said, he wished to ask the Under Secretary of State for India, What was the extent of liability undertaken by the Indian Government under the Madras Irrigation and Canal Act of 1860; whether the capital of £1,000,000 was fully paid up; what amount of interest has been paid from the Indian Exchequer upon that capital; and whether any sums advanced have been repaid out of the profits of the Canal Company? What amount of additional capital was raised under the said Company's Canal Act of 1863; how much of this additional capital has been paid up, and what amount is still due on unpaid shares; also what amount of interest has been paid on the additional capital, and from what sources the interest has come? And what is the object of the Act introduced to amend the Acts of 1860 and 1863; whether it has been brought before Parliament with the knowledge of the Indian Government; and whether there are any grounds to suppose that the works of this Company will ever prove reproductive?

said, in reply, that the Government liability under this Act was to guarantee 5 per cent on £1,000,000 of capital. Of that sum all but £44,296 had been paid up. The amount of interest advanced was £214,233, and no additional capital had been raised under the Act of 1863. The object of the Amendment Act was to enable the Company to substitute £20 shares for shares of a larger amount. There was every reason to believe that the canal works would be profitable.

said, he wished to know if any interest had been refunded?

None; the works were not yet completed.

said, he rose to ask the Under Secretary of State for India, Whether the Secretary of State in Council has under his consideration all the complaints which have been made to Her Majesty's Government, or to Parliament, by officers of the Indian Army in respect of the non-fulfilment of the Parliamentary guarantee of their former rights and privileges, including questions of compensation, bonus, and pension funds; whether the Statement which he has promised to make would have reference to all such claims, complaints and petitions; and if he can inform the House when he will be prepared to make that Statement?

, in reply, said, he informed the House the other night, in answer to the hon. and gallant Member for Harwich (Major Jervis), that he had every reason to expect that immediately after the Whitsuntide recess he should be prepared to make the annual statement on the Indian Army. As to whether that statement would have reference to all the claims and complaints made by officers of the Indian Army, he was afraid that that would be saying a good deal, for those claims and complaints were very numerous; but when he made the statement he hoped to be able to satisfy the House that such matters had had due consideration.

said, he rose to ask Mr. Attorney General, Why the proceedings which he stated on the 6th of March, 1865, were about to be taken in order to recover from Mr. Leonard Edmunds "the balance of the sums alleged to be deficient" in his accounts have not been so taken; and, why the suit which it was intimated to Mr. Edmunds by the Secretary to the Treasury in January last had been directed to be instituted in the Court of Exchequer has not been proceeded with?

said, he must beg to explain that the delay had chiefly arisen from its being intended, until recently, to institute the proceedings in the Court of Exchequer, but the regulations of that Court having been altered with regard to matters of that kind under a recent Act, it had been thought, on further consideration, that there was no good reason why the proceedings should not be taken in the Court of Chancery, which had a better machinery for taking accounts. The information, accordingly, either had been already laid, or would be laid within a day or two.

said, he wished to know, whether the proceedings would be of such a nature as to allow Mr. Edmunds to offer any explanation or defence which might be within his power to all the charges preferred against him?

Of course he would have every opportunity of doing so.

said, he would beg to ask the Secretary of State for War, Whether the 20th Regiment (2nd Battalion) has been ordered, or whether it is the intention of the Government to order it, from Japan, where it is at present stationed, to Hong Kong, to occupy the quarters vacated by Her Majesty's 11th Regiment, in which great mortality had lately occurred, or whether it is the intention of Her Majesty's Government to send Native Troops to that station?

said, in reply, that the 2nd Battalion of the 20th Regiment had received orders to proceed from Japan to Hong Kong, to relieve the regiment at present stationed there; but it would not be necessary that they should occupy the quarters vacated by the 11th Regiment, which had proceeded to the Cape. In March last orders were sent by telegraph to Ceylon to send four companies of Native Troops to Hong Kong as a temporary measure.

said, he would beg to ask the noble Lord, whether the order was accompanied by unlimited authority to General Guy not to act on economical principles, but to spare no expense in securing the health of the Battalion, and whether he is authorized to employ native watchmen, so as to allow the proper relief from duty?

replied that orders were sent that the duties at Hong Kong should be diminished by the employment of native police or watchmen, and that under no circumstances were the troops to be kept too long on duty. With the barrack accommodation, and with the authority given to General Guy to hire proper quarters, there was every reason to believe that ample provision had been made.

said, he had a question to put to Mr. Attorney General for Ireland, which, as it considerably affected landed property, he might, perhaps, be allowed to preface with a brief explanation. The right hon. and learned Gentleman, when the Chief Secretary introduced his Bill to amend the law relating to the Tenure and Improvement of land in Ireland, said that it implied the consent of the landlord to specific improvements, and that it proposed to interfere in no way with the perfect freedom of contract between landlord and tenant. That was a clear and distinct statement. It had, however, been stated authoritatively by the organ of the parties who induced the Government to bring forward the measure that—

"No landlord can defeat the claim of his tenant to compensation under the Act by a general contract not to improve, or not to claim compensation if he should improve."

And again —

"A general agreement would be one in contravention of the policy of the Act, and would be voidable."

The question, therefore, he had to ask was, Whether the statement of the right hon. and learned Gentleman was the correct interpretation of the Bill; and whether by Clause 29 an owner will have power by means of a written agreement with the tenant to prevent him from executing all or any of the improvements mentioned in the 37th section of the Landed Property Improvement Act, 1860?

said, he thought the clause alluded to by his right hon. Friend was clear and free from ambiguity. It provided that there should be no compensation for any improvements which the owner might prevent the tenant from making, or might compel him to make, by the contract. If, therefore, a landlord wished to control his tenant in making any improvements, he had only to introduce a specific clause into the lease or contract controlling or preventing him from milking that particular improvement. If, for instance, he chose to prevent him from building a house, he had only to intro-duce a clause to that effect in the contract, and if the tenant, acting in defiance of it, did build, of course he could not claim compensation against the landlord. The right hon. Baronet had ascribed to him an observation which he did not think was quite correct, but that was the meaning of the clause. It did not, however, give validity to general agreements professing to bind the tenant to forego claims for improvements made by him under the Act.

said, the question people in Ireland desired to know was whether, if an owner of landed property entered into a written contract with his tenant that as between them the provisions of this Bill should not apply at all, that would be valid under the Bill?

said, he did not think that would be a valid contract.

said, he would beg to ask the Secretary of State for War, Why the recommendations of the late Militia War Office Commission have not been carried out; and whether it is the intention of the Government to carry them out?

said, in reply, that the greater part of the recommendations of the Commission referred to by the hon. Gentleman had been carried out, and he did not know to which of them not carried out the hon. Gentleman referred.

said, he would beg to ask the hon. Member for Bristol, Whether he intends this Session to bring forward his annual Motion in favour of the Ballot?

, in reply, said, he should deem it his duty to bring on the question of the Ballot in the course of the Session, but he should take care in doing so not to interfere in any way with the progress of the Government Reform Bill.

said, he wished to ask the President of the Board of Trade, Whether he intends to propose any change in the Tribunal prescribed by the Merchant Shipping Act for investigating the causes of the loss of Merchant Ships at sea, or in any other manner to provide increased security for the safety of passengers in passenger ships?

, in reply, said, the subject referred to by the right hon. Baronet was under consideration, and a measure dealing with the question was in course of preparation; it would also contain some other Amendments of the Merchant Shipping Act. In the present state of public business, however, he did not think it very probable that such a measure would pass during the present Session.

said, he rose to call the attention of the Vice President of the Committee of Council to the subject of the payment of Cattle Inspectors. The Cattle Diseases Act Amendment Bill of this Session, passed on the 23rd of last month, enacts by the ninth clause that no fee or other charge shall be demanded or paid for any certificate or licence under that Act, or any order or regulation there under. In many counties the local authority had before the passing of the Act authorized and promulgated schedules of fees payable by cattle owners to inspectors or other officials for certificates and licences. He wished to ask, first, Whether under the above clause such payments were forbidden and had become illegal? and next, whether the clause precluded the local authority from authorizing, under Section 8 of the Privy Council Order of the 24th of March, allowances payable from the county rate, calculated on items of work done by its officers, whether by granting certificates, or licences, or otherwise?

said, in reply, that the clause applied only to the levying fees from persons applying for licences or certificates, or making declarations; but did not preclude the local authority from paying their inspectors by allowances for items of work done, instead of salary.

I take this opportunity of inquiring of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Whether there is any truth in the prevalent rumour that Her Majesty's Government have authorized any relaxation of the provisions of the Bank Charter regulating the issue of notes?

The right hon. Gentleman has anticipated the question I intended to put to Her Majesty's Government; but I would also wish to inquire further, whether in the event of their not having already taken measures to afford relief the necessity for so doing is not deserving of their immediate consideration under existing circumstances?

I wish to ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, whether he is prepared to relax the provisions of the Bank Act in the event of the Bank directors making a proposition to that effect?

In the first place, in reply to the question of the right hon. Gentleman opposite, I beg to state that there is no truth in the statement that Her Majesty's Government have authorized any step to be taken at variance with the provisions of the Act of 1844. In point of fact, they have not arrived at any decision upon the subject of the state of things which prevails in the City in immediate connection with the calamitous event announced yesterday. I may go further and say, that until two hours or two hours and a half ago no representation or formal report of any kind had reached me from the City upon the subject of the existing state of things; but for the last two hours and a half my time has been occupied in receiving information and statements, and, I may add, an important requisition from very influential persons connected with the City. I have seen many of the most influential and respected members of the body of the London bankers on the subject, and I have not yet had time to see, but I expect to see as soon as my engagements in this House will allow me to leave my place, a deputation regularly constituted from the joint-stock banks in London to the same effect. The purport of the statements made by them is that they conceive the state of panic and distress which prevails in the City to be without parallel in the recollection of the oldest men of business in the City of London. They suggest and desire that in some form or other relief should be afforded. But I am not yet cognizant of the actual state of affairs in the City, as it is exhibited from time to time by the accounts of the Bank of England, it being very well known that the reserve of the Bank of England constitutes the principal part of the disposable money of the country, and that it constitutes the stock which is immediately acted upon by any extraordinary demand for money. Before I take any steps in the matter, I should wish to know the precise course of events which have taken place at the Bank during the day; but in referring to the course of events at the Bank do not let it be supposed that I make the allusion as if it were possible to raise any question with reference to the position of the Bank itself. I merely speak of the events that have occurred at the Bank during the day as likely to guide us in the course we may adopt, because the Bank of England is, in reality, the mirror of the monetary slate of the country, and from the the actual trans actions of the Bank we obtain from day to day the most definite account of the condition of the money-market. The representations that have been made to me are of a general and partially indefinite character, while, at the same time, they are representations which, on account of the quarters from which they proceed, are entitled to the greatest weight and importance, and are entitled to the most anxious, careful, and, I may add, the immediate consideration of the Government. Possibly, in as short a time as that during which I have been occupied this afternoon, we shall have acquired very valuable information on the question by which we shall be guided in the course we may adopt. At the present moment I can only say that the condition of things in the City has our most careful and anxious consideration, and that we shall feel it to be our duty to bring the matter as far as in us lies to a wise and a prompt issue. The hon. Gentleman behind me has asked me whether we should consent to suspend the Bank Act in the event of the Directors of the Bank of England making a proposition to that effect. On that question I should wish to make this remark: in the first place, having stated our anxiety to proceed promptly with this matter, I think I had better not answer any question; especially any question relating to the hypothesis of a request by the Directors of the Bank of England, for I have not the least reason to suppose that any request from that quarter is likely to reach the Government.

rose to call attention to the continued complaint of the way in which the Fife Postal Service is conducted, and to move a Resolution, and said he was sorry to say that, notwithstanding the complaints made to the Post Office authorities, there had been no improvement in reference to this matter. It was not until that morning that the Post Office authorities had thought proper to issue a circular explaining the reasons upon which they had acted. The Postmaster stated, in his defence, that he (Sir Robert Anstruther) regarded the negotiation as a mere dispute between the Post Office and the Railway Company as to terms; whereas it was, in fact, a question whether the Post Office could pay the sum demanded by the Company with duo regard to the correspondence to be benefited; and be said that the correspondence was very small, and that the £2,000 a year which the Post Office offered was the very utmost they would he justified in paying, the Company having refused to make that alteration in the hours of the trains, which Would alone justify their demand of a higher price. That could hardly be so, for £250 had been offered in order to secure other trains. In answer to this necessity for an alteration of trains he (Sir Robert Anstruther) could only say that be had posted a letter in Cupar, the county town of Fife, at half past eight o'clock in the evening, and it was not delivered in Edinburgh for twenty-lour hours; whereas if the Post Office would only use the one o'clock train a difference of fifteen hours would be secured in the delivery of letters. He could not but think it a very hard case that the time of the House should be wasted in having these questions so frequently discussed, and that notwithstanding their frequent discussion no redress should be obtained. He thought the Return called for by the hon. Member for Hastings (Mr. Waldegrave-Leslie) sufficiently demonstrated the incon- venience suffered in Fife; and he had no doubt his hon. Friend would confirm him in what he had said.

, in seconding the Motion, said, he could fully confirm what had been said by the hon. Baronet as to the inconvenience experienced in the county of Fife. As Member for the county, he had constantly made complaints of the irregularities attending the transmission of letters.

said, that the despatch which was now asked for with reference to the conveyance of letters in Fife had, in the case of the borough which he represented, been granted, and the request with regard to the county which had been so long uncomplied with by the Post Office authorities was, he believed, a very reasonable one.

said, that this matter might easily have been settled out of doors but for the unwillingness which the Post Office authorities displayed to accede to the reasonable request of the inhabitants of Fifeshire. At present letters arriving in Edinburgh at seven in the morning were detained until half past four in the afternoon, before they were sent on, and that letters posted in Fife and reaching Edinburgh the same evening were kept in the Post Office all night and not delivered until the following morning; and great inconvenience was caused to the inhabitants of the county in question, in consequence of a difference between the Post Office authorities and the Railway Company with regard to what was really a trifling sum. He denied the assertion made by the Post Office authorities that the correspondence of Fife was so very small. It happened that the population of the county was over 100,000, and the Fife mails were the largest out of Edinburgh, except those of Glasgow.

said, his remarks would be few, since the interest in the subject was entirely local and not at all interesting to gentlemen not living in that part of the country. The facts were these. There were two mail-trains which run every day from Edinburgh to Fife. The first went early in the morning, and took over the London mail which arrived in Edinburgh the night before—in fact, it took over the whole correspondence which arrived in Edinburgh and Glasgow on the previous evening—and that mail was forwarded to every town in Fifeshire. There was another mail which left Edinburgh at half past four in the afternoon, and took all the morning letters from Edinburgh and Glasgow to Fifeshire, and also took the Fifeshire letters to other places further North. Now, the House knew very well that two mail-trains a day was the ordinary allowance which gentlemen, who lived in the country, were accustomed to expect. But in the case of Fifeshire there was an additional train, which left Edinburgh between nine and ten o'clock in the morning, immediately after the London mail had arrived in Edinburgh, and took the letters brought by this mail to every important town in Fifeshire. From a Return which he had had carefully made out he found that of 8,000 letters which arrived in Edinburgh to be despatched to Fife, no fewer than 6,500 went on without any delay. The whole question, therefore, out of which the complaint of delay had arisen related to the remaining 1,500. It was, therefore, a question whether for the rate of this sixth or seventh of the whole correspondence that was sent to Fife there should be a third mail-train every day. The interim train at nine in the morning, he must explain, was not a mail-train, but was an arrangement made with the Railway Company, under which the 6,500 letters were forwarded. That, then, was the question with regard to the down mails. As to the up mails there were also two. These seem to run satisfactorily, and to carry the mails without complaint, except that it was stated that the up train from Fife in the evening arrived too late for the letters to be delivered in Edinburgh the same night. That, he apprehended, to be a question more for the consideration of Edinburgh than Fife, he-cause it was admitted that the afternoon mail could not be accelerated; and, therefore, the question came to this—whether or not the whole of the correspondence of the other parts of the North to Edinburgh should be delayed for the sake of the com- paratively small portion that came from Fifeshire? He now came to another point. His hon. Friend seemed to think that the Post Office could do as they liked with the Railway Companies—that if the Railway Companies declined to carry on the necessary service all that was to be done was to call upon the Railway Companies to do so, and if they refused, to go to arbitration and claim damages. That was not the law. There was no power of arbitration except in letters sent by the regular mail-trains fixed by the Post Office, where the Railway Companies were compelled to keep particular time. The Act was imperfect in that respect; and all he could say was that he hoped an occasion would arise when the operations of the railways with the Post Office could be put on a more satisfactory footing. With respect to those two trains to which attention had been called, he had taken care that. the Post Office had been instructed to be put in immediate correspondence with the railway to ascertain distinctly on what terms they would give further facilities to the Post Office, both with regard to the intermediate down train, and, if necessary, with regard to an intermediate up train. If the result of the correspondence were not satisfactory, he could only say that he would do the best he could for the purpose of meeting the difficulties that had been complained of.

rose to ask the Government, Whether, having regard to the welfare and comfort of the labouring classes in agricultural districts, it is their intention to increase the number of Money Order Savings Banks, Annuity and Insurance Offices, now established in comparatively so small a proportion of the post towns of the United Kingdom? The noble Lord said, the value of those offices was fully admitted, and his object was to obtain an extension of the system, which had been found to work so well. According to the Postal Guide of April. 1866, there were something like 8,150 post offices in England and Wales, of which 2,000, or about one-fourth, had savings banks attached to them, one-eighth having insurance and annuity offices, and thirty-six being money offices only. In Scotland there were about 1,200 post offices, of which one-third had savings banks, about thirteen having money-order offices only, and, strange to say, although the Scotch people were notoriously provident and industrious, not a single annuity or insurance office was established in the country. In Ireland there were about 1,600 post offices, of which one-third had savings banks and five had money-Order offices only; but not one annuity office existed in Ireland. In the division of the county which he had the honour to represent there were about forty post offices outside of the metropolitan district. The population was scattered and agricultural, but twenty two out of the forty were neither savings banks, annuity, nor money-order offices, and only eighteen of the whole number were savings banks and annuity offices. It was universally admitted that it was desirable the poorer classes should be elevated, and in his opinion one of the best means to that end was the establishment of annuity and insurance offices and savings banks at post offices that provident habits might be encouraged. He was of opinion that those institutions were too few in number, and he trusted that in the absence of the Chancellor of the Exchequer one of the Secretaries to the Treasury would favour him with some information upon the subject; and he also expressed a hope that when the right hon. Gentleman next advocated the rights of the working classes he would consider the prayers of those who lived in the country, as well as of those who lived in the towns.

said, he rose for the purpose of asking the Chief Secretary for Ireland, Whether his attention has been called to the constitution of the Irish Bench, Law and Equity; and whether (considering the advanced age of some of Her Majesty's Judges), in the opinion of the Irish Government, its present condition is satisfactory and conducive to the due administration of justice in Ireland. But before doing so he said it would be necessary to trouble the House with a very brief statement of facts. The magnitude of the evil and a sense of public duty obliged him most reluctantly to call the attention of the House to the present constitution of the Irish Bench. Personalities were always reprehensible, but in the present instance it would not be possible for him to convey the subject to the House without indulging in them to a certain extent. he could assure the House, however, that he would do so with as much delicacy as the disagreeable na- ture of the case would allow. The first case to which he would call the attention of the House was that of the Lord Chief Justice of the Irish Court of Queen's Bench, a gentleman who was once an ornament to his profession, but whose waning intellect and bodily infirmity had rendered him unfit for the high judicial position which he now occupied. He found that as far back as 1856 the attention of the House was called to the infirmities of the Lord Chief Justice by Sir John Shelley, and in order to be accurate on the subject he would, with the permission of the House, read as much of his opening statement as bore upon the case in question. Speaking of Chief Justice Lefroy, Sir John Shelley said—

"He would not go through the Irish Bench, but he would merely allude to three of those venerable men who had arrived at the longest period of life and service. The first was Chief Justice Lefroy. He was born in 1774, and was therefore (ten years ago) 82 years of age. He was called to the bar in 1797, and his infirmities were naturally and necessarily great, and if the Returns which he moved for were granted, it would be found that he was constantly obliged to have a substitute to perform his duty, who had to be paid out of the Consolidated Fund."

The House would therefore see that ten years ago its attention was called to the inefficiency of the Chief Justice; and even in the recent State trials which occurred in Dublin he did not preside; he did not occupy his proper and legitimate position as Chief Justice of the Queen's Bench. He did not wish it to be understood that he found fault with the Government selection, because the two gentlemen who presided on the occasion he referred to were known to do honour to the ermine. He, however, thought it was unfortunate and reprehensible when the Executive had upon particular occasions to appoint special Judges. Out of numerous cases which had come under his notice, he would refer to one only—the case which occurred at Tullamore, King's County. There a man was tried for the murder of Lieutenant Clutterbuck and found guilty; when it was, in the first place, found necessary by the law officers of the court to correct an inaccuracy in the commencement of the Judge's charge—he having stated that the clothes of the murdered man had been found upon the prisoner—though they were never found till after the culprit was hanged—and then, lo and behold, the Lord Chief Justice could not recollect the form of words used in pronouncing sentence of death. To obviate this difficulty, the words were written down for him in a large and plain hand; but then it was found that the Lord Chief Justice could not read them, and the right hon. Gentleman the Attorney General for Ireland had to stand beside his Lordship on the bench and repeat the words to him before he could pass sentence. He would now show the state of public opinion in Ireland, and read a few brief extracts from certain authorities in that country. The first ran thus—

"The sight of one so aged placed upon the bench for the administration of justice is indeed affecting; and, while we pity the aged chief, we condemn the unkindness which conceals from him the feelings of the bar, the suitors, and the public."

The next one was as follows:—

"It is not enough that the Judge should be capable of concentrating his attention during one part of a case, and be capable of following the evidence and the arguments through the remainder; the whole mind and strength of the Judge in full and sustained vigour are due to the public service, and this the public service has long ceased to have from the Chief Justice Both civil and criminal cases are sent to the jury by him without reviewing the evidence, which he cannot remember, and of which he seldom takes a note."

The first extract was from a number of the Irish Times issued during the present year, the political opinions of which were identical with those of the right hon. Gentleman opposite (Mr. Whiteside), the Chief Justice, and his friends; while the other was from the Dublin Evening Post, an organ of the Liberal party in the country. The whole of the Irish press—with two exceptions, if as many—teemed with articles such as those from which he had read extracts. What, however, made more lamentable the inefficiency than if it had been exhibited by a puisne Judge was the circumstance that the weight of the business fell upon the Chief Justice in the after sittings; the records came before him, and there, as upon circuit, the Judge sat unaided. But the consequence of the present state of things was—as nobody knew better than the right hon. Gentleman the Member for the University of Dublin that every stratagem was tried by counsel and attorneys to avoid the Queen's Bench. It was now his duty to advert to another subject—that of the Lord Justice of Appeal. Some years ago the establishment of a Court of Appeal was considered to be necessary. It was a serious thing to take cases to the Upper House of Parliament, both on ac- count of the distance and the expense, and also the poverty of the country; and about ten years ago a Court of Appeal was instituted, which consisted of the Lord Justice of Appeal, who sat conjointly with the Chancellor of the time being. That court was reckoned a very great boon at the time, and it worked well for some period. At length the intellect of the Lord Justice Blackburn gave way, and now the court was virtually a dead letter. As the Chancellor sat in the Court of Appeal, and appeals from Chancery came before him there, it amounted to appealing from the Lord Chancellor to himself. He therefore asked the House if a court which was at one time reckoned so great a boon was, through the incapacity of one individual, to become useless. The hon. Member then read an extract from what he designated to be a leading authority, asserting that

"The scandal of judicial incompetency resulting from declining mental and physical power through extreme old age"

was not confined to the Court of Queen's Bench, seeing that the Lord Justice of Appeal was eighty-four years of age, and that his intellect was "only not altogether gone," and that what was intended to be one of the most valuable tribunals for reviewing the decisions of the Judges had thus become of little use to the country. He acknowledged there was some difficulty in producing provable facts in the case of the Lord Justice Blackburn, because, unlike the Chief Justice of the Queen's Bench, he never sat alone. The hon. Member then quoted another extract from the Irish Times in reference to Lord Justice Blackburn, which stated that his judgments were almost reduced to this form, "for the reasons stated I agree." He had no doubt that in the course of the evening the right hon. Gentleman the Member for the University of Dublin (Mr. Whiteside) would rise and attempt to cast the veil of his eloquence over these receding shadows of a past generation. He would, however, remind the right hon. Gentleman that not even his vigorous eloquence could alter facts, and his large experience must have taught him how difficult it was to convince a jury when a client had no case. Notwithstanding the views which he had expressed, he would ask the right hon. Gentleman to contradict, if he could, this fact—that the notorious incompetence of Chief Justice Lefroy and Lord Justice Blackburn was the common and everyday topic of conversation in the Law Courts and clubs, and at every dinner-table in Dublin. What answer the Chief Secretary for Ireland, on the part of the Government, might give to this important question he did not know; but if, after the statement made by their Chief Law Officer, they refused to take steps to remove those veteran and incompetent Judges from the Irish Bench, the House, he was sure, must agree that it would he a disgrace to the Executive and an insult to the country. In conclusion he begged to ask the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary for Ireland, Whether his attention had been called to the constitution of the Irish Bench, Law and Equity, and whether, considering the advanced age of some of Her Majesty's Judges, in the opinion of the Irish Government its present condition was satisfactory, and conducive to the due administration of justice in Ireland?

Without feeling it my duty to enter into the details to which my hon. Friend has alluded, and without taking and notice of his concluding remarks as to what Her Majesty's Government may think it their duty to do or say on so grave a matter as this, I will at once give the answer which I have to make on the part of the Government to the question which my hon. Friend has put to me. As a general proposition, there can be no doubt that there is an advanced time of life beyond which it can be scarcely within the bounds of possibility that a Judge can continue to fill his exalted station with advantage to Her Majesty's subjects or with dignity to himself. And if it were thought right to lay down any rule upon the subject, and to draw any line of age beyond which a Judge should not be permitted to occupy a seat on the bench, I think we should all agree that the line would be drawn short of the age of ninety years. But with respect to the cases in which my hon. Friend asks me for my opinion, I have this to say:—Her Majesty's Government think that the only constitutional course for them to pursue, if any action should be taken on the matter, would be not the expression of a mere opinion, but the adoption of a graver and much more serious course—namely, that of moving an Address from both Houses of Parliament to the Crown; a duty, or a possible duty, which would not differ in kind, though it would differ in degree, from the duty of any private Member of this House. If facts should be brought to the knowledge of Her Majesty's Government distinctly proving a failure and miscarriage of justice in Ireland, in consequence of the advanced age or failing faculties of any Member of the Bench, Her Majesty's Government would not shrink from that responsibility. But short of the point at which that responsibility may arise, a question of which Her Majesty's Government must judge for themselves, they deem it their duty to abstain from expressing any such general opinion as they are invited by my hon. Friend to give.

I do not rise for the purpose of entering into any details, such as have been mentioned by the hon. Member who brought this subject under the consideration of the House. Of the details which he has given I am necessarily ignorant, and I should be sorry, therefore, to offer any opinion as to the accuracy or inaccuracy of the facts which he has alleged; but I cannot help asking the House to consider the character of the case put by the hon. Member, and, as it seems to me, the very great inconvenience, and I might almost say the great injury to the administration of justice, which must arise from bringing subjects of this kind in this manner under the consideration of the House. Let me ask the House to observe what is the proposition put upon our Notice paper, and which is understood in all parts of Ireland to form the subject of our debate to night. The question put is whether, in the opinion of the Irish Government, regard being had to the advanced age of some of Her Majesty's Judges, the constitution and the present condition of the Irish Bench, law and equity, are satisfactory and conducive to the due administration of justice in Ireland? No names are mentioned, but a general insinuation is conveyed that the state of the Irish Bench, both at common law and equity, is unsatisfactory; and the House is asked to-night to enter into a consideration of the merits or demerits of persons whose names are not even mentioned, and who are not apprised beforehand of the facts to be brought forward which they or their friends in this House will be called upon to meet. What would be thought if some English Member were to put a notice of this kind upon the paper—a notice affecting the Lord Chief Justice, the Keeper of the Great Seal, or some other of the superior Judges of law or equity, and to drag their names before the public without notice and upon mere newspaper paragraphs? ["No!"] Yes, I repeat it, upon newspaper paragraphs, which bear upon their face their own refutation. If there were truth and foundation in what has been stated it ought to be put before the House in the form of a distinct Motion, such as the right hon. Gentleman has referred to, and then, as a matter affecting the due administration of public justice, notice would be taken of the facts by the House. I speak with as great freedom as any one, and free from bias or prejudice upon this question. And, as the right hon. Gentleman has referred to the propriety, in a general point of view, of not having Judges upon the bench at very advanced ages, I will state candidly what my opinion is. I think it would be a question well worthy of being considered and determined in Parliament whether there ought not to be some age beyond which, as a general rule, Judges should not occupy their position on the bench. We have secured—and it is one of the highest ornaments of the Constitution—the perfect independence of our Judges, and we have further secured to them, by one of the wisest expenditures that this House ever agreed to, ample retiring pensions after a proper period of service. It would be well worth while, I think, to make those pensions claimable after a certain limit of age is passed. The right hon. Gentleman mentioned the age of ninety; I should be glad to see seventy-five assigned as the limit, beyond which no Judge should occupy a seat on the bench. I perfectly admit that after that age we have had some very excellent Judges. Providence has been so kind to some men that at seventy-five, at eighty, and long after eighty, benefiting by the great experience which they enjoyed, their natural sagacity became increased, and made them among the brightest ornaments of the Bench. But these are exceptional cases, and, as a rule, I believe the country would benefit by a limit of retirement, while the position of the profession would be improved. But there is another circumstance which operates very strongly with me in saying that I should like to see a general rule established. Observe how extremely invidious the task must always be of bringing before the public or the Legislature the position of a Judge who has remained upon the bench beyond the time when his natural capacity fits him for doing so. The persons naturally most conversant with the failing intellect and strength of the Judge are the persons practising before him; but they are the persons, of all others, with whom it would be a matter of delicacy to make a public complaint or to offer a public defence of the Judge before whom they practice; though I ought, indeed, to make some exceptions from such statements, for after the observations which we heard the other night from the Attorney General for Ireland, I must say the feeling of delicacy does not seem to prevail in the mind of the leader of the Irish Bar. I think, as I have said, that the question of age in public officers filling judicial situations should be made the subject of general enactment, and not of comment or criticism in particular cases. Particular cases have been mentioned to-night, and there is one which I have no hesitation in mentioning, because it reflects the highest credit upon the eminent person to whom I am about to allude. We have in this country also Judges of very advanced years, and I must say that some of them exhibit to this day proofs of the greatest physical and mental ability. One of these, the very eminent and distinguished man who fills the position of Judge of the Admiralty Court, was selected last year by the late Prime Minister as the Judge of all others in this country to whom one of the most important and arduous cases that have arisen of late years should be referred. I mean the case of the Banda and Kirwee booty. And I venture to say, though, owing to absence from the country, I was not a witness of it, the manner in which that case was conducted, and the close attention which he gave to the lengthened arguments which were addressed to him, reflect the highest credit on that learned Judge, and afford the most satisfactory proof of mental and physical ability on his part. At the same time, or nearly at the same time, the eminent Judge of whom I have been speaking was, by the selection of the Government, chosen to act as a member of the Capital Punishment Commission; and any gentleman who served upon that Commission will know how arduous was the undertaking and how great was the attention to the subject which it involved. Now the Lord Justice of the Court of Appeal in Ireland is about the same age as the distinguished person to whom I have referred; and it seems to me rather too much to assume that, because he has reached that age, it is impossible he can fill his position upon the bench properly. The hon. Gentleman stated that the Judge was a dead letter. [Mr. BRYAN: I said the Court was a dead letter.] Well the effect is about the same. I cannot bear personal testimony to what passes in the Court of the Lords Justices in Ireland, but we have constantly brought before the House of Lords appeals from that Court, and so far from there being a common form of judgment, in which Lord Justice Blackburn says he concurs with the Lord Chancellor, the fact is quite otherwise. Not more than two years ago there was a case in which Lord Justice Blackburn differed from one or two of his colleagues, and his opinion was confirmed by the House of Lords, in opposition to that of the other two Judges. The name of the Chief Justice of the Queen's Bench has also been mentioned. I can state from what has fallen under my own observation with regard to that eminent person, that not more than three years ago a great case connected with the salmon fisheries was tried before him in Dublin. A number of exceptions were taken to his ruling. They came to be argued in the Court of Exchequer Chamber in Ireland and the decision of the Judges was this:—Two of the Judges of the Exchequer Chamber agreed with the Lord Chief Justice; all the other Judges differed from him. An appeal was brought to the House of Lords. The English Judges were summoned. They were unanimous, and the Law Lords were unanimous, in favour of the opinion of the Lord Chief Justice of the Queen's Bench in Ireland. I have very recently read in one of the public papers a report of a trial for bigamy in Dublin, and the question arose as to the effect of a man's going through the ceremony of marriage, being a Protestant, before a Roman Catholic priest. The prisoner was convicted in the first instance, but on an appeal to the Court of Exchequer Chamber the majority of the Judges acquitted him. The Lord Chief Justice of the Queen's Bench was among the majority, and I had the pleasure of reading a very elaborate and convincing judgment from his Lordship, in which he seemed to have led his learned brethren by the cogency of his arguments. Therefore it is really a little too much, it would be fatal to the independence of the Judges in any country—I say, moreover, it must be very injurious to the administration of justice and to that respect which we all desire the judicial office should have in the eyes of the public, to bring forward charges of this kind, which, when traced out, seem to rest on no proper grounds, and which are directed against individuals who (however great the wonder, seeing their advanced age) still appear to possess their faculties to the fullest degree. I do not say one word about the trial in question, of which I know nothing. I was very much surprised to hear the Attorney General for Ireland make the statement he did the other night. Far be it from me to question the accuracy of it; but the statement is at least different from that which has been made by some of the jury and counsel who were present on the occasion. They give a very different version of the subject. I venture to say on the general question, however proper it may be for this House to consider whether some universal rule should be applied to the age at which Judges should not continue to fill judicial appointments, it is highly injurious, in a general conversation of this kind, to make charges against individuals as to whom no distinct and specific Motion is made in the House.

Sir, I desire to afford the right hon. Gentleman the Member for the University of Dublin an opportunity of replying in this case; therefore I rise to continue the discussion. However the Motion or question of my hon. Friend the Member for the county Kilkenny may have excited the surprise of the hon. and learned Member for Belfast, in my opinion my hon. Friend has done a great public service in bringing the subject before the House of Commons. I can make every allowance for the reserve under which the Secretary for Ireland is bound to act in reference to a matter of this nature, and I know how difficult it is to bring the Government to the point of asking the interference of Parliament with regard to any one of the Judges of the highest tribunals of the land. But private Members are under no such reserve; and if no private Member could be found to speak the truth boldly on this or a similar question, injury to the public interest would be the necessary result. In the statement made by the hon. and learned Member for Belfast with respect to Chief Justice Lefroy, the hon. and learned Gentleman no doubt relied on what he believed to be the best information. On the general question, I very much agree with the hon. and learned Member for Belfast; and had he not made the suggestion which he has done, it was my intention to have done so. The hon. and learned Member for Belfast expressed the general opinion of the House—certainly of the Irish Members, so far as I know—when he said that there should be some fixed limit beyond which a Judge should not continue to sit on the Bench. This is surely a fitting subject for inquiry; and it may be fairly left to the consideration of a Select Committee of this House to decide, not as to this particular case of Chief Justice Lefroy, but as to the age beyond which Judges should be held incompetent from physical causes to discharge their judicial functions. My hon. Friend the Member for Kilkenny has truly said that the incompetency of the Chief Justice is the subject of conversation at the Bar, in the four Courts, and at private tables in Dublin. It has been, I can truly state, the subject of conversation and comment amongst the profession in Cork, and the mercantile community of that city; and so far from its being limited to the present time, I believe it has been spoken of for the last ten years. And, Sir, if a Judge of the highest tribunal of the country be incompetent, from age and infirmity, or from any cause, to discharge the duties of his office, I ask, is not that one of the very subjects which it is right to bring before the House of Commons. I desire to bring this matter to a test. I would ask the right hon. Gentleman the Member for the University of Dublin to stand up at that table, and declare in the presence of this House, that he believes the Chief Justice thoroughly competent to discharge the onerous and responsible duties of his high office. I ask him, will he pledge himself to such a statement by his professional character in Ireland, and his position in this House? No man knows the facts of the case more fully than he does, and I now challenge him to give a distinct answer to my question. Eight years ago, when Lord Derby was in office, there was an attempt made, as I understand, to remove Chief Justice Lefroy from the Bench, and place another in his stead. I have been told—indeed it has been since then a matter of common gossip—that the Chief Justice would have resigned on that occasion, but that his probable successor was not personally pleasing to him. The Chief Justice had conceived an unwarrantable prejudice against one of the most distinguished members of the Irish bar, who would have adorned that high position by his eloquence, his learning, and his character. The Lord Chief Justice was then eighty-four. Has he improved in mental and physical vigour in 1866, when he is ninety-two years of age? If it were considered right and prudent to replace this venerable Judge in 1856, when he was eighty-four, is it right and prudent to retain him in the same position in 1866, when he is ninety-two? The Bar of Ireland are unanimous on the subject. I do not much care for the statement of Mr. Battersby, which was relied on in the debate in the other House of Parliament. I have not the honour of knowing Mr. Battersby, nor do I know whether there are two Battersbys at the Irish Bar; but I have been assured that one Mr. Battersby has frequently made the incompetence of the Lord Chief Justice of Ireland the subject of free remark and of very lively description. We are asked to respect the Judges on the bench, and to maintain inviolate the independence of our judicial tribunals. Sir, I hold the complete independence of our Judges to be one of the noblest features of the British Constitution, and one which we should most jealously cherish and defend; but is it not a grave public scandal that a Judge should continue on the bench after he has reached an ago when, according to all human calculation, he is necessarily incompetent to the discharge of his judicial functions? There is an authority which may be taken as final and conclusive in this case. Mr. Napier has written a letter with reference to the Chief Justice, which has been quoted in the other House. I only refer to a single sentence in that letter, and I maintain that that single sentence, coming from so eminent a person, forms a complete justification of the course which has been taken by my hon. Friend the Member for Kilkenny. Mr. Napier says—

"It is quite true that the Lord Chief Justice is no longer young or vigorous enough to deal with lengthened or complicated cases."

Let me ask, are the parties litigant to abbreviate and simplify their cases before they can, according to Mr. Napier, hope to have them properly tried before the Chief Justice of the Court of Queen's Bench in Ireland? How, I ask, in the face of such an opinion, will the right hon. Gentleman the Member for the University of Dublin explain or justify the further retention of Chief Justice Lefroy in his present position? I shall give a case exactly in point, to vindicate the accuracy of Mr. Napier's damaging description of the physical and mental capacity of the first Judge of the highest tribunal in Ireland. I do not publicly give the name of my informant, who has freely communicated to me on this subject, but I am quite willing to mention his name in confidence to any gentleman; and I shall only say that he is a rising man at the Irish Bar, and a gentleman of undoubted honour, personally known to me for many years. I do not mention his name publicly, for an obvious reason—Judges ate, after all, but human and fallible as ourselves—and we are fallible enough in all conscience; and a Judge may not be altogether prejudiced in favour of the barrister who has spoken the truth in reference to his fitness or capacity. A long and complicated case came lately—within a few days, or weeks at furthest—before the Chief Justice. It was just one of the cases described by Mr. Napier in his letter. It was that of Megare against Pim, brought by some foreign merchants against a Dublin firm. Fifteen issues were involved, and several thousand pounds were at stake Now, I have been informed, not alone by the gentleman to whom I have referred, but by others, that nothing could exceed the exhibition of incompetency, confusion and imbecility on the part of the Chief Justice. That venerable functionary was wholly unable to instruct the jury, and the jury were utterly bewildered, not only by the complication of the case but by the incompetency of the Judge. Again, on circuit, a short time since, the first witness in a case was under direct examination when the Chief Justice actually began to address the jury as if the case had closed ! Then, as to the wonderful judgment in the celebrated marriage case, on which we are asked to believe the Chief Justice to be in full possession of his faculties; I have been informed, by two barristers, that that judgment was not delivered at all, but that it was sent to one newspaper, and copied from it into the other Dublin newspapers. By those who were in Court on that occasion I am informed that the exhibition of the Chief Justice, so far from being remarkable for mental vigour, was on the contrary one of utter feebleness and confusion. Moreover, on the same day, there was another case—that of the "Queen v. Steins"—in which, as the court were unanimous, it became the duty of the Chief Justice to deliver judgment; but, after mumbling a few words, as if he intended to grapple with the propositions involved in the issue, he stared wildly in hopeless confusion of intellect; then, in a moment or two after, lurched forward, and simply said, "Judgment affirmed." Not another intelligible word was uttered by him in this case—on the day, too, when we are told he had delivered so splendid a judgment in the celebrated bigamy case. Were it necessary, I could at once mention half-a-dozen other cases in proof of the utter breakdown of his mental powers. Then as to the trial of the murder of Lieutenant Clutterbuck. I received this day, from a gentleman in Ireland, a newspaper containing a long vindicatory article in favour of the Chief Justice, in which his entire address to the jury in this grave case is given. Here is this address, consisting of a few sentences, in which there are a few legal platitudes—bad in law, as I have been assured; and the only reference to the evidence in this important case is a mere casual allusion—a statement that it had been proved that the clothes of the murdered man were found on the accused, whereas nothing of the kind had been proved, or had really happened. If the manner in which the venerable Judge has tried this case is the best vindication that can been made for him, then it goes a very little way to prove his continued fitness for his most responsible position. What, indeed, can possibly be expected under the circumstances? The Times has summed up the whole matter in one sentence—"The Chief Justice is ninety years of age." There is a slight error here, for he is really in his ninety-second year. The true state of the matter is what I am about to describe on the authority of several men of the Irish Bar, who are at this moment in the active practice of their profession; and I appeal to the right hon. Gentleman the Member for the University of Dublin whether what I state is not the literal fact. From the time the Chief Justice goes into court until half past twelve or one o'clock, his faculties are marvellously bright; but about that hour nature asserts her supremacy, and the poor feeble old man sinks and droops, and the intellect that was bright and strong a short time before becomes like so much wool; and from that moment he is thoroughly incompetent to grasp the details of a case, or grapple with any question involving minute facts, complicated circumstances, or subtle arguments. The Chief Justice has been described as a venerable ruin, but we do not want venerable ruins on the bench of Justice; venerable ruins are very picturesque, but we like to see them removed from active life. Again, it is said that the Judge displays at times grand flashes of intellect. Aye, but those grand flashes of intellect are merely like the flashes of an expiring lamp before the utter extinction of its light. Sir, it is a melancholy thing to have this question dragged before this House; but the blame of bringing it forward is not due to my hon. Friend, but to those who do not urge this venerable man to withdraw from the bench which for so many years he has adorned and dignified, and seek the retirement which befits so awfully advanced a period of human life—when he is trembling on the very brink of the grave, and so soon to stand in the presence of that greatest of all tribunals. The hon. and learned Member for Belfast said that numbers of cases were brought before the Chief Justice—which statement was made in proof of the efficiency of that Judge. But what is the fact? On the 9th of this month there were seventeen cases in the nisi prius list of the Queen's Bench; and of that number but three—two of them being of a paltry nature—were tried, all the others being withdrawn, because neither the solicitors nor their clients would risk questions affecting property before a Judge whose age and failing powers rendered him incompetent to deal with them successfully. Whatever may be the result of this discussion, I hope the wise suggestion of the hon. and learned Member for Belfast will be taken up by the Government, and that they will have the courage to propose a Select Committee in order to deal with the whole question as it affects the Judges generally. I now conclude by again challenging the right hon. Gentleman the Member for the University of Dublin to declare whether he does not know the opinion of the Irish Bar to be that the Chief Justice ought no longer to remain on the bench—and whether he himself has not expressed that opinion? I have spoken in this painful case, not in the interests of lawyers or parties—for it is one far above the scramble of lawyers for place, or the contentions of parties for the exercise of patronage; but in the name of the public at large, whose dearest interests are involved in the question of the fitness and competency of the Judge who is to try questions of property, of liberty, and of life. I have so spoken to this House, for I feel it to be my duty not to shrink from the statement of the opinions I hold on so grave a matter.

After the answer that has been given on the part of the Government by my right hon. Friend, and after the temperate speech that has been delivered by the hon. and learned Member for Belfast, I hope this question may be allowed to drop. I entirely agree with ray right hon. Friend in the opinion that he has expressed, that it is scarcely possible that a Judge, at the very advanced age of ninety-two, can discharge the onerous duties which necessarily press upon a Judge, and especially on the Chief Judge of one of our Courts of Justice, with that efficiency and vigour of body and mind which characterized him at a former period of his life; but, at the same time, I entirely agree with the hon. and learned Gentleman that it is most undesirable, as long as a Judge is seated on the bench, and administers justice, that his infirmities should be brought before the House in the present irregular manner. My right hon. Friend has declined, on the part of the Government, to express an opinion in answer to the question that has been addressed to us, because the law has pointed out modes in which, if there is any failure in the administration of justice, redress may be obtained. The hon. and learned Gentleman has said, and said truly, that the law secures the independence of the Judges, He also said, with equal truth, that in order to prevent their being induced to remain on the bench longer than it is for the interest of the public they should do, an ample and liberal pension after a certain period is granted. But the law has done more than that. It has pointed out the mode in which, if there is failure in the administration of justice, from whatever cause, affecting any Judge, both Houses of Parliament may address the Crown to remove that Judge from office. I say, therefore, that if the facts are as stated it will be for hon. Gentlemen to consider if they will not adopt that course; but if that is not done the matter ought not to be brought into discussion in this House in an informal way, but ought to be brought forward in a legal and constitutional manner, with a view to redress. I do hope we shall not be asking questions as to alleged facts, and reading extracts from newspapers in regard to the conduct of Judges, but that we shall abstain from doing anything which can lower the dignity of the Bench; and that we shall fearlessly and firmly take that course, if the circumstances should require it, which the law and the Constitution provide. I have only one word more to say. While I fully admit the temperate tone in which the hon. and learned Gentleman (Sir Hugh Cairns) addressed the House, and while I regard his suggestion as a good one, though without binding myself to any precise limit of age at which a Judge ought to be compelled to retire, I must say that he did not speak in the same spirit of fairness with respect to my right hon. Friend the Attorney General for Ireland. On the former occasion to which reference has been made, my right hon. and learned Friend expressed to me his great regret that such a question had been put on the paper, and I know that he did his utmost to induce the hon. Member to withdraw it. [Mr. BRYAN: That is quite true.] The question, however, being put, and involving, as it did, only a question of fact, my right hon. and learned Friend felt bound to state the facts as they had come within his own knowledge. I do not know what other course he could have taken than answering briefly, and without expressing any opinion, as to a fact within his personal cognizance. I am sure the hon. and learned Gentleman opposite is the last man to wish to do an injustice to my learned Friend, who I know felt himself bound, with great reluctance, to answer a question which he regretted had been put.

The hon. Gentleman who asked this question, and the hon. Member for Cork having pointedly appealed to me, I feel bound to state my view of the matter. I could not have thought it possible that any one could be found to repeat again the story with respect to the trial of Lieutenant Clutterbuck's murderer. It appears that the relatives of the unfortunate gentleman who were present at the trial have testified that justice was administered on that occasion with the strictest impartiality. I will read one of these testimonies—

I only rise to say one word with respect to the Motion of the hon. Member. There is no doubt that when he first proposed to offer his Motion to the House he intended only to refer, as far as I can gather, to the Lord Chief Justice; but he has now seen fit, it appears, to add the name of the Lord Justice of Appeal. It is in his name that I wish to say one or two words bearing upon the question. I concur with the right hon. Gentleman who has said it would be better if definite cases were fixed upon in which it could be shown that the Lord Justice of Appeal had in any way failed to do his duty. That should be made a substantive Motion for an Address to the Crown, in order that the matter might be fully considered; and if anything was brought home to the Judge in question, he would then be properly removed from discharging the duties of his office. The hon. Member for Cork said he could produce numberless instances of a failure of justice on the part of the Lord Chief Justice and of the Lord Justice of Appeal. I am surprised—

I rise to explain.

I will let him explain afterwards.

I must explain. I rise to a point of order.

The case must be decided in accordance with the rules of the House and of debate. The right hon. Baronet is in possession of the House. If he chooses to give way, he can do so; otherwise the hon. Member must reserve his explanation until the right hon. Baronet resumes his seat.

I think the rules of the House conform to the manner of my proceeding. The hon. Member can rise when I sit down, and correct any statement which I may make; but he has no right whatever to interrupt me while I am speaking. And the House will bear with me when I express my opinion upon what he has just submitted for our consideration. He said that, according to the gossip of eight years ago, the Lord Chief Justice would have withdrawn from the Bench if his successor had been agreeable to him. It is too bad for an hon. Member representing an important constituency such as Cork—and he takes good care to tell us every time he speaks that he represents the important constituency of Cork—I say it is too bad of him to get up and make a statement of that kind which he knows is perfectly unfounded.

I rise to order, and I claim your protection, Sir. I wish to know whether any Gentleman in this House is allowed to say of another Gentleman that he has stated that which he knows to be unfounded? If such a statement were made outside of the House a very un-Parliamentary reply would be made to it.

The right hon. Baronet must be aware that to assert that an hon. Gentleman makes a statement which he knows to be unfounded is going beyond the Parliamentary limits of debate.

I must ask the right hon. Baronet, Sir, to retract that assertion.

The hon. Member stated, and it must be within the knowledge of the House, that he reported the gossip of eight years ago. That statement I will not retract.

The right hon. Baronet has transgressed the rules of debate, and he is called upon to explain or withdraw the statement.

I want to know what statement I am asked to withdraw?

The right hon. Baronet has stated that the hon. Member has made a statement which he knew to be incorrect [An hon. MEMBER: "Unfounded"]; which he knew to be unfounded; so saying, he passed the authorized limits of debate.

Perhaps I may be allowed to say that what I said was this:—The hon. Member said, repeating the gossip of eight years ago, that the Lord Chief Justice would have withdrawn from the bench if his successor had then been agreeable to him. I say that is a statement which is wholly unfounded; and I defy the hon. Member to prove that statement.

My right hon. Friend will, I am sure, after the intimation which has fallen from the Chair, retract the statement which he made. He surely did not intend to impute that the hon. Member made a speech which he knew to be unfounded.

I beg respect-folly to say that I must decline to withdraw what I then said.

The right hon. Baronet should understand that the hon. Member for Cork does not object to the assertion that the statement was unfounded, but that the right hon. Baronet had said that the hon. Member had made a statement which he knew to be unfounded. That is the representation, and that is the point which I pronounce to be un-parliamentary.

then said: The right hon. Baronet has now been called upon by the House to apologize after having made a statement which passes the proper limits of debate. The right hon. Baronet has heard what the statement is. The right hon. Baronet has said that the hon. Member for Cork has made a statement which he knew to be unfounded. That statement having been objected to and a point of order raised, I must, in the discharge of my duty, call upon the right hon. Baronet to make an apology, or retract the words which are objected to.

The intimate knowledge I have of my right hon. Friend will not permit me to doubt for a moment that he will show full deference to that expression of opinion from the Chair; but perhaps I may be permitted to say that I am afraid my right hon. Friend does not understand the point in issue. He is perfectly at liberty to contradict the statement made by the hon. Member for Cork, but he is not at liberty, according to the ordinary rules of debate, to impute to the hon. Gentleman that he wilfully made a statement which he knew to be untrue.

I think I may be able to point out how the difficulty has arisen.

The right hon. Gentleman may speak to the Question of Order.

The hon. Member for Cork, as I took it, repeated certain stories current among professional persons, some retail talk, in fact; and I think the right hon. Baronet has fallen into the mistake of supposing that the hon. Member had mentioned those stories as if they were within his personal knowledge.

That is exactly the point. I am quite willing to admit that I meant to infer that the gossip which he of course had listened to eight years ago was unfounded. I do not mean to say that the hon. Member was making what he believed to be an unfounded statement. I said that of the gossip of eight years ago. [A laugh.] Hon. Gentlemen may laugh; but that is really what I said. I have often had occasion to explain what I may have said. I believe the hon. Gentleman has given credit to gossip which was wholly unfounded, and which ought never to have left any impression on his mind. I am sorry I rose to speak at all. It is only out of personal regard to the Lord Justice of Appeal that I desired to say one word on the subject. There are plenty of persons to defend the Lord Chief Justice; and you must permit me to say that during my long residence in Ireland I never heard the least complaint against the Lord Justice of Appeal, or any statement that he had in any way failed to transact the duties of his office, which he has always performed in a manner satisfactory to the public. I have been confirmed in this by many with whom I have spoken upon the subject. I merely wish to add that I heard with very great pleasure the remarks of the Home Secretary, and I do entirely concur with him that it is most improper to adopt the course which has been pursued by the hon. Member for Kilkenny and the hon. Member for Cork. [Mr. MAGUIRE: Not improper.] But in my opinion it is so. If the hon. Member by interrupting me thinks he puts me to the least inconvenience he vastly overrates his own importance, and undervalues my indifference to him. I said what I felt, and I repeat the statement, that a more improper and more unfair charge was never urged than that which has been brought forward in this House to-night in an indirect manner by the hon. Member for Kilkenny.

assured the House that nothing but a sense of duty would have induced him to say a word upon the subject under discussion. His right hon. Friend the Attorney General for Ireland was placed in a painful position by having to answer a question addressed to him by the hon. Member for Kilkenny as to matters of fact; and he asked the House what opinion it would form of any Member who, on being asked a question as to certain matters which occurred in his presence, either refused to answer or gave a false answer to the question. All that his right hon. Friend did was to make a reply according to his personal knowledge to a question which, as his right hon. Friend the Home Secretary said, the Attorney General was most anxious should not be put, and had, in fact, used every exertion to get withdrawn. Now, the right hon. Gentleman the Member for the University of Dublin (Mr. Whiteside) had attempted to cast doubt upon the accuracy of what the Attorney General for Ireland stated upon that occasion, and he would call the attention of the House to the unreasonable manner in which that answer had been dealt with. The question of the hon. Member for Kilkenny was addressed entirely to what took place during the passing of a sentence upon an unfortunate man who was afterwards executed for murder. The points were—Was the sentence written out? Was the Chief Justice unable to read what was written? Had some persons to read to the Chief Justice the legal words of the sentence so that he might pronounce it correctly? Well, the Attorney General for Ireland replied in the affirmative to the three questions, observing that what was implied in them was perfectly correct. Having himself been present at the trial, and having been an eyewitness of all that occurred on that painful occasion, he was prepared to corroborate every word of the reply of his right hon. Friend. When the hon. and learned Member for Belfast attributed, and wrongly attributed, to his right hon. Friend a want of delicacy in this matter, he could not know the person of whom he was speaking. How could the Attorney General be accused of want of delicacy when he simply gave answers in that House to a question—answers which were most reluctantly given? He confined himself strictly to the answer, saying nothing as to the competency or incompetency of the Chief Justice. Then, how had the attempt been made to cast doubt upon the accuracy of the reply of the Attorney General. The aspersion came very ill from the right hon. Gentleman the Member for the University of Dublin, who, when reading from a letter published in the Dublin Daily Express, signed by one of the jury, omitted a most material part of it.

I read that letter to explain what took place at the trial—not to contradict the statement of the Attorney General for Ireland.

said, that if that was the object of the right hon. Gentleman he did not avow it. He appealed to the House as to whether its impression was not that the letter was read to cast doubt on the observations of the Attorney General for Ireland. Now, the sentence to which he referred ass having been omitted by the right hon. Gentleman was as follows:—"Not having remained to hear the sentence, I do not know what may have occurred." This fact placed the right hon. Gentleman the Member for the University of Dublin in a very extraordinary position. He had assailed the honour of the Attorney General by reading a letter written by a gentleman who was not present during the passing of the sentence, and had suppressed this fact, although the remarks of the Attorney General were confined to what passed while the sentence was being pronounced.

said, amid loud cries of "Order"—I read the letter of Mr. Boyle, and not the letter of the juror on this point.

said, that explanation would not do. He was surprised at the interference of his right hon. Friend in this debate, especially after the right hon. Gentleman the Secretary for the Home Department had addressed the House. When he was reading that letter of the juror, in justice to the Attorney General he ought to have said, "This does not affect what the right hon. Gentleman has said." Why was the material fact that the juror did not hear the sentence pronounced kept hack? The other letter did not in the smallest degree impugn what his right hon. Friend had said, simply admitting that something strange took place, and observing on the want of light in the Court House. As to the competency or incompetency of the Lord Chief Justice, he would not, for obvious reasons, give any opinion. He believed, however, that the House would come to the conclusion that the Attorney General for Ireland had done his duty in answering the questions put to him, and that he had discharged that duty in accordance with truth and the facts of the case.

said, that he would abstain from offering any opinion as to the competency or the incompetency of the Lord Chief Justice or of the Lord Justice of Appeal, because on that subject he knew nothing but the statements which had been made in course of the debate, and it appeared to him that they were very conflicting and could not be relied upon. The incapacity of the Lord Chief Justice of Ireland to pass sentence of death upon a prisoner, and the fact that that sentence had been reduced to writing and placed before him, had been made the subject of serious discussion. As to the circumstance of writing out the sentence for a Judge, that was a practice which he had frequently seen followed by various Judges. To the best of his knowledge, at the Old Bailey, where it was probable that more sentences of death were passed than in any other court in the kingdom, the sentence of death was invariably written out by an officer of the court, and placed before the Judge. He saw the late Chief Justice Tindal read the sentence he passed in the celebrated case of Courvoisier. His chief object in rising, however, was to state that if discussions of this sort were encouraged in that House the dignity of the judicial character—which was essential to the due administration of justice—would be most seriously impaired, perhaps, in some instances, absolutely destroyed. Expressions in regard to the Lord Chief Justice of Ireland had been used in the course of the debate which had given him great pain; they ought not to have been used with regard to a person in his high position, especially after he had served his country so many years. Another reason why such questions should not be raised in that House was that they could not but assume a party character. Whenever a point was made against the Chief Justice there were cheers from the Ministerial side of the House; and when anything was said in his favour cheers came from the other side of the House. Such questions, as he had said, would inevitably assume a party character; for the Government would support the Judges they appointed, while the Members on the left of the Speaker would probably take an opposite course. He could not approve of the suggestion of his right hon. Friend the Member for Belfast, that a limit of age should be set, on arriving at which Judges should resign, for if that had been the rule in this country, it would have deprived the Bench of many of its best and most shining occupants. They must all remember the case of Lord Chancellor Campbell, who, from being Chief Justice of the Court of Queen's Bench, passed at the age of eighty to the Court of Chancery; and, although never previously conversant with the practice of Courts of Equity, he there supported the high reputation which he had previously acquired. It was a mistake to suppose that, as in other occupations, men through old age became incompetent for the judicial office. To some extent that might he the case, hut increased experience gave Judges a facility in the execution of their work which they had not acquired in the same degree when younger and more vigorous. Like old wine, the flavour improved, though the strength might diminish. He would remind the House that Lord Mansfield retained the office of Chief Justice of England till long after he had passed his eightieth year—and he maintained to the very last his reputation as probably the greatest Judge that ever adorned the Bench in this country. If a line were drawn beyond which Judges should be incapable of acting, it would be necessary to go a step further, and interfere with the privileges of the other House of Parliament; for there would be an obvious inconsistency in compelling the retirement of a Chief Justice of the Queen's Bench, who, as a Law Lord, might still sit and review the decisions of his successors in the Court below, and of all the other Judges. To get over the difficulty they must he prepared to go the full length of declaring that after a certain age men should cease to exercise their privileges as a Peer. He might refer to the case of the United States, where the Judges were compelled by law after a certain age to retire. Under the operation of that law Chancellor Kent was compelled to resign the judicial office, and it was after he was thus superannuated and declared incapable of sitting in a Court of Justice that he wrote those Commentaries which were not only of the highest authority in his own country, but were regarded with admiration throughout the civilized world. Then look at the case of Lord St. Leonards. His Lordship was about the age at which it was suggested that retirement should be enforced, and yet he sat regularly to hear appeals in the highest court of the realm, and those who were in the habit of practising before him would support the assertion that the noble Lord was as competent to discharge those duties as he had ever been, or as any one could be. It was true that Lord Lyndhurst did not at a late period of his life hold the office of Judge; but he heard appeals in the House of Lords, and frequently sat in the Privy Council, where his ability and capacity were conspicuous to all. A line drawn sharply at seventy or seventy-five would deprive the country of the services of men like these. The Judges who retained their offices till the latest period were generally the most eminent. Ordinary men soon found their work fatiguing, and were glad to retire as soon as they decently could on their otium cum dignitate. But eminent men, men of genius, talent, and learning, went on till the last, and frequently died in harness. Lord Tenterden, it was known, did so—he died while trying a case in the Central Criminal Court. Or, take the case of Dr. Lushington, one of the greatest civilians this country had known since the days of Lord Stowell; he was as competent for his duties at that moment as he was years ago; but under the arbitrary rule proposed to be laid down he would be compelled to resign his office, and the country would be deprived of his services. Increased interest and importance attached, he believed, to the rulings of veteran Judges. He could give a further instance of his own knowledge to show the impossibility of drawing the line. When he was abroad in very early life, there was a Judge who held in Savoy an office, that of President of the Senate, corresponding to the post of Lord Chief Justice; and after he had passed the age of 100 he was still looked up to as an honour to the law, and the greatest Judge living at the time. He had no doubt that cases of inconvenience would at times arise from having aged Judges on the Bench, hut these were exceptions, and a rule of enforced retirement would be a greater evil still. When a Judge was incapacitated from age or infirmity the proper course for persons who were aware of that incapacity, and especially for those who had been injured by a failure of justice, was to lay the matter in a formal businesslike way before the Executive, and leave it to them to apply the remedy which the Constitution prescribed.

said, he should feel unworthy of the profession to which he belonged, and of the honour of the personal and professional acquaintance of the two great men whose names had been introduced into that discussion, if he remained altogether silent when attacks were being made upon them. It was melancholy that the fame and character of two such men should be made the sport and plaything of individuals in that House, whether for party or other purposes. These charges had been brought forward on lax and miserable evidence—such, for instance, as the conversation of dinner tables, of clubs, of the highway, or the contents of newspaper paragraphs. But to his mind it was still more painful that the two Law Officers of the Crown, representing the honour and dignity of the profession, had felt it necessary to offer themselves as witnesses. The Attorney General, he thought, should have delegated to another the task of answering the question addressed to him; and if compelled to answer it himself, he ought to have done so not in curt and general terms, but to have gone into a detail of the facts, and not allowed it to be inferred that the charge of incapacity implied in this miser able transaction was substantially correct. The charge originally brought forward, he must say, appeared to be one of the most paltry matters that ever occupied the attention of Parliament. He (Mr. George) had had the honour of being Crown Prosecutor for a number of years, and he knew that it was the uniform practice for the Clerk of the Crown to have printed or written forms of oaths to be administered to witnesses of different religious persuasions, and of the sentence of death. Any one who had heard sentence of death pronounced in a case of murder knew that it was a long and complicated series of sentences—the omission of any one of which would invalidate the sentence—not only indicating with great minuteness where the criminal was to be executed, but directing that he should be taken back to gaol, pointing out the time and place of the execution, and also, in a subsequent part, stating that the body of the prisoner was to be buried within the precincts of the gaol. Why, no Judge who ever sat on the bench, whether old or young, would venture to pronounce from his own recollection a long string of formal phrases, each of which was essential to the validity of the sentence, but would take them from some written document. And if, in that case, the paper had in the ordinary course been laid before the Lord Chief Justice, it would have been read from end to end; but from the accidental circumstance that the day for the execution had to be fixed, a point of law having been raised at the trial, and it being doubtful when the Judges could meet to determine it in the Court of Criminal Appeal, a discussion arose between the Judge and the officer of the Court as to the date that should be filled in. From that accidental delay there might have been a momentary hesitation as to the delivery of the rest of the sentence; but he understood from parties who stated that they had it from the Clerk of the Crown himself, that in reading the latter part of the sentence directing that the body of the prisoner should be "buried" within the precincts of the gaol, the Judge inadver- tently, in the dusk of the evening, used the word "interred" instead of "buried." If that was the fact, the Attorney General for Ireland, instead of saying that the charges brought forward in reference to that trial were substantially correct, and thereby inferentially giving the sanction of his high position to many things which he probably did not intend to sanction, would have done better if he had distinctly stated what his own recollection was as to the simple facts that had occurred, without offering any expression of opinion. Then the House would have been able to judge whether a transaction which had been magnified from a miserable molehill to a mountain ought ever to have been brought before it. For himself, he had known Judges of great eminence, but far younger than the Lord Chief Justice of Ireland, make similar slight mistakes in delivering a sentence; but he had never heard that such a trivial error, especially where it had been corrected on the instant, was afterwards made the ground of an impeachment. The Solicitor General for Ireland had rather dexterously sought to divert the war from the one side to the other in dealing with what fell from the right hon. Member for Dublin University. The letter which had been read from one of the jury did not refer in the slightest degree to the incident at the passing of the sentence. It recapitulated what took place in the presence of an intelligent juror, as the writer evidently was, stating his general opinion of the conduct of the Judge throughout the case; but it did not pretend to go into any details as to a trivial matter which possibly no human being in the court but the Clerk to the Crown, the Attorney General, and the Lord Chief Justice observed. One highly respectable barrister, Mr. Battersby, had stated to himself that though he sat as near to the Bench as he could without being upon it, he saw nothing of the incident, nor did anything occur at that time to attract his attention or to lead him to suppose that anything unusual had taken place. It was absurd to suppose that the reputation of the great and eminent man who presided with such ability at that trial, and whose judgment had been unanimously confirmed by the Court of Appeal, would be affected by a miserable story of that kind, and it was much to be regretted that so trivial a matter had ever been brought under the notice of Parliament.

said, that there was only one matter on which he wished to trouble the House. The hon. Member for Cork had asked who Mr. Batters by was, and he thought it right to state that he was a Queen's Counsel of some twenty years' standing; that he was senior Crown Prosecutor on the circuit referred to, and that in the absence of the Attorney or Solicitor General it would have been Mr. Batters by's duty to conduct the prosecution in question. Unless he were an eminent member of the Bar, that gentleman would not find himself in the position of having to conduct the Crown prosecutions on that circuit. As the Solicitor General had referred to his own personal observation in connection with that case, it was only fair that the House should again hear Mr. Battersby's letter read. He had himself received a letter from Mr. Battersby, dated May 9, in which he said—

"It seems to me that the Attorney General and I differ in our recollection of the occurrence at Tullamore. Mine remains unaltered."

Now, in his previous letter of the 2nd of May, Mr. Battersby said—

"I have spoken to the Deputy Clerk of the Crown of the King's County, and from what he says, and my own recollection, the occurrence at the assizes was thus:—The Deputy Clerk of the Crown always has in a book before him entries of the different forms of oath and of the form of sentence in capital cases, (fee, and from the first circuit the Chief Justice went to the present day, whenever a prisoner was to be sentenced to death a copy of the formal words of the sentence, with a blank for the day of execution, was invariably placed before the Judge on the Bench. In the case in question, during the address of the Chief Justice to the prisoner, it occurred to the Judge when he approached that part where the day of execution is named, that, in consequence of a point being saved for the Court of Appeal, it became necessary, instead of the usual time, to fix a day after the Dublin Commission, which was then close at hand, and sufficiently remote to enable the other Judges to attend in the Court of Appeal, and although he had previously determined on the day, he had not any memorandum of it, and was obliged to refer to an almanack, which occasioned some delay. I have no note of the trial, and nothing occurred at the time to attract my attention to any defect in the conduct of it so as to fix it on my mind."

He had only one other observation to make. He must express his regret that this matter had not ended with the communications made to the House by the Home Secretary and the Chief Secretary for Ireland. The Chief Secretary gave a reply which was becoming to his office to the question that was put to him. Discussions on these personal matters were always distasteful. In the year 1834, when the case of Mr. Baron Smith was brought before Parliament, the late Sir Robert Peel said—

"He denied the wisdom, the prudence, the justice of arraigning a Judge unless upon some charge of personal corruption, of gross and grievous neglect of duty, warranting his removal from the Bench."—[3 Hansard, xxi. 744.]

In which observations he most fully concurred.

rose to ask the Home Secretary, Whether Her Majesty's Government contemplate taking any step to afford compensation to the owners of cattle slaughtered by order of local inspectors, in the time which intervened between the passing of the Cattle Contagious Diseases Act (the 20th February, 1866) and the constituting of the local authority in the district where such slaughter took place? He said: I wish to call the attention of the Home Secretary to this subject, which is chiefly of interest to the county I represent. According to the Act, the local authorities were to be constituted within ten days from its passing. That time was ample for most of the counties; but in the county of Perth, owing to the lamentable death of the late lord-lieutenant, a considerable delay took place, and the local authorities, instead of being constituted within ten days, were not appointed for a whole month. The Act became law on the 20th February, but up to the 20th March there were no local authorities in Perthshire. I do not impute any blame in this delay to Her Majesty's Government or to the noble Lord who is now the lord-lieutenant. But the circumstance was productive of great hardship and inconvenience to the county, especially because the disease was raging with great severity during that month. The grievance showed itself in various and even opposite forms. Some farmers complained that their cattle had been slaughtered by inspectors acting under Privy Council orders, and that therefore they could not obtain compensation. Others complained that their cattle which were infected with the disease, and which they were willing to have slaughtered, could not be put to death because the inspectors did not think they had power to give orders to that effect. A farmer in the immediate neighbourhood of Perth wrote to me to say that in this way he had lost fifteen head of cattle. Some weeks ago he applied to a local authority to know if he could have compensation, and the answer he received was that the slaughter took place before the constitution of that Board, and that therefore compensation could not be given. He then applied to the Privy Council, and received from the Privy Council Office a letter to the effect that he was not entitled to compensation unless the slaughter of the animals took place under the authority of an Act of Parliament or an Order in Council; but if he had any reason to believe that his animals had been slaughtered in a way not justified by law, then he might obtain redress, the inspector being liable. I think the House will see that that reply, when put into ordinary language, meant that there was no redress at all for that gentleman. I think the right hon. Baronet will hardly say that it would be a fair course to point out to his judgment that he must either go to law with the Lord President of the Council or with his local administrator, both of them important public functionaries, and efficient public servants. In the particular district to which I have alluded, a bold inspector, acting under the Privy Council Orders, used the knife with vigour when clothed with the powers of the Privy Council; but in another district in the county where there was a more cautious inspector, he positively refused to use the knife at all. The consequence is that I have received a letter from a gentleman in the neighbourhood, who complains that one of his tenants lost twenty-one cattle between the 28th February and the 28th March—that those animals all died of disease, and that the local inspector is ready to swear that he would have put them all to death had he considered that he had the power to do so. One man, therefore, complains that he has not received the compensation which he ought to have received for the slaughter, and another complains that in consequence of his animals not having been slaughtered by an inspector, he is deprived of compensation, while those of his neighbours on whose farms the disease broke out at a later period have since obtained compensation from the local authorities. I hope the right hon. Gentleman will see that these are cases of hardship such as to justify me in bringing them under his attention. I do not, of course, expect that he will give any decided answer now, but I hope that he will take the matter into his consideration. It must be remembered that these grievances have happened in consequence of the failure in the legislation of this House to make proper provision for the interregnum which was sure to occur between the powers conferred by the Privy Council and the powers conferred by the Act of Parliament. Considering the great haste and pressure under which the Act was passed, the wonder is, not that there were oversights and blunders, but that they were not more numerous. I trust the right hon. Baronet will see that the cases are cases of real hardship, and that he will give them full and fair consideration.

In a very few words allow me to say that the facts of the case have not been brought under my notice until I heard the statement of the hon. Baronet, and I was not aware that any application had been made to the Council on the subject. I apprehend that the answer sent to the application from the Council must have been merely a statement as to what the ease was. If the hon. Baronet will furnish me with the facts of the case, I will bring it under the notice of the Council with the view of seeing if anything can be done in what appears to be a very exceptional case. I see that there is an interval between the date of the warrant and the date upon which the local inspector entered upon his duties.

That arose in consequence of his having to take the oath.

I will look into the matter, with a view, if possible, of finding a remedy.

rose to call the attention of the House to the official notification and address of Consul Meadows at Newchang to the foreign community, dated the 4th of December, 1865, respecting the danger to life and property from the proximity of the rebels; also to the official notification and address of Consul Medhurst, of Hankow, to the foreign community, dated 21st of January, 1866, to devise measures against an expected attack from a body of revolted Imperial troops, and the advance of the Nienfee rebels. He had on the 12th of April called the attention of the Under Secretary for Foreign Affairs to the official circular of Consul Meadows at New-chang, on which occasion his hon. Friend told him Consul Meadows had been very much alarmed at the prospect of an attack on the part of some rebels, but the Government had no ground for thinking that any attack on Newchang had taken place, or was likely to take place. The European Consuls and their communities at Newchang had, however, very serious grounds for believing that their lives and property were in danger, for in a circular, dated the 4th of December, 1865, addressed to the community at Newchang, Consul Meadows used the following language:—

"The undersigned begs to inform the foreign community of this port, that the commandant of the district called upon him yesterday and made a communication to the following effect: 'A body of upwards of 1,000 robbers or rebels has for some months past infested the north-eastern portion of this province, and has there inflicted a series of severe defeats on the Imperial forces sent out against them. Recently they have taken the city of Hong Kong (the first capital of the Tartars in China), on which occasion the chief civilian and second military officers of the city, with a number of the soldiers were slain. Afterwards a detached body, about 300 strong, entered the city of Fungkwang, about 150 miles to the east of this port, and this body has since advanced in this direction, being six days ago at a place about 100 miles off.'"

At a meeting consequent upon this circular Consul Meadows said, such was the unprotected state of the place, and so great were the perils to which the European community was exposed, that it was necessary to consult upon the measures of defence necessary to be taken. The meeting was attended by various Consuls and the foreign community, and Mr. Meadows, as senior Consul, took the chair. He said that there were no means of defending Newchang, and that a body of 300 mounted men who were lurking in the neighbourhood might at any time make a raid upon the place, and destroy the property of the merchants as well as of the natives, apart from the violence that might be offered to individuals. That was not a matter to be considered lightly by his hon. Friend (Mr. Layard), nor could it be considered lightly by the present Tartar Emperor, for the ancestral tombs of his family were in the hands of the rebels. With respect to the great commercial entrepÔt of Hankow, the hon. and gallant Gentleman read a statement to show the threatening nature of the circumstances under which Consul Medhurst officially called upon the community to meet in order to take measures for their own defence. It appeared that a force of 8,000 revolted Tartar troops and some 30,000 or 40,000 robbers called Nienfei were surrounding the city on all sides, de- vastating the country and creating the greatest alarm among the inhabitants. The meeting which took place was attended by both the French and English Consuls. His object in reading the statement was to prove that the two Consuls, instead of being pusillanimous, as was necessarily implied by the ridicule thrown on the affair by his hon. Friend, were men of judgment and sound discretion and had done their duty. When he called the attention of the Under Secretary to the matter his hon. Friend said—

"With respect to the attack on Hankow, he had to state that he had no reason to believe that that city had been threatened by a large rebel force. It seemed that a considerable number of peasantry took refuge there and in the neighbourhood, that the Consul went out to see what was the matter, but that, instead of 80,000 rebels, he found eight men on horseback, armed with spears and bags, that shots were fired at them, and that they thereupon ran away, leaving behind them the bags, which were found to contain eight women."

His hon. Friend was not now in his place; if he had been, he would have commented in just terms upon what he said on that occasion. He was sorry his hon. Friend had not shown better taste and feeling than to raise a laugh in the House by stating that the danger which had alarmed Consul Medhurst resolved itself into eight robbers carrying off eight women in bags at their saddle-bows—not a matter for laughter to the parents or husbands of these poor females. In order to show the gravity of the case, the hon. and gallant Gentleman read a long extract from the official circular of Consul Medhurst and the French Consul Dabry, dated the 21st of January, 1866; also from the Hankow Times, which stated that the surrounding country had been devastated, and the consequence was a large influx of the population into Hankow, where they received shelter; that subscriptions were raised in their behalf, and relief was administered as far as practicable. He had reason to believe that similar danger impended over that great commercial emporium up to the time of the latest accounts, and that the Imperial Government was incompetent to protect the place. What was, therefore, to be done? Were we or were we not to make such arrangements as would give confidence to our merchants for the security of their lives and property and the lives of their wives and children? Copies of the documents he had quoted ought to be in the Foreign Office, which would con- firm what he had stated, but his hon. Friend he supposed would say that they had not been received. He wished, by calling attention to the matter, to show that our consuls, instead of having exposed themselves to ridicule for their just alarms, were entitled to praise, and to urge that measures ought to be adopted to insure security to the foreign communities at Newchang and Hankow.

said, he would beg to ask the Secretary of State for War, Whether a Committee to inquire into the present system of Musketry Instruction is not sitting; whether any notice of such Committee has been given, enabling those desirous of giving evidence to do so; whether General Hay is a Member of the said Committee; and whether the attention of the Secretary of State for War has been called to a letter written by General Hay to The Times, on April 7th, relating to the discussion which took place in the House of Commons upon the subject of Musketry Instruction? The question had been upon the paper for a week, and had been answered by what had appeared in print, so that he might assume that a Committee was sitting, that no public notice had been given of the fact, and that General Hay, the commandant of a school of musketry, was a member of the Committee. He did not wish to refer to the letter in The Times to complain of the unusual warmth which General Hay had exhibited, nor of the motives, attributed to himself. The noble Lord the Member for Haddingtonshire (Lord Elcho), could have no reason to complain of General Hay stating that the noble Lord proved himself "a very indifferent rifle shot" at Hythe, when he was a good shot before, and continued to be one still. The real facts of the case were, he believed, that the process of instruction, as at present carried on, was extremely annoying to the army at large. As the letter of the gallant General appeared a month after a discussion in that House, it might be supposed to contain his deliberate opinion, which was that the discussion in the House was all nonsense; and as the General defended the present system, it might be inferred that he thought it admirable and incapable of improvement. In bringing the matter before the House his object was to get the original popular system restored, because it was less ex-pensive and quite as efficient. An impression prevailed out of doors that General Hay was put upon the Committee, because he was the only practised person qualified to give an opinion on the question. The history of musketry instruction in the army began with the Committee of 1851 on small arms, which introduced the Minié rifle. A member of that Committee was Captain Lane Pox, who thought it strange that there was no system of teaching the soldier to use a weapon of precision; at his own expense he spent several months on the Continent, visited the schools of musketry at Vincennes, in the camp of Belgium, and at Turin, collected the codes of instruction in the foreign services, translated them, compiled a system of musketry, and laid it before Lord Hardinge, who approved it and expressed his regret that its author, being only a captain, was not high enough in standing to be placed at the head of the projected school of musketry. Some difficulty was found in obtaining any one to take that position, which was ultimately accepted by General Hay, Captain Fox being requested to act as a sort of assistant to launch the system. At first the system was popular with both officers and men. The officers clubbed together to give a few prizes, and the present Government system of giving prizes was an admirable one. But, step by step, vexatious orders had been introduced until the system had become extremely unpopular. As we were upon the eve of arming our troops with the breech-loading rifle, some modification in the system would be rendered necessary; and that offered a fitting opportunity for the reconsideration of the whole system. He did not wish to say anything disrespectful of General Hay, but he must say that he thought that a full and impartial inquiry would hardly be made by a Committee, as a member of which General Hay sat in judgment upon his own system. Whilst concurring to a great extent with the hon. and gallant General the Member for Huntingdonshire (General Peel) as to the inconvenience of discussing military questions in that House, he confessed he did not know where else such a question as this could be raised with the hope of attaining a beneficial result. The fact that the noble Lord the Secretary of State for War previously regarded his statement about General Hay as a joke, showed how essential it was that attention should be directed to such matters. In this case he hoped his joke would prove a practical one; that it would attract to the subject the attention it deserved, and that the result would be the restoration of a popular system of instruction, which would save the country a large sum annually.

vindicated his friend General Hay, who, if he had not originated the present system of musketry, had at all events brought it to perfection. He, however, agreed that, if the subject were to be investigated, it ought to be by practical men, and not by men who of necessity could know nothing about it. Of the members of the Commission, General Hay alone had any practical acquaintance with the subject. One officer on the Committee had gone through the system of instruction with his regiment, and that was all. He had done the same, and had worked hard, and was convinced that there were many things that required alteration. The system was unnecessarily long, subjected the soldier to unnecessary torture, and unnecessarily worried the officers. The soldier was bullied at every turn, and those who could not see were punished for their defective vision by being obliged to drill all the winter. One soldier, who was a third-class man, said to him, "I cannot shoot—I cannot see the targets;" but when this man put on glasses he became a first-class shot. He had seen the officers and inspectors at Aldershot order the shooting to be discontinued on account of some trivial wish of some one officer at the end of the ground. The consequence was, that sometimes a whole company had been kept very unnecessarily exposed to a broiling summer sun until perhaps six o'clock in the evening. In his opinion, such a system required some investigation in the interests of the men, and he believed it might be so amended as to render the course of instruction a pleasant recreation for the soldier. He would detain the House no longer, but he had felt it his duty to make these few remarks.

said, that his hon. Friend who has just addressed the House for the first time had implied that his hon. and gallant Friend opposite, and those who had made remarks upon the present system of musketry, entertained some kind of prejudice against General Hay. Now, General Hay was one of his own personal friends, and he must say that no man had done more towards bringing the army into a state of efficiency than General Hay himself. All that his hon. and gallant Friend had said was that the present system was carried to excess, and that that excess was really detrimental to the service, because it deterred men from entering the service, and also cost the country a needless sum of money. Indeed, his hon. Friend who had just sat down had admitted the existence of things which amounted to a condemnation of the system. In the first place, soldiers under it were unnecessarily tortured, and in the second the officers were unnecessarily bullied. Now, these two expressions were an ample justification of all that had been done and said on the subject by his hon. and gallant Friend opposite. General Hay had honoured him by taking notice in The Times newspaper of a letter which he had ventured to write to that journal some time ago. The letter of the gallant General was somewhat personal, but he did not intend to enter into its personality. In his own letter he had stated that ten weeks were consumed at Fleetwood in giving musketry instruction, and he had expressed his opinion that half the time would be sufficient to teach the men all that it was necessary for them to learn. Now, he would ask his hon. Friend whether he did not believe that that was the fact? [Colonel PERCY HERBERT expressed assent.] It followed then that if the instruction which now occupied ten weeks were given in five, the power of the schools would be doubled, and either twice the number of men might receive instruction or one of the schools might be dispensed with. This was a practical question, and the House ought to be guided by the opinion of practical men. His main object in rising was to read to the House an excellent letter which he had received from a field officer. That letter would be his answer to the remarks of General Hay on the letter which he had written to The Times. The writer said—

"General Hay's letter induces mo to write you a few lines, to add my mite of testimony to the fact of the system of rifle instruction as at present carried on in the service being most irksome and irritating to all classes—from the commanding officer of a regiment downwards; and so much so to the private soldiers as to be without doubt one of the causes which militate against the re-engagement of our ten years' men. General Hay says:—'The whole musketry training of the soldier only employs him twelve days in the year.' Whereas paragraph 6, page 38, of the Instruction of Musketry directs that 'position drill is to be performed at least once a week by every company at other times than when engaged in the annual course, under the close and personal supervision of the commanding officer,' Ac. There are fifty days more, at all events; and no small tax on a commanding officer's time. Paragraph 28, page 80, says—'The men are to be taken into the country by companies, under their respective captains, at least once a month, to be exercised in judging distance'—twelve days more! In addition to this, all men who remain in the third class at the expiration of the annual course are exercised 'in every respect as recruits, and have afterwards to fire through the first period. For them ten days more. This last order is, perhaps, the one which hits the men the hardest. I have known many an old soldier, and many a good and valuable soldier, totally unable to get out of the third class from being a little short-sighted, and consequently disgusted to a degree by being sent to this recruit's drill, for which he gets off no other duty. A very good soldier in this regiment told the colonel a short time ago (and I believe him to be one among many) that he was taking his discharge for no other reason. General Hay further says that a soldier receives only 'a simple lecture to convey some idea of the flight of the bullet.' This would scarcely enable him to pass the examination required by paragraph 6, page 87, to qualify him for the rewards for good shooting. With regard to the 'officers some of whom vote any duty a bore,' there are in my regiment three captains, one a Brevet Lieutenant Colonel of thirty-nine years' service; and two Brevet Majors of twenty-six and twenty-three years' service respectively, besides others of seventeen, sixteen, and fifteen years. I think they may be excused if they do think going through a compulsory course of position and aiming drill with a rifle rather more than 'a bore.' And I can personally answer for the sentiments of the field officers who by a recent order are required to 'visit the drills and practices daily,' a six months' job for them. Since I had the pleasure of seeing you last, I have been for three years in India with my regiment, which has just returned to this country, and you will easily believe that what is irritating and vexatious in the musketry course in great Britain is doubly so in India, where, it should be remembered, a very large portion of the army is now constantly serving, and where it is particularly desirable that the men should, if possible, be induced to re-enlist at the expiration of their limited service. I. am very far from wishing for a moment to undervalue the importance of rifle instruction; but I feel so certain that it would be done equally well—indeed, far better—if it were carried out in a manner less irksome to both officers and men, that I sincerely hope that you and the other Members of the House who have brought the matter forward will succeed in causing a change to be effected in the system. I might mention many other causes for the excessive unpopularity in the service of the 'instruction,' and among them the degree to which a district inspector (a captain) is licensed to interfere with the lieutenant-colonels of regiments; but I have already written at greater length than I intended, which, however, knowing the interest you take in the subject, I hope you will excuse. I told the colonel of my regiment that I should write to you when we saw General Hay's letter, and he authorized me to say that it is his decided opinion that the present system of musketry instruction is to a great extent the cause of the disinclination of ten years' men to enlist."

If that were the opinion of a field officer who had seen a great deal of service, the matter, he thought, was one which ought to be taken into consideration by the House of Commons when a Commission was about to be appointed to inquire into the mode of recruiting the army. On the question of the diminution of the schools, he thought he had been fully justified in the course he had taken.

said, the remarks made by his hon. and gallant Friend were directed to the appointment of General flay on the Committee. He did not think they went beyond it. But he should like to say a few words with regard to General Hay, who had been the subject of this conversation. General Hay had to a great extent brought about a very valuable reform in the service. When he (Colonel Lindsay) first entered the army, there was utter ignorance as to all matters in reference to musketry instruction. He remembered when the Minié arm was first served out, that there was a discussion in his regiment as to whether the ball should be put down the barrel with the point or the base foremost. Such ignorance was almost equal to that of persons who were unaware whether the powder or the shot should be put in first. After the battle of Inkermann he was present when no fewer than ten bullets were extracted from one rifle, they having been put in by a soldier who fancied that "every bullet would find its billet." Since the Crimean War, however, General Hay had instructed the army in the system of musketry, and, in fact, by himself or emissaries had taught the whole of the army, the Militia, and the Volunteers to shoot. He believed that the navy and the cavalry also had had persona at Hythe under the instruction of General Hay. It was true that other persons were aware of the necessity of teaching musketry in the army, such, for example, as Colonel Fox, no doubt a prominent man, and Colonel Kennedy, but the gratitude of soldiers was mainly due to General Hay; for while other persons saw the necessity of the system, General Hay carried it out. He believed Macadam was not the first person who discovered the method of making roads which was called by his name, but he was the first person to put it into practice. General Hay was so completely master of the situation that it would hardly be possible to have a Commission unless that gallant General were a member of it. The hon. and gallant Gentleman opposite (Colonel Percy Herbert) had spoken of officers being bullied. Unless that word were withdrawn there might possibly be another sharp letter in The Times similar to that which General Hay had fired off against the noble Lord. For his own part, he never heard of any officer being bullied. Nor did he think the noble Lord was right in saying that the musketry instruction deterred men from entering the service. He believed that the musketry drill was as pleasant to soldiers as it was to Volunteers, and he thought musketry in the army should be put on the same footing as in the Volunteer service. He also thought it would be useful if more encouragement were given to the soldier in the way of prizes for shooting, and he was of opinion that for that purpose the Vote of £10,000 should be increased.

begged to explain that the opinion he had quoted of a field officer of very considerable standing did not refer to new recruits, but to the ten years' men, and they disliked the system so much that they would not re-enlist.

thought that when a Royal Commission was appointed to inquire into any alleged abuse, it ought to be composed of men who, while possessing on the one hand a thorough practical knowledge of the subject, were, on the other of free and unbiassed minds; and General Hay being the originator of the school of musketry at Hythe, could hardly be considered to be a man of unbiassed mind in this matter. It would appear to an ordinary unofficial mind, that it would have been proper to call General Hay as a witness to be examined before the Commission, rather than appoint him a member of it, when the inquiry was into a scheme which he himself had originated. It was not the recruits who were frightened at the system of musketry instruction in the army but the ten years' men whom it was so desirable to keep. He hoped, if there was to be a Commission of Inquiry into the mode of recruiting in the army, the officer whose letter had been read by the noble Lord would be examined by the Commission.

I did not rise at an earlier period to answer the question of the hon. and gallant Member, because I thought it better that I should hear what hon. Members connected with the army had to say on the subject. But what I have heard has made me regret that I did not rise earlier to attempt to dispel some of the very considerable delusions that appear to exist as to what is going on at the Horse Guards. The hon. and gallant Member who introduced the subject is very much mistaken if he supposes that an affirmative answer to his first three questions will give a correct idea of the state of the case. What has happened is this: After the discussion that took place in the House on this subject I thought it necessary to call the attention of the Commander-in-Chief to the complaints that appeared to be very general in the army as to the present system of musketry instruction, and His Royal Highness concurred with me in thinking that it was a very proper subject of inquiry. The Commander-in-Chief directed that inquiry should first be made of general officers commanding in the several districts, who should forward their opinion to the Horse Guards, and who should also call on officers commanding regiments to send up their opinion on the subject. When these reports had all been received, including a great many also from musketry instructors, the Commander-in-Chief did what he had a perfect right to do, without asking the concurrence of the Secretary of State, namely—he appointed a departmental committee to sit at the Horse Guards to look over these reports, to sift them; and to report to him the nature of the objections entertained against the existing system, and what modifications, if any, they thought ought to be introduced into it. The House will see this is anything but a committee of inquiry into the system of musketry instruction. It is not a committee on which General Hay is sitting as a judge. It is appointed only to report the opinions of the officers who were called on to give their opinions, and to state to the Commander-in-Chief what the result has been. So far from General Hay being a member of a committee sitting on his own system, it seems to me that this committee very properly appointed by the Duke of Cambridge would have been most imperfect, and would have lacked one of its most important features, if General Hay had not been a member of it. The House will see that nothing can he more different than the committee I have described from what has grown, in the hands of the hon. and gallant Member for Dover, to be a Royal Commission on the subject of recruiting in the army. As the question has been raised I may as well mention to the House the names of the members of the committee; these are—Sir J. Scarlett, President; Lord W. Paulet, Adjutant General; Sir R. Walpole, Sir A. Horsford, General Hay, General Ellice, and Colonel De Bathe. Even if it were a question as to General Hay and his system, I think the House will agree that the other members are not likely to allow themselves to be influenced by that officer. The hon. and gallant Member has asked me if my attention has been called to the letter written by General Hay to The Times newspaper. I cannot say that it has been more particularly than that I read the letter next morning in The Times. The hon. and gallant Member has referred to that letter, but he has made no sort of allusion to that part of it which directly contradicted the statements made in the House. I am not the person to say whether it was prudent on the part of General Hay to take notice in a letter to the press of discussions in this House, but as the hon. and gallant Gentleman has thought it worth while to refer to it, perhaps I may advert to that passage which contains a denial of some of the statements made in this House. It seems to me that it was altogether unnecessary to bring this particular matter again before the House, although I admitted when the hon. and gallant Gentleman made his speech on the Army Estimates that the general subject was a very fair one to be brought under the notice of the House. Any grievance supposed to exist in the army is no doubt a most proper subject of discussion, and if the result of inquiry should be to make any modification of the existing system or to leave it as it at present is, it will be perfectly competent to the hon. and gallant Officer and his friends to call attention to the fact, and to move for a Committee to inquire into the whole system. But I do not think it is a function of this House to attempt to dictate to the Commander-in-Chief in what way he is to seek and to obtain the opinion of officers on a subject so materially affecting the interests of the army as the present.

hoped the House would allow him to read one portion of the letter of General Hay to The Times.

It is not according to the rules of this House to read a letter which makes comments on our debates. The hon. and gallant Gentleman has used a wise discretion in not doing so.

said, that this yearly Vote had received continued opposition for many years past; during which period it had not passed without a division being taken upon it. The grant had originated many years ago, in a small allowance, in the time of the secret service money, and it had since swollen from £1,200 per annum to a sum of £41,155 at the present time. Besides this sum there was one of £2,500 for professors, and a sum for chaplains of various prisons in Ireland, some of them without any prisoners of the Presbyterian denomination. The whole amounted to £44,000. Last year the Vote was increased by £300, and this year it was proposed to increase it by £692. He might state to the House that these Dissenting ministers in Ireland had been paid upon the average about £40,000 a year since 1843, making a total of about £920,000, out of the funds of the State; while the Presbyterians of Scotland, of the Free Church, less numerous and wealthy than the Irish State-paid Presbyterians, had subscribed a much larger fund out of their own resources for the purposes of religion, for they had actually raised by voluntary effort above £7,000,000. He objected to this Vote; and he would remind the Committee that the members of these Calvinistic Presbyterian Dissenting bodies in Ireland were decreasing, while the sum expended by the State upon them was increasing, which manifested the deteriorating effect of this Parliamentary allowance. According to one of these Irish Presbyterian clergymen they were the worst paid ministers of any in Christendom; and he believed it had been stated, on authority, that some of those Presbyterian congregations in Ireland did not give their clergymen a shilling a day. He thought the Government would do both the denomination and the country a service if they sent a Commission to inquire how it was that, though the denomination was diminishing, its claims on the public purse were increasing. A Return of the pupils under the tuition of the professors before referred to gave the number as 432, but he believed some of the pupils were reckoned five or six times over. Dr. Cooke, of Belfast, who was credited with 165 of them, received £250, besides £320 a year for distributing the fund among his denomination, besides the profits arising from his congregation, in presents and other voluntary payments; and the late Dr. Montgomery, a Remonstrant or Unitarian minister, was allowed a like sum, rather less in amount, for making the distribution among the Remonstrants, though it was obvious that a banker would do the same thing for one-twentieth of the expense. In their memorial to the Lord Lieutenant the Presbyterians grounded their claim on the fact that they had always been loyal, but £44,000 per annum was a large sum to pay to a small body of religionists on account of this sentiment, and they were the only denomination of Nonconformists in the kingdom who had ever sold or made money of their loyalty. It would be asked, were they poor? On the contrary, they were the richest separatists in the kingdom of Ireland, and raised large sums for missions at home and abroad, building manses, and other purposes. In Dublin there had been a chapel erected by a noble-hearted individual at a cost of £15,000, and which was served by two ministers, who had attracted a very large and wealthy congregation. He should be glad to know if either of these ministers was to be placed on the Regium Donum. Indeed, the favoured and wealthy Presbyterians of the North of Ireland were famous for their liberality in all respects, except that of paying their ministers, and they threw on the Government to support their own ministers out of the taxes of the country. They had not the smallest pretence of a claim upon the public taxes. He heard, however, that they were quite indignant that they could only have £40,000 a year; and that they said they would give it up unless they could have it doubled. When they talked of their loyalty, he would ask, did they send Members to support Her Majesty's Government? [An hon. MEMBER: Yes.] Not the Presbyterians. Did they, at all events, Bend Liberal Members from Belfast? They had literally besieged the late and present Lord Lieutenants of Ireland and the late Prime Minister (Lord Palmerston) to increase the donum, and they made a display of Irish Peers and Members of Parliament in support of an increased claim on the public taxes, but they were ignominiously repulsed in every application. An application had been made to him (Mr. Hadfield) to support their petition for an increase of the grant. His reply was that he would consider of it. He had been considering ever since, and he had concluded that a single farthing would overpay them for their services to the State or the country. He regarded this Regium Donum as the curse of Ireland, for he was satisfied that the Established Church in Ireland could not exist for many months—certainly not for many years—if it were not for this bribe to the Presbyterians. It was high time that this payment should be put an end to, and he therefore moved the reduction of the amount of this Vote to £366 for retired professors and the widows of ministers deceased.

thought his hon. and learned Friend had opened too broad a question to be discussed in so thin a House. If the paltry grant which the hon. Member objected to were once touched, the whole question of ecclesiastical endowments in Ireland would be re-opened. He thought no one would grudge the small sum appropriated to the Presbyterians of Ireland when the large endowments of the Established Church were remembered. In his opinion, the Presbyterians had a right to the grant.

agreed with the hon. Member who had just sat down that the Regium Donum rested upon a different footing from that stated by the hon. Member for Sheffield, as, in fact, it rested almost on an equal footing with the Church Establishment in Ireland. In 1672 Charles II. resolved to make the Presbyterians some compensation for their loyalty, and the sum of £1,200 per annum was accordingly applied to their benefit. William III. confirmed that grant to them, and in 1830 the Government determined to enlarge the grant. The Presbyterian was one of the most loyal bodies in Ireland, and by their colonization of Ulster they had transformed one of the most turbulent provinces of that country into a peaceful, industrious, and enterprizing district. And when an attempt was made to violate the Act of Succession, the Presbyterians of Ireland took measures to secure the succession of the Electress Sophia of Hanover. The hon. Member for Sheffield said that the Presbyterians wished to sell their loyalty, but that was an accusation that need scarcely be replied to, as no one would give credit to it. For these reasons he thought the grant should be continued.

agreed in the remark that the present was only a part of a much greater question; and though he was quite prepared to vote against the Regium Donum, he would not select for opposition a small Vote to a small body while another body not more numerous, loyal, or respectable, was allowed to appropriate to itself the whole of the ecclesiastical revenues of the country. He thought, indeed, it was high time that the Government should consider the whole question of ecclesiastical endowments in Ireland. The question was at present in a most unsatisfactory state, and to that in a great measure was to be attributed the unhappy condition of that country. So long as they granted the whole of the ecclesiastical revenues of the country to a small minority and religious endowments to another portion, and left the great body of the people without Parliamentary recognition in this respect, they might depend upon it they would have Ireland in a chronic state of disaffection. If they perpetuated a state of things in Ireland different to that of England and Scotland, how could they feel surprised at the state of Ireland? The Presbyterians in Ireland were a loyal body, and would be so if the grant were taken away; but there was nothing to justify its withdrawal.

said, that this question had always been introduced hitherto in the form of a separate Motion, and had never been raised in Committee of Supply. That fact would account for the small number of Members on the Opposition Benches. It would have been more becoming if the hon. Gentleman the Member for Sheffield had brought forward his Motion openly and manfully, instead of adopting the course he had done. The grant had tended much to promote the instruction and morality of the inhabitants of Ulster, who were as earnest for its maintenance as for the existence of the Established Church. It was a miserable pittance given to a most useful and exemplary body of clergymen, and it would be a dark day for that province when it was withdrawn. He would state his own opinion to be that the grant should, on the contrary, be largely increased.

cordially approved of the Motion of the hon. Member for Sheffield. He regarded this Vote as altogether wrong, contrary to every sound financial principle, and an unjust tax for the benefit of a small portion of the community laid on the whole people. He denied that it was beneficial, even to those parties themselves; he believed they were the greatest sufferers by it. He admitted all that was said of the excellent characters of those who got the money, of their respectability, and of their being entitled to receive a much larger sum; but he maintained they had come to the wrong paymaster. The people who should give them a much larger sum were their own flocks; it was not on the revenue of the United Kingdom they should come for it. He might be allowed to say that they managed things differently in the country to which he belonged. There were 800 ministers of the Free Church of Scotland, who were in the same position as the recipients of this grant; there were 500 more of the same religious faith and principles, known by the denomination of the United Presbyterian Church, and the people of Scotland raised above £250,000 annually for these 1,300 ministers. They did not come to the Consolidated Fund begging like paupers for these paltry and pitiful grants; they came to their own denomination, who cheerfully put their hands in their pockets and paid each of their own ministers £200 a year. He believed the poor ministers of the Synod of Ulster did not get so much, even when they added the contributions of the people to the sums they got from the public funds. He denied altogether that it was wrong to take an opportunity of objecting to a particular grant because it did not include every grant to which objection might be made. He was against all the three ecclesiastical grants—that to the Presbyterian Church, that to the College of Maynooth, and, most of all, the endowment of the Established Church. Saving the rights of existing incumbents, he would abolish it out and out. He would abolish the Maynooth grant out and out, saving the life rents of existing holders; and he would abolish the Regium Donum out and out, saving the life rents of existing possessors. Whichever of them came up first, he should vote against that—Regium Donum, Maynooth, or the Established Church—he would vote against any of them. In whatever shape, way, or form he could manifest his hostility to them, that was the right way for him. He was against them all; he had attacked all of them in detail. They were all bad in principle, and the sooner we got rid of them the better. He cordially approved of the Motion which had been submitted to the House, and hoped it would be carried.

said, that after the opinions expressed by the hon. Member for Edinburgh (Mr. M'Laren), one might reasonably ask if there was anything with which a Scotchman was content. The hon. Member seemed to object to every- thing that bore the name of an endowment. The Irish Members would, however, probably do their best to avert the catastrophe which the hon. Gentleman appeared so anxious to accelerate. The first grant of this kind was made by William III. to certain Presbyterians who from a lengthened residence in Ireland did not, like the hon. Member, regard the existing state of things with so much abhorrence. Their opinions, in fact, were somewhat Conservative. The grant had been continued until the present time, and if the hon. Member and his Friends from Scotland were so willing to dispose at one fell swoop of the Established Church in Ireland, the Maynooth Grant, and the Regium Donum, the question of increasing the number of Scotch representatives would require very careful consideration indeed. For if all the endowments and institutions of the country were to be swept away, the turn of the House of Commons would come with the rest. The hon. Gentleman could scarcely imagine that he was expressing opinions becoming a statesman, for the confusion, to say the least of it, which would arise from so sudden a destruction of things ancient and revered would be surprising. He could bear personal testimony to the advantage which had accrued to the province of Ulster from the Vote before the House, and to the beneficial effects which had accrued to the population generally.

thought that what he was about to state might change the vote of the hon. Member for Edinburgh. That hon. Member said that he was willing to vote whatever was necessary to protect the life interests of the present clergymen; but the Amendment before the Committee would strike off all the stipends of the existing ministers, and therefore the hon. Member for Edinburgh ought to oppose the Amendment. With respect to the distribution of the gift, he wished to inform the Committee that Dr. Cooke, one of the distributors, had died lately, and his place had not yet been filled up; but he did not consider a salary of £300 a year too much for the person who had the care and distribution of £40,000 intrusted to him, and he thought it would be unwise to discontinue the allowance.

said, that the province of Ulster was at present in a most prosperous condition; and he believed that that prosperity was in no small degree owing to the teaching and the example of the ministers among whom the grant in question was distributed. The hon. Member for Sheffield had given the House a new test for loyalty. The true test, he said, was to support the Government. If that were so, then he (Mr. Corry) must confess himself to be one of the most disloyal men in the House, the more especially since the Government had proposed a Reform Bill, which partially disfranchised the province of Ulster, the most loyal and prosperous portion of Ireland.

wished to know, whether he was correct in understanding the Secretary to the Treasury to imply that as the existing recipients of the grant died out the grant itself would die out? If so, the estimate in the present year was inconsistent with such a declaration, as there was an increase in it for new congregations. If the Vote were taken distinctly on the ground that it was for the present recipients only, he should support it; but if others were to succeed, then he should oppose the grant.

said, that he had made no such allegation. All he did was to claim the vote of the Member for Edinburgh, who said he would oppose taking the income they now received from the existing ministers. This injustice the Amendment would do.

observed, that this was part of a very large and serious question, affecting generally Ecclesiastical Establishments in Ireland, which must soon come under the consideration of the House. He did not consider this was the right end of the subject to begin with, and he therefore trusted that there would not be a division on this particular grant to-night. He repudiated the assumption of exclusive loyalty made on behalf of Ulster, and when he heard the progress, prosperity, and civilization of the northern province spoken of in contrast to other parts of Ireland, he was tempted to ask whether the town of Belfast was not situated in that northern province, and whether it had not been year after year handed over to civil strife, and whether its streets had not been dyed with the blood of peaceful citizens.

speaking in favour of the Vote, asserted that the Presbyterians of Ireland were an essentially liberal body, and he warned them not to be led away by hon. Gentlemen opposite, who sought to curry favour with them by supporting the Vote. He trusted the day would come when the Presbyterians and Roman Catholics in Ireland would be united in one liberal bond, and then there would cease to be in that House an opposition, including Irish Conservatives.

asked what became of the fees taken in the Patent Office. The Vote represented outgoings from the Consolidated Fund, but he presumed there were some fees which were received from patentees. He would like to know what was the amount of them, and how they were appropriated?

explained that the amount of the fees was published, and that he believed they amounted this year to £110,000.

asked in how many towns the Corn Returns had been discontinued in the present year?

could not say from memory but he believed in three or four.

wanted to know what became of the Corn Returns when they were made?

explained that they were made by Act of Parliament, and published in the Gazette, and stated that they were exceedingly useful.

observed, that he did not think the Government had dealt with the Brehon laws in a satisfactory manner, and intimated his intention of bringing the whole subject of the Irish Records before the House on a future occasion.

said, hon. Members had doubtless Been the paper which he laid on the table of the House a few nights ago, on which occasion he stated what the Government had done with regard to the Records and other historical documents of the three Kingdoms, and at the same time offered suggestions as to what should be the future arrangements with respect to them. As, however, his hon. and gallant Friend proposed to raise the question on some future day in a general form he would not now further dwell on it.

having had some experience of the Record Office, testified to the ability of Messrs. Hardy and Brewer, and observed that these gentlemen went to Dublin during the vacation, and, instead of taking their leisure, spent their time in investigating the Irish Records for the benefit of the country.

observed, that the investigation of Messrs. Hardy and Brewer had not the slightest connection with the Brehon laws.

remarked that Votes of this kind were mischievous in principle, and was curious to know in what way this encouragement of the cultivation of flax in Ireland was managed.

said, this small grant was made for a very good purpose. It had been continued for three years, and the object of the grant was explained in aid of local associations for the purpose of sending instructors to teach the farmers in the south and west of Ireland how to grow and prepare flax according to the improved method followed in Belgium and Scotland; and he had the satisfaction of informing the House that this course had been attended with considerable success.

asked, whether if an application were to be made from Leinster the benefit which was extended to Ulster, in respect to the cultivation of flax, would he conceded to the former province?

said, that the grant had been made to those districts most requiring aid. The object of the hon. Member for the county of Waterford, however, would be met by leaving out the words "south and west," and then it would be open for the Treasury to receive applications from other parts of the country; but he did not undertake that any such applications would be complied with.

asked for some explanation of the mode in which this large item had been expended. In the agricultural districts with which he was connected, the only returns which had come to hand were those connected with the live stock of the country.

said, that two years ago, on the Motion of Mr. Caird, the House declared itself in favour of a complete system of agricultural statistics. It ought to be stated how the present system was a compliance with that expressed opinion of the House.

asked, whether it was intended to give returns of the acreage, corn, and agricultural statistics of the country generally, and, if so, when?

said, it had been thought desirable in the first instance to take an account of all the live stock in the kingdom, as a piece of information very useful to agriculturists. The returns were entirely voluntary, but he was informed that the farmers and holders of stock generally, encouraged by the magistrates, the boards of guardians, and the lords-lieutenant of counties, had all shown a desire to give the fullest information. It was the intention of the Govern- ment in like manner to endeavour to obtain by voluntary returns the acreage under cultivation, so that an approximate idea at least might be formed of the whole amount of the produce of the country. The returns had been obtained through the intervention of the superior officers of the Board of Inland Revenue, who distributed through the country, by means of the post, the schedules prepared by the Board of Trade. The notion at first entertained by some occupiers, that these returns were asked for with a view to increased taxation, had been entirely dispelled. It was impossible at present to say what exact amount of expenditure would have to be defrayed out of the Vote of £10,000.

asked, whether this £10,000 had been or would be paid to the Excise officers in addition to their ordinary salaries? Excisemen were not, as it seemed to him, the proper parties to collect this valuable information, which would he much more readily given to local agents of respectability and influence, the cost of whose employment would be amply covered by the Vote of £10,000.

explained that excisemen were not employed to collect the information; the surveyors, being high officers of the Board of Inland Revenue, sent the schedules to the farmers. It was the superior officers who were employed, and the returns were voluntarily made by the fanners. The cattle returns could only be regarded as an experiment, and some little time would be required before the Government could state finally the course which they would take regarding the agricultural statistics generally,

thought it very desirable that the Government should give the fullest and earliest information as to the agents through whom the farmers were to make their returns.

expressed a hope that the existing uncertainty as to what Member of the Government was really responsible for sealing with these agricultural questions would be removed, as it was most important that the farming interest should know and have confidence in the Minister to whom the conduct of such matters was intrusted. If the county Members would assist to dissipate some of the prejudices on this question they would benefit greatly not only producers but consumers, The transfer of the hon. Member, late Under Secretary for the Home Department, who was thoroughly conversant with these matters, to the Admiralty was a great loss to the agricultural interest.

urged upon the President of the Board of Trade the necessity of attempting to get these statistics before the harvest, if the attempt to get them was to he made at all; otherwise the matter had better be put off till next year.

wished to know whether, if it was intended to extend those inquiries into the quantity of land under cultivation and the different modes of cropping it, those inquiries would be conducted by the same agency as was now used to obtain similar information with regard to cattle, He believed it would tend to remove apprehension from the minds of the agriculturists if they were assured that there would be no change made either in the method or in the instrumentalities hitherto employed for that purpose.

, as at present advised, was not aware of any intention to change the mode of obtaining these returns, or to employ any agency different from that hitherto adopted. Any disclosure of the number of cattle possessed by an individual farmer, or of anything connected with his particular affairs, was carefully avoided. All that was made public was an aggregate amount, and the same principle would be applied when they took the acreage under cultivation as was applied in ascertaining the quantities of live stock. The Government trusted to the farmer for the information; and the whole matter was one of a voluntary character.

thought the President of the Board of Trade was very fortunate in the mode by which he had endeavoured to deal with that long-vexed question. On the one hand, the right hon. Gentleman had disarmed jealousy, and, on the other hand, he had provided means. That matter came up for the first time some sixteen years ago, when Lord Halifax was Chancellor of the Exchequer; and he modestly proposed that the country people should pay for the returns themselves. That immediately set their backs up, and they said, "If you want it, you should pay for it." Various schemes were then proposed, and people were afraid of this thing and afraid of that; and if it were now to be attempted to obtain those returns by local authority, he was sure they would have people's backs up again, and would not get the statistics half so easily and correctly as they now did. At present it was understood that the information was to go to a central body, and that nobody would know anything of any man's affairs, the whole matter being published in a general shape, and collected at the expense of the community at large, because the public benefited by it. The right hon. Gentleman was very happy in the way he had commenced his operations, and it was to be hoped he would go on in the same manner. Then, no doubt, in a short time, perhaps in one or two years, he would get matters into a working order. Next year care should be taken not to ask for the quantities of stock in the lambing season, because they could not then expect to get returns that would he worth much.

asked why, when a Vote of £10,000 was proposed for the collection of these statistics in England, some proportionate grant was not made for the same purpose in Ireland. In Ireland these statistics were collected by the constabulary, a body whose proper functions were entirely of a different nature, and who, he would remind the Government, were very much underpaid; and therefore, when the pay of that force was under reconsideration, the fact that it had that extra duty thrown upon it ought certainly not to be left out of sight.

asked how it happened that a Vote of £525 was taken for professional services rendered by Mr. A. J. Stephens in preparing rules and orders under the Ecclesiastical Courts and Registries Act (Ireland)?

said, that there was no authority to charge the expense on Ecclesiastical Funds, and it could only be defrayed out of the present item.

asked for an explanation of the item of £954 for distressed Polish refugees. They appeared to be already provided for by a previous Vote of £2,296, which was stated in a foot note to be gradually diminishing.

wished to know why part of the Vote was set apart for inspectors of sheep?

said, that there was an increase of claims from distressed Polish refugees arising from the Polish troubles of the year before last. Lord Palmerston, a few months before his death, sanctioned the present allowance, which would not be an annual charge.

wished to know the meaning of the item of £4,999, value of biscuit supplied from navy stores at Malta for Circassian exiles."

said, that there was a terrible famine among the Circassian exiles, and the Government sent a quantity of biscuit from Malta for their relief. It was thought better that the cash value of the biscuit should appear in the Estimates, in order that the House might know what had been done.

said, that this prompt supply of biscuit for the poor Circassians did honour to the country, and he, for one, thanked the Government for it. What was the meaning of the payment to Captain Succi of £387 for the "illegal detention of his ship at the Sulina mouth of the Danube in June, 1854?"

said, that the vessel was detained in 1854, on the eve of the Russian War. The claim was not made till 1858–9. It was referred to arbitration, and reduced from £2,400 to the amount now proposed to be voted.

complained of the item of £1,500 for robes, collars, and badges for the Knights of the several Orders. He observed, too, an item of £347 for fees payable on Installation of His Royal Highness Prince Alfred as a Knight of the Thistle,

said, that this item exhibited a considerable reduction compared with last year. It was thought only reasonable that these fees should be paid for the Knights. He could not give the details of the fees on the installation of Prince Alfred, but he would state to the Committee that this was a usual charge on the installation of foreign personages and of Members of the Royal Family.

With the permission of the House I wish to inquire of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Whether he has consented to recommend any peculiar faci- lities to be extended to the Bank of England during the existing monetary panic, and what may be the nature of the indulgence, provided he has consented to meet the wants of the mercantile community?

I stated, in the commencement of the evening, that representations had been made to me from quarters of the greatest influence and credit with respect to the extraordinary state of alarm and distress prevailing in the City to-day. I stated that those representations had come to me from gentlemen representing in particular the private banks of London, and I expected that I should shortly receive similar representations from those connected with the joint-stock banks. Those representations I have received accordingly, and they were pressed even more earnestly and urgently than I anticipated. I stated, also, at the time when I had the honour of addressing the House, that the effects of the day's proceedings in the City through the Bank of England had not been fully given to us. Since that time we have become acquainted with those results, and we find that the Bank, moved by a just desire to sustain the commerce of the country, and to avert disaster, has extended its loans and discounts to-day to a sum of something more than £4,000,000. The effect of that large accommodation was to reduce the reserves of the Bank to a sum not very far short of £3,000,000 of money. Under these circumstances, as far as the facts are known, and—there being no reason to believe that any great change has occurred in the state of things, the estimate is sufficiently accurate for all practical purposes—we find the Bank reserves reduced in a single day from a sum approaching £6,000,000 to a little exceeding £3,000,000. The Government have felt that this is a state of things which, combined with the uneasiness prevailing in the mind of the public in regard to monetary matters, calls for intervention on their part. We have taken the opportunity during the evening of considering the state of the facts, and the result has been that we have determined to address a letter to the Governor and Deputy Governor of the Bank, substantially the same as was addressed to those high officers in 1847 and 1857. That is to say, if the Bank, proceeding upon its usual prudent rules of administration, shall find occasion, in order to meet the wants of legitimate commerce, to make such ad- vances from the Issue Department as shall exceed the limits allowed by law, we recommend that they should not hesitate to make that issue, and we undertake, in the event of the arrival of that contingency, to make immediate application to Parliament to sanction that proceeding. There are other points of detail, but that is the substance of the letter which shall be in the hands of the Governor and Deputy Governor of the Bank to-morrow, and which we earnestly hope may have the effect of allaying the feeling of uneasiness which prevails in the country, especially as it does not arise from any general unsoundness in the condition of our commercial relations, but only from causes of a peculiar and specific character. In that respect we are able to draw a favourable distinction between the present crisis and others in former times; but there is also another distinction, and that is the extraordinary rapidity with which the crisis has come upon us, and which has reduced the opportunity of deliberation given to the Government within very narrow limits indeed. We have not, however, hesitated to act, to address ourselves to the subject with all the means in our power, and we trust that our proceedings will meet with the approbation of Parliament.

took the opportunity to correct an answer which had been given last evening, and to state that the proceeds of captured slave ships were paid to the captors and not into the Exchequer.

proposed a new clause to enable directors of Chartered Public Asylums to grant a superannuation allowance to their servants after a certain number of years service. He thought the principle so reasonable that no objection could be raised to it.

hoped the clause would not be pressed. If adopted, it ought to apply to pauper asylums as well as chartered asylums; in practice it would lead to difficulty in the case of asylums that depended upon endowments and upon voluntary contributions, and at present he was not prepared to adopt the clause.

said, he was sorry to persevere against his hon. and learned Friend, but he was willing that the clause should be made wider in its application, if that were desired. His hon. and learned Friend was estopped from opposing the principle of superannuation, because he had proposed it with reference to another class of public officers, and, in fact, great public establishments, involving the employment of public officers, could not be properly conducted unless superannuations were granted. The asylums named as presenting difficulties were comparatively modern; but the clause as proposed would apply to old establishments, the directors of which had not that legal power of granting superannuations which existed in England. A clause in the English Act specifically provided that officers should have superannuations.

said, that the hon. and learned Gentleman who opposed the clause ought to advance a good reason why it should not be considered, for it only embodied a reasonable and sound principle, capable of defence ill point of justice, and practically acted upon in England.

said, that in Scotland the asylums were erected by voluntary contributions, and he thought the right principle was to allow each institution to do as it thought fit.

said, he would, before the Report was brought up, take into consideration the question as to whether Parliamentary interference was necessary.

, in moving to add a new clause, explained that it had been introduced for the purpose of empowering Parochial Boards, as well as public asylums, to raise money for enlarging their wards for the reception of lunatics. It provided, however, that monies borrowed by Parochial Boards should be repaid in annual instalments of not less than one-thirtieth of the whole amount borrowed.

drew attention to the fact that the Bill did not provide for the remuneration of a very meritorious officer, the Chairman of the Lunacy Board, who at present discharged his duties gratuitously.

replied that the expenses of the Lunacy Board in Scotland were rather heavy. He did not dispute that it would be desirable to assign a salary to the Chairman, but that was a matter which did not rest entirely with him.

said, it was merely a formal measure, having for its object the enactment of a clause which had been accidentally omitted from the Act regulating the office of the Solicitor to the Treasury. He gave notice of his intention, with the permission of the House, of passing the Bill through the remaining stages on Monday next.

called attention to the clauses of the Bill requiring every package or pocket of hops to be marked in a certain way with the names of the grower, and every particular respecting the place of their growth, their weight, &c, and said, that the Bill converted what was intended as a privilege to the trader into a burden. The business was now thrown open, and this Bill would interfere with the new class of growers and traders. How could a seller of hops by retail be supposed to fix these marks on the smallest possible packages? He admitted the object of the Bill was to prevent fraud in the sale of hops, but this was too arbitrary a measure. If a system of compulsory marking were to be adopted, he did not see why cotton should not be marked, and brewers' barrels be marked. The argument that hops furnished an exceptional case was the monopolist argument. With the view of assimilating legislation with regard to hops to that which related to other commodities, and bringing this Bill into harmony with the Merchandise Marks Act, 1862, he should propose the omission of the second and third clauses. He moved the omission of Clause 2.

could have wished that the hon. Member had given the House the benefit of his suggestions on the occasion of the second reading. [Mr. DODSON: I was in the Chair.] The hon. and learned Member recapitulated the regulations of the existing law, and insisted that it was desirable not only for the planter but the consumer, and the brewer especially, that the class of hops desired should be obtainable in the market. This Bill involved no new principle, and only provided that the mark of the year and weight should be put on by the owner instead of by the Excise officer. 154 petitions had been presented, signed by 1,700 persons in favour of this proposal. Growers, factors, and merchants had signed these petitions. The Legislature had already declared in favour of exceptional legislation with regard to hops. And before the Committee of 1857 evidence was given that the marking of hops was essential for the protection of the trade against frauds. The objection to the Bill came from the Sussex growers, who grew an inferior quality of hops which, without being compulsorily marked, as proposed, might appear in the market with the Kent brand upon them.

opposed the Bill, and should vote against the retention of the clause.

, as a brewer, said, it was necessary for the protection of the trade that this Bill should be passed. It was sometimes necessary to pass an Act of Parliament to make men honest. He expressed his surprise that any hon. Member should be found to oppose this Bill.

said, there was no necessity for protecting the brewery trade. Hops should go into the market like any other article, and be dealt with as the trader felt disposed.

said, the brewers felt that such an Act of Parliament was necessary to prevent fraud. Without it they were unable to discover the fraud until it was too late. To deal with hops as the trader pleased led to fraud, and the only way to prevent it was to compel the grower to mark them The Bill would be worthless without the clauses to which the hon. Gentleman the Member for West Sussex objected.