatures in the same hand. As to the petition from Carlisle, out of 6 or 7,000 signatures, there were not more than 5 or 600 genuine ones. He believed that very few, if any, householders had signed it.

said, he differed from his hon. colleague, as to the petition from Carlisle; though that petition was not entrusted to him, he was assured that there were a great number of very respectable names to it. The meeting had been extremely orderly, the promoters of it endeavoured to the utmost of their power to get it called by authority; and not having succeeded, they did every thing to give it the appearance of a regular meeting.

said, that though the names of the most respectable persons in and about Carlisle were affixed to that petition, he was assured it was without their consent.

said, it was a gross abuse of the privilege of petitioning, and an insult on parliament, to send petitions signed by a pretended number of names really written by others. He thought it necessary to put a stop to the practice, for if the subject on which these petitions turned came to be discussed, the number of the petitions might be much relied on, and they might be told that petitions were signed by thousands or millions which were really signed by very few persons. He could not consent to receive a petition upon which such a practice was used. The proof did not rest on fancy; besides the similarity of hand, there was the testimony of the hon. baronet (sir C. Burrell). The only mode of checking such a practice, was by rejecting the petition.

observed, that the gross abuse of the right of petitioning had gone a great way to lower the authority of this valuable privilege of the subject. On the other hand, he should be very sorry if, on account of a fraud practised by a few they were to reject a petition which was really signed by many persons. This, however, ought to be inculcated on the people, that there was nothing so fatal to their own right as an abuse of it.

thought it highly proper to put an end to a practice which involved a violation of the privileges of the House, and might bring the right of petitioning itself into dispute. If the hon. baronet was certain of the facts of which he spoke, it was his duty to follow up the assertion which he had made, and if it could be proved against any individual that he had written the name of another without his consent, he should be brought up to receive condign punishment, in the utmost severity which it was in the power of the House to inflict.

said, that the declaration of the noble lord, as to the petition before them, was very candid; but as to his argument to throw discredit on all petitions, from more than one name being in the same hand, he would put it to the good sense of the House, whether a petition containing 20 or 30,000 names was to be set down as of no weight, because one person (an enemy, he had a right to assume to the cause of the petition) had put a few names to it without authority? He did not approve altogether of the system which had been pursued with respect to petitions; he thought it would have been much wiser to let the people draw up their complaints in their own language; but he could not go the length of saying, that because they were couched in these terms, they were of no avail. As to many of the instances in which the signatures were in the same hand, he had no doubt that they perfectly expressed the wishes of those whose names were written. The signatures were frequently the names of persons who, though present and consenting, either could not write, or from being not much habituated to write, were not disposed to take the trouble. He spoke from having witnessed such scenes: while petitions were signing, he had seen persons apply to a man who was writing and was more expert than themselves, to sign for them: in very few cases indeed would it be found, that the names were written without the consent of those who bore them. As to the printed forms which were made use of, though he did not approve of them, they were not on that account to be supposed not to speak the sense of the people. He would put a case. Let the noble lord draw up a petition in favour of the gagging bill or the suspension of the Habeas Corpus, or in support of all his measures, and send them round the country, if he could obtain one tenth as many signatures as had been put to the petitions for reform, he would then agree that by such means the sense of the people could not be estimated.

said, he had no doubt the names put to the Horsham petition were those of persons who had given their consent to it. As to the transactions which had been said to have taken place at Carlisle, he thought the parties should be brought to the bar, and punished for their base fraud.

said, it might easily be conceived, that the persons who took the trouble to send round printed forms of petitions, would induce persons to express grievances which of themselves they would not discover. As to the form of petition recommended by the hon. and learned gentleman, it was not probable that it would be signed by many of the distressed population; but it would have the signatures of those who would reckon by weight if not by tale, viz. the magistracy, the clergy, and all those who suffer from the outrages liable to be committed by seditious meetings. He should not object to the petition lying on the table.

supported the petition, and thought mere informality should not prevent the people's approach to that House.