stated, that his objections, and those of his constituents, to the present measure were so strong, that he felt hound to move, as an amendment, that the bill be committed that day six months. The main principle of the bill was, not that the rates of all houses were to be paid by the landlords—not that any general laws should be applied to that species of property—but that the law be directed against one class of persons occupying houses under the value of nine pounds per annum; and that the rates in those cases should be paid by the landlords, in three classes. First, when the rent was paid from year to year; second, where there was a less interest than one year; and, thirdly, where there was a greater interest than one year. It was further provided, that where the tenement was unoccupied for any period less than three months, the landlord was liable for the rates during the period the house remained unoccupied. Now, that principle conflicted with many of the rights and franchises conferred by the Reform and Municipal Bills. By way, however, of giving its due preponderance to property, that most objectionable and obnoxious principle of plurality of voting was conferred. The provisions were extremely hard upon the holders and owners of such property. It should, he thought, be the policy of the country to encourage a spirit of independence among the labouring classes, but the present measure would have a directly contrary tendency. Had they known they would have been liable to pay those rates, they would not have invested money on such uncertain security. This Act, too, would have a retrospective operation, and consequently compensation to these persons would become necessary, which this bill offered them by authorising a reduction in their rates of fifty per cent. This would not satisfy persons thus situated, and besides was an injustice to the other rate-payers, and moreover offered no compensation to the occupiers, who would be equally aggrieved. This bill would have the effect of huddling together various families in one house, and deprive the labourer of that boast that every Englishman's house was his castle. There were many labourers who could not afford to pay 9l. a-year rent, and who, being excused from the rates, thus received relief without degradation; but now, the landlords would charge the rates in the rent, and more than the rates, to secure themselves against the uncertainty. No men of liberal principles could support a measure which went to disfranchise occupiers and to give to landlords the right of voting in place of the occupiers. It was attempted to obviate this by giving persons the power to demand being rated; but he thought it the duty of the House to compel every one having a right to the franchise to exercise that right, and not to leave it as a matter of volition, whether it should be exercised or not. These objections he considered to be conclusive against the bill. It had been said, that no place could come under the operation of this bill, unless two-thirds of the ratepayers consented. That might be a partial protection to some extent; but that seemed to him to make the measure more objectionable. Upon these grounds, he would move, that the bill should be taken into consideration that day six months.

said, that the course adopted by the learned Member for Chester, and others in this Parliament, convinced him that all attempts to conciliate your friends was a most fruitless thing. An hon. Friend behind him had said, he did not care for Parliament, and that Mr. Scrope's Act should never come into operation in Merthyr Tidvil. Under the present system, if a man had five acres of land, and covered it with small cottages, he paid no poor-rates; but if he built only a barn on the land, and employed the land for the purposes of agriculture, he had to pay the poor-rate. This, he conceived, to be most unjust; and the present bill would go far to remedy this evil. But his hon. Friend, the Member for Chester, had endeavoured to excite the feelings of the House by saying, that this bill would operate harshly on the poor. He begged to say, that the bill was in favour of the poor; and it was on that ground that he supported it. He hoped the House would allow the bill to go into Committee.

said, that three years ago cottages were of a very different description from what they were at present. Now they had up-stairs rooms, to which the health of poor people was mainly to be attributed. It was well known, that many of them paid no rent at all to their landlords, whose only chance of getting rid of such tenants was to allow them to go out at the end of the year without paying anything. If the landlords were compelled to pay the rates, cottage property would soon be destroyed altogether, and the poor would be the greatest sufferers.

was not surprised, that the hon. Member for Windsor had failed in his attempt at conciliation when the principle of the bill was so wholly objectionable It would affect materially the municipal franchise, for in corporate towns a large number of voters were rated to the poor under 9l., and the present bill would disfranchise them to a considerable extent. In the cottage there was generally seen cleanliness, comfort, and health, while in large houses, which were divided into a number of dwellings, there was generally seen the reverse, and if that bill passed, it would decidedly prevent persons from investing their money in a mode so desirable as cottage property. The plurality of voting was also a highly objectionable feature in the measure; and on these grounds he should support the amendment of the hon. Member for Chester.

felt himself, although reluctantly, obliged to oppose the Bill. It would seriously affect the constituency of large towns, and tend to prevent the building of cottages. The comforts of the poor would be greatly diminished, if such a measure were to come into operation; they would be crowded into small and ill-built dwellings; and, in such a case, it would be impossible for them to give that attention to cleanliness which was necessary to insure their health and comfort. He should, therefore, vote against the bill.

supported the bill, but he begged to assure the House, that he did so from no feeling of private interest. When thousands of pounds were yearly laid out on the building of cottages, from which large profits were derived, he could not help thinking, that such property ought to be made to contribute to the poor-rates. The principle of the bill seemed to him to be fair and just; and, although he did not approve of some of its details, yet upon the whole it came so near to his views, that he should give the measure his most cordial support.

would oppose the bill, because it went to impose a house-tax on the poorer classes of the people.

said, the present law was remarkable for its severity. Under the Poor-law Amendment Act, the rate was not remitted, as heretofore, by consent of the Overseers before the Magistrates in Petty Session, but it was necessary to have the consent of the Board of Guardians, as well as of the Magistrates, before those who were unable to pay poor-rates could be relieved. He felt it necessary to urge the House to take this question into serious consideration, because it was not one which affected the owners of cottages only, but the welfare of millions of the poorer classes of the community. The House was little aware of the wide-spreading dissatisfaction of the working classes, at the present time, at the working of Mr. Scrope's act. In a parish in which he had property, there had been an increase, under that act, of from 427 to 1,018 ratepayers, while rateable property had increased in the same ratio, the augmentation in the amount of rates being from 16,000l. to a sum exceeding 20,000l. Consequently, a very large number of day labourers, who earned not more than 10s. or 12s. per week, were called upon to pay poor-rates, they not having been rated before. A collector of poor-rates, in speaking of these poor people, had said to him, "If you had witnessed the distresses of the poorer classes which I have seen, your heart would bleed; I am often compelled to come out of their cottages, by the spectacles of misery I find there." There was, in fact, the greatest difficulty experienced in collecting the poor-rates. A most respectable clergyman of the Church of England told him, a short time ago, that the sacrament money which he gave to a poor widow, being only 2s., was immediately paid to save her little goods from being taken away by the collector of the poor-rate. He was quite at a loss to understand how this bill would prevent the building of such cottages as were suitable to poor men, or how it would injure the pro- perty; because the tenement which was Free of this charge to the occupier, must, of course, be more desirable to him, and therefore would be more valuable to the owner.

thought, that as this bill had been repeatedly under the consideration of committees, and great pains had been taken to prepare it, it would be but fair to the promoters of the measure, that it should now be suffered to go into Committee. Would the House throw out the bill without affording an opportunity of showing what improvements had been made in it? By Mr. Scrope's act, all property was assessed to the poor-rate; and no person could be excused, except on the ground that he bad been a recipient of relief out of the rate. Therefore, the rate was to be gathered from all persons not so excused— a regulation which necessarily included an immense number of poor persons, who, though not actually receiving or asking parochial relief, were totally unable, out of their small incomes, to pay poor-rates. Every possible means were resorted to, in order to exact the rate from them; they were summoned over and over again, and very frequently their little household furniture, comprising only bare necessaries, were sold, under distress, for them. He believed this bill would have the effect of bringing back a considerable portion of property that ought to be rated, while it would relieve many poor persons, and prevent them from becoming burdensome to their parishes. He thought the excitement and dissatisfaction existing among the lower classses, in relation to this subject, were a strong reason why the House ought to suffer this bill to pass, or, at least, to go into Committee, that it might be made an efficient and beneficial law.

said, that all that this act provided was, that if tenements were rated, they should be rated at their full value. It did not compel property to be charged which had not been previously rated. He thought this bill would have the effect of preventing a better class of dwellings being built for the occupation of the labouring classes, and that it would be injurious, in other respects, to the poor man; and, therefore, he should strenuously oppose it.

said, that pursuant to the notice he had given, he rose to move, that this and the following clauses be expunged. Having, on former occasions, dwelt on the merits of this bill at some length, there were doubtless but few Members in the House who were not aware of the respective grounds which were taken by his hon. and learned friend in reference to this subject; it would be therefore unnecessary for him to occupy the time of the House more than would be required to go over the main points of the question. The other clauses, in point of fact, although the same in substance, were different in form to the former bill. The first clause which he opposed provided,

"Whenever any court, or judge should, upon the return of a writ of habeas corpus, issued at the instance of the father of any infant or infants, order such infant or infants to be delivered to such father by the mother, it should be lawful for such court or judge to provide by such order for the access of the mother to such infants."

And the next clause said, that

"The Lord Chancellor, the Master of the Rolls, and the Vice-Chancellor in England, or the Lord Chancellor and the Master of the Rolls in Ireland, respectively, might, upon hearing the petition of the mother of any infant, being in the sole custody and control of the father thereof, or of any person by his authority, if he should see fit, make order for the access of the petitioner to such infant, and if such infant should be within the age of seven years, to make order that such infant should be delivered to and remain in the custody of the petitioner until attaining such age."

Now, the objection he had to these clauses rested upon principle. He believed the operation of this bill, if passed in its present shape, would be to reduce the obligations of marriage, and would thereby prove detrimental to the best interests of married women and their offspring. The committee, upon reflection, must agree with him in the opinion, that if facilities were given to separations, as would be the result of this bill, those separations must ultimately lead to divorces, with all their attendant evils. Though there were some hardships in the existing law as to mothers, in this respect, still there was no country in the world in which married women had so complete a protection, as that afforded them by the general laws of this country, and he would have the committee be cautious, lest, while it pretended to take care of their interests, it did not relax the protection to which they were already entitled. Under the present law, parents, mothers especially, had a great inducement, from the natural love and affection they bore to their children, to put up with many petty trifling differences and annoyances which there were no means of remedying, because the marriage tie remained unbroken: the children formed the common link which bound the parties together. But this bill would lead to collision of interests between the father and mother, as regarded their children, and, in many cases, separations, followed by divorces, would ensue, simply because of the facilities afforded mothers of indulging their natural love, by access to their off spring. The law of England wisely was, that the right of the custody of the children was vested in the father, and that law was consonant with the laws of a higher authority: why, then, should the Legislature interfere? There might be, and he should not deny it, numerous cases in which that law operated with hardship upon mothers, but the Legislature was bound to look to the welfare of married women as a class, and not to have regard to individual cases. If a child were taken from the father for seven years, as proposed by the bill, who was to maintain and educate the child? The balance of mischief was against the provisions of the bill, and though the evils of the present system were to a certain extent pressing, still those evils would be better corrected by the tone and morals of society, than by any law that could be devised. If this bill passed, though it might afford relief in some cases, yet it would create difficulties a hundredfold, from which families never could extricate themselves. With regard to the uext clause, giving authority in these matters to courts of equity, he must say, it would be a great evil, for, with the pressure of business before those courts, this new jurisdiction would lead to a denial of justice to suitors in equity. He therefore hoped the committee would not support these clauses. The right hon. and learned Gentleman concluded by moving, that all the clauses, after the first, be omitted from the bill.

entirely approved of the course which had been adopted by the right hon. Gentleman, because he made his opposition one of principle not of detail. The law of England had hitherto interfered only on one side, but that was ever on the stronger. The law of Scotland gave to the Court of Session the power of giving the custody of infants to their mothers. But in England, when the Court of Chancery interfered, it was ever on the prayer of the father, but never on that of the mother. The right hon. and learned Gentleman said, that the judges of the land were opposed to the clause, but he (Mr. Sergeant Talfourd) did not believe it. All he asked was, that when the whole case was before the court, it should have the power of mitigating the lot of the mother, and of giving a qualified order that the mother might have access to her child.

thought the greatest misfortune that could befal any woman was to be separated from her husband. Indeed, so sensibly did women feel this, that it was with the most painful suffering they ever consented to such a step. It would, in his opinion, be a far better course, if the parties would suffer the first ebullition of disagreement to subside, and try, if, by degrees, they could not make their dispositions suit to each other. Opposed as he was to the principle of divorce altogether, he could not become a party to any legislative measure for separating man and wife. The greatest evil of all was the condition in which poor children were placed, who were innocent parties. The primary object of a bill of this sort ought to be the care of the children whom the parents were separated from. Now, the present bill did not make a proper provision of this nature. Seven years was not a sufficiently long time for the mother to have the care of her children, particularly if they were females. It would be much better to leave them with the father altogether, than place them under the mother's care for so short a time.

said, that he thought the power and control over the children ought to be in the hands of the judges of the land, rather than with the father, who might be the offending party.

desired to know if this Bill had the sanction of her Majesty's Government? and said, that his reason for asking the question was, that there were two principles in the Bill which were in direct opposition to the Reform Bill. The first principle was, that it legalised outvoters, which the Reform Bill intended to destroy; and the second principle was, that it gave to an individual the power of retaining his vote fifteen months after he had forfeited it by removal, namely, from the 1st of August to the November twelvemonth following.

said, that the present bill did meet with the cordial sanction and hearty concurrence of her Majesty's Government in the general principles which it asserted, because it went to put an end to the many complicated and vexatious questions which arose so often at the hustings, and before committees of the House on the trial of election petitions. He did not see that the bill would at all have the bad effects which the hon. Baronet dreaded; but, on the contrary, he thought it would give increased effect to the Reform Bill.

said, that, as this Bill embraced objects for which he had, for the last five years contended, he rejoiced to see it brought in, and hoped it would not meet with opposition in either House of Parliament.

regretted the bill did not meet all objections, and equally regretted it did not apply to freeholders in counties as well as to borough voters. He did not object, however, to the principle of the measure.

said, that he did not care whether the provisions of this bill were extended to county voters or not, but he had always understood that the practical evils complained of as to voting were confined to the 10l. householders.

said, the hon. Member for Ipswich had not embraced within its provisions the seot and lot voters, and hoped he would extend them to that class.

said, he had put the Bill into the best form he could.

moved a resolution for the continuance of the sugar duties, and said, that it was not the intention of her Majesty's Government to propose any alteration in those duties.

complained that there was to be no reduction in the sugar duties. He had hoped that some progress would have been made this year in the reduction of those duties, in compliance with the wishes and expectations of a large portion of the mercantile community. Considering how little had yet been done towards placing those duties on a proper footing, the subject called for the most serious attention of the House.

must protest against the interpretation put by the hon. Member for Wigan upon what had been already done in the reduction of the sugar duties. He was old enough to recollect the proceedings in that House during the last twenty years, and unquestionably for sixteen years of that time there was not one subject more discussed or debated than the equalization of the duties upon East India and West India produce. He rejoiced that it had been in his power to propose an equalization of those duties, and though so long a matter of contest, it was now the settled law of the land. With respect to the bounty on the export of sugar, that also had been a matter of grave and serious consideration, and he had been enabled to introduce a measure which gave considerable relief on that subject. He, therefore, thought the hon. Member for Wigan had not fairly estimated what had been already done relative to the sugar duties.

thought there was great danger that we should be driven out of foreign markets, unless there was assimilation of the duties on sugar with the sugar duties of foreign states. He would recommend alterations in these duties. He thought that the state of trade with the Brazils particularly called for some alteration, since at present it was hardly possible to obtain a return for cargoes shipped to that country.

said, that he should at a future day call the attention of the House to the expediency of relaxing the duties on East India sugar, and of admitting it to come into competition to a much greater extent than it did at present with West- India sugar. He should, also, call the attention of the House to the propriety of introducing foreign sugars.

had no hesitation in saying, that a reconsideration of the sugar duties might be entered upon advantageously to the state as a matter of revenue, and to the consumer in the price of sugar. But his hon. Friend must be quite aware of the difficulties which would attend the subject, arising, first, from the claims of the colonies of this country to a preference, on which he did not pronounce any opinion; and, in the second place, from the peculiar state of the Brazils, with respect to the slave-trade; because, when it was known that at the present moment the Brazils furnished a great market for slaves, and therefore gave encouragement to the slave trade, it behoved the House to pause before giving support to that trade by affording an additional market to the producer of slave labour.

thought it vain to expect that keeping up prohibitory duties on sugar could have any effect in putting down slavery. He thought it particularly absurd to use such an argument for excluding the produce of the Brazils, when this country was so largely dependent on the cotton and tobacco of the slave states of America. Resolution agreed to.