said, he would beg to ask whether it was true that, in consequence of a Resolution passed by the Combined Court, a communication was addressed by the Governor of British Guiana to Her Majesty's Colonial Secretary in June last, on the subject of receiving Convicts from this Country; and, if so, whether there was any objection to lay a Copy of such Correspondence on the table of the House?

said, it was true that the Legislature of British Guiana had been considering whether the penal establishment at present existing in that colony could be made available for convicts from the West Indies and also from this country. The Governor of British Guiana, in transmitting that information, gave it as his opinion that although that penal settlement might be made available for convicts from the West India Islands, he considered that it could not be properly made available for convicts from England, in consequence of the nature of the climate; and that was an opinion in which he (Mr. Labouchere) entirely concurred. He could not help adding, in reference to that subject, that he had read with the greatest pleasure that paragraph in the Speech of the Emperor of the French to the Legislature of that country in which he stated that the French Government intended to withdraw their convict establishment from the neighbouring colony of Cayenne, on account of the frightful mortality which had prevailed there. With regard to the correspondence to which the hon. Gentleman referred, he had only to say that he could have no objection to its production.

in reply to a question from Captain Archdall, said that the question of the Fees of County Officers in Ireland was a question of law, and not one for the consideration of the Government. His own opinion with regard to some of the fees of the clerks of the Crown was that they were illegal. Other legal authorities, on the other hand, thought differently. The origin of some of those fees was lost in the remoteness of time, and there was consequently great difficulty with respect to their legality. It was a question, however, that must be decided in the Superior Courts. Any one who was aggrieved by the exaction of those fees could institute an action and an indictment for extortion; but it was not a question for the Government, but for the individual aggrieved.

said, he wished to ask Her Majesty's Government whether any orders or instructions had been issued to the British Authorities at Hong Kong, or to the Admiral in command of the Squadron in the Chinese Waters, suspending or superseding the directions given by Earl Grey in November, 1847, whereby offensive operations against the Chinese were peremptorily forbidden without previous sanction from this Country; and, if any such order had been sent, whether they would lay a Copy of the same on the Table of the House.

Sir, no instructions relating to this subject have been sent to the authorities at Hong Kong subsequent to the date of the papers to which the noble Lord has referred.

said, he would beg to ask the Vice President of the Board of Trade whether it was the intention of Her Majesty's Government to introduce any measure during the course of the present Session for the collecting of Agricultural Statistics; and, if so, whether it would comprehend any regulation for the measure in bushels or gallons, or the weight in pounds, whereby the sale and purchase of wheat and other grain shall be compulsorily fixed; and also whether it would contain any regulations whereby the quantities and average prices of wheat and other grain sold in the various counties of England and Wales should be more correctly ascertained.

Sir, Her Majesty's Government have no intention to introduce a Bill this Session on the subject of agricultural statistics.

said, he should then give notice that on as early a day as possible, before Easter, he should call attention to the subject.

said, he would beg to ask the hon. Under Secretary for War what steps had been taken to give effect to the Resolution passed by that House on the 7th day of April, 1856, namely—

"That in the opinion of this House the practice of billeting Soldiers of the Militia, and of the Line, in Scotland, upon private families, is injurious to the comfort and discipline of the men, as well as oppressive to the people, and that it is the duty of the Government to take means to abolish the grievance."

said, that the power of billeting soldiers was given under the Mutiny Act. It was his intention to introduce a change in that power under the Mutiny Act of the coming year. As soon as the number of men were voted for the army he should bring in that Bill, and if his hon. Friend would wait until then he would find an answer to his question.

said, he wished to ask the First Lord of the Admiralty whether it was true (as stated in the Public Journals) that the Arctic vessel the Resolute (though not ordered to be broken up) had been stripped and dismantled and placed in ordinary; and whether he had any objection to state what was the present condition of this vessel, given as it was by the American people to the Queen of England.

The hon. Member must be aware that it is not the practice to keep vessels full rigged or manned, except they are fitting for service. The Resolute is in the same state as all other vessels that are not intended for immediate service. A great part of the stores are not in a state to be kept, the only exception being the rum, which has been improved by so long a voyage.

said, that it would most probably be in the recollection of the House that a lunatic confined in the Surrey County Lunatic Asylum was recently subjected to certain treatment and died in twenty minutes afterwards. The medical officer, Mr. Snape, was committed for trial; but the Grand Jury ignored the Bill, and Mr. Snape had been re-appointed to the medical charge of the asylum by the visiting committee of Magistrates. He wished to ask the right hon. Baronet the Home Secretary whether he had the power upon the appointment or re-appointment of such an officer to remove him; and, secondly, whether he had signified his disapprobation of the re-appointment of Mr. Snape. He also wished to know whether the right hon. Baronet would lay upon the Table the Correspondence between the authorities at the Home Office, the Commissioners in Lunacy, and the Committee of the Surrey County Lunatic Asylum.

said, that after the occurrence adverted to by the hon. Member, the medical officer was suspended during the inquiry and prosecution. He believed that he was not dismissed, and that there had strictly been no re-appointment, but that after the inquiry the Committee of visiting Justices recommended that the suspension should cease. The Secretary of State for the Home Department had no power as to the appointment or dismissal of the medical officer of a lunatic asylum, that power being entirely vested by the Act of Parliament in the visiting Committee. He had received a statement from the Lunacy Commissioners on the subject, which he had transmitted to the visiting Committee, and he had also received a communication from the visiting Committee in reply, which he had transferred to the Lunacy Commissioners. There would be no objection to the production of that correspondence.

said, he hoped that the papers would include Mr. Snape's statement, and also copies of the medical evidence taken by the visiting magistrates.

said, if the hon. Gentleman (Mr. Otway) would make a Motion for the production of the papers, the hon. Member for West Surrey could add the papers to which he had referred to that Motion. If he (Sir G. Grey) could procure the papers they should be produced.

I wish, Sir, to ask the First Lord of the Treasury whether Her Majesty's Government has come to an agreement with the Government of Denmark respecting the commutation of the Sound Dues; and whether Parliament in the present Session will be invited to provide the sum necessary for such commutation?

Sir, Her Majesty's Government have for a long time been in communication with the Danish Government, and other Governments of Europe, on the subject of the Sound Dues. No arrangement has yet been come to on the subject; but I hope that some arrangement will shortly be made, and in that case we shall have to submit to Parliament the provisions necessary for carrying that settlement into effect.

said, he would beg to ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer whether Mr. Tidd Pratt had ertified the Savings-Banks Deferred Annuity Tables?

said, the Registrar of Friendly Societies had to revise the rules of savings-banks, but he had no concern with their tables. Those tables were prepared by the actuary of the Savings-Banks Department, and submitted by the direction of the Statute for the approval of the Lords of the Treasury, and the approval of the Lords of the Treasury was then published in the London Gazette. That was the course which had invariably been followed.

said, he wished to inquire of the Chief Secretary for Ireland when the Report of the Endowed Schools Commission was likely to be presented to Parliament; and whether it was the intention of the Government to propose any measure on that subject during the present Session?

said, he could not say exactly when the Report would be laid upon the table, but when he left Dublin in January the Commissioners had terminated their inquiries and were deliberating upon their Report. Until that Report and the evidence on which it was founded was in the hands of the Government he could not state their intentions on the subject.

I wish, Sir, to ask the noble Lord at the head of the Government a question of which I was unable to give him notice, as I have only to-day received the information upon which it is founded. The question is whether a treaty was signed between Russia and Persia on the 5th of January last, and ratified at Teheran on the 18th of the same month, by which Persia ceded to Russia certain territory between two places on the frontiers of Turkey?

Sir, Her Majesty's Government have no knowledge of any such treaty, except from what has appeared in the newspapers.

I wish. Sir, to ask the right hon. Gentleman the President of the Board of Control when we are likely to have two papers laid before us connected with the Persian expedition, but unconnected with the negotiations now in progress? I mean—first, the instructions from the Government under which a military expedition was sent to Persia; and, secondly, the correspondence between the Government and the East India Company as to the mode in which the charges of the Persian war are to be borne?

said, there would be no objection to produce a portion of the papers immediately. His right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer had on a previous occasion stated the nature of the arrangement with the East India Company.

Is there any objection to state the date of the instructions to which I have referred?

said, the instructions for sending a military and naval expedition into the Persian Gulf were dated September 26.

Sir, I beg to ask the right hon. Gentleman whether instructions for fitting out an expedition to the Persian Gulf were not issued in the middle of July last; whether they did not reach Bombay on the 20th of August, and whether transports were not taken up and other preparations made for the expedition on the receipt of those instructions?

Provisional orders were despatched in the middle of July to the Government of India to make preparations in case an expedition should be necessary, but final instructions for the expedition were not sent until the date I have mentioned.

then rose to move for leave to introduce a Bill to make the franchise in Counties in England and Wales the same as that in Boroughs, by giving the right of Voting to all occupiers of tenements of the annual value of £10. The hon. Gentleman said that in the year 1853 he had brought a similar measure under the consideration of the House; but he had been induced to withdraw it in consequence of a promise from the noble Lord the Member for the City of London, that he would introduce, on behalf of the Government, a measure for effecting a general reform in our representative system. Accordingly in 1854 the noble Lord brought forward such a Bill; but the outbreak of the war prevented the House from giving it consideration, and the measure was withdrawn. Since then the question had remained in abeyance; and considering the distance from the Treasury bench of the seat which the noble Lord now occupied, he thought there was not much probability of the speedy reintroduction of that Bill. Under these circumstances he felt justified in submitting his own proposal to Parliament the first Session after the conclusion of peace. His measure had the constitutional basis that taxation and representation ought to go together. At the present moment there was a general communion of interests among the electors, and there seemed to be an end to those great questions which had hitherto separated the town from the country; and he was convinced that the true way to deal with the question of franchise was to deal with all classes alike. Let the franchise be fixed at whatever point might be deemed right, and let it be so fixed for all; but let not the inhabitants of one place be endowed with electoral rights which were refused to the inhabitants of another place. The case which he submitted to the House appeared very strong, if the unrepresented towns were compared with the represented towns. There were very large unrepresented towns, possessing valuable institutions and a considerable amount of trade and commerce, and yet the occupying tenants in those towns possessed no vote, unless they occupied a house at a rental of upwards of £50 a year; while in certain small agricultural boroughs, possessing no learned institutions, and with scarcely any trade, every inhabitant paying a rent of £10 had a vote. Then, with regard to the rural districts, a house situated in a country part, for which a rent of £20 or £40 was paid, was a very good house. The person living in it might have a very good income, and contribute a good deal both to the direct and indirect taxes. Still that person might have no vote; while another person living in a borough, in a smaller house, would be entitled to vote at elections. The consequence of this was, that in many places large bodies of the people were wholly unrepresented, and there was an entire absence of equality in the representation of different districts. Thus in the county of Bucks, of which the population was 163,700, the number of electors was 8,125, who returned no less than eleven Members, or about one to every 14,000 persons, and who represented 700 electors; but taking the county of Lancaster, and comparing it in the same way, they would find that there was only one Member to represent every 88,000 of the population, and every 2,800 electors. In East Surrey the population was 583,500, and the number of electors was 44,000, represented by seven Members, or one to about every 83,000 of the population, and to every 6,300 electors. The noble Lord the Member for London, on a former occasion, referred to the distinction which had always existed between the county and the borough franchises, but he thought he need not now reply to that objection of the noble Lord, as the noble Lord answered it himself in the suggested extension of the county franchise, which the noble Lord had submitted to the House. He hoped the House would allow him to bring in the Bill, and that it would deal with it, not considering the gain it might produce to one side or the other, but simply regarding it as a measure of justice.

seconded the Motion.

I hope my hon. Friend will not think I act discourteously towards him if I should not be disposed to accede to the introduction of the proposed Bill; for, independently of the objections which I should have to urge to the measure itself, I should think, from the business which the House is likely to have before it in the course of the present Session, that there is very little probability of a measure of this sort passing into law. It would, therefore, be wasting the time and distracting the attention of the House to endeavour to press forward a subject of such great magnitude, without a fair prospect of pursuing it to an end. I own I cannot agree with my hon. Friend in the principle which forms the foundation of his proposal—namely, that there should be an identity of the qualification for voting in boroughs and counties; and I concur in what has fallen from my noble Friend the Member for London, that there has always been a distinction—and I think it is expedient to maintain that distinction—between the right of voting in boroughs and in counties. The two great classes of electors represent different interests in the community, and the principles on which their rights of voting have always stood have been of a different character. But what would be the logical consequences of adopting the principle of my hon. Friend and of identifying the right of voting in counties and boroughs? Why, to sweep away all boroughs; because, if the right of voting in counties and boroughs were identical, upon what ground could you maintain the existing artificial distinctions and circumscriptions between them? It would lead by logical consequence to the subdivision of the counties into electoral districts without any definite distinction of the boroughs. I therefore object both to the principle of his Bill and to the consequences which, in my opinion, would inevitably attend it. In stating this I beg my hon. Friend to understand that I do not mean to say that there should be no extension whatever of the franchise in counties. I am quite ready to consider a proposition of a more modified kind for extending the county franchise. I think that the measure which was proposed on a former occasion by my noble Friend the Member for the City of London, by which the qualification for a county franchise would have been made to tally with that of a juryman—which I think is £20—is such as I should not be disposed to object to. My hon. Friend would not approve such a measure, because his proposal prevents him; and there are many other advocates of Parliamentary reform who would say, "You are a bit-by-bit reformer, but we are for great and comprehensive measures." Now, I confess that in matters of this sort I am not for great and comprehensive measures. There was undoubtedly a necessity for measures of that character in 1831 and 1832. They had been rendered necessary by the excitement in the public mind produced by the long continuance of abuses which required some great and sweeping remedy. The same state of things does not now exist. Our constitution has grown up gradually by the correction of evils as they happen to occur. I think that in these matters it is much safer to see one's way, and to take one step at a time. If a measure appears to be required by the condition of things, adopt it and watch its effects; but do not go beyond the point that you wish to see set right. Take time to consider the effect which the remedy you propose may produce on the general system and organisation of the country. I hope my hon. Friend will not consider that, because I cannot concur with him in the introduction of his Bill, I am one of those who set their faces altogether against any improvement in the representative franchise. My objection is to the particular measure he proposes. And as there is little likelihood that any measure of the kind would, in the present Session of Parliament and in the present state of public affairs, reach a conclusion satisfactory to the proposer—there being many measures of great importance which will have to be discussed in Parliament—I should certainly advise the House not to consent to the introduction of this Bill, which is highly objectionable in principle, and which, if not so objectionable, would probably have little chance of passing this Session.

said, he had always voted in favour of this Motion, and had not heard a single observation from the noble Lord which would induce him to deviate from the course he had hitherto pursued, when the same question was before the House. As to the argument of pressure of business, no doubt at the commencement of a Session there must be a certain number of Bills introduced by the Government, and also a certain number by independent Members. In addition to this legislative business, the House has always to settle the revenue and expenditure for the ensuing year: allowing for this ordinary and necessary employment, and he must say that he had never known a Session in which there was a greater paucity of important measures—certainly there was none which could interfere with the discussion of this question. The House would perceive that the noble Lord's objection was one which, if admitted, would be equally fatal to any subsequent re-introduction. The noble Lord had said, that it was a constitutional principle that there should be a distinction as to the extent of the qualification of voters for counties and voters for boroughs. He (Mr. Headlam) should have thought, that if the constitutional principle were to be referred to as a guide to qualification in counties, and if we were to look to the past history of the country, the county franchise ought to be more liberal than that for towns, seeing that the original qualification was the possession of a 40s. freehold; but looking to the merits of the question, the real question for the House to consider was, whether there was any real objection to that class of voters to whom this Bill would apply? He recollected that when the £10 franchise was introduced into boroughs, objections of the most serious description were urged and the most frightful predictions of the consequences made. Not a single one of these predictions had been verified by the experience of twenty-five years, and he did not believe that if the franchise were extended, as now proposed, any danger would arise to the State. It must be recollected that the present law excluded the residents in many large and important towns, and he really could not conceive a measure which could be fraught with less danger than the present. Moreover, he could not help asking himself this question, whether there was still to be a Liberal party in the House of Commons. If there was to be such a party, not only in name, but in substance—that is to say, a party seeking all suitable occasions to give effect to their principles, to extend the liberties of the people, and widen the basis of the constitution—then the present Motion gave them an opportunity, when without the slightest danger to any of the institutions of the country, they might at once vindicate their principles and confer a valuable political privilege upon a class that deserved well of the State.

I have always been an advocate for the extension of the franchise. In the first place I disliked the Reform Bill, because I never could understand why it should have fixed a money qualification for voting, having done away virtually that qualification for seats in this House. In the next place, I never understood what you meant by a £10 test of political morality. Why not have made it £9 or £8? But the objections that are made to this Bill will always be made to every Bill of the like character. I want the franchise extended to the very lowest classes, that they may protect themselves against the tyranny of the classes over them, which we see exhibited continually, and of which I shall have another opportunity of speaking shortly. But let the House rest content. You will have no Reform Bill, although there may be plenty of tattle about little Bills or old Bills; but until these Gentlemen on the Treasury Bench are sitting on the other side and want to get back again, you will have no Reform Bill.

The proposition of my hon. Friend the Member for East Surrey (Mr. Locke King) has been met by my noble Friend at the head of the Government with two objections; the first relating to the state of public business, which he says will not admit the discussion of a question of this kind; and the second to the principle of the proposition. Now, as to the first of these objections, I do not think that the Government ought to allege that there cannot be time this Session for the discussion of this Bill. There must, no doubt, be considerable discussion upon the Budget; but the propositions of the Chancellor of the Exchequer are very simple; they do not involve any complicated series of measures, and when we have decided upon one or two points, the rest of them may be said to be disposed of. As to the public measures introduced by the Government, I must say that they are of such a character as to induce me to suppose that they are not inclined to undertake measures of any great difficulty and importance. The Secretary of State for the Home Department was asked, whether the Government meant to introduce any measure with regard to church rates?—and he replied in the negative. The right hon. Baronet the Member for Droitwich (Sir J. Pakington) yesterday introduced, on his own responsibility, a measure with respect to which he has taken great pains, and which refers to one of the most important subjects now discussed in this country—that of education; but we had no hint from the Government that it was their intention to propose any measure upon that subject, or in any way to interfere with the course of the right hon. Baronet. This very night a question was put concerning a subject which has excited, perhaps, more agitation than it ought—namely, that of agricultural statistics—but oven with regard to that, the Government are not prepared to legislate, and refrain from disturbing the placid course of public business. Therefore, so far as public business is concerned, it seems to me that we shall have ample time to discuss a measure of so simple a character as that proposed by the hon. Member for East Surrey. I then come to the question itself. The hon. Member has very truly said, that I upon former occasions made objections to his measure; but I think he did not mention that into the last Reform Bill which I laid upon the table of this House, I introduced the very proposal which he has now submitted to us. In fact I found that the objection which I made on a previous occasion, and which I think could be maintained so far as relates to our ancient constitution—namely, that the franchise in counties was a franchise by tenure, while that in boroughs was a franchise by rating—that the ground had been completely taken away by the consequence of an Amendment which was introduced into the Reform Bill by the present Duke of Buckingham, who introduced the clause known as the Chandos clause, which instituted occupancy as a qualification for county voters. I was afraid of adding to the list of dependent voters. I thought the addition most unfortunate—but it was introduced by a majority of the House against the arguments of Lord Althorp and those who were bringing forward the Bill. But I find upon inquiry that, so far from adding to the dependent voters, the occupiers of £10, £20, and £30 houses in counties consist very much of persons of independent means living in small towns which have not the right of sending Members to Parliament—men of independence and intelligence, and whose admittance therefore, instead of injuring, would improve the constituent bodies in counties. There is this, besides, to consider—and now I am going to touch some-what upon the larger question. I have myself had the honour to introduce twice of late years—in 1852 and 1854—measures which were considered as the complements of the Reform Act—which were in conformity with its spirit—but which tended to the introduction of very considerable changes beyond its original scope. I think it may be said—and there are persons who will be ready enough to assert it—that there is no great pressure in the public mind, no national urgency for the adoption of a comprehensive measure of reform. For my own part, I should think it was very imprudent in my noble Friend (Viscount Palmerston) if he were now to say—independently of the general opinion which he has just stated—that it was the intention of the Government to disturb the Legislature and the mind of the country by bringing in a large and comprehensive measure of reform. But then, Sir, if I admit that to be the case, I cannot repeat the argument which I adduced in opposition to the hon. Gentleman (Mr. L. King) on former occasions, when I said that the Reform Act having been enacted by public consent, it was far better that we should not deal with such a subject by driblets, but should consider the whole subject at once, and see what defects might be found and what Amendments might be required. On the contrary, whatever might have been the impropriety of introducing driblets when large measures were required, I think that, if we sincerely desire reform, the only course now to be pursued is to adopt any measure which is in itself a safe improvement whenever it may be proposed; and I cannot but admit that the measure of the hon. Gentleman is in itself such an improvement. I think that no one who is disposed to entrust the elective franchise to the occupier of £10 houses in towns can object to its enjoyment by those who occupy such houses in the country; because the occupant of a £10 house in the country is generally a person of greater intelligence and more property than is the tenant of a similar house in a borough. It frequently happens that the occupant of a £10 house in a small country town, not returning Members to Parliament, would, if he were to remove to this metropolis or to one of our great towns, find that the expenditure of £15 or £20 per annum would not place him in so good a house as that which he had left. I therefore think that this change is a safe one; and, seeing that no one is likely to propose a large measure of reform, I am, moreover, of opinion that it will tend to satisfy a large body of persons who have some reason to complain of the existing state of things. In the first place, many persons occupying houses of £10 or £20 rent in the country may fairly say that they are excluded from the franchise which their neighbours in the borough possess. But, according to the existing arrangement, they may also say, "Here is a town which has grown up, which has 10,000, 12,000, or 14,000 inhabitants, but which sends no special representatives to Parliament; but there is a town, only five miles off, which has only 5,000 inhabitants, and which is made up partly by the addition of country parishes. It is very hard that that town should have Members, while that in which we reside has none." If we are not going to alter the distribution of seats in this House, that grievance must remain without remedy; but if you give to the inhabitants of that town of 12,000 or 13,000 persons the right of voting for the Members for the county, their causes of complaint would be greatly diminished, and they would so far be satisfied that they had at least equal rights with their neighbours. I think, therefore, this measure would tend, not only to improve, but also to consolidate our institutions, and to give further stability to our representative system. Taking this view of the question, I should be prepared, not only to vote for the introduction of this Bill, but also, if it got so far, to support the Motion for its second reading. I thing the present time is far from being an unpropitious one; for, perhaps this year, perhaps the next, but certainly before two years have elapsed, we shall have a general election of Members of this House, and I think it would greatly improve the constitution of the next Parliament if some 200,000 or 300,000 men of property—men upon whom you could depend—were added to the basis upon which the representation stands. I do not know that there is anything to prevent this improvement, and I shall therefore—without discussing with the hon. Member (Mr. L. King) the defects of the measure which I formerly introduced—be satisfied to give my support to this Bill.

said, he must congratulate his hon. Friend the Member for West Surrey (Mr. Drummond) upon the rapid fulfilment of his prophecy; for, although the noble Lord the Member for the City of London (Lord J. Russell) was not sitting on that (the Opposition) side of the House, he occupied a position which was evidently quite as unpalatable to himself. It was not his (Mr. Bentinck's) province to defend the Gentlemen on the Treasury bench; but when he heard the noble Lord asking those right hon. Gentlemen why they had not brought forward certain measures which he thought necessary to the welfare of the country, he felt tempted to ask the noble Lord whether he would favour the House with a list of the useful measures which he brought forward and carried during the several years that he had been at the head of the Government, and, of course, had every facility for carrying such measures if he had brought them forward? He (Mr. Bentinck) had no recollection of any such measures, and should be glad to see a list of them, after the production of which the charge made by the noble Lord would come with a much better grace. He believed that the country was thoroughly sick of the word "reform." It was quite true, as had been said by his hon. Friend (Mr. Drummond), that the word was used merely as a piece of claptrap to raise the bad passions of the ignorant, when certain Gentlemen were out of place, in order to get themselves back into place again. He did not believe that the House would for a moment entertain this measure, particularly after what had been said by the noble Lord at the head of the Government. As far as the general question went, it would be very difficult—after what had happened during the last few years—after the fact that the noble Lord the Member for the City of London, who when out of office was always advocating "large and comprehensive measures of reform"—had during the five or six years that he was at the head of the Government never brought forward such a measure—it would be very difficult to persuade the people of this country that there was in the perpetual agitation of this question of reform anything but a desire to obtain mere party objects. Until the country saw that some real benefit was intended by these schemes of reform all these attempts would be regarded in the light in which they deserved to be looked at, and they would not be responded to by the people generally.

I cannot now, according to the forms of the House, answer the challenge of the hon. Gentleman (Mr. Bentinck), but I shall be very happy at a future opportunity to state to him the measures which I did introduce.

said, that the observations of the hon. Member for West Norfolk (Mr. Bentinck) were most unjust towards the noble Lord (Lord J. Russell). He should have been very much surprised to hear the noble Lord state that he should take any other course than that which he had announced that he was about to pursue. In 1854 the noble Lord laid upon the table a Bill which he parted with on account of the war with great regret, and in that Bill he included the very proposition which was now made by his hon. Friend the Member for East Surrey. His (Mr. Duncombe's) astonishment was that any Member of the Aberdeen Government should oppose that proposition. There was, no doubt, great apathy in the country upon the subject of reform; but why was there that apathy? Because the country knew that the House of Commons was not equal to the emergency. Let Lord Derby's Government come again into office and introduce a Bill bringing the operative classes within the pale of the constitution, and then they would have agitation in its favour to their heart's content. But as long as they rejected minor measures like this the people would not condescend even to ask them for reform. For his own part, he only wished that this proposal had gone a great deal further. When Lord Derby's Ministry was in power it was held to be of the utmost constitutional importance that the four seats vacant by disfranchisement should then be filled up; and the Government accordingly brought in a Bill giving two additional seats to Lancashire and the other two to Yorkshire. If consistency was to be the order of the day, why was it they heard nothing more from hon. Gentlemen opposite regarding that measure? Kensington, Brompton, and other outlying districts of the metropolis had no representation, either borough or county, and the man occupying a £45 house on one side of a street had no vote, while his opposite neighbour, living in a £10 house, had one, merely because he accidentally came within the Parliamentary boundary. Throughout the country the class of persons who neither resided in boroughs nor possessed a freehold, nor occupied a house of £50 a year had no votes. To redress that gross injustice and absurdity this Bill had been introduced, and he should be much surprised if the House threw out a proposition so perfectly rational.

Sir, I would remind the hon. Member for Finsbury and the House generally that, on other occasions, when this proposition has been brought forward I have not felt it necessary to obtrude myself on your attention. And first, I must express my regret that the hon. Members for West Surrey (Mr. Drummond) and West Norfolk (Mr. Bentinck) should thus early in this discussion have thought it expedient to import into the debate the imputation of factious motives and personal objects, totally unworthy of any Member of this House. Sir, the place where I sit in this House is my own choice, and I, for one, am quite content to remain where I am. The hon. Member for West Norfolk says that the noble Lord the Member for London did not, when formerly in office, introduce important measures advantageous to the country. The hon. Member has not long held a seat in this House, but I have sat here with my noble Friend for more than thirty years; and I have not forgotten that to him is due the repeal of the Test and Corporation Acts—that to him is in some measure due the Reform Bill of 1832—that to him also is mainly due the introduction of the Poor Law into Ireland—that we owe to him likewise the commutation of tithes in England to fixed payments—indeed, I should weary the House were I to go through the entire catalogue of what the noble Lord has achieved with an ability, a zeal, a fortitude, and a constancy which redound to his infinite honour. Sir, if I could have reconciled it with my sense of duty to give a silent vote, I might well have rested the vote that I intend to give upon the speech of my noble Friend. But, having on all former occasions abstained from voting on this precise proposition, I think it right briefly to state why I shall on this occasion give to it my support. Will the House bear with me for a short time while I explain what has influenced my conduct up to the present moment with respect to measures of reform? Having in 1832, when the measure of that year was introduced, announced a strong opinion that that Bill should be viewed as a final settlement of this question, I for a very long period resisted further change on the ground of finality. But it has been my fortune to live long enough to ascertain that that ground is wholly untenable. Finality, applied to the work of man, is a solecism in terms. The juxtaposition of the words "human" and "for ever" at once shows how absurd that doctrine must sooner or later be found. Then, again, I certainly was of opinion that it was expedient, if another change was to be introduced, that it should be what has now become almost a byword—a large and comprehensive measure. Partly, however, from the apathy of the country on this subject—which I admit—and still more from the extreme difficulty, considering the extent of the previous alteration, of bringing forward another scheme which shall effect great changes without danger to the State—a measure of a comprehensive character has not yet been successful, and is not, in my judgment, likely soon to be so. I think, therefore, that neither of these grounds is any longer tenable. But I cannot forget that one of the measures upon which the Government of Lord Aberdeen was based was a measure of reform enlarging the franchise. It was so declared on the construction of that Ministry; and in the Speech from the Throne in 1854 such a measure was recommended in order to give additional stability to the institutions of the country. A Bill having that object was accordingly framed with great care by the Cabinet of Lord Aberdeen. It was introduced by my noble Friend the Member for London on behalf of that Cabinet; and it was withdrawn on account of the pressure of war, and of the peculiar circumstances consequent upon that critical state of affairs. Now, in that measure was included, among many other provisions, the precise proposition of the hon. Member for East Surrey. I admit that the measure contained other provisions which might be held to counterbalance the particular effect of the Bill now sought to be introduced; but if there were countervailing provisions as bearing on the county franchise, it must not be forgotten that the scheme of 1854 also lowered the franchise of the towns and cities, and reduced it from a franchise of a £10 rating occupation to a £6 qualification, with a residence of two years and a half. There were other provisions to which I will very briefly refer—namely, the provision giving effect to a limited extent to the votes of the minority; together with the creation of several new franchises. My noble Friend has truly stated that while the county franchise rested upon tenure there would have been grave objections to the introduction of a measure like this. But the Chandos clause in the Reform Act introduced for the first time, as bearing on the county franchise, the condition of occupation. And though the circumstances of Ireland are, I admit, peculiar, yet day by day the necessity of assimilating, in all their great principles, the laws of the United Kingdom is becoming more and more apparent. Well, with regard to the Irish counties, in 1850 the Legislature deliberately fixed their representation, not on a basis of tenure in the main, but on occupation, placing the right of voting at a county election in Ireland upon an occupation tenure of £12. Now, I should have the greatest objection to this Bill if I believed it would introduce into the counties of England any right of voting subject, from its nature, to undue influence in a greater proportion than now exists, I quite agree with the principle which I think my noble Friend has cited from Mr. Fox more than once—viz., that that is the best system of electing members in a representative government which includes the largest number of independent voters, and excludes those who, from the circumstances of their position, are incapable of the independent exercise of the franchise. The test, then, which I apply to this proposition is—"Will it introduce into the counties men of independent station who are now shut out, or will it extend the suffrage to those who are incapable of independent deliberation?" I am bound to say my firm conviction is, that it will enlarge the franchise in a manner that is perfectly safe. My noble Friend now at the head of the Government apprehends that if this proposition were adopted there would be a danger of uniform electoral districts, and that only one right of voting would prevail in the country. If I entertained any such belief I should come to the same conclusion as my noble Friend, and vote against the Bill. But there will always remain the broad distinction between the counties and the boroughs of England, that while voting in the boroughs is confined to occupation, limited by a £10 rent, in the counties, on the other hand, even if this measure were passed, the prevailing franchise would be based on tenure as low as that of the 40s. freeholder, together with the various leasehold and other tenures now unknown in the cities and boroughs. Then, Sir, I ask myself this question—if the doctrine of finality can no longer be maintained—if a large and comprehensive measure be no longer possible—if, considering the increasing population, the growing wealth, and the growing intelligence of the country, every extension of the franchise cannot be resisted—if, therefore, you are driven by the force of circumstances to the necessity of what is called, and often derisively called, "bit-by-bit" reform—if you must consent, as I believe you must, to take reform in fragments—what measure, I ask, will be the safest, and, at the same time, the largest in its scope and operation? Looking at the question in this light, I am decidedly of opinion that this is a portion of the scheme of 1854 which may be most safely introduced, and therefore, I will cordially vote for it. I believe the effect of this measure in the English counties will be to give the right of voting to many persons who have it not now, but who are entitled to it by their position and respectability, and by their personal merit. For instance, to begin with, I should say that it would give a vote to many of the working clergy, as they are termed, who are now excluded—curates, and those who have not obtained the rectorial position, but who are still most useful members of the Church of England. Again, Dissenting Ministers would to a great extent be admitted. Half-pay officers also, of both services, retired tradesmen, and clerks, either from the public offices or from large mercantile firms, who have retired to their native villages or towns on superannuations or on pensions, will be admitted to the franchise. Then, again, the principal country shopkeepers will acquire the right, which they do not now possess. If we are not to have a recasting of the whole scheme of our representation, the immense towns, such as Barnsley, Rotherham, and Doncaster, which have sprung up, and which do not now send Members to Parliament, will virtually obtain representation under the operation of the present measure. I will go one step further. The farmers of England are rising rapidly, by their amended circumstances, in which I greatly rejoice, to a position of increased intelligence and great trustworthiness. I know no reason why small farmers—farmers with holdings below £50—should not in England, as is the case now in Ireland, have a share in the representation. I should be led too far if I were to pursue this interesting subject, but I have said enough to justify myself in giving a vote now, for the first time, in favour of this Motion. I have a great respect for the hon. Gentleman who sits below me (Mr. Drummond) and also for the hon. Member for West Norfolk, and, though I may be exposed to their taunts for the vote which I give, on account of my position in this House, still I feel that my motives are pure, and my conscience does not strike me with the slightest twinge of remorse for the course which I am pursuing. For the reasons, therefore, which I have shortly stated, I cannot refuse to give my vote in favour of this Motion. Let me point out to the hon. Member for East Surrey, before I sit down, that it will be necessary in the progress of the Bill through the House to insert some guard in it against the abuse of making faggot-votes, of which a measure such as this may easily now be made the instrument. With reference to this part of the subject, I would recommend him to look at the Bill introduced by my noble Friend the Member for London in 1854, in which ample provision is made with regard to joint tenancies, and also to prevent lands joined to hovels or houses of no worth conferring the franchise. The tenure of land under the provisions of that Bill must be coupled with the occupancy of a house of the annual value of £5. With some such precautions and safeguards, I am satisfied that this will prove a very salutary measure, and I shall therefore give my vote in favour of its introduction.

in explanation, denied that he had said that the noble Lord the Member for London had not brought in any Reform Bill in 1854, or that he had not brought in any measure while he was in office. What he had said was, that during the years that the noble Lord had not only been in office but was at the head of the Government, and when he had ample opportunity of bringing forward a great measure on this subject, and with the certainty of carrying it, he had never brought in any such measure; and that that fact, coupled with the support which both the noble Lord and the right hon. Baronet now gave to this Bill, tended to throw great doubts on the motives of reformers, and was likely to lead the country to suspect that they were acting from party and personal motives.

appealed to the noble Lord at the head of the Government, whether, after the speeches of the noble Lord the Member for London and the right hon. Member for Carlisle, he would still persevere in his opposition to the introduction of the Bill. As to time and the state of business, if the noble Lord would consent to allow the Bill to be brought in, he would undertake to make the best possible use of the time which remained of the Session. With regard to the amount at which the franchise should be fixed, that would be a matter to be discussed in Committee. If the noble Lord (Viscount Palmerston) persisted in opposing the measure he would place himself in this position—that while professing to lead the Liberal party, he would, if he were to divide against this Bill, be separating himself from his own supporters, and would be converting himself into the leader of the opposite side of the House.

Before the House goes to a division, I wish to say a few words in explanation of the vote which I am about to give. I have given the deepest consideration to this subject, and I have satisfied myself of the course which I ought to take. I see two distinct grounds for refusing to vote for the introduction of this Bill. One, which I derive from the state of parties in this House, and the position of the Government; and the other from the nature of the measure itself, and the peculiar manner in which it has been brought before the House. With regard to the latter, it is quite true, as my right hon. Friend has stated, that this proposition is identical with that contained in the Bill of 1854, which my noble Friend the Member for London brought forward as leader of the House of Commons, I being his colleague, and giving my entire adherence to it. It must be recollected, however, that that measure was brought forward not only by the leader of the Government in this House, but that that leader was the noble Lord, who, of all men, is best entitled by his authority on this subject to introduce such a measure; and that it was brought forward with all the weight and authority of the Government. Neither was it an isolated proposition, as this is now; but it was coupled with many other propositions which tended, in a great degree, to neutralise it—not to neutralise it in the way of diminishing its efficiency, but to extend its value as a portion of a great measure of reform. I believe it is admitted now, even by the promoters of the original Reform Bill, that the great error of that Bill was the uniformity of its franchise. I admit, that in dealing with a question of that kind, it is a very difficult thing altogether to avoid this error, but it ought to be avoided as much as possible. Society is not uniform, and an uniform franchise will never fairly and completely represent the variety of classes into which society is divided. But the present Bill proposes to give an uniform franchise to counties and boroughs. Did our Bill of 1854 do anything like that? On the contrary, when we proposed to lower the county franchise to £10, we proposed to bring the borough franchise down to £6. If you do make the franchise uniform, what is the logical deduction? If £10 is to be the only franchise, how can you defend the existence of boroughs at all? If 50,000 men, because they live closely packed together in a certain area, and under certain conditions of life, are to send two Members to Parliament, on what ground are 500,000 men, because they live scattered widely apart, to be represented by no greater number of Members than the 50,000? An uniform franchise involves you in endless logical difficulties. Again, in the Bill of 1854, various other franchises were introduced—the right of voting was given to University graduates, to all persons with an income of £10 from the funds, to persons with a deposit of £50 in the savings-banks, to those who paid 40s. assessed taxes or income tax, or 40s. for licences. I mention these facts to show, that a question of this sort is by no means to be regarded in the same light when it is presented as an isolated proposition, as when it forms part of a large scheme. With respect to the state of parties and the position of the Government—to speak plainly of what is visible to all of us—I must say, that I think the Government exercise a wise discretion in the present state of affairs, and looking to the degree of strength which they possess, in not bringing forward questions which it may be difficult to carry through successfully. When I see the Government in a state of great difficulty with regard to that which is infinitely more pressing than this question—I mean the financial arrangements of the year—I am greatly averse from adding another to the number of their embarrassments. They have decided to oppose this Bill, and I confess their decision has weighed considerably with me. I do not wish to put them into greater difficulties than they are at present, for I am afraid, that by accumulating difficulties upon them we may weaken their hands for the settlement of that grave question at present pending, to a favourable terminanation, of which no Gentleman here, I am sure, can yet see his way clearly. Guarding myself, therefore, completely as to the opinions which I entertain on the question of reform, and without abating one jot of the confidence which I place in the people of this country, or of my belief that their growing intelligence and the independence which their increasing prosperity gives them must entitle them, sooner or later, at the hands of one Government or another, to an extension of the franchise, but objecting to this measure in its present shape, and upon the other grounds which I have mentioned, I shall feel it my duty to vote against the Motion of the hon. Member for East Surrey.

said, he was sorry to trespass on the attention of the House, but he must express his perfect astonishment at the speech of the right hon. Gentleman (Mr. S. Herbert). The right hon. Gentleman said he opposed the Motion on two grounds. The first was that it tended to uniformity. The right hon. Gentleman supported the Bill of the noble Lord in 1854; but he said, although that Bill contained this precise measure, it contained something else which took away uniformity. What did it contain? It lowered the borough franchise. Therefore, if the proposition of the hon. Member for East Surrey had also been to lower the borough franchise, the uniformity would have been done away, and the right hon. Gentleman would have supported it. The anomalies of our representation were so numerous that anybody who chose to dwell upon them might make a case against any system of franchise; but the fact remained that there was a body of men of intelligence, probity, and wealth in this country who were not represented. The hon. Member for East Surrey proposed to give them the franchise. They were an instructed race; they were a race endued with probity; and they possessed wealth. He wanted to know whether those three qualifications in constituents would endanger the character of the House? But the right hon. Gentleman had another reason. He objected to weaken the Administration. The House might anticipate that the right hon. Gentleman would to-morrow vote with the Government and against the Motion of his right hon. Colleague the Member for the University of Oxford. If the Government were wrong, then he said to the right hon. Gentleman "Vote against them." If they were right, "Vote with them." Were they right on the present proposition? At all events, the argument of the right hon. Gentleman did not prove the Government to be right, because he said distinctly he had such faith in the intelligence and probity of his fellow-countrymen that some Government or other, some day or other, must give them some such extension of the franchise. They might suppose that if the right hon. Gentleman were a Member of that Government he would support another Reform Bill, as he supported the Reform Bill of 1854. The right hon. Gentleman seemed determined to falsify the statement of the hon. Member for West Norfolk, that Gentlemen out of office voted for measures which they did not propose when in office; for he wished to postpone this measure until he should be in office;—he wished to show that he did not vote for clap-trap Motions—that he was determined to vote for the non-enfranchisement of the people of England because it would really render the franchise equal to all, and because it would weaken the Government.

seconded the Motion.

said, that in assenting last year to the introduction of a similar measure, he did not, as the hon. Member stated he did, express an opinion that the tax ought to be abolished, or of indicating such an opinion on the part of the Government; but he said that he assented to it from a feeling of the inefficiency of the present Act, and the difficulties that surrounded its being carried into effect. In stating on that occasion the difficulties the Government laboured under in endeavouring to give effect to the measure, he attributed it to the Act of 1854, which altered the previous Act by throwing on the corporations the obligation of collecting this tax; and in default of their so doing, provided that the amount should be paid by the Ecclesiastical Commissioners, and that the corporations should collect the tax and repay the Commissioners; and that if they did not so repay the Commissioners, the Government should, and should be empowered to enforce repayment by legal proceedings against the corporations. It happened that seven out of the eight corporations on whom the obligation to levy fell, came to the unanimous determination not to collect it, on the ground that they had always objected to the tax, and that it was not a tax that they ought to be called on to collect. The question then arose, what powers the Government had under the law to force these corporations to collect the tax. The law officers of the Crown considered that great difficulties existed in effecting that object; the Government, however, decided on having recourse to a court of law, and the Corporation of Cork was selected against whom proceedings should be instituted to try the question. On the 1st of January, the last day of term, the learned Judges before whom the question came decided against the corporation. That decision had the effect of placing the question in an entirely different position to what it was last year. The learned Judges who heard the case expressed their opinion in succession upon the defects of the law, and the consequence was, that the Corporation of Cork immediately gave notice of appeal, and, as he believed, it was their intention to appeal by writ of error, and after that to the House of Lords if necessary. Two years must expire before the question could be legally decided. Since the Government had obtained the judgment in the case of the Corporation of Cork proceedings had been instituted against the other corporations, some of whom had stated it to be their intention to appeal if the judgment of the Court should be against them. It therefore would take two years before they could get a final judgment, and it was obvious that the difficulties of the Government in reference to this question were not altogether over. Unhappily, during the whole period law proceedings had been going on, the corporations had not collected one shilling of this tax, and the Ecclesiastical Commissioners in their last Report, laid on the table of the House within the last week, stated that they had had to advance £21,000 in consequence, only £4,000 of which had been repaid. The question was, what was the Legislature to do? When he intimated last year that the Government were not in a position to advise Parliament how to act until after they saw the result of the legal proceedings that had been instituted, the noble Lord the Member for London said, that the Government ought to adopt one of two courses—either manfully to say that they saw the way to amend the Act, and to bring forward such Amendments as would settle the question and put an end to this perpetual annual excitement and agitation, or at once adopt the Motion. In answer to that appeal he (Mr. Horsman) said, that as soon as the Government knew the result of the law proceedings, they would take the whole question into consideration, with a view of ascertaining whether they could not prepare and submit to the House a measure that would be satisfactory to Parliament, and settle the question; or if they found that impossible and hopeless, to adopt the other alternative and support the Motion of the hon. Gentleman, with a view to its settlement by the House. Since the delivery of the judgment, and since the assembling of Parliament, the subject had been under the consideration of Government. It was not only unfair to these corporations that they should be compulsorily engaged in litigation on this subject, but it was also unfair to the Government that they should have the odious duty imposed on them of carrying these corporations into a court of law; and it was also unfair to the Ecclesiastical Commissioners, who, by their last Report, were prevented from continuing their legitimate payments, not only because their funds fell short in consequence of their having to advance the Ministers' tax, but from the uncertainty of their being repaid by the corporations. The period from the passing of the Act to the anticipated settlement of the appeals would be four years, and the Government therefore in conformity with the pledge given last year now assented to the introduction of this Bill. The Government had had the question under their consideration since they had received the judgment alluded to, but sufficient time had not elapsed to enable them to mature a plan on the subject; but either on the second reading of this Bill, or before it, he hoped to be in a position to state to the House the views and intentions of the Government on the subject.

said, although the youngest Member of the House, still, as the constituency which had done him the honour to accept him as their representative was vitally concerned in the settlement of the present question, he could not avoid saying a few words with regard to it; and he was the more anxious to do so as, being a Protestant, he represented a mixed constituency of Protestants, Roman Catholics, and Dissenters of every shade of opinion. Speaking, then, on behalf of his Protestant constituents, he would say they considered the tax of ministers' money as a tax beyond all doubt contrary to the liberty of the subject in Ireland; whilst the Roman Catholics considered it as a remnant of the old penal code which every honest Irishman wished to see abolished for ever. And he would say, for himself, that he should never be content with any measure short of the total abolition of the tax. He did not think that all the ingenuity of the lawyers on the Treasury Bench—and their ingenuity, doubtless, was very great—could suggest any other solution of the difficulty that would be at all satisfactory to the people of Ireland. The whole tax was a very small matter indeed—simply a few thousands a year, levied off eight of the principal towns throughout the country; and it was scarcely worth while for such a paltry consideration to keep up an annually-recurring agitation between the Protestant and Catholic populations of those towns. That was a state of things which no man desired to see perpetuated; and therefore he called upon the right hon. Gentleman, the Chief Secretary for Ireland, to bring in a Bill contemplating nothing less than the total abolition of the tax.

said, the Chief Secretary for Ireland having stated that the Government would express its views distinctly with regard to the measure upon its second reading, it would be obviously improper for him to adopt any peculiar line with reference to the Bill while awaiting the decision of the Government. A statement, however, of the right hon. Gentleman had startled him very much—namely, when he declared that not a single shilling had been collected under the Act—because he (Mr. Napier) had himself paid a good many shillings. [Mr. HORSMAN: I excepted Dublin.] Well; but the great bulk of the tax was paid in Dublin. Now, curiously enough, the hon. Gentleman who had just spoken had described the tax as a remnant of the penal code. Why, the Act under which the tax was now collected was passed no earlier than the year 1854, and he certainly was not aware that an Act of 1854 could be well considered to constitute a relic of the penal code. There certainly was an earlier Act on the subject, the Act of Charles II.; but so far from its being part of the penal code, at the time of its passing the corporate towns referred to were all inhabited by Protestants. It was well known as the object of the Government of that day that, the Crown having power over the property of the towns, inducements should be held out to English artificers and tradesmen to settle in those towns, and therefore it was put as a charge upon property to provide for religious worship according to the belief of those settlers. Suppose, by way of illustration, a Protestant were to go over to Ireland, and purchase property there under a decree of the Incumbered Estates Court, would it not be competent for him to endow a church, and charge any portion of his newly-acquired property with the support of its minister? And were a Roman Catholic to become the tenant of a portion of the lands would he be at liberty to say that he, forsooth, was a Roman Catholic, and that his conscience would not allow him to pay a portion of the charge, because it would go to the clergyman of another denomination? It could not, therefore, be alleged that there was anything penal in a party being obliged to acquit himself of an obligation which he had acquired with his property the day he purchased it. Besides, a large proportion of the owners of houses charged with the tax of ministers' money were Protestants. In the parish in which he resided there was never the slightest difficulty in collecting the tax; at the same time, the great bulk of those who paid it were Protestants. Circumstances were different, he believed, in such places as Limerick and Kilkenny. But it was a curious fact, that although in some of the smaller towns the persons occupying the houses were not Protestants, the owners of them were. So that that being admitted, if they repealed the tax they virtually only handed over so much to the Protestant owners of property. And give him leave to ask this question—If they abolished the tax, what was to become of the clergy in the different towns who, upon the faith of arrangements made in 1835, and confirmed in 1854, were made dependent for their incomes upon the charge of ministers' money? He would appeal to his hon. Friend the Member for Cork (Mr. Fagan) himself, and he would take the case of the very city represented by the hon. Gentleman. One clergyman who was entitled to a proportion of the tax was the Archdeacon of Cork. He believed it was notorious that upon a recent occasion those who differed from that worthy man, both in religion and politics, the Roman Catholics of Cork, actually came forward upon the occasion of a vacancy in the bishopric, and petitioned that it should be filled up by the nomination of the Archdeacon, who was also supported by a great body of the Protestant clergy of the diocese. Well, the petition was not successful, although he admitted the appointment had been filled up by a most excellent man; nevertheless some of those very persons who had not been able to obtain the bishopric of Cork for the Archdeacon were now pressing forward to take away all his income. True, the Bill suggested that the deficiency was to be made up by the Ecclesiastical Commissioners; but that would be "robbing Peter to pay Paul," for the revenues of the Commissioners were too heavily charged already. Just let them look at the case of the Protestant inhabitants. They were called upon to take away from some of the working clergy of Ireland—many of them most highly commended by the Roman Catholics themselves—their annual stipends, and put them into the pockets of the Protestant proprietors of houses. Now, was that just? Was that the view taken by Parliament in the Act of 1854—an Act introduced under the Earl of Aberdeen's Government, when Sir John Young was Secretary for Ireland and the noble Lord now at the head of the Government was Secretary for the Home Department. That was a measure which undoubtedly conferred very great advantages upon the owners of small houses who henceforward were to be exempted from the tax. He must say, as regarded Sir John Young, that he had applied himself, with the best possible intention, to carry out that Act in the most convenient manner and with the most bonâ fide intention. He had warned the House in the last year that the Government could not enforce the law; and accordingly, under the advice of the law officers they took proceedings and obtained judgment and proposed to stop there. They now complained that an appeal would be brought to the House of Lords if they attempted to enforce that judgment—but that was a threat which any litigious person could have recourse to. The truth was the difficulties under the Act of 1854 arose from the way in which the Commissioners had conducted their valuation. If the Government was of opinion that there was a real difficulty in the way of the working of the Act, their plain course all along was to have amended it in a manner that would render it enforceable. Under the old law the clergy generally got their incomes; and why should not the Government take the collection of the tax out of the hands of the corporations altogether, and consign it to the Ecclesiastical Commissioners, or to the Protestant clergy themselves. If that were done they might use their discretion as to collecting it from Roman Catholics; but where the owner or occupier was a Protestant the absurdity of objecting to pay the impost was self-evident. At the great settlement of the Church question in 1835, when church rates were abolished, as partaking, perhaps, of the nature of a personal change, Mr. O'Connell did not think it necessary to insist upon the discontinuance of ministers' money. He (Mr. Napier) would not object to the introduction of the Bill, but he certainly could not understand why the Government, after they had obtained the decision of a court of law in their favour, should have any doubt as to the course they should take, simply because the other side had threatened to appeal. At all events, the clear course of the Government was to see that the clergy were not deprived of their incomes, in order that the proceeds might be handed over to the Protestant proprietors of houses in the corporate towns in Ireland.

understood the right hon. Gentleman the Member for the University of Dublin (Mr. Napier) to say that this tax might be collected by the Protestant clergy, and when they came to Roman Catholics who objected to pay the tax, they would not be asked for it, but the Protestants would be willing to pay it. No doubt if it were left in the hands of the Protestant clergy they would collect the tax in a reasonable and proper manner. He (Mr. Bowyer) would say, let the Protestants pay the ministers' money, and let the Roman Catholics be exempted from paying it; and by these means the House would avoid these unseemly disputes, and a great deal of trouble, censure, and resentment.

thought the hon. and learned Gentleman (Mr. Bowyer) had rather misunderstood the argument of his hon. Friend, which, in fact, amounted to this, that the tax was a charge upon the property of the country, and not upon the consciences of Roman Catholics. If he (Mr. Whiteside) was in Rome, as he had been, and if he were called upon to pay a tax for his house, he would not consider it the slightest breach of his conscientious obligations that he must pay the tax. It was very well known that the first question every one asked on taking a house in Dublin was "What was the amount of ministers' money on the house?" The fact was, those gentlemen who refused to pay the tax might as well refuse to pay the tithe rent-charge. Undoubtedly the Corporation of Cork had some grounds of complaint against the Government. The corporation was entitled to receive a return of the houses over £10 in value, which were alone liable to the tax under the Act of 1854. How did the Government proceed? Really the whole affair was a specimen of how matters were managed in that most interesting institution, the Castle of Dublin. Why, they appointed two Commissioners, whose duty it was to have gone to Cork and ascertained the value of every habitable house in the city; instead of which those gentlemen never quitted the Castle, and had recourse to the poor rate book, and wherever they found a tenant that was rated at over £10 they included him in the return; and so in that way they actually declared a "racquet court" liable to the tax. Now, if the Commission had done its duty, the way to the collection of the tax in Cork would have been comparatively easy. Hence he should trust to the good feeling of his hon. Friend the Member for Cork (Mr. Fagan) to recommend to the corporation of that city the adoption of the course supported by Mr. Staunton in Dublin, and which enabled them to get in five-sixths of the tax there.

objected to the tax being imposed indiscriminately upon the inhabitants of a town, without regard to their religious opinions. The Act of 1854 was nothing less than an attempt to perpetuate the Act of Charles II. It was said the tax was a charge upon property, but it was, in truth, a charge upon the occupiers of houses. He entirely agreed with the hon. Member for Cork (Mr. Fagan) that nothing short of a total abolition of the tax by the Government would be satisfactory to these towns. He only spoke on behalf of the seven provincial towns, he did not speak for Dublin; but he questioned whether the Roman Catholic inhabitants of that city were not of the same opinion as those of the provinces.

said, that his principal object in rising was to impress this fact clearly upon the Government and the House—that the question with which they were then called upon to deal was one of principle, and not of detail—and that no measure which did not wholly abolish a tax that, on conscientious grounds, was regarded as unjust and oppressive, could satisfy those large and important communities on which it was sought to be fastened in even a more obnoxious and odious form than before. The right hon. Gentleman the Member for the University of Dublin had tauntingly asked, was it the intention of the opponents of the tax to deprive the Protestant clergy of their incomes? The answer was, that the Roman Catholic inhabitants of the towns interested in the abolition of the tax had not the remotest wish to deprive the Protestant clergy of those towns of a single penny of the incomes which they now derived. Any desire or wish to put them in a worse position they distinctly repudiated, and that in the most emphatic manner. For himself he was quite ready to bear his testimony to the exemplary character of the Archdeacon of Cork, with whom he had the honour of a somewhat long acquaintance; nor could he deny that the body of the Protestant clergy of that city were gentlemen in every way entitled to respect; but while he would not object to see the Venerable Archdeacon and his brother clergymen amply supported, he certainly, in common with the Catholics of Cork, did object to see him and them paid out of Catholic pockets. The payment was not objected to; it was the source from which the funds were sought to be obtained that was repugnant to the Catholic conscience. It should, therefore, be distinctly understood that the objection was one of principle, and not of mere detail. As a Catholic, he held that it was unjust and oppressive, and repugnant to every principle of reason, justice, and equity, to force him to pay for the support of the ministers of a Church to which he did not belong, and in whose tenets he did not believe. The right hon. Gentleman (Mr. Napier) spoke of the tax as being a tax on property. That he denied. The tax was not on the house, but on the occupier—on the individual, and not the property. The house was made the medium of its imposition, but the occupier was the victim. It was ostensibly imposed for the "cure of souls." The cure of whose souls? The souls of Protestants. Admitting, for argument sake, that the towns subject to this tax were not Catholic in the time of Charles the Second, surely no one could deny that they were Catholic at present. Therefore the tax ought to cease with its necessity, for the Catholic inhabitants of those towns necessarily repudiated the ministrations of the clergy of any other Church than their own. Let the House judge of the existing state of things by the statistics of the population of Cork. The population within the limits of the municipal boundary was about 86,000, and of that number not more than 15,000 were Protestants; so that the tax originally imposed for the cure of Protestant souls fell mainly upon a Catholic community. The same might be said of Limerick, Waterford, Kilkenny, Clonmel, and even of Dublin. He (Mr. Maguire) might remind the Government that he had warned them against the adoption of Sir John Young's Bill, which he said at the time was repugnant to the feelings of the people, and insulting to their municipal bodies. At the time of the Bill being forced through the House, the inhabitants and corporations of every one of the towns affected by it most indignantly protested against its being passed into law. The people would resist it, and the corporations could not and would not enforce it. In Cork, as well as in the other towns of the south of Ireland, the people were determined to have recourse to every legitimate means to defeat it. They would first have recourse to legal means, then passive resistance—he would not say what further means—in order to free themselves from a tax repugnant to their consciences as Catholics, and to their pride as freemen. If the right hon. Gentleman the Secretary for Ireland would glance at the evidence taken before the Committee that, ten years since, recommended its total and unqualified abolition, he would see that a now estimable and respected Protestant bishop, the Bishop of Derry, protested against the impolicy of allowing a fretting sore, such as he stigmatised this tax, to fester in the bosom of Ireland—that a Protestant clergyman declared that not one word was to be found in the Gospel to justify its imposition on a Catholic community—and that a Catholic clergyman (the Rev. William O'Sullivan) stated distinctly that no Catholic desired to curtail, by a single shilling, the revenues of the Protestant clergy, while Catholics naturally demand that the incomes of those clergy should be paid them out of any other exchequer than the pockets of the followers of another Church. He would then most earnestly call on the Secretary for Ireland, as he valued the peace and concord of the country, as he desired to see its people live in Christian amity, and by the responsibility which his office imposed upon him to deal with the question manfully and energetically, and not to attempt to tinker, by further patching and botching, a measure which was a disgrace to the statute-book of a free country.

seconded the Motion. He felt it his duty, in so doing, to briefly state his reasons, but he could assure hon. Members that none of his remarks would be intentionally offensive to Roman Catholics. He should be a very ungrateful man did he use offensive language towards them, for since his earliest days he had been on terms of close intimacy with members of the Roman Catholic persuasion, and both in this country and abroad he had experienced the greatest kindness from them. He was quite aware that Roman Catholics conscientiously treated him as a heretic, while, on the other hand, he conscientiously treated them as Christian brethren. He agreed with the hon. Member for North Warwickshire, that it was impossible for any man of ordinary common sense to come to the same conclusion as that arrived at by the Commissioners who had inquired into the working of Maynooth College; but he (Mr. Kendall) should, he supposed, in his own case, attribute it to the fact that his education had been a simple one, and that he could not, therefore, enter into the subtleties which those learned Gentlemen were masters of. He based his opposition to the Maynooth Grant simply on the ground universally pursued by Roman Catholics towards Protestants in matters relating to religion, and that the people of this country should, in their bearing towards the Roman Catholics, hold themselves on the defensive; that they should in no way give the Roman Catholics power; and there could be no doubt that a grant of money increased their power. ["Oh, oh!"]. He did not mean to be at all offensive, but he should state the grounds of his opposition. He believed that every act of the Roman Catholics, as regarded their conduct towards Protestants, was the result of a conscientious motive; that there was a certain modus operandi prescribed for them, and that they approved of and carried it out. The union of the Roman Catholics was their strength, and Protestants ought to be ashamed that they had not amongst themselves such a union. They ought to take a lesson frm the Roman Catholics, and be more in union with each other. The fact was that Roman Catholics felt respect for the hon. Member for North Warwickshire for having come forward as he had done—constantly and zealously; and they despised the Protestant who had not courage and nerve enough to support him. Let hon. Members consider for a moment what had been the conduct of the Roman Catholics of Ireland. Had there, during the last twenty years, been any one act commenced in Ireland by Protestants for the furtherance of their own religion which had not been opposed by the Roman Catholics, banded together as one man? Many hon. Members were in the habit of travelling on the Continent, where in Roman Catholic countries they experienced the utmost kindness and hospitality; but they must have observed that whenever the question of religion was involved everything was done to humiliate them. Whenever the Roman Catholics had the support of the Government of the State, they thought it their duty to oppress those who differed from them in religion. He was in Tuscany in 1834, and knew from personal experience that it was impossible to meet a man of more kindliness of disposition than the Grand Duke. Yet what had happened in that country during the last twenty years? The Grand Duke bound himself to the priests, and as a consequence had felt it necessary to oppress Protestants in order to carry out the practices of his religion. It was on these grounds that he (Mr. Kendall) opposed giving power to Roman Catholics, which they would use adversely to the Protestant religion. They need not for proof go outside the House. On any question that concerned Protestant interests they found the Roman Catholic Members bound together as one to oppose the Protestants. He, therefore, asked the House not to give the Roman Catholics power, for they would from conscientious motives make an oppressive use of it. The hon. Member for North Warwickshire had often been charged with bringing forward his Motion for the abolition of Maynooth at inopportune times—he had been censured, for example, for bringing it forward last year during the war with Russia, when Roman Catholic soldiers were fighting side by side with Protestants; and it was said that any Motion that would excite a difference between them was to be deprecated. But if ever there was a fitting, an opportune time for such a Motion as that before the House, it was the present, and he would tell them the reason why he thought so. He, for one, suspected that there were without that House, and within it too, men who, though not professing the Roman Catholic religion, were still by their acts doing all they could to forward it. Some of these men did this, he believed, designedly; others did it unconsciously. They were not numerous; but they were powerful in intellect—powerful in regard of means, powerful in regard of position, and dangerous in regard of society. He believed that those men were not true to the constituents by whom they had been sent to this House. He held that to be a Protestant Parliament, and his belief as a Protestant was, that every farthing voted in that House for education, not based upon the Protestant religion, was money granted by an act of presumption which amounted to a national sin. He heartily seconded the Motion of his hon. Friend.

said, the House would give him credit for not being in the habit of introducing theological questions, and therefore he trusted they would indulge him for a few moments whilst he discussed this Motion on other than theological grounds. Hon. Members must have wondered at the great difference between the speech of the Mover and that of the seconder of the Motion. There could not be a second opinion as to the good taste with which the seconder had put forward his views. He (Mr. Roebuck) wished he could say as much for the mover. It appeared to him that the hon. Member for North Warwickshire had read history very curiously—read it by the light of his own prejudices. The hon. Gentleman began by saying that the College of Maynooth had been endowed for the purpose of shutting out the Popish power. Now he (Mr. Roebuck) would endeavour very shortly to trace the history of that college. He would endeavour to show the House that the grant to Maynooth was founded upon justice and upon policy; and that, going to those higher principles—the principles of morality—it was founded upon these too. When was the College of Maynooth founded? It was founded at the time of the French Revolution, when this country dreaded not Ultramontane, but Gallic tyranny. The Irish Catholic priests were at that time taught in revolutionary France, and it was in order to prevent a continuance of that teaching that Mr. Pitt became the originator of the College of Maynooth. Now, the College of Maynooth was first endowed or established by the Irish Protestant Parliament—not by a mixed Parliament like the present Imperial Parliament. The seconder of the Motion called this assembly a Protestant assembly. He (Mr. Roebuck) took the liberty to contradict the assertion. It was neither Protestant, Catholic, or Episcopalian. The British Parliament represented the opinion of the whole population of the three countries; and as opinions diverged in those three countries, so did opinions in that House diverge. These countries were not Protestant. No one could say that the people, or their representatives, were all Episcopalians. In England there was one religion; in Scotland another; and in Ireland a third—three—he could not say State religions, because the Roman Catholic was not the religion of the State in Ireland—but it was the religion of the great body of the people of that country, and recognised as such by the Government. Besides the people of these three religions, there were a multitude of Dissenting bodies represented in the House. They might call the representatives of those Dissenters representatives of Protestants of this country; but they were not more the representatives of the Protestants than the Catholic Members were—the Catholics in that House as much represented the people of this country as did the Protestant Members. Therefore, he said that House was not Protestant. But the Irish Parliament was a Protestant Parliament—it was elected by Protestants, and only Protestants could sit in it, and this Protestant Parliament erected the College of Maynooth and endowed it. That was in 1795. The House must remember why they did so. They dreaded not Ultramontane but Gallic doctrines. The thing they feared was revolutionary France; and revolutionary France was the place where the Irish priests were educated. Revolutionary principles, originating in France, had spread over the whole Continent; and it was in order to prevent Irish priests from imbibing revolutionary doctrines on the Continent, and importing them into Ireland, that the College of Maynooth was created. They then came to the time of the legislative union of Ireland with this country. When that union was effected, the Parliament of England felt itself bound to adopt what had been done by the Irish Parliament in respect of Maynooth. So thought all the great men of that day; and at the head of them was Mr. Pitt. They had left Maynooth as a legacy to the Parliament of the present day; and it was now in a position to see the obligations imposed on it by that legacy. For centuries Protestant England tried to root out Catholicism in Ireland. They passed laws which were a disgrace to any civilized community. They tried every possible means that bigotry and cruelty could induce men to put in force in order to root out Catholic doctrine. But they failed; and in 1829 the consequence of their failure was felt, for they were compelled to grant Catholic emancipation. He now asked what was the justice of the claim. The justice of the claim was, that Maynooth had been established for English purposes, and the Parliament of England had maintained it on that ground. Then with regard to the policy of the claim. The great body of the people of Ireland were Catholics, and it was for the interest of the empire at large that there should be peace and good-will in that country. The Government and Parliament of England had some years ago changed their system, and endeavoured to be just to Ireland, and the condition of the Irish people was now very different from what it had been under the old system of Protestant domination. The Irish were now a prosperous people; they were now a peaceable people; they were now—he was almost ashamed to say the word—a loyal people. When he said "ashamed to say the word," he meant shame that any man should be called upon at that time of day to vindicate before his fellow-men in that House the conduct of the Irish people. The Irish had, when called on, acted like brothers to the English. Let them look to the history of the battles, and did not they find Irishmen standing by the side of the English in all the great battles on the Continent? Should not the principles, then, of that House towards the Irish people continue to be those of kindliness, that they might again have the friendship of that people in the hour of danger? Some one had said "England's danger is Ireland's opportunity," but he would say that the people of Ireland had repudiated that sentiment—whenever they had been called on they had come to England's assistance. He said then that it was the bounden duty of this country, as a mere matter of policy, to do the Irish people justice—to study their feelings—not in any way to insult them. He was of opinion that Motions of this sort, repeated every year in language such as they had heard that night, were impolitic, and the hon. Gentleman opposite (Mr. Spooner) would pardon him for saying that they were unchristian. He did not like that sort of Christianity which enabled a man to damn his fellow-man. He wanted to know what constituted the hon. Member for North Warwickshire judge in a matter of that kind? What was there in his intellect—what was there in himself—that induced him to set himself up and say to any other man, "You are a sinner?" [Mr. SPOONER: I did not say that.] The hon. Gentleman shook his head, and dissented; but the hon. Member could not say that he had not said it was a sin on the part of that House to maintain the College of Maynooth [Mr. SPOONER: Hear, hear!] He Mr. Roebuck) wanted to know what authorised him to assume the character of infallibility? His (Mr. Roebuck's) religion taught him that doctrines of religion were between a man and his Maker; and, if another man reproached his fellow on that head he went beyond the power which any human being possessed, or ought to possess. Nothing but weakness in his mind and bigotry in his heart could induce a man to act so. Having dealt with the policy and justice of the case, the higher doctrine of morality remained—that, in all questions of religion, the leading principle ought to be to give to every individual power and right to judge for himself. Was the House of Commons to enter into a theological controversy? He was a professor of the faith of the Established Church, and such he intended to remain; but he did not take on himself to catechise or school other men for dissenting from the Church. There were many hon. Friends of his who called themselves Protestant Dissenters, and he regarded the Catholics as Catholic Dissenters [Murmurs']. He knew that they would repudiate the term, but he stated it without intending offence, that, as a professor of the Church established by law, he believed everybody who departed from it to be a Dissenter. He believed that the high doctrines of morality should induce them to bear with each other on questions connected with religion; that Motions which must irritate and insult were unwise, unjust, and unchristian, and that, if they were to be repeated from time to time as they had been in the last few years, the House ought to express a strong feeling, as he sincerely believed they would tonight, by placing the hon. Member in a decided minority.

agreed with the hon. and learned Member for Sheffield (Mr. Roebuck) in protesting against the introduction of theological discussions into that House. The books which the hon. Member for Warwickshire had quoted were works of great learning, they were written in very crabbed Latin, were intended for learned men, and contained a great variety of doctrines and nice distinctions which were put with all the subtlety of the casuist. It was, therefore, easy enough for any one who chose to select passages, and suppress others to interpret them just as he pleased, and extract from them doctrines which were not in reality the doctrines of the writer. The hon. Gentleman had referred to the distinction between mortal and venial sins. How was it possible to discuss such a subject in that House? This was an instance of the unfitness of theological discussions in that House. He must, however, observe, as the subject had been introduced, that it was most unfair to suppose that because the Roman Catholic Church declared certain sins to be "venial," it therefore held them to be of no consequence at all. There were crimes of various degrees of gravity in the eye of the law, and in like manner there were sins of various degrees of gravity in the eye of the Church. But the Church held venial sins to be only less evil than mortal sins. The distinction was moreover in the Bible. The hon. Member had stated that one of the books to which he referred laid down the doctrine that the temporal laws were not valid if they were contrary to the laws of the Church. But let the hon. Gentleman read the context, and study the qualifications with which it was accompanied, and he would see that this doctrine was no more than that which every Protestant as well as every Catholic held—namely, that there were laws of his Church which a man was bound to obey rather than temporal laws. There must be a limit to the power of the temporal law over men's conscience. The hon. Gentleman would find in his Bible a narrative of three Jews who were required by the laws of their Church to say their prayers in a particular time and manner. They were forbidden to do so by temporal laws—they preferred to obey God rather than man, and they were punished for disobeying the temporal law. They were held forth as example as men who had done their duty. Did the right hon. Gentleman find that Catholics were practically less good subjects than Protestants? Did he know a single case in which a Catholic's sense of duty to his Church had prevented his being a good subject either in peace or war? The right hon. Gentleman said, that Catholics did not consider themselves bound by an oath. Let him remember the time when Catholics were excluded from this House, and from holding civil offices and commissions in the army and navy, simply because they would not take an oath which was opposed to their conscientious conviction. Surely, if they had held such a doctrine as the hon. Gentleman had mentioned, nothing would have prevented them from coming to the table and taking the oaths, with a mental reservation, and so taking their seats in that House. Yet it was notorious, that rather than take oaths which they knew they could not keep, they submitted to the degradation of being excluded from every office which could be coveted, and properly coveted, under a free constitution. With regard to the doctrines the hon. Gentleman had quoted, about what he called equivocation, he (Mr. Bowyer) was ready to prove that there was no doctrine on that subject in the authors referred to, which was not to be found also in those great Protestant writers Grotius and Puffendorf. The hon. Member seemed to think that the Church in Ireland was originally Protestant. The hon. Member reminded him of a zealous clergyman, who once wrote a book for the purpose of proving that St. Patrick was a Protestant. There was no doubt, however, that St. Patrick, the founder of the Church in Ireland was the Pope's legate, and as much a Papist as Archbishop Cullen himself. He could not see, therefore, how it was possible for the hon. Gentleman to support his doctrine that the Protestant Church existed before the Catholic Church in Ireland. But the hon. Member tried to turn the tables on his hon. Friend the Member for Dungarvan (Mr. Maguire). The hon. Member for Dungarvan had stated in the course of the previous debate that the Roman Catholics objected to paying ministers' money for a religion that they did not believe in; and the hon. Member for North Warwickshire argued that, by the same reasoning, Protestants rightly objected to pay taxes for Maynooth. The argument was specious, but unsound. The college was founded, not as a favour to the Roman Catholics, but upon grounds of public policy, and it was a small and miserable compensation for the loss of the ecclesiastical property which once belonged to the Roman Catholics, and of which the Catholic Church had been robbed. The hon. Member then stated, that the Queen swore in her coronation oath to support the Protestant constitution of the country. The fact was, that the coronation oath contained nothing of the sort. No doubt the Queen swore to support the Church as by law established in England, and the Church as by law established in Scotland. There was not one word, however, in that oath respecting the Protestant constitution; and the hon. and learned Member for Sheffield had most satisfactorily shown that there was no such thing as a Protestant constitution. The hon. Member for Warwickshire seemed, indeed, altogether to forget that Ireland was a Catholic country; that the Established Church there belonged to about 800,000 Protestants only, and that there were 7,000,000 of Roman Catholics in Ireland—["Oh, oh!"]—At any rate there were upwards of 6,000,000. Surely, no hon. Gentleman would deny that the Roman Catholics were in an overwhelming preponderance. With regard to the report of the Commissioners on Maynooth, the conclusion to which they had arrived was precisely the same as that to which the Committee of the two Houses of Parliament had arrived a great many years ago, when the same question was discussed; and it was proved that the charge against Maynooth of being anti-national, disloyal, and dangerous to the State, was utterly groundless. The hon. Member said something about the Commissioners having been misled by the Jesuits. Who were the Jesuits? He would first tell the hon. Gentleman what a Jesuit was. The question was once asked of Dr. Johnson, and he answered, "He is a man, who is a cleverer fellow than the one who calls him so." That was a Jesuit. But it so happened, that though in that sense many of the witnesses examined before the Commissioners were Jesuits, still, in the strict sense of the word, not a single Jesuit gave evidence before the Commissioners—no, not one. That was a fact. There were, however, a few witnesses examined upon whom the hon. Member had placed some reliance. But they were men who had been driven out of the Catholic Church, because they had offended against the discipline of that Church; and how far the testimony of such persons was trustworthy he would leave the House to determine. He apprehended it would not weigh with that House against that of the Professors of the "Royal College of Maynooth," who had been appointed by the authority of the Crown, and of whom he would say that they were as loyal to the Crown as any hon. Gentleman he had then the honour to address. The hon. Gentleman had said that Maynooth diffused Ultramontane doctrines. Now, some of these Professors had to his (Mr. Bowyer's) mind, expressed opinions before the Commissioners which were not Ultramontane enough; and some of those opinions were more calculated to give satisfaction in that House than at Rome, and this he had stated to the professors themselves. The fact was, notwithstanding all the hon. Gentleman said, that Maynooth was not an Ultramontane college. The absurdities which were talked about by the witnesses upon whose statements the hon. Member relied were almost incredible; one of them going the length of asserting that the priests at Maynooth were not loyal men, inasmuch as before they prayed for the Queen they divested themselves of the maniple, which he said was the only ecclesiastical vestment that was not derived from Numa Pompilius! If the hon. Gentleman would tell the House something about these vestments of Numa Pompilius, he would not only afford much gratification to the House itself, but to the whole of the learned world. He would not trespass longer on the House, because he did not wish to enter into a discussion upon articles of faith and theological questions—matters quite unfit to be considered by such an assembly, although he had thought it right to answer some of the points of the hon. Gentleman. He trusted that the House would reject the hon. Gentleman's proposal by such a majority as would discourage him from again introducing discussions of this kind, which were most nauseous, not only to the Roman Catholic, but to many of the Protestant Members, who, although they might be compelled by the bigotry and ignorance of their constituents to vote against Maynooth, disapproved the bitterness and impropriety with which the hon. Member for North Warwickshire, and still more, his hon. collogue (Mr. Nowdegate), always treated this subject.

said, he rose principally for the purpose of making a few remarks in reply to the speech of the hon. and learned Gentleman the Member for Sheffield (Mr. Roebuck), which were more worthy of notice from the position and character of that hon. and learned Gentleman than from their own intrinsic force. The hon. and learned Gentleman had commenced that speech with a condemnation of the course taken by the hon. Member for North Warwickshire in bringing forward the Motion, and he had drawn a distinction between the speech of his hon. Friend and that of the hon. Member for Cornwall, with a view of showing that the taste of the seconder was better than the taste of the mover. In his (Mr. Chambers') opinion there was no force in the comparison. Nobody ought to know better than the hon. and learned Gentleman that any truth that was pertinent to the matter under discussion was always in good taste, however disagreeable it might prove to some parties, and certainly the last man in the House who ought to complain of the enunciation of unpalatable truths or of unpalatable fictions, as being in bad taste, was the hon. and learned Member for Sheffield himself. The hon. and learned Gentleman had thought proper to indulge in censures on the hon. Gentleman the Member for North Warwickshire, which must have been listened to with pain and surprise by any one who was acquainted with the character of that hon. Gentleman, and who knew how that character had been earned and how it had been maintained. But the hon. and learned Gentleman did not confine his observations to questions of taste, but adduced arguments in support of his opposition to the Motion under the consideration of the House. He denied that the College of Maynooth had been founded by Protestants as a protection against Ultramontane doctrines, but that it had been founded as a precaution against the spread of the Gallican political sentiments of the French Revolution. That was, no doubt, a part of the truth; but it was not the whole truth. The fact was, that previously to the year 1795 Roman Catholic priests could not be educated in Ireland without violating the law, and they therefore went abroad to obtain that education which was denied them at home. But that became both illegal and impossible when the Revolution broke out, and the Continent being shut to them, a Protestant Parliament, acting rightly both politically and morally, altered the law, and made a provision for the education of those priests in their own country. They assented to the endowment of Maynooth, in order that the Roman Catholic priesthood might receive that education at home which they could not obtain abroad; but surely that did not support the conclusion that the endowment of Maynooth should be continued at the present day; because there was no longer anything to prevent Roman Catholics from maintaining for themselves establishments, either at home or abroad, for the education of their clergy. The hon. and learned Gentleman the Member for Sheffield had gone on to contend that the endowment of Maynooth was a measure which had been adopted by Mr. Pitt for the purpose of cementing the union between Great Britain and Ireland, and he had further stated that it was a legacy transmitted to succeeding Parliaments by Mr. Pitt. If that were so, it was only another of the melancholy legacies transmitted by that Minister. But even if that were true, the Parliament of the present day was not obliged to accept that legacy—that damnosa hœreditas. The Act of Union provided that the assistance given to all religious and charitable institutions in Ireland at the time of its passing should not be disturbed for a period of twenty years; and there could be no violation of that engagement in a withdrawal of the grant to Maynooth more than half a century after the establishment of the union between the two kingdoms. The hon. and learned Gentleman said that for centuries this country had been persecuting the Roman Catholics of Ireland. No doubt they had been the objects of every species of cruelty and oppression which their English masters could devise; and he (Mr. Chambers) was very sorry for that: he readily admitted that the system practised towards the Irish Roman Catholics was very cruel, very abominable, very mischievous, and entirely useless for the purpose for which it had been adopted. But that was a fact which, as far as he could see, had nothing whatever to do with the continued endowment of Maynooth. The hon. and learned Gentleman also said that it was the interest of the people of this country to maintain peace between Protestants and Roman Catholics. That was certainly true; but he (Mr. Chambers) believed that peace could not be maintained between Protestants and Roman Catholics so long as the endowment of Maynooth was left undisturbed. The people of England looked upon the question, not as one of metaphysics and theology, but as one of principle and plain honesty, and their decision had been arrived at long ago; and that decision they would most assuredly have registered by that House sooner or later, in the shape of a total repeal of the Act of 1845, for peace could only be maintained by the total abolition of the grant. The House of Commons had never laid down any general principle for its own guidance in reference to the question of religious endowments. The general and growing feeling of the country, however, was that they ought to make no such endowments, and that was a feeling which the House ought, in his opinion, to encourage. He would not rashly interfere with any existing endowment, but he would steadily resist the principle of making any further provision of that kind either at home or in the colonies. Another argument urged by the hon. and learned Member for Sheffield in opposition to the Motion was, that the Roman Catholics of Ireland had offered us great assistance in our national struggles, and that it was not advisable we should produce among them the irritation by which a withdrawal of that grant must be accompanied. He (Mr. Chambers) admitted that Ireland was at present flourishing and prosperous; but he would remind the hon. and learned Gentleman that one of the objects which Sir Robert Peel sought to attain by the Act of 1845 was the growth of a more friendly feeling among the Roman Catholic priests of Ireland towards this country and its institutions; and after having reminded the hon. and learned Gentleman of that fact, he would ask him whether the conduct of the Roman Catholic clergy during the last ten or twelve years showed that that object had been accomplished? Let them contrast the conduct of the Roman Catholic body, in 1795, with their conduct in recent times. At the former period the Roman Catholics had been, in the tone of their petitions and memorials to the Irish Parliament, humble and submissive; but they had within the last few years made an aggression on the established religion of the country such as had been unknown among us in any preceding age. That aggression, and the scenes which took place at elections in Ireland, showed but too plainly how little the Act of 1845 had contributed to win for us the favour and good will of the Roman Catholic priesthood, and that the college which was to produce priests favourable to England and her institutions had produced a Cardinal Wiseman and an hierarchy who had acted in bold defiance of the rights of our Sovereign. In making these remarks, he said nothing against the right of the Roman Catholics to the fullest freedom of worship. No doubt could exist that they were entitled to the freest exercise of their worship, and he would not have complained even of the Papal aggression if it could have been shown to be necessary in order that Roman Catholics might receive all the sacraments and comforts of their Church. Such was not the case, and a Protestant House of Commons, bound to maintain a Protestant constitution, was compelled to resist such an aggression. "There are higher moral considerations," said the hon. and learned Member for Sheffield, "than any introduced by the hon. Member who made the present Motion, and my religion teaches me not to set myself up as a judge and condemner of any man." And then the hon. and learned Member for Sheffield accompanied that remark with certain observations upon the hon. Member for North Warwickshire. [Mr. ROEBUCK: I said that I would judge no man in his religion.] He was not aware that he had misrepresented the hon. and learned Member. But how did the hon. and learned Member's argument apply? The question was, not whether they should judge and condemn another man's religion, but whether they should continue to pay for its maintenance. The question was, whether, when he was called on to concur in a vote giving so many thousand pounds a year for the support of Maynooth, he was condemning another man's religion, if he acted up to his convictions and declined to do so. It was pseudo-charity, false liberality, and indifferentism, which made all religions alike, and it was an insult to require in those from whom they differed the same smooth, indefinite, and uncertain notions. That was not charity, and was an argument which would sustain no inference. It only served to put for a single moment the opponent of the man who used such an argument into an apparently false position, and to make him appear as a person who, while in reality vindicating truth, and therefore charity, was acting on "the weakness of his understanding and the bigotry of his heart"—phrases calculated to illustrate the taste of the hon. and learned Member for Sheffield. This question had been debated and decided in the country, and must be decided in that House. It was idle to say that it was a theological subject. It was not a theological subject, but a question of plain morals, which the English people understood, and would never cease to understand so long as they had the Bible in their possession, and the Bible they would continue to have until Popery should have been endowed and established in this country. He did not believe that the doctrines which had been quoted to the House that evening as proofs of the demoralising character of some of the books read in Maynooth were held by all Roman Catholics. By a beneficent dispensation of Providence no large class of men could be made so bad as the doctrines which might be taught by their recognised leaders. But the fact that such books as those referred to were read and were regarded as authorities in Maynooth afforded a strong argument, when the House was called on to judge respecting the college and the system of education pursued there. This House was the proper arena in which to judge of that system, and the books taught in the college constituted the best test of the education carried on there. Upon these principles he had arrived at the conclusion, that the time had come when, whatever might be done with the £26,000—which he was not desirous of taking from the Roman Catholics, and was willing to give to any one or more of their secular charities—the Maynooth endowment should cease, and when religious peace should be restored to this country so far as this question was concerned.

desired that the grounds on which the Roman Catholic Members opposed the present Motion should not be misunderstood. It was not as a matter of pecuniary consideration that they supported the Maynooth endowment; for they did not come as suppliants to seek the bounty of the State, nor were they apprehensive that the withdrawal of the grant would affect the Roman Catholic religion. They, however, would view the success of the Motion as a violation of the rights guaranteed to the Roman Catholics by a solemn act of the Legislature. The grant had been for years a recognised, but inadequate consideration for the property of which the Catholic Church and people had been deprived; and its withdrawal would constitute an act of injustice the more galling on account of the offensive and unfounded charges which had been so recklessly made against the Catholic religion and faith. Independent of all considerations peculiar to the Roman Catholic body, they, on public and national grounds, and as subjects interested in the prosperity of the kingdom, deprecated the calamitous consequences which would result from giving the sanction of the Legislature to charges such as had been made that night, proclaiming that the Roman Catholic people should be regarded with suspicion and distrust, thereby placing them in antagonism with the rest of the Queen's subjects, and declaring that the tenets of their faith were inconsistent with loyalty and freedom. The general interests of the State were much more affected by the question than the peculiar interests of the Roman Catholics. He had no apprehension that the withdrawal of the grant would impede the education of the Roman Catholic priesthood, for the Catholic people were so much attached to their faith that they would provide for that object by making every pecuniary sacrifice in their power; and, supposing that their own resources proved insufficient, the assistance of the Catholic Church in other countries would not be withheld. Establishments for the purpose would be formed in foreign States, and every one of them would be a proof of the injustice and impolicy of British Legislation. When, therefore, they talked of the danger of the tenets of the Catholic Church, they should bear in mind that they would increase that danger by giving to the priesthood a foreign education and foreign habits, and causing them to feel gratitude towards those foreign countries which provided for them that education which their own country denied to them. Could it, then, be matter of surprise that the principle of this grant should have been adopted in 1795, and that every successive Government, however prejudiced against the Roman Catholic faith, should have felt the necessity of securing a domestic education for the Catholic priesthood? He would maintain that the object of the Legislature in the establishment of Maynooth had been attained, and that, therefore, it was the duty of every one, as a duty to the State, to support it. He should not enter into what was called the theological part of the subject, and should not discuss with the hon. Member for North Warwickshire garbled extracts of evidence; but he must observe on the inconsistency of the arguments which had been urged against this grant. They had admitted the Roman Catholics to all the privileges of the subjects of the realm; they had admitted them to seats in that House; they had confided to Roman Catholic soldiers the protection and honour of the country; and no one would say that they had proved themselves unworthy of their trusts. They had entrusted Roman Catholics with the administration of the laws, and they have not failed in their duty to their country. In all the discussions on this subject it had never once been shown—it had never been attempted to be shown—that the privileges conceded to the Roman Catholic laity had been in any one instance exercised injuriously to the State. He said, then, that the charges of disloyalty and immorality of their teaching alleged against the College of Maynooth had been proved to be groundless by the loyalty and good conduct of both the clergy and laity. The hon. Member for Hertford (Mr. T. Chambers), had said that the disendowment of Maynooth would produce religious peace. If he (Mr. Serjeant O'Brien) thought that such would be the case, and that these polemical discussions, which were so derogatory to the character of the House—these exhibitions of religious intolerance, in which, when the cause of religion was advocated, all religion was laid aside, could thereby be got rid of—he owned that, unjust and oppressive as was this measure, he should be somewhat consoled. But it was utterly delusive to hold out any such hope. The hon. Member for North Warwickshire and his supporters would not be satisfied with the withdrawal of the Maynooth grant. They would make onslaughts upon the State payments to the Roman Catholic chaplains in the army and navy, and upon the State provision made for the religious wants of the Roman Catholic inmates of our gaols, asylums, and other public institutions. Those payments would be denounced as national sins and as pregnant with danger to the State. There would be a revival of these polemical discussions upon each occasion of the yearly Estimates being submitted to the House. The hon. Member for Hertford had alluded to our Colonies, but he (Mr. Serjeant O'Brien) apprehended that neither the zeal of that hon. and learned Gentleman nor of the hon. Member for Warwickshire would induce them to extend the principle of this measure to our Colonies. There were reasons which would render that course inconvenient, and which would incline them to extenuate the guilt of this national sin. Was it, then, because Ireland lay at our door, while Canada was far distant, because Ireland was more within our power than Colonies which lay beyond our reach, that she was to be treated more rigorously than they; and that a course was to be pursued towards her people and clergy which England would not adopt towards the unbelieving population of India? The Roman Catholics of Ireland had been told that they were aggressive and that they had increased their demands. Now, his belief was that if they had continued satisfied with the Act of 1795, they would have been unworthy of any grant at all. All that Ireland asked was that the same policy should be adopted towards her as had been adopted towards our colonial possessions, He called upon the House not to legislate exceptionally towards Ireland by withdrawing this grant, which, although small in amount, was important in principle. Let them not reverse that policy which had been sanctioned for sixteen years by their wisest statesmen and by every successive Administration. Let them oppose this measure, which was unworthy of an enlightened State, and which, although exasperating in its results, would be powerless but for evil—which, while it would fail to produce the results anticipated by its supporters, would create in the minds of the Irish people a deep, bitter sense of wrong and a distrust in the justice of the British Legislature.

said he fully appreciated and even felt sympathy for the sentiment which prevailed among the English people that it was unjust to call upon them to support a religion of which they disapproved, and on that ground he had some inclination to vote for the Motion, but more especially on the ground that if it were carried to its ultimate conclusion it must, as an inevitable corollary, lead to a similar dealing with other ecclesiastical establishments. A critical analysis, both of the agitation out of doors on this question and of the division that might take place in that House upon it, would tend to fortify the opinion expressed by the hon. Member for North Warwickshire that it was wrong to call upon one man to support the religion of another when he believed that religion to be contrary to the Word of God. The hon. Gentleman, however, thought it was right for the State to contribute to the support of the minority of the people of Ireland, consisting of Episcopalians, Presbyterians, and Unitarians, because all of these religions were, in his opinion, in harmony with the Word of God; but that it was sinful to contribute anything to the support of the religion of the vast majority, because he, forsooth! pronounced that religion to be contrary to the Word of God. He (Mr. Moore) would not argue theology with the hon. Gentleman (who, in respect of Protestantism, was exceedingly latitudinarian), because he did not believe that his opinions agreed with those of the people of England; and, as far as Ireland was concerned, he could afford to regard the hon. Gentleman's opinions with the same feelings as he would the relics of the mastodon and megatherium, and other animals of extinct species whose terrible tusks and gigantic proportions no longer existed to trample down their opponents. The hon. Gentleman himself betrayed a consciousness that his own opinions would not pass muster out of doors. He (Mr. Spooner) had stated that Protestantism was the established religion of this country, and that the Sovereign was bound by oath to maintain the Protestant religion. But he (Mr. Moore) interrupted that statement with something like an interpellation, upon which the hon. Gentleman remarked that he (Mr. Moore) had not read history. Now, Mr. Burke denied that Protestantism ever had been established as the religion of the State—he said it was Church-of-Englandism. The hon. Member for North Warwickshire had told the House that before the English invasion the Irish people belonged to a religion which was similar or nearly so, to the Protestantism of the present day, and that tithes were established for the support of that religion. It was supposed by some—with whom he (Mr. Moore) did not concur—that the religion professed by the people of Ireland previously to the English invasion was not precisely similar to that of the Church of Rome; but there never was any doubt as to its not being represented in the smallest degree by the Protestantism of the present day. And even if it were it certainly was not supported by tithes, for tithes were not assigned to the Church until after the English invasion, and then they were assigned to the Roman Catholic Church. [Mr. SPOONER: I never mentioned the word "tithes."] But the hon. Gentleman spoke of the property of the Church, and he must, of course, be supposed to have alluded to tithes. But the Established Church had no property which had not been originally assigned to the Roman Catholic Church. That Church was at the Reformation despoiled of all its property, and for this robbery the grant to Maynooth was a tardy and paltry effort at restitution. The hon. Gentleman had told the House that wherever Catholics were dominant they endeavoured to oppress their fellow-men. That was rather a strange thing to say in the hearing of those who were acquainted with the events of the last 300 years. The hon. Gentleman opposite (Mr. T. Chambers) asked what had the cruelty inflicted on the Irish people to do with the question? Did he deny that robbery and plunder were part of the wrongs to which they had been subjected? He said also he felt it was unjust that he should be called on to pay for a religion of which he did not approve, but the hon. Gentleman did not at all feel it hard that they, the whole people of Ireland, should be called on to support a religion of which they did not approve. In point of fact, stripping this question of all the false issues with which it had been overlaid by the hon. Member for North Warwickshire and the hon. and learned Member for Hertford, the real difficulty that pressed on the common sense and the consciences of the people of Ireland was that they had to pay for the diffusion of a religion which they believed to be contrary to the Word of God, and of which they therefore disapproved. But that point the hon. Members had treated rather gingerly. The people of England and Ireland would not uphold the Established Church in Ireland; but the Conservative party did. The leaders of that party, however, were too wise to lend themselves to what might prove an amusing afterpiece to the more serious drama in which the noble Lord the Member for the City of London played the principal part a few years ago. It was only five years since that noble Lord was at the head of the Government of the country and the foremost man of a great party. He had won his great name, his position, and his office by deeds in the cause of civil and religious liberty, and when in that position it suddenly occurred to him that he would appeal to the dominant and arrogant intolerance of England in favour of civil and religious liberty. What was the result? He was eminently successful; his letter to the Bishop of Durham was called an admirable production, and his Ecclesiastical Titles Act an effective measure. He had with him almost the unanimous opinion of that House, but he had not with him the star of his House or the traditions of his party. What, he repeated, had been the result? The Bill that was carried with such triumph by that House, and received with so much satisfaction by the country, utterly broke down, and with it the Government of the noble Lord himself, in spite of the feeling of the House and the country; and as the result of the subsequent appeal to the people the only party found capable of governing the country through that House was that which had the courage to resist the arrogant demands of a dominant intolerance. He thought the example of the noble Lord ought to be an everlasting warning to the statesmen of England how they held a parley with the hollow phantom of religious fanaticism, which was half gloomy Puritanism and half "organised hypocrisy." The hon. Member might have a majority, but it would not be supported by one man who had held office or was worthy of holding office; and the people of England liked to know by whom, in the event of change, they were likely to be governed. For his own part, he (Mr. Moore) was indifferent as to the result of the Motion before the House. The grant to Maynooth was not a boon which the people of Ireland cared so much to retain. The Legislature of this country established that grant for its own and for British purposes under the guidance of Pitt and Peel; and they were now asked to do away with it on behalf of the two gentlemen whose names he regretted, for the sake of antithesis, that he was not at liberty to mention in the House of Commons.

The question, Sir, now under the consideration of the House presents itself in two very distinct aspects. The first is the political aspect. This was a bargain between the Parliament of England and the Parliament of Ireland, and you cannot honestly break it. You may alter it, and may plead in so doing the change of time and circumstances; but if you do, it must be in order to make a change that may be more advantageous to the other party than to yourselves. I said last year I should certainly prefer this grant being given to the Roman Catholics that they might send their priests to be educated abroad, because I believe that would give us a better class of men as priests, and that they would get a better education at Rome than they did in Ireland. That, however, is a question for them to settle, and not for me. But, Sir, there is another point which it becomes the House to take into consideration. The hon. Gentleman (Mr. Spooner) can scarcely conceive that this is a little isolated filching of another man's property. Is he not aware that he is asking the House to begin a new course of policy towards the Irish people, such as we have not pursued for the last sixty years? If it possible he can conceive that if he carried this question of the repeal of the grant to Maynooth the thing would be at an end? If he does not think that, surely he ought to have informed us what are the other results that must inevitably follow, and how he means to meet them. But it seems to me as if the hon. Gentleman was merely a sort of Pennsylvanian adopting a little policy of repudiation. Because he does not like his bargain he wants to be off. Why, such conduct as that is only worthy a ticket-of-leave man. He may remember, for he is fond of quoting texts of Scripture, that there is one which refers to the man that "sweareth to his neighbour and disappointeth him not, though it be to his own hurt." The hon. Gentleman seems to think that it is his duty to destroy popery in every possible way. Now, popery is like the shield of old of which we have heard, which had one colour on one side and another on the reverse; and is, therefore, black or white, as it is looked at from the one side or the other. I quite agree with him as to the Report which resulted from the recent Commission to inquire into the College of Maynooth; for certainly the worthy Nobleman at the head of that Commission proved himself utterly incapable and utterly ignorant of everything he was commissioned to inquire into; and, therefore, no sooner had he failed in the first piece of public business he ever had to perform, than they immediately made him a Cabinet Minister. That was an example of finding out the right man for the right place. Now, the hon. Gentleman says that the doctrines of the Romish priests are such as to render it unsafe to tolerate their teaching in this country. I grant everything he says on that subject, and I am not going to recant one word which I have ever said in reference to it. But it is rather cool for Irish Members to talk of the persecution of Roman Catholics in Ireland. In Spain they put to death any man who may presume to differ from them; and what have we lately read in the papers in reference to what has been done in France? the Roman Catholics would persecute again if they could; and so they will ever do. Do not suppose I am abandoning any of the opinions I have always held on these points. No such thing. I would not have the people of England imagine, either, that there is the smallest change in any of the most abominable claims put forward by the Romish Church. I must say, though, that I was surprised to hear the hon. Gentleman opposite (Mr. Spooner) talk about the difference between ultra-montane and cis-montane opinions. There never was such a thing. ["Oh!"] There never was such a difference. [A laugh.] Gentlemen may smile, but I again repeat that there never was such a thing. It is perfectly true that two or three French bishops did set up for a certain time a claim to what they called an independent Gallican Church, but Rome never tolerated it for a single moment. Then, again, the hon. Gentleman talked of Jesuits; but it is perfectly true what the hon. and learned Member for Dundalk observed, a Jesuit is only a cleverer man than another Papist—there is not a single doctrine advanced by the Jesuits which is not also a doctrine of the Roman Church. All the harm I wish the hon. Gentleman opposite is to read and study his own books. As for the Roman Catholics, I never met with a Roman Catholic gentleman who, when shown these works, was not horrified with the doctrines of his own Church. The hon. Gentleman talks about superstition. Is it possible that he knows so little of what is going on throughout the world as to believe that the tendency of men's minds at the present moment is towards superstition? The thing which is carrying away the Church, and Protestantism, and everything else is your German theology. Do you attempt to raise a cry against those foolish Puseyites? Why, it is you yourselves who are emasculating the Church of England. You have deprived it of everything which is the essential characteristic of a Church, and those essential characteristics are now found in this country in the Church of Rome alone. Yes, I say, you have denied and are denying more strongly every day the essential characteristic of a Church, which is the presence of God in its priesthood and in its sacraments. I know no Church recognised by you but the Romish Church which does stand as a witness, a faithful witness, before God as to these truths; and I would do anything rather than let that Church go down.

said, he believed that the case of the hon. Member for West Surrey (Mr. Henry Drummond) was the second in the history of the world in which a prophet intending to curse the people of God had been obliged to bless them—yes, obliged, by inspiration from some source or other, to pronounce a most decided judgment in their favour. And he wished the hon. Gentleman no greater harm than that which the earlier prophet had wished himself—"Let me die the death of the righteous, and let my last end be like to his." With reference to the question before the House, he must express his regret that he had not heard the speech in which the hon. Member for North Warwickshire had introduced his Motion. The proposition on which the hon. Gentleman had on former occasions based his arguments, and to which he supposed he still adhered, was that it was wrong and a national sin to continue the endowment to Maynooth for the education of a Roman Catholic priesthood. Now, in justice to the hon. Gentleman, he must say that his proposition had never been fully met by those who were opposed to it. He (Serjeant Shee) would endeavour to do so, and would meet it with this counter proposition—that the hon. Gentleman and those who acted with him could not, consistently with their true principles, as members of the Established Church, be parties to the withdrawal of the grant which had been made by Sir Robert Peel in 1845. The principle that Church establishments should exist in this country was a fundamental part of our constitution. Such establishments existed in England, in Scotland, in Ireland, and in all the dominions of the British Crown. They might not always be complete and perfect Church establishments, but a permanent endowment provided by the law for the religious instruction of the people existed in every part of the kingdom. The Maynooth endowment was, to some extent, a Church establishment, for such an establishment must include an adequate provision for the education of the ministers of religion, and that endowment provided for the religious instruction of those who, it was known, must be the pastors of the great majority of the Irish people. Then, if it were a Church establishment, it must be tried by the test to which such establishments were always subjected—by the test of civil utility. The most distinguished divines of the hon. Gentleman's own persuasion had made civil utility the test by which the policy of all Church establishments was to be tried. Bishop Warburton and Dr. Paley had laid down that doctrine, and it only remained to see whether it could fairly be applied in the case of the grant which the hon. Gentleman sought to abolish. The civil utility to be answered by a Church establishment was the preservation and communication of religious knowledge. Religious instruction in youth, religious observance in mature years, were the best securities which Governments could have for obedience to human laws, for peace, order, industry, and the general well-being of nations. The man who loved God would honour the King. The man who so ordered his life as to be justified in the sight of God would be just in all his dealings with his neighbour. The man who feared to offend God by sin of any kind would be little likely to be guilty of those sins which are punished in courts of justice as crimes. This was the civil utility by which Church Establishments must be tried. If it could be proved that, in consequence of unequal laws, the Roman Catholics of Ireland had been precluded from providing the necessary education for their priesthood, and thus communicating that religious instruction to the people which was the best guarantee for the observance of the peace and well-being of society, they were not as Christian men at liberty to subvert an establishment by which that important object had been in any degree attained, unless they could show that they had provided for its attainment by other and more effectual means. He contended, in the first place, that their laws had not been, as suggested by the hon. Member for Hertford (Mr. T. Chambers), of a nature to enable the Roman Catholics of Ireland to provide for the education of their priesthood out of their private means. He need not look beyond the Maynooth Acts for the proof of this position. The preamble of the first of them, the Act of 1795, recited that "it was unlawful to endow any college or seminary for the education exclusively of persons professing the Roman Catholic religion, and that it had been deemed expedient to erect a seminary with the view of providing education for the priesthood of that Church." Up to that recent period, therefore, it had not been lawful to erect a college for Roman Catholic teaching. Nay, even by the Act of 1845, which was the subject of the hon. Gentleman's Motion, the privilege was confined within comparatively narrow limits, the trustees of Maynooth having by that Act for the first time been made a body corporate, with the power of purchasing land not exceeding the value of £3,000 per annum. Would the House believe it, at the present moment there was no other institution in connection with the Roman Catholic Church in Ireland which enjoyed the benefit of incorporation. The Corporation of Trinity College, Dublin, had an annual revenue of £40,000 from land given by the State, and a total revenue of £76,000 per annum; and there were numerous institutions in connection with the Church of England in that country which enjoyed all the benefits of large revenues and of incorporation. Such were the Royal English schools, diocesan schools, chartered schools, military and naval schools, bluecoat schools, greencoat schools, hospitals, infirmaries, associations for the discouragement of vice, societies for circulating the Holy Scriptures, trustees of the library of the Archbishop of Armagh, Trinity College, Dublin; and all archbishops, bishops, rectors, vicars, and perpetual curates of the Church of England, while, on the other side, there was only Maynooth College, which enjoyed the advantage of legal immortality by incorporation. But not only were they not incorporated, but every difficulty had been thrown in the way of their endowment by the Roman Catholics themselves. Every donation to Catholic establishments had, until a very recent period, been confiscated in the Irish Courts of Equity under Acts repealed only ten years ago, and applied to Protestant purposes. By the 3 Geo. III. c. 1, passed by the Irish Parliament in 1763, when all the inhabitants of Ireland were presumed by law to be Protestants, charitable donations and bequests contained in wills were required to be published in the Dublin Gazette within three months of probate obtained. By the 40 Geo. III. c. 75, a number of official persons, and among them all the Protestant archbishops and bishops of Ireland were incorporated by the name of the Commissioners of Charitable Donations and Bequests. These Commissioners were authorised to sue "at law or equity for the recovery of every charitable donation and bequest which should be withheld, concealed or misapplied, and to apply the same when recovered to charitable and pious uses according to the intention of the donor, or in case it was inexpedient, unlawful, or impracticable, to apply the same strictly according to the directions of the donor; then to apply the same to such charitable and pious purposes as they should judge to be nearest and most conformable to the directions and intentions of the donor." Under these Acts, all donations and bequests for Catholic objects were applied as soon as discovered, to such lawful charitable and pious objects as the Commissioners judged to be nearest to the intentions of the donors—that is, to the purposes of the Protestant Established Church. Bequests for Catholic purposes were adjudged unlawful, because opposed to the policy of the English law of superstitious uses, 1 Edw. VI. c. 14, which, though never enacted in Ireland, was held to be in full force there, and acted upon every day until about thirty years ago, in the case of a bequest to a nunnery at Waterford for educational purposes, Lord Chancellor Manners refused to be bound by it and gave effect to the Catholic intentions of the testator. From that time, but little direct confiscation of Catholic charitable bequests had taken place, but Catholic foundations had continued to be without facilities or encouragement. One would have thought that in this enlightened age juster principles would have prevailed. The representation made in 1840 by the Roman Catholic Prelates to the Government of Lord Melbourne, and shortly after to that of Sir Robert Peel, that "they and their clergymen were trustees of very considerable funds, and that the legacies to them for charitable purposes had been and still were increasing to a very great extent," ought, as was hoped, to have obtained for Roman Catholics religious and educational privilege of incorporation. But the Charitable Donations and Bequests Act of 1844, 7 & 8 Vict. c. 97, passed in 1844, imposed fresh restraints upon the charities of Ireland, and left Catholic foundations without that advantage of incorporation which almost all Protestant institutions enjoyed. To one description only of Catholic charities, namely, bequests for the ministers of religion, for their residences and places of worship it professed to give facilities, by establishing a Board of Commissioners whom it authorised to become trustees for such objects. But excluding all other descriptions of charity from the benefit of that arrangement, it provided that no bequest of any interest in land for charitable purposes should be valid, if the will or deed containing the same was executed within three months from the death of the donor. This enactment applied no doubt to Protestant as well as Catholic institutions; but the former had already become rich and flourishing under the protection of the privileges they had long enjoyed. The Act, in truth, introduced into Ireland for the first time the restrictions of the English Mortmain Act. For those restrictions, the increased endowment of Maynooth granted in the following year and by the same Administration, was a very inadequate compensation. Besides, from the provisions of the English Mortmain Act—the two Universities of Oxford and Cambridge, all the colleges and houses of learning connected with them, and the colleges of Eton, Westminster, and Winchester, were excepted. There was no such exception in the Irish Mortmain Act in favour of the Catholic educational establishments which had been so long and so unjustly discouraged; so that during the first half of the last sixty years (to go no further back) it had been unlawful for the greater part of their fellow-subjects in Ireland to establish such an institution as Maynooth for themselves—and during the whole of those sixty years they had enjoyed none of those facilities for the creation and perpetuation of educational or religious foundations which Protestants in both countries possessed. He submitted, therefore, in the first place, that they could not as Christian men, withdraw the grant to Maynooth on the ground that the Roman Catholics of Ireland have had, and now have, by law, all necessary facilities for the establishment and endowment of such an institution. But, secondly, could the withdrawal of the grant be justified on the ground that the civil utility of communicating religious knowledge to the people had been provided for by other adequate means?

was obliged to the hon. and learned Member interfering for his protection. He did not think he had been more interrupted than many hon. Members he had heard [renewed interruption]. He hoped they would permit him to suggest what it was material for them to know before going to a division. The Irish Church Establishment enjoyed a revenue of £650,000, and if it had effected the object of an Established Church, there might be some ground for the Motion. Impossible to conceive anything more complete or efficient upon paper than the scheme for the appropriation of that large income provided by the Church Temporalities Act of 1833! It dealt with the whole ecclesiastical property of a country inhabited by a population of 7,944,000 souls, and contained not a word from which it could be suspected even that any portion of them were other than Protestants of the Episcopal Church of England and Ireland. And how stood the facts? In the most Protestant of the ecclesiastical provinces, Armagh, there were 638,000 Presbyterians— only 517,000 members of the Established Church, and 1,950,000 Roman Catholics. This was the extent to which the communication of religious knowledge to the people had been effected by means of the Established Church. In the three other provinces the failure was more remarkable, for out of a population of 4,817,000, the number who received spiritual instruction from the Established Church was only 334,000. ["Hear, hear!"] They cheered as if they did not believe it, while they ought to be ashamed of it. The Roman Catholics had received no benefit from the Established Church, because the Acts copied from the English Statute-book for establishing the Queen's supremacy, for the uniformity of divine Worship, and the use of the book of Common Prayer, had raised insuperable barriers between them and its communion. But for the priesthood educated at Maynooth, none of the ordinances of religion, held in both Churches to be essential or conducive to godly life and to that civil utility for which alone Church establishments exist—Baptism—Confirmation—Marriage—Holy Communion—Absolution from Sin—Public Prayer—Instruction and Exhortation, under the guidance and direction of an ordained Ministry, would be enjoyed by six millions of the Queen's subjects. They blamed Sir Robert Peel and his colleagues for making the grant to Maynooth permanent, while the truth was they had felt themselves bound as Christians and practical statesmen to provide in the interest of the whole empire for the religious instruction of the Catholics of Ireland. They talked about the endowment to Maynooth being a national sin; but after what he had said as to the impossibility of that Church administering religious ordinances to the people, how could they justify the withholding of the grant and the cessation of those ordinances? He had only one word more to say. In the debate of the year before last, it was stated that the Roman Catholics had declared they could do without Maynooth, and that the Roman Catholic prelates had passed a resolution to that effect. Now, a few days after that assertion was made, he had received letters from both the Roman Catholic Primates, denying that any such resolution had been come to, and stating that they believed the continuance of the endowment to be essential to the interests of the Roman Catholic Church and the adequate supply of priests for the Catholic parishes of Ireland.

said, he would detain the House for only a few moments, for he knew that the House was anxious to divide, and had felt the full force of the remark of the hon. Member for Cambridgeshire (Mr. Ball) that the greater part of the speech of the hon. and learned Member for Kilkenny was a mockery. But he rose to sweep away one fallacy which the hon. and learned Member had endeavoured to impose upon the House, and that was, that the Bill, leave to introduce which was asked, was intended to touch the property and corporation of Maynooth. There was no such provision in the Bill, which simply went to withdraw the annual endowment from the college. All the remarks of the hon. and learned Member, as to the hardships to be endured in respect to the operation of penal laws or disabilities upon Roman Catholics now repealed or removed, the hon. and learned Member had answered himself. Nor was his plea for the establishment of the seminaries of the Roman Church by incorporation, as essential to the due education of Roman Catholics more tenable. He admitted that the mortmain law in Ireland was less restrictive than that of England, but had forgotten to mention that even under the more restricted laws in England no less than eleven Roman Catholic Colleges were amply provided for, and instituted in a manner as perfect as considerations of State prudence would permit. The hon. Member for Mayo (Mr. G. H. Moore) had said that the administration of the noble Lord the Member for London fell because he had dared to pass the Ecclesiastical Titles Act, and that no Government could stand in this country which should propose to withdraw the annual subsidy to Maynooth. He (Mr. Newdegate) now called on the people of this country to watch the division, and ascertain whether the House of Commons was as subservient to the Court of Rome, as the hon. Member had declared that all the Statesmen who had held office, or who expected to hold office, were and must be.

Sir, I cannot but express the pain which I feel at the renewal of discussions which the Motion of the hon. Member for North Warwickshire opens up. It makes one almost fancy that we have gone back to the period when this House was the arena of contentions between those who were advocates for the removal of the disabilities of the Catholics and those who thought that such removal would be fatal to the constitution of the country. We were told, and I had hoped, that when the Catholic Emancipation Act was carried, we should hear no more of these theological and religious debates, and that we should know nothing of the religion of any Member unless we followed him to his place of worship on Sunday. I regret exceedingly that those anticipations have not been fulfilled, and that we are doomed to these periodical revivals of discussions upon matters which ought to remain a question between each man and his own conscience—of which his neighbour has no right to judge, and in which a deliberative assembly like this ought not, in my opinion, to engage. I would humbly submit to the hon. Member for North Warwickshire that the main ground on which he founds his Motion is irreconcilable with those principles which I consider that he most tenaciously holds. The ground on which he rests his Motion is, that no man ought to contribute towards the maintenance of a religion to which he does not subscribe. Now, is the hon. Member an advocate for an Established Church? I am sure that he is—I am sure that there is no man in this House who more firmly adheres to the principle of an Established Church. As the hon. Gentleman, then, is a sincere and zealous Protestant, I would ask him, does he adhere to the principle of private judgment? does he believe that every man should form his religious opinions according to his view of the truth of the doctrines which he may hold? If he does hold the principle of private judgment, can he believe it possible that in a free country like this there can be identity of religious opinions, or that there shall not be a great variety of religious creeds? Why, Sir, the only ground upon which the hon. Gentleman could reconcile his adherence to an Established Church with the principle that no man should contribute to a religion which he does not profess must be, that there should be an overruling and tyrannical power compelling every man to belong to the Established Church, and not permitting any diversity of religious opinion in the country. I say, then, that the doctrine of the hon. Gentleman is utterly inconsistent with those fundamental principles which I am sure he, as a Protestant and a friend of the Established Church, must necessarily maintain. Sir, my objection to the Motion of the hon. Member, in the first place, is on the fact that to abolish the Maynooth endowment, and to repeal the Acts which he wishes us to abrogate, would be a breach of faith towards the Irish nation. It is perfectly true, as was stated, that the Catholics of Ireland are not dependent upon this grant for the means of educating their priesthood. There is no doubt that the wealth of Ireland would enable them to erect other establishments for the same purposes if the present endowment were taken away; but it would be an ungenerous act—it would be an act indicating a want of sympathy with those who deserve better treatment—it would be a breach of faith as connected with what passed at a former period if we were to adopt the Motion of the hon. Gentleman and withdraw the Maynooth grant. Upon that ground, if there wore no other, I would resist the Motion; but I resist it upon a broader ground than that. I resist it for considerations connected with the interests of the British Empire. Sir, the hon. Gentleman has invited me to read all the books of instruction which are used at Maynooth. I certainly have no intention of doing so; but, for argument, I will admit his assertion that there may be in those books things which we might wish might not be found there; and I will ask him—is there in the ordinary instruction of our schools and colleges, and in those classical books which are used there, nothing to be found which some persons might desire not to be submitted to the eyes and instilled into the minds of the youth of the country? Admitting, however, that there are passages in the Maynooth books which, in point of doctrine and principle, are objectionable, I have that confidence in the people and priesthood of Ireland that I do not fear their loyalty will be impaired by such errors; nor am I in a position to own that the confidence which I place in them has been at all lessened by the hostile criticisms of the hon. Member for North Warwickshire. The main ground on which I call upon the House to maintain this grant is a regard for the interests of the United Kingdom. I hold, that if the grant were withdrawn, and the priesthood of Ireland were sent abroad for their education, they might receive a better education, but it would be a foreign one, and I wish them to have an Irish and native education. I care not what their religious opinions may be. That is for them to determine—not for me. I may differ from them on every point of their religious creed, but I hold it to be for the interests of the country that they should be educated at home—that they should be Irishmen in heart and feeling; and as long as they receive their instruction in their native land I am content to trust to the loyalty which belongs to their nation, and never to consent to the repeal of an endowment which is so closely connected with the peace and well-being of the Empire.

in reply, proceeded to answer two points raised in the speech of the noble Lord (Viscount Palmerston). He held it to be a true Protestant principle to respect the right of private judgment. He would leave Roman Catholics full power to exercise their civil and religious rights, and he would let them educate their own people. All he protested against was, that, as there was an Established Church, the Government and Parliament of this country should foster and support a Church formed in direct opposition to that Protestant Church, which the Roman Catholics said they should never be contented until they had destroyed. The noble Lord talked of breach of faith. Why, there was the high authority of Sir Robert Peel and the noble Lord the Member for the City of London, that no breach of faith was involved—that the endowment was a free gift, made with certain expectations which had not been realized.

saw no reason why the debate should be adjourned, except that some Gentleman might dread the success of the Motion, and some its defeat. The people of Ireland were prepared for either fortune, and he hoped the Government were so too.

said, he was prepared to go to a division; but, at the same time, if hon. Members wished to adjourn the debate, he would not object to their being gratified. [Cries of "No, no!"]

The hon. Baronet has not done justice to Her Majesty's Government in stating that no acknowledgment of the services of Sir John M'Neill and Colonel Tulloch has been made beyond that which he says was tardily wrung from them, and which they were unable to withhold. I stated—not this Session, but last Session—in terms which I thought full and ample, the high sense Her Majesty's Government entertained of the services of those officers; declaring that they had performed a difficult and important duty with great credit to themselves, and with great advantage to the public service. With regard to the acknowledgment that should be made to them, we are still in communication with them on that subject, and therefore I cannot speak definitively on that point. I must, however, object to the Motion of the hon. Baronet, and on these grounds. A letter was written by Sir John M'Neill to Lord Panmure; but from circumstances the only answer given to it was a private note from the private secretary of the noble Lord, which was not, and was not intended to be, an official document. The hon. Baronet asks for this correspondence, in order to ascertain whether Sir John M'Neill recommended Colonel Tulloch for military promotion, and what answer was given to that recommendation. I am quite ready to give the hon. Baronet as much information as to those two facts as he would possess if the papers were before him. Sir John M'Neill did undoubtedly recommend Colonel Tulloch for promotion, and Her Majesty's Government did not think fit to adopt the recommendation. Their reason for arriving at this conclusion was, as I stated on a former occasion, that the services performed by Colonel Tulloch were purely of a civil nature, and that military rank was not an appropriate acknowledgment of civil services. Colonel Tulloch had already attained the rank of colonel by merit, but not in consequence of service; for when he entered the War Office he was but a lieutenant on half-pay, but while in the office he attained the rank of colonel; and it was thought that it would not be consistent with a due regard for the interests of the service to give him the rank of major general for his services in connection with the Crimean Commission. Had we done so we must have placed him over the heads of several very distinguished officers who served in the field in the Crimea, and they would have ground to complain that this civil officer—for so I must call him with regard to the service he performed—had been promoted over the heads of those who had been actually engaged in the field against the enemy. I give the hon. Baronet the full benefit of the facts that Sir John M'Neill did recommend Colonel Tulloch for military promotion, and that we did not think it consistent with our duty that military rank should be given for such a description of service. The hon. Baronet has stated that expectations were held out to Colonel Tulloch that he would receive military promotion. I have no knowledge of such an intimation; but whether such expectations were held out or not, I think it would have been improper to make Colonel Tulloch a major general for the performance of civil duties, however well he may have performed those duties, and however valuable his services may have been.

thought there was some misapprehension on the part of his noble Friend with regard to the past services of Colonel Tulloch. The noble Lord seemed to say that Colonel Tulloch had already received such promotion that he could not now be further advanced, and that that officer had never seen service in the field. The fact was, however, that Colonel Tulloch had served in the Burmese war, where, for a young officer, he greatly distinguished himself. Colonel Tulloch subsequently rose by his merits, and had rendered very efficient services to the public. With respect to the reward that might be given to Colonel Tulloch for the discharge of his difficult duty in the Crimea, which had undoubtedly been attended with great advantage to the army, he (Mr. Herbert) would say nothing, because the noble Lord had informed the House that the Government were in communication with Sir John M'Neill and Colonel Tulloch on that subject. He would therefore express his hope that these officers would receive some suitable acknowledgment for the services they had rendered.

was understood to express his opinion that if Colonel Tulloch had been promoted to the rank of major general for services performed in a civil capacity, many officers who had commanded battalions throughout the siege of Sebastopol, and who had not received such promotion, would have had grounds for dissatisfaction.

said, after the statement of the noble Lord he would not press his Motion.

said, that until these Returns were laid upon the table, he hoped Her Majesty's Government would assure the House that no appointment of a third Commissioner would be made. He must candidly admit that his object in moving for the Returns was to raise the question how far such an appointment was required, and he considered that he could prove that by a re-arrangement of the existing staff, and a transfer of the office to the vicinity of the Four Courts, two Commissioners would be sufficient for the work.

said, the application of the hon. and learned Gentleman had come too late. Notwithstanding that he had told him yesterday no appointment to the vacant Commissionership had as yet been made, he had learned that day that a third Judge had been appointed.

said, it was very sudden. Was he appointed at the same salary?

Yes; at the same salary—£3,000 a year.