said, he would beg to ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, If the Government intend to introduce this Session any Bill relating to the Ecclesiastical Commission?

, in reply, said he had communicated with the Ecclesiastical Commissioners on the subject of the Report of the Select Committee, and, with reference to those Resolutions of the Committee which related to matters of administration that did not necessarily involve a change in the law, the Report of the Ecclesiastical Commissioners was before the House. With regard to those Resolutions which did involve the necessity of a change in the law, the main Question, he believed, was the constitution of the Commission. Now, he was willing to admit, and he apprehended his hon. Friend would agree with him, that the constitution of the Commission was susceptible of improvement. At the same time, he was bound to say that, after a careful consideration, the recommendations of the Committee did not appear to him to suggest the best solution of that Question, or the best course to be taken with a view to the improvement of the constitution of the Commission. At present, therefore, he was not prepared to give notice of any Bill on the subject, but he hoped to be able to do so at a future time, though he could not say that it would be within the present Session. The subject was one of great difficulty, and required very careful consideration.

said, he wished to ask the Chief Secretary for Ireland, When the Return relative to Religious Instruction in National Schools in Ireland, ordered last Session, and again early this Session, will be laid upon the table?

said, in reply, that the Returns for which the hon. Gentleman asked were very voluminous. They were received at the Castle on Saturday last, and would, he hoped, be presented in a few days.

said, he rose to ask the Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, Whether any information has been received at the Foreign Office that Captain Gordon, of the Royal Engineers, who was in command of Chinese troops in the service of the Futai of Shanghai, has condoned the treachery of the Futai in putting to death the Taeping Princes at Soochow and plundering the city, and against which Captain Gordon himself, Major General Brown (commanding the British troops in China), and all the European Consuls at Shanghai had published an indignant protest; whether he has consented to continue in the service of the Futai notwithstanding these indignant protests?

said, he must beg to state that, as far as he was aware, Captain Gordon was not in the service of the Futai but of the Chinese Government. He understood that he was continuing in command of the troops which he had disciplined. He was not quite aware of his reasons for that, but he understood that his motive was that he was afraid that if these troops were disbanded great danger might ensue to the settlement of Shanghai.

said, he wished to know, whether the Government have received any information as to Captain Gordon having been engaged in the siege of a Chinese town?

replied, that he was not aware of that fact, but he might add that accounts had been received that morning that Her Majesty's Minister at Pekin had made representations to the Chinese Government on the subject.

said, he wished to ask the President of the Poor Law Board, Whether his attention has been directed to the decision in the Common Pleas on the 5th of February to the effect, "that lands charged with 'Corn Rents payable free of Rates' should be assessed at the full annual value, without making any deduction for the Corn Rent charge;" whether the Board accept that decision as declaratory of the law, and will communicate it to such parishes as have asked for information?

said, in reply, that his attention had been directed to the decision in question, and, as a matter of course, the Poor Law Board had accepted it as declaratory of the law. If any parish or union, under entirely similar circumstances, applied to the Poor Law Board, they would be informed that that was the law as it stood on that point.

said, he would beg to ask the First Lord of the Treasury, Whether there exists any extradition Treaty between Austria and Russia; whether his attention has been called to an Order published by General Mensdorf, dated Lemberg, March 16, 1864, and to a similar Order published by General Meckl, dated Cracow, March 12, 1864, ordering all Polish Refugees to be immediately sent back across the frontier; and whether Her Majesty's Ambassador at Vienna has been or will be instructed to use the friendly influence of this country, in order to put a stop to such inhuman practices?

Sir, we are not aware of any treaty between Austria and Russia for the surrender of criminals. There may be some military arrangement about deserters that we do not know of. But when our Ambassador at Vienna reported to us that the state of siege and martial law had been proclaimed in Galicia, we were informed that any Russian subjects who were in Galicia and were provided with proper passports, were to be allowed to stay there if they showed that it was necessary for their private affairs that they should do so; and those who had not done this were to be required to go to some other part of the Austrian dominions. But it did not appear by that edict that there was to be any surrender of such persons to the Russian Government.

said, he would beg to ask the noble Lord, whether he will lay on the table the Despatches of Lord Bloomfield on the subject, including his Despatch enclosing the proclamation of General Meckl?

I will look into the Despatches, and see whether there is anything which, consistently with the public service, can be laid on the table. If so, it will be laid before the House.

said, he wished to ask the Secretary to the Admiralty, To lay on the table of the House a Copy of a Letter from Sir Richard Bromley, dated 9th April, and a Letter from the Governor of Greenwich Hospital, dated 11th April, on the proposed reforms at Greenwich Hospital. He also wished to know, when Sir Richard Bromley's Report on Greenwich Hospital will be produced?

was understood to state that the first Report of Sir Richard Bromley on the proposed reforms at Greenwich Hospital, together with a letter from the Governor of Greenwich Hospital, were laid on the table of the House, but he did not think it advisable to lay the further communication received from Sir Richard Bromley on the subject upon the table, as it was only a rejoinder to the Report of the Commissioners.

said, he wished to ask the noble Lord the Secretary to the Admiralty, Whether, after the papers that have been laid upon the table, it is the intention of the Admiralty to persevere, and ask the House for a Vote of money towards the construction of the proposed docks at Malta, and, if so, when the Vote will come on?

said, it was intended to ask for the Vote. He expected to bring the Vote on on Thursday next, but if not, early the following week. He would give notice when the Vote would come on.

said, he would beg to ask Mr. Chancellor of the Exchequer, What are his intentions with reference to the Duty on low-priced Corn? It was a matter of great importance, and it would be satisfactory to the trade to know exactly what the right hon. Gentleman intends doing.

stated, in reply, that he did not intend to propose to bring within the range of the foreign duty any grain not subject to duty before. He took that opportunity of giving notice that he proposed on Thursday, in Committee of Ways and Means, to move the Resolution relating to Fire Insurances.

said, he wished to ask a Question, which, at the interposition of the noble Lord at the head of the Government, he had postponed on Friday evening. He wished to know from the Attorney General, Whether he still considers a certain Report alleged to be signed by Mr. Mallory, on behalf of the Confederate Government, as a document of a character entirely unquestionable, as he on a former occasion had described it? He also wished to know whether the Government will lay on the table the Despatch of Mr. Seward with reference to that document?

said, he had to thank the noble Lord for giving him the opportunity of assuring the House that when he referred to that document on a former occasion, and used the word "unquestionable," his meaning was simply this—that never having heard any suggestion that the document was not what it professed to be, and knowing that it had been placed in the hands of Lord Lyons by Mr. Seward, and sent on that authority by Lord Lyons to Her Majesty's Government, and that it had been referred to, as if substantially trustworthy, in a communication by Mr. Adams to Earl Russell; being ignorant also of the peculiar form in which such documents are presented to the Confederate Congress; and also not being aware at the time that an opinion had been expressed by any person throwing doubt on the genuineness of the document, he, in his simplicity, did assume that the document was what it purported to be. Had it been so, emanating from the Confederate Government, it would undoubtedly have been as he had represented it, of unquestionable authority. His impression was, that the letter of Mr. Adams should be produced. [Mr. LAYARD: No, no; the despatch of Lord Lyons.] He meant, that the despatch of Lord Lyons should be produced.

Sir, I have humbly to beg the House to interrupt the course of their proceedings for a few minutes this evening in order to allow me to make a personal explanation upon a matter which I little thought would have called for explanation at my hands. In order to make my meaning plain the shortest possible course is, perhaps, to read to the House a Minute of the Privy Council passed in January, 1861; because I shall have constantly to refer to that Minute in what I have to say, and I think it will facilitate the understanding of the House if I read it to them at once and without comment. The Minute is as follows:—

"Their Lordships, having considered the instructions issued from time to time to Her Majesty's Inspectors of Schools for the preparation of their annual Reports, find the sum of those instructions to be that the Inspectors must confine themselves to the state of the schools under their inspection and to practical suggestions for their improvement. If any Report, in the judgment of their Lordships, does not conform to this standard, it is to be returned to the Inspector for revision; and if, on its being again received from him, it appears to be open to the same objection, it is to be put aside as a document not proper to be printed at the public expense."

That was the Minute of January, 1861. Last year the hon. Member for Bradford (Mr. W. B. Forster) called my attention to this Minute, and asked a question concerning it. I then explained very fully to the House the nature and object of the Minute; and it was commented upon by the noble Lord the Member for Stamford (Lord Robert Cecil) in the course of the debate. On Tuesday last the noble Lord gave a Notice which I will read to the House—

"That in the opinion of this House, the mutilation of the Reports of Her Majesty's Inspectors of Schools, and the exclusion from them of statements and opinions adverse to the educational views entertained by the Committee of Council, while matters favourable to them is admitted, are violations of the understanding under which the appointment of the Inspectors was originally sanctioned by Parliament, and tend entirely to destroy the value of their Reports."

The noble Lord moved that Resolution on Tuesday last. The case of the noble Lord was a direct charge against myself personally, that in my official capacity as Vice President of the Council I had struck out passages from the Inspectors' Reports which were unfavourable to the Office, and he gave several instances of the kind of things I had struck out. A part of the noble Lord's case struck me at the time as a strange one. The noble Lord asked the House to believe him without asking him for proofs, but he said he could give proof, if challenged to do so, that the things cut out of the Reports were of that character. I did not know in the least to what the noble Lord referred in these statements, but I was anxious that the noble Lord should have the opportunity of giving the proof which he expressed himself ready to give if he were challenged to do so; and therefore when it came to my turn on behalf of the Government to address the House, I took the only way I considered I could take in order to induce the noble Lord to produce that evidence, by denying in the most emphatic manner the assertions he had made on the faith of the evidence he said he could produce. I say there are only two ways in which it was possible for the Vice President of the Committee of Council to strike out passages of the Reports of Inspectors—the one would be, in direct violation of the Minute I have just read to the House, by the simple process of drawing his pen through them, and excluding them from the Report to be printed; the other would be, under the Minute I have read to the House, by sending back the Reports to the Inspectors with passages marked on them, so that they would very well understand if they did not amend these passages the Report would be laid aside as unfit for being printed. There are only those two ways of doing what the noble Lord seems to think we have done. One would have been in accordance with the Minute, and the other in violation of it. I denied them both. I denied that I struck passages out of those Reports, and I made use of this language, which clearly points to the other case—that is, of sending them back with passages marked—I said that the Department of Education does not point out any passages to which they object, but merely lays down a rule or principle upon which the Inspectors are to proceed, and leaves them to apply that rule or principle to their own Reports. Therefore, I think the House will agree with me that no contradiction could be more complete than that which I gave to the noble Lord's statement. And further, I gave that contradiction under as weighty sanction as man could speak under. I spoke as a Member of the House of Commons addressing this honourable House, I spoke as the official representative of a Department of the Government, and speaking on the part of that Government I spoke under a sanction fully as solemn as any oath which can be administered in a court of justice. The noble Lord had the privilege of a reply, and I did expect that in that reply the noble Lord would have produced the evidence which he said, if challenged, he was ready to produce. The noble Lord did not avail himself of the privilege of reply, and the House went to a division without any evidence whatever being given, having on the one side the assertions of the noble Lord, and his further assertion that he had evidence which he could produce, but which he did not produce, and on the other side my solemn and explicit denial. The House was pleased to vote by implication—not in very words, but by implication—that the Department of Education had mutilated these Reports, and had struck out passages from them hostile to their views, and therefore was open to censure. That, Sir, is a brief history of the proceedings of Tuesday night as far as relates to this Resolution. Now, Sir, under these circumstances it appeared to me that the course which I ought to adopt was an exceedingly simple one. The House having heard that declaration from me under the circumstances I have described, was pleased to resolve in flat contradiction to it. If the House had simply declared a want of confidence in me, I should of course have been bound at once to resign my office; but when the House did that which implied so much more than a mere want of confidence in my ability or fitness for office, it seemed to give me still less choice, and I felt it to be my duty at once to resign my office, and to bow to the decision of the House, and I have done so accordingly. But I beg the House to allow me, with all respect, to say that, while I fully admit their jurisdiction over all official persons, and their power to displace them from office, I would appeal to their calmer judgment, and request them to consider a little more the circumstances of the cage. I have something more to say to which I earnestly beg the attention of the House. I think if I were acting in a technical spirit, I might leave the matter here, as it does appear to me that —doubtless through inadvertence or misapprehension—the question coming suddenly before the House, was not fully argued, and that perhaps I had resented an attack upon myself with undue warmth; that for these and other reasons, it may be, the thing had been inconsiderately done. But I think it is only due to the House that I should not content myself with standing on a defensive or negative position, but that I ought to explain the whole matter, and what I believe to be the real meaning of the noble Lord's Resolution. The noble Lord let fall in the course of his speech, that the information which he had received was information which he had received from subordinates in my Office. Of course, if so, it was given by them in violation of their duty and fidelity to the Office. That fact was alleged by the noble Lord as a reason why he could not in the first instance produce the evidence. Now, supposing that the proof of which the noble Lord spoke had been produced, what would it have been? I think I am enabled to answer that question, and as I wish to make a full and fair disclosure, I will tell the House what I know. I was informed —and indeed my own eyes would have informed me were they able to inform me of anything occurring at any distance —I was informed, that during the course of the debate, certain gentlemen were engaged in handing about papers to be circulated among hon. Members. I have been since informed of the nature of those papers. I am informed—and the noble Lord can set me right if I am in error— that they consisted of documents purporting to be Reports, or copies of Reports, of certain Inspectors of the Privy Council, with marks placed against particular passages or sentences. Now, of course, I can easily understand, and I do not intend to blink the question, that the inference which it was intended should be drawn, and which must have been drawn, was that, while I in my place was declaring that the Privy Council always avoided marking passages in Reports to which they objected, here were instances where the Department had done so, and I was, therefore, contradicted by documents which appeared to be decisive. Sir, it is very difficult for a man to defend himself against evidence which he has never seen or heard of before an assembly the great mass of which had never seen or heard of it either. I would also say that probably there is no public Department of the country which may not be overthrown or discredited if its subordinate officials are base enough to communicate confidential documents, and if those documents are used not openly and in the face of day, are not placed before the official heads of that Department to explain them, but are used in a manner which gives them no opportunity of placing the true construction upon them. If the proofs to which the noble Lord, I presume, referred—if they had been placed before me—I should have been enabled to tell the House that the marks upon those documents ought never to have been placed there, and were not placed there with the knowledge of the heads of the Department. They were not placed there for the purpose of influencing—whatever they might have done—the Inspectors as to what passages should be omitted from their Reports; but they were placed there through a practice which ought to have been discontinued after the Minute of 1861 by a clerk in the Office whose business it was to read the Reports in order to call the attention of the Secretary to any particular passage in them which he judged to require consideration. It may not make much difference as to the impression produced upon the minds of the Inspectors, but it would have made all the difference in the world in the impression of the House or of those Members who saw these documents as to my veracity upon the subject of which I was speaking. I will now just state what has been my practice and the practice of the Office as to these Reports, and then I will conclude my remarks with thanks to the House for its kind indulgence. The fact is this—my predecessor in office, the right hon. Member for North Staffordshire (Mr. Adderley), got into some kind of trouble with the Inspectors by his endeavours to abridge or consolidate the Reports, using their own words, or to digest them under heads. He gave up that plan and substituted another. He did exactly that which the noble Lord has accused me of doing. He did cut out passages directly with his own hands from the Reports of the Inspectors, and reduced them to the formal shape which he thought proper. That was the practice of the right hon. Gentleman. Let the House clearly understand that I am not blaming him for it. I maintain that if he was to keep order and discipline in his Office it was his undoubted right and duty to exercise some control over these Reports, and I think he had a right, if so advised, to exercise that control in the manner that he did by striking out passages with his own hand. While this was the practice of the Office, it was delegated to a clerk to read the Reports, and he was in the habit of making marks against passages which appeared to him to require consideration, and then they were transmitted to the right hon. Gentleman, who dealt with them in the manner I have described. When I came into office, without at all questioning the right of the right hon. Gentleman to do what he had done, I declined to follow his example; for I was of opinion, and am so still, that the practice of striking out passages by the superiors of the Office was one very inconvenient and exposed to great drawbacks. It is very inconvenient, because the Inspectors may declare that the passages so struck out affect the meaning of other passages, and it is also inconvenient because it involves the head of the Department in what I should at all times deprecate—an angry controversy with his subordinates. Therefore, I did not act upon the principle of the right hon. Gentleman; and I can say with perfect truth that, having taxed my memory, and that of those with whom I have acted, and having searched the records of the Office, I have never, in any instance, struck out any passage from an Inspector's Report. There was a Report printed, as I mentioned the other night, which Report appeared to me to be a libel upon the Protestant religion, and calculated to stir up controversy between Her Majesty's Roman Catholic and Protestant subjects. My attention was called to the Report by an hon. Member of this House, and I felt it to be my duty to take some step to prevent such a scandal. After consultation with Lord Granville, and after the best consideration we could give, we issued the Minute which I have read to the House. The policy, principle, and nature of the Minute was this—that the Inspectors should be their own censors—that we should in no case point out what we deemed objectionable in their Reports, but that the Inspectors should be bound to make their Reports conform to the Minute of Council. We foresaw the difficulty that has arisen— if the Committee of the Council should commit itself to striking out passages, with whatever care or impartiality, they could not escape the imputation of striking out what was unfavourable and leaving in what was favourable. We foresaw it, and to avoid it we made this Minute. The system went on for two years, and I heard nothing more of it except that a Report was now and then brought before me by my private Secretary for my consideration. But on the 8th February, 1862, my private Secretary brought me a Report of one of our Inspectors which had been sent back for revision, accompanied by a letter which came into my hands, in which the Inspector said he had perused all the passages marked, and could find nothing in them that could be objected to. I was utterly astonished. I called for the Report, and then I found that the practice which had existed in the time of my predecessor in the Office, the right hon. Gentleman the Member for North Staffordshire (Mr. Adderley)—the practice of marking these Reports by the clerk —had most improperly been continued after the new Minute had come into effect. The House will probably ask me how I could have carried on this Minute for two years and not have been aware that these Reports were thus marked with marginal notes. The answer to that question is a very simple one. I am unable to read these Reports in manuscript—they are read to me by my private Secretary; and the consequence is that I never saw one of these marks, and was not aware that anything was written on the margin until my attention was drawn to the fact by the letter from this Inspector which was brought to me. I then took immediate steps to put a stop to the practice. I gave orders that this kind of thing should never be done again, and pointed out that it was contrary to the whole intention and spirit of the Minute, that it entirely counteracted the object we had in view, and would expose us to all kinds of difficulties. In 863, the same Inspector unfortunately had his Report returned to him, and he wrote back to ask that the passages to which the Committee of Council objected should be marked. I desired a letter to be written in answer to him to say that the Committee of Council could not undertake to mark any passages, that to do so would be contrary to the spirit of the Minute, and that he must himself discover, as well as he could, what there was in them that militated against the Minute under which the Report ought to have been framed. And this was my practice in the matter. It was on the strength of these facts that I made the statement I did make in answer to the noble Lord, and I can only reiterate that what I said then was entirely true to the best of my knowledge and belief. One more thing I have to say, and that is, that my noble Friend and myself had received Reports—three of them, I remember—from very important and influential Inspectors, in which they I spoke in terms of high commendation of I the changes introduced under the name of I "the Revised Code." Those passages were not of such a nature as would have justified us in sending back the Report, as they did not appear to us to violate the Minute that we had made. But we were very anxious that they should not appear, and we requested these gentlemen privately, not officially, to be good enough to expunge these passages from their Reports. All this I should have stated before, had these documents been brought before us. One word in justice to the noble Lord the Member for Stamford (Lord Robert Cecil). I do not know whether he circulated these documents, but I have no reason to doubt that whoever circulated them believed that these marks were impressed upon them by the orders of the heads of the Office of the Privy Council. I do not at all, therefore, say that they were conscious of the mischief they were doing. I only wish to point out the danger of departing from the ordinary principle of justice meted out to the poorest man in this country—that of never condemning him, more especially in the crushing manner in which I have been condemned, without at least giving him the opportunity of commenting upon the evidence on which the charge against him is based. Sir, I have little more to say. If there was any Gentleman who was anxious to drive me from the office I have held under Her Majesty's Government, his wishes are now fully gratified. I have disentangled this personal question, upon which my honour and much of the happiness of my future life depend, from any question of office. There is nothing now to be gained from any party or personal attack, and no one has now anything to gain by bolstering me up if I am wrong, or persecuting me if I am right. I beg the House, therefore, to take what I have said into their favourable consideration, and to weigh carefully the statement I have made to them. If it appears to them to be full and satisfactory—if it appears to them to bear upon it the evidence of truth—I shall be well satisfied. If it does not appear to them to bear that evidence, or if they think that any further statement or explanation is necessary, I entreat them to use in their wisdom those powers of inquiry with which they are vested, and to sift to the utmost every word I have uttered. Let them ransack our records, let them examine our clerks and secretary, let them examine me or any one else they please connected with the Office. If, on the other hand, they are satisfied that the statement I make is true and honest, then I ask them to do me justice.

Sir, I can only begin by expressing my regret that the right hon. Gentleman should have taken the Resolution which I offered to the House and which was accepted by the House last Tuesday as directed personally against himself. The terms of the Resolution were directed against the Committee of Council. It was the practice of the Committee of Council which I desired to censure; and I did not venture to give any information, for I possessed none, as to whether it was the right hon. Gentleman or any other person who was guilty of the practice to which I referred. I think the House will have gathered from the statement of the right hon. Gentleman, that what I laid before them on Tuesday night was entirely supported by the facts. It was a fact that the Inspectors received back their Reports from the Committee of Council, in many cases with the passages; marked, indicating that they were thought objectionable; and it is the fact that whenever they declined to remove the passages so indicated their Reports were suppressed. The right hon. Gentleman has since informed us that that was done by a clerk in the office without his orders. But he must have been perfectly aware of this on Tuesday night. [Mr. LOWE: No.] Was he not? Then I can only regret that he was so little acquainted with the proceedings in his own office.

Of course I was aware that up to 1862 this had been done, because I did my best to stop it.

If the right hon. Gentleman had told us on Tuesday night that he was perfectly aware that in previous years the Reports of the Inspectors had been sent back marked in that fashion —that Reports had been rejected from which passages so marked had not been removed, but that the practice was stopped, and the marks had. not since been appended—if, I say, he had made that full and frank explanation, the result, both as regards himself and the House, I think, would have been very different. But he left us in absolute ignorance of the fact that there had been in the office any discussion with reference to the continued marking of these Reports. He did not inform us that the practice had ever obtained, or that he himself had ever taken any measures to stop it. The subject was first mooted at the beginning of last year. It originated, I believe, in a question put by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Droitwich. At that time several Reports were missing, and we had reason to know that they had been marked in this way and sent back to the Inspectors. The right hon. Gentleman has always steadily refused to give any explanation on the subject. He has been constantly asked to lay these Reports on the table, and to give some pledge that the practice should be put a stop to. That pledge, however, he always steadily refused to give, and he also declined to place these Reports on the table. I ask any hon. Member whether he would not have drawn from this refusal an inference that the practice which existed before January, 1862, was going on still, and that the same agency was in operation for preventing this House from obtaining true and pure information that had been in operation before that time. Sir, I have no wish to prolong an angry controversy; but I am bound to say, with reference to my non-production of evidence, that my evidence was not the paper which I held in my hand The evidence which I had to produce, and which I would have produced if challenged to do so, was not papers but men. I should have asked for a Committee, I should have produced witnesses before that Committee, and I should have shown that Reports had been sent back marked in the way which I mentioned. One point more. The right hon. Gentleman has spoken in bitter terms of subordinates of public offices who communicate what they think to be abuses in their departments to Members of this House. I am quite sure that the House will not endorse this censure. I do not believe that in the service of the Crown any loyalty is due to heads of departments as against the House of Commons. The heads of departments and those departments themselves are alike subject to our jurisdiction; and if persons employed there see what they deem to be abuses they do no wrong in laying them before the representatives of the people. I will end, if necessary, by moving the adjournment of the House, but I thought it due to myself, after the statement just addressed to the House, to say a few words on this subject. The reason why I referred to this evidence in terms which were purposely indistinct—and the hon. Member for Berkshire (Mr. Walter) took the same course—was because we were afraid of implicating these subordinates with their superiors, and because a recent instance led us to believe that the discipline of the Council Office was maintained with unusual rigour. On this ground it was mainly that I addressed the House. But I will only say now, that if the right hon. Gentleman had spoken the other night as fully and frankly as he has spoken tonight, I do not believe that the Motion would have been pressed to a division, or, if it had been, that the decision of the House would have been what it actually was. The hon. Member for Bradford (Mr. W. B. Foster) on Tuesday, challenged the right hon. Gentleman to contest our assertion by laying the impugned papers on the table, and that challenge was not accepted. Under those circumstances, I do not know what other course was open to us than to press the Motion to a division.

Sir, nothing can be more painful than the discussion which has just taken place. If there be one thing more painful than another to a generous mind, it must be to see an honourable, able, and upright man defending himself before an Assembly like this, against a condemnation which he considers to have been passed upon him, but which he knows to be unjust and unfounded. Sir, the noble Lord who has just sat down has said that if he had been aware on Tuesday night of what my right hon. Friend has now stated, the result would have been different; but let me ask the noble Lord whether it did not occur to him, that when one makes a charge against another it might be well to ascertain by Ml inquiry whether that charge was just and well-founded or not. The noble Lord stated, that as his remarks were made with respect to Reports sent back to Inspectors in 1862, he thought he had reason to conclude that the practice to which he objected was still continued. But the noble Lord having opportunities, which are well known to everybody, of ascertaining the real state of things from those who are concerned, I think it might have been as well if he had ascertained beforehand whether the practice which he called upon the House to condemn had or had not been continued since 1862. Having taken some part in the matter with respect to which my right hon. Friend has made his statement, I can only say that nothing could give more pain to myself and my Colleagues than losing the services of a man so eminently qualified to do good service to the public and his country, whether by the extensive range of his knowledge and the logical accuracy of his mind, or the soundness of his judgment and the uprightness of his character. I say it was a most painful thing to us to contemplate the loss of his services. When my right hon. Friend came to me immediately after the debate on Tuesday to state that he felt, after such a vote, he could not with honour to himself continue to hold the office which he then filled, I and my Colleagues—all of us—endeavoured to persuade him that that view was not a sound one. We said that it did not appear to us that the question at issue was one of veracity on his part; that it related rather to the practice of a department. We felt that it would not be becoming, and would not be advisable according to the practice of Parliament, to ask the House to rescind the vote which it had come to after considerable discusssion; but it was our intention to propose to the House, what my right hon. Friend has just asked, that a Committee should be appointed to ascertain and inquire what was the manner in which the business was executed in the department concerned. It seemed to us that my right hon. Friend should have waited the issue of that inquiry, and we were convinced from what we knew that the result would bear out the assertions which he has made. No one has a right to judge the feelings of another in respect of questions which he considers to affect his personal honour, and therefore, after many days of unsuccessful endeavours to persuade my right hon. Friend to abide by the investigation and decision of the Committee, I was yesterday under the painful necessity of accepting his decided and peremptory resignation. Sir, I am sure that the House, having heard the statement which my right hon. Friend has made, will be of opinion that the vote the other evening was a hasty vote, not sufficiently considered; but the decision having been come to, I do not think it would be respectful to the House to ask them to reverse that decision. I think, however, it would be quite consistent with Parliamentary practice, and with the honour and character of the House, that they should agree to appoint a Committee to ascertain whether the impressions under which the majority voted on the occasion are or are not well-founded according to the practice of the department. I, therefore, intend on Thursday next to move for such a Committee, and I am quite sure that the noble Lord the Member for Stamford, after what he has said, will be prepared to agree to it. It is not my wish now to advert to the other topics which my right hon. Friend has announced his intention of bringing under the notice of the House, because I believe it was understood that they should remain over for discussion till a future opportunity.

Sir, this is the first time that I recollect that a Ministerial explanation has led to a debate. It is extremely irregular, but I will put myself in order if necessary by making a Motion. [Cries of "Order!"] When an appeal has been made to the opinion of the House by a right hon. Gentleman on a matter affecting his personal honour, I do not see how hon. Members on this side can be silent. At least, I wish to express my own opinion, and I have risen to say, for myself and hon. Gentlemen around me, that we take the statement of the right hon. Gentleman, as far as his personal honour is concerned, as perfectly satisfactory, and we estimate that honour after his explanation to-night as inviolate. I may say, as I am on my legs, that I hope this will close the discussion on the subject. I do not think that the observations made by my noble Friend (Lord Robert Cecil) at all called for the remarks of the noble Lord who has just spoken. My noble Friend's conduct in the matter has been perfectly straightforward. Notice of the Motion was given last year, and when the notice appeared on the paper this year the Government must have been fully aware of it; but, for all that, I did not see those preparations made on that side of the House to support the right hon. Gentleman which I think his position in office and his eminent talents deserved. I have always opposed the right hon. Gentleman as to the principles on which his policy with regard to education has been carried on; but I have always borne, and I now bear, my testimony to his distinguished talent, the clearness of his intellect, and the vigour with which he has conducted the public business, and I only regret that so much talent has been lost to the public service, chiefly, as it appears to me, from the right hon. Gentleman in this, as in many other instances, not having been properly supported by his Colleagues.

I wish to point out to the House that there is no Question before it. An opportunity of making a personal explanation is granted by the courtesy of the House; but it is not usual that such a matter should be concluded by a Motion, and made the subject of a general debate. I think the House will now agree with me, that all those who can be said to be personally concerned in this discussion have been heard by the House. [Cries for "Forster!"]

Sir, as I must consider myself one of the Members who took a prominent part in the discussion of Tuesday evening, and as I have not yet been heard, I wish, in consequence of what has fallen from my right hon. Friend, to make a very few remarks. I merely rise to say that, after the explanation which my right hon. Friend the late Vice President of the Committee of Council has given, I am sure the House will not think it necessary to adopt the course proposed by the noble Lord at the head of the Government. My own opinion is that, after that explanation, no Committee is required for making further inquiry into the subject. For myself, I wish to state in a very few words the position in which I conceive myself to stand. The House will recollect that when my noble Friend the Member for Stamford brought forward this subject, I was the Member who seconded the Motion. I had, therefore, no opportunity of replying to the speech of my right hon. Friend, and certainly I was not prepared for that unqualified denial which he then gave to the statements of my noble Friend and myself. On hearing my right hon. Friend that night, I felt convinced that there must be a mistake, and that my right hon. Friend could not have been cognizant of the facts which it was in the power of my noble Friend and myself to prove. I had in my possession at the time when I was addressing the House documents purporting to be a copy of one of these Reports which had been marked in the manner described by my noble Friend; and, after the explicit denial of my right hon. Friend, I think it my duty to put him in possession of all the information which I had then in my power to give. I regret extremely that my right hon. Friend should have felt it necessary to adopt the course of resigning his office, because it appears to me that that which he considered as a vote of censure on himself rested on an allegation which was either false or true. If it were false, it was in his power to place my noble Friend and myself in a very awkward position by showing that we had no grounds for making the statements which we did. If, on the other hand, the allegations proved to be true, it was in my right hon. Friend's power to give such an explanation as he has now given, which would have satisfied the House that he was in no degree responsible for the occurrence. I will not delay the House longer, but will merely express my regret that the vote at which we arrived the other evening has had such a result.

I wish to make an explanation ["Order!"] with respect to the reasons which induced me, and, I think, forty or fifty other Gentlemen, to give the vote which we did the other night. ["Order!"] I wish to make this explanation in justice to the right hon. Gentleman also. I had no idea whatever that the Question under discussion was one affecting the personal veracity or the personal honour of the right hon. Gentleman. I regarded it as one which purely affected the policy of the department, and the course which those who differed from the department were obliged to take. Gentlemen in my district had been very much surprised that, in the Education Report, a Report of an Inspector in whom they had the greatest confidence did not appear. In consequence of that circumstance, the right hon. Baronet the Member for Droitwich asked why the Report in question was not produced, and the right hon. Gentleman (Mr. Lowe) was asked to produce it. He refused to do so; and I was obliged to ask the right hon. Gentleman on what conditions in future he intended to produce the Reports of Inspectors. The right hon. Gentleman stated in reply that in future he intended to make the Inspectors their own censors, and added that he did not think those Reports should contain controversial opinions. I, and those who agreed with me, held that we ought to have those Reports without censorship. We then come to the question of the effect of those red marks; and I must in justice to myself and others say, that I never saw one of those Reports to which reference has been made before the debate; but I thought that sending back the Reports to the Inspectors in the way we have heard of, was virtual mutilation, as those gentlemen would know very well what such a proceeding meant. Therefore, I asked the right hon. Gentleman to produce the Report that we might see whether we were right or not. As he refused to do so, and justified his refusal on the ground that the Report of an Inspector ought not to contain anything against the chief of his department, I, and those who thought with me, felt bound to vote with the noble Lord. I regret, in common with the House, that the right hon. Gentleman should have thought that the vote was one which affected his personal honour, or anything but the policy of the department.

Sir, it is now my duty, with a little more detail than I ventured to use the other night, to call the attention of the House to a Question of Privilege—arising out of the distribution of offices held by Members of Her Majesty's Government. The House will perceive that the Question is one of great gravity. Already it has led, in a constitutional sense, to considerable inconvenience, and it may, if neglected, produce results of a character so serious that it is difficult at this moment to adequately describe them. And, Sir, my opinion is, that the embarrassing and even dangerous position in which this House is placed in regard to the distribution of offices here— embarrassing certainly to the Ministry, and, as I shall show, dangerous to the House—had its origin in the way the present Government was formed when the noble Lord, the present Prime Minister, acceded to office. The House will remember that, at that time, a considerable number—I think I may say the majority— of the great offices of State, were represented in the House of Lords. I would not myself, Sir, lay down any inflexible rules, such as the laws of the Medes and Persians, with respect to the distribution, on the formation of a Ministry, of the offices of State between the two Houses of Parliament. On the whole, that must be left to the discretion of the person who undertakes the responsibility of forming an Administration. But there are considerations which I think, generally speaking, ought to guide the individual called on by the Sovereign to form a Government in regard to the distribution of offices. For example, I would venture to say that I think the heads of the two great Departments of public expenditure should find seats in the House of Commons. I do not think the due control of this House over the public expenditure can be sufficiently possessed under other circumstances; and if the control of the House is diminished in that respect, its authority in the estimation of the country will proportionately suffer. With respect to the Secretaries of State, I would say that the majority of them should have seats in the House of Commons—even a large majority of them, I would say, as was the case with the late Government. The House, upon reflection, will see that in this matter the Constitution has, in practice, adequately provided for the representation of the Ministry in the other House of Parliament, One Secretary of State must have a seat in the House of Lords—at least, he cannot sit here, and, therefore, he must find a seat in the House of Lords. The Lord Chancellor, one of the most eminent members of the Cabinet, and the head of the jurisprudence of the country, must have a seat in the other House; the Lord President of the Council must also be a Peer, as must also be the Lord Privy Seal. The Postmaster General is by statute prohibited from sitting in the House of Commons; and since the Reform Act—a measure which it was supposed would so greatly increase the influence and power of the popular branch of the Legislature— the Prime Minister, in the majority of cases, has found a seat in the House of Lords. Added to this, the chief offices of the Household, always held by Peers, have sometimes been held by eminent statesmen, as by Lord Wellesley, for instance. I think no one can deny, therefore, that the Constitution has provided adequately for the representation of the Government in the House of Lords. And when we reflect on the manner in which the public business is divided between the two Houses —when we compare the labours of this House with those of the House of Lords —I think it is obvious that it is in this branch of the Legislature the great majority of offices should be represented. I recollect that, before the present Administration was formed—a few days.—I believe hours—before the fate of their predecessors was decided—in a somewhat memorable speech, it was said that the Government in this country ought to be conducted by the educated section of the Liberal party. Well, Sir, I thought, at the time, that was a phrase more candid than felicitous; but though various interpretations were placed upon it by both sides of the House, I do not think any interpretation arrived at contemplated the conclusion which was subsequently accomplished— namely, that the great offices of State in the new Ministry were to be confided to the custody of half-a-dozen Peers of the realm. So far as we on this side of the House are concerned in the arrangement, if we took a party view of it, we should be sufficiently satisfied. I hardly know that any arrangement could tend more to the political degradation of the party opposite. When power was seized—I do not say in a spirit of rapacity, but certainly on that occasion without any unnecessary delicacy; when there were no great scruples as to the nature or the conduct of the Opposition; and when, subsequently, the country found that the great Liberal party were in office, and yet that in the opinion of the leaders of that great party there were not in that branch of the Legislature which had brought them into power men from whose ranks they could select persons fitted to administer the affairs of the country—I think that must have been regarded as a slur upon the vote of want of confidence which had just been passed upon their predecessors. But there is something dearer to both sides of the House than party triumph—namely, the character and authority of the House of Commons. In that we all share and all participate; and I am sure that every hon. Gentleman in this House feels really sorry when anything takes place that humiliates the character of this House, or places it in a position not calculated to preserve for it the confidence and support of the country. For my own part, believing that Parliamentary Government is practically impossible without two organized parties—that without them it would be the most contemptible and corrupt rule which could be devised— I always regret anything that may damage the just influence of either of the great parties in the State. Well, Sir, this question with respect to the distribution of offices has arisen because, in consequence of the plan on which the present Administration was formed, the principal offices of the State have necessarily been represented in this House by Under Secretaries, or by Members of the Administration bearing, perhaps, a different title, but holding similar rank. It was on more than one occasion, I believe, the intention of Gentlemen on both sides the House to advert to that condition of affairs as, on the whole, unsatisfactory, as tending to diminish the authority of this House, as calculated to greatly reduce its influence. I do not know that I should myself have interfered in the matter—though I intended to do so some weeks ago—had it not been for an expression of the noble Lord at the head of the Government, which opened my mind to the position that the House was fast coming to occupy. When I offered some quite legitimate criticisms upon the conduct of a Secretary of State who happens to sit in the House of Lords, the noble Lord, not in a hurried manner, but with a most premeditated phrase, taunted me with having attacked "an absent man." That opened my mind to what must be the consequence of our passing unnoticed the: course which the Government had plainly adopted in the distribution of political offices; and I saw clearly in what a situation Members of the Opposition would be placed who, bringing forward eases of importance or urging inquiries of interest, were always put in collision with gentlemen whose abilities we all recognize, who are frequently adequate to the offices they nominally hold, but who are obliged to encounter us upon questions which no one can properly treat who is not in the counsels of his Sovereign, who is ignorant of the motives and the policy really pursued by the Cabinet, and who cannot enter into those engagements and make those representations which the authority of Ministers of the Crown alone authorizes them to express. But on that occasion I refrained from bringing the subject under your notice, because there had been for a considerable time impending over us a probable reconstruction of the Government to a certain extent, occasioned by a cause which I am sure is regretted by hon. Gentlemen on both sides. At that time, it was daily expected that the Duke of Newcastle would quit public life, and it appeared to me that to bring forward the question of the distribution of offices at a moment when the Duke of Newcastle was still a Minister might lead to observations and discussions which, in reference to him, might have been painful. The Duke of Newcastle sat for a long time in this House, and on these benches. Perhaps, now that he has retired from public life, I may be permitted to say, I am sure in no glozing language, that, during twenty years of rather warm public life my relations of personal courtesy with the Duke of Newcastle have never terminated, and I think I may add that he withdraws with the reputation of a sedulous, able, and conscientious Minister. Well, the Duke of Newcastle quitted office, and then took place the reconstruction of the Ministry which was expected. It was not of so extensive a character as had been anticipated; on the contrary, it was extremely partial—and the first thought on reflection was, that the subordinate members of the Government, who represented high offices of State in this House, were not materially reduced in number. We had to reconsider the question, and then it was suddenly discovered that the state of affairs which before we had thought practically injurious was, in fact, flagrantly illegal. The noble Lord asked me the other night how it was the thing never occurred to me before. I hardly know any subject more happy for a tu quoque, but I shall resist the temptation, great though it be. I remember reading somewhere of a Whig county Member, who, in the last century, questioned the right of Lord George Germain to sit in this House. Lord North asked Sir Joseph Mawbey, why he had not mooted the point before, seeing that Lord George had been sitting there for a year, "Why, to tell the I truth," replied Sir Joseph Mawbey, "it never occurred to me." When the noble Lord with the blue riband made his inquiry nobody thought it was an answer to the point raised by Sir Joseph Mawbey, and so I am sure that to-night in discussing this Question, which is one of great gravity, we shall not be met by observations of that kind, but shall address our minds to the merits of the case, in order to ascertain clearly the position in which we are placed. As the point to which I wish to call the attention of the House is to the offices held by the Under Secretaries of State, I wish at the outset to direct attention to the state of the law upon the question. It may appear a very arrogant thing that I, who am a layman, should presume even to make a statement, much less to draw an inference, upon a subject so technical and professional; and I should, perhaps, have been daunted in this enterprize by the observations made by the Attorney General some time ago, when he told us incidentally, in order to give a cue to the House, that the subject is most refined and complicated. There are some men who have refined and complicated minds, and there is nothing they touch that, under their magical manipulation, does not quickly become refined and complicated. I would say to the Attorney General, whose talents I always admire, that I think he is a master in the art of refinement and complication. But, notwithstanding his statement, I venture to say that the question is really very simple; that any one who chooses to give his attention to it may understand it without being an Attorney General or a Queen's Counsel; and that if I do not make it in a brief space as clear as crystal it will be from want of apprehension, or a deficiency in the powers of expression on my part, and not from any fault of the House or the subject. The tenure of office in this country is mainly regulated by statute, and it is principally regulated, as far as this House is concerned, by an Act passed in the reign of Queen Anne, with which I have no doubt hon. Gentlemen are all familiar, by name at least. A very remarkable Act is that famous Act of Queen Anne. About 1708 there was a strong Parliamentary opinion, if not a strong public opinion, that there were sufficient placemen in the House of Commons, and a Resolution was come to that the number should not be increased. An Act was accordingly passed, which—to give a general description of its main feature—enacted that henceforth any one who accepted any office of profit in the service of the Crown created after 1705— about three years before the passing of the Act—should thereby become incapable of being elected a Member of this House, or of sitting and voting here. The effect of that Act may be put briefly before the House. When the Act passed Queen Anne had two Secretaries of State and two Under Secretaries, Suppose the day after Anne, as she had an undoubted right to do by her prerogative, had appointed a third Secretary of State, and, consequently, a third Under Secretary, both those offices would have been treated as new offices—offices, that is to say, created subsequently to 1705—and their holders would have been incapable of occupying seats in this House. Heavy penalties were attached to the violation of the statute; but it is quite unnecessary to touch upon that matter now, because the question of penalties has nothing to do with this House. A very considerable time elapsed after 1708 before any fresh legislation took place affecting the seats of Members of this House—I think seventy years passed away. Great events, great disasters, had occurred during that long interval. We had lost our American colonies; the country was in a state of distress and despondency; and there arose, as always in England under such circumstances, a cry for administrative and economical reform. Mr. Burke, one of the greatest men who ever sat in this House, happened then to be a Minister of State; and it fell to his lot to consider by what means the administration might be improved and economy effected. Mr. Burke therefore, in the year 1782, in the reign of George III., brought forward that great Bill, with which I am sure hon. Gentlemen are perfectly acquainted, his Bill for Economical Reform, and by that measure, among his other reductions and improvements, he abolished the third Secretary of State, who was the Secretary of State for the Colonies. England having lost her colonies, the administrative reformers of those days naturally thought, if reduction was desirable, that there was no necessity for a Colonial Secretary; and in the Act of Mr. Burke the Colonial Secretaryship is abolished, and all those offices dependent upon it. The result of Mr. Burke's Bill was this—that two Secretaries of State were permitted to sit in the House of Commons, and two Under Secretaries. Sir, that was the state of affairs which prevailed, as far as the distribution of offices with reference to the House of Commons was concerned, for another seventy years, including the whole of the great Revolutionary War. Unquestionably during that period new Secretaries of State were created, who, of course, appointed Under Secretaries; but they were appointed, all of them, solely by the prerogative of the Crown, not by statute, and none of them ever sat in the House of Commons. The hon. and learned Attorney General appealed to the case of Mr. Bagot. Now, that case would entirely substantiate, if necessary, the statement that I am making. Mr. Bagot was a Member of this House for Castle Rising, a borough which I suspect is now only to be found in schedule A. He was appointed Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs. There were two Under Secretaries then sitting in this House—one for the Colonial and the other for the Home Department. And what did Mr. Bagot do? He immediately accepted the Chiltern Hundreds; and the hon. and learned Attorney General endeavours to frame an argument on that, that he did not vacate his seat in consequence of accepting the office of an Under Secretary of State. Yet I apprehend it is a common course of Members of Parliament to accept the Chiltern Hundreds, even if they hold any other appointment than that to which the hon. and learned Gentleman referred. But I ought to remind the House that in Mr. Burke's Act of Economical Reform, which abolished the Secretaryship of State and the dependent offices, there is a special proviso—that in case hereafter any office for the same or for a similar purpose is created, then to all interpretations, intents, and purposes it is to be considered what is called "a new office—that is, an office subject to the provisions of the statute of Anne; and to the statute of Anne is attributable that distinction between old and new offices which once was very prevalent in political literature, and which may even now be found creeping into the statute book. All offices created before 1705 are "old;" all created subsequently to that date are "new" offices. Well, whatever refinement the Attorney General may found on the case of the retirement of Mr. Bagot from this House, I make him a present of it; for really it is not at all necessary to my argument, or to the clear case which we have before us. The hon. and learned Gentleman will not deny that the invariable practice of Parliament was that only two Secretaries of State and two Under Secretaries of State could sit in this House. That he will not contradict. And so it went on till we come to the times with which we are perfectly familiar, in which we were all actors, and which form part of our recent experience. Two Secretaries of State and two Under Secretaries, as I have stated, might legally sit in the House of Commons. Then occurred the Crimean war, with its military disasters, followed by a strong expression of public opinion that there ought to be a more effective organization of our military departments. Then the noble Lord, who ought to be familiar with this question, for he was then Prime Minister, recommended this House to sanction the appointment by Her Majesty of a new Secretary of State, who should be Secretary of State for the Department of War. For that purpose it was necessary in 1855 to bring in a Bill, which was afterwards passed into law. But now I request the House to mark this. Although there was not the slightest doubt from the language of Mr. Burke's Act that only two Secretaries of State could sit in this House— although that never was questioned for a moment—there had been doubts raised whether the terms of the Act of Economical Reform were sufficiently precise to touch the Under Secretaries; but the language was still so definite that it had never practically been infringed. There had been only two Under Secretaries of State in this House; but the lawyers knew of the doubts on the subject, and in the noble Lord's Bill —the Bill brought in by his Government, of course with his sanction, and, no doubt, with his intimate knowledge—it was thought advisable that the opportunity should be seized of removing all doubt on this point. If hon. Gentlemen refer to that Act they will find that a third Secretary of State is at once made, and there is a recital that, whereas doubts at some time have existed as to the number of Secretaries and Under Secretaries of State who might sit in the House of Commons—that was, doubtless, a reference to Mr. Burke's Bill—it is now decided that there shall be a new Secretary of State under this Act, and that three Secretaries and three Under Secretaries of State may sit in this House and "no more." I hope that, as far as I have gone, the House really will understand this case. We have now arrived at the period of the Crimean war. Well, the next great events in our history were the Indian mutiny and the expiration of the Company's charter, necessitating the bringing in of a new India Bill, which was to transfer to the immediate authority of the Crown the Government of those vast possessions. It fell to the lot of my noble Friend near me (Lord Stanley), then President of the Board of Control, to introduce that Act, and in deference to the Resolutions of this House upon which that Bill was founded, the office of President of the Board of Control was converted into that of a Secretary of State for India, and with the power of appointing an Under Secretary of State instead of the two joint Secretaries of the Board of Control that previously existed. And by that Act four Secretaries of State became qualified to sit in this House, and four Under Secretaries of State. I believe there is no person in this House who will question the accuracy of that statement. There is no refinement here about the case of some half-forgotten gentleman who vacated his seat when made an Under Secretary of State in the reign of King George; but here you have the present state of the law, which depends on specific statutes, that you yourselves advised and passed, and that have been carried in consequence of your own Resolutions. This then being, I venture to say, the unquestioned and unquestionable state of the law at this moment, expressed in the statutes before me, that in the House of Commons four Secretaries of State and four Under Secretaries may sit, and "no more," I must call the attention of the House to the strange fact that throughout this Session of Parliament at least five Under Secretaries of State have been sitting here. I have no doubt that on Friday night, if any discussion had occurred, it would have been necessary for me to mention in detail who those Gentlemen are. I feel sure that in the interval we have become sufficiently familiar with the subject. But, perhaps, on a question of this kind, it is expedient, both in the Resolutions which we may have to record, and in the statements which we may have to make, that we should make our case complete; and, therefore, I shall mention who are the five Under Secretaries of State who, during this Session, have been sitting in this House. There is the Under Secretary of State for the Colonies, the right hon. Member for the county of Louth (Mr. Chichester Fortescue); there is the hon. Gentleman the Under Secretary of State for India, the Member for Falmouth (Mr. T. G. Baring); there is the Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, the hon. Member for Southwark (Mr. Layard); there has been, during this Session, the Under Secretary of State for the Home Department, late and still Member for Merthyr Tydvil (Mr. H. A. Bruce), whose fate we did not decide an hour ago; and lastly, there is the Under Secretary of State for the War Department, who is the Member, or who supposes that he is the Member, for North Lancashire. The House will now, upon reflection, find that this is a question which it becomes themselves in the first instance to undertake. It is the duty of the House to see that its composition is complete and correct. It is of the utmost importance that no person should sit or vote in this House who is not qualified for the exercise of those functions. And, Sir, I do not think that I can place this matter, as to its importance and urgency, more completely before the House than by showing them how much may depend upon the materials of which this assembly is composed being of an authentic character. I have, on more than one occasion, reminded the House of the important historical events and the equally important laws which have been shaped and passed by slight majorities, and even by casting votes. I know that Gentlemen may in these days consider historical illustration to be of little value. I am not of that school. I do not believe that a popular assembly can maintain its authority unless it respects the example and experience of its predecessors. What makes the House of Commons so influential in contradistinction to the popular assemblies of other countries is this:—That when there is any great question of difficulty— of complication, as the Attorney General would call it—the country feels that we are not solving it merely by the present thought and existing intelligence of the Members of this House, but that we come down to its consideration fortified by precedent, and bringing to bear upon it the accumulated wisdom of the eminent men who have preceded us. I need not go far to show how important it is that we should be most strict in seeing that no one votes in this House who has not a right to do so. There is no subject, for example, more important than a question of a vote of confidence. When the two great parties of this country meet with contending principles and with opposite policies, and challenge the decision of the House of Commons, the issue, it may be said, is almost of an awful character— because the very tone and temper of the policy of the country depend upon the vote. In my time there has happened a struggle of this kind; and there are few in modern Parliamentary history more interesting or more important. It was the vote which brought Sir Robert Peel to the helm in 1841. Considering the character of that eminent man, considering the measures he carried or brought forward, considering the influence of his career upon parties and events in this House, no one can look upon that as an ordinary Parliamentary struggle. And yet Sir Robert Peel was made Minister of this country virtually by one vote. Supposing there had been one or two Under Secretaries of State on the Treasury bench when a vote of want of confidence had been brought forward, perhaps by Sir Robert Peel himself, they would not have had the same opinion as Sir Robert Peel; they would have had more confidence in themselves than in Sir Robert Peel, and they would naturally have voted accordingly. But what if after that discussion it had been discovered that these Under Secretaries had no right to vote that night? See, therefore, what considerable consequences may depend upon our taking care that this House is properly constituted. But I need not go so far. I will take the present Session as affording a most striking instance of the importance of our attention to this matter. Remember the division on the question of the Yeomanry. Her Majesty's Government thought it expedient to omit from the annual votes the sum necessary for calling out the Yeomanry. An hon. Friend of mine (Colonel Edwards) challenged by anticipation the propriety of that omission, and appealed to the House. The question was really not of that limited character to which, in the somewhat hurried discussion, an attempt was made to narrow it. Some looked upon it merely as a matter of reduction or the reverse. I am myself in favour of reduction. I see with the utmost satisfaction the reductions which the Government have made of late years, and I observe with equal satisfaction that the services of the country are not less efficient. But the question of the Yeomanry was of a peculiar character. Nothing seemed more inconsistent to me and to many others than that at a time when the country was expending; so much money, thought, and energy in stimulating and maintaining the Volunteer institution—one of the most satisfactory events of our time—we should without thought deal a great blow and discouragement to our only considerable force of Volunteer cavalry. That was the view which we on this side of the House took of the matter, and I understand that was the view entertained, though not in this House yet in a place of considerable importance, by the noble Lord at the head of the Government. But what happened when the division was called? We lost the policy which we believed to be sound, and which has since been adopted by the Government by one vote. The Motion was connected with the office of the Secretary of State for War, and upon it the Under Secretary of State for that Department, representing the policy of the Government, spoke with all the authority and influence which a person holding office must have on such a subject. But not only did he speak—he voted. We were defeated by one vote; and yet it turns out that at that very time the Under Secretary of State who took that influential and decided part upon the question had no more right to speak—had no more right to sit in this House—had no more right to vote than the stranger who at this moment is passing over Westminster Bridge. The House will agree, therefore, that this is a subject which is not to be neglected. I regret that it has been neglected so long. The noble Viscount seems to think it a surprising thing that I should not have called attention to this matter before. I consider myself that the House generally is, in some degree, at fault. I am perfectly ready to take my share of the blame, and even more. But ours has been a sin of omission; but as regards the Government, theirs has been not only a sin of omission, but of commission. We have a right to expect from the Government, who have the distribution of patronage, that they should consider well how they distribute it. I say, with the greatest respect to the noble Lord at the head of the Government, that he is the individual to whom we look with confidence in such matters; and, perhaps, it is the unlimited confidence reposed in the noble Lord which has got the House into this scrape. It is not merely as the Chief Minister of the Crown that he sits on that bench—it is not merely to pass measures which he deems necessary to the welfare of the country—not merely to attend to the interests of his party that he sits there. He occupies a post second only in dignity and honour to that of Chief Minister of the Crown—that of leader of the House of Commons; and we have a right to expect from one who is the champion of our rights and privileges, and the trustee of our honour, whose first duty it is to see that the numbers of the House are complete, and if incomplete—are so only in consequence of the decision of the House itself— that he should take care that no one mixes in the deliberations and in the decisions of this House who is not justified by law in sitting here. I submit to the noble Lord, a the individual in this House who, if any one, is to be visited with its displeasure, that his own conduct rather requires explanation than that he should taunt those opposite to him, because they have discovered, however late, the critical position in which the House is placed. I wish to suggest to the House a course which, I think, it ought to take. The position in which we find ourselves is one which deeply concerns the House. It is the duty of the House to set itself right without loss of time. We ought to do that in a manner which cannot be mistaken, which is becoming defined and decisive, but which, so far as expression of opinion is concerned, shall not in any way directly make any reflection upon the conduct of any Member of the House. I have no wish to shrink from the responsibility which every gentleman, to a certain extent, must have incurred by this unprecedented state of affairs; but, at the same time, it is absolutely necessary that we should take a constitutional course, and that having found the critical position in which we are placed, we should put on record the opinion of this House in a manner that cannot be mistaken, so that hereafter an Under Secretary of State shall not be appointed by a future Minister without due examination and reflection, and that there shall be a complete record of what has Illegally been done, and of the remedy which the House of Commons proposed under the circumstances. It is with that feeling that I shall propose this Resolution, which I sincerely trust I may induce the House unanimously to adopt. It is in these words —

"Notice having been taken by a Member of this House that more than four Under Secretaries of State have been sitting and voting in this House at the same time during the present Session,— Resolved, that the provisions of the 21 & 22 Vict. c. 106, s. 4, have been violated, and that the Seat of the fifth Under Secretary of State has been and is thereby vacated."

Notice having been taken by a Member of this House, that more than four Under Secretaries of State have been sitting and voting in this House at the same time during the present Session:—

Sir, there are some things stated by the right hon. Gentleman in which I entirely concur, and there are some things which afford a remarkable comment upon the progress of constitutional principles and government in this House. The right hon. Gentleman reminded us that whereas in the early part of the last century there was a jealousy in the House of Commons as to the sitting in it of persons holding high office in the State, now, on the contrary, by the great increase in the political power which by the progress of events this House has acquired, there is an opposite feeling, and desire that persons holding important offices in the State should—within certain limits at all events—have seats in this House, and sit face to face with, and be personally responsible to, the House of Commons. That does appear to me a significant commentary upon the great development of the power of this House between the period to which he referred and that in which we are now speaking. The right hon. Gentleman said that there ought to be in this House the full number of Secretaries of State which the law allows, namely, four; and he finds fault with those who framed the present Government for having put an undue proportion of the great officers of the Government in the House of Lords, and not a due proportion in this House. The right hon. Gentleman, I think, was speaking, when he said that, without having sufficiently attended to the circumstances of the case. When the present Government was formed it consisted of fifteen Cabinet Ministers, of whom ten were in this House and five only in the other House of Parliament. Four Secretaries of State were included in that number of ten. The chiefs of the War Department, the Foreign Office, the Home Office, and the India Office, were all Members of the House of Commons. Then came the unfortunate illness of Mr. Sidney Herbert, then Secretary for the War Department, which led to his removal to the House of Lords in the hope—which, unfortunately, proved vain—that by going to a House where less attendance was required, the afflicting disease which weighed upon him might be remedied or mitigated. Lord Herbert unfortunately fell a victim to that disease. When that occurred it gave the opportunity of bringing back the War Department to this House, in the person of Sir George Lewis; we therefore restored that Secretary of State who had been removed by the visitation of illness. Then, when my noble Friend Lord Russell was removed to the House of Lords—the dignity of the peerage having been conferred upon him as a mark and reward of his long and distinguished services, and also from the circumstance that his health had suffered materially by his labours in the House of Commons—we had still three Secretaries of State in this House. Then Sir George Lewis was unhappily taken from us; and the peculiar circumstances connected with the interests of the army led to our placing that Department under the care of Lord Do Grey, who had long been Under Secretary of that Department, and had acquired a knowledge of all the improvements which Lord Herbert had so successfully carried into effect, or had been anxious to carry into effect, during his lifetime. Well, but not only had we, when the Government was formed, ten Cabinet Ministers in this House, but among them was the person who held the office which I cannot pretend worthily to fill, which in the Government with which the right hon. Gentleman was connected was held by Lord Derby in the House of Peers; and, therefore, I maintain that if you compare the original distribution and progressive changes of Cabinet offices in the present Government with their original distribution in Lord Derby's Government, you will find that the House of Commons had its proper share of those Members who occupied important positions in the administration of the country. Well, I cannot undertake to go into those legal questions which the right hon. Gentleman dealt with, because I am unwilling to trespass on those grounds which my hon. and learned Friend the Attorney General, with so much greater knowledge and ability, and without complication, will very clearly explain to the right hon. Gentleman and the House. The right hon. Gentleman maintains that one of the five Under Secretaries must have vacated his seat—that question will he fully discussed by my hon. and learned Friend. But, Sir, I am quite ready to admit that we have unintentionally, and by oversight, done that which the law does not authorize. I must take blame to myself—because I quite agree with the right hon. Gentleman, that, holding the office I do, having to originate the different appointments, I ought, perhaps, to have inquired more deeply and minutely into the state of the law. I certainly was under the impression that we were doing that which the law authorized; that we might have five Under Secretaries in this House. It turns out, however, on looking into the Act of Parliament, that we were wrong; and, therefore, I frankly admit that the right hon. Gentleman, or his learned Friend who, I believe, discovered the error, had a keener sight than we and the rest of the House possessed, But, at the same time, although I admit we were wrong—unintentionally wrong—the right hon. Gentleman and those who sit by him must share with us in the blame. Because, what is the natural occupation of an Opposition? What are they there for if not to find out when a mistake has been made by the Government? They are assigned by Providence to watch with keen eye the conduct of the Government they oppose—to trip them up even before they fall—at all events, if they stumble, mark their stumbling, and call upon them to set things right again. That is the peculiar function of the Opposition, if anything be wrong, or blameable, or liable to criticism in the conduct of the Government. I must say, therefore, we have a right to complain of the right hon. Gentleman and those who sit by him, that they have not previously announced that since April last year we have gone on in a course which they must have known—though they will not admit it— was wrong in point of law, and with reference to a law which they themselves brought in. They have laid a trap for us that I maintain is not fair in the course of a Parliamentary Opposition. But, I repeat, we candidly and frankly admit that we have done that which the law did not authorize us to do. I do not think that what the right hon. Gentleman proposes would be sufficient for the purpose; because, when a law has been broken, somebody must be liable to some penalty or other. Who is the person on whom the penalty would fall I am not prepared to say, nor what the penalty would be. I apprehend there is no penalty attached by the Act to either of the five Secretaries of State who, in excess of the law, has sat in the House; but where there is no penalty attached by the law it becomes a misdemeanour, and the person would be liable, of course, to the penalties of a misdemeanour. Well, my hon. and learned Friend will have to consider who the parties are who incur the penalty, and what we should propose as a measure of security to them, whoever they may be; and also, as a more effectual record than the proposal of the right hon. Gentleman, that a Bill of Indemnity should be brought in, which should record that the law has been violated, and by be recording, place, beyond all question, that nobody henceforward do the same thing. The illegal state of things has ceased, because, by the acceptance by my hon. Friend the Under Secretary for the Home Department of the office resigned, as I sincerely regret, by my right hon. Friend who was the Vice President of the Committee of Privy Council for Education, the hon. Member for Merthyr Tydril has vacated office as Under Secretary of State, and there are now only four Under Secretaries in the House, which is the proper number, We are now, therefore, within the law, and I need hardly assure the House is is our intention to remain so. But we do not admit that part of the Resolution of the right hon. Gentleman which asserts that the seat of any of the five Under Secretaries is vacated. That is a question which my hon. and learned Friend will be more able to argue than I can. But that is our opinion; and, therefore, independently of the circumstance that we do not think the Resolution of the right hon. Gentleman covers the case as a Bill of Indemnity would, and because it makes an assertion we are not prepared to agree to, I hope the right hon. Gentleman will agree to a Bill of Indemnity; and if he is at all anxious on the subject, there should be a clause specially reserved for himself, in regard to any responsibility he may have himself incurred in the matter. However, we take all the responsibility on ourselves. We freely admit we ought to have looked more accurately, and it was my own indiscretion not to have looked more accurately into the matter. I certainly should have done so if I had entertained any doubt, and it was only because I thought we were within the law that the error was committed.

Sir, it would have given me much pleasure to hear my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Cambridge University (Mr. Walpole), (who had risen but sat down on there being a call for the Attorney General), before addressing the House on this subject, since I am sure we should all have derived benefit from any observations he might make; and I shall regret if, following me, he should make observations I shall not have the opportunity of answering. But I take it to be the wish of the House that I should redeem the promise made by my noble Friend at the head of the Government, and I have no difficulty in doing so. The right hon. Gentleman (Mr. Disraeli) I think, attributed to me a statement which I do not recollect to have made, or, if I did, I used the expression in a different sense from that he placed upon it. He says that I represented this as a refined and complicated question, on which the House would have a difficulty in arriving at a clear understanding. But it will be necessary to correct several errors of no inconsiderable importance into which the right hon. Gentleman has fallen, with reference to the various Acts of Parliament bearing on this question. He started with a fundamental and radical error. He has misunderstood altogether the effect of the Act of Queen Anne, passed in 1707, which he supposes to have had the effect of making it impossible after that Act passed for more than three Secretaries of State, and three Under Secretaries, to sit in this House. That is an entire mistake of the right hon. Gentleman. The Act of Queen Anne had no operation whatever on the right of any Under Secretary to sit in this House; and in this consists the entire fallacy of his fundamental proposition. What the Act of Queen Anne said was this— that persons to be appointed to new offices created after 1705—not all new offices, but new offices under the Crown—should he ineligible and incapable of sitting or voting in Parliament. Now, nothing is more easy to demonstrate than that the office of Under Secretary of State is not an office created after that date; and the way in which we should deal with the point is by appealing to the practice of the House with, regard to all persons who have held the office of Under Secretary since 1705. The right hon. Gentleman does not seem to have had his attention called to the fact that, although the clause absolutely disqualifying certain persons from seats in the House of Commons relates only to new offices, the clause which regulates the practice and law of the House as to persons vacating seats on the acceptance of office applies to old as well as to new offices held under the Crown. The 26th section is to the effect that if any person, being a Member of the House of Commons, should accept of any place of profit from the Crown, his election should be deemed void, and there should be a new election, as if in consequence of a vacancy by death; the Member in question being, however, capable of re-election, if not otherwise disqualified. Upon that clause rests the practice of Members when taking office in the Government resigning their seats and going down to their constituencies to ask for re-election. Consequently, if an Under Secretaryship of State is an office of profit accepted from the Crown, then each of the Under Secretaries, who accepted office from the date of the statute of Anne to the present time, ought thereupon to have vacated his seat:—but not one of them ever did so. I appeal to you, Sir, whether it is not the notorious and universal practice of the House that a Member, on accepting the office of Under Secretary of State, does not vacate his seat, and has not to be reelected? Therefore, the uniform practice of the House, which is the best commentary on the meaning of the Act, proclaims distinctly that an Under Secretaryship of State is not an office of profit under the Crown, within the scope of the Act, whether created before or after the passing of the statute. What is the reason of that? The reason is to he found in the very language of the Act. It is that an Under Secretary of State is not appointed by the Crown, but is appointed, both in form and in substance, by the Secretary of State, and therefore his office is not an office held under or from the Crown. Thus the Act of Anne has no more to do with the matter than any other Act in the statute book. Then the right hon. Gentleman went on to say that there was an interval without change which lasted till we came to Mr. Burke's Bill for Economical Reform, in 1782. The right hon. Gentleman, however, either from taking a different view of the statute from mine, or from some other reason which it is not for me to divine, passed over an extremely material statute on this subject, passed in the fifteenth year of George II., 1742. For the purpose of further limiting and reducing the number of officers capable of sitting in this House, that Act provided that deputies and clerks in certain offices of the Government, including those of the Principal Secretaries of State, should not be capable of sitting in the House of Commons; but in order to make it perfectly clear that this was not intended to interfere with the eligibility of an Under Secretary of State to be a Member, there was a proviso that nothing in the Act should extend or apply to "the Under Secretaries to any of His Majesty's Principal Secretaries of State." Thus the rights of Under Secretaries are distinctly preserved; they are not rendered ineligible, and they are not required to vacate their seats and to go to their constituents for re-election on accepting their offices. Next came Mr. Burke's Act; and there, again, the right hon. Gentleman contrived to make out his argument by putting into the Act what would have been very material if it were there, but what was not really there. It is true that the Act abolished, among other offices, the third, or Colonial Secretaryship, and declared that if any office thereby abolished were at any future time re-established, it should be reckoned a new office; but the Act did not say one word as to the Under Secretaryships. It left those offices as they were before. I need not remind the right hon. Gentleman that the division of the business of the Secretaries of State into departments is a matter which the law knows nothing about. On that point these Acts of Parliament are entirely silent, and no restriction is placed by them on the number of Under Secretaries whom the Secretaries may in their discretion think it necessary to appoint, nor on their capacity of sitting in Parliament. The only Acts which deal with that subject at all are that of 1855, when the fourth Secretary of State—the Secretary for War —was established, and that of 1858, on the appointment of an additional Secretary of State for India. In using the word "established," I do not mean that these Acts created the new Secretaryships. They recognized the power of the Crown to appoint as many Secretaries of State, and the power of the Secretaries of State to appoint as many Under Secretaries as might be deemed fit and proper; but they also limited the number as well of Under Secretaries, as of Secretaries, who might at one and the same time sit in the House of Commons. By the former Act it was provided that any three of Her Majesty's Principal Secretaries of State, and any three of the Under Secretaries, might sit and vote in the House of Commons at the same time, and that no more than that limited number should do so; and by the latter Act the number was raised to four Secretaries and four Under Secretaries. We ought to consider how the matter stands, not only in regard to the latest Act itself, but in comparison with the way in which Parliament has dealt with the capacity of the holders of particular offices for the functions of Members of this House. The Act does not specify that the Secretaries or Under Secretaries of certain Departments of Administration shall be entitled to sit in the House, but it only limits the maximum number of persons holding particular offices who shall at the same time be allowed to sit as Members. It is said that the Act has been violated, inasmuch as five Under Secretaries have been appointed, all of whom have sat and voted in this House at the same time. Now, I should be glad to know on which of the officers in question the Act throws the responsibility of violating the provision as to the number entitled to be Members at the same time. It is easy for the right hon. Gentleman to try to impose the responsibility on the person who last entered office, and to say what the Act certainly does not say, that he should be held on accepting office to have vacated his seat. But it is the sitting of five of these officers at one time, and not the sitting of one or other of them individually, which is the corpus delicti. I wish the House to see the absurd consequences that would follow if it could be maintained that you are to fasten upon any one of the five Under Secretaries and to say that he has vacated his seat. It may be that in this case you may be able to identify the order of time in which five persons holding office were appointed; but it may happen that you may not always have the opportunity. Supposing that persons who are not Members of this House are appointed Under Secretaries during a dissolution, when, of course, no vacancy takes place. A general election follows—two, three, or more of those Gentlemen are simultaneously elected. Which of them has vacated his seat? Of course, if Parliament had meant that a particular Member of this House should lose his status as such, it would not have left the law in a state which was open to such doubts. So, if two Under Secretaries simultaneously accepted office, the Act does not say that one or either of them, or all, shall vacate their seats. It only says that not more than a certain number shall sit in this House at one time. I promised that I would state what I found to be the language of other Acts of Parliament which bear upon this or analogous questions. I find that when Parliament intended to create ineligibility to sit in this House, it used language appropriate for that purpose. Thus in the 6 Anne, while in one clause it declares that a person who accepts any office shall always be incapable of sitting or voting in Parliament, by a subsequent clause it says that if a person, being a Member of the House, accept any office, his election shall be declared void, and a new writ shall issue. There the process is marked out. A Member accepting office is incapable of sitting or of voting, the former election is declared void, and anew writ is issued. Exactly the same thing is done by the Act which prevents contractors from sitting in the House —the 22 Geo. III. There are other Acts which do not go on to say that the election shall be void and a new writ shall be issued; but to mark the intention of Parliament persons holding particular offices were declared to be incapable of being elected or of sitting or voting in the House of Commons. Such is the 15 Geo, II., which says that the clerks in certain public offices shall not be capable of being elected or of sitting or voting in this House. Such is the Act passed in the 10th year of Geo. IV., excluding persons holding certain appointments under the East India Company; and even in the Indian Government Act itself, when it was intended to make the tenure of a particular office or the acceptance of it create a personal incapacity to sit as a Member of this House, it was enacted that the Members of the Council of India should not be capable of voting or sitting in Parliament. That incapacity is attached to the office and to the person of the holder of it. There is not a single Act intending such a thing in which it is not provided for. Now, I take it that if there be a well-settled principle of constitutional law, it is that you should never infer, without strong necessity, from the terms of an Act of Parliament, disabilities, incapacities, or penalties; that you ought not to go beyond the language, if the object of the Act can be satisfied by adhering to it and keeping within it. It remains for me to endeavour to satisfy the House that there are upon the statute book sufficient reasons for holding, that we may give effect to these words, that not more than four Under Secretaries shall sit as Members of this House at the same time, without implying what the Act does not say, that some one or other of them, to be arbitrarily selected by the House, shall vacate his seat, which under other circumstances he would not do. The only Acts which contain at all similar words are those which show that the Legislature contemplated the possibility of a man retaining his status as a Member of this House, and yet being placed under a disability dependent upon variable circumstances, of voting and sitting. The Act of Charles II., well-known as the Oaths Act, is one in point. That Act has been rendered familiar to the House by the cases of Mr. O'Connell and of Mr. Salomons. It prescribes that no Member shall vote in the House of Commons, or sit there during a debate, until he shall have taken the oaths. A Member cannot sit upon these benches until he has complied with that requirement; but his status as a Member remains unaffected, although his power of sitting and voting is in abeyance. That is the Act of which the language most nearly approaches the language of the statute we are considering; and let not the House forget, that it is the earliest of all the statutes upon the subject. Exactly the same thing, in still more forcible terms, is done by the Act which excludes bankrupts from the House, When a Member becomes bankrupt, the Act says he shall remain during twelve months incapable of sitting or voting, unless the commission be superseded or his debts be paid in full; and then, if at the end of twelve months certificate is made to the Speaker that he continued a bankrupt, the Act goes on to declare that his election shall become void, and a new writ shall issue, It is quite plain, therefore, that the Legislature recognizes a temporary incapacity of sitting and voting, as capable of being reconciled with the continuance of the status of a Member of Parliament. Upon what principle, then, are we to give to the same words in this Act affecting the Under Secretaries a different effect? Every reason which induces Parliament to preserve the status of Members of this House in favour of persons who hesitate to take the oath, but who may do so at any time, and to afford to bankrupts a reasonable opportunity of ridding themselves of the incapacity, all these reasons apply à fortiori to the case of Under Secretaries. The public convenience may make it expedient to appoint a Member of this House. It may require some time to make arrangements, and in the meantime he ought not to resume his seat after appointment; and thus the intention and the language of the Act of Parliament would be satisfied; and but for some oversight, as in the present instance, arrangements would easily be made to limit the number of Under Secretaries in this House. There is nothing in the nature of such a case which makes it necessary that any particular individual should vacate his seat because there happened to be four persons already in the House holding similar appointments. It is to be presumed that when the attention of the Government is directed to the subject they will always take care to make the necessary arrangements. While the Legislature has carefully defined the maximum number of Under Secretaries who shall sit at the same time as Members of this House, it does not go on to say that the election of one or all shall be void if that number be exceeded, nor that any of them shall be incapable of voting or sitting; so that I apprehend, upon all legal principles of construction, you cannot hold that any seat has become vacant; although undoubtedly the Government is open to any censure which the House may think fit to pass upon them for not adverting to the terms of the recent Act of Parliament, which limited the number of Under Secretaries sitting in this House. When the attention of the Government was called to this subject no time was lost by them in making the necessary arrangements to comply with the terms of that Act of Parliament. Of course, the responsibility of that oversight rests with the Government; but the very fact that hon. and right hon. Gentlemen opposite have not before discovered it, and that it escaped you, Sir, with all your vigilance, affords some explanation and excuse for the fact that the attention of the Government was not directed to it. I apprehend, therefore, that the House will not allow their notice of this matter to travel beyond the necessity of the case; and that they will not declare that to be law which is not to be read in, any Act of Parliament; and which may, by comparing the language of the Act which governs this case with that of other Acts of a similar nature, be satisfied by taking a different course. I submit that, although the former part of the Resolution moved by the right hon. Gentleman is unquestionably true, and we cannot object that it should be placed upon record, yet the latter part of the Resolution declaring vacant the seat of—I suppose the right hon. Gentleman means the noble Lord the Member for North Lancashire, because he was the person last appointed—is entirely unwarranted by the Act of Parliament, is not supported by any legitimate or necessary inference arising from any of the former Acts, and is one, therefore, which it would not become this House to adopt.

Sir, the latter observations of the hon. and learned Gentleman (the Attorney General) seem to imply that some censure is cast upon the Government by the terms of the Resolution, for an error of conduct in having appointed a fifth Under Secretary. Now, I think the House will recollect that my right hon. Friend the Member for Bucks most carefully avoided casting any such imputations; and, indeed, he stated in his speech to-night, that he was not going to cast any censure upon the Government; nay more, he added that the whole House, and he himself as well as others, was to blame for not having noticed the illegality before. He adopted, in fact, the humorous observation of the old play as equally applicable to the noble Viscount and himself, "Brother, brother, we are both in the wrong." The only question now is, how are we to put ourselves right; and this is a matter of grave importance—one that concerns the constitution of the House, and in reference to which we ought to take care to put upon record something to prevent a similar illegality or excess of authority from happening again. The noble Viscount seems to think that this could be done simply by a Bill of Indemnity; but I take leave to doubt whether that is the way in which this House ever sets its records right. It has always taken care to put some resolution upon its Journals, declaring its opinion of a matter affecting the privileges of its Members, and its own constitution; and the Motion of my right hon. Friend seems, therefore, to meet exactly the nature of the case. The observation of the Attorney General is that he concurs in the first part of the Motion, that there has been a violation of the Act of Parliament; and it is the latter part of the Motion to which he demurs. My hon. and learned Friend addressed to this Act of Parliament a very refined argument, but I do not think that that argument was sound. My hon. and learned Friend did not bear in mind two things, which if he had done he would have found the question to be plainer and clearer than he has represented it to be. The first thing I should have wished him to bear in mind was, that he should take the Act of Anne in conjunction with the Act of the present Queen; and secondly, that the words of the Act of Anne, "shall be incapable of sitting and voting," are not more strong for vacating the seat than the words of the later statute "shall not sit and vote." The words are nearly synonymous, and what construction you put upon one phrase you must put upon the other. Suppose that this blot had been hit the moment that the Under Secretary of State for War had been appointed to his office; will anybody deny that a Member of this House might immediately have moved that a writ should be directed to the place represented by the fifth Under Secretary of State for the election of a new Member? If you do not put that construction upon the Act of Parliament you would give to the Government the opportunity of creating offices without the checks imposed by the Legislature, and I cannot believe that the House would assent to a construction so contrary to its own independence and to all the privileges of Parliament. Now, what is the state of the law. In attempting to correct the speech of my right hon. Friend, I think the hon. and learned Gentleman himself fell into an inadvertence in reference to the statute of Anne. The two sections of that statute which relate to this subject are the 25th and the 26th; the 25th relates to new offices, and the 26th to old offices. The 25th section prohibits any Member from taking any new office—that is, an office created since 1705—and declares that any person who shall have a new office under the Crown shall be incapable of being elected to this House, and of sitting and voting. The 26th section has not the word "new" office, and in order to give effect to that section you must interpret it as relating to "old" offices, otherwise you would repeal the 25th section, which immediately precedes it. When an old office is accepted, the Member is to vacate his seat, but he is eligible for re-election. As to new offices, on the contrary, the seat is to be vacated, and the person to be ineligible for re-election. This principle of vacating the seat runs through all the statute law; and any statutes relating to Secretaries and Under Secretaries also, which give an exemption from the full operation of the statute of Anne, are only exemptions in the specified cases to which they extend. Then my hon. and learned Friend points to the statutes of George II., but that Act confirms my view, instead of giving weight to his argument. The statute of George II. was another disqualifying statute, for the very preamble and the very title of it make more persons ineligible than were ineligible before. That was the object of the statute; but then a proviso is added which extends the exemption to any Undersecretary of a Secretary of State. I ask my hon. and learned Friend whether that would give exemption to any Under Secretary except one Under Secretary of each Secretary of State—would it give it to two? [The ATTORNEY GENERAL: I have no doubt whatever about it.] Will my hon. and learned Friend show me any authority for that? The proviso is to take them out of the ineligibility that rests upon them, and to give the benefit of the exemption to one Under Secretary of a Secretary of State, and not to two; or otherwise there could be a Power to create her officers without number, whilst the Legislature has taken good care that the number should be restricted. Pass we then to the statute of Geo. III. Now, that statute having done away with the third Secretary of State, says, in the strongest possible words, that the office of a third Secretary of State, under whatever name he is called, is to be considered as a new office; and what does that mean but that such office is to be considered a new office within the meaning of the statute of Anne. So that the third Secretary of State when he was appointed would receive his appointment as to a new office, and if there were three such officers in the House of Commons he would be rendered ineligible, and the Under Secretary would be in the same position. Then comes the Acts constituting the Secretary of State for War and the Secretary of State for India, giving the benefit of the exemption to these third and fourth Secretaries of State, but not to the fifth. Now, how does the Act deal with Under Secretaries? Why, in exactly the same words as it deals with the Secretaries themselves. The words are, that the four Secretaries of State may sit and vote as Members of the House of Commons, but that not more than four shall sit as such Members; and it is also said that not more than four Under Secretaries shall sit as members. If my hon. and learned Friend admits that these are disqualifying words as to the Secretary of State, how can he put a different construction upon identically the same words when applied to the Under Secretary. My hon. and learned Friend has quoted two Acts relating to Bankruptcy and to the admission of Baron Rothschild. The Bankruptcy Act is no doubt an enabling Act, giving to Members a limited time within which to obtain their certificates and sit again as Members of this House. By that Act it was provided, in the case of Members becoming bankrupts, that at the end of twelve months after the declaration of the bankruptcy the Speaker must be certified of the fact, and the election of such Members then became void unless the fiat were superseded or the creditors were, paid in full. That being so, I ask my hon. and learned Friend to consider whether, supposing the law vacates the seat when a Member is declared incapable of sitting and voting, the law does not also vacate the seat when it says he shall not sit and vote? Could my hon. and learned Friend point out the distinction between those two propositions? If not, it appears to me that the case is established completely against him; and for the sake of the regularity of our proceedings, and in order to preserve the constitution of the House, as it was intended by the Legislature when it passed the law limiting the number of Members holding office to so many and no more, we have nothing to do but to declare at once not only that the law has been violated, hut that the seat has been and is vacated; and then, I think, we shall set ourselves right. The question arises not only whether the noble Lord the Under Secretary for War has been guilty of a misdemeanour, for which, I understand, you purpose to bring in a Bill of Indemnity, but whether he has not also subjected himself to the penalty of £500. The Bill of Indemnity should extend to that and to everything. [The ATTORNEY GENERAL: The Bill will include all penalties.] Nevertheless, if the Under Secretary for War continues to sit here and vote without vacating his seat, the question may arise, whether he is not still guilty of a misdemeanour and still liable to penalties? My own belief is that that is a very doubtful point; and, if so, I cannot conceive why the Government should object to set forth the matter fully on the records of the House. The noble Lord the Under Secretary for War would then go to his constituents, and I hope he would soon be returned to the House; but in the meantime the House is bound to take notice that a Member has been sitting here who ought not to have sat here, and who might by his vote have decided some of the most important questions that come before us. If this is the proper construction of the Act of Parliament, we must take the consequence of our own inadvertence and set the matter right at once, or as nearly as we can; that is to say, we must now deal with the circumstance as it would have been dealt with if notice had been taken of it at the proper time; but for the House to adopt the proposition that a Member, holding an office which he cannot hold while he is Member, is to continue to sit and vote in the House as long as the Government and the Member himself may choose to hold such office, would be, I think, a course detrimental to the privileges and independence of the House, and therefore I shall support the Motion of my right hon. Friend.

It is very desirable that the House should come to some satisfactory decision on the matter involved in this discussion. We have heard the statements of the Attorney General and of the right hon. Gentleman opposite, and the Government have considered the question very fully since notice was taken of the circumstance which has given rise to the present debate. They have had high legal opinions, in addition to those of the Law Officers of the Crown, confirming the opinion of the Attorney General that the appointment of a fifth Under Secretary has not rendered his seat vacant, but there can be no doubt that an error has been committed by the fifth Under Secretary being in this House. Under the circumstances, I would suggest that we should avoid committing ourselves by any decision in this House, either to the proposition that the seat is actually vacant —for that may be wrong, and, if so, it is a serious constitutional error—or to the counter-proposition that it is not vacant. After what has passed in debate it appears to the Government to be the proper course that, in accordance with what has been done on former occasions, when a doubt arose whether the acceptance of an office involved the loss of a seat, a Select Committee should be appointed to report their opinion on the point. I will mention two instances when this course was adopted within my recollection. One was the case of Mr. Wynne, than whom there could not be a man with greater constitutional knowledge. Having accepted an office which seemingly involved the loss of his seat, he himself suggested the appointment of a Select Committee to consider the question. At a later period Mr. Daniel Whittle Harvey accepted an office which led to a doubt whether his seat was vacated, and the House, abstaining from committing itself to any declaration of opinion, referred the matter to the consideration of a Select Committee. I might refer to more cases of an analogous nature; and I therefore think that, without committing ourselves to any opinion—for if we do we may be establishing a bad constitutional precedent —we should adopt the course of referring the matter to a Select Committee. Consequently, I propose, as an Amendment, that the latter part of the Motion of the right hon. Gentleman declaring that the seat is vacant should be omitted, and that there should be substituted instead thereof the words, "That a Select Committee be appointed to inquire whether the Under Secretary of State last appointed to that office has thereby vacated his seat." At the same time, the Bill of Indemnity may be proceeded with, because that is a distinct question. It will be proposed in general terms, exempting those who may have subjected themselves to penalties from those consequences, and it will also stand as a permanent Parliamentary record of the fact which has occurred, and thereby provide against its recurrence.

My opinion is that in questions of this kind it is highly desirable that the House should not arrive at a decision which might have the appearance of anything approaching to the character of a party proceeding. At the same time, I think that it is of great importance that the House should not act in a timid and hesitating manner. I have indicated the line that I think that the House ought to take, and I understand that the Government to a great extent adopt it. They acknowledge that there has been a violation of the law, and the only point they hesitate at is, whether it has vacated the seat of the Under Secretary of State who was last appointed. I should not object to refer that matter to a Select Committee in the way that has been suggested; but there are one or two points upon which previously I think we ought to have a clear understanding with the Government. It should be clearly understood that the Bill of Indemnity should not be introduced before the Committee come to their decision, and I should like the House to have some understanding us to what is to be the conduct of this fifth Under Secretary of State. I was not indisposed to limit the inquiry to the fifth Under Secretary. But the noble Viscount the Prime Minister appeared to express a doubt whether the position of all the Under Secretaries was not affected? If there be any doubt I must say I do not think that these Gentlemen ought to take any part in the deliberations or decisions of the House until the question has been entirely settled by the Select Committee. Certainly, on the understanding that the Bill of Indemnity will not be introduced until the Committee comes to a decision upon this question, I shall look upon that as an arrangement which ought to be made. I think that an agreement of that kind should be entered into before the House is asked to assent to the Amendment of the right hon. Gentleman.

said, he was glad the Home Secretary had proposed the Amendment, because, although the question affected the privileges of the House to a great extent, it also affected the seat of an hon. Member, and the House ought not to pronounce an opinion upon the matter without duly investigating it, and giving the hon. Member affected by it an opportunity of being heard by counsel before the Committee. The speech of the right hon. Gentleman opposite, the Member for the University of Cambridge (Mr. Walpole), I had raised many difficulties which did not occur to his mind before. The right hon. Gentleman said that the statutes spoke of the Secretaries and Under Secretaries in the same language. The effect of the construction put upon the statutes by the right hon. Gentleman might be not merely that the fifth Under Secretary must vacate his seat, but that all the Under Secretaries holding new offices might be equally subject to re-election. That was a reason why the House should proceed with great caution, because the later statutes did not declare that the new Under Secretaryships were not new offices. He doubted, after hearing the right hon. Gentleman, whether the reference to the Committee was quite large enough, and it might, therefore, be desirable that words should be added so that no doubt might arise herein.

, said he did not think any difficulty could arise on that point; but nevertheless the utmost possible care ought to be taken in the form of the reference to the Select Committee, as it appeared to him the question involved one of the most formidable constitutional points that in his experience had ever arisen in the House. He thought that they ought to make the subject clear and specific, as it related to the present constitution of the House in connection with the office of the Under Secretary for War. He was quite satisfied that the Committee would do full justice to the question.

With reference to what has been said by the right hon. Gentleman about the Bill of Indemnity, I have no objection to postpone that until after the Committee has reported.

rose to move, as an Amendment—

"That this House is of opinion that the system of discharge of prisoners from Penal Servitude on licence, without police supervision, should no longer be continued."

The right hon. Member said, that if he succeeded in inducing the House to adopt his Resolution, he thought it would effect the saving of much time and trouble to the Committee upon this most important question. The Resolution affirmed no more than what the House had already agreed to. If he collected the sense of the House rightly during the recent debates on this subject, it appeared to him that all shades of opinion were concentrated in the proposition he was about to submit. Those would agree in the proposition who took his view of the matter, that there ought to be no abbreviation of punishment, but that the sentence of the law, so far as its duration was concerned, should be carried out as pronounced by the Judge; and that all the advantages hoped for by the abbreviation of punishment were overbalanced by the indefniteness which it brought on the penal law. He would rather trust to other processes of treatment for the moral effects which were required and desired in prison and under penal servitude than to the system of abbreviation of punishment. He would rather trust to discipline and salutary influence maintained over prisoners, and above all to the hope held out to a prisoner suffering penal servitude, that if he conducted himself well he might hope at the expiration of his sentence for the highest boon which an Englishman under such circumstances could possibly desire—namely, transportation out of the country, partly at the cost of benevolent and private societies and partly out of the rates of the locality to which the prisoner belonged. Those also would agree in the proposition who were represented by the hon. Member for Bedford (Mr. Whitbread), in the Amendment of which he had given notice, in favour of a remission of punishment, for good conduct, to the maximum limit of one-fourth of the original term. The supporters of such a proposition, from some fanciful notion of their own, appeared to see an advantage in hanging over the head of the prisoner so liberated the remainder of his punishment like the sword of Damocles, as a warning to himself and a beacon to others. They, however, were against licences, and therefore agreed in his proposition. Lastly, there were those who approved of the system of liberating prisoners on licence. But they also agreed that such licence should not be without supervision. What was the object of this Bill? It was simply to reduce into an Act of Parliament those conditions attached to tickets-of-leave which were at present vested in the discretion of the Secretary of State; under which discretionary power the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland had succeeded in realizing a successful police supervision in Ireland. In England these conditions were a dead letter; or the only effect was that greater facilities were given to ticket-of-leave men to commit crime than were possessed by any other class of offenders. The proposed Bill, if carried, would spoil the Irish system, and not benefit England, for it fell short of the conditions now actually enforced in Ireland, and did not impose such conditions as were required in England—yet both systems rested on the same bases—the Acts of 1853 and 1857. He thought it would be much better to assimilate the manner in which the system was carried out in the two countries by passing a Resolution by which the Secretary of State should be made to exercise the similar powers in England which had been exercised by the Lord Lieutenant in Ireland. A Resolution would do as well as an Act, for the power existed which only needed to be exerted, and if it could not be done by Resolution it would not be done by Act of Parliament. What were the conditions provided in this Bill? First, it was enacted that the licence should be ipso facto forfeited if the holder should be convicted of any indictable offence. That was not a very stringent condition, seeing that any one who committed an indictable offence was liable to a. punishment equal to such forfeiture. But then the unexpired term of his sentence was to be cumulative upon his new sentence. The same, however, might be done by larger punishments on second convictions. Then the holder of a licence who should fail or refuse to produce it when called upon by a magistrate or police officer, or shall break the conditions of his licence, was to be summarily punishable with three months imprisonment with or without hard labour. Then came a clause which empowered any police officer to apprehend without warrant any licence-holder whom he might suspect of having committed any offence, or of having broken any of the conditions of his licence. This was not so much a weak proposition, but rather a dangerous one, and yet one that, in efficiency for its purpose, fell short of the Irish system, where the ticket-holder must present himself once a month to the police, and if not, the police were authorized to apprehend him. There was something valid in that system, and anything that fell short of it would be wholly invalid. He protested against the provision in the Bill. A policeman might come up to him, and producing a photograph which he chose to think was something like him—and these photographs made all men alike villanous—ask him for his ticket; and though he might protest, the policeman might, on his not producing u ticket-of-leave, apprehend him and take him before a magistrate.

said, there was nothing about a photograph in the Act. The policeman was empowered to apprehend a ticket-of-leave man on suspicion of having committed an offence, and demand his ticket.

said, he was aware there was nothing about photography in the Bill, but by police regulation that photographic resemblance was to be considered primâ facie ground for suspicion; he objected to the mischievous and dangerous principle that was about to be introduced, of summary arrest on such suspicion. Besides, it would not meet the object in view, because ticket-holders would take care not to get within the scope of the active operations of the police. No man would remain within reach of his photograph. He had, however, no hope of his Amendment being adopted by the Government and allowed to modify the Bill. He should therefore support the Amendment of the hon. Member for Northampton. Sir Richard Mayne was the only person who at all recommended anything like supervision for England, and he doubted its possibility. Major General Cartwright had, however, offered to undertake to organize a supervision for England. He appeared to be a very sanguine man, and very much like one who would undertake at a moment's notice the conduct of the Channel fleet; but he (Mr. Adderley) did not consider the House was justified in legislating upon such assurance as that, Sir Walter Crofton told them that the Irish system might be introduced into England, but he (Mr. Adderley) thought there was a great difference between the circumstances of the two countries. They had a much smaller number of convicts to do with in Ireland than were in England, and the police of the two countries were very different in constitution. The Irish were far more French in their ideas than the English. They looked more to the Government. The ticket-of-leave system was taken from Australia; but there were two conditions attached to it in Australia that never would be submitted to in this country, namely, that a man should not leave a certain district, or be out after a certain hour of the night. It would be impossible to have a police force in this country that would be sufficiently strong for the efficient working of such a system. When the country was obliged to substitute penal servitude for transportation we adopted a most injudicious imitation of the terms of the old sentence. The Royal Commission reported last year that the increase of crime was to be attributed to two causes, the shortness of the terms of punishment and the inefficiency and inequality of the system. He thought they would much shorten their work if they were not to trouble themselves so much about the intricacies of punishment, and that they fell into a great error in constructing punishment to meet their own refined and philosophic views rather than the rough motives of the criminals with whom they had to deal. The main point should be to make the discipline more severe, more efficient for the deterrence from crime, and the punishment more strict and definite; by which means they would have the best chance of diminishing the number of criminals now crowding the gaols of this country.

expressed a hope that the right hon. Gentleman would not oppose any obstacle to their proceeding with the Bill that evening. He did not understand the object of the right hon. Gentleman's Resolution as it had been explained that evening. He had at first imagined that the right hon. Gentleman wished the House to express on opinion to the effect that there ought to be strict police supervision over convicts who had been discharged from penal servitude with tickets-of-leave. At present, however, he appeared to wish the House to discountenance altogether the principles of granting tickets-of-leave. There had been a decided feeling in the House in favour of the Bill being read a second time, and he therefore hoped that the right hon. Gentleman would not expect them to go into a long discussion upon the principles of the Bill. He had no desire to enter into a comparison between the effects of the Bill in England and Ireland. If he did so he should be involved in a long discussion which would probably be attended with no good result. The object of the Bill was to enable the Government lawfully to do what it had hitherto not been possible to do in a legal manner—namely, to authorize the police to apprehend the holder of a ticket of leave upon suspicion of having broken its conditions, and to take him before a magistrate for the purpose of having the question adjudicated upon. The right hon. Gentleman had given expression to his views upon the Bill, and any further discussion on what he had stated would, in his opinion, be better postponed to the Committee.

said, he would withdraw his Amendment.

said, he did not think any ground had been made out for the severer treatment of criminals which it was proposed by this Bill to carry out. He proposed to move the omission of the second clause. The clause proposed to increase the minimum sentence of penal servitude from three years to five years—a change of which no notice was given in the Preamble, and without the attention of the Commission, on whose Report the measure was founded, having been directed to the subject. His objections to the change were first that it was too important an alteration of the penal laws to be made without sufficient notice, and next, that there was no such increase of crime as to justify the measure, notwithstanding the distress in Lancashire and other circumstances. That the number of criminals had increased was true enough, but that increase was sufficiently accounted for by the growth of our population, and by other circumstances. One cause of the increase of crime was the harsh treatment extended to tramps and vagrants in our workhouses; and therefore if we were to review our penal system we ought at the same time to review the Poor Law. One effect of increasing the period of penal servitude would probably be that Judges would frequently, in consequence of the severity, rather sentence to imprisonment for two years; and thus there would be an augmentation in the number of those who came under the system which now prevailed in the county gaol. The system pursued in county gaols was generally one of great severity. Magistrates generally made the arrangements for the management of convicts, and the law which required the sanction of the Secretary of State had become a dead letter. In illustration of what he meant, he referred to the severe arrangements recently made by the magistrates of Hampshire. He might add that he recollected his right hon. Friend the Member for Oxfordshire (Mr. Henley) saying, with respect to the system of excessive severity which prevailed in different parts of the country twenty or thirty years ago, that men who had been subjected to it went home from prison without any apparent ailment and died. The comfort and luxuries of penal servitude had been made matter of common conversation, but it was a most foolish principle that the measures necessary for those who used expressions of defiance in reference to the punishment to which they were subjected, should be adopted as the measures necessary in all cases. In his own opinion no sufficient case had been made out for coupling with increased intensity of punishment increased duration; but he did not propose to press his Motion to a division.

denied that it was in the power of magistrates to make what rules they pleased for the government of county gaols, without the sanction and approval of a superior authority. As to this clause, there was no point upon which the opinion of the Royal Commission was more decidedly expressed, or upon which those witnesses who were entitled to speak with authority on the subject, were more unanimous than that the minimum of penal servitude ought to be increased. He had stated, on a former occasion, to what extent the sentences of three and four years' penal servitude were passed, contrary to what was the intention of the Legislature when they sanctioned those short sentences. The Commission were fully justified in their recommendation that the term should be increased, upon the ground that there should be a substantial distinction between the sentence of penal servitude and the sentence of imprisonment; but the Bill did not go to the full length of the Report of the Commissioners, for their proposal was that the minimum should be seven years.

said, the arrangement to which the right hon. Gentleman (Mr. Adderley) referred had not yet been reported to the Quarter Sessions, but when they were, they would be reported to the Home Secretary, in accordance with the law. So far from their being of extraordinary severity, they were a compromise between those who held extreme and those who held moderate opinions.

said, that in the old times of low diet, reports had certainly been made to the magistrates of his county that men occasionally went home out of prison in a weak state not fit for work, though he never recollected anything so strong being said as that men went home and died.

said, he wished to know what the probable operation of the alteration of the minimum of imprisonment from three years to five would be upon the number of prisoners to be received into county gaols, and what security the Home Secretary had that this new scale of punishment would be carried out any better than the old scale. According to the Judicial Statistics of 1862–3, of the number of persons convicted of offences for which they were liable to penal servitude for life, one-half had been sentenced to imprisonment; and of those who were liable to penal servitude for fourteen years, three quarters had been sentenced to imprisonment. Of 1,493 persons liable to penal servitude for life, only twenty-three were sentenced to it; and for 218, six months' imprisonment was deemed sufficient. Sentences for terms exceeding ten years were passed only on seventeen out of 4,499, who were liable to fourteen years penal servitude. As a county magistrate, he looked with some apprehension on the working of this second clause. The effect would be that something like three-fourths of those now sentenced to three years' penal servitude, instead of being sentenced hereafter to five years, would be sentenced to imprisonment. The consequence would be that the additional gaol accommodation for long sentences of imprisonment would be required to the extent of at least three-fourths.

asked how soon they might expect to have a penal discipline Bill by which they might judge of the probable effect of imprisonment upon prisoners in county gaols. He felt objection to the abridging of the discretion of Judges and Justices in giving sentences, because he thought it would extravagantly increase the number of prisoners in the county gaols. From his experience of our criminal law he felt a very strong objection to long imprisonments, believing them to be endured with a sullen endurance, and calculated to render criminals still more vicious.

said, it was impossible for him to give an answer with confidence to the question of the hon. Gentleman opposite, because where the law, as it must necessarily do to a very great extent, left to the Judges a wide discretion as to the punishment to be awarded to particular crimes, it was impossible to say how the fifteen learned Judges would exercise it on the circuits. He believed the practical effect of the minimum term of punishment would not be of the character anticipated by the hon. Member. With regard to the question of prison discipline, that of course depended, in great measure, on the magistrates, to whom the superintendence of local prisons was intrusted. With respect to the reforms of gaol administration, he should shortly introduce a Bill on the subject; but, of course, he could not enter on that subject now.

thought, that by making the present minimum term of three years more severe—such as two years' imprisonment, and one year on public works—it would be a better introduction to liberty than a longer term of penal servitude.

said that, with the exception of the reduction in diet, he saw very little improvement in the present Bill over the old system.

said, that eighteen months' separate confinement was as much as most prisoners were able to bear, so that the proposal of the hon. Member opposite (Mr. Adderley) was not practical. He did not think that the effect of the lengthened minimum would be to choke the county gaols in the way that was supposed.

suggested that, as the number of lashes which might be inflicted on a prisoner was not specified, the words "a number not exceeding fifty" should be introduced into the clause.

said, that there would be power included in the Bill to inflict the present maximum number, which, he believed, was thirty lashes.

said, that the schedule as it stood would prevent female convicts from being sent to refuges, as was now the custom in Ireland. A new clause, of which the right hon. Baronet had given notice, however, would meet that difficulty, and he would not press the Amendment which he had put upon the paper.

said, that the system referred to by his hon. Friend was found to work extremely well, and he had therefore drawn a clause to prevent any interference with it.

pointed out the hardship that might arise under this clause, which declared that a ticket-of-leave holder, on being convicted either by the verdict of a jury or upon his own confession of an indictable offence, should be liable to have his licence revoked, and to undergo the unexpired portion of his term of penal servitude in addition to the penalty for the new offence. The clause did not speak of any offence for which the person should have been indicted, but merely of an indictable offence. Now, it was an indictable offence to strike a man, and not the less so because it might be done under the greatest possible provocation—as, for example, where a man struck another for wantonly insulting his wife or his sister in the street. For the offence committed under such circumstances, a magistrate would, perhaps, only inflict a fine of 1s.; yet, if the offender happened to be a ticket-of-leave holder, under this clause he would have his licence revoked and be sent back to prison for the residue of the sentence.

said that, no doubt, an extreme case might he put, however they might shape a Penal Servitude Act. The object was to make the law accord with what was the present practice, for a licence-holder on conviction for an indictable offence almost invariably had his licence revoked. If, however, the indictable offence committed was of so trivial a character as the hon. and learned Gentleman had described, the Judge might represent the facts to the Secretary of State, and there was nothing to prevent the prerogative of the Crown from being exercised so as to temper justice with mercy.

moved, at the end of the clause, to add the words—

"If any holder of a licence granted under the said Penal Servitude Acts, or any of them, who shall he at large in the United Kingdom, shall fail to report himself to the chief police station of the borough or district where he shall be on his arrival therein, and subsequently on the first day of each month, or shall change his locality without having previously notified the same to the police station to which he last reported himself, he shall be deemed guilty of a misdemeanour, and may be summarily convicted thereof, and his licence shall be forthwith forfeited by virtue of such conviction."

The words which he proposed to add embodied the rules laid down for the regulation of the police supervision in Ireland, where they had been in operation seven years. The question which he sought to raise, and on which he meant to take the sense of the Committee, was whether the Irish system should be adopted in England. Two objections were urged against his proposition—the one that it was impracticable, and the other that it would prevent convicts from getting employment. Now, those two objections were incompatible with each other. If the proposal were really impracticable it could not prevent the convicts from getting employment, and even if it might prove a dead letter there could be no harm in trying it. Now, all those who said it was impracticable were merely theorists, whereas all those who said it was practicable based their opinion on actual experience. He would refer the Committee to the evidence given before the Royal Commission on the subject by Sir Walter Crofton, the head of the Irish Convict Prisons. Sir Walter stated that the public in Ireland generally approved of the system; that employers were ready to engage these persons; that he never heard of any complaints on the part of the public; that the men obtained sufficient general employment, and that they went to the colonies if they had any difficulty in doing so. His own belief was that prisoners discharged on ticket-of-leave were not a class of persons who were exceedingly anxious to work hard for an honest livelihood, and that they would be induced to do so only by the adoption of such a system of supervision as his Amendment contemplated. Captain Whitty, Director of Convict Prisons in Ireland, stated in a memorandum that no instances had come to his knowledge of any evil or abuse having arisen from the supervision exercised in that country by the police, although the system had been six years in existence. He added that several discharged prisoners who left Ireland had returned there and registered themselves again for supervision. That showed that the well-disposed found the system beneficial rather than otherwise to their interests. It was said that, although the plan might work in the rural districts of Ireland, it could not be carried out in Dublin; but experience did not support that objection. Mr. Organ voluntarily undertook to aid discharged licence-holders in obtaining work in Dublin, and where he had reason to fear that the men were relapsing into a dissolute life, he put himself in communication with the police in regard to them. His reports were made fortnightly, and were checked by the police, so that in Dublin a double system of supervision had been practised. It was said this system, though suited to Ireland, would not do for England; but he did not see such a difference in the circumstances of the two countries as to warrant that conclusion. As regarded protection to ticket-of-leave men, he believed the police in Ireland assisted them in getting work; and in one instance, when a ticket-of-leave man was accused of a crime, the officer of the station where he was registered was enabled to prove an alibi. Mr. Waddington had made an admission on this point very much against his own views, for he said if the supervision was carried out in London and not in the rest of the country they would drive the licence men out of London into the country. But it was said the system had been tried in France, where it was obliged to be relaxed. The French system, however, was very different from the Irish. When a convict was released in France he was not allowed to choose the locality where he was going—the place was chosen for him; even the villages and towns he should pass through to get to it were named, and after he got work a letter was written to his employer warning him that the man was a convict. That was a very different system from what prevailed in Ireland. There it was no part of the duty of the police to go to the employer and tell him that he had a ticket-of-leave man in his employ, or to tell the fact to his fellow-workmen. The Inspector General of the Midland district in his last report urged strongly the introduction of the Irish system into this country, and said that in one month he could organize the machinery necessary to carry it out.

said, he did not think it would be expedient for the Committee to adopt the Amendment of the hon. Gentleman, which would establish a continuing supervision over all licence-holders from month to month. The hon. Gentleman had not adverted to the essential difference between the police force in Ireland and in this country. In Ireland there was an armed police of 13,000 men, who occupied barracks all over the country within a short distance of each other, while here the stations were much scattered, and policemen few, even in a large district. The Royal Commission had reported against the proposal of the hon. Gentleman. Substantially the same proposition had been made in the Royal Commission by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for the University of Cambridge (Mr. Walpole), and only two of the Royal Commissioners voted for it—namely the right hon. Gentleman himself, and the right hon. Member for Oxfordshire (Mr. Henley), eight other members of the Commission voting against it. What was already required? That every licence-holder should in the first instance report himself to the chief of the police in the town or district where he should go on his discharge. It had been found that it was the practice of convicts to return to the districts where they originally resided, and when once they had reported themselves on their arrival, the police would be able to keep an eye on them, especially as the gratuities would be paid through their hands. If they attempted to do more than that, and to require that throughout the whole of the country every convict shall periodically report himself at the chief police-station of the borough or county in which he had taken up his residence, they would place an insuperable bar in the way of such men procuring honest employment. Under such a system a convict's previous character would be published to all his associates; and moreover, the very fact that he was obliged at certain intervals to leave home and visit a distant police-station, would in itself interfere with his chances of getting regular work. He did not know whether the hon. Member who proposed the Amendment was favourable to the emigration of convicts. [Mr. HUNT: I think emigration should be encouraged.] As the licence did not authorize emigration, the police would be bound to warn a convict who announced to them an intention of leaving the country that he would be committing an illegal act. On these grounds he could not agree to the Amendment.

supported the Amendment. It was notorious that at present the conditions of the ticket-of-leave were not enforced. Convicts were left to the general superintendence which the police bestowed on all notorious criminal characters; but the difficulty was to know what man fell within that category. At present the police had no means of ascertaining the character of the convicts who entered their districts. It was all left to chance, and chance had been the bane of our criminal system. There was no communication between the police of different counties, or between the police of the counties and London. The police might perhaps, recognize a man who returned to his original haunts; but criminals did not often return to the places from which they came—they sought a new district in which to carry on their depredations. How was their character to be known? There was an instance of a criminal mentioned by Mr. Recorder Hill, at Birmingham, who had been convicted eleven times. In March, 1850, he was sentenced at Maid-stone to fifteen years' transportation for stealing a watch; but in January, 1857, or about six years and nine months after his previous sentence, he was sentenced to six years' penal servitude for stealing 15lb. of cheese; and when Mr. Hill was calling the attention of the grand jury to the case he was again under an indictment for felony. Mr. Hill felt that this was not right, for if the man had been discharged on the ground of merit, and had enjoyed the benefit of a well superintended supervision, he might have been saved from the commission of his subsequent crimes. Supervision was, in fact, the root and branch of the system, and it was a privilege due to the criminal population, each of whom must be guarded against himself lest he be led back into crimes which in his calmer moments he might wish to avoid. It was stated as an objection that it was difficult for such a class to obtain employment. But in Ireland, after the first time, employers were content to take them, and were even anxious to have them. One employer of labour in Dublin gave it as his opinion that, after an experiment of five years, they had given satisfaction, and the Inspector of the police in Dublin gave the same opinion. There was one instance of a man who, before he came under the instruction of Mr. Organ, was the terror of the neighbourhood in which he resided, and always slept with a blunderbuss under his head. He was sentenced for receiving stolen goods. This man was now leading a sober and settled life, and had a pig and some fowls. Mr. Smith also gave it as his opinion that men under licence found it difficult to get employment, and that the great want of will to do well was the principal impediment, and that if the police were judicious their superintendence would not increase the difficulty of the well disposed to get employment. It was very right that there should be a sympathy with those who, having departed from the path of right, wore discharged from prison; but this sympathy must not interfere with the well being of society. He cordially supported the Amendment.

said, that in Australia ticket-of-leave holders were preferred by employers because of the stringent supervision that was exercised over them. In those colonies convicts again offending were remitted to prison to complete their original sentence. That was no hardship, because, when a man was sentenced to four years' penal servitude, he ought to undergo the whole of the punishment, and any remission was a favour to him. The hon. Member who spoke last had referred to the sympathy that was felt for liberated thieves. He, also, felt some sympathy for them, but he felt more for those who were robbed. Unfortunately, the current of public sympathy had of late years run in favour of the thieves, and he was glad to think that the humbug was coming to an end.

said, he should support the Amendment of the hon. Member for Northamptonshire (Mr. Hunt). He admitted that the subject was surrounded with difficulties; and, so long as transportation was kept in its present suspended state of animation, those difficulties must continue. The only way to meet the matter was to look it in the face. So long as the home-made criminals were turned out upon the country, they must make use of police supervision, for without it neither property would be safe, nor would there be a chance of reclamation for the convicts themselves. The supervision was recommended in the Report of the Royal Commissioners of last year, and he (Mr. Moor) regretted that the right hon. Baronet the Home Secretary did not read this paragraph instead of the one immediately succeeding it. The paragraph said that there would be much difficulty in securing efficient supervision on the part of the police, but that this object had now become of such extreme importance that it ought to be attempted. Again, Colonel Henderson, in writing to Mr. Waddington, in September, 1863, recommended that strict police supervision should be exercised over the convicts on tickets-of-leave. There was no doubt that, to a certain extent, or for a certain time, the susceptibilities of the English people would be opposed to the strict supervision of the police. The right hon. Member for North Staffordshire (Mr. Adderley) said the case might occur in which a person having a resemblance to a notorious offender might be taken to a lock-up. Such little inconveniences might occasionally occur. In New South Wales the story was told of the Chief Justice being out late one evening, and not being well known to a new member of the police, was asked for his pass, and, not having it, was walked off to the station, and locked up until his friends could come and identify him. Such things the country must put up with. In France there was a regular supervision, which, according to the evidence laid before the Royal Commission, had led to a diminution in the number of crimes. He hoped the Amendment of the hon. Member for Northamptonshire would be successful, as it would be worth a trial; and if the experiment did not succeed it could be abandoned afterwards. At any rate, it was a duty to make the experiment.

remarked that the Irish system depended upon Mr. Organ, who was a man such as was seldom to be met with. He was sorry that he could not support the Amendment.

said, he believed it to be quite possible to establish in England the system adopted in Ireland, and Mr. Organ had stated that he would undertake to establish it if the Secretary of State would allow him to try. He hoped the Amendment would be carried, for he thought it would bring about an improvement in the police force. It was disgraceful that every reform had to be dragged from the Government through the aid of those who sat on the Opposition benches.

said, the Home Secretary had referred to a division which had taken place in the Commission upon a Motion of his right hon. Friend (Mr. Walpole). Had he (Sir John Pakington) been present upon that occasion he should certainly have supported that Motion. Speaking of the discharge of convicts under licence, the Commission said—

"We believe, on the contrary, that this system, coupled with a general prolongation of sentences of penal servitude, and arrangements for placing convicts when so discharged under effective control and supervision, would afford the best prospect of giving to society a real protection against criminals without subjecting them to undue severity."

He would remind the right hon. Gentleman of this passage, and also of the fifth recommendation at the close of the Report—

"That those who may be unfit to go (to Western Australia), but may earn an abridgment of their punishment, and who may consequently be discharged at home under licence, should be placed under strict supervision till the expiration of the terms for which they were sentenced, and that the necessary powers should be given by law for rendering this supervision effectual."

The Commission distinctly laid down the principle that every man discharged under licence should be placed under supervision. It was very true that, by a division, a majority of the Commission recommended that, as in Dublin, licence-holders should be placed under the supervision of an officer in the Convict Department, assisted by the police. He dissented from that recommendation, believing that supervision exercised by the Convict Department would be very difficult and inconvenient. Nor could he assent to the proposal that discharged prisoners should be placed under the control of the Prisoners' Aid Society, for though he thought highly of that society as a voluntary institution, he thought it would be unwise to trust to it as an auxiliary of the State. The only safe mode of giving effect to the recommendation of the Royal Commission was by placing these men under the supervision of the police on the plan recommended by his right hon. Friend (Mr. Walpole), and now repeated in the Motion before the Committee. He earnestly hoped that the Committee would not allow the Home Secretary to fritter away the great principle now at stake. We had had enough of men discharged under licence without supervision. This system had caused well-founded dissatisfaction from one end of the kingdom to the other. He believed the best plan was to give men the chance of amendment by discharging them under licence, but he could only assent to that principle on condition that they were discharged under supervision. There should be either one thing or another. The Lord Chief Justice and his right hon. Friend (Mr. Henley) said, "Let us have fixed sentences entirely worked out, and no remission." His own feeling was that there should be remission accompanied by strict supervision, but that if no supervision was introduced there should be no remission.

thought it would be fatal to the prospects of convicts in this country obtaining honest employment on their discharge if they were bound to report themselves periodically to the police. Sir Richard Mayne, who said he was ready to undertake the supervision of these convicts, added that in doing so he could not prevent employers from knowing who they were. Whatever might be the case in Ireland, in this country, though employers were sometimes willing to employ licence-holders, workmen would turn them out if they knew the men were convicts. Moreover, he did not believe that the fact of a man's reporting himself once a month was any guarantee that, for the remainder of the month, he did not maintain himself by robbery, A man might report himself in London and be operating for the remainder of the month in Glasgow. Such reports offered no real security to society, while they would have the effect of driving these men out of honest employment.

said, he was against all licences at all, and thought that when you had got a thief the best way was to keep him to work out the full sentence passed upon him. Whether the sentence was one of six months' imprisonment or of six years' penal servitude, he saw no reason why there should be any remission. Being of opinion that the whole system of remission was a mistake, he was also of opinion that the mistake was not mended one bit by supervision, which was mere moonshine. Upon what was it founded? The hon. Member for Salisbury (Mr. Marsh) said, that in Australia employers of labour would sooner engage a thief than an honest man. Did he think that that was the case in England? Hardly. Mr. Organ, the great authority on this subject in Ireland, said he had great difficulty in getting employers of labour there to engage these men, and that, when this difficulty was overcome, it was necessary to keep the thing a secret from the workmen, who would otherwise have made the place too hot to hold them. With our police organization, what chance was there that this could be kept a secret in England? Our workmen did not mind working with a man who had been transported, and who had served his term, for they had a strong sense of natural justice, and said, "The man broke the law, but he has suffered the consequences, and there is an end of it;" but the case would be quite different with ticket-of-leave men. In this country nobody liked tickets. The Nonconformists did not like to be ticketed, and if these unfortunate men were ticketed, no one would work with them, and the poor fellows would thus probably be driven into crime again. The compelling a man, to report himself to the police would have a tendency to keep him out of honest employment, and make him a thief for the rest of his life; because a convicted man—and it was good that it was so—had enormous difficulties to contend with, and if those difficulties were increased, so were the chances of that man again becoming amenable to the law. The hon. Gentleman had given the House a lecture as to the course which public opinion had run in respect to this matter. There had been a good deal of getting rid of the gallows, and a good deal of getting rid of the "cat;" and for the last twelve years, during the period that the milder system had been at work, crime had, on the whole, decreased relatively to the population. As he was against licences and all supervision, he would vote with the Government on the present occasion. When he voted in the Commission he had merely voted against certain words standing part of the Question; that was to say, he voted against a stricter supervision than his right hon. Friend desired to have. He declined to sign the Report of the Commission, because the principle of "ticket-of-leave" ran through it, and he was dead against that system, for he thought that when a prisoner had served his term of punishment he should be let out a free man.

trusted that an addition would be made to the clause enabling the chief of the police to dispense with the periodical visits of the licence-holders if he were satisfied they were doing well. If no other Member did so, he would give notice of an Amendment to this effect on the Report.

said, that there was nothing in his Amendment which need prevent the noble Lord's suggestion from being adopted. He imagined that the chief constable would depute some constable to discharge the duty of receiving these reports.

moved to leave out after "large" the words "in the United Kingdom." One of the greatest services that could be rendered to licence-holders was to assist them in emigrating to the colonies. The Discharged Prisoners' Aid Society was willing to assist in this good work, and his object in proposing this Amendment was to enable the licence holders to emigrate legally.

said, the proposed Amendment, if agreed to, would be inconsistent with the power taken to revoke a licence, which could only be done within the United Kingdom, and he feared that it would give rise to great dissatisfaction in the colonies.

wished for some explanation as to the course the right hon. Baronet proposed to take with regard to the Amendment which he had induced the Committee to adopt.

said, it was his intention to assist the hon. Gentleman in giving effect to the decision of the Committee.

then moved the addition of a clause (Licences may be granted in Form differing from that in Schedule A).