Sir, it is understood that the Plenipotentiaries at Paris have appointed certain Commissioners to inquire into questions relating to the Principalities of Wallachia and Moldavia. I wish to ask the noble Lord at the head of the Government whether any instructions have been framed by the Plenipotentiaries for the guidance of those Commissioners, and, if so, whether there is any objection to lay a copy of them upon the table of the House.

Sir, no instructions were framed by the Congress. It was determined by the Congress that Commissioners should be appointed by the Turkish Government and by the English, French, and the Austrian Governments to proceed to Moldavia and Wallachia, and to place themselves in communication with certain assemblies called "Divans," to be convoked by the Porte in those provinces with a view to come to some understanding as to a form of government for the Principalities which should be recommended to the representatives of the allied Powers at Paris. It rested with each Government to give its Commissioner such instructions as it might deem fit and proper. I may say, however, that those Commissioners will not proceed to transact any business in the Principalities until the assemblies are convoked, and it is the opinion of Her Majesty's Government and also of the French Government, that no preliminary steps, such as elections with a view to the constitution of these assemblies, should take place until the Principalities shall have been evacuated by all foreign troops. That has yet not taken place—the Austrian troops are still there, and the Russians at present occupy that portion of Bessarabia which is to be included in Moldavia, and which they cannot evacuate until the line of frontier has been traced and agreed upon by the Commissioners appointed for that purpose. Therefore, some little delay may occur before the Divans and the Commissioners enter upon business.

Would there be any difficulty or impropriety in placing before Parliament a copy of the instructions framed by the Government for the guidance of the British Commissioners?

It is not usual to do so. The House usually wants to know what is done in consequence of instructions, but it is obvious that circumstances may occur in the course of the transactions which may render particular portions of the instructions previously given inapplicable.

said, in bringing under the notice of the House the present state of Greece, he must state that it was his opinion that the subject was germane to the question of Supply, inasmuch as the financial mismanagement of the Greek Government entailed upon this country a charge of £47,000 a year for interest on the Greek loan. The present Viceroy of Ireland (Lord Carlisle), who had recently visited the East, said the Government of Greece seemed to him to be the most inefficient, corrupt, and, above all, contemptible Government with which a nation was ever cursed. It was to diplomacy alone that they had trusted for many years to release this country from the guarantee into which it had entered on behalf of Greece, the hope of such a release being founded on the possibility of a better administration of the public funds by the Greek Government. In 1845, in answer to the late Lord Beaumont, Lord Aberdeen said that England, in conjunction with France and Russia, had created the State of Greece, guaranteed the independence and integrity of its territory, and guaranteed also the interest of a loan; and the Greek Government would do well to recollect that those Powers could enter into possession of any of the Greek revenues for the repayment of the interest of the loan so contracted. The same noble Lord added that the provinces were infested by robbers, and the then state of Greece was such as to give pain to all who wished for the welfare and prosperity of the State. The exercise of diplomacy for eleven years had left the condition of Greece the same as Lord Aberdeen described it in 1845. But since the war with Russia commenced, the noble Lord at the head of the Government had taken military possession of the Piræus, and he wanted to know what was to result from that military occupation? Were the people of England, through the instrumentality of this military occupation, to be relieved from the payment of £47,000 a year? Was King Otho to be supported in carrying on a Government described by the noble Lord (Viscount Palmerston) as destitute of administrative talent, and by Lord Carlisle as the most corrupt with which a country was ever cursed? He therefore wished to know what course would be taken by the Government in behalf of this country or in conjunction with its Allies? When the late respected Lord Dudley Stuart brought the subject under the consideration of the House, in August, 1851, the noble Lord now at the head of the Government stated that Greece had stipulated by treaty to apply the first produce of the Greek revenues to the payment of the interest on the loan, but, he was sorry to say, that they had from first to last disregarded that engagement. If the Greek Government had properly managed its financial affairs there would have been ample means to meet all the charges upon it. It had failed to do so; the liability had fallen upon the Powers which guaranteed the loan, and representations innumerable had been made upon the subject to the Greek Government, but without effect. It was, however, intended, he supposed, again to endeavour to make some impression upon the sense of right and justice of the Government of Greece. The Congress of Paris were of the same mind as the noble Lord in 1851, and desired to make some impression on the sense of right and justice of the Government of Greece. He therefore hoped that he should elicit from the noble Lord a statement of the policy or coercion which it was intended to exercise towards that puny and imbecile Government. It was no doubt the intention of the noble Lord, in creating the kingdom and appointing a king, to found a constitutional Government in Greece; and if that constitution had worked well in Greece it would have had great influence upon the civilisation of the East. But Very little progress had been made with it, and it was his impression that the non-compulsion of the payment of interest on the loan had been a real disservice to the Greek Government, because it had left the means of corruption in their hands. He was quite aware that in asking what was the policy of Her Majesty's Ministers he might meet with the declaration that no policy was so distinct as the occupation of territory by a military force. The conduct of the King of Greece was certainly most treacherous; and, although only 6,000 French and a regiment of British troops had been sent to the Piræus, who could estimate the value of that force if it had been available for the siege of Sebastopol? The necessity for coercion had arisen, and he hoped to hear that the noble Lord would feel it consistent with his duty and with the interest of this country, that coercion would be applied with a definite object—either to lessen the extravagant expenditure and corrupt practices of the King of Greece, or, if he would not listen to sound advice, to reduce him to the condition in which the noble Lord found him—that of a German Prince.

Sir, with regard to the general condition of Greece, I have nothing to add to those opinions which the hon. Gentleman has quoted as having been expressed by me on former occasions. I adhere entirely to them, and I am sorry to say the course pursued since by the Government of Greece only confirms the justice of anything I may have said in condemnation of it. With regard to the occupation of Greece by detachments of French and British troops, that occupation took place in consequence of measures of aggression either instigated or permitted by the Government of Greece against the Turkish territory. The Governments of England and France thought, and justly thought, that when they were engaged in a war with Russia for the defence of the Turkish dominions, it was not fitting that a small State like Greece, which was essentially bound by obligations to neutrality, should attack on the one side that empire which the two Governments were defending against the assaults of a larger Power on the other. For that purpose the Piræus was occupied by the forces of the Allies, and during the occupation the aggressions which led to it have ceased. I wish I could say that the occupation had produced any improvement in the system of the government of Greece, or the internal tranquillity of the country. I cannot state that; for the system of government is just what it has been considered to be hitherto, and those disorders commonly called "brigandage," such as carrying off people for their ransom, of pillage, of robbing villages and highway travellers, continue to take place to a great and lamentable extent. The real fact is, that the Government and Court party have been ever since the accession of King Otho in a state of conflict with the representative system. The three allied Powers of England, France, and Russia, when they made their arrangement with Turkey for the independence of that territory which constitutes the Greek kingdom, issued a proclamation to the Greeks, promising them a representative Government, and that was delayed until the King attained his majority. He was then called upon to fulfil his engagement, but he evaded it. At last, in 1843, an insurrection broke out, which extorted from the King the representative constitution that he was unwilling to give; and from that time to the present there has been a perpetual endeavour to get rid of the constitutional Government by corrupt and indirect means; and that money which ought to have been appropriated to the payment of the debt of Greece was appropriated in corrupting the electors, and afterwards those who were elected, so as to make the Greek Parliament a mere shadow of the substance. With regard to enforcing the payment of the debt, as the guarantee was common to the three Powers—England, France, and Russia—it has always been held that no one Power can rightfully enforce this claim without the concurrence of the other two; because it is clear that if the surplus revenue will only pay one-third of the debt, one of three Powers, by taking the whole, would naturally deprive the other two of that which would give them a fair share of the surplus. That view of the case has always been taken by the Government of this country. With regard to the future policy which England, in conjunction with France and Russia, may think proper to pursue, I am sure the hon. Gentleman will perceive that would be an anticipation of the future which it would not be proper for me to enter upon.

said, he believed that the system of brigandage in Greece was on the point of being arrested by a treaty of extradition between the Greek and Turkish Governments. That treaty was begun when Kalergi was in office, and was now, he trusted, on the point of being acceded to.

said, he objected to the Vote, as most monstrous. He hoped that some reason would be given for taxing the people of this country to the amount of this Vote for the exclusive benefit of the Established Church, which was already possessed of ample funds to defray all expenses connected with it. Surely it could afford to pay Commissioners, whose sole duty was to protect its own property. Every principle of justice was opposed to such a vote as this, and he felt it his duty to divide the Committee upon it.

said, he wished to know whether it was the intention of the Government to introduce any measure to carry out the various schemes set forth in the last Report of the Charity Commissioners? More than a month ago he had himself called attention to the state of the charity called the Sherburn Hospital, in the county of Durham, which, in consequence of the death of the master, had been in a state of abeyance for nearly two years. He had received a letter from the chaplain of the hospital stating that, whilst they had been waiting for legislation, a fourth of the occupants of the hospital had died, while many repairs, of which the institution stood in need, were left undone, because there was no one in authority to sanction the outlay. It certainly seemed strange that a great war with a country like Russia could be commenced and brought to a close in a less period of time than it took, the Government to regulate a single charity.

said, it was not altogether different from the ordinary course of events that large and important questions should be settled in a much shorter period of time than was taken up with the arrangement of comparatively minor interests. No doubt the delays in regard to the settlement of those local charities upon a satisfactory basis was in great measure owing to a want of power on the part of the Charity Commissioners. However, the question had engaged the attention of his right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for the Home Department, and it was his intention shortly to introduce a Bill on the subject.

Can the noble Lord give a pledge that the Bill will be introduced during the present Session?

I may undertake to say the Bill will be introduced during the present Session.

said, he believed matters would have been in a much more forward state had it not been for the jealousy of Parliament in preventing the Charity Commissioners from sitting in Parliament. Had they been allowed to do so, they would then have had some one in the House willing to attend to the preparation of Local Charity Bills.

said, he thought that the Commissioners attended to charities which did not require their attention, while they neglected those into which they ought to inquire. The charities of Coventry were administered satisfactorily by the Commissioners appointed by the Lord Chancellor, and nobody wanted the interference of the Charity Commissioners. Two of the charities required some change, and the alteration proposed by the Lord Chancellor's Commissioners met with almost universal approbation; but the Charity Commissioners, who knew nothing about the wants of the population, dis- agreed, and persisted in recommending a plan of their own. He thought it most unjustifiable to pay a Commission for acting in opposition to the wishes of the people and doing mischief, and therefore he should move that the Vote be reduced by £2,632, with the view of making the amount of it the same as last year.

said, he thought there was much reason to complain of the arbitrary spirit with which the Charity Commissioners had dealt with local charities, besides in many instances acting in exact contravention of the wishes of the founders. Some time ago he had presented a petition signed by upwards of 1,000 inhabitants of the town of Spalding, in Lincolnshire, protesting against the manner in which the Commissioners had dealt with a local charity of theirs. It appeared, from investigation, that a former inhabitant had left a sum of money to be distributed amongst the poorest of the population, either in fuel or in doles of money. Well, the Commissioners proceeded to found a school out of the produce of the charity, and although the inhabitants pointed out that they already possessed an endowed grammar school, while there were other schools well supported, supplying adequate means of instruction to both rich and poor amongst the 9,000 inhabitants comprising the population of the town, no notice had been taken by the Commissioners of the remonstrances of the inhabitants, and there the matter remained.

said, he did not see that the diminution of the Vote would have any tendency to improve the working of the Charity Commission. It was utterly unfit for the work it had to do, and the House should determine whether it should have its powers increased, or whether it should be altogether abolished. The whole thing was at present in a very unsatisfactory state, great evil arising from delay in obtaining a sanction by Bills to the schemes of the Charity Commissioners, and the expense and delay were now even greater than under the former system, when the sanction was given by the agency of the Court of Chancery. He wished to know whether an attempt would be made by the Government to give validity to the schemes of the Charity Commissioners, and also to improve their powers of working? He considered that the Government were bound to give a clear intimation of their intentions.

said, that his connection with the Charity Commission was but of recent date, and he had no personal knowledge of some of the cases which had been brought under the notice of the Committee; but he certainly would have been prepared to give explanations respecting them, had it been previously intimated to him that they would have been referred to. In answer to the question put by the hon. Member for Newcastle-upon-Tyne (Mr. Headlam), with respect to the schemes of the Charity Commissioners, contained in their last Report, he could state that it was the intention of the Lord Chancellor forth with to introduce in the other House five or six Bills for the purpose of obtaining legislative sanction to the schemes relating to Dulwich College and some other charities. Short as had been his connection with the Charity Commission, it was long enough to convince him of this—that no men could exert themselves more strenuously and zealously in the performance of their duties than the Charity Commissioners. They felt that the law under which they acted was in an unsatisfactory state, and that the powers given them were in some respects extremely limited. An Amendment of the Act was promulgated last Session, but that was by no means sufficient to remedy the evil. If he should have the honour of retaining his connection with the Charity Commission, he should feel it his duty to bring in some measure to improve the powers of the Commissioners.

said, he could not agree with the right hon. Gentleman in the mode of dealing with this matter. He was much satisfied that the subject had been brought forward; but he did not see how cutting down the Vote would have any bearing on the subject. No doubt some cases had arisen which had created considerable alarm, he might say, in many minds. The Commissioners apparently had got some kind of hobby in their minds in respect to some of those charities. Instead of seeing the charities of England properly administered, according to the obvious intentions of the founders, the Commissioners appeared to be determined to apply them all in the general way of education. They Were in this difficulty—suppose the Commissioners had the absolute power of dealing with the charities without coming to Parliament, the House might reasonably complain that they could not stop this mischief. He, therefore, thought that the necessity of coming to Parliament was a very wholesome check. They were now somewhat advanced in the Session; and those Bills spoken of by the right hon. Gentleman (Mr. Baines) were not as yet introduced into the other House of Parliament. He (Mr. Henley) had only to express a hope that they would be brought before the House of Commons in time to enable them to discuss their merits with that gravity which their importance demanded. If they were held back, however, until the last fortnight or three weeks of the Session, it would then be impossible that they could receive that care and attention from that House which they deserved. He had been in communication with some of the people of Coventry, and they quite confirmed what had been stated by the hon. Member for Lambeth (Mr. W. Williams). He was very glad to see the right hon. Gentleman (the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster) the representative of the Commission in that House. Whatever body the right hon. Gentleman was a Member of, would derive great weight from his high character and position. His great talents and judicial mind, when applied to the business of the Commission, would be of great public service, because he was the last man that was likely to be led away by any particular fancy as to the distribution of those funds. There was one matter which was not in a very satisfactory position in the Estimates; there was an item of £3,400 under the head of "inspection."

said, the increase in this year's Vote was rendered necessary by the increased work which the Commission had to do. When the Commissioners were first appointed, they only employed as many clerks and inspectors as were absolutely necessary for the duties to be performed; but as their work developed itself each year and the range of their operations was extended, an increased staff was necessary in consequence. Last year they had thirty-six officers, while this year they had forty-six, and that was why the Vote was so much larger.

said, he hoped that the Commission had not lost sight of the Sherburn Charity, but that it would be provided for in the Bills which were about to be brought forward.

said, he must beg to express his satisfaction at the announcement which had been made by the Government of the intention to introduce measures during the present Session for sanctioning the schemes already decided upon.

said, he objected to the manner in which the Commissioners got the information on which they founded their Reports. He thought that they should take down the evidence of parties in the places where the charities were situate. In the case of Coventry, they did not take that course, and the consequence was, that they had made a Report which the inhabitants entirely repudiated, and it was acceptable to no one.

said, that with reference to the five or six measures that were to be introduced upon this subject in the other House, he believed that they would be sent down to the House of Commons in the dog-days, when it would be perfectly impossible to give them proper consideration. It was quite clear from what they knew of the feeling of the people in regard to those charities, that the movements of the Commissioners would be more closely watched than those of any other body. Now, what he wanted to know was, what was the cause of the delay in the introduction of those Bills? Four months of the Session had now passed by, and yet those measures, they were told, were not yet ready. In respect to the financial part of the question, it appeared to him that it turned very much on the question of inspection. He had not heard from the right hon. Gentleman (Mr. Baines) any statement to show the necessity of this increase of £2,000 or £3,000 for inspectors. The number of inspectors in this kingdom had increased to an alarming extent. We expended £5,250,000 upon the civil service, out of which we paid a large sum in the way of superannuations. Unless the right hon. Gentleman could give very strong reasons for so great an increase in the way of inspectors, he thought that the Committee would neglect their duty if it did not support the Amendment of the hon. Member for Lambeth.

said, that the Charity Commission had started with a very small number of clerks. At present, however, there was employed under it a greater number than in the Home Office, and exactly the same number as in the Colonial Office, where the business of our forty-eight colonies was transacted. Of the three additional inspectors whom it was proposed to appoint at the salary of £800 per annum each, he (Mr. Williams) understood from authority that could not be doubted that one of them was a country attorney who had been an active electioneering agent for some Members in that House.

said, that they had voted last year £5,000 for the Solicitors' Bill, and £5,000 more in the present year, although no Bill of the kind had as yet been received. He thought it was a bad system to be voting this money for two years together, in the absence of the examinations of any accounts for which the money was given. He would beg to call the attention of the hon. Gentleman opposite to the point he had just alluded to, and to inquire the reason why no explanation had as yet been given of it?

said, that the Bills referred to by the hon. Member for North Warwickshire did not apply to the Charity Commission at all; they were connected with the business done under the authority of the Lord Chancellor. Those additional inspectors were appointed, because it was found that the two inspectors previously employed were utterly inadequate to the work that devolved upon them. With regard to the number of clerks employed, the Commissioners had shown the greatest anxiety to keep them down to the lowest possible number; but the increase during the present year in the number was occasioned by the immense amount of work that was to be performed.

said, he should wish to have some explanation as to the respective duties of the Court of Chancery Commissioners and the new Charity Commissioners.

said, that the existing Commissioners would gradually supersede the former Commissioners in respect to the work remaining to be done under the latter; but the former Commissioners would still have the power to put the Attorney General in motion in reference to those proceedings that could only be conducted in Chancery, and in connection with those proceedings it was necessary to have a solicitor.

said, that the Vote for the Commission last year was £12,390. The payments made by the Bank of England, on account of the Commission, had been during the past year £13,502. He wished, therefore, to know how there could be a balance of £750 as stated in the Votes to the credit of the Commission?

said, the balance was in the Treasury, and not in the Bank of England. Of the payments made, some were for the expenses of the preceding year, and consequently their amount exceeded that of the Vote.

said, he should like to know if all those charitable estates were gradually to merge into the Charity Commission, what was to become of the properties that were locked up in Chancery, a portion of the proceeds of which had been devoted to the payment of costs incurred? There was a vast number of estates locked up in the name of the Attorney General.

They will not merge into the Charity Commission.

said, he would ask then, whether they were to understand that no further suits could be instituted in the Court of Chancery without the direction of the Charity Commissioners?

said, he did not think that there remained any cases in which the former Commissioners had reported that proceedings had been taken. As to any new proceedings, the present Commissioners would supersede the old.

said, he must congratulate the parties interested in those charities, upon the accession of the right hon. Gentleman the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster to the Commission. The present conduct of charity suits had given rise to great dissatisfaction, owing to the enormous expense with which they were attended. Returns of the cost of those actions from 1821 up to the last year, showed that the amount disbursed had been constantly increasing. During the period between 1821 and 1835, when Mr. Hindes had charge of these proceedings, the sum expended was £21,503, or at the rate of about £1,500 per annum. The corresponding item for the next six years, up to June, 1841, was £19,193, or equal to £3,199 a year. This augmentation occurred under Mr. Parkes' tenure of the office of solicitor, and from this last-named date to December, 1847, the costs of these suits still further increased, the amount expended on them during that period being upwards of £39,000, or not less than £6,140 per annum. Mr. Fearon then succeeded to the office of solicitor, when the annual cost at first rose to £8,400, and during the last four years, ending March, 1855, the sum actually reached £10,500 per annum. From these facts it would be seen, that since Mr. Hindes had had the conduct of these suits, the expense had increased sevenfold. Great dissatisfaction was the natural consequence of such a state of things. In the case of a school charity in his (Mr. Knight's) own district (Worcestershire), the matter was taken in hand by Mr. Parkes, and, owing to the delays which occurred in the course of the proceedings, the charity was extinguished for a period of fourteen years, and costs exceeding £1,200 were incurred. He thought it absolutely necessary that the law officers connected with public establishments of this description should be paid by salaries instead of by fees, for it would then be their interest, as well as their duty, to bring any legal business in which they were engaged to as speedy a conclusion as possible. Mr. Fearon might be animated by very good intentions, but it was his interest, under the existing system, to promote rather than to discourage litigation. He (Mr. Knight) believed that the solicitors to nearly all the great public bodies in England and to most of the Government departments were now paid by salaries instead of by fees, and he did not see why the same principle should not be adopted in the case of the Charity Commission.

said, he was not anxious to continue the present discussion, but he felt that he should be wanting in common justice if he did not say a word in behalf of one of the most meritorious officers in the public service— he meant Mr. Fearon. If the Committee chose to put that gentleman on a salary, of course it could do so; but surely it could not be ascribed to Mr. Fearon that Parliament had passed a Bill appointing Commissioners, and that a vast increase of business had resulted therefrom. The hon. Gentleman (Mr. Knight) seemed to complain that Mr. Fearon had superseded the ordinary relators in charitable causes; but if that were so, it was entirely in consequence of the measures of Parliament itself. It had been found that the proceedings in charity matters in relators' suits were attended with the most abominable abuses, and that such suits had frequently been got up by attorneys with the view of making costs out of them. So far, then, from desiring to see the Charity Commissioners deprived of the authority now vested in them, and these suits left to the mere optional proceedings of private relators, he believed they could not do better than per- sist in the course which Parliament had deliberately adopted; and it was also his opinion that no man was more competent to discharge the duties of his office than Mr. Fearon. If, however, the hon. Gentleman (Mr. Knight) wished for inquiry as to the manner in which the business of the charities was managed in the Attorney General's office, and would move for a Committee on the subject, he (the Attorney General) would be happy to second the Motion; and he had no doubt the result would be to show that there was no public officer more entitled to their thanks than Mr. Fearon.

said, he had made so many complaints against the Statute Law Commission that it would not be necessary for him to say much upon the present occasion. If the Government were determined that no reform should take place, they could not adopt a more effective plan for accomplishing their purpose than that of continuing the Commission in its existing state. He could only characterise the Commission as a "complete delusion" on the public. In 1853 no less a sum than £7,500 was voted for it, and a kind of promise was then made by the hon. and learned Gentleman the Attorney General, that it really was to be a working body of men. At the same time, the Lord Chancellor, in another place, stated the outline of a plan for clearing the Statute Book of certain Acts which were completely useless, and for bringing the written law into a uniform shape. Since that period other sums had been voted for the Commission, which made the total expenditure nearly £12,000, but up to the present time not a single result had been obtained. At one period there was a working staff attached to the Commission, consisting of three learned Gentlemen—Messrs. Rogers, Anstey, and Coode—well known for their great desire to effect a reform of the Statute Book; but at the end of the first year they were discharged, certainly not for having done little, because they laboured most zealously in the work. The present Chief Commissioner was Mr. Bellenden Ker, who had been a member of the Commission since 1853, and had received the greater part of the sum already voted by Parliament. He was also for no less a period than seventeen years on the Criminal Law Commission, which cost the country £50,000, also without a single result. Surely the Committee would not think that such a state of things ought to be continued. Since the abandonment of the plan laid down by the Lord Chancellor, the hon. and learned Member for East Suffolk (Sir F. Kelly), in February last, with a great flourish of trumpets, had asked leave to introduce two Bills for the consolidation of the Statute Law; but those Bills had not yet made their appearance, and he much doubted whether they would be passed, even under the most favourable circumstances, during the present Session. The hon. and learned Attorney General, in his memorandum recently laid on the table of the House, suggested a most admirable plan for the reform of the Statute Book. His hon. and learned Friend adopted that plan which nearly every sincere law reformer sought to obtain—namely, the expurgation from the Statute Book of all that mass of obsolete laws with which it was at present incumbered. At the end of his paper he expressed his conviction that the necessity for a consolidation of the Statutes being now so strongly and so generally felt, Parliament would readily supply whatever funds might be required for its accomplishment, if once convinced that the work was undertaken in earnest and with a reasonable security of a speedy and satisfactory result. The hon. and learned Gentleman proceeded to say that he saw no reason, if a sufficient number of able hands were employed, why the work should not be achieved in twelve months; while he was convinced that if we proceeded in the present manner, twenty years would not suffice even for its imperfect completion. Such was the deliberately expressed opinion of the Attorney General, and there could be no doubt that he was right. Parliament, he felt assured, would gladly grant almost any sum that might be asked for the consolidation of the Statutes, provided it were assured that the duty would be efficiently discharged; but he certainly did object to vote sums year after year without anything being done. The present constitution of the Commission was radically defective. It was well known that the first Commissioner, who received a salary of £1,000 per annum, did not devote his whole time to the work, and it might also be questioned whether, looking at his antecedents and his ordinary occupation, he was the fittest man for the place. What the country wanted was, not a useless Commission, consisting exclusively of the favourite of some Member of the Government, but a really effective body, able and willing to reduce the Statute Book into something like shape. There were between 200 and 300 Acts relating to the Poor Laws, which required consolidation. A digest had been prepared of these laws, and he had moved for a return of it, but by some mistake an incorrect copy had been printed, and although he had pointed out the fact, the incorrect copy was that subsequently issued for circulation. It was, of course, perfectly useless. A correspondence had taken place between the Lord Chancellor and Mr. Coode on the subject, in which Mr. Coode offered a digest of those Acts. That correspondence was excluded from the Return. He begged to say that he had no personal motive whatever in making these observations with regard to Mr. Bellenden Ker. He did not even know the gentleman by sight.

said, he had the honour of being a member of the Statute Law Commission, and he hoped the Committee would allow him to make a statement in reference to the observations of the hon. Member for East Surrey. He could not help saying that on several occasions, when the Statute Law Commission was under consideration, notwithstanding the disclaimer of the hon. Member (Mr. L. King), the hon. Member had shown a hostile feeling towards Mr. Bellenden Ker. He was quite convinced that the hon. Gentleman was acting under a sense of public duty; but at the same time he believed that he was labouring under some misapprehension as to the conduct of Mr. Bellenden Ker. The hon. Gentleman had evidently implied by his remarks that the Lord Chancellor had exercised his patronage in regard to Mr. Bellenden Ker from personal friendship towards that gentleman. He (Mr. Baines) had the authority of the Lord Chancellor for saying that Mr. Bellenden Ker had no personal claim on him, nor any other claim beyond that which his well-known ability naturally commanded. The reason why the Lord Chancellor adopted the services of that gentleman in the Statute Law Commission was this, that Mr. Bellenden Ker had been engaged for a number of years in the Criminal Law Commission, and on which he had shown considerable ability. The hon. Member for East Surrey had said that there was no result from that Commission. He (Mr. Baines) would appeal to many hon. Gentlemen of the legal profession, now Members of that House, whether there had not been some most important results. If there had not proceeded many new Acts of Parliament from its labours, much preliminary matter had been produced, which must ultimately result in several Acts of the greatest utility. To say, therefore, that there had been no result from the labours of the Criminal Law Commission, was to state what was not borne out by fact. When the present Statute Law Commission was proposed, his noble and learned Friend the Lord Chancellor thought he could not do better than avail himself of the ability of the same gentlemen who had been employed on the Criminal Law Commission; he accordingly engaged the services of Mr. Bellenden Ker. The hon. Member for East Surrey had said that Mr. Bellenden Ker did not give the whole of his time to his work, but he gave full half of his time to his work. He (Mr. Baines) would appeal to the hon. and learned Member for East Suffolk (Sir F. Kelly), whether the conduct of Mr. Bellenden Ker had not been such as to justify the trust reposed in him by the Lord Chancellor. He (Mr. Baines) believed that that gentleman had discharged his duty in a vigilant and able manner. If, indeed, they looked at the number of Acts of Parliament already passed in consequence of the labours of the Commission, he admitted that they were not very numerous; but if they regarded the Acts that were likely soon to pass, they would be of opinion that a very different result had proceeded from the Commission. A great deal of labour had necessarily been devoted by the Commission in the preparation of Bills to be brought before Parliament. He would now state to the Committee what bad been the labours of the Commission. The question the Commission had to inquire into was a very complicated one, and the duties of the Commissioners were of a very laborious nature. There had been the consolidation of the National Debt Act, the Landlord and Tenant Act, the Master and Workman Act, the Law relating to Prisons, to Stamps, to the Statute of Limitations, to Bills of Exchange and Promissory Notes, the consolidation of the Criminal Law, consisting of eight Bills under those heads. Then there were the following subjects also dealt with—namely, Offences against the Person, Offences against Property, Malicious Injury to Property, Forgery, Treason, and other Offences against the State; and the law of General Procedure. On all these points Bills had been prepared, and other Bills in regard to other subjects of the law were in forward preparation, such as the consolidation of the law of Carriers by Land and Water, and the law of Aliens and Denizens. The classification of these Statutes brought him to another part of the labours of the Commission of very considerable importance, which was embodied in their second Report. In that Report they stated that their attention had been called to a most important subject—namely, the appointment of a public officer, or of a Board to revise current legislation. He was glad to say that some most valuable suggestions had been made by the right hon. Member for the University of Cambridge (Mr. Walpole), as well as by the hon. and learned Member for East Suffolk (Sir F. Kelly). Those suggestions were taken into consideration by the Commission, and in their Report the Commissioners had stated a plan for the purpose of carrying into effect most of the objects which he had mentioned. After the various labours to which the Statute Law Commissioners had devoted themselves, it could not in justice be said that there had been no results from the labours of that Commission. He trusted that he had said enough to satisfy the Committee that the Commissioners had been judiciously exerting themselves in the prosecution of their arduous and valuable duties. They were, however, still most diligently exerting themselves to carry out the objects for which they were appointed, and when they finally closed their duties, he trusted it would appear that their labours had not been thrown away.

said, he was by no means sorry that the hon. Member for East Surrey (Mr. Locke King) had taken that opportunity of depreciating the labours of the Statute Law Commission, for it would afford him an opportunity of addressing a few words to the Committee on the subject of the Commission. He was quite ready to confirm all that had fallen from his right hon. Friend (Mr. Baines) respecting the very great merits of Mr. Bellenden Ker. He ventured to say, without fear of contradiction, that it would be totally impossible to effect any of the great objects for which the Commission was appointed without the aid of Mr. Bellenden Ker. That gentleman had attended every meeting of the Commission, and he had dedicated a great deal of his time, which he might profitably have employed on other business, to business relating to the Commission, but which did not fall within the scope of his duty. The salary paid to Mr. Bellenden Ker, which if even doubled in amount would still be inadequate, was paid him for services rendered to the Lord Chancellor in advising upon all Law Bills, without which assistance it would be quite impossible for the noble and learned Lord properly to fulfil all the duties of his high office. Quitting that personal subject, he would now call to the notice of the Committee what the Commission had really done. During the first one or two years of its existence, the Statute Law Commission, although it failed to do anything that could be called a consolidation of any definite portion of the Statute Law, did much which facilitated the task of those who were now engaged in that work. They had directed the preparation of Consolidation Bills upon several important and complicated subjects, and also of various indexes of obsolete, expired, and repealed Statutes, and other Statutes that ought not to remain on the Statute Book. At an early period of the present year the Commissioners perceived that, however useful might be the consolidation of Statutes upon particular subjects, yet the time was come when it was necessary to determine upon some fixed and practicable plan in order to bring the chief objects of their labour to a successful issue; and accordingly, in March, the Lord Chancellor invited the members of the Commission to bring forward any plans they might have formed for the complete consolidation of the Statute Law. He (Sir F. Kelly) submitted a plan, and the Attorney General also intimated his intention of submitting one, but, in consequence of the pressure of the hon. and learned Gentleman's other duties, he had stated that he was unable to bring it before the Commission for some weeks. His (Sir F. Kelly's) plan was considered by the Commission, and it was agreed to proceed upon it, and instructions were given to prepare two or three Bills upon very important subjects. Some weeks later the Attorney General produced his plan, and upon examination it was found that everything that was proposed by the hon. and learned Gentleman which was practicable had been proposed, and was actually being carried into operation under the other plan previously adopted. The Statute Law of England was at present spread over no less than forty volumes, containing upon an average 1,000 pages each. Through those volumes enactments were scattered without order or arrangement, sometimes embracing ten or twelve, or even as many as twenty, different subjects in a single enactment. The object of the Statute Law Commission was to get rid of those forty volumes with all their defects, and to substitute some five or six volumes which should contain the whole Statute Law of England, reduced to about 300 Acts of Parliament, each Act embracing a single subject, but the whole of that subject. Those 300 Acts again were to be reduced into classes, each constituting a complete class of the Statute Law. The reason why no Bill had been as yet laid by the Commission on the table of the House was this, that it was found necessary to collect one or two classes, and to collect the whole of the Bills that would come within those classes, before proceeding with a single Bill. The Criminal Law—that which the hon. and learned Gentleman the Attorney General considered most important—had been first taken in hand. That law had been divided into classes, forming in the whole eight Bills, which Bills, with the exception of the whole of one and a part of another, he (Sir F. Kelly) had revised from beginning to end. Those Bills only awaited the revision of Lord Wensleydale and Sir John Jervis—two members of the Commission—and would be laid on the table of the House in a few days; and when they should have been so laid on the table, hon. Members would be able to form an idea of the difficulty which the Commissioners had had to encounter at every step, and they would at the same time have an opportunity of judging whether the consolidation of this one class did not afford the strongest ground for hoping that the whole work would be completed within the time specified. He hoped the statement he had made would satisfy the hon. Member for East Surrey, that, so far from doing nothing, the Sta- tute Law Commission had done much towards the achievement of a great national undertaking, and as a proof of it he might say that the Sleeping Statutes Bill, introduced by the hon. Member himself, was the result of the labours of the Statute Law Commission, and was in fact taken so literally from a plan of theirs that some errors which had been detected by him (Sir F. Kelly) had been adopted by the hon. Member in his Bill. So far from the Statute Law Commission being open to reprehension or suspicion, they had done all that could be done by a body of learned and distinguished men, and that which they were doing, if they were permitted to do it, by the support of Her Majesty's Government and of Parliament, would be the achievement of one of the greatest national undertakings ever executed in this country.

said, he was quite prepared to vote the money asked by her Majesty's Government, but at the same time he required an assurance that it would work some good. The Commission, which had now been sitting three years, had done nothing in the world. Enormous sums were paid for the Criminal Law Commission, which was employed for many years to consolidate the Criminal Law, but no fruit had ever yet been obtained from the labours of that Commission. The hon. and learned Gentleman (Sir F. Kelly) told them in the month of February there was no difficulty in consolidating, the great difficulty being in codifying, and he now said there was nothing but difficulty in consolidating. The hon. and learned Gentleman asserted that in eighteen months he would not only prepare, with the assistance of his friends, but pass through both Houses, a perfect consolidation of the Statute Law of this country; but now, according to his account, there were nothing but difficulties on all sides. He took the liberty of repeating what he had said privately at the time, that if the hon. and learned Gentleman did in eighteen years one-half what he said he could do in eighteen months he would be entitled to a higher statue to his memory than the Duke of York's. He hoped the hon. and learned Gentleman the Solicitor General would let them know what was really doing in this business. The hon. Member for East Surrey (Mr. L. King) proposed first to ascertain the obsolete laws and laws out of use, and to expunge them from the Statute Book, and then to begin consolidation. Until that was done, nothing, in his opinion, could be done; and they had not taken the first step. But the hon. and learned Member (Sir F. Kelly) said it was beginning at the wrong end to take out the repealed Statutes, and they ought to begin to consolidate before they knew what there was to consolidate. He conceded that the difficulties in consolidation were immense, the ancient and modern Statutes being full of contradictions. He wished to see them not only consolidating the Statute Law, but making positive enactments out of the unwritten law, and then, and not until then, would they have the law brought into a scientific state. The learned Judges upon the Commission were constantly employed in the high duties of their profession, and one good head constantly employed, and with efficient subordinates, would be worth the whole fourteen members of the present Commission.

said, he could assure the hon. and learned Gentleman that certain Gentlemen were at present, and had been for some weeks, engaged in the work of expurgation of obsolete Statutes. Seventeen or eighteen Bills had been prepared, any one of which would take any hon. Member six months to frame, and they were nearly ready to be laid upon the table. The difficulties surrounding the question were immense. When he brought forward the question early in the present Session he said it would be necessary that he should have the support of the Government, and that they should undertake to supply the funds. Six weeks afterwards the question was brought under the notice of the Cabinet, which had given the necessary authority. Since then not an hour had been lost. From twelve to fifteen barristers had been constantly employed, and as fast as they had prepared Bills he had been engaged in revising them. As soon as possible those Bills would be laid on the table.

said, he fully agreed with his hon. and learned Friend the Member for East Suffolk (Sir F. Kelly) that Mr. Bellenden Ker had been unjustly attacked. It was true he received £1,000 a year, but he had assured him (Mr. Malins) that, if he were relieved of his duties, he would most willingly relinquish his salary. He was perfectly satisfied, looking at what Mr. Ker's private practice as a conveyancer would be if he were not so engaged, that, so far from deriving any advantage from his appointment in a pecu- niary point of view, it was a disadvantage to him. He therefore regretted to hear the hon. Member for East Surrey renew his attacks this year upon that gentleman. His hon. and learned Friend (Sir F. Kelly) spoke of the great difficulty which attended the consolidation of the law, and as if there were no digest which could guide the profession to all the really important Statutes. But it should be remembered that several learned gentlemen had prepared valuable works, either with respect to their professional views or their own emoluments. There were, for instance, certain collections of Mr. Evans and Mr. Chitty, which had been ably edited by Mr. Welsby and Mr. Bevan, and by referring to which the practitioner could find brought together all the laws on certain particular subjects. He had not the slightest doubt that a great deal might be done by the Statute Law Commission, but he believed that the difficulties which beset its operations were very great. In the short Report made by the Commission two points of great importance were touched upon. The first was the appointment of a Minister of Justice, or some such officer, to superintend the passing of any Bill on the subject through both Houses; the second was the classification of the Statutes, and he thought that, if the recommendation of classifying them every year were adopted, it would be a great advantage to the public as well as the profession.

said, he wanted a little explanation as to the expenditure of this sum of £1,911, and how far it would advance the object of the Statute Law Commission. He thought the Committee could not make a greater mistake than by giving money to a gentleman for one service, while he had a salary for performing another. That was the position of Mr. Bellenden Ker. It was said that Mr. Bellenden Ker rendered great service to the Lord Chancellor; but if so, he should be paid as legal adviser to the Lord Chancellor, and not in some other capacity which he did not fill. He entertained great doubts as to the possibility of any codification of the Statutes. He thought one of the first objects of the House of Commons should be to amend its system of legislation. He wished to know whether the fifteen gentlemen of the Statute Law Commission, who were said to be on the work of codifying the Statutes, were paid or were amateurs?

said, he did not rise to object to the Vote. He would willingly vote ten times the amount proposed, if a business so important to the public service would be thereby placed upon a satisfactory and efficient footing. The staff of the Commission consisted of a Commissioner at a salary of £1,000; a second Commissioner at £600; and a clerk at £100; which, in the aggregate, amounted to a sum rather less than what was paid for the staff of the National Gallery. He had latterly voted against a sum of £22,000 proposed for improvements in the parks. Now half of that sum would suffice to consolidate the Statutes in a proper manner; but that, he believed, would never be done until it was made a department of the State, and a proper number of persons were appointed to do the work.

said, that, since 1853, a sum of £11,000 had been expended for the purposes the Commission had in view. The Statute Book contained, he believed, 17,000 Acts of Parliament, in forty volumes, but of these only some 2,500 were operative, the remainder being for the greater part obsolete. There was, therefore, only about one-sixth of the whole which required revision, thus reducing the forty volumes to something like seven, and that was the amount of work which eminent gentlemen described as fraught with such difficulties that the human mind was unable to perform its task. He believed that the difficulties had been very much exaggerated, and he trusted that the item would be disallowed.

said, he wished to know what benefit the country had derived from the money which had been expended in the attempt to consolidate the Statutes? No doubt there was a certain amount of difficulty in the undertaking, but, if properly managed, it could unquestionably be accomplished. The difficulties which would attend the consolidation of the law of this country would not be as great as those under which the Roman Code was framed, nor as those under which was drawn up the Code Napoleon, which, with all its imperfections, was a model of legislative wisdom. As to the present Commissioners, he did not think—and he said it with the utmost respect—that the Lord Chancellor had sufficiently estimated the importance of the task, nor did he think that Mr. Bellenden Ker was the person best fitted to preside over the Commission. In his opinion the best method of accomplishing the task would be, instead of having a Commission composed of eminent men who entertained contradictory opinions, to have two or three eminent men, aided by an efficient staff, under the guidance of one person. There was no difficulty in the case which might not be easily surmounted in four or five years by pursuing a right system. He would be prepared to vote a very considerable sum of money for such a purpose as that; but with regard to the present Vote he looked upon it as money not merely thrown away, but as money expended in a manner that was positively mischievous.

said, he considered that the desirability of codifying the law was a question, and perhaps a doubtful question, for a nation like England; but there was no question as to the fact, that it would be most unwise for Parliament to profess that a code ought to be drawn up, unless it was prepared to set seriously about the task. Now, as to the performance of that task, he could only say that it appeared to him no nearer to completion than it was three years ago. It had been said that the present Commission had been very successful; but in order to be successful three things were necessary. The Commission, in the first place, to have been successful, ought to have been able to consolidate the law clearly; in the second place, they ought to have been able to obtain the approval of Parliament for the Statutes which they proposed; and thirdly, those Statutes ought to have received the approbation of the Judges. Now, had the Commission performed their task to the satisfaction of any one but themselves. It was surely most desirable that the House of Commons should have some prospect of this work being speedily accomplished. The hon. and learned Member for East Suffolk (Sir F. Kelly) had stated that certain Bills had been introduced which might prove exceedingly useful if they only received the support of Her Majesty's Government. Now, he willingly confessed that was a point of the most vital importance. The task was one of great importance, and one which required great authority for its execution. It was by no means matter for despair that with regard to some portions of the Criminal Law the late Sir Robert Peel had, with the assistance of his own law officers and of a gentleman of great ability, Mr. Gregson, been able to introduce and carry a very clear law upon the subject. Afterwards, when it became desirable to mitigate the severity of the criminal code, he (Lord J. Russell) had introduced various measures upon the subject, and he had been greatly assisted in the task by the Criminal Law Commissioners, and one of the Judges had assured him that the Judges generally were satisfied with those measures. In order, however, to carry measures of that character, it was necessary that some Minister of the Crown should undertake the matter, and that the Government should not merely undertake to support those measures, but that they should consider those which they approved as their own, and should use all their influence to carry them into law. If a number of Bills were thrown upon the table of the House providing for the consolidation of the law, not supported, or rather adopted by the Government, he should despair of their success. One of the greatest men of modern times—the late Emperor Napoleon—when he was first Consul, and when he was engaged in considering the provisions of that code which would ever be a monument of legislative wisdom, was in the habit, from ten o'clock in the morning until five in the evening, of taking counsel with his law officers and discussing its provisions. After the articles had been framed according to the sense of the majority of the Council, they were sent to the different departments of France for the consideration of the tribunals. Now, he (Lord J. Russell) thought that, in like manner, after the subject had been fully considered by those who were selected for the work, the product of their deliberations might be submitted to the Lord Chief Justices, the Master of the Rolls, and other high legal authorities. To employ those high legal functionaries in the initiatory labours was to put them in a position that could hardly be useful, but their services would be of great value if they had the supervision and, if necessary, the correction of the work of others. Even three times the expense at present incurred would not be thrown away if, by such means as he had hinted at, those separate Bills, having the approval of the highest authorities, were brought into Parliament under the sanction of ths Government. Whether they were brought in by the Home Secretary, the Solicitor General, his right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, or by a Minister of Justice, let it be understood that they were the measures of the Government—that it was their object seriously to improve and reform the Statute Book—to make that the principal business of the Session—and that they were prepared to form a code on which the reputation of the country might be staked. If that were done, then we might expect the production of such a code as could be placed in competition with that of any other country in the world. As to the particular plans which had been brought forward he would express no opinion. It might be that the plan of his hon. and learned Friend the Attorney General was better than that of the Commissioners, or that the plan of the Commissioners was better than that of the Attorney General. On that matter he gave no opinion, but he would most earnestly repeat the view he had expressed, that on a question of such serious importance the labours of those appointed to discharge this duty ought to be submitted to the highest and most competent authorities, and then such a reform of the Statute Book would be obtained as he felt assured would satisfy the House of Commons and the country.

said, he wished to say a few words on the question under consideration which he must admit was one of paramount importance, though much that he intended to say had been anticipated in what had fallen from the noble Lord the Member for London. He must of course believe that the mode of procedure which had been adopted was the best that could be followed considering the high authority on which it rested, and he could with great sincerity bear testimony to the zeal, energy, and industry which the Statute Law Commission had exhibited; but it was unreasonable, within so short a time, to look for anything as the direct fruits of their labours. The results of their exertions would be produced in a short period in a collected form, and therefore he thought that a great deal of what had been said was unseasonable in point of time. When the question was first mooted in 1853, he had doubted whether the object could be effectually completed by a gratuitous Commission. He did not think that the House of Commons would in the first instance have been willing to assent to the method by which it was conceived the object could be attained. His hon. and learned Friend the Attorney General and himself thought that the best thing to do would not be to make a mere consolidation of the Statutes, but to codify the law; but their views were overruled, it appearing that the Commission were in favour of the mode now adopted. Let hon. Members look at the paper of business of that day, and then say what chance there was of any measure of legal reform receiving the attention of that House during the Session. He therefore contended that Government were not answerable for the alleged delay that had been commented upon by the hon. and learned Member for Leominster. The Commission had been industriously collecting materials, and a number of consolidated Statutes would shortly be laid before Parliament. Much had been said about the slow progress that had been made, but it should be borne in mind that the members of the Commission could not devote to its duties the whole of their time, having their own proper offices to attend to. The duties of the Commission could only be discharged by each of the Commissioners directing such time as they were able to command to the superintendence of the labours submitted to them. Those duties, however, had been performed most zealously, and those who complained that nothing had been done could hardly have taken a view of all the circumstances. With regard to the gentleman appointed to superintend the labours of the Commission, there could be no imputation more unfounded than that his appointment emanated from an undue exercise of the Lord Chancellor's patronage. The Lord Chancellor selected him chiefly because he had discharged with fidelity his duties on the former Commission. Supposing the course taken to be a right one—and he was bound to snppose it was—no person could more efficiently have promoted the objects which the majority of the Commissioners had resolved on than that gentleman. Undoubtedly he should have been glad if the House had recognised the appointment of a great officer charged with the duty of amending the law, but the mode of proceeding by Commission had been deliberately adopted, and the result obtained was more than might have been expected. He could assure the Committee that the Commissioners were prepared to submit to Parliament Bills which would fully justify the representation made of their labours, and he therefore thought that it would be unreasonable to refuse the Vote now asked.

said, he trusted he need not assure the Committee that there was nothing whatever personal in his motives in this matter: but, unfortunately, some hon. Gentlemen, when they had a bad cause to defend, were apt to impute personal motives. His complaint was, that this Commission and the Commission which preceded it, the Criminal Law Commission, had spent enormous sums of money and done very little. With respect to the Sleeping Statutes Bill, he was willing to admit that he stole that out of the Report of the Commission, for it had been sleeping there so long that he thought it right to tear it out of the Report and introduce it to the House. He would state a reason for the Committee not agreeing to the proposed Vote. By a return distributed that morning it appeared that the actual balance in the hands of the Statute Law Commissioners on the 30th of April last amounted to £3,029, and he saw no ground why the Committee should now add to that sum.

said, he should move that the Vote be reduced by £900, as the travelling charges of the Endowed Schools Commissioners (Ireland) appeared to be excessive.

said, he would beg to ask the hon. Gentleman to say what salary the Commissioners would have left if they had to pay their travelling expenses, which the hon. Gantleman appeared to think they ought to do out of their salaries?

said, he had been misunderstood. The salaries had been fixed at £200, but had been raised by this Vote to £500. He did not propose to reduce the travelling expenses, but the salaries to the amount originally fixed by Act of Parliament.

said, he must complain of the large sum paid under the Act, especially the sum of £8,400 paid to the present Attorney and Solicitor Generals for patents, and £702 for their clerks. He must also complain of the amounts paid to the Irish Attorney and Solicitor Generals for patents. He fully admitted that men of eminence should fill those offices; but he thought the sums paid to them under the Act excessive. He considered the time was come when patents might be done away with.

said, that three years ago, a Bill was passed for the improvement of the Patent Law, and at that period the law officers made a great sacrifice of the fees to which they were entitled by Act of Parliament. They were entitled to a fee of ten guineas on each patent, but by the new law it was fixed at six guineas, and the Lord Chancellor and the Master of the Rolls were empowered to reduce the amount of the fee. Two years subsequently it was reduced from six guineas to three guineas, the sum which the law officers now received. The amount of the Vote was £21,842, and the sum which had been paid into the Exchequer was £90,000, and, therefore, the public were the gainers to the amount of the balance.

said, he thought it monstrous that the mechanical ingenuity of the country should be taxed to the amount of £90,000 a year.

said, he expected that this Vote would certainly have disappeared by this time from the Estimates altogether. There was a time when those fisheries required encouragement, but that time was certainly passed. They were never in a more prosperous state than at present. The hon. Under Secretary of the Treasury stated last year that the Vote was to cease, and he now asked for an explanation of its continuance?

said it was the intention of the Government to have expunged the Vote from the Estimates; but on further inquiry it was found impossible to do so this year. He proposed to take the Vote for the ensuing year for the last time, and to issue a Commission to inquire if the continuance of the Board was necessary, more particularly with reference to the "brand," and if so to make it self-supporting.

said, that after the explanation of the hon. Gentleman, he had great pleasure in withdrawing his opposition to the Vote.

said, he thought they were not justified in maintaining such a Board at the expense of the public. Had the hon. Member for Lambeth divided the Committee he would have supported him.

said, that the only objection to the Vote which he had heard as relating to piers and harbours was that it was too small. He fully acquiesced in the proposal to issue a Commission of Inquiry, although he had no doubt the result would be the continuance of the Board in some shape or other.

said, he had been informed that one effect of the Board had been a great increase in the herring fishery on the east coast. In 1829 there were exported 85,000 barrels of herrings. In 1855, 350,000 barrels. He had also been told that the "brand" was regarded by foreign purchasers as a proof of quality. He was glad that the Government was not going to abolish the Board but to inquire.

said, he must protest against the Board being supported out of the public funds.

said, he had been informed by a person conversant with the subject that it would be a great national injury if the grant were withdrawn.

said, as a Scotch Member he thought the Vote was indefensible. The Government last Session gave the House to understand that the propriety of discontinuing it should be inquired into; but it was not until November that the Treasury sent down a minute on the subject to the Fishery Commissioners. The Board made a long and somewhat irrelevant reply vindicating its existence, as of course all Boards would do. He had seen a letter written by a large herring curer at Anstruther, who gave it as his opinion that the development of the trade was due to causes wholly irrespective of the Vote, which he thought might be withdrawn not only without detriment, but with positive advantage to private enterprise.

said, he wished to know in what shape, if any, the Vote was likely to come before the Committee next year?

said, he must beg to explain to the Committee that, exception having been taken to the Vote last year, the Government then admitted that it was open to serious objection, and promised that it should be carefully considered before being again submitted to Parliament. During the recess the subject was examined accordingly, and the Government, being of opinion that the principle on which the grant was founded was untenable, and that it ought not to reappear in the Estimates, made a communication to that effect to the Fishery Board. The Board in reply, perhaps not unnaturally, defended the Vote. They made strong remonstrances to the Treasury, which were supported by many hon. Gentlemen connected with Scotland, sitting on both sides of the House. It was represented that this question involved not merely the "brand," which belonged to an antiquated system, but was connected with piers and harbours in the small ports on the coast of Scotland, and affected a branch of trade which afforded the means of subsistence to a very considerable class of the poor population of that country. Under such circumstances the Government were unwilling to take a course which they were told by persons fully acquainted with the subject might be attended with very serious results, but they determined to propose the Vote this Session, and to send down to Scotland a Commission to make a close investigation and to report to the Treasury, who would then decide whether the Vote should again be submitted to Parliament, or whether it should be altogether discontinued.

said, it seemed to him that there was such a considerable discrepancy between the explanations of the Chancellor of the Exchequer and the Secretary to the Treasury that he now felt it his duty to divide the Committee.

said, he had stated that a Commission would be appointed upon the distinct understanding that, if the brand was to be continued, such a fee should be paid as would defray the expenses of the Board and render it self-supporting, and that if the Vote should appear in the Estimates another year it would be in such a form that no expense would be entailed upon the country.

said, he wished for some explanation relative to an item of £200, and another of £100, for two of Her Majesty's ships which had been employed in the north of Scotland in connection with this fishery which he considered a scandalous job.

said, the two vessels were old ships of the Navy, employed in the police of the fisheries.

said, that the employment of these ships, so far from being a scandalous job, as asserted by the hon. and gallant Member for Brighton, was essential to the interests of a very large portion of the Scotch community. He could not agree with what had fallen from the hon. Secretary of the Treasury, respecting the object of the proposed Commission. He thought that the Commission ought not to be a foregone conclusion, and that the Government ought not to commit itself to any opinion. It ought to take the Vote for the present year, and wait the Report of the Commission before taking any further decision. He thought, therefore, that they should not be told previously what the Government intended to do. The matter affected a very large class of his constituents. He willingly admitted that the principle of the brand was indefensible, and could only be kept up by an appeal ad misericordiam. The herring fishery was carried on by persons in remote islands, where it was impossible they should be known elsewhere by their names, and when the article could only be known and bear its price by means of the "brand." The matter was but little understood, and on that account he would press upon the Government to institute the inquiry by an impartial Commission, to see if the "brand" was necessary or not. The "brand" could only be kept up upon the distinct recommendation of a Commission. He did not defend the "brand," he required only that it should be fairly examined into. The herring fishery was a peculiar one, it was carried on only at a particular time of the year. It was only by proper police and abstinence from confusion that the shoals were prevented from escaping. It was therefore essential that a proper police should be maintained. It was likewise necessary there should be harbours of refuge under such circumstances; and he thought that, as Ireland had been benefitted during the last ten years to the extent of £70,000 or £80,000, while Scotland had received only £17,000 or £18,000 for harbours for fishing pur- poses, it was but fair that Scotland should receive a further share.

said, he wished to know whether he was to understand distinctly that the various items composing this Vote of £13,500 would hereafter disappear from the Estimates?

said, he could only repeat the statement which he had already made, that the Report of the Commission would decide whether the Vote should cease and the Board be abolished, or whether the Board should be continued upon the principle that a fee should be charged for branding equivalent to the sum now imposed upon the public for that purpose. Under no circumstances, however, could the Vote be entirely given up, for, whether the Board was abolished or not, it would still be necessary not only to continue the pensions and allowances granted to retired officers, but to provide compensation for the present active officers of the Board. He might state, as an additional reason for continuing the Vote for another year, that contracts had already been entered into with continental purchasers for the delivery of herrings next season with the Government brand.

said, he hoped the Opposition to the Vote would be persisted in. It was most absurd that such a large sum should be annually spent in assisting in the catching of Scotch herrings.

said, he wished to know what the Government would decide, if the proposed Commission reported in favour of the Vote?

said, the Commission could not Report in favour of the Vote as it stood, for the question would go to them upon this basis, already determined by the Government, that the expenses of the branding system should no longer be imposed upon the public.

said, the people of Scotland felt great interest in the Bill. Last year he felt himself compelled to join in opposition against the Bill which the right hon. and learned Lord Advocate then introduced, because the right hon. and learned Lord proposed to do away with a time-honoured system in Scotland, which had for centuries fostered education and been a blessing to that country. But the present Bill was of a different nature, and he wished to state his reasons why he should no longer oppose the Bill, but why, on the contrary, he was ready to offer his support to the right hon. and learned Lord in carrying it into law. The present Bill did not propose to alter the existing system, although it would certainly introduce many startling changes if adopted in its present form, and some of which he certainly did not think it was expedient to introduce. The opposition which had been raised against the Bill appeared to him to be founded on a total misapprehension of the real object of it. It was supposed that the Bill would effect a severance of the schools from the Church of Scotland. He agreed with the petitioners, who opposed that Bill on that ground, that such a severance would be productive of the worst possible effects; but he did not conceive that any severance of the schools from the Church would be effected by the Bill. It was his opinion that the right hon. and learned Lord had no wish to sever the schools from the Church; that question, thereforee, was no longer a matter of argument. Had that been the object of the Bill he should have continued to have given it his most strenuous opposition, because he could not conceive that a pure religious education in the schools could be insured except by a connection of those schools with the Church. One great change in the Bill, and that which had excited considerable difference of opinion in the Church of Scotland, was the proposed abolition of the test of the schoolmaster which the Church of Scotland had hitherto required. He had always felt that the obligation that the schoolmasters appointed to the national schools should belong to the Church of Scotland was unjust in principle and oppressive in practice. Considering how many men of piety and intelligence there were in Scotland professing the same doctrines virtually as those of the Established Church, it was, in his opinion, un- just to say that they were unfit to be teachers in the schools simply because they differed from the establishment in some unimportant part of Church discipline. Any law which operated to exclude them from such an office was unjust and uncalled for at any time, and assuredly more particularly so at the present day. The religious feeling in Scotland was as strong as ever; he therefore did not believe that in seeking to share in the management of the schools the large Dissenting bodies in Scotland had any wish to do away with the religious character of those schools. If it were possible to abolish the obnoxious test of adherence to the Established Church, without giving up the religious character of the teaching in schools, he conceived it to be most desirable. At present, he might safely say that the teaching in the schools was not in the slightest degree of a sectarian tendency. He had found in his district one-third of the school children belonged to various sects of Protestant Dissenters, and a considerable proportion were Roman Catholics, and yet there had not been a single complaint against the doctrines taught. It had been said that all change should be opposed, because some Dissenters had declared that, having obtained one advantage over the Established Church, still more would be required; but he hoped the House would not be guided by hasty expressions from any source. He hoped rather that the Established Church would, by timely concession, obviate the necessity of future changes more sweeping and, possibly, more dangerous. Another feature in the Bill was the appointment of Government inspectors, and he thought experience was in favour of that enactment. When it became necessary to inquire into the character of schoolmasters, it was a great advantage to have a man to conduct the inquiry who would not be bound by any petty local feelings. He would, however, wish to put it to the right hon. and learned Lord Advocate whether, having no desire to interfere with the religious character of the schools, it would not be as well that that desire should appear upon the face of the Bill, in order to refute any opposition from those who opposed changes upon that ground; and if that were done it would have a great tendency, he apprehended, to diminish the opposition to the Bill. In the clause by which private prosecutions against schoolmasters were to take place at the instance of the heritors only, if an alteration were made to allow prosecutions at the instance of individual heritors or of the minister, he thought there would be a sufficient security that Roman Catholics or Dissenters could not override the feelings of the clergy or the people by subverting the minds of those placed under their care. There should be some enactment that schoolmasters must be of some Christian denomination, and, as the Westminster Confession of Faith was ackowledged alike by the United Presbyterians, the Free Church, and the Established Church, he thought that might safely be made a test. If those concessions were made, he believed they would disarm much opposition from that side of the House. He would also beg to remind his Friends, from whom upon this occasion he might in some degree differ, that it was most essential that the question should be settled during the present year, and he would put it to them whether, if they could make concessions not inconsistent with their principles and at the same time retaining the religious character of the schools, it would not be advisable to yield some points in order to settle this muchvexed question?

said, it seemed to him that the argument of his hon. Friend (Sir J. Fergusson) ought to have led him to a conclusion directly opposite to that at which he had arrived.

Not a test requiring adhesion to the Established Church, but only of the religious character of the schoolmaster.

His hon. Friend would destroy one species of test, but would establish another in its stead. Now, he (Mr. C. Bruce) could see no reasonable objection to that provision in the present system under which the schoolmasters were required, as they had been, required for 200 years, to be in communion with the Established Church. He was one who entertained serious objections on principle to the clauses of the Bill; but supposing they were to throw out the Bill on the second reading, they would not settle the question, which might be brought forward again on a succeeding night. It was, therefore, not his intention to divide the House, although he should undoubtedly say "no" to the second reading. Unless his right hon. and learned Friend should expunge the objectionable clauses, he should, when the House went into Committee on the Bill, move that it go into Committee that day six months. His right hon. and learned Friend who introduced the measure had declared that he was willing to make every concession which he could, preserving at the same time the principle of the Bill; but those concessions were rendered of no value by retaining the obnoxious provisions to which he (Mr. Bruce) objected. The 9th clause seemed to him to aim at the entire separation of the long connection which had existed between the parish schools and the Established Church. He could not, therefore, consent to that clause. No doubt his right hon. and learned Friend would deny that his object was to abolish religious in favour of secular education, yet that was a natural consequence which would result from the measure. He thought that the opponents of the Bill were entitled to much greater concessions than had been made by his right hon. and learned Friend, especially after the previous decisions of the House last year and the year before. In the House of Lords, which was not to be put out of consideration entirely, it was rejected at once; so that they had a right to expect very material concessions, and especially a guarantee of the continuance of the intimate connection between the Church and the schools. Not to concede that was to "keep the word of promise to the ear, and break it to the sense." The hon. Member for Edinburgh (Mr. Black) had professed himself not only perfectly satisfied with the Bill, but avowed his intention to support it. That hon. Gentleman was held in high consideration both by that House and by his constituents, and, therefore, his observations were entitled to great weight. He had advised them to accept this measure as an instalment, and had referred to the High School of Edinburgh, and cited it as a proof that the constitution of parochial schools in Scotland was not one necessary to maintain; because that school had eight masters of different denominations, and yet it enjoyed a large amount of popularity. But the hon. Gentleman had forgotten to state that that school was purely a grammar school, devoted to secular teaching, and providing for the education of the children of the middle rather than of the poorer classes. Edinburgh, indeed, had many advantages in respect of religious teaching which country parishes in Scotland did not enjoy. The hon. Gentleman also said that the existing constitution of the parochial schools was opposed to the spirit of the age. He really was at a loss to know what was meant by such an argument, because the spirit of the age was a very volatile spirit, and very different in different countries. The spirit of the age delighted in putting down all old institutions, however they might venerate them. The House of Common, however, he trusted would respect existing institutions, while at the same time it desired to promote social progress and the advancement of truth. Among the institutions of the country, he believed that it respected none more than the Established Church, whether of England or Scotland. Now, the noble Lord at the head of the Government was said to be an incarnation of the spirit of the age; and the House could not have forgotten the eloquent and statesmanlike declaration of that noble Lord the other night in favour of the Established Church in Ireland. In his (Mr. Bruce's) opinion this measure of the right hon. and learned Lord would, if passed as it at present stood, be a heavy blow and great discouragement to the Established Church in Scotland; and the more they inquired into that Establishment, as respected its relation not only with schools but other institutions, the more they would have reason to rejoice that it had so faithfully performed its legitimate functions. He believed that no useful or satisfactory school superintendence could be exercised by the ministers of one denomination over the children of another. There were, undoubtedly, parts of the Bill of which he approved; but without a distinct assurance that the 9th clause would be given up, he should certainly oppose the measure in Committee, for if it passed as it was it would destroy that valuable connection of which he had spoken, and would introduce disunion and heart-burnings into every parish in Scotland, and sound teaching in its schools would become impossible.

said, he felt called upon to vindicate himself after what had been said by the hon. Member for Elginshire, who had last addressed them, and he would say that if the hon. Gentleman was not more accurate in his arguments than in his report of what he (Mr. Black) had said relating to the High School, in Edinburgh, they would be entirely groundless. In that school the Bible was regularly read, and a desire was manifested that the instruction which was given should be of a religious character. It was not correct, then, to say that secular instruction alone was given in that school. Every master in the High School of Edinburgh desired his class to be a large one, and they knew too well that the people of Scotland wished their children to have religious instruction not to supply this want. The petitions against the Bill came from two sources—one from the Established Church, and another from the Commissioners of Supply. There were about 1,000 parishes in Scotland, and these met in a collective capacity—first, as presbyteries, then as synods, and, lastly, as the General Assembly. Then the General Assembly had its Commission. No sooner did any question arise affecting the Church than the Commission or the General Assembly gave the word, and every parish minister must then set about getting up petitions. This body had a monopoly of the schools at present; and no corporation, especially an ecclesiastical one, gave up a monopoly without some resistance. He willingly admitted that the Commissioners of Supply were very estimable gentlemen; but they had not exhibited much statesmanship. They had opposed the repeal of the corn laws, the repeal of the Test Acts, and other liberal measures, and they did not appear to exhibit more liberal feelings in these case of the parochial schools. They appeared to consider it their duty to support every thing which was antique, so that Dr. Chalmers once said, "There are two things in nature which never change—the fixed stars and the Scotch lairds." No public meetings of any consequence had been held against the Bill, and he trusted that if the Bill passed, the heritors of the Church would not stop in the march of improvement, but would proceed so as to relieve themselves of the present incubus. What showed the real opinion of Scotland in the strongest manner with regard to this Bill was the meeting of the Convention of Royal Burghs, which was the remains of the Scotch Parliament. At the last annual meeting of that body, held in Edinburgh, a Motion was submitted approving of the general principle of this Bill. To that Motion an Amendment was proposed, demanding the insertion of a clause providing that the schoolmaster, on induction, should be bound to subscribe the Confession of Faith, as by law established. The numbers were—for the Motion, and in favour of the removal of tests, thirty; for the Amendment, only nine. It was quite absurd to say that there was no "test," for a book of 500 pages had to be subscribed, the tenets of which those who subscribed promised to adhere to all the days of their lives; but he believed that but a very small proportion of schoolmasters had read this book. Such a system of tests would deprive the country of the services of great men. By this Bill the minister would retain the same power that he held before. It was a mistake to suppose that the minister and the presbytery laid down what was to be taught in the schools. That power was really exercised by the heritors. The presbytery was merely a examining body. The heritors selected the schoolmaster. The presbytery retained a veto to dismiss an immoral man; but, practically, all questions affecting a man's morals were settled in the Court of Session. The great guarantee that religion would be taught in these schools was to be found in the religious character of the people. Besides the High Schools of Edinburgh, there were schools teaching 3,000 scholars; but when these schools were founded it never entered into the imagination of the ministry to require religious tests in the schoolmasters.

said, the boroughs whose representatives had expressed an opinion in favour of the Bill were without parochial schools, and he thought they would do well to attend to their own affairs, and leave the country parishes alone. The first six clauses of the Bill, the object of which was to provide larger salaries and better dwelling-houses for the schoolmasters, were unobjectionable; but he objected to the rest of the Bill, because it would, in his opinion, have the effect of depriving the Church of the superintendence of the schools. There was no objection, on the part of the people of Scotland, to provide funds necessary for those purposes. The remaining clauses of the Bill entirely related to the question of religious teaching. At present the presbytery exercised a controlling power with respect to religious teaching; but the provisions of the Bill of the right hon. and learned Lord Advocate would take that power away. The practical action of the ninth clause would be to take away the test altogether; and many of the other clauses of the Bill tended to sever the schools from the Church, and turn them into secular schools, somewhat after the fashion of the Resolutions of the noble Lord the Member for London (Lord John Russell), which had been so unanimously rejected by that House. Another matter to which he wished to call attention was with reference to the appointment of in- spectors. By the fourteenth clause of the Bill, power was given to divide Scotland into districts, and appoint inspectors to superintend them. Now, that was a provision introduced into the Resolutions of the noble Lord the Member for London, but it had been unanimously objected to. In England, grants of money were advanced through the Committee of Privy Council. Nevertheless, no such power was exercised in this country as was proposed by the present Bill to be put in practice in Scotland. He should like to know why it was attempted to exercise a power in Scotland which had been unanimously rejected as regarded England? Although he had so many objections to the Bill, he did not intend to divide against it at that stage. However, it was but fair to give notice that unless the right hon. and learned Lord Advocate previously placed on the table such Amendments as would meet many of the objections urged that evening, he should deem it his duty to offer even opposition to the Bill going into Committee.

said, he had serious objections to the Bill. It was his belief that the schools of Scotland were at present in a more efficient state than they had ever before been, both as to the qualification of the teachers and the number of the schools. He would have no hesitation in inviting the right hon. and learned Lord Advocate to go with him into any district in the south of Scotland, and if he found any young person of the age of fifteen, and of sound mind, who could not write or read, he would give up his opposition to the measure altogether. To the inspection of the inspectors proposed by the Bill he also objected—their supervision, in his opinion, could never be as effectual as that exercised by the clergyman of the parish—and he would advocate the selection of the best schoolmasters without the regulation for their being of the Established Church being so stringently enforced—a declaration, he thought, to the effect that they were protestants, and would never teach anything contrary to the truths of the Bible, would be quite sufficient.

said, he desired to express his concurrence in the general objects of the Bill, but, with respect to the appointment of others besides members of the Church of Scotland as schoolmasters, he was bound to say that he thought the Bill went a great deal too far. It was his earnest conviction that the Legislature was bound by the Act of security, passed at the time of the union of the two countries, to maintain the Presbyterian religion in Scotland. The required subscription to the Westminster Confession of Faith was the assertion of that principle, and the abolition of the subscription was the abolition of the obligation that the schoolmaster should be Presbyterian, and that his teaching should be Presbyterian. He could as yet discern nothing in the religious circumstances of Scotland to justify such a change in the character of Scotch schools. The people of Scotland were at the present day as thoroughly Presbyterian as at the time of the Union. They had the same antipathy not only to papacy but to prelacy; and that antipathy had increased by circumstances which had lately occurred in the Episcopal Church of England. No doubt, the Presbyterians were no longer united, and that was a reason I why the test should be altered so as to adapt it to the present circumstances of Presbyterianism in Scotland, and such a change he considered might be made in complete harmony with the Act of Union; but that was no reason why the Presbyterian character of the schools should be swept away entirely. He therefore trusted that alterations would be made in the Bill to meet the objections he had stated.

said, as he was given to understand that there was to be no division on this stage of the Bill, he hoped he might be allowed shortly to explain its objects. His desire in introducing the Bill was to place the schoolmasters, at the expiration of the present Act, in a proper and decent position with respect to remuneration, and at the same time to do away with the exclusion which prevented a man, however orthodox his belief might be, from being a schoolmaster, unless he was a member of the Established Church of Scotland. He had been complimented by hon. Members on the improvement of the present Bill compared with former propositions, but he could not accept the compliment, as he did not think the present Bill so efficient; but it was not necessary or right to go on year after year in contention if there appeared to be any mode of settling differences. Accordingly, having made up his mind to leave the parish schoolmasters as they stood, with only such modifications of their position as seemed necessary, he proposed the present Bill. He did not, however, call the Bill a measure of education for Scotland, but only a step towards it—a necessary step undoubtedly, because when the present Bill was passed then all parties might unite in ulterior measures for the education of the people of Scotland. Along with the increase of salaries and house accommodation he proposed to abolish the test. With respect to the abolition of the test, there were two views held—one, that the test was a security for the teacher being a member of the Established Church of Scotland; and the other, that it secured the religious character of the teacher. He would put it to the House whether that test was an efficient one for those purposes? Hon. Gentlemen seemed to forget that the Test and Corporation Act had been repealed. Nevertheless, he believed there was more real religion in the corporations of Scotland than in any others. The university test had been abolished in the same way, and he believed no Scotchman would wish to see it reimposed. This test he therefore proposed to abolish, as applied to schoolmasters. It was a mistake, however, to suppose that there was no test left in the Bill for the schoolmasters. He did not suppose that the present was the best constitution for the schools that could be instituted, but nevertheless he felt a certain amount of respect for ancient institutions, and thought that the powers proposed by the Bill were justly left in the hands of the Presbyterian ministers. An hon. Gentleman had said that the seventh clause of the Bill took from the Presbyteries the right of initiating proceedings. That was true, because the power they possessed was the power of acting both as prosecutors and judges—a combination of functions which was admitted on all hands to be vicious. He should be inclined, however, to give the power of complaint to any three heads of families. It had been said that the eleventh clause took away all power of examination from the Presbytery; but the clause had no such sweeping operation, for it was expressly limited to such schoolmasters as were not of the Established Church, and it left the right of examination just as it was in every other case. If hon. Gentlemen opposite would be content with that security for religious teaching which was provided in the Bill, by leaving the appointment of the schoolmasters and the jurisdiction over them in the hands where they were now placed, the Bill might pass, but he should be very loath to consent to anything in the shape of a test or a profession.

said, the right hon. and learned Lord had not explained how the Presbytery were to take cognizance of any difficulties which might arise in respect to religious teaching. Either there ought to be a test, as a criterion by which the Presbytery might go, or there ought to be a recognition that the Presbytery was to be the judge of what teaching was orthodox and what not.

said, he wished to ask in what way the jurisdiction of the Presbytery was to be preserved? He believed that the last clause was the most general one he had ever seen introduced into any Act of Parliament. The Bill was, in his opinion, most imperfectly drawn, and he was by no means satisfied with the way it was interpreted by the rubrical or marginal notes. He hoped that the right hon. and learned Lord would place upon the notice paper such Amendments as would render the measure more acceptable to the feelings of the people of Scotland. He also hoped that ample time would be given to the House to consider those Amendments before they went into Committee.

said, that it would be very satisfactory to the people of Scotland if the right hon. and learned Lord Advocate would, before the Bill passed its next stage, introduce into it some provision securing that the teachers appointed to the schools in that country should be Protestants.

said, he would beg to ask the right hon. and learned Lord Advocate when he would lay upon the table the clauses which he had shadowed forth in his speech?

said, that, instead of the Bill being imperfectly drawn as had been asserted by the hon. Member for Berwickshire (Mr. F. Scott), he thought it had been imperfectly read. He would do his best to make himself master of the difficulties which had arisen, and if they appeared to be real he would frame clauses to remove them. If he found it necessary to introduce new clauses he would give ample notice of them.

said, that these last expressions of the right hon. and learned Lord had inspired him (Mr. Scott) with much distrust of his intentions.

said, he should move that the debate be adjourned. The right hon. Gentleman (Mr. Lowe) had given notice of a long list of Amendments; and it was too late (five minutes before One o'clock) to proceed with a Bill of such importance.

said, that it was of great importance that the Bill should go up to another place as soon as possible, and he, therefore, urged the House to allow him to proceed with it. The Amendments of which he had given notice were intended to meet objections which had been taken in Committee, and he, therefore, apprehended that they would not be opposed. He himself should not oppose the addition of the clause of which the hon. Gentleman (Mr. Spooner) had given notice.

said, he wished to move the omission of Clauses 46, 47, and 48, which authorised the Board of Trade to appoint an inspector to examine into the solvency of a company. The provision he considered mischievous and fallacious, the only trust-worthy investigation into the accounts of an undertaking being one instituted by the shareholders themselves.

said, he could not accede to the proposition of the right hon. Gentleman, Those clauses were originally proposed last year by a noble Lord in another place, who took for his guide the New York Act, which empowered a small number of shareholders, if dissatisfied with the state of a company's affairs to apply to a Court of equity for an inquiry. That was a very objectionable provision, as it would arm a small section of the shareholders with the power of endangering the stability and shaking the credit, of the undertaking by giving undue publicity to their internal quarrels; but it was thought that all the benefits of such a clause, without its disadvantages, would be secured by allowing one-tenth of the proprietary, under the guarantee of payment of the costs of the proceeding, to apply to the Board of Trade to appoint an inspector to examine into the accounts. That Board would not, however, be responsible for the report of this officer; and yet it was desirable that it should be enabled to nominate a respectable and impartial person to conduct such an investigation. The Board of Trade possessed an analogous function in its power to select an arbitrator to settle disputes between railway companies. It was true the majority of the shareholders in a joint-stock company could examine into the accounts, if so disposed; but this provision was intended for the protection of a minority suspecting that the affairs of the concern were not going on satisfactorily, and who would thereby have an impartial tribunal to which they could appeal, whose inquiries could be conducted with the least possible detriment to the interests of the undertaking. If some such power as this had existed in the case of the Tipperary Bank, the proceedings which had proved so ruinous to that unfortunate concern might have been arrested.

said, he strongly objected to the appointment of a secret tribunal at the discretion of the Government, and he thought the right hon. Gentleman (Mr. Lowe) could not have referred to a case more fatal to his own proposition than that of the Tipperary Bank. In his opinion, shareholders might safely be left to decide upon matters affecting their own interests, and he felt called upon to protest against the substitution of the secret action of the Board of Trade for the open action of shareholders themselves.

said, he could fully comprehend the illustration of the Tipperary Bank, and when the proper opportunity arrived he might be able to afford some information with reference to the gang of persons concerned in that establishment. The Bill under consideration provided that if any officer or agent of a company refused to produce books or documents, or to answer any questions which might be put to him by the inspectors, he should incur a penalty of £5. Now, what was to be done with that sum did not appear. Perhaps it was to be handed to the shareholders. The Bill provided, also, that the Report of the inspectors was to be forwarded to the Board of Trade, and he supposed it would be preserved among the archives of the country.

said, he likewise objected to this measure, because it would enable a public board to deal with private transactions. One ground on which the Bill was supported was, that the interests of a company might be prejudiced if in- spectors were appointed at a public meeting to investigate the affairs of the company; but he thought the same danger would arise if it transpired that an application had been made to the Board of Trade to institute such an inquiry. The Bill was also advocated on the ground that, if a majority of the shareholders were unwilling that an inquiry should take place, the minority might apply to the Board of Trade to direct an investigation; but he would prefer that such an inquiry should be proposed and discussed at a meeting of shareholders, rather than that it should be undertaken in consequence of a secret application to a public Board.

said, in explanation, that the Bill did not contemplate any interference on the part of a public department beyond the appointment of persons, for whose impartiality there was some guarantee, to investigate the affairs of companies. The Bill did not merely provide for the infliction of penalties in case of the non-production of books, but it gave power to examine persons upon oath, and if that power had existed previously he did not believe that one person connected with the Tipperary Bank would have obtained possession of £200,000. The Bill was designed to prevent a minority of shareholders from being trampled upon by the majority.