said, he wished to ask the Secretary to the Admiralty, Whether he has received from the Naval Commander-in-Chief at Devonport any official Report of the damage done to the Research in the late experiment; and, if so, whether he has any objection to lay it upon the table of the House; and, if he has not received such Report, is it the intention to call for it?

, in reply, said, he had received a Return of the damage done to the Research on the occasion referred to, and, without troubling the House with details, he might state that the repairs of that damage would cost the public £19 in labour and £5 in materials, in all £24. If the hon. Baronet wished to see the details, he should be glad to lay the Return on the table.

said, he wished to know, whether the vessel had not since been taken into dock,

said, the report was that the vessel was ready to proceed anywhere, and he believed there had been no necessity for taking her into dock.

said, he would give notice that on Thursday he should move that the Return be laid on the table.

said, the noble Lord had not answered the question. Would the Return be produced?

said, he saw no objection to its being laid on the table.

said, he wished to ask the Secretary to the Treasury, Whether the Mint are taking any measures to remedy the present deficiency in the supply of silver coin?

said, in reply, that the Mint had lately been so much occupied by the demand for gold coinage, that some delay had been experienced in the silver coinage, but he hoped that in a very short time the supply of the silver coinage would be equal to the demand.

said, he would beg to ask the Secretary of State for the Colonies, If any application has been made to Her Majesty's Government, or to the local authorities, by or on behalf of Mr. Collins, the Concessionaire of the Russo-American line of Telegraph, intended to pas viâ Behring's Straits, for permission to carry a portion of such line through British Columbia; and, if so, whether such permission has been or is proposed to be given?

said, in reply, that such an application had been made, but it was not only an application to pass through British Columbia, but it was an application for an exclusive privilege. An answer was returned favourable to the right of passage, but disapproving that part of the application which referred to an exclusive privilege.

said, he wished to ask the Secretary of State for the Colonies as to the conduct of the Government with respect to meeting the claims of the Officials in the Ionian Islands. He wished to know, Whether the Government is prepared to secure to those Officials the payment of their Pensions, or whether those Gentlemen are to be thrown helpless upon the tender mercies of a Government which has never yet performed any one of its treaty obligations?

, in reply, said, his hon. and learned Friend was well aware that these charges had long been paid by the Government of the Ionian Islands, and by the Convention they were made the next charge after the sum charged to the Civil List. The amount was to be paid in half yearly instalments to Her Majesty's Consul at Corfu, and the Government expected that the payments would be made in due course.

said, he would beg to ask, Whether the Government have received any Return of the casualties which occurred at the Volunteer Review in Hyde Park on Saturday last; and also, whether the Report which had appeared in the papers is true, to the effect that Sir Richard Mayne had declined to provide any extra protection for the public on that occasion?

said, he had received no such Return as that to which the hon. and gallant Gentleman referred; but he had ascertained that so far as the information of the police went only one accident had occurred, which was occasioned by the breaking of a bough of a tree up which some person had climbed. In reply to the second Question, he might observe that the police had done all that by previous arrangement they had undertaken to do. On the 23rd instant he received official intimation from the War Department to the effect that, as 22,000 Volunteers were expected to assemble in Hyde Park on the following Saturday, there might be great difficulty in getting the various corps into the Park, unless the different approaches to it could be kept clear by a body of police. He immediately, on the receipt of the letter, directed Sir Richard Mayne to place himself in communication with the officers of the War Department and the Horse Guards, who undertook that the duties within the Park should be performed by the military. It was not, he believed, known at the time that there was to be a reserved space fenced in by iron hurdles, for persons who were provided with tickets of admission; but he subsequently was applied to with the view of having instructions issued to the police to lend their aid in securing admission to the reserved space in question. The keeping of the approaches to the Park clear, however, involved the employment of a considerable body of men, who were for the purpose withdrawn from their ordinary occupation, and much dissatisfaction would naturally be created in other parts of the metropolis if they were drafted away in such numbers as to endanger the safety of property in those quarters. It was therefore arranged that this part should be guarded by the military. In addition to keeping the approaches to the Park, the police undertook to provide a sufficient number of men to secure access to the line of hurdles of the various corps until they came to the inclosure; and their duties in providing ingress and egress for the troops engaged in the review were so efficiently performed, that not the slightest interruption had, he believed, taken place.

desired to ask the First Commissioner of Works, on what principle the distribution of tickets for the reserved space was made? It was stated that seats would be provided for ladies; but such accommodation was not afforded. It was also, as he understood, announced that tickets would be given to the Members of the two Houses of Parliament; but many persons were admitted who, he should say, were by no means closely connected with Members of either House.

said, that the main object was to enable the friends of the Volunteers to see their evolutions, and 4,000 tickets were given to the commanding officers to be distributed as they pleased among the members of their corps. That, of course, led to the admission of very various classes and ranks of society. Besides this, tickets were sent to the Members of both Houses of Parliament and to official persons, to foreigners and others, who seemed entitled to a preference. It was stated on the cards that the first three rows of chairs were to be reserved for ladies; but he was sorry to say that many in the station of gentlemen disregarded this regulation, and were so discourteous to the ladies, that they took the front seats, and refused to give them up to ladies when asked to do so, and intercepted the view of those behind by standing upon the chairs. Although he could distribute the tickets, it was beyond his power to teach manners to those who had possession of them. It was a source of great regret to him that Englishmen should have disgraced themselves, as he thought they had done, on Saturday afternoon, by retaining seats while ladies were standing by.

rose, pursuant to notice, to move—

"That in the opinion of this House it is expedient that the existing Duties upon Spirits should be reduced."

The subject of which he had given notice involved a question of considerable importance. In the commercial language of the country, he might say that as sugar was easy, and as tea was looking up, bethought that the article of spirits might fairly claim some consideration from the House. Let it not be supposed that he had risen to advocate a discriminating duty on behalf of Ireland. Although the question involved was one which deeply affected the interest of Ireland, it certainly was not his intention to ask for any discriminating duty. But the difference between the Chancellor of the Exchequer and himself, in point of argument, was this—that while it would be enough for him (Mr. Whiteside) to prove that the right hon. Gentleman's last experiment upon the spirit duties was inapplicable or had failed both as regarded Ireland and Scotland, on the Chancellor of the Exchequer lay the onus of establishing that his experiment was applicable to all parts of the United Kingdom, Now, he intended to quote the right hon. Gentleman's own opinions in favour of his view of the matter, and to prove that that was a reasonable and logical view. If the right hon. Gentleman intended to apply one duty to all parts of the Empire, it lay with him to prove that such duty was applicable to the condition of each branch of the United Kingdom. He (Mr. Whiteside) was in a condition to prove that the experiment of the right hon. Gentleman was wholly inapplicable to the condition of Ireland. In 1853 the spirit duties in England, Ireland, and Scotland varied very materially. The astute mind of the Chancellor of the Exchequer was then directed to the question of equalizing the duties in the three countries, and he then said that he had for a long time been considering whether a great object of financial policy could not be obtained by equalizing the spirit duties in the three countries. The right hon. Gentleman then proceeded to state the nature of the task which he had undertaken. He observed—

"That is, however, a very difficult problem. It may be very doubtful whether it will ever be entirely obtained, but such an approximation to it as will stop smuggling, might, perhaps, at some time be reached. It is quite plain that such an equalization cannot be obtained without some reduction of the spirit duties in England. We must lower the English duties at a fitting time to some point up to which the others may be raised."

The right hon. Gentleman then suggested an increase of duty "within reasonable bounds" for Scotland of 1s. a gallon, in addition to 2s. 8d. before. Making, then, an allowance for waste, the Chancellor of the Exchequer calculated a gain to the revenue from Scotland of £278,000. Now the House would see what he proposed to do for Ireland. He (Mr. Whiteside) confessed he always felt alarmed for his country when the right hon. Gentleman promised to extend the benefits of his measures to Ireland. The right hon. Gentleman went on to say—

"The Government have also anxiously considered this question as it regards Ireland. It is quite plain, I am afraid, that we can in no case stand as we are with regard to the Irish spirit duty, since an allowance for waste in bond will entail a diminution of revenue. At present the spirit duty in Ireland is extremely low in comparison with the duty in the two other countries. When an attempt was made to increase the tax in 1842 by 1s. per gallon, it was found most difficult to give effect to the increased duty, and we think it would not even now be safe to propose to levy an additional tax of 1s. a gallon upon home-made spirits in Ireland."

The right hon. Gentleman then discussed certain changes contemplated in the revenue as essential to the levying of the duty on spirits. He said—

"We think we may fairly propose an additional duty of 8d. per gallon on Irish spirits, namely, an augmentation from 2s. 8d. to 3s. 4d. a gallon."

The right hon. Gentleman exhibited great caution then in the measures he was taking for amending and reforming the system by which the additional tax was to be levied. At that time he (Mr. Whiteside) pointed out the difficulties attending the attainment of that object, which he thought could only be carried out by some reduction of the spirit duty in England; but he made no advance to the settlement of that difficult problem, nor was any step taken towards it until the year 1858, when his right hon. Friend the Member for Buckinghamshire, being then Chancellor of the Exchequer, undertook to deal with the Question. Nothing was more remarkable and nothing reflected more severely upon all financiers who had dealt with the spirit duties, except his right hon. Friend, than did the numerous alterations which had in the last few years been made in those duties. It was really surprising how any man would embark his capital in such a business, and it was not to be wondered at that so many skilful people left this country in order to avoid the legislation of a capricious-Minister and a fickle assembly. He (Mr. Whiteside) could safely say that the grounds on which the distillers of Ireland were induced to give their assent to the proposition of his right hon. Friend the Member for Buckinghamshire were reasonable and just—namely, that a fixed, permanent, equitable, and uniform duty would be imposed upon all parts of the country, and that the markets of England and Scotland would be opened to the manufacture of Ireland, so that they might be compensated by the greater sale of the article manufactured for the increased duty which was to be placed upon it. It was a very serious thing to raise the duty in Ireland in that year from 6s. 2d. to 8s. a gallon; still it was effected on the understanding that the duty was to remain permanent. That was the converse of what was recommended by the present Chancellor of the Exchequer in 1853, which was to reduce the standard in England to a figure to which the duties levied in Scotland and Ireland might reasonably be raised. The arrangement finally made was, to preserve the duty at the figure at which it stood in England, and to impose additional burdens on Scotland and Ireland. But it was understood at the time that that was to be a permanent settlement. The next thing that took place, however, was a China war. The noble Viscount saw a British flag, which was seen by no one else, floating upon the Lorcha Arrow, and went to war with China. As a consequence he had a large bill to pay. No one denounced that war more eloquently or justly than did the Chancellor of the Exchequer. Having made that speech and defeated the noble Viscount, he ultimately became Chancellor of the Exchequer, and was called on to pay the bill—a very unpleasant predicament in which to place the right hon, Gentleman. And accordingly, in July, 1860, when the Irish Members were taken at a disadvantage, being, as they often were, at the assizes, or else crossing the sea on their way back, the Chancellor of the Exchequer brought in a supplementary Budget, introducing it with all those expressions of regret and explanatory observations which, from experience, they knew the right hon. Gentleman to be capable of making, particularly when he was on the wrong side of the Question. He expressed his regret at the China war, which placed him in the painful predicament of providing the means for meeting the cost of that war; and he then proceeded to show how he proposed to raise the money. This was the hinge of the whole Question. If the right hon. Gentleman was right then, he was clearly right now; but if he was wrong, as experience showed him to have been, he presumed he would not be unwilling to reduce the duty upon spirits to the standard settled in 1858, levying an equal and uniform tax upon the three kingdoms, Friends of his in Ireland were anxious to have the duty reduced to the rate at which it stood previous to 1858, but he did not think they ought to separate themselves from the English and Scotch merchants, who made out a very strong case against the last addition of taxation. The right hon. Gentleman treated the Question with great candour, admitting that the whole affair was one of money. The question was often discussed as if it were one of morals; but the Chancellor of the Exchequer put it roundly on the short and distinct issue that he must have money, and the only question to be considered was how he was to get it. The right hon. Gentleman, then, in effect, said, "I will unsettle what was settled in 1858." In February, 1860, the differential customs duty on spirits was, in substance, abolished, and, in July, 1s. 11d. duty was laid upon foreign as well as on British spirits. The following was the Estimate made by the right hon. Gentleman. He said that the increase to 10s. upon British spirits would I produce an augmentation of £2,252,000, independently of the revenue to be derived from foreign spirits; but, making every allowance for the diminution of consumption consequent upon the higher duty, he would only estimate the augmentation at £1,000,000. From foreign spirits the right hon. Gentleman was to receive £400,000. The Chancellor of the Exchequer carried the House so far with him that in July, 1860, they agreed to his Resolutions. What had been the fulfilment of that prophecy? The speeches of the right hon. Gentleman had been collected in a book; and he (Mr. Whiteside) could imagine an advice to be offered to them by an enraptured economist—namely, that they might burn the Orations of Cicero, provided they preserved the Speeches of the Chancellor of the Exchequer and made them their study. He should be happy to study the speeches of the right hon. Gentleman, but he should certainly object to the other suggestion. But did the Chancellor of the Exchequer recollect the admirable speeches which he had made in reference to those measures he had introduced? All those speeches, which he had read with infinite pleasure and satisfaction, were speeches in extenuation and mitigation of punishment. Not one of those speeches had been made with the view of showing that his figures had been realized, or that his predictions in regard to the revenue to be derived from spirits had been fulfilled. The fact was this—the Chancellor of the Exchequer had never got the money he anticipated from his financial experiments, and what was more, he never would get the money. Nay more, if the right hon. Gentleman had simply left the duty as it had been, he would have obtained infinitely more than he had ever got under his new disturbance of the former equitable adjustment of those duties. His (Mr. Whiteside's) proposition, therefore, was that the House should prefer the settlement of 1858 to the novelty introduced by the right hon. Gentleman in 1860. In 1861 the right hon. Gentleman made a speech upon the grievances of the distillers — he stated those grievances very clearly, but he gave them no relief. Now, five gentlemen, distillers from grain in this city, had done him the honour of communicating with him, one of whom stated that his firm alone paid £600,000 yearly to the State, and that the five together paid nearly £3,000,000. Five others from Scotland paid about £2,000,000; and those from Ireland, with whom he was acquainted, paid £2,250,000. But to refer to the speech of the right hon. Gentleman in 1861. He said—

"It is one of the main complaints of the distillers of spirits, than whom I never had the pleasure of meeting with a more intelligent body of British merchants and tradesmen, that they are taxed, as they think, most unfairly in proportion to beer. I admit from its nature that beer ought to be taxed more lightly than ardent spirits; but we have certainly pushed this principle as far as it can go."

He admitted from its nature that beer ought to be taxed more lightly than ardent spirits, and said that the Government had pursued that principle as far as possible— the alcohol in spirits was charged with a duty of 10s. 6d. a gallon, that on wine between 6s. and 7s. a gallon, and the alcohol in beer at only 1s. 10d. a gallon— that, in fact, while beer was taxed at the rate of 18 to 23 per cent ad valorem, and wine from 25 to 80 per cent, the tax upon spirits was upwards of 400 per cent. The right hon. Gentleman, however, declined to give the distillers any redress. Now, with respect to Ireland, he (Mr. Whiteside) considered it indispensable that the House should consider the condition of the distillers in that country. They belonged to a body of men who paid into the revenue about £10,000,000 a year. He had endeavoured to lay before the Committee the exact state of the facts. In 1861 the right hon. Gentleman not only failed to get the additional million from spirits which he had calculated upon as a moderate estimate, but his receipts from that source fell short by more than £500,000 of the amount received from the article in the previous year. That was to say, that they not only did not pay the additional revenue estimated by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, but the sum raised in the shape of duty fell short of that of the previous year by upwards of £500,000. The right hon. Gentleman, in admitting those facts, stated that—

"It was estimated, on the contrary, before and apart from any change of duty, that the tax would yield about £400,000 more than the duty had yielded in the year before."

So much for the estimate of the right hon. Gentleman. The Chancellor of the Exchequer seemed, then, to be fully convinced of the error of his figures—an error from which no figures of rhetoric could rescue them. Now, it was generally the practice of the right hon. Gentleman, when his figures were in his favour, to assume a triumphant tone, and when they were against him an explanatory one. Accordingly the right hon. Gentleman said it never was the case that in the first year after a fiscal change of this kind the Government had received all the money which was contemplated. Well, but why then did the Chancellor of the Exchequer say that he estimated the immediate increase from his new experiment at £1,000,000; and afterwards, when he found that his anticipations were lamentably disappointed, account for the enormous discrepancy by saying that the full and fruitful results of his experiments could not be expected in the first year after the increase of duty? And, referring to Ireland, the right hon. Gentleman went on to say—

"The country we naturally look to with misapprehension, and which may be called the peccant part of the United Kingdom. Illicit distillation was not increasing, as has been proved by the returns of the detections in Ireland; it was, in fact, reduced, and the police was effective in this regard."

Well, he (Mr. Whiteside) admitted that that was rather a strong representation of the right hon. Gentleman's case, but he did not intend to leave that point untouched. He had now shown that the right hon. Gentleman had utterly failed in his experiment of 1860. He would now show what was the case in 1862. If the Returns of the revenue were bad in 1861, they were worse in 1862, the second year after the new experiment of the Chancellor of the Exchequer. The right hon. Gentleman, in reference to the spirits duties of that year, said—

"With respect to the spirit duty, that is a fiscal and likewise a social question of very great interest and importance. The figures were but partially satisfactory. I estimated with a liberal allowance the effect of the heightened price—that we should receive £10,000,000 of revenue from British spirits. We have only got about £9,600,000. It is true there is an increase of £359,000 upon the previous year, but even this is not so large an increase as we thought we should receive. Now, the serious question is, from what cause has the revenue fallen short? Is it from illicit distillation, or is it from an alteration in the public taste, or is it from a diminished power of consumption? It is certainly not from illicit distillation."

The right hon. Gentleman then entered into a dissertation upon public taste — a subject no one was more competent to discuss than himself. Those who thought that the taste of a nation could be altered had better go to Holland and see how the Dutch burgomasters and their friends swallowed the strong drinks there, although they had the sour wines of Germany which they never touch, and the light wines of France which they never taste. So in the damp climates of Scotland and Ireland. They might wish them to drink tea or coffee, but they persisted in drinking spirits; and that being so, the question was how they might be supplied at a high price without encouraging crime by illicit distillation. The right hon. Gentleman admitted the diminished consumption, but said that it did not arise from illicit distillation, but from the increased sobriety of the people. That prediction, however, unfortunately, had not been fulfilled. According to the last Return of the Inspector of Prisons in Ireland, the committals for drunkenness in 1862 exceeded by a trifle those of 1861. In 1862, when the duty might be said to have had an effect in diminishing drunken ness, the Inspector stated that the committals in Dublin for drunkenness amounted to 6,868, of which 3,788 were females, which was somewhat in excess of the numbers in 1861. This was after two years' experience of the duty which the right hon. Gentleman predicted would diminish drunkenness. The right hon. Gentleman the Chancellor of the Exchequer had truly said, with regard to the dangerous and weak side of any system for raising a duty on spirits, that in Ireland there had been no illicit distillation. Before, however, he entered upon that part of the question, he would refer to the Budget of 1863; and here he had to thank the right hon. Gentleman for giving a true but fearful description of the condition of Ireland. He said truly that the attention of the people of this country had not been fully awakened to the amount of calamity which during the last few years had befallen that portion of the Empire. The right hon. Gentleman went through each particular head of production, and he proved to the satisfaction of all who heard him that the loss that year reached £13,000,000, which approached the full amount of the estimated valuation of that country, namely, £13,400,000. The right hon. Gentleman then proceeded to explain how it was he did not get the million, and he said that if he did not get the whole he did a part of it. It was, however, a very small part, and he made an ingenious calculation, beginning the year at a different period to that when he persuaded the House to assent to his Resolutions in 1860, for the purpose of showing that his loss had not been really so great as it was; and he said that he admitted the principle to be to get what money he could, provided it did not increase illicit distillation, and he then a second time pronounced a deserved panegyric upon the eminent persons engaged in the trade, and of the importance of having their assent and support in the collection of this great revenue. His hon. Friend (Sir Stafford Northcote), who was so well versed in financial matters, had obtained a Return relative to this subject, and it showed the net revenue, after deducting all drawbacks and allowances, from home made spirits for the five years commencing 1860. In that year the revenue was £9,778,960. In 1861 it was £9.225,538, showing a diminution of £553,422. So that instead of getting a million the diminution was about half a million. In 1862 there was a revenue of £9,618,291, and the decrease compared with the year in which he made the increase of duty was shown to be £160,669. In 1863 the revenue was £9,399,707, showing a decrease of £379,253, compared with 1860. Then there was the year 1864, which was estimated to reach £9,600,000, which would show a diminution of £178,960; and the Gentlemen who had prepared the Return had done what he was not called upon to do, and in endeavouring to make a case for the right hon. Gentleman added that the dealers, being apprehensive in 1860 that he was about to raise the duty, paid a large amount of duty in anticipation, which ought to be taken into account in reckoning the receipts of the present year. A Return moved for by his hon. Friend the Member for Dublin (Sir Edward Grogan) showed that the diminution in the manufacture of the article in Ireland had reached 5,000,000 gallons a year. The Return gave a comparison of the years 1838, 1839, and 1840, with 1858, 1859, and 1860. The diminution was enormous, for 1838 it was 12,296,342 gallons, against 5,335,774 gallons in 1860. A very useful Return was likewise obtained by the hon. Gentleman opposite (Mr. Moffatt), which showed an immense reduction on the amount of spirits distilled and upon which duty was paid in Ireland in 1863. All these Returns showed that the effect of raising the duty had been to diminish the consumption, and that while the right hon. Gentleman had only estimated the reduction of consumption consequent on the increase of duty at 10 per cent it amounted to 23 per cent. Before he entered upon the question of illicit distillation he would remind the right hon. Gentleman of the argument he used in 1863. He said that though he had not got his money illicit distillation had not increased, and he appealed to the opinions of the distillers in confirmation of that opinion. Now the opinion of the rectifying distillers of England were against the right hon. Gentleman. The hon, Gentle- man the Member for the City of London (Mr. Crawford), had presented a petition to the House from the rectifying distillers of England. They set forth in that petition the effect of the varying scales of duty which continued up to 1859, and the reason assigned in 1860 for the increase of the duty was the necessity to provide for the increased expenditure which the country had to meet on account of the war in China. They stated that the annual revenue from the duty on spirits amounted to somewhere about £10,000,000 sterling, and it appeared by the Returns presented to Parliament that—

"Since the high rate of duty of 10s. per gallon was imposed, not only has a very considerable decrease in quantity consumed taken place, but that a large deficit in the annual revenue derived from duty on spirits has resulted. Your petitioners refer to these statements for the purpose of declaring their conviction, not that the quantity of spirit actually made in the country is less, but that a very large quantity of what in all probability is actually consumed is derived from the increase of resort to illegal means for making and vending spirits; and one among the several proofs we have confirming this view is, that one of our body was recently offered spirits of wine 63 per cent over proof, at the rate of 500 gallons per week, at very little more than half the duty of 10s. per gallon, to be delivered in bulk in champagne cases, lined with tin, so as to make it appear they were filled with wine—an extremely easy process to introduce illicit spirits among dealers and retailers without fear of detection."

Then they said that the quantity manufactured was, in 1859, 23,878,688 gallons, when duty was 8s. per gallon; 1860, 21,338,448 gallons, at 8s. to July, when raised to 10s.; 1861, 19,514,201, at 13s.; 1862, 18.836,187, at 10s.; and that if they were challenged they could show that consumption had not been diminished, the extra quantity being supplied by illicit distillation. The fine-grain distillers to whom he had alluded, who paid the enormous revenue of three millions, stated their views to the Chancellor of the Exchequer in a memorial to which they received a reply that the right hon. Gentleman could not adopt their views. The Scotch distillers had recently sent to him a document, in which they stated their belief that the duty should be uniform for Great Britain and Ireland at 8s. per gallon for British spirits, and they proceeded to state—

"The lamentable failure of the measure by which the duty was raised in 1860 to 10s. per gallon is too evident to need much proof. It was passed to produce an annual increase of revenue of £1,335,000: it has only produced £197,165, or £1,137,835 less than estimate. Had it not been for the rise of duty there is no reason to believe that duty-paid spirits would not have shared the constant increase of consumption which has taken place with all other duty-paying articles. The increase in duty-paid British spirits, which it was estimated would be from 10 to 11 per cent, has reached the enormous amount of 20 per cent. We submit that the chief cause of this astounding diminution is the constant increase of illicit distillation, which bids fair to prevent any further expansion of the spirit duties."

They said that the amount of distillation had been decreased 20 per cent, and the high rate of duty in addition prevented all expansion of the home trade, and they also stated their belief that it had had the effect of greatly increasing illicit distillation, which the Chancellor of the Exchequer could not have failed to observe. The last Report of the Commission of Inland Revenue was, perhaps, not so satisfactory on this point as the right hon. Gentleman could have wished. They said—

"We do not deny that in one point of view the revenue accounts since the spirit duties were raised to their present rate have disappointed us. The consumption has undoubtedly decreased in a greater degree than we had expected, and although in the past year there were obvious abnormal causes operating towards this result, we cannot but feel great hesitation in making an estimate for the future."

He thought this admission of the Commissioners decisive. He would take now the case of the Scotch distillers, who had drawn up an able petition, which had been presented to the House. They stated that prior to 1823 the Spirit Duty had been for some years retained at a high point, the result of which was that smuggling had increased to such an extent that the Government of the day, having found it impossible either to collect the revenue or to prevent illicit trade, reduced the duty. They then stated that they had embarked a large capital in the trade, believing the duty to be settled, and they besought the House to do them that justice which had been done to the foreign producers of brandy and rum. The Chancellor of the Exchequer returned the same answer to the Scotch distillers as he had done to others—that their memorial would be considered; which meant, in fact, that it would never be looked at. He contended that the opinion of Scotland was not to be relied on as favourable to the right hon. Gentleman. Within the last few days he had received a letter from Scotland in which the writer said it was the opinion of the Scotch distillers that there should be a uniform duty imposed, such as that which was settled by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Buckinghamshire, and that the lamentable failure of the measure by which the duty was raised in 1860 to 10s. was too evident to be denied. It also stated that there was a constant increase of illicit distillation, because the same quantity of spirits was consumed now as was done before the increase of the duty. The right hon. Gentleman, in speaking of the consuming power of the country and its expansive energies, had quoted those persons when in his favour, and the least tiling he could do now that they were against him was to give the same weight to their opinions He could speak with confidence with regard to the effect of the high duty of spirits in Ireland. The right hon. Gentleman had, in truth, decimated the distillers of that country, the effect of his measure having been to reduce them from 100 to 25. They also troubled him with a memorial, in which they set out their case, and in formed him that the effect of the high duty would be to throw the trade into dishonest hands, that demoralization would become prevalent, and that it would produce no increase to the revenue. They said that all they submitted to the right hon. Gentleman had come to pass—that demoralization and illicit distillation had increased, with no gain to the Treasury, except the,£179,000, which some gentlemen said would have been greater if the duty had not been increased. The right hon. Gentleman had appealed to the opinion of the distillers of Ireland, who were men of the highest respectability, such as Messrs. Jamieson, Sir J. Romer, Messrs. Roe, and others; now he must throw their opinion overboard. Beyond doubt the high rate of the duty had greatly increased illicit distillation in Ireland. He had received the following letter and Return, showing the extent to which illicit distillation was, carried on in one part of the county of Tyrone:—

"Glenelly Rectory, Gortin, Newtownstewart.

"April 26, 1864.

"Dear Sir, — Observing that you have given notice of your intention to bring under the consideration of the House the subject of the reduction of the existing duties on spirits, I send you a Return, showing the extent to which, within a very limited district, illicit distillation has lately been carried on. The seizures have been made within less than four months by one party, consisting of a constable and three sub-constables, and within two miles of my glebe house. It is quite unnecessary for me to make any observation on the demoralizing tendency of the practice, as productive of drunkenness, and tending to further infractions of the law.

"I have not the pleasure of a personal acquaintance with you, but I have a very great pleasure in being one of your constituents.—Very truly yours,

"E. M. CLARKE, J. P.,

Ex-Schol.-Rector of the Parish of Upper Badoney.

"To the right hon. J. Whiteside," &c.

The Return was as follows:—On January 7, 1864, at Glenerin, in Upper Badony, there were seized, 1 stillhouse, still, still-head and worm, 100 gallons of singlings, 80 gallons of wort, 100 gallons of potale, and 50 bushels of grains; on January 29, at Dunlogan, county Derry, in Ballinarine, stillhouse, still, 350 gallons wort, and two prisoners; on February 19, Canontray-haugh, in Upper Badony, 1 barrel containing illicit matter; Keadycam, in Upper Bodeny, 1 stillhouse, kieve 2 barrels, 2 stone of malt, and — bushels of grains; on March 1, at Strahull, in Upper Badony, stillhouse, still, rieve 3 barrels, 30 gallons of singlings, 2 stone of malt, and 4 bushels of grains; on March 29, at Garvagh, in Upper Badony, 1 stillhouse, for the purpose of carrying on illicit distillation; on April 4, at Goles, in Upper Badony, 1 stillhouse, 60 bushels of grains, and 200 gallons of potale; on April 12, at Leaghs, in Upper Badony, stillhouse, and 350 gallons of wort; on April 14, at Keodycam, in Upper Badony, stillhouse, 30 bushels of grains, and 100 gallons of potale. He begged the right hon. Gentleman to notice the distinction between the sales of spirits by publicans who are under some control and the illicit traders who were under no control. It was a perfectly legitimate Motion to propose to the House that public-houses should be shut up on the Sabbath Day, for you have the power and the right to do it if you think fit; but what law or control had you over those persons who were possessed of stills, and manufactured an article and disposed of it at one half the price legitimate dealers could sell it at. They committed not only a crime in manufacturing it, but they were the cause of crime in others He had received some amusing letters in reference to it, and one which he would read, but the writer did not wish him to mention his name. It stated that it cost only a few shillings to set up a still beside a running water, whilst the facilities for disposing of the spirits were very great indeed. A dealer in Londonderry had written him as follows:—

"As a tobacco manufacturer and spirit retailer, pay a yearly licence of £20 18s. 11d. to the inland revenue. I can buy any quantity of illici whisky of real 'Innishowin,' so can any spirit retailer in this city. In fact, it is hawked about by sample during the day, and a delivery made at once if a bargain is made. The number of seizures or convictions for illicit distillation is no criterion by which to judge of the extent to which the traffic is at present carried on. The ' poteen' is sold from 7s. 6d. to 11s. per gallon, according to quality and strength."

So they saw how successfully the illicit distiller could compete with the honest tradesman. A learned Judge in charging the grand jury at the late assizes, Donegal, referred to the fact of there being between twenty and thirty persons confined in the gaol for summary convictions against the revenue laws. No other county presented such a picture, the learned Judge observed, as the result of illicit distillation. The grand jury stated that the duty on spirits was so high, it now became impossible to put down illicit distillation. The learned Judge to whom he had alluded further stated that Ribbonism and agrarian outrage always accompanied illicit distillation, and wherever the spirit-stills abounded there arose a plentiful crop of crime. The result of all this was that there had been laid upon the table of the House a Return which completely refuted all the views of the right hon. Gentleman the Chancellor of the Exchequer with respect to the anticipated increase of legitimate distillation. The Return had been summarized in a morning paper in this way—That in the year ended March, 1864, there were 2,743 detections and 411 convictions for offences against the Excise laws. Taking the last three months only, namely, the first three months of 1864, and comparing them with the corresponding months of 1863, he found that while in January, 1863, there had been in the county of Donegal 74 detections, the number in January, 1864, had increased to 140, with only 17 convictions. In February, 1863, the number of detections was 98, the convictions 23; this year the numbers were 148 and 38. In March of the present year the detections had been 129 in that one county. It was, then, impossible to maintain the duty at so high a figure that it led to increased illicit distillation and crime, and drove out of the trade the highly respectable and honourable men who found that they could not carry on the trade under the present duties—gentlemen to whose opinion the right hon. Gentleman referred when they were in favour of his views, but which he rejected when their opinions were opposed to his own. The manufacture of spirits in Ireland was a very important trade. It was intimately connected with the agricultural interest, with the farming class, with those who fattened cattle and kept dairies; and if the right hon. Gentleman persevered in crushing these interests by the weight of the duties, he did an irreparable injury, and brought himself within the criticism of the Edinburgh Review, the organ of the old Whig party with which he was now so inseparably connected, that the current of his fiscal legislation of late had been altogether detrimental to the interests of Ireland. In 1853, and again in 1858, the right hon. Gentleman stated to the House that he was sure of obtaining as large an amount of money by a diminution of duty as with the higher rate. But, thinking it desirable to check drunkenness, he raised the duty. The consequence had been an increase of illicit distillation, and an increase of drunkenness. This being so, was it not a fair appeal that he now made to the right hon. Gentleman to take the whole of the circumstances connected with the morality and industry of Ireland, as affected by the spirit duties, into his serious consideration? The right hon. Gentleman had admitted the great extent of the misfortunes of Ireland. But what had he done to administer relief? Positively nothing. Yes, the Government had thrown them into Chancery. Not a single Irish Bill was upon the table except a Chancery Bill. This was not a pleasant subject to discuss at present. "Sufficient for the day was the evil thereof." There was another point he had omitted to mention, which was that the publicans throughout the country were driven, by the enormous duty on spirits, and the consequent increase of illicit distillation, to resort to poisonous adulterations, and thus the people were injured both mentally and physically—maddened, in fact, by the adulterated drink; whereas there were abundant proofs that pure Irish whisky, when taken, not as the Scotchman took it, but drank as an Irishman and an Englishman drank it, injured neither the mind nor the body. The right hon. Gentleman was scarcely aware of the extent of the adulteration. By the fraudulent skill of the chemist the methyl was extracted from the methyllated spirit admitted duty free, and the spirits to some extent rendered potable and forced into the market to the injury of the revenue. It was the same case of the brandied wine, three-fifths of the spirit was im- ported duty free. It was clear that if these large duties were to be maintained there must be a very considerable increase in the number of detectives, a much greater vigilance would have to be exercised, and the police must be more liberally paid. It was true that a large number of detections had been made; but this was the symptom only of the malady, not a proof that the disease had been subdued. It was clear, then, that the right hon. Gentleman's experiment had failed, and the best thing he could do was to retrace his steps.

said, he admitted that the right hon. Gentleman was fully entitled to call attention to this subject—not so much, perhaps, in deference to his particular constituents, who would hardly recognise him on this occasion as discharging any special duties they had committed to him, as in deference to the interests of the important trade whose cause he had pleaded with so much moderation and ability. The right hon. Gentleman had himself made an admission which he must feel bore very materially on this point—that the question they had now to deal with did not affect the case of Ireland alone, but involved the rate of spirit duty to be levied for the three kingdoms. The right hon. Gentleman had stated—and with truth, provided the application of the remark was kept within certain limits—that he, as Chancellor of the Exchequer, was bound to show that any measure proposed for the entire kingdom was applicable to every portion of the kingdom. The case, however, did not stand now as it stood in 1842, when Sir Robert Peel, having laid an additional duty on spirits in Ireland, and an increase of smuggling appearing to be traceable to that augmentation, came down himself and proposed the removal of the additional duty. It would not have been equally easy to adopt that course; in fact, its policy would have been very doubtful, if the duties in the three kingdoms had been uniform, as they were afterwards made by successive measures of Sir George Lewis and the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Bucks. The right hon. Gentleman (Mr. Whiteside) went back to the year 1853, when he himself proposed to the House to take the first step in the policy of equalization—not at all concealing that equalization was the ultimate aim, but stating at the same time that he was not so sanguine as to anticipate that equalization could be obtained without an augmentation in Ireland and Scotland and a reduction in England. At that time he should certainly have thought it sanguine to anticipate that even an 8s. duty could be Levied through the three kingdoms; but the result of the augmentation of 1853–4 was so satisfactory, that each step in that direction warranted encouragement —nay, even seemed imperatively to demand the step by which it was succeeded, until they came to the limit where the 8s.; duty was made uniform through the three kingdoms. The right hon. Gentleman (Mr. Whiteside) said that when the 8s. duty was imposed on Irish spirits it was regarded by the parties interested as a final arrangement. He certainly could not bear out that statement. The Chancellor of the Exchequer of 1858 did not pronounce any such opinion, and he would have been; most unwise if he had. The principle on; which Parliament had always acted with respect to the spirit duties was to impose on that article the highest amount of duty which it was possible to levy, without increasing illicit distillation, and the mere statement of that proposition was sufficient to show that the right hon. Gentleman was mistaken in supposing that the 8s. duty was regarded as a final settlement. The further augmentation which was proposed, the right hon. gentleman seemed to think the step from a wise to an unwise policy. Perhaps it was hardly worth while correcting the inaccuracy of the right hon. Gentleman's statement, that this augmentation was made to pay the bill for the China war, which had sprung up during the first Administration of the noble Viscount (Viscount Palmerston). The bill for that China war had been paid; it was to pay the little bill for another China war which broke out under the Earl of Malmesbury, who was Foreign Secretary of the Administration with which the right hon. Gentleman was himself connected, that that measure had to be resorted to. But, though the augmentation was made on that occasion, it would be quite an error to imagine that the proposal was then invented. It was a proposal held steadily in view by the Revenue Department, which had been mentioned before anybody was aware that such an exigency would occur; and the only question was, whether the time was then ripe for it, or whether its adoption should be postponed? All previous experience was in favour of it. It was perfectly true that all the increase of revenue which he had calculated upon had not been received; but the right hon. Gentleman, who had studied his speeches so closely, would recollect he did not rest the case exclusively on an anticipation of increased revenue, but that he explicitly laid down the principle that whatever revenue was to be raised from spirits it was desirable that it should be raised from as small a consumption as possible. In dealing with tea, sugar, and such articles, the principle was to raise the revenue by a duty as low as possible, in order not to interfere with the expansion of trade; but the exact reverse of that principle was applicable to spirits, and it was sought to raise the largest revenue which could be got from the smallest area of consumption. He could not agree with the right hon. Gentleman that the observation made by the Revenue Department in the Return to which he referred to prove the failure of his measure was needless and calculated to mislead. On the contrary, without it the Return would have been fallacious. If it were true that the spirit revenue of 1859–60 was a just and safe basis from which to reason as to the increase or decrease of the duty in subsequent years, the statement of the hon. and learned Gentleman might be an accurate one; but, on the contrary, it was demonstrable that the revenue of 1859–60 had been considerably swelled by the premature delivery of spirits, in order to escape from an anticipated increase of duty. The proof of the justice of his statement was to be found in the fact, that the revenue derived from spirits during the first four months of the years 1860–1, when there was no anticipation whatever of an augmentation of the duty, and, therefore, no motive for the premature delivery of spirits from bond, fell greatly below the revenue of the preceding year. Now, that circumstance was, he contended, to be explained in no other possible way than by the supposition that towards the close of the previous financial year a much larger quantity of spirits had been taken out of bond than was necessary to supply the wants of the dealer. If that were so, it was plain that the year 1859–60 absorbed a considerable portion of the revenue due to 1860–1, and to that extent was not to be taken as a fair standard of comparison for subsequent years. The right hon. Gentleman, he might add, had omitted to take into account in the argumentative Dart of his statement another most important portion of the case. The substance of his argument was that the duty on spirits ought to be reduced for the sake of the distillers in this country. But that argument looked not simply to the effect to be produced in illicit distillation, but to an augmentation in the consumption of spirits. The right hon. Gentleman in one portion of his speech delivered a most cogent argument against the diminution of the duty on malt, and it was plain that a Motion with that object would not receive his support; but be that as it might, he pressed that the duty on spirits should be reduced, while he failed to show whence the money was to be procured for the purpose. He contended, indeed, that there was an increase of £170,000, which sum might be secured to the revenue by means of an increased consumption; but he seemed altogether to forget the duties on foreign and colonial spirits, which, at the present increased rate of duty, yielded nearly £500,000 a year. How was that sum to be made up? Was it out of the diminution of illicit distillation in Ireland? If not, did the right hon. Gentleman mean to propose that the duty on spirits should be reduced with the prospect of the reduction causing a deficiency in the revenue? There were two questions to be considered in dealing with the matter. He would, in the first place, ask whether, if the Motion of the right hon. Gentleman were acceded to, the Exchequer would be likely to obtain the money which he promised; and in the second place whether, if that money could be obtained, the House would be justified by the prospect in making the proposed reduction. Now, in reply to the first question he would say, that he did not think we could obtain the money; while he was also of opinion that the House would not be justified in obtaining it unless it could be shown that it was to be done by the diminution of illicit distillation. That point of illicit distillation was in reality the only one on which the right hon. Gentleman was able to rely. He touched indeed, but only very lightly, on the subject of adulteration, while he must admit that there were many causes in operation which pressed on the distiller independent of the augmentation of the duty. Such, for instance, was the greatly increased consumption of tea and wine, which tended to restrain the consumption of spirits. If the 3,000,000 gallons of wine added to the consumption of the country within the last three years were taken into consideration, the fact would account for the disappearance of something like 1,000,000 gallons of spirits, Besides, the consumption of beer was gaining greatly on that of spirits, and he should not, under those circumstances, be surprised to hear the right hon. Gentleman propose that the duty on malt should be doubled. The number of beer-houses in Dublin, as stated by his right hon. Friend the Secretary for Ireland the other night, had increased from 3 to 370 during the last few years. Thus beer, which was lightly taxed in consequence of the lowness of the malt duty, had been constantly pressing on the business of the distiller. Again the competition of foreign spirits was undoubtedly an element in the case. Very nearly at the same time that the augmented duty on British spirits was adopted, there was also adopted the practical equalization of duty as between British and Foreign spirits. There were, in addition, other causes of pressure under which the distillers in Ireland might have suffered. At the time of the augmentation of the duty, the Legislature sought to improve the position of the distiller with regard to the Excise, and also gave him facilities for export by the allowance of a drawback, which he did not before enjoy, Those facilities operated in England, and in Scotland more especially, to the encouragement of an export trade, which he was afraid was not to the same extent developed in Ireland; but he saw no reason why the Irish distiller should not seek in the same direction some compensation for the reduction of his trade. The right hon. Gentleman, he might add, did not, as he had before observed, dwell at any length on the subject of adulteration, although he might have found in a poet who dealt with Irish questions a complete bearing on the point which would have furnished an illustration for his argument—

"Poor Paddy, of all Christian men, I think,

On basest food pours down the vilest drink."

That was a sort of synopsis of the case as to adulteration, but the poet had too much good sense and knowledge of political eco- nomy to attribute it all to the augmentation of the spirit duties. It was true that spirits were commonly adulterated; the adulteration of food seemed, indeed, to be a special and distinct characteristic of this country; but in none of the spirits which had been purchased in small quantities by officers of the revenue had any adulterations of a pernicious character been discovered. Having thus cleared the ground of other matters, he desired to draw the attention of the House more closely than had hitherto been done to that which was the turning point of the case — the question of illicit distillation. Here the right hon. Gentleman had the vague and general statements of a portion of the body of distillers— statements which, whenever they had been investigated, had proved to be entirely without support—and the Returns of the number of detections which had been presented to that House. He would begin by showing the worst of the case first. In the financial year ending in March, 1861, the detections amounted to 1,585; and in 1862 they rose to 2,110, but even then they were less than in the last year of the lower duty. The right hon. Gentleman saw no wisdom in any one but the right hon. Member for Buckinghamshire. It seemed that 8s. was the precise point that wisdom indicated; that it was the duty of the Government to go to that point, and not to go beyond it. He was not finding fault with the measure of the right hon. Gentleman; he was only objecting to the attempt to distinguish between that measure and others in the series of which it was only a step; and he would presently show what was the number of detections in the year 1859. In 1862 the detections rose to 2,110; in 1863 they fell to 1,972, and in 1864 they rose to 2,742. That was the case of the hon. and learned Gentleman. Now for the answer:—First, was there any special cause of recognized and uniform operation which would account for this measure? And, secondly, how did this increase stand compared with that of former years? The special cause was perfectly notorious. It was the state of the oat crop. Whenever there was in Ireland a large quantity of grain of a very low quality, and consequently of a very low price, especially when, as was the case last year, a great deal of that grain was hardly marketable at all, an additional portion found its way into illicit distillation. The price of oats in Ireland in March, 1862, was 14s. 2½ d. per barrel; in 1863, 13s. 8d.; and in 1864, 12s. 8d. Nor did this decline fully represent the case. These were the prices in the market of Dublin; but in the towns which were the centres which supplied the districts where illicit distillation prevailed, in the markets of Derry, Donegal, Sligo, Galway, and Mayo, the price did not, he was told, exceed 8d, per stone, or 9s. 4d. per barrel. That being so, the relative augmentation of illicit distillation was a matter of course. The question, however, was not whether in a particular year there was an augmentation of illicit distillation, which was thoroughly accounted for by circumstances, but whether there was a normal augmentation extending over a series of years. The right hon. Gentleman said that if this duty was to be maintained they must have a better, and better paid police force. The police was better than it was, the constabulary had been substituted for the revenue police, and the consequence was, owing to the superior numbers of the former employed on the work, that these Returns were more trustworthy than they ever were before. Having stated the number of detections in the worst year since the imposition of the highest rate of duty, he would go back to 1836. In the year 1836, when the duty was 2s. 4d. a gallon, the detections amounted to 3,323. It would be said that since 1836 there had been a great change in the state of the country. Then he would go to the favourite year of the hon. and learned Gentleman, when supreme wisdom dictated the measures taken with regard to the spirit duty. In the year ending March, 1859, the detections for illicit distillation numbered 3,172; that was 400 more than in the year just expired, although the year 1858 was, if he remembered rightly, a year of good harvest, and consequently of a good condition of grain. While the year just expired had been a bad year, especially in regard to the quality of the grain. How then, in the face of these facts, could the hon. and learned Gentleman assert that the increase in illicit distillation was due to the operation of the new duty? Moreover, the diminution of the number of detections did not sufficiently indicate the measure of the diminution of the crime of illicit distillation. It was necessary, also, to take into account the number of persons arrested. The number of persons arrested in Ireland in the year 1852, the year before the increasing of the duty was commenced, was 492; in 1862, under the full operation of the high duty, it sunk to 103; and, although in 1864 it rose under the influence of the causes to which he had referred to 198, that was considerably less than half the number at which it stood in 1852. And when he spoke of illicit distillation and discussed the operation and success of a measure of this kind, the right hon. Gentleman must remember that illicit distillation was known in England and Scotland as well as in Ireland; and considering that about three-fourths of the spirit duty were raised in England and Scotland, it was necessary, in estimating the operation of an addition to that duty with reference to illicit distillation, to look at the figures for those countries. The numbers indicated were very much smaller than were those in Ireland, but the cases were more considerable. In England and Scotland illicit distillation was carried on not in out of the way places, but in the great towns and near to the markets. In March, 1859, the, last year but one of the 8s. duty in England, the detections for illicit distillations were 195; in 1860 they were 126. In 1861, the first year of the high duty, the detections, still falling, were 111 in number; in 1862 there were 114, in 1863 they had fallen to 105, and in 1864 to 79. According to all the evidence applicable to the case, he believed there never was a period when illicit distillation in England stood at so low a point. In Scotland, for the year ending the 31st of March, 1859, the detections were 37 in number; in the next year, 29; in 1861 they fell to 18; in 1862 they were 23; in 1863, 26; and in 1864 they had fallen to 13, or little more than a third of what they were before the additional duty was imposed. He could not conceive by what process of reasoning it could be contended that illicit distillation was increasing, when these figures showed a continual decline, and when the energy of the preventive force was at its height. As regarded the fiscal operation of the measure, he would admit that the product was much less than he had already stated. In the current financial year, however, as far as it had gone, there had been an increase in both the home and foreign spirit duties of about £60,000 per month. The fiscal result of the measure had only been partially achieved; but the gain, whatever its amount, was obtained in conjunction with another advantage — a limitation of the consumption of ardent spirits, which were not only evils in themselves, but fruitful parents of crime. He hoped the House would not accede to the Motion of the right hon. Gentleman, but would resolve itself into Committee of Supply.

said, he did not intend to trouble the House at any length; but there were one or two points in the speech of the right hon Gentleman the Chancellor of the Exchequer which he could not allow to pass without observation. In the first place, the Chancellor of the Exchequer accused his right hon. Friend of pleading the cause of the Irish distillers and of "the trade." Now that argument was a very inadequate description of the case. The case pleaded was not the case of "the trade" or of the Irish distillers, but of a country—of Ireland. A key to the line of argument adopted by the Chancellor of the Exchequer might be found when he said that the reduction of I duty proposed by Sir Robert Peel was one made under entirely different circumstances —that it was made at a time when the Irish duties differed from the English duties. He said that a measure which might be proper when a separate rate of duties existed might not be equally advisable when one uniform rate had been established, as was the case now. That was so; but in applying the principle of uniform duties the right hon. Gentleman forgot that the strength of a chain was to be tested by the strength of its weakest link, and it was to no purpose that he quoted the success of the system in England and Scotland, if it could be shown that a 10s. duty was higher than Ireland could bear; and if it could be proved that an uniform duty did not succeed in Ireland, when it succeeded in England and Scotland, surely that was a matter for grave consideration, with reference to the necessity for modification? It had been urged by the right hon. and learned Gentleman (Mr. Whiteside) that the calculations of the Chancellor of the Exchequer as to the proposed increase in 1860 had been doomed to disappointment; but the right hon. Gentleman (the Chancellor of the Exchequer) to his great surprise stated that it was a matter of secondary importance whether his judgment on that point were correct or not.

explained. He had declared it to be a matter of secondary consequence whether he put the proper construction on certain facts at the time; he never said that it was a matter of secondary importance whether his official calculations were sound.

said, his right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer, on being asked how it was that, in introducing his new duty, he did not include in his view the large quantity of spirits taken out of bond at the close of the financial year 1859–60, admitted that it certainly was an oversight on his part, and added that the subsequent experience of the officers of Revenue had thrown further light on the matter. But his right hon. Friend's memory must be exceedingly short, because in his speech introducing the Supplementary Budget on the 16th of July, he plainly showed that this great augmentation in the delivery of spirits from bond had been brought under his notice; in fact, he made it part of his argument. This increase of the spirit duties, moreover, was not part of a great system of policy laying down the principles upon which those duties should be levied in future; it was strictly and purely a money question, the proposal being made at a late period of the Session, after the financial arrangements of the year were concluded, and expressly to meet a deficiency which only then became apparent. The right hon. Gentleman told them in his Budget speech in the following year, that he had expected to get £400,000 more from these duties than they had yielded in 1859–60; but that, instead of producing £400,000 more, they yielded £550,000 less, so that the total disappointment to the right hon. Gentleman that year was represented by a sum of £950,000. The £400,000, moreover, was only the amount estimated to be got in during the remnant of a financial year, a further increase of £350,000 being looked for in the year ensuing. To complete the statement of the results ensuing from this change of duty it would, therefore, be necessary to add that £350,000 to the deficit in the year following. No doubt the right hon. Gentleman got more than he expected upon colonial and foreign spirits; but his calculations and expectations when he raised the duty on homemade spirits from 8s. to 10s. must be regarded as a great failure in a fiscal point of view. He did not know where the right hon. Gentleman had derived his figures in regard to the revenue from spirits, because they were not to be found in the papers before the House. Yet, although the right hon. Gentleman had made a very considerable miscalculation by not taking into account the particular position of Ireland as regarded the other parts of the United Kingdom, he still doubted whether the House ought at once to pronounce against the experiment the right hon. Gentleman had made. It had only been tried for three years, and its failure in a fiscal point of view did not prove that the House ought to reverse its policy, which had never been to stimulate the consumption of ardent spirits as it had done in the case of tea and coffee. Still his right hon. and learned Friend had shown that, while the increase of duty had done great harm to Ireland by encouraging illicit distillation, it had done no good to the revenue. There was, however, a Committee sitting upstairs to inquire into the whole subject of Irish taxation, and the effect of recent legislation upon the fiscal burdens of Ireland. No doubt this question of raising the Spirit Duties to 10s. per gallon would come before the Committee in due course, and the evidence they were taking might throw considerable light on the matter. He would, therefore, suggest to his right hon. and learned Friend, in the interest of his country and the cause which he had so fairly and so ably brought before the House, that it would be better to wait until they saw the evidence taken before the Committee, and the judgment they formed upon it. It was impossible, on other grounds, to call upon the Government at present to reduce the duty, because a large amount of revenue might be imperilled by a considerable reduction. His right hon. and learned Friend had every reason to be satisfied with the discussion, and he trusted that he would not press the matter to a division.

wished to explain the misconstruction referred to. It was true that in July, 1860, he stated that there were extra deliveries; but the mistake was in supposing that the assumed effect of those deliveries had been exhausted in the period between February and the end of the financial year, whereas experience showed that the effect was fully felt after the close of the financial year. With regard to the deficiency of £900,000, he stated all the particulars in regard to it in the financial statement of that year.

expressed his extreme disappointment and dissatisfaction at the speech of the right hon. Gentleman the Chancellor of the Exchequer, which had held out no hope to Ireland for the future. The Chancellor of the Exchequer, contrary to his usual course, had ad- mitted that he had been disappointed in both his anticipations—that he had not succeeded in raising the revenue be expected, and that illicit distillation had greatly increased. [The Chancellor of the EXCHEQUER intimated dissent.] But the right hon. Gentleman had not given out one word of hope that the present demoralizing effects of his measure would be diminished.. He (Lord Claud Hamilton) had received a great number of letters from magistrates in Ireland, stating how crime had increased in consequence of this recent legislation. From one well-known magistrate, intimately connected with the counties of Donegal, Armagh, and Tyrone, he heard that not at any former period was there such an amount of illicit distillation. A collateral inconvenience from this illicit distillation was, that the police, occupied in what was called "still hunting" night after night, were unable to attend to their ordinary duties. If the right hon. Gentleman denied that the measure had failed as regarded Ireland, it was surprising that such denial was made in the face of published documents. The right hon. Gentleman referred to the increased consumption of beer, tea, and wine; but it appeared that as the licit production was decreasing, the illicit production was on the increase. One of the first effects of a large increase of duty was to throw the distilling trade into much fewer hands—to twenty-three hands, he believed, where ninety had previously been engaged, and the concentration of distillers in a few towns, who formerly were scattered over the country; the result was, the farmers could find no local sale for their damaged grain, and were thus driven to dispose of it for illicit distillation. Under these circumstances he wished to know how the right hon. Gentleman proposed to meet the evil. The right hon. Gentleman had alluded to Sir Robert Peel's policy; but when Sir Robert Peel saw that the measure which he had introduced had not the desired effect of increasing the revenue, but had stimulated the illicit trade, he reversed his policy, and repealed the additional duty. But the right hon. Gentleman did not propose to do so. He merely asked how was he to treat the foreign manufacturer and the Scotch manufacturer if he was to reduce the duty upon Irish spirits? But he (Lord Claud Hamilton) looked upon the question as a great moral and social one, and paramount to every fiscal consideration. The demoralization was not confined to those only who were engaged in the illicit trade. No one put up a still without engaging his neighbours to act as spies for him against the police; and therefore it was not merely one man, but thirty or forty men, that were engaged in resisting the law. A learned Judge (Mr. Justice Hayes) had warned the people of the evil of engaging in such a course as that, how it led from venial offences by little and little to penal servitude and the gallows; and he further observed that it appeared from the face of the police Returns, that the fruits of this practice were a greater prevalence of assaults against the person, threatening letters, and incendiary crimes. It was not right that the police should have been turned into a revenue force to put down illicit distillation, for then it had become impossible for them, without a great increase to their number, to perform efficiently their ordinary duties. He, however, did not appear here as the distiller's advocate. If it was possible to raise the tax without producing crime, he, for one, would readily consent to the increase; he only protested against a fiscal arrangement that produced crime and demoralization. He trusted the Chancellor of the Exchequer would re-consider this matter, and deal with it as one of vital importance to the moral and social well-being of Ireland.

said, there could be no difference of opinion as to the great evil of the practice of illicit distillation. It was possible that that practice had of late years increased in a few districts in Ireland; but he believed that there had been no general increase of that kind. Indeed, the Returns presented to Parliament actually showed that there had been in Ireland a smaller number of convictions for that offence during the last few years, than there had been during former years when the duty had stood at its lowest amount. It was alleged that one of the evils of the existing state of the law was, that it had contributed to reduce the number of distilleries in Ireland. But he believed that that reduction was owing mainly to the growth of more temperate habits among the people. The fact was, that there had been a steady decrease in the number of distilleries in Ireland ever since Father Mathew had commenced the temperance movement. The number of those establishments in 1840 was eighty-six, in 1846 it was fifty-four, in 1852 it was forty-six, in 1853 it was forty, in 1859 it was thirty-seven, and in 1862 it was twenty-seven. That gradual decrease was to be accounted for by the diminution of the demand for whisky, owing to the temperance movement, the decrease in the population, the increased consumption of tea and beer, and in some measure the change of system upon which distillation was carried on. It was a remarkable fact that the production of whisky in Scotland had considerably increased since the higher duty had been imposed. In the year 1854, when the duty was 3s. 8d. or 4s. 8d. per gallon, Scotland had produced 10,000,000 gallons of spirits; and now, under a duty of 10s. a gallon, the production of spirits in that country amounted to 14,000,000 or 15,000,000 of gallons annually. That increase seemed to be principally owing to the employment in Scotland of patent machinery in the work of distillation, and the result was, that the Scotch were at present able to undersell the Irish distillers in their own market. If the Irish wished to compete with the Scotch in that manufacture they should use the same improved machinery. The Irish distillers, for the most part, confined their attention to the production of whisky for the consumption of their own countrymen; he confessed that, for his part, he was not sorry to find that the sale of whisky had of late years declined in Ireland, because he believed that that circumstance was principally attributable to the more temperate habits of the people, and to their vastly increased consumption of tea and beer. He had no desire, on the other hand, to see any measure adopted which would diminish the price of whisky in Ireland, and until the hon. and learned Gentleman was able to show—what he had hitherto failed in doing—that the high duties had produced illicit distillation, he should regret to see any steps taken which would tend to the increase of distillation, and not to the increase of the national morality.

said, he had always been of opinion that the spirit duties ought to be put at the very highest amount which would be compatible with the prevention of illicit distillation. But if it could be proved that the increased duty had had the effect of greatly increasing illicit distillation with all its attendant evils, that would, no doubt, be a subject for the serious consideration of the House. What he principally complained of, however, was that while the duty had been enormously increased of late years, no corresponding increase had taken place in the police measures adopted for the purpose of preventing illicit distillation. Experience proved that, with proper precautions, an increase of duty need not be attended with an increase of illicit distillation; for the fact was, that there was a smaller amount of that latter evil when the duty had been raised to 8s. than when it had stood at a much lower sum. The practice of illicit distillation seemed to be at present confined to a few districts in Ireland, although in those districts it was no doubt extremely rife and mischievous; and he should be glad to hear that the Government were prepared to have recourse to some more stringent measures than they had yet adopted for the purpose of checking the evil. He believed that the transference from the old revenue police to the constabulary of the duty of preventing illicit distillation had been attended with the best possible results, and he could not help thinking that if the Government would add to the number of constables in the districts in which that distillation specially prevailed—a measure which would necessitate, it was true, a large increase of expenditure—it would go far to eradicate the practice. One of the unfortunate consequences of the present system was, that the spirit sold to the poorer classes were of a very inferior and even of a very deleterious description. A poor man had lately told him that five or six glasses of whisky formerly had no effect upon him, but that two glasses at present made him not only drunk but mad. He was convinced that unless illicit distillation was checked in Ireland the Government would be compelled to reduce the spirit duties. He sincerely hoped, however, that that would not be done, because he believed that spirits formed the most legitimate object of taxation; and he was, therefore, most anxious to see effectual measures adopted for the prevention of illicit distillation. He quite agreed with his right hon. Friend the Member for Limerick, that the recent decrease in the consumption of spirits in Ireland was a subject not of alarm and regret, but of satisfaction and congratulation.

intimated that he would not press his Motion.

complained of the enormous cost of the new building, and called attention to the item of £4,899 for preliminary expenses of designs which were not adopted. He found, when he added this item to the sums of a similar nature voted in previous years, that upwards of £10,000 had been paid for designs not used. He moved the omission of the item.

asked when the new Foreign Office would be finished according to the contract.

said, the contractor had bound himself to complete the building in two years and four months from the present time. It would probably, therefore, be in use in three years. In reply to the hon. Member for Truro (Mr. Augustus Smith), he explained that the estimate of £200,000 for the new Foreign Office was based upon the original tenders made in 1859. The building now in the process of erection was, in its internal arrangements, almost the same as that for which the contracts were given; but since that time the price of labour and materials had risen about 10 per cent, and the estimate founded on the lowest tender was £223,516. He reminded the Committee that in July, 1861, he stated that the Government could not bind themselves to the estimate of £200,000. The item of £4,899 was made up of various sums paid for drawings and plans. First, there was a sum of £500 due to Mr. Gilbert Scott for work done between November, 1858, and March, 1859; next, there was a further sum of £2,000 payable to Mr. Scott for working drawings and specifications for tenders in 1859; then the model exhibited to Members of the House cost £300, and £1,500 was paid to surveyors for preparing bills of quantities, There were also some smaller charges, bringing up the total to £4,899; but the money had actually been paid, did not require to be voted, and was mentioned only to show the total estimated cost of providing a new Foreign Office. The drawings and plans, though not adopted, were necessary to enable the House to decide what kind of building the Foreign Office should be. Architects had to be employed to prepare them, and he did not think any fault could be found with the amount. He hoped, therefore, the hon. Member would not press his Amendment.

said, it seemed to him that there were several items in this Vote which had already appeared in a previous account.

explained that the items in question were not to be voted now, and were given merely for the information of the House as to the amount of the whole grant.

asked whether Mr. Pennethorne's claim in regard to the Foreign Office was included?

said, that the only architect whose account was included was Mr. Scott.

asked what the buildings were for which these sums were required.

said, he thought it would be very convenient if the fees and other sums received by the Probate Courts were put in the same account with the expenditure. They were receiving a large sum every year from the public in the shape of fees, out of which the Proctors' compensation was paid. It was understood that the fees in the Probate Court were to be reduced as the compensation charges for the Proctors gradually diminished, and he therefore thought that a statement of the sums paid to the Proctors should be in eluded in the accounts.

said, he believed that under this Vote was the proper occasion to express the alarm he felt as to the custody of wills in the building in which they were now placed. It was understood that the building was very vulnerable by fire, and that no protection at all was afforded to its contents. He should be glad to know whether this subject was under consideration, and if any proper site for the custody of wills had been decided upon.

said, he shared to a certain extent the anxiety and apprehen- sion of the hon. Member. A railway was going to be carried under the Registry in Doctors' Commons, and a street was going to be taken through it. The Government had endeavoured to take care that the removal of the wills should be conducted in a manner that would not cause any confusion. A clause was to be introduced into the railway Bill, that the wills should not be removed until a proper place of deposit had been secured, and a similar precaution had been taken in the Act for the street. A portion of the present Registry was not, perhaps, in a satisfactory fire-proof condition, and the Government had been anxious to get another building. It was thought that they might be ultimately deposited in the basement of the new Courts of Justice. The circumstances to which he had referred rendered it necessary that a change should be made without delay, and probably the basement of the new Courts of Justice would answer the purpose. The larger portion of the expenses connected with the Probate Court would be found under the head of "Law and Justice," where they could more properly be discussed than on the present Vote, which had reference to a Registry at Manchester.

wanted to know whether all the wills of the district would be stored there?

said, that all the wills of the district would be deposited in the new building at Manchester.

inquired how soon would the new Registry Office in London be completed?

replied that the existing Registry Office could not be taken possession of without the consent of the Lords of the Treasury, who, of course, would not give their consent until a perfectly proper depository for the wills was. provided. He believed that such a place would be ready in ample time.

asked when the remaining houses in New Palace Yard were to be taken down?

stated that the owner of Fendall's Hotel and of the adjoining houses was bound by an award to surrender them, and their demolition would commence when surrendered.

wished to know what was intended to be done when the houses were pulled down?

said, that the Government had asked for a plan for laying out the whole of New Palace Yard as an open space. The details were not yet decided on; but, probably, the best scheme would be to carry a balustrade wall along the southern side of Bridge Street, on account of the level of New Palace Yard being below that of Bridge Street. This difference of level might be made conducive to beauty in laying out the square.

asked for an explanation of the Vote.

said, that the Committee were now asked to Vote this sum for plans and estimates prepared by Mr. Pennethorne at different times between 1853 and 1856, and unless some explanation was given with regard to the Vote he would move its rejection.

said, the hon. Member must be aware from the various Committees that had sat on this subject, and debates that had taken place in the House, that a great number of plans had been prepared at different times. This Vote was confined entirely to the claims of Mr. Pennethorne Mr. Pennethorne did not send in his claim until after the question respecting the site of Downing Street was decided, because he did not know that he would not be employed upon it. This question had been the subject of great deliberation. In 1853 it was proposed to have a building facing St. James's Park; but that plan was set aside in November, 1854, and another plan was prepared which was to carry the offices all round the quadrangle. Committees and debates followed: it was afterwards thought desirable to enlarge the area to be employed for the public offices. With this change of opinion it became necessary to throw aside the designs that had been made, and to prepare others. The largest item in this Vote was for a sum of £2,100, charged by Mr. Pennethorne for his designs and his estimate, amounting to £435,000 for an office round the quadrangle, and for which he had prepared the working drawings for a contract in gross, and was entitled to ½ per cent upon the estimate. In consequence of the preparation of these designs, the House voted a sum of money in July, he believed, 1855, for the site, and it was intended that the plan should be adopted. Then it was found that the area would not be sufficient, and a Committee on the public offices was appointed in 1856. They determined upon rejecting the existing plans, and recommended a public competition Consequently Mr. Pennethorne's designs became useless; but he was entitled to remuneration, and the Committee would see that it would not be honest on the part of Parliament not to compensate an architect for work fairly done, and which had been of great use informing a decision on the subject. For himself lie (Mr. Cowper) rejoiced that the former scheme had been abandoned, and the larger area decided upon.

thought the Government erred in the plan they adopted in paying the persons they employed. It appeared that in 1864 a large sum was due to Mr. Pennethorne for work commenced so long back as 1853. Would such a state of things be borne for one instant in a private establishment? Why could not the expense incurred for plans in one year be paid for and brought into the Estimates of the next year? This debt had been accumulating for eleven years, and he protested against such a mode of managing the public accounts.

pointed out that no explanation had been given of the £5,600, which, according to the audited accounts, had been paid to Mr. Pennethorne in 1859–1860. It appeared as if Mr. Pennethorne were being paid twice over. In his evidence before the Select Committee Lord Llanover distinctly denied having given Mr. Pennethorne any authority for the preparation of these plans.

believed that Mr. Pennethorne had misunderstood the directions which he had received from Lord Llanover; but it was not likely that a man of his station and high character would have made these plans except he had believed that he was acting under instructions from the head of his Department. The work had been done, and after due consideration the Government were of opinion that, on the whole, Mr. Pennethorne was entitled to be remunerated for them. As to the sum paid two years ago, it had nothing whatever to do with the plans referred to in this Estimate.

was sure that Mr. Pennethorne believed himself to be perfectly justified in preparing these plans, and was glad that the Government had concluded to propose this Vote. The difficulty in closing the architect's accounts lay quite as much with the House of Commons as with the Board of Works. An architect was directed to prepare plans for some public buildings which were thought to be urgently required. By the time he sent them in, perhaps, public opinion had changed, the buildings were not thought to be so urgent, or there might be doubts expressed as to the mode of carrying them out. Time went on, and the architect did not like to send in his bill, because he did not know but that at the end of two or three years' discussion his plans might be, after all, adopted, when he would get the usual percentage. For instance, how many years had the Foreign Office and the National Gallery been under discussion, and how many architects had been employed in preparing plans for them? As to the Foreign Office, he wished the noble Lord at the head of the Government joy of the building which was being erected in Downing Street, and he hoped that his name would be engraved in large letters over it, so that posterity might know to whom they were indebted for that ornament to the metropolis. Mr. Pennethorne was a most careful and painstaking public servant, and he hoped the House of Commons would not refuse him payment for work actually rendered.

reminded his noble Friend that tins Vote was for plans which had been rejected and disposed of at once. Supposing any one not in Mr. Pennethorne's position had prepared these plans, would it have been fair to make him lie out of his money for eleven years?

asked whether Mr. Pennethorne was not a permanent servant of some Department, and whether his whole time was at its service. He was under an impression that he received a salary either from the Board of Works or from the Woods and Forests.

said that, under the present arrangement, Mr. Pennethorne had a salary of £1,500 a year as surveyor and architectural adviser to the Board of Works. In these capacities he had rendered great services to the Department, for which he would have received a larger remuneration had he been paid in the ordinary way. With respect to plans for new buildings, Mr. Pennethorne was in the position of any other architect, and entitled to his commission. In 1853 and 1855, Mr. Pennethorne considered himself likely to be appointed architect for erecting those buildings for which he had made the designs. Even after the Committee of 1856 recommended public competition, he did not know, until the contract was made, that he should not be intrusted with the execution of the work. Consequently, he did not press for payment until the contract was entered into for the present buildings. His claims, however, had undergone considerable scrutiny.

thought there would be a great economy in employing a Government architect in all public works. Mr. Pennethorne appeared to be paid a salary, and to make all his charges besides.

observed that it would be absolutely necessary that where a competent architect was taken from his ordinary work he should be paid a competent salary. But it did not follow that because an architect did the ordinary work of his office very well, that he was one to whom they should intrust the design and execution of great public buildings.

wished to know whether the plans now to be paid for included those of the Lombardo-Gothic building from which they had been saved by the noble Lord the First Minister, and which, however beautiful in itself, would have been totally unsuited to the locality.

No. The design to which the hon. Gentleman alludes was not prepared by Mr. Pennethorne, but by Mr. Scott.

I rise, Sir, for the purpose of expressing the dissatisfac- tion I so strongly feel in the unworthy delay which, as it appears to me, has been permitted from year to year to occur in the completion of this monument to England's heroic and illustrious admiral; and to complain that, although a sum—in amount, £3,816—has been expended upon the lions destined to adorn its base, so little progress has been made in the work. Regarding this I may mention a circumstance, painful though it be in interest, which is, that a few mouths since one of the last of Nelson's captains—the late admiral of the fleet, Sir Graham Howard—almost in his dying hours expressed to his son, Captain Howard, of the navy, his strong and anxious regret that this last testimony to the great and illustrious man, whom he survived, was still incomplete. There were but a few left who had served under that great seaman, and he (Admiral Walcott) was afraid that they likewise would pass away with the same sentiment on their lips.

"Well might the passing foreigner exclaim—

If Britain thus neglect her gallant son,

She ill deserved that honour and that fame

Which with his precious life for her he won."

He therefore hoped that some effort would be made to complete this column.

thought that it was disgraceful that the monument should be left uncompleted.

said, he fully sympathized with the feelings of the hon. and gallant Admiral, who, he believed, originally proposed the erection of the lions, and much regretted the delay which had occurred in the completion of the work. That delay, however, had arisen rather from an excess than a want of care. The first model was all but completed, and he was assured that one of the lions would be cast during the present year. When that had been done the difficulties would have been mainly overcome, and he trusted that no long period would elapse before the other three were finished, and that the hon. and gallant Admiral would have an opportunity of seeing and admiring them. Some money had been paid in advance, but the value of the work executed was fully equal to the sum which had been advanced.

said, there were in the Foreign Office four colossal lions of sufficiently large dimensions, executed by an eminent artist some years ago, and then only set aside by the vote of the late Duke of Wellington. They were to have cost 6,000 guineas, and every lion would have been distinct and different. Not only was the work, after being un fait accompli, thus thrown aside, but the work Of providing the lions for the angles at the base of the monument transferred to Sir Edwin Landseer. He trusted that the new work would be properly executed; but he could not help thinking, that as a matter of economy, the lions finished years ago might have been advantageously and properly used. He saw no reason why the British public should pay £17,000 for the same thing as they could get in as high or a higher style of art for £7,000.

observed the House had been told last year that Sir Edwin Landseer was going every day to the Zoological Gardens — he presumed at feeding time — to study the lions Now the public were told that they were only going to have one cast some time this year. He trusted, however, that the right hon. Gentleman would give them some more precise information on the point. He hoped the four would not be all alike, and he thought that it would have been better to have engaged four artists. He really could not understand why Sir Edwin Landseer should have been commissioned at all. That he was a great painter of animals was not a very satisfactory reason why he should be a good artist in bronze. Indeed, he should have thought that Sir Edwin was one of the worst persons to whom the work could have been intrusted, for the great merit of his painting was the great finish of his work, whereas what was wanted was something bold and striking.

said, one of the lions was ready for casting within the next month. The principal reason which caused Sir Edwin Landseer to go to the lions was that the lions would not go to Sir Edwin Landseer, and the artist deserved much credit for taking the special trouble be did. When the lions were seen they would give a practical answer to the remark just made, and he believed that the hon. Baronet (Sir George Bowyer) on seeing the model would come forward and say-that whoever selected Sir Edwin Landseer did well. He (Lord John Manners) had selected him because he considered him the best fitted to place the lions on the pedestal. The hon. Baronet (Sir George Bowyer) had suggested an eminent sculptor; but his next remark that there ought to be four employed was not consistent therewith.

had heard from those who were competent to give an opinion, that Sir Edwin Landseer's model was a high work of art. The turn which the debate took reminded him of the heraldic artist who was brought to Exeter Change to see the lions, and who, when assured that they were lions, maintained that they were most misshapen beasts, and not the animals he had been painting all his lifetime. The British public were in the position of this painter of heraldry—they had only seen the conventional beast in stone or bronze—and Sir Edwin Landseer would teach them what the king of the beasts really was.

said, he had distinctly understood that no further Vote would be asked for on account of the works at Alderney, and yet a Vote of £50,000 was now asked for, and it appeared that more would be required.

said, it had been stated last year that the Government had decided on abandoning the construction of the eastern arm of the breakwater, and that the works would be confined to the completion of the western arm. There would thus be a reduction in the total estimate from £1,300,000 to £1,200,000; and there was reason to believe that this Estimate would not be exceeded. After the present Vote, a further sum of £50,000 would complete the whole work.

was glad to hear that the rocks were to be blasted; otherwise the harbour was more likely to wreck than to save our ships.

said, he had recently been to Alderney and could not help being struck with the folly of successive Governments in throwing money away upon the works there. Alderney was one of a cluster of rocks. As to its being a harbour of refuge, if the eastern arm was abandoned no vessel would find protection against an easterly gale, or would run there for protection—and as to its being a look-out station from which to watch Cherbourg, even on a clear day it would be impossible to see ships entering or leaving Cherbourg, which was twenty-four miles off. In addition to £1,600,000 for the breakwater, the Government had spent £250,000 on I fortifications, which in a time of war would require 7,000 men to man them. No I enemy would ever have thought of attack- ing Alderney if we had not put fortifications for him to attack there. Did the House think that in time of war the country would keep its ships lying in the harbour? No, they would be cruising up and down the Channel, protecting our own commerce and watching the enemy. The pier erected at Alderney, if constructed somewhere on the coast of England, might be instrumental in protecting life and property; but in its present position it was exposed to the most violent gales, from which its concave instead of convex form rendered it very liable to injury. The harbour itself was nothing but a cluster of rocks; it was true that these were being blown up, but was it not a monstrous thing of any Government to select such a site? For his own part he would rather that the whole undertaking should be abandoned; but if the House should be of opinion that the works should be completed, he would suggest that the additional work should be performed by convict labour.

said, it was a great mistake to call Alderney a harbour of refuge, as no man in his senses would run down upon that dangerous coast. But at the time it was originally designed for a great naval port, the most distinguished authorities, including the late Duke of Wellington, were favourable to the scheme. To illustrate the matter, if a foreign Power were in possession of a great harbour and extensive fortifications upon an island only sixteen miles from Portsmouth, their importance doubtless would be generally recognized. The breakwater, however, would be perfectly useless unless the southeastern arm were constructed as well as the western. This would cost an additional £100,000, but whatever Government might be at the time in office he was sure the money would have to be spent.

said, he believed that the works at Alderney would only hold out an invitation to an enemy to attack a place which they would otherwise never visit. He also had recently been at Alderney, and one of the 200 or 300 inhabitants of the island told him that it would have been better if the vast sums which had been expended there in the construction of a harbour which could never answer the intended purpose, had been employed in cutting down the whole surface to low-water mark and removing to London the stone of which it was composed to pave the streets.

asked, when there was a reasonable prospect of the completion of the works at Holyhead, which the public had been looking forward to for several years past?

asked for some information on the subject of Portpatrick Harbour, and moved that the Vote be postponed until the requisite details were furnished in the same form as in Vote 18.

said, that when he was in the North of Ireland he was informed that the Government had agreed with a railway company to construct a line to Portpatrick; but on inquiry he could not discover that any such contract existed. There had been voted up to last year the sum of £21,000, and the House was now asked for a further sum of £8,700. The original Estimate was, he believed, from £12,000 to £15,000. He wished to know how long they were to go on voting money for making Portpatrick Harbour? A small outlay at Stranraer, to form a route by Larne, would be money much better laid out.

said, he had been two or three times to Portpatrick Harbour, and he believed that the works there were a mere job. Stranraer, on the other hand, might easily be made an excellent harbour.

said, he had attempted to land at Stranraer by the steamer, but he was obliged to get into a boat, and could not even land from that, for he was put into a cart and then shot out, like so much rubbish.

said, that the sum of £200 or £300 expended on a landing stage at Stranraer would make it a better harbour than Portpatrick, because a steamer could enter it at any time of the tide.

said, that the works for the accommodation of the packet service at Holyhead would, he believed, be completed within the present year; but some delay had hitherto been caused in consequence of some difficulty being thrown in the way of the London and North Western Railway traffic. This difficulty had now been removed. The Vote for Portpatrick Harbour was rendered necessary in consequence of an engagement, wisely or unwisely, entered into between the Government and the Portpatrick Railway Company in 1856, that if the Company brought down their line to the harbour the Government would render the harbour available for the steam packets between Portpatrick and Donaghadee. He understood that the works would not be completed during the present year, though the deepening of the water-way at the entrance gates would be completed within a few weeks, and the harbour itself would be dredged. This latter work was frequently interfered with by the weather, and, therefore, he could not say when it would be finished, but the Government must carry out their agreement with the Railway Company.

said, he had been unable to find that there was any engagement by the Government to do this work, and lie asked for the production of the document, if there was any. The Act of Parliament was silent on the subject.

said, that the agreement was founded upon a correspondence which took place between the Government and the Railway Company, and upon a subsequent Treasury Minute, ordering the execution of the works. Beyond that, there was no written contract with the company.

said, he could not, under the circumstances, support the Amendment; but he trusted that next year the estimate for this and similar works would be in the same form as those for Dover and Alderney. If there had been any Irishman at the Board of Trade or the Treasury, the works at Holyhead would have been completed long ago.

said that, years ago, a promise had been made that no more money should be spent upon this harbour.

said, he was not so sanguine as the right hon. Gentleman in his belief in the speedy completion of the arrangements for the passenger traffic between Dublin and Holyhead. He thought that the attention of the Government could with very much greater advantage be directed towards the blowing up of Daunt's Rock. They were asked to vote £50,000 for the works at Alderney. He regarded those works as nothing less than a monstrous job, and while the Government were bestowing their attention in that direction, the applications for the destruction of Daunt's Rock, which would only cost £20,000 or £25,000, were entirely neglected; and yet if that rock were removed it would make fully available one of the finest harbours in the world.

objected to the principle of expending public money for local purposes. His right hon. Friend the President of the Board of Trade had assigned a reason for the necessity for the expenditure of so much money the principle that, because the Parliament of, 1856 made an agreement, the Parliament of 1864 was bound to accept the conditions agreed to, and act upon them, whether those conditions were good or bad. His right hon. Friend was too good a tactician to admit that the bargain was a bad one, but if it had been advantageous he would certainly have said so, and in his remarks lie had carefully avoided making any such statement. The position of Portpatrick was not to be compared to that of Stranraer, and yet Government was spending money for no earthly purpose, while they had a magnificent harbour within five miles. With regard to Daunt's Rock, it was perfectly marvellous what an amount of misconception existed upon the subject. Daunt's Rock was no more an impediment to the entry of Cork Harbour than were the cross-benches to any one coming into the House —in fact, a vessel must go out of her way to get on it. There was actually existing at the present moment, at the very mouth of Cork harbour itself, a rock ten times as dangerous and inconvenient, which no one entertained any idea of removing; and the only ground upon which the removal of Daunt's Rock was urged upon the Government was, the fact of a vessel having run on it in cold blood.

wished to know the amount which was to be devoted to the Albert Model Farm for additions and alterations.

complained of the expenditure of money for the erection of model agricultural schools, which he maintained existed in reality for the benefit of the landlords. Many items had been included in this Vote which did not properly belong to it. He said that the sum of £4,000 was asked for the Phoenix Park. What was that for?

said, the Phoenix Park in Dublin was placed under the Board of Works, and therefore the sum asked for came under the amount voted for that Board. It was unreasonable to object to the Vote of a little more than £4,000 for the Phoenix Park when no less than £94,000 had been voted for the English Parks.

explained that the sum asked for the Phoenix Park was to carry out improvements in the way of levelling, draining, and planting shrubberies. With reference to the Vote for the Board of Education Buildings, the principal item was for a steam laundry at the Albert Model Farm, by which it was expected that a considerable annual saving would be effected.

reminded the right hon. Baronet that last year he had undertaken to consider the expenditure at Glasnevin, with a view to its reduction and ultimate extinction. A new Vote for alterations and repairs did not seem adapted to the fulfilment of such a promise.

did not admit that he had contemplated the extinction of the institution. He had promised to consider what reductions could be made, and he had carefully gone over the details of the establishment with that object in view, the result of which was that reduction had been made. He did not believe that it would be for the interest of Ireland to abandon the institution.

said, it was clear that as long as the schools were maintained repairs would be necessary; but what he objected to was that any enlargement or addition to the Model Farm should take place after the pledge which had been given last year, that the institution should be put upon a reduced scale, with a view to its ultimate suppression. The item of £600 for a steam laundry needed some explanation.

said, it was perfectly true that last year he gave the Committee a pledge that the Agricultural Mode Schools should be reduced, and he had done all in his power to carry out the wishes of the House in that respect. The expenditure now proposed was, for the most part, for necessary repairs. In Class 4 the Estimate for that particular class of institutions would be found to be diminished; and when Class 4 came on for discussion he should be prepared to give every information in detail with regard to the Model Agricultural Schools in Ireland.

thought the proposition to increase the amount for alterations of the Model Farm was nothing more than an attempt to perpetuate the institution, and as its real purpose was simply to supply landowners with land stewards, he objected to the outlay for such a purpose. He should therefore move to reduce the Vote by £600.

said, the institution was something more than a school for land stewards; it was really a valuable national institution.

wanted to know why such alterations were made in the Model Agricultural Schools and the Albert Model Farm as to require an outlay of £1,726 upon them.

asked why it was necessary to build a steam laundry at an expense of £600. Whose washing was to be done in that laundry?

said, he supposed it was the dirty linen of the establishment.

said, that the school was of more use to the peasantry, from whom land stewards were taken, than to the landlords.

wished for some explanation of the item for the harbour master, and for the construction of a breakwater at Howth.

said, an Act of Parliament was passed last Session authorizing the advance of money to make certain improvements in Howth harbour, in consequence of the number of fishing vessels that went near the harbour. At the same time, power was given for levying tolls on vessels that should frequent the harbour, and it was expected that a considerable sum would be received in that way which would clear off the amount expended.

objected that this country should be called upon to pay for lighthouses which were of value only to the ships frequenting the coasts of our colonies. He thought that the colonies themselves should maintain those light houses. Ceylon had a surplus revenue, and yet the taxpayers of this country were called upon to maintain the light houses upon the coasts of that island, He should move the reduction of the Vote by the sum of £2,000, the cost of the maintenance of the lighthouses in question.

could not understand why this country should not pay its proportion for the keeping up of this light ship, for if it were not maintained the shipping of this country would materially suffer.

also observed that the lighthouse at Ceylon was kept up to facilitate the navigation of ships going to and from China and Australia, and that it would be very hard to call upon the inhabitants of the island itself to submit to the heavy charge necessary for that purpose.

wished the right hon. Gentleman would apply the same argument to the case of Daunt's Rock, in the vicinity of Cork.

said, the light ship was principally for the use of the local shipping.

moved the rejection of the whole Vote. Here was a large sum proposed to be voted by the country for building a new lunatic asylum in the Isle of Man. What the population of the Isle of Man was he did not know. The Governor had £800 a year, and therefore, so far, it was an agreeable place. The probable cost of the building was £20,000, and £2,000 for the purchase of the site, He did not see why English taxpayers should contribute this money for the purpose of building a lunatic asylum in the Isle of Man.

said, the Vote was proposed with the view to fulfil engagements which had been entered into in 1850, when Sir G. C. Lewis was Secretary to the Treasury. At that time an application was made by the Isle of Man for a grant towards erecting an asylum for its criminal and pauper lunatics; and the Government undertook to provide half the expense necessary for erecting the proposed asylum provided the inhabitants of the island themselves would raise the other half. Considerable difficulty was however found in the island in raising the necessary sum. Matters remained so until 1858, when the island took upon itself to raise the necessary money by means of a local assessment on real property; and then, upon a second application, the late Government declared that they were willing to pursue the same course as had been suggested in the year 1850. The necessary preliminaries were accordingly completed, and plans and estimates were prepared for the buildings, which were approved by the proper authorities in this country. It was, therefore, deemed desirable to propose the present Vote to defray half the cost of the buildings. He might add that the revenue which the Exchequer received from the Isle of Man amounted to £27,000 a year, while the sum annually paid out of that revenue did not exceed £15,000, thus leaving a sum of £12,000 to be appropriated to the purposes of this country. He thought that, considering this circumstance, and that an asylum was necessary for the island, this Vote might be agreed to.

said, it might be true that Customs duties were raised in the island, and that those duties went into the Imperial Exchequer; but similar duties were raised by every county in England, which besides raised rates for such objects as the building of its own lunatic asylums. Why, then, he should like to know, should the right hon. Gentleman seek to arouse the pity of the Committee for the Isle of Man? Or why should it be made an exception to the rule which applied to other parts of the kingdom? That island was in a peculiar position. It had no representative in the House of Commons. It was governed by a Parliament of its own, and if it governed itself it ought to tax itself. If the Committee agreed to the Vote, they would be introducing the principle of taxation without representation —a course to which he objected; and he should therefore support the Motion of the hon. and gallant Gentleman behind him.

called attention to the fact, that while one-half the cost of building and repairing these court-houses in Scotland was borne by the Consolidated Fund, the like charge in Ireland had to be entirely defrayed out of the county rates. In England, again, a still richer country than Ireland, the whole expense of building and repairing the county courts came out of the Imperial Exchequer.

said, that the arrangement by which one-half of the expense of Sheriff Court-houses in Scotland was provided out of the county rates, and the other half out of monies voted by Parliament, was based upon an Act of the Imperial Legislature. It did not follow from that that in Ireland the Assistant Barristers' courts ought also to be built or repaired from funds voted by Parliament. They should take into ac-count the relative apportionment of the local charges in each part of the United Kingdom. In Ireland the entire expense of the police force was paid out of the Imperial Exchequer, whereas in England and Scotland the county rates were charged with the cost of providing barracks for the police.

observed that the principle involved in this Vote was one of considerable interest, and he invoked the close attention of the Government to it. The practice in this matter varied very widely in different parts of the country. At Portsmouth, Plymouth, and Chatham, contributions were granted in aid of the local rates, while in Ireland not a shilling was expended in that manner. It was high time that some rule should be laid down whereby the Government property should be liable to certain assessment in all parts of the country. Before they voted this money, they should insist on knowing whether any general rule would be laid down applicable to all parts of the kingdom.

said, it was proposed to deal with this money in the same way as the Vote of last year was applied. The rule laid down was, that where the assessable value of the Government property exceeded one-sixth of the assessable value of all the other property in the parish, a contribution should be made in aid of the local assessment. The Government believed that by that arrangement they would indemnify the other properties of the parish for any losses they might sustain by the establishment of Government property in their districts. It was also proposed to make contributions where the Government purchased property, and so withdrew it from the previous rateable area. They would contribute the same amount as they found the property paying when they took possession of it; but it would be a fixed amount, and would not be increased as the value of the property increased by the Government expenditure. Whether in respect to official residences the liability to pay rates should be placed upon those occupying the residences, or the Government, was a question which must depend upon circumstances. That question was, in fact, still under the consideration of the Government.

asked why the property in question should be liable only to the payment of poor rates?

replied that where the property acquired by the Government had been assessed for other local rates, contributions would be made to them also.

protested against the mode in which this money was distributed by the Treasury. He knew that a large quantity of land had been taken by the Government in the neighbourhoods of Plumstead, Woolwich, and Deptford, on which no rates were ever paid. He trusted that before next Session Her Majesty's Government would declare some distinct principle by which this money should be applied.

thought that the principle adopted by the Government was very illogical. It appeared that when the Government property should amount to one-sixth of that of the whole parish a special contribution in aid would be given. He could not see any reason why every kind of property in possession of the Government should not pay its fair share of taxation as well as every other property. Then, again, the hon. Secretary of the Treasury said that the Government would not pay any more for property which they had improved by an outlay than what they paid before, But that was laying down a different principle from that which applied to the property of private individuals. He hoped that henceforward the logical principle would be laid down that all Government property should pay its fair share of taxation in the same manner as every other property was liable to.

said, it appeared to him an extraordinary principle to lay down that Government property should make a contribution in aid of rates only when it amounted to one-sixth of the rateable value of the parish. This question of rating should not be left in the hands of the Government, but rather placed in the hands of the ordinary local authorities of the country. He thought the explanation given by the right hon. Gentleman very unsatisfactory.

said, that when the right hon. Gentleman admitted that a certain proportion of the Government property was rateable, the question assumed a much larger shape, and the question arose whether or not all the Government property should be rated, and dealt with like all other property. He could not agree with the hon. Member for Knaresborough (Mr. Collins), that this Vote should be rejected because all the Government property was not rated. It was but reasonable when the Government took possession of land and improved it by the erection of large buildings it should be rated in common with other property under similar circumstances at its full value. He should vote for the present amount, though he considered it should have been a much larger sum.

explained. He considered all property should be rated. It was a fallacy to have a mere rate in aid, as the present mode of rating Government property was.

said, the hon. Member appeared to be taking an unusual course. Instead of agreeing to or rejecting the present Vote, most of the hon. Members who had spoken had urged the necessity of a larger Vote, and to meet the views of all, the Government ought to have proposed a sum of £120,000. He, on the contrary, thought the Vote should have been smaller, being of opinion that it was wrong to rate Government property.

said, he believed the House was in hopes that the late Exhibition had been disposed of now and for ever, and that the last decision on the question had been given in a way that should not encourage the Government to revive it He was anxious, therefore, to know what was implied by the rather suspicious phrase, "certain buildings used for the purposes of the late International Exhibition."

explained, that the buildings in question were the two arcades which were of a permanent character, and had been used as refreshment rooms.

asked whether any Vote would be proposed this year for the new buildings at South Kensington, for the design of which Captain Fowke had received the prize?

said, it was not intended to ask for a Vote this year.

asked whether the buildings the Government had agreed to purchase were to be dedicated to tavern purposes?

wished to know whether they were to be applied to national purposes, or whether the Horticultural Society were to have the benefit of them?

stated that the portions of the late refreshment rooms bought by the Government were on each side of the central part which remained in the hands of the Commissioners of the Exhibition. The Horticultural Society had no right over the portion which had been sold to the Government. These buildings were to be devoted to purposes of science and art.

thought it was much better to get rid of the whole of the land instead of completing the purchase of these arcades. He last year voted against the purchase of the land. They were then told it was a very good bargain, that it had been sold cheap, and he was of opinion it would be better for the nation to sell it for a profit. In order to get rid of any further difficulty or dispute about the matter, he moved the rejection of the Vote.

, asked to what particular purpose of science or art it was intended to devote these arcades? It was difficult to understand to what other than the culinary art they could be devoted. He thought they had sufficient room on the other side of the ground for the purposes of science and art.

asked when the Exhibition building would be cleared away? As it was rumoured that a Patent Museum was to be erected there, it was important to know when they would have possession of the ground.

said, he understood the right hon. Gentleman to say he did not intend to propose a Vote for the erection of any building on the ground this season; but he hoped that reply had no reference to the Vote they were led to expect would be asked for this year for a building for the reception of the Natural History collection of the British Museum. He hoped that that Vote would not be delayed. The opinion out of doors was favourable to such a Vote.

said, he was very sorry, but he did not think it would be possible to propose a Vote this year with reference to the removal of the Natural History collections from the British Museum to South Kensington, as it would be impossible to get the arrangements completed this year. The contractors were removing the old Exhibition building at South Kensington as fast as possible, but he could not say exactly when the ground would be cleared. The Government were not responsible for the contractors' arrangements. They were bound to remove the building, but it did not appear there was any binding covenant entered into by them with the Commissioners of 1862 for the clearing of the ground in a given time. He was unable to say at present to what particular purpose of science and art the arcades would be devoted. That was a question for further consideration. The ground was purchased on the understanding that it should be devoted to such purposes connected with science and art as Parliament should determine. The buildings were well adapted for the collections of Natural History. Unless the House voted the money so as to complete the purchase and to obtain a conveyance there could be no legal title, and the money which had been already paid would be lost.

hoped that nothing would be done to prejudge the question as to the removal of the Natural History collections from the British Museum. He objected altogether to the removal of these collections, which were so attractive to the working classes. He believed the proper place for the Natural History collections was the British Museum, and protested against any steps being taken for the removal of the collection.

said, he did not wonder at the House being aghast at the notion of any addition to the Science and Art Department at Kensington, and he believed that the very phrase "Science and Art" stank in the nostrils of every one. With respect to the removal of the Natural History collections of the British Museum, nothing could be done without the sanction of Parliament; and when a Vote for the purpose should be taken, then would be the time to have plans submitted to the House for the accommodation of the collections.

asked, whether there was any plan for the appropriation of that part of the twelve acres purchased for the purpose of the South Kensington Museum, which seemed to be insufficient for the Patent Museum?

inquired what was the period when the Exhibition Commissioners had agreed to clear the ground of all buildings and hand it over to the country.

said, that at present there was no proposal before the House for the disposal of the Exhibition ground. That might be brought forward next year; but as yet the matter was not ripe. The Exhibition Commissioners of 1851 were in possession of the land, which they sold to the Government; but they did not possess any legal power to require the ground to be cleared within a certain day. The building was, however, in process of demolition. The Patent Museum occupied a small place belonging to the Kensington Museum, and upon the ground referred to by the hon. Member for Waterford (Mr. Hassard) the building was being proceeded with.

asked, whether the contractors had not pledged themselves to have the building removed from the ground by a certain day?

said, that there was originally an agreement for the removal of the building within a certain date; but the stipulated period having elapsed, the Commissioners had no legal power to name any other time.

wanted to know, whether the building on the twelve acres which had been referred to was to be erected in accordance with Captain Fowke's plan, which ultimately assumed a very handsome appearance?

observed, that though it was stated that the arcades would be useful for the exhibition of the Natural History collections, yet if the House decided not to remove the collections there, then the arcades would be perfectly useless. By the Vote now proposed the House would be pledged more deeply than ever to the removal of those collections, and therefore he thought that his hon. Friend was quite right in moving the rejection of the Vote.

said, that upon being-asked of what use the arcades would be, he replied that they were for the same use as the land—namely, for purposes connected with science and art, and he had referred to the opinions of competent judges, who stated that they were very well adapted for that object.

, in moving the second reading of the Bill, said, he had been requested to make a statement more in detail of the origin and nature of the Bill than he had done in the few words in which he had moved for leave to introduce the measure. The Bill had its origin in the Report of a Royal Commission, appointed in 1861, which was laid on the table of the House at the commencement of last Session; and its object was to reform the system of registration of land titles in Scotland. At present there were local registers in the counties, and a general register in Edinburgh: it was pro- posed by the Bill to remove the local registers to Edinburgh, and to keep the register in Edinburgh in the form of a county register. The results would be to remove the necessity of a double search, to ensure economy by the abolition of the separate staffs, and lastly, to keep the index so close up as greatly to facilitate the search and lessen the expense. It would readily be supposed that a subject which had been the object of a Royal Commission was neither new nor unimportant. It certainly was not new, although it had been represented in some of the local newspapers as having come upon the country by surprise. On the contrary, the objects which the Bill proposed to carry out have been canvassed in Scotland for years before the Commission was appointed —so much so that the officers who had been appointed to be Registrars of Sasines in Scotland since 1858 had held their offices under the condition that, in the event of the registers being removed to Edinburgh, they should not be entitled to compensation. It was, therefore, unfair to represent this Bill as a sudden thought, or an ill-digested and ill-considered scheme, proposed for the first time in the present Session of Parliament, whereas it was the result of long consideration and discussion; and was based on the opinion of the soundest and most eminent lawyers in Scotland. He was not disposed to deny that the measure is one of great importance. To show what was its importance, he would briefly describe the existing state of things. The system of land registry was introduced into Scotland in 1617. In that year an Act was passed which established a complete register of all rights affecting land, whether conveyances, or burdens, or legal process, The nature of the system introduced by the Act of 1617 was this—A general register was established at Edinburgh, and in that general register all rights affecting land were registered and divided into different departments, according to the nature of the rights registered. But, as the Act expresses it, "for the greater relief of the lieges," certain districts were appointed throughout Scotland in which offices of registry were kept in order to prevent the necessity of the deeds being sent up to be recorded in Edinburgh. These districts were not counties, but districts embracing sometimes more than one county, and sometimes parts of counties. As they were appointed in 1617, so they remained to the present day. The result of the Act of 1617 had been most beneficial to Scotland. It had built up a system of registration of land titles which was nearly perfect. It had been perfect in giving a great security to land tenures in Scotland, enabling purchasers and lenders of money to ascertain, if not with perfect accuracy, at least with an approximation to accuracy, the burdens which existed on land. There was only one defect—at least only one important defect—and that was the expense. The expense was very great comparatively, and one object of the present measure was to reduce it. Should it prove successful, a great and immediate economy would be effected; and it might prove the foundation of further reforms for cheapening the conveyance of land in Scotland to an extent unequalled in any other part of the kingdom. At present, if a man wished to purchase or to lend money on security of land, he was obliged to search for forty years; because, as forty years was the prescriptive period, he must see that the laud he was going to buy or to lend money upon was free so far as that period. In order to do this, the first step he had to take, if he lived in the country, was to examine the local register—the register of sasines in the country. But that register only extended over a limited period; for all the local registrars entered the deeds as they came in in a book sent by the Registrar General, to whom, when it is full, it is re-transmitted. Sometimes, in large counties, these books were filled in a few days; sometimes in counties and districts where the transactions were few, they were not filled for three or four years. The first thing to be done was to ascertain whether there were any burdens on the land; then a further search must be made in Edinburgh, and it must be made in a double register, first in the general register which was kept there; and secondly, in the particular register which had been transmitted from the counties. In that way, double trouble was occasioned, double fees were charged, and double expenses were incurred. Now the proposal made in the present Bill was this. It would no longer be necessary to have these registers kept in the counties for the purpose of recording; and for the purpose of searching they were useless. It was, therefore, proposed to bring up the registers from the counties to Edinburgh, to keep them in the Register Office, to abolish the general register, and to keep for the future the whole of the county registers in Edinburgh. The result would be that there would be only one register to examine instead of three, and a considerable economy would be effected. In the next place, there would be a saving of the whole expense of the local registers. The fees received by the local registrars amounted to £12,000 a year, and if the registers were brought up to Edinburgh and kept there by one staff, there would be a saving of about £7,000 or £8,000 a year on the total cost of the registers, which in the end would accrue to those who used the register— in other words, of those who were interested in the conveyance of land. But the greatest and most important advantage would be, that the registers being all in one place the officials would be able to keep up the "Index" to the current year. He would not enter into the details as they were fully explained by the Commissioners in their Report. In order to secure a simple and easy search, it was necessary that there should be a complete index of the whole of the registers. That was impossible as long as there was a double register—one kept at Edinburgh and the other in the counties; and it was impossible that in Edinburgh the officials could complete it, because the county registers came up at intervals, sometimes at intervals of three or four weeks, and sometimes as long as three or four years; and in that way the process of completing the index could only be done in cycles of five years. These were substantially the leading features of the Bill. There had been a good deal of criticism expended upon it, and some had so far misconceived the measure as to imagine that it would be practically very expensive and inconvenient. In what way expense and inconvenience could arise he could not imagine. It could not arise in the mode of searching, for the mode of searching would be simplified and shortened; it could not arise in the registration, for whereas in former times it was necessary to have these local registrations, because the registration could only take place at particular places, since the introduction of the penny postage a very ordinary mode of registering the deed had been by transmitting it by post to the registrar, whether in Edinburgh or in the counties. There was a passage in the Report of the Commissioners which was clear and distinct upon this point. The Commissioners said—

"We have to add, on the head of transmission by post, that, notwithstanding the great inconveniences arising from the double set of registers, we should scarcely have been prepared to recommend the abolition of one of them—whether it resulted in the keeping of a single register for each county in Edinburgh, or for each county within itself—unless improved means had been provided for the conveyance of deeds by the establishment of cheap postage, and unless we had been certiorated by experience of the perfect safety of their transmission by post. On this last point we have been fully satisfied by the returns we have received from the keepers of all the registers. It appears from these returns that while nearly a fifth part of the whole writs recorded in the General Register House is now transmitted by post, the proportion transmitted to some of the district registers is much greater, In Ayrshire and Fifeshire, four-fifths are sent by post to the district registers; and the proportion in several other districts varies from four-fifths to a half. This proves that the post is already universally accepted as a cheap and convenient auxiliary to registration. The same Returns inform us that though transmission by post has been so extensive for a number of years, not a single instance has occurred, throughout Scotland, of a deed intrusted to the Post Office for the purpose of transmission to the register having been lost, or even delayed for an hour. This is the result, although scarcely any of them have been registered at the Post Office, and although the great majority has been sent in book-post packets."

There was, therefore, good reason to believe that any process of registering deeds could be quite as efficiently performed by persons residing at a distance sending them through the post, as by sending them through the local register. As regarded expense and economy, there could be no doubt as to the difference between the present system and that now proposed. It had been suggested—he need hardly say without a shadow of foundation—that this proposition was really made in the interest of professional bodies in Edinburgh. It was difficult to meet a suggestion of this kind, but fortunately in this case he had the means of proving that it was entirely unfounded. The proposal did not originate in Edinburgh. It originated with the Procurators of Glasgow—a body of legal practitioners than whom none stood higher in Scotland; and to them the public would really be indebted in a great measure for this important improvement. In the year 1856, the Procurators of Glasgow took up the question of the state of the Register of Land Titles. They resolved upon a Report which he now held in his hand. In that Report they recommended the proposal for reform which was embodied in the present Bill. They considered the question whether the register should continue to be kept in Edinburgh or not, and they gave a very clear deliverance upon the subject. They said that the General and Particular Registers as at present kept should be discontinued, and separate registers kept in Edinburgh for each county. They then went on to say—

"There appear many strong reasons for keeping all the county registers in Edinburgh. First, the principal part of the present registers are at present kept altogether in Edinburgh; second, all the register-books are at present sent in blank from Edinburgh, and when filled up are sent to Edinburgh, and these transmissions are attended with considerable official troubles and expense to the public; third, the keeping of all the registers at one place would tend to form and maintain a methodical and accurate general system of recording; fourth, there is a General Register House especially built for safety of records; and fifth, by the above arrangements, and those after proposed, all searches could be made at once, and in the same place, thereby saving much time and expense,"

This was the Report of the Committee of the Faculty of Procurators of Glasgow, signed by twenty-three of the most eminent of that body—gentlemen not inferior to any body of professional men in Scotland, either with regard to the extent of their business, or to the extent of their knowledge. The general body of the Procurators, not content with adopting the Report unanimously, resolved that it should be printed, and copies of it transmitted to the Lord Advocate, to the different legal bodies, to the Members of Parliament for Scotland, and to other persons interested in the land registers of that country. He (the Lord Advocate) thought, therefore, that the suggestion that this was a novel and ill-considered project could scarcely be maintained. The result of this Report was that the project was taken up by the Lord Justice Clerk, who was at that time Dean of the Faculty of Advocates. That body appointed a Committee to consider the subject, and they reported clearly and strongly in favour of the proposal; and not only so, but the present Lord Justice Clerk, when he was Lord Advocate in 1858, introduced for the first time, into the commissions of those officials appointed, during his tenure of office, a clause to the effect that if those registers should be removed to Edinburgh, there would be no claim to compensation on the part of the holders of offices. No stronger testimony can be given to the views which the Lord Justice Clerk entertained on the subject. The Writers to the Signet did the same thing. Mr. Montgomery Bell, the Professor of Conveyancing in the University of Edinburgh, read a paper at the Social Science Congress at Glasgow in 1860, in which he gave the clearest and strongest opinion upon the same matter. The hon. and learned Member for Greenock (Mr. Dunlop) on more than one occasion in 1860 and 1861, asked whether he (the Lord Advocate) intended to legislate upon this matter of records. Although impressed with the desirableness of a change, at the same time he felt that it was a very important matter, which was, to some extent, a matter of practical detail. He did not think it would be safe to act in regard to a matter affecting interests so large and momentous without further inquiry; and therefore he suggested to the Government the appointment of a Royal Commission to inquire into the whole matter, to examine the whole of the county registers, and to report their opinion upon the subject. Accordingly, two gentlemen of the greatest weight and distinction in the profession—Mr. Charles Morton, Writer to the Signet, and Mr. Andrew Bannatyne, now the head of the Faculty of Procurators in Glasgow—were appointed for that purpose, and they made a full and elaborate Report, in which they entirely and fully confirm in every particular the views expressed by the Procurators of Glasgow in 1856, followed, as they were, both by the Faculty of Advocates and by the Society of Writers to the Signet, and the Society of Solicitors before the Supreme Courts. In short, nothing could have been more fully or better considered than this proposal. It might be good, or it might be bad, but there was no ground for saying that it had been rashly or lightly submitted to the House. The Faculty of Procurators in Glasgow, although they commenced this important work, did not, however, appear to be inclined to finish it in the same spirit. They took up the Report of these Commissioners, who exactly confirmed the views which they held in 1856, and they reported again that they were quite clear that, in their opinion, the local registers should be brought to Edinburgh, but that one exception should be made, and that registers ought to be kept at Glasgow. That was a strong testimony to the general principle. As to the exception, it rested, in his opinion, on very slender ground. He would not detain the House by going into the matter, but he wished to suggest to those who take an interest in the subject, that in the Appendix to the Report of the Committee of Procurators they will find protests signed by a minority of the Committee—composed of names which with all acquainted with the profession in Glasgow would carry great weight, in which the proposal to make an exception of Glasgow was thoroughly and clearly answered. It was quite true that, since the Bill had been introduced, a petition had been presented to this House by the Procurators of Glasgow, in which they stated that they think the measure is objectionable, on the ground that it proposed to bring up the local registers to Edinburgh. The Procurators of Glasgow are a body of whom he wished to speak with the highest respect—indeed, he knew of no body of professional individuals more entitled to respect; but having proposed in 1856 this important measure, they had, on grounds which he (the Lord Advocate) could not appreciate, come to change their views in regard to the particular proposal which he now submitted to the House. To what extent that opinion prevailed he did not know, but he thought that the clear and dispassionate opinion of 1856, which was again repeated at the end of 1863, was the wisest and soundest opinion. He was not disposed to change his opinion in consequence of the petition which had been presented by the Procurators of Glasgow. He would make but two further observations. In the first place, it was said that it was not proposed to bring up the burgh registers. In the first place the burgh registers are not comprised in the Act of 1617. They were not brought up to Edinburgh. They stood upon an entirely different ground, and they could well and properly be dealt with separately, as was recommended by Professor Montgomery Bell and also by the Report of the Commissioners. There were matters in regard to the burgh records which might require attention; but it was desirable that they should be dealt with in a separate measure, and not mixed up with the county register. The second matter to which he wished to allude, was compensation to the holders of office. Without now expressing a general opinion on the subject, he might say that those who hold their offices without any clause to the effect that they were not entitled to compensation, might reasonably be compensated. His opinion was, that they ought to be compensated out of the fees that would be drawn under the new system. It would not be necessary to put hands into the pockets of the Treasury, who, indeed, drew £5,000 from the registers in Scotland. The matter may be fairly consi- dered, and there would be plenty of money to defray any charges of the kind. It was not a money question. The object of the Bill was, that dealers in land, whether buyers or lenders, should have a good clear title at the least possible expense, There could be no other object. The object he was most anxious to accomplish he was satisfied never could be accomplished till there was this right registration, and he was certain that when that was done it would produce great economy, and that upon this still larger and more important reforms would be based.

The right hon. Gentleman has told us to-night that this Bill had been discussed at a meeting by most of the Members for Scotland. He ought also to have told them that that meeting was somewhat against the Bill, The fact, however, was, that the principal feeling of enmity to the Bill was that it had not been fairly discussed either in the House or in the public papers in Scotland. It had been desired that a Bill of this kind should have been brought forward before the county meetings of the 10th April, and it was therefore suggested to the right hon. Gentleman that he should postpone his Bill until they had had an opportunity of discussing it at their meetings. The right hon. Gentleman was not inclined to do so, but fairly stated that on moving the second reading of the Bill he would make a statement that might appear in the public papers, and be read all over Scotland. That statement he had now made, and he (Major Hamilton) begged to thank him for the pains he had taken. He was not himself in favour of the Bill, nor did he think that his constituents were; but as his hon, and gallant Friend the Member for Ayrshire (Sir James Fergusson) had put an Amendment on the paper, and it was desirable that the Scotch Members should have a full opportunity of discussing the measure which could not be done at that hour of the night, he would beg to move that the debate be now adjourned.

Sir, it is not my intention to make a long statement to the House. The Bill contains a great deal that is valuable, and I do not think that there is any great objection to it because it is unpalatable to certain local legal practitioners in Scotland. But my intention, in rising, is to say a few words upon the manner in which Scotch business is transacted in this House. When I first became a Member of the House I was told that the Scotch business was conducted in a most admirable manner. It was said that Scotch business was dealt with in a manner that contrasted most favourably with the way in which Irish business was conducted, and with the rows that were constantly got up when any Irish business was before the House. Now, I think if Scotch Members allow themselves to be flattered by observations like these they will greatly deceive themselves. I think the way in which Scotch business is transacted is the most slovenly possible. In point of fact, the only person charged with the conduct of Scotch business in the House is the Lord Advocate of Scotland, and that learned Gentleman is, as his name imports, a practising barrister—often in very large practice; and I believe the present Lord Advocate is the leader of the Scottish bar. We never see the right hon. Gentleman in his place in the House till after Easter, or at least very seldom, unless he wishes to be present in some Ministerial party division. The consequence is, that no business of any importance is brought forward in the early part of the Session; and if any important business connected with Scotland is introduced at the latter part of the year, it is slurred over in a very unsatisfactory manner, as is shown by the debate going on this morning at half past one o'clock— the only debate, too, that has taken place on Scotch business in the present Session of Parliament. Now, in my opinion, there is no part of Her Majesty's dominions that requires more reform than the ancient and loyal kingdom of Scotland. We have courts of law in Scotland called Courts of Session, but they are so strangely constituted, their proceedings are carried on in such unintelligible jargon, and the Courts themselves are fenced about with forms so obsolete, expensive, and dilatory, that they are obstructions to, and not courts of, justice. Scotland is full of legal sinecures. We have some local Courts in Scotland. They are called Sheriffs' Courts; and of these we are somewhat proud, but we feel that they are incumbered with a double set of Judges. The Sheriff's Substitute performs all the duties, and he sits throughout the year hearing and deciding cases; the Sheriff Depute, often the less competent Judge of the two, revising and reversing the judgments in appeal. Then we want a sweeping reform of the Scotch law of marriage, of the law of domicile, of the law of inheritance. Last year we had a Bill in this House to correct the pro- cedure of the Courts of Session, but the Bill wag not pressed forward with zeal— it was withdrawn, and, I believe, was not introduced again this Session. If it be introduced, I am quite sure it will be emasculated, and will be found utterly worthless, because the Minister for Scotland is the Lord Advocate. He is a legal practitioner, and if he brought in any Bill that would really do away with all the sinecure offices in Scotland, and put the Courts on a good footing, it would be torn into pieces by the practitioners who benefit by the present system. We have these measures discussed at the meetings of the Social Science Association in Edinburgh, and I believe the Lord Advocate takes a great part in these meetings, but they are never discussed in this House. In lieu of such proposals, we have a Fish Teinds Bill, we are threatened with a discussion upon the Law of Hypothec, we have a Rivers Pollution Bill, and such small matters as might, in my belief, be just as well deferred to the Greek Kalends. What ought to be done to remedy this state of things? We ought to have a Minister for Scotland who is not a practising barrister. And unless we have some remedy of this nature, we never shall have any of those great measures of practical reform which Scotland requires, and which her Members ask and imperatively demand. I beg to second the Motion for the adjournment of the debate.

I think I am entitled on the Motion which the hon. Gentleman has made to say a few words in reply to, perhaps, the not very relevant, but not the less important speech of the hon. Member for Dumbarton. I quite admit that our plan of conducting business in this House is very different from that he would have us adopt, and the hon. Gentleman has set the good example of the new mode of procedure which he would recommend. On this, which is a very important Bill, relating to a very important subject—a subject that is as important as any of those law reforms which he wishes to see undertaken—the hon. Gentleman has chosen to introduce every topic which has nothing to do with it—everything which is not concerning the matter before the House; and I suppose that his method of conducting Scotch busi- ness in this House is to have important debates conducted in such manner as is suggested by his speech. He seems to be under the delusion that he is speaking on Friday night and not on Monday night, and that the Motion which stands in the name of the hon. and gallant Member for Ayrshire (Sir James Fergusson), for Friday, is the Motion now before the House. He will have an opportunity, when that Motion comes on, of expressing his opinion upon these matters. But let me put the hon. Gentleman right. He says, that since he came into Parliament, I have never been in my place till after Easter. In that he is entirely under a mistake and a delusion. There has not been a single Session of Parliament in which I have not attended in my place before Easter—there has hardly been a single Session in which I have not been here in the second week of the Session and remained until Easter. If there have been occasions when that has not been the case, they have only been when there was little public business to do, and I have thought that I might, without impropriety, remain in Scotland. In regard to the general mode in which Scotch business has been conducted, I venture to say that during the last ten years the measures that have been passed for Scotland have been as important, well considered, and successful as any of those for any other part of the United Kingdom. I am not going now to enter into them. If the hon. Gentleman had wished, he could have informed himself of the facts. What does he want us to do? I am happy to say that the censure he has bestowed upon me he has broadly and impartially scattered. There is not an institution, scarcely an officer, of Scotland that has not fallen under the lash of the hon. Member. The Court of Session, he says, is useless; the Sheriff's Court is bad; the law of marriage ought to be reformed. I would suggest to the hon. Gentleman, since he holds these strong opinions, he, as an independent Member of Parliament, perhaps might lay upon the table Bills upon the miscellaneous subjects which might carry out the views he has expressed.