expressed a hope that this clause would be struck out, as he saw no necessity for it. It recognized a principle, the practical effect of which was, that if a person was rich and gave money, he then could have a contribution out of this public fund.

said, the clause was simply permissive in its character, and he could not see that any harm would arise from it.

proposed in the first part of this clause to substitute the eleventh day of October for the first day of August, 1884, which was agreed to. He then proposed to omit at the end of the clause the words which provided that no lease for such term of twenty-one years should be extended beyond the first day of August, 1884, which was agreed to. He then proposed to add to the clause the following words:—

"And a like extension, at the accustomed rate of fine, shall, for the purposes of sale, purchase, or exchange, be allowed in the case of any lease for lives, the extent and value of which shall be computed by arbitrators in default of an agreement between the parties to be less than the extent and value of a term ending on the said eleventh day of October one thousand eight hundred and eighty-four,"

which were also agreed to.

moved a proviso empowering a lessee to enforce a sale of the reversion on the Commissioners, the value to be determined by arbitration.

said, that was a clause for confiscating the whole property of the church to the lessees—and he could not understand what the right hon. Gentleman was about when he gave his assent to it.

proposed after "determined," to insert—

"And where such lease shall relate to houses or building ground, it shall be lawful for the arbitrator or arbitrators or umpire, as the case may be, simply to find the gross sum to be paid for such sale or enfranchisement in such manner as he or they shall deem just: provided also, that in all cases regard shall be had to the long-continued practice of renewal, and that the arbitrators shall have power to decide whether ground is or is not to be valued as building ground."

He said that, although arbitration did not give or profess to give what was infallibly right, it was a thoroughly English mode of getting rid of differences as to value between man and man. It gave in the long run a fair average of substantial justice. A similar clause for ascertaining by arbitration the value of Church house property had been recommended by a most able Committee of the House of Commons in 1856, and had been introduced in 1857 into the Bill which bore on the back of it the name of the noble Lord the Member for Tiverton. Between the mode of valuing Church house property adopted by Mr. Smith, the Surveyor to the Commissioners, and that contended for by the lessees, there was a difference, in point of value, of £800,000 on the whole. He hoped, therefore, that the Committee would admit the justice in such cases of a reference to arbitration.

said, there were two principles involved in what was now proposed. He was willing to assent to the principle of arbitration being applied to land, but the Ecclesiastical Commissioners thought if it were applied to house property it would have a deleterious effect.

supported the view taken by the right hon. Gentleman (Sir George Lewis), and hoped the Committee would not agree to retain the word "houses" in the Amendment.

said, that he thought the word "houses" in the Amendment ought not to be allowed to jeopardise the proposal with regard to building ground. He suggested that a special clause might be introduced to meet the case of house property.

said, that there was a second Amendment to be proposed, which had reference to building ground only, and he would suggest, as the most convenient course to take, that his hon. Friend (Mr. Freeland) should withdraw his Proposition, and then move the insertion of the word "houses" in the next Amendment.

assented, and withdrew his Amendment.

said, he would move the following addition at the end of the clause—

"And where such lease shall relate to building ground, it shall be lawful for the arbitrator or arbitrators or umpire, as the case may be, simply to find the gross sum to be paid for such sale or enfranchisement in such manner as he or they may deem just: provided also, that regard shall be had to any consideration given to the lessee by this Act on account of the long-continued practice of renewal."

moved that the word "houses" be inserted after the words "building ground."

said, he had already made a concession with regard to building ground; but should it be the wish of the Committee to include house property he was willing to abide by that decision.

was afraid that the effect of this Amendment, if carried, would be to cause great loss of property to the Church, and he hoped the Committee would not sanction it, unless the principle of valuation was distinctly understood.

said, he thought it would be safer for the present to abstain from legislation on the subject of house property, and confine the Amendment to the case of building ground. He was ready to abide by the decision of the Committee if they chose to include house property, but his impression was in favour of omitting it.

said, this was a most important question, as affecting the interests of the Church. It involved a sum of probably not less than £800,000. He had heard it stated that the subject was one which ought to be referred to a Select Committee, but he could not think there would be any advantage in taking that course. On the other hand, he did not wish, as an Ecclesiastical Commissioner, to show any reluctance to refer these questions to arbitration. At the same time, he felt strongly that the decision of the question would mainly turn on the choice of an umpire. The arbitrators, on a matter beset with so many difficulties, might disagree, and the appointment of an umpire was therefore a question of very great importance. He thought that if the subject were postponed till the Report was brought up it might be possible in the interval to frame a clause that would meet all the difficulties of the case. He deprecated a hasty decision on a question involving an immense amount of Church property; and he felt strongly that the Committee had not before them at that moment the materials for legislation.

said, he had not formed any strong opinion on the matter, but he took it in this way, that the Commissioners, who devoted great attention to the subject, had acted upon a certain principle, which they believed to be important for preserving the value of the property committed to their care. That was the report they made to the Executive Government, and, therefore, he did not feel justified in giving up that principle. Pie should be glad if the question could be arbitrated on fair principles, and by persons acting under a feeling of official responsibility, but he should not like to see it committed to the chance decision of profesional surveyors. He was not desirous of making what might be considered a hard bargain on the part of the Church, as against the lessees, and he would be happy if this matter could be arbitrated upon a fair principle by a person acting under a sense of responsibility, but his right hon. Friend had not suggested any means by which that end might be attained.

said, each party might appoint an arbitrator, and, in case of their disagreeing, an umpire should be appointed. The only question was by whom. At the present moment, he should be sorry to impose the task upon the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster; but there was the Vice-Chancellor of the Duchy, who was a lawyer of distinction, and holding his office permanently;—he would be a most proper person to decide a matter of this nature.

approved of the suggestion of the right hon. Baronet.

said, the importance of this question could hardly be overrated, and he hoped it would be dealt with on the bringing up of the Report.

said, if it was thought that the Home Secretary might not exercise an impartial judgment in the matter, he would suggest the Lord Chancellor, who would be above all such suspicion. In the meantime the clause, as proposed to be amended, might be passed, and he would be prepared on the Report to make some proposition on this subject, which he hoped would be acceptable to the House.

said, that if the Home Secretary would undertake to bring up a clause on the Report incorporating his proposal as to house property with the suggestion of the right hon. Baronet (Sir James Graham) as regarded the appointment of an umpire, he (Mr. Freeland) would not now press his Amendment.

in order that there might be no mistake, would repeat what he meant to do. He would now accede to the Amendment proposed by the hon. Member for Winchester, and would bring up on the Report a clause declaring the system of arbitration to be followed in the case of house property, and providing for the appointment of an umpire.

then proposed to insert the following clauses:—

"The Ecclesiastical Commissioners shall not, except under special circumstances, assign as a permanent endowment to any Ecclesiastical Corporation, sole or aggregate, lands or hereditaments lying within the boundaries of any Parliamentary Borough, or within two miles of the cathedral church of any cathedral town, and not being lands or hereditaments used or to be used as a residence, or as residences of any Ecclesiastical Corporation, sole or aggregate, or as a school, cathedral, or church, or lands and hereditaments adjoining to and intended to be occupied with such residence or residences, school, cathedral, or church respectively."

"In any case in which it shall be found impossible or inexpedient to give effect to the provision lastly hereinbefore contained, the said Ecclesiastical Commissioners shall lay upon the Table of both Houses of Parliament, if Parliament be then sitting, or, it not, then within one month after the then next sitting of Parliament, a statement of the contents and position of the estate proposed to be assigned, and of the grounds on which it has been found impossible or inexpedient to give effect to the provision lastly hereinbefore contained; and if at the end of forty days after the presentation of such statement no Address praying the Crown to withhold its consent from any such arrangement shall be presented by either House of Parliament, the said Commissioners from and after the expiration of such period shall take the necessary Steps for carrying the proposed arrangement into effect."

He said he was most anxious that these Amendments should be introduced into the Bill. He thought that if lands were re-transferred as permanent endowments to Ecclesiastical Corporations within or in the immediate neighbourhood of Parliamentary boroughs or cathedral towns great political jealousy would arise, in consequence of the change of tenure now about to he introduced with reference to church property. According to the old system the lessee, so long as he paid the renewal fines and quit-rents, was virtually the owner of the property. At all events, he was politically independent. But, according to the proposed new system, the lessee of church lands was to hold them at rack-rent for a term, or as tenant from year to year. They might thus become a source of great political influence, especially if (as without doubt they would be, if situate within or near a borough) they were what are called accommodation lands. The retransfer, too, of lands near towns as permanent estates was inexpedient, as it would tend to stop building operations; for, although the lands would be subject to powers for enfranchising or granting building leases, yet, as the Ecclesiastical Corporations under the proposed new system would have no interest in exercising these powers, they would probably be but seldom exercised.

said, if they were making a law for Chichester the proposed clauses might be very proper, but as they were making laws for the whole country other places must be considered as well. The radius of two miles would, for instance, be wholly inapplicable as regarded London. He did not think it expedient that the Commissioners should be deprived of the discretionary power which they at present possessed.

said, he was very glad that the Government would not assent to the clauses. The matter ought to be left to the discretion of the Ecclesiastical Commissioners.

said, he thought the hon. Gentleman had hardly considered the importance of this Amendment. He hoped the Home Secretary would continue his resistance to the clauses.

said, that although disposed to support the clauses of the hon. Member for Chichester, he thought it right to state that, representing a city in which the Ecclesiastical Commissioners had great estates within the borough, their management of those estates was as remarkable for doing the best that could be done for the property as for their abstaining from all political interference. The Commissioners were quite entitled to this testimony. Peterborough and its neighbourhood had derived the greatest benefit from the operation of this Commission, and the freedom given to ecclesiastical property, as was manifest by the constant extension of buildings and improvements of all kinds, in consequence of the operation of this Commission, and he felt it right to bear his testimony as well to their management as to the conduct of the Commission, in reference to political and local matters. He believed that he could bear similar testimony for other places besides Peterborough.

said, that the case of London referred to by the Home Secretary would fall within the exception on the ground of special circumstances referred to in the first of his clauses. As, however, there appeared to be no chance of carrying these clauses on the present occasion he would not now press them to a division.

then proposed the following clause for the compulsory enfranchisement of intermixed lands:—

"In any case in which lands leased by any Ecclesiastical Corporation he intermixed with lands possessed by any lessee or trustee as freehold or copyhold of inheritance, the said Corporation, with the approval in writing of the said Church Estates Commissioners, or the Ecclesiastical Commissioners, if the said lands shall have become vested in them, shall, within three months after the receipt of a notice in writing from the said lessee or trustee stating that he is desirous of purchasing the lands so leased, offer for sale to such lessee or trustee the reversion of such lands; and if the parties shall not be able to come to an agreement as to the value of such reversion, then either party may require the other party to join in referring to arbitration the finding of the value of such reversion on the principles and in manner herein mentioned; and when such value shall have been so found it shall be binding on both parties, if either party require it, to complete the proposed arrangement on the terms settled by the arbitrators, or their umpire, as the case may be."

then proposed the following Clause:—

"Wherever the estate and interest under any such lease or grant may be vested in any trustee or trustees, either expressly or by implication of Law, and any monies, stocks, funds, or securities for money are vested in the same trustees or trustee, upon the same or like trusts, it shall be lawful for such trustees or trustee, with the consent of the person or persons entitled for the time being to the beneficial receipt of the dividends or annual proceeds of such monies, stocks, funds, or securities, if such person or persons shall be capable of giving consent, or if there shall be no person capable of giving consent, or if such consent shall be withheld and the trustee or trustees shall consider such a course essential to the interest of the parties entitled under the settlement, then with the sanction and approbation of the Court of Chancery, to be obtained on petition to the said Court, to raise out of such monies, or by sale of such stocks, funds, or securities, a sufficient Bum for the purpose of purchasing the reversion of, or otherwise enfranchising, the property comprised in such lease or grant, and of procuring, if necessary for the purpose of enfranchisement, the renewal of such lease or grant, and to pay and apply the same accordingly, and all payments and applications of monies, or of the proceeds of the sale of such stocks, funds, or securities so made as aforesaid, shall be valid and binding on all persons interested under the trust, will, or settlement under or by which such monies, stocks, funds, or securities for money, may be held in trust or settled as aforesaid."

then proposed the following Clause:—

"In any case in which the estate and interest under any lease or grant made by any Ecclesiastical Corporation may be vested in any trustee or trustees, and such trustee or trustees shall not have power to sell, it shall be lawful for such trustee or trustees, with the consent in writing of the person or persons entitled for the time being to the beneficial receipt of the rent or annual proceeds thereof, if such person or persons shall be capable of giving consent, or if there shall be no person capable of giving consent, or if such consent shall be withheld and the trustee or trustees shall consider a sale essential to the interest of parties entitled under the settlement, then with the sanction and approbation of the Court of Chancery, to be obtained on petition to the said Court, to sell and dispose of all or any part of such property; and in every such case the purchase money shall be paid to such trustee or trustees, whose receipt shall be a good discharge for the same; and the money so paid to such trustee or trustees shall be invested and be held by him or them upon the same trusts, as far as the circumstances of the case will admit, as the leasehold property, if not sold, would have been subject to."

said, if it could be shown that any great evil arose from the present system of church leases it might be desirable to submit to an infraction of the laws of property which were usually recognized in this country, and allow a system of compulsory enfranchisement. He did not believe, however, that any such case had been made out. Even if there had been he did not think they ought to adopt an unilateral system. If they gave a power to the lessee to compel the Church they ought to give a corresponding power to the Church to compel the lessee; and in many instances there might be extreme hardship in compelling the lessee to adopt the course which the clause pointed out. He could not assent to the introduction of the clause.

said, he would move a clause providing for the augmentation of benefices up to £100 per annum. In moving this clause he wished to call the attention of the Committee to the condition of the poorer clergy, and he would especially refer them to the case of Carlisle and its neighbourhood. The Bishop of the diocese was provided with a beautiful palace, though rather too far from Carlisle for his clergy to get at him, and the Dean and Chapter had a large income. He believed that when certain leases fell in the income of the latter would amount to not less than £21,000 a year; and, as much of this income would be derived from lands in the neighbourhood, he hoped the small livings in Carlisle would, in due time, receive an augmentation. There were four parishes in Carlisle; the population was 70,000; and the highest stipend received by any of the clergymen was £150 a year, while another received only £85 a year. Matters were still worse in the country parts of the diocese. There were 259 livings in the diocese; 108 of which were less than £100 a year; 69 less than £80 a year, and many of the incumbents received less than £50 a year. In such circumstances the Committee would see that it was impossible to provide adequately for the spiritual instruction of the people. In old times, when the incumbents were able to live frugally in the retired parishes among the hills, the evil was not so bad; but the expense of living was now so much increased that they were hardly able to sustain themselves and their families. He was informed by the Bishop and other ecclesiastical authorities of the diocese that it was impossible to provide proper or efficient persons to give religious instruction to the people. It might be said the Ecclesiastical Commissioners had more populous places than Carlisle to provide for, but surely they ought to do something for a district so destitute as Carlisle. He would not ask how many fine palaces had been built, but he would say that there was much cause to complain of the past and present conduct of the Commissioners. Instead of augmenting the livings of the poor clergy they had increased, he heard, the salaries of their own officials. That might be right in itself, but the object of the Commission being to make better provision for the small livings, they should have been attended to in the first instance. He had heard the other day too that the Dean of York—a person deservedly popular in the city—had had his salary greatly increased. That also might be a proper thing, but he maintained that the first duty of the Commissioners was to attend to the poor clergy.

said, he should cordially support the clause. He stated the case of a parish from which the Commissioners had drawn funds to the amount of between £8,000 and £9,000. The living was a very small one, and there was no parsonage. An offer of contributions to the amount of £600 was made to the Commissioners if they would contribute £200 to the building of a parsonage, but they replied that the case did not come within their rules. In another case where the living was £150 a year, and where the tithe rent-charge, of which the Commissioners had the reversion, was £2,800 a year, they also said they could not make a grant, as it did not come under their rules. Nobody disputed that the Dean of York was an excellent man, and he had no doubt that the money given to him by the Commissioners would be well spent, but that was not the question. It was the duty of the Commissioners in the first instance to look to the comfort of those working clergy, who were struggling with the evils of poverty. The great complaint against the Commission was that the funds were not expended in the relief of the most necessitous cases.

said, the Committee had decided the day previous in favour of a proposition that would give to localities in the neighbourhood of lands held by the Commission a certain preference; but his hon. Friend now asked them to come to a decision which would be inconsistent with any such preference being given to local claims. He said the Commission ought to consider first the most necessitous cases. If that was done, then they must abandon all preference for particular localities. But if the clause proposed by his hon. Friend were passed it would not effect any alteration of the existing law. He believed that the Commissioners could take into consideration any case that came before them; and there was nothing in the clause that would change their mode of procedure. If it was intended that benefices under £100 were to have a preference over all others in the matter of augmentation, then the clause was at variance with others that had gone before it.

said, he believed the Ecclesiastical Commissioners had adopted a rule that they would not give relief in any case where the population did not exceed 2,500. Why should the line be drawn at that particular amount of population? He thought the proposal of the hon. Member deserved more attention than it had received. The means of the poorer clergy were much more restricted now than formerly, in consequence of increased competition in educational and literary pursuits; and the clergy were unable to apply their talents in other directions. He thought it would be very proper for Parliament to lay down the rule that no clergyman should be expected to exist on less than £80 or £100 a year.

said, no one regretted more than he did that there should be a single incumbent with an income of less than £100 a year. Since he had a seat at the Board he had anxiously taken into consideration every such case that had been brought forward; in point of fact, he could tell his hon. Friend that every single case brought forward this year had been gone into by a Committee, which was appointed for the purpose, and consisted of the Estates. Committee of the Commission, and one or two other Members; and that, with one or two exceptions, where the population was under 100, grants had been given to all the cases where the income was less than £100. But if they were to agree to this clause, the discretion of the Commissioners would be taken away as to the appropriation of their funds. Every year the regulations under which the Commissioners agreed to receive applications for grants, were published and circulated as widely as possible; and he might state that, at the instance of the Bishop of Carlisle, the regulations were last year altered so as to take into account area as well as population. A given day was named as the last on which applications, coming from any part of the kingdom, would be received for the benefactions placed at the disposal of the Commissioners. These applications were all classified and gone into very carefully. The system under which benefactions were received, excluded from the benefit those poor parishes that could not offer benefactions; but he hoped to see a fund, say £10,000 a year, laid aside to meet such cases. They must be very careful, however, that they did nothing to stop the stream of benevolence that had been pouring in for the last few years. Last year there were offers of not less than £237,000 in the way of benefactions; and he thought, therefore, they should be cautious lest, in making grants independent of benefactions, they took a step that would check this flow of liberality. Allusion had been made to the augmentation of the salary of the Dean of York. That was considered to be necessary, in order to make the salary equal to what it was understood to be when the present dean was appointed. To make up the difference between what the salary was stated to be nominally, and the actual amount, the Commissioners had consented to make the augmentation. There was a difference of opinion on the subject, however: and the opinion of the law officers of the Crown had been taken. That was in favour of the legality of the proceeding. He did not himself think that the Commissioners ought to have taken that step without coming to Parliament.

said, he cordially agreed with the hon. Member for East Kent (Mr. Deedes) that the grant of £1,000 a year to the Dean of York was a most unjustifiable proceeding, considering that there were incumbents starving on £80 a year. He hoped that in future no such grant would be made, till the actual wants of the poor clergy were supplied.

said, he wished to know whether the Commissioners were precluded by any rule they had laid down from dealing with such cases, as the hon. Member for Cumberland had referred to?

said, there was no rule laid down by the Commissioners to prevent their considering any application that might be made to them.

said, that in many cases the parishes, the value of whose livings was so small, had a fair claim upon capitular revenues.

observed that hitherto the attention of the Commission had been directed to the spiritual destitution of the great masses of the commu- nity. He did not deny that the poverty of the clergy in many instances was inconsistent with the efficient spiritual instruction of the people, and this was a matter which all must deeply regret. The rule of the Commission in former years had been to confine the augmentations to populous places; but, at the instance of the Bishop of Carlisle, last year population alone ceased to be the consideration in such cases, and the question of area was combined with that of population. The consequence had been a considerable augmentation of the incomes of many of the poorer clergy in the diocese of Carlisle and elsewhere. It would be impossible, in his opinion, to adopt the rule that all livings should be brought up to £100 a year. Such a rule it would not be wise to adopt. He disapproved the augmentation of the income of the Dean of York. He thought it a matter of doubtful policy, and was of opinion that, though the Commission might have had the legal power to do so, it was a step which should not have been taken without coming to Parliament. Accordingly, he thought it his duty, though unsuccessfully, to resist the augmentation.

pointed out that one effect of the clause, if carried, would be to discourage the giving of endowments for more than £100 a year. They would have endowments of £50 or £60 a year, and then the Commissioners would be expected to raise them to £100.

said, it ought to be understood that such a rule should not prevail in the case of private patrons, unless a grant were made by the Commissioners to be met by one of equal amount from other sources.

said, he had always been in favour of giving great discretionary powers to the Ecclesiastical Commissioners, but he believed that the exercise of that discretion in the case of the Dean of York's salary would do more to shake the confidence of the public in the Commission than anything that had occurred for years, while it might lead the House to lay down hard rules for the guidance of the Commissioners in future.

said, the office o Dean of York required a large expenditure, as a great deal of hospitality was expected from him. Two years ago he proposed in the Bill then before the House that the salary of the future Deans should be £2,000 a year, and the people of York were quite willing, but they were not will- ing that the present Dean should receive that salary, as his private fortune was quite adequate; but they thought that at the next avoidance the salary should be raised to the same amount as that of the Dean of Canterbury. However, he wholly disapproved the manner in which it had been done by the Ecclesiastical Commissioners.

proposed to add a clause after Clause 47, giving compensation to the clergy within the Metropolitan area for the loss of fees in consequence of the discontinuance of burials in their church-yards; he stated that the Metropolitan Interments Act, which was passed in 1850, authorized the Board of Health by an order in Council to cause the discontinuance of burials in parochial burial grounds. That statute recognized the rights of the incumbents to compensation for the loss of their burial fees; accordingly the General Board of Health directed an inquiry into the claims for compensation under that Act; the inquiry was conducted by Mr. C. Z. Macaulay, Assistant Secretary to the Board, and by Mr. H. K. Williams, Treasurer under that Act. These Gentlemen, having ascertained the facts bearing upon these claims, recommended the annual amount which should be given to each incumbent. The result of these inquiries, including the sums claimed and allowed in the case of each parish, has been printed as "A return to an order of the House of Lords, dated April 26, 1858." The clergy having had their claims thus investigated for the purpose of having compensation given to them under the provisions of an Act of Parliament were justified in expecting that they should not suffer pecuniary loss by the disuse of their burial grounds. But to this day they have not received the expected compensation, for the Act of 1850 was repealed in 1852 by the Metropolitan Burials Act; the Board of Health then lost all jurisdiction in the matter, and the claims for compensation which that Board had investigated and approved have remained unsatisfied to the present time; these losses have been alluded to in the Report of the Select Committee of the House of Lords appointed to inquire into the deficiency of the means of spiritual instruction, dated April 1858. An opportunity for providing the means for com- pensating the clergy now presents itself the Bill now before the Committee provides in Clause 47 that compensation shall be given from out (it is presumed) of the funds in the hands of the Ecclesiastical Commissioners to surveyors, lawyers, and others who may suffer loss by the change made in the method of letting or managing church property, and a slight extension of the provisions of that clause is all that is required for granting compensation for the losses occasioned by the discontinuance of burials in the Metropolitan churches and churchyards.

admitted that great hardship had been caused by the loss of fees in the way referred to, and if any means could be devised, without making a charge on the funds of the Church, to make up incomes that had been so affected, he would be glad to give it his best consideration, but he did not think it was a matter that could be provided for in the present Bill, and, therefore, he must oppose the clause.

moved to insert a clause enabling the Commissioners, if they should think fit, to release any rent-charge granted, or transferred to them by way of endowment of any church or chapel, in consideration of the transfer into their names of a sum in consols producing dividends equal in amount to such rent-charge, and also enabling them to release a portion of the lands on which a rent-charge was chargeable, provided that the residue of such lands was of sufficient value to yield the rent-charge.

moved to add a clause enabling the Commissioners to borrow money from the governors of Queen Anne's Bounty or from the Exchequer Loan Commissioners to make up any deficiency arising from the non-renewal of leases.

moved a clause extending the benefit of the provisions in favour of lessees to sub-lessees.

said, he would move that the Commissioners be empowered to make grants to such persons connected with St. Paul's Cathedral and Westminster Abbey as had accepted a commutation of their claims in 1840. The Ecclesiastical Commissioners felt themselves compelled to discontinue the grants which had been made, and his object was to prevent the reimposition of the fees by the vergers who had accepted the commutation.

expressed his opinion that the clause was unnecessary.

said, he put a question the other night to the Secretary of State for "War with regard to some letters from the Bombay Government and other matters relating to the administration of the War Department. The right hon. Gentleman did not recollect the dates of the Correspondence; and he therefore begged now to give notice that he would put his question to-morrow, and specify the dates of the several papers which he wished to see produced. [Sir CHARLES WOOD was understood to intimate to the hon. and gallant Gentleman that he might put his question at once.] He had, therefore, to ask the Secretary of State for War, Whether he had not received from the Secretary of State for India in Council a letter from the Bombay Government, dated 25th of February, 1860, with an enclosed letter from the Inspector General of Ordnance in Bombay, dated 30th of November, 1859, together with the copy of a letter from the Bombay Government, dated 12th of March, 1860, with an enclosure from the Inspector General, dated 15th of December, 1859, all relating to stores sent from this country to India r He had also to ask whether there will be any objection to laying Copies of this Correspondence on the Table of the House, together with Copies of any Correspondence concerning the recall by the Council of India of certain Storekeepers recently sent to India by the Secretary of State for War.

I thought, Sir, that my hon. and gallant "Friend was going to put a question as to a misapprehension which arose respecting the answer given by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for War, and not to put so extensive a question as the one he has just read. The answer given by my right hon. Friend the other night has led to considerable misapprehension. I supposed that the question of my hon. and gallant Friend referred to a letter relating to some Artillery Stores which were sent out to meet the demands of the service in India. On that subject a letter was written to the War Office on the 12th of May, to which we have not yet received an answer. My right hon. Friend stated the other night that he had addressed a letter to us in November, to which he had not received an answer. The hon. Member for Birmingham (Mr. Bright) took notice of that, and said that it was much after the fashion of the India House. Literally, my right hon. Friend was correct. No answer was sent to his letter, but the reason was that a joint Committee of Officers of the Indian and War Departments was appointed, which fully investigated the subject to which that letter referred—namely, the mode of supplying stores to India, and placed it upon a proper footing—that Colonels of regiments, instead of making requisitions home, shall make them to the local Governments, by whom the stores needed shall be obtained from this country. With reference to the subject of the hon. and gallant Gentleman's question, I can only say that during the war stores were sent out with the Royal Artillery which are not now required. That probably was owing to the pressure of the mutiny, and would not have occurred in ordinary times.

said, he rose to ask the right hon. Gentleman the Secretary of State for the Home Department what are the rates at which he estimates the interest attaching severally to the Three per Cent Consolidated Annuities and to the Thirty Years' Annuities, given in consideration for the Loan of £16,000,000 which he made as Chancellor of the Exchequer in April, 1855?

Sir, I am afraid that I cannot give a perfectly direct reply to the question of the hon. Gentleman, on account of the manner in which that Loan was contracted; but I will give the best answer in my power. Assuming that the Loan of £16,000,000 in April, 1855, might have been raised at £88, if the whole had been raised in Consols, which leaves a bonus of only £2 for risk, &c, Consols being quoted at £90 at the time of the Loan, the interest payable on that portion of the Loan of £16,000,000 which is represented by Consols may be taken at about £3 8s. per cent sterling. The bidding was in one sum for both Consols and Annuities. Assuming, therefore, that the remaining £12 represents the capital received for the annuity of 14s. 6d. for thirty years, which is equal to a perpetuity of 9s., the interest payable on this portion of the Loan may be taken at about £3 15s. per cent sterling. Therefore, the difference in the rate of interest, according to my calculation, is that between £3 8s. and £3 15s. That is matter of calculation, and may be disputed; the following, however, is matter of fact, and cannot. The present price of the Annuity is about £16 ⅞ per £1 annuity, up to April, 1885—about twenty-five years. This gives an interest of £5 18s. 6d. per cent, which includes about £2 10s. for sinking fund; this leaves £3 8s. 6d. for interest per cent sterling. According to the present price of Consols, you may say that a 3 per cent annuity is worth about from £3 4s. to £3 6s., and therefore the difference, as I submit, between the price of Consols now and that of these Annuities is not much more than 2s. 6d. per cent.

gave notice that he should to-morrow call the attention of the House to the impolicy of raising money by loans repayable by terminable Annuities.

said, he would beg to ask the noble Lord the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, Whether any proposition has been made to Her Majesty's Government by the Special Envoy of the Neapolitan Government, lately arrived here, that the English Government should join with the other Powers in imposing and enforcing, by the means at their command, an armistice for six months between the Neapolitan Government and the Sicilian Government under General Garibaldi; and whether Her Majesty's Government have any intention of entertaining any such proposition?

Sir—In answer to the present question, I have to state that it is true that an Envoy from the Neapolitan Government has lately arrived in this country, and has proposed to Her Majesty's Government that they should mediate between the King of the Two Sicilies and Garibaldi; and that if that mediation, for the purpose of obtaining an armistice, and providing that there should be no attack upon the territories of the King of the Two Sicilies on the mainland, should not be accepted by Garibaldi, force should be used by the Governments of Great Britain and France, with a view of imposing such an armistice upon him. To that proposition Her Majesty's Government have declined to assent.

Sir, I rise to make a Motion of which I gave notice the other day, with a view of facilitating the disposal of the business of the Session. The Session is now very advanced; the period has arrived when no Bills except measures of extreme urgency will be taken up by the other House—at any rate when Bills brought in by private Members have no chance of passing through the House. I hope, therefore, the House will not object to coming to a Resolution that on Tuesdays Orders of the Day shall have precedence of Notices of Motion, the Government orders having priority. I put on the paper a notice to ask the House to adopt the Resolution in respect of Tuesday next, and each succeeding Tuesday during the remainder of the Session; but I find that hon. Members have Motions standing in their names for Tuesday next, and as I do not wish to interfere with them, I propose the rule shall commence on and after Tuesday se'nnight—Tuesday, August the 7th, and be continued on each succeeding Tuesday during the Session.

The House has, I think, shown during the Session no indisposition to assist the Government, as far as the arrangement of time is concerned, in the prosecution of public business. Thursday was given to them after Whitsuntide without a murmur. The noble Viscount then proposed another change, by which the time of the House has been somewhat curtailed. It was proposed—and it seemed but a slight proposition at the time—that public business should commence at a quarter past four instead of half-past. That arrangement, while it has very considerably added to the inconvenience of independent Members, has not contributed, to any material extent, to the advancement of public business. The noble Lord now makes another proposition, that the House should give up to the Government the only day which remains for the use of independent Members. There is no disposition, I am sure, to throw any difficulties in the way of propositions of this kind made by the Government; but the House has a right to expect in return that there should be an equally frank and accommodating spirit shown by the Government to the House. There is one subject, on which I must say the House has not been fairly treated by the Government. The measure to which I refer is the one noticed by the right hon. Gentleman the Chancellor of the Exchequer this evening—the Paper Duties Bill. That Bill is admitted by hon. Members on both sides of the House to be a measure of great interest and importance, and it is therefore incumbent on the Go- vernment to introduce it to the notice of the House at a time when it may be fairly and fully discussed. Although, however, inquiries from both sides with respect to it have been made with unexampled frequency—I myself having been obliged, almost in an intrusive manner, to press for information on the subject—we have not been favoured until to-night with any intimation from the Government as to their intentions; and now a day is proposed which appears to involve unreasonable and unexpected delay. I should certainly be sorry to oppose the Motion of the noble Lord; but, if the House agrees to it, I think the Government ought to fix an earlier day than next Monday week for the introduction of the Paper Duties Bill. They ought to place that measure before us on the earliest day possible after next Monday, which is already appropriated. But I really cannot see why the Government should not, some days ago, have arranged for the introduction of the Paper Duties Bill to-morrow, when I believe we are only going into Committee of Supply. I think that would have been a proper time. However, I shall support the Government in the present Motion, provided we have an assurance from the noble Lord that he will bring forward the paper duties' question on the earliest day after next Monday, which I suppose will be Thursday, seeing that the noble Lord does not now propose to take Tuesday, although I think that would not have been an unreasonable proposition on the part of the Government. The very best arrangement, in fact, would have been to take the Paper Duties Bill on Tuesday next; for the subjects which are to be brought before us on that evening, though important are not urgent, and might be discussed at an early period of the Session with more advantage. I, therefore, think that we should give the Government Tuesdays at once, and that the noble Lord should fix the Paper Duties Bill for next Tuesday; but if that arrangement cannot be made—though I see no difficulty in the way—then I shall be glad to support the modified proposal of the noble Lord, on the clear understanding that the Paper Duties Bill will be brought under our consideration on the earliest day at the command of the Government after Monday next.

said, that he, as an independent Member, was willing to give the Government every facility for bringing forward their important measure re- lating to the paper duties. That was a question which ought to he fairly and fully discussed, even though it should detain hon. Members in their places for two months.

said, he thought the proposal which had been made by the noble Lord by no means unreasonable. But with regard to the introduction of Government Bills, he wished to call the attention of the Government to a Bill of great importance which was in his charge (the Roman Catholic Charities Bill.) It had met with very serious and unexpected difficulties, arising from the opposition of hon. Gentlemen on his (Sir George Bowyer's) side of the House, and unless the Government would allow a day for its full and free discussion, the Bill would be lost, and the Roman Catholic charities would be left to the administration of the Charity Commissioners without the protecting clauses which had been promised in the first instance.

said, that if every hon. Member had not the patriotism of the hon. and learned Member for Sheffield (Mr. Hadfield), all were agreed that the question of the paper duties ought to be settled as speedily as possible. He therefore wished to press upon Her Majesty's Government the importance of discussing the question on the earliest possible day. It could not satisfactorily be dealt with except in a full House, and he did not think that on so late a day a large assemblage of Members could be expected.

observed, that the House had been placed in a rather singular position by what had occurred with regard to the paper duties. On Monday last his right hon. Friend the Member for Buckinghamshire asked when the measure was to be introduced to the notice of the House. The noble Lord at the head of the Government promised a reply on the following day. It was very remarkable that on Monday evening, when the noble Lord at the head of the Government was making his interesting statement on the fortifications, the Chancellor of the Exchequer was not present. On the following day matters were vice versâ. The right hon. Gentleman the Chancellor of the Exchequer was present, but the noble Lord was not. His right hon. Friend (Mr. Disraeli) repeated his question on the occasion, putting it to the right hon. Gentleman the Chancellor of the Exchequer. The right hon. Gentleman, however, gave the House to understand, in some naïve remarks, that he knew nothing about the state of public business. A similar avowal was made by the noble Lord the Foreign Secretary, who stated that he did not know what his noble Friend's intentions were. Was it not very extraordinary that upon a subject which interested the whole country, and which had given rise to several debates in that House, there should have been so much indecision and delay? One of three things must have occurred; either there must have been great dissensions in the Cabinet on the subject, or there must have been some question pending in France—such, for example, as that relating to the exportation of rags, with respect to which the Legislative Council had refused to carry out the wishes of the Emperor—which it would be convenient to have settled beforehand; or the Government must have thought—to quote a remark attributed to the present Lord Chancellor when he was Attorney General—that the end of the Session was the time for passing Bills without obstruction. The subject was discussed, not only in the House, but out of it; and it was considered most extraordinary that this question of the introduction of foreign paper without duty should be delayed from day to day; and he felt sure that it was not now satisfactory to the House to have it postponed till Monday week.

Hon. Gentlemen are very kind in making so many suggestions, but their propositions are so various and so difficult to carry out that I must adhere to the proposition which I have made, and ask the House to agree to give Orders of the Day precedence of Notices of Motion on Tuesday se'nnight and each succeeding Tuesday for the remainder of the Session. With regard to the observations made as to the answers given to inquiries on the subject of a particular measure, really if hon. Members knew how difficult it is for Government to settle the day on which particular business can come on, and how often we are disappointed against our will by the manner in which discussions on other business are continued, they would understand our difficulty. If we say that on some future day we shall give an answer, it is in the belief that we will be able to do so; but the course of public business may be such that it is not only difficult but impossible to fix with certainty when a particular question will come on.

said, he wished the noble Lord would take that opportunity of informing the House what measures the Government intended to proceed with and what to abandon. He, for one, felt surprised at the statement of the noble Lord that the House was to take on credit certain important measures for the consolidation of the criminal law, which were mentioned in the speech from the Throne, and which had come down from the House of Lords. That was the first time he had ever heard such a statement made. Why should the House of Commons take on trust most important measures coming from the House of Lords, when that latter House refused to take on trust the financial measures of the House of Commons? The Bills he alluded to would require most anxious consideration, and, as far as he was concerned, they would not be taken on trust.

said, he thought that the House must have heard with regret that the noble Lord had not given a more definite answer to the questions of the hon. Member for Hertford as to the intention of the Government with regard to the paper duty. He could hardly believe it possible that the right hon. Gentleman the Chancellor of the Exchequer was serious when ho gravely told the House that it was his intention to postpone that important question till the 6th of August. Such a postponement would seem like—though he would not impute such an intention to the right hon. Gentleman—trifling with the business of the country. The right hon. Gentleman was too old a Parliamentary campaigner not to know that, apart from the abstract question whether or no a Member ought to be in his place at all times, it would be perfectly impossible to get a full attendance of the House at that period. The hon. Member for Birmingham smiled and shook his head, but he would agree as to the fact. He asked, when the great importance attached to this subject was considered, whether it was dealing fairly by the House or the country to postpone the discussion one moment later than possible. There was the whole of the following week, and without wishing to impute any such motive to the Chancellor of the Exchequer, yet, if the right hon. Gentleman persevered in postponing the discussion of the question relating to the paper duty to such a distant day, when it would be impossible to obtain a full attendance of the House, it would look very much as if the right hon. Gentleman thought that there would be a better chance of succeeding with his measure in an empty House than in a full one.

said, he too was sorry that the Government had not distinctly stated what Bills they did not intend to proceed with. The Companies Bill, a consolidation Bill, containing about 300 clauses, had been before Parliament for about three months, and did the Government expect that the House would take a Bill of that sort on credit? Then, there were seven different Bills for the consolidation of different branches of the criminal law; and the House must either go through them clause by clause—which was impossible—or take them on credit. They contained at least 1,000 clauses, and the noble Lord gravely proposed that they should be passed without any one Member in the House knowing their contents. He wished the noble Lord would state tomorrow night what measures the Government intended to proceed with and what to drop.

said, the question of what measures should, and what measures should not, be proceeded with, had to a great extent been decided already. The Bankruptcy Bill, the Corrupt Practices Amendment Act, the Highways Bill, the Scotch Wine Licences, and the Savings Hank Bill, had all been disposed of, and the orders respecting them discharged, and no other Bill remained on the Orders, on which any discussion was anticipated, which was in the hands of the Government. The reason why the Companies Bill, and other measures had not been proceeded with, was owing to the decision of the House of Lords not to take any ordinary Bill after a given day, and the necessary consequence was, that all the measures which came down from the Lords were postponed till others had been considered. The day fixed expired, he believed, that day, and the hon. and learned Member who had charge of the Bill could obtain a day for bringing it forward. He would suggest to the hon. Member for Guildford (Mr. Bovill) who had charge of an important Bill, and to the hon. Member (Sir George Bowyer) who had charge of the Roman Catholic Charities Bill, to look to Wednesday as a suitable day for placing their Notices on the Paper.

I confess I am much disappointed that the right hon. Gentleman has not intimated that it is the intention of the Government to yield to the strong representations which have been made on this side of the House respecting the great inconvenience of the course which they are taking. I think we have some reason to complain of the state of the business on the Paper. The House must recollect that not long ago the noble Lord promised to state what business would, and what would not, be proceeded with. It is extremely inconvenient to have a long list of orders constantly on the Paper when the House does not know which of them will really come on; and I ask why have the Government not supplied us with this information? But my object in rising is chiefly to complain of the conduct of the Government with regard to the important discussion on the paper duties. The noble Lord says it is extremely difficult for the Government in the conduct of business to be able to state on what night Bills will be brought on. That I can easily understand; but it was no more difficult last Tuesday than on Monday, and on Monday the noble Lord volunteered the statement that next evening he would fix a day for this discussion. My right hon. Friend was accordingly in his place. He appealed to the right hon. Gentleman the Chancellor of the Exchequer, then to the noble Lord the Foreign Secretary, and both said they were unable to answer the question. But that was not all. The noble Lord the Foreign Secretary said he had that morning received a communication from the Prime Minister, informing him that he was coming down to make the expected statement, and we were told that he would no doubt do so in the course of the evening. No such statement, however, has been made to this day; and this rather strengthens a statement made to me only last Tuesday, which at the time I received with some incredulity—namely, that a regular supporter of the Government went to them and said, "What are you going to do about these paper duties? Why do not you fix a day? If you do not take care, and if you postpone the question so late, the Conservatives will have left town, and we shall carry it." I can easily understand, on the part of some of the usual supporters of the Government that some such alarm may exist; but, on the part of the Ministry it does look as though they wished by further delay to bring on this question when the House is more thinly attended than it now is. Looking at the strong representations which have been made to the Government, and the inconvenience which delay will cause to many hon. Members, I think that before we accede to the request of the Government respecting the Tuesdays, we have a fair right to expect them either to fix the discussion for Thursday next, or adduce some better reason for its postponement than they have hitherto given.

I wish to say one word only, in the first place, on a very small point. It has been stated that the Savings Banks Bill has been disposed of; virtually, no doubt, that is so. But there are minor questions connected with it which may have to be carried forward. I mention that to prevent misunderstanding. It is not absolutely disposed of, though, as regards all the material and controverted questions involved, it certainly is disposed of for the year. I will now answer the challenge of the right hon. Gentleman (Sir John Pakington) and the hon. Member (Mr. Bentinck) on the subject of the paper duties. The hon. Gentleman said he thought it must have been the Chancellor of the Exchequer who had postponed the discussion of this Bill in the expectation of carrying it by such postponement; and he likewise said that it was utterly impossible to have a good attendance here on the 6th of August. Now, he is entirely mistaken in both those propositions. I, myself, have seen an excellent attendance in this House, not on the 6th of August, but on the 1st of September, and I do not imagine that the proposition respecting the paper duties will be postponed till the 1st of September. As to the Chancellor of the Exchequer being responsible for postponing this business, I think if the hon. Member were conversant with the interior working and anatomy of any Administration he would know, that all the Members of a Government are nominally and habitually in a state of conflict as to which of them shall bring on his own business first, and it certainly never happens that the person who is departmentally concerned in a Bill is voluntarily the agent in postponing it. Setting aside the commercial importance of this question of paper duties, it is a question on which a great deal of interest is concentrated. It is, therefore, a subject which cannot be disposed of in a debate of an hour or two, but we must have a clear and unbroken evening to deal with it. The Govern- ment are, of course, aware that at this period of the Session you cannot expect a large number of Gentlemen to remain permanently in town, and they have therefore thought that they would best consult the general convenience of the House by selecting for the purpose of the discussion an unbroken evening, with regard to which they could give notice some time before, and with a perfect confidence of their ability to carry out the arrangement. That is the principle on which the Government have proceeded. Let us see, then, whether there is any intermediate day which would have satisfied these conditions. Monday will be devoted to the Fortification Question. Friday is not an unbroken evening; and the Members of the Administration have mournful experience that no man can count on going on with the Orders on those evenings until ten or eleven o'clock. Thursday is the only other day at the disposal of the Government; and how is the hon. Gentleman to guarantee me that the subject of fortifications may not require to be discussed on that evening also? That is a question of vast importance, and one upon which there has been very little discussion. Did I hear any Gentleman suggest that it was a question of no more importance than the paper duties? I shall not enter into any comparison. The two subjects are not in pari materi â, and it is difficult to bring them to any positive standard. But there is nothing so inconvenient as the interruption of important discussions. The Government believe it will be the pleasure of the House to come to a decision on the subject of fortifications in the course of next week; but they think themselves bound to keep open two days for the discussion. [An hon. MEMBER: There is Tuesday.] Tuesday is not at the disposal of the Government. We think it our duty to keep open Monday and Thursday for the discussion on fortifications; and we do not think it convenient to appoint the paper duties for Friday in next week, when the debate might probably begin at nine or ten o'clock, and might have to be adjourned until Monday. That is the principle on which the Government arrangement is based, and it does not appear to me that Ave have any option.

I think the right hon. Gentleman the Chancellor of the Exchequer has given an extremely good reason why a different course should be pursued from that which he proposes. He spoke of the inconvenience attending the interruption of an important debate, and assumed the possibility that the discussion on the fortifications would not terminate on Monday evening. But what is the conclusion from his premises? Why, that it would be for the convenience of the House and of the country that a discussion so interrupted should be resumed, if possible, on the following day, and the Government in the course of the present Session have had very good reason for knowing that, if the debate were adjourned on the Monday, hon. Members who have Motions on the Paper for the following evening would interpose no difficulty in the way of its resumption then. I will therefore test the sincerity of the Government. Let them put the paper duties down for Thursday. We shall then see whether the fortification debate terminates on that day, and if not, whether private Members on Tuesdays will not be ready to give way. If they are ready, the fortification debate may be resumed on Tuesday, and on Thursday the paper duties may come on. If they are not ready, we shall at all events be in no worse position than now. And, on the other hand, if the fortification debate terminates on Monday there will be no difficulty in discussing the paper duties on Thursday, and hon. Gentlemen who are anxious to take part in the discussion will be relieved from inconvenience.

One would suppose, from the observations of so many hon. Gentlemen opposite, that there was no difficulty in arranging these matters at the end of the Session. I find at the end of every Session that there is just this confusion and difficulty, and if hon. Gentlemen were in office they would have just the same difficulty, provided some of us were not to treat them with a little more consideration than they seem disposed to extend to the Government to-night. I have risen to appeal to the Chancellor of the Exchequer in a different sense. I do not ask him to avoid postponing the paper duties beyond the 6th of August, not because all the world is expecting what will be done in this matter; for after all it is a question of three-farthings or seven-eighths of a penny per pound in the import duty on paper, and the course which the right hon. Gentleman proposes is greatly in favour of the revenue, with which hon. Members opposite so much sympathize. I ask because there is one point which renders it most essential that the question should be settled. At this moment there are coming into this country, under the low duty provided for by the specific Article in the Treaty, very considerable quantities of paper under the name of paper hangings, and, I think, card-board, and competing with the paper which is now paying a high duty and a high excise. That state of things cannot be allowed to go on, as it is injurious to trade, and it is the duty of the Chancellor of the Exchequer—although the matter is not of the great importance which hon. Gentlemen opposite attribute to it—to see that it is not postponed longer than the day that is fixed, in order that the House should say whether the House will support the treaty which in an Address to the Queen it has already undertaken to support, or whether it will not. The proposition is one strictly in accordance with the treaty, and one which the Government must formally place before the House, and which this House by a specific Address to the Crown has declared its readiness to support.

said, that if the attack upon that side of the House had come from any one but the hon. Member for Birmingham (Mr. Bright), he should have been surprised, for certainly no Government could have been treated with more consideration by its opponents than the present Government had been. Upon the other hand, he knew of no previous instance in political history of a Government so entirely at the mercy of an Opposition as the present had been, and which had been treated with such forbearance by that Opposition. Never before had there been so much time wasted in quarrels between the Government and its supporters. Indeed he thought it was an indecorous thing that Government should be constantly assailed by its supporters, or be assailing them. But that evening was the climax. The House was willing to accede to anything the noble Lord asked, and only required in return that the earliest possible day should be fixed for the discussion of the paper duties. Hon. Members had important duties to perform in their own districts. They had been called together earlier than usual, nominally for the "despatch of business;" but even the noble Lord must admit that in no former Session had so little business been despatched with any useful result. It was only due to the House that the noble Lord should accede to the request that had been made, and undertake to bring on the question of the paper duty on Thursday next.

I think it will be obviously the most convenient course that we should come to no decision now, but adjourn the question until to-morrow, when the Government can state their determination after communicating with those hon. Members who have notices on the Paper for Tuesday next. With respect to the paper duties, I cannot understand why a different principle should be applied to financial legislation at the end of the Session from that adopted at the commencement. The Chancellor of the Exchequer has told us truly that the paper manufacture is an important one, but at the beginning of the Session we were told that such injury would be inflicted upon trade and commerce by having matters kept in suspense that even the forms of the House were overridden, and scarcely anytime was allowed to consider the financial propositions that were made. But this Resolution of the paper duty has been five months upon the table. Paper is a most important manufacture, involving £1,500,000 of revenue, and whether paper manufacturers are right or wrong in their views, still few hon. Members who have been in communication with them can fail to believe that they are sincere in their convictions that the effect of the proposed change will be a transfer of their business from England to the Continent. If that be their belief, surely when they come to our bar they are entitled to have this important subject considered while there is time and ample attendance to give it fair consideration. We have no right, without some good cause, to turn a deaf ear to their application, and when the Government propose to postpone this question until the 6th of August, it is not too much to require them to state some strong reasons for such almost indefinite postponement. I must say the state of business at this moment is serious and perplexing, and our acquiescing in this proceeding would make us parties to the inconvenience it entails. I for one am not disposed to allow the relations between the Ministers and the House to be overstepped quite so readily as the noble Lord seems to suggest. Those relations I hold to be clear and indisputable. Ministers are selected and placed over each branch to administer the public business of the country, as servants of the country, and they have to give their attendance in this House as servants of the House. They have to come down to answer questions and to give any information which may be required, and there should he no waste of public time, no indefinite postponement of important measures from the Ministers of the Crown not being in their places when they are wanted. There has been during the last few days great public inconvenience from Ministers not being in attendance, and I must say I agree with the right hon. Member for Buckinghamshire that when they have been in their places the answers that have been given, as on Monday and Tuesday nights, were hardly respectful to the House. The complaints have hitherto been confined to the paper duty; but now the House has also to complain of the manner in which the question of fortifications is to be dealt with, because we who are interested cannot help complaining that that important question—and, after the speech of the noble Lord, I must say that grave question—has stood postponed for a whole week because the Government took a most extraordinary and unprecedented course of placing a Resolution before the House and calling upon us to vote £2,000,000 without previous notice—a course for which I venture to say even the oldest Member cannot remember a precedent. When I saw the vague character of the Resolution I was amazed, and the hon. Member for Birmingham very naturally objected to proceed. The noble Lord very properly gave way, but those who came down to support the noble Lord as well as those who came down to oppose have a right to complain that a whole week has been lost for the settlement of so important a question through the carelessness of the Government. There is another question of a constitutional character which has been raised to-night. I heard with surprise a question on finance addressed by the hon. Member for Buckingham to the Home Secretary, which I should have thought it was the duty of the Finance Minister to answer. Are we to understand after the occurrence of the other night that this hitherto unprecedented course is to be adopted in future? [Sir GEORGE LEWIS: The question related to a loan which I negotiated.] I understood that it related to, and implied a comparison with, the loan now about to be negotiated. We had, however, a most important financial proposition submitted in a manner quite unprecedented, because hitherto a Vote for fortifications has been brought forward in connection with the Budget. There has been an Estimate for the military department, and the money is found by the Chancellor of the Exchequer. But in this ease there has been no Estimate; there has been no proposition from the Chancellor of the Exchequer, he was not even present when the question was brought forward. To-night, again, we have the Home Secretary replying to a question which the Chancellor of the Exchequer ought to have answered. I hope that when we come to discuss the question on Monday the Government will not lay themselves open to the creation of further delay by any hon. Member opposed to the proposal rising and refusing to allow the matter to proceed because of no opportunity for explanation from the Minister who is entrusted with the finances of the country. We are now on the 26th of July, and the most important—the financial portion—of our business has yet to be gone through, and we shall be neglecting our duty if on every occasion we do not obtain from the Government precise information of the course they intend to pursue. We now see daily what is certainly a novelty; upon one important measure after another the Government is defeated, and not only submitting to defeat, but positively showing an insensibility to it such as has never been witnessed before. We haven ever before seen Ministers undergoing defeat without manifesting any feeling or shame, and it is a question whether the House of Commons will allow a state of things to continue which is most injurious to the public interests, and damaging and degrading to all parties concerned.

The charge which my hon. Friend has brought against me is—to use his own language—the most singular and extraordinary I every heard, and when he talks of my conduct as unconstitutional, that is an example of rhetorical inflation which I have never heard exceeded in this House. What are the facts? The hon. Member for Buckingham (Mr. Hubbard) gave notice of a question to me upon the subject of a loan which I negotiated in 1855, when I held the office of the Chancellor of the Exchequer. The hon. Gentleman himself put the question to me, and I did not in any way originate or suggest it. If I had declined to answer that question, my refusal might have been considered discourteous, or it might have been supposed that I was ignorant of the matter. I thought it was my duty, partly out of respect to the hon. Gentleman, and partly out of deference to the House, when a question was asked upon a matter of fact, of which I had official cognizance, to give an answer to it. Now, what there is irregular or unconstitutional in that surpasses my comprehension to imagine. On the contrary, if I had declined to answer the question put to me, I should have justly exposed myself to the censure and disapprobation of the House.

said, that if hon. Members would make shorter speeches there would be no counts out, and the public time would not be wasted. They saw the result of these long speeches at the end of the Session, when nothing had been done. He had never detained the House for ten minutes, and he hoped he never should. If an hon. Member could not say what he had to say in twenty minutes, he ought not to have the ear of the House. He would give Ministers and ex-Ministers an unlimited time for speaking upon great questions; but twenty minutes was quite long enough for other Members to say all they had to say.

said, he had meant to conclude by moving that the debate be adjourned until to-morrow.

I understood, and other Members of the Government understood, that what hon. Members particularly wished in regard to the paper duties, and that to which they attached importance, was that there should be certainty relative to the day on which the discussion is to be taken. My noble Friend in arranging the business of the House naturally considered how that certainty was to be obtained, and proposed Monday, the 6th of August, as the day on which the paper duties could be brought on. But the hon. and learned Member for Belfast (Sir Hugh Cairns) proposes a mode by which, with two or three contingencies and uncertainties, you may fix the paper duties' discussion—that is to say, if the discussion on the fortifications is not finished on Monday night, then we are to consider whether the Gentlemen who have now the right of bringing on notices of Motion on Tuesday night will persist in those notices or not. The hon. and learned Gentleman thinks they will not persist in them, but that is evidently a matter quite of conjecture and uncertainty. Of course, there is this for them to consider—that, if they attach great importance to their Motions, they must either bring them on then, or give them up for the remainder of the Session. Therefore, my noble Friend did not think right to propose to take that day from them. Those Motions relate to the Slave Trade, the Volunteers (Ireland), the business of the House, and the Council of India. We have no particular reason for wishing those questions to be discussed, and the Government would be very willing that hon. Members should give up these notices of Motion. But, if there is uncertainty on Monday night, uncertainty on Tuesday, and then the paper duties are put down for Thursday night, on a chance that they may come on, I think it would be putting Members of this House to greater inconvenience than by the mode we propose. None of these hon. Gentlemen have yet said that they mean to give up their right. The hon. and learned Gentleman says there are no other questions of importance fixed for Tuesday, but I think it is hardly fair for Gentlemen to make their own estimate of the importance of questions. [Sir HUGH CAIRNS: I did not say so. I understood from the Chancellor of the Exchequer that the only thing that prevented Thursday being taken was the possibility of the Debate on Monday being adjourned.] What I was about to say was that six weeks ago it was said that it would be necessary to go on with the Civil Service Estimates, and that postponing them beyond an early day in June would certainly be unprecedented. Now, it appears that there is no care for Votes in Committee of Supply or Civil Service Estimates, but that all oar attention ought to be given to the paper duties. The right hon. Gentleman (Mr. Horsman) last year was very importunate on the question of fortifications. He said nothing was so important as the question of fortifications, and that we ought to have a loan upon them. The right hon. Gentleman is now quite indifferent on the subject, and he lather complains that it is not made one of the ordinary Votes of Supply. [Mr. HORSMAN: No!] Yes, the right hon. Gentleman complained that my noble Friend had brought forward the question of fortifications, and said that the usual course was that they should be brought forward in the Estimates of the year. If they were comprised in the ordinary Votes of Supply they would then be taken as part of the appropriation of the year. But my noble Friend adopted, not exactly the scheme of the right hon. Gentleman, but the principle of the scheme for which he was so earnest last year, in having a special loan for fortifications. But the right hon. Gentleman now gives up all care for the fortifications, concentrates his whole attention on the paper duties, and gives lectures to Her Majesty's Ministers as to the way in which the public business ought to be conducted. It may be that the official career of the right hon. Gentleman was so brilliant that every one else is at a great distance from him in this respect. That may be the case, but I do not think any other Member is entitled to hold this language. If hon. Members consent to give up Tuesday there will be no objection to take the paper duties on Thursday, but as business stands at present it will be better to have certainty than uncertainty in regard to the day.

said, he could not but express his astonishment at the refusal of the Prime Minister to accede to what he thought a very proper suggestion—namely, that he should take the earliest possible day for the discussion on the paper duties; because it appeared to him (Sir William Miles) that, if any argument could be adduced for an early consideration of that question, it was that given by the hon. Member for Birmingham. He stated that at the present moment there was a vast quantity of paper coming from foreign countries, and creating great confusion amongst the whole trade throughout the country. It was a very singular thing that, generally speaking, in all questions of adjourned debate no appeal was made to private Members till the very night of the adjournment; but from that night till Tuesday there was plenty of time to make an appeal to hon. Members who had Motions for Tuesday, and from the disposition which had been shown by every private Member who had had a Motion during this Session, he felt confident that they would immediately give way.

Then why do they not say so?

Because they have not been asked. He could easily understand if they were asked and refused to give way that that would be a reason for postponement; but his own wish was to have the paper duty discussed as early as possible, and he could not conceive why the subject should not be put on the Paper for Thursday. Some arrangement might still be come to with hon. Members who had given notices of Motions, and ho should, with that view, move that the Debate be Adjourned.

said, an hon. Friend of his had an important notice of Motion for Tuesday, and he felt sure he would not give way. Nor was it likely that an hon. Member would surrender his right, when it was considered that Tuesday was the last day on which a Member would have an opportunity of bringing forward any Motion. He trusted that his hon. Friend opposite would not press his Amendment, because it was even doubtful whether the question of the paper duties would come on so soon as Monday the 6th of August.

said, he wished to remind the House that it was wasting a great deal of time over this discussion. He wished also to assure the Chancellor of the Exchequer that on the subject of the paper duties be would receive a determined and energetic support from hon. Members below the gangway.

said, it was most important that the European Forces Bill should be considered without delay. Could not three out of the four Members who had put down instructions give way to the fourth, so that the House might have but one instruction to deal with?

said, he wished to explain, in answer to the remarks of the noble Lord (Lord John Russell), that he did not complain of the financial proposals of the Government in regard to the national defences. On the contrary, he approved them, and came down to support them on Monday. What he complained of was that the discussion had been put off in consequence of the irregularity to which he had alluded. He maintained, however, that a Vote for fortifications was as much a part of the financial proposal of the year as any part of the Budget. It was therefore the duty of the head of the department to make the estimate, and of the Finance Minister to explain how the money was to be raised. The Government had departed from the ordinary usage in the course they had taken.

said, he thought that it was necessary to adjourn the debate in order to give time for the Government to negotiate with hon. Members who bad notices upon the paper. The European Forces (India) Bill was of such importance that he should feel it his duty to address the House upon it at greater length than was usual with him.

said, the hon. Member could not then discuss that Bill.

I think it is not expedient to press the adjournment of the Debate. We have placed our views on this subject before the leader of the House. I think they are substantial, and I am sorry the noble Lord has not acted upon them. But, after all, in a matter of this kind we must leave much to the discretion of the leader of this House. On a point in which the management of the business of the House is concerned I think the noble Lord, after previous communications with those hon. Members who have Motions for Tuesday, might have been able to move the Resolution which we find on the Paper—a Resolution which, under the circumstances, appears to me a very proper one. In that case he would have had no difficulty whatever in appointing Thursday for the discussion of the duties on paper. I am still of opinion that Thursday would be a much more convenient day for that purpose than Monday; but it is not clear now that the discussion would be certain to take place on Thursday. And on such a point as whether a Government measure should be brought forward on a Thursday or a Monday, although the feeling of the House upon it may be be strong, I do not think it would he very courteous towards the Government to insist on their adoption of our view. I trust, therefore, that my hon. Friend will not press his Amendment, and that we shall accede to the arrangement, although I do not think it a wise one, which the Government have made for the conduct of their own business.

said, he would withdraw his Motion.

rose to move the Instruction to the Committee of which he had given notice. A Select Committee which he had the honour to obtain at an early part of the Session, and which had been presided over by the noble Lord the late Secretary of State for India (Lord Stanley), had investigated the whole subject of the manner in which the appointments in the civil service at home were filled up, and in their Report they recommended that the principle of open competition should be applied carefully and gradually to admissions to the entire British civil service. That recommendation was in accordance both with the feeling out of doors and with the whole current of present legislation. A few nights ago, the Secretary for India placed a notice on the paper for leave to introduce a Bill to regulate the Indian civil service, and it was then rumoured, whether rightly or wrongly, that the right hon. Gentleman intended to very much alter and curtail the system of open competition. He hoped the Government would take this occasion to contradict that rumour. In his dissent to the Bill of the Government Mr. Prinsep stated that the measure omitted to notice an important point connected with the officering of the Indian army which ought to engage the attention of Parliament. Mr. Prinsep was quite correct; and this omission rendered the Instruction he (Mr. Hennessy) had been requested to move, absolutely necessary. By the Act of 1858 for the Government of India, it was provided that one-tenth of the commissions for the Indian army should be placed at the disposal of the officers who had served in India, and that arrangement had still the force of law. But under the present Bill what would become of that arrangement? He would venture to recommend that that principle should be carried out. The system of open competition had been introduced into the civil service of India as well as into the scientific and medical branches of its army, and it had produced the most beneficial results. He, therefore, wished to see it extended generally to commissions in the army. It might be said that his Motion would interfere with the patronage and the prerogative of the Crown, but that objection had been satisfactorily disposed of by the President of the Council in a debate in the other House two years ago, when it was shown that the same objection might equally have been urged against introducing competitive examinations into the civil service. According to the testimony of the highest authorities, and amongst others the noble Viscount at the head of the Government, and the right hon. Member for Buckinghamshire, the system had operated with perfect success. The right hon. Gentleman (Mr. Disraeli), when leader of the House, had said:—"I am a firm, though not a headstrong or extravagant supporter of the competitive principle for public appointments. As far as I am able to form an opinion, I think that principle, in its practical application, has been entirely successful." Referring to the apprehension that the power of the Crown would be too much increased by the Indian patronage, and to the fact that the middle classes, who gained India, would lose their share, he said—"It appears to me that that difficulty which has baffled some of our wisest statesmen, and the wisdom of many Parliaments, we have, in a great degree, solved by the creation and development of that very competitive principle of which I have been speaking." Surely this was a proper occasion to manifest our sense of the great advantages conferred on British India by the middle classes, and a proper occasion likewise to show our appreciation of that generous and politic principle—competitive examinations—which so high an authority as the right hon. Gentleman (Mr. Disraeli) had thus identified with the successful solution of the capital problem of Indian Government. By his Instruction to the Committee, he proposed that the successful candidates should pass through one of the military colleges, a requisition which was in accordance with the practice in foreign countries. Under the French system every successful candidate in the competition was entitled, according to his means, to the privilege of support from the State. The Prussian system differed from the French in many respects. In the Prussian system the Patronage of the Crown was very limited. The officers underwent a preliminary examination before the colonel, and the principle of open competition was adopted. The Austrian system was still more competitive than the French system, throwing open the commissions of the army to all classes, while it also recognized the principle of granting commissions to the sons of officers. The Commissioners who had investigated this subject had boldly approached the question of the expediency of throwing open the commissions in the British army to all classes by the establishment of a thorough competitive examination. Those examinations had, up to the present, been most successful, and he thought the time had come when they should be extended. Long before the recent changes in the Government of India were thought of, Sir John Lawrence proposed that a large proportion of the commissions in the Indian army should be given by open competitive examination. In late Reports presented to Parliament the success of competition candidates, as contrasted with patronage candidates, was shown. One of these Beports—that of the Rev. Canon Mosely—gives an account of a competition at Woolwich, in which fifty-three cadets were examined together—thirty who had got into the Academy, on the average about nine months, by open competition, against twenty-three patronage-appointed cadets, who had been in the Academy for periods varying from one year nine months to two years nine months; that is to say, it was a competition of patronage-appointed candidates specially trained, chiefly in practical branches of the service, on an average of two years, against competition cadets, trained on an average of nine months. The first four places were won by competition cadets; the fifth by a nominated cadet. Then came no less than nine competition cadets, and only the last two places fell to the nomination cadets. The results of other competitions of patronage-appointed and competition candidates were similar. The usual objection to this plan was that the persons who would gain commissions under it would be of a lower social rank than those who now held them, and that this would have an injurious effect upon the army. The futility of this plea was abundantly shown by the results of recent examinations for the civil service and for commissions in the scientific branches of Her Majesty's army. Of the successful candidates in the former examination, the great majority had been educated at the universities, and of those who were candidates at one of the latter one-third were sons of clergymen, one-third of private gentlemen and magistrates, a large number sons of officers and barristers, and only 4 per cent were sons of persons in business. Considering by whom India was won, and for a long time governed, the middle classes might, in his opinion, fairly receive more than 4 per cent of the commissions in that country. Probably this was one reason why Sir John Lawrence, in a memorandum, to be found among the paper's on the organization of the Indian army, recommended that a system of open competition should be established. There could he no doubt that under the system indicated by his (Mr. Hennessy's) instruction the Home Government would be relieved of an onerous and distressing task, Members of Parliament would be saved much troublesome solicitation, and, above all, the military administration of India would be conducted with greater skill, with more economy, and, as a natural result of a higher educational standard, with a greater regard for the feelings and interests of the Native population. Indeed, recent events furnished us with the most conclusive evidence that many of the British officers, entrusted with grave authority in India, had, from an ignorance of popular customs and a disregard of national habits and traditions, given great cause of complaint and encouragement to disaffection. As long as we send out officers to India who seem inclined to treat the Natives as slaves, who seem unable or unwilling to appreciate the noble qualities, of that unfortunate people, and who add the grossest military outrages and insults to the civil misgovernment and financial burdens we have imposed upon them, so long will our rule in India be a blot upon civilization. The executive barbarity, the breaches of faith, the unfeeling disregard of Eastern customs and prejudices, and the military insolence, which characterize British administration in India, might be traced, to a great extent, to the ignorance and want of ability of those entrusted with the Queen's authority. By sending out more intelligent and better educated men, something at least will be done to remedy these acknowledged evils. Another, though less important reason influenced him in desiring to throw open the whole Eastern service, and sweep away the exclusive system of patronage. In Great Britain and Ireland there was a large number of young men possessed of good abilities, fair attainments, and an honourable ambition, to whom it would be only just that we should throw open some of the rewards to be obtained in India. On their behalf, and with an earnest desire to promote the efficiency and increase the intelligence of the Indian service, he begged leave to move the Instruction to the Committee of which he had given notice.

seconded the Motion.

said, he thought the Motion was not practically of a nature to carry out the excellent intentions of its author towards the Indian military service and the Queen's army generally. At present there was a certain amount of the patronage of the Indian service, one-tenth of the whole, which was to be given to the orphans of officers in the Indian army, of the Civil Service of India, and of the Queen's officers serving in India; but commissions, to be of any use to such persons, must be given without purchase, for the option of a commission which cost at least £450 was no favour or advantage to a young man without means. To meet that difficulty the Government had determined that the class he had mentioned should have, as far as possible, all their commissions, without purchase, upon, entering any one of nine local regiments from which the system of purchase, as practised in the Queen's army, would be excluded; but if half of all the commissions which fell vacant in the local army or in the Queen's army serving in India were to be given to a certain class, the immense majority of those commissions would be, of course, with purchase, and therefore of no advantage to the proposed recipients. He was not an advocate for giving commissions to any particular class. The army was not made for officers, but officers for the army, and he thought a general system of entrance and promotion was far better than that of selecting a special class for a particular amount of patronage. If the attention of the hon. Gentleman had been called to the Report of the Committee on Military Organization, of which the right hon. Baronet (Sir James Graham) had been Chairman, he would have seen how few commissions were available without purchase in time of peace in the Queen's army. During times of war or anticipated war, however, they amounted to a great number. From 1853 to 1859 upwards of 3,000 commissions were given away without purchase; but previous to the late war the number of commissions disposed of without purchase was not more than, upon an average, sixteen per annum, and in some years it fell as low as three. Of such commissions a considerable number must be given to non-commissioned officers who had earned their rank. If the hon. Member's Motion were agreed to, an enormous proportion of commissions would be given to the class of persons mentioned, as compared with other classes; and again they would be of no advantage, as the great majority of commissions by purchase would not be available for orphans or persons in distressed circumstances. The hon. Member had read a number of extracts in favour of open competition, but the object of his Motion was to limit the amount of competition.

resumed: At that late period of the Session he did not expect that any hon. Gentleman would seek to deprive the Government of another day in the progress of business. The Government were maturing a plan for a better arrangement under which candidates having passed the Military College could obtain those commissions by purchase, after a successful competitive examination. In those arrangements the most scrupulous regard would be paid to the officers in the Indian Civil Service as well as to those in the Queen's army. Under those circumstances he trusted that the House would reject the proposition of the hon. Member for King's County.

said, the right hon. Gentleman, on a former occasion, had pooh-poohed the question of promotion in the local army, and now, to his surprise, he had endeavoured to induce the House to believe that it would be of no advantage to the sons of officers in the Indian service to have a right of nomination in consequence of their birth. The right hon. Gentleman seemed to forget that there were 4,980 European officers now on the list of the local army; and it would require 300 gentlemen a year to supply the vacancies which occurred in that number. The late Court of Directors, with a generous consideration for the claims of old servants, military and civil, and for the sons of Royal officers who had served in India, used to allot about three-fourths of their patronage in satisfaction of these claims. And what was now the prospect of these 4,980 officers? One-tenth, that is to say, about thirty appointments were annually to be allotted to the sons of those officers. [Mr. SIDNEY HERBERT: About twenty.] It appeared that there were only twenty allotted to them, so that the injustice was even greater than he had at first supposed. Well, the officers in India now got their commissions without paying anything for them, and yet the right hon. Gentleman sought to make the House believe that the increased number to be allotted, as proposed by the instruction to the Committee, would be of no advantage to the orphan sons of officers—although it insured them Commissions gratuitously. The Royal army was just as much interested in this question as the local army. Upon the score of humanity even he trusted that the House would concur in the proposition of the hon. Member for the King's County.

said, he wished to read the protest of a member of the Indian Council, Mr. Willoughby, against some statements which had been made in that House:—

"Excluded from Parliament they have no means of defending themselves, even when unworthy motives are imputed to them. They have been charged with a lust of power and a greed of patronage. Strange that the gallant officer, who stated in Parliament that it was simply a question of patronage, should not have felt how he exposed to a similar retort those who advocate amalgation. I am satis6ed, however, that there is not a single individual in the council who would not willingly relinquish the so-called patronage, and I would suggest the following mode for carrying out the object:—Let the number of cadetships now distributed by the Secretary of State in Council among the sons of persons who have served in India, in the military or civil services of Her Majesty or the East India Company, be increased from one-tenth (Clause 35, 21stand 22nd Victoria, cap. 56) to one-third or such other proportion as may be deemed expedient, and let the remainder be open to public competition into the Royal Military College at Addiscombe."

This was the declaration of one of those who were accused of unworthy motives in their attempt to uphold what from their knowledge and experience they believed to be the interests of India.

said, he had hoped that the right hon. Gentleman the Secretary for War, after the strong language he had made use of, would have remained in his place until the conclusion of the debate. For himself he felt bound to support the proposition of the hon. Member for the King's County. It was a very remarkable circumstance that they had heard that night, for the first time, from the Secretary of State for War, the word "purchase" introduced with regard to the Indian army. Not a word had been said about purchase before. Now they knew that the head of the English army was a determined supporter and promoter of the system of purchase, and that distinguished and illustrious personage was the most prominent in promoting the Bill which was now before the House. He should be sorry to use any strong language with respect to the Secretary of State for India, or the Secretary of State for War, because he believed them more worthy of commiseration than of indignation. He believed they were compelled to take the course they did by a powerful influence which they felt themselves unable to resist. The Indian Secretary was chargeable with inconsistency in this matter, for whereas he had, at a comparatively recent period, brought forward a Bill providing for a local army in India, he now was advocating a Bill which wholly set aside former legislation. The right hon. Gentleman said the gravity of the mutiny in India bad compelled the Government to forego their intentions. Gentlemen who were induced with difficulty to interest themselves in Indian questions supposed that he might be right, there being no papers for their guidance. Certain pertinacious persons, however, persisted in demanding these papers. The noble Viscount—who he was glad to see was indulging in a nap as he required it—administered the most jocose rebuke to the right hon. Gentleman (Mr. Horsman) for his peculiar pertinacity; but, whatever objections might be urged to certain expressions which had escaped the right hon. Gentleman, those who had the interests of India at heart had some reason to feel obliged to him for the course ho had pursued. It was suggested on the part of the Government that their patronage and that of the Horse Guards should be waived and a college should be formed. But the question was, who was to permit persons to enter the college? Why, the Commander-in-Chief. And then the country was told that there was no patronage at all? Why, it was a trick and a delusion. He was in favour of the competitive system. In the Royal Commission on the Purchase System Lord Panmure and the Commander-in-Chief expressed themselves very doubtfully as to the eventual results of competition; and the supporters of the competitive system felt that when two persons of such high position and authority spoke in this way it was questionable whether the system would be maintained. But somehow the Members both of the late and the present Government listened to the representations of the examiners, and after a year or two it was admitted that the system had answered extremely well. The Earl of Derby, he believed, stated in the other House that only one appointment made on the competitive principle had proved unsatisfactory. Some persons at first were horrified at the notion that Commissions would be obtained by young men who had nothing in their favour except that they were rather clever; and such persons appeared to think that cleverness was not an adequate qualification. It turned out, however, that those young men were not only clever, but well-conducted, and were competent, both physically and mentally, for these appointments. He thought, therefore, that unless the right hon. Gentleman the Secretary for India could bring forward a stronger case than had yet been urged, the general scope of the argument of the hon. Member (Mr. Pope Hennessy) could not be objected to. The Secretary for War had made a remarkable observation. He said that it had been contended that the officers of the local European forces in India were of a different class from those who composed the officers of Her Majesty's army, but that he did not believe a word of it. That was a strong expression considering that the right hon. Gentleman had had no practical experience of either army, but he (Sir De Lacy Evans) had experience of both, and insisted that there was a considerable difference. He had referred to the Army Lists, and while in the Indian army he only found five names of "honourables," in Her Majesty's army there were 200 or 300 peers or sons of peers among the officers. There was also a large infusion of the aristocracy of wealth as well as of blood. Then came back the original question, was it wise to put an end to that be dy of middle-class officers who had rendered such good service in India? The Resolution of the hon. Member might be open to question in details, but upon the whole it was one to which he (Sir De Lacy Evans) should give his support.

said, he also would give his cordial support to the Motion of the hon. Gentleman opposite. The legislation on which the right hon. Gentleman, the Secretary for India, had embarked, was of an unexampled character. The Government plan was very wide and large; especially that portion which provided that the troops of the local Native service should be officered by a selection from officers of the Line. He thought the gravest objections were opposed to that proposition; but as he had already pointed them out to the House, he should, not repeat them on the present occasion. The Bill would interfere with the existing law, not merely by giving large additional patronage to a department in which the public had not the utmost confidence, but by interfering with the status and position of officers of the Indian Army, notwithstanding the guarantee of 1858.

said, he could assure the hon. Gentleman that the Bill, if passed, would not at all affect the guarantee contained in the Act of 1858, and never had been intended to do so.

said, he rose to move that it be an Instruction to the Committee that they have power to make provision for the future regulation, discipline, and patronage of the European forces serving in India. The terms of his Motion were purposely ample to embrace all the aspects of the question he wished to bring under the notice of the House. He was far from wishing to embarrass the House by making a longer statement than was necessary; but he was of opinion that the attention given to Indian subjects by that House was hardly commensurate with their importance. He had endeavoured to improve what little personal experience he had on the subject by reading carefully all the papers which had been brought before Parliament on the subject, and if it had not been for the paucity of information, he should not have presumed, sailor as he was, to have taken up the question. In reading the various Minutes which had been drawn by the most distinguished Indian authorities on this subject, he had been struck with the great moral preponderance in favour of maintaining a local force in India. In particular he had read the able Minute drawn up by Mr. Wil-loughby, and generally adhered to by the Members of the Indian Council, which he believed to be the most exhaustive treatise on the subject which had been laid before Parliament. The first paragraph related to the danger which India would run under the new system of being denuded of troops at a season of Imperial emergency. The Secretary of State for India might say that there was no chance of this ever happening, but it had happened in the Crimean war, when troops were withdrawn from India and never replaced. Many of the disasters attendant and consequent on the annexation of Oude were attributable to that cause. Mr. Willoughby next brought forward the sanitary considerations which rendered it advisable that India should always be garrisoned by soldiers inured to the climate. His own experience enabled him to say that this was of vital importance. He had seen a regiment landed from England in a first-rate state of efficiency decimated within a few weeks of its arrival by the effects of the climate. He well recollected the frightful visitation in the neighbourhood of Bangalore, when almost the entire wing of an European regiment was lost on its march from Bangalore to Madras. The 78th Regiment, in its march from Kurrachee to Moultan, lost 2 officers, 25 sergeants, 9 drummers, 439 men, 47 women, and 169 children. The same thing had happened in China, where troops from England had suffered immensely, while the local Europeans had not lost a man. Mr. Willoughby's next reason referred to the fact that until very lately there had been scarcely a dissentient voice against the plan of a local European army. Lord Clyde, General Mansfield, and General Grant were of that opinion not very long ago, and it certainly behaved those Gentlemen to come forward with some more cogent reasons than any they had yet assigned for the change which had taken place in their opinions. Among those who were still in favour of a local force were three Governors-General, the Earl of Ellen-borough, the Marquess of Dalhousie, and Earl Canning, Lord Harris, Sir Henry Somerset, Lord Stanley, Sir James Out-ram, Sir B. Frere, General Vivian, Sir J. Laurence, General Birch, Colonel Baker, Colonel Sir Philip Melville, Colonel Green, Colonel Durand, Mr. P. Grant, and Mr. Bicketts. Sir James Outram, in the Minute which he had drawn, alluded to this change of opinion, and expressed a hope that the recent conduct of the local European troops—which he presumed had had considerable influence in producing the change of opinion—would be fully explained by the Secretary for India when the subject was discussed by Parliament, so that no Member of either House might give a vote to the prejudice of the existing army under an erroneous impression as to their language and conduct. Sir James proceeded to point out that the noble Lord at the head of the Government, when the Bill transferring India to the Government of the Crown was under discussion, treated it as a matter of course that the men would have their discharge offered them. He carefully guarded himself against admitting the propriety of their claim; but he felt that, considering the difference of legal opinion on the subject, there was considerable excuse for the men regarding the statements and opinion of the Attorney General as the quibbles of a lawyer. Mr. Willoughby's next reason was because he did not see how any amalgamation could be effected without raising discontent among the local European troops, and violating a second time the conditions on which they enlisted. It was stated in a General Order, dated June, 1859, that the sole change would be in the designation of the troops; that they would be deemed the Indian military forces of Her Majesty; and that the previous terms under which they enlisted would be carefully observed. It was supposed in this country that the local Indian army was annihilated; but the fact was that 22,356 men and officers of that army were still left, and the question arose what was to be done with them. The next reason of Mr. Willoughby was, because the Royal Engineers were not adapted, while the local Engineer corps were especially adapted for service in India both in peace and war, and because to relieve 80,000 troops every ten years would entail an intolerable burden on Indian finances. He thought that when they came to look at the plan shadowed out by the Government, they would be convinced it would throw an enormous expense upon India. There would be 8,000 relieving and 8,000 relieved men continually at sea every year. There would be 5,600 recruits to meet deaths. There would be 4,000 invalided, or whose time had expired; and there would be 4,000 going to relieve them—so that there would, in all, be 29,600 men hors de combat. But, moreover, a regiment brought home bodily from India would be of no use for twelve months. Supposing a regiment during cold and wet weather, like that of the present summer, were landed at Portsmouth, and were sent to Aldershot, the whole of them would be very soon on the sick list. On the other hand, a regiment proceeding out to India direct from this cold climate would for some time after their arrival be completely disorganized. Until the plan of the Government was tested by experience, it was impossible to say what the number of non-effectives would be. Mr. Willoughby's next reason was because no plan or scheme had as yet been devised, by which amalgamation could be effected without a violation of the Parliamentary guarantees made to the Indian army in Clauses 56 and 58 of the Government India Bill of 1858:—

"The first of these clauses secured to the officers of the Indian army the like pay, pensions, allowances, and privileges, and the like advantages as regards promotion and otherwise, as if they had continued in the service of the Company.' The second clause guaranteed 'any claims to pension, or any claims on the various annuity funds of the several Presidencies in India,' which an officer might have had previous to the passing of the Act; and the proper interpretation of these clauses was given by the then Prime Minister, the Earl of Derby, when he introduced the India Bill into the House of Lords, on the 15th of July, 1858, and explained, that the Bill provides, as far as it refers to individuals and bodies, that they shall have reserved to them all the rights, privileges, and expectations which they were led to form at the time of their admission to the service.'"

He should be very sorry to see the army of India handed over to the tender mercies of the right hon. Baronet the Secretary of State. He belonged to a branch of the Company's service which was reduced in 1833, and he retained a very lively recollection of the manner in which he was treated. He was driven from a very high point in that service, a fund to which he had paid nearly £3,000 was confiscated, the pensions to widows were withdrawn, although that did not so much matter then, as he was not married; he was put upon a pension of £200 a year, the junior officers were sent adrift with but scanty compensation, and for years he contributed to the support of the warrant officers of the ship to which he belonged in the Poplar workhouse. With that experience the right hon. Gentleman would excuse him for not wishing to hand over brother officers to the tender mercies of Her Majesty's Government, for he was convinced that faith would not be kept with them, that they would be treated according to the whims of the fluctuating majority of the House of Commons, and that, probably, any one rising to defend them would address a number to whom it would be the duty of some hon. Member to call the attention of the Speaker. Mr. Willoughby's next reason was—

"Because it was a great object to secure for service in India, not only in a military, but also in a civil and political capacity, a large body of officers, who going out young became attached to India, and, entertaining no views or expectations beyond India, were induced to make themselves intimately acquainted with the manners and customs of the country, the languages, peculiarities, and even prejudices of the various tribes and peoples who inhabit it."

This was the most important point of the whole controversy. They might depend upon it that a man who had enjoyed the luxuries of the Junior United Service Club would not settle in India in the same way as a boy, who uncontaminated by the society of this country, looked to India as the field in which he had to gain his spurs, and to the Natives as the subjects whom it was his birthright to govern. He would adduce in support of this statement the evidence of an officer whose name was an honour and a credit to his country, and who was not born with a silver spoon in his mouth—Sir James Outram. Sir James Outram said—

"Hitherto the officers had been mainly derived from the middle classes of England. They came out healthy, ingenuous youths, ignorant of the enjoyments and dissipations of life, and full of expectations of a country which was to be their home for the next twenty or thirty years. On their arrival they were drawn into contact with people who had acquired knowledge of the Natives, their language and religion, and of civil and military affairs. From them they took their tone, and really became ambitious to acquire a thorough knowledge of the country and its concerns. They were thrown into intimate intercourse with the Natives, and learnt to feel a friendly interest in them. They were thus enabled to remove many misapprehensions from the minds of the Natives, and to win their affections by redressing their wrongs and giving them practical aid in a variety of ways."

The present system was, perhaps, an anomaly. Officers, it was true, were not always present with their regiments. One might be found superintending some great work here and another there. It was, however, scarcely fair or consistent for the right hon. Gentleman (Sir Charles Wood)—one of whose colleagues in the Cabinet was at Pekin and another at Toronto—to find fault with a practice in which the Ministers themselves indulged. Mr. Willoughby also adduced as arguments against the change, that it would injure the morale of the Native army, diminish the authority of the Governor General, and overwhelm with work an already overburdened department at home. When they reflected on the wide and complicated nature of the military administration of India, involving the direction of three local armies under separate heads, the transport of troops to and from India, and a vast amount of other arrangements, it was obvious that it was utterly impossible for the Horse Guards, already fully occupied with the superintendence of the Queen's army at home and in the Colonies, to discharge these additional duties with credit or success. The tendency of the change would be to create a central bureaucracy of the most objectionable kind, which would paralyze the whole empire to its extremities in Asia, and might prove fatal to its very existence. Mr. Willoughby pointed out, further, that the division of authority between the Governor General and the Secretary of State for India was best adapted to check the abuse of patronage, and that it was essential to the good government of India that first nomination to the service and subsequent promotion should not be vested in the same hands. Sir Charles Trevelyan, who was a great authority with hon. Gentlemen opposite a short time ago, if not so still, and who was really an able, though sometimes an imprudent man, remarked,—

"The weak point of the Horse Guards is in reference to the higher class of Staff appointments, which is called in England valuable patronage; but here the India rule that all Staff appointments are to be at the disposal of the local Government provides a satisfactory remedy."

The next argument used by Mr. Willoughby was that the proposed change would remove the check at present imposed on the tendency to incur excessive military expenditure on account of India, and to cast undue charges upon the Government of that country. He himself could regard the proposition now made only as the first great step towards an arbitrary mode of government by means of the extensive patronage which would be placed at the disposal of the Government. The patronage of the military service of India, of the local uncovenanted service, of the numberless appointments which would spring up in every direction as India became more civilized and the means of communication were multiplied, would place an engine in the hands of the Government which might be wielded for the most dangerous and arbitrary purposes. Had this Bill been brought in at an earlier period of the Session, there would have been time carefully and deliberately to consider it, and nothing would have induced him to act an obstructive part. But, having wasted their time in the consideration of abortive treaties, of a Reform Bill which was intended only to be talked about and bandied from one side of the House to the other, of a financial scheme which had broken down from point to point, they were asked at the fag-end of the Session to decide this great and important question, which involved the permanence of our Empire in the East, and to expose the military administration of India to the influence of a fluctuating Parliamentary majority. Another of Mr. Willoughby's reasons against the change was that the officers and men of the local army fraternized more with the Natives than the constantly shifting troops of the Line could do. He had the authority of Sir James Outram for saying that the ages of officers in the army who went to India averaged from 28 to 38—a period of life when their habits and prejudices had become fixed, and when they could not adapt themselves to Indian life, or acquire fresh languages, as well as they could have done at an earlier age. Thirty years ago, as a youngster, he had had some experience in the transport of Queen's officers, to India. He knew that a great improvement had taken place among them as a class since then; but he recollected that on one occasion, about the year 1824, out of a batch of twenty-two officers, only two or three were under 40 years of age, and only a couple of them could sign their own names. Of these two one had been a midshipman, and the other had been at Sandhurst. There could be no doubt that the amalgamation of the two forces would tend greatly to unpopularize the Queen's service, and would prevent many men from joining it. There was a great number of men who went into the Line for the mere purpose of amusement, and of getting a certain knowledge of accounts and of the management of affairs, which enabled them, when they "came into their estates, to become useful and agreeable members of society. None of these would relish the idea of Indian service. But there was no such class in the Indian army. The officers there went out to India to work, and had no idea of living luxuriously at their clubs, or of shining in the fashionable world. He agreed with Mr. "Willoughby also in believing that the present time was the least opportune that could have been chosen for such a change. The time was badly chosen for forming a new body of from 5,000 to 7,000 officers. Sir Bartle Frere, a high authority, had written a short Minute on this question, in which he showed that the local European army had not been the creation of any individual soldier or statesman, but had grown up with the growth of our marvellous Indian Empire, that it would be inconsistent with a wise and prudent policy to supersede it by the present scheme, and that the outbreak of the mutiny, which was quite as likely to have occurred under the management of the Horse Guards, was not sufficient for the proposed change. Officers high in Her Majesty's service had assigned the indiscipline of the local regiments as a reason for doing away with them. Now want of discipline was comparative. He had himself seen at one and the same station a Queen's regiment which was a perfect disgrace to the service, and whose barracks were at night a perfect pandemonium of drunkness and debauchery, and another Queen's regiment than which no body of troops could be finer or better ordered. He witnessed the 18th Regiment march into Bombay after the events at Jellalabad, and never in his life did he see, nor was he, perhaps, ever likely again to see, such a regiment. There would always be contrasts between the state of different regiments, and therefore there was no weight in the argument attempted to be drawn from that circumstance. For himself, he had never heard but one opinion expressed by Sir L. Cole and many other competent Indian authorities on the good discipline of the local European force. He thanked the House for the great patience with which it had listened to him. He humbly hoped that the delays which would be interposed to the passing of this measure would be successful, and that the Government would accept the advice of those who regarded this as a question of conscience, of deep and awful responsibility; that they would take time to send out to India for the purpose of assuring these 5,000 officers that they would be fairly and hourably dealt with; and that the great settlement so recently come to would not be destroyed piecemeal, or alterations, of which no man could see the issue, be introduced into the foundations of our Indian Empire.

(who was imperfectly heard) said, if there were any irregularity in his again addressing the House, the blame was due to the manner in which the Government, relying on the indifference of Parliament to such questions, particularly at that period of the Session, had sought to carry through this most important measure. They were now near the end of July, when a great number of Members were doubtless anxious to enjoy their shooting. The House, in his humble opinion, had not displayed the decorous dignity which became it on so grave a subject as a question of India. When the Minister for India introduced the Bill, he had hardly finished his statement when 200 Members went away from the House, leaving the debate to be carried on by some dozen or two Members, who, having either been in India or taking a strong interest in this matter, desired to give it proper discussion. The same thing was repeated night after night; and if anybody called attention to the fact that there were not forty persons present, then the Ministerial train-bands were brought in to keep a House from some place hard by—he know not exactly where, although, doubtless, it afforded them more agreeable employment than taking part in the business of the country. This convinced him forcibly of the truth of a sentence in a letter from the Duke of Wellington to his brother, the Marquess of Wellesley, in which that great commander observed, "The real truth is that the public mind cannot be brought to attend to an Indian subject." He did not, however, think the Government would have so far presumed upon the indifference and comparative ignorance of the House on this question had the Bill been introduced, early in the Session. The right hon. Gentleman the Secretary of State for India had told them that the authorities for and against the amalgamation of the armies were pretty equally balanced; that he had himself been long undecided on the point; but that he had now made up his mind to do exactly the reveise of what he did in August last. The right hon. Gentleman had forgotten to tell the House in any clear and satisfactory manner how he came to change his views. The public out of doors entertained a tolerably decided opinion that the initiative in this matter came not from the right hon. Gentleman himself, nor perhaps from his colleagues, but from a higher source. The House had been treated unfairly by the right hon. Baronet and by the noble Lord at the head of the Government with regard to the pro- duction of papers. They had been assured by the noble Viscount that if they passed the second reading of the Bill the papers which were asked for would be produced at the next stage. But what had subsequently taken place? It was said the papers were very voluminous, numbering 800 pages, and on the morning of the day, when the next stage was to be considered, an instalment of those papers only was given, and the House was forced into a discussion of the Bill. The right hon. Gentleman had thrown out hints that the change which had taken place in his opinions, and the opinions of some of the general officers, was owing to some very grave and terrible mutiny which had taken place, and that there were considerations of such gravity connected with that mutiny that it was desirable that the local force should no longer exist. He thought he would be able to show to the House that no such great mutiny as had been hinted at had taken place. Lord Clyde had acted most judiciously in regard to this matter. He suggested to the Governor-General to appoint a Committee to inquire into the subject, and on that occasion the men came forward, and in a most respectful manner stated what were their grievances. Earl Canning had distinctly stated that the statements made by the noble Viscount had a very great effect in causing the outbreak in India. General Sir Charles Stewart also, writing to the Commander-in-Chief, said that many of the men grounded their claims on part of the speech of Viscount Palmerston. The same fact could be abundantly proved from the petitions of the men themselves, in which these petitioners alleged that Lord Palmerston had stated in Parliament that any soldier who did not choose to come under the new regulations would of course be entitled to his discharge. "As to the charge that the mutineers intended to make common cause with the Sikhs, what was the fact? The Government in their alarm caused the letters of the private soldiers to be stopped in the post-office and examined, and there they found a letter from some foolish fellow, saying that if their grievances were not redressed they would unite with the Sikhs. But if the letters of soldiers, or even officers, in this country were examined, many foolish expressions would be found in them. There were, perhaps, one or two letters from soldiers to their sisters in Tipperary or Kerry, complaining of their treatment, and those letters were paraded as proving that grave discontent existed. Lord Clyde was reported to have stated that no officer of the local army was fit to be intrusted with a command; but he would not believe, until he heard it from Lord Clyde himself, that so distinguished an officer had uttered any such expression. At the present moment several Indian officers were commanding-divisions with the highest approval of the Government, and if Lord Clyde had really made the statement attributed to him Earl Canning had met it in the most unanswerable and decisive manner. He was astonished that Ministers should seek to carry a Bill through Parliament by disparaging the character of their own military officers in India. Their depreciatory remarks were in striking contrast to the glowing eulogium passed by Earl Canning upon the heroic conduct of that portion of the Madras army, the Fusileers, which was actively employed in the suppression of the mutiny. Lord Clyde, on leaving India, thanked in handsome terms the officers and soldiers of the two services for their gallantry, endurance, and discipline. What had been the conduct of the authorities in this country with regard to those troops which were disbanded in India and sent back to England? Why, as soon as they arrived here recruiting sergeants invited them, most zealously to join the British army, and he found there were at Woolwich, at the present moment, a thousand of these men whom the Secretary at War described as disloyal and unworthy to be in Her Majesty's service. Under these circumstances he thought the Government were bound to bring forward more substantial reasons for the course they pursued. With regard to the question of patronage, the opinion of the Marquess of Wellesley was thus recorded:—

"If the King's Commissioners for India and the Court of Directors should at anytime agree to co-operate in filling from home all official vacancies which shall occur in India, it is evident that the result of such a combination might he the transfer of the whole local patronage of India, or of a certain share of it, to the Crown. Whatever share of the patronage of India should be obtained by the Crown in this manner would ho exercised in the most dangerous and objectionable form, for as the appointments to office would be made in an indirect manner, and through several successive channels of authority, no direct responsibility would attach to the Ministers of the Crown; and the influence of the Crown might become considerably extended through a secret and unobserved course, and without the possibility of public control. Such a system would be sufficiently objectionable, even in its application to the public and constitutional interests in England; its application to the public service in India is, however, infinitely more perilous."

He thought this bore a distinct reference to what was proposed to be done. The course proposed would open up the most enormous field of patronage in the world, and was therefore most objectionable, not only in respect to India but this country.

said, he felt great interest in the subject, and a careful examination of the papers which had been laid before the House, led him to believe that the reasons which had been stated by the Secretary for War as those which had induced him to change his mind since the 10th of August last year were most unsatisfactory. He regretted the right hon. Gentleman the Secretary for War was not then in his place, because in the course of a speech which he had made on the Bill before the House, he brought a serious charge against the local European forces. In concluding that speech the right hon. Gentleman drew a comparison between the conduct of certain regiments which had lately gone out to China, under the command of Sir Hope Grant, and those in the service of the East India Company. The officers of those regiments were in the receipt of Indian pay, whilst the men were not, and the latter believing Indian pay to be their right, represented the case to their officers, who promised to refer it to the proper authorities. Now the right hon. Gentleman stated that in that ease there was not the slightest discontent or dissatisfaction; that the representations were made by the officers to the proper authorities; and that the latter decided that the men had a right to Indian pay, which was at once generously granted to them. That was the instance which the right hon. Gentleman had compared with what had taken place in respect of the local European forces in India. Well, what had happened in the ease of the latter? When the Government of India was transferred to the Crown, the men naturally supposed that upon that event they would be allowed their discharge, or a bounty on re-enlistment and they had been encouraged to suppose so by a statement made in this House by the noble Lord at the head of the Government. But disappointed in that expectation, they did exactly what was done by these regiments in China—they made known their complaints to the commanding officers. It was notorious that the opinion of the Commander-in-Chief and the Chief of the Staff was in favour of the men, but the Advocate General and Lord Canning determined that their claim was not a valid one, and this decision was confirmed by the opinion of the legal authorities at home. Was this a parallel case with that cited by the War Secretary, in which the men got all they asked for, while the local army in India, though the Commander-in-Chief was on their side, found their claims rejected on the strength of a lawyer's opinion? In the papers which, after much delay, had been placed on the table of the House, there was abundant evidence that all the best authorities in India were of opinion that the men only asked what was their due. In a despatch from Lord Clyde to the Military Secretary of the Indian Government, dated November 10, 1858, it was pointed out that in the attestation of a soldier on joining the Indian army he was asked whether he would serve the East India Company only, and that no alternative of serving the Crown was apparent. Nothing could be more clear and distinct than the opinion of the Commander-in-Chief upon that point. Many officers had stated that the dissatisfaction arose from the men being refused any bounty, and being transferred from one service to another without any proper explanation being vouchsafed to them. There could be no doubt that there had been great mismanagement, which had cost the country an enormous sum of money. These very men who had accepted the discharge offered to them, had been equally invited to re-enlist upon their arrival in this country. He was informed by a gallant Friend near him that there were 600 men now at Woolwich who had been re-enlisted from the Indian army, and those men were amongst the best at that station. To found the Bill before the House on what was now said to be mutiny of the worst character, but which was called discontent in the blue-books laid on the table, and represented as more in the character of a strike in the speech of the Secretary of State for India on the 10th of August last year, was absurd. He had been told by persons come home from India, that if the men had had a sovereign a-piece given to them to drink the Queen's health, accompanied by a few good words, the matter would have been settled quietly, and nothing more would have been heard of what had been miscalled a military mutiny. He was exceedingly surprised at the sudden change of opinion that had come over the mind of the right hon. Gentleman the Secretary for India upon this subject—a change which, up to the present moment, he had not attempted to explain. The blue-books showed the inconsistency of the statement that the mutiny had been the cause of this Bill. The dates of the public documents contained in them contradicted such an impression. The fact was, that the men in India were induced to avail themselves of the excuse which their change to the Queen's forces gave them to get home to England to see their wives and families, believing at the same time that they would most probably be re-enlisted, as had been the case in many instances. There was not mutiny, but discontent shown that they should have been handed over like bullocks or other chattels as they expressed themselves from the service of the Company to that of the Crown without bounty and without proper explanation. Lord Clyde had himself borne testimony to the brilliant services of the officers of the local European army in upholding the honour and dignity of the English name in India. The colours of one of the Bombay regiments bore the names of ten battles; those of a Madras regiment thirteen battles; and those of a Bengal regiment twelve battles. The 1st Madras Eusileers were selected by Sir Henry Havelock to lead the van of his army. They captured Cawnpore, and worked their way to Lucknow; and these were the men who, standing shoulder to shoulder with their gallant comrades of the Line, had with them successfully put down the mutiny of the Native Indian Army. He should certainly support the Motion of his hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Portsmouth.

said, as this was a very important question, and as many hon. Gentlemen were anxious to speak upon it, while Ministers had not yet done so, he begged to move the adjournment of the debate.

I certainly will not make any opposition to the Motion, finding the debate cannot finish to-night. I can only state that the duty of Ministers is to sit here and listen to any speech which any hon. Gentleman may make, and to any extracts with which they may favour us from the papers before the House. Of course, when an hon. Member is at a loss for any further argument, it is natural that he should eke out his speech by read- ing. I wish, it, however, to be clearly understood that we attach great importance to this Bill; that our patience is inexhaustible, and that we shall be quite prepared to sit here till Christmas in order to get it through.

said, he regretted the spirit in which the noble Lord had mot the Motion for the Adjournment of the debate. He might possibly find himself met in the same spirit, as those who were opposed to the Bill were equally endowed with patience to sit till Christmas. Moreover, while it was not unusual for hon. Members to read extracts, it was no less common to find Ministers, when at a loss for argument, resorting to jests. He could, however, assure the noble Lord he would find great difficulty in jesting away the opposition to this Hill. The earnestness of its opponents would not be defeated by his levity. The noble Lord said the other night, in introducing a measure to that House, that serious matters ought not to be treated with levity, and he therefore, hoped, with regard to this Bill, the noble Lord would now practice what he then preached. The noble Lord said the Government attached much importance to this Bill, that their patience was inexhaustible, and that they would sit till Christmas to carry it through Parliament. Would the noble Lord tell the House what particular interest it was intended to gratify and promote by passing this Bill? Who wanted the Bill? Who asked for it? Who would make it necessary for them to sit till Christmas? Would the noble Lord answer those questions? The House had seen some of the greatest questions that could be submitted to their consideration, one after another, thrown aside—questions on which the Government had come into office, and to which they were committed, abandoned; while office, contrary to all precedent, was retained. Was such a thing ever before known in the history of Parliament? ["Oh, oh!"] Yes, they had had quite enough of that. There was no such intolerance as when a Liberal majority abetted a Ministry in overriding the forms and practice of the House. That tyrannical majority had accomplished great things this Session; but if they thought that in July they were quite as strong and irresistible as in the month of February, the opponents of this Bill would show that they were somewhat mistaken. They had now come to a very serious point in this matter. This was the 26th of July, and the noble Lord told them, with that light bombast by which he knew so well to throw over a great question, that they would sit there till Christmas. He had said so before. Did ho not say so the other night with regard to the Bankruptcy Bill brought in by the Attorney General? Did he not tell them that the patience of the Government upon that subject was also inexhaustible? Was not that a Bill for which the whole country was looking? Was not that a Bill of enormous importance to all their constituents? And yet, while one day the noble Lord said the patience of the Government was inexhaustible, the next week he abandoned it, as he abandoned the Reform Bill, and every other Bill when he found the numerical majority was against him, and yet continued to retain office. He did not, therefore, attach much importance to the statement of the noble Lord that he was prepared to sit till Christmas in order to pass this Bill. With all respect to the noble Lord, on whose honour and veracity he wished to place the utmost reliance, he did not give much credit to that statement. He, therefore, repeated to the noble Lord that, on this question of the Indian army, they had been treated in a manner of which, he would venture to say, the noble Lord's own official experience of fifty years, under every different sort of Administration, furnished no precedent. The noble Lord would find no precedent for it in the Administration of Viscount Melbourne, in the Administration of Earl Grey, in the Administration of the Duke of Wellington, in that of Lord Liverpool, in that of Lord Castlereagh, in that of Mr. Addington, or in any previous Administration to which, during a long series of years, the noble Lord belonged. But they were not prepared to be overridden upon this, one of the greatest questions which had been brought before the House, affecting the retention of the Indian empire by the Queen; a Bill being brought in of a single clause, an abstract Resolution—a dodge, he must call it, to avoid submitting any plan to the House—he repeated that on a question involving the retention of that great empire, won by the valour of so many heroes, and retained by the wisdom of so many statesmen, they were not prepared to jeopardize all this because the noble Lord cared nothing for the public interests in comparison ["Oh, oh!"]—he repeated it deliberately—he said in comparison with that peculiar influence to which on that occasion he would not more particularly allude, and which made him so desirous to pass this Bill. The noble Lord was determined to force this Bill through the Commons and through Parliament, while, as far as the could see, no one in the House desired it—no one in India desired it; the whole Indian Council was against it; all the best authorities were against it. It had been introduced without notice. Information had been kept back. No plan was produced; only the noble Lord said his patience was inexhaustible, and he would sit there till Christmas in order to carry it through. Well, now, the House of Commons and the Ministerial majority had shown themselves capable of great things; where there was a party with no great knowledge, and no strong convictions, they were not likely to have any very great scruples; and, as he believed nineteen out of every twenty of that majority had not read the papers, or taken any pains to inform themselves on the question, but were ready to go into any lobby into which the hon. Member for Lewes might invite them, he, for one, would say that he would not bow to any tyrannical majority—he would yield to reason, but he would not be overborne by force; and he promised the noble Lord he would find it very difficult, unless he substituted argument for jests, to compel them, even if they did sit till Christmas, to pass this unconstitutional and unprecedented measure which he was endeavouring to force down the throats of the House of Commons.

said, he hoped Her Majesty's Government would believe that those of their followers who never differed from them except with great pain, and under circumstances of great difficulty, in opposing, as far as the forms of the House would admit, this Bill for the abolition of the local army of India, were actuated by a real desire for the public good, as far as their knowledge and experience enabled them to judge. It was a question not to be voted on without thought or reason, and therefore he trusted hon. Members would study the valuable papers which had been placed upon the table, and then, if they sat till Christmas, he firmly believed the discussion which took place would only tend to make every division more adverse to the measure introduced by the Government. It merely gave the Government power to do something else. What was that something? Let the Government say distinctly what this was to lead to, what was the real object and meaning of the measure, and what substitute they proposed.

said, that he did not wish to offer any factious opposition to a measure which, in his opinion, was the most important which had engaged the attention of the House during the Session, but, having listened to the arguments which had been adduced with reference to the proposed amalgamation, he must confess they appeared to him to be all on one side. The noble Lord (Lord Palmerston) had taunted hon. Members who were opposed to the scheme with reading extracts, but he could hardly be aware, when he did so, of the effect which the statements contained in those extracts had produced. The fact was that the House, worn out as it was at the present late period of its labours, had not time to devote to the acquisition of a thorough knowledge of the papers which bore upon the question, and that not one out of every twenty of its Members had read them with any degree of attention. Having left the House with only twenty-one Members in it when the second reading of the Bill was under discussion in order to procure some refreshment, he had found on his return that there were 200 present, that number having, when the division took place, increased to 400, the great majority of whom had not listened to the debate, and knew nothing of the subject on which they had voted. Since then, however, in consequence of the statements which had been brought to their knowledge by means of the extracts which had been read to the House, several hon. Gentlemen who had voted for the second reading had declared their opinions with respect to the measure to have undergone a change. Under those circumstances, and taking into account the late period of the Session, when it was impossible that hon. Members could set about acquiring the information which was necessary in order to enable them to arrive at a just conclusion on the subject, he trusted the noble Lord would see the expediency of withdrawing the Bill and postponing legislation to another Session. If the Government did not consent to act upon that suggestion, then the course which he should advise the opponents of the measure to pursue was to go on reading extracts until their object was attained. It was, in his opinion, extremely doubtful whether, if hon. Gentlemen generally had read carefully as he had done the Minutes of Sir James Outram and Mr. Willoughby, the Government would retain that majority which they had upon the previous stage of the measure secured.

said, that communications which he had received from several gentlemen, civil and military, in India, led him to believe that a strong feeling of dissatisfaction was growing up in that body of 4,980 officers of the local army of India who would be affected by the Bill, and who, from the accounts of the debates in Parliament which they received, were induced to form the opinion that their interests were being dealt with with the utmost recklessness and inattention by the House of Commons. The question before the House, however, was less to be considered as tending to the injury or promotion of the interests of any particular class, than as bearing upon the future safety of our Indian Empire, and the best mode of reconciling the rule of a comparatively trifling number of Europeans with the obedience of 200,000,000 of the Native population of India. For his own part, he could not help thinking that the annual accession of fresh European blood to that country, which the proposed annual reliefs of regiments would effect, and the fact that those of our race who were sent out there were for the first five or six years after their arrival disposed to look upon and treat the Natives as "niggers," must ultimately tend to impair, if not altogether to annihilate, our authority in India.

said, he wished to know from Her Majesty's Government why they proposed to abandon the power of maintaining a local European force in India. He had voted against the second reading because he could not understand why Her Majesty's Government should abandon the power of raising and maintaining a local force in India.

moved that the Bill be now read the Second Time.

said, he was induced to offer a few observations on the Bill, because in his capacity of a proprietor of East India Stock he was in a position to state that great uneasiness prevailed among that body, proceeding from the fact, which was only too transparent, that the Bill tended to invade the sanctity of what was called the Security Fund. Hon. Members were not, perhaps, aware that the East India Stock was the old, original stock of the East India Company; that by the Act of 1833 a bargain was entered into between the Government and the East India Company by which the proprietors were guaranteed an annuity at the rate of 10½ per cent on their stock, and the final payment of a sum of £12,000,000 sterling; that in consideration of this the Company relinquished their right of trading, surrendered to Government all their commercial assets, amounting to upwards of £15,000,000, and placed in the hands of the Commissioners for the Reduction of the National Debt £2,000,000 as a securityfund, which, by interest and compound interest had accumulated so rapidly that it already amounted to £5,125,000. Now, he fully admitted that, as India had been incorporated with the rest of Her Majesty's dominions, and as it had been proved that the old system was unsuitable to the altered circumstances of the country, it was incumbent upon the House to make great and important changes. He did not, therefore, object to the payment of the stock being transferred to the Bank of England; on the contrary, he believed such an arrangement would enhance the value of the stock; but he did most strongly object to the security fund and the unclaimed dividends being placed at the absolute disposal of the Secretary of State for India. By such a proceeding an extraordinary and dangerous power would be placed in his hands, and that House would reverse the award of the arbitrators—only appointed last year, with the mutual consent of the Government and the Company—which ruled that the Directors were bound to retain the unclaimed dividends for the proprietors and Company. In respect to economy no saving would be effected, as he understood that the Directors were being rapidly reduced to six, two retiring every year. Under those circumstances, if the House passed the Bill as it now stood it would not only repudiate a previous bargain, and the award of the Government arbitrator, but it would lend its hitherto unsullied name to a wanton aggression on the right and property of a chartered body of its own creation, with regard to which it was distinctly laid down that all acts must be done upon the requisition and with the approbation of the Court of Directors. He had, therefore, in conclusion, to express a hope that the Government would omit from the Bill the 20th Clause, which dealt with the security fund. If they did not consent to take that course, he should feel it to be his duty to divide the House against the second reading.

said, the 20th Clause would be omitted, and that the security fund would then stand in its present position.

said, he must complain of a system of legislation according to which questions of the utmost moment, involving a vast amount of property, were treated as matters of arrangement between the Secretary of State for India and certain private Members. A Bill had been introduced containing a clause, which he did not hesitate to stigmatize as dishonest. By what authority, he wished to know, did the Government seek to take into their hands rights appertaining to a large body of stockholders, the enjoyment of which had been guaranteed to them by charter? Could the proposition be defended on any principles of justice, by which the whole of this guarantee fund was to be handed over to the Secretary of State and the Chancellor of the Exchequer? The House was now aware that the National Debt Commissioners were a complete sham: for the right hon. Gentleman had admitted the other evening that he exercised the whole powers of that Commission. An opinion was consequently gaining ground out of doors that, by this measure, chartered rights would be greatly jeopardized.

said, if his hon. Friend would wait till the Bill was reprinted on Monday, he would doubtless find his objections removed.