said, he rose, pursuant to the notice he had given, to call the attention of the House to the Report of the Select Committee on the Revision of Standing Orders. He would not detain the House by repeating any of the arguments which he used on a former occasion when he moved for the appointment of the Committee. He would merely state that the Committee, after much consideration, resolved to recommend the adoption of the Resolutions he had had the honour to submit. If he could persuade the House to agree to the Report of the Committee, next Session, Referees would be appointed by the Speaker, who would have, in connection with Private Bills, to determine certain facts, the investigation of which would thus be withdrawn from the Committees of the House. There was some delay in coming to a conclusion, in consequence of the reluctance of the Speaker to assume the responsibility of appointing the Referees. The Committee were, however, so strongly of opinion that it was desirable that the whole system should be in the body of the House, and unconnected with any public office, that they renewed their request to the Speaker, who was then good enough to express his willingness to undertake the duty if the House required it. The Committee had made some alterations in the definition of subjects to be submitted to the Referees. In regard to the second class of questions, for instance, it had been decided that only the details of traffic should be referred to the tribunal. Although the Resolutions had not met with the entire approbation of all concerned, he was bound to acknowledge the spirit of fairness with which they had been considered. The Parliamentary Bar had expressed their readiness to give the new system a fair trial, and the Parliamentary agents had not only made the same statement, but had given him their best assistance in determining the various sub- jects to be submitted to the Referees. He inferred from the recent discussion that the disposition of hon. Members was not unfavourable to the experiment. For his own part, he would undertake, if the Resolutions did not accomplish the object with which they had been proposed, to save the time of the House and to diminish the expense to persons promoting or opposing Bills, to move their repeal at the earliest moment. He hoped, however, that they would prove successful. The Committee had agreed, not unanimously, but by a large majority, to recommend an important change in the Standing Orders of the House, that Private Bill Committees should each consist of three instead of five Members. He was one of those who had doubted the expediency of so great an alteration, and he at first proposed that the number should be reduced to four; but there was much to be said for the larger reduction. At present three formed a quorum, and as, under the new rule, the proceedings would be suspended in the absence of any of the three Members, there would practically be no change. Another alteration which was recommended with the view of expediting the private business of the House, and of advancing Bills early in the Session, was that the time allowed for petitions should be ten clear days after the first reading, instead of eight days after the second reading. There were some further alterations of minor importance to which be need not refer in detail; but, in conclusion, he would express his belief that if these proposals were carried out, Private Bill legislation would be conducted in a more satisfactory manner, and they would not have Bills delayed till the end of the Session, so that it was scarcely possible for them to be considered in the other House. He moved the repeal of the present Standing Orders relative to Private Bills.

said, he wished to ask, whether the object of the Motion was to give the House a clear sheet of paper for the introduction of a new series of Standing Orders?

said, that was the object of the Motion. That course had always been adopted on former occasions.

asked, whether the proposed Resolutions contained any provision to the effect that the Referee was not to be a Member of the House?

said, that the Resolutions contained no such provision; on the contrary, it was proposed that the Chairman of the Referees should be the Chairman of Ways and Means.

said, he could not help thinking that so important a subject should have been brought forward earlier in the year, and be suspected that, considering the period of the Session, and the attendance at the Committee, they had arrived at what was rather a foregone conclusion. He confessed that he had no great hope that the new system would lead to any reduction in expense. He even feared it would be attended with the opposite result. The hon. and gallant Gentleman had, however, in some degree disarmed opposition by pledging himself to move the repeal of the Resolutions if they did not prove effectual in saving the time of the House and the money of suitors.

said, that be hoped sincerely that the House would adopt the proposition of his hon. and gallant Friend. All the Members attended the Committee, and gave the subject most careful consideration. The Resolutions had, in substance, been explained to the House previously.

said, he understood his hon. and gallant Friend to undertake that if the new plan was not found satisfactory he would propose its repeal. He was, however, afraid that it was exactly in the fact that it was an experiment that the real danger lay, and that it might be the first step towards taking away from the Committees of that House their jurisdiction over Private Bills.

said, he questioned very much the expediency of leaving engineering questions to be decided by Referees, and the other questions connected with Private Bills to the Members of the Select Committee. Experience had, he thought, proved that whenever the attempt had been made to divide a judicial inquiry into two parts to be dealt with by separate tribunals, the system had operated unsatisfactorily. He, however, did not intend to oppose the proposition of the hon. and gallant Member, but he thought that its practical effect would be to make these matters of inquiry more expensive and less satisfactory.

said, he wished to correct the answer which he had given to the hon. Member behind him in respect to the appointment of Referees. Now, as there was a small salary attached to the office of Referee, the Chairman of Ways and Means, who was to be Chairman of Referees, could not appoint a Member of that House unless he resigned his seat, he would begin by moving the adoption of the now Standing Order No. 7, which proposed that the numbers of the Select Committee should be three instead of five.

said, that the new Standing Order itself proposed to effect the reduction to three Members, and if nobody objected to it, the new Standing Order would pass.

said, that such a reduction was open to great objection. In the Committee of which he was a Member that Session two of the Members were taken suddenly ill and were obliged to absent themselves. Now, if there were to be only three Members on the Committee, in the event of such a contingency, the inconvenience would be obvious.

said, he wished to ask whether the reduction was proposed for the convenience of individual Members of that House. The public interest, he thought, would suffer by leaving Private Bills to be decided by Committees of only three Members, instead of five.

said, he could not concur in the proposed reduction the practical effect of which would be that Committees would consist of two Members only! That would not be satisfactory to the public. He should not so much object to a Committee of four.

said, it had been felt, in the discussions on that matter which had taken place in the Committee, that if they had Committees of four Members, too great power would be thrown in the hands of the Chairman, who would have a casting vote where the Members were equally divided in opinion. On that ground, after considerable discussion, the Committee determined to recommend that the Committees should be constituted of three Members. The most experienced Parliamentary agents were of opinion that as much weight of authority would be carried by a decision of a Committee of three as of a Committee of five. Under the system at present in operation, the amount of business to be done being so enormous, hon. Members had to endure a very severe demand upon them, and, in fact, that mode of carrying on the business was breaking down. The House must contemplate the alternative of reducing that pressure, or that of taking that business away from the House altogether. His noble Friend (Lord Hotham), he knew, had always deprecated the notion of taking the business away from the House, but, in order to retain the jurisdiction in that House, some reform of the present system must be adopted, which would give satisfaction to the public on the one hand and afford a relief to Member on the other hand.

said, he did not believe that the decision of a smaller number would carry so much weight as that of a greater number. He would also point out that if the reduced Commit tees were to be selected, as at present, from all the Members of the House, the inexperienced would rely upon the more experienced, and thus upon the Chairman of a Committee would devolve most of the labour and responsibility of the inquiry.

said, he thought the decision of a Committee of three would have as much, if not greater, weight than that of five, because of the responsibility being less divided.

said, that in his opinion the House ought to hesitate long before it altered the constitution of the Committees Too much was made of the tax put on hon. Members to serve on Committees. No doubt there was some inconvenience, but so long as the House chose to keep those matters within their own jurisdiction, the only question to be considered was what arrangement would be most satisfactory to the public. If the number were reduced: to three, great difficulties might arise, I Should one Member he absent, and the in quiry proceed with the concurrence of all parlies, the result would be a tribunal of two, one Member of which would have two votes, and would practically have the case in his own hands. On the other hand, if, upon the absence of one Member, the Committee had to report to the House and take its pleasure, then upon the rising of the Committee the parties could not be told when the proceedings would be resumed, and the expenses of the inquiry would be going on, though no progress was being made. If the tribunal was to consist of four, the result would be almost worse, because one Member must then have two votes. He thought that with some of the new regulations and with others which might be introduced, the present odd number of five would give more satisfaction than any change such as was proposed.

said, that he had had an opportunity of hearing the Question discussed both at the Committee which had been held last year and at the Committee which had sat during the present Session, and he had come to the conclusion that the arguments were rather unfavourable to reducing the number so far as three. He believed that there was a good deal of force in the argument employed by the hon. Member for St. Ives, that in the case of the absence of one of the Members of a Committee formed of throe, through illness, the whole business was practically under the control of the Chairman, who, in case of a division of opinion, would have the privilege of using his casting vote. Many of the matters referred to Select Committees were too important to be decided by one Member, and the public would hardly think that sufficient justice was done to their interests. If they could secure the attendance of three Members no doubt it would be sufficient, as that number was the present quorum, He would much prefer the reduction of the number of Members on the Committee to four. If he remembered rightly, his hon. Friend the Member for North Lancashire in the Committee which sat upon the subject last year advocated the reduction to that number, although as Chairman of the Committee which had recently sat he brought forward the recommendation for the reduction of the number to three.

said, he hoped that the House would not agree to the proposition of the right hon. Gentleman the President of the Board of Trade, which would practically have the effect of placing the whole of the power in the bands of the Chairman, and reducing the other three Members to the position of dummies. He was quite willing to acknowledge that ability and intelligence possessed by the Chairmen of Committees, but he believed it would be very easy to find another half-dozen Gentlemen who would perform the duties of Chairmen equally well in every respect.

said, that he certainly had been in favour of four, but the feeling of the Committee was so strong against that number that he believed he stood almost alone. Under those circumstances, he felt himself bound to support the Report of the Committee.

said, he thought that the House hardly understood the proposition which had been made, because it involved not only an alteration in the number of Members serving on a Committee, but an alteration in the constitution of the Committee itself. At present the Committee was formed of five shifting Members, any three of whom formed a quorum, and the present proposal was that the Committees should consist of three Members, in the absence of any one of whom no business, unless the consent of the House had been obtained for such a course, could be proceeded with. The intention of the new Standing Order was that no one should vote who had not heard the evidence from beginning to the end.

said, he wished to move that the word "four" be inserted.

said, he wished to know, if it was competent to move an Amendment?

said, he was in favour of four Members rather than of five, and should therefore vote against the insertion of the word five. He thought that the number of four would facilitate the conduct of private business.

said, be was also prepared to vote for "four." That number would afford some relief to the House and also leave an efficient Committee.

said, he would put the Question in this form:—That the word "five" do stand part of the Resolution. Those who were opposed to "five" might fill up the blank with any other number.

said, he moved that the word "four" be inserted, instead thereof.

said, he objected to the proposal, as he should prefer a Committee of three to four Members. In the former division the question was as between three and five, and he voted against three; but now he would, if it were competent to him to do so, move that the word "three" be inserted instead of four.

said, he wished to ask, if it was competent for any hon. Member to move the insertion of the word "three" as an Amendment?

said, it could not be done. The House had already decided against "three."

said, that decision was "five" against "three." It was then proposed to take the decision of the House on the question of "three" against "four."

said, that in consequence of the alteration just made he begged to move the postponement of Resolutions 7, 8, and 9, his object being to make them conformable to the Resolution already adopted. Further Consideration of Standing Order, No. 7, postponed till To-morrow, at Six of the clock. Standing Order No. 8, as amended by the Committee, and No. 9, as revised by the Committee, read as follows:—

"8. The Committee on every opposed Private Bill (not being a Railway, Canal, or Divorce Bill), or Group of Bills, shall be composed of a Chairman and two Members not locally or otherwise interested in the Bill or Bills referred to them, to be appointed by the Committee of Selection."

"9. The Committee on every unopposed Private Bill (not being a Railway, Canal, or Divorce Bill), shall, if the same shall have originated in this House, be composed of the Chairman of the Committee of Ways and Means, who shall be ex officio Chairman of every such Committee, to- gether with one of the Members ordered to prepare and bring in the Bill, and one other Member not locally or otherwise interested therein, such Members to be appointed by the Committee of Selection, and shall, if such Bill shall have been brought from the House of Lords, be composed of the Chairman as aforesaid, and two other Members, to be appointed by the Committee of Selection, of whom one at least shall not be locally or otherwise interested in the Bill; and the Chairman and one other Member of such Committee shall be the quorum thereof."

said, he wished to know how his hon. and gallant Friend intended to deal with the question of the Chairman's vote. There was a difficulty in the matter, as the Committees were to be composed of four Members. It would be objectionable to give one Member a double vote, and therefore he thought they ought to act on the maxim semper presumitur pro negante. The presumption was for the negative in appeal cases in the House of Lords and the Courts of Law, and he thought that would be the safest rule for the Committees of the House.

said, his wish was to take the sense of the House on the Question, and therefore he would consider it afresh on the following day.

asked the Speaker, whether it would not be competent to any hon. Member to move on the following day that the word "three" be inserted in the Resolution instead of "four?"

said, it would not. The sense of the House had been taken on the Question, "that the word 'three' stand part of the Question," and the decision had been in the negative. The only matters to be decided in connection with the Resolution were those of the quorum and the vote of the Chairman.

said, that believing that some time should be given for the consideration of the proposed changes, he would move the adjournment of the debate until to-morrow.

said, he had never heard a more unreasonable proposition. The three Resolutions which he moved to postpone were connected with the one just adopted; but the others were in no way connected with those three.

said, he would suggest that Resolutions 7, 8, and 9 should be postponed till the next Session.

said, he should support the Amendment of the hon. Baronet the Member for Westminster.

said, the House had distinctly decided the Question that four should be the number of members, and he was afraid that having so decided they could not go hack on it. The Question of the casting vote of the Chairman was a very important one, and if Resolutions 7, 8, and 9 were postponed till the following Session, a new Standing Order might be framed, which, on a full and fair consideration of the subject, might meet all the difficulties.

said, he would have no objection to the suggestion of his right hon. Friend (Mr. Bouverie), but he did not see what was to be gained by it. At the beginning of next Session any hon. Member might move the repeal of the Resolution fixing the number at four.

said, he believed they had begun by repealing the Standing Orders, and, if so, they had no machinery for dealing with private business.

said, he thought it was not the fact that the Standing Orders had been repealed.

said, he begged to remind the House that it had already decided that Standing Order No. 7 should be postponed till the following day. Then came Standing Orders 8 and 9, when it was proposed that they also should be postponed till to-morrow, on which the Question had been raised whether or not the whole debate should be adjourned. It was quite competent for any hon. Member to move that the debate be adjourned, otherwise the hon. and gallant Gentleman could go forward with the other Question which stood for consideration that evening.

said, he wished to ask, whether the Standing Orders had been repealed or not?

said, it had been proposed to repeal the old Standing Orders and proceed to the consideration of the new, but a debate arose before that Question had been finally submitted to the House; and, therefore, the House had not come to any decision that the Standing Orders should be repealed.

said, it was necessary that they should now adjourn the debate, because they were now passing Resolutions which seemed to be inconsistent with the existing Standing Orders, and they would have two different sets of rules at the same time.

said, he wished to ask the Secretary to the Admiralty, Whether it is the intention of the Lords Commissioners to appropriate any portion of Greenwich Hospital for the reception of worn-out and disabled Seamen of the Merchant Service?

said, in reply, that it was not the intention of the Admiralty to appropriate any portion of Greenwich Hospital to that purpose.

said, he wished to ask the Secretary to the Treasury, Whether the opinion of the Law Officers of the Crown has been given on the construction of the Act 19 & 20 Vict. c. 69, s. 16, respecting certain deductions made by the Treasury from the Government contribution of one-fourth part of the charge for the pay and clothing of the Police in Counties and Boroughs, and whether he will state the effect of such opinion?

said, in reply, that the Law Officers of the Crown had given it as their opinion that the expression, "charge for pay," would include any portion of the pay deducted for the purpose of being paid over to the superannuation fund. The Treasury, therefore, were at liberty to contribute one-fourth part of the charge for pay inclusive of the sum paid for superannuation.

said, he would beg to ask the Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, Whether the exemption of British Subjects from the demand for Passports in Franco exempts them also from their Passports being demanded and given over to the custody of the captain on going on board French Passenger Steamers in the Mediterranean and elsewhere? He wished further to ask, Whether any information has been received at the Foreign Office of the complaint made by Lord Francis Douglas, that his Pass-port had been taken from him and torn to pieces before his face at a place near Bodenbach, in Austria?

replied, that he had not received any official communication on the subject of Lord Francis Douglas's passport. With regard to the more general Question, he had to state that, as far as he could ascertain, the rule appeared to be that when a French passenger vessel called at any port in the Mediterranean, it was the practice for the captain to collect the passports and show them to the authorities. But he was not aware whether the captain did that in the case of vessels trading between one French port and another. He rather thought that was not the practice.

said, before putting the Question of which he had given notice, he had desired to have made a statement, containing some important facts bearing upon the American war, and tending to show how futile was the attempt to restore the Union and to coerce the South; but as he had no opportunity now of doing so, he begged simply to ask the First Lord of the Treasury, If, considering the great sacrifice of life and property occasioned by the war still raging between the United States of America and the Confederate States, and considering the loss the people of this Country have suffered by the war, it is the intention of Her Majesty's Government, in concert with the other Powers of Europe, to use their endeavours to bring about a suspension of hostilities?

I can assure my hon. Friend that Her Majesty's Government deeply lament the great sac- rifice of life and property in America and the distress which that war has produced in this country. But we have not thought that in the present state of things there was any advantage to be gained by entering into concert with any other Powers for the purpose of proposing or offering mediation, or of negotiating with the Government of the United States or of the Confederate States to bring about a termination of this unhappy war.

said, he rose to ask, on behalf of his right hon. and gallant Friend General Peel, Whether it is true that a demand has recently been made upon an Officer for Stamp Duty upon a Commission as Quartermaster General in the Crimea in 1855, which appointment he ceased to hold in 1856; and whether, in fact, any Commission has ever been made out?

replied, that a Circular had been issued in December, 1858, which laid it down that I a stamp duty of thirty shillings should be paid on commissions being gazetted, According to that rule, this stamp duty ought to be collected out of the first additional pay received by the officer. It appeared that in some cases this had been neglected to be done, and therefore it was very probable that in some instances officers might have been recently asked to pay the stamp duty on commissions granted so long ago. With regard to the great delay in making these claims on officers, the noble Lord was probably aware that in consequence of the enormous number of new commissions issued a few years ago, an Act was passed dispensing with the necessity of the Sign Manual being affixed to them, the signature of the Commander-in-Chief being substituted. The arrear was so great it had not been all worked off yet; and, inasmuch as the Commissioners of Inland Revenue actually refused to affix the stamp to commissions till the stamp duty was paid, the charge was now being made against those officers who ought to have paid it at once.

said, he wished to ask a Question of the Secretary for Ireland with reference to a Parliamentary Paper which was laid on the table on the 29th of June. The paper in question was one of four letters written thirty years ago relative to a charge of forgery against Mr. O'Malley Irwin, and which had hitherto been withheld from the House. It appears that a copy has been found by Sir Thomas Larcom in the Irish Office, and it was pro- duced when moved for by the hon. and learned Member for Suffolk (Sir Fitz Roy Kelly) in the course of the late debate. On Friday night a doubt was cast on the authenticity of this Letter by the Irish Attorney General. He (Mr. Hennessy) wished to know, Whether there is a Copy of that Letter in the Chief Secretary's Office, and whether the original has been abstracted from the Crown Solicitor's Papers during the trial of Mr. Irwin for forgery in 1834, and also whether this Copy is authentic?

said, he believed he might state that if the letter dated the 4th October was a copy of an original, its authenticity might be asserted. Thirty years ago was rather a long time to carry inquiries back, and to speak with accuracy on such a matter.

said, a correspondence had passed between Sir Thomas Larcom and himself on this subject, and he distinctly stated that the original letter was not in the Office. He was not prepared to say this was a copy of an original letter.

said, reverting to the subject of his Question, he wished to know. Who is responsible for the Note appended to the Return, as to the Original Letter having been abstracted from the Crown Solicitor's papers, and whether the statement made in that Note is correct?

said, of course the Irish Office was responsible. He was responsible for it to that House.

said, he was not aware of the existence of any papers which would corroborate the statement made by the right hon. Gentleman on the subject of the Woolwich Gun Foundry the other night; but he had received private information upon that point, from which he bad reason to believe that that statement was perfectly correct. He believed that the whole building, which was constructed at the time when the right hon. Gentleman was in office, with some trifling exceptions, was available for the manufacture of the Armstrong gun. The only loss was occasioned by the additional expense for the fitting boxes, amounting to £2,700, and for the casting pit, amounting to £4,000, making together £6,700. From this the sum of £836 must be deducted for the sale of old iron, leaving a sum of £5,864 actually lost by the change of machinery from cast iron to Armstrong ordnance.

observed that, in popular theory, the House of Commons was responsible for the keeping of the public purse. That was a delusion which was fast passing away; for what was the state of the representative system in the month of July? After two and a half hours' discussion on the Standing Orders, which came to nothing, they were exhausted, and were prepared to pass a Bill involving millions of money. What was really the state of the question regarding fortifications? At half past two in the morning during the last week the Bill went into Committee; that was to say at a time when it was impossible for those who were not present to know what had been done, for those able men who sat in the Reporters' Gallery were naturally us much fatigued as the House, and they were totally unable to record any remarks if they were made; the consequence was a blank in the discussions of the question, which involved first and last an expenditure of £20,000,000. How did the question actually stand at that moment? A material alteration had been made in the original plan for the defence of Portsmouth Harbour and Spithead, which he believed would not be effectual for its purpose, but would lead to a great increase of expenditure. The original plan, as given by the Defence Commissioners three years ago, proposed to flank the entrance to Spithead with two forts on the Horse Shoe and No Man's shoals. The House approved and adopted that plan. That was the outer circle of defence 6,000 yards from Portsmouth Dockyard. But within that outer defence the Commissioners proposed that midway between Ryde and Portsmouth another fort should be erected called Sturbridge, to command the anchorage at Spithead. From the Report of the Commissioners it appeared that was a most material point in the inner circle of defence. What, then, had been done? Mr. Hawkshaw, the engineer at that time, made a Report in which he stated he was very much afraid he would not find a foundation sufficient to carry the heavy guns intended for that fort. At the time Mr. Hawkshaw had already penetrated 30 feet, and he stated that if he went 15 feet further without finding any solid foundation he would have to give up the work. That depth was reached without the discovery of any solid foundation, and the consequence was that after the House had been misled and a large sum of money expended, Sturbridge Fort was abandoned. By the abandonment of that fort he maintained that the recommendation of the Defence Commissioners, as indorsed by Parliament, had been materially altered, for the result was that an enemy would be able to steam up a channel 2,000 yards in width and shell the dockyards with comparative freedom from molestation. The Defence Committee, with the addition of another officer, Sir Alexander Milne, after the want of success at Sturbridge in finding a solid foundation, were called upon for another Report, and he could not, when he considered the amount of money involved, avoid characterizing the haste which the matter had been dealt with as most extraordinary, if not indecent. The Committee were only called upon to report on the 15th of July, and on the 19th the Report was presented. No explanation was given with it. They had only that morning received the plan which should have accompanied the Report involving the alteration of the whole of our national defences, and which, if agreed to, would burden the country with a positive expense of £11,000,000, according to the estimates, and they were asked that evening to consent to the third reading of the Bill, which would give a Parliamentary sanction to the new plan. He believed the House was blind enough to pass anything, and the excuse they would urge would probably be that they shuffled off all the responsibility upon the Ministry. What did that responsibility amount to? The House voted the money, and its application might be found some years hence to have been of no service at all; and that was where the responsibility, as it was termed, began and ended. Three years ago they were told it was of vital importance that the country should be put into a state of defence, but what was the actual result? The result was that on shore they had enormous lines of trenches and casemates with neither men nor guns to defend them, while they were so much the weaker by the increased area which they had to defend; and at sea not a single floating battery had been made for the last three years. But the state of the gunnery was a question of still greater importance. The expiring moments of Parliament could not be better devoted than to the consideration of the state of the weapons which were placed in the defences, and by which the integrity of the country was to be preserved. He found that in the last five years, between 1858 and 1863, the country had expended £2,539,547 17s. 8d. upon the construction of new ordnance, and that the result had been an issue to the army and navy of 2,370 guns, of which number 799 were the 100-pounders, and to the efficiency of those guns he would allude. No doubt we possessed some excellent iron-clad ships, but had the Admiralty any guns fit to put into them? He held in his hand a most extraordinary pamphlet by a flag officer of great reputation on the active list, Admiral Hal-stead, in which that officer stated his opinion that "the British navy at present possesses no guns adapted for iron-plate warfare." The Duke of Somerset, too, on being asked by the Ordnance Committee as to his opinion of the 100-pounder, said that for naval purposes at 200 yards it certainly had not the greatest power for penetration, and that in that respect the old 68-pounder smooth-bore was the most effective weapon in the service. The Report of the Committee, after a review of the whole subject, was to the same effect, that the 100-pounders were of no service. The fact was that we had consumed two and a half millions of money during the last five years, and that we were as far from having an effectual naval weapon as we were at the outset. If the House thought that that was a subject with which it was entitled to meddle, it ought not to consent to the third reading of the Bill without having some more definite idea as to the future than was to be gathered from the Reports laid before Parliament. He wished to do full justice to Sir William Armstrong, and he must say that he could not think that he had been particularly successful in his large guns, but at the same time justice had not been done to him. They should remember that, as Mr. Armstrong in 1859, he never undertook to make any large guns; he only undertook to contract for the supply of light breech-loading field guns to the army. It was very true that a most extraordinary contract was entered into, but the House should remember the original circumstances. At the same time, subsequent experience and experiments had shown that the breech-loading system as applied to heavy guns was a complete failure, and fit that moment Government was occupied in doing with their artillery exactly the reverse of what they were doing with the small arms. At that time 250 breechloaders were being rifled upon the shunt principle, which was, in reality, nothing more nor less than an adaptation by Sir William Armstrong of the French principle, with a slight alteration. The House would easily understand the principle, which was the insertion into the gun of a projectile with ribs or buttons, but the material difference was that the shot entering by one chamber was discharged by another set of grooves. Complaints had been made, and most justly, of the great partiality exhibited by the Select Ordnance Committee with reference to Sir William Armstrong. Nothing appeared to go down with the Committee but Armstrong guns. Every inventor who had come before the Committee complained of the conduct of its members in that respect. On comparing our Select Ordnance Committee with a similar committee in France, he could not help arriving at the conclusion that its members had done wonderfully little in contributing to the service of gunnery. It was a most remarkable fact that with the one exception of Captain Blakeley, all the improvements in gunnery had been effected by civilians. Mr. Whitworth, Mr. Lynal Thomas, and Sir William Armstrong were all civilians, and Captain Blakeley was the only artillerist connected with the improvements. The House, perhaps, imagined, that these 110-pounder guns were tested by experiment before being adopted. No such thing. Sir William Armstrong was made a director of the Artillery; and when he was asked before the Committee to state upon what series of experiments these guns were approved, his answer was, "None at all. There was such a pressure that there was no time for experiments." Yet a great number of guns had been made which were utterly condemned in the navy, and he believed that no great confidence was felt in them by the practical men of the Royal Artillery. He now wished to draw attention to a comparison between the French gun and ours, because really we seemed to be in a sort of fool's paradise with regard to our gun, which was thought an invention superior to any in all the world. He was sorry to see that the Duke of Somerset ridiculed altogether the idea of the French gun, though his Grace gave no reasons; but a remarkable paper had lately appeared in the Edinburgh Review, evidently written by an artillerist of high standing, in which a very favourable account was given of this French gun, which, as compared with our 68-pounder,—the only one available for the armament of our iron-clads—was said to be as superior as cheese to chalk. Had the noble Lord (Lord Clarence Paget), above all men in the world—he who was such a great naval reformer in opposition, and who discovered then a waste of £5,000,000 which he had never proved — had that great naval reformer who had reformed nothing, sanctioned an expenditure of £2,500,000 upon a gun, while the navy was left without any except what was called the good and wholesome old 68-pounder? Captain Blakeley, who was an artillery officer of great attainments, and was driving an enormous trade in guns with foreign countries, where his guns were highly approved, was asked before the Committee whether he thought that the Armstrong gun would be effective against a side of La Gloire. His answer, in effect, was, "By no means. The French possess a gun so superior to the Armstrong, that if we unfortunately went to war with them at the present time our iron-clads would not stand a chance against that gun." Captain Blakeley went on to say that we had spent millions upon the formation of an iron-clad fleet, and if we sent the fleet to sea at the present moment it would cut a very sorry figure against the French gun. Was that a proper state of things? Could the House he content to go to what were called its duties in the country, not knowing at any time, if a war broke out, what would be the result? He could not rest content without making a last struggle to draw attention to the subject. As to the forts, he doubted whether there was a gun for them; and, after all, recent experience bad not been such as to afford much encouragement with regard to heavy guns. At the siege of Charleston, where these monster guns had been employed, they had never fired above forty-eight rounds without bursting, though to that day Fort Sumter had never been taken; and an American paper took much credit for a heavy gun which was fired seventy-six times and did not burst till the seventy-seventh. Expensive experiments were going on at Shoe-buryness, which, as the writer in the Edinburgh Review said, were made without precision and without judgment, and yet we now had no naval gun, while it was very much doubted whether we had a gun which was fit to be mounted in the forts when they were built. From the first he had always argued that the proper defence of our shores was the navy, and the navy alone. But although the House supported him by their cheers, they had withheld their votes from him. These fortifications had lingered, the original plan being altered, while it might be altered again. If it were not for the lateness of the Session he should be almost inclined to resist the third reading, to stop the digging of holes in which we were burying millions, and ask the House to pause in the rash outlay, and see whether they could not lay out the residue of the money to better advantage upon naval defences. Exhausted as the House was, he felt indebted to them for listening to his short explanation, but he felt the question to be one of such vital importance that it could not be pooh-poohed from the Treasury Bench, and was worthy the deepest consideration of the House.

said, he was very glad that the hon. Gentleman had not carried out his intention of opposing the third reading of the Bill, especially as it had reference to the completion of a scheme for the defence of Portsmouth and Spithead. The subject had been so fully discussed in several former years, and the House had so distinctly asserted its determination that Spit-head should be defended by a system of forts in combination with its floating defences, that it would be scarcely worth while to occupy time at that late period of the Session in discussing once again the merits of the scheme. It was true that it had been found necessary to abandon the site of one of these forts, and a modification of the plan had been rendered necessary, but that modification was very slight. But if the hon. Gentleman would look at the evidence before the Defence Commission, be would see that the Government had sufficient grounds to go upon with regard to the foundation for the Sturbridge Fort. Sir Charles Fox strongly supported the opinion that a site would be found; and although Mr. Hawkshaw expressed more doubt, still his evidence pointed rather to the probability of very great outlay being necessary than to the conclusion that a good and safe foundation would not be found. The hon. Member accused the Government of not having made greater progress with the works. But the House would remember that it was owing to the opposition of the hon. Member that the whole scheme for the defence of Spithead was suspended for more than a year, and that not only the work was suspended, but a great deal had to be gone over again. If, then, anybody was to be responsible for the delay in building the forts, and for the fact that the foundations were not yet above the level of the water, it was the hon. Member himself and the House. The hon. Member complained that the scheme had been presented in too hurried a manner, Now, the Report was presented the day before that fixed for the Committee on the Bill, and although the explanatory plan was not ready on the same day, the plan was conspicuously displayed in the House early that morning, and was tolerably certain to be seen by hon. Members who came down prepared to discuss the Bill. Hon. Members had not been asked to read a long and complicated Report; the Report presented was a very short one, and he did not know what possible benefit could have resulted from its being placed in the hands of Members at an earlier period. With regard to the plan, the object was that if the enemy's ships should succeed in penetrating the outer line of defences, they should be exposed at any spot where they might anchor to bombard the dockyard at Portsmouth to so concentrated a fire from the several forts that they would be unable to devote themselves to that object. By the Report of the Committee, without referring to the plan, it would be seen that those four works averaged about 3,000 yards' distance from each other, the greatest distance being a little over 4,000 yards. The experiments which had taken place a few days ago at Shoebury-ness showed that the expectations of the Committee with respect to the ordnance which might be placed in our forts had been fulfilled to the letter. The experiments made on that occasion showed that at 3,000 yards a projectile fired from the 600-pounder gun with a full charge would break the plates of any iron-clad vessel. [Mr. BERNAL OSBORNE: What! At 3,000 yards?] The experiments which had been fully reported in The Times showed that to be the fact. No ship could possibly pass between the forts at a greater distance than 1,500 yards from one of them; and no ship could take up a position to shell the dockyard at a greater distance than 2,000 yards from the combined power of the forts. The hon. Gentleman said we had not a gun to put in these forts; but the House would perceive that the experiments with the 600-pounders showed that when mounted on the forts those guns would do all that they had originally been expected to do. Though he quite admitted we were not as far advanced in the matter of ordnance as might be wished, still there was no reason that when those forts were finished they should not be armed with a certain proportion of 600-pounders, and a proportion of smaller guns. The foundation of the forts would not be ready till next summer, and another year or two must elapse before the structures would be ready to receive the guns. Surely, then, the hon. Member would not have had the Government manufacture more of those 600-pounder guns without instituting experiments to test their performance. In reference to what had been said by the hon. Gentleman on the subject of breech-loading guns, he was quite free to admit that, as explained by him, the breech-loading system of Sir William Armstrong, which had proved so successful in the case of smaller ordnance—of field guns—had not been found so successful in guns of a larger description. [Mr. BERNAL OSBORNE: Hear, hear!] But the hon. Member had mentioned that the Government were altering some of the old breech-loaders into muzzle-loaders. That statement was not strictly accurate. No finished breech-loaders had been altered. Certainly 250 guns which it had been intended to finish as breech-loaders had since been ordered to be finished as muzzle-loaders. The barrels had been formed, but they were in the state in which it was possible to finish them on the muzzle-loading system or as breech-loading guns; and considering that the system of breech-loading guns had not been found to answer satisfactorily, orders were given to finish them as muzzle-loaders. The hon. Gentleman had referred to the Duke of Somerset's evidence before the Ordinance Committee of the previous year, in which his Grace said that at 200 yards the 110 lb, gun was not effective against iron places; but the House must recollect that when that gun was ordered it was not intended to be used against iron-plates. There had been an opinion prevalent in the country that our ships should be armed with a rifle gun, throwing a ball a long distance. Accordingly those guns were ordered, and except with the few exceptions of their trials against iron-plates, they had been found to answer exceedingly well. The hon. Gentleman said that those were important exceptions. [Mr. BERNAL OSBORNE: Hear!] But he must repeat it had not been intended that those guns should be used against iron-plates, and there were a great many situations in which they could be exceedingly useful. The Duke of Somerset had given his opinion that the navy had not got too many of them. For all purposes of long range, and for use against wooden ships, those guns were most desirable; and unquestion-ably they would be most valuable on shores which were not exposed to the attacks of iron-clad ships. They could not be adopted as the staple arm of our ships; but both naval and military authorities concurred in thinking that too many of them had not been made. The hon. Gentleman said that we had not got anything better than the old 68-pounders against iron-clad ships. [Mr. BERNAL OSBORNE: The Duke of Somerset said it.] The Duke of Somerset made that statement last year; but since that a number of guns from 6½ to 7 tons weight had been made—that being, as we were told, the heaviest weight of broadside gun which a ship could carry, if heavier guns were put aboard, it must be to be used as other than broadside guns. The Government were also making some of the 12-ton guns, which, when smooth bore, had a calibre of 10½ inches, and when rifled a calibre of 9·22 inches. It might be said that they had not got any large number of those guns. They certainly had not; but surely the hon. Gentleman did not think the Government were wrong in making experiments before they introduced either the 7-ton or the 12-ton gun as a general arm of the navy. They had gone on with such haste in the case of the, 110-pounder that no experiments had preceded its adoption; but the result taught them that they might go too fast, and those large guns which were being tried were very expensive. Next Session, if the House thought fit to vote the necessary sums, the Government would be prepared to go on faster in producing those large wrought-iron guns for the army and navy. He could assure the House that the hon. Gentleman was mistaken when he said that the French navy was better armed than ours. If the hon. Member was right, would he tell the House what this formidable weapon was which the French service possessed? [Mr. BERNAL OSBORNE: Read the article in the Edinburgh Review.] He had read it. The hon. Gentleman said that evidently it was written by a man possessing very great knowledge of the subject. He thought it quite evident that it was written by a person who was very friendly to the inventor of the gun to which he presumed the hon. Member referred. That gun was a weapon of great range, power, and accuracy, but it was a mistake to suppose that the French navy was armed with that experimental gun. He believed the French ships were armed with old 32-pounder guns which had been rifled, and which did not carry a charge of more than 8 1b. or 9 1b. of powder. If it was a fact that any other nation was very much ahead of us in its ordnance, that would be an argument to show that we should proceed to manufacture a large number of the best gun we had; but as that was not the case, there was no such necessity for such hot haste. If there was reason to believe that we could arm our ships with as good a gun as any other nation could bring against us, and that we could construct improved guns as fast as anybody else, that was a reason, not, perhaps, for delay, but for not proceeding with undue haste. The hon. Member said that recent experience seemed to be against large guns, and he referred to the short lives of the American guns at Charleston. The fact was that the Americans did not possess a wrought-iron gun at all, and experience had shown that east-iron, however well made, was not suitable for large guns carrying a heavy charge of powder. Wrought-iron or steel was the proper material for the purpose; and although it might be more expensive in the first instance, yet as it lasted much longer than cast-iron, there was in the end not much difference in respect of cost. Therefore, he did not think we were in so deplorable a condition in regard to the armament of our ships as the hon. Member wished the House to believe. Heavier guns were being made, and he hoped that before long we should have a number of iron-clad ships armed with a gun much superior to the 68-pounder. As to the forts which would be exposed to attack by iron-clad vessels, an armament would be prepared for them before they could possibly be finished. In the course they had pursued, the Government had been carrying out the wishes of the House, and he thought that at so late a date, it would be a pity to stop the works then going on and resort to another mode of defence.

said, he regretted that, in attacking the Government for not paying proper attention to the defences of the country, the hon. Member for Liskeard should have cast reflections on a body of officers who deserved well of their country—the Ordnance Select Committee. [Mr. BERNAL OSBORNE disclaimed any intention of doing so.] The hon. Gentleman had accused the Committee of being prejudiced in favour of one system, which had disappointed everybody. The truth was that since the subject began to attract attention the Committee had been changed three or four times in order to please the hon. Gentleman and others. First of all it was composed of artillery officers, but a complaint was made that it was not purely an artillery question, and that engineering science should be brought to bear on it. Accordingly, engineer officers were put on the Committee; but even that did not satisfy people, and a mixed Committee was formed, comprising officers of artillery, engineers, and civilians, among the number being such men as Professor Wheat-stone and Mr. Gregory. Objections, however, continued to be made, and further changes took place. The Committee now included artillery officers, engineer officers, line officers, and naval officers, Surely, when such a body of men, consisting of the best officers in the service and eminent engineers, concurred in a certain opinion, even the hon. Gentleman might be expected to bow to it. Great improvements had been effected during the last six years. In 1858, when the gallant General the Member for Huntingdon (General Peel) was at the War Office, there was a great cry for a rifled gun, and every effort was made to procure the best. Sir William, then Mr. Armstrong, a man quite unknown at that time, came forward with a plan, and after a long course of experiments he was pronounced to be the victor, and his gun was adopted. Indeed, such was the enthusiasm that the House and the country believed this inventor knew more about rifled guns than anybody else, artillery officers being quite ignorant on the subject; and so he was appointed Director of the Rifled Ordnance Factory.

The House did not make the appointment.

No; but when it was announced in the House that Mr. Armstrong was to be Director and K.C.B., and all the rest of it, the intimation was received with plaudits. Well, Sir William Armstrong having gained a high position, was naturally attacked by a number of men who tried to grapple with him and to take his place. Then came the question of a possible collision with France, and an alarm was raised that we had no naval guns. He recollected the Secretary to the Admiralty refusing to give Returns of naval guns, be cause we had then none at all. Sir William Armstrong succeeded in introducing 40 and 70-pounder guns which could blow any wooden ship out of the water. The French and other Governments finding that such powerful ordnance could be constructed, turned their attention to iron-plated ships; and as they went on from two, four, and six inches of iron, Sir William Armstrong ! kept up to them. We had now a gun which could pierce a ship plated with any thickness of iron that, as far as experiments had gone, could probably be used. It was for the Government to decide how many of these guns should be ordered; but hon. Members should not go on blowing hot and cold as they were doing. At one time they complained that the Government had done nothing, and then that they had done too much. Where should we have been, he would like to know, but for the money which had been spent? If the 100-pounder had been given up, it was because something better had been found. We had proceeded on step by step from one gun I to another. It was only within the last few years that the great manufacturers bad learnt how to make iron-plates at all. He recollected a year or two back when a ½-inch plate was deemed quite a wonder; and it was much to have found out in so short a time how to roll such enormous plates as were now produced. It was not a mere military question, but one which interested every man who worked in iron, whether master or mechanic; and he was not sure that as much credit was not due to the labourers at the furnaces as to any-body else. He trusted that the House would discuss the question without any party feeling, and that when it was found that we had got a good weapon, the Go- vernment would stick to it and carry it out.

said, he had opposed the Bill at every stage, and it was rather singular that the right hon. Gentleman who had charge of the measure was never in his place when the Order was called. He was always out of the House when the discussion commenced. On a former occasion he ventured to say it was irregular that an opposed Bill should be moved by any one except the Minister in charge of it; and he begged leave to ask the opinion of the Speaker on that point.

said, the right hon. Gentlemen on the Treasury Bench were responsible for such Bills.

It is an Order of the House.

said, that petitions had been addressed to the House by medical officers in Her Majesty's Indian service, complaining that the Indian Government were treating them very badly. Only a few days ago a petition was laid on the table from the College of Surgeons, reciting the grievances of these gentlemen, the gist of the statement being that changes had been introduced by the Government to the disadvantage of medical officers belonging, not only to the Indian, but also to the Home service. Under these circumstances the number of candidates for medical appointments had declined in proportion as the Government injured the service. In 1858 an Act was passed providing that all medical appointments in India should be given by open competition. The Secretary of State alleged that open competition had failed, because the number of candidates had fallen off more and more every year; but that result was attributable not to the failure of competition, but to the ill-treatment of the service. The right hon. Gentleman, instead of redressing the grievances of the medical men, proposed to do away with open competition and to appoint an efficient body of medical officers, thus endangering the safety of the Indian army. The Bill had been brought in late in the Session, and hurried through to its last stage without opportunity being given for discussion in anything like a complete House. It proposed, in lieu of the present statutory regulation under which the appointments were made, to place the old and arbitrary power of selection in the hands of the Secretary of State. The right hon. Gentleman said he intended to obtain medical men for India from the Queen's army; but the army of the Queen itself was at that moment inadequately supplied with medical men. The right hon. Gentleman asked them to repeal the only statute which established open competition, and then he said he would avail himself of a warrant by which such competition was established. But that warrant might at any moment be withdrawn, and, moreover, the provisions of the Bill made no mention of it whatever. He begged, therefore, to move that the Speaker leave the Chair, in order that in Committee he might move the insertion of words which might make the Bill a useful measure.

said, he would second the Motion. The Queen's army, from which it was proposed to draw medical men for India, was most insufficiently provided with medical officers. If there was an army in the world which had a right to expect that no expense would be spared in supplying it with a proper medical staff, it was the British army. Some foreign armies might be more exposed to the bullet, but no army was so much exposed to every kind of climate. It seemed to be utterly impossible to make any impression on the Government on that subject. Even the disastrous experience of the Crimean war, in which thousands and thousands of men were sacrificed in consequence of the inadequacy of the medical staff, appeared to have been lost upon the Government. The medical service of the army was composed of a body of gentlemen who had never failed in their duty at home or abroad; but, owing to the treatment these gentlemen received, medical men of good standing could no longer be got to enter the service, and the Government were obliged to resort to the introduction of an inferior class of men. He protested on the part of the army against the manner in which the medical department had been treated, and unless something were done in the interval he would move an address to the Crown on the subject early next Session.

said, he wished to know whether the right hon. Baronet meant to do away with open competition. The refusal to answer that question created suspicion. He had reason to believe that the competitive system had succeeded well, and he made the statement, on the authority of an Indian medical officer. Several petitions, however, had been sent up to him that day for presentation to that House, protesting that the Warrant of 1858 had not been carried out. As things stood young men were deterred from entering the medical service; hut, if an alteration were made, the services of a highly educated body of men would be rendered available and their rights secured, As to drawing assistant-surgeons from the Queen's army, they were told the other night that for the last eighteen months the supply of that body had fallen short by forty men. There must be something radically wrong in the system, cither with reference to the position or the pay of these officers, for if they gave men sufficient encouragement to enter, there would be no difficulty in obtaining a proper supply.

said, that the hon. Member who spoke last had mixed up matters which bore no relation to each other. He had said he had several petitions to present from medical officers in India with reference to the Warrant of 1858, but he had entirely forgotten that there lay on the table the copy of a des-patch sent to India three or four months ago, and remedying the grievances of the existing medical service of India by putting it entirely on the same footing as to pay and allowances as the Queen's army occupied, according to the rank which the officers held. The hon. Member said the object of the Bill was to get rid of the competitive system, and to introduce into the Indian service an inferior class of medical officers. The hon. Gentleman must either not have heard or had forgotten the statements that he (Sir Charles Wood) had made on three or four occasions in that House. The competitive system had not failed in the Queen's army at home, but it had failed in respect to the Indian army. That was, of course, before the improvements had been made in the condition of the medical officers in that country. The object was to get a better description of men for the Indian service. All the assistant-surgeons entered the Queen's army by competition. It was not possible to introduce into the Bill all the regulations that would be necessary to be made, but those regulations would be laid before Parliament. The object of the Bill was to enable the Secretary of State to make certain regulations under which assistant-surgeons of the Indian army might be induced to enter the Indian army, and he believed that the advantages of Indian service were so great that many officers would be induced to avail themselves of the opportunity held out to them. There could be no object in requiring two examinations in such cases. The assistant-surgeon passed a competitive examination upon entering the Queen's army, and it would be useless to call upon him to undergo a second and similar examination upon transferring himself to the Indian service. There were also good medical schools in India from which men might also be drawn. After these explanations, he trusted the House would assent to the third reading of the Bill.

said, that having listened attentively to the speech of the right hon. Gentleman, he still entertained a belief that the object of the Bill was to get rid of a system which had been deliberately adopted by Parliament—the system of competition in the Indian medical service, and to substitute for it the arbitrary will of the Secretary of State. That was not an object which the House should sanction. It was said that there was a difficulty in getting medical officers for the Indian set vice, and the right hon. Gentleman told them that he was not going to get a worse class of officers than we had at present there. If so, there was no reason to depart from the present system. Let the right hon. Gentleman hold out proper temptations, and there would be a hundred candidates for each appointment. Either there was no reason for the Bill or the standard of efficiency was to be lowered. If, as the right hon. Gentleman assured them, he had introduced many important improvements in the condition of the Indian medical service there would be a sufficient number of candidates at, the next competitive examination. It was a mere question of demand and supply. If terms were proposed such as men of education could not accept, the right hon. Gentleman would not get a sufficient number of proper candidates. The right hon. Gentleman said he wanted to get assistant-surgeons from the Queen's army to enter the Indian service; but then they were told by the hon. and gallant Officer opposite that there was a difficulty in obtaining a sufficient number of assistant-surgeons for the Queen's army. The proposition had filled him with alarm, because he knew that there lurked in many departments a dislike to the whole system of competition. He believed that if the Bill were carried, although he was quite sure the right hon. Gentleman would not depart from his promises, yet in the course of a short time the competitive system would be destroyed root and branch. He implored the right hon. Gentleman to withdraw the Bill, and not to endeavour in the last days of the Session, by means of a Government majority, to pass a measure which could not be fairly discussed, and which appeared to be so opposed to a system which had received the sanction of Parliament.

said, he rose to join in the appeal. The provisions of the Bill appeared to him to be clear to substitute a system of patronage for a system of competition. He protested against a Bill which professed upon its face to confer unlimited powers being explained by a promise that those powers should only be exercised within a certain limit. That promise would no doubt be observed by the right hon. Gentleman, but he could not bind his successors If the Bill were passed, he agreed with the right hon. Gentleman (Mr. Monsell) in thinking that it would be fatal to the system of competitive examinations, As to the want of candidates for the Indian service, that was to be traced to the inadequate inducements that were held out, and he thought that nothing would be so unwise as to deal in a niggardly spirit with medical officers in such a climate as that of India. Those arrangements which would procure the most efficient medical officers for our troops in India would, in the end, he by far the cheapest arrangements this country could make.

said, he also would express a hope that the right hon. Baronet would not attempt to force the Bill through during that Session. The House should regard with jealousy any measure which tended in the smallest degree to destroy the competitive examination system.

expressed his entire approval of a local medical staff in India, as preferable to putting so many thousands of recruits into the hands of inexperienced persons. At the same time, he denied that the service proposed by the right bon. Baronet was necessary, seeing that the medical service in India was fast improving. He disapproved altogether of the removal of the existing tests, and would point out that while the right hon. Gentleman proposed to form a staff corps, by drawing from Her Majesty's service, there were at the present moment no less than 200 vacancies in that service.

said, he could not understand, if the object of the right hon. Gentleman was to do so little, why he should have taken power in the Bill to do so much. The fact was the service had been up to a recent time very unpopular, but candidates were increasing, and he hoped that as the improvement went on, if they increased sufficiently, the right hon. Gentleman would in the next Session bring in a Bill to do just what was wanted and no more.

asked, whether the right bon. Gentleman would produce the regulations for the information of the House?

said, that he could not produce the regulations before the Bill was passed, because he had no power to do so.

said, that in rising to move that the House go into Committee on the Bill, he trusted that be might be allowed to make one or two observations, inasmuch as he had been charged, without due foundation, firstly, with not having made a sufficiently full explanation of the objects of the Bill, and, secondly, with having made it at a very late hour. He would appeal to the House not to allow the measure to be lost, inasmuch as it was likely to mitigate the sufferings and miseries of a very unfortunate class of our fellow-beings—perhaps even to save their lives. He understood there were Members who intended to impede the progress of the Bill, chiefly on the ground that it involved a new principle which they thought dangerous, and which, if carried out, would, they said, impose a burden on property from which it had hitherto been comparatively exempt; and they said that with that novelty in the measure it ought not to be passed at so late a period of the Session. He would not deny that if the principle of the Bill were new there would be something in the argument, but there was no novelty in the principle, and the statement was, therefore, unsupported by the fact. It was stated that the measure threw the charge of that class of persons upon the whole property of the metropolis; that that had never been done before; and that such a precedent was extremely dangerous. There was, however, an Act of Parliament which embodied the very same principle for the support and relief of the same class of persons, and it was because there were provisions in that Act which could not be carried out that he brought in a measure to supply its defects. The measure to which he referred was the 7 & 8 Vict., which was brought in in consequence of a general desire in that House to remove what was felt to be a scandal and reproach to the metropolis—namely, that people wandering about without a habitation or settlement suffered the extreme consequences of want, so that everyone was shocked by the scenes that took place. There was a strong feeling that something ought to be done, and a Bill was introduced and passed to carry out the principle that the metropolis ought to bear the burden of the support of these wayfarers. That Bill divided the metropolis into six districts, and applied the principle of the equalization of rates to the relief of that class of the poor. Rich parishes were combined with poor ones, and inquiry was made how the rates thus required could be levied equally. That Act, the 7 & 8 Vict., now existed, and embodied the principle to which the hon. Member for Westminster objected. When an attempt was made to enforce the provisions of that Bill, however, objections were made by the guardians, the overseers, and the ratepayers. They found that the machinery was cumbrous and costly—that the Bill required the creation of six great asylums, which were supplemental workhouses, and hardly adequate for the relief of the class of persons in question. These asylums were a great distance from each other, and from the relieving officers, and it would be necessary to keep up great establishments in them all the year round, while it was only at one period of the year that there was a great demand for admission. The Bill was so distasteful to the public that they refused to apply it. A Committee of that House inquired into the subject, and, by a majority of one, passed a Resolution recommending the Poor Law Board, which had the right of enforcing the Act, not to carry it into effect. Notwithstanding that, the right hon. Gentleman the Member for North Wilts (Mr. S. Estcourt), when he was President of the Poor Law Board, again tried to enforce the Act, but found that it was impossible. The question was brought before the Committee which sat to inquire into the general operation of the Poor Law, and they, after careful and deliberate inquiry, came to the conclusion that the reason why the parishes did not make adequate provision for that class of the poor was the unequal distribution of the charge, and therefore they proposed the remedy which was embodied in the Bill before the House—namely, that the charge-should be made equal, that a common fund should be created from which these per sons should be relieved, and that thus no parish should have an inducement to refuse to relieve them. That was important when they considered the nature of the opposition which was about to be offered. If the measure had originated with him as a private individual, or, indeed, as President of the Poor Law Board, there might have been some force in the objections which were about to be raised; but he did not think that the authority of those who were about to raise those objections would outweigh that of a Committee of which such sound Conservative authorities were members as the right hon. Gentleman the Member for the University of Cambridge, the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Wilts, the hon. Members for Devonshire and Cheshire, he believed the noble Lord the Member for Stamford, the hon. Member for Petersfield, and the hon. Member for Whitehaven, all of whom had voted for the proposition which was embodied in the Bill. The whole opposition to the Bill arose from a fear that it might be a step towards the equalization of the rates throughout the metropolis. One objection would be that it contained no clause, such as was recommended by the Committee, giving to the Poor Law Board power to enforce upon parishes an effective provision by means of wards and buildings for the lodging of the poor. Such a power was already contained in the 4 & 5 Will. IV, but it was limited by a proviso which had reference to the expense, so that beyond a certain amount it was impossible to exert that authority. Under the Bill before them there need be no apprehension as to the expense, because the fourth clause cast the expense of providing wards or buildings, as well as that of maintenance, upon the new common fund. He did not believe that that was an honest objection, because it was impossible to tell exactly where the wards would be wanted, or what number might be required in any one parish. Indeed, some of the parishes which discharged their duty most efficiently had no wards. There was a variety of ways in which these people might be provided for; and if the liability to relieve them was fixed upon the parishes they would soon find some means of doing it, so that we should not be shocked by hearing of people starving: in the street. If, however, the objection was persevered in, it might be met by au Amendment of a single line which he had ready, providing that no union or parish should have the benefit of the Act which did not comply with the requirements of the Poor Law Board. Another objection which might be urged against the Bill which proposed that the Metropolitan Board of Works should collect the rates by which the fund was to be raised, was that that Board had by a small majority expressed their wish to have nothing to do with the matter. He never supposed that they would desire to have anything to do with it. He did not believe a word of what the hon. Member for Westminster said about their being an ambitious body who were anxious to extend their jurisdiction, and whom it was necessary to watch. The casting upon a machinery or a public body the duty of collecting a rate which was not strictly applicable to the purposes for which they were originally created was not new: in principle. The overseers and guardians at present collected, under the title of poor rate, a great deal of money which was not expended upon the relief of the poor. He had not consulted the Metropolitan Board upon the subject, but as a matter of courtesy he informed them of what he was about to propose, and said that he hoped they would not object to perform the merely ministerial act of collecting the sum of £5,000; and he believed that they were men of so much patriotism and good feeling, that if this duty were cast upon them they would not shrink from its discharge. It could give them no trouble, and they might be performing a great act of humanity by lending themselves to that purpose. To the objection that it was late in the Session, he replied that the Bill was a very short Bill, and that unless a factious opposition was raised to it there was plenty of time to pass it. Last year the Session was, he believed, slightly prolonged in order that a measure for the better protection of game might be passed, and he saw no reason why, if necessary, a similar prolongation might not be submitted to in order to enable the Bill before them to receive the sanction of Parliament. As to the incidence of the rate, in nine cases out of ten there existed arrangements between landlords and tenants by which the latter paid the sewer rate. It did not matter who paid the rate; it must come out of the rent. It was not, however, correct to say, that at present the cost of the relief of the poor was entirely defrayed out of sums raised by rates paid by the tenant. The State contributed to the payment of masters of workhouses and schools, of doctors and auditors, and when paupers were sent into the lunatic asylum or as vagrants to prison they were supported out of the county rate. He could not help thinking, under those circumstances, that it was extremely desirable that the facilities proposed by the Bill should be conferred, and he trusted that goodwill would be brought to bear upon the discussion, and that a great scandal would not be allowed to continue.

said, he was sorry he could not agree with his right boil. Friend in thinking that the mode in which the Bill was introduced or the time at which it was brought forward were not open to objection. He was ready to admit that the existing state of things required that some remedy should be provided, but his right hon. Friend did not appear to him to have a full appreciation of the great difficulties with which the Question was beset. He wished briefly to remind the House of the circumstances under which the present proposition was made. It professed to be founded on the recommendation of a Committee which sat three years on the Poor Law administration of this country, but he would endeavour to show that it did not precisely conform to those recommendations, The Committee reported on the 31st of May, and their Report was ordered to be printed on that day; but from that time until about a week ago the House had received no intimation that it was the intention of the Government to legislate on the subject. It was not, indeed, until his hon. Friend the Member for Whitehaven (Mr. Lyall) had asked a question with regard to it, that the right hon. Gentleman had announced that he had a Bill already prepared. In accordance with that announcement the Bill was introduced on the 19th of July, at a late period of the evening, as he was informed, for he did not happen to be present on the occasion. And what, he would ask, followed? Instead of affording a little time to those interested in the question to consider the measure, the second reading was moved on the following day, at an advanced hour of the day, There was some reason for complaining, therefore, that his right hon. Friend had rather stolen a march on the House in introducing a Bill of such importance at the end of the Session, and pressing it on for discussion in the very week when it was understood the sitting of Parliament was about to terminate. The Bill was, he maintained, one of the most important in its principle and operation which had in the present Session been submitted to the notice of the House. It involved a problem which was, perhaps, about the most difficult of solution of any connected with that difficult branch of administration with which his right hon. Friend had to deal. The evil against which it was directed no doubt existed in the great city, or rather, he might say, the immense mass of cities to which it applied. There was, it must be admitted, in the metropolis a wandering, houseless, destitute population, for which there was no adequate provision. About twenty years ago an attempt was made to deal with the very same question. Sir James Graham introduced and carried a Bill which had the same object as that before the House, but which was of a character far more judicious and better prepared. His right hon. Friend had quoted that as a precedent for the measure which he proposed, but there was a very broad distinction between the two proposals. The Bill of Sir James Graham established districts for the relief of the poor, and the relief was to be dispensed by those who collected the rates out of which it was to be administered. There was to be a Board in each of those districts, selected from the Board of Guardians, which was to be intrusted with the management of the asylums constituted under the Act. Those who were taxed were those who had the administration of; the relief; but his objection to the me a-sure before them was, that it proposed to intrust the numerous bodies throughout the metropolis connected with the relief of the poor with the administration of funds collected from the whole of the metropolis. There were thirty-eight of those bodies, and the rental of the area which would come under the operation of the Bill was between £12,000,000 and £13,000,000, or not far short of the rental of the whole of Ireland, and every one of the bodies ill question would have the power to give relief without stint to the casual poor. [Mr. C. P. VILLIERS: No, no!] He certainly read the Bill in that way, and the auditor would have no check on the administration of relief or the discretion of the guardians in granting it. It should under those circumstances be borne in mind that those for whom provision was sought to be made was not a limited class which could be dealt with as a constant body. Indeed, the great difficulty in the matter was that indiscriminate relief had a tendency to increase the numbers of the vagrant class, and thus to throw an additional burden upon the country. Mr. Buller in 1848 published a minute on the subject of vagrancy, which was well worthy of the consideration of the House, and in which, he stated that it had a tendency, as it were, to spring from the ground under the operation of a system if indiscriminate relief, until at last it became overwhelming in its extent beyond all contemplation. There was, he might add, a curious instance given in one of the early reports emanating from Mr. Commissioner Hall, in which a case of great alleged hardship on the refusal of relief to a pauper boy was brought before the magistrates, who indulged in sonic severe remarks on the conduct of the officials by whom the relief was refused; the consequence being that the provisions on the subject were relaxed; and as a result, as Mr. Hall stated, 15,000 persons applied for relief in eight weeks, and the evil at last became intolerable. The truth was the House, in dealing with the subject, were like the knights fighting about the two sides of the shield. There were two distinct classes by whom relief was sought. Everybody was disposed to look with sympathy on the case of the honest mechanic out of work, or that of the widow and of the orphan children who had nobody to succour them. But there was a very different class—a squalid lazzaroni class—who were always ready to live on charity; and in the minute of Mr. Buller, to which he bad already referred, he found the rapid increase of vagrancy in England and Wales reported at the time to exist—attributed principally to the system which had been adopted for the relief of the casual poor. There might, no doubt, be an attempt made to grapple with what was unquestionably a great evil, lint then the subject was surrounded by immense difficulties which gentlemen coming from all parts of he country had a right to expect sufficient time would be allowed as far as possible to solve, and which should not be sought lo be disposed of in the last week of the Session by means of a measure which was to be shoved through Parliament without discussion, while those who objected to that course being taken were charged with factious opposition. His right hon. Friend said the Bill was founded on the Report of the Committee which he had mentioned, but the fact was that that Committee recommended a good deal more than he proposed. They passed the following Resolutions:—

"In order to secure sufficient and convenient moans for the relief of the casual and houseless poor within the metropolis, as defined by the Metropolitan Local Management Act, it is expedient that the charges incurred for the support of such poor should be paid out of a rate assessed on the annual rateable value of the whole of the said metropolis. That, in the opinion of this Committee, the machinery adopted under the Metropolitan Local Management Act might be made available for raising the amount of such charge, and your Committee recommend that authority be given to the Metropolitan Board of Works for such purpose."

Then they go on to say—

"That the Poor Law Board be empowered to prescribe and enforce all necessary arrangements for providing the requisite accommodation in the several unions and parishes, and otherwise carrying the foregoing Resolutions into effect. That, with the view of suppressing vagrancy as far as practicable, the Committee are of opinion that the central authority, when invested with ade- quate power for that purpose, should direct Boards of Guardians to provide suitable and sufficient wards for the reception of the wayfaring and wandering poor, and that the regulations for their management and relief should be on a uniform system throughout the country."

[Mr. C. P. VILLIERS: This is a recommendation only for the metropolis.] Just so, but it was a matter which affected not merely the metropolis, but all the districts of the country, and what he dreaded was, that by removing from the local Boards all motive for strict—nay, he would even say scurvy and stingy administration of relief—there would be an indiscriminate and lavish distribution which, instead of a godsend, would be a curse to the poor themselves. He hoped his right hon. Friend would not reek on him among those who he seemed to think were ready to give a factious opposition to the Bill; on the contrary, he should be willing to lend him all the assistance in his power to pass a satisfactory measure. It was only because he believed it to be impossible to pass a satisfactory measure at that period of the Session, and because he believed his right hon. Friend, by passing a Bill in a hurried way, was incurring a great risk, in which he should not be willing to share, that he begged to move that the House go into Committee on the Bill that day month.

said, that although he concurred in many of the arguments of the right hon. Gentleman who had just sat down, he did not agree with his observation that there was no urgency in the case. On the contrary, the Committee of which he had been a Member thought it a subject which deserved the early consideration of Parliament. Some time back the right hon. Gentleman, in reply to the hon. Member for Norfolk, stated that the subject would require several Bills, and that no general Bill would be introduced by the Government during the year. After the harrowing cases of distress amongst the poor of London during severe winter weather, of which they all had read in the newspapers, it would not be a comforting reflec- tion at Christmas that a Bill providing relief had been opposed and thrown out. The Bill did not involve the principle of an extension of the area of rating generally, nor of an extension of the area of rating in the metropolis. Twenty years ago the Act of the 7 & 8 Vict, recognized the principle of general rating in each of the six districts of the metropolis on the rateable value, on the ground that the relief of casual poor was on a different footing from the relief of the resident poor. The 7 & 8 Vict, could not have been a very good measure, as it had proved unworkable and had been a dead letter. He thought the time had arrived when Parliament ought to pass a workable measure for the relief of the casual poor, and he would suggest that the Bill should be restricted in its operation to one year. Perhaps, however, that might not be necessary, inasmuch as the whole system of the Poor Laws must come before Parliament next Session, as the Poor Law Commission would expire in 1865, unless renewed by Parliament.

said, he felt great apprehension lest the Bill, instead of alleviating the misery of the vagrant population, would be the means of increasing it. The cases of starvation reported by the press had not been among the casual and the vagrant, but among the resident poor, who were unwilling to enter a workhouse, and would have been saved by a modicum of out-relief. The Bill would increase the number of vagrants. The proposal to put the relief of vagrant and casual poor in the metropolis on the general fund would be an invitation for all the beggars in the country to flock to the metropolis. He remembered asking a party of beggars, having the appearance of bricklayers and bricklayers' labourers, where they came from. They replied, "Windsor." "But," said he, "why come to London?" "Oh," was the reply, "we can get at any workhouse a night's lodging and some food, and then we chance it for the day." This the Bill would increase. Besides, it would have the effect of superseding all voluntary charity. Therefore, he should support the Amendment; and he hoped that the President of the Poor Law Board would consent to postpone the Bill for the future consideration of the House when it again opened.

said, he wished to say a word, as he believed he was the only Conservative Member present who was on the Committee, and who was in favour of the principle of the Bill. As such he felt he had a right to complain of the course taken by the right hon. Gentleman, for he had placed him and those who were in the same situation in a painful dilemma. Had the Bill been introduced at a period of the Session when it was possible to consider it properly, he would have given it his heartiest support. There was an enormous evil to be remedied. Every winter most frightful cases of death from destitution were recorded in the newspapers, causing the deepest dissatisfaction with the working of the Poor Law, and numbers succumbed to disease brought on by want, whose deaths never got into the papers at all. If they did not give some power to the guardians to relieve this distress next winter, a fresh contingent would be added to the tale of persons whose fate was already laid to the charge of Parliament, who had suffered them to perish in spite of the professedly humane principles of the English law. That was a terrible responsibility to impose upon them. It was an awful alternative to have to choose between disregarding the ordinary form and rules of the House, and passing a Bill on a novel principle, which might produce evils they could not foresee, as they had not time to consider it adequately, or encountering the responsibility of having contributed to the starvation of their fellow creatures. The right hon. Gentleman had no right to place that terrible alternative before them. Under these circumstances, knowing as he did how great the evil was, he hesitated to vole against the Bill. No other compromise appeared to be open to them, under the difficulties of the case, than to ask the right hon. Gentleman to allow the Bill to terminate in February or March next, 30 that it might be in force during the winter. He hoped they would not be held to pledge themselves to any principle in agreeing to that temporary remedy for the evil which pressed upon them so. Next year they could discuss the questions and settle the basis on which it should rest, and he hoped the right hon. Gentleman would assent to the proposal.

said, he quite concurred in the noble Lord's suggestion, though he could not concur with the Mover of the Amendment as to the difficulties which might result from the passing of the measure. The right hon. Gentleman (Mr. Bouveric) had stated that there would be no check upon the expenditure, but if he had looked into the Bill he would have seen provision was made by the first clause that on the part of the Poor Law Board the same checks that were now applied to the relief of the poor should continue, and thus that one uniform system must be adopted throughout the metropolis. He believed that the whole amount that would have to be raised by the Metropolitan Board of Works under this Bill would be about £6,000 a year, and when they considered the large area over which the authority of the Board extended, a rate of a farthing in the pound would answer all purposes. Were they, then, to talk of the lavish expenditure of money that might take place, and the number of vagrants that might come into the town? The argument of the hon. Member for West Surrey, when he observed that the measure would do away with private charity, applied to any poor law; but his belief was, that however the public arrangements for the relief of the poor might be enlarged, there would always be ample room for the exercise of private charity. When he first had a seat in that House the Member for Kilmarnock was President of the Poor Law Board, and looking at the right hon. Gentleman's career while he held that office, be could not discover that he ever did anything to ameliorate the condition of the poor, but, on the contrary, every proposition with that object had always been received by him with steady opposition. If on the present occasion the right hon. Gentleman, instead of opposing the Bill upon its principle, had brought his experience to bear to remedy its defects when they got into Committee, he would have taken a more worthy course. The Bill would do something to remedy those terrible stories which always appeared in the winter season, and if it was defective its faults might be remedied next year.

said, the Question was, the right hon. Member for Kilmarnock's Amendment, and not his past career at the. Poor Law Board. The Bill involved two important principles— the extension of uniform rating, and the transfer of the Poor Law affairs to the Metropolitan Board of Works. [Mr. C. P. VILLIERS: No!] He could not but regard these principles with apprehension and doubt. His noble Friend the Member for Stamford had described in touching terms the great evil which required to be remedied; but the greater the evil the more inexcusable was it in the right hon. Gentleman not to have brought forward the Bill at an earlier period. The Bill involved principles for the discussion of which the House had a right to expect time and opportunity, and it was neither decorous nor courteous to submit such a Bill in the very last week of the Session, when it might have been introduced at any time during the last three months. It was a dangerous precedent, which they ought to discourage. He felt the difficulty pointed out by his noble Friend, but he thought they had a right to look to the President of the Poor Law Board to prevent the recurrence of the evils in question during the winter, and to introduce the Bill at a proper time next Session.

said, he had no wish to raise a factious opposition to the Bill; but he thought the House had a right to find fault with the President of the Poor Law Board for not having allowed more time for the consideration of the Bill, seeing that the Committee had reported so far back as May. He agreed with the noble Lord the Member for Stamford (Lord R. Cecil) as to the awkward position in which the House was placed. It was easy to say that those who objected to the Bill were wanting in proper feeling towards the casual poor, but there was no ground whatever for that assertion. The right hon. Gentleman urged that there was nothing for it but to bring in a Bill of that kind, the District Asylum Act having failed; but the reason why that Act failed was because it was permissive merely, and the right hon. Gentleman should have introduced a Bill to make it compulsory. That Act, as he believed, worked very well, till one Metropolitan Union made an objection, and directions were thereupon given that no further steps should be taken in the matter. He could not help suspecting that the Bill before the House was an attempt to get in the thin edge of the wedge, and that sooner or later it would be sought to have a district rating for the whole of the metropolis. One great objection which he had to the measure was that under it the money would not be expended by those who paid and who had an incentive to check its improper application, Moreover, the Bill went in direct opposition to the 90th clause of the Metropolis Local Management Act, which expressly provided that the Metropolitan Board of Works should have nothing whatever to do with the funds raised for the relief of the poor; and he was glad that that Board had upon consideration decided, by however small a majority, against its being mixed up with this matter. It would be much better for the Poor Law Board, if it had the power, to compel Boards of Guardians to do their duty. Without denying the claims of the casual poor upon their commiseration, it should not be forgotten that there was one class of vagrants in all parts of the country, and especially in the metropolis, between whom and the really deserving it was necessary to discriminate. He alluded to the class of sturdy beggars, who had a strong repugnance to work for their living; and it would, he thought, be dangerous to teach such persons that they had only to come up to London to get food and lodging for nothing. Indeed, he did not see why if that Bill was really good for the metropolis it should not be good for Liverpool, Birmingham, and other large towns. In conclusion, he firmly believed, after the discussion which had taken place in that House, that no Board of Guardians would dare to neglect its duty in this matter.

said, that feeling strongly that in a rich and prosperous community no person should run the risk of starvation, he regretted that the Bill had not been introduced at an earlier period of the Session. The Bill was founded upon a wrong principle, and was opposed to the whole of their legislation for relief of the poor. He denied, therefore, that those who opposed the measure were fairly open to the charge of factiousness or hard-heartedness. Nothing could be more objectionable to the ratepayers of the metropolis than the proposal to give such powers to the Metropolitan Board of Works as were contained in the Bill. It was wrong to impose on that Board duties inconsistent with those which they were elected to perform. Their hands were already full and they had solemnly expressed their aversion to have these foreign duties imposed upon them, which they could not perform with satisfaction to themselves or to their constituents. Not only did the Bill do so, but it sought to apply funds raised for one purpose—the sewage of the metropolis—to another, the relief of the poor; and it involved the proposal of shifting the burden of supporting the poor from the occupiers to the owners of property. Marylebone parish contained one-twelfth of the valuation of the metropolis; and if the entire relief for houseless poor was to amount to £6,000, that parish must pay fur its quota, £500, though it might not be called upon to relieve houseless poor to the extent of £100 a year. Thus that parish would suffer by the change to the extent of £400 a year. But the metropolis ought not to be singled out for the application of a measure of this kind. If it were a good one it ought to be applied to the entire country, and ought not to be brought in at a time when Members were out of town. The noble Lord the Member for Stamford (Lord Robert Cecil), who was a Member of the Committee on the subject, suggested that the measure was only to continue in operation until March next, when the severity of winter should be over, and he (Mr. Harvey Lewis) objected to a measure of this kind being made permanent.

said, that the objection to the measure seemed to be directed more to the manner in which it was proposed to be administered than to the raising of the funds from the entire metropolis. It was an objection, however, based rather on sentiment than on principle, and was worthy rather of the vestry room than the House of Commons. It was said that if relief were expanded the number of destitute poor would increase. But would it be for a moment contended that the present state of things should be allowed longer to exist over another winter. The floating poor were of necessity driven eastwards — the residents of the West End were relieved of their presence—they said they were willing to contribute to their support, and if they were sincere in their profession they ought not to object to the Bill. The houseless poor did not belong to east or west, but were the common charge of the entire metropolis, and any measure which made the metropolis support them was a proper one, and did not at all interfere with the principle that every district should provide for its own poor.

said, he should support the Bill. It was to be regretted that more time had not been allotted for consideration, but he hoped that another winter would not be allowed to pass without some-measure to afford relief to the destitute classes in whose behalf the Bill was introduced being adopted. He had communicated with the various Boards of Guardians in the eastern districts of the metropolis, and they were in favour of the Bill, and were anxious that it should become law.

said, that whether the proposed legislation was good or bad it was at all events hasty, and hasty legislation was always open to objection. He agreed in the principle of the measure so far as it declared that provision ought to be made for the homeless poor. But was there no alternative to passing the Bill? He maintained there was. The central authority had power enough by the present law to compel recusant Boards of Guardians to provide refuge wards for the homeless poor. His constituents had done this, and public opinion in the metropolis was in favour of that course. Let the right hon. Gentleman try the power he had, and he would find it unnecessary to pass such a Bill as that before the House for one winter. The right hon. Gentleman seemed to think that every Member of the Committee was bound by its recommendations. Now, he must say, while he felt bound by the Report as a whole, he objected to piecemeal legislation. The Committee had certainly agreed to the principle of the Bill; but they did not stop there. They proposed, by the power of the central body, to compel all Boards of Guardians throughout the country to deal liberally with the casual poor; but the right hon. Gentleman brought in a Bill to deal with the metropolis, and ignored the whole country. Was that fair to the metropolis? The result of not providing for the casual poor elsewhere would be to send them in greater numbers to the metropolis. The right hon. Gentleman ought to have dealt with the whole country in a comprehensive way, instead of which he had brought in a limited and one-sided measure, which he felt perfectly free to vote against. He advised the right hon. Gentleman to withdraw the present Bill, and let the country consider the whole subject in the recess; and when a general measure was introduced next Session it would probably pass without much altercation.

said, he wished to know whether the right hon. Gentleman had consulted any of the parishes in the metropolis with respect to the Bill, and what answers he had received. On the general question it was impossible for any one who lived in the metropolis, or read what appeared in the newspapers, not to feel that something should be done to relieve the casual poor. It was no party question. It was one of simple humanity. Still the principle of the measure was so important, and the opportunity for considering it so brief, that he hoped the Bill would be limited to the mouth of March next.

said, he would answer the Question put to him by the hon. Baronet, Whether he had taken any steps to ascertain the feeling of the metropolitan districts with respect to this Bill? Distinctly he had done so; and with respect to the lateness of the period when the Bill was introduced he might say, the Report of the Committee was made on the 31st of May; it was printed and delivered on the 18th of June. He did then take the course which the hon. Baronet seemed to think he ought to have done—to ascertain what the opinion of the metropolis affected by the Bill was, and as soon as he had ascertained that he gave notice of the Bill; at least he announced his intention in reply to a question put by the hon. Member for Whitehaven. He took steps to legislate on that portion of the Report which he thought most urgent. He had not during the course of the discussion been able to collect any real objections to the Bill. The existence of the evil which the Bill was proposed to remedy had not been denied, nor had it been urged that the Bill was not likely to meet those evils. He had not heard a single Member say that the Bill did not fairly represent the Report and the recommendation of the Committee, or that it would not have the effect of preventing those shocking occurrences which they all regretted so much. All that they had heard was that it had been introduced at a wrong time, and there never was a measure against which its opponents upon other grounds failed to urge the same objection. One objection to the Bill was an apprehension as to what might follow. [Sir MINTO FARQUHAR: What were the replies of the parishes?] He believed that only one out of the whole of the metropolitan parishes was unfavourable to the measure. The hon. Member for Marylebone (Mr. H. Lewis) appeared to object to the Bill on account of an apprehension as to the increase of cost, but he might mention that a portion of the hon. Gentleman's constituency, the in-habitants of St. Pancras, an important district of the borough, had, as far as he could gather from their communications, highly approved the Bill. They had passed a resolution and appeared to be unanimously in its favour, but thought that the district was hardly large enough, and that it ought to be a police district. The noble Lord the Member for Marylebone (Lord Fermoy) had given notice of his intention of moving an Amendment with that object. It had been urged against the Bill that it would afford increased temptations to vagrancy, but he could not perceive anything in the mode of relief which could possibly lead to that result. The hon. Member for Westminster (Sir John Shelley) objected to the Bill because he believed it would attract vagrants from the country from the circumstance that no one would be turned away. He did not, however, regard that as a result which was likely to follow. He had believed it to be better to bring in the Bill late in the Session rather than not at all, and, as he was confident in the success of the experiment, he was willing to agree to the proposal which had been made to limit the operations of the Act to the first of April next. That limit would cover the period within which the shocking cases which had been referred to would be likely to occur.

said, that he would withdraw his Amendment upon that understanding, but he must insist upon satisfactory evidence being adduced to show that the Boards of Guardians possessed proper places for the reception of the casual poor previous to the reimbursement of their expenses by the Metropolitan Board of Works.

said, he rose to move that the House resolve itself into a Committee upon the Bill on that day month. The measure had arisen from a convention signed in London, March 5, 1864. He held that it was not respectful or decorous to the House that such a Bill should be delayed to so late a period of the Session. The Under Secretary for Foreign Affairs had just informed him that this measure had passed the House of Lords. That might be a strong recommendation to the hon. Gentleman, but with all respect to the House of Lords, it was not the slightest recommendation to him (Mr. White). The Prussian Government would have the power, under the Bill, to follow an unfortunate exile into this country, and, upon suspicion that he had attempted to commit murder, to have him captured, and sent back to Prussia. After the atrocious conduct of Prussia in Posen — he would say nothing of later transactions— he thought there were very strong reasons to hesitate before they entered into an extradition treaty of this kind with that country. If any Prussian subject were supposed to have sympathy with the Poles across tie frontier, and had entered the British territory, the Bill would give the Prussian Government power to persecute that individual by trumping up a charge of attempting to murder against him, and demand that he should be given up to them. The Bill also gave the Prussian Government power to demand the extradition of a subject who had fled to this country, who was supposed to be guilty of robbery with violence. There was something ludicrous in the idea of Prussia coming to ask for justice against persons who had been guilty of robbery with violence. The murderer of Mr. Briggs was believed to be a German; but with regard to such a man there was no difficulty, as our laws were sufficient to meet a case of that kind. Now that we had a well-grounded belief in an association or a Holy Alliance of the great Northern Powers it seemed to him (Mr. White) somewhat suspicious that M. Bismark should want a Bill of this character. If the measure were passed, the time would come when Austria would apply to us for a similar measure; and Russia afterwards. He believed that the Bill was not intended for its ostensible purpose. He looked upon the measure as one aimed against political exiles and that it was intended to prevent us affording an asylum to patriots who fled here for refuge from the persecutions inflicted upon them in their own country. If there were any-real value in the Bill it should not have been delayed until the end of the Session, when it was almost impossible to discuss its merits. The conduct of Prussia was not of a nature calculated to secure the good opinion of England. At all events, the Bill was not of such pressing importance that it ought not to be postponed until the next Session. Under these circumstances he should move that the House should resolve itself into a Committee upon it that day month.

seconded the Amendment.

said, that the object was merely to confirm a simple extradition treaty such as we had with Italy, France, and other Powers. Although the convention bore date the 5th of March the ratifications had not been exchanged till the 8th of April. The Bill had no political tendency. We had similar conventions with other European nations for mutual convenience; and his hon. Friend (Mr. White) must remember that the provisions of the convention could not be put in force without a legal process. The convention applied to persons accused or convicted of murder; comprehending the crimes of assassination, parricide, infanticide, and poisoning, attempt to commit murder, forgery, fraudulent bankruptcy, burglary, robbery with violence to the person robbed, larceny, or embezzlement by clerks and servants. It would be a great convenience to us to have the convention, and he could assure the House that there was nothing in it which ought to alarm even a Gentleman of the advanced political opinions of his hon. Friend, for there was no desire on the part of the Government to put an end to the patriotic feeling of Prussian patriots.

said, he could not agree that the question was quite so simple a matter as the Under Secretary for Foreign Affairs would have them believe, neither did he feel satisfied that the political element was excluded from the treaty. The great difficulty they had to look at was the law of conscription, and what he feared was that under the Bill they would be called upon to apprehend deserters for a despotic Power. Now, a case in point had just happened? Certain Poles escaped from the Russian army and fled to America, and they were demanded by Russia from America under a similar extradition treaty. Conscription was often used as a mere engine of oppression, and deserter was very often used as only another name for political exile, and what he wanted to show was that something of the same kind might be included in the Bill. Burglary by the law of Germany meant a nocturnal breaking or forcing into any dwelling-house or any building thereunto belonging with the intention of committing a crime. It did not mean an English crime but a Prussian crime, and that might mean desertion. So that a soldier who escaped from his barracks and broke through an outside building for the purpose of desertion would come within the clause in the Bill, He thought it would have been much better if the Bill had stated distinctly the exact nature of the crime, and not have given two lines of German to explain an English word. [Mr. LAYARD: That is childish.] He would thank the hon. Gentleman to refute his argument. What he objected to was that the Bill took cognizance of a Prussian crime and not an English crime, without any attempt to define it. The same kind of objection applied to the crime of embezzlement. We might call it embezzlement, but by the German it was breach of duty; and what he feared was, that by the terms of the treaty we should be delivering over those who came to our shores to an extent we little thought of. He did not say that all the things at which he had glanced would happen, but they might happen. The Bill was not drawn with that caution and circumspection that was necessary, considering the particular country with which we were dealing and the spirit of our own laws. He thought the Bill should be delayed and further time given for its consideration.

said, he thought his noble Friend had not rightly apprehended either the provisions of the Bill or the general principles which pervaded all measures of the same nature. If his noble Friend would consider the matter be would see that in conformity with the treaty itself the Bill provided expressly that no one should be delivered up except such evidence was produced as according to the English law would justify a magistrate in committing him for the offence in this country. That principle was perfectly well settled. The matter was fully considered in the case of the slave Anderson, who was demanded for extradition from Canada on the ground of his having committed what by the law of the United States was considered murder—namely, killing the person who sought to apprehend him and deliver him back to slavery. But it was held by the highest authorities in this country that he could not be delivered up, for this reason—that a man who killed another while defending his own liberty could not be guilty of murder according to the laws of this country. And in the cases instanced by the noble Lord the crimes should, according to the laws of the United Kingdom, have amounted to burglary or embezzlement, and that was the language not only of the statute but of the treaty also. In truth, the words to which the noble Lord had referred were used only for the purpose of making clear to the German mind what the English words burglary and embezzlement meant. English words must be interpreted by English magistrates in an English sense—the German terms were merely equivalents. No one could doubt that according to the Bill and the treaty an English magistrate must be satisfied that the accused person had been guilty of what would be the offence of burglary or larceny according to the English laws.

said, he would remind the House that the Question had really arisen, not as between England and Prussia, but as between Russia and Prussia. He found that one of the crimes included in the schedule was robbery with violence. Now what had happened? A certain number of Polish refugees were apprehended in Prussia, under a similar treaty between Russia and Prussia, and when England and France remonstrated, the answer was that they had been apprehended on a charge of robbery with alleged violence, they having stolen some forage, or something of that sort. The consequence was that the political refugees had been given up to Russia. Now it was remarkable that it was the first time not only that the Prussian word for burglary would come into an Act of Parliament, but also the words "robbery with violence." That was the definition of burglary which it was sought to introduce into an English Act of Parliament. He had no confidence in the Bill after what our Government had done with our own police. The right hon. Gentleman the Home Secretary, unfortunately for his own reputation and also that of the Government and the country, sent two English detectives, at a critical time, to Russia. He (Mr. Hennessy) stated at the time that the two detectives received £1,000 each from the Russian Government, and he would now inform the House why it was they were paid that money. Before the Polish insurrection broke out the Grand Duke Constantine applied to this country for two detectives to be sent to Warsaw, and by the Home Secretary's permission they went there, at a time when the severity of the Prussian rule was so great that almost every country in Europe had remonstrated. A Polish exile, who had been many years in this country, went to Warsaw with a British passport in the name of Brett. He (Mr. Hennessy) hoard when at Cracow, that Walker, one of these detectives, saw Brett in the streets of Warsaw, recognized him, and he was arrested. That was before the insurrection. Brett was cast into prison, and three months after the insurrection broke out Brett was taken out and hanged in the Streets of Warsaw. That man travelled under a British passport in an assumed name, He was a refugee, but he never fought against Russia. However, the unfortunate man was hanged, and the two English bullies received £1,000 each. It was notorious that the Duke Constantine was assisted by the English and French police in detecting the Polish refugees from Paris and London, some of whom it was desirous to place in the list of proscriptions, and others in the list of conscription. They had seen enough of these proceedings to be cautious how they allowed a Bill of this kind to pass. The Prussian Government strained laws such as that before them against political offenders, and he hoped the House would reject the Bill.

said, the hon. Gentleman had recurred to a subject with regard to which the fullest information had been afforded last year. Every paper connected with the matter had been laid upon the table; the hon. Gentleman did not last year make the charge which he had just now made, and he (Sir George Grey) utterly disbelieved that there was any foundation whatever for it. The House was perfectly satisfied, when the subject was last year before it, with the explanation that had been given. The hon. Gentleman had said that Prussia had delivered up the Polish refugees under a treaty similar to that before the House. But had the hon. Gentleman compared both treaties? If he had he would admit the force of his argument; if not, he could not admit that it was good for anything.

said, that no answer had been given to the Question asked by his hon. Friend (Mr. White)—namely, whether a person was to be given up charged with murder or attempt to murder without any qualification. It was said he was not to be given up unless he was guilty of an of- fence the commission of which would make him liable to be convicted of murder in England. If a man engaged in an insurrection in England he might be liable to be tried for murder, because any act contrary to law that ended in death was murder in England. Therefore, under the Bill, all political refugees might be given up if engaged in acts which in England would be illegal if carried on against the Government. If so, he did not see what was to prevent the Poles who took refuge in England after an insurrection being charged with simple murder—that is to say, killing or attempting to kill any of the subjects of the Czar. They would all be liable to be claimed and given up under this Bill.

said, that the explanation of the hon. and learned Attorney General appeared to be satisfactory as respected persons accused; but the convention also contained a provision that fugitives convicted of crime should be given up on a copy of the conviction being produced. Some further safeguards were necessary.

said, he thought there was great force in what had fallen from the hon. Gentleman (Sir Francis Goldsmid). In foreign countries a man might be convicted of crime in his absence par contumace. A man who was a political refugee might be convicted of any crime in his absence. There ought to be something to guard against a conviction such as that. If he understood the Attorney General, the learned Gentleman stated that a man could not be given up unless a magistrate here was satisfied that the circumstances were such that the man would be convicted of the crime if the circumstances occurred in this country. But take the case of burglary. That was a technical crime, and must be committed in certain hours between night and morning. Was it meant that the same circumstances which constituted the crime of burglary in this country must be proved in every case under the treaty?

said, he had no hesitation in saying that the circumstances required in this country must be proved in order to justify extradition.

said, he wished to know if there was any difference between the treaty and other extradition treaties which we had concluded with foreign countries. The other treaties had worked well, and inasmuch as we had not been called upon to give up under them political offenders or persons who had been engaged in insurrection, he did not see that there was any objection to that before the House, if it was similar to the rest. An answer to that question would, he thought, prevent the discussion being protracted.

I think the explanation given by my hon. and learned Friend the Attorney General ought to be sufficient. It is not true, as has been supposed, that a Foreign Government would send here and claim a man, requiring that a statement of his guilt should be taken without any further inquiry, and that its own explanation of its own law is td be the rule according to which a man should be given up. The treaty requires that proof shall be given to satisfy a magistrate that if the offence charged had been committed in this country, it would, according to our law, justify the committal of the man. Therefore, that clearly excludes any foreign interpretation of any crime under which a man can be claimed under the treaty in question. This treaty is exactly the same with what has been concluded with Denmark. I may state from my own knowledge, that in regard to the treaty with France difficulties have arisen, and complaints have been made by the French Government in consequence of the conditions attached to the delivery of the man. We have required that witnesses should come over, and that oral testimony should be given to prove that the man has committed in France a crime which in England would justify his committal. The French Government required that written documents should be sufficient. But this we have not admitted, and that has sometimes prevented our delivering up a French criminal claimed by the French Government. It is quite clear that no political offender could be claimed under this treaty. As to the notion that the fact of a man having been concerned in an insurrection would bring him in this country under the description of a murderer, that is really not for a; moment to be entertained. The laws of this country would not construe that to be murder which is simply being engaged in civil war against the Government of the country. Therefore, there can be no sort of apprehension that this treaty could be used for the purpose of enabling Foreign Governments—whether Prussia, or Russia, or any other—to claim a political offender. As to the assertion of the hon. and learned Gentleman (Mr. Hennessy) that political offenders may be claimed, as between Prussia and Russia, under the extradition treaty between those countries, that may be true, because the crime of insurrection may be a crime which under that treaty may justify one Government in claiming a refugee from another. It does not, however, follow that a political refugee can, under the operation of the English law, be claimed under the provisions of this treaty.

said, that the hon. Member for Hull (Mr. Clay) had asked the noble Lord whether the present treaty was identical with the extradition treaties with other countries? He understood the noble Lord to state that this was quite a different extradition treaty. [Viscount PALMERSTON: I said it was the same.] The noble Lord had pointed out the inconvenience which the present extradition treaty with France had caused.

said, he wished to explain. He had stated that the present treaty was the same as other extradition treaties, and, as a proof of the safeguards which the treaty gave to persons claimed, he stated that with regard to the treaty with France difficulties had arisen about giving up a man because oral proof had not been given that the man had committed a crime in France which in England would justify his committal.

said, that there was an inconsistency between the noble Lord's explanation and the second clause of the Bill. It would be necessary for some legal Member of the Government to point out the words in the clause that corresponded with the terms of the extradition treaty now in force.

said, he thought the Attorney General had clearly explained that it must be proved that a fugitive had committed an act which in this country would justify his committal, otherwise he would not be given up.

said, he wished to point out that the paragraph of the section headed "thirdly" provided that, in the case of a fugitive convicted of crime, an authenticated copy of the conviction should be produced, and proof of the identity of the person convicted he given to the satisfaction of the magistrate. Therefore, if either a man was convicted in Prussia en contumace of an attempt to murder, and was convicted in his presence and afterwards escaped, his only offence having been that he was engaged in au insurrection, all that the Prussian authorities would have to do to obtain his surrender by this country would be to produce an authenticated copy of the conviction and give evidence that the man they claimed was the person named in it. He did not know whether that provision was identical with those contained in other extradition treaties, but we certainly ought not to strain any point in favour of Prussia, who was doing her best to put down liberty on the Continent.

said, that as it was a Bill which greatly affected the character of the country, he should move the adjournment of the debate, in order that the measure might be discussed at a proper period of the evening.

said, he wished to call attention to the circumstance that the paragraph of the second section headed "secondly" contained a provision—

"That depositions or statements on oath, certified under the hand of the magistrate by whom the original warrant was issued, and attested by the oath of the party producing them to be the original depositions or statements, or true copies thereof, may be received in evidence of the criminality of the fugitive apprehended."

That appeared to be a departure from the principle upon which the noble Lord stated that we had acted under the treaty with France. If he was not mistaken, in consequence of the objections of the French Government, an Act was brought in which would have authorized the reception of depositions under the treaty with that country, but was rejected by the other House, the late Lord Campbell saying that he would never admit such a departure from the principles upon which criminal justice was administered in this country.

said, that he held in his hand the treaty with France, and it was in all the points that had been mentioned exactly similar to that before the House. In the treaty under consideration, however, murder was much better defined than it was in that one. Here it was stated to comprehend assassination, parricide, and two other offences. [Mr. HENNESSY: Assassination?] He apprehended that the laws of no civilized country would say that "assassination" included the taking of life in an insurrection where the parties were openly and fairly in the field. The provisions of the French Treaty as to the production of convictions were precisely the same as those which were contained in this convention. In both cases, of course, it would be ne- cessary that the magistrate should be satisfied not merely that the fugitive who was claimed had been convicted of an offence which was called murder, or whatever it might be, in the country from which he had fled, but that the offence of which he had been convicted was such as would have amounted to that crime in this country. The House must be satisfied that in carrying out the treaty which had been entered into with Prussia there would be no risk of our abandoning those safeguards of liberty which had in all similar cases been maintained in this country. It ought to be remembered that the administration of this law would be in the hands of the judges of the realm, who had always been most jealous of any extension of the interpretation of Acts of Parliament of this kind, and who would take care that the law of this country was not made instrumental to the surrender of persons as criminals for acts that would not in this country constitute the offences charged. He trusted that the House, having regard to the fact that this treaty had actually been entered into with Prussia, would not hesitate to give it its sanction.

said, he begged to point out that there was a most extraordinary difference between the convention with France and that before the House, and the hon. and learned Gentleman, when he said that the cases were exactly similar was entirely in error. According to the clause of the Bill before them a fugitive convicted of crime might be given up on authentic proof of the conviction and identity of the party. Now, in the 6 & 7 Vict, there was not a word enabling this country to give up a person, on certificate of conviction, on the ground that he had been convicted before. So far from the cases being identical, they were exactly the reverse. The treaties between England and France were the same as between England and Prussia; but Parliament had omitted the clause which was inserted in the present Bill. He should like to know what justification there was for putting into this Act a clause which had no effect between this country and other powers. The noble Lord had intimated that the treaty was the same, and that the Acts of Parliament were the same. Now, if any hon. Member could prove that the stipulations between this country and foreign countries were the same as in that case, he should be out of court; but he contended that the Bill pro- posed to give powers for the extradition of criminals which were not given in the case of France, and he for one was not disposed to extend the law in favour of Prussia.

said, that when the Attorney General, with that eloquence by which he was characterized, had talked in glowing terms of English principles and English justice, he could not help thinking that the American term "bunkum" might with great propriety be applied to his speech. The fact was that the Bill before the House had nothing to do with English principles or English justice, but rather with Prussian law and Prussian injustice. Political offenders were frequently condemned in their absence by foreign courts as they termed it par contumace, as was the case with M. Mazzini, who if he had been a Prussian might be delivered up on the following day under the operation of the Bill at the request of the Prussian Ambassador. That being the nature of the measure, he should offer it all the opposition in his power, believing it, as he did, to be a flagrant and atrocious violation of the right of asylum which was the boast of this country.

said, he would point out that the treaty between England and Prance, to which the hon. Member for Horsham (Mr. Seymour Fitzgerald) had adverted, was not that which was at present in force. The treaty to which the hon. Gentleman referred was that of 1843; whereas there was one of 1852, to which an Act giving effect had been passed in 1853.

As there appears to be some doubt about the treaties, I have no objection to the adjournment of the debate.

I rise, Sir, to ask this House to do an act of generosity and of justice. This House is one of the highest authorities in the realm. There is, technically speaking, no appeal from its decision. But if by circumstances it should have been led to do that which is not founded in justice, there is an appeal which I am sure must always be successful when made. We know that the approval of the House of Commons is one of the highest objects of ambition to every man engaged in the service of the country; and we also know that its censure is felt most deeply by any man on whom it may happen to fall. I have said that, technically speaking, there is no appeal from the decision of this House, but there is, nevertheless, an authority to which, in reality, such an appeal can be made; and that authority is one which is always ready to hear everything that can be alleged in favour of the person wronged, and is always open to listen to the truth when stated, though the truth may be in opposition to its original belief and conviction. The authority to which I allude is the House itself. I am quite sure that if it can be shown to the House that the decision at which it may have arrived in any case, whether affecting an individual or a department, has been arrived at hastily, or without full consideration, or upon inadequate grounds, an appeal to its sense of justice can never be made in vain, and that it will always be ready to set right that which it may have done wrongly. On the 12th of April last there was a debate in this House, and a Resolution was proposed inculpating a right hon. Member as well as a Department of the Government. The right hon. Member is my right hon. Friend the Member for Calne (Mr. Lowe), and the Department of the Government is the Committee of Council for Education. The noble Lord the Member for Stamford (Lord Robert Cecil) moved a Resolution affirming that the Report of the Inspectors of Schools had been mutilated as produced to this House, that that mutilation had deprived the Reports of their proper value, and that the practice was at variance with the understanding on which those Inspectors were originally appointed. My right hon. Friend, feeling that in the course of the debate a question had arisen which, in his opinion, involved an imputation on his veracity, with a nice sense of personal honour, and at variance, I am bound to say, with the advice of his friends, tendered the resignation of his office, and took upon himself the censure which the Resolution implied. That being so, we thought the matter could not be allowed to rest there; and the decision of the House having been founded on a misconception, and on a want of sufficient explanation, we deemed it right that a Committee should be appointed to investigate the matter, and to ascertain on what grounds the Resolution had been proposed. I am not at all seeking to impugn the conduct of the noble Lord who moved the Resolution, or that of those Members who voted for and carried it. They acted on their honest and sincere conviction, though I think I can show that that conviction was founded on error. It was determined, at all events, that a Committee should be appointed; and our first Motion was that the Members of that Committee should be named in the usual way. We thought it essential that my right hon. Friend should serve on it; but he declined to do so, and we were unable to persuade him to retract the decision. The Committee were eventually nominated by the General Committee of Elections. That Committee met and made the Report which is in the hands of the House. Now, the Resolution of the 12th of April has been, in my opinion, entirely negatived by the Report, and, that being so, I propose to the House to rescind a Resolution at variance with the deliberate Report of a Committee so appointed. The Resolution passed by the House was to the effect that the Reports of the Inspectors of Schools were mutilated, and, therefore, were deprived of their value; but the Committee reported, as hon. Members are well aware, that, in point of fact, it was not correct to state, as was stated in the Resolution, that from those Reports was excluded everything that was unfavourable to the views of the Committee on Education, or that those things only were inserted which were in their favour. The Committee found that passages were admitted—some favourable to them and some unfavourable—that there was no partiality in that respect, and that a fair representation was given of the opinions of the Inspectors of Schools. The Committee say that disquisitions on matters not belonging to the cognizance of the Inspectors had been omitted, and that they think such omission was right and proper. They also say that such a supervision is essential to the working of the Committee of Council as it is now constituted. Therefore, the Report of the Committee appears to me entirely to exculpate my right hon. Friend and the Department to which he belonged from the charges which were implied by the Resolution of the 12th of April. I therefore propose to the House the Resolution which I now place in your hands—

"That this House, having considered the Report of the Select Committee appointed to inquire into the practice of the Committee of Council on Education with respect to the Reports of Her Majesty's Inspectors of Schools, is of opinion that the Resolution passed on the 12th day of April last, with reference to such Reports, ought to be rescinded, and the said Resolution is hereby rescinded."

Sir, as Chairman of the Committee I should wish to say a few words on this Question. If it had come on at an earlier period of the evening I should have thought it my duty to go at some length into the matters connected with it, but at this time of night I cannot be expected to do so. In the first place, however, I trust sincerely that the House, although this Motion has been brought on at a late time of night, and at a late period of the Session, will not object to it on the ground of time, knowing as we do that the noble Lord is extremely limited as to time, and it being absolutely imperative that this question should be set at rest once and for ever. Whatever different opinions there may be on this point and on others which may arise in the course of the debate, I hope there will be no difference upon one on which the Committee were unanimous—that the personal honour of the right hon. Member for Calne is absolutely and entirely clear and untouched. If any doubt of the sort has existed in the mind of any man in or out of this House, I trust it will be set at rest henceforth and for ever. As to the conduct of his Department, it is quite clear that for many years it has exercised a censorship and control over the Reports of the Inspectors. The Committee found unanimously that such a power existed, and that it had existed for many years, and, moreover, that it had been exercised with fairness and without excessive strictness. The noble Lord has analyzed the terms of the Resolution to a certain extent. I should be unwilling to discuss the meaning of the word "mutilation." The Committee considered that point. They refer to it in their Report, and they say that it must always be a matter of opinion whether the omission or alteration of any portion of a document has or has not an important bearing with reference to that which is admitted or is permitted to stand. The following words of the Resolution of the 12th of April are to the effect that there has been an exclusion of matter unfavourable to the views of the Department, and matter admitted which is favourable to them. If that is true, it is true to the letter, and yet the converse is: also true; and if the converse be added to the Resolution it has no effect whatever, and becomes a caput mortuum. Then comes the point which is really at issue. The Resolution affirms that the censorship of the Reports is at variance with the under- standing originally existing on the appointment of the Inspectors. It seems to me that this Question entirely depends upon this consideration—Is this body of men entirely under the control of the Department and under the orders of the Department, or is it a body of men absolutely independent of the Department? If it is a body independent of the Department, then, of course, any supervision or alteration of their Reports is a most improper proceeding; but if it is considered that the Inspectors are clearly officials of the Department and subordinate to its regulations, then, of course, no complaint can arise. The mistake—for so I must call it—appears to me to have arisen in this way: When the Committee of Council was originally formed, Parliament, no doubt, required information on various matters connected with education, and was anxious to receive not only facts, but opinions, however discordant, to assist the Department in hitting on some system of education which might be supported by the Government. That necessity for ascertaining these various opinions ceased in the course of a few years, when the system was established. Then the Reports became quite of a different character, it became no longer necessary to have this mass of opinions, and the Reports assumed their present character. It seems to me that the error of the noble Lord the Member for Stamford (Lord Robert Cecil) originated here. I trust, however, that there will be no opposition to the Motion of the noble Viscount. I trust that the noble Lord the Member for Stamford and the hon. Member for Berkshire (Mr. Walter) whom I see opposite, and other hon. Members who supported the Resolution, will acquiesce cordially in the noble Lord's Motion for the rescinding of that Resolution. The Resolution of the 12th of April appears to me quite unsupported with facts, and I may say is entirely at variance with them. I do not see, indeed, how the Resolution can assist the views of the hon. Members to whom I have referred in the matter. Their views appear to me to be to reassert the right to receive from the Inspectors all the information they may choose to give, both as to matters of fact and matters of opinion. If that be their object they ought to proceed, not by a Resolution of this kind, but by an entirely different course. They ought to move for an inquiry in far more general terms; in some such terms, in fact, as those suggested by the right hon. Mem- ber for Droitwich (Sir John Pakington) when the appointment of the Committee was proposed, and which would have considerably extended the inquiry of the Committee. If such a Committee had been obtained, those who supported the Resolution of the 12th of April might have appeared before it to support their views; but I believe they would be far more free if they were relieved from the Resolution now standing on our books. Therefore, I cordially support the Resolution of the noble Lord.

Sir, I have no hesitation in saying at once that I have not the slightest desire or intention to oppose the Motion of the noble Lord, both because I think that the main object aimed at by the Resolution which it is now proposed to rescind has been fully attained by the inquiry, and also because I should be sorry to be guilty of want of respect towards the Committee, which, I think, was selected with great fairness, and which has also conducted the inquiry with great fairness, and whose Report, though I cannot concur to the full extent in the description of it given by the noble Lord—indeed, I should be disposed to take exception to some of his expressions—still points in the direction indicated by his Motion. The only thing I do complain of is, that the noble Lord should not have availed himself of the power which he might undoubtedly have exercised to give this Motion precedence over the Orders of the Day, so as to afford to many hon. Members who have been forced to quit the House from sheer exhaustion an opportunity of stating their opinions upon it. The Report states that the principle involved in the object of this inquiry, and in the Resolution of the 12th of April, is important. That is undoubtedly the case; and I may add that it has acquired an adventitious importance from the unfortunate circumstance to which that Resolution led—the resignation of my right hon. Friend the late Vice President of the Committee of Education—who, actuated by feelings most honourable to himself, but hardly called for, in my opinion, by the occasion, considered the Resolution to be a reflection on his personal honour. I never took that view of it myself, as my right hon. Friend well knows; and many hon. Gentlemen, whose authority my right hon. Friend would be the first to acknowledge, fully shared that opinion. It appears to me that this misunderstanding, as it is termed in the Report, was owing to the construction put upon the word "mu- tilation." I believe the word was chosen rather from the want of a better word than from any other reason; but it certainly never was intended by it to throw any personal reflection on my right hon. Friend. In fact, if instead of the word "mutilation" we had used the words by which is described the practice of the Department— of which I may say we knew nothing at the time—if the Resolution had said, "In the opinion of this House the practice of sending back to the Inspectors their Reports to be altered by them and brought into conformity with the Minute of 1861. & c," instead of "the practice of mutilating," & c, it would equally have answered my purpose, and would have been strictly consistent with the fact. The question is, what really was the practice of the Department in the matter. It appears to be thought that the essence of the charges against the Committee of Council was their alleged practice of marking Reports; but I wish it to be distinctly understood that that is not a practice I should complain of. Nor should I object to the Department overhauling the Reports and exercising a kind of censorship over them. My right hon. Friend explained at great length, on several occasions, the history of the practice. He said it always had existed, but on one occasion a passage occurred in an Inspector's Report so wholly irrelevant and improper—a comparison between the state of chastity of Protestants and Catholics, or something of that sort—that the Minute of 1861 was framed. I am of opinion that such a Department could not be carried on without some degree of censorship over the Reports, and without the power of striking out irrelevant passages. But the gist of my complaint was that passages bearing on questions in controversy were unfairly struck out, and that the House had not the benefit of statements of fact made by the Inspectors within their own official experience. My right hon. Friend gave his own explanation of the practice of the Department. He stated that the reason which induced him to frame the Minute of 1861 was as follows:—

"The reason was my reluctance to strike out anything myself, as a matter of authority, from the Reports of the Inspectors. It appeared to me that it was a bad plan to strike anything out as a matter of authority, and then present tie Report to Parliament, as the Report of the Inspector. I thought it might raise a controversy between the Inspector and the Office, and that he would say, as, I believe, in some cases he did say, that the context was interfered with by striking out portions, and that the meaning of what remained was altered. I preferred very much, and it scorned to me, and to Lord Granville, to be the better course, to make the Inspector his own censor, and to collect into one Minute, instead of into different Minutes, what it was necessary to say on the subject of the Inspectors' Reports; and, if an Inspector happened seriously to offend, to call his attention to it, and to leave him to alter the Report."

The practice therefore was, instead of striking out any passage in a Report, to send back the Report to the Inspector, with a notification that if he did not make it conform to certain instructions it would be suppressed. That, however, was more objectionable, as it seems to me, than marking the Report, and for an obvious reason. Here is a case in point. Mr. Watkins addressed a letter to the Committee of Council in the following terms:—

"I have the honour to return to you herewith the manuscript of my general Report for 1862, which I have received from you by this post, and to point out to you that, though it has been returned to me under the circular of August 27, 1862, no passage in it is marked as objectionable; I am therefore utterly at a loss to know what it is in my Report that is censured; I drew it up most carefully in conformity with your letter of instructions, and I believe that it is entirely both according to the spirit and the letter of that document; but I shall be most happy to consider any objections which may be pointed out to me and, if I can, conscientiously, alter the passages censured."

I do not know what satisfaction Mr. Watkins got on that occasion, for it is not mentioned. I suspect it was very little, because in answer to another question Mr. Lingen said that my right hon. Friend the Vice President "considered it part of the policy of the Minute to say to an Inspector, 'This is not a Report which we will print at the public expense.' If the Inspector said, 'Why? there was no answer to that question; he was merely referred to his instructions." Again, in another part of his evidence, Mr. Lingen said—

"I should like to substitute the actual communications that passed between the Office and the Inspectors. Here is the Minute, stating what the Report ought to be; here is a Report sent in; here is the judgment of the Committee, that it does not conform to the Minute; the Inspector says, 'Why? The, answer is, that we do not consider it good policy or for the interests of the service to tell you; that was the course of things."

I ask the House whether there can be a more unfair way of dealing with these gentlemen than this, to send back their Reports unaltered, and when they inquire, "What is it that you object to?—tell us, and we will revise it," to reply, "You must find that out for yourselves—we will not tell you; but if you do not make your Reports conform to the instructions we will not print them." That is the practice of the Department, and it is, I must say, as unsatisfactory and unpleasant a mode of transacting business with the Inspectors as anything one can possibly conceive. Such, then, being the existing practice, I wish to call the attention of the House to a statement in the Report of the Select Committee, to which I take exception, because it is at variance with fact—

"No objection," say the Committee, "is made to statements of facts observed by the Inspectors within the circle of their official experience, whatever may be their bearing on the policy of the Committee of Council."

The House will recollect that the question turned very much on the alleged suppression of a particular Report by Mr. Longueville Jones. My noble Friend opposite and myself at the time the Resolution was passed stated that, as we were then informed, a passage containing statements not of opinion, but of fact, was suppressed because it was deemed at variance with the policy of the Department. I have here the Report of Mr. Longueville Jones. Four passages in it are marked in pencil. It is treated as an exceptional case, and the Select Committee, I am sorry to say, endorse the statement. It is an exceptional case, just in the sense in which when a respectable young woman gets into a scrape that is called an exceptional case. It is a flagrant case. It is the distinct suppression, not of an opinion, but of a fact which had a direct bearing on a question on which the House had voted only a few months before, and in which I myself take a strong personal interest—I mean the question of the value of schoolmasters' certificates. It is said the Report was suppressed because it contained throughout an animus hostile to the Department. I must own I am at a loss, in looking over the Report, to discover the hostile spirit. I do not say it is a good Report—that is not the question, but I will leave the House to judge of its tone. The passages which are marked, and in which alone the hostility can be supposed to lurk, are these. The first passage relates to the excuses alleged to have been made by teachers and managers of schools for the bad reading, writing, and arithmetic complained of in their schools. The second passage contains a simple objection to the practice of granting money for school buildings. The third passage merely mentions that the writer had met with opinions and declarations from all quarters among teachers, but that it would be of no use stating what these opinions and declarations were. To the fourth passage I beg the attention of the House. It is as follows:—

"There are several notable examples, however, of admirable infant schools in Wales; and I beg leave to name that of Conway, as realizing, in my opinion, more than any other similar institution I ever saw, all the highest and best requisites and results connected with infant teaching. The schoolmistress is the best infant teacher in my district, admirably fitted for her duties in every respect, and deserving of the greater credit because she is not certificated, though she is aided by pupil-teachers."

Now if that is not a statement of fact I should like to know what is. I am bound to do my right hon. Friend the late Vice President the justice to say that he treated the passage as rather foolish, because he said it had no bearing on the subject, but as quite harmless, and such as would never have led him to think of condemning the Report. Mr. Lingen, however, saw a great deal of mischief in it. Mr. Lingen was asked—

"You thought the statement made was intended to harass the Department?"

to which he replied,

"Yes. Taken with the rest it appeared to me to be a certain case picked out at a rather critical time of the discussion to show this—here is the best teacher of a particular class in my district who is not certificated."

No one can doubt that the passage was marked out because it stated the very kind of fact which I wanted to ascertain — namely, the case of a good school kept by an uncertificated master or mistress. I have contended all along that there are plenty of good schools conducted by uncertificated teachers. The object of the Department was to prove the contrary; and they had Reports stuffed full of cases to show how worthless uncertificated teachers were. Here, however, when an instance occurred of a school, held up to commendation, which was kept by an uncertificated schoolmistress, they would not allow the statement of that fact to appear, because it told against their side of the question and in favour of mine. It was a flagrant and foolish suppression of a fact, which would have done little harm to the Department if published, but which has done them great harm by its suppression. I have myself been exposed to some taunts in this matter. Mr. Longueville Jones was severely censured for "his disloyalty and baseness" in furnishing me with the Report. I protest, not only on coustitu- tional, but on personal grounds, against any such imputation. I will not surrender my right as a Member of Parliament to receive any statement either of private grievance or of any matter affecting the public welfare from any official of the Government whatever. We are privileged men. I do not say that officials have a right to send letters to the newspapers, or to confide the secrets of their Departments to any persons; but in this House we are entitled to know what is going on, what abuses exist in Departments, what the opinions of the officials arc. I have not used any of the information I received except in this House; and I will not allow charges of "disloyalty and baseness" to be made against my informant, or of improper violation of confidence against myself for what I did. Besides, I have another reason. Hon. Members will, perhaps, recollect that in 1862 a correspondence with Mr. Norris, one of the Government Inspectors, was forced on me—it was not courted, but, at the same time, it was not declined by me. Mr. Norris, the Inspector, endeavoured to dissuade me from proceeding with my Resolution, and entered into a correspondence with me, which he conducted in a fair and able manner. I did what I could to reply to his views; but the Committee of Council, thinking, I suppose, that Mr. Norris had the best of the argument, deemed the correspondence of sufficient importance to be laid before the House. Well, I ask, is one Inspector to be allowed to write to me, with the sanction of the Department who lay the correspondence on the table, because they think it supports their position, and is another Inspector to be prohibited from communicating to me materials which strengthen my case? That is a position which any Member of this House will see at once is most unreasonable. I shall not at this hour (one o'clock) trouble the House with any further statement on this case. I would only say, in conclusion, that I think this whole inquiry will have been of very great service to the country. I hope it will make the Privy Council Office somewhat more cautious, and lead them to understand that the country is not disposed to submit to be ridden too hard by the Gentlemen at the head of that Department. You may be quite sure that if the Privy Council system is to work at all, it must be made to work harmoniously with the great body of school managers in this country. I assure the Department that, so far from caring for its assistance, I should have no objection myself to see its whole system swept away; for I think the education of the country could go on perfectly well without it. But I say that, if the system is to continue, it must be made more applicable than it is now to the wants of the community, and it cannot be made more simple and more applicable to those wants as long as it is clogged by the existing conditions and restrictions, With these remarks I do not oppose the rescinding of the Resolution. I do not wish to cast any censure upon the Department, and still less upon my right hon. Friend who then had charge of it; and if it be necessary I shall support this Motion.

said, he was unable to concur with the hon. Member for East Norfolk (Mr. Howes) in thinking that although at the earliest stages of the present system of education it was desirable that the Inspectors should act with entire independence and afford the fullest information, yet that we had now arrived at another era in the history of the movement when the Inspectors should not be free agents, and report according to their own discretion, but should only be the mere instruments and servants of the Department, expressing the opinions of the Committee of Privy Council only, and not their own. The Report of the Committee had been so lately circulated, that he did not think the House was acquainted with a letter dated August, 1863. It was stated in the Report that the House was aware of the system that had been pursued, the real fact being that neither the House nor the country was aware of that system until that Report was published. It had been generally supposed that a certain censorship was exercised over the Inspectors Reports, but that something of freedom was nevertheless allowed them, and that they were permitted to express opinions contrary to the judgment and practice of the Department. But in the letter of August, 1863, the Inspectors were informed that their practical suggestions for the improvement of the schools in their respective districts must he consistent with the existing Minutes, and the principle sanctioned by Parliament. Nothing had been allowed to appear in the Reports for that year which was contrary to the Minutes of Council. Take the case of the Factory Inspectors. One of those Inspectors recommended, the year before last, certain alterations in the factory system of Scotland, requiring a change in the law to carry them out; and the Government introduced a Bill to give effect to his suggestion. Now, if a Factory Inspector was permitted to do that, why should not a School Inspector be permitted to make a suggestion, even although it might militate against some particular Minute of Council having indeed, in a certain degree, the sanction of Parliament, but certainly not having the force of law? He could not admit that entire impartiality had been shown in the exercise of that censorship. In a former year Mr. Watkin's Report complained of a change made in regard to having Inspectors and assistant Inspectors, and his Report was suppressed. Then there was Mr. Norris's case, which had been referred to by the hon. Member for Berkshire (Mr. Walter). He would not weary the House by quoting the evidence taken before the Committee at that hour of the night, but if any hon. Member would carefully consider it, he would find that there had been an excision of facts and opinions unfavourable to the views of the Department, while facts and opinions favourable to those views had been inserted.

Sir, I am sorry that the noble Lord the Member for the East Riding of Yorkshire (Lord Hotham) is not here, because I think he would have informed us that it was not the unanimous opinion of the Committee that, as the hon. Chairman has stated, any time however late, any day however late in the Session, is a fitting one for bringing this Motion forward. [Mr. HOWES: No!] I understood the hon. Member to express a hope that there would be no protest from any part of the House as to time; because, whatever might be the time, this matter ought to be disposed of this Session. I think the noble Lord the Member for the East Riding would have shown that there are members of the Committee who would not agree in that opinion. This Question, Sir, consists of two parts—the one a personal part, and the other a matter of policy. I thought that the noble Lord at the head of the Government carefully confined himself to the personal part of the Question, and if I am right in that impression, and am to understand him as merely wishing to clear the right hon. Gentleman the late Vice President of the Education Department from the shadow of anything reflecting upon his veracity, then I have no objection to join the noble Lord in his Resolution; but, if he wishes, at this late period of the Session, and at this late hour of the night, to ask the House to commit itself to a reversal of the decision on a question of policy to which it came deliberately in the middle of the Session, then I can only enter my protest against a proceeding which seems to me highly unconstitutional and improper. But I gathered from the expressions of the noble Lord that he desired to confine himself strictly to the personal aspect of the question. [Viscount PALMERSTON signified assent.] I have from the first done all in my power to remove what seemed to me the extreme misapprehension of the late Vice President of the Education Office, that there was any intention on the part of any person in this House to cast any personal reflection upon him. With regard to the Committee of Council, I cannot extend to them the same complete exculpation as to the wisdom and entire fairness of their proceedings, but still I am perfectly willing to admit that they were actuated by right intentions, and I certainly do not mean to oppose this Motion. But as respects the matter of policy, I beg that my conduct on this occasion may not be misunderstood. I do not admit that the Committee of Privy Council have a right to mutilate or cut to pieces—call it what you like—these Inspectors' Reports. I do not agree that they have the right so to alter or cause to be altered the Reports intended for the use of this House as to change their meaning. I contend that the Committee of Council have no right to alter any document—that no Department has a right to alter any document that is placed before us, without saying at the same time, on the face of such document, that it is not the true original production of the person whose name it bears, but has been dealt with by the Department through which it has passed. That seems to me not only to be a principle essential to the proper conduct of any public office, but an elementary principle of morality. I trust that on a future occasion the House will go further and deeper into this matter— that the whole question of the Inspectors' Reports may be inquired into by a Committee familiar with educational subjects, and that we may come to some decision as to the extent and nature of the censorship which may be exercised in these cases. That irrelevant matter should be excluded I freely admit; but I cannot admit that argumentative matter — that is, matter which differs from the opinions of their superiors on questions of policy—I cannot admit that that is rightly excluded from these Reports. At all events, where ever it has been excluded, hon. Members of this House who read the Reports ought to be warned that that species of censorship has been exercised. There is much in the Report of the Committee which I should have wished to criticize if the hour had not been so late; but I know that my right hon. Friend the Member for Droitwich (Sir John Pakington) at the earliest period in the next Session intends to ask for n Committee of Inquiry into the whole constitution of the Committee of Council. That may be a fitting opportunity of reviewing these proceedings and of inquiring into the nature of the practices which that Committee have really adopted—that may be a fitting opportunity of also answering the observations which have been made by the hon. Member for East Norfolk (Mr. Howes), which I could not answer now without detaining the House at an inconvenient length. I will only add that I hope I may not be held by my silence on this occasion to have assented to principles which I cannot admit.

said, that he rose to move for papers relating to the immigration into Turkey of Circassian exiles. A great amount of suffering had been caused by the proceedings of the Russian authorities in Circassia, owing to the great miseries and suffering entailed upon an immense number of the unfortunate natives of the Caucasus. The course pursued in that quarter seemed to be but a portion of the policy of the Russian Government towards rebellious or resistant races. In Poland the same course had been pursued, and the Poles had been forbidden to hold any land in Lithuania. The object of Russia appeared to be to get rid of every people opposed to her rule, and to replace them with the pure Russian race. In short, everything pointed to a revival of that policy, which rendered her an object of so much alarm some time since. He would also remind the House that England had a great interest in the subject, besides the general one of humanity, as Russia was employing her resources in extending her power eastward.

said, he was glad that the subject had been brought before the House, as a great and lasting feeling existed against the proceedings of the Russian Government, by the course it had pursued with regard to the gallant race of the Caucasus.

said, he quite agreed in the opinion which had been expressed of the great crime which had been committed by Russia. The Turkish Government had behaved with great humanity. The Sultan had subscribed £50,000 from his own privy purse for the relief of the poor refugees. There was some difference as to their numbers, one account describing them at 100,000, another at 300,000. The probability was they numbered about one-half. The Russian Government had done nothing beyond placing at their disposal three or four vessels. The British Government had given every assistance in their power, by furnishing transports, and sending a largo amount of biscuits, With regard to papers, he had none that he could produce at present.