Sir, I rise to present a petition to the House which is of a very peculiar character, and if the House will give me their attention I will state its purport. It is signed by twelve or thirteen gentlemen, who are well known to many Members of this House, and who are persons of first-class education and in good position. The petition has reference to the state of things in Ireland. It begins by condemning secret associations, and the violence which has followed, and expresses a hope that order may be restored to Ireland by the judicious use of power by the English Government. It states that the petitioners remember that the history of Ireland has been the history, first, of imperfect conquest and long neglect; next, of war and the dispossession of the Irish people; then of legal injustice and harsh repression of the disturbances caused by the said injustice. They go on to state their disapprobation of certain things which exist in Ireland at this moment, as, for example, the Irish Church Establishment and the enforcement of a system of land law at variance with the traditions and feelings of the Irish people. They declare that the Government of Ireland is a Government in the interest, not of Ireland, but of the State Church and the territorial aristocracy of England; that by the present distribution of political power the Irish nation is unable to make its wishes adequately felt by the stronger country to which it is bound; that in consequence of the apparent hopelessness of a remedy for the evils which press upon their country——

I rise to order. I wish, Sir, to know whether the hon. Gentleman is entitled to make a speech on the Irish question under colour of presenting a petition?

The hon. Member is in order. He states that the petition contains such and such allegations. In doing so he is perfectly in order.

They state that in consequence of the apparent hopelessness of a remedy for the evils which press upon their country, honourable Irishmen may, however erroneously, feel justified in resorting to force—that, in a word, there is a legitimate ground for the chronic discontent of which Fenianism is the expression; and therefore some palliation for the errors of Fenianism—

I rise to order. I think, Sir, you decided some short time ago that an hon. Gentleman who attributed a participation in the opinions of Fenians to Gentlemen in this House was out of order. I therefore ask you, Sir, whether the hon. Member is in order in giving currency to a petition and taking advantage of the privileges of the House to read at length a petition which, in fact, justifies Fenianism, which has been condemned by judicial authority and by the highest authority in this House—namely, Sir, yourself.

The other day, when a Member of this House stated that other Members of the House were Fenians or approvers of Fenianism, I made the observations I then used with regard to one Member of the House attributing such opinions to other Members of the House; but I did not undertake or pretend to prescribe exactly what the language of a petition should be.

I will now read the prayer of the petition—

"Your Petitioners, therefore, pray your honourable House that it may take such measures as it shall judge fit, Firstly, To secure the revision of the sentences already passed on Fenians, sentences of great, and in the judgment of your Petitioners generally, excessive and irritating severity."

I ought to state that this refers to the sentences not of this week, but to those passed previously.

"Secondly, To provide in any case that prisoners suffering as Fenians or for a political offence shall not during the execution of their sentence be confined in common with prisoners suffering for offences against the ordinary criminal laws of their country. Thirdly, Your Petitioners, justly alarmed by their recollection of the atrocities perpetrated by the English troops in Ireland in 1798, as also by their recollection of the conduct of the English army and its officers in India and Jamaica; lastly, by the suggestions of the public press and the general tone of the wealthy classes with regard to the suppression of rebellion, pray your honourable House to provide that the utmost moderation and strict adherence to the laws of fair and humane warfare may be inculcated on the army now serving in Ireland. Lastly, Your Petitioners pray that the prisoners taken may be well treated before trial, and judged and sentenced with as much leniency as is consistent with the preservation of order, and that in the punishments awarded there may be none of a degrading nature, as said punishment seem to your Petitioners inapplicable to men whose cause and whose offence are alike free from dishonour"——

I rise to order. I beg, Sir, to ask whether the hon. Member is in order now?

The hon. Member is entitled, in presenting a petition, to read the prayer of that petition.

Whether loyal or disloyal?

"However misguided they may be as to the special end they have in view, or as to the means they have adopted to attain that end." The signatures, perhaps, I may read—

"Richard Congreve, Southfields, Wandsworth; E. Truelove, 256, Holborn; Edward Spencer Beesly, University Hall, Gordon Square; Frederick Harrison, Lincoln's Inn; T. H. Bridges, Bradford, Yorkshire; H. Crompton, 23, Westbourne Terrace; S. H. Reynolds, Brasenose College, Oxford; C. A. Cookson, Inner Temple; F. B. Barton, 29, Lamb's Conduit Street; John Maughan, 1, Pleasant Row, Canonbury; S. D. Williams, jun., Birmingham."

In the general spirit of that petition I entirely agree.

The question is that the petition lie on the table.

I beg to move that this petition be not allowed to be laid upon the table of the House.

I beg to second that Motion.

I oppose the Motion of the hon. and gallant Member, because I see nothing disrespectful to the House in the language of the petition. However we may reprobate the undertaking for which these men are now under trial, still, I think, that when a petition of this kind is brought before this House, praying for a fair trial, and for fair consideration by the prisoners or their friends, it would be most unbecoming of the dignity of the House and most impolitic for us to reject it.

Sir, there is one paragraph in the petition to which I should wish to call attention, as I think it is worthy of the consideration of the House whether it does not of itself justify the Motion that has been made. That paragraph asks that the troops shall be directed to conduct themselves according to the laws of fair and humane warfare. I would ask the House to bear in mind what I have established, or have offered to establish—namely, that the late Fenian movement had a deliberate purpose. This was that the Fenians should act in connection with the like party in America, so as to afford grounds for demanding from the President of the American Union a declaration that the Fenians were a belligerent Power. In this case, I am enabled to state upon undoubted authority, very large sums are ready to be embarked in the enterprize of sending out privateers. If the House accepts this petition to which their attention is thus formally called, in which our troops are described as being engaged in a state of warfare, instead of in putting down a lot of freebooters and scoundrels of every kind—indeed, every origin except the real one has been attributed to them—I ask whether this fact will not be of very material importance in any future communication which the brethren of these Fenians may think fit to make to the President of the United States.

said, he trusted that the hon. and gallant Member would withdraw his Motion.

said, that the only Motion before the House was that the petition do lie upon the table. If any hon. Member objected to that Motion he might vote against it.

hoped that the hon. and gallant Member would not divide the House. He was as much opposed to Fenianism as was the hon. Member; but he thought that to reject this petition would be particularly unfortunate at the present time. It would be playing into the hands of the friends of Fenianism, and would give force to their endeavours to persuade the people that there was no use in resorting to Parliamentary action in behalf of Ireland, because this House would turn a deaf ear to their complaints. The hon. Member for Honiton (Mr. Baillie Cochrane), who had raised this question, had been previously known as an admirer of tornadoes; but in this instance he had only raised a storm in a teapot.

said, that his object having been attained in thus formally drawing the attention of the House to the fact of the petition which had been presented to them being a disloyal one, he would not divide the House upon the question.

said, he rose to ask the Chief Secretary for Ireland, Whether, in consequence of the Report of the Medical Officer of the Mountjoy Convict Prison, that the prisoners confined there under the Habeas Corpus Suspension Act were suffering in health from the discipline they were subjected to, and were likely to suffer still more if the prison rules continued to be enforced to the same extent, it was the intention of the Government to direct that the untried political prisoners should be treated in a less severe manner than they have been hitherto?

Sir, in answer to the Question of the hon. Member, I have to state that on the 24th of February last a Report was presented to me which had been made by the medical officer of Mountjoy Convict Prison with reference to the health of the untried prisoners. The greater portion of that Report has been already published in the Annual Report of the Inspectors of Public Prisons, and I have no doubt but that that Report contains the statements referred to by the hon. Member. It is there stated that, in the opinion of the medical officer of the prison, the continued confinement of untried prisoners had tended to operate injuriously upon their health. Immediately upon receiving that Report I ordered inquiries to be made, and the next day directions were given that certain relaxations of the prison rules should be made in favour of those persons. The relaxation of the rules amounted to this, that the time allowed for exercise was doubled, the prisoners were allowed to smoke during the time they were taking their exercise, and they were allowed to walls with a companion. When I was in Dublin the other day, I made it my business to inquire what had been the effect of this relaxation in the prison discipline on the health of the prisoners. I had a long conversation with the medical officer of the prison, and I requested him to make a Report upon this subject. On the 26th of April I received the following Report from that gentleman:—

"With reference to the health of the untried political prisoners at present confined in this prison, I can report favourably. I have stated in my annual Report for 1866 'that all serious cases of illness among prisoners of this class were reported to the Government, and have been discharged from prison upon it being understood that confinement was likely really to aggravate their disease.' There is not at present a single case requiring treatment in the hospital. With reference to the dietary of these prisoners, they are permitted to obtain their own food from without if they please, but for those who do not do so the scale of prison dietary is tolerably liberal and varied, and during the cold weather additional blankets were distributed at my suggestion, so that I met with no complaints of cold from insufficient clothing. The prisoners are now daily in association with each other during their hours of exercise, and are permitted to smoke—a privilege greatly valued. Considering the construction of this prison, and the kind of discipline which is in some degree inseparable from that, prisoners of this class cannot be in association except when at exercise. As the days get longer and the weather milder, I would suggest that all those who desire it should be allowed two periods of exercise (in the forenoon and afternoon), during which time they would be in association with each other. The untried prisoners are allowed books as well from the library of the prison as sent by their friends. Those of them therefore who are capable of enjoying it have intellectual occupation.

"ROBERT M'DONNELL.

"Mountjoy Prison, April 26, 1867."

The further recommendations contained in this Report have been carried into effect as far as is compatible with the safe custody of the prisoners and the maintenance of the prison discipline.

said, he rose for the purpose of asking the Secretary of State for the Home Department, Whether his attention has been called to a resolution passed at a meeting of the Reform League held in the Sussex Hall last night, by which it was determined (after the reading of the Government Proclamation, prohibiting the meeting announced for Monday next in Hyde Park) "that such meeting be held as publicly notified;" whether, in the event of such meeting taking place, the Vice Presidents as well as the President will be held liable for a deliberate infraction of the Law; and, whether the Home Secretary has received, in common with other Members of the House, a list of the members of the Reform League in which the names of Thomas Hughes, Esquire, M.P., Thomas Bayley Potter, Esquire, M.P., P. A. Taylor, Esquire, M.P., and The O'Donoghue, M.P., are published as purporting to be Vice Presidents of the Reform League? He begged to apologize to the hon. Member for Finsbury (Mr. M'Cullagh Torrens), whom he saw in his place, on the circumstance of his name being omitted from the list of hon. Members who were Vice Presidents of the League on the Notice Paper. He could assure the hon. Gentleman that the omission was unintentional.

Sir, in answer to the first Question of the hon. and gallant Gentleman, I may say that my attention has been called to the resolution to which he refers. In answer to his third Question, I am not aware that I have received any such list; but I believe that in the list of the Vice Presidents of the Reform League the names of the hon. Members to whom the hon. and gallant Gentleman refers are included. With regard to the second Question I have to state that, considering the position which those Vice Presidents hold in this House and in society, I cannot conceive that they will be identified with any attempt to resist the authorities of the land or deliberately to infringe the law of the country.

said, he would beg to ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, If any facilities will be given to meet the general desire on the part of the tradespeople and others residing in the western parishes of London to be sworn in as Special Constables for the preservation of the peace for Monday the 6th May? He understood that a very large number of persons desired to be sworn in, but some difficulties seemed to stand in the way.

In answer, Sir, to my hon. Friend, and especially in reference to the last part of his Question, I beg to state, not only that I hear that a very large number of persons are anxious to be sworn in as special constables, but ten minutes before I came down to the House I received a Memorial on the subject, signed by 6,000 persons, many of whom, indeed most of whom, are working men; and I am also informed that that Memorial is still in course of signature, and I am told that by eleven o'clock to-morrow morning 4,000 more names will be added to the document, which deprecates the intention of those who have called the meeting in Hyde Park. With respect to the other portion of the Question, I am happy to inform my hon. Friend that in consequence of the applications made to me I have communicated with the vestries in the different parishes contiguous to Hyde Park, or where the police would necessarily be withdrawn to preserve the public peace, offering them every facility for persons to be sworn in as special constables to preserve the public peace.

said, he would beg to ask if the right hon. Gentleman has communicated with the Middlesex magistrates on the subject?

I do not think I have had any communication with the magistrates of Middlesex hitherto.

Sir, I wish to ask the right hon. Gentleman a Question, which is this—Whether it is not the custom before proceedings are taken to swear in special constables, that there should be depositions as to the probability of a breach of the peace being about to be committed? It does not follow that because a public meeting is to be held, therefore there will be a breach of the peace. In this country we are accustomed to great meetings, and this alarm is preposterous and absurd—and I hope the right hon. Gentleman will not do anything. ["Order, order!"] If the House wishes to debate the question now I will do so; but what I was merely going to remark was, that I do not wish the right hon. Gentleman to commit himself to any course.

In answer to a Question put to me by an hon. Friend just now I stated that, in consequence of numerous applications which had been made to me, facilities would be offered to persons wishing to be sworn in as special constables in their respective parishes. The law upon the subject is that where there is a riot, tumult, or felony, or where a riot, tumult, or felony is apprehended, upon information of the fact being laid before a magistrate, special constables may be sworn in for the preservation of the peace. Nothing will, of course, be done contrary to the law.

May I ask the right hon. Gentleman whether it is intended that these special constables should in the slightest degree interfere with the peaceful entrance of any persons to the Park; or whether they will be expected to take any part in dispersing the meeting; or whether it is merely intended that, if there should be tumult, then that they should assist in quelling it.

There need be no apprehension of any special constables being employed for the purpose of preventing persons from entering the Park, or, as the hon. Member calls it, of dispersing to meeting. They will merely be there to assist the authorities in case the public peace should be broken.

I should like to ask the right hon. Gentleman whether the special constables will be drawn up in the Park to take a show of force in opposition to the meting? I ask this, because I am sure the right hon. Gentleman would do nothing to provoke a breach of the peace. I wish to ask whether the force of special constables to be drawn up in the Park; and, if so, whether in an attitude of defiance or provocation to the meeting?

No such thing is in contemplation.

said, he wished to ask the right hon. Gentleman, whether, with respect to the Proclamation, the reason of its warning was simply with reference to probable interference with the ordinary use of the Park; and, whether he has obtained further information subsequent to the issue of the Proclamation affording other reasons for putting a stop to the meeting?

I may first of all remark, in answer to the question of the hon. Gentleman, that no Proclamation has been issued. What has been published is a notice signed by the Secretary of State. I am continually receiving further information with regard to the proposed meeting; but the notice which I issued was simply one warning persons not to attend a meeting which is prohibited by law.

said, that as the hon. Member for Birmingham (Mr. Bright) had spoken of "the meeting" in manner calculated to convey the impression that it had been decided upon holding it, he would ask the hon. Member whether he was authorized by the Reform League to state that fact to the House?

I beg to inform the hon. and gallant Gentleman that I am not on the Council of the Reform League, and that I am not a member of that body.

said, he would beg to ask the Secretary of State for India, Whether he has approved of the Minute of he Governor General in Council limiting he consideration of the claims of Officers of the late Indian Army, in respect of monies subscribed by them for the purpose of stimulating promotion, to such sums as they may have paid in the rank held by them in 1861?

said, in reply, that a despatch had been received, and would shortly be laid on the table, which would at once answer the hon. and gallant Member's Question, and render unnecessary the Motion of which he had given notice, as it would show that the Indian Council meant to adhere to Lord Cranbourne's letter of the 8th of August.

said, he would beg to ask Mr. Chancellor of the Exchequer, Whether he will, before proceeding with the consideration of the 3rd Clause of the Representation of the People Bill in Committee, lay upon the table of the House the Amendment which he had promised to introduce, in order to remove the ambiguity which he acknowledged to exist in the Clause as at present worded? He would also beg to ask the right hon. Gentleman, if he has any objection to stating at once the nature of the intended Amendment?

As I propose to address the House on the Order of the Day being read, it would be more convenient for me to answer the Question of the hon. Member upon that occasion.

I rise, Sir, to call the attention of the House to the proposed interference of the Government with the public meeting in Hyde Park on Monday next. After the questions which were put to the Secretary of State at the commencement of the evening, and the answers that he gave to those questions, I was a little doubtful whether there was any necessity for my bringing the question of which I had given notice in a more direct form before the House. But on further consideration and consultation with some of my Friends, it has been thought better to have something more said about a question which at this moment is exciting great interest in London, and, from what transpired during this evening, it would appear some alarm. I hope that the alarm outside this House is very much less than that which has been manifested within. The Notice as it is printed in the Paper states that I am about to call the attention of the House to the proposed interference of the Government with the public meeting in Hyde Park on Monday next. I beg to assure the right hon. Gentleman (Mr. Walpole) that I do not rise for the purpose of making any attack upon him, or upon anything that he has done, or of increasing whatever difficulty he may feel in dealing with the question. In looking at the question as one of legality and right, I shall not undertake to say whether the people—the members of the Reform League and others who propose to hold a meeting in the Park—are acting with strict legality or not. Nor shall I undertake to declare my opinion whether the Government have a tight to permit or to forbid the holding of meetings in the Park. I should say from the Notice which the right hon. Gentleman gave last night of the introduction of a Bill to define the powers of the Government with regard to the Royal Parks, that he himself, and his Colleagues with him, are not by any means satisfied as to the clearness of the title by which they act in preventing the holding of meetings in the Park. I think the introduction of that Bill creates that opinion in the House, as it has, no doubt, created it in the minds of the public. I will presume that the Government has—if anybody has—a right to close the Park—that it has the right to close the Park on any day, and on any occasion. But that right is one which must be exercised, in accordance with the public interests and for the public good. It is quite clear, that although technically and legally the Government may have the right to close the Park, yet practically it has no such right in regard to the ordinary and common enjoyment of it. The Government really dare not attempt to close the Park on any frivolous pretence merely because it happened to please themselves, if the matter were one in which the public took no great interest. Therefore the right, if there be such a right, to close the Park absolutely any day is a right practically of no effect. It is incomplete, is not intended to be exercised, and never has been exercised. Nothing can be more clear than this—and if the right hon. Gentleman would be very candid, as he generally is in his statements to the House, he would say—it is not illegal for any number of persons, on Monday next, to enter Hyde Park. He would admit, further, that when they are in the Park it is not illegal that they should stand shoulder to shoulder, or, if they were numerous, even in a dense multitude. He would say, further, it is not illegal for a man to speak in a loud voice in the Park. We shall have an opportunity of hearing the right hon. Gentleman's opinion, and I am sure he will not say that it is not legal for those present in the Park to listen to what is said. My impression is, that the Government will act upon the opinion I have now expressed, and will say that none of these things I have described are illegal, and that altogether as one act they are not illegal. But it may be said, and with a certain show of reason, that a great meeting amidst a great population may be attended with—or may sometimes be attended with—danger to the public peace; and that therefore it is the business of the Government, and of the Home Office, to exercise some oversight in a matter of this kind when the public peace is menaced. That is a doctrine that many persons I know in this House hold; but they are very timid. I always notice one section of it particularly timid—I mean the Gentlemen opposite below the gangway. The timidity is not on the Treasury Bench, or with the Gentlemen that sit behind that Bench. They seem to have some confidence in the occupants of that Bench. The timidity as I have indicated, is at this end of the House, where there seems to be a great clamour on any occasion of this kind, as if some fearful danger were going to assail the country. If hon. Members had bee bred in Paris these might be some reason for apprehending these dangers. In Paris these occasions are not thought desirable. Once there was a banquet announced to take place there. It was thought perilous and did not happen. Peril came from it. Thus men might learn a lesson from the transactions that happened in other countries. Where English people, English blood, and English speaking people are found—whether in our colonies, in the United States, or in the United Kingdom—great meetings have never been found productive of breaches of the peace. I defy you to find anything in history to show that, as a rule, great public meetings have been attended with breaches of the peace in this country. One of the most signal instances of a breach of the peace was in 1819, in Manchester, where men met to ask for Reform and for a repeal c the Corn Laws. If there had been no interference with that meeting it would have been as tranquil as we are in this House at this moment. But because it was interfered with by blind, bigoted, foolish magistrates, whose conduct now ever man in the county of Lancaster is read to condemn, there was a breach of the peace and bloodshed. But it was on the part of the Yeomanry not on that of the people. The result of that transaction has left to this hour feelings of animosity rankling in the minds of not a few of the people of that great district. If what I have said with regard to the question of legality be true, as I believe it is, I am also forced to say that the course taken by the Government last year was, I believe not only an unwise course, but an illegal course. It was also an unnecessary course and led to any disturbance that occurred. If the Government had acted as I am persuaded they will act now, you would have found the meeting in the month of July last would have passed off just as tranquilly as 999 meetings out of every 1,000 have passed off in the history of this country. A Proclamation—or not exactly a Proclamation, but a notification has been issued by the Secretary of State. After stating in this notification that the use of the park for the purpose of having such meetings is not permitted as it interferes with the object of Her Majesty in opening the parks for the enjoyment of the people, he goes on to warn the people not to attend. I have great sympathy with persons who enjoy the parks, though unfortunately I find my way there very seldom. I do not know how many persons will be in the Park on Monday at the meeting at six o'clock apart from those who will attend that meeting. If I said 5,000 it might be beyond the mark. But if 100,000 persons, citizens of this metropolis, are anxious to meet in this Park for two hours, it would be no great sacrifice on the part of these other visitors to it. Their enjoyment would not necessarily be interfered with. The true object of opening the parks to the public would not be endangered or injured in any way by permitting 50,000 or 100,000 persons to meet there and express their opinions on a great public question. We in this House are occupied almost from night to night on this question of the Reform Bill. No question of greater importance can be submitted to us. We are making the future history, and deciding the future condition of a great Empire. We are exhorted to put aside all party feeling, and those motives which excite contests here, that we may devote every power of our understanding and all our patriotism for the purpose of arranging this measure in a manner satisfactory to a great people, and finally to settle a question that has been a matter of contest for many years. Who are the people that have the greatest, or at least as great, an interest as any in this question? Surely the unenfranchised thousands who live in this metropolis and in other parts of the country. If they had not a natural and intense feeling on this question you would not now be endeavouring to legislate upon it. If they have a very intense feeling upon it, it is a reasonable thing to expect that they should wish to meet and proclaim to the country—their sense it may be of gratitude to Parliament for the interest we are taking in the question; it may be to explain their opinions on certain points of the measure; it may be to offer counsel to the Government and to the House how to settle the question on sure and permanent foundations. I take the liberty of asserting that a meeting of this nature, whether in Loudon or in any great town—in a crisis of this nature, if I may use the phrase—is an important and useful event. We have had such meetings all over the country. They have been going on since you threw out the Bill last year, and will not cease until the measure before the House, or some other measure for the same object, shall pass both Houses of Parliament and receive the assent of the Queen. What has taken place? I want to show that these fears are without foundation. I was in Birmingham the other day, and I was there in August or September, when the whole town appeared to turn out. There was no special constable to keep the peace. The Mayor and the Mayor of last year joined in the procession. The head of the police helped to marshal the procession. There was a unanimous feeling on the part of every class in the town—the public, the corporation, many of the magistrates, the police guardians of the public peace, with regard to this question. The meeting was held, and by competent authorities judged to have contained, from its centre to its circumference, not many fewer, if any fewer, than 300,000 persons. ["Dissent."] I will say this, at any rate, that I believe the number of persons was very much larger than has been ever yet assembled in any park in London at a political meeting, and it may be greater than will be assembled in Hyde Park at any time during this Session. If I ask my hon. Friend (Mr. W. E. Forster) what was done in the West Riding, he will give the same account. There was a meeting there with a sufficient number of men from twenty towns to have formed twenty meetings. If I ask my hon. Friends the Members for Glasgow, they would state that in the autumn of last year an incredible number assembled on the green at Glasgow. If I ask my hon. Friend and Relative the Member for Edinburgh, he would tell me what he saw in the Queen's Park in Edinburgh. If these meetings have been held without a breach of the peace; if none of the persons in these towns apprehended a breach of the peace, why, in the name of common sense, when a proposition is made to hold a meeting in Hyde Park, worry the Home Secretary as if the city were about to be sacked by a foreign enemy? If meetings have been held of the people of Birmingham at Brookfields; of the people of Glasgow in Glasgow Park; of the people of Leeds at Woodhouse Moor; of the people of Edinburgh in the Queen's Park—s which, I believe, is more absolutely at the disposal of the Crown than any other—why, I ask, is there this terror of a meeting in Hyde Park? Why is this insult offered—for it is an insult—to a great many people of this metropolis to suppose that they cannot meet on an occasion like this without inspiring fears in the minds of men on whom on ordinary occasions cowardice is the last passion that would operate? I was sorry to hear that some have asked that there would be special constables enrolled on Monday next. I believe that this scheme has originated with a few lawyers. A friend of mine said the proposal was carried about in a court where he was the other day, and that some persona signed it. I am sorry to find wigs and gowns with so little courage and so little wisdom. I would say that, to enrol the middle class if you please or any class as special constables with a view of arresting the meeting, or of dispersing it, or with the view of putting them in an attitute of defiance or menace, in opposition to a great meeting like that intended to be held on Monday, would be one of the most insane things that any Home Secretary or magistrate could do. It would be setting class against class with a vengeance. It would be widening the breach which the legislation of this House during this Session, if it be wisely terminated, will in all probability fill up for ever. Neither is it a case for the military at all. Nobody dreams of it out of the House. It is not a case for police, except that the police in this great city should in a body co-operate with all persons anxious to keep the peace and put down any disturbance that might arise. I am confident myself, that the police, united with the many thousands of honourable men who may take part in the proceedings of Monday, would find their labour very light, and their duties more formal than real. What is the duty of the Government in this matter? It is not a question that can be settled very wisely by legal quibbles and technicalities. I hold the duty of the Government to be this. To offer no kind of opposition to the peaceful entrance of the people into the Park, and when they are in the Park, to take no part whatever in endeavouring to prevent what I believe will be the legal proceedings of the day—the intended proceedings of the day. To have no thought whatever of judging of that meeting in any other way or in any other spirit than the police all over the country have judged of the meetings that have been held throughout the country. I maintain, contrary to the feelings of some, that the character of the English people is guarantee for a peaceful issue on a day like that. In Birmingham, Leeds, Glasgow, Edinburgh, Newcastle, and Manchester you can have these great meetings. It is quite impossible that there should be that difference between the temper of the people of the metropolis and the temper of the people in other great cities of the country—that while those in the country are perfectly harmless, those held in the metropolis are to be eminently hazardous and dangerous. In a meeting like this the people have a great national object connected immediately and directly with their class, and with measures now being discussed in this House. They will go there ennobled by the sentiments which animate them, and you may have a double reliance upon them that there will be nothing done about which any of their countrymen may be ashamed. I hear hon. Gentlemen sometimes speak of the President of the Reform League with feelings akin to contempt. I have gone through a deal of that. I have known hon. Gentlemen on the other side of the House use strong language of me in public—I say nothing of what is said in private. Sometimes that language has been used to my face in this House, but oftener when I have not been present. There has been language of terrible abuse for my dangerous views in one year. I find them next year embodying those views in an Act of Parliament I venture to say this of Mr. Beales—that there has never been connected with any political agitation in our time a more honourable man than he is. I judge from many years' personal, and some years' rather intimate acquaintance with him. I judge from what all those who know him best say of him, and I judge from the general conduct which he has pursued during the last two years when be has been prominent before the public in connection with a great agitation. He has suffered from that connection. He has been cut of from an honourable office; but he stands upon the principles which he holds, and he endeavours to move in their direction legally and morally. He has now, as I know, the intense satisfaction of knowing that the right hon. Gentleman the Chancellor of the Exchequer and his Colleagues are gradually dragging—it may be drawing, inviting alluring, coaxing coercing, or bringing in some way or other—the great Conservative party of England into intimate alliance with him. Sir, let me say this of the right hon. Gentleman the Home Secretary (Mr. Walpole.) I believe there is no man who ever filled the office which he does who was more anxious to perform its duties with moderation and with justice in all questions of the nature which I am now introducing to the House that he is. I am sure the right hon. Gentleman regretted the momentary turmoil that took place last year as much as I did, or any one of us did. I believe now he will now act upon a wiser principle. That he will believe, as I believe, that almost every man who goes to this meeting in Hyde Park will consider himself the guardian of public liberty, and at the same time the protector of the public property. I shall be much surprised if there be harm done to anything within the Park. I believe this at any rate, that the character of the English people for a love of order will not be tarnished by the transactions of that day. Sir, when I look at the difficulties of the right hon. Gentleman the Chancellor of the Exchequer, who has so much labour with the contending parties of this House in connection with die Bill he has introduced, I say it ought to strengthen his hands, and to be to him and to every man in favour of a settlement of this grand question, a pleasurable fact that there are millions of the metropolis of this Empire who can meet calmly, if not to discuss, at least to consider, the great question in which they are so much interested, and to lend their powerful aid to the attempts which are now made to introduce a large portion of the people to the privileges of our ancient and noble Constitution. I say that it is the business of the House and of the Government not to criticize this question too narrowly in a great emergency like this. The Law Officers of the Crown ought not to try and find a flaw in the claim of the people to meet in Hyde Park. They ought to be above quibbles of that nature. Let them rather consider the grandeur of the question and the grandeur of the hour. Let them consider the intense interests of the people. Let them consider that they are laying the foundation for future legislation and government. Then they will be thankful that there is a love of the Constitution strong enough, a love of order strong enough to enable this immense body of people to meet in their tens, twenties, or hundreds of thousands, for the purpose of peacefully assisting Parliament to arrive at an adjustment of this question. [Laughter.] I was just about to conclude, but the laugh of hon. Gentlemen will induce me to add another sentence. Is there a man among you, if so let him get up when I sit down and say so—is there a man among you who does not feel that he would not be in the position in which he now stands with respect to this great Bill if it had not been for the assistance of those great demonstrations of public opinion? [Laughter.] Why, Sir, the thing is notorious, and if there be any man incapable of seeing it I shall not waste my time and the time of the House in discussing the point. I say such are the obstacles in the way of a very great measure like this, that it cannot be adjusted without the assistance of that great body of the people who hold these meetings—holding them for a noble purpose—["Oh, oh!"]—for it is a noble purpose, and I trust that the Parliament of England will regard it in that spirit.

said, that it was lest the right hon. Gentleman (Mr. Walpole) should be over-persuaded by the eloquence of the hon. Gentleman who had just sat down that he rose at that early period. The hon. Member had praised the Government for their moderation; but he (Mr. Neate) thought the Government were entitled to something more from the Opposition side of the House, and that was cordial thanks for the course they had so wisely taken, and which he hoped they would persevere in. He did not come there to throw down the guantlet to the working men. Nothing was farther from his intention than to take such an aggressive course. If there had been anything of aggression, it had not been on the part either of Parliament or the Government. He must say that looking to the character of this agitation, it was difficult to conceive anything more unprovoked or more wanton than the shape which it had assumed during the last two months. If, indeed, Her Majesty's Government had endeavoured to disappoint the just expectations of the people by the introduction of a little Reform Bill, if they had proposed to reduce the borough franchise to £9 and the county franchise to £25; if they had rested at the resting-place, which by their own fault they lost last year, of an £8 franchise in the boroughs and a £20 franchise in the counties, he could understand that there would have been cause for a resentful agitation. But the Government had offered a measure which was more liberal than those who claimed to represent the working classes had been willing to accept, and more extensive than the measure of last year. Except, then, for the mere love of agitation—except for the purpose of keeping up a sort of Parliament in the streets, he could not conceive anything which could induce the leaders of this movement to persevere in the course on which they had entered. The mode in which the House of Commons and the Government had dealt with this matter had been marked by singular forbearance. In that House they had taken no notice of the many unmerited insults which had been heaped upon them, and they hail shown more than kindness to these agitators. Not only had there been a procession on the 3rd of December, to which the police lent their assistance, end for which the Government offered the use of Primrose Hill; but there had been—he trusted there would be no permanent allowance of any such right—weekly meetings permitted in Trafalgar Square. These agitators, however, had not allowed the Government any resting-place, but had themselves brought the question to an issue. It must now be determined whether any number of people without any legal character or authority could take to themselves the right on any pretext to meet in any of the open places of the metropolis. If the Government conceded any such claim as that, so far from deserving the support of the House, they would deserve to be impeached. If there was any legal question in dispute, the proper course was to let it be tried. But there was in reality no such question. Nobody who had ever talked with a lawyer, or who had a lawyer among his acquaintance, still less any lawyer could suppose that there was any doubt in the matter. There might, indeed, be a right of way through the Park. On that point he apprehended that they would have some information. But a right of way, if such existed, did not carry with it the right to hold a meeting any more than the right of way down Piccadilly implied the right of holding a meeting in the middle of the thoroughfare. Although the Crown might have granted the public a qualified right of way that right was confined to going through the Park. It was quite open to the woods and forests to say that they would grow hay in the Park, and that nobody should be allowed to trespass by walking on the grass. ["No, no!"] A very similar question was raised before the Select Committee on Commons. It was there proved that people had not, as had been supposed, the right of walking up and down and round a common, but merely that of going through it to the point which they wished to reach. That was the extent of the right of the public in the case of the parks. A right to pass through, not to trespass. It was said, however, that although there was no legal title to hold the meeting, it would have been wise to permit it. That might have beet, the case had permission been asked; but when a right was asserted, the matter assumed a different aspect. He agreed with his hon. Friend that such permission might have been granted in this instance without danger to the peace of the metropolis. But the House must look not to the present temper of the people, and to the degree of excitement which prevailed respecting the very moderate differences of opinion which now engaged public attention, but to what might happen on an occasion when greater excitement existed. His hon. Friend had cited the example of Birmingham and Manchester, and had said why not allow here what was done at Birmingham, where the Mayor and a great number of the leading inhabitants showed their pleasure and satisfaction at such a meeting being held? and where they attended, he presumed, in order to have the pleasure of listening to his hon. Friend. But the leading authorities and inhabitants here, including those who used the Park for its legitimate purpose of recreation, did not wish for such a meeting. Therefore the example of Birmingham did not apply. His hon. Friend, judging partly from himself, and partly from those that had listened to him, contended that nothing but good could result from such a gathering. There might arise, however, other demagogues. [Laughter.] He hoped it would not be supposed that he intended to speak of the hon. Gentleman as a demagogue, though be did not see why the word should be deemed offensive, for it simply meant "a leader of die people;" but he should be the last to apply any term in the slightest degree disparaging to the relations which subsisted between his hon. Friend and the people, which redounded to the honour of both. But other leaders of the people might arise possessing equal power of stirring up their passions, but not possessing to the same extent the ability or the inclination to restrain them within those moderate courses which had marked the career of his hon. Friend as a political agitator. The House were bound to consider that contingency; and, while leaving unnoticed the attacks which had been made on their character, they ought to take care that they transmitted undiminished to their successors the power and authority with which they were intrusted. Especially should they do this at a time when they were on the eve of a great extension of the franchise. The more widely the doors of the Constitution were thrown open, the larger the number with whom they came in contact, the mightier the impulses to which the course of legislation was hereafter to be subject, the more important was it that they should transmit to their successors, unimpaired and untarnished, t he laws and liberties of the country. Our laws had derived much benefit from our liberties, but the liberty of our country owed still more to its laws. He should esteem them false friends to English liberty who, either by their language or their silence, lent any countenance to the doctrine that the councils of this country and the legislation of the House of Commons were to be controlled by multitudinous assemblages out of doors or by permanent agitation in the streets. The hon. Member concluded by moving the Amendment.

seconded the Amendment.

said, he was glad to find that the hon. Member (Mr. Bright) took a pacific view of the proceedings of Monday next, since there had been prophets in that House who had prophesied evil and who had been very influential in carrying out their own prophecies. He must say that that remark was applicable both with regard to the hon. Gentleman and to the right hon. Gentleman (Mr. Gladstone). The conduct of both of them reminded him of a story related by an eminent Member of the House (Mr. Arthur Kinglake) in one of the cleverest books ever written on the East. He described the behaviour of a certain prophet, who predicted that there would be a great plunder of the Jewish quarter of a particular Eastern town. On the day which he had fixed for the event he went among the crowd, created a tumult, and led them to the Jewish quarter, which they accordingly plundered. He indulged in a second prophecy of the same kind, but with that the law interfered, because he was regarded as too practical a prophet to be allowed to continue his prognostications. The hon. Member, however, had confined himself to stating his confidence that peace would be preserved inside the Park, and had said nothing whatever about the outside. But that he (Mr. Davenport Bromley) conceived was an equally important matter. He had a friend living near Cumberland Gate who had told him that the whole of his windows and nearly all his furniture were destroyed last July; that he had had the damage repaired at considerable expense; and that he did not look forward to next Monday with any feelings of satisfaction. He was not at all so sanguine as the hon. Member for Birmingham with regard to the peaceable character of the contemplated proceedings. The hon. Gentleman had said a good deal about the late Reform meeting at Birmingham. But he must be well aware that on Easter Monday there was invariably a vast crowd of people in Birmingham, and that the fact of the recent meeting being held on Easter Monday must be taken into consideration. The hon. Gentleman had also stated that hon. Members on the Ministerial side of the House—whom he, perhaps, regarded as less likely to have received an historical education than those on the opposite Benches—could not appeal to history for instances of the peace having been broken by meetings of this character. He surely ought to have remembered the Bristol riots, the Lord George Gordon riots, the Nottingham riots, and several other instances which might be mentioned, not forgetting the Hyde Park riots of last July. He believed the Government would not adopt an unwise course, or take an ostensible line of opposition in any direction. At the same time, he trusted that if any infraction of the law took place, they would take care to hold the leaders of the demonstration responsible for any injury to person or property which might unfortunately occur.

I wish to take the earliest opportunity open to me of making a few observations in reference to the questions asked early in the evening by the hon. Baronet (Sir Charles Russell) in which he introduced my name and the names of other hon. Members on this side of the House. I do so because I hold it to be right, and the duty of the House, to scrutinize the conduct of its Members outside its walls. Some eighteen months ago, to begin at the beginning, some artizans whom I had known for some time, and for whom I had a great respect, called on me, and asked me to subscribe to the Reform League, of which they were themselves members. I subscribed to the funds, and, without further solicitation, I was made a Vice President of the League. Since that time whatever responsibilities or advantages may attach to that office have attached to me, and do so still. From many of the doctrines and most of the action of the Reform League I have differed widely. I have taken public occasion to state those differences; but I am not aware that the council of the Reform League have felt it to be their duty to alter their course of action in consequence of those views and opinions of mine. Admitting all this, I see and know nevertheless, as has been stated by the hon. Member (Mr. Bright), that but for the action of the Reform League, and the agitation that has been created by it and other similar bodies, we should not be where we are with respect to this question. I hold that the conversion of hon. Gentlemen opposite to the doctrine of household suffrage is, in a very great degree, owing to the agitation of the Reform League. I have been urged by many persons to give up my office as Vice President of the League. I have been urged to do so by persons whose judgment I highly respect, and whose good opinion I feel anxious to retain. But, after the best consideration I could give to the case, I declined to withdraw. It is not therefore likely that now I should re-consider the question, upon the pressure of the hon. Baronet and of the Gentlemen who think with him, for whose judgment I have not a high respect, and whose good opinion I am not anxious to obtain. It would be an act of simple cowardice and poltroonery if I were at this moment to recede from my position in consequence of the pressure applied to me by political opponents, or by any persons whatever. I apprehend that there are hardly any Members of this House who do not subscribe to institutions over whose actions they have no control, and with whose opinions they do not entirely agree. With respect to the proposed meeting in Hyde Park, I can only say that, as a Vice President of the Reform League, I am not in favour of it, and that I have done and shall do what little I can to prevent its occurrence. But, at the same time, let the House and the Government distinctly understand that, whatever may be my opinion upon the subject, if the meeting be held, I shall not shrink from the responsibility which may fall upon me as Vice President of the League; nor do I intend to recede from that position. With respect to the property destroyed last year, the destruction, it must be remembered, was occasioned by the attempt to keep out of Hyde Park the persons who wished to enter it.

Sir, there was a singular omission in the speech of the hon. Member (Mr. Bright) of the one topic which I should have thought was the most important in the consideration of this question. He was very eloquent and powerful in advocating the holding of public meetings for the purpose of political discussion. The hon. Member pointed out the good which such discussions often produce, and, founding his argument mainly upon that, he advocated the propriety, and almost the right—for he treated the denial of it as an insult to the people—of the admission of the people to the Royal Parks for such purposes. The hon. Gentleman never beard from me, nor do I believe he will hear from any Member of Her Majesty's Government, any expression of an intention to deprecate meetings of that kind. But the strange omission, which could not have escaped the attention of the House, relates to what is the foundation stone of the matter now under consideration—namely, the place where the meeting is to be held, and the propriety of insisting upon a place that is forbidden, when other places are open. That was hardly adverted to, except in two sentences, from the beginning to the end of the otherwise powerful speech of the hon. Gentleman. The whole question before the House at this moment is whether that right—of which Her Majesty's Government have no doubt, and of which, I believe, not ten Gentlemen in this House have any doubt—namely, the right of the Crown to the Royal Parks, and as consequent on that right, the power either to permit certain things to be done, or the power to prohibit certain other things from being done—is not as clear at the clearest proposition known to our law. The right of the Crown has been exercised in various ways and at various times. There is an implied permission, consequent on usage for every person to be admitted to the parks—and gladly, willingly, and cheerfully they are admitted—for the purposes of general recreation and enjoyment. The same right is established in many parks in many parts of the country—not Royal Parks, but parks created by the beneficence of individuals, or by public subscription. In almost all these parks they make it a condition—I know they make it a condition in most of them—that they shall not be open for two purposes—namely, purposes either of political or religious discussions. The reason is obvious. These are two topics on which men's minds are easily excited, and on which contrary opinions may be brought to bear in an adverse manner. If you opened the parks for the discussion of one set of opinions, you must open them for that of the other set of opinions. If therefore the Royal Parks were opened for either of these purposes of religious or political discussions the injurious consequences would be so great that not only do I hope, but I firmly believe, that the House will support the Government in maintaining the distinction as a reasonable distinction to be observed. The hon. Member said he wanted to know whether any number of persons had not a right to enter the Park. I concede that to be so. But when the hon. Member goes on to ask whether they have not a right to put shoulder to shoulder, to stand near each other and express their opinions to each other in a somewhat loud voice, I say that time answer to the question must depend upon circumstances. The real fact, and the only question which arises is, not whether any number of persons may enter the Park, or whether any number of persons may even be walking together, but whether any number of persons may hold a public meeting, doing that which is not permitted to be done. He imagines that either the Government or myself must have some doubt as to time rights of the Crown, since we have announced our intention to bring in a Bill on the subject. I do not bring in that Bill because we have the slightest doubt of the rights of the Crown, but because those rights are in our opinion undoubted. The mode of exercising those rights, however, so as to prevent the infraction of the law, or of the right which is conceded, to the persons entering the Park, is not so easy of enforcement. The real truth is that since every one has permission to enter the parks, the holding of public meetings, instead of being a criminal offence, is an act of trespass; and that in dealing with a trespass it is found difficult, indeed impossible, to act immediately when large bodies are collected together. It is easy to enforce the law, and it has often been enforced when small bodies of men have tried to enter upon religions discussions. When preachers go into the Park for this purpose you can stop them and hand them out. If they resist, you can deal with them for a breach of the peace. But another state of circumstances now arises. This being the case, the question is whether the Government; after all that has occurred, were not justified in warning those who announced their intention of holding this meeting in the Park for political discussion that they ought not to hold it, because such meetings were not allowed to be held. That was a warning, I should have thought, which the members of the Reform League might have cheerfully and honourably acted upon. They knew perfectly well, because an intimation was given to them last year by the Government, that if they simply wished to have a meeting for the discussion of the question of Reform in the open air, in order to avoid the expense of an indoor meeting, Primrose Hill was open to them for that purpose. You cannot, therefore, say that it was for the purpose of preventing them from having a meeting that we took the course we did. It was simply to maintain the right which cannot be maintained for the benefit of the public unless the authorities do their utmost to maintain that right, and unless in endeavouring to maintain that right they are supported by Parliament and the country. The question then arises supposing these gentlemen to insist on going to the Park, upon whom will fall the responsibility of any breach of the peace which may arise? They have had their warning, and I think they might ever now be advised to take it. No provocation will come from the Government so as to lead to that which is to be deprecated by everybody—the chance of a disturbance of breach of the peace. If they go, as understand they intend to go, though in a somewhat altered manner from that originally announced—if they go into the Part as other people go into the Park, the gates will not be closed. They will be admitted; but I do hope that when that is done, they will not insist on holding their meeting. I do hope they will pay such respect to the law of the land as to desist from what they must know is contrary to law. They have had every opportunity offered them of trying the legal right. Not only have they declined to accept that offer, but the President of the Reform League himself has said within the last six weeks that the legal right, he admitted, was with the Government. Sir, if this had been only an announcement of a meeting to be held in the park, it would not have become the Government, in maintaining the rights of the public—for all the people have a right to the enjoyment of the parks—to have stood neutral. But that is not all. I do not wish to say anything to aggravate or increase the difficulties of the present state of things. But I should imperfectly discharge my duty if I did not point out that not only was the meeting announced to be held, but language was used for the purpose of defying the Government and the authorities, which no Government could submit to with due regard to the interests of the country. I hope that language has now been withdrawn; I hope still more that it will not be repeated. In concluding, the few observations I have addressed to the House, pointing out the reasons why Her Majesty's Government have felt it their duty to take the course they have done, I cannot but add this further entreaty to those who may be connected with the Reform League. One of the vice-presidents (Mr. Thomas Hughes) has already said that he has tried, and will try to prevent this meeting, though he held himself responsible for what occurred while he remained Vice President, I hope that others will join their voices with his in trying to persuade the League not to do that which is contrary to the law. There is no intention on the part of the Government to prevent them from having the fullest and fairest discussion on the great subject of the day, provided the place where it is held is not a place set apart for other purposes. The rights of the people to the enjoyment of the parks are recognised by the Crown, but those places will never, I hope, be permitted to become arenas of political or religious agitations.

Sir, I wish to meet, without a moment's delay, so far as I am concerned, the invitation which has been given by the right hon. Gentleman (Mr. Walpole) to the Members of this House for an expression of opinion with respect to the meeting proposed to be held in Hyde Park on Monday. I will state at the commencement of the few remarks I have to make that I draw, in my own mind, and I desire to make intelligible to the House, a broad distinction between assuming responsibility on the part of this House for any step the Executive Government may take in the exercise of their legal powers, with reference to affirming or questioning the correctness of their judgment—a matter that I take to be beyond the duty of the House—and that which, on the other hand, I think does lie within the duty of the House and of Members of the House—namely, respecting and supporting the authority of the Crown and of the Ministers in the administration of the law. One word, in the first place, in respect to some remarks which have been made in this debate. Nothing could be less desirable than that any difference of opinion should be manifested in this House by a vote on a question touching public law and order. Upon questions of this kind the space that separates the two sides of this House entirely disappears. There can be but one sentiment in any quarter of this House with regard to the paramount importance and sacredness of every interest connected with the maintenance of public order. In the little I have to say I shall endeavour to speak in a spirit conformable to that sentiment. Holding that sentiment, I make this preliminary appeal to my hon. Friend (Mr. Neate) that I trust he will not ask us to go to a vote that must necessarily be misrepresented and misunderstood, relying, as I think he may, upon that substantial union of opinion which I am certain pervades all quarters of the House. I must say that if there be those who question either the lawfulness or the usefulness, in given circumstances, of great assemblies of people for political purposes, I am not among such persons. Moreover, I confess it was with some surprise that I heard expressions of scepticism from some portions of the House when a speaker on this side stated what appears to me entirely beyond dispute, that assemblages of the people for discussion and manifestation of their opinion regarding the question of Reform, have had an important—I will venture to say a vital influence and effect, in bringing that question to its present position. I can conceive nothing more legitimate in general than the principle of such meetings. Nothing less questionable than the propriety of their being brought into use on occasions of this kind where the interests of the people are directly concerned, and where for many years a main allegation in the mouths of its opponents—doubtless a conscientious allegation—was that the people themselves were indifferent to it. Although my hon. Friend (Mr. Neate) has rested his argument on the merits of the Bill introduced by Her Majesty's Ministers, I am not going to rest any counter argument on the demerits of that Bill. But I must say it is very natural that among those who are alive to the advantages and recommendations of that Bill the people of London should not be found in a foremost rank. This is not the time to introduce polemical observations; but whatever may be said as to the advantages contained in it to other parts of the country, there can be no question that the Bill, as regards the population of London, is little more than null. I therefore am not prepared to concur, directly or indirectly, in the slightest censure of the people of London for their continued desire, if they think fit to entertain that desire, to meet and express their views in respect to the question of Reform in Parliament. But, as was said by my right hon. Friend (Mr. Walpole), that is subject to considerations of place. The Government believes itself to be in possession of legal powers to prohibit the use of the parks for the purposes of political discussion. It is a question, I admit, of very nice discretion—whether upon any occasion the extreme right of the Government in such matters should be waived. My right hon. Friend, I think, on certain occasions, if my memory does not deceive me, has himself waived somewhat of that right. I confess it appears to me it might be wise in some circumstances that that right should be waived. I agree cordially with my hon. Friend (Mr. Neate) when he deprecates permanent agitation. I will not say there can be no greater curse to a country. But I will say it is a great public evil, commonly testifying, indeed, to the existence of other and greater evils, but yet in itself a great public evil. But the way to get rid of these evils is by just legislation. However, I am now only drawing attention to the difference between a permanent cession of a right and an occasional waiver under circumstances that would justify such an exercise of discretion in the part of the Government. If the right hon. Gentleman has upon former occasions waived somewhat that right, I admit that he and his Colleagues are the proper judges whether that right should be waived under present circumstances. I am not sure whether I have gathered from the speech of the right hon. Gentleman with perfect exactness the intentions of the Government upon this subject. I will, however, state what those intentions are as I understand them. I understand that the right hon. Gentleman holds himself to be beyond all doubt in possession of a legal power to prohibit and to put down meetings for political discussion in the parks. I understand him further to say, and I think this very important, that if other persons differ from the Government in their view of the law, he is not opposed, but, on the contrary, would give every facility for trying the legal right. Under these circumstances, and inviting an appeal to the law, the right hon. Gentleman says to those who propose to hold the meeting in Hyde Park, "I warn you not to attend the Park on Monday, the 6th of May, for the purpose of political discussion. No attempt will be made to close the gates of the Park against the entrance of any one who wishes to go there, but my intention is not to permit political discussion in that place." I understand that to be the intention of the right hon. Gentleman. If I have not correctly defined that intention, perhaps it might be as well if he were to say so.

As this is a very important point, perhaps the House will forgive me for interrupting the right hon. Gentleman. The right hon. Gentleman used the phrase "prohibit and put down." I believe I never uttered the words "put down." On the contrary, I think I explained myself by saying that this was a trespass only. There would not therefore, practically, be power to stop such a meeting, and for that reason I sought by Bill to obtain some further powers to enforce the legal right in a more effectual manner.

I must admit that when I read the Proclamation, or document, or notification—call it, what you will—published by the right hon. Gentleman, I understood it to be the intention of the right hon. Gentleman to assert the legal right of which he thinks himself possessed by the agency of those who are at his command for that purpose. As the matter stands at present, I understand the right hon. Gentleman to say that his intention is limited to interference when any act takes place that involves a breach of the peace.

I think I never expressed any intention as to what would be done in the event of the meeting being held. What I did say was, that the meeting being prohibited, the parties to it would be trespassers, and might be treated as trespassers. But in treating them as trespassers and in handing them out of the Park, a breach of the peace might easily be committed. This would be one of the consequences that might arise if the meeting were held.

I do not doubt that it is owing to defective apprehension on my part that I feel myself to be imperfectly informed by the statement of the right hon. Gentleman as to the course that he intends shall actually be taken in this matter. But if the intention of the right hon. Gentleman be to treat as trespassers, and therefore as persons who have committed a breach of the law, those who engage in political discussion in the Park on Monday next; or I will go further, and say whatever may be the intention of Her Majesty's Government with respect to the administration and execution of the law, my most earnest advice and entreaty to those whom the Proclamation concerns is to conform themselves to the notifications it contains. So much at least of respect is due to the Government as the administrators of the law, that it is not consistent with the duty of the private individual and loyal subject of the Queen—and I agree with every word that the hon. Member (Mr. Bright) has used with regard to the general spirit which pervades the minds of the working population of London, whom I believe to be as jealous of the purity of their loyalty, as any Gentleman in this House—to place himself in conflict with those who are properly responsible for the execution of the law. If any persons question the legality of the powers assumed by the Government, they should carry the matter before the tribunals of the country, where the legal question would be determined. I will only add that, as others may labour under the same defective apprehensions as my self with regard to the intention of the Government on this subject, I hope that as far as the nature of the case admits their intention will be fully and clearly made known to those to whom the Proclamation has been addressed. It may be on my part an undue assumption of authority, to which I have no pretension, to utter any word of advice or recommendation to those who propose to hold this meeting. But be that as it may—exposing myself to misconstruction on that score, but trusting, as every public man in this country may trust, to the generous indulgence of his fellow-countrymen, when in strictness, perhaps, he travels a little beyond his province for the sake of obtaining a great public end—I offer to them in the face of the House the entreaty which I have just uttered. Under these circumstances, I feel confident that the hon. and learned Member (Mr. Neate) will not ask the House to divide upon his Motion. In my opinion it would be a great mistake to press that Motion, and to ask the House to express beforehand, without being fully acquainted with the intentions of the Government, its opinion as to whether the Government had or had not been wisely advised to adopt, in the exercise of its discretion, a particular course. We should certainly have the alternative, if the division were to be taken, of voting that the words proposed to be left out stand part of the Question; or that the business of the House should go forward in its ordinary course. However, I feel almost confident that we shall not be driven to this alternative. I think I am expressing the sentiments of my right hon. Friend (Mr. Walpole) himself in making this appeal to my hon. and learned Friend. I cannot agree with the observations which have been made by the hon. and learned Member with regard to those who have met in different parts of the country for the purpose of expressing their opinions on the subject of Reform; neither do I share in the apprehensions which some people appear to entertain with regard to any results that may arise from such meetings. But the question before us is one of a totally different description, and it is one in which our duty and obligations are so clear as to be beyond dispute. Let us respect the right and liberty of meeting: let us, if we think tit, reserve to ourselves the right to question the authority assumed by the Government at the right time and at the right place; but, in the meantime, let us support their authority as the administrators of the law for the sake of the law itself and for the sake of the public interest.

said, he had a petition to present from Charles Bradlaugh, a member of the Reform League, praying that notwithstanding the notification of the Home Secretary he might be protected whilst taking part in the public meeting on Monday next. The question with respect to the meeting on Monday next was this, whether under various pretences it was the purpose of the Government to restrict and render more difficult the exercise of the rights of the public. The ground now taken by the Government differed from that taken by them on a former occasion. The ground taken by the Chancellor of the Exchequer last year was that a breach of the peace might be apprehended. The present pretext was that the enjoyment of ordinary visitors to the Park might be interfered with. The reasons were inconsistent, and it was trifling with the question. Personally, he did not approve of the proposed meeting. He could not imagine why these persons could not leave the matter to himself and to others who had protected the cause of Reform on a recent occasion. Still, the point was one upon which the public must be allowed themselves to judge, and the House had therefore no right to interfere on the ground of unreasonableness. Nothing could be more pretentious, more unsound, more fictitious, than the objection raised by the Proclamation of the right hon. Gentleman. Why should it not apply to reviews and other public celebrations? The present discussion was not at all calculated to allay the dissatisfaction which now prevailed. The legal question had been raised, but that had nothing to do with the matter. The Crown had many rights that it would be madness to enforce. The right hon. Gentleman, in dealing with this matter, ought to consider the rights of the public, which were now in danger of being infringed. He trusted that the right hon. Gentleman, instead of interfering with the rights of the people, would rather assist them in expressing their opinions.

I had not, Sir, the good fortune to be in the House when the hon. Member (Mr. Bright) made his speech, but can well understand that its purport was somewhat similar to that of speeches made by the hon. Member elsewhere. I heard, however, with great satisfaction the speeches of my right hon. Friends (Mr. Walpole and Mr. Gladstone.) My right hon. Friend (Mr. Gladstone) apologized to a certain extent for holding the opinions which he expressed; but I cannot help regarding that apology as entirely unnecessary, inasmuch as I believe it to be the duty of every well-wisher of his country to assist in maintaining order and peace in the metropolis. I cannot, however, think that this question is at the present moment in a very satisfactory state, and I confess that I was unable to gather from the re- marks of my right hon. Friend (Mr. Walpole) the exact position in which the matter at present stands. I remember very well the circumstances of 1848, when my right hon. Friend (Sir George Grey), who was the Home Secretary at that time, must have had considerable experience in connection with this question. I have risen, therefore, for the purpose of asking him to favour the House with some expression of opinion upon this matter, with which his experiences and recollections of 1848 must have made him familiar.

I must say that I do not think the remarks of the noble Lord are warranted, because my right hon. Friend (Mr. Walpole) has told the House what our opinions are with respect to permitting the people to enter Hyde Park. Upon that point I think we fully express the opinions of Her Majesty's Government, while upon the legal points we never entertained the slightest doubt. If the question assumes the form of a simple trespass, then it will be dealt with according to the circumstances. The noble Lord appears to think that my right hon. Friend had not been sufficiently explicit as to the intentions of Her Majesty's Government after the people had entered the Park. It is asked what the Government intend to do after the people shall have entered the Park. What course will be taken must depend on circumstances—upon what takes place in the Park. It is quite impossible to say beforehand what we are going to do with respect to those who attend in the Park. All I can say is that we have taken every precaution for the preservation of the peace, and for preventing any possible inconvenience and injury to the ground in consequence of any accident or disturbance which might possibly arise. Every precaution is taken for the preservation of the public peace. But with respect to our conduct after the people shall have entered the Park, I repeat that that must depend on what takes place. I trust that every thing that takes place will be of such a tranquil and ordinary character as to make it unnecessary on the part of the Government to take any steps. But when my right hon. Friend is pressed to state what he will do under circumstances which have not at present occurred, the only answer which can be given is that we have taken precautions which we think adequate to preserve the peace of the metropolis.

I can, of course, give no opinion as to the course which the Government ought to take on this occasion. The circumstances of 1848, which have been referred to, and those of the present time, are very different. There is no question now as to the legality of meetings held for the discussion of questions connected with Reform, and the only question is as to where those meetings should take place. I think, however, that there is some obscurity remaining as to the course which the Government intend to take. It is not an unreasonable assumption that the persons who do go to the Park on Monday will go with the intention of holding a meeting in defiance of the notice which has been issued. This. I apprehend they have no right to do, inasmuch as the Park is a place which is only opened to the public subject to certain restrictions imposed by the Crown in the interest and for the benefit of the public. If persons, with the view of asserting what they conceive to be their legal rights, should attempt to hold a meeting in the Park—though I trust they will not do so—I think that they should distinctly know beforehand what course the Government intend to take. I must, however, express my earnest hope that, after the discussion of this evening, the general expression of opinion as to the right of the Government to prohibit meetings in the parks, and the advice which has been so earnestly tendered by many Members of the House, the members of the League will abstain from doing that which must put them in the wrong.

said, he wished to know whether it was the intention of the Government to bring up a special force of cavalry and infantry to prevent the people from going into the Park, in the event of there being a procession, with banners, with the obvious intention of holding a meeting in the Park. If the people were once allowed to enter the Park, then the difficulty would arise of driving them out again, and the utmost danger might result, not only to property but to person. On the former occasion of a meeting in Hyde Park an hon. Member had his house actually entered; several gentlemen had all their windows broken, and the son of a right hon. Gentleman on the Ministerial side of the House nearly lost his life. Therefore, he wished to know whether the Home Secretary meant to have a sufficient force of military ready to prevent the people from entering the Park?

said, that he had already expressed an opinion that Hyde Park was not at all a suitable place for holding political meetings, and he therefore had no sympathy with those who intended to hold a political meeting in that place. He understood the Home Secretary to say that the persons whose intention was to hold a meeting in the Park would be allowed to enter. But what he wanted to know was, when those persons proceeded to commence a political discussion, whether the Government meant to take forcible means to eject them, or whether they would be allowed to continue the discussion? It would depend on the course adopted by the Government whether the whole affair passed off peaceably, or whether it led to the breach of the peace.

said, that he was a special constable in 1848, and he was ready to serve again in that capacity. He could not concur in the statement of the right hon. Gentleman (Sir George Grey) as to the great difference between the circumstances of that time and the circumstances of the present time. If anything, they were more serious now. The question did not relate to the right of public meetings for political discussion, for that was conceded on all hands. Neither was it a question as to the convenience of the place of meeting, for, having regard to the situation of the residences of most of the persons likely to attend, and to its own shape and position, Primrose Hill would be a much more convenient place for the purpose of the meeting, and there was not the same likelihood of damage being inflicted upon the houses in the neighbourhood as was the case in Hyde Park. Primrose Hill had been offered more than once, and there could be no doubt that Hyde Park had been chosen as the place of meeting simply for the purpose of intimidation. There was no question at all as to the point of law. Even the hon. Member (Mr. Bright) did not assert that the people had any legal right to meet in the parks. Every one had permission from the Crown to go into the parks at certain times and for certain purposes, and this permission could give no greater right than every one had to walk up and down a street in front of a man's house; but if a number of people were to give notice that they intended to hold a meeting in the street in front of a certain house, and were warned by the police against doing it, as it would interfere with the proper use and enjoyment of the thoroughfare by others for other purposes, and would therefore be unlawful; and if, notwithstanding these warnings, the people insisted on their right to hold the meeting, it would be exactly the question which was raised in this case. He did not think it would be right for the Government to say in precise terms what they would do in case of any particular event occurring. He agreed with what had fallen from the Chancellor of the Exchequer—that their course must be guided by circumstances. Considering that the legal question was free from doubt, that the right of public discussion was fully conceded, and believing that if the meeting were held as proposed it would be in direct defiance of the law and for the purpose of intimidation, he held it to be the duty of every Member of that House to give to the Government his utmost support on this question, as their cause was alike the cause of true liberty, the cause of law, and the cause of order.

said, that he was also ready to serve again as a special constable in defence of law and order—as he had under the command of his hon. and learned Friend in April, 1848—if necessary. But in reference to the matter under discussion, he was of opinion that the intentions of the Government should be made a little clearer. If any of the persons who went to the Park on Monday should get up and commence an address to his fellows on some political subject, would he be turned out of the Park? The intentions of the Government on that head had not yet been put before the House point-blank, and he thought that they ought to be clearly understood, or many of the persons attending in the Park, when they found that political topics were not allowed to be discussed, would complain that they had been made fools of, and a disturbance might arise. The Proclamation which had been issued left it quite doubtful whether the Government intended to prevent any discussion or not. Would persons acting in the way described be turned out of the Park? If that were properly known and understood, it would have the affect of preventing a great many people from going there. If it were not stated beforehand, and people went to the Park under the impression that they would not be interfered with, and then were turned out, they would be much more likely to get into a state of temper in which a disturbance was likely to happen. If a disturbance occurred in con- sequence of any violation of the law, he quite agreed that the Government ought not now to be called upon to explain what they would do in that event; but he thought it was only right and fair that a distinct answer should be given to the question of whether, if Mr. Beales or Mr. Bradlaugh attempted to get up a political discussion in spite of the warning of the Government, they would be taken into custody by the police?

said, that he had received a communication from Perth, strongly urging him to state to the House that they took a deep interest in the question, and that they considered the proposed political meeting might be fairly held in Hyde Park on Monday next. He did not express any opinion upon it himself; but he thought it should be known that there was a strong feeling in the country upon the question, as it was considered to be one which affected the right of meeting in public places.

said, he could not let pass without observation the statement that the House was unanimous in denying the right of the people to hold meetings in the Park. For his part, he held that the people were distinctly in the right in holding their meetings, so long as they were peaceful and orderly meetings; and—however little his opinion might be worth—this was at least important to understand—namely, that the people thought so too—that therefore they could not be said to be acting with the desire to deliberately defy the Government, but simply to exercise what they believed to be an undoubted right. Now, he must say that no ground whatever was, in his opinion, made out fur the alleged illegality. The right hon. Gentleman (Mr. Walpole) from time to time used the phrase "Royal Parks," as though they were the property of the Crown; but then in the next sentence he would use the quite different, and indeed inconsistent, language—that the parks had been made over to the people for their recreation and amusement, and generally for all proper and useful purposes. Now he (Mr. Taylor) must say that he was not surprised that amongst such proper and useful purposes Englishmen should think that occasional meetings for the peaceful and orderly discussion of political questions should not be ignored or excluded. But then it was said the Government are bound to keep the peace, and to take precautions that no meeting at which violence was threatened or probable should be permitted. To that proposition he gave his entire concurrence; but then it had no special reference to a meeting in the Park, or elsewhere. The Government were responsible for the maintenance of order, and it was their duty to take care that it was not violated in the Park or out of it. But then they were bound by a responsibility to the House and to the country to show that they had sufficient grounds for interfering with the usual and constitutional right of meeting. In this case they had no such right, because they could not allege, and did not allege, that they had any fear of a disturbance. What said the Proclamation of the right hon. Gentleman? It said, meetings for political discussion were not permitted. Permitted by whom?—he should like to inquire. The simple fact was that the plea that such meetings interfered with the general enjoyment of the people was a mere pretext, as the people very well knew; the real object being to prevent a mass meeting on Reform. The Government did not believe that the proceedings of the Reform League would cause a disturbance. The only disturbance to be apprehended was through Government interference with the meeting, and hence the responsibility for any breach of the peace would rest with the Government. But it was said that now at any rate the people knew that they would be acting illegally, since the Proclamation had been issued by the Government. Now he wished to point out that proclamations did not, happily, in this constitutional country, constitute law. He had the highest possible respect for the right hon. Gentleman (Mr. Walpole); but he ventured to tell him that he did not constitute in himself all the governing elements in the country—he was not exactly Queen, Lords, and Commons rolled into one. He (Mr. Taylor) asked what law it was under which political meetings were forbidden in the Park; and if the right hon. Gentleman could only point to his own manifesto, he (Mr. Taylor) respectfully denied its validity. It was not very long since the right hon. Gentleman the Chancellor of the Exchequer had defended in that House all the infamous atrocities committed in Jamaica on the ground that they were done under a proclamation of martial law. Now he had not yet heard that such doctrines were to be applied at home as well as in our colo- nies; he even thought it not impossible that, after the luminous charge lately delivered by the Lord Chief Justice, the right hon. Gentleman the Chancellor of the Exchequer might not be anxious to repeat his dictum. But be that as it might, he (Mr. Taylor) was prepared to take the responsibility, whether as a vice-president or in any other capacity, of declaring his conviction that the Reform League was correct in believing that in calling a meeting in Hyde Park they were not acting illegally, and in throwing the full responsibility of any disturbance that might ensue upon the foolish interference of the Government. He thought the Government should not now be pressed as to the exact course they intended to pursue on Monday. They had already stated that they did not propose to prevent the people entering the Park, and that they should not interfere unless a breach of the peace should occur; and he, for one, had no fear that any such misfortune would occur, except through the forcible intervention of the police, of which, after the speech of the right hon. Gentleman, he had no apprehension.

I rise to reply to the inquiries recently put to the Government lest it should be thought that we are deficient in courtesy. I had hoped that what was stated by the Chancellor of the Exchequer a short time since would have been sufficient. It has been said most distinctly that as long as persons, whom I will not more particularly define, walk into the Park in a peaceful and well-conducted manner, no attempt shall be made to prevent their entrance. I trust that, after what has been said upon both sides of this House, this ill advised intention on the part of the Reform League will be abandoned. But if, in spite of what has been said here, and in defiance of the notification that has been issued by the Home Secretary, the intention of the League is still maintained, the Government will act at its discretion. But, inasmuch as we have reason to believe that steps have already been taken with a view to evade any arrangements the Government may have made, we do not think it our duty publicly to state here the course we should take under circumstances which we cannot foresee. We have taken and shall take abundant precautions to protect the public peace, and I hope those precautions will be successful in preventing unpleasant consequences.

The right hon. Baronet has stated that the Government cannot, consistently with their duty, tell us what they can do under circumstances they cannot foresee; and nothing can be more reasonable. But what we want to know is what will they do under circumstances which they can foresee, because they have been announced in the form of a programme of proceedings. We are told that a number of persons intend to go to Hyde Park. That is a perfectly legal proceeding. But they intend when they go there to hold a meeting. I gather from the Secretary of State (Mr. Walpole) that that is not in itself an illegal proceeding. [A Member of the Government was understood to dissent from this.] I understood the right hon. Gentleman to say, in substance, that the Crown gives a licence to its subjects to go to the Park; but that licence is revocable, and that it would be the pleasure of the Crown, as announced in the notice which has been given, if the persons meeting in the Park on Monday evening proceed to hold a public meeting on the subject of Reform, to revoke the licence, and that those forming the meeting would thus be made trespassers. Now, the question I want answered is this. As the Government knows it is the distinct intention of certain persons to hold a public meeting on Reform in the Park, and as they have announced that such persons will become trespassers by so doing, I want to know what course the Government will take with regard to those persons when they act as they say they will? It is useless for the Government to say they do not foresee this event. They do foresee it. The Home Secretary has certainly foreseen it. He has told us exactly what is anticipated, and he has said something about handing them out of the Park. Is that to be done, or is nothing to be done? The members of the Reform League have clearly stated what they mean to do, unless they change their minds. If the Government wishes to prevent a great calamity, it will do its duty and announce what it will do in the event of the Reform League carrying out its programme. I ask the Government to declare its intentions in this respect. It appears to me that the Government, in not answering the questions put to it, incurs a heavy responsibility. If the people are led to suppose that they can hold this intended meeting with impunity, subsequent interference would produce a sense of wrong. The people will think they have not been fairly dealt with. This, I think, is a fearful responsibility for a Government to assume. I make these observations in no hostile spirit. I put these questions simply in the cause of order. I do not ask you what measures you will take to suppress a riot. A riot is like a battle; events must be met as they arise. But while nothing has been done to rouse hot passions, it is of the last importance that you should tell us what you will do when the meeting has begun. Do you mean to dissolve the meeting and turn the people out of the Park? If they resist, do you mean to have recourse to force, and will you treat those who resist as criminals? Unless the Government announce what the people will have to expect if this meeting is held, the Government, in case of disturbance arising, will be charged with having caused a very great calamity.

said, that in deference to the wishes of the right hon. Gentleman (Mr. Gladstone), he desired, with the permission of the House, to withdraw his Motion.

said, he rose to ask the Vice President of the Committee of Council on Education, Whether it is the intention of Her Majesty's Government that the Grants voted to promote Elementary Education be administered in strict conformity with the principles and regulations of the Revised Code, as approved by Parliament; with reference to Section 22 of the Revised Code, whether the number of scholars now considered adequate to maintain a school is greater or less than the number, thirty, for whom School Plans have been provided by the Committee of Council on Education; whether families interested in a proposed school will be allowed to decide for themselves the suitability of the religious denomination under which it is founded; and whether, in the event of a denominational school not being acceptable to all the families locally interested, its suitability will be determined by reference to the majority who can, or to the minority who cannot maintain it? He said, that in 1803 the number of scholars was not much more than 500,000, or about 57 in the 1,000 of the whole population. At present the number was supposed to be 2,500,000, or about 130 in the 1,000. The progress that had been made was therefore highly gratifying. Thy National Society, which had been in existence for half a century had done a great deal; the number of children in its school at present amounting to about 1,160,000 The British and Foreign School Society had also taken a very active and successful part. The Wesleyan Methodists and the Roman Catholics had also exerted themselves with great effect in promoting education. Much, likewise, had been done by the Education Department of the Privy Council which, constituted thirty years since, had been intrusted by the State with the distribution of funds for the object. The Education Department, indeed, had no only distributed the funds, but had or plied themselves to the improvement of education. The result of their labours was that at the present moment the Government Inspectors examined about 12,000 schools containing about 1,262,000 scholars. After all that had been done, however, there was said to be about 500,000 children still in want of education. If we looked at the state of our prisons and reformatories, and judged by the evidence of our criminal statistics, we must admit that even though the deficiency be not so great as it had been represented, much still remained to be done. If education had not been carried as far as it ought, then we must look with regret upon any proceedings which might have the effect of staying its course, It would be found from he Returns issued by the Education Department that, having acted with great success up to 1859, the extreme point of the contributions made by the Committee if Council to the building of schools was then reached. Having given as much as £154,000 in building grants, they had year by year diminished those grants, until in 1865 they reached the comparatively low sum of £19,000, though the demand or education had not relaxed. We were bound to look for the cause of this remarkable falling off that we might see whether it could not be remedied. In order to judge fairly of the matter it was necessary to consider what had been done in both Houses of Parliament upon the subject. When the Educational Board was first constituted many very eminent friends of education were anxious to take the whole work out of the hands of denominational agents, and to make the system entirely secular. But the opinion of he House and the country was against such a proceeding, and the result was that year by year grants were made by Parliament for the purposes of education on what was designated the denominational system. This system was based upon the fundamental principle that education must comprise as one of its essential elements a certain amount of religious instruction. While, however, the State undertook to distribute amongst the various educational agencies the amount of money annually voted by Parliament, it, left to the religious managers of schools the whole control of those schools and the responsibility of including in the education they gave that element of religions instruction stipulated for by the Legislature. If they looked through the papers presented to Parliament from time to time upon the subject of education, they would find an explanation of the falling off in the Government grants. In 1859 an attempt was made to economize the national expenditure. This was, of course, desirable; but he must express his regret that the subject of education had been selected for the purpose of exercising that economy. For, while we had been saving hundreds from school grants, we had, perhaps, been expending thousands in the repression of crime, and in the establishment of reformatories. The following was the mode in which the school grants were economized. Parishes comprising populations of something less than a thousand applied for a grant, usually through the clergy, and they were required to make a religious census of their people, or, in other words, to do what in that House had, on another occasion, been stigmatized as "ticketing." The taking of a religious census in any shape had been refused by Parliament. Therefore, when the Education Department imposed on the promoters of schools such an office, they took a course unwarranted by any authority from that House. But it was not merely the demand for a religious census, but the method of carrying out that demand which was reprehensible. In some cases it amounted to this—that where the school promoters were not able to distinguish between Churchmen and Dissenters they were told to draw the line of church attendance and to class all who did not go to Church as Dissenters. Therefore, the dissolute, the intemperate, and the idle, the very persons who most wanted education, were to be set down as Dissenters, and thus children were to be denied the education they required. If different denominations simultaneously applied for school grants the Department required them to reconcile their differences, and to unite in establishing one school before they would make a building grant; but everyone acquainted with the religious differences which existed in this country must be aware that they were not matters of caprice, but were generally the growth of habit or the result of honest conviction, and as such ought to be respected by Parliament and by the Committee of Council. Managers of the larger proportion of Church schools in the rural parishes were necessarily the clergy, whose liberality in the cause of education, far exceeding as it did that of the laity, was worthy of all praise. The education of the rural population rested mainly with them, and it was upon them that the Conscience Clause was sought to be enforced. The real effect of that clause was to give to any parent disapproving the doctrines f the Church a legal right to withdraw his child from all religious instruction and insist on his receiving a purely secular education. He believed that the practice of coupling grants with such a stipulation was contrary to the intention and feeling of the House. It was irreconcilable with the present denominational system. If it were enforced the consequence would be that the clergy would be disabled from extending as they desired the education of the labouring class. He could find nothing in the Revised Code to warrant any of these obstructions, and he wished to know whether the operations of the Department were to be guided by that Code or by some by-law which existed behind the scenes, and which was not subject to the control of Parliament. He desired such an extension of that Code as would adopt the principle of payment for results without insisting on the employment of certificated teachers. In touching on that point he could not help regretting that a gentleman conspicuous for his talents and for his zeal in the cause of education—he referred to Mr. Walter—was not now a Member of the House, since he would have taken a lively interest in a discussion on this subject. He had carefully considered the objections which were offered to the proposal of paying for results, and they had failed to convince him that it was not the natural expansion of the present system. He admitted that the object of the Department was not merely to extend, but im- prove education. Surely, however, payment for results was one of the most certain means of determining which system was the more successful. Was it fair or just to say to those whom they were reproaching for not educating the people, "Come and take one of our teachers, who will cost twice as much as the teachers you now employ?" The capitation grant should be given to any school in the country that deserved it, without reference to the teacher by whom the results had been obtained. If there was a great advantage to the country in having certificated teachers, let there be a contribution from the State quoad the employment of such teachers. The principle of our denominational system was that it was a religious system. He was convinced that in this country no other system could prevail. While as a free people we objected to despotic methods of education, we were anxious that children should early receive religious instruction, and should not be left to pick it up, or not, at a more advanced age. To supersede the denominational system for a system of rating would be a most disastrous step. It would entirely eliminate the religious element. It would deprive the country of the services of thousands of able and devoted men who now gave their valuable assistance, and it would involve the country in much greater expense. On all these accounts he deprecated any deviation from the present basis, He desired its extension and enlargement, being satisfied that had the Department acted more in accordance with the feeling of the English people so much educational destitution would not have now existed. He was anxious that the denominational system should be more faithfully adhered to by the Department. No misplaced economy should insist on the formation of a large school for a whole parish, when the feeling of the people was in favour of small denominational schools. It was much better frankly to acknowledge our religious differences, and to let all parties work as best they could in their own way than to try and force them to co-operate. The promoters of Church schools were resolute in their resistance to the obnoxious clause No persuasions, threats, or fines would ever induce them to accept it. Even it the annual grants were made contingent upon its adoption the only result would be that the education of the people would be taken out of their hands, and that the State would have to undertake the task at a much greater expense to the country.

said, that after the very able and moderate speech of his hon. Friend, he thought he should have no difficulty in giving a satisfactory answer to his Questions. The first Question was—

"Whether it is the intention of Her Majesty's Government that the Grants voted to promote Elementary Education be administered in strict conformity with the principles and regulations of the Revised Code, as approved by Parliament?"

He unhesitatingly answered in the affirmative. There was, moreover, no code of rules in the back-ground; no regulations of which Parliament was not cognizant and had not sanctioned. With regard to his hon. Friend's second Question, it arose from a misapprehension, as the School Building Grant had never once been refused on account of the sparseness of the labouring population. A school had been built for as few as twenty; another for only thirty children. The misapprehension arose from the fact that, in an early volume of the Minutes, the smallest plan of a school happened to be one for thirty scholars; and in a late volume the smallest plan was for forty-eight. But there is not, and never has been, a minimum limit to the size of a school. The hon. Gentleman had alluded to Section 22. The object of that section was to enable the Committee of Council to refuse another school where schools already existed, which were sufficient for the population. The House might suppose a case where a landowner possessing a large park with a cottage for his gamekeeper, and another for his coachman, and another for his gardener, might apply for a grant for the children of those persons. Such an application would be refused under Section 22 of the Revised Code. The hon. Gentleman conceived that in certain cases of large parishes of above 1,000 inhabitants, some of whom were Churchmen and some Dissenters, the Committee of Council were in the habit of telling them that they must sink their differences, in order that the Government might have to build only one school. That was a misapprehension; such a course was never taken. Nor did the Government compel a clergyman to "ticket his parishioners" or make a return of all his parishioners as either Churchmen or Dissenters. What they said was, "Tell us the proportion of Dissenters and Churchmen." Sometimes the clergyman returned the number of Dissenters in his parish at one-ninth; while the Dissenters returned themselves as one-fourth. The Committee of Council did not consider these two statements as necessarily contradictory and untrue; because the clergyman regarded all who went to church as Churchmen, while the Dissenters regarded all who went to chapel as Dissenters. Throughout the country many persons went to Church in the morning, and went to hear some favourite preacher at the Dissenting chapel in the evening. Such persons would therefore be counted among each congregation; both ministers would claim them. It was fair to remark, however, that such persons, and very many Dissenters likewise, repaired to the church clergyman for marriage, baptism, and frequently also for burial. Such persons seemed, therefore, to be rather Churchmen than Dissenters. But the view taken by the Committee of Council was that "Nothingarians" or persons who went to no place of worship were always to be counted as Churchmen. The reason was that, as there was a National Church in this country, it was presumed that those who did not claim to belong to other religions and did not frequent other places of worship belonged to the National Church. He now proposed to take the third and fourth questions together, and he thought it would be in his power to remove a little misapprehension which existed in the mind of the hon. Member. If an application came to the Government for a building grant for a school, and if the parish happened to contain more than 900 inhabitants, the Committee of Council would grant it; although there might be another application for an undenominational school for the same place; because they thought that such a parish was large enough for two schools. If, however, the parish contained less than 900 inhabitants, the Committee of Council inquired in that case what proportion of Dissenters there was in the parish. Be might be asked why they fixed upon 900 as the limit. He answered that it was in order that they might not needlessly multiply the number of schools. But why should they guard against the unnecessary multiplication of schools? For three reasons. First, because of the injustice which would be involved in such an administration of the public funds. The Government had a limited sum to distribute throughout the country; and their object was to raise up schools as fast as they could, and advance a sound education speedily throughout the country. If, however, they set up two schools needlessly in one parish, they would not be able to build one school in some other parish. With a limited sum at command, they could not be profuse in one locality without defrauding and stinting another. Another reason was that they had to consult the convenience of the parishes themselves. One schoolmaster could only teach 150 children, and as that was the proportion of children of the school ages in a population of 900, the latter was the maximum number fixed upon for the population of a "single-school parish." Now, the principal expense of a school consisted in the payment of the schoolmaster, who received from £100 to £120 a year. If a parish of 900 inhabitants had two schools, there would be a double cost; and as the inhabitants would still give about the same sum in subscriptions for two schools as they would for one, and as the Government grant would be the same whether there were two schools or one school, the expense would be doubled while the income remained the same. The consequence would be that both schools would languish, become inefficient, degraded and moribund. Another reason was for the sake of discipline. A case had just come under his knowledge in North Wales, where there was a Church school and an undenominational school in one parish. If a boy were unruly, and were checked by his master, he felt his dignity offended, complained to his father, and left that school for the other. The state of the schools at last became so bad that the two masters came together, and each entered into a voluntary compact not to take any boys from the school of the other, without a bene decessit in writing. For this reason it was that in the country the Committee of Council endeavoured not to build two schools within three miles, at least, from each other. Therefore, on these three grounds—first, the economical administration of the public funds; secondly, the burden upon the parish itself, and the establishment of two bad schools, instead of one good one; and thirdly, on the ground of discipline—the Government had come to the decision to build only one school in parishes of less than 900 inhabitants, unless there were some special reason to the contrary. To return to the point from which he had digressed: if the parish contained fewer than 900 inhabitants, the Committee of Council wrote back to the promoters to ask how many Dissenters there were in the parish. If the promoters replied that there were fewer than one-sixth, the Committee of Council gave them the school they asked for, whether it were national, church, or undenominational. That rule had been laid down by the right hon. Member for Calne, on the principle de minimis non curat lex; which meant, in this case, that the Government would not take account of less than one-sixth of Dissenters. If there were more than one-sixth of Dissenters, then it became a question whether the ground was clear or not—that is, whether a school did or did not already exist in the parish. If the ground was not clear, and there was a church school or an undenominational school for instance, then the Committee of Council could grant one school of the denomination required by the promoters, whether it were a church school or a national or other kind of school. If, on the contrary, the ground were clear, three cases might arise. In the first case the Dissenters might be in one corner of the parish, and in the contiguous corner of the next parish there might also be Dissenters. The Committee of Council then gave a Church school to the part where there were Church inhabitants only, and one undenominational school for the Dissenting portions of both parishes; because the Dissenters did not care for the division of parishes. Another case that might arise was when the promoters said they did not choose to have a Conscience Clause, but would build a school for themselves without asking for a building grant. Then as soon as the school was built they came to the Committee of Council for annual grants. In the third case only it was that the promoters were required to accept a Conscience Clause. The Committee of Council said it would be unfair to the inhabitants of the parish, a large proportion of which were of a different religion, if the distinctive tenets of the majority were to be thrust upon the minority. A building grant would therefore be refused, unless they consented to receive the Conscience Clause. The Conscience Clause made no difference in regard to Church children. They still remained under the stringent Minute of August 10, 1840. The inspector would still be bound to examine them in the catechism, and to report on the religious character and discipline of the school. It was only in regard to Dissenters that the Conscience Clause took effect. The effect of the Conscience Clause was to with- draw the children of Dissenters from the class, during the period of religious teaching, if the parents especially objected to that teaching; and only if a specific objection was made. He thought the Committee of Council was bound to continue the practice which Parliament had sanctioned, and which had till now remained unchallenged by any direct vote in the House. He had procured a Return which he had that very day laid upon the table, and which would, he believed, be in the hands of Members in less than ten days. It was a Return from January 1, 1861, to March 31, 1867, of the awards of building grants. The awards of building grants for Church schools amounted to 867, the awards for all other schools, Wesleyan, Roman Catholic, Congregational, Baptist, Presbyterian, denominational of all kinds, and undenominational schools, were only eighty-seven; making together 954. The number of applications for building grants for National and Church of England schools in which no Conscience Clause had been asked for by the Committee of Council, was 829. The number in which the Conscience Clause had been accepted was sixty-eight, and the number in which it had been refused was thirty-seven, during all those years. But of those thirty-seven proposed schools, twelve schools had been built without the building grant, and they now received annual grants. The number in which the Conscience Clause had been insisted on, but in which no answer had been returned to the office, was only five; and of these, two were already in the receipt of annual grants. The hon. Member would therefore see that the Committee was not very severe in the administration of the rule of which he had spoken. He might be asked who had devised the Conscience Clause? It had not been devised. The Conscience Clause had been forced upon them by circumstances. Formerly their operations had been carried on in populous places; they bad been engaged in building schools in towns and in large parishes which could maintain many schools. Thus they had been constructing schools for the various denominations. It was after these places had been supplied, in 1861, that they began to work in small, poor, one-school parishes. They had then to consider how they could best act with regard to economy of their funds and justice to all persons. They endeavoured to make the public fund go as far as possible, in order to bring education into every parish, and to spread schools over the country. Wherever practicable, they wished rather to have one school than two, merely on economical reasons, so that the sum which would build two schools in One parish, might adequately supply two parishes with one school each. Another principle which had constrained them to take this course was the principle of parental authority. This principle had been acknowledged by the law of the land. The Court of Chancery directed that orphans should be brought up in the religion of the father, even although the father was no longer alive. The hon. Member himself, in a pamphlet he published in 1865, acknowledged the justice of that principle, for he said—

"The parent at his will exercises the right of determining where his children should attend public worship. The rules of the National Society do not forbid the exercise of this right. In the matter of education, all that Churchmen have a right to expect is fairplay and no favour, with equal liberty in the exercise of their means for educating the labouring classes."

The Committee of Council itself had been instituted on that very principle. The Order of Council appointing the Committee of Council on Education stated that it was

"Her Majesty's wish that the children and teachers instructed should be duly trained in the principles of the Christian religion, while the rights of conscience should be respected."

But in all these things much depended, not on the plan, but on the spirit in which the plan was administered. Under the same Code one Vice President of the Council might act so as to make the rules appear most vexatious and unjust; another, under the same rules, might gain the confidence of all parties, and, by fairness and moderation, call out that local effort which was the necessary initiative in the spread of education. The hon. Member had spoken very truly of the clergy. Who were the Committee's best allies? Why, the clergy. The existence of schools was mainly due to their exertions. In nine cases out of ten who was it that applied for a school? The clergy. It was the clergy who took the initiative; it was the clergy who obtained local subscriptions, without which no step could be taken by the Committee of Council; it was the clergyman who undertook the onerous duty of being manager and correspondent; and when the school was built, it was the clergyman who laboured to make it efficient and to keep the master to his duty. In the Report of the Duke of Newcastle's Commission, vol. ii., p. 74, Mr. Fraser said that in Dorset on the average a clergyman subscribed eleven times as much as an average farmer, six times as much as an average householder, and twice as much as the landowners. Was it not plain that the existence of schools over the country was mainly due to the exertions of clergy? And why should they quarrel with their best allies? He was net speaking in a partizan spirit; he did not take a view which was prejudiced, partial, or too favourable to the clergy. The Commissioners, in vol. i., pp. 76, 77, reported deliberately to the same effect—

"169 clergymen contributed £1,782, or £10 10s. each; 399 landowners, £2,127, or £5 6s. each; 217 occupiers, £200, or 18s. 6d. each; 102 householders, £181, or £1 15s. 6d. each; 141 other persons, £228. The rental of the 399 landowners was estimated at £650,000 a year… The heaviness of the burden borne by the clergy was imperfectly indicated even by such figures as these. It frequently happened that the clergyman considered himself responsible for whatever was necessary to make the accounts of the school balance… He was the man who most felt the mischief arising from want of education… He begged from his neighbours, he begged from the landowners; if he failed to persuade them to take their fair share of the burden, he begged from his friends and even from strangers, and at last submitted, most meritoriously and most generously, to bear not only his own proportion of the expense, but also that which ought to be borne by others."

If the end and object of the Committee of Council really was the spread of education, it was clear that they should take every advantage of the best means. They had not so much to press strangers into their service, as to gain the confidence and encourage the efforts of their friends and allies. What would be thought of a general if, at the commencement of a campaign, he were to bicker with his friends and quarrel with his allies; yet they were waging an internecine struggle, which promised to be a long one, against ignorance, depravity, degradation, darkness, and bad citizenship. He was not arguing for any change in the present system, but he desired rather to support it; and argued against any change that might rashly be made. Whenever they wished to inspire energy and secure really effective work they must lay hold on some popular impulse: and what impulse was so strong as religious feeling; or call it, if you like, sectarian zeal? It was for this reason that religious feeling had been made the flywheel of the educational machine. That was the reason why schools were denominational. That was the reason why our whole system had been made essentially denominational. That was why the Revised Code contained the rule that no schools (with one exception) were to be aided unless they were in connection with some religious body, Aye, and this in stead of increasing sectarian feeling, really diminished it; for education was the best corrective of polemic fury and antidote to sectarian animosity. Education afforded the proper cure for narrowness and bitterness, as light always expelled darkness. While, on the other hand, if you stop education you nourish bigotry; and if you forbid religious teaching you bottle up a bursting effervescence of acrimony. The opposite system had been vigorously attempted. In 1839 the opposite course had been tried by Lord John Russell; but his undenominational plan came to nothing. Why? because it was undenominational. Every point upon which religions differed was to have been banished from the system. Peace and unity were to have been procured by washing out all differences of hue. He made a silent solitude and called it a happy peace. There was but a poor residuum left—a caput mortuum of religion. Therefore the people of England, who pride themselves on being religious, would not for a moment stand it. They were up in arms and put it down. In 1842, another attempt had been made, but it also came to nought, and melted away like the army of Theudas in the wilderness. All this time education lagged fearfully. A poor paltry £20,000 was all that was voted for education when there were no schools in the country. Then we were the lowest of all nations in education; our standard of education was the worst. Now, on the contrary, we were the highest. In 1833 1 in every 11½ of the population were scholars on the books of day schools; in 1851, it was 1 in 8½ it 1858, it was 1 in 7·7. In France it was 1 in 9 of the population; in Holland it was about the same; while Prussia was in 1858 very slightly in advance of us. In 1848 the futile attempt to establish undenominational education was given up, after a long controversy about the management clauses; and Lord Lansdowne then allied the system with the religious bodies throughout the country. Instantly education began to spread; and now so much had it improved, that we could vie with any nation of Europe in our standard of education. Mr. Lingen was asked as follows by the Education Commissioners on the 30th of November, 1859:—

"The general offer (that is, offer of aid) does not apply to secular schools?"

He answered—

"No. The Bible must be taught. The school must either belong to one of those denominations which the Committee of Council has expressly recognised, or it must put itself under the Minute of the 3rd of December, 1839, which provides that religious instruction shall be given out of the Bible. A secular school professing that it did not give religious instruction would not be admitted to aid; that point has been ruled several times over."

The hon. Gentleman had alluded to the decrease in the amount of the building grants from £134,000, in the year 1859, to £24,000 in the present year; but the causes of that decrease were, first, that, after having made grants for so many years the demand for school buildings was of course not so great as it was formerly; the great bulk of the towns had been supplied, and the Committee of Council had gone far to fill the country; there was therefore not so great a demand; secondly, the amount of the grant had been reduced three-eighths, by the Minute of January 21, 1860—namely, from 4s. to 2s. 6d. per square foot, while the building grants for normal schools had been altogether stopped; and thirdly, the operation of the Revised Code had created a fear in the minds of the managers lest they should not be able to maintain their schools if they built them. That fear, however, had now a little passed away, and there had consequently been a considerable increase in the amount of the building grants during the present year. One difficulty to be contended with was that there were no less than 8,000 parishes, with populations under 500, which were as yet unsupplied; and the Committee of Council were obliged to wait until application was made to them before they could give grants for building schools in those localities. The Government, it must be remembered, had abandoned the initiative in education; their principle was to aid local and voluntary effort. The Committee of Council had done nothing to prevent the spread of schools in those places; but the larger and more populous places were naturally the first to call for schools. The Committee of Council anxiously waited for the clergy or others to move in the matter. He trusted that they would speedily do so. The hon. Gentleman was anxious that the necessity for certificated teachers should be got rid of, and that all payments should be made merely by results. But if that were done, they would be destroying their security for good education. Some learning can be measured as a result; but moral tone, discipline, religious feeling could not be measured and paid for. What was a certificated teacher? One who had conducted himself well for two years in his training under our eye, and who had every year been visited by the Inspector. Hence the moral and religious character of a certificated teacher was thoroughly well known whereas that of the uncertificated teacher had still to be ascertained. He had endeavoured to answer the Questions of the hon. Gentleman to the best of his ability, and he trusted that he had done so satisfactorily. There was one rule that the Committee of Council endeavoured to follow, and that was to discharge the duty which Parliament had imposed upon them of promoting to the very utmost the education of the country, of raising schools, and of seeing that they were efficiently maintained.

said, that while he could not admit the historical accuracy of the noble Lord's statement as to the negotiations between Church and State, he must express his satisfaction at the able speech he had just made. The noble Lord had appealed to him to say whether the standard of education in this country was not as high or higher than that of any other country in the world. In answer to that appeal, he must say that in the best schools assisted by Government the standard of education was equal, if not superior, to those of any other country. But he did not regard the average of our schools as equal to that of Prussia and some other countries. Without some such qualification of the denominational system as is given by the Conscience Clause, it would have been found unworkable, and the interference of Parliament would long since have been sought. It was only by the aid of such a clause that the system of Church schools in small parishes, erected partly out of public funds, could be defended. His complaint was that the position of those who administered the Parliamentary grant was not defined with sufficient accuracy. Too much was left to their arbitrary judgment as to whether they would impose or remit the Conscience Clause. The Committee of Council had, in the course they had taken with regard to this clause, acted, in his opinion, upon a just interpretation of the language of the Revised Code. He was sure that had anything like an exhaustive discussion taken place upon this subject, the principle of the Conscience Clause would have been applied to schools much more widely than at present. The noble Lord had insisted upon the liberality the Church had shown in a pecuniary sense. He (Mr. Bruce) was equally ready to admit that in a majority of instances there had been a corresponding liberality in a religions sense, with, however, some not infrequent exceptions. Some very curious facts had incidentally come to light before the Committee which had sat during the last two Sessions, under the presidency of the Secretary for War (Sir John Pakington). Mr. Collins, a diocesan inspector for Northamptonshire, who had fifteen schools under his inspection, and who was called to give evidence on the value of the teachers' certificate, was incidentally examined as to the Conscience Clause. He stated that the population of his parish was about 500, of whom 100 were Dissenters, Wesleyans, and Baptists. With the full concurrence of his rector, he had excluded absolutely from the school all the unbaptized children, who, so far as he knew, went to no day-school at all. He believed the rule in the village schools in his neighbourhood, in respect of the admission of Dissenters, was very much the same as in his own. Another gentleman, who attended from Mr. Walter's neighbourhood, stated that in his parish, with a population of 600, only forty-five attended the school. This was in consequence of a second school in connection with the British and Foreign Bible Society being erected on account of his refusal to allow the children of Dissenters to attend their own Sunday-school. He held in his hand the monthly paper of the National Society for March, 1867, which contained a letter signed "J. B. S.," on the failure of the present Sunday-school system, its cause, and its remedy. In adverting to the failure of the catechism as an instrument of religious instruction, the writer (the Rev. Mr. Sweet) said—

"You may now question nine scholars out of ten throughout the country as to their own new birth, their own adoption and sanctification, their own relation to Christ, their own Church membership, their own part in the communion of saints, and their own personal interest in other branches of the Church, and in each other, as members of one body, or their own share in the common obligation of the whole Church to evangelize the world, without discovering that the very moderate supply of dogma contained in our catechism is more than a dead letter as regards any practical influence on their affections, hopes, and habits."

To supply this failure of the catechism to impart the requisite dogmatic instruction, the writer proposed to teach to children, of whom three-fourths leave school under ten years of age, as follows:—

"The nature, privileges, offices, and proper unity of the visible Church, or Body of our Lord Jesus Christ, must be carefully instilled; the proper conditions and objects of her connection with the State, in any given country must be explained and justified; the accident of such connection carefully distinguished from her essential attributes; the commission, character, and power of her threefold ministry, and the nature of her sacraments, conditions of membership, and various rites and holy seasons, taught and enforced; her use of fixed forms of devotion, her creeds and synodal powers vindicated; and the nature and guilt of heresy and schism plainly laid down, and all must be illustrated from Holy Scripture."

That, however, was not enough. The child must not only be taught dogmatic truth, he must be guarded against the danger of imbibing dogmatic error.

"Very closely connected with the suggestion of a more defensive teaching in Church schools is another of a kind the more perplexing to the conductors of town schools in proportion to its importance. It is that no day scholar should ever be allowed to attend a Dissenting Sunday school. You may allow him with comparative impunity to attend a 'Protestant Dissenters' meeting' provided he accompanies his parents; though even this must subject the doctrinal influence of the week-day labours to a violent wrench and a most crucial trial, too probably resulting in a sceptical habit of mind. But to allow him to be subjected to the libellous, not to say blasphemous, misrepresentations of the Church's doctrine which most of the sects practise savours of treason to the child's soul and to the Faith."

These being the dangers to be guarded against, the following rules were proposed for general adoption. First of all to—

"Allow no day scholar, on any plea, to attend other than your own Sunday school."

He said—

"If any scholar be allowed to be absent from your Sunday school, and also from Divine service at Church, let two conditions at least be insisted on—namely, that his parents take him to their place of worship twice on the Lord's day, and that he attend no Sunday school whatever beyond his home."

He then went on—

"Let the baptism of every scholar be clearly ascertained, proper prayers taught for his daily use, and all unreality in teaching avoided. Then teach dogmatically, illustrating rather than proving to the child by Scripture; basing all personal appeal, in the first instance, on the doctrine of grace received, and obligation incurred in baptism—like St. Paul in Romans vi. and 1st Corinthians vi.—and always pointing the scholar onwards to the laying on of hands and Holy Communion."

In order to secure to the clergy the proper amount of authority his suggestion was—

"Let the parish priest be clearly supreme in the government, as having the prime control of Christ's lambs next after the parents, and as exercising, by their accord, parental authority in the school. With grateful acceptance of lay assistance in every department of the work, and glad use of lay counsel in all things, let there be no 'committee' paralyzing government, and no divided authority perplexing the scholars, but a real though limited monarchy both in week-day and Sunday schools."

His summing up of the whole was as follows:—

"Let no scholar fourteen years of age leave your school in ignorance of the nature and attributes of the visible Church, the duty and blessedness of unity in the Body, in the Faith, and in the Spirit (Eph. iv.), nor of the evils and guilt of heresy and schism; and let the prominent errors of Romanists, Protestant Dissenters, and of Latitudinarians be explained to the more advanced scholars by the clergy themselves, or under their guidance."

It might be said that these were only the words of a correspondent to the paper of the National Society; but the prominence given to a communication, which occupied ten out of the twenty pages of that periodical, showed that these views were not considered extravagant and unpractical by the literary organ of the great Church Education Society. Care ought therefore to be taken that the religious convictions of the parents should be properly respected, and that wherever the public money was granted, they should have the power of withdrawing the child from the religious teaching of the clergyman. He most cordially agreed, therefore, with the Report which had been presented by his right hon. Friend (Sir John Pakington), who had proposed that in all cases where grants were made from the public money the Conscience Clause should be thoroughly enforced. His own opinion was that no grant of public money ought to be made except upon that principle. He could not but express his disappointment that a principle of so much natural justice, and one about which, he might add, he had always met with but one opinion out of doors, should be opposed by a body so respectable, and possessing so many claims upon their gratitude and veneration, as the clergy of the Church of England.

I rise to move the Resolution of which I have given notice—

"That this House is of opinion that the County of Aberdeen should receive the proportional amount of the Grant which the owners of cattle slaughtered under the compulsory Orders in Council would have received, in accordance with the Privy Council Regulations, had no Cattle Assurance Association been formed within the same."

It will be in the recollection of the House that during the prevalence of the rinderpest in this country, very arbitrary powers were given to the Privy Council. In August 1865, the Privy Council issued an Order making it compulsory upon the owners cattle to slaughter their animals wither compensation. During the course of the present Session, a grant of £55,000 was made to defray the expense of the cattle which had been slaughtered. Upon Aberdeenshire sending in its claims to a share of this money, to the extent of £824, the claim was disallowed. It was not denied that the cattle had been slaughtered in accordance with the instructions of the Privy Council and the Order of the Government Inspector; but the Privy Council said because there was a Rinderpest Association in the county by which the farmers had been paid, therefore they could not make any further payment. I venture to say—and in this I shall have the support of all the Scotch county Members—that if it had not been for the existence of the Aberdeenshire Rinderpest Association £1,000,000 would not have covered the amount of loss which would have been sustained. They have therefore felt it to be their duty to apply for this grant. They used their best exertions to enable the Government to carry out their powers, am they have therefore a right to share in the Compensation which other counties have received. It is a fallacy to say that the farmers have been re-paid by this Assurance Society. For every £100 which they received for slaughtered cattle they had paid so many pounds beforehand. Therefore, it cannot be said that they have been re-paid It may be said that if Aberdeenshire is to receive this compensation, other counties in similar circumstances must also receive compensation. I do not see why they should not all receive compensation. From the Return which has been laid upon the table of the House it appears that the total number of cattle slaughtered during tin existence of the Order of the Privy Council was upwards of 75,000, and if we take the value of these at £10 per head, and purse the mode of distribution adopted by the Privy Council—namely, given one-half the value, we get at a sum of £35,000 which is within the sum granted the year for compensation. [Lord ROBERT MONTAGU: The sum was £25,000.] At all events, the Government would not require any very large additional sum to meet the claims, and it would be preferable to vote this additional sum rather than perpetrate an injustice.

in seconding the Motion, said, the question was whether a distinction was to be made between different portions of the kingdom. The course pursued was to give compensation to those who followed a system, and to withhold it from those who invented it.

said that the claim made by the Aberdeen Association for refunding to them the compensation paid by them, rested upon two grounds. One was the general ground that unless the amount of compensation were refunded the Government would be offering a premium to imprudence, by compensating those who were careless and imprudent, and refusing compensation to those who had had foresight, and had provided funds to meet the exigencies of the case. The other was the special ground that the Association was not a Mutual Assurance Association; but was formed to carry out the Orders of the Privy Council and to stamp out the plague; and that compensation had been offered merely to induce persons to give information when their animals were attacked, and induce them to co-operate with the society. It was urged that the Association was not formed for purposes of insurance, but was established simply for the purpose of inducing the farmers to consent willingly to the slaughtering of the cattle. No doubt the duties of the Government inspectors had been much facilitated while the compulsory slaughtering Order was in force, by the establishment of this Association. And after the compulsory Order had been withdrawn, the Association had bought up diseased cattle and had killed them. But it should be borne in mind that this Association had refused to compensate those who were not members of that body. There were two instances of such a refusal. From this it appeared evident that the Association was really a Mutual Assurance Association. This view was supported by the "Constitution and Rules of the Aberdeenshire Rinderpest Association, August 1865." Rule iv. is in these words—

"The objects of the Association are, 1st, The Extermination within the county of the Cattle Disease, commonly known as the 'Rinderpest,' and 2nd, The Indemnification of Sufferers by this Disease, to the extent and subject to the Rules and Conditions after mentioned, or such Rules and Regulations as may from time to time be issued by the Central Committee."

And Rule xii. runs thus—

"Sufferers by this disease who are not members of this Association, or members who shall infringe any of the preceding rules or regulations, or the rules, regulations, or precautions which may be issued under any Order in Council, having reference to the Rinderpest, or by the Central Committee, shall have no claim on, or right to the funds of the Association, but the Central Committee shall have power to indemnify such parties to such extent, and in such manner as they shall deem advisable for the public good."

He now turned to the general ground. This, as the hon. Member had acknowledged, would apply equally to all counties, and not to that of Aberdeen alone. In fact, it involved a question of the propriety of the Order of Council of December 1866. The £25,000 which had been granted by the House, had been estimated on the assumption that, under that Order, no associations would be refunded. If that Order was to be annulled the House must be asked to vote £10,000 more. In dealing with other cases on the same principle as it was now proposed to deal with the case of Aberdeenshire great difficulties would present themselves. In Norfolk and Warwickshire the farmers had been compensated from the local rates, and in some counties those farmers who had suffered losses were merely excused from the payment of the regular rates; in others the landlords had compensated the farmers; and would it, then, be proposed now to refund the money to the local rates and to the landlords? The principle now advocated by the hon. Member would lead to a whole host of new and unheard of claims upon which there could be no check, and the difficulties which would result from acting on it were sufficient to induce the House to pause before agreeing to the Motion of the hon. Member.

said, that he only desired that compensation should be given on the same scale as that which had been laid down in other cases.

said, he had been unable to discover any valid argument in the speech of the noble Lord why Aberdeenshire should be excluded from the benefits of the compensation fund because it had established an Association of its own. It was notorious that, among the crowd of schemes for the suppression of the cattle plague which occupied the attention of the House in the early part of last Session, the system adopted in Aberdeenshire was considered to be the most effectual, and it was ultimately adopted. It had worked excellently well in the county itself, and had preserved the northern districts of Scotland from the plague. The only reward that they had received at the hands of the Government was a refusal to allow them to participate in the benefit of the money voted for the compensation of sufferers from the disease. This was really placing a premium upon the carelessness, idleness, and indifference of those who had taken no pains to stamp out the plague.

said, he should support the Motion. He admitted that his views were not altogether disinterested in doing so, for if the present proposal received the sanction of the House he should take an early opportunity of bringing forward a similar one, substituting "Norfolk" for "Aberdeenshire." The case of the two counties was precisely similar. On the outbreak of the plague an Association was established in Norfolk, £25,000 was subscribed. Rules and regulations for the extirpation of the disease were enforced. Infringements of the Privy Council Orders were prosecuted. Though the Government rendered no aid, and could not stop the fairs, so that the disease was repeatedly re-introduced after being stamped out, the loss of stock was confined to 6,000. But for the Association, 50,000 out of the 100,000 head of cattle in the county would have been lost. The return for all this energy, was that the farmers of Norfolk were refused any compensation for their losses. The funds voted for the purpose were entirely distributed among those improvident or indifferent persons who had stood by with folded hands while the disease was making its greatest ravages throughout the kingdom.

said, he thought that the hon. Member (Mr. Fordyce) had made out a good case. Scotland, and, indeed, the country in general, owed a great deal to the farmers of Aberdeenshire for their pointing out the manner in which the plague might be met. But the noble Lord had clearly shown that the question was surrounded with difficulty. The hon. Member for Norfolk (Mr. Read) had made a strong claim for his county, and, doubtless, others could make an equally strong claim for theirs. Although he should vote with the hon. Member, he would prefer to leave the matter in the hands of the Government. He had promised to represent the case of Perth to the House. It had happened that the lord-lieutenant of Perth died just as the Cattle Plague Bill was passed. During the three weeks that elapsed before his successor was appointed, although the disease was rife in the district, the local machinery could not be set to work to stop it, or compensate the losers. All that the people of Perth, however, asked, was that the county should have power to assess its inhabitants for the relief of the sufferers at that time. He hoped that the Government would not refuse so reasonable a request.

said, he was still of opinion, as he was last year, that it was unadvisable to meet the cattle plague by a public Act and rate. But he was bound to say that it seemed hard that those districts which had exhibited a disposition to help themselves should be permitted to suffer most. He hoped there would be no division, and that the matter would be left in the hands of the Government.

said, he had been applied to to support the cause of Aberdeenshire, and had thought it an isolated case. The Vice President of the Council (Lord Robert Montagu), however, had given unanswerable reasons for refusing the request; and as the public revenue had already suffered far too much from the cattle plague, he should vote against the Motion.

said, he would ask leave to withdraw his Motion. He hoped, however, that the Government would reconsider their decision.

said, that he desired, as an old member of the Royal Institute of Architects and as President of the Royal Institute of Architects of Ireland, to make a Motion with reference to the advisability of adding professional men to the judges of designs for the new Law Courts. He did not wish to make any imputation upon the judges at present appointed, or offer them any slight in taking this course. The competing architects had the most implicit confidence in the judges as men of honour, but feared they would be wanting in technical knowledge. If the Solicitor General had a great question with reference to the procedure of Chancery, would he bring it before a committee of architects? Or if a question of trade was to be decided on, would the bench of Bishops be the proper tribunal? He was aware that two professional men had been appointed to advise the judges. That was a step in the right direction, but it did not go far enough. Those two professional gentlemen were approved by the competing architects. They had every confidence in them, and it was desired that these two gentlemen should have the same power of voting in the final decision as the fully appointed judges had. It would be only fair towards the judges that they should be assisted in their deliberations by able and competent professional colleagues, as their decision, however righteous and impartial, must unavoidably be criticized by eleven disappointed men. To the public it would likewise be more satisfactory that the judges who were to decide upon this great work, one of the most important ever submitted to competition, should not wholly lack the professional element. He trusted the Government would re-consider the matter, and satisfy the reasonable desire of the competing architects.

said, that as the mouthpiece of the Society of British architects he had already communicated to the Treasury the wishes of that body. The claim had been made before, and its justice had been admitted. What was urged against it was that it came too late. He could not see that it was too late to make the alteration suggested. One word of assent from his right hon. Friend (Mr. Cowper) on the part of the judges, would free the hands of the Government, and materially strengthen in public and professional estimation the tribunal of which he was a member.

said, Her Majesty's Government had no wish in the matter save that of obtaining the best designs of competent architects. The five gentlemen, who, as at present arranged, were to constitute the judges, with the aid of two professional architects as assessors, were selected before the present Government came into office, as the result of conferences which took place in 1865. Though his hon. Friend (Mr. Bentinck) exerted himself last May to procure the addition to the tribunal of some professional members, he let the matter drop without effecting anything practical. [Mr. BENTINCK: I beg pardon. The matter dropped in consequence of the dropping of the Reform Bill.] At all events, from May, 1866, till the present time the matter was never mooted, and the Government naturally supposed that the House acquiesced in the arrangement made by the late Government. If the gentlemen appointed as judges were of opinion that they would derive assistance from the appointment of additional members in the manner now proposed, the Government would offer no opposition to that course. But it was one which they could not sanction without previous communication with the gentlemen who had been already appointed, and had undertaken to act. Under these circumstances, he hoped his hon. Friend would not press the Motion.

said, that as one of the Committee of five appointed to adjudicate upon these designs, he could entertain no possible objection to the proposal. In any case, very serious and onerous duties must be entailed upon the judges, and as the competitors had declared that the ex- clusion from the tribunal of professional opinions would not increase their confidence in its decisions, that declaration was entitled to the utmost consideration. The reason why the Committee originally was composed exclusively of unprofessional men was that it was supposed they would be unbiased in their opinions by any of those predilections or prejudices which professional training almost necessarily engendered. He thought that, under the circumstances, no objection to the proposal need be anticipated from other members of the Committee. After what had been said by the Secretary to the Treasury (Mr. Hunt) there was no necessity for pressing the Motion to a division.

said, he was glad to find that the right hon. Gentleman (Mr. Cowper) had come to his senses on the subject since he had left office. He thought it highly desirable that whenever considerable sums of money were expended in connection with Art, the advice of professional men should be secure.

said, he would withdraw his Motion. After what had fallen from his hon. Friend the Secretary to the Treasury he was quite prepared to leave the matter in the hands of the Government.

said, he rose to call attention to the absence of information as to the intentions of Government relative to the Representation of the People in Scotland. When an inquiry was recently addressed to the right hon. Gentleman the Chancellor of the Exchequer on the subject, his reply was that it was desirable further progress should be made with the English Reform Bill before that for Scotland was brought in. He was anxious, if possible, to induce the Government to alter the determination on that point at which they seemed to have arrived. He thought it extremely desirable that before the English Bill made any further progress, the House should be made acquainted with the provisions of the Scotch measure. It was hardly reasonable to ask the representatives for Scotland to vote on the question of the English borough occupation franchise while they were kept in complete ignorance as to how far the principles of that franchise were to be applied to their own country. Setting aside differences of detail, the general principles of a Reform Bill applicable to England must be applicable to Scotland also. On the three former occasions on which a measure of Reform had been read a second time, in 1852, 1860 and last year, the Bill for Scotland war introduced before that for England went into Committee. The Chancellor of the Exchequer could hardly forget that on a former occasion his hon. Friend the present Under Secretary for India (Sir James Fergusson) brought forward a Motion—which was debated for three nights—while the English Bill was in Committee, to the effect that its further progress should be stopped until the Bills for Scotland and Ireland were introduced. That Motion, though not made in form, because it could not be so in accordance with the rules of the House, was strongly supported by the right hon. Gentleman, and he trusted he would in the present instance see the propriety of acting as far as possible in accordance with the views he then advanced. He was the more anxious that the Scotch Bill should be at once laid upon the table because a great deal of light might be reflected on the question of the borough franchise for England by the proposals it would contain. The peculiarity of the proposal with regard to compound-householders did not apply to Scotland, because there there was no Small Tenements Act, no compounding, and nothing corresponding to the rates in this country. The poor rate and other rates were, of course, levied there. But those charges were levied by separate bodies under separate statutes. The poor rate was not levied in every parish, though the number in which it was not was inconsiderable. That being so, it would be impossible to apply the principle bearing upon the case of the compound-householder to Scotland. In other words, the personal payment of rates was in that country the universal rule, and in its case, therefore, household suffrage with payment of rates would be nothing less than household suffrage pure and simple. There was, it was true, a provision that where the value of a tenement was under £4 the proprietor should be liable to pay the rates, and should be entitled to recover the amount afterwards from the tenant. But with that exception there was nothing at all which corresponded with the requirements of the English law on the subject. That being so, he should like to know how the case of Scotland was to be met in any Reform Bill which might be introduced. Was there to be house- hold suffrage, without any restriction, or was the sharp, hard line of a £4 rental to be drawn as defining the qualification it boroughs. It would be singular if a rental should be adopted in Scotland as the basis of the borough franchise after all the tremours and fears that were expressed last year about a £7 rental suffrage. He should express no opinion as to whether the proposal to give Scotland substantially household suffrage, pure and simple, was a sound one or not, all he meant to contend for was that if such a proposal was to be made it was time the fact should be known. He did not say they were going too far, but they might be going too fast. He would put it to the right hon. Gentleman and the House to say how long if household suffrage, pure and simple, were granted to Scotland it would be possible to retain in England even a shred of those restrictions which they had been engaged in discussing for the past few weeks. He hoped the right hon. Gentleman would be able to give an answer to his remarks which would be regarded by the Scotch Members as satisfactory.

I am not at all surprised that the right hon. Gentleman who is a distinguished Scotch Member should feel a natural curiosity about the measure which the Government proposed to introduce with respect to the representation of Scotland. I am still less surprised that, having been also a distinguished Member of the late Government, he should take a fair and legitimate opportunity to make some criticisms on the past and probable future conduct of the Administration. As to the instance which he has adduced as an argument to prove that it is our duty to bring in a Scotch Reform Bill at an early period—I mean the Motion of my hon. Friend the Under Secretary of State for India (Sir James Fergusson), which was discussed at considerable length at the time, and which led to an important division—I can only say that I do not think it tells exactly in favour of the right hon. Gentleman's position, inasmuch as the Motion was unsuccessful. That being so, and wishing always to profit by experience, I must protest against the supposition that we, sitting on these Benches, are bound to adopt all those proposals which were unsuccessful while we sat on the Benches opposite. But nothing is more reasonable than the wish of the right hon. Gentleman that the House should be made acquainted with our inten- tions in reference to the Scotch representation. I much regret that no inconsiderable delay should have taken place on the subject. I trust, however, the right hon. Gentleman will, in extenuation of that delay, take into account the remarkable and peculiar difficulties which the Government and myself—to whom this business of Reform has been mainly intrusted in its management in this House—have had to encounter. The difficulties connected with the English measure have, in the first place, been very considerable. It is not easy to launch a vessel of such magnitude under any circumstances, but those which we had to contend with were unusually adverse. We have not had the advantage of an able coadjutor in the person of the Lord Advocate. I have felt very much the great inconvenience arising from that circumstance. Several questions have been asked me at different times by hon. Gentlemen connected with Scotland as to the nature of our Bill, and if I have not explicitly replied to them it has been only because I have been in daily hopes that I might have the opportunity of introducing the measure. One is often liable to misapprehension in giving answers to isolated points of inquiry. I hope the Bill will soon be in the hands of hon. Gentlemen. But I have no desire to avoid answering the questions put to me to-night by the right hon. Gentleman; and, after the delay which has unintentionally occurred, I will tell him, as nearly as I can, the character of the measure. It is framed upon the model of the English Bill, as I said it would be when I first noticed it in this House. With regard to the main provisions, they are founded on the same principles, so far as differences in the circumstances of the two countries will permit. With regard to the franchise, in which the right hon. Gentleman, by his inquiry tonight, is particularly interested—namely, the borough franchise, it is identical with that proposed in the English Bill. There is no hard and fast line. Every householder who is rated to the poor and who personally pays his rates will possess the franchise. I deny that in the English Bill there are heavy restrictions. That is a complete misapprehension of the right hon. Gentleman. The conditions of the borough franchise in England are the being rated to the poor and personally paying the rates. These are the same conditions which we have introduced into the Scotch Bill. If Scotland is not blessed with the compound- householder, that is "one of the results of modern civilization," on which she may be congratulated. The Bill which we are about to introduce with regard to the representation in Scotland is, I repeat, framed on the same principle as the English Bill. The franchise for boroughs—respecting which the right hon. Gentleman is desirous of having explicit information—is identical with the borough franchise proposed for England. If this Bill passes every householder in a Scotch burgh who is rated to the poor, and personally pays his rate, will be entitled to a vote. There is another point on which the right hon. Gentleman made some observations, and I beg to state that on that point, as on the previous one relating to the franchise, Her Majesty's Government will be found to have fulfilled their promise. It is the opinion of the Government that the representation of Scotland is not sufficient. We believe that the claims of that country to increased representation are of a character which, on a general revision of this question, cannot be denied. We shall make a proposal on this subject which we think will be deemed fair and adequate. I trust that I have now answered the inquiries of the right hon. Gentleman with sufficient explicitness. If there be any point which I have omitted I shall be glad to be reminded of it. I can tell him, with great satisfaction I hope to him, and certainly to myself, that the Bill is not only drawn, but printed—that I have a proof copy of it in my possession, and that I hope to be able to introduce it on Thursday.

said, he wished to ask, whether the Irish Reform Bill would be introduced at the same time as the Scotch Bill?

I am afraid we shall not be able to bring it in at the same time; but we shall attend to the interests of Ireland.