said, he rose to oppose the Motion, considering the measure as one of a most monstrous character, and which he trusted the House would not lend its sanction to its passing into a law. The Bill contained what professed to be a history of the Constitution of the Dock Trust, the Dock Committee, the Corporation, the Conservancy and Pilot Commissions of Liverpool, and others, and upon the suggestion of two self-constituted bodies in Manchester,—and he said it with no feeling of disrespect, but still self-constituted bodies—the House was now asked to abrogate the powers held by those different authorities under various Acts of Parliament, and to substitute for them a body of twenty-one persons, to be elected by the dock ratepayers. No charge of injustice or neglect of duty had been made against any one of those bodies which it was now sought to destroy, and no case had been made out for terminating a system which had hitherto been so well administered. The composition of the Dock Trust of Liverpool was not exactly understood either in that House or out of it. The trustees were twelve chosen from the town council, and twelve elected by the dock ratepayers; and the body thus composed had acted usefully and for the benefit of the commerce of Liverpool and of the whole country. It was, however, not at all surprising that there should be some misapprehension abroad as to the constitution of the Dock Trust, seeing that the august Board of Trade itself had been deceived, and had stated to the world, in a Report dated April, 1856, that the Dock Committee was composed as follows:—

"Twelve members are elected by the council of the borough and twelve by the dock ratepayers; but no person can be elected a member who has not both resided in or within eight miles of Liver- pool for live years, and paid rates to the amount of £10 a year, either on his own account or as an agent for persons residing in or near Liverpool."

Now, the latter statement was the very reverse of the fact, for any agent of a Manchester house, more than eight miles from Liverpool, duly qualified, was entitled to vote. No doubt objections would be raised to the veto which the town council could exercise upon the proceedings of the Dock Committee, but that veto appeared to him to be an advantageous and constitutional power, although it was one not very frequently exercised. He found that since 1851 there had been only one instance in which the power of veto had been exercised, and during the last thirty-two years there had been only thirteen such instances. It might also perhaps be urged upon the House that purchases of land were made from the corporation by the dock trustees. The fact was true, but what were the conditions? In 1790 the corporation gave the land and a large sum of money towards the formation of the first dock, and since then whenever any purchase of land had been made from the corporation for the purposes of the Dock Trust the sales had been based upon one of the four following conditions:—Either the land was sold for the same price which the corporation had paid for it, or it was sold for the price which had been paid by other purchasers of land immediately adjoining, or the sum to be paid was fixed by the verdict of a jury, or it was arrived at by mutual agreement, subject to the consent of the Lords of the Treasury. All those modes of dealing were, he contended, fair and equitable. Another argument would be no doubt raised, that the Corporation of Liverpool had purchased the Birkenhead docks, but had not carried out their engagement to transfer those docks to the Liverpool Dock Trust. The fact was, the Birkenhead docks, being in a state of insolvency, were purchased by the Corporation of Liverpool upon the distinct understanding that, whenever the Dock Trust was in a position to make the purchase, the docks should be transferred to them; but from that time to the present the Dock Committee had never been in a position to purchase them, although the corporation had always been and still were willing to transfer the Birkenhead docks, and place them formally, as they already were practically, under one management with the Liverpool docks; and the object of one of the Bills which had just been read a second time was to assimilate the rates and charges in both docks. The corporation had paid £1,443,000 for the Birkenhead docks, and would have to expend £1,500,000 more to complete them. A petition had been presented in favour of the Bill, to which was attached the seal of the Great Western Railway Company; and on another occasion he would have an opportunity of showing how that seal had been procured. He was quite sure the noble chairman (Viscount Barrington) of the company would not have permitted the seal of that body to have been affixed to a petition in favour of a Bill which was at variance with all the noble Lord's expressed opinions in and out of that House; and he (Mr. Horsfall) had received a letter signed by a number of proprietors of that line, protesting against what they conceived to be a gross misappropriation of their corporation seal. It was unworthy of the promoters of the Bill to have recourse to such means. It would have been far more creditable to have imitated the straightforward, honourable course which had been taken by Mr. Pender, he believed, of Manchester, who had sent out a vessel yesterday without payment of dues, and therefore was pre- pared to test in a Court of Law the right of the Corporation of Liverpool to levy them. Such a course, he repeated, would have reflected more credit upon the promoters of the Bill than the insidious measures by which they sought to obtain their object. He should therefore move that the Bill be read a second time that day six months.

seconded the Amendment.

said, he must express his regret that the hon. Gentleman (Mr. Horsfall) had not followed the course which he (Mr. Gibson) had adopted in regard to the two Bills promoted by the Liverpool Corporation, and had not allowed this Bill to be sent at once to a Select Committee where there would be every opportunity of examination into its merits. The hon. Member for Liverpool had endeavoured to show that something unusual was attempted to be done by the Bill now before the House, but, in fact, the mea- sure was nothing more than an attempt to carry out the recommendations of the Board of Admiralty, of the Tidal Commission, of a Committee of the House of Commons, and, above all, the requirements of an Act of the Legislature. The question of the local dues on shipping was only incidental, and did not constitute the principle of the Bill, which was that the docks of Liverpool and Birkenhead should be consolidated into one estate, and that the management and control of them should be vested in one public body of trustees, and it was obviously desirable that such body should be independent of the corporation. To vest the management in the present Dock Trust of Liverpool would be to place the whole trade of the country with that port under the control of the corporation, which would consult mainly the municipal interests, and thus render the trade of the country tributary to the local interests of the town of Liverpool. Surely that was a subject well worthy of inquiry by a Committee of that House, and yet the hon. Member for Liverpool wished them, not to allow that inquiry, but to reject the Bill at once. Let the House consider who constituted at present the managing body of the Liverpool docks. It was called the Dock Committee, one half of the members of which were chosen by the town council of Liverpool. The chairman of that committee was selected from those members chosen by the town council, and all the resolutions of the Dock Committee were liable to be vetoed by the corporation, so that, in fact, the corporation did possess an entire control over the proceedings of that committee. In 1855 a Committee of that House had expressed its opinion that it would be for the public advantage, after the amalgamation of the Liverpool and Birkenhead Docks, that the whole dock system on both sides of the Mersey should be placed under one public trust. That Committee also made a special Report recommending "That the earliest opportunity should he taken of carefully considering the constitution of the Dock Trust with reference to the altered circumstances in which it will be placed in consequence of this amalgamation." Mr. Bramley-Moore, a Member of that House, and formerly chairman of the Dock Committee, had said that most of the persons lately sent to the town-council of Liverpool were not merchants or dock ratepayers; that merchants and dock ratepayers ought to have greater influence in the management of the docks than they now possessed; that they were the most proper parties to have control, as they were directly interested in the good management of the docks; that the power of veto over the proceedings of the Dock Committee, possessed by the town-council, was not desirable, as that body was at present constituted, but that if its members were ratepayers and interested in the docks no harm could arise therefrom; that a sum of nearly £1,000,000 had been laid out in the purchase of lands for the construction of docks; that the money had passed between the dock estate and the corporation, and that the corporation were the principal parties who had derived advantage from the dock estate. Mr. Bramley-Moore also pointed out how the corporation, by buying land, as it were, of itself and paying for it out of the dock dues, levied on the trade of the country, made the trade of the country unfairly contributory to the estate of the Liverpool Corporation. Mr. Chapman, a Liverpool merchant, also stated before the same Committee, that the town-council were most properly the conservators of the interests of the town, but that the interests of the dock estates were very different from those of the town—the one being of a public and national, the other of a peculiarly local character; that the dock estate had been made entirely subservient to promoting the interests of the corporation estate; that the two had been in a state of antagonism for years; that the dock estate had been plundered to an enormous extent; and that, in fact, the dock estate had been made a sort of milch cow to aggrandise the great corporation estate. It was against the Liverpool Corporation making use of a great public estate for its own peculiar benefit that the promoters of the Bill now under consideration protested. The principle of the Bill was nothing more than placing the management of those important interests in a responsible public board. Although it was called a Private Bill, it dealt with very important national objects—namely, the completion of the Birkenhead docks and the placing at the disposal of commerce all the natural advantages of the Cheshire shore. When those objects were attained the estuary of the Mersey would do for England all that it could accomplish in the way of affording facilities to trade and navigation. But if the management of those important interests were allowed to remain exclusively in the hands of the Liverpool Corporation, their policy would be to prevent the development of the Birkenhead dock system, to withhold from the public the full benefit to be derived from the natural advantages of the Cheshire shore, to make the Birkenhead docks secondary and subsidiary to the Liverpool docks, and to take care that no rival port sprang up at Birkenhead to compete with the port of Liverpool. The interests of the public were necessarily and consequently opposed to such views. When the Birkenhead docks were completed, the large sum of £13,000,000 would have been expended out of dock rates, which was about £1,000,000 a year, levied on the trade of the country. Now he asserted that the Corporation of Liverpool, as a corporation, had no more to do with that vast property and that large revenue than any private individual. The money to make the docks was supplied by the public, the rates were levied on the public, and the public, no doubt, with a due regard to any just claims which the Corporation of Liverpool might be able to establish, had a right to see their interests vested in a responsible board. With regard to the town dues, it was said that the proposed measure was a Bill for carrying out the local dues on the Shipping Bill, which was abandoned in the last Session. It was nothing of the kind. It was impossible to introduce a Bill to carry out the recommendations of the Committee of 1855 without incidentally raising the question of the town dues. In that year improvement Bills were introduced by the Corporation of Liverpool, asking for power to pledge the town dues, in order to raise the necessary funds. Those Bills were rejected, so far as they pledged the town dues, upon the ground that it was a disputed question whether dues levied on ships and goods carried in ships, though called town dues, could be properly applied to defray the municipal expenditure of Liverpool. But when it was proposed to raise money for the purchase of the Birkenhead dock estate by pledging the town dues the objection of misappropriation did not arise. Mr. Serjeant Wrangham, who was counsel for the Liverpool Corporation, said he could hardly conceive a more legitimate purpose to which those dues could be devoted, contributed as they were by vessels frequenting the harbour, than to what were strictly harbour purposes, and under the Birkenhead Dock Act of 1855 authority was given to pledge the town dues, as part of the corporate estate, in order to raise money to purchase the Birkenhead dock property. When, therefore, it was proposed to transfer the Birkenhead docks and the Liverpool ducks to a public board, elected by the dock ratepayers, it became necessary incidentally to deal with the town dues; but the mode in which they should be dealt with would be in the discretion of the Committee. The House, in agreeing to the second reading of the Bill, would pronounce no opinion on the principle of the measure introduced by the right hon. Gentleman the Vice President of the Board of Trade, but merely enable the Manchester Chamber of Commerce and the Commercial Association, who legitimately represented the dock ratepayers of Lancashire and Yorkshire, to have their plan considered as well as the plan of the Corporation of Liverpool. He considered that he had shown that the Corporation of Liverpool had other interests than those of the public, and in simple justice he asked that the public interests should be considered in Committee.

said, he could see no reason why the Bill now before the House should not be referred to a Committee, as well as the two preceding measures. A Committee of the House was the best and fairest tribunal to which the whole question could be submitted.

said, he was strongly in favour of inquiry into the subject, and would therefore recommend the withdrawal of the Amendment.

said, he had been all his life a merchant in Liverpool, and yet he had never heard any charge of an abuse brought against the dock trustees of that town. Those trustees had no personal interest in the property, for the whole of the revenue was appropriated to the payment of the interest on the debt and the management of the dock estate. The Bill embodied a very extraordinary scheme, under which any person might be elected a dock trustee, even though he should have no qualification of any kind, and might reside in the most distant part of the kingdom.

said, that he could not agree with his hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool (Mr. Horsfall) upon the question under consideration. His hon. Friend had told them that the Bill was the same Bill which had been introduced last year by the right hon. Gentleman the Vice President of the Board of Trade. Now, if that were the case, he (Mr. Spooner) should certainly vote against it. But the present measure, unlike that of last year, was carefully limited in its operation. The Chamber of Commerce of Manchester was not the only body that sought to obtain a change in the existing system. That system was also opposed by the representatives of other commercial towns, who felt that there were some restrictions of a very harsh character imposed on their trade. They wished to have an inquiry for the purpose of ascertaining whether or not the charter of the Dock Trustees had been exceeded. He should object to any infringement of the charter right of Liverpool; but it was alleged, and he thought not without some reason, that the rights given by the charter in the present instance had been unfairly extended. There being two parties at issue as to the facts of the case; the House could not inquire into those facts, and the subject was, therefore, in his opinion, a fitting one for inquiry by a Committee.

opposed the Bill on the ground that the question of law involved in the matter had not yet been decided by the proper legal tribunals. Besides, he objected to the clause of the Bill transferring the town dues from the corporation to a new body, and he thought it would be just as reasonable to ask the House to transfer the property of the Great Western Railway Company to the Liverpool town-council. If the hon. Member divided, he would vote for the Amendment.

said, he was not disposed to press his Amendment.

said, he wished that Ireland had been omitted from the Bill. The mercantile and professional classes of that country had the strongest objections to the Bill, and the Irish Members had defeated it every year since the present Parliament was summoned. Yet the hon. and learned Member for Ayr (Mr. Craufurd) persisted in endeavouring to force the measure upon the House. Many of the small traders in Ireland were in the habit of making their purchases in this country, and if the Bill passed, and an action were brought against them in this country, they must bring over their witnesses at a ruinous expense to defend it. He had warned the hon. and learned Member that he should persevere in his opposition, and he regretted that Ministers had permitted the Bill to be reintroduced. He should, therefore, move that the Bill be read a second time that day six months.

said, if his hon. and gallant Friend (Colonel French) resisted the Bill on the part of Ireland, he should certainly oppose it on behalf of England. It proposed to effect a change in the law for which there was not, in his belief, the slightest necessity. A man who had obtained a judgment in England might now issue execution upon it in Ireland by means of a short action, and an Irish creditor might in the same way obtain execution against an English debtor. But were hon. Members aware what the effect of the Bill would be with regard to judgments obtained in Scotland? A person holding "heritable estate" of any kind, or possessing goods in Scotland, was liable to be summoned by "edictal citation," a process which consisted of the proclamation of the names of the parties to a suit, and the holding up of a triangular piece of paper at the Market Cross of Edinburgh, and which gave the Court of Session power to pronounce judgment in the cause. A judgment so obtained, in the absence of a defendant, would by the proposed measure be transferable to the Courts of England and Ireland, so that any gentleman who went to Scotland and took a bit of land or a cabin for the shooting season, or who left behind him any personal property, such as a gun or a fishing-rod, would be liable to have a judgment obtained by the process of "edictal citation" enforced against him in this country. Again, by the law of Scotland, although not by the law of England, owners of mines and factories were answerable for injuries done to one of their servants, arising from the neglect of another of their servants. If the present Bill became law the owners of factories and mines where accidents had occurred through the negligence of servants, resulting in a great loss of life, might therefore be ruined if they happened to possess any property in Scotland or were ever caught there. Another effect of it would be that paupers in Scotland would have power to sue persons of property in Egland and Ireland without giving security for costs. The Bill had been sent to a Committee three or four times already, and if it ever was to arrive at maturity, it ought to be in that state now. The Bill in fact was bad in principle, and when its details came to be examined, there was scarcely a good provision to be found in it. It disregarded every recognised principle of equity and justice, in order to meet the views of some Scotch lawyers who wished to elevate their mongrel Scotch system of half Civil and half Common Law into a recognised system of jurisprudence. He hoped the House would reject the Bill, and he should therefore very cordially second the Amendment.

said, he thoroughly agreed in what had fallen from his hon. and learned Friend opposite as to the vicious character of the Bill, and was so convinced of the inexpediency of its introduction that he should support the Amendment. It was not a measure giving reciprocal advantages to both countries, but its reciprocity was like Irish reciprocity—all on one side. The Bill would be injurious both to the country and the profession. A power was given to the Sheriff's Court in Scotland which was not given to the County Courts in England or to Assistant Barristers' Courts in Ireland; so that an advantage had been conferred upon the country to which the hon. and learned Member who introduced the Bill belonged, and which England and Ireland were deprived of. It had been the tendency of the English Legislature to afford facilities, by means of which trials could be readily obtained in the cases of dispute; but the Bill would remove such Courts to a greater distance than ever. He should give the Bill his strenuous opposition.

said, he should support the Bill, because he thought it would remedy a great defect in the law, which had been long felt by the mercantile classes. He apprehended that the real reason why the Bill was opposed by the Irish Members, was, that they had not capital to pay their debts. He could not agree with the hon. and learned Member for Wexford (Mr. M'Mahon), in thinking that it was a hardship not to allow a man who had left his debts in England unpaid to go shooting in Scotland. He certainly thought it would be desirable to assimilate the laws of England and Scotland, and he could not understand why it should be necessary for a man to bring three separate actions—one in England, one in Scotland, and one in Ireland for the recovery of the same debt.

said, he objected to the Bill, because, in defiance of every remonstrance, the hon. and learned Member for Ayr had persisted in including Ireland in, it, to which country it would be a great injury. Under the disguise of reciprocity, it sought to obtain great advantages for Scotland without conferring any upon Ireland. He denied the assertion of the hon. Member for Sheffield (Mr. Hadfield) that Ireland was either unable or unwilling to pay its own debts. But the case of Ireland was quite distinct. It was not a manufacturing country like England, but subsisted mainly by agriculture, and its debts were chiefly owing to English creditors. It was very well known that the principal contracts arose from the export of agricultural produce and cattle from Ireland; and, therefore, it was clear that the effect of such a measure as the present would be that the major part of the judgments would be obtained in England against persons in Ireland, because the export of produce did not give rise to credits or debts while imports of manufactures did. The only way that the Bill could operate would be to enable the Manchester or Birmingham manufacturer to bring his action in England, and if a process-server could be found to swear that the process had been served, judgment might be obtained by default and registered, and then without any possibility of impeaching it in Ireland, it would stand in the same position as a judgment obtained in the Irish Court of Common Pleas; and even where the judgment was obtained by fraud there would be the greatest difficulty in setting it aside because they would first have to set aside the memorial for registration in the Irish Court, and when they had done that the judgment would still be good in England, and therefore second expensive proceedings would be necessary. On these and other grounds he was totally opposed to the Bill.

said, he was also opposed to the Bill. The question involved in the Bill was whether in England, Ireland, and Scotland principles of legislation should be introduced, which should be different from the principles of administration which had prevailed in Courts of Justice within the memory of man; or whether those principles were to be subverted by an in- direct course, when in point of law they could not be by a direct course? The object of the Bill was centralisation. The grounds on which he opposed the Bill were that they asked the Court to issue a process, in respect to which it had no record or means of controlling the form of record; and, without giving the record, they ask the Court to issue an execution. The true remedy for the evils was to make the processes of the Courts of Westminster applicable to all parts of the kingdom.

said, that the Bill was either misunderstood or misrepresented. Some arguments had been used which he considered were unworthy the attention of the House. He had heard it stated that the Bill would be injurious to the interests of the Bar and of the solicitors of Ireland; but was an Imperial measure, providing for the due enforcement of certain rights, to be obstructed for such a reason as that? The effect of the Bill was to remove that which was a blot and a disgrace to the laws—the necessity for a creditor suing his debtor in separate actions for each of the three kingdoms. A creditor, for instance, in Ireland commenced an action for the recovery of a debt, and obtained a judgment. That judgment was conclusive, but the debtor removed to this country, or his property was here, and then the Irish judgment was of no value, and he was compelled to commence a new action for the same demand. Or on the other hand, an English creditor would have to institute a fresh action in Ireland before he could recover a claim upon which he had obtained a judgment in England. A case had come under his own observation in which a peer residing in this country had had a judgment recovered against him, but his person was privileged. He had considerable property in Ireland, the creditor followed him, but the Irish Courts said we cannot grant you a process on this English judgment. In England they said you cannot execute your judgment, because the person of your creditor is privileged. Now, he would ask, was such a state of things to be allowed to exist. He could only understand some of the objections which had been urged against the measure on the ground that all the creditors resided in England, and all debtors in Ireland. He maintained that the principle of reciprocity did exist in the Bill, because a judgment obtained in Ireland could be executed in England. It was not true that the Bill would give greater facilities for obtaining judgments than existed at present. If the arguments against the Bill proved anything, they proved that the existing state of the laws was highly objectionable; but surely that was no reason fur opposition to the principles contained in the measure then before the House. He believed that it had been completely misunderstood. It had gone through a Select Committee, though under a different form, where it had been carefully considered, and clauses expunged which might have been liable to abuse, and it had been four times before the House. He could not see that any danger would be likely to result from wiping away a disgrace which was none the better because it had existed for centuries. Now was the time to relieve themselves from the monstrous proceeding of instituting fresh actions on judgments already rendered conclusive.

said, after the Bill had been through the Committee it came before the House, and was discussed on a second reading, and was rejected with the concurrence of the late and present Attorney General, who stated that the object was good, but had not been well carried out. In Committee he had tried to bring the Bill into an effective form, but had failed in so doing. Bad reasons might be given for rejecting a bad Bill; and the right hon. and learned Gentleman (Mr. J. D. FitzGerald) had adduced only the bad reasons against it. In the case of the peer, for example, the Court of Exchequer in Ireland had pointed out the true remedy—the enactment of a provision for "substituted service" of a person resident in another country. Now he (Mr. Napier) had framed such a provision for the Common Law Procedure Act, but it had not been accepted. He objected to the Bill upon valid grounds, There were more persons residing in Ireland indebted to persons in England than there were in England indebted to persons in Ireland. And many debts were secured by warrants of attorney, on which execution in Ireland could not be obtained without satisfying the Court that the warrant of attorney had not in the meantime been satisfied and discharged; whereas under the present Bill the creditor might in this country issue execution on simple registry, without satisfying the Court as to the time which had elapsed since the warrant was given. Questions as to the Statute of Limitations, or as to insolvency and bank- ruptcy, might arise, and cause great complications and practical difficulties, which were by no means provided for by the Bill in its present form. The general principle of jurisprudence was violated, that execution should be commensurate with jurisdiction, and without any sufficient safeguards nor effective provisions against collusion. The proposed Bill was to be an Imperial law, and its effect on the whole Empire must be considered. It would, however, he had every reason to believe, operate injuriously on Ireland, and besides that country would acquire no advantage from it. Make men pay their debts; but this might be done by provisions for substituted service of process. He did not see how the objections he had urged could be obviated. The memorial or copy of a judgment was to have the effect of a judgment. In all his experience he had not known half a dozen instances of any grievance; whereas the Bill would produce practical evils of a serious nature. He had given the measure his best attention, and felt bound to oppose it.

said, he had listened with surprise to some of the observations urged against the Bill, founded apparently on the ground that there were mere Irish than English debtors, or upon some technical details in the Bill which might require an amendment. If there was any force in the latter class of objections, the proper time for considering them would be in Committee. With regard to the former, he could not allow it to be said, or imagined, that there was any Irish Member who would found his opposition to a Bill upon the circumstance that it would compel a large class of Irish debtors to pay their debts, and give an advantage to English creditors which they did not now possess. The Bill was founded on an honest principle, and he thought it a monstrous absurdity to compel a man who had obtained a judgment in one tribunal to commence the process again. When the Bill was last before the House it contained certain objectionable clauses. They were omitted from the present Bill, the object of which was simply to enact that a judgment obtained in England should have the same effect in Ireland and Scotland. He could not concur in some of the objections which had been made, namely, that the measure would not give to the Irish Court the same equitable jurisdiction over the English judgment as was possessed by the English Court, for he conceived that it armed the Irish Court with the same equitable jurisdiction over the English judgment as the English Court possessed. He also conceived that the objections urged by the right hon. and learned Member for Dublin University (Mr. Napier) founded on technical considerations, proceeded from an erroneous rending of the Bill; but, at any rate, they could be removed by the introduction, if necessary, of a few words. The Bill was in the interest of the just rights of creditors, both English and Irish, and was introduced to put an end to an anomaly as absurd as if a judgment pronounced in Middlesex should not extend into Surrey.