said, he wished to ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, When a Bill for amending the Industrial Schools Act is likely to be introduced?

said, that a Bill had been prepared, but its introduction had been delayed in consequence of the Education Commission not being yet prepared with their Report.

said, he was about to ask a question of the noble and gallant Lord the Secretary for the Admiralty, but a word or two of explanation would be necessary to make that question intelligible. Mr. Piggott, a gentleman who had made improvements in telegraphs, obtained the sanction of Her Majesty's Government to lay down an experimental line of telegraphic cable between Alverstoke and Ryde. The Government placed a ship at his disposal; but sent no inspector to see how the experiment was conducted. Mr. Piggott, however, sent a Report to the Admiralty; but, though he had made three applications on the subject to the Board of Admiralty, he had not received any reply. He would, therefore, beg to ask the Secretary to the Admiralty, Why no answer has been given to a Report sent in by Mr. Piggott to the Board of Admiralty of the result of a trial of his Telegraphic Cable laid down between Alverstoke and Ryde on the 20th day of June last?

said, he wished before the noble Lord answered the hon. Member for South Northumberland, to put another question to which he might give a reply at the same time. It appeared that a telegraph was to be laid down between Malta and Alexandria, and be was informed that Mr. Gisborne was the Government officer who was to be employed to superintend the operation. After the result of the recent telegraphic experiments, he wished to know whether his information was correct or not?

said, he would beg to inform the hon. Gentleman (Mr. Coningham) that the Admiralty had nothing to do with the submarine line between Malta and Alexandria. As to the Question of the hon. Member for South Northumberland (Mr. Liddell), he begged to say that in 1860, Mr. Piggott applied for permission to lay down a telegraph wire from Portsmouth Dockyard to the Isle of Wight. The Admiralty objected to its being laid across Portsmouth Harbour, but gave him permission to lay it down between Alverstoke and the Isle of Wight. Mr. Piggott afterwards wrote to the Admiralty to announce that the line had been laid down; but the Admiralty had nothing at all to do with the submarine telegraph, and no answer was deemed necessary.

Sir, I may, perhaps, be permitted to take this opportunity of informing the House that the Avon was sent out this morning to endeavour to intercept Sir Baldwin Walker.

Sir, after the announcement which the noble Lord has just made, perhaps he will allow me to put to him two questions. First, whether it is true that no telegraph was sent from the Admiralty till half-past eleven o'clock to-day? Secondly, whether the Avon is not reckoned one of the slowest ships in Her Majesty's service?

Sir, it is quite true that the orders were sent out this morning; but it must be remembered that the Avon sailed from Devonport, and that we had news of Sir Baldwin Walker having put out from Yarmouth Roads, where he had taken shelter, yesterday morning. It is quite possible, therefore, that the Avon may be able to cut him off.

said, he would beg to ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, Whether he has considered the expediency of proposing to Parliament some measure for enabling municipal bodies, and other local authorities having control of highways, to lay down or to consent to the laying down of tramways on streets and other public thoroughfares?

said, he had been requested to introduce a clause on the subject into the Highways Bill: but he did not like to mix up the two objects. The subject was one deserving of consideration, but he could not say that he was at present prepared to propose any legislation with respect to these Tramways.

said, that in rising to move for a Select Committee on Colonial Military Expenditure, he need hardly apologize for bringing under the notice of the House a question involving an expenditure of £4,000.,000 sterling, nine-tenths of which were raised from the taxation of the people of this country. The usual official objection would probably be raised to the Select Committee for which he was about to ask—namely, that it would involve an interference on the part of Parliament with the proper functions of Government, but he thought he should be able, in a few words, to prove that that objection could not fairly apply to the Motion to which he asked the House to assent. In 1834 a Committee for the same object was granted by the Government of that day. It was presided over by the present Lord Fortescue. On the Report of that Committee action was taken by the Government, to the great advantage of the public; but many changes had taken place since 1834—changes both in the home administration, and in the actual expenditure in the Colonies, which tended to make inquiry still more necessary than it was when granted at that date. From the beginning of the present century up to 1854 the administration of the Colonics and that of the War Department were under one head. In that year, owing to the pressure caused by the Russian war, the two departments were separated; and they had the testimony of men of experience that, under the present system, great inconvenience was caused in the public service from the want of an uniform rule in respect to colonial military expenditure. He did not intend to trouble the House with lengthy quotations, but he would refer to a passage in a letter, written in March, 1859, by Mr. Hawes, on behalf of the right hon. and gallant Member for Huntingdon (General Peel), then Secretary of State for War, to the Secretary of State for the Colonies. In that letter the Colonial Secretary's attention was called to the extreme inconvenience felt in the War Department by reason of the absence of any fixed and recognized principle on which to decide questions relating to military expenditure in the Colonies; and the desirability of an understanding between the several Colonies and the Imperial Government was pointed out. It was suggested by the right hon. and gallant General that the matter should be submitted to the consideration of a Committee composed of one member from the War Office, one from the Colonial Office, and one from the Treasury. Sue'] a Committee was accordingly appointed. They were all men of ability, but they presented a Report in which they diametrically opposed each other. That seemed to have been made an excuse for doing nothing: but, at all events, no action bad been taken on the subject. His object in now proposing the appointment of a Committee was not to embarrass the Government, but to give them a basis for action. The aggregate of our military expenditure for the Colonies was nearly £4,000,000 annually. Of that amount the Colonies contributed about one-tenth. The Committee he proposed would not have to operate on our whole colonial empire. The political garrisons, convict depots, and the philanthropic settlements in Western Africa, with regard to which the question of apportionment of expenditure did not arise, would be excluded from the inquiry. What ever opinions might exist as to the value of these dependencies to Great Britain it was evident that they must be retained, if at all, at Imperial cost. They were ten in number, and the cost of our military expenditure in regard to them was about £1,500,000, while there were twenty-seven or twenty eight colonies and dependencies that absorbed the remaining amount of £2,500,000. The total amount of contributions from Colonial sources towards making up the sum of £4,000,000 was £370,000. The twenty-eight colonial dependencies on which he proposed the Committee should operate contributed £350,000 a year, and of that sum £240,000 was contributed by three colonies—namely, Ceylon, Victoria, and New South Wales. These facts showed the anomaly of the present system, both in regard to their imperial expenditure and the proportions paid by the Colonies. Again, the military defence of the North American Colonies and the West Indies were organized on no settled rule or principle. Vast sums were squandered on fortifications which were often worse than useless, while small garrisons were dotted about on our insular possessions which, in the event of war with any European or other Power, would be simply caught in traps. It was to him quite inconceivable that they should go on keeping fragments of troops in all the small dependencies that they possessed. The colonial power of England rested on her naval superiority alone. The Report of the departmental Committee called attention to the enormous military expenditure at the Cape of Good Hope, amounting to £830,000, side by side with which was an item in the Estimates of £68,000 for the civilization of the Kaffirs. Anything more monstrous than that expenditure of £830,000 he could not imagine, and he was at a loss to understand bow Parliament could sanction—if, indeed, it had ever sanctioned—such an enormous outlay. The tendency of such a system was to keep the colony in a state of perpetual minority. The Kaffir wars, again, had cost this country not less than £5,000,000. He brought forward this Motion in no spirit of hostility to the Government; and he, therefore, regretted to hear that it was their intention to oppose it. That opposition, however, rendered it necessary for him to anticipate some of the arguments likely to be used against it. He should probably be told that the matter ought to be left to the Executive Government; and that it was not a question for the House of Commons. That was an argument which had been used for the last twenty-five years, and might be used with equal force for twenty-five years to come. But how could the Government deal with the matter satisfactorily when the average duration of office of each Colonial Minister was little more than eighteen months? Under such circumstances, unless some sound rules were laid down for that department, any statesman who held the seals of the Colonial Office must find great difficulty in giving satisfaction. A long space elapsed before the missives of the Colonial Office could reach the colony, and when the time came for the return of the mail the Colonial Office had a new functionary who might feel disposed to deal with the question at issue on a different principle. The settlement of important questions between the Imperial Government and the Colonies was thus indefinitely delayed, and the seeds were thus sown for future disputes. The severance of the War Department from the Colonial Office had only aggravated the difficulty of the case. He disclaimed any desire to invade the functions of the Executive, but the whole history of the matter showed that it was high time for Parliament to interfere. He might be told that one Committee had already sat, that his Committee would do nothing, and that the Colonies would be coming before it in formâ pauperis to get what they could for themselves. But persons who held this opinion of the Colonies must have forgotten their conduct during the Russian war, when the Australian colonies sent home between £70.000 and £80,000 to the Patriotic Fund for the widows and children of those who fell in the Crimea; and when Nova Scotia offered to maintain a militia of 25,000 men to protect her own shores in the event of England requiring the services of her army elsewhere. It could not be said that the expenditure proposed to be inquired into was unimportant, for if £1,000,000 of this £4,000,000 could be saved, it represented 1d. in the pound on the income tax, or it would enable the Chancellor of the Exchequer to take his long-deferred action on the paper duty. The student of history could not but notice the contrast between the Colonial policy of England and that of Spain and Holland. He did not mention the colonial policy of the latter countries for any purpose of laudation, but it was worthy of remark that they received from their colonies every year nearly the precise sum that England spent upon hers. But it was not only, or mainly, on economical or financial grounds that an inquiry into our present colonial policy was demanded. The retention of colonies in an inglorious and unlonely subjection was a hopeless enterprise, degrading alike to those who imposed and those who accepted the dominion. Sixty years ago Mr. Fox, in advocating the Quebec Bill, told the House of Commons that the only sure mode of retaining our Colonies was to enable them to govern themselves. This advice had been echoed by the late Sir William Molesworth, Mr. Charles Buller, and some distinguished statesmen who were still Members of that House. But self-government was necessarily followed by self-defence, and the Colonies that were left to govern themselves ought, as a necessary consequence, to defend themselves. It was not necessary to go back to ancient times to show the accuracy of that theory. Our North American colonies, before the declaration of independence, paid the whole cost of their military defence out of their own taxes, and yet provided in addition for the whole expense of their civil government. During the seven years' war they raised 25,000 men at a cost of several millions sterling. The policy of England towards her Colonies ought to be in accordance with this ancient precedent to cherish the feeling of self-reliance, and to revive, if possible, the sound principles of Colonial Government from which we had departed. He submitted his Motion to the consideration of the House, he repeated, in no hostile spirit towards the Government, but because he believed that man was doing a service to his country who was instrumental in diminishing the drain on the resources of the State, and lightening the burden which pressed on the population—a burden in this case involving an expenditure of £4,000,000 sterling—and the withdrawal of 100.000 soldiers from the service of the mother country to the outlying provinces of our empire. But there was a still more powerful argument for investigating and reforming our colonial policy—namely, that by cherishing those principles of self-reliance to which he had adverted, they would be qualifying the Colonies for a glorious future and for eventual independence. He would, therefore, move,

"That a Select Committee be appointed on Colonial Military Expenditure, to inquire and re port whether any, and what, alteration may be advantageously adopted in regard to the Defence of the British Dependencies, and the proportions of cost of such Defence as now defrayed from Imperial and Colonial funds respectively."

said, he had particular pleasure in seconding the Motion, because the colony of Queensland, with which he was principally connected, had no soldiers and no military defence. It struck him that the Colonies ought not, strictly speaking, to have a military defence. A fleet, with a sufficient number of marines, would, in his opinion, be a much more effectual defence than a garrison of soldiers. The advantage possessed by a fleet was that it could move very rapidly to any point on the coast where its presence might be required. It would be recollected that the Volunteers of New Zealand were, on a recent occasion, placed in great jeopardy, and would have been cut off by the natives but for the assistance of blue jackets. Even if they had no colonies their commerce would require them to keep up a navy; and, therefore, with that expense the Colonies could not be charged. He hoped that the Committee would be appointed, as the subject was full of details, and they were not to suppose that the Colonies could be dealt with by one single rule—one Procrustean plan. He was glad to hear his hon. Friend pay a tribute to the loyalty of Australia, although he had, he thought, made a mistake in saying that the Australian colonies contributed only £75,000 to the Patriotic Fund, as it was within his own knowledge that New South Wales, by no moans the largest of these colonics, had alone subscribed £53,000. The case of the Cape required peculiar attention. In former days the colonists fought the Kafirs in their own way, but of late the Government had prohibited them to engage in any kind of guerilla warfare. It was, therefore, the duty of the Government to provide them with adequate protection.

said, he could assure his hon. Friend that his Motion for a Committee was not viewed as a party attack upon the Government. He concurred in the objects aimed at by the hon. Member's proposition, but he differed from him as to the means of attaining those objects. The desire felt for inquiry by a Select Committee into the matter arose very much, he believed, from what was supposed to be the comparative failure of the inquiry made some time ago by a Departmental Committee appointed by the late Government. The Report of that Committee was not a joint one. There were in effect two Reports, one of which was made by an able gentleman, a member of the War Department, from whom his Colonial Office Colleague was compelled to differ. The document containing that Report was drawn up with very great ability—was full of ideas and valuable observations; but, as far as its practical utility went in enabling the Government to settle the matter on a satisfactory basis, it was comparatively of little benefit. But the failure of the Committee could not be attributed to the Minister under whose auspices it was appointed. The Reports, in fact, did not furnish an answer to the questions submitted to the Committee. General Peel, in his instructions to the Committee, laid down very simple principles as to the colonial military system and the distribution of the charges—principles in which, in the main, his noble Friend now at the head of the Colonial Office concurred—and requested the Committee to consider a scheme for the application of those principles to each colony. In the able paper drawn up by Mr. Godley, the two main recommendations were these—That the defence of the Colonies should be maintained under a system of local control and management, and that there should be a uniform contribution on the part of the mother country. The essence of the Report was—that the defence of the Colonies ought to be carried on by local corps provided by each of those Colonies, and without the assistance of regiments sent from home. There was no doubt that local corps such as the Cape Rifles and the Ceylon Regiments were very useful under certain circumstances, and in peculiar methods of war fare, but he was convinced that there was no surer way of destroying in the Colonics the sense of connection with the mother country than by making up our minds to withdraw from them the presence of British regiments. His hon. Friend who seconded the Motion reminded him of a strong instance which bad recently come to the notice of the Government. The other day the colony of Queensland were asked whether they would prefer a regiment of their own or a small detachment of British soldiers. The answer was in the shape of a minute of council, which stated that the local government had the strongest objection to substitute for a small detachment of Her Majesty's troops a local corps raised in the colony. They pointed out that the system of local corps tended to isolation. They asked for a very trifling number of troops. They stated that the presence of a small number of British troops tended to keep up the imperial feeling of attachment to this country, and at the same time constituted a far more efficient force for ordinary purposes, local troops being necessarily inferior to imperial troops, and altogether wanting in that esprit de corps which existed among British soldiers, and that such had once proved to be the case in the colony of New South Wales. But the Report to which he had alluded, while maintaining that the defence of our Colonies should be left to local corps, asserted that we should contribute towards the expenses. He could not think that Parliament would ever agree to a proposal of that kind. It would be false economy. We should get an inferior article for our money; the local corps would not be available for the general defence of the empire; they could not be moved from point to point in case of danger, but would always be fixed to one spot. Then the Report recommended that our contribution should be at a uniform rate for every colony. That appeared to him to be the very exaggeration of theory on a practical question, and it was a recommendation which no Secretary of State could possibly carry out. The circumstances of the Colonies varied enormously. They varied in point of age, of wealth, of exposure to danger, of means of defence. The power of peace and war was not vested in the hands of the Colonies. They were liable to he involved in wars which the mother country might engage in for her own purposes; and the greater portion of them were so situated that if not dependent on the Crown of England they must take their allegiance elsewhere and ask for protection from some other Power. Next it had been said that they ought to encourage in the Colonies the principle of self-reliance and self-defence. In that statement he entirely concurred. But the Report in question had strangely underrated the spirit of the British Colonies. It seemed to assume that the spirit of self-reliance was extinct. The truth was, that whenever danger had threatened, a commendable spirit of self-reliance had always been shown by the British Colonies. It was well known how the Volunteers of Australia came forward last year. He could quote, if necessary, resolutions passed by the Legislatures of New South Wales and Victoria expressive of self-reliance. But the colonists had done more. They had shown their spirit by coming forward in large numbers to serve the Crown. There were at that moment in Victoria some 4,000 or 5,000 admirably trained Volunteers. And so in other colonies. The same spirit had been shown in Canada and in Nova Scotia. Not long ago it was proposed that Nova Scotia should contribute certain sums towards its defence. She declined to do so; not, however, for want of loyalty, but on account of the smallness of her revenue, which amounted only to £150,000, one-half of which was spent in paying the guaranteed interest of railways. But a few years ago, when New Brunswick seemed to be in danger from the United States, Nova Scotia voted no less a sum than £100,000 for defensive purposes. She had also enrolled an admirable body of Volunteers, He thought, therefore, that a spirit of self-reliance and self-defence was by no means wanting in our Colonies. It prevailed to a gratifying extent, aad he might add that it had received constant encouragement, both from the Colonial Minister and from the War Department. The hon. Member for Taunton had talked of the enormous sums expended by the mother country in the military defence of her Colonies; but, in taking his figures from the report of Mr. Godley, he had unintentionally deceived the House. The expenditure was nothing like £4,000,000 a year.

I referred to the aggregate amount, including the colonial expenditure.

contended that the tables in the Report from which the hon. Gentleman had derived his information were constructed upon an erroneous principle. For example, they included all the dependencies of the British Crown, mere military ports like Malta and Gibraltar, as well as Canada and Australia. Nevertheless, the authors of the Report, though by no means inclined to underrate the military expenditure in the Colonies, had not ventured to put it at more than, £2,000,000 a year, stating the number of troops at 27,000. But those figures did not represent the present state of things. The tables in the Report were drawn up in a very extravagant year, in a year most favourable for those who wished to complain of the existing colonial system, in a year when the number of troops at the Cape was certainly enormous. At that time a new Kaffir war was considered imminent, but, happily, the evil was averted by the presence of an unusually large military force and by the ability and energy of the governor. The tables also included the cost of the German Legion, and, in fact, every possible item which could be dragged in to swell the grand total. They embraced, among other things, a proportion of the expense of transport, of the departmental expenses at home, and of the cost of the non-effective service. In short, the authors of the Report seemed to have drawn up their statement as if they thought that the troops in the Colonies were of no value whatever to the Empire at large and were never to he seen at home again. He would tell the House what had been done since. The number of troops at the Cape in the year in which the Report was prepared was 10,700, whereas, according to the last Returns, the number of troops at the Cape and in Natal did not exceed 4,300. He agreed with the hon. Gentleman that the Cape ought to contribute more than it did to its military defence. It should, however, be remembered that at the Cape of Good Hope and in New Zealand the colonists were constantly in danger from the aborigines, and that the Home Government and the opinion of this country would not tolerate self-defence by means of internecine war such as that which was carried on between the early settlers and the natives in North America. As to Australia, it was well known that those important colonies did contribute large sums to their defences, and the charge to this country on their account was very small. Sir William Denison had proposed a plan of a joint and equal contribution, but he had never intended to apply the scheme as a uniform system to all the dependencies of the Crown. As to New Zealand the war had interrupted all the arrangements; but before it broke out measures had been taken to throw on New Zealand the whole cost of works, barracks, and fortifications, and to levy a contribution for the troops stationed there at a fixed sum per head. With regard to Canada the intention of Earl Grey had not been to throw the whole charge on the colonial Government, but to reduce it to a very moderate amount, confining it to the garrisoning of the principal cities and ports of the colony; and that was exactly what had been done. With the exception of a few posts there were only the garrisons of Quebec and Kingston, and besides the regiment of Canadian Rifles there was only a single regiment from this country. That was not too much for the great province of Canada. In the colonies, properly speaking, the number of troops at this moment could not be put above 19,000 men. He could not exactly say what deduction that would give from the £2,000,000 stated in the Report two years ago, but certainly it must represent a very large sum. He hoped that statement would lead the House to believe that things were not so bad as they had been represented by his hon. Friend. The colonies were making vigorous efforts, and every opportunity was taken by the present head of the Colonial Office, in conjunction with his colleagues, to reduce the charge of the colonial military system on the mother country. His hon. Friend proposed to deal with the subject by a Committee of the House of Commons. He thought what he had said would show that such a remedy was not needed; that the case was not so bad ns had been represented; but whether that were so or not be must say that the remedy proposed was entirely unsuited to the case. It seemed to him that the subject was not a fit one for inquiry by the House of Commons. It was not a question of facts, but of opinions and principles. It was well known there was a difference of opinion between the authors of the Report; that difference was not in respect to the facts of the case. On the facts they were agreed; the difference related to the principles to be applied in dealing with the question. He feared that an inquiry before a Committee, so far from settling the question, would rather tend the other way and interpose obstacles to its settlement. Gentlemen might no doubt come forward and give strong opinions in favour of relieving the British taxpayer on the one hand; and on the other gentlemen from the colonies would express colonial views; but that would not facilitate the settlement of the question. He was glad to hear from the hon. Gentleman who seconded the Motion an assurance that the colonies were ready to assume a greater share of the responsibility of their own protection; and colonial witnesses might be found to give similar evidence; but, after all, these were merely the opinions of private parties; they did not bind the colonies. The question must be treated through the colonial Governments. The only way in which retrenchment in this matter could be carried out was by negotiation carried on by the Imperial Government with each of the colonies in their turn. If the House of Commons took these negotiations out of the hands of the Government they would, he was convinced, cause dissatisfaction in the colonics as well as fail in the end they had in view. They might as well attempt to take negotiations with France out of the hands of the Government and place them in the hands of a Committee as to do so with these negotiations with Canada. There was not, after all, much difference as to the principles on which any improvement in the system should be based. His noble Friend at the head of the Colonial Office was quite ready, for instance, to accept the principle as laid down by the right hon. and gallant Member (General Peel) that all the military charge for internal police should fall on the colonies, at all events as regards communities of English origin, for it could hardly be strictly applied to those heterogeneous mixtures of various races to be found in Trinidad and the Mauritius. But the object General Peel had in view was not carried out by the Departmental Committee. Nor could the task be fulfilled by a Committee of the House of Commons. It must be left to the Government itself, and the noble Duke at the head of the Colonial Office, who was willing and anxious to carry it out. He could answer for his noble Friend that he would lose no opportunity of doing so in each colony as the case arose, consulting not only colonial but Imperial interests, and keeping fully in mind the claims of the British taxpayer.

said, he thought the House was deeply indebted to the hon. Gentleman for having brought this subject before the consideration of the House. He had done so in a very moderate speech, without passing censure on the present or any preceding Government. It seemed to him desirable that they should obtain more full and explicit information on the subject. He had listened with great attention to the speech of the hon. Under Secretary for the Colonies, and he could not but express his regret and surprise that Her Majesty's Government should oppose the Motion. The position taken by the hon. Under Secretary that the Committee would interfere with the province of Her Majesty's Government was not defensible. On Friday last the Government had acceded to a proposition for the appointment of a Select Committee to consider what alterations should be made in the Board of Admiralty and the duties of that department. A Committee had also been appointed to consider a number of matters which were peculiarly within the province of the Poor Law Board and the Exchequer. When, therefore, the hon. Gentleman raised that preliminary objection to the appointment of a Committee, he (Mr. Baxter) thought he had unduly prejudiced the prerogatives of the House of Commons, and he hoped the House would never agree to the doctrine that matters of the kind were to be left entirely to the Government. He really believed that Ministers ought to have accepted with thankfulness the proposal of the hon. Member for Taunton, for they had heard that the departments were not agreed among themselves—that the War Office differed from the Colonial Office; and, in the remarkably able Minute of General Peel, it was stated that Government were labouring under great difficulties and embarrassments; while the document to which their attention had been invited set forth that not a year passes without discussions on the relative liabilities of the Imperial and colonial Governments. The speech of the Under Secretary for the Colonies, indeed, would make it appear as if everything was couleur de rose, and no doubt his speech would be read with great pleasure by the colonists; but the House must recollect that they were the representatives of the people of this country, and that they found a Report placed in their hands which stated the military expenditure on account of the colonies for the year 1858 at £3,968,000 while the colonies only contributed the sum of £378,253. His hon. Friend said that the cost had since been greatly reduced; but he wished the hon. Gentleman had condescended a little to particulars. Let them contrast the state of things here with the case of the Dutch colonies, which, after paying all military and naval expenses, contributed a surplus revenue of £2,600,000; and the Spanish colonies the estimated surplus revenue was £1,150,000, or a sum very nearly as great on the right side of the ledger as ours was on the wrong. It had been said by the hon. Gentleman that 1858 was an exceptional year, and that the expenditure had been considerably reduced, but even according to his computation we should still be upwards of £3,000,000 out of pocket for the defence of our colonies. The hon. Gentleman had not noticed the fact that Nova Scotia and New Brunswick did not contribute a farthing towards this expenditure, while the Cape of Good Hope only gave the miserable pittance of £34,000. He held that a primâ facie case for investigation had been made out; and so far from embarrassing the noble Duke at the head of the colonial Office, if the inquiry were carried out in an impartial manner, it would enable him to enforce his views with those Colonies which did not adequately support their military expenditure. He agreed in the praise which had been bestowed on the people of Australia for their noble efforts, and it was precisely because he was anxious for the extension of the principle which they were acting upon, and because he believed this would only be effected by the voice of the people supporting the Colonial Office, that he was anxious for the appointment of the Committee, the proposal for which had been made in so temperate and conciliatory a manner.

said, he had been much surprised when the hon. Gentleman, the Under Secretary, concluded his speech by stating that he should oppose the Motion, for he had never heard a speech which more conclusively established the necessity for a Committee than that which had been made by the hon. Gentleman. The hon. Gentleman had devoted the greatest part of his remarks to the refutation of a Report made by two officials of the War Office. Committees of that House were intended to settle questions which were in controversy, and where differences arose between Members of the Government—however injudicious it might be to publish them—when they had once been brought to light that House was the place in which they ought to be determined. The hon. Gentleman had told them that there was a great controversy as to the course which should be pursued in Australia. There was the Denison system and the Grey system; and the hon. Gentleman told the House that his own mind—and he presumed the mind of the noble Duke under whom he served—was not quite settled as to which of these was the best. In such a position that House, as it seemed to him, was the only place where the question could be fairly tried. A great mistake had been made in allowing the Report of officials, differing so widely, to be presented; but as that step had been taken, and as great doubts had been consequently awakened, he saw no adequate means of settling them, except by referring the matter to a Select Committee. The hon. Gentleman, he thought, had mistaken the pedigree of the present Motion, which really arose from the wise and judicious State paper issued by the right hon. Gentleman, the Secretary of State for the Home Department, during the absence of the noble Duke in reply to an application for aid from New Zealand, in which he stated with great force the difficulties attending the supply of military force to the colonies and the necessity existing for an authoritative settlement of the doubts which had arisen. The hon. Member for Montrose (Mr. Baxter) had fallen into the error, common to many speakers, of confusing the various colonies subject to the British Crown. Had he looked more closely into the Report he would have seen that many changes were incurred in the defence, not of colonies, but of detached military posts, a distinction which it was necessary to bear in mind very carefully. Of the £3,500,000 of Imperial expenditure for military purposes more than £1,000,000 was absorbed by the Mediterranean settlements, Gibraltar, Malta and the Ionian Islands. Differences of opinion might exist as to the wisdom of maintaining those military posts, but it was quite clear that the large sum expended upon them ought not to be set down to colonial charges. Bermuda, Heligoland, and St. Helena, with numerous others, belonged to the same class, and materially reduced the sums which the hon. Gentleman had spoken of as colonial expenditure. There were likewise colonies which had nothing to fear from attacks externally, unless they proceeded from an European Power, with whom they would not become involved unless we ourselves quarrelled with them in the first instance. For example, if we went to war with France, our possessions in the Pacific would be in danger; and if with America, those in the Caribbean Sea would be imperilled. But as long as we were at peace, they would not be in any danger at all; and it was, therefore, conformable to the first principles of justice that if we made a quarrel we should bear the expense of defending those whose security depended entirely on our foreign policy. The exhaustive division to which be had referred only left two colonies unmentioned- those of New Zealand and the Cape of Good Hope—both of which had powerful native tribes on the frontier, with which they might come into collision, and so require the assistance of English troops. It might be fairly questioned whether it had been wise originally to colonize these territories, and whether, looking back on all the results, we had been repaid for the great cost and anxiety which they had entailed. But, having entered into a pledge with the emigrants whom we had sent out to those colonies, it was impossible with honour to refuse to guarantee their security. Take the Cape as an example. Complaints had been made of the enormous sums lavished on that colony; but it should be remembered that the policy of this country had curtailed its frontiers, promoted the formation of a hostile republic on its borders, and forbidden the Dutchmen to pursue the kind of warfare by which they formerly kept the Kaffirs at bay. Having done that, they were absolutely bound to aid the colony in meeting the dangers to which they had taken so large a share in exposing it. Then there was the case of New Zealand, which required the most careful consideration of a Committee of that House adequately to solve it. It was not merely a military question, but a question whether they ought not to take the affairs of New Zealand more under their own control, if they were to be responsible for all that might happen in the colony. The present war in New Zealand was apparently caused by the pressure put upon the Governor to furnish land for the colonists. That raised the question as to the rights of the natives, and the powers and duties of the authorities in the colony. It was impossible for these delicate questions and minute details to be settled in that House; and, on the other hand, it was not consistent with their usual policy to leave them entirely to the Executive Government. It was, therefore, to be regretted that the hon. Under Secretary for the Colonies opposed the Committee, whose investigations might lead to valuable results in the saving of vast expense, and the prevention of future difficulties.

said, he thought it could be hardly satisfactory that so many heads of departments should be without seats in that House. Not only were the Secretary for the Colonies, the head of the War Office, and the First Lord of the Admiralty, all Members of the other House; but there was another department scarcely less important which seemed almost to have been put in commission in the Lords—he meant the Chancellorship of the Exchequer. [A laugh.] It could hardly be denied that those who attempted to alter the scheme of the Budget took on themselves the responsibility for the financial affairs of the country; and, therefore, he repeated, that the office of the Chancellor of the Exchequer was in commission in "another place." The present Motion was, strictly speaking, scarcely a proper one, because it would throw on a Committee the responsibility connected with colonial matters, which ought to belong to the Government. On the subject of New Zealand it should not be forgotten that they had duties to discharge in the interest of the natives as well as of the settlers. By the Treaty of Waitangi Her Majesty solemnly promised that the New Zealanders should enjoy all the tribal and other rights which they possessed at the time. The present war in the colony had, however, arisen from the disregard of that stipulation. At that moment there were almost troops enough in the colony to settle a Chinese war, or to put down another Sepoy insurrection. There were already above 3,000 European soldiers there, and he heard that another regiment was under orders to reinforce them. And whence did this war arise? Three or four years ago, when the House was asked to guarantee a New Zealand loan of half a million, he warned them that there might be difficulties respecting questions of dealings with land; and everything had happened as he feared, though in a different island. In the north Island, not far from Taranaki, there was a plot of land which had been obtained from the natives of New Zealand by practices which he would not describe. The land bad formerly been held by a tribe which, for purposes of whale fishing, had emigrated thirty-three years ago to Queen Charlotte's Sound; but they had always intended to come back. In fact, the owner of the land made his son Wirimi Kingi, or William King, promise that he would go back. In the meantime, Governor Hodson and the New Zealand Company had severally made purchases, had bought the rights of a few members of the tribe who had stayed behind, and also of another tribe who had seized it and pretended to the right of conquest. The present Governor evidently thought he had got a capital title to the land; but he had really no title at all. ["Question!"] He (Sir John Trelawny) maintained that it was the "question"—involving the rights of the taxpayer and the honour of the British Crown, and that the New Zealanders had a right to be heard; and he hoped that the Imperial Government would not without due inquiry keep up the war when they had no case whatever as against Wirimi Kingi.

said, he hoped the Government would withdraw its opposition to the Motion of his hon. Friend. He had been waiting for an opportunity to follow some hon. Member who was opposed to the Motion; but that opportunity he could not find, for the only Gentleman who had yet opposed the Motion was his hon. Friend the Under Secretary of State. He hoped the Government would, therefore, see that the general wish of the House was that the inquiry should take place. The hon. Under Secretary had himself, as the noble Lord (Lord R. Cecil) had said, given the best reason for the inquiry, for he had admitted that the slight pressure already put upon the Government had induced them to move in the direction proposed, and so far no mischief had arisen. The reason why the pressure had been slight was the unwillingness of the House to discuss any colonial questions, and he would ask whether the opinion of the House had not materially ripened even while its attention had been for a short time arrested by the question within the last hour. Hon. Gentlemen were, no doubt, impatient for the coming debate on the hop duties; but he thought they were beginning to see that, to say nothing of larger considerations, as much might be saved to the revenue by this Committee as the Chancellor of the Exchequer now raised by the hop duties and the paper duties together. Both might be spared to the taxpayer, and a great national advantage gained besides if this inquiry were permitted. He confessed he should be more ready to vote for the repeal of the hop duties if he felt that the Government would look into the enormous sources of waste which inquiry into colonial defence paid for by the British Treasury would open up. The hon. Under Secretary had stated that the amount in question did not exceed two millions and a half a year, but that was an amount not to be disregarded, even by this country. The hon. Gentleman had based his opposition to the Motion upon a departmental Report which came before the House last year as if that had concluded inquiry. If the House had looked into that Report it would be still more eager for an inquiry for some reasons why nine-tenths of the empire should not be called upon to find money or men for their own defence, but that one metropolitan island should have to supply both for all the empire. What were the reasons for such an unprecedented undertaking? The colonies did not ask for it, and did not thank us for it. At this moment the New Zealand colonists accused the Home Government of causing the war in that colony. In the depart mental Report which had been referred to it was said that Mr. Godley of the War Office had recommended one plan and Mr. Elliott of the Colonial Office another, but that merely proved there was a difference of opinion, which was a reason for further inquiry. But the Reports of those gentlemen, although differing in detail, agreed in the main principle that it was absurd for England to continue to supply men and money for the defence of the whole of our colonies. Mr. Godley argued for the establishment of one fixed principle in the contribution of aid to the defence of all colonics, as distinguished from military posts, while Mr. Elliott recommended a more elastic system for the different dependencies. In the essence of their Report, however, they were in perfect accord. The Under Secretary of State had said that he thought the withdrawal of Imperial troops would tend to bring about a separation of the colonies from the mother country; but surely it could not be that the connection with any of them was based upon so slight a ground as the presence of a few hundred soldiers sent from England. And would not colonial red coats be British troops just as much, and carry our flag as well? If it were necessary to hold them by troops from England the spirit which formerly bound England to her colonies must have greatly changed. Such was not the relation which formerly existed between the North American colonies and Great Britain when it took ten years of folly on the part of George III. and Lord North to sever the connection. The colonies before that raised their own armies and equipped their own fleets; and they stood not against militias only, but against the armies and navies of France and Spain, and they even added to the dimensions of the empire. That which led to the emancipation of the colonies was not their being left to their own defence. What had broken the link was the commencement of that new system of interference which had now been put forward as one of the safeguards of the connection. What would be our position if inquiry were refused? The hon. Gentleman the Under Secretary asked (hat the Government might be left alone as they were doing something in the direction proposed, But what had Government done in the last hundred years; and what were they at liberty to do? He also admitted that a handful of troops was a bad defence for a colony, and that it was desirable the colonies should be allowed to make some provision for their own defence, and thus learn the lesson of self-reliance. He acknowledged that we must expect the result of extraneous aid to be generally to weaken the recipient. Thus he believed the subsidizing of colonial churches had paralyzed the action of the Church in the colonies, as any body taught to depend upon another for support was necessarily weakened. Then why should the colonies not provide for their own defence? What reason was there that England was to provide it for them, and Ireland not be also dealt with as the colonies were? It was true that Ireland was represented in that House, but the colonies also had Parliaments of their own by means of which they controlled the Executive Government, and could refuse supplies to the Crown. Again, it was asserted that it was Imperial policy which was primarily the cause of differences between the mother country and foreign nations; but he contended that colonial relations and policy as often lead to wars. During the last ten years they had spent a great deal more in colonial wars—which would not have occurred, he believed, if the colonies had been left to themselves—than had been expended on account of the Crimean war. Did the House know that at this moment five regiments were sent to New Zealand to finish a war for which that House was responsible, inasmuch as by the New Zealand Constitution Bill it had implicated itself in the native policy? With respect to the Cape, the hon. Gentleman admitted that there had been much unnecessary expenditure in that colony, but he (Mr. Adderley) had moved for a Return which when produced would astonish the House. The German Legion had been sent out to the Cape upon the understanding that they were to receive half-pay until they were settled as colonists, and were not, except in cases of emergency, to be placed upon full pay. The Return would show that, from the moment of its landing, the Legion had been kept upon full pay, and that the amount of that pay had never been brought under the notice of the House. This sort of expenditure practically got rid of the control of Parliament and was capable of unlimited abuse. He implored the Government to reconsider their determination, as even this short discussion had enabled the House to mature its judgment upon the point.

The right hon. Gentleman who has just sat down certainly thinks the opinion of this House capable of very rapid formation, if he imagines that it has been matured and brought to perfection in the short period during which this discussion has been carried on. I perfectly agree with my hon. Friend the Under Secretary in the objections he has urged to the Motion. It seems to me that the objects to which the Committee might direct its attention may be classed under two heads. First of all it would have to determine what number of troops should be maintained in each of our foreign colonies and dependencies, and next it would have to determine by whom those troops should be paid. Now, I think, it is not too much to say that the question of what would be a proper garrison from time to time, and from year to year, under the varying and fluctuating circumstances of the empire, and its relations with Foreign Powers—what should be the actual number of troops in each of our dependencies, varying infinitely in their conditions and relations—is one which cannot properly he determined by a Committee of this House, but must be resolved at the discretion of the Executive Government, conversant with all the considerations by which such a decision might be governed. Then, Sir, as to the question of who is to pay these troops. It is not within the competence of a Committee of this House, of the House itself, or of the British Government, to determine what contribution the colonies should make; because we all know that many have independent Legislatures, and that any arrangement for dividing the expense of garrisons could only be effected by negotiations between the British Government and colonial Governments and Legislatures. Such a negotiation could not be carried on by a Committee of the House of Commons, and, therefore, I am bound to say that the tendency of the Motion is rather to transfer to a Committee of this House duties and functions which properly belong to the responsible advisers of the Crown. This is my opinion, and I can anticipate no great political result from a Committee, if the House affirms that one should be appointed. The right hon. Gentleman who has just sat down, in his zeal to induce the Government to consent to the Motion, made use of an argument not very likely to carry conviction to our minds. He said that if the Government would agree to the Committee, he should be greatly tempted to vote for the abolition of the hop duties. If the Government, in its negotiations with these colonial Legislatures, should be provided with no better arguments to produce an impression on them than those which the right hon. Gentleman has urged in his negotiations with the Government, I am afraid that neither the Committee nor the Government would make much progress in that distribution of expense which the right hon. Gentleman is so anxious to effect. But although, undoubtedly, I do not think any good ground has been laid for the Committee, and I cannot anticipate any good results from it, yet, if it appears to be the general wish of the House, as I have collected it to be from the course of this debate, there is no such strong objection to the Motion as to induce the Government to trouble the House to divide upon it. At the same time I repeat that I do not anticipate those advantages from the Committee which the mover expects, because we think that the information necessary for the guidance of the Government is already in our possession; but, nevertheless, as it seems to be the wish of the House that the Motion should be agreed to, I shall not oppose it.

moved the following Resolution:—

"That the maintenance of any Duties upon Hops is impolitic, and that in any remission of taxation or adjustment of financial burdens, provision should be made for the removal of such Duties."

He said I believe the prevailing idea among persons whose attention has not been specially directed to the Excise duty on hops is that it operates as taxes on articles of consumption ordinarily do; that, in the long run, it is paid by the consumer; that it is the beer drinker alone pays the duty; that beer is not an absolute necessary of life, and that thus a useful and reliable amount is contributed to the revenue of the country by a duty upon a commodity which is in itself a fair and legitimate object of taxation. I must point out that if the case were simply such as is supposed, the tax would still be open to this grave objection—that it is a tax on the raw material of a manufacture, and the amount has to be advanced in the first instance by the producer, then by each dealer in succession through whose hands the commodity passes, till it conies at last to the consumer increased in price, not only by the amount of the duty, but by successive accumulations of interest. Those, however, who have any experience of the working of the hop duty, or have been led to inquire into it, know that its operation is very peculiar and complicated. The fundamental reason is to he found in the exceptional nature of the crop, which is itself full of irregularities and anomalies. Hop growing is the most expensive branch of farming. It costs the hop grower from £22 to £30 an acre for raising the crop, and from 20s. to 30s. per cwt. for the expenses of picking and bagging. Notwithstanding this enormous expenditure, the result is the most uncertain in the world. I will tell the House what the variation in regard to the growth of hops has been in successive years. In 1849, 42,000 acres produced 145,000 cwt. In 1850, the same number of acres produced 420,000 cwt. In 1851, the number of hundred-weights produced on the same number of acres fell to 236,000; and in 1852 it rose to 447,000 cwt. In 1854, the number of acres under cultivation had increased one-seventh, and the number of hundred-weights produced fell to 86,000. In 1855, the same number of acres produced 728,000 cwt.; and in the succeeding years, from 1856 to December, 1858, the crop on the same acreage fell by 300,000 cwt. In 1859, the acreage having been reduced by fully one-fifth, the crop available was 599,000; and in 1860 the crop, upon the same number of acres, fell to 97,000 cwt. It will be seen from that Return that the hop plant may be taken as the emblem of fickleness, and the symbol of uncertainty. While the supply is so irregular as to baffle all calculation, the demand is strictly limited, because hops are only required for the purpose of making beer. It is not like a manufactured article, in which the producer has the power of apportioning the supply to demand; but all hops which were not required for making beer were a dead loss. Without any over-speculation on the part of the farmers, there is always danger of production out running consumption; but the duty is not upon consumption, but upon production. The grower is called upon to pay duty upon every pound of hops produced; and it may frequently happen that there is an excess of supply over the demand, and then the grower sustains a loss, inasmuch as the duty must come out of the pocket of the grower. The duty, being a duty on quantity, is contrived with such perverse ingenuity as to be heaviest in those years when prices are lowest, and the grower least able to meet the pressure. I will give the House a statement of what that pressure is. In 1855, the duty in the Sussex collection amounted to £14 2s. 8d. per acre; in 1856, to an average of £11 11s. 1d.; in 1857 to £6 7s. 7d.; in 1858 to £12 16s. 7d.; and in 1859 the duty, on an average, was £14 per acre. The duty on the average of five years was £11 5s. per acre. On many lands it amounted to more pounds than the rental did to shillings, and in many cases it exceeded the rent, tithes, land tax, poor rate, church rate, highway rate, and county rate, all put together, three or four times over; and in such years it came not out of the pocket of the consumer but out of the pocket of the grower. Moreover hops are of various qualities, and their qualities are distinguished by very distinct lines of demarcation, lines as wide and definite as those that distinguish different growths of wine; yet the duty is uniform and inflexible. It is 14s. per cwt. Some hops average in value nine or ten guineas per cwt., while others are only worth two or three guineas, so that the average duty on some kinds is as high as 75 per cent. while on others it is only about 8 per cent. Looking, then, at the nature of the commodity, the great cost of production, the uncertainty of the crop, the irregular supply, the limited demand, the unequal value of the articles produced, I say that hops are, á priori, an unfit object for an Excise duty. The growers have so many natural difficulties and anomalies to contend with, that they cannot bear to be further subjected to artificial ones. The necessary effect of any Excise duty, even the best devised, is to increase the cost of the article on which it is imposed, and to necessitate the employment of a larger amount of capital in that particular stage of manufacture or production at which the Excise duty is levied. Here is a commodity the cost of producing which is naturally very great, and Government selects that and artificially increases the cost. Here is the branch of farming which naturally requires the largest capital to be embarked in it, and Government selects that and artificially increases the capital to be staked. Here is a business that at best can only pay on a cycle of years, Government selects that and artificially extends the cycle on which only it can answer, and renders it almost impossible for it to answer under any circumstances. Here is a branch of farming that is naturally the most speculative, Government selects that and artificially multiplies and aggravates the risks and losses attending it, till it is converted into a perfect lottery in which the blanks are very numerous, and the prizes few and far between. Can it be wondered at, if, under such circumstances, the growers are always in difficulties, whether their crops are good or bad. If the crops are large, prices are low and duties heavy, and the planters are distressed to pay them; if there is a dearth, the grower having been compelled to sell the superabundant crop of the previous year at a sacrifice, in order to pay the duty, found himself deprived of the means of profiting by the turn of the market. And what is the value of this objectionable revenue? Till last year the Excise duty was £1 per cwt., and at that rate it has yielded £300,000 a year on an average of twenty years. I take twenty years, because with so fluctuating a commodity it is necessary to take a long average in order to arrive at an estimate of any value. Last year it was reduced to 14s. per cwt., and, judging from past averages, that rate might, on a succession of years, be estimated to produce about £200,000 a year; but, owing to the uncertain nature of the commodity, the Excise would yield £400,000 one year, and perhaps not more than £40,000 the next. There is a saying in bop growing counties that—

"Till St. James's-day be come and gone,

There may be hops, or there may be none."

That refers to old St. James's day, which falls in August. It is impossible for the Chancellor of the Exchequer, when settling his Budget in February, to say what he may derive from the hops to be produced in autumn. Last year, in the month of February, the right hon. Gentleman stated several times over that the amount which he estimated to receive from the growing crop in 1860 was £300,000. The result has not at all borne out the estimate. The actual amount was £69,000, and the right hon. Gentleman can calculate upon receiving only a very small portion of that £69,000 within the financial year 1860–61, as he has been obliged, in consequence of the distress of the planters, to postpone payment to the financial year 1861–62. At this moment he is wringing out of the capital of the planters the arrears still due upon the crop of 1859. Why? Because the planters have had good crops for a few successive years, which the duties have converted into a perfect curse. Nobody ever heard of a farmer being ruined by having too good a crop of corn, or of hay, or too many lambs; but the effect of the hop duty is that when the grower has laboured to secure a good crop he is ruined by his very success. In fact, he becomes that standing paradox pithily described by Mr. Bacon in his able pamphlet on this question, "the victim of abundance." I said the Chancellor of the Exchequer was at this moment with difficulty wringing out of the capital of the farmers the arrears of the postponed duty of 1859. I am far from wishing to taunt the right hon. Gentleman with the postponements he has granted. He has only followed the example set him by a long line of predecessors in office. Within the last forty years the collection of the duty has been postponed somewhere about thirty times, The system of long credits and of postponements is unsound, vicious, and disgraceful. It is bad for the Exchequer, bad for the trade, and bad for other taxpayers, who naturally think that the hop-growers are favoured at their expense, Last year the right hon. Gentleman put the tax as he thought upon a sound basis. He proposed to collect it within the financial year in which it was charged, to shorten the credits, and to put a stop to the system of postponements. But in the very first year afterwards he has found it necessary, through the force of circumstances, to break through his own resolutions. There could not be a greater condemnation of the tax than this fact. But these long credits and postponements, evils as they undoubtedly are, have been found necessary as palliatives to the evils necessarily inherent in the tax. The right hon. Gentleman has only added another to the long list of failures to make this a satisfactory tax that have gone before. If the duty is to be collected at an early stage, or as soon as it is charged, the necessary effect must be to intensify all the evils already complained of, and to confine the trade to desperate men who have nothing to lose, or to a few great speculators who can afford to gamble on a gigantic scale. I am at a loss to understand why the right hon. Gentleman clings with so much pertinacity, not to say obstinacy, to this small and unreliable duty, which has not even the merit, which an indirect tax should have, of being paid in the manner least galling to the parties affected by it. The right hon. Gentleman is a fearless, some people call him a reckless, financier. It cannot be that the right hon. Gentleman is afraid of dealing with the hop duties on account of their amount. Last year he did not hesitate to deal with taxes that amounted in the aggregate to millions; but when he came to the small sum that composed the hop duty, he hesitated and doubted, and reduced that one-third. He does not belong to that school of financiers who think it wise to levy a revenue by means of a number of small taxes upon a number of different commodities. Quite the contrary. He made it his boast last year that he had swept off 371 articles from the tariff; but if it be a good policy to abolish small Customs' duties, surely it is much more so to do away with small Excise duties that impose restrictions of so many kinds on internal trade. He will not surely, in this instance, make use of that oracular saying he uttered the other night, that "the abatement of one man's taxation is the increase of another's," for in the case of duties on articles of consumption it by no means follows that remission is necessarily attended by loss to the revenue which must be compensated by increased taxation in some other quarter. Since 1844 a number of Excise duties have been abolished, among others those on glass, bricks, soap, and vinegar, amounting altogether to £2,500,000; and at the same time additional duties have been imposed upon spirits, estimated to yield £2,000,000. But, in the aggregate, although Excise duties have been remitted to a larger amount than the amount of spirit duties added, the result has been, since 1844, that the excise duties, which then yielded £17,500,000, have since produced £22,000,000. This shows that the remission of Excise duties is not necessarily followed by a loss of revenue. Remit the hop duty, and the hop growers themselves being more prosperous, and the tradesmen they deal with, and the labourers they employ, sharing in that prosperity, they will all have more money to spend on tea, on sugar, on malt, on tobacco, and on other dutiable commodities, and the revenue will gain in one direction what it lopes in another. But if it be thought a bold experiment to abolish a tax on the chance of an increased revenue to be derived from other duties, at all events the reduction of a tax on the chance of increased revenue from its very reduction was by no means so hazardous. But as far as the consumer is concerned, the abolition of the hop duty would only be a reduction of the duties on beer. For what is the hop duty? It is merely an unwholesome excrescence of the malt duty. It is thought difficult, if not almost impossible, according to the traditions of the Board of Inland Revenue, to tax satisfactorily the manufactured article, beer; and therefore it is taxed through its main ingredient, malt; but the Exchequer, not satisfied with this, goes further, and apparently out of wanton love of taxation—taxation for the sake of taxation—imposes a small duty, with all the expense, restrictions, and unpopularity of a separate Excise, upon a raw material of beer. I believe that if the hop duty were taken off the consumer would get a benefit either in the price or the quality of beer; that consumption would be stimulated, and the increased revenue derived from malt would in a short time, if not in the first year, compensate the Exchequer. I have good grounds for this belief. There used to be three duties on beer, the beer duty proper, the malt, and the hop duties; in 1829 the three together yielded in round numbers £7,000,000. The beer duty proper, which alone amounted to £3,000,000, was swept off in 1830; but since its abolition the two remaining duties have yielded as much as the three did formerly. This is the more remarkable, as since 1855 malt, for purposes of distillation, is allowed to be made duty free, and thus, according to the latest returns, upwards of 600,000 quarters of malt have been withdrawn from the revenue account. When the beer duty was abolished, the number of quarters of malt charged with duty immediately rose from three millions and a half to four millions and a half, and the revenue sprang up from four to five millions. Some small Excise duties, that on chicory for instance, are defended avowedly on the ground that they serve to protect an important Customs' revenue. Is this the case with the hop duty? I will tell the House what has been the Customs' revenue derived from foreign hops charged for home consumption since 1846. The duty has been, in round numbers, 1846, £2,500; 1847, £5,000; 1848, £11; 1849, £7,785; 1850, £12,000; 1851, £225; 1352, £300; 1853, £50,000; 1854, £102,000; 1855, £40,000; 1856, £25,000; 1857, £32,000; 1858, £37,000; 1859, £4,000; 1860, £9,600. This has been certainly under a system of protection, when the Customs' duty was 45s. per cwt., rather more than double the amount of the Excise. Still it suffices to show that there can have been no important trade in foreign hops to spring up. In fact, in the year 1854, every opportunity was given for the importation of foreign hops, had there been any great quantity to be derived from abroad. In that year there was a very short crop at home; there was a good crop abroad. The Customs' duty was, in the interest of the consumer, reduced temporarily to a level with the Excise, that is, to £1 per cwt. Hops in England were at a famine price; there was every stimulus to importation; but the Customs' revenue derived from foreign hops amounted only to £100,000; and it is never likely, under any circumstances, to exceed that to any amount. Growers on the Continent or in America will not plant with a view solely of supplying the English market, when that market is usually amply supplied, and more than supplied, by the produce of our own gardens. All that can be expected is that when there is a short crop at home and a large crop abroad, the surplus of foreign countries may come in to supply our wants. If anything can bring about a steady supply from foreign countries, and permanently reduce the price of hops at home, it is the setting the trade completely free. I say of the Excise and Customs combined what I said before of the Excise alone—that the trade in a commodity so precarious and variable is too delicate and too sensitive to bear the additional derangements which any legislative trammels, be they ever so well devised, necessarily entail. Set the home and foreign produce both completely free; that and that alone will steady the trade, so far as the nature of things admits of its being steady; that will, as far as is possible, mitigate the alternations of dearth and excess under which we suffer; the deficiencies of one year and of one country will then be, in some degree, balanced by the superabundance of another; the grower will be relieved and the consumer benefited. There will then he less need and less temptation in scarce years to have recourse to quassia, gentian, broom tops, fern leaves, ground ivy, picric acid, grains of paradise, strychnia, cocculus indicus, & c, which we are told on high chemical authority are used in beer as substitutes for hops. Mr. Phillips, the analyst to the Board of Revenue, states in the fourth Report of the Commissioners of Excise, that beer is extensively adulterated by the use of other ingredients in lieu of hops; but adds that such adulterations are very difficult of detection, and if the chemist detects them, can scarcely ever be proved to the satisfaction of a court of law. I revert to the Excise duty, which is the main point, and I say of it—it is a duty trifling in amount, unreliable in amount, difficult to be collected, intensely unpopular, unequal in its pressure, heaviest at times when the tax-payer is least able to meet its pressure, heavy in its incidence in an inverse ratio to the ability of the individual to bear it, a blundering duty falling where it was never intended to fall; and, moreover, owing to the nature of the commodity on which it is levied, that a duty never can be made to work satisfactorily to the Exchequer, or fairly to the planter. I go further, and say that even if you could put it on ever so satisfactory a basis it would be still an absurdity and a blunder to maintain it; because it is contrary to common sense to keep up the machinery of a separate Excise to tax an article that is already largely and reliably taxed by means of another machinery. Sir, there are objections to be urged against every tax; but I defy any one to show a tax that combines so many elements of a bad tax and atones fur them by such slender advantages. I speak strongly against the duty, but not more strongly than I am warranted by high authorities in doing. Speaking of the Excise duty on hops in 1852, the right hon. Baronet the Member for Carlisle said—

"The cost of collection is great, the amount received is small; and the impost is, I believe, vexatious and onerous to the grower, as it certainly is onerous to the consumer. The interest of the consumer certainly is that the entire tax should be remitted."

With respect to the cost of collection, I will here observe that the hop duty is not collected by the regular staff of the Board of Inland Revenue, but by some 270 officers appointed solely for this particular purpose; so that whatever the cost of collection is, by the remission of the duty the whole expense attending its collection would be saved to the country. Again, in 1852, the hon. Member for Rochdale said—

"He never thought, after the great doings of Peel, we should ever have a half and half Chancellor of the Exchequer making two bites at a cherry. Here is a most exceptional tax—the only tax you have collected upon the produce of the fields and gardens of the country—worthy no doubt of Persia or of Turkey, but too ridiculous for this England of 1852. It has all the evils that can attach to any tax; it is cumbrous and costly in its collection, it is uncertain in its amount, it bears with most unequal pressure on different parts of the country, it falls with the severest pressure upon the poorest soils and the poorest qualities of hops."

The late Lord Aberdeen, when Prime Minister, said to a deputation that waited upon him to urge the repeal of the duty, in the hearing of the right hon. Gentleman, who was his Chancellor of the Exchequer—

"That no doubt the course advocated by the repealers was the only rational way of dealing with the matter. It was impossible to deny that there were very great objections to the tax, and that if it did not exist already no one would think of putting it on."

Again, he said—

"The tax is contrary to common sense."

The right hon. Baronet the Secretary for India said, speaking of the hop duty in the House, in 1852—

"If there be a sound principle with regard to an excise duty it is this; do not maintain an excise duty unless it brings in a considerable accession of revenue."

When Chancellor of the Exchequer he had attempted to defend the tax, but his praise was of that faint kind which carries condemnation with it. The right hon. Baronet the Home Secretary when he was appealed to listened to the arguments, smiled grimly, but advanced no argument in defence of the duty. I do not ask the right hon. Gentleman to cut off a necessary branch of the revenue. I do not ask him to part with this tax if he cannot spare it; but only that, if he is about to remit taxation or to shift the burdens of the country, he will provide for the extinction of this obnoxious duty. I may be told the time is inopportune because our financial burdens must be great. I say the time is opportune, because if our burdens must be heavy it is the more important that they should be wisely and justly imposed. I know well the ability of the right hon. Gentleman "to make the worse appear the better cause," but I beg the House not to be led away by his refined ingenuity, his brilliant eloquence, or by any special pleading or sophistries; but to judge and decide this case fairly upon its merits.

in seconding the Motion said, I appeal to the Chancellor of the Exchequer whether his doors have not been beset, whether his table has not been covered with representations upon the subject of the hop duty; in fact, whether he has not found this tax to be the most tiresome, the most plaguing one, and the most constant bore with which he has to deal. [The CHANCELLOR of the EXCHEQUER: "Hear, hear."] Is it not the galled jade that winces, and do not these facts prove how oppressive and how obnoxious this duty is? It is not the object of the hop growers of the county which I represent to ask for anything unfair to the rest of the community. They may be told they can give up the cultivation of hops if it ceases to be profitable, but a certain portion of the country is suited to the growth of hops, and the hop growers ought not to be told to give up the growth of an article which is beneficial to the community. The hop duty has some of the worst features of a tax. It is variable, inconvenient in its collection, and of its amount it is impossible to form a correct calculation. I was delighted to hear the Chancellor of the Exchequer state the other night that the merits of a tax depended upon the proportion that came into the coffers of the State as compared with the amount paid by the taxpayer. Judged by this test, the hop duty is ill-devised and wasteful. A large army of persons are appointed for its collection who are precisely the same in number whether the crop is large or small. They walk the same number of miles and have the same duties to perform, except in the figures in which their return is made. Last year if one of these persons were asked, "Well, what return have you to-day?" he usually replied, "What is the use of my walking to and fro? There are no hops grown in the country." Thus the Government have to pay the same amount as in the most prosperous years to persons who come back to tell them that no hops are grown. The tax not only does not fill the coffers of the State; it weighs on a very meritorious class of persons. The precarious nature of the crop, and the various enemies by which it is attacked, are well expressed in the old distich—

"First the flea, next the fly,

Then the louse, and then I die."

The Chancellor of the Exchequer is to be added to this list of destructives, for he came in at the end of it all, and if the hop growers got over the flea, the fly, and the louse, then the Chancellor of the Exchequer came in and took the little profit they might otherwise realise.

believed that there had been no subject for many years on which the House had so little information as the hop tax, and its bearing on the cultivator. His hon. Friends had addressed the House as the representatives of districts in which it was extensively grown. The tax under discussion was an exception to the rule, that a tax was paid by the consumer, and his constituents were, therefore, not much interested in the matter. But, as an owner of property in a district were hops were grown, and as an unfortunate grower of hops for a quarter of a century, he begged to corroborate the statement of his hon Friends. Chancellors of the Exchequer used to tell the hop growers that when they were agreed it would be time enough to ask for this remission. But then, thanks to the course pursued by his right hon. Friend, the hop growers were now reduced to the state and condition of a "happy family," and they were agreed in saying that they had no fear of the foreigners if their arms were freed from the shackles of this tax. By the Budget of last year, the right hon. Gentleman proposed a tax of 14s. upon the foreigner as against 15s. paid by the home-grower, on the ground that the extra shilling added to the freight put the home grower on a fair footing with the foreign grower. There were, however, two or three circumstances much in favour of the latter. He had the power of bonding his hops, while the English grower was obliged to pay the duty at two fixed periods, whether his hops were sold or not. If the foreigner did not sell his hops he could take them back. He had also another "pull" over the English grower. He said to the brewer, "My hops are in bond, and you need not pay for them until you put them in your copper." But the home grower was obliged immediately to call upon the purchaser to pay down for his hops. The English growers now said what he thought for a quarter of a century they ought to have said—that they were ready to compete with all the world. It happened that he grew hops in a part of the country that suffered most from this duty. The Weald of Sussex grew a hop that was less good in quality, although larger in quantity, than that of other districts. But at the same time that class of hops was necessary for certain brewers. All their expenses, however, increased with the duty; and, as the duty was payable on a fixed day, every one was obliged to sell to meet the duty, and then down went the market. He had been a hop grower for twenty-five years, and on making up his account he found that he had lost exactly the amount which had gone into the Exchequer, and that if it had not been for the fiscal payment there would have been a profit. Could he be charged, then, with "an ignorant impatience of taxation" when he complained of a tax which was unfair in its incidence in respect to one cultivator and another? Some time ago his right hon. Friend said that the best way to benefit the labouring classes was to employ them. In that case the cultivation of hops must be extremely beneficial to the labouring classes, for in no other part of farming was there so much employment of labour, and it was divided minutely over every portion of the year. It was had been that hop-picking was demoralizing; but, whether that remark might be true in some districts of Kent where there was a large importation of roughs into the hop-gardens during the season of hop-picking, it was not true with regard to the regular agricultural labourer. The first operation after picking was stripping the poles and putting them away. Then came the wood-cutting and stripping off the bark—which latter operation was done by the women and children. These and other employments extended through the winter. With spring came the cultivation of the hop, which was done entirely by spade husbandry—the labourer earning good wages by task-work. Then came the poling and tying—the latter of which was done by women and children; and lastly, the hop-picking, in which the labourers and their families earned enough to buy their clothes, and partly to pay their rent. Therefore, he called on the friends of the agricultural labourers in that House to do what they could to get rid of a tax, absorbing a vast amount of the farmer's capital, which would otherwise be expended on labour in his district. Everybody knew that hop growing was the most precarious cultivation that could be. He had seen one of his hop gardens so much injured by wind in the course of a single night that he had sat down and calculated that it would not be worth his while, with the duty staring him in the face, to pick the hops at all. In all other agricultural products it was the interest of the farmer to get as large a crop as possible; the hop-grower, however, prayed that he might only get half a crop, unless he were selfish, and then, perhaps, he might pray that he might have a full one, and his neighbour none at all. The difficulty of obtaining a drawback of duty was such that hop-growers had been known to make a false affidavit that they had sold their hops to a foreign purchaser, and then to make an arrangement with the captain of the vessel to throw them overboard. All those points were well worthy of consideration, and should lead to a withdrawal of this wretched tax. From a Return respecting the hop duty, it appeared that from the year 1800 to 1858 the duty had either been altered, postponed, or modified twenty or thirty times. He was sorry to find that the right hon. Gentleman the present Chancellor of the Exchequer, with all his talents and ingenuity, moved in the same wretched groove as the bunglars who had gone before him, and that his tinkering was no better than the tinkering which had occurred previously. Still, he believed that his right hon. Friend, if he had his own way, would remit the tax altogether, for it really would not bear any further patching up. In the name, then, of the growers of hops, and of the agricultural labourers in the hop districts, he appealed to his right hon. Friend to agree to the Motion; and, as far as he was concerned, he was prepared to back him up in any necessary retrenchment of the public expenditure.

said, having the honour to represent a large hop producing constituency, I cannot confine myself to a silent vote on this occasion. It is not easy to conceive what are the motives which induce the right hon. Gentleman the Chancellor of the Exchequer to resist the Resolution before the House. To admit the utter viciousness of this tax and yet still to maintain it for the sake of revenue, when at the same time so far from being a certain source of revenue, it has only tended to mislead the Chancellor of the Exchequer and to embarrass and disturb his financial calculations, is a principle of action which I for one cannot very well understand. There is one very important point which the House will do well to consider and that is, that whatever estimate the right hon. Gentleman may make as to his future sources of revenue, so long as it or any portion of it is based upon the supposed amount he will receive from this impost, his calculations will be framed upon a most unsound and insecure basis. Nothing is better calculated to show the treacherous character of the tax than the fact that, while the Chancellor of the Exchequer calculated on a duty this year of £300,000, he will not collect £70,000. Whatever may be the deficit with which the right hon. Gentleman will have to grapple, not less than £230,000 will be owing to his reliance on a duty which is as much a lottery to the Exchequer as the prices of the crop are to the producer. At the time the right hon. Gentleman came down to the House to introduce his Budget the hops might be in a most flourishing condition, promising a most abundant yield, and the right hon. Gentleman might feel perfectly secure that he would reap from them a handsome revenue; but hardly might the words have passed from his lips before a blight might fall upon the crop, and all his expectations be ruined for that year. It is manifest, then, that until the right hon. Gentleman can control the wind and the weather any estimate he may frame upon the probable quantity of hops will be a mere fancy estimate, and his calculations nothing more than vague speculations. It has been said that we ought not to demand a reduction of taxation at the present crisis when there will probably be a considerable deficit; but for my part I think that renders it a most opportune moment in which to call the attention of the House to the insecurity and utter unsafe-ness of this source from which the right hon. Gentleman draws his revenue. What can be more fluctuating than this tax upon hops? Sometimes the duty is as high as £700,000, sometimes as low as £40,000. Is it not obvious, then, to every hon. Member, that it is utterly impossible for any Chancellor of the Exchequer to frame any accurate calculations in which the hop duty is an element? Moreover, in addition to this uncertainty, nothing can exceed the enormous inequality of the pressure of this duty. The amount of Excise duty raised on hops during the last four years was about £2,000,000, and that duty was raised upon from 43,000 to 45,000 acres of land, and the inequality of the pressure arises from the fact that in the different districts the price of hops varied from 40s. to £19, and in some seasons up to £40, yet the duty is one uniform amount charged upon all hops alike. I can state an instance of a planter who, on fifty acres, has lost in one year £1,000; but to give a general notion of its extreme pressure in successive years of large crops, heavy duties and low prices, I will add that the average dead loss per acre on Sussex hop-lands has been £18 or £19 during the last four years. It has been said that we are in the same position as the class of persons on whom the malt duty is levied. I totally deny the parity of the two things. The malt duty is one which not only brings in a large amount of revenue, but is perfectly sure as regards its collection, in both which points it is entirely distinct to the hop duty. But the greatest point of difference is this. The duty on malt is a duty imposed upon a manufactured article, whereas the duty on hops is an imposition on the raw material. Of course, the right hon. Gentleman will meet our demands by saying, "Why, Gentlemen, if hop-growing is so very unprofitable, and if it subjects you to such intolerable hardships, do you not give up the plant, and devote your energies to the cultivation of some other plant of a more lucrative character?" That, however, is not a fair argument to employ, and for this reason, that if we are taxed upon fair and equal principles the disadvantageous circumstances under which the hop farmers labour will no longer continue to exist; and what we complain of is that a most unsound and vicious principle of taxation is applied to us which is applied to no other interest in the kingdom. When the right hon. Gentleman told us that we ought not to grow hops it might be retorted upon him that last year he came down to the House, and, in a most eloquent and seductive speech, dwelt in the most impressive terms upon the duty of relieving from taxation those products in the manufacture of which there was a great employment of labour. I will not for a moment endeavour to insinuate that the Chancellor of the Exchequer entertains the slightest feeling of hostility to the agriculturists, but when I find the right hon. Gentleman taxing beyond their energies a class of farmers who, as it has been shown, are peculiarly distinguished for their employment of labour, while he at the same time expressed himself anxious to relieve a class of the manufacturing interest from taxation on the express ground that it would employ a vast amount of labour, I must say that if the right hon. Gentleman does not intend to act with hostility to the agricultural interest, he appears to be guilty of the greatest inconsistency, while at the same time he is guilty of great injustice to labour itself. As the Resolution before the House deals with the Customs' duties as well as the Excise, I will not refrain from remarking that it is difficult to understand on what ground the Government desires the retention of the latter. The import duty of 20s. is neither a protection to the home producer, nor a large nor reliable source of revenue to the Chancellor of the Exchequer; the variable state of the home crop produced corresponding vacillation in the import duties on foreign produce. Within the last three years the imported hops once rose to 16,000 cwt., then sank the next year to about 1,800 cwt. One year the Customs' duties produced £36,000, the following year a little over £3,000. I need not remind the House that the Customs' duty was then at 45s., which the right hon. Gentleman has since reduced to 20s. I would also remark that the amount paid by Government as drawback on exported hops within the last four years has exceeded by £4,000 the whole amount derived from the Customs' duties in that period. The right hon. Gentleman may tell us that as a favour he has imposed a differential duty of Is. upon the growers of foreign hops, but when we know, as we do, that the English hop growers are always obliged from the necessities of the case, to pour their hops into the market whatever may be the price, while the foreign hop growers can hold back, it is obvious that that which the right hon. Gentleman would term a protection is nothing more than a preventative against the extinction of hop cultivation in this country, and is not accepted by the home producer as an equivalent for the privilege of bonding now given to the foreigner, by means of which system he can choose his own opportunity for an advantageous sale, while the English grower is forced into the market in order to meet the home duty, whatever may be the prices, and however ruinously low they may be. Altogether this is a tax so unfair and so utterly indefensible upon the grounds of justice and equality, while at the same its results are so uncertain as to render it almost valueless as a reliable source of revenue, that I am not without hopes that the Chancellor of the Exchequer may for once listen to the just demands of the hop planters.

I think that, whatever difference of opinion may be shown, Sir, when you invite us into the lobbies, there is none as to the manner in which this question has been brought forward by the hon. Gentleman near me, or in which it has been discussed by the hon. Gentlemen who have followed him. It is to me very gratifying to hear good speeches from agricultural Members. I find that when they have a good case they talk nearly as well as hon. Gentlemen who are connected with other branches of industry. I do not know that I have heard to-night a single sentence, or a single argument with which I should be disposed to find fault. The case is a good one; and the Chancellor of the Exchequer will have a difficulty in said anything against it. It has been said by the hon. Gentleman who introduced the subject, quoting from an hon. Friend of mine not here, that the hop duty has more bad qualities than any other tax could possibly possess. I fear there are many taxes which might have somewhat the same character imputed to them. We are all agreed, however, that this tax is a bad one; and the question is, not whether it shall be a permanent source of revenue, because the House must feel that it never can be permanent. But the question submitted to us by the hon. Gentleman is something in the nature of a pledge, for he asks us by Resolution to declare that the maintenance of the duties on hops is impolitic, and that in the remission of taxation or the adjustment of financial burdens provision should be made for the removal of such duties. I conclude that what he wants is this:—That the very first £200,000 or £300,000 or £400,000, or whatever amount is necessary for this abolition—the very first sum which the Chancellor of the Exchequer can by any possibility spare—he is to devote to the abolition of the hop duty. I do not blame those who have that kind of interest in the question which my hon. Friend the Member for Westminster (Sir John Shelley) has, or of other Members who represent constituencies who are deeply interested in it. I do not complain of the course which they have taken, because we know that when we are to get anything from the Chancellor of the Exchequer we are not to be mealy-mouthed in our mode of expressing our opinion. But I will ask the House this:—Whether it is disposed to pass this Resolution and to make this pledge? I am as much against this tax as anybody here. I believe it is as bad a tax as it has been described. I believe there does not live the man so stupid who as Chancellor of the Exchequer would attempt for the first time to propose a tax so odious and absurd as this. But, notwithstanding all this, and believing as I do that but a very short time will elapse before it is abolished, yet I am not prepared, in the position in which we stand, to give a pledge that the first money which the Chancellor of the Exchequer can spare shall be devoted to the repeal of this duty. My hon. Friend the Member for Westminster admitted that it is only just now that the hop growers have become a happy family. For many years the hon. Member for Rochdale, who has been quoted, and myself were beset by men in the lobby who wanted something done with regard to the hop duty. There was then a protecting duty on foreign hops, and that always seems to blind the eyes of every man connected with it. Last year it blinded the eyes of the paper makers. Tears before it blinded the eyes of the hop growers. As long as the protecting duty remained, the hop growers of Kent had not the same interest as the hop grower of Sussex. The growers never came before the House until now with the authority of a united interest, and nothing was done. Since last year the scales have dropped from their eyes, and now they see it in the light in which we, as Free-traders, have seen it for many years, and they come and ask the House that this tax should be abolished. But I must tell my hon. Friend that it is not common for persons who have just found out that a tax is bad, and who have just agreed to ask for its repeal, to obtain that repeal on the first asking. That is a sort of courtship which I can assure my hon. Friend is not very common with Chancellors of the Exchequer. As this is the first year the hop growers have asked in this plain and resolute voice, though I should, be glad if they had it, yet they would be much better off than their neighbours if they had it this year, and they should be very well satisfied if they get it next year or the year after. The question cannot stand debates like this tonight. The reading of this debate tomorrow must necessarily convince everybody out of doors who is not already convinced, and in another Session they will in all probability come with a force which the Chancellor of the Exchequer of that day will not be able to resist. The difficulty in my way is the pledge. What is our position in this question of taxes? For anything I know it may be true that hon. Friends near me and hon. Gentlemen opposite have made it all right with the House of Lords. They may have ascertained that if the question should be taken up by the Chancellor of the Exchequer and a Bill introduced repealing the hop duty the House of Lords will agree, in point of fact, with the opinion of this House, and consent that the amount of taxation shall be repealed. But we are not certain of that. We know that there is a question on which the House of Lords have not agreed with this House, and I undertake to say on behalf of the House of Commons that, however humbled we may have been by what took place last Session, we are not yet come to that point of supplication when we shall consent to send to the other House a Bill for the repeal of any other tax until the House has sent up another Bill for the abolition of the Excise duty on paper. I might compare the paper duty with this duty, but that is not my object, because I do not want to show that any tax upon its own grounds is worse than this tax. But I may tell the hop growers that if they have the exciseman for a few weeks in fine weather in autumn, the paper-maker has the exciseman fifty-two weeks in the year, and that he is just as great a nuisance to the papermaker as he can be to the hop grower; and, further, that*the papermaker has applied to have his duty abolished for many years, and that last year he was treated in a manner in which no manufacturer in this country has heretofore been treated by Parliament. I think, therefore, that he has a right to come here first, and that the House of Commons cannot pass by his ease for the purpose of considering any other case, however grievous it may be. I will not refer to the burdens on the press, or to the injuries done to education by the existence of the Excise duty on paper. I do not pretend to make it appear that those injuries are worse than the injuries from the tax on. hops. I will place them, if you like, precisely on the same ground. But I durst appeal to hon. Gentlemen who are most in favour of the abolition of the duty on hops, and I think I may say, under the circumstances of the paper trade, and under the circumstances of this House of Commons, it is fitting that the Chancellor of the Exchequer and his colleagues should discuss the question of last year, and the incidence and burden of the Excise on paper before they take into consideration this grievous tax, which has been brought under our notice to-night. It is not necessary that I should enlarge on that point. Of the serious damage which has been done to this House of Parliament by the transaction of last year I know not that anything which the Chancellor of the Exchequer, or the Government, or the House itself can do can set up the character of the House and place us exactly in the position in which we were last year. But this I do say, that they will do what now is in their power to do if they take the first opportunity of reasserting the right which they embodied in a Resolution last year, and of again passing a Bill for the abolition of the Excise duty on paper. And when that is once done, and the Bill has passed both Houses of Parliament, then I think I shall not have the smallest objection to vote for the strongest Resolution, and for the most instantaneous action on the part of the House of Commons on behalf of the abolition of this duty. But I should say for myself that I was base as a Member of the House of Commons, and that the House was unworthy of its history, and would be unworthy of the slightest confidence on the part of the people of England, if it did not on the first opportunity assert its ancient right, and teach those who for a moment have forgotten it that here, and here alone, rests the power to tax the people of England, and to determine what shall be raised from the people to satisfy the exigencies of the Crown for the service of the year.

Sir, As representing a district which has been alluded to in the course of this debate, and which is, in no slight degree, interested in this question, I must ask leave to trespass shortly on the time of the House while referring to a few observations that have been made. The hon. Baronet, the Member for Westminster, in speaking of the district in which he resides, observed that while he could, for his part, declare that the immorality spoken of in connection with the hop-picking did not exist, he could not answer for Kent where a large number of strangers are annually collected for the hop-picking. Well, I have made inquiries with respect to this alleged immorality from the employers and from various other parties, who, if it had existed, would certainly have been aware of it, and I am justified from their answer in stating it to be a fiction. The alleged immorality does not exist. As regards what fell from the hon. Member for Birmingham, while I must decline to follow him over the whole of the ground he has traversed, I must say that his argument seemed to me to amount simply to this: because the papermakers cannot get their duty remitted, the hop growers shall not. Why, Sir, this is the old argument, if I may use the expression, of the dog in the manger. The hon. Member did not attempt to show that the duty upon paper is more onerous or unjust than that levied on hops; he did not attempt to prove that the small sum produced by the hop duty is so imperatively required by the country that it cannot be spared. Let us look at the difference between the two duties. The paper duty produces nearly £1,500,000 a year. The hop duty, in one year it is true, produced £728,123; but fifteen years ago, it fell to £62,253. In the five years from 1855 to 1859 it produced on an average over £300,000 per annum. And, last year, it fell to little over £69,000. How can this duty, variable as I have shown it to be, be placed in the same category with a tax which produces so large and certain a revenue as the paper duty? It must be remembered, too, that this hop duty is a tax on the raw material. The papermaker can regulate his produce according to the estimated demand—the hop planter never. The hop-planter cannot predict what the yield of a given acreage may be. Why, in two nights the better part of his crop may be blasted. But it is not in the years of deficient crops that the planter.' is most to be pitied. A large crop means a large duty. This large duty forces the planters simultaneously into the market; they must sell, at whatever price, to pay the duty; and the result is, the factors, who are well aware of this, will not give the price for hops they would otherwise command. Last year, certainly, the Chancellor of the Exchequer slightly reduced the Excise duties. But, in so doing, he substituted one large payment for two small ones; so that the interference with the trade is not mitigated, but rather increased. Besides, formerly—when there was still an instalment of the tax due—the Chancellor of the Exchequer could calculate with certainty on what he had to come in from the tax. Now, unless the Chancellor of the Exchequer is Zadkiel, or one of those persons who can sec into futurity, I cannot see how he can count on any certain amount from the hop duty. Last year the right hon. Gentleman took credit for £300,000 from this source, while the actual produce was only £69,000. He might again take £300,000 for next year; but who should say that it might not be lower even than £69,000? The proof that it presses on the planter is to be found in the number of times he has been compelled to come to the Chancellor of the Exchequer to ask for a postponement of the period of payment. I am not defending the postponement system. I believe that had that system never been allowed to exist, it would have been better in the end for all parties; but I maintain that the frequency of the demand for postponement shows how oppressively the tax weighs upon the planters. I have received a communication which demonstrates the unfair nature of this tax. It states that in a part of the country there were 135 tenants, occupying 18,500 acres, of which 1,477 acres were under hops. The average duty paid was £19,420 per annum. The gross rental of the whole of those estates was £15,146. After deducting 10 per cent for cottage and other expenses, the net rental coming to the landlord was £13,632 per annum. So that while the duty was upwards of £19,000 per annum, the landlord's rent was only £13,632 per annum. In other words, the hop duty came to 20s. 6d. per acre—the rental to only 14s. 2d. Can there be a stronger proof of the enormous sum thus wrung from those whom I have the honour to represent? Well, now, the hop planters (united for the first time) come to the House to ask merely for free trade to enable them to compete with the foreigner. It is true the Chancellor of the Exchequer has granted a countervailing duty of 1s, per cwt.; but does he imagine that to be sufficient? Does he imagine that this paltry shilling will countervail the enormous advantage the foreigner enjoys in bonding his hops? Free trade is all we seek. There sit in this House many Gentlemen who, in times past, have been engaged in forcing free trade on the producer for the consumer's benefit. Now that the case is reversed will they be deaf to our prayer? We make it no secret that this is a producer's question; but I trust that they—I trust that this House—will not in common justice (small as a community though we be) deny us our plain, simple request for free trade.

Sir, I am bound to say, in common fairness, that the case against the hop duty has been stated to-night, both by my hon. Friends behind me and the noble Lords and hon. Gentlemen opposite, with very great ability; and it is impossible that greater justice could have been done to the case in their hands. In what I have to say I shall make certain reserves and qualifications; but, speaking with perfect openness and sincerity, I shall not disguise that upon various points I subscribe in a great degree to what they have advanced. What I shall urge upon the House, and what I shall beg the House to bear in mind in coming to a decision is that what we are called on to debate to-night is not the merits of the hop duty or the policy of continuing it as a tax. I shall ask no one to-night to give an opinion on the merits of the hop duty; but, without raising that question, I shall endeavour to state conclusive grounds against adopting this Motion. So far as the hop duty is concerned I fairly admit that it is open to these charges. It is unequal in its produce as a fiscal resource; it is unequal in its pressure upon different classes of hops in a degree which, although it may be easy to find parallel and even stronger cases in commodities of various kinds, may yet, with regard to a domestic commodity, be fairly called peculiar. It tends to aggravate distress in a year of low prices, and in a trade where reverses are already constant and severe; and, I may also add that it is open to objection as being levied on an article of raw produce. These are objections which may fairly be sustained in their degree; but there are two objections taken against it which are not sustainable. It has been said that this is a costly duty as regards collection. On the contrary, the money derived from the hop duties, so far as collection is concerned, is among the cheapest which come into the Exchequer. The noble Lord who spoke last, with great ability, spoke of the trade being destroyed by Excise restrictions. But let us give the hop duty its due. There are no restrictions which in any degree interfere appreciably with production, and as the hop duty is distinguished unfavourably as being levied on an article in a state of inception and not when it is brought to market, so, on the other hand, it is favourably distinguished from other duties—the malt duty, for instance, or the paper duty, more than the malt duty or the duty on spirits, more even than the duty on paper—as not interfering with the operations of the producer. My hon. Friend who made this Motion spoke of the fickleness of the plant, but I say to those who support him, do not be led away by the supposition that you will put an end to distress in the hop districts by the abolition of the duty. My hon Friend, the Member for Westminster (Sir John Shelley) stated very fairly that he himself having been a hop-planter for twenty-five years, had undergone considerable losses; but as an exhibition of a general rule his statement was incomplete, because he will not contradict me when I say that there is an important element in this case which is rarely brought into view in debate, and which has not yet been mentioned—I mean the interest of the landlord in promoting hop cultivation, not on account of the special rent that he gets for his grounds, but on account of the ready market which is thereby offered him for his underwood. That is an element without which we cannot understand the amount of inducement there has been to promote this hop cultivation. I will not enter into the question with regard to the morality or immorality arising from the concourse of people collected by the hop-picking, but I will look at it simply as a trading question; and, looking at it as a trading question the real truth is that this cultivation is unhappily distinguished from every other agricultural product by the extraordinary reverses which it offers to those who pursue the trade. In one year a man's crop is not worth picking; in the next year he may have £100 per acre, clear of all expenses, in his pocket. In point of fact hop cultivation is a lottery. I do not attempt to disguise anything connected with it. The duty acts as a deduction from the prizes and an aggravation of the blanks. But when there is a year of distress it would be a gross delusion for the hop-planters to suppose that the main cause is the operation of the duty. I cannot accept the amount of the duty as being that at which the hon. Member for Sussex (Mr. Dodson) placed it. He spoke of it as being £200,000; and in order to reduce it so low, he went back to a time for striking his averages when the average crop was much less than it is now. He also omitted to take the Customs' duties on foreign hops into account. Stating the facts as fairly as I can, I should say that the average amount of the duty would be from £300,000 to £350,000; but I fully admit that it is uncertain, though not so uncertain as you would suppose if you look only to the extraordinary variations of the British crop, because when there is a low crop here a considerable amount of revenue is derived from the Customs' duties. But while I admit that it is an uncertain element of the revenue, I do not think we should on that account do well to part with it; because, in the case of a country like this, uncertainties upon minor elements of the revenue are really very small in their effect on the general results, except under peculiar circumstances. The hon. Member for Sussex was, I thought, much too sanguine in his anticipations of the public and general results which were to follow from abolition. He compared this case with the repeal of the duty on soap, bricks, glass, and other articles. So far as regards the general public I know of no duty in the repeal of which the general public has so little interest as this. It is precisely one of those small amounts, difficult to trace in their incidence, the repeal of which, no doubt, ultimately comes round to the public benefit, yet let not the House deceive itself; this is not like the case where we have been able by the removal of an impost comparatively small to give greater freedom to trade, to open new and extensive sources of employment, and almost immediately to bring back to the revenue, through the means of relieved enterprise and augmented wages, all we had lost. This, speaking candidly, is a producer's question; it is to him that you would be making a present of the duty, and you must consider when you enter on the question of its remission. My hon. Friend behind me says I have proved myself a fearless or a reckless financier; but at the same time I am not so reckless or so fearless as to be content to accept the Resolution he has proposed; and that on principles which I am convinced, notwithstanding the able statements we have heard to-night, will carry with them the assent of this House. There is one other incidental point I would deal with before referring to these principles. It is this:—There is a certain connection—what amount of connection I do not now say—but there is a certain amount of connection between the abolition of the hop duty and the augmentation of the malt duty. And many gentlemen who have done me the honour to visit me on the subject of the hop duty have alluded to that connection, and the facility of substituting an increase of malt duty for the hop duty within the four walls of my room; but by some strange accident that topic is always forgotten by Gentlemen connected with hops who forget nothing else when they come to debate the question in this House. I have never heard them suggest that easy and obvious method of supplying the gap. How that has happened I do not know. The case of hops has been referred to, and compassion has been excited by stating that in certain cases £10 or £15 an acre is actually levied in the shape of hop duty where the rent has been only 10s. But what if I were to adduce the case of barley? I might certainly raise some compassion for the barley growers; for I apprehend not £10 or £15, but a sum nearer £40, £50, or £60 is levied on the crop for the year when used for distillation. The noble Lord who has just sat down said they asked for free trade and nothing less. My hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham must have really felt his heart leap within him when he heard a declaration of free trade from such a quarter. [Mr. BRIGHT: "Hear, hear!"] But a very important question arises here—as to what constitutes free trade. We are now happily all agreed on being Free-traders, but there is a very serious controversy remaining unsettled. The original free traders always held that the essence of free trade consisted in the abolition of preference and protection, but there is another school of politicians who give a farther development to the principle of free trade, and say that you have no free trade in any article which is subject to a tax. With them free trade is the abolition of all indirect taxes, and in that sense the noble Lord demands from this House that we should give him in hops the very small boon of free trade which he wants. I must confess I have been very glad to see within proper measure the abolition of indirect taxes which were not protective, where it could be done with due reference to the public interests and proper regard to the balance of revenue and expenditure; but if the noble Lord will go on to insist on that free trade which means relief from all taxation, I must reluctantly part company with him and leave him to perform the ulterior stages of that consummation of free trade without my having the honour to accompany him. I think I may pass in a very few words the references of my hon. Friend the Member for Westminster (Sir John Shelley) to some minor points of the case. He dwelt on the hardship to the home grower arising from the foreigner being allowed to bond his hops, and asserted that the difference of 1s. in the duty did not countervail that advantage which the foreigner possessed. We need not enter into that question now, for the 1s. is entirely prospective. At present the duty is 6s. per cwt., that amount of protection still remains on British hops. I am bound, however, to believe that the importer of hops from abroad would be very glad to abandon his privilege of bonding for the sake of that 1s. The question is one of much broader scope than my hon. Friend has described. I must object to the Motion of my hon. Friend on the ground that it is an abstract Resolution relating to the matter of finance; and I cannot but feel that this is a most serious matter. I will not go into the question whether upon any occasion, under any circumstances, the House of Commons has been justified in passing such a Resolution, because there is in existence a Resolution of this House of this character with reference to the paper duty of which of course as a Resolution of this House as well as on account of my right hon. Friend, its author, I desire to speak with due respect. But these two things I must observe—first, I think the fate of that Resolution up to the present time ought to be a warning to every prudent man how he adds more Resolutions to that class. And, then, let my hon. Friend consider what he is about to do. It is very well for him to bring the House of Commons into the assertion of an abstract Resolution, and perhaps there are hon. Gentlemen in the House who, after hearing the statements made against the hop duties this evening, would be disposed to say, "Well there is no great harm in recording an opinion against the hop duty;" but does he think nobody else will follow his example? There are other duties the repeal of which will be demanded in this House. The hon. Member for Dudley (Mr. Sheridan), for example, armed with high authorities, will demand from the Government the repeal of the fire insurance duty. He will come down with his abstract Resolutions, and invite us to resolve that the maintenance of the duty is impolitic, and in any remission of taxation or adjustment of financial burdens provision should be made for the removal of such duties. Do not, in point of fact, suppose that this is a question of one Resolution; it is a question, not of one, but of a string of Resolutions that will be pressed upon you, every one of which will be supported and authorized by that which had gone before. I ask whether the result of that process—having got four or five Resolutions condemning particular sources of revenue—pressed by heavy estimates, perhaps a bad harvest, and the temper of the country disposed to extravagance rather than retrenchment, with so many solemn pledges given by the House, and all standing unredeemed—I ask whether such a result will conduce to the credit and authority of Parliament? Let me tell my hon. Friend that nothing can tend more to lower the House of Commons in the view of the public, and to weaken its authority—I will say, even in its relation with the other branches of the Legislature—than the practice of being induced, on statements of hardship, in a great degree common to all taxes, to commit itself to expressions of opinions worthless in themselves, dangerous because they give rise to hopes which probably cannot be fulfilled, and certainly of a character that lead to contrasts, comparisons, and criticisms unfavourable to the character of the House in the estimation of the country. I have spoken of the paper duty Resolution, but I confess it appears to me that the paper duty Resolution, as it stands—though I entirely hold all the opinions I previously expressed—time having only confirmed them—the Resolution on the paper duty as it stands ought to be a warning to us to induce us to hold our hands and consider how we commit ourselves to such rash proceedings. Let me appeal to hon. Gentlemen on the opposite side of the House. These proceedings I may characterize strictly as innovations. I do not think it has been the practice of the House of Commons in former times to endeavour to meet a cry out of doors, or the momentary wishes and even permanent interests of any class of the community by drawing these long bills on the future, and promising at some future time, unknown and indefinite, to redeem them. I must add that as it is in the nature of a very questionable example, to be imitated in a form more questionable, so my hon. Friend has improved on the paper duty by the form of language he uses. The paper duty Resolution merely said—and it was the mildest form in which it was possible to make trial of the principle—it merely said that it was undesirable that that duty should continue permanently to form part of the financial arrangements of the country. But my hon. Friend has the boldness to make a much enlarged demand upon us. What he claims is, that, in some manner or other this duty shall be got rid of at the very first moment when any change whatever takes place in our fiscal arrangement. If his Resolution is passed it would not be lawful to remit the duty upon the smallest article, however urgent might be the demand for its remission, but this Resolution would stand in the way, and we must pay the hop grower a fine of £300,000, or £400,000 before we could deal with it or address ourselves to the performances of our duty. Now, it is the invariable duty of the gentleman who for the time being holds the office I have the honour to hold, when the House is thus solicited at an early period of the Session to give pledges respecting particular duties, to remind it of its position on this subject. In the course of a few weeks the financial year will be at a close; a year critical in a financial point of view both on account of the extensive changes introduced into the law of the condition of trade, and, likewise, of the peculiarly disastrous character of the last harvest. Without dwelling upon these points, I put it to the House whether it is our duty to consider the claims of the people to relief from taxation separately one from the other, according as those claims may be pressed with greater eagerness or skill by the advocates of a particular interest; or whether we ought not rather to wait until the time comes when we may know, as a whole, the financial condition of the country, until we see what is to be our expenditure, what are our means, and if there be an opportunity of remission, deciding upon the various claims on the Exchequer after a careful comparison of their merits? Now such a comparison is entirely avoided by my hon. Friend. He has not entered into a question of the claims to remission which would compete with the claim of the hop duty upon an occasion of this kind. He has forgotten that we are leaving the duties on tea and sugar at a war rate; that we are still maintaining the paper duty, which this House passed a Bill to repeal, and that the income tax is now, in a time of peace, at 10d. in the pound. I might multiply these instances, but will only refer to a recent vote of the House of Commons, by which it appeared that the case of some of the payers of this income tax was thought especially deserving its consideration. Now, I do not want to obtain an advantage over my hon. Friend, unless it be such as from the form of his Motion I can justly have. I do not ask the House of Commons to affirm, that the hop duty is a perfect duty or ought to be permanently maintained; nay more, I do not ask the House to say that there are other more serious and urgent claims to which it is our duty first to give heed. I only entreat the House not to prejudice the great questions which may come before us when the Estimates for the next year are fully prepared, and when we have obtained a just view of our probable Revenue. That is the time when my hon. Friend will have the opportunity of making a proposal if he pleases; but he must see that the nature—the essential and invariable nature—of a Motion like this if carried now, is to give to a particular claim an unfair and surreptitious advantage over other claims perhaps as well entitled to consideration. Why is this particular case to have exceptional consideration? Why is not some one to point out the enormous advantages of a reduction in the duty on tea? I ask my hon. Friend to be contented with equality of dealing, which he will have if he remains in the same predicament as the representatives of other interests, and if he asks the House at the proper time, when it knows the means and resources at its command, to decide upon this, after a searching comparison with other claims. These are the grounds upon which I feel strongly persuaded that the House will not accede to the request of my hon. Friend. I have endeavoured to state those grounds without in any degree concealing or attempting to weaken admissions which fairness demands from me as to the nature of this particular tax. But the Government would be guilty of the grossest breach of duty if they yielded to every popular demand of this kind. In the present instance the demand is backed by a stout phalanx, who have had civil war among themselves, the first thing they do on making peace being to proclaim war with somebody else. The Government, however, would fail in their duty if, from any fear of such power they were to refrain from entreating the House to hold this question over until the proper time arrives for deciding upon it in connection with the annual financial projects which only a few weeks must of necessity bring before us. Above all the House should avoid the inconsiderate repetition of Resolutions of this description with regard to the abstract merits of taxes, which are either in themselves valueless, or are worse than valueless, nay, are dangerous from the expectations they excite, and which constitute an entire departure from former practice; for those who preceded us never stooped to popular favour by promising to remit taxes, the abolition of which would involve the national finances in total uncertainty and confusion.

said, the right hon. Gentleman bad based his opposition to the Motion mainly on the ground of the Resolution being an abstract Resolution. He would admit that there might be objections to an abstract Resolution, but he noticed that those who carried their measures through Parliament generally succeeded by means of such Resolutions. Inasmuch as the injurious operation of this tax had not been denied, and as the Chancellor of the Exchequer had admitted nearly all the arguments urged against it, he thought his hon. Friend perfectly justified in proceeding with the Motion, because when the Budget was brought forward there would be very little chance of obtaining relief. If ever the movement for repealing the hop duty was to be successful its supporters should persevere now. It was acknowledged that hardly any Revenue would be derived from the tax this year, and there was also an absolute certainty that next year would be a bad hop year. A remission of the duty would, therefore, make but little difference to the Exchequer for these two years. The Motion only stated that if remission could be granted, then that this tax should be taken into consideration and as he believed that such a remission would be productive of advantage to the Revenue, by increasing the quantity of malt consumed, he should certainly support the Resolution.

said, he would not long detain the House, but being connected with agriculture, and as the question before the House was an agricultural question, he thought he would be excused for saying a few words upon it. It had been admitted on all sides throughout the debate that the arguments advanced in favour of the remission of the tax in question were conclusive, and, although the right hon. Gentleman the Chancellor of the Exchequer had endeavoured to weaken those arguments by the introduction of extraneous matter, he had signally failed. If the supporters of the Motion were to listen to the captivating appeal of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, and postpone the Motion until the Budget was before them, they would be told that they were then too late—that the financial scheme of the Government had been all prepared, and that the adoption of a Resolution like the present would entirely destroy all their calculations and arrangements. He therefore thought now was the right time for raising that discussion. The right hon. Gentleman had argued that the hop duty did not materially affect the general public; but surely it could not be denied that that tax ultimately fell upon the consumer, who had to pay it in the shape of an increased price for his beer. He had endeavoured last Session, but without success, to convince the right hon. Gentleman of the impolicy of the course he had pursued upon the malt question, and had pointed out the consequences that would ensue. Of course he did not then expect he should be able to influence the Chancellor of the Exchequer by his arguments, but every one of the consequences he had foretold had come to pass. The hon. Member for Birmingham, introducing a matter totally irrelevant to the question before the House, had asked how they could think of remitting the hop duty while the tax upon paper was retained? There was this important difference between the two cases—that the hop growers were now unanimous in demanding the repeal of this impost, whereas, when the abolition of the paper duty was proposed, the great body of the manufacturers came forward to declare that the measure would not only diminish the public Revenue, but would seriously injure their trade. Therefore the two cases were not at all analogous. He trusted the Chancellor of the Exchequer would permit the Resolution to pass, and that the House would agree to the Motion before it.

Sir, I hope the House will well consider the step they are asked to take before they give a vote on the Motion of the hon. Gentleman. I am not one of those who are at all insensible to the claims of the class of producers whose case is now before us to the attentive consideration of Parliament. It has been my lot on several occasions to have their case placed before mo with great ability and great fullness of detail, and I can truly say that on no occasion have I heard it put forward more clearly or more efficiently than it has been to-night—especially by my noble Friend the Member for Kent (Lord Holmesdale), to whom I have listened with great satisfaction, and who, I trust, will hereafter take an active part in our debates. But my hon. Friend the Member for Cambridgeshire (Mr. Ball) will pardon me for saying that he does not establish a case for the remission of a tax when he proves that it is a grievance. Whether a tax is a grievance or not is a secondary consideration. We must first look at the state of the Revenue. There is, indeed, no tax which is not a grievance, which is not a burden upon industry, or an obstacle to enterprise; and if the attributes of an impost are to be discussed in this House only with reference to those consequences, a triumphant case may be made for the repeal or remission of every duty that now exists in our tariff. But the primary consideration, which ought not to be absent from our thought at the present moment is the condition of our financial resources. The hon. Member for Cambridgeshire, and several speakers who preceded him, appeared to assume throughout their arguments that the Chancellor of the Exchequer is in possession of an impending surplus, and they are, therefore, putting in their claim for their share of that surplus. But they quite forget that at this moment there is actually a great deficiency, supplied only by annual and temporary taxation. Under these circumstances we are not to consider what may be the effects of a particular tax which presses on the interests of our constituents, so much as what is the general condition of the national finances, and whether the Chancellor of the Exchequer, when he places his account before us, will be able to carry on the affairs of the country without calling on us to renew that which is always described as, and which we would fain believe is, a temporary resource in the form of a large amount of taxation. We must, therefore, dismiss from our mind3 the pleasing dream which lies at the basis of all the arguments that have been addressed to us—namely, that the Chancellor of the Exchequer, when he comes before us with his financial statement, will be in the happy position of a Minister who has a surplus to apportion to the relief of the industry and trade of the country. We know that the case will be very different. I do not want now to enter, as my hon. Friend (Mr. Ball) briefly entered, into the principles which guided our commercial and financial legislation of last year, or to dwell on the consequences it has produced, We shall soon be in possession of an authentic account. That those consequences have been important, and perhaps serious, no one doubts; but let us have from authority a statement on which we can rely of the results of that legislation, which was received by many with great distrust. We must remember that we have unfortunately experienced the ill effects of a had harvest. We were told that if we embraced those principles of free trade which my noble Friend appears to have embraced in so complete a manner to-night, the disastrous effects of a bad harvest would no longer he felt. I will not now discuss whether those representations were just or exaggerated, but I think that, whether Free-traders or not, we shall all agree that a had harvest is to a country, and especially to this country, a great evil. Well, we have encountered that evil. We have had to encounter the effect of commercial and financial experiments, together with that bad harvest, in the face of an increased and increasing expenditure. I give every credit to the Government for the reduced Estimates which they have offered to the House; I have no doubt that, small as the reduction is, they would not have placed those Estimates on the table without having a conscientious conviction that they were justified in taking that course. But at this critical period it is open to every Member of this House to form his own opinion of what may be the conjuncture of public events, and what may possibly occur in the affairs of the world, and I have no hesitation in saying that, in my opinion, the period is now so critical that he would be a very rash leader of his countrymen who would allow them to indulge in a hope that there will be any great diminution of expenditure, and consequently any considerable reduction of taxation. The fact is that every man knows that the period is so extremely critical that we should husband and increase our resources, and not only have we that general feeling, but it seems also that the future is obscure, and that it is a period on which no one can speak with authority to guide us. Is this an occasion, with an impending financial statement—is this the occasion to come forward and to further embarrass the Minister entrusted with the management of the finance, under circumstances which must ensure him many difficulties that he will have to encounter? I do not think, then, we should be justified in supporting the Motion of the hon. Gentleman. He and his friends may justify the Motion by the Resolution which the House adopted in the case of the paper duties, but there is no similarity between the two cases. It is the office of the House of Commons—their most legitimate office—if they entertain a strong opinion as to a particular tax, and also believe that the Government of the day has probably a surplus at its disposal—it is the duty and highest privilege of the House of Commons preliminarily to express an opinion upon that tax, which they believe to he a permanent grievance. That was the case with the paper duties. They had often been discussed, and when the House came to the Resolution, it was accepted in a greatly modified form by the Government of the day, who announced that the Resolution could not in the least degree affect their conduct, and the House accepted it in that spirit. Is that the present position of the hon. Member for Sussex? That was a Resolution about the paper duties, which did not at all touch an impending Budget, even if the Minister of the day had not stated that the Government would not consider it in that respect. This is a Resolution which affects an impending Budget, and it is impossible for the Chancellor of the Exchequer, if the Resolution be carried, to avoid remodelling his Budget; or, at least, it must naturally interfere with the financial arrangements he intends to propose. Is that a fair or a politic course? I am aware of all that can be said against the hop duties, and I may say when I had the opportunity I proved my feeling by giving all the relief in my power to the growers; but I cannot subscribe to the doctrine that it is a tax which, as a grievance, takes the highest rank of all circumstances which can annoy or injure Her Majesty's subjects. I think there are many other matters we must consider before any taxation is remitted; and nothing can be more unwise in the position in which the country is now placed, than that we should enter upon a partial and fanciful scheme for the remission of taxation at a time when we ought, on the contrary, to prepare our minds for larger and severer toils—for really comprehending our position, and bringing to bear upon it all the resources of the country, and especially that which is the most important of all national resources—that spirit in a community that makes it ready to bear great burdens when it feels that they are required for the safety and welfare of the country.

in reply, said he did not seek to interfere with the impending Budget. The hon. Member for Birmingham had admitted that the hop duty was an odious tax, but said that he was pledged first to the repeal of the paper duties. But was the House prepared to say that not a farthing of taxation should be remitted until there was such a surplus of revenue as would enable a million and a quarter to be dispensed with? When the hon. Member referred to a Resolution of that House touching the paper duties as precluding him from supporting the present Motion, he ought to bear in mind that in 1853 Mr. Frewen moved a Resolution that "The Excise duty upon hops is impolitic and should be removed." On that occasion the hon. Member for Birmingham said the Chancellor of the Exchequer ought to be obliged to the then hon. Member for East Sussex for introducing the Resolution before the Budget was brought in, in order that he might see whether the duty was popular or not. And he (Mr. Dodson) claimed the vote of a Colleague of the Chancellor of the Exchequer to-night, because on that former occasion he voted for Mr. Frewen's Resolution. In the division list he found voting against the hop duty the name of the right hon. Milner Gibson. The Chancellor of the Exchequer had that night greatly gratified the hop growers. He admitted three-fourths of the arguments adduced in favour of the repeal of the hop duties; and he passed over in silence the other fourth. The Chancellor of the Exchequer was not correct in another point, for the acreage of the hop growth was quite as large twenty years ago as it was now. The right hon. Gentleman had objected to an abstract Resolution, but that was a stock argument upon such occasions, and one that he hoped the House would not listen to. If an independent Member moved a Resolution before the Budget he was told it was too soon; if he moved it after the Budget he was told it was too late; and the Resolution was objected to as an abstract proposition. An independent Member could hardly be expected to introduce a Bill for the remission of taxation; and it was only by a Resolution that the opinion of the House upon the merits of a particular tax could be obtained. He hoped the House would not be led astray by the arguments of the Chancellor of the Exchequer and the right hon. Gentleman opposite, but would give its assent to the Resolution he had proposed.

rose to move, "The Appointment of a Select Committee to consider the present System of Promotion and Retirement in the Royal Navy, and the present pay and position of the several classes of Naval Officers, and to report what changes therein are desirable, with a view to the increased efficiency of the Naval Service." It was a lamentable fact that there was no one class of officers in Her Majesty's Navy that had not just and serious ground of complaint. He should not occupy the House by going into details on the subject, but he would run over the principal grounds of complaint on the part of the various classes of officers, that the House might perceive he did not move for a Committee on insufficient reasons. He would begin with the captains. Their complaint was, first, that their pay, both full and half-pay, was insufficient, and that the regulations under which they received the command money, granted by order of the Admiralty, had, instead of making their condition better, rendered it considerably worse than before. That command money was granted to enable the captains of men-of-war to entertain those persons whom, from the position they occupied, it was the duty of these officers periodically to entertain. But previously the pay of the officers had been so reduced that that very allowance made them worse off than they were before, for the obligation to entertain was imposed upon them, which before had not been required. By the scheme 49 captains would receive from £36 10s. to £133 6s. 8d., but there were only two captains who would receive the larger addition to their pay; 45 would be entitled to £6 1s. 8d. a year, or 4d. a day additional; and he should like to know what portion of a gentleman's dinner 4d. a day would represent? Nineteen captains would receive sums varying from £18 7s. 6d. to £85 3s. 4d. Commanders would receive 2s, 6d. per day as command money, and out of that they would have at times to entertain persons of the rank of ambassadors. The way that lieutenants in command had been treated was worthy of the Admiralty. They were to receive 2s. a day command money; but their ordinary pay was first reduced from 11s. to 10s. The only two captains entitled to the highest rate of pay of £766 10s. were Captain Elliot and Captain Fanshawe. Between 40 and 50, or nearly one-half the entire number, would receive the lowest rate of £456 5s. 6d., instead of the old pay of £700. This command money, for which the Admiralty took so much credit, was in reality a loss to many officers. He had prepared a comparison between the English, French, American, and Prussian navies. With regard to the lowest grade, it was 140 per cent in favour of the American over the English in the full pay, and of 227 per cent in the half-pay. In the French navy it was 46 per cent in the full pay—there was no half-pay in the French navy; and in the Prussian navy it was 22 per cent. Commanders in the American navy were 117; per cent better in the highest grade in the full pay, and 157 per cent in the half-pay, the Prussian 42 per cent. The American lieutenants in command had an advantage of 143 per cent, and the Prussian 47 per cent. The difference between the American lieutenants and the highest of our lieutenants was 134 per cent in favour of the American in the full pay, and 95 per cent in the half-pay; and in the lowest, the comparison was 71 per cent on the full pay, and 242 per cent on the half-pay in favour of the American. It must also be borne in mind that in the English Navy officers were subject to income tax, and that they were, likewise, obliged to incur expense in keeping their ship in creditable order. The Royal Albert had just been paid off, and the half-year's bill of her commander for paint required beyond the Admiralty supply was £67. An officer had also to furnish his mess with cabin furniture; and the comparative cost of living in this country was 30 per cent in excess of the others which he had mentioned. A Prussian officer who went to France on business for his Government was allowed 14s. a day, while if he came to England he received £1 1s. Another grievance experienced by officers was that in calculating their time for flag rank their commander's services were wholly ignored, though a great many of them had served within a few months or weeks of the requisite time. Moreover, when men reached that stage, the Admiralty were very shy of employing them. An old and valued friend of his, Admiral Trotter, an eminent officer in every respect, who had been on the Niger Expedition and rendered good service, as a commander he was senior officer of the southern division of the African station, and had eleven pennants under his orders, as a post-captain he was the commodore oil the Cape station, and only wanted three months of his time when a near relation of the First Lord was sent out in the packet, surprised him lying in Simon's Bay, and sent him home, he actually attained his flag before he reached England; of course he never got another chance of employment, and he died a Yellow Admiral after all. Thus a man might serve twenty years as a commander, might in that capacity command squadrons, and be engaged on surveying or other service of the highest importance, and yet not be allowed to count a day of it towards his flag, while another, commanding a flagship, though he never went outside Plymouth Breakwater, might serve his whole time. Those were the leading grievances of the post-captains on the active list. The captains on the reserved list, from their liability to be called out in case of emergency, came also under the head of active officers. A deliberate bargain was entered into with those gentlemen in 1852; their services were justly extolled in the public papers, some of them having fought in every action during the great war; every advantage was promised to them, their commissions were made out in precisely the same terms, and they had every reason to believe that they stood on the same footing as regarded progressive advancement with other officers in the service; but when the time came for promoting them to the 14s. list, they were told that the proposal had been drawn up for the purpose of bearing a different construction from that which was evident on the face of it. They were thus deceived and cheated out of their just rights, and they were entitled to say so, for they took the advice of an eminent counsel—Mr. Lush—who told them that he could not possibly interfere between them and the Admiralty, but that were the transaction simply one between A and B the agreement would be binding before God and man. The commanders complained that the command money was of the same delusive nature as he had already shown it to be; they claimed to reduce their list by those who were ineffective, and they also claimed to have their mate's time counted on their retirement. Many of the commanders who obtained their promotion during the late war, when mates were serving as acting lieutenants on account of the scarcity officers, an. as such came home commanding brigs; but, although a mate's rank was equal to that of a lieutenant in the army, not a single hour of the time passed in such capacity would count, except under a recent order, and to a very limited extent. Another grievance was that while officers borne on the books of Coastguard ships would receive their time, or a portion of it, those who had hitherto served in them would be mulcted of at least two-thirds of that time. The year before last the principle had been affirmed that every day of a man's time ought to count in the civil service. But in the navy a different principle was applied, when it came to be made up, the Admiralty cut off every portion of time that they could. If a man had served two years eleven months and twenty-nine days, they would cut off the eleven months twenty-nine days, and only give him credit for two years. Again, the half-pay was deficient, and they called on the Admiralty to give them a graduated half-pay, rising every year, or at least every two years, according to their service. It was known to every hon. Gentleman who represented a dockyard town that many officers who had faithfully and gallantly spent the best part of their lives in their country's service were actually half-starving, and had not the means of educating their families, or of appearing in that society to which their education and professional position entitled them. Within the last twenty years everything, with the exception of some articles of clothing, had risen in price by some 20 or 30 per cent, while the pay of those officers was not increasing, but on the contrary, the Admiralty was now proposing to cut off part of the pay of captains. The senior lieutenants, who did the duty of commanders in ships, ought to have additional pay. The adjutant of a regiment received an addition of 3s. 6d. a day, with, he believed, an allowance for a horse; while the additional allowance to a senior lieutenant, doing duty as a commander, was only Is., out of which he had to find paint, brooms, and other articles, which were not supplied in sufficient qnantity. The cost to a post-captain of commissioning a ship was at the rate of £500 a year; and a commander could not commission a large sloop of war without sinking £1,000 of his own money. What added to this hardship was the fact that when the ships came home the mess traps were sold for whatever they might fetch, which sometimes was little or nothing. That occurred in the case of the Royal Albert a few weeks ago. The Admiralty ought to supply officers as well as captains with mess traps, such as linen and plate; and he did not believe the Admiralty would be losers by so doing, in fact, he believed he could state that the supply of those articles left a profit on the transaction. Then the instructors in gunnery did not receive sufficient. They had only 1s. a day in addition to their ordinary pay; while the three captains of the Royal Artillery who instructed the military received 9s. 6d. Officers were now required to "pass in steam," and were obliged to go to the college at Portsmouth to qualify themselves. They contended that they ought to be allowed full-pay while there for that purpose. And here he would say a word or two on the state of the college itself. The public rooms were excellent; there was a good library; and the studies were in perfect order, but the sleeping rooms were dog holes. They were wretched lofts, partitioned off by screens; the beds were anything but what they should be; and the accommodation generally was very indifferent indeed—the place is cold, damp, and uncomfortable, nothing like that which was enjoyed by the pensioners at Greenwich. An officer coming to the college from a warm climate was pretty certain to have cold or rheumatism before he left. There was also a grievance connected with leave to which he wished to direct the attention of the House. An officer in the army was entitled to a certain portion of time every year on full pay. He had likewise the advantage of a passage home in a Government vessel from the Mediterranean if such an opportunity off; but if an officer in the Navy came home after four years commission, he with the greatest difficulty got four weeks' leave; and if he fell ill he was obliged to produce a certificate to that effect. Even in the case of a death in his family, he could not at any other time get leave for more than a fortnight or so. The effect of that regulation was detrimental to the service, especially in the case of junior officers. Again, officers on Coastguard and contract vessels ought to be allowed full pay whenever they were serving. Every Gentleman who had commanded a ship must know the value of the first lieutenant; he was not only the captain's principal officer, but his friend and adviser. He was the man who carried on the duty of the ship; he was the man on whom the captain must depend in all cases of emergency. First lieutenants were very often sent out to dry nurse young gentlemen who could not be trusted by themselves. To that class of officers Sir Baldwin Walker belonged. This most valuable class ought to be entitled to brevet rank and increased pay; but such men were too often left to languish in the grade of lieutenants to the end of their lives. That was a just cause of complaint, and it was not unnatural that they should desire a choice of retirement at an early age when the Admiralty did not intend to promote them, and at a period of life when they might turn their attention to some other means of employment. He thought that was one of the most important points to which the attention of the Admiralty and the House ought to be directed. Those officers desired a fixed rate of half-pay after a certain number of years' service, and that rate ought, in justice, to be a sufficient one. They also complain that they have no servant allowed them as is the custom in the army, and he would remark that the employment of ships' boys as servants is in many respects most objectionable. In the next place, he hoped the lieutenants would be allowed to count their service as mates. It was considered that the title of mate was an anomalous one—that mates might be very easily and justly called second lieutenants, or receive some more dignified title than that which they at present enjoyed. They also considered that they ought to be better paid, and he could assure the House that there was not a more valuable class of officers in the ship than the mates, and at this moment the navy was very short of them from keeping the list full of old lieutenants who ought to be paid off at a better rate of payment than now. The mess things ought to be supplied to this class of officers as well as to the others; and if that were done the great loss of mess things that now took place would be prevented. If the property of the midshipmen's messes, for example, were Government property, it would be put under regulation, and not destroyed, as at present. When a ship was paid off the system now was to break the whole of the midshipmen's mess things rather than let them fall into the hands of the Israelites. The midshipmen of the navy were appointed at too early an age, and this was a source of great evil. It led idle boys to go to sea to escape from school. So soon as their mothers could not manage them they were voted the property of the navy and put on board ship, when the confinement and want of exercise stunted their growth, and the service was ultimately put to great cost in giving them a very imperfect education. No young gentleman should be admitted into the navy till he was able to judge for himself. He could speak on that point, for he went to sea himself to get quit of school. It was absurd to hear young Lords of the Admiralty saying that these gentlemen had adopted the profession from choice, and that they must be kept to their bargain. They were unable to judge for themselves when they went to sea. The next class of officers he would refer to was the warrant officers. He had presented a petition to the Admiralty from the warrant officers, which the noble Lord thought contained some things that were reasonable. He (Sir James Elphinstone) thought the petition was very reasonable. The hope of getting warrants ought to be held out as a prize to the men before the mast; but, instead of that, there was a difficulty in finding men to take the place of warrant officers, because by doing so they forfeited their pensions and their back time, besides being involved in an expensive outfit and exposed to the risk of being dismissed the service without trial. The petition of the warrant officers contained a long list of grievances which he thought ought to be forthwith redressed. Thus they justly complained of the allowance to their widows. Those of men who had been five years in the service only received £25 a year; those of ten years, £30; those of twenty years, £35. These pensions were done away with in 1850, and restored in 1860, and the widows of warrant officers dying in the interval received no pension at all. This was accounted for by the Treasury on the ground that an increase had been made in the salaries of the officers, to enable them to assure their lives, but no office would assure them if they were going to many different foreign parts. Amongst other grievances under which these men laboured, he might add that the coastguard service was closed against them. They asked that these things might be altered, that they might have a presentation to Greenwich College School for one of their sons, and that they should not be liable to dismissal without, in the first place, trial by court- martial. He had now given the particular grievances affecting the different grades of the service, but there were general grieveances that were common to every grade of the service. It was a general complaint that retirement fell far short of the requirements of the service. That caused injustice in many respects. By the non-application of the compulsory retirement to all ranks, it failed to secure a steady flow of promotion throughout the service. Only 6 captains had been promoted to flag rank since the 1st of January, 1859. Then, by maintaining the 3 senior lists far above the requirements of the service, employment was placed beyond the reach of the many. There were only 19 flag officers employed out of 99; 127 captains, out of 347; 209 commanders, out of 438. Perhaps he should be told by the noble Lord that his proposals would entail a large expenditure upon the country; but if it were so the country would be more efficiently served. When his noble Friend undertook the duties of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, he went beyond what was required of him as Secretary to the Admiralty. It was the duty of the Admiralty to say what was required for an efficient fleet, how they were to get a class of contented and trustworthy officers and men, and not to consider the cost. He believed that when they got the Augean stable of the Admiralty cleaned out, and had a proper administration of the affairs of the navy, with officers and men well paid and provided for, they would be able to effect reductions in other departments of the navy that few were now able to calculate. In conclusion, he would only add that if the House granted him the Committee, he would pledge himself to prove every word that he had uttered.

said, he did not rise to address the House at any length at so late a period in the evening, but in seconding the Motion he wished to say a word with regard to the reserved captains. When that body was established in 1851, the bargain was that they were to be placed in the same position as though they were actively engaged, with the one exception, namely, that they were only to be called on in cases of emergency; but in 1856 they were placed, by an Order in Council, in the position of retired officers. They had not, therefore, the position which they had a right to expect. That was a point which he felt ought to be strongly pressed on Her Majesty's Government. It was most important that, where the navy was underpaid, where every officer was underpaid, as compared with the French and Russian navies, the engagements entered into with them should be fulfilled. The whole expense of carrying the engagements with those officers out would be only £3,000 a year, and were they for that sum to break their engagements with those captains?

said, not only the members of the navy, but the country generally, must be thankful to the hon. Member for having brought the question before the House in the lucid and temperate manner in which he had done. It had been remarked on a former occasion by the right hon. Member for Portsmouth that the navy was remarkable for discontent—that, in fact, it was always grumbling. He did not mean to say there was no good reason for that observation. He had always understood from all naval men with whom he had had communication that dissatisfaction was generally felt in the navy, and only the day previous a gallant officer, who was by no means undistinguished, said that dissatisfaction was felt from the quarter-deck to the forecastle, and extended even to the galley. The causes of discontent might be classed under the heads of pay, promotion, and retirement. There was a deficiency under the first and last heads, and want of a well-regulated system with regard to the second. The English navy was the greatest and most gallant navy in the world, but it was the worst paid. A lieutenant in the French navy, on active service, received 19s. 6d. a day, including command money; a lieutenant in the English navy only 12s. a day, or 62 per cent less than the French lieutenant. A commander in the French navy in command, received 25s. 5d. a day; an English commander only 19s., or 34 per cent less than the French commander. An American captain received £875 a year; an English captain £766 10s., or more than £100 less. Was there, in that, no cause for discontent? In the French navy officers were never put on half-pay until they were sixty years old, and then they retired on a handsome allowance. Our officers dreaded half-pay with its miserable emolument, insufficient to enable them to live as befitted their rank. The half-pay of an American captain was £612, that of an English captain £264 12s. 6d., or less than half. Look, then, at the inequalities in the scale of pay of different ranks in the British service. A post captain of forty years' service received 10s. 6d. a day, but the Burgeon acting in the ship under his command, although he had not served half the time, received 18s. a day. The first lieutenant of a 50 gunship when on full pay received 11s. per day, while the half-pay of the surgeon of the same ship would be 13s. 6d. per day. That scale of payment was fixed fifty years ago; and as the expense of living had since then greatly increased, the allowances to officers ought to be proportionately augmented. The Committee was likely to put an end to such inequalities as these, which gave great dissatisfaction and made officers dread a shore life. Again, captains on the reserved list bad been led to expect increase of rank concurrently with increased pay, and with subsequent advantages, such as Greenwich Hospital, &c. When these officers complained to the Admiralty, they found there was no redress, "as there was no responsibility." As an instance of an officer who had been hardly dealt with under that regulation, he would refer to the case of Captain Spencer Smythe, who had served as gallantly as any officer in the navy, and one to whom they actually owed the victory of Navarino. That officer was now on the reserved list, receiving the miserable pittance of 6d. a day above the senior commander. That gallant officer had been first lieutenant of the Dartmouth at Navarino. Before the action he gave Sir Edward Codrington a plan of the Ottoman fleet, and from that plan the allied squadron took up the position in which the battle was fought. Being one of the number selected for promotion. Captain Smythe was named commander of the Philomel,vice Viscount Ingestre, but before the commission reached Malta Captain Keith had been promoted, and the commission intended for Captain Smythe was returned to the Admiralty, and the half-pay blank, intended for another officer, was filled up with his name. Sir Edward Codrington said that the mistake of the Admiralty would be rectified. Sir Edward spoke of him in the most flattering terms at Malta for the plan he had furnished, and the Lord High Admiral noted him for promotion, but the frequent changes in the Admiralty frustrated all these hopes. Had that officer's original commission been acted on he would have received those emoluments to which his merits so signally entitled him. Many others were in similar position. The fact was that these gentlemen had been led astray. The brevet system was abandoned, and in lieu of it, and as a reward for past services, a certain number were appointed to the reserved list of captains. But they were never told they were to be deprived of rank and pay, or Greenwich out-pensions, or retiring allowances, as a proof it was not so intended. Three Greenwich out-pensions were granted to them; but they were afterwards told they were not entitled by being on the reserved list. Still more recently they were told that a recent regulation made by the Admiralty they were precluded from receiving these out-pensions. Many of these officers were only sixty years of age, while some were only fifty, and was it to be supposed that men who felt themselves as efficient as younger officers would, for 6d. a day, give up all prospect of promotion and the rank to which they were entitled by seniority. The retired captains had memoralized the Admiralty ever since 1838, but they also felt that where there was no responsibility there was no redress. He believed that the noble Lord (Lord Clarence Paget) had formerly advocated the claims of the captains on the retired list; but since he had been in office he had been silent on the subject. The only means by which the natural discontent of these officers could be removed was by paying them on a reasonably liberal scale, and not after a rate inferior to that of all the other great naval Powers. Let the pay given by the greatest maritime Power in Europe be a pay, not to make officers discontented, but to make them satisfied to be in the service. Let promotion also be properly exercised according to a well regulated system, and not according to family connection or political favouritism; and when he mentioned political favouritism he alluded not merely to the present Board of Admiralty, but to all Boards of Admiralty. With regard to retirement, that, upon taking place after a certain age, should be accompanied by a liberal and adequate allowance, which would enable officers to live like gentlemen. He believed that, if the proposed Committee were granted, a zealous and contented navy would be the result.

said, that he would not be tempted to enter upon irrelevant topics. There would be ample opportunity before the Committee recently appointed to examine the subject of patronage, and he hoped that those hon. Members who had been so liberal in their assertions and accusations would go before that Committee, and show how far their accusations were true. In reference to the reserved captains harsh language had been used, and the House had been told that those parties had been cheated. Now, the House would recollect that that list was intended to meet the case of officers who had not the slightest chance of promotion, and if subsequently other officers had been introduced into it, that was never in contemplation at the early period of its formation. It was said that the contract had been broken. He wrote the contract, for the Minute was his, and the Order in Council was correctly formed upon the Minute. Something had been said about an after-thought, but he never had the slightest doubt about the construction of the Minute, and he wrote to some gentlemen, who had applied to him to be a witness in respect to their cases, stating that it was never intended to give them what they claimed, and the Admiralty came to the same decision on a perusal of the papers, and not upon his opinion at all. With regard to the Admirals on the reserved list, it was well known that great evils existed, which were corrected by the arrangement now so much complained of. The benefit to the public was, that now there were really active Admirals on the list. The Admirals who were placed on the retired list were not in the slightest degree injured, for, though they were nominally on the active list before, they were never employed, and before the alteration the list was in such a state that when he had to make his first appointment he had great difficulty in selecting an officer to take charge of the West India Station, and was obliged to send out an Admiral above seventy years after all. He believed that it would be found that from the alteration as great a benefit had accrued to the country with as little injury to individuals as had ever resulted from any arrangement made by the Admiralty. The noble Lord the Secretary to the Admiralty had been told to look to the interest of the navy alone. Now, he did not think that those who were responsible for the naval service had only and exclusively to look to the interest of the navy. They had also to consider to a certain extent the duties of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, and how far the country could bear the expense to be imposed. When the House was told that the families of officers were in distress, and that the price of provisions was high, it should be borne in mind that there were other parties whose families were in great distress in consequence of the high price of provisions, and if they gave to the one they took from the other. They must consider the taxpayers as well as the officers of the navy. His own impression was that the manner in which these cases were agitated in the House of Commons by no means tended to the benefit or discipline of the service.

observed, that a complaint is not uncommonly made that naval officers were given to a habit of complaining of this grievance; therefore, he was of opinion that it would be highly advantageous that an inquiry should be instituted with the justice or groundlessness of that feeling upon their part. He thanked the hon. Member for Portsmouth for the explicit manner in which he had brought the subject before the attention of the House, but as a Committee had been agreed to for an inquiry into the administration of the navy in all its departments, he could have wished that the subject now proposed had been merged in that inquiry, and the time of the House not occupied in its consideration on the present occasion. Convince both officers and seamen that they are not only your refuge in the hour of danger, but an object of your solicitude and care in time of peace, and you will have abundance of gallant fellows to man your ships. He must now challenge "the observation made by the hon. Baronet (Sir Francis Baring) that Admirals placed on the reserved list had no cause for complaint, they not having been employed entitling them to a place on the active list"—he considered, in many instances, their treatment had been most cruel and unjust; he boldly would say that his own wa3 a case in point, and that there were others who had been equally unfairly dealt with, but as he was not empowered to name any officer, he would throw himself upon the indulgence of the House whilst he replied to the challenge thrown out by the hon. Baronet. In the year 1823, when in command of a frigate on the Ionian station, in consequence of the barbarities perpetrated and injuries to commerce inflicted by piratical vessels and crews on the coast of Cuba, he had proceeded with orders from the naval Commander-in-Chief on that station to use all efforts for their extirpation, and in the execution of this service neither to set a value on his own life, his officers, or crew—he would not describe the barbarities to which he had adverted, the attrocities so committed in part partaking of indelicacy—under Providence he successfully fulfilled his orders; his superior officers viewed his conduct with approbation, and recommended him for admission as a Companion into the Order of the Bath; his health was so shattered in carrying out the orders with which he had been entrusted that he was necessitated to resign his ship by invaliding and return to England, and the recommendation for this distinction to his Sovereign up to this hour had never been carried out; every consecutive First Lord of the Admiralty, with the exception of the late King, Lord Ellen-borough, and Admiral Sir George Cock-burn, had rejected his fair appeals—although made in the first instance in the year 1827, and followed up by a minute of the Board of Admiralty in 1846. The reason assigned being that the number of companions were limited and that the number was complete. From the year 1823 to that of 1852 (when he was placed on the list of Reserved Admirals), he challenged a search into the Records of the Admiralty for abundant proof that no officer ever more persistently, zealously, and earnestly entreated for active employment in any description of command, and service, and upon any station. Repulse met him, and disappointment weighed heavily upon his heart, but his spirit remained unbroken—his official and personal applications to the right hon. Baronet, the Member for Portsmouth, were in vain, and he refused him employment; the same fate had awaited him upon the part of his successors at the Board, and he stood denied from the opportunity of earning for himself a distinguished name in his profession from the year 1823 up to the present hour. The late ex First Lord of the Admiralty with a cold-hearted indifference partaking of contempt, in regard to the service he had performed, declined to carry out the recommendation of the Board of Admiralty of 1846, with a poor excuse upon the plea he was ineligible for the Companionship of the Bath, his service not having been gazetted—at the period he performed that service it had not been the custom to gazette letters in time of peace; afterwards this became rescinded, and agreeably to the Statutes of the Order when first instituted in the year 1815 up to 1847, he having the decoration of a medal was entitled to the Order. In 1847 the statutes were amended making a gazette compulsory; but it was all to no purpose that he impressed this upon the late ex-First Lord of the Admiralty. After the insinuations made by the right hon. Baronet, the Member for Portsmouth, he asked the House if he had not made out a just cause and ground for complaint. He would only say in conclusion that it was a wise and just policy to treat officers with strict honour and justice, as it would ensure the devotion of their best energies to the service of their country.

explained, that he had not the intention of applying to the gallant officer one word that referred to any charge against him. All he said was that it was only the officers who had not served their time who were a whit the worse for the new arrangement.

said, he should have been glad if the Motion could have been avoided. But the dissatisfaction which prevailed among various classes of officers rendered it necessary that the subject should be thoroughly investigated. The scheme of retirement adopted last year by the Admiralty was of such diminutive proportions that but little advantage had been derived from it, though he owned that it had led to the promotion of some very able and deserving officers. A Royal Commission some years back pronounced the officers of the navy more inefficient than those of any other service, and he feared there was still too much truth in the statement. In several recent instances a disposition had been manifested by officers to retire from active service, and an unfortunate degree of apathy and indifference pervaded the body of naval officers. It would be necessary, also, for the Committee to inquire what constituted "sea-service," as it was sometimes interpreted in a manner that did great injustice to deserving officers. He acknowledged the desire which the right hon. Baronet the Member for Portsmouth had manifested when in office to treat naval officers with due consideration, but believed that the prospective advantages which officers on the retired list were led to expect had not been conferred on them. He should cordially support the Motion for a Committee.

Before I touch upon the subject of the Motion before the House, I must be allowed to express the deep regret with which I have heard the gallant Admiral, the Member for Christchurch (Admiral Walcott), led away for the moment by the warmth of his feelings, impute to me that while I held office [Admiral WALCOTT: Not at all] I treated him with neglect and contempt. [Admiral WALCOTT: So you did.] I can assure the gallant Admiral that I was never led for a single moment to regard his services and professional character with any feelings but those of sincere respect. The gallant Admiral, I am sorry to say, takes great offence with me, and this evening he has told the House very candidly the reason—namely, that I did not recommend him for the honour of a Companionship of the Bath. [Admiral WALCOTT: Not that you did not recommend, but that you did not follow out the recommendation.] The statement of the gallant Admiral is one which we should not expect to hear publicly made, and I am sure the House will feel that in justice to myself I ought to give some explanation. The gallant Admiral added, that not only did I refuse, but that I made the refusal with unkindness, and without a conciliatory word. All I can say is that if the gallant Admiral, when the warmth of his feelings has subsided, will only refer to the letters which I wrote, I am sure he will feel that I did convey the refusal, which I was sorry to be obliged to make, in the kindest and most conciliatory language which I could use. And the simple reason which occasioned the refusal was this—that his case did not come within the rules of the Order. I, therefore, had no option in the matter, and had no power to recommend. [Admiral WALCOTT: I think I have shown that it did come within the Order.] Having made this explanation I will turn for a few moments to the Motion of the hon. Member for Portsmouth. I feel some regret that the discussion should have turned so much on the particular case of the reserved captains. The right hon. Baronet, the Member for Portsmouth (Sir Francis Baring), told us that when he was First Lord he drew up the minute and originated the Order in Council referring to the reserved captains, and, that being the case, he knew better than any one what was the object of it. At the same time, I think a matter of this kind must be decided, not by the intention of the Minister, but by the wording of the Order itself. I have given some attention to the wording of that Order, and that being the case, it is only fair to repeat what I stated last year, that I think it sufficiently ambiguous to enable the Admiralty to shelter themselves under it; but that a strict and fair construction of it is in favour of the claim of those officers, and I am sorry the present Board do not seem disposed to take a generous view of their case. The Motion is very much the same in substance as one which I made last year. The hon. Member moves for a Committee; I moved for a Commission. I retain the opinion that some inquiry ought to be granted. I think it is a great evil, and I am sure my noble Friend, the Secretary to the Admiralty, will not deny that it is a great evil that officers of the British Navy should be discontented. I know not how far the noble Lord, the Secretary of the Admiralty thinks, as he once said, that naval officers always are discontented, and always are grumbling. I do not think that one of their characteristics, and I deem it a great national evil that any officer of the service should have any just cause of complaint. At the present moment we are particularly called upon to have regard to their claims, as the condition of the navy, in respect to discipline, is not what it ought to be. I shall probably revert on a future occasion to that subject; but of this I am satisfied—that, before we can hope to have the discipline of the navy in a satisfactory state, we must take care that the officers are justly dealt with, and that they have good grounds to be content with their position. There are two reasons why inquiry is more called for now even than when I moved for a Commission last year. The present Board of Admiralty have taken into their consideration much that was said last year with regard to the unsatisfactory pay of the navy, and especially the pay of the captains. I stated last year some painful cases which had come under my own observation, where captains had been compelled to refuse command of ships through being unable to afford to accept them. The Board of Admiralty have since drawn up a new scale of pay, and unfortunately the result is that it gives a small boon to some classes, while it leaves other classes worse off than they were. I think that is an additional ground for inquiry. The other reason is of the same nature. The present Board have adopted a new system of promotions and retirements, and that has failed likewise to give satisfaction to the service. I am sure the Board of Admiralty can have no wish to have these feelings of dissatisfaction existing, and we cannot have a stronger proof that the condition of the navy is not what it ought to be than when an officer in the position of the lion, and gallant Member for Devon-port (Sir Michael Seymour), fresh from active service, comes forward to support the statement of the hon. Member for Portsmouth, and to pledge his important opinion in favour of inquiry. I hope the Government will take these facts into their serious consideration. All that is asked is to extend to the navy the same description of inquiry which has twice been given within the last few years to the army. If the causes of dissatisfaction on the part of naval officers are groundless, the Admiralty will be fortified with arguments for resisting future Motions which they do not now possess. If, on the other hand, the naval officers can establish the justice of their demands the national feeling will surely require that those demands should be conceded.

I can quite understand and appreciate the hon. and gallant Member for Portsmouth, and the hon. and gallant Member for Devon-port advocating the claims of every class in the navy. I can quite understand the sympathy of other hon. Members when they hear appeals on behalf of the noble and gallant service. But that a Minister who has known the difficulties under which the Admiralty labour with the very limited means at their disposal—who knows that if these things are taken into consideration in the way he is encouraging the House to take them into their consideration, the Marines and the Army cannot be left out—who is perfectly aware that it is impossible to give that higher pay which I, as a naval man, must feel they ought to receive—who has had an opportunity, when First Lord of the Admiralty, to have rectified what was wrong—when such a man comes down day after day to foment discontent in the navy—[Cries of "No, no!"]—I say discontent in every class in the service, from the officers to the ships' crews—it is a lamentable fact indeed. The present Board of Admiralty has been constantly occupied in endeavouring to improve the pay of every class in the navy. What have we done? I do not blame my hon. Friend, because he has not studied what has been done. But when he talks of giving command money to captains, and, in truth, reducing their pay instead of increasing it, if he had read carefully the papers on the table he could not have fallen into that mistake. Officers in command of line-of-battle ships will receive an average of about £100 more pay than they do at present; officers in command of large frigates will receive an average of £70 a year; while commanders and lieutenants will receive command pay, the former of 2s. 6d. a day, the latter 2s. I shall not ask the right hon. Baronet opposite (Sir John Pakington) to look at the papers, because I fear his object is to show that we are endeavouring to damage the navy rather than doing what we can to improve the position of its officers.

Sir, I emphatically deny that I am actuated by any such motives as those which the noble Lord has imputed to me. The noble Lord is not entitled to impute motives to any hon. Gentleman who may choose to address the House upon a subject of great public importance. I appeal to you, Sir, whether the imputation of motives is not disorderly?

It is not my intention to impute to the right hon. Baronet that he knowingly does injustice to the present Board of Admiralty, but I say that the necessary effect of his continual harangues about the wrongs of the navy, is to foment discontent in every rank of the service. Let me put a practical question to the House. The hon. and gallant Member for Portsmouth in his able speech touched upon the case of every class of officer in the navy. Here, then, you are asked to deal with between 5,000 and 6,000 commissioned officers, exclusive of warrant officers. Considering the view which the hon. and gallant Member takes of the pay of officers of the navy, he will, I think, admit that an average of £10 a year to each officer would be but a paltry addition to their pay; yet that addition would at once amount to an increase of £50,000 or £60,000 a year in our Estimates. Is the House prepared to sanction so considerable an addition to the Estimates for the navy? Last year we increased the retired pay of almost all classes in the navy; we gave increased pay to masters, paymasters, and engineers; we gave pensions to the widows of warrant officers amounting in all to a permanent increase in the Voves of upwards of £40,000 a year; and we endeavoured in various other ways to benefit the service. I am willing to admit that we have not done all I could wish, but that is because the Admiralty, with all its desire to improve the position of every branch of the service, has been obliged on the ground of expense to stay its hand. The present Motion may be divided into two parts. One has reference to the question of promotion. The hon. and gallant Member for Portsmouth will have an opportunity of bringing the subject of promotion before a Committee which, I hope, will be nominated in a few days. It is unnecessary, therefore, to dwell upon that point on the present occasion, further than to invite the hon. Baronet to defer that portion of his Motion to the consideration of the proposed Committee on the Administration of the Navy. The other part of the Motion deals with the position of the several classes of officers in the navy. I want the House to consider, if we are to appoint a Committee to hear pathetic stories about the wrongs of individuals—wrongs which, no doubt, exist in the navy as in other services—and to listen to the tale of every unfortunate officer in the navy, what will be the result. The result will inevitably be that the Committee will make a report recommending a considerable increase of pay throughout the navy. Is the House prepared for that? As a naval officer I could not be expected to offer much opposition to it; but I must say, occupying the position which I do, that I would hesitate before urging such a recommendation upon the House. I have been told that I should not consider myself as the Chancellor of the Exchequer of the Navy; but what would the House say to me if I did not look to the general interests of the country, instead of simply endeavouring to improve the position of my brother officers, without reference to the pockets of the taxpayers. Day by day I am obliged to decline the memorials and appeals of officers for increase of pay. Some remarks were made by an hon. Gentleman opposite with respect to political influence. I challenge the hon. Gentleman to name a case in which an officer has been promoted through political influence since the Duke of Somerset became First Lord of the Admiralty.

I did not apply that remark exclusively to the present Board of Admiralty. I referred to all preceding Boards quite as much as to the present.

I accept the retraction of the hon. Gentleman.

No, I retract nothing; I merely explain.

I am glad, at all events, that the hon. Gentleman did not apply his observation particularly to the present Board of Admiralty, because I know that political influence has really nothing to do with promotion in the navy. The hour is so late that I shall not discuss all the complaints which were made by the hon. and gallant Member for Portsmouth. I shall simply say that in what we have done during the last two years, in the addition we have made to the pay of several classes of officers, and in our proposal to give command pay to commanders and lieutenants, we have given an earnest of our desire to improve the position of every branch of the service. Of course, as may be supposed, I feel a deep interest in the welfare of naval officers; but I must confess that I think many of the complaints we hear are unreasonable. If you appoint a Committee to examine into those complaints great demands will be made upon you. The appointment of a Committee will be an intimation to every officer to bring forward his claims, and the result will be the presentation of a report which it will be impossible to carry into effect. The recommendations of the Committee will be rejected, and you will break the hearts of many officers. Such are the reasons which induce me to entreat the House not to agree to the Motion now before us.

said, that the very excited speech which the House had just heard from his noble Friend rendered it necessary that some remarks should be made upon it. He had listened with the greatest surprise to the declaration made by his noble Friend of his views on the subject of Ministerial or rather ex-Ministerial responsibility. According to that declaration it would seem that any hon. Gentleman who had ever been in office was bound in all time coming to hold his tongue whenever any question was brought before the House affecting the particular department with which he had been connected. Remembering what the conduct and language of his noble Friend had been before he entered upon office, he could only hope that his noble Friend would not act in his own case upon the principles which he had laid down to-night. When his noble Friend was out of office there was no man more outspoken or more severe in his comments upon the management of the Admiralty, and he trusted the House was not to understand that if ever his noble Friend should chance to be out of office his tongue was to be hermetically sealed. His noble Friend had asked the House whether it was prepared to sanction on increased expenditure of £50,000 or £60,000 a year upon the navy? He thought that if the House appointed a Committee of Inquiry, and if that Committee found that injustice was to be done to the officers of the navy, the House would not hesitate to rectify that injustice, even though it were to cost £50,000 or £60,000 a-year. The noble Lord had himself acknowledged that the officers of the navy were underpaid, and that their position was in many respects undeserved.

I said nothing about their position. I simply expressed the opinion that they were underpaid.

said, he would accept the language of his noble Friend that the officers of the navy were underpaid. When the Secretary of the Admiralty made a statement of that kind he had no right to resist inquiry. His noble Friend might, without inconsistency, have risen in his place, and declaring upon his responsibility as a naval officer, and as the organ of the Admiralty in that House, that the officers of the navy were not underpaid, and that their claims were not well founded, have called upon the House to reject the Motion of the hon. and gallant Member for Portsmouth; but since he had chosen, as a naval officer and as a responsible member of the Government, to admit all that had been said in favour of that Motion, he had no right to throw any obstacle in the way of its adoption.

Sir, the noble Lord has totally misrepresented the argument of my noble Friend. What my noble Friend said was, that he was sorry to see a distinguished Member of this House, like the right hon. Baronet opposite, who had occupied the responsible situation of First Lord of the Admiralty—not having, when in office, carried into operation the opinions he now proclaims—waiting till he was out of office in order to express them strongly, and knowing, as he must do, that unless those opinions were shared by those who have the power to carry them out, he was running the risk of creating dissatisfaction in the service, which it was desirable to avoid. My noble Friend stated that in his opinion the officers of the navy were underpaid. I should be disposed to generalize that assertion, and I should not be going too far if I were to say that all the services of the country were underpaid. I am convinced that if you were to measure simply the rewards alloted in this country to public servants by the services performed and the merits of the officers, you might go through the army and navy, and the civil service, and you would find that all had claims to an increase of pay. You might appoint a Committee and go through all the establishments of the country to see whether each officer and each clerk received as much as the generosity of the country would be disposed to allow him if the funds would permit it; the result would be a great increase in the expenditure of the country in every department. This Motion is confined to the navy, but you could not confine the principle to that service only. You must extend it to the army, and if you extend it to the army you must in justice extend it to the civil service. I would, therefore, warn the House against going blindfold into an inquiry of which they cannot foresee the consequences.

said, he wished to correct a misapprehension of his noble Friend the Secretary for the Admiralty. What he (Sir James Elphinstone) said was that it was the duty of the Admiralty to come to the House and tell them what was required to render the navy efficient, and that it was the duty of the Chancellor of the Exchequer to find the money that was necessary. He would only further remark that the pay of a tide-waiter was just the same as that of a commander of the navy.