said, he wished to ask the hon. Member for Bath (Mr. Tite), Whether it is his intention to proceed this evening with the Second Reading of this Bill?

, in reply, said, he begged to say that he intended to postpone it for a week, and then, if it were read a second time, he should propose to refer it to a Select Committee. The measure was somewhat urgent, inasmuch as it referred to a debt of £200,000 which had been cast upon the Board of "Works by the Commissioners of Sewers.

said, he rose to ask the Chief Commissioner of Works, Whether he has received the Report of Sir Roderick Murchison and Professor Faraday on the processes for preserving the external Stonework of the Houses of Parliament, and whether he has any objection to lay the same before the House, together with Copies of the Instructions or Minutes of Reference to those gentlemen, and any Correspondence not already before the House, which has passed between the Board of Works and the respective patentees, the Referees, or Sir Charles Barry?

said, he had received the Report of Professor Faraday and Sir Roderick Murchison upon the plans for preserving the external stonework of the Houses of Parliament, but he did not feel at liberty to lay those opinions before the House, they having been given for his guidance, and not being intended to receive publicity. He should, of course, hold himself responsible for any action he might take in consequence of those Reports. He would have no objection to lay upon the table the correspondence that had taken place with the patentees and referees

said, he wished to know, Whether the right hon. Gentleman will include in the Papers any instructions or letter of reference to Professor Faraday and Sir Roderick Murchison, in order that the House may know exactly what is the case that has been submitted to those gentlemen?

said, he had no objection to comply with the desire of the hon. and learned Member.

said, he would beg to ask the Under Secretary of State for the Colonies, Whether any authentic intelligence has been received with respect to the disturbances reported to have occurred between certain Native tribes in the province of Taranaki, in New Zealand, through a disputed land claim connected with the movement in favour of a Native King, and in consequence of which Captain Murray, commanding a detachment of the 65th Regiment, had proclaimed Martial Law, and that Her Majesty's Ship Niger had left Auckland for the scene of action with considerable reinforcements; and whether there is reason to believe that these disturbances would not spread beyond the province?

replied that no disturbances had taken place in the province of Taranaki in the sense of any armed insurrection by the natives, nor had there been any disputed land claim connected with a movement in favour of a Native King. What had taken place was, that a piece of land had been bought by the Government from the native owner, a Chief who was willing and desirous to sell it, and the authorities were proceeding to survey it, when they were interrupted by another chief, who, however, did not pretend to have any claim to the land. The question was one of great importance, both to the natives and European inhabitants of New Zealand, inasmuch as it concerned the maintenance of the original treaty with the native chiefs. The Governor proceeded himself in the Niger to New Plymouth with a strong detachment of troops. He (Mr. C. Fortescue) had that day received a letter, from which it appeared that the Governor was meeting the difficulty with great prudence and firmness, and there was reason to hope that no collision would take place with the natives; but if unfortunately there should be a disturbance, it would not, it was believed, extend to the province of Auckland.

said, he would beg to ask the Secretary of State for India, What were the grounds for the removal of Brigadier Innes from his command as Brigadier at Ferozepore, in May, 1857, after the perfect approbation of the Commander-in-Chief had been conveyed, in the Adjutant General's Letter of the 19th of the same month, to that Officer, for the judgment, vigour, and decision with which he had acted at the commencement of the Mutiny in Bengal?

said, he was not quite sure that that was a proper question to be put in the House of Commons; but his answer was that the Indian Government had thought it right, for the interest of the Queen's service, that that Officer should be removed.

said, he rose to ask the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, Whether, in consequence of the remonstrance of Her Majesty's Government, any promise or security has been given by the Russian Government that the graves of the officers and men of the British Army, who are interred in the Crimea, shall be protected and held sacred in future?

replied, that three despatches had been written, bearing date respectively the 31st January, the 4th February, and the 24th May, remonstrating with the Russian Government on the desecration of the graves at Sebastopol and its neighbourhood. The Russian Government, in reply, promised that a full inquiry should be made; and they said they had every desire to preserve the graves in a decent manner. They also said that there was some difficulty in doing so, on account of the graves being scattered; and he (Lord John Russell) had been told that the land on which they were belonged to divers persons who were not amenable to the Russian Government. Her Majesty's Ministers had directed the Consul General at Odessa to place a person in charge of the British cemeteries, at a salary of £100 a year, in order to take care of them.

said, he rose to move for leave to bring in a Bill to provide for the uniform registration of births, deaths, and marriages in Ireland. The good effects of the kindred system of registration which had been established in England since 1836, were now fully appreciated, and he would remind them that the noble Lord who introduced the Bill in that year (Lord John Russell), was asked whether it was intended to extend its provisions to Ireland. The noble Lord said he was aware of the great importance of the inquiry, but he would rather wait and see the effect of the English Bill before he proposed to extend its provisions to Ireland. A quarter of a century had elapsed since that time, and therefore he (Lord Naas, hoped he might bespeak the favourable consideration of the noble Lord for the present measure. In Ireland the want of a system of registration of births, deaths, and marriages had been daily felt. For sanitary and medical purposes it had become almost indespensable; and was of no less importance for the elucidation of questions relating to the descent of property. The opinions of Mr. Armstrong, as cited in the Registrar General's third annual Report, of Mr. Howell, the inspector of factories, and finally, of Dr. Farr, who had considered this subject probably more than any man in England, were unanimous as to the inconveniences experienced in all these respects from the absence of such a system in Ireland. As, too, we were on the eve of taking the decennial census, it became important that not a moment should be lost in entertaining this question. At the International Statistical Congress held at Paris in 1855, the very highest authorities expressed their opinions strongly as to the want of such a system. Its absence indeed seemed incomprehensible to some gentlemen there present, who thought it must be in consequence of some unconquerable antipathy which England felt towards Ireland, whilst others had gone so far as to gravely state it as another proof of the extreme oppression exercised by one country over another, and to allege that it was not allowed for fear lest the Irish should believe they were of much more importance than they really were. Of all the nations of Europe there were only five not possessed of this statistical information—Spain, Greece, Hungary, Turkey, and Ireland—and of these the first four were certainly not the most civilized, or indeed, celebrated for progress of any kind whatever. Even in the States of the Church an accurate account was taken every year of the population. The want was the more remarkable, as in Ireland they had the most complete system of statistics upon every other subject of any nation in the world. There was, first, the Ordnance survey, then a property valuation giving the value and size of almost every tenement in the country, there were agricultural statistics furnished yearly, and criminal and police law statistics, conducted in the best and most accurate manner; and it really only required a system of returns of births, marriages, and deaths, to make the information complete. The means by which he proposed to carry out this system of registration were less expensive and more simple than the method employed in England. In Ireland the only registration at present existing was with respect to Protestant marriages solemnized by ministers of the Established Church, or of the Protestant Dissenters. He proposed to extend the registration to those celebrated by the Roman Catholic clergy. The registration of births and deaths he proposed to take in a different way from the marriages. As to them he availed himself of the present registration districts, and proposed to make the present registrars of marriages the registrars for the district. He also proposed that the Lord Lieutenant should have power to appoint the chief constable at each station of the constabulary an assistant registrar. Thus they would have 1,700 assistant registrars scattered over the whole country, there being about that number of constabulary stations in Ireland. The Registrar General would distribute the necessary books to these constables, with proper instructions for making the entries. It was not proposed that the constables should keep any papers of importance, but that they should forward them at intervals to the registrar of the district, who after taking transcripts should forward the original documents to the Registrar General. As to marriages, the Registrar General was to furnish the officiating clergyman of every Roman Catholic place of worship with the necessary documents for affording this information. These would all be filled up in duplicate by the clergyman, who was to retain them until they were filled up, when one of the copies was to be sent to the Registrar General, and the other to be retained in the clergyman's hands. Beyond that it was proposed that the Registrar General should furnish every quarter certified copies of the necessary statistical information for the year, and that he should publish in the usual way the information which he had thus received. Then, as to the payments; he proposed that every Assistant Registrar, that is to say, the constable, should receive for every birth registered by him 6d.; the registrar for every transcript he made 1d.; for every entry of marriage sent to the Registrar General, 2d. Every clergyman authorized to register marriages for so doing was to receive for each the sum of 1s. These and other small fees would be defrayed to the extent of about £9,000 a year out of the Consolidated Fund, and to about an equal extent out of the local rates; the whole expense being under £20,000 a year. These were the main provisions of the Bill. There were also clauses providing for the registration of persons born at sea, and an important clause enabling persons already married, and where marriages were not properly registered, to become registered. He should be most happy to receive any suggestion that might be made for the improvement of the Bill. It had been carefully prepared by persons well acquainted with the subject, and he sincerely hoped that Ireland would not be left another year without a proper system of registration.

said, he was extremely glad that the noble Lord continued to take, in an independent position, the same interest in this subject that he did when in office. The noble Lord had had the honour of laying upon the table the first Bill that was ever proposed to remedy the great want that was now experienced of a registration in Ireland. He concurred with the noble Lord in regarding this as a matter of great importance, not merely in a scientific point of view, but as affecting the interests of the poor of Ireland, who might often be called on to prove the place of their birth in making out a title to legacies left them, perhaps in the Colonies or the United States of America. He was glad the noble Lord had introduced the subject, and he hoped the present Session would not pass over without some measure or other in connection with it being carried into a law. The subject had occupied a great deal of attention and consideration in Ireland, and two plans had been prepared. One was that of the noble Lord, which proposed mainly to effect a system of registration through the aid of the constabulary, and the other was somewhat more analogous to the system adopted in England and Scotland—namely, to obtain the desired information by means of the services of the local authorities, the clerks of the unions, and medical officers employed in the various districts. Ireland possessed a system of medical relief more complete almost than that of any other country. It had more than 700 medical districts, and the total number of dispensaries exceeded 1,000. It was therefore a great question whether it would not be expedient to enlist, in the aid of the Government in collecting the statistical information necessary for a complete registration, the scientific knowledge of the medical profession. It was proposed that, ordinarily under the Registrar General in Dublin, the clerks of the unions should be the registrars; and the information with regard to births and deaths should be collected by the medical officers for each of the dispensary districts. As regarded marriages, it was proposed that the law should remain as it was so far as the marriages of Protestants were involved. With regard to Roman Catholic and other marriages, a machinery very like that proposed by his noble Friend would have to be introduced. He must say he did not think the employment of the constabulary would be so good a machinery as that to which he had referred. In the first place, he presumed that they would proceed in this matter on the basis of the system which prevailed in England—that whatever was paid for out of the Consolidated Fund in England, would be paid for out of the Consolidated Fund in Ireland, and that whatever was paid for by local rating in England, would be paid for by local rating in Ireland. If that was to be the rule, the largest portion of the expenditure would fall upon the local rates; and by adopting the machinery proposed by the noble Lord (Lord Naas), that of the constabulary, it appeared to him (Mr. Cardwell) that they would at the outset experience a difficulty in employing the constabulary, who were paid out of the Consolidated Fund. In the next place, he was not sure whether it would be agreeable that all information should be communicated to the police; and, thirdly, they were liable at any moment to be called away upon other duties. If, on the other hand, they adopted the machinery of the Poor-law medical officers, they would have the local funds paid to persons appointed by local authorities, and who were in constant communication with the ratepayers. It seemed to him that upon the whole there were very great merits in both plans, but he was inclined to think that the preponderance was in favour of the plan for entrusting it to the local authorities. He would now give notice that in the course of the week, he would lay upon the table a Bill which had been prepared before the present Session, but which from press of public business he had been prevented from earlier introducing, and which was based upon the plan of local management and entrusting the working of the system to local officers. The House would then have both plans before it, and his anxiety would be that one or other of those plans in the course of the present Session should pass into law. If he should have reason to believe that the plan of the noble Lord met with more general approbation, he should have every assistance which he (Mr. Cardwell) could give him, in carrying that measure into effect. He sincerely trusted that the Session would not pass without having provided some means of keeping up, by detailed information, coupled with a scientific application of that information, a complete record of the whole movements of the population and the social progress of Ireland.

said, he wished to move for a Select Committee to inquire into the truth of the allegations contained in the Petition of the Ayr and Maybole Junction Railway Company, presented in August last, and printed in the Eleventh Report of the Select Committee on Public Petitions, Appendix 202, relative to the application of the grant for Portpatrick and Donaghadee Harbours. The object of the Motion was to carry into effect the object of a petition presented some time since on this subject, in which the petitioners expressed their readiness to agree to complete a junction by railway between Portpatrick and Glasgow, and also between Donaghadee and Belfast, and to make important improvements in both harbours, on receiving a guarantee from the Government that a mail packet service should be esta- blished between the two ports, thus completing the communication between Glasgow and Belfast. The late Government had postponed any grant of money for the improvement of the harbours until the completion of the line from Portpatrick to Glasgow and Dumfries; now the railway company contended that they had been exempted from this condition, and that it was enough if they formed a communication with Dumfries, leaving the traffic to find its way from there to Glasgow. The effect of this would be to give the Portpatrick Company eighty miles of traffic, and to cause that additional cost and inconvenience to the public. The company had been bound under a penalty to complete their line to Portpatrick in five years; this they had done; but this did not release them from the other part of their engagement to complete the communication to Glasgow. Nevertheless the Government had seen fit to release them from this obligation. This was done, as alleged, by a letter from the Secretary to the Treasury; but such a letter could not set aside former Minutes. Unless the Government would reconsider their decision he hoped that the House would grant him the Select Committee he asked for. He had no desire to cast reflections upon the character of a gentleman who was now engaged in the public service in the East, or to throw aspersions on Mr. Wilson, but he believed that under the direction of the right hon. Gentleman the Treasury had adopted a course which must have been founded on some misapprehension of the real merits of the case. The subject, he thought, was one at all events which called for further investigation; and he hoped for the support of Irish Members on both sides of the House in the Motion he now submitted; for every one travelling from Ireland to Scotland was interested in the question.

said, he would not detain the House but for a few moments while stating the grounds why the House should not agree to the Motion. It was unnecessary to go into the question whether Donaghadee and Portpatrick were the right points between which the passage ought to be established between Ireland and Scotland, because in 1855 a memorial was presented to the Government with respect to a communication between Scotland and Ireland, and the matter was referred to Commissioners, who reported in favour of a communication between Portpatrick and Donaghadee. A Bill was accordingly brought before Parliament for the purpose of effecting that object, provided it could be brought into connection with railways to the north of Scotland, and upon that application was made to the Government for assistance in the shape of money. A correspondence took place with the Treasury, and a Minute was issued by which they gave a distinct pledge to the promoters of the Dumfries and Portpatrick Railway to propose a vote for the harbours in question, on condition that the railway was completed within a certain time. Parliament had voted the money, and the works were now in progress. Under those circumstances, he did not think that the House of Commons could properly grant the Select Committee which was asked for. The contract which had been made by the Treasury could not be broken unless some collusion of a culpable nature could be proved to have existed between the Secretary to the Treasury and the railway company. Such a charge, if to be brought forward at all, should have been made last Session when Mr. Wilson was still in the country; but there was, in truth, not a shadow of evidence in support of it. The Treasury Minute was drawn up in the regular form, and as the whole transaction had reference to a railway Bill, which, when before Parliament, any party interested could have opposed, no undue secrecy could be alleged. The only contention was that the Government should, by the small outlay of £20,000 on the harbour, force the Portpatrick Company to spend, not only £500,000 on a line eastwards to Dumfries, but £300,000 more on a line towards Ayr. He thought the Government had done very well in obtaining security that the line from Portpatrick to Dumfries should be made, and he hoped the House would not grant a Select Committee in order to re-open a positive contract which had been recognized by three successive Governments, and adopted by the House of Commons, and on the faith of which large and expensive works had been commenced.

said, that last year he had asked whether the Government intended to expend this £20,000, and he had been informed that no more money would be laid out until the conditions of the grant were fulfilled. He thought that the Government, having in the first instance promised to assist the promoters, were bound to carry out their engagements.

said, he was as anxious as the hon. Gentleman to maintain the just power of the Treasury in its Minutes, but the original Minute of the 15th of August, 1856, undertaking that £20,000 should be laid out in the improvement of the harbour of Portpatrick, was upon condition that two railways should be made—one from Portpatrick to Dumfries, and the other along the coast, in connection with the present Ayr and Maybole Railway. The complaint of the persons interested in the coast line was that by a subsequent Minute in 1857, and by a letter of Mr. Wilson, the Portpatrick Company were told the money should be expended on the harbour if only the line to Dumfries were made. It was not fair to vary the basis of the whole transaction, and he thought the Government ought to withhold the remaining £10,000 until these persons were satisfied.

said, that as the Representative of the county in which Portpatrick was situate, he wished to add that the Portpatrick Company had never proposed to make the line to the north; and, as there was nothing to prevent the Ayr and Maybole Company making it, he did not see that they had any just ground of complaint.

pointed out that when the grant was first made it was on the understanding that there should be a line of communication made between Portpatrick and Glasgow on the one hand, and Portpatrick and Dumfries and London on the other. This condition had never been carried out, and the country at large, therefore, had not got the benefit which this grant was intended to secure. He hoped the Treasury would stand to the sum of £20,000, and not consent to any further increase.

said, he wished move for a Return showing the Salaries of the Officers and Assistants employed in the British Museum, the South Kensington Museum, the Museum of Practical Geology, and on the Ordnance Geological Survey; specifying the duties of each person, the date of his appointment, and any regulations which may exist regarding increase of Salary; also stating when and by what amount any such Salaries may have been augmented.

said, he thought it was not desirable for the Return to be ordered in its present shape.

said, he had understood that it was to be an unopposed Return.

said, he considered it to be unnecessary to include the British Museum, because the information in question relative to that institution would have to be adduced before a Committee now sitting.

said, he rose to move for copies of the examination papers, and the answers thereto, by the candidates for the appointment of factory boys, before the Civil Service Commissioners at Portsmouth, in January, 1860. Without some explanation on his part this might seem a very small matter to bring before the attention of the House, but he should show the House that it really involved points of considerable interest and public importance. The way in which the question originated was this. A lad in whom he took some interest had been twice examined for a berth as a factory boy at Portsmouth, and on both occasions, although not placed on the list of candidates sufficiently high to obtain him the situation, he obtained a place very nearly equal to that of the successful candidates. In January last he went up for a third examination, but in the interval between the second and third examinations the conduct of the examination had been transferred from the schoolmasters to the Civil Service Commissioners. On the third occasion, however, he not only was not successful in getting an appointment, but his name was included in a list of those who were stated to be so utterly incompetent as scarcely to entitle them to be placed on the list of failures. This struck him as being a very singular falling off, and he made inquiries into the matter, when he found that the lad's failing was attributed to his bad spelling. He had not only obtained the evidence of the schoolmaster that the boy was actually superior in abilities to several of those who got appointments; and, as it was alleged that he had failed on account of his spelling, he could only say that he had pages of the boy's spelling in his possession, and that he spelt as correctly as any hon. Member of that House. He had therefore come to the conclusion that the boy had not had that justice to which he was entitled, and he had applied to the Civil Service Commissioners, through the Secretary of the Admiralty, to see the work done at the examination by this boy, and by the five boys who had gained appointments. In order to procure clear and comprehensive information, he had also asked for the examination papers used at the general examinations. He made his application, as he had said, to the noble Lord the Secretary of the Admiralty, and in the course of time he received, through Mr. Kempe, an answer from Mr. Maitland, the Secretary of the Civil Service Commissioners. That answer gave the subject a much more serious aspect, and the real and important question was this, whether the Civil Service Commissioners were to be considered from that time forth a totally irresponsible body. That was the real question at issue. Mr. Maitland stated that as the Civil Service Commissioners seemed to be accused of unfairness in the conduct of the examination, they declined to notice the matter in any way whatever. They further expressed the opinion that if their decisions were called into account their services would be no longer useful to the country. Now, he had preferred no charge of unfairness against them; no doubt they had every wish to do that which was just and right towards all the candidates who presented themselves, but they had not the attribute of infallibility. He asked the House whether the tone assumed by them in this communication was such as ought to be assumed by any body of public servants. Were they to say that they would not, under any circumstances, deal with any charge preferred against them? If they were enabled to maintain such a position they would establish a privilege which no other body possessed; yet that was the position claimed by these gentlemen. He could not share such an opinion, and he should be surprised if the House sanctioned it. He had stated, in his reply, to the Civil Service Commissioners, that he preferred no charge of unfairness, but that he demurred to the position laid down by them, and he stated that he knew no instance of servants of the Crown being entitled to such a claim; and, further, that he should take an early opportunity of bringing the question before the House of Commons; and his purpose in moving for these papers was to raise the question of the right of the claim asserted by these gentlemen. It seemed to him a position so monstrous and untenable that he could not think the House of Common would assent to it. He might be told that at the universities there was no appeal against the decision of the examiners; but there was really no affinity between the cases. Then he might be told that there was a Committee sitting up stairs in connection with the proceedings of the Civil Service Commissioners, and that he must wait till that Committee had reported; but he bogged to say that there was nothing in the proceedings of that Committee which affected the question he wished to raise. With the Civil Service Commissioners rested the whole patronage of the country, and was it to be endured that no one, not even the House of Commons, was to impugn their decisions? Supposing an hon. Member were to ask a question of the noble Lord at the head of the Government, the House would be rather astonished to hear the noble Lord reply that as the question implied a charge against him he should not take any notice of it, and still more astonished would the House be if the noble Lord were to add that the utility of the Ministry would be entirely destroyed if he were to answer such charges. Well, then, were the Commissioners to assume a position which not even the head of the Government would take upon himself? Were they to be the only irresponsible body of men in the country? To suppose that they never made mistakes would be absurd, and if the Government supported and the House sanctioned their claim to entire irresponsibility he believed it would cause great surprise and regret throughout the country.

Sir, I heard with satisfaction the statement of the hon. Gentleman that he intended nothing offensive to the Civil Service Commissioners in making this application. I quite admit that as he has stated the question, it is one of considerable importance. My own view differs entirely from his, but the importance of the subject I quite allow. As it stands, the question is a simple one, which may be stated without much difficulty and without much detail. As respects the particular person in whom the hon. Member feels an interest, there is no difficulty in explaining whatever he has referred to as being apparently peculiar. The method of proceeding adopted by the Commissioners is that certain elementary acquirements are treated as absolutely indispensable—and unless a fixed and positive standard with regard to those acquirements is reached by the candidate, the Commissioners will not take cognizance of any other acquirements he may have attained. Such a regulation and distinction between what is essential and what is of secondary or less absolute importance is, I believe, both perfectly well founded in the nature of the case, and justified by the practice of otheir institutions. In the case of the young person referred to by the hon. Member there was one particular point in the elementary acquirements regarded as essential in which the candidate proved to be defective, and therefore the Commissioners could not ascertain his efficiency in the other branches to which the examination extended. The hon. Member has said that he has many pages of the boy's spelling in his possession which do not exhibit any deficiencies. It must, however, be obvious that positive evidence is much better than negative, and the appeal from the Commissioners to the hon. Member's judgment involves the whole question. It is not alleged that there has been any breach of faith upon this occasion. All persons applying for public appointments are made aware of the conditions upon which those appointments depend, and they all know that an examination must be submitted to, and that from the decision of the examiner there is no appeal, either to the House as a whole or to individual Members. The hon. Gentleman considered the claim of the Civil Service Commissioners unheard of, because they declined to submit their proceedings in particular cases for review; but, so far from being unheard of, it is a claim that is supported by analogy of the proceedings of every other department, and which is grounded upon the necessities of the case. The hon. Gentleman says if my noble Friend at the head of the Government was to say that he would not take notice of any charge that might be brought against him it would be a monstrous claim, and therefore so much more is it a monstrous claim on the part of the Commissioners. But I draw a broad distinction between acts in the nature of executive acts of an ordinary kind, and those particular cases where an essentially judicial function has to be performed. Every public servant who has others under him may be called upon to do something in the nature of a judicial act, by punishing, suspending, or dismissing those under him; and I never heard of a public officer who had performed acts of this kind who did not lodge a claim for his acts of exemption from review just as in this case. There was a very marked case which occurred some years ago, which bears upon this point. A gentleman, whose name I need not mention—an officer of the Customs' establishment, a landing-waiter—was accused of culpability, or connivance at certain frauds, whereby the public revenue was materially injured. A Royal Commission was appointed, of which I was a member, and over which Lord Granville Somerset presided. We instituted a most laborious investigation into these frauds, and we became perfectly convinced that the landing-waiter who was charged with connivance, and had on that account been dismissed, was entirely innocent. We heard all parties; we made a kind of judicial investigation; we reported to the Crown that this gentleman was innocent; but the Chairman of the Board of Customs declined to accede to our recommendation that the gentleman should be restored to his situation. An hon. Member came down armed with our Report, but failed to induce the House to interfere with or to review the acts of the head of a department, who declared that any such interference would be destructive of discipline and injurious to the public service. The gentleman was afterwards re-appointed—and a most deserving public officer he has proved—but not in consequence of any covenant on the part of the authorities to do so. That is an instance which occurs to me, and if ever there was a case in which it was essential to uphold the independence of public functionaries, I think the case now brought forward is one. The whole weight of personal feeling and political influence is continually working against the Civil Service Commissioners, and unless this House and the Government afford them full support it will be impossible for those gentlemen to exercise satisfactorily the functions that have been assigned to them. I do not complain of the hon. Gentleman for finding fault with the Commissioners, but the question is not whether they are infallible, nor whether they have made in this case an error—as it is possible they may have done—but whether it is absolutely necessary for the proper discharge of their functions that, so long as those functions are discharged with honesty and general intelligence, their acts should be exempt from review. That demand is supported by the universal practice of all examining bodies whose examinations are entitled to any respect. The hon. Gentleman says the Universities are not in point; but, if they are not, the particulars in which they differ from the present case give this case greater strength. The Universities are independent bodies, and their conduct cannot be brought before the House in particular cases; they are free from political influence which presses upon public departments. It is not from any personal feeling towards the Commissioners that I say we ought not to call upon them to submit their proceedings to the House, but because if you do so in one case other demands will arise, and these concessions will make the exercise of their functions useless and delusive, affording no security to the public, but working much mischief, because delusive. It must be borne in mind that the Commissioners have in no way declined the jurisdiction of the House. They do not deny that it is within the power of this House to inquire into the acts of any public officer; but the question is, whether it would be prudent or politic to exercise those powers. I think it would be most imprudent and impolitic, and would defeat the useful labours of the Civil Service Commissioners. No claim can be greater upon the public gratitude than the claims of those gentlemen, but it is not upon that ground that I hope the hon. Gentleman will not press his Motion, or that, if he does, the House will not support him. I oppose the Motion because there are certain prerogatives, belonging essentially to the discharge of the duties of the Commissioners, which it would be against the interests of the country that: we should deprive them of.

Sir, I quite agree with the right hon. Gentleman as to the importance and responsibility attaching to the duties assigned to the Civil Service Commissioners, and it is for that reason that I desire to see the utmost publicity given to their proceedings. Besides, the general question as to the desirability of examinations for the Civil Service, has been by no means quite decided by the public opinion of the country; and I think it will be found that there is a good deal more to be said on the other side of the question. I would say that in a matter which has not been fully determined by public opinion, it is only fair that the public should be fully informed as to all the transactions of this great Commission. If the power intrusted to it is to be exercised in entire secrecy, and not to be subject to the supervision of Parliament, I believe it will degenerate into a very irresponsible power. Certain I am that if publicity is not given to their proceedings, an immense amount of public odium will accumulate upon this Commission; and I think it is only fair and just to the Commissioners that such a Motion as that before the House should be at once acceded to.

said, he also was in favour of the Motion, and he trusted that the House would not remain satisfied with the explanations they had just heard from the Chancellor of the Exchequer, for they amounted to but a very lame attempt to dispose of the matter. The question really in issue was, whether the whole patronage of the Crown should or should not be placed in the hands of officers wielding irresponsible power. The right hon. Gentleman the Chancellor of the Exchequer had nicknamed the functions of those officers by characterising them as "essentially judicial." He (Lord R. Cecil) had never before heard such an application of the term; but if such proceedings were to be called "essentially judicial," and if the House of Commons were to be debarred from any power of reviewing the decisions of those Civil Ser- vice Commissioners, then he felt no hesitation in saying that they had lost much more than they had gained by the establishment of such a system. And he would remind the House that not more than two years ago a Government was turned out, not wholly, but mainly, because its appointments were considered improper. But, accepting for the moment, that these proceedings ought to be considered "essentially judicial" in their character, had ever anybody heard of essentially judicial proceedings being carried on in England with closed doors? The right hon. Gentleman the Chancellor of the Exchequer, in alluding to the examinations at the Universities, had called the attention of the House to the fact that the decisions arrived at in Oxford and Cambridge were subject to no review; but the examinations were conducted in public, so that the bearing of the students could be observed, and some opinion be formed as to whether the decisions of the examiners were fair or not, rendering them, therefore, subject to censure. But the decisions arrived at by the Civil Service Commissioners were not only left without review, but the examinations were conducted in private. He, however, demurred entirely to the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge being cited in justification of the Civil Service examination system. The degrees they granted had no influence on the fortunes of any one, save those to whom they were given; whereas all the inferior offices of the Crown were recruited from these Civil Service examinations. There was no analogy between the two. It was of the essence of a free country that the disposal of its public offices should be reviewed and criticised and inquired into by the representatives of the people. The right hon. Gentleman had spoken of these Commissioners in complimentary terms. He had no doubt they conducted their duties with great ability and impartiality; he had no ground to impugn the one or the other; but it should be borne in mind that impartiality and ability were not always secured by high names and distinguished position, and that this system which we were establishing might last for generations. Without imputing corruption to the Commissioners, which he would be slow to do, he might still, without insulting them, remark on their eccentricities and crotchets. For instance, they might have peculiar views about education and other matters coming within their province, and they might thrust these peculiar crotchets forward to the detriment of the public service and to the injury of the youths they had to examine and the system they were called upon to administer. He would even go further, and, discarding his allusions to hypothesis, call the attention of the House to the Report last issued by these Commissioners, and especially to the details of the examinations for Indian appointments. In those examinations the Commissioners had been allowed to exercise their most extensive and unfettered powers, and in the results arrived at the House would find materials to fully justify the terms he had used—"eccentricities and crotchets" It would naturally be supposed that in granting Civil Service appointments some attention would be paid to the qualifications of the individual to perform the duties of the position. It was impossible to examine a man in the art of leading an army, or of governing a province; but he could be examined as to his knowledge of Sanscrit and Arabic, and in respect to these Indian examinations, upon his knowledge of those and their kindred languages would depend very much his efficiency in wielding the power with which he desired to be entrusted. It was, therefore, a rational conclusion that the Commissioners would encourage those who possessed these special qualifications for Government in India. But what was the fact? It would be found that men possessing high marks in Arabic and Sanscrit were rejected, whilst men who had no marks at all for proficiency in those languages, but whose knowledge of Latin and Greek, or other languages equally foreign to the duties of the position, had been found good, were chosen. With such facts as these before them, they were not to suppose these Commissioners were, as a matter of course, immaculate; and unless some check, such as that adopted with respect to every other paid servant of the Crown, were established, it would not be surprising if the duty were improperly performed. He agreed that the system was at present on its trial, but it would be found that its direct tendency was to turn all the offices of the Crown into a set of exhibitions for the schoolboys of the country. In no other undertaking was this system adopted; every private firm would look upon it with distrust. There was nothing that commended itself to common sense in the idea that a mere successful book-worm was, as a matter of course, more capable than his unsuccessful com- petitor of leading an army or ruling a province. The merits of the candidate should be tested by a more careful and ample experience and to obtain that experience they should jealously watch the progress of the present system, and more jealously than otherwise because the system was new, untried, and would most probably fail.

There are two questions brought under our consideration, and before this House comes to a vote, it is expedient to distinguish between them. One is the expediency of the system of examination; the other is the propriety of making the examination papers public. I remember very well the issue of the Order in Council under which this system was created, and I cannot admit that there was any want of consideration in regard to the framing of that Order, while up to this time it has not been found necessary to make any alterations in the regulations there laid down. Since that time the Commissioners have made annual reports, and the working of the system has been copiously brought under the notice of Parliament, so that there has been ample opportunity of interfering, if interference had been thought necessary. I therefore assume that the general feeling of Parliament and the country is in favour of the maintenance of the system. I do not, therefore, think it necessary to review the ground which the noble Lord has travelled over when he appeared to question the expediency of the general system. The point raised by the Motion, and which we have to decide is, whether it is expedient that any hon. Member of this House should be entitled to call for papers written by candidates at the examinations. I affirm that, if the system is a good one and ought to be supported, it is absolutely necessary that the confidence of the various candidates should be maintained. We have the example of the examinations at the Universities and public schools to go by. The noble Lord, who is so well acquainted with the system of examination at Oxford, said there was publicity given to the examinations at that University. [Lord R. CECIL: At the vivâ voce examinations.] But these are not vivâ voce examinations. The rule both at Oxford and Cambridge is that the examination papers written by the candidates both for degrees and studentships, are considered confidential, and that were even the head of a college or any one in authority to complain of the discretion of the examiners, the latter would neverthe- less refuse to show the papers. Suppose you were to allow an appeal from the decision of the examining masters by bringing the papers before House of Commons, the effect would be that you would have to bring up the papers not only of the unsuccessful but of the successful candidates. What would be the result? Some Gentlemen might think that a person placed by the examiners six or seven, ought to be four or five; but is a Bill to be brought in reversing the decision of the examiners? Such a mode of conducting the business of the examinations would be absurd and impracticable. The only means of attaining the object of the hon. Gentleman would be to declare that, in the event of a candidate being dissatisfied with the result of an examination, there should be an appeal to some superior board of examiners. But would such a system as that answer? The rule is, that where there is no competition, the original appointment is in one sense absolute. The person is usually sent to the Civil Service examiners in order that they may ascertain whether or not he comes up to a certain standard. If he comes up to the standard, his appointment proceeds; if he does not come up to the standard, another is appointed. In the case of competition, the duty of the examiners is to say which is the best of the candidates, but in no case is the original appointment dependent upon the will of the examiners. It is therefore erroneous to say that the patronage of the Crown is in any sense transferred to the examiners. But what would be the result of the appointment of a superior board of appeal? The result would be simply this, that in any case where candidates were rejected for not coming up to the standard, or rejected in cases of competition, they would appeal and take the chance of a second examination. You would then have the process repeated a second time, before another board not more competent to decide than the first, and you would multiply the trouble and inconvenience without any good result. The necessity of the case seems, therefore, to be that if you are to have these examinations at all you must allow the decision without appeal, to rest with the persons appointed by the Executive Government. If it can be shown that they are not worthy of the confidence of the Government or this House, that they act with unfairness, or are incompetent from literary or other disqualifications, then let the House interfere by an Address to the Crown, to remove them from their offices; but it is impossible to work the system on any other principle than that of placing confidence in the examiners and not violating the secrecy of the examination papers. Therefore any Motion calling for such papers ought not to be assented to.

said, he had understood the right hon. Gentleman the Chancellor of the Exchequer to say that the rule adopted by the examining Commissioners was to take a certain standard, and to put aside all considerations of special fitness beyond that. [The CHANCELLOR of the EXCHEQUER: Accomplishments, not fitness.] That word would answer his purpose as well as the other. What he wished to say was, that the tendency of such a system as that described by the right hon. Gentleman—namely, that if the candidates did not come up to the elementary standard they were put aside altogether and others chosen in their place—would be to make the affair rather a mere schoolboy's examination than the examination of persons capable of performing duties to the public. Spelling, he admitted, was an elementary principle of education, and perhaps, in the absence of any other there was not a better test of whether a man was an educated man or not than that of spelling. But it should not be forgotten that many an eminent man had gone down to his grave deserving well of his country for the services he had performed, but whose ability to spell was in fact nil. Discussing once with Sir George Grey, the Governor of the Cape of Good Hope, the merits of a public servant, Sir George said—

"I never knew a more valuable or efficient public officer, for he was able to speak well, write well, and compose well—his reports being truly admirable; but he would never have been able to enter the civil service under the present system, for to the end of his days he could not spell well."

Without alluding to names, he would give another instance. There was an individual who excelled all others in history, mathematics, and composition; not only so, but he was known among his fellows to be the ablest and most efficient candidate for the office; yet that man had been rejected in a competition because he had made a mistake in the spelling of a single word. He would not deny that if resort could be had to no other test the test of spelling might be taken; but he maintained that such elementary parts of education ought not to be taken as conclusive while it was possible to test the abilities and education of candidates in some other way. He could not agree either with the statements that had been made by the Chancellor of the Exchequer with regard to what was understood to be the prevailing practice in the various departments of the Government with respect to the removal and reinstatement of public officers. And he was of opinion that in the case of the individual to whom the right hon. Gentleman had more particularly alluded, that it would have been simple justice to reinstate the man who had been improperly displaced. Indeed, so far from the doctrine laid down by the Chancellor of the Exchequer having obtained, while he (Mr. Hope) was in the Colonial Office, one of the most difficult and disagreeable portions of their duty was the discussing and determining questions with respect to the removal of public officers. He did not deny that for the efficiency of the public service it would, in many respects, be much better that there should be a power of absolute dismissal; for there were many cases in which a man was inefficient, but in which no fault could be alleged sufficient to justify his discharge. It was, in fact, one of the advantages which private mercantile firms possessed over the Government, that when they had a clerk that did not suit them they could send him away without assigning any reason. Nevertheless, he held that no such custom could be introduced into the Government offices; they must in each case require a justification for the dismissal of a public servant. He did not wish to say a word in disparagement of the Commissioners in the present case, of whose very names he was ignorant, but it could not be contended that they were not liable to errors. Only the other day it transpired that the examiners for military commissions had been deceived by a gross system of fraud. Suppose that had been the case of a competitive examination. If grounds should exist for supposing that improper practices prevailed, were not parties who were aggrieved to be entitled to appeal to the Government, and demand an investigation? Moreover, he could give an example where an appeal had been actually allowed. The military examinations were not only directed to proficiency and scholarship, but also to physical qualifications. A candidate was recently rejected on the ground either of deficiency of eyesight or hearing. The young man's father dissented from the decision. He took the opinion of physicians, which established the lad's fitness, the military examiner gave way, and the boy was received. That was, fortunately, an appeal of a nature which it was possible to substantiate; but the same right ought to be recognized more generally, and he for one could not admit the principle of irresponsibility on the part of the Commissioners which the Chancellor of the Exchequer seemed desirous to establish.

In order that the House may not be led away from the question at issue, I wish to restate what is the precise claim put forward by my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer. That claim is simply that in the absence of any imputation of fraud, misconduct, and suspicion, the Government shall not be compelled by the friends of candidates who may consider themselves aggrieved, in the House of Commons to publish the answers to the questions that have been proposed. And what docs a man contract for with the Government who submits himself to examination? He submits on his part to abide by the result of that examination, and the Government, on their part, undertake that if the examiners place him in a certain position he shall receive a certain place. The Government, also, do not undertake that the Commissioners shall be infallible. They undertake that the Commissioners shall do their duty honestly and fairly, and if they do that the contract is fulfilled, and it would he the height of injustice to the other candidates to reverse the decision of the Commissioners, even if they should have been guilty of some errors. If these examinations are to be re-opened, the candidate who is fortunate enough to have a friend in a Member of Parliament will always he able to obtain a reversal and review of the examination; but the poor man who has no such friend must submit to the result of the examination, although the Commissioners are quite as liable to error in the one case as the other What remedy can there be in publicity in such a case? This House does not meet to entertain scholastic questions, but to manage the business of the nation, and I trust the time will never come when it finds us engaged in considering examination papers involving questions of spelling and grammar. What would be the result if the House got possession of these papers? What would they do with them? Would they reverse the decision of the examiners? In the department with which I am connected it has always been the practice to refuse these examination papers, on the ground that the person submits to this examination as he would submit to an award in a case of arbitration. The noble Lord (Lord R. Cecil) has complained that in the East Indian examination candidates are not examined into those matters which would show their special aptitude for the Indian service.

I said they were examined in special knowledge, but that those who were proficient in Sanscrit and Arabic were rejected, while those who knew nothing about them were selected.

The noble Lord is mistaken in what he said on this point. The subject of education for the Indian service was referred to a Commission of which Lord Macaulay was a Member. That Commission reported that they wished the Indian examination to be open to all the well educated young men in the country. They, therefore, made a list of all the subjects in which young men are usually educated, and assigned to each a number of marks which they believed would represent the relative difficulty of each subject. They did put Arabic and Sanscrit in that list, but not on the ground of the aptitude which a knowledge of those languages would give a person for the Indian service, but simply and solely because they were studies upon which young men of liberal education might in some cases have entered, and for which they might be, therefore, entitled to receive marks. But the Commissioners drew up their list expressly to exclude those who had turned their attention to the Indian service, in order that the service might be open to all the young men in the country, and that those should not be excluded who had not thought it necessary to devote a certain portion of their time to particular studies. I had something to do with that Report, and, for my own part, I only regretted that Arabic and Sanscrit were included at all, because the admission of those languages into the list tended to create the very error into which the noble Lord had fallen. As the House would not know what to do with these papers if it got them, and as debates on this subject would take up the time of the House without any useful result, I trust that the House will refuse to agree to a Motion which would destroy the independence of the examiners, and put an end to the confidence which the country now places in their decisions.

replied. The Chan- cellor of the Exchequer had referred to a case which occurred in the Customs some time ago. But in that case, in consequence of the Report of the Committee, the man was re-appointed, while in the case he now brought forward there were no means of obtaining justice if these papers were refused.

said, he rose to move for leave to introduce a Bill for regulating the Use of Locomotives on Public and other Roads, and the Tolls to be Levied on such Locomotives, and on the Waggons and Carriages drawn or propelled by the same. The Bill was in principle the same that he had the honour to introduce last year, but he had added new provisions in order to meet the objections which were then urged against it.

said, he could not conceive how it would be possible, under the most favourable circumstances, to run steam carriages on the public roads consistently with the public safety. He should not object to the Bill at that stage, but he hoped it would be shown to the House that no danger could arise from the use of locomotives on turnpike roads.

said, he rose to move that a humble Address be presented to Her Majesty for Copies of the Minutes in Council of the Governor of Madras, dated the 20th day of March, 1860, and of the Minutes of the other Members of the Madras Council, upon Mr. Wilson's Budget; together with any Correspondence of the Secretary of State for India in Council with the Governments of India and Madras upon the imposition of the Income Tax; and of Dissents (if any) of Members of the Council of India. There had recently appeared in an Indian newspaper certain Minutes of the Governor of Madras, the Commander-in-Chief, Mr. Maltby, and Mr. Morehead, members of the Council of Madras, expressing their opinions as to the practicability or non-practicability of imposing the new taxes devised by Mr. Wilson upon the people of India at the present moment. In that Minute, Sir Charles Trevelyan expressed his conviction that the present crisis in India was more pregnant with portentous results for good or evil than any which had occurred within the memory of the present generation, and that on the line now taken would depend the future of our empire in the East. Sir Charles then proceeded to say:—

"I have always been of opinion that the financial crisis might be satisfactorily met by the reduction of expenditure only, combined with some obvious administrative improvements, whereby both our civil and military establishments would be rendered more effective, and the existing taxes would be more fully collected. … If we determine upon reducing a large portion of our Native Army and improving the condition of the remainder, financial difficulties will be overcome; we shall have a feeling of security which we have not enjoyed for many years, and shall be free to work out those improvements in the different branches of Indian administration on which the prosperity of the country depends. The result of this policy may be as clearly foreseen as anything in human affairs can be; but it will be far otherwise if we use our strength to impose on the people of India a new system of taxation which is extremely distasteful to them, which is not justified by any necessity, and which is totally unsuited to the present state of society in the country. The argument used by myself and my colleagues, and by many of the ablest of the officers serving under us, against the tobacco and licensing taxes are equally applicable to the taxes now proposed. If we use the strength which our present advantages give us to force obnoxious taxes on the people it will place us in a position towards them totally incompatible with the simultaneous reduction of the Native Army. We cannot afford to have a discontented people and a discontented army upon our hands at the same time."

The same Gentleman spoke of the income tax as utterly impracticable, and of the tobacco tax as being next to it most injurious, because it would bring back the evils of a system of native taxation from which the Government had only recently assured the people they were finally relieved. He also said—

"It is a novel experiment, the success of which must be uncertain, and in the event of failure there is the danger of its raising a flame of discontent throughout the whole empire, and uniting the entire people in a feeling of opposition to us."

That was a portentous prognostication, from the fulfilment of which he hoped Heaven would defend us. Mr. Maltby said—

"I hesitate not to give my strong opinion as an individual member of the Government that it would he far safer to dispense with three European regiments, at least two of our Native Cavalry Corps, and a corresponding portion of Native Infantry, than to attempt to introduce the proposed taxes."

Mr. Morehead, whose experience gives great weight to his opinions, said—

"A sullen feeling of dissatisfaction already exists wherever Mr. Wilson's scheme of taxation has been understood by the people, and this feeling will, if the proposed taxation is carried out, undoubtedly become one of general and serious discontent. I agree with Mr. Maltby. I look upon an income tax for the present year as hopeless, and as a general measure it can only end in failure."

Such were the opinions of high authorities upon the proposed scheme. He said nothing as to the mode in which they had got into print. They had been published in the papers, and were known by this time throughout all India, and he believed that it would be found impossible, after that disclosure, to carry out Mr. Wilson's Budget. Sir C. Trevelyan set out with the axiom which every statesman adopted unhesitatingly, that before you attempt to tax a people you must see if you cannot reduce your expenditure, and Sir Charles thought he had proved that reduction was quite practicable.

proceeded to say that if 50,000 European troops could break the neck of the mutiny, reduce Delhi, take Lucknow, and hold their own until re-enforcements arrived from Europe, that there was not now a Native Prince in India who could withstand a Brigade—nor a fortress to sit down before—and that the people had been to a considerable extent disarmed, there was no necessity to keep a larger force in India now than in 1857. In April 1857, however, the revenue of India amounted to £33,000,000, which was fully sufficient to cover all charges in India and England at that time, and allowed £2,000,000 to be expended on public works and improvements. The state of things which existed in April, 1857, could surely be restored, if the House and the Government only resolved to return to the status of that period. These facts were not to be gainsaid, as they were derived from papers upon the table of the House; and he contended that in these circumstances they would be running a tremendous risk if, in opposition to such opinions as those which had been expressed by Sir Charles Trevelyan and Mr. Maltby, they attempted to impose new taxes when they could do without them. His right hon. Friend (Sir C. Wood) had a vast responsibility resting upon him. He must either maintain a force sufficient to collect those taxes in India, or he must abandon them, and reduce the expenditure of that country within the £37,000,000 which the Indian revenue was now producing. He hoped that before these taxes were insisted upon his right hon. Friend would obtain the opinion of this House upon the subject; for, fortified in that way, he might be able to carry the whole weight of the country with him. In the meantime, as the papers for which he now moved had been printed and circulated in India, he did not see how the Government could well refuse to produce them for the information of this House.

said, that as he had placed upon the paper a notice of a Motion for Friday next very similar in terms to that just made by his hon. and gallant Friend, he begged to be allowed to detain the House for a few moments. On Friday last he had ventured to condemn the financial scheme which had been so recently introduced to the Legislative Council at Calcutta by Mr. Wilson, and he was not a little surprised to find that opinion so soon receive a strong confirmation from very important and influential authorities. On Saturday, the following day, the Indian mail arrived, bringing news that the financial Budget was exciting the greatest alarm in India, in the same proportion as the financial Budget of the Chancellor of the Exchequer was beginning to excite distrust and apprehension amongst commercial and monetary circles at home. We less authorities than Sir Charles Trevelyan, the Governor of Madras, and Mr. Maltby, who had been for thirty years in the Civil Service of that Presidency, and who had lately been made a Member of the Council, Mr. Morehead, and Sir Patrick Grant, his colleagues in Council, had denounced this scheme in the strongest terms. Without, however, going into the merits or demerits of the scheme at that moment—though he himself held a very strong opinion on it, and, if no other Member undertook the task, should feel it his duty to bring the question under the consideration of the House—the request of his hon. and gallant Friend ought to be agreed to. The papers had been published in all the Indian journals, and on so grave and important a subject Parliament and the people of this country ought to be placed on the same footing as the Indian community. He hoped, therefore, the right hon. Baronet the Secretary of State for India would not resist the production of these papers, and if he did, he (Mr. Vansittart) would gladly support his hon. and gallant Friend in taking the opinion of the House on the subject.

said, that great exception was taken in this country to Mr. Wilson's policy of laying additional taxes on British manufactures introduced into India. If it were true, as was stated last year, on high authority, that India was chiefly valuable to us in consequence of the commercial advantages which we derived from that country, the policy of taxing British imports was very questionable. It had always been maintained that the raw materials of manufactures should be exempted from taxation or as lightly taxed as the finances of a country would allow; but in this new scheme a double duty had been laid on the importation of the half-manufactured article—cotton twist. The manufacturers of that article in this country had to sustain a competition in India, where there were now a considerable number of factories having the advantages of cheap labour, cotton grown on the spot, and none of the drawbacks of the cost of transporting the material first to England and then to India; and this was a case, therefore, in which special consideration ought to have been paid to them. He hoped that this policy would receive full discussion in the House.

The House will see, from the observations of my hon. Friend behind me (Mr. Buchanan), that my right hon. Friend, Mr. Wilson, is not at all likely to be more successful than Chancellors of the Exchequer in this country in the very difficult task of imposing taxes which will please all parties. My hon. and gallant Friend (Colonel Sykes) finds fault with one part of the Budget, because it will not suit the people of India; and my hon. Friend, the Member for Glasgow, finds fault with another portion, because it interferes with the interests of the manufacturers at home. But the question for the House to bear in mind, is the position of the Indian finances. It was my duty last year to state their position; they have received the fullest consideration of Indian Statesmen; and the Supreme Government in India, after the fullest deliberation, and after having taken the opinions of the best authorities, have come reluctantly to the unanimous conclusion that the course which they have taken, coupled with a large reduction of expenditure, is the only one which offers a fair prospect of equalizing expenditure and income. That this is a desirable, nay, an indispensable object to attain, no one in this House, I think, will be prepared to deny. Having refused last year, and rightly refused, I believed, to give an Imperial guarantee for the Indian loan, I must express an earnest hope that the House will leave the responsibility for the arrangement of the Indian finances to the Government in that country, who, after all, must be better able to judge in what manner additional revenue can most easily and justly be obtained. I quite agree with my hon. and gallant Friend, that large reductions ought to be made in Indian expenditure. Ever since I have been in office I have impressed that on the Indian Government; and I am happy to say that last week we received news from India of reductions to a larger extent than we anticipated. The House may be assured that I do look to a large reduction of expenditure, rather than to a large increase of taxation, for equalizing expenditure and income; but the Indian Government have come to the conclusion, and I must say, that I cannot dissent from that view, that both are necessary for that object. I shall not go into a discussion of the Indian Budget, further than to say with regard to the production of the papers, that I hope my gallant Friend will not press for them at the present moment. They only arrived here last Saturday; other questions besides the mere question of the Budget are involved in them; and it is only right that the Indian Council should have the opportunity of giving them a full consideration. I feel the necessity of producing them before long, as strongly as my hon. and gallant Friend; and in a week or ten days I may have no objection to laying them on the table; coupled, however, with other papers, without which it would be impossible to come to an adequate conclusion on the subject.

, in reply said, he had no objection to leaving the chief responsibility to Indian authorities; but he wished to point out that these authorities were not agreed. The Madras Government objected to the scheme in the strongest manner.

said, he presumed that after the statement of the hon. Member (Mr. Vansittart) the financial scheme of Mr. Wilson would be brought under discussion on some future occasion. He would suggest, therefore, that instead of these desultory discussions, the right hon. Baronet, the Secretary for India, should fix a day when, all the papers on the subject being before the House, the whole question of Indian finance should be gone into. In this way the right hon. Gentleman would save both his own time and that of the House.

said, that it would, of course, be his duty, sooner or later, to bring the finances of India under the notice of the House. The Indian accounts had been received, and were being prepared for printing. As soon as they were printed they would be laid on the table of the House; but, until they were produced, it would be impossible to fix any time at which to enter upon the question; nor in the present state of public business, was it possible for him to do so, if even the papers were now ready.

, in moving the second reading of this Bill said, that it had its origin in the proposition of the Chancellor of the Exchequer to obtain a revenue by imposing a penny tax upon contracts made on the Stock Exchange. The Chancellor of the Exchequer declared that Sir J. Barnard's Act was obsolete, and on that ground proposed to repeal it, and convert the contracts against which it was directed into a source of revenue. But the right hon. Gentleman did not seem then to be aware of the existence of the Act of 1845, which prohibited all contracts by way of wagering and gaming. The Government afterwards stated that they did not intend to give validity to gambling transactions, but only to deal with contracts for bonâ fide transactions. Now, if the object of the Bill introduced by the Government was merely to prevent interference with the legitimate transactions of bonâ fide purchase and sale, then he quite concurred in it; but, on the other hand, if they intended by their Bill to do more, and to remove the restrictions upon gaming transactions, that Measure would meet with his most strenuous opposition. The Bill which he had prepared, whilst it preserved the penalties against gambling, would be found to do away entirely with every possible restriction which could be considered objectionable as interfering with bonâ fide transactions; and he did not confine it to the mere transactions of immediate purchase and sale. He quite understood that it might be right and proper, in ordinary transactions on the Stock Exchange, that there should be contracts made which might be completed at a future day, and that contracts should be entered into by persons who at the moment might not be possessed of the stock which they contracted to sell. Transactions of that kind however were prohibited by Sir J. Barnard's Act under heavy penalties, and he proposed by his Bill to do away with those restrictions. There was no bonâ fide transaction of purchase and sale which would, after the passing of his Bill, should the House sanction it, be at all interfered with by the provisions of Sir J. Barnard's Act. But he had guardedly abstained from giving any countenance to transactions which were of a purely wagering or gambling character, and had left all the penalties in force as to such bargains, and that was the main difference between the Bill proposed by himself and that proposed by the Government. The objection he felt to the Government measure was, that it remitted the penalties on gambling in the Funds, which were imposed by Sir John Bar- nard's Act, and it rested with the Government to make out a case for a repeal of those provisions. He had never yet heard any sound argument for the remission of those penalties. The object no doubt was to raise a revenue by taxing gambling transactions, but the Government could not tax them without also legalizing them; and he would ask, was there not something of far higher consideration than the mere question of revenue? He could not help thinking, that of all species of gambling that on the Stock Exchange was the worst and most pernicious. If a man went into a gaming I house, and threw dice, or played at hazard, the chances were equal; but was; there any element of fairness in the gambling on the Stock Exchange? Persons who had secret information of the movements of Governments abroad, or who had obtained intelligence from those who ought not to impart it, might operate on the Stock Exchange with a certainty which others could not enjoy, as to the events which would take place. Again, nothing was so easy as for men of large capital to combine in their operations to their certain gain, but to the certain loss of other speculators. Suppose three capitalists on the one hand, and three on the other, wished to realize a million of money —what so easy as to employ six different brokers on either side—innocently, so far as the brokers were concerned—to operate so as to raise or depress the stocks? The parties could themselves sustain no loss, because they were dealing one with the other, but the man who went there to speeculate in good faith could not fail to be led on to his destruction and ruin. Such gambling was so easy that if the restrictions upon it were removed an inducement would be held out to many persons, who now resisted the temptation, to embark on those speculations, which, if at first unsuccessful, at once produce ruin, and which, if temporarily profitable, only postponed the fatal period, by fostering a habit of gambling. It was on that account that the repetitions of such scenes as had lately alarmed the commercial world— the case of Mr. Pullinger, and others of the same sort — were so frequent. He was told that there was speculation in other descriptions of property produced by such operations besides the funds, but was that any argument for removing the penalties upon gambling? Would the Government, because they found gambling transactions in existence, be prepared to legalize them? So far from equalizing the market, an effect which had been ascribed to these speculations, they had a most ruinous effect upon trade. A recent case had occurred in which a certain firm having entered into time-bargains to an enormous extent for tallow, found it worth their while to buy up all the tallow in St. Petersburg, in order to keep up the price, but the consequence was that the consumer was taxed with an unnecessarily high price, to satisfy the speculations of one house. In India some years ago, an influential firm employed agents all over the country to bargain for opium, with a view to raise the price, while the firm itself ostensibly was working for a fall in the market, and by those speculations stood to win a million and a half of money. That was no imaginary transaction, for the circumstances of the case were investigated by the Courts of India, and afterwards became the subject of judicial decision in the Privy Council. Were not such cases as those likely to be most destructive to the morality of a people, and was not their immediate effect most injurious upon persons legitimately engaged in trade? The Government of India, in consequence passed a Bill to prohibit all wagering and gambling contracts. He trusted the House, with these examples before them, would not consent to encourage these gambling transactions. Again he would ask why, when year after year, every endeavour was made to put a stop to gaming-houses, the Government should now come forward, and, by a side wind, endeavour in order to obtain a revenue to legalize or remove a single restriction upon gambling? If the great gaming-house in Throgmorton Street were licensed, why should not other gaming-houses be licensed, too, if they applied for the privilege? Why should a penalty be continued against them, and why should not all restrictions be removed from lotteries or betting-houses? It was said that all transactions for the purchase of goods at a future day were of a gambling nature; but if those transactions were confined to legitimate bargains, and were based on the principle of supply and demand, they would be limited in their extent, and would not be productive of injurious results; but not so with gambling in the Funds. He contended, then, that no sufficient grounds were shown for removing any of the penalties and restrictions imposed upon gambling contracts by Sir John Barnard's Act. That Act declared all contracts by way of wagers and gaming to be void, a heavy penalty was imposed for making the wager, and an action for the return of the money was also authorized. The Government proposal would remove the penalty and the power of getting back the money, and simply render the transaction void. That was virtually to encourage gambling; and if they sanctioned it, would they not admit that those speculations were not looked upon by that House in so serious a light as formerly? He had endeavoured to ascertain, from time to time, upon what grounds the Government were resisting his proposal, and insisted upon extending the repeal to gambling transactions. The first suggestion was that Sir John Barnard's Act was an obsolete Act of former days, but that argument was at once removed by showing that in 1845 the Legislature had not treated it as obsolete, but had passed an Act to extend its provisions. The next ground taken up was that the Act was not efficient; but it was a strange way of increasing its efficiency to remove two of its most important restrictions. But did the right hon. Gentleman mean to say that if no Act existed these transactions would not increase. He (Mr. Bovill) thought on the contrary that the effect of the provisions making the broker liable to a penalty, besides refunding the money, had a tendency to render him extremely cautious as to the persons with whom he transacted that species of business, and to limit greatly the number of persons who embarked in those gambling speculations. If only six tradesmen in the course of a year were prevented by these restrictions from entering upon that wild course, they ought certainly to be retained by the Legislature. Why was it that the Stock Exchange gentlemen were so anxious for the repeal of this clause? Was it not because the Stock Exchange knew that if the restrictions were withdrawn, and the penalty removed, their transactions in gambling in the British funds would be extensively increased? Could it be said, that the penalties imposed upon gaming-houses did not prevent gambling to a great extent? But it was argued that so long as these contracts were declared illegal the persons who embarked in them had a temptation held out to them to act dishonestly. But then, if that were so, what would they do with the Act of Parliament of 1845, which de- clared them illegal, and which it was not proposed to touch? Was it not to encourage dishonesty to tax the contracts, while they were declared null and void by the Act of 1845? There was only one argument more. The Solicitor General had said that the object of the Government was to make the law uniform, and to put an end to an Act which imposed a penalty only on one description of transactions. But if the question were to be dealt with as a whole, let the Government bring in a Bill to deal with all wagering and gambling transactions whatever. If Sir John Barnard's Act did not apply to transactions in the foreign funds or in railway shares, let the penalties be extended to those cases also. This, however, they did not pretend to do, and therefore to talk about making the law uniform was a mere afterthought. He offered his Bill as one that would legalize every bonâ fide transaction in the way of contract and sale, and if it was asked how they could ascertain when a transaction was bonâ fide, his answer was that juries would decide that just as they decided other questions of a similar kind. There would be no difficulty whatever about the matter, for an examination of the broker's books would at once show whether any transaction in which he had been engaged was a real or a gambling transaction. His object was to legalize honest dealing and to discourage acts of gambling, and in that spirit he moved the second reading of the Bill

said, it had been often asked of late who was Sir John Barnard? He was a citizen of London, and a Metropolitan Member who, 130 years ago, persuaded the House of Commons to pass a very foolish Act of Parliament—an Act that had never met with much favour on either side of Westminster Hall—an Act to which the Judges gave but little effect; and an Act that had been virtually repealed by common sense and the common practice of mankind. Sir John Barnard's views were, that it was necessary, in order to ensure our commercial morality, that men should be prevented from bargaining for that which at the time of the bargain they had not got. The fallacy of his views was pointed out 130 years ago, when it was predicted by many eminent lawyers then in the House that if it passed it would prove in its operations most injurious to trade, and one Member at the time said that it ought to be entitled "A Bill for destroying the commercial credit of the country." If all the evils prophesied in respect of this Act had not arisen, it was because it had been treated as a dead-letter, and men had gone on bargaining and trafficking as if the Act had never passed. He was only surprised such a Bill as that introduced by the Government had not been proposed before. Now, however, there were two Bills before the House. In one the Chancellor of the Exchequer proposed to repeal entirely Sir J. Barnard's Act; and by the other, which the hon. and learned Member for Guildford had introduced, and in regard to which he appeared to have stolen a march on Government in the nature of a time bargain, it was proposed to repeal a certain portion only, and to retain another portion of Sir John Barnard's Act. His hon. and learned Friend appeared to have changed his opinion lately with reference to Sir John Barnard's Act. A short time since the hon. and learned Member considered it the perfection of wisdom; but, having discovered his mistake, he wished now to repeal a portion of it only. He (Mr. Collier) considered the simple mode of dealing with this subject was to adopt the Bill of the Chancellor of the Exchequer and repeal Sir J. Barnard's Act. If that Act were good as applied to time-bargains in funds, it would also be good for railway shares, stock, and every description of mercantile contract. His hon. and learned Friend, however, shrank from such an absurdity. A few years ago an Act had been passed which, by a recent decision of the Courts, applied to every transaction in the nature of a bet. It was quite enough to say that all gaming transactions were illegal, and then Sir J. Barnard's Act was unnecessary. He therefore submitted that the Bill of his hon. and learned Friend was useless and mischievous. To use a homely expression, borrowed from the hon. Member for Birmingham, it made "two bites of a cherry"—it repealed a part instead of a whole—while it was desirable to repeal Sir J. Barnard's Act entirely, and at once, and have done with it.

said, he should support the Amendment. The measure of the Chancellor of the Exchequer to repeal Sir John Barnard's Act, and leave all trading transactions of a gambling nature to be dealt with under the provisions of the general statute of the present reign, was plain and intelligible. But the partial repeal proposed by his learned Friend drew a distinction of which he was at a loss to understand the principle or advantage. He concurred in the view that if the Act was to have operation at all, it ought to be extended to all gambling transactions in trade. The man who sold Russian or French stock, or corn, or any other merchandise which did not belong to him, was quite as culpable as he who sold a quantity of Three per Cent Stock which was not in his possession. In his opinion, however, the Act was so defective, absurd, and inoperative, that the wisest course the House could take would be to get rid of it altogether.

said, he approved of the measure of the Chancellor of the Exchequer in preference to that of the hon. and learned Member for Guildford. Sir John Barnard's Act was known to have been brought in because Walpole had been suspected of stock-jobbing; but the Minister, with lofty disdain, allowed it to pass without notice, and against his own judgment. It was, moreover, based upon arguments wholly untenable in modern times, and as it had become a complete dead letter it should be repealed outright. No longer back than Lord Kenyon's time 200 actions were brought against parties for gambling transactions on the Stock Exchange; but all failed on account of the refusal of a broker called as a witness in the first case to make any disclosures. Since then there had been, he believed, no actions of the kind.

said, his Bill only imposed penalties upon what were universally admitted to be improper transactions, while in other cases it removed restrictions which interfered with business.

Sir, I rise to move the Amendment of which I have given notice—

"That the present state of the Finances of the country renders it undesirable to proceed further with the repeal of the Excise Duty on Paper."

I feel I ought to explain my reason for putting this notice on the paper, instead of the usual Amendment that the Bill be read a third time this day six months. I have for some time been of opinion that there was no probability that this Bill could be proceeded with at present. I thought there was other business which must take precedence of it; and it was, therefore, with great surprise that I heard last evening the statement of the Chancellor of the Exchequer that it was intended to resume the debate to-night. Considering the bearing which the Estimates of the year have upon this question and that we have not yet had an opportunity of discussing them, I certainly did think that we should, before proceeding with this measure, have been allowed to make ourselves acquainted with the financial condition of the country, and to ascertain whether we are now in exactly the same position as when the Budget was brought forward. We have this year departed very widely from the ordinary routine of financial business, because usually some progress is made in the Estimates even before the Chancellor of the Exchequer makes his statement to the House. That course, no doubt, is sometimes departed from, but seldom, if ever, has there been a year in which such important business has been brought forward before any progress had been made in the Estimates; and it appears to me that this is not a year that should be chosen for deviating from the usual practice in such matters, because the financial measures of the Government are very important and the annual Estimates of a very peculiar character. The Budget was announced before a single Estimate was produced, and we were compelled, therefore, to take them upon the authority of my right hon. Friend. Since his statement, however, we have had a good many of the Estimates laid on the table, and, to my great surprise—I can hardly now believe I am not under some mistake—I find a considerable difference in one class between the statement of the Chancellor of the Exchequer and the statement which appears in the Estimates. I was unable to give earlier notice of my Motion because, until last night, I never thought this Bill would be brought forward before we had made some progress in those Estimates. With regard to the form of the Motion, it is not my wish to dispute the third reading. I do not intend to maintain that the paper duty is a good duty, nor do in any way dispute the case which my right hon. Friend has made against it. But it appears to me that this is not the right time for repealing it, and in making this Motion I think I am acting in the spirit of the Resolution which was passed two years ago, and to which so much reference has been made as a reason for that repeal. I feel bound, however, to protest against its being considered that we are in any way bound by a Resolution passed in a former Parliament, and especially by a loose Resolution of the sort which was passed in 1858. It is not, indeed, pretended that we are practically and absolutely bound by it, but is said that the question is, to a certain extent, prejudged by that Resolution—the more so because it was adopted, after full deliberation, with the assent of the then responsible Ministers of the Crown and without a division. If we look, however, to the terms of that Resolution, and to what took place in the debate upon it, I think the case for the repeal of the paper duty in the present year is not at all strengthened. The right hon. Gentleman the President of the Board of Trade moved a Resolution of two parts, the first containing the abstract proposition that the paper duty was not a good permanent source of revenue, and the second declaring that measures ought to be taken to put an end to it. The then Chancellor of the Exchequer did not deny the first part of the Resolution, that it was not desirable to maintain the paper duty as a permanent source of revenue, but he demurred to the second part, that the House ought at an early period to abolish the duty, because he said other things ought first to be taken into consideration. The noble Lord the Member for the City of London also, while assenting to the general proposition that the tax was not a good one, used strong language as to other things which ought first to be done, and said that the faith of Parliament was almost pledged to make remission first of the war duties on tea and sugar. The present Home Secretary reminded the House that they were pledged on the first favourable opportunity to repeal the income tax, and he said he did not like the second part of the Resolution, because it interfered with the redemption of that pledge. The latter part of the Resolution was struck out, and it was generally understood that, although the abstract Resolution was adopted, it was not intended to give effect to it. It may not be a wise thing for the House to adopt an abstract Resolution of that sort; but when it is adopted with the express and distinct refusal to attach words which would give it a practical operation, I cannot find in it any argument that the House is pledged, much less that the Resolution pledges a Parliament which is not the same as that in which the Vote was taken, to any particular measure for giving effect to it. I think it, therefore, a most undesirable precedent for the Chancellor of the Exchequer to refer to an abstract Resolution as one which commits the House to a certain policy; and if abstract propositions are so taken up I think serious mischief may follow. Not denying that the repeal of the paper duty is a good thing if we can afford at, I say the present is not a good time to take such a step; and if it was not thought a good time in 1858, when, the expenditure was £63,500,000, still less can it be a good time now, when the expenditure is £71,100,000. Although there may have been a reasonable probability in 1858 that we should have an opportunity at a future time of dispensing with the tax, the case is very different now, with a much larger expenditure and greater difficulty of meeting it. I admit that my objections to the repeal of this duty, are in the nature of objections to the whole financial scheme of the Government. One of the main objections is, that I think we are now sacrificing a large and important portion of indirect taxation without having previously settled the principles upon which the direct taxation to be substituted is to be placed. I do not wish to be understood as saying that I object to the substitution in a proper way of direct for indirect taxation. What I mean is this—that we ought to take very good care to make direct taxation as free as possible from objection, and to put it in such a shape that when we strike away indirect taxation we may be in a position to fall back on direct taxation, with the certainty that it will not fail us in consequence of the objections which it will engender. This is the point in which the scheme of the Government fails. It is very easy and pleasant to strike away indirect taxation, but is it prudent to do so when we have in its place only the income tax, which high authorities tell us is unsuitable as a permanent source of revenue, and when no one can assure us that it can in any way be altered or improved? The other objection which I have is, that for the purpose of change we are forestalling and using up all our resources, postponing burdens, calling in credits, and taking other temporary aids, and accumulating for next year a deficit, which, to say the least, is most undesirable. I think those two objections have become stronger since the financial statement than they were at that time. I will now venture to call the attention of the House to the discrepancy between the statement of the Chancellor of the Exchequer and the Estimates now laid on the table. My right hon. Friend estimated the charges for the current year—including the debt, the Consolidated Fund, the Army, Navy, Civil Service, and Revenue Estimates, together with a Vote of credit of £500,000 for the China expedition—at £70,100,000. The items for the debt, the Consolidated Fund, and the army and navy amounted to £57,400,000; the Vote of credit to £500,000; the Miscellaneous Estimates to £7,500,000; and the estimates for the collection of the revenue to £4,700,000. Those were the figures given by the Chancellor of the Exchequer in his statement, and to the estimates for the collection of the revenue I must request my right hon. Friend's particular attention, because he told us that they showed an apparent increase of £225,000, which would probably be to a great extent recovered by the superior yield of the Post Office amounting to £80,000. Since then the estimates for the collection of the revenue have been laid upon the table, and instead of £4,700,000 they amount to £4,932,432, showing therefore a difference of no less than £232,342. Considering that the estimated surplus was only £464,000, this makes a most serious difference in the calculations upon which the Budget was founded, because it at once does away with something like one-half of that surplus. I have looked at that once or twice, thinking that I must be mistaken, but on referring to the printed Report of my right hon. Friend's speech, I find that I have not misrepresented him in supposing that he took the amount at £4,700,000, and I am sure that I have taken that of the Estimates upon the table correctly at £4,932,432. Had we gone on with the discussion of these Estimates we might have received some explanation of this discrepancy, which would so far have mitigated the objection which I feel to this part of the financial scheme; but it is unreasonable to ask us to grant remissions of taxation before we know what our expenditure really is to be: and therefore I think I am justified in saying that, so far as we can judge, the financial state of the country does not admit of our proceeding with this measure at present. The Miscellaneous Estimates my right hon. Friend took at £7,500,000, including, I presume, the £100,000 which is usually taken for civil contingencies. As yet but six classes of these Estimates have been laid upon the table, but they amount to £6,644,328. Class 7, at the amount at which it stood last year, and the £100,000 for civil contingencies make up an item of £1,128,236, raising the amount of the Miscellaneous Estimates to £7,772,564, which would be an excess over the estimate of the right hon. Gentleman of £272,564. Now, I am aware that there will be a reduction in the amount of Class 7; but is it reasonable to suppose that you can obtain a diminution of no less than £270,000 upon a single class of estimates, the total amount under which is only £988,000? I do not say that it may not be done, but it would have been more satisfactory that we should have had these estimates fully before the House, in order that we might see whether it was a real saving or only a postponement of Votes which will come upon us in a future year. I know that my right hon. Friend is most anxious to reduce these Estimates, but except a reduction in Class 1, which I suppose is in the nature of a postponement of works, and in Class 4, a reduction of £22,000, which has been balanced by an increase of £20,000 in Class 3, he has been able to make no diminution. On the contrary, taking the estimates for the collection of the revenue together with the other classes, I find that there is an actual increase of no less than £85,000 in the present year. I know that I am apparently, in legal parlance, travelling out of the record, but it is a course which is forced upon me, because I cannot state my objections to the course which we are pursuing without pointing out in some detail the difficulty which I experience in going on with this legislation before I can ascertain what is the real state in which the Estimates will ultimately stand. I must also call attention to what has happened with re- gard to the Army Estimates. It is true that their amount is now pretty much that which my right hon. Friend stated. He said that the charge for the army and the militia would be about £15,300,000. I find that the Estimates upon the table amount to £14,842,000, which, taking the charge for the militia at £460,000, as last year, would give almost that amount. But a very remarkable operation has been performed upon these Estimates. After they had been laid upon the table and the number of men required had been stated at 143,000 and some odd hundreds, they were withdrawn upon the ground that the Governor General of India had sent home more troops than was expected, or something of that sort. They were withdrawn and revised, and in the revised Estimates I observe that the number of men, instead of being 143,000, is 145,000, the actual addition being about 1,900 men; but notwithstanding this there has been no increase of the Estimates. There has been an increase in some Votes, but that has been balanced by a decrease in others, and among these latter are the Votes for clothing, provisions, and warlike stores. Those who have objected to Votes for clothing and provisions after the number of men had been voted have often been told, and it is an argument which has been delivered ex cathedrâ, that they ought to have objected to the number of men, because after that has been passed the Votes for clothing and provisions follow as a matter of course. That to uninitiated persons seems an argument of great weight, and has, I know, closed the mouths of many persons who were disposed to raise objections; but it can never be used again, because in this instance, although the number of men has been increased, the Vote for clothing has decreased by £18,000, and that for provisions, including forage, by £2,700. The presumption which is raised by these facts is either that the Estimates were originally incorrectly or negligently framed, and the House was asked to vote an unnecessarily large amount, or that they have now been improperly reduced, and we shall at a future period be asked for a Supplementary Vote to supply deficiencies, as has occasionally been the case before. I have had the curiosity to look at the Supplementary Estimate of £1,050,000 which was voted last year, and I find that of that sum £290,000 was voted for clothing, and £350,000 for provisions, that is to say, the Estimates were insufficient under those two heads, under which so remarkable a reduction has now been made. I do not wish to question the accuracy of these Estimates. The circumstances which I have mentioned may be susceptible of a complete and satisfactory explanation, but we ought to have our minds set at rest upon these matters before we proceed with the financial scheme. If we abolish the paper duty, and the Government is afterwards obliged to ask for more money, there will be no means of raising it except by adding a penny to the income tax, or something of that sort, and therefore we ought to have an opportunity of going into these Estimates, and sifting them very carefully, before we agree to the abolition of that tax. These are not the only Votes upon which I would remark. In the item of warlike stores the revised Estimates show a reduction of not less than £80,000, which is a very curious feature, and lets us into something more. The original Estimate for warlike stores was £743,000, of which £250,000 was to be deducted for sums chargeable to the Indian Government. In the revised Estimates the Indian Government is charged, not with £250,000 but with £300,000, and the amount to be voted for miscellaneous stores is reduced from £743,000 to £713,000. Does this mean that India requires at one time one sum and another at another, or that the whole system of the accounts between the Indian Government and the Home Government is one incomprehensible labyrinth and maze, and that you may really make use of it as a matter of account to state things very much as you please? That is a matter on which I want information. We ought to have an account current between this Government and the Indian Government. I do not say anything is wrong, but all this is matter of inquiry. Of course we shall have that inquiry sooner or later; it cannot be prevented; but we should have it with much more profit to ourselves if we had not decided nil our financial arrangements before we set about it. I might go into other details, but, in truth, I think I have stated quite enough to prove the case I was anxious to submit to the House that it is really necessary, before we proceed any further in the way of reducing taxation and throwing away for ever these duties on paper, that we should go into our Estimates and ascertain how the country really stands. I have not touched on other matters which are very important indeed, and on which I have in vain endeavoured to extract from Government some information. There is the Vote for fortifications for instance, which stands in the Estimates at £649,000. Do you, or do you not, mean to make any further proposal on that subject? I formerly asked that question, to which no reply was given. I repeated the inquiry, and the answer of the noble Lord was that a Commission had reported on the subject; their Report was under consideration, and when the Government had made up their minds what to do he would inform the House, But there the matter rests. I do not blame the Government for letting the matter rest there; but in the meantime they must not be surprised if rumour is busy spreading reports that they are going to have a large loan for this purpose. If the sum of £10,000,000 is to be borrowed, the interest of it will pretty nearly absorb the amount of the anticipated surplus. Perhaps you mean to deal with it in another way. Perhaps the loan is to be raised in Exchechequer bonds, which are to be paid off from year to year; but if you are to spread the repayment of £10,000,000, or £5,000,000, or £6,000,000, over so many years, you will have a million a year or more to provide for that purpose, which might be got, perhaps, from the paper duty better than in any other way. Then, again, this fortification Vote is in a very anomalous state; there is this peculiarity about it, that no details whatever are given. In former years these details were always supplied; but here we have only the bare sum put down of £649,000. Under these circumstances, I think I am not making an unreasonable proposal when I ask the House to affirm my proposition. I wish inquiry; I call for no expression of opinion as to the policy or impolicy of repealing the paper duties, if the finances of the country were in a position to admit of their repeal. I do not wish to raise the question on the merits. All I say is, that you are not now in a position, financially speaking, to part with this important tax. I really do feel that this question of the Estimates and the expenditure, deserves much more consideration from the House than it has yet received; because the whole case of the Chancellor of the Exchequer seems to rest on the hope that in future years there will be a considerable reduction of our expenditure. It hangs very much on this, that he looks forward to a time when we shall not have to spend so large an amount on our military and naval establishments. I, too, hope with my right hon. Friend, that this may be so: but I do not see in these Estimates anything that leads me to believe that this anticipation is at all likely to be realized at an early period. A great many Gentlemen, therefore, who were disposed to accept the Chancellor of the Exchequer's proposals with confidence and joy, trusting to the reduction of expenditure, are very likely to change their opinions on this subject, and come more nearly to the views we on this side of the House have adopted, because, however anxious to concur in the reduction of expenditure, we have not seen our way to such reductions. When the Budget was brought forward, we were told that, in consequence of the measures proposed with regard to our commercial relations with France, and especially arising out of the new treaty, we should find ourselves in such relations with our neighbours over the water, that it would soon be unnecessary to maintain these great warlike establishments; and that, on the other hand, the prosperity of the country would increase so much, owing to the growth of our trade with France, that the elasticity of our resources would soon recover, notwithstanding the reductions which had been made. I ventured to doubt that proposition at the time. But I must say that, looking at what has since taken place, looking at the state of feeling which has been engendered, the sort of distrust, I will not say that has sprung up, but which has increased from time to time as to the position and conduct of the Emperor of France—looking, at the same time, to the dissatisfaction entertained by many of our merchants and manufacturers at the arrangements which have been made—the extension of trade and the prosperity which were promised us, are not altogether so sure as we were led to expect, And the expectation of prosperity from that treaty has been, I will not say destroyed, but very much weakened. Having thus stated the object I have in view, I would just say one word as to the example and precedent set by Sir Robert Peel, so frequently referred to. When Sir Robert Peel put on the income tax it was because our system of indirect taxation was then in a very unsatisfactory condition, it was necessary to effect a reform in that system of indirect taxation, and he put on an income tax for a time to cover the experiment on indirect taxation. Now, we cannot say that our indirect taxation is in the same unsatisfactory state as in 1842; but, on the other hand, it is now our direct taxation which is in a state which requires the most careful and attentive consideration, the most tender and delicate treatment; because, if you are to improve and render it permanent, you will require time both to mature your plans and to bring them into operation. I therefore urge you, if you really wish to follow the example of Sir Robert Peel, to take the converse of his course, and keep your indirect taxation so as to enable you cautiously to put your direct taxation on a sound basis. When my right hon. Friend opposite imposed the succession duty, he had indirect taxes to fall back upon while waiting the result of his experiment. Next year we shall have to grapple seriously with the income tax, to see what can be made of it; whether it can be altered, or made more palatable, or whether it can be replaced by any other system or collection of taxes, direct or indirect. That will be a matter of time and patience; probably it will take years to bring about; and if my own wish could prevail, I should be glad to see this paper duty maintained until we have brought our direct taxes into such a state, that we can repeal it, as Sir Robert Peel proposed to deal with the income tax, when the indirect taxes had sufficiently recovered. But that is not what I ask now. All I ask at present is, that, looking to our present condition and our prospect for the next year, the House, without pronouncing any opinion condemnatory of its principle, will refuse its assent to the Bill for the present.

Sir, until the close of the hon. Gentleman's speech, I was at a loss to understand precisely what his object was, and what he wishes the House to do. But if I correctly apprehend what he seeks, it is that we are not to maintain the paper duty as a permanent source of taxation, but that we are to hold it, as it were, in suspense until certain operations have been performed upon the income tax, or upon some other portions of our direc- taxation, in order to make them satisfactory to the taxpayers of the country. I would really submit that that is not a practical proposition to put to the House. I can understand an hon. Member saying, "I decline to repeal a particular tax." I can understand an hon. Member saying, "I will vote for the repeal of such a tax." but I do not understand the course which the hon. Gentleman has taken, namely, that we are to hold this tax under a sort of sentence of death—and to keep the great industries of the country affected by it constantly under the impression that it may at any moment be repealed. If there be one course more objectionable than another it is to condemn a tax, and avow your intention of soon repealing it, and when the opportunity presents itself of carrying out the views you have expressed, to refuse to avail yourselves of it. The hon. Member has not correctly represented what passed upon the occasion some two years ago, when the Resolution was passed to which he was a party.

I was not in the House at the time.

The hon. Baronet was a Member of the Government, and must have concurred in the course taken.

I do not think I was in the country at the time. I certainly was neither in the House nor a Member of the Government.

Then I was mistaken in considering him a party to it; but I do not know that the point is at all material to the argument. The hon. Gentleman has not, however, correctly represented what then took place. A Resolution was moved to the effect that the paper duty ought not to be maintained as a permanent source of revenue. A second Resolution was proposed to the effect that measures ought to be taken to enable Parliament to dispense with the duty. The then Chancellor of the Exchequer—the right hon. Gentleman opposite—objected to the second Resolution, that is, to taking immediate measures for the repeal of the tax, but consented to the Resolution which condemned the tax as a permanent source of revenue. The House unanimously supported the Government in the view they took. The right hon. Gentleman said then not what the hon. Member for Stamford has related, but this—that although he was not prepared to say that the tax should be immediately repealed, he was prepared to say that it ought to be taken into early consideration. Well, Sir, what is early consideration? Two years have elapsed since that period; and it has been well explained by my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer that 1860 is a remarkable year, for in this year a large sum falls in from the annuities; and it has been repeatedly stated that an opportunity ought to be taken this year to give some relief from indirect taxation by the repeal of the war duties on tea or sugar or something of that kind. Why has not such a measure been proposed? [Cries of "Oh, oh!" from the Opposition.] Then you differ from the hon. Member for Stamford, for he came forward in behalf of revenue; but I understand those cheers to be, not on behalf of revenue, but on behalf of a proposal for substituting the repeal of the duty on sugar or on tea for that of the duty on paper. I really do not think this is an opportunity for raising a question of that kind—upon the third reading of the Paper Duty Bill. If you preferred a repeal of the duty on sugar or on tea, I respectfully submit that this is not the occasion when such a proposition should be addressed to the House. How do we stand? A Bill is brought forward for the repeal of the paper duty. It is read a second time in the House, after full debate, and after ample notice. The Bill passed through Committee without any material opposition. The drawbacks to be allowed to the various persons affected by the repeal of the tax are settled and arranged; and contrary, I maintain, to all precedent—after such a course as this has been taken by the House of Commons the hon. Member for Stamford comes down and asks us not to agree to the third reading of the Bill, but to hold the question in suspense; and the cheers of his friends announce to us that they now want to abandon the paper duty repeal and to substitute the repeal of the war duty on sugar. ["No, no!"] Then what am I to understand? My hon. Friend is very anxious about the Army Estimates. He says he does not understand the Clothing Vote and the Provision Vote. Well, I cannot explain them to him. I am not bound to explain them to him; but I am bound to believe that what the War Department informs the Government is the necessary vote has been considered by them. It is not for me to presume to enter into an argument with the War Department as to whether the exact sum is sufficient which has been asked for the provisions and the clothing of the army. Nor is it for me to go into the point of the expense of the collection of the public revenue, which is a Vote never taken, as I am informed, till the end of July; and therefore it will be absolutely necessary to deal with those financial measures—if you deal with them at all during the Session of Parliament—before that time. I am also surprised at the hon. Member for Stamford telling us he expected that this Bill would not be proceeded with, and that that was the reason he did not give longer notice of his Motion. Why should he expect that the Bill would not be proceeded with? This is an adjourned debate. The third reading of the Bill was moved ton days ago, and the objection then taken was not the objection we have heard to-night, but simply that it was too late in the night to proceed then with the third reading. We heard nothing then about the provisions and clothing Votes of the Army Estimates, or about the expense of collecting the public revenues. I ask the House whether it is fair to deal with a question of this magnitude in the spirit in which it is now proposed to deal with it? I ask you is there no consideration due to the important industry which is affected by the tax? Can you say that it is nothing to keep an industry, employing perhaps, considering all the subsidiary trades, some ten millions of capital, in a perpetual state of suspense as to whether this tax is to be repealed or not r I believe many contracts have already been entered into, in the full belief that the House of Commons would not retrace its steps in a tax repealing Bill; and that after the Bill had been read a second time, after full and ample discussion had taken place, and a division had followed, there was a complete conviction throughout the country that the measure would be carried into law. But if we now hang it up, if we hold it in suspense until the hon. Member for Stamford has settled the principles of his direct taxation, and has made himself thoroughly acquainted with a variety of minute details in the Estimates which at present he does not understand, I say we shall not be acting according to precedent, we shall not be acting with justice to the great industry and the great capital which are employed in the paper-making trade of the country, and we shall be striking at the root of that confidence which has hitherto always been reposed in the first decided step of the House of Commons upon questions affecting taxation. Now, Sir, we have heard a great deal of anxiety expressed about the public revenue. Nothing but a desire to take care that we do not part with too much of our income has actuated the hon. Member for Stamford in proposing his Motion to the House. But I want to know whether that desire is shared in by the right hon. Gentleman, the Member for Droitwich, because he voted the other night for the Bill for repealing or at least materially reducing the duty on fire insurances? Where was the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Buckinghamshire on that occasion? He may indeed have paired, but certainly if there was that excessive anxiety about our parting with income and creating a deficiency, for some future year, I think it certainly was remarkable that he should not have been in his place to protest against a course which would be so dangerous to the revenue of 1861. But let me recal to the recollection of the House the position in which we stand in regard to this Bill. Upon the second reading, the whole question was raised in connection with the income tax, upon the Motion of the hon. Baronet the Member for Somersetshire, (Sir W. Miles) declaring that, as the repeal of the paper duty would necessitate an addition of 1d. in the pound to the income tax, it was inexpedient to proceed with it at that time. The hon. Member for Stamford voted for that Resolution; he voted against the repeal of the paper duty, because it would necessitate an addition to the income tax. But the House overruled that proposition by a decisive majority, and the penny was added to the income tax—and now you turn round, and you say, contrary to the spirit of that Resolution, that, having got the income tax, you will not give us the repeal of the paper duty. I say it is a very strange and inconsistent course of proceeding to connect the penny addition to the income tax with the paper duty, and then, when the House has decided to have the additional penny and not the paper duty, to turn round and say, "We will have the 10d. income tax and the paper duty into the bargain." The speech of the hon. Member for Stamford is an attack upon the whole principle of the Budget of the Government. It in fact takes the finances of the country out of the hands of the Government, and lays down a totally new scheme, utterly at variance with the principles which the Chancellor of the Exchequer submitted to the House. After the speeches which were made when the Budget was submitted to the House, there can be no doubt that one of the leading features of the Budget was that there should be in the present year a certain amount of remission of indirect taxation, for the benefit of the trade and industry of the country, and that the expenditure of the country should be provided by the requisite augmentation of the income tax and the imposition of other duties for the purpose. That, in fact, was the principle of the Budget, and if you now say you will strike out so great and material a feature of the whole financial scheme as the Member for Stamford proposes, I am of opinion that you are attacking the very principle of the financial measures of the Government. But I want to ask the hon. Member for Stamford if he succeeds in maintaining the paper duty, what he will do with the law on the subject? Are the opinions of the Commissioners of Inland Be venue to go for nothing? Is their deliberate report to be ignored—the report made to this House that this tax is no longer tenable, in justice to the parties affected, without legislation? The Commissioners of Inland Revenue, of their own free will, presented a report, in which they stated that it was necessary to change the mode of levying this tax, if it was to be maintained as a source of revenue. I ask hon. Gentlemen then if they are prepared to legislate upon the subject of the paper duty, and to make its application one that can be carried out with justice to the different interests affected? I cannot imagine that they can be averse to take that course, but I do most emphatically protest against a course of uncertainty, and of doubt. If you mean to maintain this duty upon paper, say so boldly, and apply it to those cases to which it ought to be applied, and which are now exempt; carry out your tax equally and justly to every branch of those industries which ought to bear it, being in competition with each other; but do not by your halting course leave all those anomalies and injustice without remedy, and expose the trade and industry of the country to a system of vexation and injustice, which, I venture to say, in the whole history of our Parliamentary proceedings, is entirely without precedent. I, for one, deny altogether that the question of the repeal of the paper duty stands upon mere financial grounds. It has never been advocated by those who have agitated for its repeal, simply as a question of a pecuniary burden. The repeal of the paper duty has been advocated upon high moral grounds, and the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Buckinghamshire has himself told us most emphatically, that his reason for wishing for the repeal of the paper duty was not to get rid of this pecuniary burthen when opportunity offered; but that he advocated its repeal for moral, literary, and educational considerations. Now, those are high grounds, and I say the financial view of this question is insignificant, as compared with the moral and educational view that may be entertained in reference to its hearing upon the diffusion of knowledge in this country. I hope, Sir, this House will not be induced to retrace its steps upon this important question. I believe sincerely that no measure is more thoroughly consistent with the policy of the age in which we live, than a measure for untaxing the press and the cheap literature of this country. You are voting large sums annually for the education of the people of this country. You are beset with all kinds of difficulties of a religious character in the endeavour to diffuse knowledge amongst the people. I say, then, do what in you lies, at least, to allow the people to educate themselves by taking from the books that must be the instruments for conveying knowledge—take from them the exciseman's hands and these fiscal burthens, which, most undoubtedly, do operate most materially to deteriorate the quality of your cheap literature, and to prevent the diffusion of knowledge amongst the great body of the people, you have in your Reform debates complained of the ignorance of the masses of the people, and their unfitness to exercise the franchise from their inability to form a right judgment in regard to political matters. I say you can take no course more logical or more direct towards spreading information among the people, than by repealing a tax of this description, which most undoubtedly presses most heavily upon that very literature which is to circulate amongst the masses of the people, and which is to diffuse the knowledge that you desire should be spread through the country. Sir, I will not discuss the merits of this great question; but I protest against its being placed simply upon financial grounds. But, putting it upon financial grounds, I say that the hon. Member for Stamford (Sir Stafford Northcote) has made out no case why we should retrace our steps or why we should upset the financial measures of the Government. He calls upon us to admit that when the measures of the Government were introduced we committed a great and grievous error. ["Hear!"] Yes, but we cannot admit that. Neither, after the divisions that have recently taken place, do I believe the House of Commons will admit it. Nothing has transpired since those measures were brought forward to induce us to adopt a total change in our policy. I entreat hon. Gentlemen, then, on all sides to support this Bill. For myself I take an interest in it far beyond any ordinary party question, and although I should regret to see any one of the excellent financial measures of the Government interfered with, I should doubly deplore the rejection of this particular Bill, because I believe it contains within itself the germs of great moral benefit to the great mass of the community.

said, that having last year deemed the question of the abolition of the paper duty a proper one to be taken into consideration by the House, he had hoped that the right hon. Gentleman would that night have advanced some reasons why he (Mr. Ball) should continue to hold views which, he owned, the information he had since been able to obtain had tended very much to shake. The right hon. Gentleman had stated that to keep the question longer in abeyance would lead to discontent and put the paper trade in jeopardy. He (Mr. Ball) had made extensive inquiries of persons whose authority was entitled to the highest trust; and he affirmed that he had not met with a single individual interested in the paper trade who had not declared that if the proposal of the Government were agreed to it would entail almost certain ruin upon all who were engaged in the trade. It was most unfortunate, perhaps, but upon every part of the subject that the right hon. Gentleman had opened to-night he seemed to be totally in error, and his statements to be contrary to the facts. The right hon. Gentleman stated that there were ten millions of capital employed in the trade.

explained, that he merely spoke upon speculation.

Then the right hon. Gentleman, considering the position which he occupied, ought not to have indulged in such speculations. He ought to have been careful how he put forth assertions which he could not sustain, presuming them to be disputed in that House.

said, he had stated that it was probable ten millions of capital was engaged in the manufacture of paper in this country, and the subsidiary trades with which it was connected.

The right hon. Gentleman would excuse him for contradicting him; but it was not probable that £10,000,000 were so employed, seeing that the returns for the whole quantity of paper made gave about £6,000,000 a year. But be that as it might, it was only fair to argue that in proportion to the extent of the interest with which the House was called upon to deal did it behave them seriously to consider the results which might flow from the mode in which they were asked to legislate. The right hon. Gentleman stated that the revenue derived from paper last year was about £1,400,000, but last year's revenue surpassed the ordinary amount contributed from that source. It would be fairer to take it at £1,200,000. Was it right, however, to interfere even with that sum when the deficiency could not be supplied without the imposition of an extra penny as income tax? He contended that it was most unjust, and that the tax of a penny would take more out of the poor; clerk's pocket than the value of all the paper he consumed in the course of a year. But there was another objection to the repeal of the paper duty. He had been told by persons conversant with the subject, that that repeal would tend to do material injury not only to the manufacturers themselves, but to those whom they employed. The right hon. Gentleman had not, however, informed the House to what I extent he thought the operation of the Bill would be to diminish the number of those who earned their livelihood in that way. He might add that the materials from which paper was made were from 40 to 50 per cent cheaper on the Continent than in England; and it was only the extra 1d. per pound, between the 1½d. excise duty on English and the 2½d. customs duty on foreign paper that had hitherto enabled the English maker to compete with the foreigner. He asked, then, would it not have been wiser for the Government, when negotiating the Treaty with France, to have said—"We are giving you a great boon; you must grant us an equivalent. What is free trade for England should be free trade for France; and in framing a treaty which is designed to blend together in closer harmony and friendship these two great nations, we must have that treaty based upon principles of equity and justice; and you must allow the free exportation of rags." Moreover, the Government had not fairly considered what they owed to the poorer classes of the country. Surely it was their duty, in the first place, to have considered how our own poor were to be employed and maintained, and contentment promoted amongst them. It was all very well to say that by advancing a portion of the people to the possession of the legislative influence they would be gratified and pleased; but as soon as their bread was taken from their mouths they would inevitably show that no mere right to vote for the election of Members of this House would, in their view, be equivalent to that of which they and their families were deprived.

said, the questions of the Excise duty and the Customs' duty on paper were quite distinct. Two years ago the House condemned the paper duty as a permanent source of revenue, and as the House during the present Session undertook to review the finances of the country, it was bound to abolish the Excise duty; and if the abolition of the duty caused a deficiency in the national income, that deficiency ought to be made up, either by a loan or by such a proposition as that of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, that a penny should be added to the income tax. The real question raised by the hon. Baronet was merely whether since the second reading of the Bill any new circumstances had arisen which ought to induce them to reconsider their decision and retain the duty? That entirely depended upon whether they had confidence in the estimate which Her Majesty's Government had formed of the expenditure of the current year. Those who believed that the sums which Her Majesty's Government had asked for would be sufficient to meet the exigencies of the public service had no alternative but to vote for the third reading. The hon. Member for Cambridgeshire (Mr. Ball) had raised another and an altogether different question—a question well worthy of attention, but not one that they could then properly discuss, namely, the effect which the abolition of the Customs' duty would have upon the British manufacturers of paper and those whom they employed? The hon. Gentleman would see that no possible injury could accrue to the British manufacturer from the remission of the Excise duty, the mischief could obviously only arise from the abolition of the protective duty of a penny a pound now levied upon foreign paper. But the House had already affirmed the commercial treaty with France, by which this country bound itself not to place on any French article on which an Excise duty was charged a Customs duty higher than that excise. It followed, therefore, that if the paper duty of 1½d. per lb. was maintained, they would be obliged to reduce the Customs duty from 2½d. to 1½d. per lb. He trusted that the House would agree to abolish the Excise duty altogether, and then, as the article of paper would drop from the Treaty, the House would be free hereafter to impose a protective duty of a penny, which he hoped would never be given up, unless, indeed, the Government were able to obtain from France a perfectly free trade in rags.

said, that the question for the House was, whether that was the proper time for the remission of the paper duty. A great deal was said about the Resolution by which the House of Commons had pledged themselves to abolish the paper duty as a source of revenue; but the Resolution did not pledge them to take it off until the Treasury was in a position to spare it. He confessed he was surprised at the course the Government had taken on that occasion, when he found what were the opinions expressed by hon. Gentlemen opposite in the discussion on the hon. Member for Ashton's (Mr. M. Gibson's) Resolution in 1858. In that debate the hon. Member for Birmingham (Mr. Bright) said—

"He believed the object of his right hon. Friend in bringing forward this Resolution was merely to put on the records of the House the opinions of hon. Members on both sides, so that, whenever the condition of the Treasury should be such as to permit the Chancellor of the Exchequer to consent to the abolition of this tax, the right hon. Gentleman would select it as the very first for remission, and so get rid of it."

What said the right hon. Member for Bucks (Mr. Disraeli) on the same occasion? This,

"He objected to the Motion as first proposed by the hon. Gentleman. He agreed with him that the maintenance of the Excise on paper as a permanent source of revenue would be impolitic, but could not agree with him that such financial arrangements ought to be made as to enable Parliament to dispense with the tax."

The right hon. Baronet the Home Secretary, who certainly had given the hon. Gentleman no encouragement, said—

"That, when they knew that they had a surplus revenue and the means of diminishing the taxation of the country, then was the proper time to consider what, under existing circumstances, were the taxes which had the first claim to reduction."

These declarations formed one of the grounds of the surprise of the country at the determination of right hon. Gentlemen opposite to seize the present occasion to repeal this tax. He would only quote one more authority, the noble Lord the Member for the City of London—he said distinctly—

"The House would recollect that last year the then Chancellor of the Exchequer proposed that the income tax should be kept up at 7d. in the pound, and that instead of 1s. 3d. the duty on tea would he 1s. 3d., and that there should be a proportionate increase in the duty on sugar. This year they had allowed the income tax to fall from 7d. to 5d. in the pound, but they had kept up the duty on tea at 1s. 5d., and also retained the proportionate increase in the duty on sugar. It was therefore almost a matter of good faith when next there was a reduction in taxation, that the duties on tea and sugar should he reduced, which were in fact war duties, and there could be no greater claim for reduction of taxation than in those articles of consumption which entered so largely into the comforts of the people."

Was this, then, the proper time for taking off the paper duty, when there was not only a deficit, but when that deficit was being increased by his right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer, and when, too, he was reimposing the duties on tea and sugar, and was not only maintaining, but increasing the income tax? The fact was that the Chancellor of the Exchequer ought to rejoice if the Bill were rejected, as its rejection would leave him in possession of funds which he could not afford to lose; and as the income tax had been imposed, should the paper duty be retained, he could only congratulate the right hon. Gentleman on having that amount to meet any difficulties that might arise. The right hon. Gentleman the Member for Ashton expressed his surprise that they should object to the Bill on the third reading. Surely he had been long enough in the House to know that they had a right to dispute a measure at every stage, on the first and second reading, on going into Committee, and on the third reading. Since the period when the Budget and the Commercial Treaty were brought forward, the feeling of the country had materially changed. The people had seen that there was not the desire supposed to exist, on the part of a neighbouring country, to meet the free-trade proposals of the Government. Under these circumstances, it might be fairly argued that the House ought not to press the passing of the Bill. The right hon. Member for Buckinghamshire had been taunted, he thought unfairly, in relation to the question of fire insurance, for having stated last year as a Minister of the Crown the course which he felt it his duty to adopt with regard to it. He himself was in favour of a reduction of that duty, but he had not voted on the question either last year or during the present Session, as he did not wish his motives to be misinterpreted. He was extremely glad the hon. Member for Stamford had brought forward the question, and he hoped the House would declare its opinion that it was unwise to sacrifice revenue amounting to £1,300,000 when a great deficiency existed in the present year, and it had been shown that the deficit for next could not be less than £12,000,000.

said, he differed in opinion from the hon. Member who had last addressed the House, and who, he thought, had somewhat wandered from the issue before the House—namely, that without further financial explanations from the Government, it would be imprudent on the part of the House to assent to the third reading of the Bill. The principle of the Bill had been decided on on the second reading, and consequently they were not then in a position to dispute the propriety of repealing a tax that the House had already declared ought not to form a permanent source of revenue. The point raised by the hon. Baronet, the Member for Stamford, and upon which he trusted the Chancellor of the Exchequer would afford some information was, that inasmuch as the House would probably be called on to adopt larger Estimates than were at first contemplated, and as the last of these Estimates had not yet been presented, it was desirable, before so large an amount of revenue was parted with, that the House should be in a position to arrive at a just conclusion. In this view he entirely concurred; and though it might be said that the increased amount of the Estimates would not absorb the entire of the available surplus, there were other questions looming in the future, as to which they ought to have some information. It was stated, for instance, that the Government intended to propose certain plans of fortification: and it would be well that the House should be in possession of the fact, before coming to any definite Resolution, involving such an extensive sacrifice of revenue as they were now asked to make. He differed from those who thought that an income tax ought not now to be imposed, with a view of removing other kinds of taxation, for the principle had been already adopted. The sole question was, whether sufficient provision had been made for the additional expenses to be incurred. He did not find fault with the Government for not having produced these additional estimates; for, in the position in which they found themselves at the opening of the Session, they had no choice as to the manner in which they should introduce the financial details; and he believed it was customary for Chancellors of the Exchequer to bring in towards the close of the Session a supplementary estimate, embracing all additional and miscellaneous charges. He differed from the hon. Member for Hertfordshire (Mr. Puller), who thought that the Excise and Customs' duties were not intimately connected; on the contrary, they were so intimately related, that he could not conceive how any hon. Member could vote with respect to the one, without anticipating that he would be called on to vote in similar sense on the other. And, therefore, he thought himself justified in assuming that the decision that night would virtually decide the question on Monday, as all who now supported the Government would vote against him on the future occasion. He was not surprised that the right hon. Member for Ashton-under-Lyne (Mr. M. Gibson) should take credit to himself for having brought the question to an issue; for it was he who, by an argument of great ability, induced the House, two years ago, to agree to the Resolution which had placed the paper duty in its present anomalous position. But that position had existed ever since; and he did not see that any great injury would result from the postponement of its final decision till next year; the House, in so doing, would be acting in strict accordance with the principle which had guided them since that Resolution was passed. The capital of £10,000,000, alleged to be vested in the manufacture of paper, would remain in exactly the same position it had occupied during that interval. He could see a clear distinction between the reduction of Customs' duties, and the present case. In the former, the House proceeded by way of Resolution, and pledged itself to take off or reduce certain charges; but with respect to duty imposed in accordance with an Act of Parliament, its repeal was not accom- plished until all the successive stages had been gone through; and nobody had a right to complain, if in any of these the Bill for effecting that object was defeated. He by no means contemplated the permanent retention of the paper duty, against which many reasons could be assigned, especially its harsh operation in the case of literary men, and of certain commercial interests; but he believed the injury which it entailed was very much exaggerated. There was no tax which was absolutely free from objection; and in every instance it was a question of comparison as to the least objectionable mode by which the Exchequer could be supplied. In support of the paper duty, it might be urged that it was of long standing, having existed ever since the time of Queen Anne, and that interests had grown up under it and become accustomed to it; while duties more recently imposed had interfered with existing interests, and ran more directly counter to the ideas and habits of the people. Unless, therefore, some fuller explanation were afforded than had yet been given, and unless fears, which were not unreasonably entertained, were more satisfactorily allayed than had hitherto been the case, it would be an act of imprudence in the House to part at such a moment with so large a portion of the revenue.

Sir, I wish to explain to the House in a few words why most reluctantly I shall feel obliged to vote against the third reading of this Bill. I do not come to that determination on any of the narrow grounds I have heard stated since I came into the House, but upon the general view I take of the resources and revenue of the country, which I think are placed in considerable jeopardy by my right hon. Friend's Budget for this year. In the few remarks I made at the beginning of these discussions I described the Budget as being in my opinion an ambitious Budget, and the experience I have acquired of it since only confirms that opinion. I have sat in this House the greater part of half a century, during which time I have paid some attention to the financial condition of the country, and this is the first instance within my recollection when a Chancellor of the Exchequer has come down asking us to repeal certain taxes connected with the permanent revenue of the country, at the same time admitting that he leaves a deficiency, to be supplied by new taxes in the ensuing year, of somewhere about £10,000,000 or £12,000,000. I do not know that any Gentleman in this House can furnish a similar precedent. It is a course full of danger, and it is full of inconvenience; for at the beginning of the next Session we shall be launched into exactly the same discussions which now prevent us from proceeding with the ordinary business of the nation. If it should turn out that some of the great measures of this Session do not succeed or are not carried we must recommence our discussions upon them in the beginning of another Session, and at the same time we shall have to provide the means, which will be then very much more disputed than now, of supplying the deficiency of £10,000,000 or £12,000,000. Again, we have no security that the sums asked from us on account of the Estimates constitute the whole expenditure which we shall be called upon to provide for the service of the year. I have the greatest misgivings with respect to the Vote for the China expedition. As to that item, we must be guided not only by the actual Estimates before us, but by what our own judgment suggests as to the probable expenditure we may be called on to face. With respect to the tax which we are now discussing, I have not a word to say in its defence. It is about as odious a tax as one can well imagine. It is not only a tax which interferes, as all Excise taxes do, with an important branch of manufacture—being almost the only tax of that description now left in our fiscal system—but it also impedes the circulation of information and of knowledge. Upon all these grounds no man is more disposed to repeal this tax, whenever we can do so without robbing the Exchequer. But when we are called on to repeal it at the risk of leaving a large deficit, or when we are called on to impose other taxes equally odious to the people, I think we should wait until some more favourable time presents itself. It is upon these, and upon no mere narrow grounds, that I object to the repeal of this tax. Another reason why we should suspend our judgment is this:—My right hon. Friend proposes other taxes which have not yet passed the House. Some of them are objected to by various classes of persons who will be affected by them. For instance, the mercantile classes object to the petty taxes which are to be imposed upon trade. It is true we remit duties on consumption, but we impose petty, vexatious, shackles on trade, such as 2d. or 3d. on removing packages, which are not imposed on the commerce of Hamburg, Belgium, Holland, America, or of any other country in the world. It is the first time in the history of the country that such vexatious taxes were imposed. I feel strongly the objections to such imposts, and it is therefore not quite clear to my mind that others may not object too, and that my right hon. Friend may not experience some difficulty in carrying them. At all events, I think it will be better to wait until they are carried before we proceed to remit other duties. Though greatly indisposed therefore to do anything in the least opposed to the measures of the Government, I feel obliged in my conscience to vote against the third reading of this Bill.

said, that if he had voted upon the second reading of the Bill, he should have voted in its favour, because he had at that time believed that it would afford a considerable relief to the paper manufacturers, and that it would lead to an important reduction in the price of paper. But everything that had since passed, both abroad and at home, upon that subject, convinced him that that expectation was but a delusion. He believed that the measure would not be productive of the advantages he had at one time anticipated, and he should, therefore, vote against the third reading. He felt convinced, too, that the Estimate of the Government on account of the Chinese war would be found utterly insufficient, and with that conviction he could not, without some overpowering reason, such as did not, he believed, exist in that case, consent to the extinction of a large amount of revenue.

Sir, I must frankly admit that my right hon. Friend (Mr. Ellice) does found his opposition to the third reading of this Bill upon no narrow grounds. I might, indeed, question the correctness of some portion of those grounds as matters of fact. He complains of the Government because they are proposing the imposition of a number of new taxes upon trade which have not yet received the sanction of this House, which may therefore be uncertain as to their fate, and with respect to which it is desirable that we should know whether they are to be adopted before we surrender revenue. My right hon. Friend says he has attended the debates of this House for nearly half a century, and it is, perhaps, no wonder, therefore, that he has become so weary of hearing them; that the taxes of which he speaks have been debated by the House, and, with an insignificant exception, have received its deliberate approval without his knowledge. Therefore, as regards that part of my right hon. Friend's statement, if it has materially affected his judgment on the immediate question before us, I can only regret that a voice so authoritative should have been guided or misguided, as the case may be, by considerations so entirely erroneous. As to my right hon. Friend's larger allegations and criticisms on the general policy of the Government scheme of finance, I must point out to him that he has spoken somewhat late. His statement, which resumes and sums up, in fact, the most prominent objections urged against the financial plans of the Government as a whole, would have been extremely important if it had proceeded from his mouth, with his authority, some two or three months ago, and would then have, at least, been in place and in time. At present, I hardly know what purpose it can answer beyond that of eliciting warm expressions of approval from that portion of the House which finds a large amount of sympathy in a quarter where sympathy with them was not previously known to exist. But I must submit to my right hon. Friend that it is too late to discuss these matters now. ["No, no."] With great respect I must decline to follow my right hon. Friend into the mere enunciation of counter-statements which it would be perfectly easy for us to make, or into that very minute examination, and, as I think, that not very difficult refutation, of his opinions, which would, in point of fact, involve the repetition of our principal debates for the last three months. I beg to state to the House what I conceive not to be the question now at issue. We are not debating the general principles of the financial plans of the Government, and I venture to tell my right hon. Friend that if he really has entertained these sinister and dismal apprehensions, it might have been better either to have uttered them in their full force at the time when they might have operated on the decision of Parliament, or possibly to have kept them to himself. The time, Sir, has passed by when the decision of Parliament can be governed by these prophecies, because in the main, as I shall endeavour to show to the House, the principal questions raised by them are already decided. I do not ask your assent to that proposition just now, but I will attempt presently to show that it is a sound and correct proposition. We are not discussing to-night the question whether it would have been wiser on the part of the Government to have refrained from proposing a repeal of the paper duty, which was to be made up by an additional penny of income-tax, because that additional penny has already become law, and has, at the moment I am speaking, been levied from many of Her Majesty's subjects, and a large party in this House opposed to the policy of the Government has, by its deliberate vote, in its own self-chosen language, sent forth to the country that the proposition of a tenth of the income-tax and the repeal of the paper duty were correlatives the one to the other, and inseparably united. That has been declared by the Motion of the hon. Member for Somersetshire (Sir William Miles), and supported generally by the party opposite. Neither are we discussing the question whether the Government would have done better to have proposed the reduction of the duties on tea and sugar rather than of that on paper, because we have seen that while it has been argued that at any rate it would have been a preferable change, yet there has been no serious intention of recommending a change of that sort, or it would have been submitted to the House in the shape of a formal Motion. Neither are we discussing the question whether a protective duty of a penny per lb. is to be maintained upon foreign paper in consideration of the legislation of foreign countries. I think, Sir, I may venture to assure my noble Friend who lately addressed the House (Lord Harry Vane), that, as far as argument at least, the two questions of the duty to be imposed upon the importation of paper from abroad and the question of the retention of the Excise duty on paper at home are entirely distinct. He may say if he pleases, and he has a right to do so, that the same inclination which led a majority of the House to vote for the one may lead them to vote for the other; but, in truth, the two things are quite distinct Neither at this stage do I propose to re-argue the general question of the repeal of the duty on paper. My right hon. Friend the Member for Coventry has not gone further than to say that a more odious tax than that for the retention of which he argued could not be conceived. And this most odious tax he desires to retain after the House has given to the Exchequer the equivalent which was stipulated for when the repeal of the duty was proposed. I do not re-argue the general grounds against the tax. I merely recite them. Among them, were, of course, the general objections to Excise duties upon what is called a legitimate and unexceptionable manufacture. Prominently among them are the uncertainty and inequality of the present law, which have led the responsible Department to report that

"It is scarcely an exaggeration to say that we are levying a duty upon A while we allow B to send out goods precisely similar in nature without any interference from the revenue officers."

So that according to the opinions of those who are most competent to speak upon the subject it is not possible to go on longer as we are, and if the duty is not repealed there remains for Parliament the doubly odious task of new vexatious and restrictive legislation. Another and a less weighty ground is the Resolution of this House, and I hope that hon. Gentlemen who voted for that Resolution, meaning, apparently, nothing by it, will derive from that vote a salutary lesson for the future, when they see what effect such a vote produces in weakening the hands of those whose duty it is to maintain and enforce the law. My right hon. Friend has said that this duty is a tax on literature and education, and, as such it has long stood in evil odour in this House. And observe, the effect of it is to confine within narrow limits the whole manufacture from fibrous substances, which it is reasonable to expect, if the shackles of the law are removed, may become the basis of a trade vastly multiplied, and which will contribute to the general prosperity of the country in a degree far beyond the measure of tribute which it now supplies to the revenue. My hon. Friend the Member for Stamford (Sir S. Northcote) stated the case not unfairly. I understood him to take as his ground, not the general proposition that the financial policy of the Government ought ab initio to have been rejected, but that since the House had adopted the principle of the repeal of the paper duty such changes had taken place in the prospects of our expenditure as imposes upon us the duty and obligation of withholding the relief we had promised in respect of this particular item of finance. The state of our expenditure and the probable demands upon the public purse were declared by the Government at the com- mencement of the Session, and it requires no declaration from the Government to show that it contained some element of uncertainty, because we had undertaken to send, in conformity with what was our duty and honour a costly expedition to one of the remotest countries of the globe, with respect to which the cost must necessarily depend much upon circumstances attending the despatch of that expedition and the course of political affairs which might follow its departure and arrival. I never disguised this, nor do I now, that there is a degree of uncertainty affecting the expenditure of the present financial year, and probably that of future years. That is not a matter that is new to the House, but one which it had in view when it assented to our financial propositions and gave them its sanction and approval. And although the precise amount of that expenditure has received some degree of modification—the precise amount we are not able to say—yet there has been no such change as would justify us in altering the financial propositions which we submitted to the House. It is still a case of uncertainty, I admit, but still it is substantially the same case of uncertainty upon which the House gave its vote in the mouths of February 'and March. Now I come to the specific case upon which my hon. Friend rests. He said there was a change in the estimates for the collection of the revenue, and he intimated that there would be a similar change in the estimates for the miscellaneous services, although those changes would not involve any increase of charge. I think my hon. Friend will see, although he may be perfectly right in principle, when he says a material change in the probable charge of the country will justify a corresponding change in your intentions with regard to the provisions for it, that there is no such material change at this moment, as will justify his Motion. He says that several military Votes have been altered. It is true, and when we come to discuss those estimates a good reason for the alteration will, I am sure, be given, and the hon. Baronet knows well that a state of accounts involving such large sums between the Governments of India and of England is necessarily a disturbing cause, which from time to time tends to vary Estimates and to modify charges on either side. The Estimates as presented by my right hon. Friend he is prepared to stand by; and the House will, I think, admit that he is not in the habit of presenting Estimates got up to meet the incidence of an immediate charge and then relying upon supplementary estimates to carry him through the year. Of course I did not understand that any offensive charge was made against us; and all I mean to say is—that the Estimates now presented in respect to the Votes to which the hon. Baronet alluded—namely, the clothing, provisions, and stores—will be defended by my right hon. Friend, and they must be understood to represent the mature convictions and the latest information of the department over which he presides. My hon. Friend adverted to the Vote for fortifications, and asked for details. Undoubtedly, nothing can be more reasonable than that the House should be informed as to the details of that Vote; but the House and the Government are essentially in the same predicament, inasmuch as while it is known to them both that a special body has been appointed for the purpose of considering the important questions connected with the defences of the country, the Report of that body, embodying the recommendations which it may think fit to make to the Government, is not yet in the hands of the Cabinet for its consideration. What course, then, has been taken by the Government under the circumstances? Why, this; they have submitted to the House necessarily a sum without details, which remains in a great degree unfixed, but, at any rate, a sum which is much more than the Vote of last year, or, indeed, of any preceding year, for the purpose of fortifications. But that matter stands precisely now as it did at the time when the House arrived at the decision which it is now asked to retract. I come now to the third head—that of the Miscellaneous Estimates, which my hon. Friend anticipated would be increased to £7,772,000; but that is sheer anticipation. I think I may venture to assure him that that is an inaccurate estimate, and that the charge for the Miscellaneous Estimates will approximate nearly to the figure at which I originally stated it. I will not say there will not be a variation of some £20,000 or £30,000, because my hon. Friend knows that in the course of public business there are always some items of these Estimates unsettled at this period of the year, but substantially that charge will correspond with my former Estimate. Then there remains the charge for the collection of the revenue; and, with re- spect to that, there is something in what has been stated by my hon. Friend, because, owing to the early period at which the Estimates were proposed, they were stated at a lower figure than that at which it was afterwards thought prudent to fix them. But it is impossible for me to state even now in what degree that change in the figure is likely to represent a real increase of expenditure, because, as my hon. Friend knows, important alerations are contemplated in reference to the revenue establishments and the collection of the taxes, and at present it would be impossible for me to say in what degree any changes that may be made in that sense may affect the Estimate; but even if the whole of the difference my hon. Friend anticipates were to be represented by a real expenditure—that difference being above £200,000—although it may constitute a change in the circumstances since the Budget was proposed, yet constitutes no change of a nature or magnitude that would justify us in stopping the course of a measure which involves a revenue of five or six times that amount. So far, therefore, as regards change in circumstances since the period when the financial statement was submitted to the House, there is nothing that would justify the Government in making new financial proposals to Parliament. But even that is not the whole of the question before us; and I entreat the House, before coming to the vote of to-night, to consider what its meaning and bearing really are. The third reading of a Bill is now contested, and you axe, in circuitous and vague terms, but still with no doubt as to the practical object, invited to reject that Bill on the adjourned debate on this its very last stage, the object of that Bill being to repeal a duty which involves a large amount of revenue, and a trade producing many millions worth of goods every year. I intreat the House to consider what is really involved in that proposal. My right hon. Friend (Mr. Ellice) says he has sat in this House for nearly half a century, and I ask him if he has ever known such a vote given as that in which he is going to join to-night. If any other hon. Gentleman has known it, let us have the precedent. Has my right hon. Friend, I repeat, ever known a case in which the repeal of a tax affecting trade, deliberately proposed by an executive Government as part, and a fundamental part, of its financial propositions for the year, long debated in the House of Commons, variously discussed on both sides, and deliberately affirmed by a large majority—I say has he ever known a case in the half century of his experience in which, at the last moment, on the Motion for the third reading of a Bill, the House of Commons has interfered and arrested the boon on its way to the people? What does this involve? I am appealing to hon. Gentlemen conversant with trade and taxation, and I ask them what is the effect that is uniformly produced on the House and the country when the repeal of a tax upon trade is announced by the authority of the Queen's Government, and is accepted by the higher authority of this House? I state without the slightest fear of contradiction, that such an arrangement, when so announced, is almost uniformly taken for granted as a thing accomplished. ["No, no!"] These are surely matters for a free expression of opinion, and I state it as my opinion that even upon the announcement by the Queen's Government of the repeal of a tax on trade, that repeal is usually taken for granted. But what I insist upon is this—and here I challenge contradiction in any form—that, without exception, when such a remission of taxation has been proposed by the authority of the Government and accepted by a deliberate vote of the House of Commons it is from that time regarded by every person concerned as if it were already the law of the land. Is there an exception to that? Can my right hon. Friend (Mr. Ellice) furnish me with an exception? Let us recollect what this matter really is. The business of the Queen's Government is to make demands on the House of Commons for the sums necessary to carry forward the public service, and to suggest the means by which those charges are to be met. But this power of altering the taxes of the country is one of the greatest, most important, and most vital parts of the whole functions of the House of Commons; and what I now wish to bring to the particular notice of the House is that there is no instance of the correction of a deliberate vote of this kind. Directly the remission of a tax is announced by the Government and accepted by the House of Commons every description of trading arrangements begin to be made by those who are affected by the tax. Those who intend, when you remove a tax of excise, to create new establishments—and, in this ease, to erect new mills—begin to make their arrangements—those who intend to import from abroad begin to make their arrangements to import from abroad—those who intend to make arrangements to dispose of a valuable stock, commence their arrangements for disposing of that valuable stock; the whole operations of that trade are, in point of fact, dependent on the vote of the House of Commons; and when the House has deliberately given that vote I say it is always and without exception regarded as the definitive and authoritative expression of its opinion. I think my right hon. Friend (Mr. Ellice) must be led to consider whether, even for the purpose of retaining the paper duty, it would be worth while to give such a shock to public confidence as the new course of practice now recommended could not fail to give. During the half century of my right hon. Friend's experience you have at intervals repealed from £40,000,000 to £50,000,000 of taxes, and in every one of these instances the first affirmation of the House has been accepted by the country, and are we now going to break up the traditions of the House, and destroy that confidence which the country has ever felt in its declarations relative to taxation? The hon. Member for Hertfordshire (Mr. Puller) says we have not lost our right to vote against the Second Reading of a Financial Bill because the principle of it has been affirmed in a preliminary Committee, nor to object to the Third Reading because it has passed through Committee. Certainly not. No person asserts that either the individual Members of Parliament in this House have lost their right to do what they please in the matter. I am not questioning the right of the House of Commons, but addressing arguments to its sense of fairness, and to that disposition which the House almost uniformly shows to paying regard to its own traditions, and to fulfil those expectations with regard to financial changes which the previous proceedings of Parliament has raised in the country. I know not in what way an executive Government would be able to meet the allegations of parties who, building upon an unbroken course of practice, had made arrangements which were subsequently interfered with. I must also say that I do not think that, even in a financial point of view, you can effectually reanimate the paper duty. You have gone too far. Your own deliberate and unanimous Resolution, sanctioned by the Members of the Government of that day, in whose recollection it seems now to dwell somewhat lightly—the consequent announcements of your own confidential servants, whose business it is to collect the revenue—the proceedings you have this year taken, and the voice of your own majority would have this effect, that even if you persuaded the House to reverse its vote—which I think you cannot do—you would only bring back the trade to a paralyzed existence. You would check the manufacture, you would proscribe all enterprise, and you would only half obtain the fiscal objects which you contemplate, while no small loss and suffering would be the consequence of your having disappointed the just expectations that you had raised. But these considerations are apart from the important merits of the general question that has almost posthumously been raised by my right hon. Friend, and from the merits of the other important question whether the Government judged wisely or not wisely in proposing the repeal of the paper duty. What I submit is that it is above all things necessary in matters relating to taxation that the people of this country should know when the voice of Parliament has been uttered. The practice of forty years has exhibited a system of uniform conduct in this respect, under which you have given a promise to the country that I do think it would be neither wise nor just to recall; and I do not hesitate to express my individual opinion, that if we were about to be, I will not say involved in war, but to be placed in circumstances that would demand of us additional charges, it would be better that the Government, having arrived at this point, should propose some other appliances, and ask the House to find the means in some other way, rather than counsel the House to do that which would be regarded as nothing more nor less than the breach of a legislative promise. I feel confident that the majority of the House retains the opinion which it expressed on the Second Reading of the Bill. I also feel confident that even some of those who doubted the merits of the measure when it was introduced will not doubt now, when the question is whether the House will or will not fulfil a solemn pledge that it has given to the country.

I trust the House will allow me to state that I for one do not concur in the opinion expressed by the right hon. Gentleman the Chancellor of the Exchequer in reference to the operation of this measure on the trade in paper or subscribe to the principle he has laid down that every removal or every reduction of a duty proposed by the Government is to be considered almost by consent as imperative. In 1852 the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Buckinghamshire proposed, on the part of the first Government of the Earl of Derby, a reduction of the duty on tea, but the House rejected that Budget entirely. Does the right hon. Gentleman mean to say that because the Government proposes a reduction of duty, such is the prestige and importance attached to the proposal that all transactions of trade in the particular commodity affected by it are brought to an end, and that a rejection of the proposal by this House cannot be carried into effect without inflicting serious and fatal injury on that trade? I ask the right hon. Gentleman is he sure that in consequence of his proposal for the removal of the Excise duty on paper there has been such an extension of projects for the manufacture of that commodity as he seems to suppose? Does he mean to say that the paper manufacturers are in favour of his measure if that measure be coupled with a reduction of the duty on foreign paper, without any compensating reduction of duty on the import of the raw material? So far as I can gather the opinion of the paper manufacturers, they would rather have the duty on paper remain if its repeal is to be accompanied by a reduction of the duty on foreign paper without any corresponding reduction on the import of rags. The right hon. Gentleman says it will be a breach of faith not to carry out this proposal. But I think it is but too probable that if it be carried out English capital will be carried away to be embarked in paper manufacture abroad, when proof will be given of the right hon. Gentleman's mistake in thinking that the rejection of this Bill on the third reading would inflict injury on the trade. The right hon. Gentleman is correct in saying that when a Resolution is carried in this House with reference to an import duty on a foreign product commerce relies on that Resolution being formally passed, because it affects the duty on the import of the commodity; but when a Resolution of the Mouse affects the manufacturing industry of this country it is a very different thing. I agree with the right hon. Member for Coventry (Mr. Ellice), that it is better to remove Excise duties if we can, but that of all Excise duties that on paper is the least injurious to the production of manufactures, the least hurtful, the least preventive to inventions and the introduction of new materials. But we are not now considering whether Excise duties are or are not hurtful, nor whether the removal of the paper duty might or might not benefit the manufacturers and extend the trade of the country. We are not now even considering whether it is better to repeal this duty or those that press more heavily on the labouring classes; but we are considering whether, looking to the future, and, looking to the uncertainties of expense, and to what may happen next year with, perhaps, another Parliament—at any rate, with a great deficiency, we should now remove a source of revenue which now exists without great pressure on the productive powers of this country and without great injury to the manufacturing classes or detriment to the consuming classes, and which may be wanted, and, I believe, is now wanted, but which, at all events, this House would be unwise to part with. For a Government to refuse this proposition on the part of an Opposition was most extraordinaiy. We have heard in old times of "Her Majesty's Opposition," but this appears to be "the Government Opposition," which grants the Government £1,200,000, and places right hon. Gentlemen opposite in the happy situation of perhaps avoiding a deficiency, or at least secures to this country its power to meet future contingencies, and to maintain public faith.

Sir, I should be quite content that this Debate should close with the able speech of my hon. Friend the Member for Huntingdon (Mr. T. Baring), had it not been for references repeatedly made to me, not only to-night, but on a former occasion by the right hon. Chancellor of the Exchequer with respect to the conduct I pursued in reference to this tax two years ago; and I do not think it becoming to myself or to the House to remain silent, when the right hon. Gentleman has spoken under an entire misapprehension of what took place on that occasion. With respect to the question generally, as moved by way of Amendment, it appears to me that a very simple issue is raised; and when we strip it of all the envelopment which has been thrown around it by the rhetorical dexterity of the right hon. Gentleman, we have before us only one point to consider, and of all points in the world one the most entitled to the grave and earnest consideration of the House of Commons. Sir, the Government, from one peculiar circumstance on which we need not now dwell, had this year to make their financial statement at an unusually early period, when we were not and when we could not be in possession of the results of the financial year; and the propositions of the Government were of a very extensive and singularly complicated character. Well, the consequences of these circumstances was a result, which the right hon. Gentleman has admitted, that there were necessarily in the statements made what the right hon. Gentleman has happily and fairly described as elements of uncertainty; and it is because we are now in the middle of the Parliamentary Session, and because those elements of uncertainty have to a certain degree been developed, and because there is a prospect of a still further development of them, ending in an issue not in harmony with the calculations and estimates of the right hon. Gentleman, that my hon. Friend the Member for Stamford takes this opportunity, when the House is called upon to sanction a further remission of revenue, to advise you to re-consider your position and see whether you are justified in taking the step which the Government counsels you to pursue. I listened with great attention to the right hon. Gentleman to see how he would answer the objections urged both with moderation and modesty by my hon. Friend. In the first place my hon. Friend says that we are not yet in possession of all the Estimates of the Government, but that, nevertheless, we have already had one estimate which exceeds the calculation made at the beginning of the year by a sum considerably above £200,000; and as the Government calculated only on a surplus for the whole year of £400,000; therefore, more than half this surplus has already disappeared. I have not heard any denial of the accuracy of that statement. My hon. Friend as well as the right hon. Member for Coventry, with all the authority the latter Gentleman so justly possesses in this House, called our attention to the Vote of credit for China. Was the answer of the right hon. Gentleman on that point satisfactory? So far as I could follow the ambiguous though adroit phraseology of the right hon. Gentleman, I understand that he is in possession of evidence at this moment to the effect that the estimate this year has been exceeded. Then what has be- come of that surplus revenue calculated on at the beginning of the year? The right hon. Member for Coventry, following up with more detail the intimation made by my hon. Friend, appears to have excited great indignation on the part of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, because that right hon. Member succeeded in showing that some of the taxes which the Chancellor of the Exchequer counted on, and which were framed, if not with the intention, at all events with the effect, of greatly vexing and embarrassing the trade of the country, would probably fail in producing the anticipated amount of revenue, and might not even receive the sanction of the House. What was the answer of the Chancellor of the Exchequer? The House cannot have forgotten the dignified reproof the Chancellor of the Exchequer administered to the right hon. Member for Coventry. Undismayed by the experience of half a century, which we all acknowledge and which he shows in our Debates when ever he rises, the Chancellor of the Exchequer positively gave him a lecture, for not being aware that all these measures had already received the sanction of the House. Is that so? I have watched the progress of these measures, not with the authority of a Gentleman who has sat here for fifty years, but with a sense of the responsibility attaching to my position in this House, and I have observed that the charges on the various operations in warehousing, such as "tapping, reguaging, bottling," &c., which were announced in the Budget, and which stood on the Motion paper of the House for a considerable time, have disappeared from that paper. I have made, not a public inquiry, but an inquiry, I believe, at an authentic quarter in this House, and I shall be greatly misled, if those measures will ever reappear. They are dropped. There was an estimate, when the financial statement was made, that these particular measures would produce £130,000. To that add the sum of £230,000 in excess, occasioned by the collection of the revenue, and the unknown but certain excess on the China Vote, and we shall soon be arriving at the amount of this very tax, the remission of which is under our consideration. For I must remind the House that, though this tax produces a revenue of more than £1,200,000 a year, and is increasing in amount, yet, so far as the financial year is concerned, the amount which it will give to the Chancellor of the Exchequer will only be £1,000,000; and the items to which I have already alluded approach to an amount something exceeding two-thirds of that sum. But a very important element is still to be noticed, and that is the subject of fortifications. My hon. Friend, the Member for Stamford, very properly called the attention of the House to that matter, which is no longer a rumour, but an understanding sanctioned by an announcement from Ministers to the effect that the question of the fortification of this country on a great and costly scale, has been under the consideration of a Committee; and the Report of that Committee has, I understand, been made to the Government. At any rate, there is a general impression that the Report, when made, will be acted upon. No denial has been given by the Chancellor of the Exchequer on that head. The right hon. Gentleman evaded the question, by merely saying that the Report is not yet submitted to the Cabinet; but he offered no defence against the grave and sensible objection made on the possible resulting expense. He said there was an item for fortification in the Army Estimates of £640,000, without the usual specification in detail; and then he conveyed to the House the impression—indeed, he more than conveyed an impression—I might say he made the statement, that if the great expenditure on account of fortification to the amount of £10,000,000 were decided on, it would be minus, at all events, the sum already included in the Army Estimates. But the House will, I am sure, recollect—the words are yet ringing in our ears—that the Secretary for War answered my specific inquiry in the most frank and unambiguous manner, that that latter Vote was in no way connected with any future plan for the general fortification of the country, but only for that portion still in hand. Therefore, on those points connected with the finances of the country, the right hon. Gentleman has totally evaded the objections that have been urged, or has practically admitted their justice. One word upon this particular tax under discussion. The President of the Board of Trade has appealed to me to support this Bill, upon the grounds which I expressed some years ago, and more than once expressed in favour of the Repeal of the Paper Duty. He says that the financial views of my hon. Friend, the Member for Stamford, are not to be entertained; that my views are of a higher character, and that I take the moral, literary, and educational view of this matter. To consider the matter in this view, is, in his opinion, to take the high view of it; to consider it in a financial point of view, and with reference to the national revenue, is a low view. Now, I do not agree with the right hon. Gentleman, because moral, literary, and educational progress, is entirely dependent upon the state of the country; and if the finances of a country are in disorder, if its general prosperity ceases, then, depend upon it, that intellectual progress, to which he refers, must cease also; and the efforts which multitudes make to educate themselves, must vanish as a dream. And when the right hon. Gentleman, the President of the Heard of Trade, who ought to understand what important considerations are involved in the state of the finances of a country, decries that view of policy as low, which only aspires to keep the revenues of a country in a healthy and satisfactory condition, I say that a sound state of the public revenue and expenditure is the only foundation upon which you can build up those plans for the amelioration of the people, to which I should be most happy if it were in my power to contribute. The President of the Board of Trade, says my hon. Friend, is unreasonable, because we have got the income tax; and now my hon. Friend wants to have the paper duty, too. The right hon. Gentleman says we are bound by the tenth penny of the income tax to remit the paper duty. But does the right hon. Gentleman mean to maintain that we ought to remit the paper duty, whether we can afford it or not? Because that is the question. "But then," says the Chancellor of the Exchequer, "remember the Resolution you sanctioned two years ago with reference to this tax. Your mouth is closed by that Resolution." Now, Sir, if that Resolution were more precise and explicit than it is, I should still consider my liability to support it at the present moment with reference only to the present financial condition of the country. But what was this Resolution so frequently referred to and misrepresented by the right hon. Gentleman? I am not surprised if hon. Gentlemen do not remember it, especially considering the fallacious manner in which it has been adverted to. The stream of public affairs is too rapid to permit these matters to be remembered, and only those who are responsible for them can recall particular acts and the motives by which they are actuated. That Motion which declared that the paper duty ought not to be a permanent branch of revenue really meant nothing, as my hon. Friend the Member for Norfolk said at the time. What were the circumstances under which that Resolution was brought forward? It was brought forward after the financial statement of the year had been made. In that financial statement I proposed, on behalf of my Colleagues, a policy which the House entirely and unanimously approved and sanctioned, and no one more cordially than the present Chancellor of the Exchequer—namely, that it was the bounden duty of this House, although at great sacrifices, to fulfil the compact that had been made in 1853 by the right hon. Gentleman himself, who was then Chancellor of the Exchequer, for the entire abolition, if possible, in the year 1860 of the income tax. I expressed on the part of my Colleagues, with the entire; concurrence of both sides of the House, our desire to remit the war duties on tea and sugar. We gave reasons, however, which were unanimously approved of by the House why we could not do so, and we showed that the first thing a Finance Minister had to do was so to guide the revenue and expenditure as to get rid of the income tax in 1860, and thus to complete and consummate the financial policy of the right hon. Gentleman the present Chancellor of the Exchequer. If that was the policy of the then Government, approved of; by their political opponents, how could it be supposed that when two or three weeks afterwards we came to consider the paper duty, that policy could be supposed to be upset by a Resolution of that kind? Such a Resolution only meant that when the war duties on tea and sugar were removed and the other obligations of Parliament were fulfilled, then, if the opportunity were afforded and the state of the revenue permitted, this Excise duty should be remitted. I admit that I should have been most happy to remit it when the state of the revenue permitted. I had always been in favour of repealing Excise duties, on the ground that they interfered with the national industry, and I should have been delighted to repeal this particular Excise duty, the remission of which, was recommended to me by considerations of moral influence that I highly esteemed. That is my answer to the right hon. Gentleman. What, then, is the slate of affairs now? Has the income tax terminated in this year, 1860? Have the war duties on tea and sugar been abolished? The right hon. Gentleman is now responsible for the finances of this country. He has doubled the income tax; he has retained the war duties on tea and sugar; and then he turns round upon me, and says I called for the abolition of the duty on paper! Why, anything more illogical or inconsequent, any plea more futile or fallacious, was never put forward. But I am told that we are not justified in pursuing the course proposed by my hon. Friend. Of late years I have doubted whether we have not been dealing with the forms of this House too lightly, and whether we paid them that veneration and attention which our predecessors thought it wise to give. But I did not expect to hear a Minister of the Crown rise and make a speech which, if it had any meaning, would imply that the forms of the House are entirely abolished on all questions of finance, and on all proposals to levy taxes—the subjects which most interest the country, and which are the main and principal reason for our sitting here as their representatives. Why, Sir, suppose a war should occur during some fantastical financial proposition, in which a tax of this kind is included? Well, there is a war. There is a Chinese war, the cost of which is estimated at £500,000, but which may be nearer £5,000,000. Here is a war. And then the right hon. Gentleman, with all the mysterious dogmatism he knows so well how to assume when it suits him—contradicting himself as he constantly does with rapid incoherence, but covering his contradictions with that robe of glittering phraseology which prevents one from immediately detecting the weakness of his argument—laid down the principle that when once this House has consented to the remission of a tax it is impossible to offer any further resistance to its repeal. The House seemed astonished, and the right hon. Gentleman, becoming more audacious, advanced another principle, that when a Minister once proposed that a tax should be repealed the House had no right to interfere. I gave, unfortunately, an indiscreet cheer, which reminded the right hon. Gentleman that he had better reconnoitre his position. Having, therefore, treated the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Coventry to another admonition, the right hon. Gentleman turned round and said that there was no instance in which the House of Commons, having once voted the repeal of a tax, had afterwards refused to carry out its vote. I do not know what the half-century of experience and observation and wisdom which has been referred to to-night in so admonitory a tone can supply to the right hon. Member for Coventry. My experience is much more limited; but I remember some remarkable instances in which this House having come to a determination upon most important taxes—taxes of far more importance than the paper duty—reconsidered and changed its opinion. The House came once in my time to the determination to repeal the malt-tax. The malt trade is one of some importance, and I suppose that decision of the House put all the maltsters of England in a flutter; but the malt-tax was not repealed, which shows that there is nothing so essentially anomalous or unconstitutional as the Chancellor of the Exchequer says in this House reconsidering a Resolution to which it may have prievously come. I remember, too, the House once coming to the determination to repeal the sugar duties. The sugar trade is one in which there is immense speculation, and, I dare say, a great effect was produced in Mincing Lane when that vote was arrived at; but did the House pursue the policy which it had sanctioned with its approval? On the contrary, circumstances occurred which made the House deem it prudent to reconsider its decision, and the sugar duties were not abolished. What more do we propose tonight? We think the House on the subject of the paper duty has arrived at an imprudent, premature, and precipitate decision. In the former cases referred to we were not so much surprised as we have been in this instance. They were isolated questions placed fairly before the House, and the House had every opportunity of arriving in either instance at a sound decision, without being perplexed by extraneous circumstances. What has been the condition of the House in the present case? It had an immense scheme with respect to the commerce and the finances of the country placed before it the moment it assembled. It had not a decent opportunity to consider that scheme. If any hon. Gentleman asked for those fair opportunities which the bare forms of the House and Parliamentary precedents secure to us, the Chancellor of the Exchequer rose like a dictator and a despot in this House, and under a species of terrorism the House arrived at a precipitate decision, which has been ruinous to our trade and has made us ridiculous in the eyes of Europe. The Chancellor of the Exchequer, not satisfied with that, came forward and demanded of the House to rescind all the financial policy which for years he had been professing and upholding, and which so nearly concerned the interests of the whole people. He asked the House in the year when he had pledged himself, so far as a statesman can pledge himself, to abolish the income tax, to double that impost; and when his propositions were not received with all the enthusiasm which he seemed to count upon—for inconsistency is always sanguine—he vindicated his policy, as he has vindicated it to-night, by a statement which upon reflection he must feel has no foundation. He told us that he had been disappointed in the policy which he had established in 1855; that the Russian war had occurred and had baffled all his plans. He quite forgot that in 1857, when he was not in office, and when the then Chancellor of the Exchequer, the present Home Secretary, wanted to induce the House to consent to retain the war income tax, on the ground of the great expense of the Russian war, which had added to the national debt an annual charge of £1,200,000, he rose and scoffed at the right hon. Gentleman, and treated him with intense and unutterable derision. And upon what ground? Upon the ground of his ridiculous assertion that the Russian war had made any considerable addition to the annual charge of the country or had diminished its permanent revenue. He asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer in an indignant tone whether he could pretend for a moment that the charge occasioned by the Russian war ought to induce the House to abandon those solemn pledges which it made to the nation in 1853—pledges which induced the people of Ireland to consent to the income tax being extended to that country; pledges which induced the adoption of the succession tax, by which alone the Government had been able to settle some of the most difficult and delicate questions ever submitted to Parliament. Such was his language in 1857. What is the moral? What confidence can we have in following the counsels of the right hon. Gentleman? I showed you on a previous occasion, when you were in the delirium of the French Treaty, which every man on both sides looks back to now with shame, how the right hon. Gentleman had failed in every one of the great propositions of his famous Budget of 1853. Having traded upon that false celebrity for seven years, you now meet him again in 1860. Three months of the Session have not yet passed, and you already deplore the course which, following his counsels, you have pursued. Now, while there is still an opportunity of at least mitigating our previous folly by some prudential movement, will you—can you reconcile it to yourselves to sacrifice, in the present financial condition of the country, a large branch of revenue which the trade interested—and that is an important consideration—does not want you to part with, and which the evidence before you proves is not a declining but an increasing revenue? Above all, I ask, will you do this at a moment when Europe is in a condition which must make the boldest man quake and the wisest man tremble?

Sir, I request the indulgence of the House for a moment while I make an explanation upon two points on which the right hon. Gentleman has entirely misrepresented me. One of them touches my personal honour, and the other is of vital importance in the present discussion. The right hon. Gentleman says that in 1857 I urged that the financial consequences of the Russian war had not made it impossible to fulfil the plans of 1853, and that in 1860 I stated that they had. I wish to meet that statement of the right hon. Gentleman with the most direct contradiction which the forms of the House will allow. My words are upon record, and they were distinctly and emphatically the reverse of that which the light hon. Gentleman has stated to the House. The other point is one upon which I am content to rest the issue of this debate. The right hon. Gentleman says I alleged there was no instance in which the House, having voted the remission of a tax, had thought proper afterwards to change its mind, to that statement likewise I am obliged to give a direct contradiction. What I said was, not that there was no instance in which the House, having given a vote for the repeal of a tax, had afterwards altered its mind and reversed the vote, but that there was no instance in which the House, having voted the repeal of a tax upon the proposition of the Executive Government, I had afterwards reversed that vote, which I stated to be equivalent to a pledge to the country.

I cannot allow to pass, as if I acquiesced in it, the statement of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Buckinghamshire, that in moving the Estimates of my Department I had frankly stated that the lump sum for fortifications included nothing more than would be moved under ordinary circumstances. What I said, in answer to a question of the hon. Member for Norfolk whether any new works were contemplated, was, that no now work or no work not sanctioned by Parliament should be commenced under the Vote given on account. As I could not tell either what works the Commission would recommend or what the Government might decide upon, still less what this House would sanction, I took the Vote as a sum in a lump, instead of in detail, the details being then unknown. In the Estimates I purposely inserted a large sum without detail, in order that, whatever might be the decision of the Government or of this House upon the question, I might have the means of providing what, in the responsibility of my office, I might deem necessary for the defences of the country.