gave notice that on Thursday next in Committee of Supply he would move the Estimates for the expenses of the war with Persia and of the hostilities with China.

said, he wished to ask the right hon. Gentleman the Chancellor of the Exchequer whether, before moving in Committee of Supply for a Vote of £500,000 for the Persian Expedition, he would lay on the Table of the House the Estimate of the East India Company, presented to the Government last February, and containing their rough calculation of the entire cost of the Persian war to December next; and also the Correspondence which had taken place between the East India Company and Her Majesty's Government on the subject?

said, that the correspondence relative to the Estimate had already been laid on the Table. That Estimate was made when the war was still unfinished, and when the total amount of the expense was uncertain. He should be in a condition on Thursday to lay on the table the Estimate of the East India Company with respect to the total expense of the war. He thought that would be more satisfactory than to communicate one that had been formed on imperfect knowledge.

said, he wished to know whether the right hon. Baronet would lay the Estimate referred to on the table before the discussion?

said, he should object to lay on the table the first Estimate of the East India Company as to what the expense would probably be. He would lay on the table the Estimate which he meant to move.

When will that Estimate be laid on the Table?

To-morrow.

said, he would beg leave to repeat the question he had put on a previous occasion, whether those officers who were on leave, but were, before the expiration of their furlough, ordered out to India would be obliged to go out at their own expense or at the expense of the Government?

said, the question of making an allowance in aid of their expenses to officers in the service of the East India Company who were on leave of absence in this country, and had been ordered to rejoin their regiments, was at present the subject of communication between the Board of Control and the War Department, but that, as soon as a decision was arrived at, no time should be lost in announcing it to Parliament.

said, he wished to ask the Secretary to the Trea- sury to explain the meaning of his letter to the Secretary at War, dated 2nd July, 1857, relative to the completion of the works of the Ordnance Survey now in progress on the 25-inch scale.

said, he had received From Colonel James the following explanation of the interpretation put by him upon the Vote of the House with reference to the completion of the works of the Ordnance survey.

"I should complete the plans of the cultivated districts of those counties which are in progress on the 25-inch scale, and draw the plans of those counties which, are not in progress on the 6-inch scale only. That is, I should complete on the the 25-inch scale the plans of the cultivated districts of Northumberland, Westmoreland, Roxburghshire, and Lanarkshire, and the other counties now actually in progress on that scale, as we have completed the plans of Durham and Linlithgowshire; but should construct on the 6-inch scale only the plans of Cumberland, and the other counties, in which the field survey has not been commenced, on the 25-inch scale."

He (Mr. Wilson) could only add, that the Government were most anxious to carry into effect the wishes of the House on this subject.

said, he would beg to ask what was the meaning of the phrase "in progress," in Colonel James's communication? Would works which had only just been commenced be considered as "in progress"?

said, he understood from Colonel James's note, that the expression applied to all those counties in which the survey had already been commenced upon, the 25-inch scale.

The Noble Lord at the Head of the Government having distinctly acquainted the House with the number of troops he proposes, under the existing state of India to despatch there from this country, I wish to know from the First Lord of the Admiralty, looking to the large reserve of one steam navy, whether it is the intention of the Board of Admiralty to make use of any of the screw line-of-battle ships available for the conveyance of those troops to the East Indies.

replied that the Admiralty had reason to believe that the troops could be conveyed to their destination more conveniently and rapidly by the employment of hired transports.

said, he wished to ask the Vice President of the Board of Education whether, as it appears from the Returns laid before this House that in the case of some of our National Collections of objects of art, science, and historical interest, as well as in the case of civil and religious edifices and monuments (all maintained or assisted by the Money Votes of Parliament), the public have the benefit of instruction by means of descriptive labels affixed or appended to such objects, without incurring the cost of a catalogue, while in the case of other such collections, edifices, and monuments (similarly supported by public money) no such advantage is given to the public, whether measures will be taken for extending the system of labelling generally for the benefit of the public?

in reply said, that the Government had been most anxious to carry out the object to which the hon. Gentleman referred in the case of all museums and collections of objects of art, science, and natural products. At the British Museum, at the Kensington Museum, and at other similar institutions, all the articles exhibited were described in a short and condensed manner; and in the case of the Turner collection, not only were the subjects of the various paintings described, but the date at which they were painted was also given—an arrangement which he considered afforded great assistance to students.

in rising to propose the Motion of which he had given notice with reference to the Ordnance Survey, observed that circumstances of a private and very painful nature, connected with the intelligence just received from India, would have induced him to forbear from bringing this subject under the attention of the House, were it not that this was the only opportunity of which he should be able to avail himself for eliciting their opinion on a question which he regarded as of great importance. He had been told that in again calling attention to the subject of the ordnance survey he would only be wasting the time of the House, but he could not think he was open to such a charge when he asked hon. Gentlemen to consider whether something like £2,000,000 of the public money was expended profitably or unprofitably. He did not propose to reopen the question of the 25-inch scale, as he bowed to the decision at which the House of Commons had arrived on that subject. He believed, however, that that decision was in a great measure attributable to the general misconception which existed on the subject, and to the idea that this was exclusively a Scotch question, or, as it had been termed, "a Scotch job." With regard to its being "a Scotch job," he begged to say that whatever steps might have been taken in Scotland since the survey upon the 25-inch scale had been in progress, a similar course had been adopted in the northern counties of England. The fact was, that the survey had proceeded in the two countries pari passu. What was the position of the survey when the House arrived at its decision? In the northern portion of England, and throughout Scotland, the Ordnance had made surveys, and had published maps of the cultivated rural districts upon the scale of 25 inches to the mile; and they were also publishing a 6-inch map, and a 1-inch map of the whole country. The large towns, the population of which exceeded 4,000, were surveyed upon a 10 feet scale. When the scale for the survey of the rural districts was raised from 6 inches to 25 inches, the scale for the survey of towns was raised from 5 feet to 10 feet; and it might have been thought that when the country survey was reduced from 25 inches to 6 inches, the town survey would also have been reduced from 10 feet to 5 feet; but no change had hitherto been made. He was, however, quite willing that towns should enjoy the advantage of a really good practical survey, which would be afforded by a 10-inch scale. He found, from the letters of the Secretary at War, that the survey was in progress on the 25-inch scale in three counties in the north of England—Northumberland, Westmoreland, and Durham— and in nine counties in Scotland, including Renfrew, Ayr, Dumfries, and Peebles; and in those counties of Scotland would be found the large proportion of the cultivated districts of that country. The total estimate for the survey of Scotland, conducted in the way he had described, after mak- ing a deduction in respect of the work already done, amounted to £624,000; and as regarded Scotland the only saving effected by the change would be about three farthings an acre, or £50,000 in the aggregate. Again, in the counties which had been begun in the north of England the only saving would be £5,000. The total saving, therefore, would amount to £55,000. But there were considerations why that sum should be reduced by at least £25,000, so that the actual saving would be something like £30,000, or rather under that sum. He admitted, however, that the unsurveyed portions of the two countries must be taken into account, and that whatever the House had done with respect to the north of England and Scotland, they must be prepared to do in the south of England. What would be the saving effected on the survey of the whole of Great Britain? Why, somewhere about £230,000, which appeared to him a very trifling one. But they had further to consider whether, in effecting that saving, they were adopting a really useful scale. It often happened that the economical votes of the House proved the most extravagant in the end. His desire, however, was not that the House should at once decide the matter, but that it should come to the conclusion that further inquiry was needed. He might remind the House that the 6-inch scale originated in Ireland in 1824, on the Motion for a Committee to report on that question made by Mr. Spring Rice, now Lord Monteagle. That Committee, after referring to the various divisions and subdivisions of land in Ireland, such as town-lands, ploughlands, colps, gneeves, cartrons, tates, bullibos, bullibellos, horsemen, beds, cows' feet, and cows' toes, came to the conclusion that the survey of that country should be conducted on such a scale as to admit of an accurate delineation on the map of the town boundaries, for the purpose of a general valuation for local purposes, and that that scale should be 6 inches to the English mile. They stated that "a survey by townlands appeared to be the rational medium between a baronial or parochial and field survey, and that the best scale for effecting the intended survey would be that of 6 inches to the English mile, adding that "a survey of 6 inches to the mile might be applied to various purposes of private utility." It was, therefore, for special purposes in Ireland that that scale was adopted—namely, for a properly purpose, and for aiding the Irish in making local assessments. Now, they had to consider whether such a scale as that was or was not a proper scale for a property survey in England and Scotland. When he used the word "property" survey, he did not mean a survey of a gentleman's property for private purposes, but a survey for registration and other public purposes—one, in fact, which should fulfil all those national objects for which such a survey should be undertaken. That brought him to the Committee of 1851, appointed to consider the survey of Scotland. He had heard complaints made—chiefly by Irish Members—as to the constitution of that Committee, that the Scotch had shown, very little delicacy in the matter, in that the majority of Members who served upon it were Scotchmen. Now, he found that the Irish Members had had three Committees appointed in connection with the question of an Ordnance Survey. The first was in 1824, which consisted of twenty-one Members. Lord Monteagle being Chairman, of whom one was a Scotchman, five were Englishmen—one of the latter being the Irish Secretary—and fifteen were Irish. In 1846 there was another Committee appointed to inquire into and report upon the then state of the Ordnance Survey in Ireland and on the works which would be required for its completion. That Committee, of whom Sir Denham Norreys was Chairman, consisted of fifteen Members, of whom one was a Scotchman, two were Englishmen—one being the Irish Secretary and the other the Clerk of the Ordnance—and twelve were Irishmen. Mr. Barry Baldwin was subsequently added to the Committee, a name which he (Lord Elcho) suspected was that of an Irish gentleman, though he sat for an English borough. Again, in 1853, a Committee was appointed to consider and report upon the details of the reduced map of Ireland then in course of publication; and that Committee consisted of thirteen Members, of whom, while there was not a single Scotchman, one was an Englishman and twelve were Irish, Sir Denham Norreys being again Chairman. He (Lord Elcho) therefore trusted, after that, that the House would hear no more from any hon. Member from across St. Georges's Channel as to the indelicacy of the Scotch in the constitution of any Committee of that House. He would revert to the Committee of 1851, which was appointed chiefly on account of the delay which had occurred in the survey of Scotland. What had that Committee done? They examined several persons both for and against the 6-inch scale, and the conclusions they came to were:—

"That the 6-inch scale be abandoned. It is, evident that if the 6-inch scale were abandoned a very large saving would be effected, and the time necessary for the completion of the map (1 inch) greatly shortened. Your Committee, therefore, recommend the abandonment of the 6-inch scale as being, generally speaking, inapplicable to Scotland".

What applied to Scotland applied equally to England, either in the north or in the south. The Committee added, that undoubtedly the plans would be of some value to proprietors in the valuation of their estates. The Scotch Members decided, notwithstanding, against the 6-inch scale, upon the ground that they did not think the advantages to the public would be proportionate to the cost to the country. All the objections which could be taken to the 25-inch scale, on account of size, applied equally to the 6-inch scale, because the moment they abandoned the 1-inch scale they adopted the principle of a plan, and not of a map. It appeared in evidence before the Committee that a map of Scotland on the 6-inch scale would be 216 feet long by 120 feet broad. The hon. Gentleman the Member for Mallow (Sir Denham Norreys) said he considered a large map a great evil, and that the thing was to get as small a map as possible. In the Committee of 1846, when the hon. Baronet was very anxious to get a 1-inch map, he denied as far as possible the utility of a 6-inch map. When Mr. Griffith was under examination Sir R. Ferguson asked, "Is it likely there would be any room large enough to hold the map of a very large county upon the 6-inch scale?" The answer was, "It would require a very large room indeed. In the county of Cork I do not suppose they have any room large enough to hold the map of the county." The hon. Baronet who was Chairman of the Committee was not satisfied, and he put this further question:—

"Even if there were such a room, would it be of any practical utility from the impossibility of the eye catching the names and lines upon it?" The answer was, "No eye could take in two distant points in one view with sufficient clearness."

The objection, therefore, of the hon. Baronet to the 25-inch scale applied equally to the 6-inch scale. In either case it was not of much value, for no one ever thought of putting the maps together; they were, as every hon. Gentleman well knew, bound up in separate parts. Still it seemed to afford strong reason for inquiry, but his reasons for inquiry were not exhausted. He came next to the correspondence upon the scales which was published in 1854, and which resulted in the circular from the Treasury, to which he had on several occasions alluded. His right hon. Friend the Member for the University of Oxford being then Chancellor of the Exchequer, determined to endeavour to ascertain what would be the best scale, if there were to be a large map, for the survey of England and Scotland, and with that view sent out upwards of 300 circulars to public bodies, engineers, surveyors, valuers, land agents, and others whose opinions were entitled to consideration. The replies returned were in favour of the 6-inch scale 32, in favour of the larger scale 120. He begged to call attention to the names of some of the public bodies who condemned the 6-inch and were favourable to a larger scale. Those names included the Registrar General, Copyhold, Enclosure, and Tithe Commissioners, the President of the Geological Society, the President of the Geographical Society, the Cathedral Commission, Society for Promoting the Amendment of the Law, Metropolitan Commissioners of Sewers, the Ecclesiastical Commissioners, the Poor Law Board, Highland and Agricultural Society, the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster (Lord Belper), the Commissioner of Woods (Mr. Gore), the Board of Supervision for Relief of the Poor (Scotland), the General Board of Health, the Statistical Society, the Statistical Conference (held at Brussels, 1853, Mr. Farr deputed by Government), Sir H. De La Beche, Messrs. Brunel, Stephenson, and Locke, Mr. Vignoles, Colonel Dawson (engineer to the Tithe, &c. Commission), Lord Ross, Lord Wrottesley, Lord Beaumont, Mr. Coulson, Mr. Bellenden Ker (Titles Registration Commissioners), and Mr. Warburton. The substance of those replies supported the view that, however applicable the 6-inch scale might be to the large properties, large counties, large estates, and large holdings, when they came to smaller divisions, such as the 40s. freeholders in England and the £10 franchise in Scotland, they must have recourse to a larger scale. Mr. Griffith, who was engaged in the valuation of Ireland, was obliged to enlarge the 6-inch maps when he came to the smaller parishes and parishes where the division of property was more minute. The same had been the result in the Encumbered Estates Court. Colonel Dawson, the engineer to the Tithe Commission, stated that—

"For rating purposes in England and for valuation every separate parcel of land or tenement, however small, is required to be accurately drawn upon the plan, and to have marked within its limits a reference number to an accompanying terrier; those numbers consisting very commonly of three or four figures, and possibly of five or six. It is, moreover, indispensably requisite that the exact acreage, as for buying and selling, should be obtained by admeasurement within the limits of each parcel or tenement upon the plan; and no surveyor, valuer, land agent, or other person employed in the management and transfer of land in England would admit the sufficiency of a smaller scale than twenty inches to the mile for ascertaining' the areas with the degree of minuteness required."

Mr. Griffith, in the correspondence of 1854, said:—

"In making the tenement valuation, I find the 6-inch scale sufficient for determining the area of tenements not less than one acre, measuring from the paper; when the area is less than one acre, its contents is ascertained by measurement in the field."

For valuation purposes, for the transfer of property, for the registration of assurances, it was important that they should be able to measure the area on the paper without reference to the property, and that the map should be of a size to admit of five or six figures of reference being inserted and accurately read. The blue-book was full of evidence given by persons most conversant with the subject, and tending uniformly to show that in England and Scotland a survey should be made much larger than that of six inches to the mile. The Board of Supervision for the Relief of the Poor in Scotland, of which Sir J. M' Neil was the able head, expressed an opinion that it was most important for valuation purposes, and the purposes of the board, that there should be maps of from twenty to twenty-six inches to the mile. Since the subject had been under discussion, a Valuation Act for Scotland had passed, and he believed the Lord Advocate would confirm his statement, that for the purposes of that Act such maps would be extremely valuable. The head of the Poor Law Board gave evidence to the same effect. They were empowered to order maps to be made. They were unable to avail themselves of the 6-inch maps, and when they ordered any, they ordered them on the larger scale. It was the same with the Tithe, Enclosure, and Copyhold Commissioners. From the Commissioners of Woods they had instances of the disadvantages of not possessing a plan sufficiently large. There was a Crown estate at the mouth of the Humber. They could make no use of a 6-inch plan, which was in existence in Yorkshire, and had to survey upon the larger scale. The same was the case with regard to the drainage of Windsor Park. He could keep the House for a week listening to extracts to prove that in England and Scotland for valuation purposes it would be advantageous to have a map much larger than six inches to the mile. In the blue-book would also be found the strongest evidence from Mr. Bellenden Ker, and the other authorities who had been consulted, that it was essential, with reference to the transfer of property and the registration of assurances, there should be a larger map than one of that size. He had delayed the House at such length because he wished it to feel that the decision to which it came the other day upset the 25-inch scale, which would have been perfect for all purposes where a map or plan could ever be used, and that if no further inquiry were instituted the survey of the rural districts would proceed upon the 6-inch scale. He did not deny that the 6-inch scale had its merits. It had succeeded in Ireland for the purposes to which it was applied in that country, and, as the son of a landed proprietor in the Lothians, where all the divisions were large, it would be more convenient to him to have a plan of his estate upon that scale than upon any other. But when they came to great national purposes—such as valuations, registration, and transfer of property—they must adopt a larger scale than six inches to the mile if they wished to make the survey useful. He could understand the views of those who said that a 1-inch map was all that the nation should be required to make. He did not deny the beauty and advantages of such a map; but they ought to bear in mind that the principle of a property survey—and by that term he meant a survey for great public purposes,—was adopted in Ireland in 1824, and that it was extended to England and Scotland in 1840, when it was resolved to proceed upon the 6-inch scale. Moreover, such an amount of work had been done upon a larger scale than one inch to the mile, and the advantages of the enlarged scale were so fully appreciated by the public that he believed it impossible to revert to a 1-inch map alone. The Government of Lord John Russell tried to do so in 1851, but the administration of Lord Derby, which succeeded, found that they could not abide by the decision of their predecessors, and they were obliged to depart from it in consequence of the memorials they received from all parts of the country praying for a larger scale. In the same manner the Ministry of Lord Aberdeen found it impossible to revert to the 1-inch scale. Upon his own suggestion— for at that time he held an office in the Treasury—a circular was sent to all the most competent authorities in Great Britain with a view of ascertaining what, in their opinion, was the best scale, and the result he had already detailed to the House. So great and universal, indeed, was the demand for large plans, that no Government could take their stand upon a 1-inch map alone; and, seeing that the difference of cost between the 6-inch scale and the 25-inch scale was a mere trifle—something like three farthings an acre in the cultivated districts, the total difference upon the whole of England and Scotland being £230,000, and upon the unsurveyed districts of the north of England and Scotland only £30,000—he thought it would be unwise economy not to spend a little more in order to get a really useful map. England was not so poor that it could not afford to spend £230,000—spread, if they pleased, over ten or twenty years—upon a map which, in the opinion of all the most competent authorities whom the Treasury had consulted, was essential, if they wished to have a map practically useful for the national purposes of the valuation and registration of property. At the same time, England was not rich enough to spend £2,000,000 (which would be the cost of the 6-inch map for the whole of England and Scotland) for a map which might to a certain extend be useful, but which the authorities united in declaring would not be sufficiently large for any practical purpose. He did not ask the House to negative the 6-inch scale. He did not, indeed, submit any proposition with respect to scales at all. That was not a question for the House to decide, because it was of a technical, scientific, and practical nature, and as such the Treasury, feeling its incompetence, had been obliged to refer it to acknowledged authorities. He warned them not to be led away by professional opinions which might be given in that House. There had always been a jealousy on the part of the civil engineers towards the Ordnance with respect to this question of survey. The civil surveyors had uniformly endeavoured to get the work into their own hands, and were naturally vexed that the Ordnance-office should be allowed to proceed with it. But this great national work was undertaken by the Government corps of engineers. Commenced in the last century it had proceeded gradually and slowly over the length and breadth of England under the same superintendence. The civil engineers were naturally anxious that the survey should be limited to as small a scale as possible, because the more that was left undone the more would remain for them to do. Mr. Jones, the Cathedral Commissioner, in his reply to the Treasury circular, said that he was in favour of a map upon the scale of 26⅔ inches to the mile, that being the scale which the civil engineers always adopted, though it would appear that they locked up their maps in order that they might be employed to make fresh surveys upon different scales. Any professional opinion, therefore, which might be given upon this question must be taken cum grano salis. He trusted he had said sufficient to induce the House not to take any hasty or irrevocable step with respect to the scale or scales upon which the survey should be made. The question was already in a state of great confusion, and he believed that by referring it to a fair, impartial, and competent tribunal, they would adopt the only practical issue out of their difficulties. The most fair and competent tribunal to which it could be referred would be a Royal Commission properly constituted. Do not let a single Scotchman be upon the Commission, but let it consist of such men as his right hon. Friend the Member for Oxford University, the hon. Member for Sheffield, the hon. Member for West Surrey; or, in the other House, Lord Eversley, Lord Belper, Lord Rosse, and Lord Wrottesley. It would be only fair to exclude civil engineers, but the Commission ought to have the services of some scientific man, such as the Astronomer Royal. If the Commission were properly constituted he had no doubt that the inquiry would be a fair and searching one; and in that event he would be content never to open his lips again upon this subject, but to abide by the decision of the Commissioners.

Amendment proposed, to leave out from the word "That" to the end of the Question, in order to add the words "in the present position of the Ordnance Survey of Great Britain, the Survey on the six-inch Scale ought not to be proceeded with without further inquiry; and this House is of opinion, that an humble Address should be presented to Her Majesty, praying Her Majesty to be graciously pleased to appoint a Royal Commission to inquire into the whole subject of the National Survey, and report upon the Scale or Scales on which it should be made and published," instead thereof.

My noble Friend has thrown out challenges right and left. He has challenged the Irish Members, he has challenged my right hon. Friend the Member for the University of Oxford, he has challenged the civil engineers who are Members of this House. Now, I hope none of these parties will accept the challenge of the noble Lord. It is no disparagement to the courage of any man that when he is engaged in the performance of public duties, or is about to be called upon to do so, he should, for the moment at least, decline any private challenge that might be tendered him. We are met this night to enter upon the performance of a public duty far more important than any discussion upon the 25-inch scale, the 6-inch scale, or the 1-inch scale. We are anxious to go into Committee of Supply in order to determine the expenditure of the country, and really I do hope that we shall not have a renewal of the discussion; about the 25-inch or any other scale, which, if once begun, would probably occupy the whole night. I hope the House will be satisfied with having indulged my noble Friend with what, no doubt, was his real object, to vindicate the character of his countrymen from any charge of selfishness, or that their desire for the larger survey arose from other motives than those which should guide all public men in their advocacy of public measures. He has also stated again, in great detail, the reasons which he gave the other evening in support of his own opinions, and I am bound to say that in many of them I agree with him, for the House will excuse me for saying that I believe the decision it arrived at the other evening was a wrong one. But, nevertheless, there is that decision, and whether it was based upon full examination and careful deliberation, or founded upon prejudice and superficial impressions, it is not for me to inquire. The House determined by a majority that the 25-inch survey should not be continued or published. That decision we adopted, and by it we are bound to abide. My noble Friend purposes, with a view to the reversal of that decision and the re-establishment of the 25-inch scale of survey, that all surveys of any kind should be at once stopped, the officers and men engaged upon them should be paralyzed until a Commission, which he suggests, shall have reported to the Government, and the Government shall have laid the Report before this House in the next Session. By that proceeding many months would be wasted, all the persons now engaged in these surveys must be kept in idleness at a great expense or be discharged; and in the latter case, it would be found necessary, when the work was recommenced, to reorganize the staff, at great cost and labour, and after all, with a great risk of inconvenience, from the ignorance of the persons employed. It is impossible, therefore, for me to agree with the Resolution proposed by my noble Friend—that is, as to the first part of it. If he will consent to strike out all the first portion of the Resolution, and, not to-night, but on some future occasion, would propose a simple address to the Crown to appoint a Commission to inquire into this matter, I should have no objection to offer to such a proposal. Every one must admit there have been so many changes of decision, so many plans adopted and abandoned, perhaps I may be permitted to add, so much tergiversation upon the question of these surveys, that it may be desirable to have a Commission properly constituted to inquire into the whole matter, and to endeavour to educe some order out of this seeming chaos. However that may be, it would be highly inexpedient to stop all proceedings until the Report of that Commission shall have been read, and still more inexpedient would it be to raise at this time a debate upon these surveys, which would certainly entail the loss of this night, as far as the Committee of Supply is concerned. I entreat the House, therefore, not to be drawn into a discussion, however tempting the occasion may be, but hope they will allow this matter to drop for the present, and proceed at once with the business of the evening.

said, he believed his noble Friend (Lord Elcho) would be much mistaken if he suffered himself to think that the House was prepared to sanction the suggestion thrown out by the noble Lord (Lord Palmerston) towards the close of his address. All the inconvenience which the noble Lord had pointed out as likely to follow from the adoption of the course proposed by his noble Friend must inevitably be produced by the adoption of that recommended by the noble Lord himself; and he (Lord J. Manners) rose for the purpose of stating, that upon that, or upon any other occasion, he should feel it his duty to oppose any attempt to reverse the decision at which the House had arrived the other evening in reference to that question.

observed, he was quite prepared to accede to the suggestion of the noble Lord at the head of the Government, and to allow the challenge of the noble Lord the Member for Haddingtonshire to pass without notice, if the Government would declare that no Commission should issue upon this subject during the present Session. He must, however, be allowed to say, that any Commission nominated by Lord Panmure could only be intended as an evasion of the decision arrived at by the House on a former evening.

wished to know whether he had correctly understood an answer which had been given that evening by the Secretary for the Treasury, that whenever the engineers had commenced the survey of any county on the 25-inch scale, no matter how small the commencement had been, the survey of that county should be proceeded with on the same scale.

said, he believed the Ordnance Department had put an erroneous construction on the division of the House the other evening. The opinion entertained at the Treasury upon the subject was, that the 25-inch survey might be completed in those districts in which it had previously been commenced, but that it should not be adopted in any portions of the counties in which those districts were situated; and that opinion would be communicated by the Treasury to the Ordnance Department.

said, he thought there could be no doubt the object of the Motion was to reverse the decision to which the House had come on a former evening. If he was to understand that the Government intended to oppose that Motion he would not say one word; but if it was intended that hereafter the same Motion was to be brought forward without the same opportunity of resisting it that existed now, he should feel inclined to go on with the discussion at once.

We have moved that the Speaker do leave the Chair, in order that the House may go into Com- mittee of Supply. My noble Friend (Lord Elcho) has moved his Resolution as an. Amendment to that Motion. The Government support the original question. If my noble Friend should on some future occasion think fit to renew his Motion in its present or in a modified shape, of course ample opportunity will be afforded to all hon. members to state their objections.

The course I propose to take now is to withdraw my Resolution for the present, and to bring it forward on some future occasion. [Loud cries of "No!"]

said, as the noble Lord (Lord Elcho) had occupied one hour of the time of the House in introducing his Resolution, it was only fair that he should now submit it to the House.

said, that these allowances were proposed to be granted under the Act of Parliament, but several of them were not in accordance with the scale laid down by it. He thought, moreover, that the system was radically wrong, as those who enjoyed a long life after their retirement, received much larger sums than the nature of their services deserved. He found from the papers that these instances were by no means uncommon; amongst others he might mention that one gentleman had retired over twenty years ago on the ground of ill-health, and was still drawing his retired allowance. He would suggest that a capital sum should be given instead of a pension: it would be a better provision for his family if an officer died soon after his retirement.

said, that the present scale of superannuation pensions was founded on an Act of Parliament; and if the system of paying sums down were adopted, he feared there would be many cases in which public servants would spend the money thus given them upon their retirement, and would be thrown upon the public bounty after all. He would also state that the cases referred to by the hon. Gentleman were not cases which had occurred under the ordinary course of super- annuation, but cases in which the parties had retired for purposes of economy at the desire of the Government.

said, that of this enormous amount of retiring allowances, a large proportion was paid by way of compensation for abolished offices. Now, why were these persons not appointed to other departments of the service upon the abolition of their offices? A large saving would be effected by adopting this system. In many instances retiring allowances were granted to persons who had spent but a few years in the public service, and it did seem as though this large expenditure was saddled upon the public to a great extent for purposes of patronage. One instance he would mention in which an individual was paid £700 a year as a retiring allowance in 1820—thirty-seven years ago—on account of "infirmity of body," and he had been receiving it ever since. The proper course would have been to give this person six months or so to recover his health instead of pensioning him off in this way. He had no doubt that many of these retiring pensions were occasioned by the improper creation of vacancies, and he believed that if the subject were inquired into by an independent Committee of that House a large sum might be struck off from these estimates.

said, he wished to call the attention of the Committee to the scale on which the retiring allowances to Consuls were made, which he thought quite inadequate. In almost every case where they had retired from ill health, the allowances were miserably small. In one ease, where a Consul with £800 a year salary, had been obliged to retire from that cause only, the miserable pittance of £200 a year was allowed to him. He knew twenty-six cases in which the Consuls had retired on account of serious ill health, and in all of which trifling pensions had been granted after twenty, thirty, and forty years' residence abroad. The injustice of this was, he thought, the more striking when contrasted with the pensions allowed in the diplomatic service. Ambassadors and Ministers received considerable pensions when they retired, while the Consuls who had been long in the service did not receive much more than the amount contributed by the consular body. The total consular salaries were £137,260, and the pensions £10,542; but the Consuls contributed to the Superannuation Fund no less than £6,863, whilst the diplomatic service paid nothing and received £22,530 in pension, and £150,000 in salaries. A Consul with £500 a year, after serving twenty-five years, and being subject to a deduction of 5 per cent, would receive on retiring £250; and he might mention the case of a Consul General at Chili, who after eighteen years' service at £1,400 a year, received but a pension of £400, having contributed £1,440 to the fund. Considering our complicated relations all over the world, and the immense interests of British property and of the British people, and how important it was to secure the services of able and qualified persons, it seemed to him, that if they wished to obtain good public servants for this branch of our service, they must treat them better than that. He also complained that in many instances, where an office had been abolished, and compensation granted, the office had been shortly after revived, and instead of the same civil servant, another person had been appointed to fill the office against all principles of economy and efficiency. The compensations to be voted this year amounted to £9,720, and he should cite two or three instances in proof of what he stated. A Consul General at Buenos Ayres, receiving £2,500 a year, retired a few years ago at the age of thirty-eight with a pension of £1,000 a year, and it was said that the office was abolished. Almost immediately after, another Consul was appointed, held the office for a very short time, and then retired with, a pension of £266 at the age of thirty-one. At the present moment, we had a Consul General and Agent with a salary of £1,885, and a Vice Consul with £500 a year, making the total outlay £3,651. Again, at Venice, a Consul General receiving £1,200 a year, retired at the age of forty-three with a pension of £600 a year. Abolition of office was the reason assigned. We had now, however, another Consul General at Venice with a salary of £700 a year. He would leave the Committee to judge, whether these appointments and reconstruction of offices were necessary, and whether they were made for the good of the country or for the private advantage of some favoured friend. For his part, he did not see why, if a port became of less importance and the trade small, so as to call for little labour at the hands of a Consul, a reduction in the salary of the existing Consul could not be made; or, at all events, a more systematic promotion established, instead of taking the Consul out of the service altogether on a compensation, and then appointing a fresh officer. The third case he would mention was, that of Tripoli. In 1852, a Consul General receiving £1,600 a year, retired upon a compensation of £850. The office was abolished; but, notwithstanding that, we had now a Consul at Tripoli with £800 a year, and a Vice Consul with £300 a year. He did not say that it was not essential to have a Consul at Tripoli; but he could not see the advantage of abolishing an office, of granting compensation, and then of appointing a fresh officer in that fashion. Again, in 1851, we had a Consul at Foo-chow-foo with £1,200 a year; the office was abolished, and he retired on a pension of £600. Immediately after, another Consul was appointed, and the present establishment consisted of a Consul and Vice Consul, with salaries of £1,200 and £750. He mentioned these facts, because he thought that it was better to give cases, than to make long orations on the Estimates. The public purse was not unlimited; he hoped, therefore, that the Government would consider the subject, that they would not give these compensations, where they were not deserved, and that they would not abolish offices, and in a short time reconstruct; them at such a serious expense to the country.

said, he thought that though a certain latitude must be allowed to the Government with regard to pensions and allowances, there should be some general rules observed with regard to them. There were two items with regard to which he should like to have some explanation. It appeared that Mr. Espine Batty, Consul, retired after eight years' service, and, his salary having been £1,000 a year, the pension he received was £500 per annum; and, on the other hand, that Jonathan Johnson, clerk, retired after thirty years' service, and his salary having been £800 a year, his pension was only £550.

said, he wished to inquire whether the rule laid down by the Committee of 1834, with reference to superannuations and compensation on the abolition of office, was now adhered to? As he understood, the recommendation of that Committee was that they should be the same. He wanted to know whether that rule had been altered, or whether some of the cases referred to in which the compensation awarded had been very large were special ones, out of the ordinary course?

said, that the practice of the Treasury as regarded abolished offices was by no means uniform. No doubt the rule of giving compensations according to the principle laid down in the Act of 1834 might be considered as the general practice of the Treasury; but in some cases, where it was for the convenience and the economy of the public service that particular offices should be abolished, and where great hardship to individuals accrued, they had considered it competent to the Treasury to act with greater liberality. If a person were superannuated under the Act of 1834, either through age or illness, he must be taken to have left the service for his own convenience, and it must be remembered that his office was immediately filled up by another person, and there was no gain to the public. But the case was altogether different when they abolished an office and compelled a man to retire sooner than he otherwise would have done. No other person was then appointed to the office; the gain was all to the public, and the person so deprived of his situation was entitled to consideration. With respect to the two cases selected by the hon. and gallant Member for Aberdeen, (Colonel Sykes) one was the case of a professional gentleman taken from the law, and in all such cases professional officers were dealt with differently from those who were in the public service as clerks, and who had not been called on to give up a profession. There was a strong instance of this which he could mention. Two years ago Parliament passed an Act which did away with the Metropolitan Building Board, and provided that all servants who had been employed in that department for three or four years should have two-thirds of their then salary. That provision was inserted in the Act on the distinct consideration that they were professional men, who had been withdrawn from their profession, and had, consequently, lost what connection they might have had. With respect to the observations of the hon. Member for Stafford (Mr. Wise) with respect to the case of the late Consul at Buenos Ayres, he wished to remind the Committee that that charge would not again occur, because arrangements had been made for the re-employment of the officer in question. He was willing to admit the hardship of some of the rules respecting the consular service, but at the same time he would observe that next year, as his hon. Friend was aware, the whole matter would be sub- mitted to a Committee, when abundant opportunity would be given to bring forward the whole details of the service.

said, he did not think that his hon. Friend had exactly answered his question. No doubt there might be cases of great hardship on the abolition of offices. But his hon. Friend was aware that the recommendation of the Committee was that the same practice should be followed in superannuation cases as in the case of abolition of office. His question was whether in this case the rule had been exceeded, or whether the cases in question were special? No doubt the case of a professional man taken out of his ordinary line of life to fill an office was different from that of a clerk who was taken into the office early in life, and who retired after long service. He quite agreed, also, that many cases of hardship might arise from the sudden abolition of office; but his experience told him that it was by no means the best class of officers who were reduced. When the Committee made its recommendation he knew that the officers were full of complaints; that officers who were selected for reduction were selected because they were not the best officers in the service, and they had retiring allowances granted them, while others were retained, and had to serve much longer, merely because they were more energetic and able men. He believed that in all cases where an extra sum was allowed to retiring officers, the recommendation was that a special minute should be made and laid on the table of the House.

was understood to say, that in the particular instances alluded to, the Act of 1834 had been complied, with, and special minutes made and laid on the table. With regard to others the minutes had been made in former years. In reply to a question from Mr. BLACKBURN,

said, that the Act of 1834 did not grant any specific compensation for the abolition of offices. It merely referred to compensation to those worn out in the service. Up to the age of sixty-five the Treasury had no power to grant superannuation allowances, except under a medical certificate that the officer was no longer fit to serve, combined with a general certificate of good conduct. The superannuation for offices abolished was under a different law, or, rather, arose out of the prerogative of the Crown itself, which had been exercised for a long period and had been recognized by various Parliamentary Committees.

said, he would refer the hon. Gentleman to the Act itself, which enacted that no compensation shall be given for offices abolished, except under certain circumstances.

replied, that what really was enacted was, that in the cases of offices abolished the compensation should be made out of the funds devoted to the service of that particular department.

said, he wished to call the attention of the hon. Gentleman to a case in the superannuation list, where a gentleman retired from the service at eighty-four years of age, after a service of ten years only. That gentleman had been receiving a salary of £1,500 a year, and since his retirement a pension of £375 a year. He wished to ask whether it would not have been better to have appointed a younger man from whom more work could have been obtained. There were some other cases which he might name were it not invidious to do so.

replied, that the cases referred to were those very ones abolished by the doing away of the Metropolitan Building Board, and in which the compensation had been distinctly defined in the Act.

said, he also would beg to call the attention of the hon. Gentleman to the case of a clerk of the venison warrens, who, after a service of fifteen years at a salary of £150, was allowed to retire on his full salary, and to ask upon what principle that amount of compensation was allowed?

said, he could not state the exact ground upon which the full salary had been given. Probably it was a patent office, and the person who filled it was entitled to the full salary.

said, that he observed that £700 of this Vote was to the poor French refugee clergy. Now, as he understood that it was sixty-six years ago since this Vote was placed on the Estimates, and as he assumed the clergymen in question must have been at least twenty-one years of age at that period, and therefore must by this time have reached the age of eighty-seven, he wished to know how much longer it was expected that Parliament would be asked for this money, and whether the recipients were indeed living?

replied, that the application was made through the secretary of the society, a most respectable person, and there was no reason to suppose the money was improperly paid. In reply to Mr. BLACKBURN,

said, that the Vote did not include £1,200 given by the Government to certain literary characters.

said, he must object to several items of the Vote. For instance, he found an item of £22 formerly charged on the hereditary revenues of Scotland, which included alms given to Her Majesty's beadesmen and the expense of finding them with gowns. He thought such payments ought to be discontinued. He also saw an annuity of £500 granted by King Charles II. to the ancestor of the late Sir Thomas Clarges in fee, which he saw no reason why the country should be called upon to pay at the present time. He objected to the charge on principle.

replied, that all these charges had been subjected to the strict examination of a Committee of that House, and had been retained on the ground that it would not be keeping good faith with the recipients. The Committee must remember that the items were formerly charged on the land revenues of the Crown, and the charge had been transferred with the revenues in question.

said, that he did not object to their present payment, but thought they ought to cease on the decease of the recipients.

stated that the item of £90 9s. for repairs of the bridge at Berwick was a charge which had formerly been defrayed from the Civil List.

expressed his opinion that this was one of those items which ought not to continue in the Estimates. It might have been defensible before the establishment of the Poor Law in Ireland, but he thought the charge of such institutions ought not now to be thrown upon the public taxes.

could console his hon. Friend by informing him that under the 14 & 15 Vict., &c. 68, these allowances would be gradually discontinued.

said, he rose to object to the item. The noble Member for the City of London (Lord John Russell), when he was at the head of the Government, had proposed to reduce the allowances to the Dublin hospitals at the rate of 10 percent per annum, until they altogether ceased. In 1854, on the Motion of the hon. Member for Dublin, the subject was investigated by a Committee, who recommended that the grants should be continued. The Commissioners appointed at the suggestion of that Committee recommended that the total sum granted for the support of the Dublin hospitals should not exceed £15,600, while the aggregate amount now asked of Parliament was £19,017, or an excess of nearly £4,000. In Liverpool, Manchester, Birmingham, and other large towns, there was a large immigration of poor Irish, for whose support the ratepayers were compelled to provide from their own resources. The people of Scotland were also about to be called upon for large contributions for the establishment of lunatic asylums; and if it was right that grants similar to that now under consideration should be continued, the House ought to decide upon what principle the money of the State was to be applied to such objects. He therefore proposed that the recommendation of the Committee of 1854 in favour of a certain fixed and specified sum should govern the House on this occasion, and that the £2,600, less the£850 voted on account last Session—in other words, £1,750—should be the sum granted for the Westmoreland Lock Hospital for the present year.

Motion made, and Question proposed, "That a sum not exceeding £l,750, be granted to Her Majesty, to complete the sum necessary to defray the Expense of the Westmoreland Lock Hospital, Dublin, to the 31st day of March 1838."

said, it was extraordinary that, in the face of complaints from year to year, the grant for this hospital should on this occasion be £2,770 more than the grant of last year.

said, he had endeavoured to do all that lay in his power to carry out the understanding of the Government of which his noble Friend the Member for the City of London was at the bead, until he was interrupted by the appointment of a Committee of that House. He certainly opposed the appointment of that Committee, but unsuccessfully, and when it reported to the House, no other course remained to the Government than to carry out the recommendations which it made. A Commission was also appointed for the purpose of inquiring how the £16,000 granted by the House for the support of those hospitals should be applied. That Commission recommended a certain distribution of the funds, which the Government, of course, adopted. Besides, an Act of Parliament passed last Session which confirmed the proceedings both of the Committee and the Commission. As to the charge that the Government was this year exceeding the Vote of last year in respect to the Westmoreland Lock Hospital, he could explain how that was. Only £1,215 of the Estimate of 1856 happened to be voted, so that £1,385 was advanced from the Civil Contingencies Fund to mate up the Estimate, and that £1,385 had now to be repaid, and was included in the Vote for the present year.

said, he doubted whether the explanation of the hon. Gentleman (Mr. Wilson) was correct on constitutional grounds. The Government ought to have a policy and to act upon it.

observed, that he would remind the Committee that he opposed the Bill last year, which passed into a law, and took a division upon it, on the ground that its object was to make the grants for these hospitals more permanent than they ought to be.

said, the Vote ought not to be objected to by the English Members, inasmuch as whenever it was found that any of those numbers of poor Irish who came over to this country and enriched it by their labour on public works in London, Glasgow, and Liverpool, were unable longer to contribute their labour in that way, they were at once sent home and landed on the nearest shore, unless by long residence in this part of the kingdom they had gained a settlement in it.

said, he begged to remind the hon. Member (Mr. Kirk) that any Irishman gained a settlement in England after he had resided in it for four years.

said, he wished to recall to the recollection of the Committee that the grants for these hospitals were guaranteed by the Act of Union, and had continued ever since uninterruptedly, and that a Committee of that House, of whom eleven were English and four were Irish Members, had recently recommended their continuance. He added that on a division thirteen Members of the Committee voted for the continuance of all the grants, and that the grant which they were unanimous in recommending should be continued without reduction was the very one now under discussion. Moreover, he might mention that at the time of the Reformation there were hospitals in London, such as St. Luke's, St. Thomas's, and St. Bartholomew's, which had lands in Ireland, and which they were allowed to retain. There were monasteries at that time in Dublin which had lands in England, but they had lost their lands, and had been allowed grants by Parliament in lieu of them. This alone constituted an equitable claim to an equivalent.

said, he could not but characterise the Vote as a paltry one, and was quite surprised that an hon. Member for such a city as the city of Dublin (Mr. Vance) should ask assistance for the Dublin hospitals. The people of Dublin were rich enough, and he was quite sure they were willing, to support their own charitable institutions. The London hospitals were supported by voluntary contributions, and he did not see why the people of Dublin should not act in a similar manner.

said, that in fact three of the largest London hospitals were supported by public moneys, being endowed with the revenues of monasteries suppressed in the reign of Henry VIII.

concurred in the opinion of Mr. Cox.

expressed his wish to withdraw the Amendment, but

objected.

said, he must complain that so large a sum should be granted to persons at the will of the Government, The Committee ought to have a list of the persons, and some explanation ought to be given as to the manner in which the money was expended.

said, he had no means of furnishing details at present, as the money was expended in Ireland.

said, he rose to move the reduction of this Estimate to £366, the amount for widows and orphans, at the same time he wished to state that in asking the Committee in reality to reject the Vote, he was not actuated by any ill-feeling towards the people of Ireland. Being a Protestant and a Nonconformist, he would be the last to breathe a syllable against a body of men for whom he entertained the highest respect, and he should not grudge the money if he believed that the grant was founded upon a correct principle, or was likely to benefit the Irish people. A similar grant was withdrawn from the Nonconformists of England when the noble Lord the Member for the City of London was Prime Minister, and the Nonconformists in this country regarded its withdrawal as a boon and an advantage. He did not wish to raise the question of the Established Church in Ireland. But in Ireland they had not been content with the establishment of Protestant Episcopacy. They had passed an Act providing for the education of Roman Catholic priests, at the same time that they made grants out of the public Treasury to Presbyterians and Unitarians of the Synod of Ulster. The principle of indiscriminate endowments had been received with considerable favour by some of our leading statesmen, and perhaps this might turn out to be a step in that direction; but he believed that principle to be a most vicious one, and calculated, if acted upon, to subvert our civil and religious liberty. Still it was a principle, and he could understand it; but, in selecting four out of twelve denominations in Ireland, he did not think they were acting upon any intelligible policy whatever. He was convinced they would never have ecclesiastical peace in that House or in the country until they began to act upon the opposite principle of impartial disendowment. There were no special reasons why this grant should be maintained. He had often heard it said that the grant was given in lieu of tithes, and that the Presbyterians in the north of Ireland had a right to it. But he had looked carefully into the history of the transaction, and, after the fullest and most impartial investigation, he believed the statement in question to be a pure and unmitigated fiction. Dr. Reid, the historian of the Irish Presbyterian Church, said not a syllable about it; and he learned from a passage in the Memoirs of Lord Castlereagh, that the Presbyterian ministers were put in possession of the tithes being at that time ministers of the Irish Church. They were deprived of them in the time of the Commonwealth, and from the Restoration down to 1672 the Presbyterian ministers of Ireland were supported by the voluntary liberality of their people. William and Mary afterwards granted them a sum of £1,200 a year, to be paid out of the revenues of the Irish Establishment; but in little more than a twelvemonth the Irish Parliament passed a Resolution to the effect that this pension was an unnecessary branch of the Establishment. The Queen continued the grant, but it was soon discontinued by the Irish Government. He thought that the whole history of the donum proved most conclusively that it was neither more nor less than a reward for political services. In 1772 it was placed in the annual Estimates under the head of "secret service" money, and when Lord Castlereagh endeavoured in 1799 to alter the mode of distribution, he entitled his scheme—" A plan for strengthening the connection between the Government and the Presbyterian Synod of Ulster." Such being the origin and history of the grant, what had been its effect upon the Presbyterian Church? It had weakened that Church, and diminished the stipends of its ministers by drying up the sources of voluntary liberality to such an extent that one of their own pastors had spoken of it as the most beggarly denomination in Christendom. It appeared from a recent Parliamentary Return, obtained by the hon. Member for Sheffield, that the Presbyterian congregations of Ulster raised on the average, by their own exertions, no more than £57 per annum each, and it was very remarkable—such had been the effect of the grant—that some of the largest and wealthiest congregations actually contributed less than some of the smallest and poorest. Let him contrast that miserable result with what had been done by the Free Church of Scotland. When the disruption in the Scottish Church took place, 448 ministers and professors abandoned their offices and emoluments in the Established Church of Scotland. That number had grown, in 1857, to 801, with about one-third of the whole population of Scotland adhering to their discipline. In the first year of the disruption the sustentation fund was £68,000; last year it was £108,000. In the first year of the Free Church's existence the ministers received a stipend of £105 annually; now, the number of ministers had increased to 712, who received £140, in addition to the freewill offerings of their congregations. In fact, the average salaries of the Free Church ministers were larger than those of the ministers of the Established Church. The missionary fund had risen from £3,000 in 1843 to £14,000 in 1856. The Free Church schools last year numbered 607, and the manses 535: all created since the disruption. In that space of time the Free Church had raised no less than £3,902,000 for religious purposes. He asked the House to contrast the working of Presbyterianism under the voluntary system in Scotland with its working under State subsidies in Ireland, He submitted that he had made out a case for the consideration of the Committee which justified him in asking them to support the Amendment which he proposed. He was fully persuaded that, if they would take that course, it would have the effect of strengthening Presbyterianism in the north of Ireland, and would be the first step towards the abolition of a policy which was false in principle, and could not be permanently maintained. He should, therefore, conclude by moving that the Vote be reduced to £366.

said, he felt it necessary to correct some of the mistakes into which the hon. Member for Montrose (Mr. Baxter) had fallen. When the Presbyterians first settled in Ireland, the question was not whether they were Episcopalians or Presbyterians, but whether they were Protestant. The Irish Protestant Church at that time was not altogether identified with, the Church of England, but was founded on seventy-two Articles, differing in many essential particulars from the Thirty-nine Articles of the Church of England; the object then being to establish a universal Protestantism in Ireland. Accordingly, the Presbyterian ministers took possession of the manses and tithes, but when the Commonwealth came, they, in common with all other clergymen, were deprived of their revenues. Upon the Restoration they were restored to their benefices, but when the Act of Uniformity was passed, they again, in common with all other non-conforming ministers, were deprived of them. In 1672, however, and not in 1772, as the hon. Gentleman had stated, the present grant was made. It was true, that during the latter part of the reign of James II. the grant was withheld; but it should be understood that James II. was a Roman Catholic, and, therefore, not likely to favour any grant for the maintenance of Protestant ministers. After the Revolution of 1688, the first Act of William III. upon landing in Ireland was to restore the grant, and the very words of that grant were, "in lieu of the tithes of which they had been unjustly deprived." Thus, the Presbyterians claimed it as a contract entered into between them and the Government at that time. It was on a similar footing as the Scotch grant, and like it had been placed on the Consolidated Fund, and it was only very recently that it had been put on the annual Votes. The opposition to this grant did not come from, the Free Church of Scotland, but from a society in the city with a very long name—he meant the "Society for the Liberation of Religion from all State Assistance and Control." He had attended one of their meetings and learnt that their object was to destroy the Irish Church, and to effect that object they sought to obtain the support of the Roman Catholics by depriving them of the Maynooth grant, and of the Presbyterians by the withdrawal of the Regium Donum. The hon. Gentleman who objected to this grant, if he had referred to a paper laid upon the table of the House in February last, would have found that Scotland had not been without her share of grants for religious purposes. These having exactly the same object in view as the Irish grant, but not a word was said against them by any Scotch Member. That return showed that in five years the Church of England had received grants to the extent of £203,296; the Church of Scotland, £106,452; the Church of Rome, 131,910. The grant to the Irish Presbyterians had been always a free and unconditional grant. No Government had attempted to impose terms in respect to it, and if any attempt had been made to impose such terms it would have been vehemently resisted. The Irish Presbyterians believed the grant to be their inalienable right; they received it from their fathers, and would certainly, if possible, hand it down untouched to their children. Let it be remembered that the Scottish Presbyterians found the north of Ireland a barren morass, from which the English settlers had fled in disgust. They had transformed it from barrenness into fertility; and, though the worst land, it was now the best cultivated part of Ireland. It had no fuel of intense power to work its manufactories but what it imported from England and Scotland; and yet, in the face of all these disadvantages, it competed successfully with both countries. He trusted earnestly that the Committee would not assent to the proposal of the hon. Member for Montrose.

said, he would beg to ask the hon. Gentleman who had just sat down, if he really believed that a contract existed between the Government of this country and the Unitarians of the north of Scotland for granting them a certain sum annually? If the principle of State support for purposes of religion were right, then the Roman Catholics of Ireland undoubtedly had the first claim as constituting the great majority of the people. He should support the Motion of the hon. Member for Montrose, however, upon the plain and intelligible principle that all grants of public money for religious purposes were wrong in principle, and also from a strong conviction that these grants tended to lessen the vitality and diminish the strength of true religion wherever they were applied. If the Motion of the hon. Gentleman (Mr. Baxter) were carried, it would be one step towards the consummation so earnestly desired by the hon. Member for North Warwickshire (Mr. Spooner)—the abolition of the Maynooth grant. Let the Protestants first show to the people of Ireland that they did not want the money of the State, and then they could consistently, and with clean hands, demand that the Roman Catholics should give up the grants they received.

said, that he should support the Amendment, as he altogether denied the existence of a contract. The whole system of State grants was humiliating and degrading to their common Christianity, and was, moreover, absurd, as the Legislature was called on at one and the same time to support the most opposite systems of religion. It was miserable to see the contrast presented between the Free Church of Scotland, which during the thirteen years of its establishment had collected £3,900,000 by voluntary contributions for the support of its institutions, and the Irish Presbyterians, who during the same period had been begging £520,000 or thereabouts from the State. Throughout the whole of Great Britain and Ireland there was not one denomination of Dissenters, with the exception of this rich body, which received a single shilling from the State for religious purposes; and he trusted that the Committee would come to the decision that the grant should no longer be continued to a body so well able to maintain its own institutions; for they might rest assured that, if the grant were withdrawn, the income of the Presbyterian clergy would be increased fourfold by wealthy voluntary contributions.

briefly replied, and observed, that the reference which had been made by the hon. Member for Newry (Mr. Kirk) to Scotland was peculiarly unfortunate, seeing that no nonconformist body in that country received a penny from, the State for religious purposes.

Motion made, and Question put, "That a sum, not exceeding £366 be granted to Her Majesty, to defray the Expense of Non-conforming, Seceding, and Protestant Dissenting Ministers in Ireland, to the 31st day of March 1858.

said that, though opposed to the policy of this Vote, he should not trouble the House to divide against the grant, as he looked upon the last division as decisive in respect to it.

said, he should propose to reduce the Vote by £900. There were six orthodox professors at Belfast College, and he thought three would be quite ample; and that of the two non-subscribing professors of divinity one might be dispensed with, for they were only occupied about an hour each day. He trusted that all such miserable grants would shortly come to an end, and that the noble Lord at the head of the Government, who had put a termination to ministers' money, would also get rid of every one of these subjects of contention.

said, the hon. Member objected to this Vote on the voluntary principle; but how did he propose to set it right? Not by taking it away altogether, but by reducing the amount. What sort of argument was it that because there was a small number of students, one professor should teach them everything? It was said the professors did not lecture more than an hour a day each. He should like to know in what academical institution the professors lectured longer. The establishment of the Queen's College in Belfast had given rise to an agreement that the Queen's University should be supplemented with this theological college; it was a solemn compact entered into by the late Sir Robert Peel.

Whereupon Motion made, and Question, "That a sum, not exceeding £700, be granted to Her Majesty, to complete the sum necessary to pay the Salaries of the Theological Professors and the Incidental Expenses of the General Assembly's College at Belfast, and retired Allowances to Professors of the Belfast Academical Institution, to the 31st day of March 1858,"—put, and negatived.

said, he wished to express his satisfaction that the cost of collecting the various branches of the public revenue was now submitted to Parliament, at the same time he must complain that the expenditure incurred for this purpose far exceeded that which was found necessary during the early portion of the present century. In the ten years preceding 1810 the cost of collecting the revenue was 5 per cent, and in the years between 1810 and 1814 it was 5½ per cent, the revenue at that time being nearly equal to its present amount. Last year, however, the cost of collecting the revenue exceeded 7½ per cent, the whole amount expended for that purpose, including superannuations, amounting to £4,699,000. The cost of collection during the last year exceeded that of 1854 by £642,000, and that of 1855 by £313,000, and he hoped the Government would afford some explanation on the subject.

observed, that they were at present on the Customs Votes, and undoubtedly he must admit that there had been a considerable increase in the cost of collecting the Customs duties, but it must be borne in mind that, although the revenue from Customs had exceeded that of former years—which was somewhat a matter of surprise after the large reductions of duty which had taken place—it was necessary to regulate the establishment of the Custom House, not with relation to the amount of duties to be collected, but to the amount of trade with which it was necessary to deal, because it was requisite to provide for the examination and superintendence of every vessel, whatever might be the nature and value of the goods she carried. When hon. Gentlemen remembered the extraordinary increase of trade which had taken place within the last two years, and especially last year—when they recollected that the entries of shipping were double what they were in 1849, when the Navigation Laws were repealed, they would readily understand that a very large establishment must necessarily be required by the Customs department to superintend the vessels and the goods landed from them. He thought it ought to be a matter of great gratification to the House that, although such extensive reductions had taken place in the Customs duties, the revenue derived from that source had not suffered, and the increase of trade was proved by the circumstance that a lower rate of duty yielded an amount equal to that formerly received.

stated, that it was quite true that at present the cost of the tobacco warehouses was in excess of the rent received from that source, but that in a short time an arrangement would come into force which would do away with the present system, and tobacco would in future be warehoused like any other commodity.

said, he wished to know whether the hon. Gentleman the Secretary to the Treasury had received any representation with respect to the salaries of the officers of Excise. Several petitions had been presented to the House, representing that since those salaries had been fixed at their present amount an increase had been made in the salaries of various other departments, and that the Excise officers were inadequately remunerated. He believed that the salary of an Excise officer was no more than £90 a year, which was never raised, while the salaries in other departments were increased by £5 or £10 each year. Unless an Excise officer was promoted to the rank of supervisor, his salary remained at £90 to the end of his life. He believed that the Board of Inland Revenue had strongly recommended the Treasury to consider favourably the representations of the Excise officers; but he was aware that was an inopportune moment for making any demand upon the Treasury. He begged to thank the Government, and particularly the Chairman of the Board of Inland Revenue, for having conceded the prayer which had been presented for so many years by the officers of Excise that the system of compulsorily removing them to distant parts of the country might be abolished. He knew that a feeling of gratitude pervaded the Excise officers for that concession.

said, he wished to ask how it was that the charge for this year was £200,000 in excess of the year 1854?

stated that the increased poundage on the income tax, which, however, had ceased on the 20th of March last, accounted for it. The only other increase in the Estimate was on account of the allowance to riding officers of £20 a year for a horse. With regard to the observations of the hon. Gentleman the Member for Edinburgh respecting the remuneration of Excise officers, the Government had received a very large number of applications for increase of salary from the Excise officers. The majority of them evidently emanated from one common centre, although they had arrived from a great number of quarters. One of the main reasons urged for an increase of salary was their liability to pay the income tax. All he could say was that the Board of Inland Revenue and the Treasury would consider the application, and make known their decision in a short time.

observed, that the salary of a first-class surveyor of Excise in Scotland was £200 a year, while the salary of a first-class surveyor in England was £460 a year. Again, the salary of a second-class surveyor in Scotland was £170 a year; the salary of a second-class surveyor in England was £400 a year. The salary of a third-class surveyor in Scotland was £160, while in England the salary of a third-class surveyor was £340 a year. So that while the average salary in England was £253, in Scotland it was only £170. Now, the officers in Scotland had precisely the same duties to discharge as those in England, and the qualifications demanded were identically the same. He hoped, therefore, that an end would be put to the odious distinction between their salaries.

said, he wished to be informed by the hon. Secretary to the Treasury whether the Chief Commissioner of Works had the superintendence of the building and repairs of the Ireland Revenue Offices and the General Post Office, because he found in this Vote an item of £25,000 for new buildings, although last year a sum of £30,000 was voted for the same purpose.

said, that till very recently the whole of the expenses connected with each department of the Inland Revenue were paid out of the gross receipts of that particular department; but the whole of the works of the public departments were for the future to be under the superintendence of the Commissioner of Works. The reason why this Vote was not transferred was that the works to which it referred were in progress when that change was effected.

said, he would beg to remind the hon. Secretary to the Treasury that he had not answered the question of the hon. Gentleman (Mr. Black) as to the distinction between the salaries of the English and Scotch surveyors of Excise.

apologised for not having replied to the hon. Gentleman's observations. He was informed that although the name was the same the duties of the officers referred to were entirely different, and he could only say that the Chairman and Deputy Chairman of the Inland Revenue Board were exceedingly desirous of doing everything to do justice to all the officers employed in the collection of the Inland Revenue. He was sure that the difference of the duties was quite sufficient to justify the difference of the salaries.

said, he would admit that there was a difference in the duties, and it was this—the Scotch surveyors had to do all that was done by the English surveyors and something more into the bargain.

asked, if there had been any increase in illicit distillation in Ireland during the last year to justify this large estimate? He observed in the Estimate an item of £2,880 for the "wages and victualling of crew of Seamew revenue steamer, and coals." This was not an Estimate for the coastguard service; it was merely for the revenue police, and he could not understand what the police had to do with a revenue steamer.

said, the Government had no reason to believe that there had been any increase of illicit distillation in Ireland within the last year; on the contrary, there appeared to have been less than formerly. With respect to the amount of the Estimate, the Government hoped, under the Bill which he should ask the House to read a second time on an early day, to reduce the expenditure materially in the course of the present year. As to the Seamew steamer, the hon. Member might not perhaps be aware that for many years past it had been absolutely necessary to maintain a steamer on the north and west coasts of Ireland for the purpose of visiting the creeks and islands where illicit distillation formerly prevailed to a very large extent, and that it had been found extremely useful in suppressing the trade.

observed, that there was an increase on this Vote of £348,000.

explained, that no fewer than 1,500 new district post offices had been established, so no village of any size was without a post office, and no farmhouse without its letter carrier. Indeed, the department was to be looked at as a part of the public service rather than a means of revenue.

said, he wished to know why there was a medical officer and medicine provided for the men of the London Post Office, and not for those of Dublin?

said, that the number of men in the Dublin office was small as compared with the number in the London office, and would not justify the appointment of a medical officer.

said, he must complain that in the Estimate for the conveyance of mails by railroad, amounting to upwards of £580,000, no less than £268,039 was put down as an unascertained sum for services which were easily ascertainable— namely, £204,703 for the conveyance of mails on the Great Western, North-Eastern, and South Wales Railways; £47,000 for the same service on the Great Southern and Western Railway, Ireland; and £16,336 for the same service on the Edinburgh and Glasgow Railway, the Glasgow and Paisley Joint Railway, and the North British Railway. He suggested that it was desirable to bring those charges before the House in a more complete and businesslike manner.

explained, that whenever a service was ascertained the cost was given with precision. But this large sum was taken as an estimated charge only, because there were a great number of arbitrations pending, the claims connected with which the Post Office might be called upon to pay at any time in the course of the year.

said, that in a great country like this £100,000 was probably not too great a sum to be intrusted to the executive for unforeseen expenditure; and all that the country required was, that it should be used for necessary and proper purposes. He thought that some of the items required explanation. There was a sum of £1,000 paid to the parties who brought home the treaties of peace from Paris and Persia. Seeing that the country paid £42,000 a year for couriers and messengers, the necessity of giving to a gentleman who was in the receipt of a good salary, a sum of £500, merely for travelling from Paris to London, was not very obvious. There was also £2,000 given to the clerks of the Foreign Office in consequence of the extra duties performed by them during the war. He believed the clerks at the Foreign Office did their duty well, and he was the last person to grudge them full and ample payment for their services, but he was anxious to know whether the hardworking junior clerks had received their fair share of this amount, or was it all swallowed up by two or three superior officials, who superintended the labours of the rest and generally obtained most of, if not all, the credit. The item of £1,200 for the legal expenses connected with the purchase of Burlington House seemed to be excessive. The Solicitor of the Treasury had a large salary, and he could not imagine how such an expenditure could have arisen from the purchase of a house and two acres of garden. The Lord Lieutenant of Ireland received an annual salary of £20,000, yet there was a paltry charge in this account of £18 for a robe for that distinguished representative of royalty. There was a charge of £28,517 for special missions, being those of Lord Clarendon to Paris, and Lord Granville to Russia; but they had voted a few nights since £37,500 for miscellaneous diplomatic expenditure, of which £12,500 had been appropriated to the mission to Petersburg and Moscow at the recent coronation. There was no portion of our expenditure that required inspection more than this department, for it was scattered over several Estimates. £180,000 was annually charged on the Consolidated Fund for the salaries and pensions of the diplomatic body, and he might mention, that since 1840 no less a sum than £5,431,000 had been expended for all the departments connected with the diplomatic and consular establishments. So long as Reports of Committees and Resolutions of that House were ignored and set at defiance, and such small missions as those of Hanover, Florence, and Stutgard continued, we should find that this expenditure would continue, and probably increase. Last year, besides £150,000 for salaries, and £22,530 for pensions, and £37,500 for miscellaneous expenses, the sum of £7,390 had been allowed for outfits, making £217,420 for one year's diplomatic expenditure, and to show the Committee the character and amount of this outlay, he might state, that during twelve years we had voted for outfits £55,304; for special missions £123,720; for house rent £110,774; and for miscellaneous expenses £235,581; amounting in all to £525,379; and unless the Committee had these items in sectional Estimates, it was not possible, without considerable trouble, to know what each department cost. It was easy to assume that the Paris embassy cost £10,000 a year, that being the sum stated in the annual accounts; but in another Vote was £3,909 for miscellaneous expenses; in another £1,709 for repairs and taxes, and £401 for wages; and it must not be forgotten that we had paid £87,000 for the embassy house; and in addition to this, during the last three years, we had paid £1,150 for altering and repairing the chapel. So at Constantinople the salaries were £11,340, but the extra were £8,269, the repairs £1,000, the wages £564, whilst the House had cost £86,615. Until he had carefully inspected these Estimates and examined those of past years, he had no idea of this large expenditure, and he thought that Her Majesty's Government were not doing their duty in permitting what appeared to him a very unnecessary and very extravagant drain upon the public purse.

said, he really must correct the hon. Gentleman's inaccuracy, for the robe of the Lord Lieutenant cost £18 and 7d. He must also complain of £287 for the translation of a French tariff, and£2,000 for a Commission to Erzeroum to settle differences out there between neighbouring Governments. This charge for that Commission had been going on for fifteen years, and yet the Commission had returned to this country ten years ago, and one of them, the Hon. Mr. Curzon, had written a very amusing book of his goings on there. Then there was £834 for researches in the neighbourhood of the Dead Sea for nitre—rather an out-of-the-way part of the world.

said, there was an item of £62 17s. 8d. for bringing home John Frost, after transporting him out of the country at the public expense. There was an item of £1,516 for the Islington Park, and an item of £4,000 for collars and badges for knights. He also objected to the charge for the police at Aldershot and other encampments. It appeared to him that the commander at a camp ought to be able to keep his troops in proper discipline without the aid of the civil force. Then he found the sum of £1,200 to be distributed among the Episcopalian clergy in Scotland—a vote which was open to many objections; but he would not detain the House upon that. Unless a party was formed in that House to keep down the expenditure, they would never produce an effect on the Government, and he feared the country would be thrown into financial difficulties. He could not but believe that more attention would be paid to these subjects in the House of Commons if the franchise was extended.

said, he wished to call attention to the very large sums remaining unexpended of balances of civil contingencies. Not less than £150,000 remained of the balances of former years, and this ought to be spent before any new money was voted. He found in page 5 an account of expenses incurred for presents to Dr. Kane and others of the American Arctic expedition. He did not, in the least, complain of that money being spent, but he thought the Government ought to take some notice of the spirited conduct of Mr. Peabody, a gentleman of great wealth and high position, who had contributed several thousand dollars towards the expedition for discovering the Erebus and Terror. He objected to the items of £6,145 for the Commission for settling the territory of the Cape of Good Hope, as he held that the colony ought to pay this expense.

said, he spoke from a knowledge of recent proceedings in the Bight of Benin, and consequently must complain of the Vote which had been made to a most unworthy person, King Pepple, who had been lately deposed from his kingdom in those regions. The liberated negroes in the Bight of Benin were preyed upon by the kings of those countries; but it was to the efforts of those free negroes that the increasing trade which was springing up between this country and the coast of Africa might be attributed.

explained the items in the Vote. As to the balances, a statement was presented last year, showing the exact state of the accounts. There was a balance of £80,000 in hand, and that sum, £70,000, was afterwards repaid to the Exchequer. With regard to the presents voted to the officers in command of the expedition sent out to search for the Erebus and Terror, they were confined to those officers who were actually employed in the expedition. He was quite sure that Mr. Peabody, from his position, made contributions from higher principles than the expectation of any marks of approval from this country, but the Government would always feel the greatest gratitude towards those gentlemen, and especially Mr. Peabody, who assisted to fit out that expedition. With regard to the gratuities which had been referred to, it had been an immemorial custom to give £500 to the messenger who brought home a treaty of peace or the news of a great victory, and the custom had been followed in the instances of the fall of Sebastopol, the Treaty of Paris, and the Persian Treaty. With regard to the £2,000 given to the clerks in the Foreign Office, that was the only office to which no extra assistance was afforded during the whole time of the war. There was great pressure upon it, and he was sure the Committee would be of opinion that the Treasury only did what was right in complying with the earnest request of Lord Clarendon and distributing £2,000 among the whole of the clerks, irrespective of their grades. With regard to the charges for special missions, such as Lord Clarendon going to Paris and Earl Granville to Moscow, they were different from those voted the other night for special expenses connected with the embassies, the latter being for couriers, postages, and other extra charges of the current year. With regard to the cost of obtaining a translation of the French tariff, it was thought desirable that the Board of Trade should be in possession of all the different tariffs to meet returns ordered by the House, and to put hon. Members in possession of valuable information. With regard to the item of £1,200 for the Episcopalian clergy of Scotland, that sum was paid last year, and it was the last time the item would appear. With regard to the charges for police at Aldershot, Dovor, and Shorncliffe, where there were large numbers of troops congregated in camp there would be camp-followers, and the police were required, not to keep the soldiers, but to keep the camp-followers in order. The small charge for searching for coal was incurred at the time of the war, when it was thought important to discover new supplies of coal for our steamers. With regard to the charges for Orders of the Garter, it had often been remarked that it was a very mean thing to offer an honour to a military officer for distinguished service in the field, and at the same time expect him to pay £200 or £300 for fees. The Government had therefore come to a decision two years ago to distribute these honours gratuitously, and their decision had received the approval of the House in the last and preceding Sessions of Parliament. With regard to the charges for the passage of governors, they were made upon a regulated scale, and had long been defrayed by the country.

wished to know the principle upon which grants to Ireland were increased and grants to Scotland withdrawn.

explained that the grant to the Irish Presbyterians was a very old one. It originated with the Irish Parliament, and had been voted ever since the Union. That to the Scotch Episcopalians was of recent origin. It was at first only occasional, and did not become regular until about fifteen years ago. Government felt, therefore, they could withdraw one, but not the other.

said, no one would wish that distinguished naval and military officers should be called upon to pay fees when they received a well-merited honour: but he objected to having any fees at all paid to a set of idle, useless officers.

said, he should move the reduction of the Vote by £5,403 4s. 6d., made up of the following items:—Expense incurred on account of police on duty at Dovor and Shorncliffe, £542 13s.; the Commission for inquiry into the Government of Maynooth College, £1,200; fees paid to the Clerk of the Crown on the election of a temporal peer for Ireland, £46 3s. 1d.; for granting a pardon to J. Frost and others, £62 17s. 8d.: expenses incurred on account of intended park at Islington, £1,516 16s. 8d.: Episcopalian Church of Scotland, £1,200; and Mr. Poole, remuneration and expenses while engaged in researches for coal in Nicomedia, and for nitre on the shores of the Black Sea, £834 12s. 1d.

Motion made, and Question proposed, "That a sum, not exceeding £94,507 be granted to Her Majesty, to defray the Charge of Civil Contingencies, to the 31st day of March 1858.

said, that perhaps the hon. Baronet was not aware that all these sums had been already paid. If the Amendment was carried, the only result would be that the sum at the disposal of Government for next year would be £95,000 instead of £100,000, but not one of these items would be affected.

thought that in that case their control of the public finances was a mere farce. He withdrew his Amendment.

asked for an explanation of the sum charged for creating Lord Wensleydale a Peer.

stated that Lord Wensleydale was, in the first instance, created a Peer for life, but it was afterwards found necessary to make him an hereditary Peer. He paid the fees for the first patent himself, but the Government thought that they ought to pay the expenses of the second.

said, he considered the practice of giving a present of £500 to the messenger who brought a treaty to be most objectionable, and not at all applicable to the present day. He gave notice that whenever such an item appeared in the Estimates again he would move that it be disallowed.

said, he wished to ask whether any expedition to Africa were now in preparation?

said, that the last expedition of Dr. Barth to Central Africa had produced very remarkable results, and great benefits were likely to be derived from it both as regarded the interests of commerce and civilization, and therefore the Treasury had adopted the recommendation of Lord Clarendon, that successive expeditions should be sent out for four or five years, as he considered that it was only by following up the experiment in that manner that a way could be opened for private enterprise. Arrangements had been made to carry out his recommendation.

asked to what district the expeditions were to be directed?

replied, that the expeditions were now in preparation. One was to be directed to the north-east coast of Africa, and the other was to ascend the Niger.

said, he must still complain of the item for a robe for the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, as Grand Master of the Order of St. Patrick.

said, he should oppose the Motion, as a clause to the same effect had already been inserted.

said, he rose to move to omit Clause 10, which interfered with a principle that had hitherto been respected, namely, that no person should be obliged to answer any question the tendency of which was to criminate himself. Up to this moment that principle had never been departed from. There were but two Acts which appeared to be departures—namely, the act against bribery at elections, and the Bankrupt Act. In the former case, however, there was a distinct provision that no proceedings should ever be taken against the person for the matters in respect to which he should have been compelled to give evidence; not that his evidence should not be used against him, but that no proceedings should ever be taken. In the second case also, that of the Bankrupt Act, it was provided that if he answered fairly and truly, no subsequent proceedings should be taken. It was true that the clause went on to provide that his evidence should not be used against him on any criminal proceeding, but he thought that provision was insufficient, as though the evidence could not be used, yet questions might be put with a view to obtain information that would enable parties to get up evidence against him. He did not say that the change ought not to be made, the innovation might be a wise and proper one, though he did not think so; but he wished them to consider that they were reversing an old-established principle, and that they ought not to do so without due deliberation.

seconded the Amendment.

said, he was at a loss to know how the clause as it stood altered the law with regard to a witness criminating himself.

said, the principle of the law was that a witness should not be involved in a predicament by any answers he gave on examination, or in other words, that any particular question he may have answered shall not be used against him. But it did not go on to provide that if a Trustee were compelled to disclose certain matters which would involve him in a criminal prosecution, he should be therefore held to be exempt from punishment. All he proposed to do was this—That a Trustee should be bound to answer faithfully and fully as to the management of the trust property, and that he should not, by reason of his being a trustee, take advantage of that position to commit a fraud. He wanted to carry out the great principle that a man should not set up his own wrong to enable him to escape from being punished.

said, the hon. and learned Gentleman (Mr. I. Butt) had mistaken the object of the clause. What he proposed was that a Trustee, being already bound by civil contract to answer faithfully and fully every question which might be put to him concerning the use which he had made of the property entrusted to him, when he had committed a crime by stealing some of that property, should not afterwards be allowed to set up his theft as a defence to a civil suit in which he was required to make a full discovery. The clause was intended to apply solely to proceedings in a court of equity.

said, it would be in the recollection of the House that when the 20th Section was under consideration a good deal of discussion took place with regard to it, and the result was-that it was postponed. The preceding clause declared that no prosecution should be proceeded with until the matter had been brought before a Judge of one of the Superior Courts, or the Attorney General, or the Solicitor General, &c. The Committee thought it might be desirable that the accused party should have a bearing previous to an indictment being preferred, and, in order to meet its view, he should propose the insertion of the following words: "But he"—that is the Judge— or the Attorney General, or the Solicitor General—" shall in every case give the party accused an opportunity of answering the charge, where the same can in his opinion be done with a due regard to the interests of justice."

said, he hoped the right hon. Gentleman would not press the Bill at that late hour. When the Bill was last before the House, he represented to the Secretary for Ireland that it was a measure in which the people of Dublin were deeply interested, and it should not pass without giving them the fullest opportunity of considering its provisions. The Corporation of Dublin had stated by petition many objections to the Bill, and they complained that not even the heads of the Bill had been submitted to them previous to its introduction to Parliament. If the Bill was read a second time that night he did not think it could pass during the present Session, especially as he should consider it to be his duty to give it his most strenuous opposition. He begged to move as an Amendment that the Bill be read a second time that day three months.

said, that nineteen days had elapsed since the Bill was printed and distributed amongst hon. Members, so that the hon. and learned Gentleman could hardly say there was any surprise. In deference to the Corporation of Dublin he last year withdrew the Bill, and had since, after carefully examining their petition, and the speeches of those hon. Members who then opposed it, expunged from it every objection of which they complained. The hon. and learned Gentleman had not pointed out a single objection to the measure as it now stood, and which merely consolidated into one Act all that was really useful in the nine separate and conflicting Acts by which the Dublin police was at present regulated. It also proposed to do away with one of the three existing Police Offices, and thereby effect a saving of £4,000 a year, and to reduce the number of police magistrates from seven to five, increasing, however, on account of the extra labour thus imposed on them, the salaries of the remaining five from £600 to £800 per annum. There was, in the Bill, no provision for extending the power of the police, but the real wish of the Corporation of Dublin was to place the whole charge of the force upon the finances of the country, which already bore one half the cost, for they asked to have the Dublin police placed upon the same footing as the Irish constabulary, or else themselves to have the control of that body. ["Hear, hear," from Mr. BUTT], The hon. and learned Member for Youghal cheered that proposal, but was he willing that, in return for being entrusted with such control, the ratepayers of Dublin should bear the whole cost of their own police? The Bill merely consolidated the law, and was in all respects a very beneficial Act, enabling the meanest capacity to understand what the police law of Dublin was by reducing a very complicated law into the provisions of one Bill. He certainly should press the Bill to a second reading.

thought that, if the Government had the management of the police, they ought to pay all the expenses attendant thereupon, though if he were a citizen of Dublin he should be willing to pay any extra expense to have the control of that force, for at present the inhabitants of that city were subject to much vexatious tyranny at their hands. There was a case in Dublin of a man being dragged off by a police-constable for using obscene language, and when the constable was asked what the language was, he replied that the man had actually "d—d the police." There were most objectionable powers reenacted in the Bill, and one of them was with regard to obscene language. He should oppose the second reading of the Bill.

denied that the Attorney General had any authority for stating that the Bill was similar to the Bill of last year, except that the objectionable clauses had been struck out. The Amendments of the Attorney General had not removed all the objections to the Bill. The Attorney General had not, as he should have done, consulted those who last year made the objections to the Bill. The Attorney General, before he brought in a Bill affecting the municipal laws of Dublin, ought to have given full notice. It appeared, however, that the authorities of the city of Dublin had been taken quite by surprise by the present Bill.

said, it was his intention of giving the strongest possible opposition to the Bill in all its future stages. The Bill had been referred to a committee of the Corporation in Dublin, and they had not had time to report. The members of the corporation had urged him and his colleague to take every possible step to arrest the further progress of the Bill. He would suggest, however, whether it would not be better to bring the Bill in next Session, and then refer it to a Select Committee, or at all events to refer it to a Committee during the present Session.

said, the Bill had been printed nineteen days, and had been before the House during the whole of that time. Not one single substantial objection had been made to the Bill. Under the circumstances he hoped the House would consent to the second reading. His hon. and learned Friend would be prepared to entertain any suggestions before it went into Committee.

said, there was the strongest objection among the people of Dublin to an increase of power being invested in the commissioners of police in that city.

said, that the Bill empowered Government to purchase certain properties required for the extension of the Public Offices.

said, he hoped that the right hon. Baronet would give the House some approximate notion as to the amount of money that would be required. With wars in Persia and China on out hands, he thought the House should know the amount of the demand that was likely to be made on it.

said, that the Government were only proposing to carry out a portion of the recommendations of the Select Committee of last Session on public offices. The amount which the Government intended to ask to enable them to purchase the site of the new offices was £270,000; but the present Bill contained no money clauses, but only such as were requisite to empower the Public Works Commissioners to purchase the land. Should the House of Commons grant the money for that purpose, and the third reading of the Bill should not be taken until after the vote for money which would appear in Class No. 7 of the Civil Service Estimates,

said, he would give the right hon. Baronet notice that, although this Bill had gone through Committee at a railroad pace, the country would never sanction the enormous scheme of building which it contemplated. Bricks and mortar too often led to bread and water, and he for one would rather see great men in little offices than little men in great offices. He warned the House that unless they kept a sharp eye on this matter of the public offices the country would be involved in an expenditure of £5,000,000 before they knew where they were. The present Parliament were supposed to be more jealous custodians of the public parse than the last, and he certainly should oppose any such extravagant plan as he believed to be in contemplation.

said, that if the House did not agree to the Vote, the Bill would fall to the ground. The Government had no large scheme of building in contemplation; they merely intended to build a new Foreign Office, a new Colonial Office, and a new War Department. Any one who saw the Foriegn Office must admit that a new building was necessary; and with respect to the War Department, its business was now carried on in various buildings, and to remove it to one edifice was a measure not only of metropolitan improvement but of administrative.

observed, that he thought that the best thing Government could do under this Bill would be to adopt the plan he had suggested.

said, he did not think they had done their duty to their constituents by passing such a Bill through Committee at such an hour of the night.

then moved that the House adjourn. They would have to meet early the next day, and it would neither be fair to Mr. Speaker nor to their own constitutions to sit longer at present.

who had a Bill on the Orders of the Day (the Industrial Schools Bill), expressed a hope that the hon. Member would not persist in his Motion.