rose pursuant to the notice he had given, to move that—

"This House will upon Tuesday, the 23rd day of this instant February, resolve itself into a committee of the whole House, to consider of the following address to her Majesty, that is to say, that an humble Address be presented to her Majesty, praying that her Majesty will be graciously pleased to take into consideration the Report, bearing date 12th May, 1840, made by the Commissioners to whom it was referred to examine and adjudicate upon the claims of certain British subjects, for losses sustained by the seizure and confiscation of their ships and cargoes by the Government of Denmark in the year 1807, and that her Majesty will be graciously pleased to advance to such claimants the amount of their respective losses as ascertained by the said commissioners, and to assure her Majesty that this House will make good the same."

The hon. and learned Member briefly alluded to the facts of the case, and to the classes of claimants—those who had ships and goods, and those who had goods ashore and book debts. He had hitherto been opposed by the Government; but he would not then enter into the merits of the question. If, however, he should hear any new arguments urged against the motion, he should use his privilege of replying to them.

said, I rise for the purpose of seconding this motion. It has been with feelings of regret that I have for some time observed the right hon. Gentleman the Chancellor of the Exchequer give to this subject the same opposition as his predecessors, and adopt all the ex parte considerations by which they were influenced. From the straightforward, manly character of my right hon. Friend, I would have imagined that he would not interpose his authority to prevent the compensation justly due to those claimants. With every feeling of respect, I must say, that I believe the right hon. Gentleman does not understand the merits of this case. When this British property was seized by the Danish Government the British Government had seized upwards of 1,300,000l. worth of Danish property, without providing any protection for British merchants. That property was always represented and understood to be intended as a fund from which compensation should be given to the British merchants who were sufferers by the course pursued by our Government. These persons have constantly since that time down to the present period, pressed their claims. The House of Commons has ordered payment to be made to two classes of claimants—to those who had claims for book debts, and to those who had their goods seized in the ports. Now there is a third party demanding compensation, those who have had their ships and cargoes seized at sea by Danish men of war. I cannot see how the right hon. Gentleman can oppose himself to their application. The judgment of the House has been on two several occasions pronounced in their favour; and I am sure, Sir, that it does not become the character of this House, to do that which would be considered monstrous in a court of justice, to reverse the decision which it has twice pronounced, when there are no new facts by which its judgments can be influenced. I cannot think the House will do so; still less can I think that the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Tamworth, who has ever shown the greatest regard for maintaining the character and consistency of the House, would recommend such a course. For my own part, I must say, that, having advocated those claims for nine years, it is with feelings of indignation I am compelled to come forward on this occasion. A large sum of money was obtained previous to the war at the sacrifice of British property. Surely no one will pretend that the object was to plunder the owners? I hope the House will do them fair and honourable justice. They ought to be paid not only the principal, but I am quite sure that those claimants whose case has been so improperly delayed, ought to receive compensation for that delay. I will not further trouble the House on this occasion; but I will say that this is not a party question. The House has twice declared itself in favour of these claims; and I trust it will not now reverse its decision.

was sorry, after what the hon. and learned Gentleman had said, to announce that he should not only follow the course of his predecessor upon this question, but was fully prepared to appeal for support and approbation to the House, and even to the country at large. The hon. and learned Gentleman was a skilful advocate, and he brought to bear upon this question his habitual adroitness. The hon. and learned Gentleman always put this question as between the Chancellor of the Exchequer and the claimants. That was a most adroit way of putting the question certainly; but the real question was, were they justified in calling upon the people of England to pay those claims. Were they justified in taking the money out of the pockets of other people, to put it into the pockets of these respectable persons residing in Liverpool and Hull? From the best consideration he had been able to give the subject, he was of opinion that they had no right to call upon the public to do so. The hon. and learned Gentleman, and the hon. Gentleman who had followed him, had carefully avoided all allusion to that portion of the question. He had alluded to the decision to which the House had already come. He admitted, that the hon. and learned Gentleman had had one decision in his favour; but the first decision which had been come to, and been come to by the very Parliament which had directed the other classes of claims to be paid, had been against the claims which the hon. and learned Gentleman was then advocating. In accordance with the expressed opinion of the reformed House of Commons Lord Spencer had given way, and admitted the claims of the two first classes of claimants, which claims had been paid. The very claims which the hon. and learned Gentleman was now advocating had been submitted to that House, and it had refused to admit them. It was remarkable also, that Sir James Mackintosh, who was the first to bring the subject of the Danish claims before Parliament, had in his speech on that occasion only alluded to those claims which had since been settled. Those were the only claims which he thought the country called on to pay. In that speech Sir J. Mackintosh had stated, that there were certain acts which the Danish government had committed contrary to the laws of war and the laws of nations; by those acts British subjects had suffered wrong. The English Government, at the making of peace, had a right to call upon the Danish government for compensation for these wrongs. It had, however, neglected for some reason or other to do so, and the right hon. Gentleman had argued, that in consequence of having thus neglected its duty, which was to enforce these claims as against the Danish government, it had taken upon itself the duty of compensating the English subjects, who ought to have been compensated by the Danish government. That the claims now brought forward by the learned Gentleman had never entered into the contemplation of Sir James Mackintosh, appeared still more clearly from the calculations which he had made on the subject. On that occasion, Sir James Mackintosh had stated, that the outstanding claims amounted to about 200,000l., but that they had been reduced by various circumstances to about 100,000l. Now the Government had already paid 284,000l. on account of those claims, and here was another class of claims now brought forward, amounting to an additional quarter of a million. It was obvious that there was a great distinction between these claims and those which had already been paid. Denmark was bound to pay the other classes of claimants; she might have been compelled to pay them; but there was no doubt, that according to the laws of war and the laws of nations, Denmark was perfectly justified in confiscating the property in question. She was perfectly justified in making this seizure; consequently no claim could be brought against Denmark, and no claim could be made against her for compensation. The grounds on which the former claims had been voted did not exist in the present instance. It was stated, that we having received a large sum of money for seizures taken from Denmark were bound to give compensation to these claimants. He knew not on what ground the hon. and learned Gentleman assumed that they were in possession of that sum of money. As far as he could ascertain, after the expenses of the captors and of adjudication had been liquidated, and the other expenses had been paid, the sum remaining had, if not the whole, at least, by far the larger portion of it, had been already paid for those Danish claims which Parliament had already voted. The payment of those claims had, as nearly as possible, eaten up the whole of the money received as the produce of those seizures. The hon. and learned Gentleman had contended, that those claims ought to be satisfied out of the droits of the Crown, but as he had before stated, the hon. and learned Gentleman was mistaken, if he supposed that, after paying the expenses of the captors and the payment of the claims already liquidated, there was any surplus remaining. [Mr. Cresswell expressed his dissent.] He could assure the hon. and learned Gentleman, that after paying captions, and expenses, and other claims, it would be found that there was scarcely any surplus remaining, certainly nothing like the amount of 100,000l., or 200,000l., as the hon. Gentleman seemed to imagine. He admitted, that if the claim were founded on justice the amount of the claim ought not to be taken into account. But if there were Gentlemen there, who were under the influence of that active canvass which he knew had been carried on, he warned them that the case was not a trifling one, and that which happened once might happen again. He thought it necessary to caution them, that they would not be voting a quarter of a million, but a million in full. There were five cases of the same nature, in which he believed similar claims would be put forward, and he would tell them, that they knew not what might happen if they once opened their doors to such applications. It was supposed, that the Danish claimants were the only claimants of the kind; but if the House should grant the motion of the hon. and learned Gentleman they would have similar claims submitted to them by those whose property had been seized by the Spanish Governments for the amount of 60,600l. The more they admitted such a principle, the more would parties endeavour to avail themselves of it. If they let in one end of the wedge the rest would be sure to follow, and they would find, that the annual expense in meeting such claims would form a very large item in the public expenditure. The hon. and learned Gentleman had urged the claim then under their consideration, at a very unusual time—before they had voted any of the supplies on the estimates for the army, the navy, or other public expenses. But let them look to the nature of the claim itself. He found, that there were out of the million about 55,000l. paid to Insurance offices. Now he (the Chancellor of the Exchequer) did not see why the underwriters should come and recompense themselves out of the taxes of the country, which they were to put into their own pockets, because they must have been remunerated in other ways for the risk they had run. But why did not the underwriters pay the parties? If they received high premiums for the risks of war, they were liable to the payment. The risk they ran was one which they willingly incurred, and they ought not to look to the nation for the money which they lost. He did not think he need detain the House any further, but he would again state to the House, that if they consented to pass that vote they would agree to a resolution which included a large sum of money to parties who had already received a quarter of a million, and they would at the same time agree to a principle the extent and termination of which no man in that House could determine.

hoped, that in taking the subject into consideration they would argue it on its own merits, and would not be misled by those arguments foreign to the question, which the right hon. Gentleman, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, had introduced in his speech. The right hon. Gentleman stated, that the amount of these claims was extremely large, and so endeavoured to make an impression on the House. These claims had undergone a most rigorous investigation, and the House would perhaps be surprised to hear, that the amount of the debts amounted to no more than 225,000l. Perhaps it might be urged, that the time for bringing forward the motion was not well chosen, inasmuch as a large deficiency had been experienced in the public revenue for the last two or three years. But he would submit to the House, that that was no reason whatever for rejecting claims, founded substantially on justice and on equity. The right hon. Gentleman said, that the payments which had been made into the Treasury, and the money seized, were entirely eaten up by the sums paid to former claimants. But it should be remembered, that the country would have been obliged to have gone to other purses if it had not received a large sum from the Danish government. The right hon. Gentleman had said, that the period chosen for the motion was an extremely inconvenient one, and that it was really too bad that it should be brought forward before any of the public estimates were voted. He could not help complimenting his hon. Friend on the period at which he had thought proper to bring forward this motion. It was an excellent opportunity for the House to put in practice the maxim—"Be just before you are generous,"—to practise that economy it was ever so ready to profess. It appeared to him, that these parties had an unanswerable claim upon the House on account of the two votes they had come to last year; on the 24th May, 1838, and 18th June, 1839. Let the House only consider the expense to which they had put these parties. They had been put to all the expense of investigation, and it would be hard if this measure, which had proved the justice of their claims, was to be made only an aggravation of injustice. He hoped the House would support his hon. Friend's motion, because he was satisfied of the justice of the claim itself, and because he thought, that it would be consistent with the honour, dignity, and character of the House, having admitted the principle, not to recede from carrying it into effect.

confessed his opinion was precisely the same as the hon. Gentleman's. He also had constituents who were interested in this question, and he should vote for the payment of these claims, because they were just. He was not at all intimidated by the prospect of being called to account at some future day to which the right hon. Gentleman had alluded, and which remark he thought had been improperly thrown out, to disturb their judgment. There were three classes of claimants, two of whom had been paid—those which were founded on book debts, and those which were founded on property on shore had been paid. The only property respecting the claim of which there could be any doubt by the law of nations, was that which the right hon. Gentleman hesitated to pay. He asked him to point out any difference whatever between these classes. He had listened attentively to hear of any difference, and had heard of none. He had heard nothing laid down in justice or principle, to deter him from giving his vote in favour of these claims. It had been twice argued, and on a former occasion means had been resorted to to postpone its payment, which he did not think consistent with the honour of any Government. When, on the 24th May, 1838, a motion for this purpose was carried by a majority of thirty-four, instead of complying with the vote, the Chancellor of the Exchequer directed the amount of the claim should be scheduled, but not examined. Now, the House had then heard the whole claim argued, and had come to a decision upon it, and he had yet to learn the propriety of any Minister afterwards opposing the payment. If there had been any doubt upon the subject, the Chan- cellor of the Exchequer would have been right in opposing the claim to the utmost. Two classes out of the three had been satisfied by the Government, and he should undoubtedly continue to vote for the payment of the other.

said, with respect to insurance offices, when they insured property they received premiums according to the risk which they ran. He would join issue with the right hon. Gentleman opposite as to the very grounds on which these claims were opposed—because those ships' cargoes were insured, the claim ought to be refused. Now four or five times the amount of premium would have been charged had the case which took place been contemplated, and therefore the right hon. Gentleman's argument would not stand. He conceived, that when the House, by a majority of three to one, in the year 1839, directed that the commissioner should proceed and adjudicate on the claims, it substantially decided, that those claims ought to be paid, and were just. The right hon. Gentleman ought not to represent this as a question between the House of Commons and the merchants of Liverpool. It was a question that concerned all the traders of the kingdom. The question to be decided was, whether the merchants and shipowners of England should have justice done to them by the payment of 250,000l. or not. He would certainly give his most strenuous support to the measure.

was fully convinced, that the claim was a just one, and ought to be paid. Indeed, the case was a good deal stronger than the learned Alderman had put it, because, in the first place, the insurers never could have contemplated the risk, although the general words of the policy covered that defect. He really was surprised at the opposition that had been given to the motion. For a number of years the entire claims were contested, and then a part was conceded, on the ground that the seizure of debts was against all international law—the seizure of goods on shore was resisted in like manner; but the House decided, that the Government ought to pay them, and did make it pay them. Now, in the present case, the shippers of cargoes were informed at the Admiralty, that no war whatever was in contemplation against Denmark, and it might be said, that the Government actually induced them to send out their cargoes, and yet that claim, in spite of the repeated decisions of Parliament, the Government now resisted. Economy was certainly an excellent virtue in a Government, and one which ought to be in all cases practised, but common honesty was superior to economy and ought to be the rule of conduct. It was said there was no war whatever with Denmark, but there was something very like it in practice, and something very advantageous to those who got the Droits of the Admiralty, to the amount of 1,300,000l. and out of which ample compensation might be made to the merchants whom they deceived into sending out their cargoes. The Government had thought fit to make a present of the Droits of the Admiralty for the purpose of making improvements at Windsor. It deceived the British merchants when they sent out their cargoes, and now, in spite of the repeated decisions of the House, the Government refused these parties redress. He hoped, however, that the vote of that night would put an end to the matter.

considered that the objections of the right hon. Gentleman did not apply to the case before them. The House had on two occasions solemnly sanctioned the motion of his hon. and learned Friend, and it was shameful now if they had not the moral courage to put the parties in the way of getting satisfaction for their claims. The right hon. Gentleman did not deny, that the decision of the House had been in their favour, but his objection was, that he himself had taken a different view of the case. He thought it most unjust in the right hon. Gentleman to withhold his assistance from the parties in obtaining their money. The right hon. Gentleman had relied upon the first division, in 1836, when the majority was against the claims; but the right hon. Gentleman did not state what the amount of the majority was, or what were the numbers in the House. He knew that discussion had taken place at the close of the Session, when there were not one hundred Members in town—and when the majority did not exceed eight. Now it was perfectly well known that the greater number of the Members attending the House at the close of the Session were the friends of Ministers, and it was therefore impossible to suppose, that such a decision would at all weigh against the decisions which the House had twice come to since. On those grounds he would give his strennous support to the motion of the hon. and learned Member.

did not hesitate to say, that his opinion on the subject remained unchanged. He was quite ready to admit, that the hon. Gentleman who had just sat down was equally entitled to hold his former opinions on the subject, and might very properly abide by that decision to which the House had already come. He was not influenced in his opinion by the amount of the demand if the claim were a just one, and if it would not be attended with fatal consequences he would at once say to the Government pay it; but his ground was, that if they made that particular payment there never would be a war hereafter, or those circumstances which led ultimately to a war, which would not ultimately involve them in claims which it was impossible to calculate, because it was impossible to calculate the activity of the enemy's cruisers against merchant vessels. It was no uncommon case that an embargo was laid on, and in particular circumstances that step might be followed by a war, and if in such cases were they to make allowance to the underwriters, or those who insured in consequence of the warlike measures taken by the country, there would be no end to the expenses they would be called upon to defray. He thought such a step would strike at the best energies of the country, and he should therefore give his vote against the hon. and learned Gentleman's motion.

said, the notion of the right hon. the Chancellor of the Exchequer was, that if these claims were admitted, other similar ones would be brought forward on future occasions; but he contended that every claim should stand upon its own foundation, and he believed that the present one was founded injustice, for it ought to be recollected, that when the expedition was sent out in 1807 against Denmark, the country understood we were in a state of profound peace with that power, and therefore quite unprepared.

said, in voting as he intended for the present motion, he wished to guard himself from being supposed as pledged hereafter to vote for compensation to private individuals in case of losses consequent upon war. The facts of the present case were special, and as such he considered himself at liberty to pursue the course he then followed. The claims made in this instance were of a threefold nature. They were as follow; claims in respect of the confiscation of debts; claims in respect of the confiscation of property on shove; and claims in respect of the confiscation of ships and cargoes, including the charges of insurance and freight. It had been allowed, that according to the law of nations, Denmark had not been entitled to confiscate the property on shore, nor the debts, nor such goods as were in their own warehouses. And if that was the case, the British Government was called upon to demand from Denmark such compensation as would satisfy the loss. Then, if this Government had neglected to do this, they were liable to be asked by the sufferers to make them that compensation which they required. The hostile movements which had led to the state of things that produced this conduct on the part of Denmark had been different from the origin of most wars. This had not commenced in an embargo being laid upon any Danish vessel or subject, but had been caused by the fact of England's receiving intelligence of the intention of a powerful enemy of her's to seize the Danish fleet, with a view of turning it against this country. Under these circumstances the Danish fleet was seized by England. Acting under the very natural, however they might be hasty, feelings caused by this seizure, and not aware that the intelligence the English Government had received with respect to the intention of her enemy, was correct, which had been subsequently proved, Denmark had declared war against this country; and these circumstances might have justified the Crown in appropriating to the uses of the revenue the money derived from the seizure of the fleet. Then if that money had been so applied, it appeared to him tolerably clear and just, that those who suffered in consequence of the retaliation of Denmark should be compensated, and more especially if they considered the particular circumstances of the country. If those claims had been made before the money in question had been spent, he apprehended there could be no possible objection to allow them. In voting then for the present motion upon its own particular merits, he trusted he had satisfied the House that he did not therefore hold himself bound to vote for future claims for compensation for injuries which might be the inevitable result of war.

did not deny what had been stated by his hon. Friend, the Member for Lambeth, that there was a great difference between the case now before the House, and those other two in which compensation had been given. But he thought his hon. Friend had signally failed in making out a reason for voting for this motion. The hon. Gentleman had said that, with respect to the book debts and the goods seized on shore, these did not come under the class of ordinary seizures in time of war; and that the Government had therefore either of two courses to choose—either to call on Denmark to make reparation, or to do so itself. But his hon. Friend admitted that the present case was different from those. This was a case of ordinary capture in time of war. It had been stated by the hon. Alderman, the Member for Sunderland, and the hon. Member for Hull, that in all cases like the present, when the Government had not made a public declaration of war, or given notice to the insurers, of the approach of war, the public ought to make compensation for losses. Could anything be more dangerous than this? There might be a great expedition preparing in the ports of another country to invade this; and it might be necessary to take steps to prevent the invasion. Would it be contended that the Government was to give notice of the preparations which it thought necessary to make, for intercepting the armament before it reached our shores? It was said, that the sum now claimed was a very moderate one—no doubt it was so, but if they consented to pay one quarter of a million they would be setting a precedent which would entail upon them claims to a much greater extent. It was said by the hon. Baronet that Denmark was much irritated—no doubt she was, and he thought she had much reason to be so. Her capital had been bombarded—she was a great sufferer, so that, in fact, she was very naturally much irritated, and he (Lord John Russell) did not think it was either rashness or showed any want of prudence in her going to war with the country which had done her so much damage. His hon. Friend said, they would be perfectly safe in paying the present claims, because they would never again meet with such a case. He could tell his hon. Friend he was much mistaken, for we might yet be thrown into war with other countries, and if the House allowed themselves to be bound to refund anything but that which was lost by anything done against the law of nations, or the rules of just war, they would open a door to most extravagant claims—if they acknowledged the present claims, they would go much beyond anything which had ever been done before. He felt bound to go much further, and say, that they were not bound to indemnify any particular classes. If it, was necessary, for the security of this country—of the whole community—if they should in certain cases be obliged to step out of the usual usages of war, the whole community had the benefit of the act—the shipowners of Hull, Sunderland, and Liverpool, had the benefit of it, and they had no right to come forward as individual claimants, and say they had the benefit of the general protection of their country, but their country could not vindicate its honour without their claiming' to the very last farthing for any losses sustained by them in consequence of a due prosecution of a necessary war, and one carried on strictly according to the law of nations. If the House of Commons persisted in acknowledging such claims as those now brought forward by the hon. and learned Gentleman, they would recognise claims for which no precedent was to be found in past history; but if the motion of the hon. and learned Gentleman were to be agreed to, many would be found in our future history.

notwithstanding what had been said by the right hon. Gentleman, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, was sure the House would go along with him in saying that there was nothing improper in the feeling which had brought him forward. Unless he had been urged to it by his constituents, he would never have brought before the Mouse a question of that nature, and he trusted that hon. Gentlemen would think that he was justified in speaking on behalf of certain firms in Liverpool. The right hon. Gentleman, like many other persons who had disagreeble things to encounter, was never pleased with the time which was chosen for this discussion. If he (Mr. Cresswell) came late in the Session all imaginable objections were made; he was told that there was no money for him, and that he should not have delayed his motion to so late a period. If he came early, he was met with the objection that there was no money in the Exchequer, and asked why he had come so soon. Now, he thought the best plan was, to bring it forward at an early period of the Session, when he could expect a full House, and he hoped the right hon. Gentleman would be satisfied with the numbers on that occasion. His (Mr. Cresswell's) opinion upon this subject was still that which he had expressed when he first brought the subject before the House. He for one, could never understand that they had any right to call upon Denmark to make compensation for the book debts and the goods on shore. He never could understand what pretence they had for such demands. Was there any complaint against Denmark? Had she committed any wrong against this country? Had we asked for redress for any wrong or injury which we had suffered? No. But, notwithstanding we had no such complaints to make, they had laid an embargo upon the ships of that country; we had sent out cruizers to capture her vessels wherever they could find them; we had sent out powerful armaments to slaughter her subjects and to seize her fleet; and it was now said, because the Danes had in turn taken the property of some of our ship-owners and merchants, that these must receive no compensation, that the Danish government was justified in taking it, and the owners must put up with the loss. But this was not a case of war. He totally denied that it was a case of war, and he hoped that this would never be made a precedent for other cases; that the country would never be in the same straits again, and therefore, would not be induced to resort to similar practices. What was their own statement to the Danes, at the time that this expedition was undertaken? What was the proclamation made? Why, that they came to their shores not as enemies, but in the way of self defence. Was there any war at that time? Was it consistent with the notion of a state of war? If it was a state of war, and it took place according to the ordinary usages of nations, why was that State Paper put forward in 1837 to justify these proceedings? Did the Government attempt to justify its proceedings upon the ground of war? No such thing. He trusted, therefore, that under all the circumstances, the House would vote, as it had voted, for the compensation of the Danish claimants.

I should be unwilling to trespass upon the time of the House in asking leave to bring in a bill for the better ordering of the execution of criminals; but since it is a subject which has, I believe, never been discussed within these walls beyond a short conversation in committee, in May, 1837, on the Punishment of Death Bill, I am desirous, by some short explanation of the principles and plans of my bill, to prevent any misapprehensions or misrepresentations as to the nature of the change I am about to propose: and I am at least as anxious to hear the objections and opinions of hon. Gentlemen, in order that I may as far as possible obviate or profit by them in the filling up of the clauses, should the House grant me permission to introduce my bill. For myself, Sir, I can safely declare that I am actuated in undertaking this measure by no motive in the world but an earnest desire to do away with what appears to me to be a barbarous and pernicious practice; and happily this is a subject which can by no possible ingenuity be converted into a party question; and for once therefore we may meet, in the common cause of humanity, upon neutral ground, and be the better for it. I confide the question therefore entirely to the general good feeling of the House, and propose it unprompted and unsupported by any one special interest, section, or party: I do not even connect it with the nearly related questions now so frequently discussed respecting the mitigation of our code, or the abolition of the punishment of death. I leave it to stand upon its own plain practical grounds of seeking to provide a formal, reverent, and sufficiently public and authentic method of conducting the execution of ciminals, instead of our present practice of making an exhibition of such executions; for hitherto all our executions have partaken more or less of the character of exhibitions—spectacles! and it is against this exhibitionary character, this notion of making a spectacle of an execution, that I endeavour to raise my voice, and enlist the concurrence of the House. But, before proceeding one step further, I beg leave to declare most explicitly, that I have no intention whatever of proposing private, and much less secret executions, or of withdrawing the strict eye of public observation from their proceedings. I know full well the benefit of publicity on almost all occasions, and most especially on those which regard the administration of justice and its penal execution, not to have studied most carefully, by various provisions, to guard against and satisfy that jealousy which the public so wisely entertain of all that has a tendency to mystery or secrecy in these matters. I trust, therefore, I shall not be misunderstood or misrepresented on this point; and I am the more anxious to be clear on this head since I have read the few remarks which the right hon. Baronet the Member for Tamworth made on this part of my subject, when it was incidentally raised by the hon, Member for London: for, bearing as he did the strongest testimony against our present mode of conducting executions declaring:—

"That it does appear that more evils actually result from public executions than could occur from any other other mode of proceeding in these cases."

He rests his objections to the plan imputed rather than assented to by the hon. Member for London upon its being "private," saying:—

"I think there would be great difficulty in, and very serious obstacles to, inflicting punishments of this extreme kind in private. I think such a practice would be very apt to revolt the public mind, and excite in private quarters the most rankling suspicions and the most distressing feelings."

Now, Sir, my endeavour has been to contend with these difficulties and obstacles, and to render executions decorous, while I continue them public—that is, sufficiently public to prevent those "rankling suspicions and distressing feelings" which the right hon. Gentleman so properly respects. And if he finds that I have, in any degree, succeeded, I hope to have the benefit of his great talents and great experience in perfecting that which I shall have feebly commenced. But, Sir, while the right hon. Baronet bears this manly testimony against the mischiefs of our present system, I find others taking the old one, and upholding our present executions as a support to the good, and a terror to the bad—as "having the effect of instilling into the minds of those who witness them a salutary horror of crime and a respect for the laws." Now, Sir, I protest against this assertion. I verily believe, that the public exhibition of punishment by human suffering and death neither does, nor ever has produced this salutary effect. That, on the contrary, it hardens where it means to reform, and is both the cause and effect of crime. All experience is against it. In all the countries of Europe, Turkey included, where executions are most savage, and death brought most closely home to the eyes of the people, there they are the most savage, and human life and human laws the least respected. It would be tedious and invidious to particularize. The converse is also true. Or, to come nearer home, what has been the course of civilization and executions in England? Why, as the light of the one has advanced, the savageness of the other has receded. I need only appeal to the historical recollections of every one present whether such has not been the fact? Compare our present laws and executions with those of the latter Tudors, when exhibitions, I may say forests of gibbets, and the most savage tortures were the approved means of making men honest, as Smith-field fires were of keeping them religious. Shall we be told, these are all enormities of by-gone days, and that every one repudiates them now, when we have at length reduced executions to that perfect state in which they impress those who witness them with a salutary horror of crime, and respect for the law; in which, in fact, all the benefits of publicity are retained without any of its barbarities? This is, indeed, a flattering unction, and I would it were genuine; but it is nothing more than the common threadbare objection to all improvement. True, indeed, we have got rid of the practice, although not of the law for hanging in chains, and of cart and coffin processions to Tyburn; we have got rid of the practice, though not of the law, for drawing on hurdles, which was itself a mitigation of the older custom of drawing over the bare ground and of embowelling dead or alive. Mutilating, torturing, burning, are now abolished; though this last, as respected women, lived on to the reign of George 3rd. All these have passed away, and are remembered now only to be repudiated. So far so good; but much yet remains to be done. Nothing so easy as to repudiate the abuses of former days; nothing more difficult than to acknowledge and root out those of our own. Why, Sir, every one of the successive courses of barbarity which I have just enumerated, found defenders in their several days. Conscientious men who (torture no longer being the vogue) could denounce the rack, and in the same breath declare Charles 2nd's head would not be safe on his shoulders, should the living entrails of regicides, like Harrison's, not be torn out and burnt before his dying face—dying, and not dead, mark you—for Ludlow tells us he actually rose up under the torture. This generation passes away, and another arises. Liberal supporters of the House of Hanover, who could heartily denounce those enormities inflicted on the regicides, and yet in 1745 could find no security for the Hanoverian dynasty without planting the heads of the wretched jacobite rebels on Temple Bar, to give loyalty to the citizens; or preserving others in spirits to pack up and despatch for like edifying exhibitions at Manchester and elsewhere. Men who could find no safety for husbands without burning their wives alive (as in the case of Catherine Hayes, in 1726) for murdering them, or of Anne Bedingfield, dragged on a hurdle and burnt, but not alive, so late as 1763. Men who committed crime were checked and chastised by processions to Tyburn, whose abominations Mandeville and Hogarth have immortalised. And now all hon. Gentleman can fully perceive these barbarous errors of their predecessors. Even later still, hon. Gentlemen have seen their contemporaries defend—if they themselves have not defended—the whipping of women in prisons, or of men at cart-tails—the pillory—the practice of hanging in chains—the revolting procession and ceremony of huddling a felo de se into a hole on the highway, and driving a stake through his body. Hon. Gentlemen who have heard these things defended can, now that they are passed away, see and deplore their barbarous inutility, and worse than inutility. And what, pray, is the inference from all this? That we have at length arrived at perfection? That our present exhibition of an execution, or Frost's sentence, for instance, that they should be drawn on a hurdle to the place of execution, that they should there be hanged by the neck until they were dead, and that afterwards the head of each should be severed from his body, and the body of each divided into four quarters, to be disposed of as her Majesty should deem fit. Are these, forsooth, symptoms of perfection? No, forsooth; the only way of viewing this gradual abandonment of terror which I have been endeavouring to trace (and in the word terror I include the suffering of the criminal and its exhibition to the public) is, that if it has been foiled and been abandoned in its extreme rigour—if it has failed, likewise, and been abandoned in each of its successive gradations of diminishing terror, each succeeding generation confirming, by experience and by further mitigation, the mitigations of its predecessor—then surely the only fair, rational, and common sense deduction is, that this terror, this exhibition of terror, is erroneous not in degree, but in principle and application. But hon. Gentlemen may say this is all very well, but after all it is but a deduction, and that practically our executions work well; that they support the good and affright the bad. Now, what say facts and experience to this? I state my facts against any they can bring, and pray, are the good thus supported, the bad thus affrighted? Who, pray, are the good that ever attend these executions? Who are the considerate parents that send their children to them as to a school of moral instruction? Who are the wise masters that send thither their apprentices to learn wisdom and gentleness from the gallows and its followers? Who, indeed, are the persons of any pretensions whatever to respectability, who, being convicted of having witnessed one of these exhibitions, do not forthwith feel it necessary to make some excuse for having done so? The good, then, do not attend, or attend not for their profit. But although they do not actually attend, perhaps it is meant that they are there in thought, and that the idea of a public execution gives a reality and publication to the law which is most useful. Sir, surely this is a mere refinement; the sentiment of the efficaciousness and sovereignty of the law resides not in the harsh exhibition of an execution, but in the substantial fact of the execution itself. Will any man say that the wayfaring man, the lone widow, or any, the most timid person in the wide world, will rest or travel one iota the less free from fears of felons because they may have seen one hanged in the morning, or read in the evening of some great hanging exhibition; with all the newspaper reports, making a fustian hero of some Thurtell scoundrel, blazoning forth his atrocious crimes, and dwelling with mawkish sentimentality upon his exemplary piety, or heroic fortitude on the scaffold? Will these tend more to deter or captivate the bad—to support or alarm the good and conciliate public respect for the law, than a formal announcement in the Gazette, that such and such a criminal was duly executed in such and such a gaol before a certain number of witnesses in pursuance of his sentence, for having committed such and such a felony? But then perhaps the exhibitions support the good by affrighting the bad. I doubt this: when do they affright them, how do they affright them, and where? Did they affright when, as of old, they were infinitely more savage? If they did, why are they abandoned? And if they did not, what presumption is there that they will now? And where do they affright them? At the executions themselves? If so, why do they attend? And yet it is notorious that the worst thieves and felons and their associates are the most constant attendants of these executions. Surely if they were awed by them, they would not attend: nothing is easier, or perhaps safer, for many of them than to keep away. But no; they are drawn thither by a certain fascination or attraction for scenes of blood, or strong excitement. It is a holiday to them: they come to see their late associate die, as they call it, manfully, and to learn how to die in like manner themselves. There is not a spark of contrition or awe about them. Fielding, than whom few persons (as his admirable writings testify) better understood human nature, and (more especially from his situation as a magistrate) that class we are now contemplating, thought so too. In his treatise on the Increase of Robbers, he attributes it, amongst other causes, to our public executions. After disposing of the shame which the criminal is supposed to entertain, and which he asserts is more frequently in his distorted notions of pride, and in those of the crowd, pity, he says,

"His procession to Tyburn, and his last moments there, are all triumphant; attended with the compassion of the meek and tenderhearted, and with the applause, admiration, and envy of all the bold and hardened. His behaviour in his present condition, not the crimes, how atrocious soever which brought him to it, is the subject of contemplation; and if he hath sense enough to temper his boldness with any degree of decency, his death is spoken of by many with honour, and by all with approbation. How far, (he adds) such an example is from being an object of terror, especially to those for whose use it is principally intended, I leave to the consideration of every rational man; whether such examples as I have described are proper to be exhibited, must be submitted to our superiors."

And he then proposes executions within the prisons, before high judicial authorities and a restricted number of other persons, as a means of preventing crime. Hogarth, too, in his "Thief's Progress," leads his idle apprentice, whom he is conducting step by step to the gallows, to the contemplation of—what? an associate hanging in chains. The Rev. Mr. Cotton, late ordinary of Newgate, in his examination before the Committee of Criminal Laws, says respecting the younger thieves,

"I think it a shock and a horror at the moment upon the inexperienced and young: but immediately the scene is closed, there is a forgetfulness altogether of it; but upon the old and inexperienced thief it makes no real or serious impression. I have had occasion to go into the press-yard within an hour and a half after an execution, and I have found them amusing themselves, playing at ball or marbles, and appearing precisely as if nothing had happened."

And for the bystanders,

"That it makes very little impression on the public. They appear to me to come to it as to a spectacle, and go away thinking no more about it, without some very extraordinary case or very particular crime occur; and generally, I am completely of opinion that it has not any effect by way of example. It seems to take away and blunt abhorrence against the crime, in pity and compassion for the sufferer."

Mr. Mainwaring, a magistrate for Middlesex, gives, as an instance of the effect of executions

"Three persons were brought before me for uttering forged notes. During the investigation I discovered that these notes were obtained from a room in which the body of a person named Wheller (executed on the preceding day for uttering) then laid, and the notes in question were delivered for circulation by a woman with whom he had been living."

Mr. W. A. Brown entertains the same opinion:—

"I can hardly think it can have any moral effect, or make any advantageous impression upon the minds of persons attending these executions, when they will, even under the gallows, be often engaged in picking pockets. I apprehend that many of those who attend executions are of the most depraved and abandoned character. At some executions (he says), the people show approbation, at others there has been a cry of' Shame, shame!' and in one instance a cry of' Murder.'"

As instances of how they keep their spirits up, Mr. Harmer states that:—

"The punishment of death has no terror for a common thief. Their common expressions used to be, such a one is to be 'twisted,' now it is such a one is to be 'top't.' One man whom I attempted to console told me, 'Players at bowls must expect rubbers.' Another, 'That it was only a few minutes, a kick and a struggle, and it was all over.' Others I have heard state, that they should kick Jack Ketch in their last moments."

I mention these circumstances to show what little fear common thieves entertain of capital punishment, and that so far from being arrested in their wicked courses by a distant possibility of its infliction, they are not even intimidated by its certainty. But the most startling testimony is a letter written only last week by a most respectable clergyman, who has devoted his time greatly to the attendance on prisoners. I entreat hon. Gentlemen's attention to this. It is most short, and most essentially to the point. I hope its contents will be clearly stated. This gentleman says:—

"All the criminals executed whom I have either witnessed, or accompanied to the scaffold, have amounted nearly to fifty, and there was not a single malefactor but had seen the punishment of death inflicted, and some had seen it repeatedly. The only exceptions were three persons who were respited, and therefore not executed. I give this testimony from having asked each, and that singly, whether he had seen an execution. Some of these had been constant attendants at executions at the Old Bailey. Every criminal executed in Bristol, Gloucester, and Ilchester, that I have witnessed for nearly thirty years, has afforded no exception. Every one that I have attended had witnessed one punishment."

Are these your deterring, your salutary effects? No, Sir, the force of example. Here, Sir, is a practical commentary on the deterring qualities, "the salutary horrors," of a public execution. The force of example is, indeed, most powerful, but so, also, are its workings most mysterious. Good, easy gentlemen, sitting in their arm chairs, with look severe, and beard of formal cut, read the account of an execution, and dream of the alarm into which it has thrown all the thieves of the country, whereas the example has been working on their blinded and hardened spirits in a diametrically opposite direction. The sight of death inflicted has created an appetite for scenes of death. Blood calls for blood. The example of their comrade's execution has fired their passions of pride, resistance, and retaliation. I take it, this is the usual working of these examples. It is a fact well known to all who have attended to the workings of the human mind, that tales and scenes of horror have a strong tendency to re-produce themselves in the minds of those who frequently witness, or become familiarly acquainted with them. I myself remember a strong instance, now some years since, of a farmer's daughter, who, leading an irregular life, ended by drowning herself. A neighbouring girl, who was her friend, and seemed likely to pursue a similar course, was taken to the corpse, and admonished by her parents. After a few weeks, that same girl was found drowned in the same pit as her friend, clothed in a similar dress, with the same quantity of money in her pocket, and a like bunch of flowers in her dress. In the Journal des Tribunaux, of the 29th of August, 1829, there is an account of the execution of a girl (Rose Perrin) at Mantua, for the murder of her father. It naturally produced a great sensation in the country: we are told the mountaineers from around flocked to see the execution as if it was a fair, in their holyday clothes. That very night following the execution of this paricide, the daughter of a respectable family in the town, fired by the excitement, conceived, but was mercifully prevented, from executing the project also of murdering her own father. The same thing occurred after Greenacre's execution, in the case of a person, till then highly respectable, who, having secured a seat to witness it, returned home, and having attempted to hang his wife, cut his own throat. Mr. Motthey, of Geneva, in his "Nouvelles recherches sur les Maladies des Esprits," gives an account of a similar effect produced on a man, who, having seen his friend broken on the wheel, returned home and attempted the lives of his sisters. To take a more familiar instance, what is it that sends forth the adventurous traveller to the sands of Africa, or the ice of the North Pole? Is it the comforts and enjoyments that have engaged his propensities as he pores over book after book of voyages and travels? No, it is the dangers and shipwrecks, and difficulties, that captivate his ardent mind. And so, Sir, in an evil course, the hair-breadth escapes, and the agitating, bewildering prospect of a great public execution, shaking off the load of a hated life, haunt and lead on the steps of the felon. I do not for a j moment mean to argue that the reform of our executions would put an end to this distortion of mind; all that I contend for is, that it would destroy one of its predisposing causes. And if these are the effects upon the more ferocious, it may be said, that they are so hardened, nothing can reclaim them, but that the sight of an execution must check and deter the minor offenders. Why, then, did it not check those old offenders who have always witnessed them, and were once, too, juvenile offenders? Precisely because it checks neither the young nor the old, Sir, experience, both old, recent, and present, tells us that the pickpockets are seldom so busy as when an execution is going on. We have already heard Mr. Browne's evidence in 1819; let us hear what Barrington says of an earlier time. He declared,

"That no occasion was considered by pickpockets so favourable for the pursuit of their trade as executions;" adding with the experience of a practitioner, "that everybody's eyes were then on one person, and all were looking up to him."

And we must remember that, at the time this evidence was given, picking pockets, i. e. stealing from the person, was a capital offence, which might have brought any one of those persons, thus following their trade, next in succession, to the rope of that very gallows, which, forsooth, we are to consider as erected for their edification and reformation. Ask the police now, and they will tell you the same story. Indeed, in all newspaper accounts of executions, we invariably find some remarks upon the carelessness or activity with which the police have encountered the swell mob and swarms of pickpockets, without whom, indeed, an execution would scarcely be complete. And who are the other attending pupils of this great national school of moral and legal instruction? We have already named all the greater and lesser classes of felons and thieves; their companions are abandoned women, vagabonds, idlers, curiosity or excitement-hunters, chance passengers, renegade apprentices, boys, children, Jews, pedlars, and hawkers selling oranges, and bawling out the last dying speech and confession of the wretched criminal before he has well nigh breathed his last. And what is the conduct and what the conversation of this motley crew? Is it a sober, serious demeanour, such even as men wear—such as even most of those, if met on other occasions, would wear when death crosses their path, or whenever they meet a funeral in the streets? Are these expressions of charitable sorrow for crime, of the benefit of example, of respect for the law? No, no, Sir, these are all fictions, the theories of mere imagination. Those whose duty compels them to attend them know full well that it is otherwise. Mr. Browne's evidence exemplifies their respect for the law, when they execrate or applaud according to their fancies, and sometimes cry out "shame, shame," or "murder!" Mr. Cotton, the ordinary, tells us "They come as to a spectacle." Then their amusement is a hurling of cats and dead dogs at each other's heads—a crowding, shuffling, and swearing—obscene jests, and practical jokes. Some come to verify what Mr. Harmer, in his evidence, states they have declared before execution, "that after all, it is only for a few minutes; a kick and a struggle, and it is all over;" or some, more irreverent still, who come to see whether their comrade "will realise his boast;" as Mr. Harmer also deposes," that he will give Jack Ketch a kick as he swings off." But hon. Gentlemen may, perhaps, say, these are the hardened atrocities of London executions. Will they attend to a country one? Let them hear what took place at Stafford, at Anne Wycherley's execution. The Rev. Mr. Buckeridge, the chaplain to the gaol, says:—

"Nothing could exceed the moral debasement exhibited on that occasion. The country, for the space of twenty miles around, was the night previous to the execution, overrun with persons of both sexes, of the most abandoned, dishonest, debauched, and dissolute characters. Petty robberies, of all descriptions, were committed, and the beer-shops and public-houses rang with blasphemy and obscenity. Within sight of the gallows, and while the unhappy victim was actually suspended, obscene jokes, horrible imprecations, drunkenness, and fightings were forced upon the eye and ear. On a late occasion, when two boatmen, named Owen and Thomas, were executed, the same moral pestilence was spread through the country. I trust in God, sir, your efforts may be crowned with success, for certain I am that for one person rescued from a life of crime by the sight of a public execution, twenty, by the same means, become rogues and prostitutes. Should you wish for any further information, I shall, at all times, be most happy to reply to any communication with which you may favour me. I have now held the situation of chaplain for seventeen years, and, of course, have witnessed many executions, and I can only say, that I shall hail with the greatest joy the law which ends for ever such brutal and heart-hardening exhibitions."

But this was in the neighbourhood of manufactures. Will they come, therefore, into a quiet, thinly-inhabited part of the country? I will read them a letter I received only yesterday. It is dated from the gaol of Devizes, and is from the governor:—

"The execution of James Moslin took place at this prison on the 6th of September, 1838, at twelve o'clock. As early as eight o'clock in the morning, crowds of persons began to assemble in front of the prison-lodge, and, by the time appointed for the execution, 15,000 persons must have congregated together. During this time, the most disgraceful and indecent behaviour pervaded the whole multitude. This exhibition must have operated very ineffectually upon the minds of a very large number of those who witnessed it. For the after part of the day such scenes of drunkenness and debauchery have scarcely been witnessed. I may speak within compass, when I say, that not less than 2,000 persons who came into the town to witness the scene left in a state of beastly drunkenness. This number includes a very large portion of women, whose whole families accompanied them. At ten o'clock at night, and probably many hours later, every public and bye-road leading from Devizes, for many miles out, was crowded with persons in every state of intoxication. I made a minute in my private journal, on the evidence of one of the most respectable commercial gentlemen who travels the west of England, who arrived in Devizes at half-past nine at night, who stated that in the space of nine miles, he passed, according to his computation, not less than 700 persons, of both sexes; in very few of these could he detect an instance of sobriety, while on several occasions he had reason to fear for his personal safety, and at the sides of the road, and the banks, and public footpaths, scenes the most disgusting and indecent met his eye at every turn, I could enlarge upon this spectacle to a much greater extent, but this will be sufficient for your purpose, and I sincerely trust I may never be obliged to witness a similar one."

Is this a convincing specimen of the salutary horror of crime and respect for the law instilled by the exhibition of an execution in the country? One instance more and I have done, and I select a favourable one—one which the papers called "orderly and becoming,"—in order that hon. Gentlemen may see the best side of the picture. I take Courvoisier's; in the midst of London—in the midst of the season—in the midst of the nineteenth century. First we are told by the Observer, of the condemned sermon,

"Although the service was not to commence till half-past ten, the avenues to the prison were blocked up before nine by those who had been fortunate enough to obtain the privilege of admission, and among the congregation were"—here several noble Lords are named, whom I omit—"several Members of the House of Commons and a few ladies."

In plain words, persons who came to stare at the prisoner: and at such a moment! The same paper says,

"During the whole of Sunday large masses of people visited the Old Bailey;" "which," continues the Globe, "in the evening, resembled a fair, and the numbers of persons continued to increase until midnight:" and the Herald adds, "the people then assembled were of the lowest class; they talked of the execution with as much levity as they would of a cock-fight or boat race. Taverns and coffee-houses were kept open for them during the night. Some, who could get near enough, amused themselves by throwing gravel at the workmen erecting the gallows; others were singing, or horse-playing, in the hired rooms opposite; while shouting, whistling, jeering, and jostling, were going on outside with increasing vehemence as the fatal hour approached." "They thus," takes up the Observer, "remained in the open air during the whole night, in order that their curiosity might be fully gratified in the morning. The windows were all occupied by three o'clock in the morning by spectators who paid high prices for them."

And the Globe adds,

"That those windows commanding the drop presented a considerable number of well-dressed women; while, in the crowd below, there was a smaller proportion, and that of the lowest and most abandoned rank."

While this was going on without, we learn from the Observer, that

"Before seven o'clock, several noblemen and gentlemen were admitted to the prison"—I here again omit their names—"with several Members of the House of Commons, and a list"—whose names I omit—"of foreign princes and counts who wished to see the English mode of disposing of great offenders; and lastly, a great actor, for the advantage of his professional studies."

Now, Sir, amongst this throng of amateurs the prisoner receives the Holy Sacrament; and which coucluded, just as he is going to be pinioned, "Mr. Sheriff Evans drew a letter from his pocket and asked for his autograph;" while, we are told, Mr. Sheriff Wheelton "wept bitterly." The bell tolls—the procession moves on—the prisoner mounts the scaffold, and the people, we are told, "receive him with an unanimous shout of execration"—" a yell," the Globe calls it—"which went to the hearts of all around him;"and for the two minutes (the Herald says "five") that the rope was adjusting, the yelling and shouting were incessant. The other paper calls it "murmurs, shouts, shrieks." The Observer remarks "on the disgracefully indecent way in which those who had been admitted by special orders into the gaol rushed after the culprit when he left his cell to go to execution, notwithstanding the efforts of Mr. Cope and others to keep them at a proper distance, and which brought forth cries of shame. And thus with amateur lords, counts, senators, and others hurrying to a condemned sermon, to stare at a criminal.—then hustling and crowding round him while he was receiving the last offices of religion, and passing amidst the reading of his own burial service to his grave; with one sheriff weeping, and the other (with a smirk) begging for his autograph; with 14,000 people yelling at him in his agony; and ladies with opera-glasses looking on from the opposite balconies, was one of the latest, and, as these papers stated, "becoming and orderly," executions conducted. Now, Sir, thus it is; here are two undoubted pictures, originals, drawn on the spot (the one in town, the other in the country), of what hon. Gentlemen wish to continue to call conducive to the interests of morality, humanity, and justice. Will they have the goodness to specify any one possible benefit or support that can accrue to any one institution, law, or individual from assembling together of such irreverent masses of idleness, profligacy, and vice? and that, too, for the express purpose of witnessing scenes of death, whereby, and by the contagion of numbers, the force of example, and their own excited passions, it is morally certain—every one must know it is morally certain their hearts must be hardened. Who would wish that executions should be so conducted in future? But while these evils are admitted—indeed they cannot be denied—it may be replied that the plan which I propose threatens still greater mischief, namely, the bringing the last administration of justice into suspicion, by rendering it private, and therefore suspected. Now, sir, I beg to repeat, as I have already declared, that I have no intention whatever of promoting secresy; on the contrary, I seek publicity—not the publicity that panders to coarse curiosity or morbid sensibility—but real useful publicity and general attention. I seek to constitute a formal, independent, appropriate, and sufficiently-numerous assemblage of witnesses to this last sad scene of the law, whereby the public shall be secure, and be certified of its full and exact execution—those present impressed with its solemnity, and the criminal as little as possible disturbed in his last moments. Now, for this purpose, I propose that all the public officers who now superintend and are responsible for the due execution of criminals without the walls, shall be equally bound to superintend and be responsible for their execution within the walls of their respective prisons. And I require also the presence of the inspector of prisons for the district, in order that he may make a special report of the whole proceedings to the Home-office, and which report, together with others of a similar nature, shall annually be laid before Parliament. I adopt the same provisions that are now in force for securing the free access and attendance of the ministers of the faith of the criminal. I make provision for the admission of a certain number of the relations and friends of the criminal who may consent to be present at his execution in compliance with his request, made in writing and certified by the minister of his religion in attendance on him. I also provide for the admission of a like number of such of his relations within specified degrees, who may on any day preceding that of the execution signify in writing to the governor their desire to be present. I thus secure a certain class of witnesses most interested in the humane treatment of the prisoner, and whose presence and whose testimony would go far to remove that rankling suspicion and those distressing feelings of doubt which might otherwise arise. Even though few should attend, yet the bare fact of their having the right and power of attendance would produce the same effect. I provide, also, for the admission of a certain number of the public press, whose accounts, though divested of all the exciting and mischievous topics which executions now furnish, would still spread the report of the execution far and wide. I require the presence of all the convicted prisoners within the gaol at the time of the execution, and that they should pass the remainder of the day in their own separate cells, trusting that if the sight of the final catastrophe of crime can at any time soften and reform them, it will be most likely to do so when, instead of returning to the loose conversation of their ward, they shall be left to their own solitary reflections. I admit a limited number of magistrates, and, according to the greater or less space for executions within the area of the gaols, and which shall always be in the open air, and allotted by the magistrates assembled at quarter sessions. I provide for the admission, upon written application to the governor of the gaol, of a certain number of general witnesses, the inspector of prisons to countersign these orders for admission, which in this and in all other cases when the number of applications for admission shall exceed the number to be admitted, those to whom they shall be granted shall be decided. Thus much for the witnesses, which will vary from forty to fifty. And, with a view to further publicity and example, I require that a formal certificate of the due execution of the criminal, together with a specification of his offence, trial, and conviction, as well as the number of witnesses present, shall be forthwith drawn up and signed by the authorities responsible for the execution, to be by them transmitted to the Secretary of Slate for Home Affairs, for insertion in the three following gazettes. Also that a copy of the certificate shall be printed off as a handbill, and affixed within and without the walls of all the gaols within the circuit, and upon other conspicuous places in the county within which the execution shall have taken place. Also, to prepare the public mind in the neighbourhood, I require that notices, as handbills, announcing the day and hour of the execution, shall be affixed in like manner to the gaols and other conspicuous places within the circuit and county. And finally, still further to arrest attention and address the serious thoughts of all those in the immediate vicinity of the execution, I provide that all those public officers who have to superintend it, shall assemble at the town-hall, or usual place of meeting for public business, and proceed thence with their constables and police in formal procession to the jail, the bells of the several parish churches through which, or near which they shall pass, tolling meanwhile. I should add, that I prohibit all access whatever to the gaol during the time of execution, except to those persons for whose admission this bill shall specially provide. These are the principal outlines of the method of conducting executions which, under the advantage of the corrections and improvements of hon. Gentlemen, I propose as a substitute for our present mischievous exhibitions. The execution as proposed would be formal and solemn, for it would be attended by the public authorities and the ministers of religion, unexposed to the interruptions and crowdings of curiosity. It would be satisfactory and public for all the classes or interests in any way connected with it, either by affection, duty, association, or responsibility to the public, and each one independent of the other would be there to witness it, with the press and official certificate to authenticate and publish it. And finally, it would be decorous, for it would be conducted without parade and without excitement, in the presence of an assemblage of persons all under the check and within the observation of each other. This, Sir, is the substance of my bill. Hitherto I have said nothing of the wretched criminal himself, not that 1 in the least allow that his crimes, be they what they may, car in any degree preclude a most careful abstinence from everything calculated to inflict on him unnecessary anguish. But I have already tresspassed too long on the patience of the House to permit me to enter now on this branch of the subject. I will, therefore, only entreat hon. Gentlemen to ask themselves whether it be just, whether it be charitable, whether it be Christian, that a fellow-creature in those last moments, when he ought to commune with his own heart and be still, should be dragged forth pinioned and blindfold, on the very precipice of the grave, to be made a spectacle to an uproarious multitude? He may appear calm, but his calmness may be that of one steeped in agony. He may even look bold, but it may be the fictitious boldness of one quivering at every nerve. The vision of that ocean of faces that is to glare on them, of those execrations which are to attend them at their last moments, have often haunted criminals and disturbed their thoughts for nights before their execution. And all this terror is mere gratuitous torture; for it is generally unperceived, and the wretched sufferers cannot, like the transported man, return and recount all the miseries he has endured. You denounce torture, but surely here is torture lurking yet amongst your judicial proceedings, and unequal in its application, according to the caprices of a multitude. Is it fining that the last feeling, the last pang of the dying man, should be that his agonies are made a raree show for his fellow creatures to stare at? And when all is over, those fellow-creatures—the writhing ended—turn again to their gin-shops, and say, "Well, at all events, the poor fellow died game." Died game! How many half-instructed criminals, gone to their last account, have not been deterred from giving vent to a full and bitter repentance by a desire to keep up their worldly spirits for this crowning exhibition of their craft; and to do what, in their wretched slang, is called "dying game"? And how many imaginations have not been blinded to the atrocity of a crime by a natural sympathy with courage, false or real, with which its punishment has been publicly borne? These are the consequences of your system of making exhibitions of your executions. But I have trespassed too long. I have now endeavoured to point out the mischiefs of our present practice of conducting executions, and to show that a substitute for it might be found which, while retaining all the necessary qualities of publicity and example, should get rid of the demoralizing effects of making the death of a fellow-creature a spectacle for a civilized people. I move, Sir, for leave to bring in a bill for the better ordering of the execution of criminals.

seconded the motion.

said, that there was no hope of the bill which the hon. Member asked leave to introduce ever passing into a law, because he thought that there was too much good sense, both in that and in the other House of Parliament, to permit parties to be privately put to death; a proposal pregnant with greater evils he could not conceive. The argument of the hon. Member, in fact, went to the great point of abolishing the punishment of death, and in that object he (General Johnson) agreed, but when the hon. Member talked of carrying out his argument by making the execution a private exhibition—a sort of raree-show, to see which, if too many applications were made, the precedence was to be decided by chance—he must say that he never heard a proposition to which he could more object. He would therefore oppose the present motion upon principle. He would divide against the introduction of the bill; and if that motion should be carried, he should feel it his duty to oppose its progress at every stage.

was certain that every hon. Member in the House would do justice to the excellent motives of his hon. Friend the Member for Knaresborough. He, with many others, had fully arrived at the same conclusion as the hon. Member, that the public execution of criminals was a great and serious evil; but they differed from his hon. Friend as to the best mode of getting rid of them. He was one of those who were opposed to the execution of criminals, and to capital punishments altogether. Hitherto he, and those who had acted with him, had proceeded entirely in one direction; and now his hon. Friend asked them to travel in an entirely opposite direction. The hon. Member would get rid of executions, as he thought, by making them private: but his hon. Friend, who was so right in motives, was so wrong in point of principle, that he felt bound to oppose him, for by his method he would fix and make more lasting capital punishments; he was, in fact, taking away one of the greatest arguments in favour of the abolition. He would only draw the attention of the House to the simple principle, that privacy in the execution of criminals was bad his hon. Friend might be warranted by the present state of the public feeling, and in the condition in which England was found in the nineteenth century in proposing a remedy, but he was not justified upon general principles in recommending his present plan. Let him ask, too, whether the hon. Member's system might not be abused, and whether the most cruel of all executions were not those which had been private? They were bound, as legislators, to look to no palliation for the evils of the passing moment, if they adopted what was in the abstract and permanently wrong? Whence came the rack, whence the torture, whence the inquisition itself? From private punishments. All the cruelties and horrors of the most barbarous systems had been perpetrated in private. Thus, not only was principle against his hon. Friend, but all history was also against him. It was by much more extensive measures, by doing away with executions altogether, and by extending the blessings of education, that benefit would be gained; but he denied that there would be any improvement by getting together some fifty men as a kind of jury to witness the execution. Let it not be understood, however, that he would wish to do anything but the greatest justice to the motives of his hon. Friend, but he doubted the value of his conclusions. His hon. Friend however, did not prevent publicity—he had not withdrawn the presence of the press—and, in modern times, the great instrument of publicity was the press; and though the public would not view all the dying agonies of the criminals, they would read the fullest details; they might not take place coram oculos of the people, but they would be exaggerated exactly in proportion to the want of the power of correction through publicity. Then his hon. Friend wanted the relatives of the criminal to attend. He hoped they would not, at all events he would not desire to give them any encouragement, and if their presence were withdrawn, how would there be publicity? In short, the good proposed by the hon. Member was doubtful, the evils that would result from his remedy would be certain. His hon. Friend would withdraw the horrors he had so vividly described, but he must say that he had lately seen a great change in the conduct of the people in respect to these executions; there was a time when the criminal was looked upon as a hero; he was now viewed with execration, and, dreadful as it might be to think of the yells that fell upon his ears in his last moments, yet, even this was somewhat better lo having him looked up to with admiration, and received with acclamation. He trusted that if his hon. Friend did not find himself strongly supported by the House he would withdraw his present motion, and join in the endeavour to abolish capital punishments altogether.

could not let this question, which had been so ably introduced by his hon. Friend, go to a vote without giving his opinion upon the subject in as few words as possible. He must say, that he entirely concurred in the view taken by the hon. and gallant officer, who spoke immediately after his hon. Friend, that the attempt to have executions in private would be followed by great evils. The arguments which his hon. Friend had used appeared rather to make out a case for the abolition of capital punishments altogether, than to the execution of criminals in private; and his hon. Friend was somewhat unfortunate, because he found arrayed against him not only those who were in favour of continuing capital punishments, but also those who were against their further existence; he thought, therefore, that his hon. Friend would see the necessity of withdrawing his motion without pressing the House to come to a vote upon the principle on which he had displayed great ability and the arguments for which he had so admirably put before them. With respect to the details, he did not at that time mean to enter upon them, or to debate the question, further than to state simply this; that if they were to adhere to the present system of capital executions, they had only to decide whether that was to be an execution in public, or an execution in private? He might lament the depravity and the bad feelings which rendered it necessary that society should in any case turn its hand against a fellow creature; and he might lament also that when there was the solemn spectacle of the execution of the last sentence of the law, there should be such scenes of vice amongst those who came to witness the scene, and who sought to imitate the example of the criminal; but he could not alter human nature; and, he believed, that if they either did away with the punishment of death altogether, or most of all, if they superseded its publicity, more evil would flow from the alternative than was now experienced. Entertaining, therefore, that opinion, much as he might regret it, he must differ from the hon. Gentleman, and if the motion were pressed to a division, vote against it.

also suggested to the hon. Gentleman, that observing the sense of the House to be against him, he should withdraw his motion; at the same time he must say, that the House was greatly obliged to the hon. Gentleman for the strong and powerful case he had made out against public executions. He had proved that public executions were a nuisance—that they did more harm than good, and he recommended the noble Lord to weigh well those arguments, and to be prepared to answer them, or to acquiesce in the motion for the abolition of capital punishments when it should be brought forward. He was sure that the speech of the hon. Member would produce a great effect in the country.

was most unwilling to press any motion to a division against the general opinion of the House. He hoped, however, that the present discussion, if it were of any value, would make a step in the progress, and ultimately bring public opinion to maturity. As to the imputation that he sought to revive secret executions, or anything like the Inquisition, he was not liable to it; for no man would regret such a revival more than himself. And as to history being against him, he believed that in the best period of ancient history, before the approach of corruption, executions were comparatively private; it was only in the time of the abominations of Rome that the scenes in the public arena began. In the better times of Athens, also, the same system of privacy prevailed. In recent days, in the civilized state of New York, there were no executions; and in Prussia they could only take place by the order of the King. Reserving, then, to himself the full right, upon any future occasion, to move for a committee upon the subject, he begged leave to withdraw his motion.

having presented a petition, signed by 1,960 inhabitants, manufacturers, &c., of Manchester and Salford, for the free exportation of machinery, said, I rise in pursuance of the notice in your hand, Sir, to move the appointment of a select committee, for the purpose of inquiring into the operation of the existing laws affecting the exportation of machinery. The machine-makers of this country have for many years considered these laws decidedly injurious to their interests, restraining them from the full exercise of their talents and mechanical ingenuity, circumscribing the advantageous employment of their capital, and restricting the enterprise of one of the most important branches of our national industry. They have petitioned the House in great numbers—I may say almost to a man—praying that the existing laws which oppose these obstacles may be revised or repealed; and the petitions are not confined to the master machine-makers, but they have been drawn up and signed by large bodies of the operative mechanics also, who feel that they share a common interest with their employers, in every thing which concerns the prosperity and extension of that branch of trade in which they are engaged. Before I proceed to state in detail the arguments which are advanced by these parties in favour of a repeal of the laws which prevent the free exportation of machinery, it is perhaps desirable that I should recall to the recollection of the House the proceedings of its select committee appointed in the year 1824, to inquire into the then state of the law respecting the emigration of artizans, the exportation of machinery, and the effects of the combination laws. That committee, after a long and laborious examination of witnesses, reported to the House, on the 21st of May, 1824, their decided conviction of the impolicy of the laws relating to the combinations of workmen and the emigration of artizans. The House of Commons, guided by justice and sound policy, proceeded almost immediately to legislate in conformity with the recommendation of the committee. Bills were introduced by my hon. and indefatigable Friend the Member for Kilkenny, which passed this House almost without opposition, and the laws relating to artizans and combinations were consequently repealed. With reference to the question of the export of machinery, however, the committee reported at that time in favour of further inquiry in the ensuing Session of Parliament. In the Session of 1825 this committee re-assembled to "inquire into the state of the law and its consequences respecting the exportation of tools and machinery." Their report, made on the 30th of June, 1825, is the document which I hold in my hand, occupying seventeen pages of very interesting matter, the perusal of which will very amply repay any hon. Member desirous of making himself acquainted with its contents, and which, if I obtain the consent of the House to the appointment of a select committee this evening, it is my intention to move shall be supplied to each of the Members of that committee who may not be already in possession of the document. I cannot, of course, on this occasion, attempt to give anything like a full outline of the report itself, without occupying more time than the House would be willing to accord me. I will only say, that I know of no more valuable treatise upon the subject of the exportation of machinery, or which contains a record of more important matter, than this report. Prescribing to myself, what will not, I trust, be considered undue limits in bringing this question before the House, I beg leave, at all events, to read the recommendation with which that committee concluded its report, on the day to which I have already referred:—

"Although your committee are impressed with the opinion, that tools and machinery should be regulated on the same principles as other articles of manufacture, yet, inasmuch as there exist objections in the minds of many of our manufacturers on this subject, which deserve the attention of the Legislature, and as it is possible that circumstances may exist which may render a prohibition to export certain tools and machines, used in some particular manufacture, expedient, your committee beg to recommend, that until an alteration can be made in the laws on this subject, his Majesty's Privy Council should continue to exercise their discretion in permitting the exportation of all such tools and machines, now prohibited, as may appear to them not likely to be prejudicial to the trade or manufactures of the United Kingdom."

I am well aware, that on previous occasions when this subject has been brought under discussion in this House, there have been opinions expressed by parties entitled to the highest respect at the time they spoke, and which having been placed on record, are, as regards some of those individuals now no more, become matter of history; and, with the permission of the House, I beg to refer to some expressions which fell from the late Mr. Huskisson, during the period that the committee to which I have just alluded was carrying on its inquiry. In the year 1825, on the occasion of Mr. Littleton presenting a petition from Nottingham, against the repeal of the laws prohibiting the exportation of machinery, Mr. Huskisson said:—

"He had listened with great attention to the statements of his hon. Friend on a subject which was certainly of great importance, that was with regard to the exportation of machinery, for himself, he was certainly inclined to think, that such a repeal would be very advantageous; but he well knew, that a strong persuasion existed among a large body of the manufacturers, that it would be attended with the greatest injury to their interests. He had no doubt that the expected report of the committee would throw great light upon the subject; and enable it to be more distinctly seen how far the superiority of our manufactures was attributable to machinery, and how far to other causes. It ought to be recollected, that we had already permitted the free exportation of labour. Our mechanics might go whither they chose, and why the exportation of machinery should be placed on a different footing he was at a loss to conceive. He was, however, disposed, in the present state of alarm on the part of the manufacturers, on this subject, to treat the matter with as much delicacy as possible, and he was by no means disposed to propose the repeal of the existing prohibition without further enquiry. He could not help adverting to his hon. Friend's (Mr. Littleton's) observation, that he should not object to the repeal of the prohibition, provided the Board of Trade were empowered to use their discretion with respect to the articles of machinery to be exported. He felt very considerable doubt with respect to the expediency of such a course. It would throw on the Board of Trade a most invidious task, and would inundate them with applications, on the merits of many of which they would find it exceedingly difficult, if not impossible, to decide. He could also assure his hon. Friend, that as the Board of Trade was at present constituted, it had as many duties to discharge as it could well get through."

I have hitherto spoken in the language of the petitioners, when making use of the word laws, in reference to the exportation of machinery. The term law is, perhaps, scarcely correct—the fact being, that certain descriptions of machinery are prohibited export, whilst a discretionary permissive power as regards other descriptions of machinery is vested in her Majesty's Privy Council, I believe in the Board of Trade. There is something, the machine-makers contend, extremely anomalous in this state of things, and that the rules which operate as law should remain in the condition stated by Mr. Huskisson. The only direct legislative enactment which I find as having passed this House with reference to the exportation of machinery, since the year 1825., it contained in certain clauses of the Act of 3rd and 4th of Wm. 4th, cap. 52, p. 205, being an act introduced by Mr. Poulett Thomson, on the 26th August, 1833, for the general regulation of the customs, and which states in a sort of schedule a description of certain "tools and utensils," which are prohibited exportation. I think it incumbent upon me to state the actual position in which we are placed at present. Our position, then, I conceive to be legally this—our artizans are at perfect liberty to emigrate to any part of the world they may desire, carrying their talents and skill to the best market, if better than that of their native country can be found. We can export an immense variety of tools without any restriction whatever, excepting those enumerated in the clause of the Act of 1833, to which I have just referred. We may export steam-engines, and any portions of steam-engines, and mill-work of all sorts, without any restrictions, and without any necessity existing for an application to the Board of Trade; and we can export, with the permission of the Board of Trade, all those elementary parts of the machinery—if I may be allowed such an expression, which is not perhaps a mechanical one, by which I mean all those preparatory parts of machinery—employed in the early processes of manufacture, or the "preparation" as it is called, in the spinning and throwing of the four great staple articles, cotton, silk, flax, and wool. The hon. Member proceeded as follows: In order to show what a vast accession of demand there has been lately for those articles, and to what extent the exportation of machinery destined for these branches of trade has been carried on, I think it right to refer to a return moved for in the last Session of Parliament (6th of May, 1840), by the hon. Member for Belfast, whom I am glad to see opposite to me at this moment. There is in that return a statement well worthy the consideration of the House. It shows, that in the year 1831 the total amount of machinery exported to all parts of the world was 60,028l., official value, whilst in the year 1840 the amount had increased to 387,096l In this return, however, I should observe, in order to prevent any confusion, that in the statement of export to Europe there is included all machinery shipped to Malta, the Ionian Islands, the Isle of Man, and the Channel Islands of Guernsey, Jersey, and Alderney, which although very small in amount, I strike out as being British possessions, as I wish to be quite correct, and the actual return as regards Europe will then stand thus:—

Machinery exported to Europe in 1831	£19,255
Machinery exported to Europe in 1840	253,177
In 1831 the value of machinery exported to North and South America, exclusive of British possessions, was	7,690
In 1840 it had increased to	54,000

I will now return to the object of my motion, viz., the very natural desire of the machine-makers of England to be permitted to export those articles which are at present prohibited, and here let me say that I wish to be understood, in moving for the appointment of a Select Committee, as being myself anxious for inquiry, and not, as at the present moment, entertaining a decided conviction of the propriety, in a national point of view, of removing all restrictions whatever from the supply of English machinery to foreign nations. I will frankly confess that I have, heretofore, participated very much in the feelings of English manufacturers, that it was undesirable to hasten, or actively promote, the successful manufacturing rivalry of foreign competitors, by supplying the continent with English machinery of the best description, without any restriction whatever, because I have felt with them that they are placed in a disadvantageous position as regards the cheaper labour of the continent under those impolitic laws which regulate the importation of food, and which has induced the belief that it may be dangerous and inexpedient to place within the reach of foreign competitors those mechanical contrivances of which the English manufacturer has possession. Should any one ask why I am anxious to promote an inquiry at the pre- sent moment, I answer in perfect sincerity, that I think the machine-makers, who have approached the House through so unworthy a medium as myself, are on every principle of policy and justice entitled to be heard, when complaining of the restrictions at present imposed upon them; they are men eminently distinguished for their talents, and the opinions of men of talent and integrity should always command our attention and respect. There is no Member of this House to whose constituents this question is of so much importance as to those whom I have the honour to represent; for on the one side I believe I number a larger body of machine-makers amongst my constituents than are to be found in any other borough in the kingdom; and there can be no doubt on the other, that Manchester, as the great centre of the cotton trade, is most deeply interested in sound practical legislation upon any question which affects those who are the great owners of machinery, and in no other place is so much property invested in machinery. I am anxious to approach the consideration of this subject without bias. It is now fifteen years since the machine makers of this country have had any opportunity of parliamentary inquiry afforded them; and fifteen years of commercial and manufacturing existence in this country present, perhaps, as many aspects of change as whole centuries in former times; in that interval none but those who are conversant with the fact can by possibility be aware of the vast improvements which have taken place in the machinery and tools of this country, nor of the rapid strides which have been taken in mechanical skill and enterprise. If I wanted an illustration, suffice it to say, that, since the sitting of the committee in 1825, almost every railway in the kingdom has been constructed, and the locomotive principle has been successfully developed. I denominate this a mechanical era in itself, which will always be looked back upon as one of the most extraordinary in the history of this country; and whilst we have been making such progress ourselves, we must recollect that our inventions and improvements have been likewise secured by our continental rivals. As regards the arguments of the machine-makers, relative to the restrictions upon the exportation of machinery, they contend, and with great force as it appears to me, that at the present moment the law being such, or the regulations such as I have described, they are placed in a very anomalous position. If ama- chine-maker in England discovers some new mechanical combination or invents a new machine our laws place him in a most embarrassing position, for it must be recollected, that he has as full a right to secure a protection for his invention upon the continent as in this country, and in the event of his patent attaching to a machine which is prohibited exportation from this country, what are the consequences? Naturally seeking to derive the full advantages of his own ingenuity, he is obliged either to establish a manufactory on the continent, which must always expose him to great injury if he is not continually there upon the spot to superintend it either himself or through a partner, or he must throw himself into the hands of foreigners, and thus derive only a portion of that return which he would do if his invention remained entirely in his own hands He has to supply the foreign agent or purchaser of his patent with all the knowledge requisite for the construction of the machine—he furnishes him with drawings, and in all probability must accompany his specifications with a model machine, which being made in this country, can only be sent to the continent in a surreptitious manner. Thus, instead of calling into activity the works connected with our mines of coal and tin, and the labour and industry of a large body of our industrious English artizans, he is compelled under our present system to call all those advantages into operation on the part of the foreigner. This is independent likewise of the loss of employment at home, which I have just stated. Moreover, there cannot be any more satisfactory or profitable result to himself from parting with the possession of his patent, and Selling his right to other parties abroad, for, by so doing, he receives, in all probability, a mere percentage of the advantage he would derive, if he was permitted to keep the whole under his own guidance and control at home. I have stated, that by the existing regulations all the preparatory machinery for the spinning of cotton, flax, silk, and wool, is allowed to be exported, under a licence of transit from the Board of Trade, and the machine-makers contend, that when those parts of the machinery, used in these four great staple commodities are once sent abroad, it is clear, that they are intended, in their ultimate place of destination, to be brought into immediate co-operation with those other portions of the machinery which are required for the production of the finished article. There are only two ways by which the finished machinery, employed in these latter operations of spinning, can be supplied. If from England, it is a smuggling trade if it is supplied by foreigners, then there is the loss of that which would ha extremely valuable in putting into operation British skill, capital, and industry. In regard to this part of the subject, I will quote the words of the machine-makers themselves who state the position in which they are placed by the restrictions imposed upon the exportation of the articles of their manufacture. In a pamphlet which I hold in my hand just published by the committee of machine-makers, and addressed to the President of the Board of Trade, they say that

"The obvious evil arising from the present law has been, to encourage the exportation of machinery by all the illegal and deceptive measures which the chicanery and cupidity of man can devise. It is a monstrous fact that all our machinery is diffused over other countries almost as readily as over our own, and that every improvement is transferred as soon as it is discovered, either by the aid of the smuggler or the draftsman. Bulky machinery is regularly smuggled out at a premium of 40 to 50 per cent., and small machinery at a premium of 10 to 25 per cent. The average premium for smuggling out the whole of the machinery for a cotton mill is 25 per cent."

It is a fact well known at the Board of Trade that articles are constantly shipped under a false description. There is one instance which has lately come to my knowledge, which I am betraying no confidence in mentioning, of an individual having actually exported a quantity of what are termed "Spiral Cutters," a part I believe of the machinery which, since the application of power to the manufacture of woollen cloths, is used to shear or reduce the surface or nap to the smooth appearance which those conversant with fine woollen cloths know how to appreciate. It is, in fact, a sort of endless screw, but acting as a knife, and called a "Spiral Cutter." An individual, I wish to state, actually exported five hundred of these articles, and boasted without any disguise of his having so done under the denomination of "Chaff Cutters." Another individual applied not long since to the Board of Trade for a licence to permit the exportation of certain machinery; he was told it could not be granted, that it was a machine coming strictly within the line of prohibition, and that no licence could consequently be issued. What said this individual in reply? His answer was, that it was a matter of perfect indifference to him whether the licence was granted or not, although he might in consideration for his own character and feelings, desire not to have the imputation cast upon him of sending out the machine surreptitiously. The order had been given him for this machine; it had been faithfully executed by him; and he should subject the party for whom it was made to great inconvenience if it was not immediately shipped. It was wanted immediately, and go it must to the continent; and whether the licence was granted or withheld, it would certainly be sent out of the country in less than twenty-four hours from the moment that he was then in conversation with the gentleman connected with the licence-department at the Board of Trade. The machine-makers state, that there has been a great improvement in that branch of the trade which comprises the manufacture of tools; and perhaps there is nothing in mechanical invention more interesting to look at and examine than the operations of what are apparently machines, but which are bonâ fide tools. There have been combined in the space of one single machine the operations of a vast number of tools, and these are exported under the general term of "tools," without any reduction whatever. The foreigner is thus enabled to compete with the English machine-maker in a manner little contemplated by either party a very few years since. A vast amount of manual labour it is evident is thus saved, for it should be borne in mind that whenever we meet with manual labour in a high degree of perfection, a long previous apprenticeship must have been gone through by the artizan. All this is, however, passed over. All this time is gained in the training of mechanics by the introduction of these inventions. The quantity of tools, I understand from the authority of a most respectable machine-maker, exported the last few years, has been equal in each year to nearly the same quantity as would be required for regular use in eight or ten of the largest machine-making establishments to be met with in any part of this country. It is quite clear, therefore, that our foreign competitors are now in possession of means far more extensive than has ever been the case before for the manufacture of similar machines to those produced by the machine-makers of this country; and, it is a striking fact, that at the present moment the English machine-makers declare their inability any longer, with ad- vantage, to export many parts of machines, because such is the improvement which has taken place in their construction abroad, and such is the expense of the arrangements necessarily connected with the smuggling of articles, that the machine-makers upon the continent are now able to make machinery for the cotton or other manufactures of their own countries, and supply them on cheaper terms than by purchasing them from England through the present round-about mode. Whether this state of things is likely to undergo any change or not, I will not take upon myself to predict. As regards steam-engines, however, I read a few days ago, in one of the French journals, that, at a recent sitting of the Chamber of Deputies, an application was made to the Chamber to abolish the 30 per cent. tax upon British machinery, allowing a drawback of 32 per cent. upon that manufactured in France. The motion was opposed by M. Powells, himself a manufacturer of steam-engines, who wanted a large drawback, I think of 30 per cent., but his proposition was rejected. Now, when I first read the paragraph, the term machinery led me to think that the French Chamber had been seized with a sudden fit of free trade principles; but such is not the case—the matter under discussion, as I understand it, referred only to the duty payable upon the importation of steam-engines into France, which duty is 50 per cent., whilst the general duty upon machinery imported into France, is, I believe, 15 per cent., and the same duty of 15 per cent., is paid on the importation of machinery into France, across the Belgian frontier. The House must remember, that since the committee sat in 1825, the position of this country is greatly altered. Large machine manufacturing establishments have sprung up in France, in Belgium, in Switzerland, Saxony, Prussia, and Russia; and, if we go across the Atlantic, the United States exhibit a striking example of mechanical rivalry, and inventive genius. From that country have been derived some of the most important improvements in the machinery adapted for cotton spinning, patents for which have been taken out in England, and likewise upon the continent, and have then brought into active operation, and at the same time into active competition, many thousands of spindles, against those employed in the same manufacture in this country. These are some of the leading facts which the machine-makers have laid before me, and which I regret that I should so imperfectly have, myself, endeavoured to bring under the consideration of the House, facts, which exhibit, I admit, with considerable force, the inconsistencies with which the machine-makers are surrounded. I have already stated, that heretofore my opinions had been on the side of the manufacturers of this country, not hastily to throw away the advantages they possessed. They have, up to this time, I believe, rather retained an opinion in favour of restricting the exportation of machinery, if that restriction could be bonâ fide maintained; but I think the statements of the machine-makers are well worthy the consideration of the manufacturers as well as of this House. I will not take upon myself to say what change of opinion may have taken place in the minds of the manufacturers since the last Parliamentary inquiry, but before I sit down, perhaps the House will allow me to say, that should it grant this Committee of Inquiry, it will undoubtedly become part of the duty of that committee to consider well the objections urged by the manufacturers before the committees of 1824 and 1825, and to investigate and fully inquire into the claims of the two parties. The manufacturers formerly opposed the exportation of tools on the ground, that they apprehended a foreign demand for them, would greatly enhance the price at home. We have lived, however, I think to see, that this exportation has proved altogether fallacious, and keeping this fact in view, it may not be an unfair assumption, at all events, it is matter for consideration, whether the ultimate result of the exportation of machinery may not correspond with the result I have named in connexion with tools. I will here state some of the arguments which were put forward by the manufacturers in 1824. It was stated, on their behalf, before the committee, as the general opinion of commercial bodies, that a repeal of the laws, prohibiting the exportation of machinery, would be injurious to their interest, especially as regarded the cotton trade. They expected that a great demand for cotton machinery would immediately arise for exportation, and that the cost of similar machinery would be thereby enhanced to their detriment. I must, in candour, however, draw the attention of the House to the period when the objection was made: it was in the year 1824 and 1825; and, as every hon. Member will remember, that was a period when the currency was in a very extraordinary and inflated state—when every article of manufacture had risen greatly in price—when, as stated by the manufacturers, and repeated in Parliament by Mr. Huskisson, a fact of which there is no doubt, that new mills were built standing in want of machinery to fill them, the demand being equal to the average supply of eighteen months. What I would say, therefore, with reference to the objection on the part of the manufacturers is this. On looking at a question of this kind, do not limit your opinions to the result of a particular year, when such extraordinary circumstances may, as in the instance named, attach themselves to it, but look rather and examine whether the accuracy of your opinion will not be more fairly tested by the result of an average of years. I know that the manufacturers have laid considerable stress upon this argument, namely, that in former times, Scotland, when cotton-spinning was first established there, had derived the whole of her machinery from the Manchester and Lancashire workshops, but that very soon the Scotch became such good and expert machine-makers that they supplied themselves. From this fact, therefore, they drew the inference, that as Scotland, after possessing herself of models, had been able to supply her own rapidly increasing' wants without again resorting to the Lancashire districts, the same results would follow on the continent if the restrictions on the exportation of machinery were removed. I do not mean to say that their fears are by any means groundless. But I think this committee, for which I now move, will enable all parties to state their views more fully and more correctly probably than was the case in 1824 and 1825; for both parties have gained great experience since that time, and the relative condition and position of the continent and this country has undergone so great a change in that interval, that I conceive it to be a matter no less desirable for the manufacturer that the inquiry should be gone into, than it is for those who have petitioned the House in such strong terms, pointing out the inconsistencies resulting from the existing state of the law. This important investigation will take place, if the House will permit a committee of Inquiry to be appointed upon this subject; and I will now conclude by moving, in the words of the notice which I have given, for permission to appoint a select committee for the purpose of inquiring into the existing laws which affect the exportation of machinery.

said, that although he was by no means decided as to many of the points which had been made by his hon. Friend who had just sat down, yet he thought that the inquiry which he sought was one of the highest importance; and he had great pleasure in seconding his motion. Me would do so, because he believed it to be precisely one of those questions of difficulty, in which the assistance of a committee was essentially required, in order to discover the safe course to be pusued. The subject of inquiry was one beset with doubt and difficulty, one point only being absolutely certain, namely, that the administration of the existing law had utterly failed in realising its own object. The machinery which we wished to retain had neither been kept in the country, nor had our rivals on the continent been excluded, as we had hoped, from attaining the power and skill for producing it for themselves. The law, in fact, had become utterly inoperative, and the Legislature must speedily decide whether they would abandon the principle of prohibition altogether, or so amend and alter the law as to enable them to do that which they were now unable to do—to enforce it. The result of this inquiry must lead to one or other of these consequences, for it was quite clear the matter could not longer remain as it was; the prohibition under its present regulation, being a mere legislative delusion, so far as regarded any effectual protection to our own manufacturers, and a powerful incentive to machine-making on the continent, without being any advantage to our own machine-makers at home. He could not look back to the legislation upon this subject in 1824 and 1825, without believing it to have been either imperfect or mistaken. Indeed Mr. Huskisson himself seemed to feel its imperfection, and admitted the necessity of doing something more to simplify and strengthen the law upon the subject; but, in 1826, he justified himself to the House for declining to take any further steps then, on the ground of the alarm which might be created in the then depressed state of every branch of trade and manufacture were the question to be again mooted. That temporary impediment had long sine passed away, but, notwithstanding, no steps had ever since been taken to remedy the inconvenience admitted by Mr. Huskisson. Mr. Huskisson himself predicted, in 1824, that the alteration of the law which legalized the emigration of skilled artisans would one day or other lead to the further concession of the export of machinery, which it would then become more difficult than ever to prevent. But with all admiration and respect for the genius and acquirements of that statesman in every thing pertaining to the finance and commerce of this country, he must say, that the necessity for further legislation, which had at length arrived, when this subject had been mainly caused by the crude and clumsy arrangements which were made by Mr. Huskisson himself, for the administration of the law in 1826. A discretionary power was vested in the Board of Trade to permit the free export of certain machinery, whilst others were to remain under prohibition, and for the guidance of that discretion Mr. Huskisson, who was then at the head of the Board of Trade, stated in the House of Commons, that he had laid down the following principle, the wisdom of which it was difficult to discern:—

"That when machinery was of great bulk, and contained a great quantity of raw material, then no objection should be made to exportation, as he considered that no injury could be done to the country by it. But where the machinery was of modern improvement, and depended mainly upon the ingenuity and excellence of the mechanism, and where the raw material used was trifling, he felt that he owed it to the manufacturer to restrain as far as he could, the exportation of such machinery."

Thus the Board of Trade, with, of course, but an imperfect knowledge of the construction of machinery, were to dispense with all considerations of rarity, ingenuity, and performance, and to look mainly to weight of metal; and he had understood, that the standard practically taken was to allow such machinery to pass as was driven by a screw of one inch-and-a-half in diameter. The most ingenious pieces of mechanism thus found their way through the Custom-house, if they were only heavy enough; and amongst other formidable errors which were committed in accordance with this theory, was the unlimited export of tools. Hon. Members were not probably aware of the vast importance which attached to this latter permission; and when they hear that machinery is prohibited, but that "tools" may be exported freely, they naturally conclude, that it is only files and hammers, and such implements, that are meant by that phrase. But the im- portance of the concession would be perceived when it came to be known that, under the name of "tools," the most complex and wonderful machines were permitted to be exported, because they were to be used for the production of other machinery, and not of any articles of commerce. These tools are in fact machines—not only so, but they are the most valuable of all machinery, because they not only produce it, but confer upon it its precision, its finish, and its excellence. Some of these tools are of enormous size; planing machines of twenty to thirty feet in length, drills of corresponding dimensions, and lathes that grasp a beam of iron, that it would have taken weeks to polish by hand labour, and turn it out in a few hours as smooth and as delicately finished as an ivory toy. Operations, in short, which were once achieved, after long labour with the file and the hammer, in the hand of the workman, and liable to all his inaccuracies and defects, are now performed by tools that act like automatons, combining, with gigantic power, a precision that is faultless, and an ingenuity that approaches to instinct. Can anything be more inconsistent in legislation than to permit the unrestricted export of tools such as these, which are in fact pregnant with machinery itself, and in the same breath to say to continental machine-makers, "These you may have, but we cannot permit you to import our machines." Is it any thing more or less than saying, you shall have the tree with pleasure, but we cannot think of sending you the fruit? Now, to give an example of the operation of this permission, he would just mention the case of one machine, which for the purposes of exportation might be classed under the head of a "tool." One of the most important articles in the preparation of cotton yarn, and indeed yarns of all kinds, was the card by which the fibres were spread and arranged preparatory to twisting, and which was a kind of brush formed of bent wires, stuck through leather. The making of these cards was formerly a matter of infinite labour and minuteness, each piece of wire being bent by the fingers, and placed one by one in holes previously pierced, which was likewise done by hand, in the leather; a very small quantity, in fact, could be made in a day. Now, the entire of this operation is performed by a single tool, called Dyer's card-making machine, so independent, that one boy can attend two or three of them, and (if he might use the phrase) so intelligent, that it requires only to be supplied with a strip of leather, and a coil of wire, and in a few minutes it produces of itself the given quantity required of the finished material for clothing the carding frame. It lays hold of the wire, cuts it in pieces of equal length, bends each piece twice at a right angle, pierces the holes in the leather to admit its two points, thrusts it through and bends it on the other side, repeating each one of these five or six operations three hundred times in a minute, till it completes a little web of this complex and intricate texture, almost entirely without any human assistance. Now, he had been informed, that in legal construction this wonderful machine is a "tool" for making cards; as such, could be exported, if required; and the only obstacle which he saw to it, would arise on the question, whether it was driven by a screw of the requisite diameter. Such is the anomalous condition of the law at present it prohibited the export only of light machines, all preparatory machinery was permitted to be exported liberally; finishing machines alone were restricted; tools might go, artisans might go, and we had recently permitted the export of fuel. Now, look to the results of this legislation. There is not a country of Europe, that is not rapidly advancing in the manufacture of machinery for itself. Model machines are smuggled constantly out of England to each and to all of them. They have, then, our artizans, our tools, our iron, if necessary, and even our coals; and whilst they are envious of our manufacturing superiority, they are making rapid advances in constructing machinery for themselves wherewith to rival us in our productions. France, Switzerland, Belgium, Prussia, Saxony, Austria, and Russia, have each their factories of machinery, and have each made vast progress in its production. The smuggling of machinery from this country goes on as a regular trade. In a committee, of which he was chairman, last year, one witness stated, it to be his profession to smuggle it, and detailed the terms on which it was done. At Berlin, last year, he had been shown spacious rooms in the Gewerbe Institute, containing models or originals of every complex machine in use in England for the spinning of silk, wool, flax, or cotton, and was assured that they had all the newest improvements immediately on their appearance in Great Britain; nay, further, that they had some machinery superior to any in England, inasmuch as they could combine two or more English patents in one construction, a practice which the law rendered impossible in this country. He (Mr. E. Tennent) had found in all their workshops, English tools and English mechanics; and already, so far were they advanced, that they were beginning to dispense with the services of the latter, and to make the former for themselves, and the machinery produced by their own tools, and their native artisans, though inferior in finish and in precision to that obtained from England, was still eagerly sought after as a substitute for it, whilst they confidently hoped to shortly equal us in the manufacture itself. Now, these statements, he submitted, all tended to raise a serious question as to the prudence of the principle of prohibition, as it was abundantly clear, that the refusal of England to permit the exportation had given an impulse to the manufacturers abroad, which, but for it, might never have been communicated—it was mainly this prohibition that had spurred them on to cope with us, whilst our own lax administration of the law, by permitting the export of the most rare and costly tools, had equipped them for the contest. But this was only one side of the question. He had already stated the case to be surrounded with difficulties and doubts requiring the investigation of a committee. The inquiry did not end here—it was not sufficient to ascertain what had been the consequence of the prohibition. It was necessary likewise to inquire what might be the results of removing it now upon our manufactures at home, and upon their competitors abroad. The manifest superiority which our manufacturers still possess in the use of our own machinery is abundantly attested by the anxiety of their continental rivals to obtain it, even at a premium of from 50 to 75 per cent. upon the first cost in this country. If it did not produce better and more plentifully, it could never warrant such an outlay. Again, not only is their own home-made machinery inferior to ours in every respect, but the cost is considerably higher. For example, a mill for spinning linen yarn has recently been erected at Ghent, the buildings of which could cover 15,000 spindles, but 10,000 only have been erected, at a cost of 80,000l.; that is, about 8l. per spindle, the cost at Ghent; and better machinery could be erected in Belfast for from 4l. 10s. to 5l. a spindle, and in England for even less. An alteration of the law, therefore, which would give to the Belgian spinner the superior machinery of England, at a diminished cost, would be a manifest advantage acquired by him in his competition with the English spinner. Again, it is very true, that the machine makers of Belgium, France, and Prussia, are making rapid advances in their rivalry with those of Great Britain, but it must not be overlooked that they are mainly indebted to Great Britain herself for the very means of doing so—for the tools with which they work; and though they are beginning in some places to make these for themselves, they candidly admit, that they do so at a greater cost, and for an inferior article, to that which they could obtain from Sharp, Roberts, and Co., of Manchester. They have their own iron, but it costs more, and is less valuable than ours; they have coals, too, but they are twice the price; and they have skilled artisans, but at higher wages. In fact, so obvious is their inferiority in all these particulars, that a manufactory of machinery lately commenced at Hamburgh, had, when he visited it in October last, an English director, English workmen, English tools, English models, English iron, and even English coals, all procured at an immensely increased expence above that for which they could all have been had native. The manufacturers, therefore, buy machinery smuggled from England at 75 per cent., premium; or those who purchase machinery made by Englishmen on the continent, at greatly in creased prices, clearly admit their inability, without it, to cope with the manufacturers of England; and to give them, therefore, its unrestricted use, and un prohibited importation, even supposing the certainty, that their own machinery in time will equal ours, is to surrender in the mean time the temporary advantage which we possess, and to yield to the foreigner that start which our own producers have for the moment got of him in the market. Mr. Huskisson, in 1826, would have proceeded to deal further with this law, were it not for the alarm of the British manufacturers; that alarm, he believed, was not now so strong as it had been some years ago. They either felt, that the success of their competition with the continent, depended upon other elements than the mere excellence of machinery, or else they had become indifferent in some degree, from perceiving that their rivals had already got possession of the greater portion of that machinery, and were likely to obtain the whole; but certainly, in the year 1839 and 1840, when it was proposed by France to impose an import duty upon linen yarns, and that impost, it was conceived, might be averted by repealing our prohibition upon the export of machinery, the linen yarn spinners of the whole kingdom, had signified to the Board of Trade their acquiescence in the proposal. How far other branches of manufacture might be similarly affected towards it, would be for the inquiry of the committee; and he hoped, that their sentiments and opinions would certainly form a main feature in the inquiry, and that the question would not be prejudged upon any partial information as to what was doing in Belgium, or in France, or in Prussia, or in any one section of Europe; but what might be expected generally from every quarter of the globe, which possessed manufactures, or affected to compete with England. Till the House was in possession of that information, any hasty decision upon the matter would be ex parte and premature. Of one thing he felt already perfectly assured, that the law could not remain as it was, and whichever principle ultimately prevailed, whether that of prohibition or free export, the law must be altered in order to enforce it. If the prohibition were to be continued, it was idle to think of maintaining it under the present system, which afforded scarcely the shadow of an impediment to smuggling and contraband trade. The law must not only be simplified, but the articles to which it applied defined, and no longer left to the guesses of a custom-house officer, or the embarrassing discretion of the Board of Trade. Again, if the prohibition were to continue, it was madness to permit the export of the tools, as at present, which was no more than taking the trade out of our own hands to place it in those of our competitors. The House must be prepared either to permit the export of everything in the shape of machinery, or to recall the licence which has already been given for the export of that part; and he did not hesitate to say, that he thought the latter course impracticable, without exciting great exasperation on the continent against English manufactures. If the entire trade were legalized, it would secure its profits to our own manufacturers of machinery, instead of operating as a premium to their continental rivals. But he could only repeat, that the whole question was so vitally important, and yet so complicated, owing to the existing imperfections of the law, that fresh legislation was inevitable, and a committee of inquiry indispensable, in order previously to decide upon the most safe and prudent course to be adopted. He would support the motion of his hon. Friend.

had great pleasure, on behalf of the Board of Trade, in acceding to the motion. He had also very great pleasure in finding that the subject was in the hands of gentlemen of such experience, and who so thoroughly understood it.

defended the policy of Mr. Huskisson, as regarded the repeal of the combination laws, and allowing mechanics to go abroad. Mr. Huskisson, though anxious to see the laws repealed which related to the exportation of machinery, had felt himself obliged to recommend that the laws should not be repealed, in consequence of the opposition of the manufacturers of machinery in this country. Had those laws been repealed, the manufacturers of machinery in this country would have been in possession of the whole continental trade for tools as well as machinery—the most lucrative trade, perhaps, in the world. Everything that had since occurred on the subject had proved the correctness of the views of Mr. Huskisson, who was deterred from advising repeal, not from any unwillingness, but from a knowledge of the extent of the prejudice of the manufacturers, with which he had to deal. He had always been convinced that the manufacturers would ultimately see their interest, and now the time was come. If the restrictions were taken off, our manufacturers would supply the greater part of the world with machinery. He hoped that the hon. Gentleman (Mr. M. Philips), who would no doubt be chairman of the committee, would endeavour so to expedite the report as that a bill could pass the House this Session.

entirely concurred in the object of the motion, because, although his own mind was made up as to the necessity of repealing these laws, he thought that inquiry was necessary to remove any prejudice existing in the public mind. He thought that there should be no medium between an entire prohibition and free exportation.

thought that the removal of these restrictions had now become matter of necessity, and that it would be highly advantageous to the manufacturers. It was admitted on all hands that in several foreign countries there was an alarming rivalry with many of our most important manufactures. The inquiry, therefore, should not be confined to the present state of the question, but also extend to the causes which produced this rivalry. He hoped that the House would be induced to admit the justice of the present claim, and that they would be induced to allow that what so deeply affected the commerce and manufactures of this country, also affected the very foundation of the prosperity of the country. The laws to permit the importation of machinery were, at the present time, totally inoperative. As a proof of this, he would state, that there was a company at Cambray which undertook to supply any machinery from this country, to be delivered on the Continent, at an additional charge of 25 per cent.

wished to impress upon the attention of the House the gross inconsistency of the present state of the law, for while it admitted the exportation of models of machinery of all kinds, and the materials for machinery, the manufactured article was prohibited: was it, then, not an absurdity to continue the present system? He rejoiced that the question had met with such a favourable reception in the House, and he trusted that ere long they should attain a satisfactory result.

should not have the slightest hesitation in assenting to the motion, if he was satisfied that the foreign manufacturers would, as was stated, be induced to take all our old machinery, and leave the improved machinery to the home market. He did not believe that that ever could be the case. They, at the present time, paid 25 per cent. more for their machinery than the manufacturers of this country. Would it, then, be an advantage to our producers to remove the restrictions, and give this premium to foreign manufacturers? The question, in point of fact, was, whether they should allow the exportation of machinery to an amount equivavalent to the sum annually expended in the employment of it, and in the profits derived from its use. For instance, suppose in a cotton-mill the machinery cost 60,000l., the expenditure in the shape of wages, together with the profits, might be taken at about the same sum. He feared, that if at present they allowed the free and unrestricted exportation of machinery, they would give a key to foreigners of several most important branches of manufactures which were not carried on on the continent. He hoped that the committee would be impartially selected, and not composed only of those who took a one-sided view of the subject, but that it should be open to free inquiry. His own predisposition was in favour of free trade, and if it were not for the corn-laws and the national debt, he should not object to the removal of every restriction.

as a manufacturer and merchant, was anxious to state his opinion, which he should do as shortly as possible. He was for the entire removal of all restraint on the exportation of machinery. He did not, however, altogether agree with the hon. Mover and Seconder of the motion, as he thought that the appointment of a committee was altogether uncalled for, and would only be attended with a waste of time, and an unnecessary expenditure. He would venture to assert, that there was not a tool or machine made in this country which could not readily be exported, in spite of all the exertions of the Government to prevent it. The impediments at present thrown in the way of this exportation were nothing more nor less than a bonus to the manufacture of foreign machinery, and therefore so far injurious to the manufacturers of machinery in this country. He thought that the better course would have been, for the hon. Member for Manchester to have at once asked for leave to bring in a bill to allow the free exportation of machinery.

was satisfied that the prohibiting the exportation of machinery was only driving the foreigner to manufacture his own machines. It would have been of the greatest advantage to this country if a measure for the removal of this restriction had been passed when it was proposed in 1824. It was the opinion of all the authorities of the Board of Customs, that it was impossible to prevent the exportation of machinery, and that the laws that existed on the subject only operated as an impediment, and tended to enhance the price to the foreigner. The amount, then, of this difference of price operated as a premium to the manufacturer of machinery on the continent. Until 1750 there were no restrictions on the exportation of tools or machinery, and no evil was found to have arisen from the then state of things. When the subject was before the House in 1824, Mr. Huskisson observed, that as long as they allowed artisans to go out of the country, it was of no use to endeavour to prevent the exportation of machinery.

thought that great injury bad been inflicted upon our manufactures by not agreeing to the measure on this subject introduced in 1824. The effect had been to deprive us of some most important branches of trade, and above all, of the manufacture of machinery for the world. In consequence of the natural and peculiar advantages which existed in this country, this latter was a species of manufacture of which no country could deprive us. If they had allowed the exportation of machinery when it was formerly proposed, at the present time it would be one of the most important articles of our exports. The result of not doing so had been, that the restriction had operated as a bounty to the foreign manufacturer of machinery, until he was able to compete with us. A few years ago he knew that there was an extensive smuggling of machinery into France, but he doubted very much whether this was the case now. He would suggest to his hon. Friend to extend his motion into an inquiry into the extent and nature of the duties on machinery imported into foreign countries. He also thought that it was a question for consideration, whether they should not impose a moderate tax on the exportation of machinery. If this had been done a few years ago, he had no doubt but that it would have proved highly beneficial to the revenue. He was rejoiced to find that there was no objection to the motion, and he trusted that the inquiry would be of an ample nature.

did not agree in the propriety of the suggestion just made by his hon. Friend, as to the levying a tax on the exportation of machinery, as the tax would only operate as a bonus to the smuggler, or a premium to the foreign manufacturer of machinery. It would prove highly injurious to have any impediment in the way of exportation.

rose to call the attention of the House to the sailing of the proposed expedition from this country to the river Niger. He did not mean to enter into details respecting the policy or expediency, nor would he question the principle upon which the undertaking was founded. His chief desire, at present, was, to direct the attention of the House to the late, and, in his opinion, ill-selected and dangerous period at which the expedition was announced to sail from this country, on its perilous enterprise. Were he even much more competent to go into the details of this measure than he felt himself to be, he should still consider it unnecessary to trouble hon. Members on those points, as they all came under discussion last Session, when the expedition was sanctioned by a vote of the House. He was also unwilling to disturb the impression that seemed to have been made in the public mind on this subject, since the occurrence of that most numerous, respectable, and influential meeting in London, which gave rise to the present proceeding, and at which an illustrious prince presided. While he could not help considering that very great difficulties were likely to interfere with the execution of the design of the expedition, he was ready to give the greatest credit to the motives of the promoters of it, knowing that their object was the abolition of the slave-trade in Africa, by the planting of colonies and the gradual extension of commercial, agricultural, and other peaceful and humanizing pursuits throughout that great continent. It would appear that from some of those causes that seemed incidental to undertakings of this sort, the expedition was now delayed. Perhaps the cause of the delay was inevitable; but he was given to understand that the starting of the expedition had now been postponed until the remote period of the 1st of April next. Looking at the length of the passage before the vessels could arrive at Sierra Leone, which was the first place they could touch at; seeing also that one of the three vessels composing the little squadron must be towed out by some other ship, it was probable that the expedition would not arrive at that settlement before the middle, or perhaps the end of May next. The vessels would then have to employ some of the natives called Kroomen, and some farther time would no doubt be spent in procuring them, probably not less than ten days or a fortnight. A much later period would have arrived before the expedition could enter upon the recognised objects of its mission. They would reach the coasts of Africa some time in the month of June, at the height of the rainy season, which began in the middle of April and continued until the middle of October, and that period of the rainy season at which he calculated the expedition would arrive, was the most unhealthy of the whole six months. He was told the other night, in answer to a question by the noble Lord the Secretary for the Colonies, that it was necessary the expedition should go out during the rainy season, when the Niger would be found in a state of flood, and then the vessels would be admitted, or would, at least, proceed up the stream with greater facilities. That might be very true, as stated by the noble Lord, but it appeared to him that they were yet placed in much difficulty, through the want of some certain data as to the state of the river. If it could be shown that vessels commencing operations could, by following a certain indicated channel, beginning at the sea coast, make their way up and get into the interior of the country, then he should offer no objection to the departure of the expedition at the time already mentioned. But when he knew that the Delta of the Niger was at least 200 miles in extent, and that the course of the channel was continually shifting, he feared that the vessels might have to remain some time at the mouth of the river, and the consequent delay might be fatal, particularly from arriving in the most unhealthy season of a pestilential climate. He was sure those apprehensions must have some weight with the House, in considering this important question, which had nothing to do with party objects. Their only object should be, that the money for the expedition should be expended according to the principle on which it had been voted by that House, and that while they endeavoured to eradicate the slave-trade, a humane anxiety should be kept up for the lives of those who were selected to execute the task. Under the circumstances which he had already stated, he would, therefore, ask the Government and the public, whether it would not be better to delay the expedition for some time longer? Would it not be better to employ the vessels already prepared in surveying and exploring services, so as to pave the way for other vessels which should follow at some future season, and endeavour to execute the great objects and views which were now recognized respecting Africa? He confessed, that while he approved the intentions, he had great doubts indeed as to the expediency and practicability of the expedition, seeing what a failure the colony of Sierra Leone turned out, maintained as it had been at great sacrifices of life, while its exports had been very trifling, and not at all commensurate with the money that had been expended by this country. He feared there would be great difficulty in establishing agricultural colonies, and it was to be feared that much trouble would be given by the different tribes the moment a portion of the country was declared to be our territory. But to confirm his apprehensions as to the great danger of sending out an expedition at this season of the year, he would refer to an account of the voyage of the Ethiopia, in those regions. The Ethiopia was commanded by an experienced captain, who attempted to work up the Niger. His vessel was about the same draught as those employed, that was, about six feet; but his endeavour proved a total failure. This gentleman's crew consisted of twelve men; but the sickness produced by this fatal coast, soon reduced them to five. He tried to enter by the Formosa mouth, but failed, and at last he got in by the Warree. The captain's statement was, that the navigation of the river was difficult throughout; that he had tried to trade with the towns on the banks, but without success; that the whole course of the river was impracticable and unhealthy, and of little importance to the world as a medium of commerce with Africa; that during six months of the year the river was shut up, and during the other six months it was blocked up by rocks and shoals. It seemed to him, therefore, that a trade in heavy articles, such as coffee and rice, the proposed staples could not be carried on in that river. It would only do for the transit of palm-oil, gum, gold-dust, ivory, and other light articles. He trusted, therefore, that the Government would not, for the sake of pleasing a few benevolent men, turn its attention so exclusively to the improvement of Africa, as to forget the welfare of the men who were employed to work out the objects of the expedition. He would conclude by moving for the production of correspondence relating to the Niger expedition.

said, that when the expedition was first arranged, it was intended that it should sail from this country in October. But since then the Government had learned from Captain Elliott, and other experienced persons, that during the dry season the navigation of the Niger was closed for six months. Consequently the time of departure was changed, in order that the ships should not arrive at the mouth of the river at a time when they could not enter it. The sailing of the expedition was, therefore, postponed until March, in order, first, that the smaller steamers, after crossing the Bay of Biscay, might arrive at the Niger before the dangerous weather broke out, that was at the end of June, and then they would ascend the river in July, with the first flood of the rainy season. The Gentleman already named had assured the Government, that the rainy season was not the most sickly one.

was sorry that, not seeing the noble Lord the Secretary for the Colonies, he could not put to the noble Lord a question, to which he (Mr. Hume) received a very unsatisfactory answer a few nights ago. He wanted to know what were the objects of the expedition? Were they to plant a colony and alarm the inhabitants by taking possession of the country? Or was the expedition for the purposes of discovery? If colonization was the object, there should be more ships sent out. He thought they had better postpone the motion until the noble Lord the Secretary for the Colonies was present.

was surprised to hear the hon. Member for Kilkenny now ask the objects of an expedition, towards which, though so sensitive in money matters, he joined in a vote of 60,000l. last year. [Mr. Hume: No such thing.] It was a fact. The hon. Member was now asking about the objects and principles of an expedition for which he joined in a vote of the House of Commons of 60,000l. last year. His hon. Friend was one of the first to assent last year, and he would have a similar opportunity of raising the question and of voting more money when the estimates for the present Session came on. But really the principle of the expedition was well known to almost every man in this country. It was fully discussed at that very large meeting alluded to by the noble Lord, and more pamphlets and newspaper articles had appeared on this subject than on any other connected with Africa. Now the principle of this undertaking, he would inform his hon. Friend, was to begin at the right end, a step which had not yet been attempted in all the endeavours that had been made to put down the African slave-trade. The present plan was to prevent, by the introduction of commercial relations with the interior of Africa, a continuance in the traffic of human flesh, which would then yield in importance to the new interests that would be created. In other words, having failed in making an impression on the blacks by urging the principles of humanity and generosity, the abolitionists would now proceed upon the most effective of all principles—that was, to persuade the blacks that it was their own interest to discontinue the slave-trade. The present expedition would not be sent out to found a colony; but it would penetrate into the interior of Africa to establish commercial relations with the chiefs; and if concessions of territory should be offered by them, commissioners would be empowered to treat with them, and an establishment would hereafter be fixed there. But the leading object of the expedition at present would be to examine and inquire. The noble Lord had asked when the expedition would sail; he thought, that the Secretary of the Admiralty had satisfied him on that point—[No, no.] Then he hoped he should succeed in satisfying the noble Lord. Every attention that was possible was paid to this expedition, with reference to the comforts and convenience of all engaged in it. But the great difficulty which they would have to encounter was this—namely, that the season that was considered the least healthy, was also the season that rendered the possibility of navigating the river the most practicable; for when the water was deepest, was the period when the season was most unhealthy. Every contrivance that could be adopted to prevent the bad effects which were likely to arise from the unhealthiness of the climate would be put in operation; so that he did not consider that the same difficulties would be encountered by this expedition as by the previous ones. Many of the travellers who had gone before upon similar expeditions had not taken the due precautions which were necessary, for they had not the commonest medicines, which they of course required. But this expedition started with every precaution, and with all the chances of success in its favour. If this statement were unsatisfactory to the noble Lord, he was sorry for it, but he thought the noble Lord, notwithstanding his statement of only seeking to be satisfied on one point, had entirely wandered from that one point of asking the time of the departure of the expedition to a series of objections against the whole scheme. He was clearly of opinion, that the question relating to the policy of the scheme itself would have been better discussed at another time. He could not allow the observations of his hon. Friend the Member for Kilkenny to pass unnoticed, as this was not the first time they had been called upon to discuss the principle of the expedition, and as he recollected that the House had already received his sanction for the vote of money for the purposes of this same expedition.

said, that it was no doubt true there was a vote passed in a committee of the House last year for a grant of money for this expedition; but, at the same time, it was also true, that on the same occasion, when this vote had been moved and carried, no discussion whatsoever had taken place upon the subject. His hon. Friend had taken the same credit for the scheme as if the matter had been undertaken after a full and deliberate discussion. It appeared that only a silent vote had been given on the occasion of proposing this grant of money. Now, he would say, that no vote was ever passed on a matter of such consequence with so little consideration, and in which such attention so wholly disproportioned to the magnitude and importance of the expedition was given to the subject. Here was an expedition entered upon to a place from which communication was cut off by water during six months in the year. He believed that, such was the result of the latest observations, and for such an expedition 60,000l. was rather a large sum to begin with. The hon. Member said, that they were beginning at the right end. Now if this sum was necessary for beginning the business at the right end, what was to be the sum that would be required after three or four years, when they got settlements in Africa? Looking at the danger that the lives were exposed to which were embarked in this expedition, he must say, that the information received upon the subject was but very slight indeed. He hoped, therefore, that some advantage would be taken of the delay which must occur before the departure of this expedition, to obtain from the Government some more complete information and explanation as to what their real objects were. He was aware he might incur the displeasure of those with whom he generally acted, and who were friendly to this scheme, but he must say, that, from the extent of the sum which was obtained, and from the nature of the difficulties that must necessarily interpose, the House was acting a most unjustifiable part in not endeavouring to acquire much larger information upon the subject.

did not think the noble Lord had made out any case to support his objections to the measure, and in endeavouring to prove the probability of its failure, the noble Lord had utterly failed. The noble Lord had commenced by stating, that there was a certain ship commanded by a Captain Bearcroft, which had undertaken the navigation of the river Niger, but which had failed, and from this fact he endeavoured to show the total impossibility of passing through any of the branches of the river so as to get satisfactorily into the interior. But when the noble Lord had read that letter, it appeared by that same document, that Captain Bearcroft had got much further up than the noble Lord appeared to be aware of. The extract from that letter, which was read, was to this effect, that Captain Bearcroft had got much further up that river than any one else who had ever preceded him. He (Mr. O'Connell) could not make any mistake as to that, and to his recollection, that was the accurate meaning of the extract. It appeared that his hon. Friend, the Member for Bridport, was somewhat displeased at not receiving more information upon the subject, but he would ask that hon. Member, if there was ever any refusal made to give such explanation? No! he (Mr. O'Connell) was not aware that information on the subject had ever been asked. The noble Lord had brought the subject before the House solely with a view of showing that the time which had been chosen for the expedition to arrive near the point of its destination was the most unhealthy. That, however, was a point which he (Mr. O'Connell) thought he had completely failed in establishing. There never, then, was a refusal to give the required information. What, then, was the complaint from the hon. Member for Kilkenny? Why, that it happened by accident that, on one occasion out of twenty years, that hon. Member did not happen to be in his place in this House. Now, he (Mr. O'Connell) thought that every indulgence should be extended to that hon. Gentleman for this single offence; but on this unfortunate occasion, when this grant of money was obtained, the hon. Member for Kilkenny was not then in his place. Now, no one could be ignorant of the main objects of this expedition. It was formed for the purpose of attempting to ascertain whether a favourable system of commerce could be obtained with the interior of Africa. That House had already expended large sums of money for the purpose of putting a stop to the slave-trade; but, as it was stated at that great meeting which was held upon the subject, if they could succeed in this object, to which they wished the public to direct their attention—that is, if they could succeed in estab- lishing a commercial trade in Africa, the traffic in human beings must necessarily cease, because commerce was the natural introduction of civilisation. At one of the most magnificent assemblies that ever was held in this country—one of the first and most important meetings which ever took place within the present century, and at which for the first and only time in his life he was a silent auditor, the objects of this expedition were there stated plainly and explicitly. And a detail had been made there of facts which rendered it highly probable that a commerce with the interior of Africa would be ultimately established unless physical obstacles should start up which could not be overcome. Now, he thought that it was very well worth their while to lay out 60,000l. upon this experiment, and he was contented to rely upon British ingenuity for the most triumphant success. He was rejoiced to see the Government coming forward as pioneers, or to pave the way (as the noble Lord expressed it) for this happy result. He thought that they were called upon to exhibit gratitude to the Government for so nobly coming forward on this occasion with this sum of money; and he hoped that there would be no want of further funds, should they be required, to carry out their views with reference to this expedition; but he was afraid, that if the sum which had already been granted turned out useless, there would be little chance of coming before the House again for more money. He trusted that the information which the noble Lord had given would be thankfully received, and added to what they had already obtained upon the same subject, and that nothing would ever be done to check this grand experiment.

rose for the purpose of explaining what his intentions simply were. He had merely asked, whether the noble Lord would have any objection to adjourn the consideration of this question to another evening, for the purpose of hearing all the information that could possibly be given upon the matter. He would remark, that it was the first time since he had had the honour of holding a seat in Parliament that he ever heard a Member of the Government, when asked for information upon a subject then under discussion, refer to the speeches which had been made at a public meeting as his answer—that such speeches would inform him of every particular relating to the subject he wished to be enlightened on. As regarded that same public meeting, he recollected so much of it—that the hon. Member for Dublin had been present at it, but had not been allowed to speak. He had informed the noble Lord, the Secretary of the Colonies, that it was his decided intention to oppose the motion for this grant of 60,000l.; but, not having been present at the time it was brought forward, he had not an opportunity of carrying his intention into effect. He begged leave to state, that he considered the expedition had been commenced in utter ignorance of the most necessary facts, for it was now admitted that the parties engaged in it were to have sailed in October last, but they had since found that they could not sail until the month of March. So much for their information on the subject. Then, with regard to the objects which they had in view. They were fully agreed upon the point, that commerce was the best means of putting an end to slavery, but he denied that they were adopting the best means of establishing commercial relations with the interior of Africa. How could sailors or seamen effect this object? They should rather have made merchants the parties for bringing about such a desirable conclusion. He thought that Government were beginning at the wrong end—they might do much mischief, but it was impossible they could do good. He wished to know whether any instruction had been as yet received as to the particular objects of discovery, and as to the purposes upon which they were going? They ought to have had every instruction possible to be obtained upon the subject; but so far from that being the case, it was quite evident the Government were in a state of profound ignorance upon the matter.

said, accustomed as he was to pay every respect to what generally fell from the hon. Member for Bridport, yet he could not allow him to put forward the statement he had made, without inquiring from him his authority. [Mr. Warburton: Jameson's pamphlet.] He thought as much, but it might happen that that gentleman's own interest might have interfered to influence him in the opinions which he had given with reference to the African trade. The whole scope and objects of this expedition had been laid before the House last February. The hon. Member for Bridport had said, that there never were objects of such magnitude entered upon with such slender means; but he would say, that there never was any great colony yet founded with means so ample. But that hon. Member continued to say that this was a very great colonial undertaking entered upon with little means and less information. Now, with regard to the information, he held in his hand a paper, dated the 8th February, 1840, and which was signed by the noble Lord, the present Secretary for the Colonies. It was a letter from Lord John Russell to the Lords Commissioners of the Treasury. It sets out by detailing the principal object they had in view, which was to prevent the continuance of the slave-trade, which it stated had been extensively carried on in Africa, and which no marine force was found capable of putting down. Another object which it stated was the cultivation of commercial relations with some of the African chiefs. Another object stated, was the admission on favourable terms of their goods and manufactures. These, then, were the declared objects which they had in view, and as to the sum of money which had been voted to carry out those objects, the money at present spent to put down slavery by steam-boats and other vessels was ten-fold greater than the sum granted for this expedition. Was it not, then, worth their while to make this experiment? He principally rose to say, that they had here ample information and plenty of money to carry out their views, and many as great objects had been effected with means much less.

in reply, said he was glad the hon. and learned Member for Dublin had called his attention to another matter. It was stated by Mr. Fowell Buxton, that this expedition should advance to the distance of 2,500 miles up the Niger. Now Captain Bearcroft had only been able to go the distance of 500 miles up the river, and then found the obstacles that met him so insurmountable, he could get no further. He thought, that the Government should postpone this expedition; if they did not, the money which had been voted for it would be completely thrown away. They should use some part of it in exploring and pioneering the way for the expedition to go out on the following year. There was no immediate haste for it. It was better not to undertake it at all than to perform it ineffectually. Much useful information might be gained by deferring it to some other time. At all events, they should possess the advantages of knowing where they were going to. He was not by any means satisfied with the information which he received, or the explanation which had been attempted to be given him. It appeared, that all the information they had as yet received was from Captain Allen, who might be a very competent person to give instructions upon the subject, but he thought, that there were many other men equally competent to speak upon the subject. He thought, that, when the Government had received a little more information upon the subject, they would see the inexpediency of sailing at the time proposed. If this vote should be asked to be renewed, he thought it most probable, that he would give it his determined opposition.

said, his noble Friend had sought all information upon the subject, upon the best authority. The former expedition had, by attempting to enter the river in April, and afterwards in May, when the water was low, been compelled to remain in the Delta, to the great injury of the health of the crews of the vessels composing the expedition, which it was hoped would this year be avoided by entering the river later, when there was a greater depth of water for steam navigation.

moved for leave to bring in a Bill to amend the Registration of Voters in Scotland. He proposed to establish one appeal court for registrations for the whole of Scotland. It was to consist of barristers of seven years standing, to be named by the Speaker, and to sit in Edinburgh. He proposed to give no appeal on matters of fact to this court, but only on questions of law. The bill also contained clauses relative to costs in cases of appeal. He proposed that when the right of a voter had once been established, he should not be removeable from the register except for matters occurring subsequently to the registry. In cases where the value of premises giving a title to vote had been established, he proposed that no proof of subsequent alterations of value should disfranchise the party so long as he retained possession of the premises or property which gave the right. An annual revision, which would compel a voter to establish his claim afresh every year, seemed to him a thing so monstrous, so really an instrument for vexation and oppression that he could not think of adopting it. Lastly, he proposed to introduce clauses defining fictitious votes, and if there was any sincerity in the declaration which had so often been made against fictitious votes, he was sure that those who made them would agree with him as to the necessity of some such definition to prevent the present frauds and abuses. The hon. and learned Gentleman concluded by making his motion.

objected to the intended court of appeal, as being likely to be unsatisfactory, if no matter could be inquired into before that tribunal, which had transpired or taken place before the claimant of the suffrage had been placed upon the registry.

would be glad to concur in any measure which would put an end to the existing evils of the system of fictitious voting.

said, it was notorious that the Reform Bill of Scotland required some such bill as this to remedy the practice of taking vexatious objections to persons who had been for years undisturbed on the roll, in the hope of removing them, in their absence and without being able often to obtain a hearing in defence of their franchise.