said, he wished to ask the Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, Whether he will state the result of the communications addressed to the Spanish Government with reference to the alleged seizure of the American brig "Mary Lowell" by a Spanish ship of war in British waters on the 15th of March 1869, and lay upon the Table Copies of the Correspondence which has taken place upon the subject?

, in reply, said, the Mary Lowell, an American vessel, laden with contraband of war, was captured by a Spanish frigate on the 15th of March last, off the Bahamas. Representations were made to Her Majesty's Government that the capture had been effected in British waters, and consequently communications were addressed from the Foreign Office to the Spanish Government upon the subject. The Spanish authorities, in their reply, denied that the capture occurred in British waters, and the vessel was condemned by the prize court of Havannah as a vessel taken on the high seas. Her Majesty's Government thought it due to the United States as well as to them selves that the circumstances under which the capture was made should be thoroughly sifted by some competent person, and accordingly the Admiralty were requested to send Commodore Phillimore to investigate the matter. His Report had been received, together with the charts and documents which he sent home, and after a careful examination of them, the Government were advised that the formal submission of the Mary Lowell occurred on the high seas. Her Majesty's Ministers at Washington and Madrid had accordingly been informed that the evidence as to the place of capture of the Mary Lowell did not justify a demand for her restitution, and this decision was to be communicated to the Governments of the United States and Spain. These communications were made in November last, and no reply had yet been received from either of the Governments named. The correspondence being incomplete he was unable to lay it on the table.

said, he would beg to ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, Whether his attention has been drawn to the Petition recently presented to the House on behalf of the Inhabitants of Barnstaple, Bideford, and other towns in North Devon, praying that the season for catching and selling Salmon in the Taw and Torridge Fishery District may be enlarged; and, whether he is of opinion that such enlargement is practicable and desirable?

said, in reply, that his attention had been drawn to the Petition referred to. The powers at present vested in the Secretary of State did not extend to the time of selling salmon, but only to the catching of salmon. The matter would, no doubt, occupy the attention of the Select Committee now inquiring into the Salmon Fisheries, and he believed they would be in favour of extending the power of the Secretary of State.

said, he wished to ask the Secretary to the Board of Trade, Whether the Government have received any authentic information respecting the lamentable collision between the "Bombay" Steamship, belonging to the Peninsular and Oriental Company, and the United States' Corvette "Oneida?"

replied, that the Board of Trade had received no information as yet beyond what was in the newspapers as to the collision adverted to by the noble Lord, and the lamentable loss of life resulting to the crew of the United States' vessel Oneida. On receiving the first tidings of this disaster the Board of Trade took steps to insure a full and searching inquiry into it, but he had heard to-day that a court of inquiry had already been held at Hong Kong, and that it had suspended for six months the certificate of Captain Eyre, the master of the Bombay. The Report of these proceedings would be laid before the House as soon as it was received. In the meantime he earnestly hoped, for the credit of the merchant service, that the facts brought out before the court of inquiry would show that the master of the Bombay was not so culpable as had been represented.

said, he wished to ask the Chief Secretary for Ireland, What steps the Government have taken, or intend to take, for the prevention of an illegal lottery, the tickets for which are headed "St. Clare's Female Orphanage," Harold's Cross, Dublin, and the drawing of the prizes of which is announced to be held on the 17th and 18th instant?

replied, that he was not previously aware of the important event which was about to occur in Ireland; but since the hon. Gentleman gave notice of his Question he had ascertained what that event really was. He found that a sort of bazaar was to be held at Dublin on the 17th and 18th of the present month in behalf of a Roman Catholic charity which supported some hundred and odd orphan girls. Whether the lottery to which the question alluded was contrary to law or not he did not mean to say; but he found that the same question had been raised over and over again under successive Irish Governments, and it had been uniformly decided that it was not the duty of Government to interfere in cases of this kind. Those lotteries had no tendency to encourage gambling, and if anybody deemed them contrary to the letter of the law the courts were open and the question might be tried. He might remark that the strongest opinion on the subject was given by the legal Adviser to the late Government.

said, he would beg to ask the Secretary of state for War, What arrangements are proposed for meeting the claims of those who, as sons of distinguished Officers in the Queen's and Indian Service, would in the ordinary course have been nominated to Cadetships at Sandhurst, with the advantages of a free education and a commission in the Army without purchase, under the circumstances of that College having been closed since June 1869 to further admissions, pursuant to the Report of the Royal Commission on Military Education?

replied that the subject was under consideration by the India Office and the War Office, and he expected that he should be able almost immediately to state the result.

said, he wished to ask the Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, as it appears from Despatches published in the "North China Daily News," that the French Charge d'Affairs. M. Rochechouart, in a personal interview with "Ma," the Viceroy of Nankin has obtained ample redress for the late outrage by the Literati at Ngan-king upon French Missionaries, and a grant of a plot of land within the walls of Ngan-king for a Church and Mission House; whether Sir Rutherford Alcock in his personal interview with "Ma," the Viceroy, has obtained equivalent redress for the outrage by the Literati upon English Missionaries in Ngan-king; whether the following circumstances, as detailed in a private letter published in the "China Overland Trade Report" of the 25th January, and dated Tamani, 10th January 1870, have been reported by the Consul at Tamani, or have come to the knowledge of the Foreign Office— namely, that, by order of the Tavatar of Tarwanfoo, the Mandarin of Oulan has proclaimed a reward of 200 dollars for the head of Mr. Pickering, a British merchant, travelling with a Chinese pass in Formosa, after confiscating his property to a large amount; and, whether Mr. Field, a British merchant, has been put into irons, after being robbed of 1,000 peculs of camphor, he also traveling under the protection of a Chinese pass?

said, in reply, that in regard to the first part of the Question of the hon. and gallant Member, he had to state that the Government had received no information whatever inspecting the redress alleged to have been obtained by M. Rochechouart for an outrage upon French missionaries at Ngan-king. The circumstances attending Sir Rutherford Alcock's interview with "Ma," the Viceroy, were as follows:—Some English missionaries established themselves in Ngan-king, a province where they had no treaty right. They were told that they incurred considerable risk, but they took no heed of the warning. They remained unmolested till April, when the governor of the province informed them it would be advisable for them to leave the city, as an examination of students was about to be held. They did not think proper to do so, and these students in a large body took occasion to pull down the mission house, and so threatened the missionaries that they, with their wives and children, had to take refuge in the palace of the governor. The governor afterwards sent them away under an escort, and gave them 100 dollars besides. Sir Rutherford Alcock had an interview with the governor, and he promised that, on obtaining a list of the expenses which the missionaries had incurred in consequence of the outrage, he would refund the amount, and also punish the ringleaders of the students. Therefore, there was no occasion for Sir Rutherford Alcock to make any application to the Viceroy. Nevertheless, he had represented the matter to the Viceroy, who pointed out that by residing in a place where no treaty right applied to the missionaries they had acted imprudently, and had rendered themselves liable to outbursts on the part of the people which it was difficult for him to repress. A demand for compensation to the amount of 1,700 dollars had, he was informed, been made.

said, he would beg to ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, If Serjeant George Lewis, 1 B, Stephen Fairchild, 91 B, and Daniel Burden, 363 B, who were fined by Mr. Arnold, the Police Magistrate, on 4th of June 1868, for having been guilty of stating falsehoods on oath, and that he had come to the conclusion that on the side of the Police lay the perjury, whether the above-named Policemen are still retained in the force?

Sir, the facts of this case are not accurately stated in the hon. Gentleman's Question. No charge was made against these men of having been guilty of stating what was false. They were charged only with neglect of duty, and the facts are briefly these—Some persons witnessed a fight between women in Eaton Square, and called on the three policemen, named in the Question, to interfere to prevent its being continued. According to the statement of the persons who appealed to the policemen, the latter neglected to interfere. The case was heard before Mr. Arnold, the police magistrate, who was of opinion that the police had been guilty of neglect. He accordingly fined them, and, in consequence of that decision, my right hon. Friend and predecessor the Member for the University of Oxford (Mr. Gathorne Hardy) inquired into the circumstances, and obtained from Mr. Arnold a Report of the whole proceedings. After consideration of that Report the right hon. Gentleman thought it his duty not to dismiss the men, but to retain them in the force. I may, at the same time, tell my hon. Friend I have not the slightest doubt that if they had been found guilty of perjury they would have been instantly dismissed. In the present instance there was a conflict of evidence, and there being a doubt, my right hon. Friend opposite gave the benefit of that doubt to the accused. Two of them still remain in the force, but the third was subsequently dismissed for misconduct.

said, he would beg to ask the First Lord of the Admiralty, If any of the Admiralty livings mentioned in the Scheme "Greenwich Hospital," Parliamentary Paper No. 343, Session 1860, have been sold; and if sold, why the living of Alston has not been augmented in accordance therewith?

replied that under the Greenwich Hospital Act of 1865, a certain number of livings were to be sold and the proceeds applied, one moiety to increasing the value of other livings, the other moiety to forming a fund to augment the pensions of retired naval chaplains. The Act came into operation in 1865, but he did not find that any steps had been taken in regard to it by his predecessors. As soon as the business connected with Greenwich Hospital, under the Act of 1869, was thoroughly finished, he intended to take up the subject with the view of selling the livings.

said, he wished to ask the Vice President of the Committee of Council on Education, Whether it is intended that (in case of the passing of the Elementary Education Bill), after notice shall have been given, according to Clause 9, of the insufficiency of public school accommodation in any school district, the Department should make building and animal grants towards the establishment and support of any new school, whether denominational, undenominational, or secular, in the same way as grants are now made to schools connected with religious denominations; whether, in choosing among offers to build new schools, the Department will be governed by the same principle as at present—namely, that "the new school is suitable to the families relied upon for supplying scholars," either as to their religious denomination or otherwise; and, whether new schools thus formed will be wholly independent of school Boards and of local rates?

said, in reply, that unless the conditions of the Parliamentary grant were altered after the passing of the Bill, grants would be made towards the establishment and support of any new schools, whether denominational, undenominational, or secular, in the same way in which grants were now made to schools connected with religious denominations. In answer to the second Question of his hon. Friend he had to state that, unless those conditions were changed, in choosing among offers to build new schools the Department would be governed by the same principles as at present. In regard to the third Question, any now schools which would be thus formed would be wholly independent of schoool Boards and the local rates unless aid were granted by the school Boards under Clause 22, in which case the school Board might assist them in common with the present denominational schools. It would be observed his reply was limited by the supposition that the present conditions of the Parliamentary grant would not be changed. He had already stated, in answer to several Questions, that if the Bill became law it would become the duty of the Government to reconsider the conditions on which aid should be given out of the taxes, but he could not conceive that the present or any Government would change the condition contained in Section 22 of the Code, that in all aid given out of the public funds towards the building of new schools such aid should not be given unless their religious denomination was suitable to the families supplying the scholars. He could not conceive that in any new revision of the Code that condition would be departed from. He might add, that condition would apply to building grants to school Boards as well as to private individuals.

I promised, Sir, that I would to-night give an answer to the Question put to me last week respecting over-regulation prices of commissions in the Army. The Estimates for the present year propose a considerable reduction in the number of officers, and I have introduced into the Votes a sum of £49,000, by which it is intended to provide for the purchase of the first commissions vacated. It appeared to me desirable to take this opportunity of accomplishing a purpose which I thought would be beneficial to the subaltern officers of the Army, and which was recommended to me by my predecessor in office—I mean the abolition of the ranks of Cornet and Ensign—and for that purpose I introduced into the Estimates the further sum of £45,000. Looking to the advantages of that proposal, I thought it might have been accepted without raising the general question of the over-regulation prices, which it was neither my intention nor desire to raise. That view, however, has not been taken; the general question has been raised; and, as I feel that the proposal I have made is not of sufficient importance to bear the weight of the general question, I do not propose to persevere in it, but, on the contrary, to take that sum of £45,000 as an addition to the saving to be realized by the present Estimates. The question having been raised, Her Majesty's Government are of opinion that it ought to be thoroughly examined. They have no desire to deal with the question of purchase except upon principles of perfect equity. What is known to every one is that, notwithstanding the prohibitory provisions of the statute, over-regulation prices are generally paid; but there is no information which can be officially considered by the Crown or laid before Parliament, and it is the intention of Her Majesty's Government humbly to advise Her Majesty to institute inquiries by a Commission for the purpose of obtaining that information.

said, he rose to call the attention of the House to the circumstances connected with the dismissal of Captain Coote from the Shrievalty of the county of Monaghan and the appointment of his successor. He would, in the first place, thank the right hon. Gentleman at the head of the Government for having afforded him so early an opportunity of bringing the case before the House. When he first gave notice of his intention to ask the Chief Secretary of State for Ireland for an explanation of the circumstances, he thought that he should be merely called upon by a simple recital of the facts of the case to show that a most unmerited insult had been cast upon Captain Coote by a measure so strong and unusual as his dismissal from the position of High Sheriff, in the arbitrary exercise of their power by the Irish Executive. But on looking into the matter, he found that another and far graver question was involved—the constitutional question with regard to the appointment of the present High Sheriff. The circumstances under which the dismissal of Captain Coote occurred were these—At the Spring-Assizes of last year a man named M'Kenna, a Roman Catholic, was indicted for the murder of Tames Clarke, a Protestant, in the course of a riot in the previous year. When the trial came on, the constitution of the jury panel was challenged by the counsel for the prisoner, on the ground that his case was prejudiced by the exclusion from it of Roman Catholics. It was worthy of note that on the panel thus challenged the first two who answered to their names were Roman Catholics, and that after the challenge had been made the panel was set aside. A correspondence thereupon ensued between the Chief Secretary for Ireland and Captain Coote, from which it appeared that the Lord Lieutenant exonerated Captain Coote from all blame in the matter, inasmuch as he had left the constitution of the panel to his deputy, but required that the deputy should be dismissed. With that request Captain Coote refused to comply, on the ground that the verdict was contrary to the evidence, and to the Judge's Charge, and was given under circumstances which deprived it of moral weight. After some further correspondence, Captain Coote was dismissed. Before entering further into the subject, however, he wished to invite attention to the correspondence which was carried on between the Chief Secretary and Captain Coote, which was published in the Irish newspapers last year, and the accuracy of which was, he believed, not challenged. In the course of the correspondence his right hon. Friend the Chief Secretary for Ireland stated that, having most carefully reviewed all the circumstances of the case, and deeming it to be the duty of the Government to insure strict impartiality in the administration of the law, the Lord Lieutenant had come to the conclusion that he could not permit Captain Coote to remain as Sheriff of the county any longer. One would have thought that the first duty of the Lord Lieutenant was to consult the presiding Judge and take his opinion on the subject. Now, Captain Coote had written to Judge Morris, who tried the case, stating that, as the Irish Executive had revoked his appointment, he should be glad, if the request were not singular, to have a copy of the Judge's notes of the trial. To this the Judge replied that it would be unusual for the Judge to furnish such notes except to the Lord Lieutenant, adding, however, that he thought it due to Captain Coote to say that he had not been applied to by the Executive in this matter. Now, to come to the occurrence of Captain Coote refusing to comply with the demand of the Lord Lieutenant. He did so, first, on the ground that the verdict was contrary to the evidence. It was asserted in the challenge that the High Sheriff was an Orangeman. This was proved to be false. Then it was asserted that the Orange Society had subscribed to the proceedings against M'Kenna. This proved to be false. It was also asserted that the Sheriff and sub-Sheriff, as Orangemen, had taken part in instituting those proceedings. This, of course, was also proved to be false. The sub-Sheriff swore that he had framed the panel impartially—that he did not distinguish between Protestants and Catholics. The only thing that remained in the challenge was that the Sheriff was an Orangeman, which the Judge ruled was no disqualification. He would leave the question of the alleged preponderance of Protestants on the panel to his hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Monaghan (Colonel Leslie), and would pass on to the consideration of the second part of Captain Coote's rejoinder, that the verdict was contrary to the Judge's Charge. The opinion of Judge Morris, as expressed in that Charge, was, that the proportion of Roman Catholics and Protestants on the panel was a fair one. He stated that the law recognized no distinctions among jurors on account of religious differences any more than it did on account of the colour of their hair, and that the late Chief Justice of the Queen's Bench had refused to allow such an inquiry. How, in the face of that Charge, the verdict could have been given that was given, and how the Executive could have acted upon it as they did, he (Viscount Crichton) must say passed his limited comprehension. The third ground assigned by Captain Coote for his refusal to dismiss his deputy was, that the verdict was given under circumstances that destroyed its moral weight. As to that, the only witness on whom the Crown had relied for the identification of the deceased as having walked in a procession—before the riot—was one of the triers, a man named M'Phillips, who swore to seeing him in the procession, and who was under cross-examination for two days. He (Viscount Crichton) had endeavoured to show that the evidence upon which the sub-Sheriff was found guilty of having improperly arranged the panel was insufficient. But supposing the reverse to be the case, was it right or just to dismiss the High Sheriff because his deputy held certain political opinions or acted in a certain manner? He had referred to the debates which were held in 1838, in Lord Mulgrave's time, upon a somewhat similar case which occurred when Mr. Stanley was Secretary for Ireland; and Lord Brougham, with Lord Lyndhurst, strongly condemned the action of the Government on that occasion, and said that the Government had no right to interfere in the matter. Then, how was Captain Coote's successor appointed? Where was he found? By whom was he returned? By what law, usage, or custom was Mr. Langdale made High Sheriff of the county of Monaghan? In Ireland the Sheriffs were originally chosen from the freeholders of counties, who selected twelve electors, and they chose three persons, one of whom re ceived the appointment. The Statute of Sheriffs of Edward II. vested the selection in the Chancellor, the Treasurer, the Barons, and the Justices. There was a unanimous decision by the twelve Judges in the reign of Henry VI. on a case in which the King, passing over the list of the Judges, appointed of his own will a Sheriff of Lincolnshire. This man refused to act, and the question arose what should be done. The decision was, that if none of the three persons originally named was appointed, the name of a suitable person ought to be obtained in the prescribed manner; and in his Commentary Lord Coke said this was a just exposition of the statute concerning the making of Sheriffs. Another case happened in the reign of Queen Elizabeth. The Judges were unable to meet to elect the Sheriffs for the ensuing year; the Queen took upon herself to choose them, and in almost every case she selected them out of the list sent in by the Judges in the preceding year. Blackstone remarked that this was the only authority for making exceptional appointments of Sheriffs. This being the law and the usage in England, how were they applicable to Ireland? In the reign of Henry VII. Poyning's Act was passed, making all the English statutes then in force applicable to Ireland; and these Acts, with one or two exceptions, continued in force. A book upon Sheriffs of the date of 1776 stated that the practice was the same in Ireland as in England. From 1776 to 1816, probably owing to the disturbed state of the kingdom, Sheriffs were occasionally appointed in an irregular manner. In 1816 the late Sir Robert Peel, then Mr. Peel, Chief Secretary for Ireland, restored the practice to its original form. Ten years later, in 1826, a Commission was appointed to inquire into the Courts of Justice in Ireland; and in an appendix to the 15th Report of the Commission there appeared a letter from the late Lord Chief Justice Wolf, stating what the practice was. He said that, upon the Summer Circuit, the senior Judge in each county secured the best information he could, collect as to the gentlemen qualified for the office of High Sheriff, and selected the three he thought most eligible for the office. In the following Michaelmas Term, on a day fixed for the purpose, the Chancellor met the Judges in the Chief Justice's chamber, and each Judge handed in his list; the qualifications of each gentleman named were discussed, names were transposed, struck out, and substituted; the fist, as settled, was laid before the Lord Lieutenant and published in the Dublin Gazette, and from that list the Lord Lieutenant made the final selection. This, he believed, was the practice at the present day. In a Charge delivered very recently by Chief Justice Whiteside, that high authority stated that the Sheriff was not a nominee of the Crown. He (Viscount Crichton) was at a loss, therefore, to understand how the Government could justify their recent interference, unless upon the principle of "exceptional legislation for Ireland." With respect to Mr. Langdale personally, not a word could be said against him. He was an English gentleman of an old Roman Catholic family, he had some property in Monaghan by right of his wife; but so far as he (Viscount Crichton) had been able to ascertain, he had never served on the grand jury; he was totally unacquainted with the great majority of the inhabitants of the county, and, indeed, it was said that up to the time of his appointment as High Sheriff, his face had never been seen in the county. Against Mr. Langdale's appointment in itself, however, he (Viscount Crichton) had nothing to urge had he been appointed in a proper manner. From Thom's Almanac for last year it appeared that Mr. Langdale's name was not on the Judges' list. The three names were those of Messrs. Coote, Brady, and Denison. He might be told that there were reasons why the two latter gentlemen could not serve; but in that case, the proper course would have been for the Executive to have applied to the Judges for a further list. He was informed that during the administration of the Duke of Abercorn it happened three or four times that the list sent in by the Judges was exhausted, and on each occasion a letter was sent from the Castle to the Lord Chief Justice requesting him to call the Judges together again in order to obtain fresh lists from them. If the lists returned, by the Judges were to be set aside at pleasure, and the nominees of the Government substituted for the gentlemen named by the Judges, their lists were merely waste paper, and the meeting of the Judges and the Lord Chancellor in Michaelmas Term was a solemn farce. In the prescribed mode of appointment there were two guarantees for the nomination of a suitable person—there was the security of the gentry of the county, whose representative, the High Sheriff, returned a list of names to the Judges, and there was the security of the Judges of the land, who named three gentlemen to the Lord Lieutenant; and the importance of maintaining these securities was evident when it was stated that the High Sheriff returned all the jurors in his county. Suppose a trial was pending in which the character and conduct of the Government, or some agent of the Government, was involved, or at which some person who had rendered himself obnoxious to the powers that be was to be arraigned, and the Government were anxious to secure a conviction or an acquittal, as the case might be, if the High Sheriff proved inflexible and he could be dismissed and another appointed in his place, the jury list could be tampered with in order to defeat the ends of justice. The action of the Government did not stop with the appointment of Mr. Langdale. When his term of office was drawing to a conclusion the Judges submitted three other names in the regular way; but when the result came out, it was found that Mr. Langdale, whose name was not upon the list, was re-appointed High Sheriff. Such a re-appointment was, to say the least of it, unusual; and the Government seemed to have taken that view of it in the case of the county of Sligo in 1868. In that case three names had been on the list of the preceding year—Messrs. Howley, Orme, and O'Connor. Mr. Howley, who had been appointed, re-signed from indisposition. Mr. Orme was appointed in his place by the Duke of Abercorn for the remainder of the year; at the end of that period lie expressed a wish to be re-elected, on the score of the expense he had gone to for equipages and liveries. But the present Government rightly, and in accordance with usage, refused to accede to his request. Why had they not acted upon the same rule in the county of Monaghan? He had no wish to attribute motives: but the fact that Mr. Orme was a Protestant, and that his successor was a Catholic, seemed significant. He should be told that precedents were to be found for overriding the gentry of the county and the authority of the Judges; he was quite aware of it; he believed there was no course, however unconstitutional and arbitrary for which precedents might not be found; but he did not think that precedents taken from the dark ages of English constitutional history, and from the days of the Stuarts, would find much favour in the present House of Commons. On seven different occasions Charles I. appointed Sheriffs of his own motion, passing over the Judges' list; but he appointed those who, in the House of Commons, were obnoxious to him, and of whom he wished to get rid, in order that he might the more easily obtain money without the consent of Parliament. That precedent, therefore, was not of much value. James II. also played the same game, and there was a correspondence between him and Lord Clarendon, in which the King requested the appointment of Sheriffs to be deferred until he gave instructions, and in which Lord Clarendon, referring to the receipt of a list, said he thought it strange, to say no more, that any two men should take upon them to give in a list for the whole kingdom, and so interfere with the nominations of the Judges, who were the proper persons to name gentlemen for these appointments. In the days of James II. the practice in Ireland was for the Lord Lieutenant to send to the King every year a list of the High Sheriffs. That list was submitted to some creature of his Majesty, who made remarks thereon. Then the list was again transmitted to the Lord Lieutenant, who answered the remarks; and it might be interesting to some hon. Members of the present House to know what comments were made on their ancestors. Against the name of Sir Michael Coote were the words— "Weak and Whiggish." The next was Sir Thomas Fortescue, and the note against his name was—"A creature of the Chancellor—but loyal." He had endeavoured to show that the evidence on which Captain Coote was dismissed from the Shrievalty was insufficient, and the appointment of his successor unconstitutional; but he had been actuated by no factious motives in bringing forward the Motion. He called attention to the subject because he believed injustice had been done to an individual, and a breach of the Constitution committed. He believed he was borne out in the view he had taken by Coke, Blackstone, Lyndhurst, and Brougham; and Junius, in one of his letters, advised that no invasion of the Constitution should be suffered to pass without the most determined resistance, for one precedent created another, and thus precedents went on accumulating until they constituted law. If the course adopted in the case he brought under notice were generally persevered in, it would have the effect of alienating the feelings of the gentlemen of the country, and probably of lowering the influence of the law. This, in the present state of Ireland, would be a most dangerous experiment. The treatment of Captain Coote, taken in connection with the dismissal of a magistrate in the same county, and contrasted with the leniency shown towards a gentleman of superior social standing, who was permitted to talk treason mingled with direct appeals to violence and bloodshed, was calculated to produce the impression that a different measure of justice was to be meted out to Protestants from that which their Roman Catholic fellow-countrymen received, and to disincline the former from undertaking offices which they had hitherto filled to the benefit of the community at large. The hon. Member concluded by moving his Resolution.

, in seconding the; Resolution, said, that having known Captain Coote and Mr. Mitchell for a great many years, he desired to record his opinion that they were incapable, either for political or religious purposes, of tampering with the jury panel. He wished to call the attention of the House, without trespassing at any great length upon its time, to some points which had not been dwelt on by his noble Friend (Viscount Crichton}. The assize town —Monaghan—was not in the centre of the county, and there was no railway communication with it from some distant baronies where the population was Roman Catholic; consequently there existed a difficulty in obtaining jurymen from those parts. The subject had long attracted the attention of the grand juries and magistrates, and it being suspected that the barony constables were capable of taking bribes from persons desirous of being left out of the lists, they came to an arrangement among themselves that these officers, instead of being appointed annually, should be appointed for seven years. The conse- quence was that a much higher class of men had been induced to accept the office; and he was informed that the effect on the jury panel had been most beneficial. This showed that the magistrates of the county had done all they could in order to place a proper class of men on the panel. The sub-Sheriff, whose conduct was complained of, had filled the office eight years, and he hardly thought that that would have been the case if he were an improper person. He would state for the last twelve years the number of Roman Catholics on the jury panel of Monaghan. In 1857 there were 50 Roman Catholics on the panel, and both the Sheriff and sub-Sheriff in that year were Roman Catholics; in 1858 there were 23; in 1859, 10; in 1860, 42; in 1861, 56; in 1862, 40; in 1863, 50; in 1864, 50; in 1865, 53; in 1866, 66; in 1867, 54; in 1868, 48; and in 1869, 49. It was to be remarked that the smallest number of Roman Catholics on the panel in any one of those eight years—when Mr. Mitchell was sub-Sheriff—was 40, while in another of them it was as high as 66. It had not been so high as that in any other year of the twelve years. In 1859 it was only 10. With regard to the action of the Government, and the verdict upon which that action was taken, the verdict was given by two triers, selected by the Judge to decide whether the panel had been properly challenged or not, and those men, both of whom were Catholics, and one of whom kept a well-known public-house, had since been struck off the petty jury panel. Last year the Gentleman who at that time filled the office of Attorney General for Ireland—and who, during his short career in the House of Commons, gained as much esteem for himself as anyone ever had in the same period—explained to the House the mode of trying a challenge to the array. He said—

"M'Kenna was then put upon his trial, and the array was challenged on his behalf. It was the greatest misfortune which could befall the administration of the law that religious considerations should enter into the selection of juries; but the charge against the Sheriff was that he had designedly inserted the names of Protestants upon the panel, intending to prejudice the trial of M'Kenna, and the counsel for the Crown could take no other course but to consent to try that issue. The mode of applying triers was peculiar, and, perhaps, not over satisfactory, but it had been transmitted from very ancient times. The first two persons who answered to their names were sworn, and in this case it was certainly a remarkable circumstance that the persons appointed to try such a serious issue were both Roman Catholics."

Later in the year there was a trial at Galway, the particulars of which must be well known to the hon. and learned Member for Tipperary (Mr. Heron). According to the newspaper reports, Mr. Heron challenged the array at that trial. The Attorney General demurred, and the question as to how the challenge was to be tried having arisen, Mr. Heron referred to the Monaghan case, and wanted to have it tried in accordance with that precedent; but the Attorney General said that if the course taken at Monaghan were reviewed, it might not be found satisfactory, and Mr. Justice Keogh said that a different course had been adopted in the State trials at Cork and another place. The Charge delivered by Judge Morris at Monaghan was said to have been as strong as possible against such a finding as that which was subsequently arrived at; but a Queen's Counsel remarked—"You might as well have charged against a stone wall." Why did not the Executive in 1869, when Mr. Coote was dismissed, appoint the next gentleman on the Judges' list instead of appointing Mr. Langdale? That next gentleman was Mr. Brady. In 1870, when Mr. Brady was at the head of the list, they did ask him; but his health did not admit of his accepting the office, and instead of applying to other gentlemen in their order of succession on the list, the Executive again appointed Mr. Langdale. In 1869 Mr. Langdale appointed as his sub-Sheriff a gentleman noted for his very strong feeling in politics and religion on the other side; but when nominated to the office for the present year he appointed the master of an Orange lodge. He would read to the House what Lord Lyndhurst said in 1838 on the appointment of Sheriffs—

"Neither by the common law, nor by the statute law, was the power of appointing Sheriffs vested in the Crown. He would state broadly and distinctly his opinion, founded upon the Act called 'Poyning's Act,' that the Lord Lieutenant had no power to go out of the Judges' list. The Act of Parliament was precise upon the point; and who would say that an Act of Parliament was not to be obeyed by the Crown?"—[3 Hansard, xliii. 1005.]

He held that it was the duty of the Government to do everything in their power to make the law effective. That could be done only by a system of perfect impartiality as between individuals, and as between sects. Let the same law be applied to Roman Catholics and to Protestants, to priests and to Presbyterian ministers, to the Peer and to the peasant. The Irish were very shrewd and very quick in their perception. There was nothing the lower classes in Ireland appreciated so much as justice. He himself had known an agent to be able to do anything with a tenantry in Ireland, because, though he was perhaps harsh, he was just. An ounce of justice was worth a bushel of legislation. He hoped that by dealing out justice equally among all classes in Ireland, that country would be made prosperous and happy.

said, it was most natural that his hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Monaghan (Colonel Leslie) should have seconded the Motion, and he thought it was most fortunate that the Motion should have been brought forward by his noble Friend (Viscount Crichton), who had done so with much intentional fairness. He was, however, unable to agree with the greater part of what had been urged either by the noble Lord, or the hon. and gallant Gentleman; and it would be his duty to state to the House the special and imperative reasons which had led the Irish Executive to depart in the case of the Sheriff of Monaghan from what he admitted to be, not the law, but the wholesome and beneficial practice in Ireland, with respect to the choice of the Sheriffs from the Judges' lists. He did not contend for one moment that what the Government had thought it their duty to do was a course that ought to be taken by any Government except under special circumstances, and for very good reasons connected with the public interests. When those reasons did not prevail—and he hoped they would be seldom found to exist—he agreed that the ordinary and wholesome practice ought to be—and he was sure it would be—maintained. Two questions were raised by this Motion: first, there was a question relating to the dismissal of the Sheriff of Monaghan, which it was the painful duty of the Irish Executive to order; and, secondly, there was a question as to the appointment of his successor. His noble Friend (Viscount Crichton) had passed very lightly over the transactions out of which this controversy had arisen, and he (Mr. Chichester Fortescue) was therefore bound to inform the House what those transactions were, because they showed very clearly, not only the nature of the case with which the Government had to deal, but also the imperative necessity there was for the Government dealing very carefully, and even very rigidly, with the administration of the law in Ireland. He would not go further back than 1865, when there was a General Election, at winch there were formidable scenes in the town of Monaghan. Those were scenes of party conflict arising out of the old feud between Protestants and Roman Catholics. During the disturbance on the day of election a Roman Catholic voter, who was among the crowd at the railway station, was shot, and in the following year a person was put upon his trial for causing that death; but that person, who was a Protestant, and, he believed, an Orangeman, was tried in the town of Monaghan by a jury consisting of Protestants, and was acquitted. He (Mr. Chichester Fortescue) did not say that that acquittal was not right; but it was absolutely essential that the House should know the facts, in order that they might understand the nature of the circumstances and the state of society in the county of Monaghan. In July, 1808, there were in the town of Monaghan the scenes usual on an Orange anniversary; there was the annual specimen of civil war, only that year it was rather worse than usual. Very violent outrages occurred, and a Roman. Catholic, named Hughes, was shot by some one from the window of the Orange Hall, which was attacked by a mob. Later in the year, in November, there were similar disturbances of a party character in the town of Monaghan, upon which occasion a Protestant, named Clarke, lost his life. It was supposed that he met his death at the hands of a man named M'Kenna, who was at the Spring Assizes of last year charged with that homicide. At that time a large number of persons, mostly Roman Catholics, were awaiting their trial upon charges of greater or less gravity. There were about 100 Roman Catholic prisoners, and twelve or fifteen Protestants. Among the Protestants was one David Baird, who was charged with the homicide of the Roman Catholic, Hughes; and among the Roman Catholics was M'Kenna, who was charged with the homicide of Clarke, the Protestant. The trial of Baird came on first. He was tried by a jury entirely consisting of Protestants, and he was acquitted. He (Mr. Chichester Fortescue) had no reason to say that the verdict was an improper one; indeed, the opinion of the then Attorney General for Ireland was that that acquittal was not improper. These, however, were facts which had made a great impression upon the people of Monaghan, and must be taken into account when a question concerning the administration of justice and public confidence in the law was brought forward. When M'Kenna was put upon his trial for the homicide of Clarke, and before the jury was struck, the prisoner's counsel challenged the array of the jury panel, which he alleged was not properly and impartially constituted, but was, on the contrary, constituted in such a way as to prejudice the case of a Roman Catholic prisoner. That challenge was submitted in the ordinary way to the constituted tribunal of "triers." At this point he must say one word about what his hon. and gallant Friend (Colonel Leslie) supposed to have been the opinion given at Galway by the late Attorney General for Ireland, who was thought to be adverse to the appointment of those triers. He could entirely satisfy both his hon. and gallant Friend and the House upon that point, because he (Mr. Chichester Fortescue) had been assured by the Master of the Rolls for Ireland that he never said, or meant to say, anything at all approaching to what had been attributed to him. The contention of the prisoner's counsel at Galway was that the Judge was bound by law to take the first two names of the jury panel, and the Attorney General contended that he was not bound to do any such thing. He was not quite sure whether the Judge might not take the names of any two respectable persons; but the Judge was certainly at liberty to take two names from the grand jury panel. What Mr. Justice Morris did at Monaghan was to take the first two names upon the ordinary panel. At Galway the Attorney General contended, in accordance with a number of cases, that the Judge was not bound to take those names from the ordinary panel, but that if he pleased he might take two names from the grand jury panel. At Monaghan the triers were constituted in the ordinary way; they heard the evidence as to the constitution of the panel. It had been said that the triers were both Roman Catholics, and that had been hinted at as a circumstance which showed the reason for what followed.

explained, that he did not assert that that circumstance was any reason for what happened. He merely said it was one of the circumstances that preceded this case.

said, there was no reason why two Roman Catholic triers should not be impartial even in a party case. It was, however, a very curious circumstance that the first two names on the jury panel should have been those of Roman Catholics, especially when certainly not more than seven—he believed not so many—Roman Catholic names were in the first seventy names on the panel. It was an odd coincidence, but nothing more. Those two triers heard the case, and came to the conclusion that the challenge was justified, and that the jury panel had not been properly and impartially constituted. Upon that the trials of all the prisoners were necessarily postponed, and the panel was of course quashed. As soon as these facts were brought under his (Mr. Chichester Fortescue's) notice and that of the Lord Lieutenant, the Government, acting under the advice of the Law Officers of the Crown, at once saw that it would be scarcely possible to allow the sub-Sheriff, who, as it appeared, had constituted that panel, to continue in his office and constitute further panels for the county of Monaghan. When he said that he meant this—He did not mean to say it was absolutely imperative upon the Government to act upon the decision of those triers; but he did mean to say that the primâ facie case requiring the Government so to act was of the strongest kind, and it would have required the strongest ground to justify them in setting aside that decision and acting as if it had never been given. And in considering the arguments and the evidence put before those triers the Executive and their legal Advisors had no reason to think the triers were not justified in the conclusion to which they came. Soon after that a Question was put in that House, supported by a statement by his hon. Friend the Member for Cork (Mr. Downing), not long after the Spring Assizes. It was then the duty of the present Master of the Rolls to answer that Question, and in doing so, although those circumstances had then only lately happened, and the Government had not then as fully considered the matter as it did afterwards, the Master of the Rolls said he thought it would be the imperative duty of the Government to take some means or other by which the same sub-Sheriff should not constitute the jury panel of the county of Monaghan, as the same prisoners, implicated in the same charge, with the same party elements, were to be tried at the next Assizes for that county. The Government considered the matter most carefully, and at a convenient time before the Summer Assizes he addressed a letter on the part of his noble Friend the Lord Lieutenant to Captain Coote, the High Sheriff, couched, he though, in very respectful terms, recounting the state of facts which he had just given to the House, and conveying in the strongest manner the opinion of the Lord Lieutenant that it must tend to shake public confidence in the administration of justice in the highest degree if the High Sheriff did not take immediate steps to appoint a new sub-Sheriff, whose duty it would be, in conjunction with the High Sheriff, to take care that the jury panel was fairly and properly constituted for the ensuing Assizes. The answer to that was a short letter from Captain Coote, respectfully declining to make a change of his deputy, and enclosing a statement of facts with regard to the framing of the panel which he thought would at once convince the Government they were wrong. That statement of facts was most carefully examined by himself (Mr. Chichester Fortescue) and the Law Officers of the Crown, and he was bound to say it more than ever convinced them that it was their duty not only not to set aside the verdict of the triers, but to give effect to it as far as the Executive were concerned. The House, first of all, ought to know that in the county of Monaghan there were 125,000 inhabitants, of whom 92,000 were Roman Catholics and 33,000 were Protestants; and the jury-book for 1869 contained 1,215 names, of which 423 were Roman Catholics and 792 Protestants. The High Sheriff and the sub-Sheriff had nothing to do with the jury book, but they were responsible for the jury panel which they made up from the jury book; and the jury panel for the Spring Assizes of 1869 contained 250 names, of which 201 were Protestants and only forty-nine Roman Catholics—a proportion very different from that comprised in the jury book. He should mention that the original jury panel contained 200 names altogether; but fifty special jurors were added—persons, as was well-known, of higher standing than ordinary jurors— and of those fifty only one was a Roman Catholic, and the result was, as he had stated, 201 Protestants to forty-nine Roman Catholics. One of the most remarkable facts relating to that part of the matter was that in the barony of Farney there were 291 jurors—the largest number, with one small exception, of any barony in the county—and out of those 291 jurors, 221 were Roman Catholics. And, further, in that same barony, there were 140 Roman Catholic jurors rated at and over £20 a year, and, therefore, men of a substantial and respectable class. Yet from that great barony, containing so large a proportion of Roman Catholic jurors, the Sheriff thought right to summon only twenty jurors, although how many of the twenty were Roman Catholics and how many Protestants he (Mr. Chichester Fortescue) could not say. The reason given by the Sheriff for doing that was that there was no direct railway communication between that barony and the county town of Monaghan. But there was railway communication [An hon. MEMBER: No!], though it was not direct; and it was not easy to get from the one place to the other. Another reason he assigned was, that he was not so well acquainted with the jurors in Farney as with those in the county town. Now, he (Mr. Chichester Fortescue) ventured to say that those were no reasons at all. The Sheriff was bound to make the very best panel he could make. On an occasion of such gravity as that, when the serious offences to be tried were of a party cha racter, he was bound to take care that the jury panel should be above all suspicion. But he did not do that. It should be added that the Roman Catholic names on the panel were, for the most part, placed low down on it. As he had already said, out of the first seventy names, there were only seven Catholic names. The Government, on a careful examination of all the facts, came to the conclusion that there were no grounds for setting aside the verdict of the constituted tribunal in that case, but that, on the contrary, it was their duty to accept that verdict and act upon it. They would at once have proceeded to do so had it not been for one statement made by the Sheriff of Monaghan, which had been alluded to by the Mover and Seconder of that Motion, and which he must explain to the House. The Sheriff described one of the triers, William M'Phillips, as a person who had sworn informations against James Clarke, for whose murder John M'Kenna was indicted. That implied a grave imputation against the impartiality of the trier, William M'Phillips; and, before going further, it was necessary to test that insinuation—because, of course, if anything of that kind could have been produced against M'Phillips, it might have made a difference in the decision arrived at. The Government, therefore, obtained a copy of the informations in question, and on examining them it appeared to him that, so far from that imputation being well-founded, the informations, on the face of them, were of a singularly fair and moderate character. They were only informations on a very trifling matter, to prove that that person had taken part in a party procession, carrying a flag and beating a drum; and it appeared that M'Phillips had not even volunteered those informations—that he had been compelled to come forward and say what he had witnessed. The man happened to sec the procession go by; he gave his evidence in a most moderate and straightforward way, and there was nothing to warrant any suspicion as to his fairness and impartiality as a trier. That being the case, the verdict of the triers remained as it stood before, unaffected, as he said in his following letter, written in July. But in the meantime considerable delay had occurred, and the Summer Assizes were over. Care, however, was taken that no injury should arise from that fact, because all the minor cases were postponed to future Assizes, and in that case of homicide the prisoner, upon certiorari in the Court of Queen's Bench, was tried elsewhere and acquitted, as it turned out, though that had nothing to do with the matter. But the Summer Assizes being over, it came to be seen how the jury panel had been constituted by the same sub-Sheriff on that second occasion—namely, the Summer Assizes, and they found that, so far from being improved, the panel was then rather worse than it had been at the Spring Assizes. There were 200 names on the panel for the Summer Assizes, of whom 160 were Protestants and forty Roman Catholics. The fifty special jurors had been omitted. And there was also this remarkable circumstance, that the Sheriff had thought it his duty to leave out of the panel the names of the two jurors who tried the case on the former occasion. The Government came with great regret to the conclusion contained in his letter to the Sheriff of Monaghan. They made up their minds that as it was one of their first duties to protect the impartial administration of the law, and to secure general confidence in that impartiality, especially in a county constituted like Monaghan, the High Sheriff who had declined to change his sub-Sheriff must be superseded. He now came to the second act of the play—namely, the appointment of a successor. The legal part of the case he would not touch—he would leave that to his learned Friend the Solicitor General for Ireland. He would assume for the moment that the Government had legal power to take the name of a gentleman not found in the Judges' list as it then stood. They believed it their duty both to consider the public convenience and to make it certain that the sub-Sheriff, whom they had taken pains to remove, should not be re-appointed, as that would stultify all they had done. Therefore, to avoid entering into negotiations, as by good advice they were able to do, and also the danger of having to repeat the same process if one of the gentlemen on the list had chosen to appoint the same sub-Sheriff, they filled the office by selecting a gentleman, not, indeed, on the Judges' list, but, as was admitted on the other side, of high respectability, holding property in the county, though, perhaps, not a resident, and perfectly competent, he supposed, in the opinion of everyone, to discharge the duty. His hon. and gallant Friend opposite (Colonel Leslie) said that the new Sheriff had made an objectionable appointment of an under-Sheriff. Well, he believed it was time that, in the first instance, he appointed a gentleman who had better not have been appointed, as he was open to the suspicion of partiality. His (Mr. Chichester Fortescue's) attention had not been called to the matter until very recently; but the gentleman referred to was not now in office; and to the gentleman who was now in office his hon. and gallant Friend could not object, for Mr. Nicol was, he believed, a good Protestant, (though he did not know he was a good Orangeman). He was a highly respectable man who could not be objected to on any side. The charge against the Government was that at the end of the year they again passed over the names on the Judges' list, and reappointed Mr. Langdale. But there was no occasion to pass over any names, because the High Sheriff was not appointed for any particular time, but during Her Majesty's pleasure. The Government allowed Mr. Langdale to continue in his office, and that was the most reasonable course for them to take. It would be very difficult for a Government holding the views which they held to allow the late sub-Sheriff again to form a panel for this year, for though the case of homicide had been disposed of there were other cases of a party nature arising out of the riot still to be tried. But quite apart from that, and as a matter of fairness, to allow Mr. Langdale to continue in office this year was only in the natural course of things. Mr. Langdale had been appointed towards the end of 1869; he had never gone through an Assize, and it was only fair that he should be required to go through two Assizes in 1870 like other Sheriffs. That was what the Government had done, and by that, as a matter of policy and duty, and as an effectual means of securing the due administration of the law in such a society as that of the county of Monaghan, they were prepared to stand. But there remained behind a very important question, as to which, however, the Government had no doubt—namely, whether they had legal powers to take that course. The Mover and Seconder of the Resolution had tried to overwhelm them with detached quotations from Blackstone, Lyndhurst, and Brougham; but they were quite familiar with these quotations, and with a great many others, which put an entirely different aspect on the case, and he ventured to say, according to the highest legal authorities in Ireland, to whom they had access, that whatever might be the case in England, as to which he had nothing to say, in Ireland, at least, the appointment of the Sheriff of the Crown from the Judges' list did not depend upon statute, but solely upon practice, and a practice by no moans uniformly observed. There was no English statute bearing on the subject, and the highest authorities, including Lord Plunket, denied that the English statutes of Edward II. and Edward III. applied to Ireland. For some time after the Restoration the Sheriffs were generally appointed as now; but from about 1770 to 1816 it was asserted that the Sheriffs in Ireland were appointed by the Crown. In the year 1816 Sir Robert Peel, then Chief Secretary for Ireland, restored the former practice; but restored it as a practice, and in his correspondence on the subject he never said one word about the illegality of the course of procedure which had prevailed for more than a generation before, and it would be strange if he had, seeing that in doing so he would have repudiated the legal authority of such men as Lord Chancellor Manners and Attorney General Saurin. But though Sir Robert Peel restored the usage, which, as a beneficial one, he was quite right in restoring, and though it had been generally adhered to since, yet upon several occasions it was for good reasons departed from by Lord Wellesley, the Duke of Northumberland, and Lord Normanby. A very curious case, bearing very much on this matter, arose in 1838 in this very county of Monaghan, and the coincidence was a strange one, as showing how events repeat themselves, and hereditary causes produce hereditary effects. In 1838 another Mr. Thomas Coote, he believed the father of the late High Sheriff—was appointed Sheriff, and having appointed as sub-Sheriff a notorious Orange partizan, with whom he (Mr. Chichester Fortescue) did not intend for a moment to compare the present sub-Sheriff, was removed by Lord Normanby, and was told by Mr. Drummond that he had shown by the first act of his shrievalty how little regard he had to the impartial administration of the law. A new Sheriff had to be appointed by Lord Normanby, and did his legal advisers think it necessary to confine themselves within the Judges' list? Not at all, and a gentleman not named upon it, Mr. Kenney, was appointed, and the Assizes came on. But at those Assizes there were prisoners to be tried who were fortunate enough to be defended by eminent counsel whoso names had since been heard of, and they recommended an appeal to the Queen's Bench on the ground that the jury was not a proper jury, because empanelled by a nominated Sheriff. That appeal was signed by the names of Joseph Napier and James Whiteside. They went before the Queen's Bench, and put in a plea that the grand jury had not been summoned by the lawful High Sheriff. The Crown replied, to which there was a rejoinder, and to this rejoinder the Crown demurred. The case was tried by an eminent Judge— Judge Burton. The counsel for the prisoner declined to argue the point, and judgment was given against the plea and rejoinder by Judge Burton. But, though fie case was not argued before the Queen's Bench, it was argued before a still higher tribunal—the House of Lords—by Lord Lyndhurst, supported by Lord Brougham, to whom were opposed the names of Plunket, Mulgrave, and Cottenham. Lord Mulgrave avowed that he had appointed a Sheriff outside the Judge's list in eighteen or twenty cases, on good grounds, and said that he wished, except under special circumstances, to abide by the practice of making the selection from the Judge's list. Lord Plunket, after referring to the facts and the law, maintained the propriety of what had been done, saying that, unless this were so not a single Sheriff in Ireland had been legally appointed since the Reformation, and that he was ready to share the whole responsibility of what had been done with the then Lord Lieutenant of Ireland; and Lord Cottenham, following, agreed with the views expressed by Lord Plunket. These being the facts of the case, and the law being as he had stated it, the Government, believing they had the power, thought it to be their duty, acting under the best legal advice, to take the course that had been followed on the present occasion. Further, he would say that, though it was far from their desire to depart, except under circumstances of the greatest gravity, which he trusted might never occur again, from the general usage, they would be ready at any future time to incur a similar responsibility, should it be necessary, in order to the due administration of the law in Ireland.

said, he did not rise to give an opinion upon the difference between the Sheriff of Monaghan and the Executive which had dismissed bun, but he could not forbear expressing an opinion which had been forced upon him by the discussion of the case, that if Captain Coote had done all the things of which he had been accused he had only followed the practice that had, in political cases, been habitually sanctioned by the Irish Executive. As one instance out of many that might be cited he would mention that though the county of Cork had a population of 500,000 Catholics against 50,000 Protestants, at the time of the Fenian trials in 1865, a jury panel was called, composed of 360 Protestants and forty Catholics. If Captain Coote acted unfairly he should like to know what would be said of the Crown prosecutors who, in the case to which he referred, insisted on bringing prisoners to trial before an unfairly constituted jury such as he had described. No doubt the learned Solicitor General for Ireland would say that the Crown prosecutors were the best of men, and it was equally free from doubt that, as lawyers and Crown prosecutors, they were so; but this only proved what he had said, that the practice of the Crown in the trial of criminal cases in Ireland was habitually unfair, and that between the course taken by the Sheriff of Monaghan and the Executive that superseded him there was not a pin to choose.

said, it was not easy for an English Member to follow an intricate dispute as to the constitution of Irish jury panels; but he must say, having heard the very clear statements of his hon. Friends who moved and seconded the Resolution before the House, that he could hardly regard as satisfactory the explanation of his right hon. Friend the Chief Secretary for Ireland. The question was whether equal justice was done as between Protestants and Catholics under the present Government in Ireland; and his right hon. Friend, with the simple remark that the verdict of the triers was correct, had dismissed the question as affecting the Sheriff, altogether forgetting that Judge Morris, in his Charge, entirely approved the panel. What did the Government do with regard to the question? They said to the Sheriff—"Your sub-Sheriff has constituted an improper panel; you will not dismiss him, and we will supersede you." And having done this, the Irish Executive passed over the name of the next Protestant gentleman who was eligible for the office of Sheriff, and appointed a Roman Catholic; and the first thing he, in turn, did was to select as his sub-Sheriff a person who, as his right hon. Friend admitted, ought not to have been appointed to that position. When the term of office of the High Sheriff expired, instead of going back to the gentleman who had been so improperly passed over, the same Roman Catholic was re-appointed, on the ground that having only served part of a year it was but right that he should serve another year in addition. He asked the right hon. Gentleman at the head of the Government if this was showing equal justice to Protestants and Roman Catholics in Ireland? The other day it was said of the right hon. Gentleman at the head of the Government that if there was any one particular word emblazoned on his banner it was "equality;" and the right hon. Gentleman himself, ascending into one of his highest flights of eloquence, had compared himself with Janus and even with the lions in Trafalgar Square, adding that he had had an opportunity, in the course of his political career, of looking at politics in every aspect. This being so, he wished to know why the right hon. Gentleman did not act with more justice than had at present marked his conduct with reference to the members of different religious bodies in Ireland? The right hon. Gentleman the Prime Minister was a disciple of Sir Robert Peel; but he thought Sir Robert Peel would hardly approve the right hon. Gentleman's present course. There was at that day much talk of repealing the Union, and the Government dismissed all the magistrates who favoured repeal; and with equal justice they dismissed all the Orangemen also. Further, in 1850, the Earl of Clarendon; who was then at the head of the Irish Executive, dismissed the Earl of Roden from the lord-lieutenancy of the county Down, not for any political act, but in consequence of what the Government of the day regarded as nothing in the world more than an error of judgment, in receiving and addressing a procession of Orangemen, which was then perfectly legal. The Earl of Clarendon, when called upon for a defence of his conduct, said—

"It was the duty of Her Majesty's Government to inspire all classes with confidence in the impartial administration of the law; to convince them that before the law all were equal, and that whether high or low, rich or poor, the same measure of justice should be meted out to all."

Having these words in his mind he (Mr. Bentinck) called upon Her Majesty's Government to state the course they meant to pursue. He called upon the right hon. Gentleman at the head of the Government in his capacity of modern Janus to show equal justice to all, and not to be—as he once said the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Buckinghamshire was—"a double-faced deity, who wished to smile on his friends and frown upon his enemies." What was to be the result of this business? It appeared, from what the right hon. Gentleman (Mr. Chichester Fortescue) had stated, that the real culprit in the case, if there was a culprit at all, was the Lord Chancellor of Ireland, who had been the cause of the names of gentlemen being passed over. It was the duty and business of the Lord Chancellor to assist the Judges who were charged with the selection of the Sheriff; and it was his duty to advise the Government not to pass over those Protestant gentlemen in order to appoint a Roman Catholic. From what he (Mr. Bentinck) knew of the Irish Bar, he was satisfied that if either of the able and acute lawyers at the head of the Courts of Common Pleas and Exchequer — Chief Justice Monahan or Chief Baron Pigott —had been in this position of responsibility, the same disastrous result would not have happened. But the right hon. Gentleman, for a political purpose, had gone out of his way to appoint, over the heads of those distinguished Judges, one who had previously been but a Puisne Judge; the reason being that he was known to be a partisan of a small but active section of the Roman Catholic party, which entertained ideas differing very widely from those held by the ma- jority of persons belonging to the same religion. Had a man of greater weight been chosen to fill the office of Lord Chancellor, he believed that the Protestants of Ireland would not have the same good reason which they now possessed to bring a charge of inequality of treatment against the present Government.

said, he hoped that in taking part in this discussion he should confine himself to language which would be in harmony with the feelings and opinions, not only of those who sat upon his own side of the House, but of those who sat opposite. He rose simply to advocate what was just and right; and with respect to what had arisen, as narrated by the Chief Secretary for Ireland, he was bound to say that, looking at it either from the point of view of the right hon. Gentleman himself or of his noble Friend (Viscount Crichton), it left upon the mind a painful impression. Great distrust of the law obviously existed upon one side and on the other, and it was no doubt highly difficult for the Government in keep straight between the two parties. But the question really was whether in proceedings so strong and unusual as had been adopted in this case there had not been something very like a triumph given to one side, and a depressing influence, not called for by the circumstances, exercised upon the other. The returning officer, whose name had appeared in the course of these proceedings, had stated that he was in the habit of taking Roman Catholics and Protestants alternately, and that he had suggested to Mr. Mitchell to adopt that course last year. Mr. Mitchell very properly refused to listen to the recommendation, because nothing could be more calculated to impede the due course of justice. Looking to the panel for the county of Monaghan he found upon it the names of 1,215 persons; and in matters of this kind it was necessary to look, not so much to mere population as to those who were entitled by rating to servo as jurymen for the county. Of those who were so entitled to be upon the panel 792 were Protestants and 423 Roman Catholics; that was to say, speaking in round numbers, the Roman Catholics formed one-half the Protestants. When the panel was called over, upon the occasion of the trial, seventy-two jurors answered to their names; of these, forty-eight were Protestants and twenty-four Roman Catholics—the proportion of Roman Catholics corresponding in the main to the number of those upon the general panel of the county. In itself, therefore, there was nothing unfair in the proportion; and, in addition, it must be remembered that the two first who answered to their names, and were sworn as triers, were both Roman Catholics. He held in his hand a Return of the constitution of the different jury panels from 1857 to 1869, and it appeared that the highest number of Roman Catholics put on was sixty-six and the lowest number forty. The highest number had been put on in 1866 by the same sub-Sheriff, Mr. Mitchell, whose conduct was impeached in the late transaction; and in 1864, when Mr. Rogers was sub-Sheriff, and the alternate principle of selection recommended by Mr. Reilly was adopted, the panel only contained the names of fifty Roman Catholics. Forty-nine was the number placed upon the panel by Captain Coote; and this he (Mr. Gathorne Hardy) found, from the statement of the facts as they came before the Judge, was certainly at least equal to, if it did not exceed, the average number of Roman Catholics called on to serve for many years past. The only ground he had been able to find in the Papers for the imputation upon Mr. Mitchell was, that a sufficient number of Roman Catholics had not been put on from the barony of Farney; but whether this was owing, as had been already suggested, to the fact that the barony lay at a considerable distance, and that jurors accordingly were unwilling to serve, or from some other cause, the fact remained that the number of Roman Catholic jurors from that barony upon the occasion in question was fully equal to the average number who were returned. Therefore, so far, primâ facie there was no case against Mr. Mitchell. But the panel was challenged, the two first persons were chosen as triers; and, though he made no imputation upon them, it was impossible, remembering all that his right hon. Friend opposite had staled, to put out of sight the fact that both the persons chosen to try whether a sufficient number of Roman Catholics had been placed upon the panel were themselves Roman Catholics. Another point which would naturally occur to the mind of any Protestant in Monaghan, thinking over all the circumstances, would be that one of these very triers—in the fairest possible way doubtless, but still, as a matter of fact—had laid an information against the deceased man Clarke. And further, when the trial of M'Kenna took place in another county, it was a circumstance worth noting that the other trier sat by M'Kenna throughout the proceedings, and showed that he was deeply interested in the trial. Was it surprising, therefore, that Captain Coote, when called upon to dismiss his under-Sheriff, against whom, during nine years, no complaint had been made, and whose character must have been destroyed had effect been given in such a manner to the verdict of the triers, replied—

"I have known Mr. Mitchell for many years; he has served before without reproach, and I will not, therefore, take upon myself to dismiss him; at least, without application being made, in the first instance, to the Judge who tried the case. Let the opinion of the Judge be ascertained; let it be known whether he, accustomed to weigh such matters, is satisfied with the verdict of the triers before I am called upon to send Mr. Mitchell into the world stained with the imputation of having falsely and fraudulently got together this jury."

In this appeal to the Judge who tried the case Captain Coote was certainly acting in conformity with invariable practice. His right hon. Friend opposite the Secretary of State for the Home Department, where a case was referred to him affecting the life or character of any human being, would no more think of taking action upon the matter without referring it to the Judge who had tried the case and obtaining the Judge's opinion upon it than he would think of trying the case himself originally. Upon this point he appealed, not to passion or to party feeling—he appealed to those who were acquainted with the mode in which business was ordinarily conducted in this country. His right hon. Friend opposite (Sir George Grey) had long filled the office of Secretary of State for the Home Department, and he felt certain that if such a case had come before him he would never have dreamt of acting to the prejudice of any person, in the same manner that Captain Coote had been dealt with, until he had first referred the matter to the Judge, who knew all the circumstances of the case. With regard, therefore, to Captain Coote, an unjust and harsh proceeding had been adopted. He did not deny the power of the Government to act as they had done; he did not impugn their authority; but he ventured to think that such an exercise of power could not be defended. He impugned the step which had been taken, because the evidence relied on in support of it was not satisfactory, and, further, because the Government had not thought proper to appeal to the Judge by whom the case was tried. That Judge—if he might throw in such a consideration—was himself a Roman Catholic; but he was a gentleman upon whose perfect honour, integrity, and desire to do justice to all parties the Government might have relied with confidence. He came next not merely to the removal of Captain Coote, but to the appointment of his successor. The Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant had admitted that as a matter of course, in the ordinary discharge of his duties, the name next upon the list recommended by the Judges would have been selected. When Captain Coote was removed, two names remained upon the list; and he was not aware that any imputation had been cast upon the fitness of either of those gentlemen. On the contrary, it was admitted that they were gentlemen well qualified to fill the office of High Sheriff. But what did the right hon. Gentleman say? In consequence of an apprehension which he entertained that they might re-appoint Mr. Mitchell as sub-Sheriff, without making a single application to either of those gentlemen, without calling their attention to the circumstances, without asking whether they entertained either willingness or unwillingness to act, and without ever asking whether, if chosen, they meant to appoint Mr. Mitchell, the Chief Secretary took a gentleman who was non-resident in the county, a gentleman who was of a different religion from the two who were upon the Sheriff's list, and without a word to those gentlemen appointed the Sheriff he himself had selected over their heads. In some great emergency he could understand a course like this being adopted by a constitutional Government, such as he hoped the present Government aspired to be. Precedents might undoubtedly be found for it in the days of James II., or in the acts of Lord Mulgrave, to which reference had been made. But the acts of Lord Mulgrave did not pass without severe commont and reprehension—reprehension not conveyed in the language of partizans, but in what might almost be called a judicial survey by Lord Lyndhurst, who came to the conclusion that acts such as those were contrary both to law and to the Constitution of the country. This, indeed, had been practically admitted by the right hon. Gentleman opposite. At a moment, when the Government were desirous of giving a great example of equity and of acting in strict accordance with law, it was certainly unfortunate that they should furnish to the Irish people, and to Irish Protestants especially, such materials for reflection and comment as this case afforded. Captain Coote was dismissed from the office of Sheriff because his sub-Sheriff was suspected of partiality in putting too few Roman Catholics upon the panel. The Government redressed the balance by calling in a gentleman from a distance to serve as Sheriff. And whom did this gentleman, the new Roman Catholic Sheriff, select as his sub-Sheriff? Why, the very man who had acted as treasurer in collecting the money for the defence of M'Kenna. Was the conduct of Mr. Mitchell impugned because he had done that which had been done since 1857, and was another Sheriff to appoint a man who would have to impanel a jury if M'Kenna had been again tried in that county, the sub-Sheriff being the man who had been treasurer of the sum for his defence? He thought when they were endeavouring to take away from the Irish the idea that justice was not impartially administered, they must take great care not to expose themselves to imputations these parties made upon one another. If the Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant had taken one of those gentlemen named on the list, or said he thought that a new sub-Sheriff ought to be appointed, he might have saved a great deal of ill-feeling on the subject. He might fairly have said that—he might fairly have asked whether the gentleman appointed would have undertaken to do it. Had he done so, he would have taken the ordinary constitutional course. He did not think anything would have happened with the panel which would have interfered with this action on his part. He was quite certain that the course taken by the Government in this case had not been judicial, though they might desire it to be so. It had made an impression in Ireland that if Protestant ascendancy was to be put down, it was to be put down by Roman Catholic ascendancy. That was an injudicious and unfortunate thing; and he hoped what had happened, or might happen, to-night would tell the Government in tones not to be mistaken, that the English people, in their desire to see equality among all classes in Ireland, would not give assistance to any invasion of the Constitution in order to obtain it.

said, he must beg to recall the attention of the House to the question as put from the Chair— whether the conduct of the Government in the dismissal of Captain Coote and the re-appointment of his successor had been unconstitutional, and calculated to impede the due performance of public duty. The first and most important question, to consider was, whether what had occurred in the appointment of Mr. Langdale in consequence of the dismissal of Captain Coote was constitutional or not. It was always unpleasant to argue in that House what, after all, was a dry question of law; but he ventured to assert that it could be shown by reference to the statutes and cases that the conduct of the Government in this instance was strictly within the limits of the Constitution, and in no way a departure from the law of the land. He was very much struck with the ability of the noble Lord who had introduced the subject (Viscount Crichton), from the manner in which he referred, although he was not a lawyer by profession, to the authorities which seemed to justify his opinion. He (Mr. Dowse) thought, however, that a short examination of the loading cases would satisfy the House that the Government had acted wisely, so far as the question of law was concerned, in following the advice of their legal Advisers, and justly, so far as discretion was concerned, founded upon the opinion given them on the point of law. He took his stand on this position, which he held to be settled and indisputable—that the Crown had power to nominate a person to be Sheriff of a county in Ireland, although not returned on the Judges' list, and that such person was legally and con- stitutionally the Sheriff. This was plain whether they referred to the origin of the office of Sheriff, the statutes that regulated it, or the nature of the duties which the Sheriff was called upon to perform. The office of Sheriff was contained in the earldom which undoubtedly lay in the gift of the Crown; and when the office was separated from that of earl the right of appointing the Sheriff, as of conferring the dignity of earl, remained in the Crown. The Crown had even the power of giving away this right. The Corporation of the City of London had the privilege by charter, which was given by Henry I. for a consideration to the county of Middlesex. Unless this power was taken away by statute, it was inherent in the Crown. Had it, then, been taken away by statute? The statutes mentioned by the noble Viscount were the 9th. Edward II. and the 14th Edward III.; but these statutes did not abridge the power of the Crown to appoint a Sheriff. This fact had been recognized by our greatest writers including Bacon. Mr. Chitty, on Blackstone, was clearly of opinion that the statutes referred to, while they took away from the people the right of choosing a Sheriff, did not affect the Crown's right, privilege, and prerogative to appoint Sheriffs. Lord Tenterden gave a similar opinion. Reference had been made to the reign of the Stuarts. He did not know that that was a very good time to search for precedents, but a precedent was not necessarily bad because it came from a bad time. What was the English statute on the subject? It declared that upon the morrow of All Souls', the Chancellor—that was, the Chancellor of the Exchequer — Treasurer, President of the Council, and Chief Baron were to meet in the Exchequer, that they should sit in open court, and discharge their duty in an open, legal, and constitutional manner. There was a great dispute in the other House in 1838, whether the statute applied to Ireland. Lord Plunket maintained that it did not, and that if it did there had never been a legal Sheriff appointed in Ireland from the days of Henry VII, to the present time, for the Judges never sat in open court. He (Mr. Dowse) would go further and say that if the English Acts were binding and creative, there never was a legally appointed Sheriff in Ireland; because, before Poyning's Act, the English law did not apply. But even if the statute did apply to Ireland he contended that its terms were merely affirmative and not negative, and that it did not take away the power of the Crown to appoint a Sheriff. The very case in question had been decided, as referred to by his right hon. Friend, and the position of the Government on that point was impregnable. In Monaghan, in 1838, a bill of indictment was found against a man named Heenan, and counsel pleaded that Thomas Coote (father or grandfather of Captain Coote) was the Sheriff, and that one Kenney summoned the jury. The relocation of the Crown was that Kenney was Sheriff—Kenney had been appointed by the Crown direct. The case came on for argument before the Chief Justice, and what was the judgment? It was that the prisoner was to plead because the jury had been properly impanelled. And in other cases similar decisions were arrived at. He trusted he had shown that the duty imposed upon the Crown in the present instance had been performed in a constitutional manner. The question, however, still remained whether Captain Coote ought to have been deprived of his office. How did the case stand upon this point? The Sheriff was appointed during Her Majesty's pleasure, and Captain Coote had been removed from his office by the appointment of another person to it. Nothing was more important than that justice should be impartially administered in Ireland, and the present Chief Secretary, beyond all others, desired to secure the impartial administration of the law. In this particular case it happened that although the population of the county of Monaghan consisted of 90,000 Roman Catholics, and 30,000 Protestants, the jury book contained the names of 800 Protestants as against 400 Roman Catholics. He was willing to concede that the Roman Catholic population was generally of the lower order, and therefore the relative proportion of Roman Catholics and Protestants would not show itself exactly on the jury book. But neither did the proportions of the jury book appear in the jury panel, which only contained one-fifth or one-sixth of Roman Catholics. A person, of a credulous turn of mind might believe that that was an accident, but it was extraordinary how frequent these accidents were, for on another occa- sion, out of a panel of 110 jurors only ton were Roman Catholics, and their names, by another unaccountable accident, had got to the very bottom of the list. There was not the excuse that they had been placed alphabetically, for two of them began with the letter A. Now if ever there was a time when it was necessary that there should be a just panel it was on the occasion in question. Two men, one a Protestant and the other a Roman Catholic, were to be tried for their lives. Others were to be tried for taking part in one of those religious— he should rather say irreligious—brawls that were a disgrace alike to Irish Roman Catholics and Irish Protestants. And the result of the conduct of Captain Coote and his sub-Sheriff was, that these men had not yet been tried, and were now awaiting their trial at the Assizes, The excuse put forward for not summoning the quota of jurors from the barony of 1'ariiey was, that they resided at too great a distance from the county town; but as the distance was not more than fifteen or sixteen Irish miles, with a railway running within four or five miles of the place, and cars plying the intermediate distance, the jurors might have been conveyed from their houses to Monaghan within three or four hours. When M'Kenna's case came on to be tried the prisoner challenged the array. The learned Judge appointed two triers to try the panel, and they found that it was unfairly and improperly constituted, and for a purpose, and the sub-Sheriff afterwards went the length of leaving the two triers off the panel because, he (Mr. Dowse) presumed, that functionary did not consider them proper jurymen to try prisoners. The panel was quashed and no more trials were allowed under it. M'Kenna applied to be tried at Louth, and was acquitted. The Executive took no further steps upon that occasion, and it was not until the next Assizes, when it was found that the person who was responsible for making out the panel was utterly incorrigible, that the Government called upon Captain Coote to remove him, and on Captain Coote refusing to do so, the Government was compelled to remove Captain Coote himself. He submitted that the Executive had only done in this matter what they were bound to do, and he trusted they would be acquitted by the high court of justice before whom they were now upon their trial of having committed any improper act in reference to this matter. The panel was worse than before; there was no time to get a certiorari, The Government had to say to the prisoners—"We will not try you until March, 1870." The Government, he contended, was not justified in again running the risk in March, 1870, they had had to encounter by the accidents of this sub-Sheriff whom Captain Coote had declined to remove. The right hon. Gentleman the Member for Oxford University (Mr. Gathorne Hardy) appeared to think the Government should have entered into a kind of bargain, and have informed one of the other gentlemen on the list that they would appoint him if he would not appoint such a person as sub-Sheriff. He, however, contended that it was the duty of the Executive to exercise its own discretion, and to appoint a gentleman of position and respectability who was not likely to appoint Mr. Mitchell sub-Sheriff. It was said that Mr. Langdale had appointed as sub-Sheriff the former treasurer of M'Kenna's fund. Mr. Langdale would have been quite incapable of appointing such a person had he been aware that he had acted in that capacity; and as soon as he was aware of the circumstance he removed him and appointed a strong Protestant, the master of an Orange Lodge, in his place. The right hon. Member for Oxford University, in his fair and candid speech, had said he believed the Government were anxious to do their duty. He (Mr. Dowse) said that they had done their duty, and they would have been liable to blame had they not acted as they did. They were not to be kept from doing their duty by irrelevant remarks or references such as those of the hon. Member for White-haven (Mr. Bentinck) to cases not before the House. The case of Captain Madden would be met when it came on; one case was enough at a time. The hon. Member for Mayo (Mr. Moore) intervened in the debate, on the part of the Fenians, and for some reason or other his Friends cheered him. Fortunately the Attorney General for Ireland, who was engaged as Solicitor General in the prosecution of the Fenian prisoners, happened to be in the neighbourhood of the House at the time when the hon. Member for Mayo was speaking, and he had sent a note to the Treasury Bench, in which he authorized him to state that on the occasion referred to the panel was challenged and the triers found on their oaths that the panel was fair and honest. The charge in ado against the panel of the county of Cork, as far as it was an unfair panel, was disposed of by the constitutional method in the same way as the panel in this case had been. In conclusion, he had refrained from going more minutely into the legal question, as it was unnecessary and would only weary the House. He left the matter in the firm belief that the Motion was totally unsustainable, and that the House would say that the Government deserved not censure but thanks for what they had done in this matter.

said, he was not prepared to deny the prerogative of the Crown to appoint a Sheriff, nor was he prepared to deny that the Crown had power to select a Sheriff in Ireland or England, from outside the Judges' list. Indeed, examples were to be found in Irish history—in the course of the Governments of the Duke of Northumberland and of Lord Normanby—of this having been done; and an implied sanction was given to the step, by the fact that there was no express condemnation of it by Parlialiament. He was not prepared to deny the view of the Solicitor General that the statutes were affirmative; but, notwithstanding this, it was a very serious matter to exercise a prerogative which so great an authority as Blackstone had pronounced to be totally unconstitutional. Blackstone expressly said—

"It is true, the reporter adds, that it was held that the Queen by her prerogative might make a Sheriff without the election of the Judges, non obstante aliquo statuto in contrarium; but the doctrine of non obstante's, which sets the prerogative above the laws, was effectually demolished by the Bill of Rights at the Revolution, and abdicated Westminster Hall when King James abdicated the kingdom. However, it must be acknowledged that the practice of occasionally naming what are called pocket Sheriffs, by the sole authority of the Crown, have uniformly continued to the reign of His present Majesty, in which, I believe, few (if any) compulsory instances have occurred."— [Blackstone 1, ix.]

But although it was true the Crown had power to make Sheriffs outside the names returned by the Judges, that power had not been exercised in England for a very long time; he was not aware that it had been exercised in England since the Revolution. Unquestionably it was exercised by Charles I. and James II., and not improbably the reason it had of late not been exercised in England, was because of the opinion of so great a constitutional authority as Blackstone against it. If, then, it had not been exercised in England for a long time, and some constitutional feeling existed against it, was it not all-important that there should be as great an unwillingness to exercise this high prerogative in Ireland as had existed in the case of England? Indeed, it was more necessary to refrain from exercising this prerogative in Ireland because of the political character of the representatives of the Government. The Lord Lieutenant, although he was the representative of the Sovereign, was not the actual Sovereign, but the member of a political party, and appointed by that party. The Chief Secretary for Ireland was generally a Cabinet Minister, and avowedly engaged in political conflicts, and of late years the Irish Law Officers had generally been Members of that House, and taken an active part in political discussions. Admitting the high position of the Lord Lieutenant, and the weight which should be attached to any act of his, or of the Chief Secretary, the question was, whether it was not the safer course, and a course calculated to create greater confidence in the administration of justice, that persons inevitably associated with political parties should not interfere in matters connected with the machinery for the administration of justice. He held that Members of the Government should as carefully refrain from nominating the Sheriffs as from nominating the jurors; and the extreme importance of the point was manifest when it was considered that the Sheriff selected the panel. The charge against Captain Coote, too, showed how important it was that the Sheriffs should derive existence from a quarter where no political influence prevailed. He had himself twice acted as a Judge sent by Lord Kimberley, and on one occasion he had the returning of Sheriffs for Wexford, Waterfowl, Kilkenny, and the county of Tipperary. Believing it was the duty of the Judge to exercise discrimination in the names he returned, he refrained from complying with a request to nominate a young man just arrived at his majority in one case, on the ground of the disturbed state of the country, and returned the name of an older and more experienced gentleman. Now, if the Judges exercised discretion in returning names was it not a strong measure for a Government to take to exercise an arbitrary prerogative in the teeth of a return by the Irish Judges? Therefore, setting aside the fact that rare and exceptional occasions may arise to justify the exercise of the prerogative, he contended that the greatest reluctance should be felt to exercise that discretion except on the most sound and certain grounds. He was of opinion that the Chief Secretary was perfectly right in taking action in the matter when he found the triers had returned against the Sheriff that he had impaneled improperly; but he questioned the propriety of his mode of action. Here again it was impossible to omit the fact that the Executive in Ireland was political, that the Law Officers were political, and that the Chief Secretary himself was a political character: and he objected to their constituting themselves judges in an inquiry affecting the conduct of a person engaged in the machinery for administering justice. When his right hon. Friend (the Chief Secretary for Ireland) found the sub-Sheriff had acted improperly, it was his duty to write to the Judge who presided at the trial, to know the particulare of the case. It was by no means a matter of course that the triers should be right; to decide as to what constituted an improper panel was not so simple a matter. The mode in which a Judge selected the triers was to take any person who might happen to be in the court. By accident, the Judge at Monaghan took the very first two names on the impeached jury for triers. The Judge might accidentally select two persons who would not discharge the duty of triers, he would not say with honesty, but with intelligence—because the juror who discharged the duty of trying the character of a panel should be characterized not only by honesty of purpose, but by a certain amount of education, so as to be able to distinguish between a popular and a bonâ fide objection. Suppose, for instance, that there were not a sufficient number of jurors who belonged to a particular rank in society, and that the panel was formed exclusively, or nearly so, of the gentry, why should anyone proceed to act upon the finding of triers who, taken from a lower class, came to a decision on grounds incapable of being upheld on legal grounds that the panel was not a proper one? He had himself seen such a thing as the two triers find- ing against the Judge's charge, and there was no immediate remedy. In the present case, however, the point was, whether the sub-Sheriff should have been condemned before the following plain and simple question was put to the Judge:—"Do you approve the conclusion to which the triers came?" If this question had been put to the learned Judge, and answered in the affirmative, the Government would, in his opinion, have been perfectly justified in taking the course they did. They would then have had a judicial sanction of their decision, and he, for one, would not object to the Government having acted firmly and decisively, and to the utmost of their power, if they had previously obtained the opinion of the Judge, that the decision against the sub-Sheriff was founded on good legal and constitutional grounds. Now, in the present case, the right hon. Gentleman did not even pretend that he had ever communicated with the Judge. It had been already stated—though he might remark in passing that he disliked the introduction of religion into discussions of this nature—that in this case the Judge was a Roman Catholic, and that he was perfectly competent, in consequence, to say whether there were a proper number of Roman Catholics on the panel. That was all the more reason why his opinion should have been taken. He believed, however, that the Judge's opinion, in a legal point of view, was diametrically opposed to that which had been expressed in that House by his right hon. Friend the Chief Secretary of Ireland—namely, that at the commencement there ought to be established an abstract inquiry as to the religion of the juries. In order to show how fallacious such an idea was, he would remind the House that every juror must, by law, possess certain qualifications. Now, there existed in Ireland some baronies belonging to great absentee proprietors, and in which there was not a resident above the rank of a humble farmer. It might be that Roman Catholics in such a barony were omitted from the list, because they were not competent to act as jurors. Could anyone for a moment maintain that trials; ought to be upset because the Sheriff, not finding a sufficient number of qualified men in the barony, selected jurors from another barony? Another thing to be borne in mind was that, as the law at present stood, no publican, grocer, or person existing by mere dependence upon the public, could act upon juries. Both these causes tended considerably to reduce the number of those who were qualified to act upon juries. Matters instead of being improved would be very much complicated if they were to introduce a law that there should be on the panel a Roman Catholic and a Protestant alternately. The learned Judge, in his Charge, adverted to the doctrine, and said he was not prepared to acquiesce in it any more than he was prepared to acquiesce in the doctrine that the jury should be composed of men with light and dark hair alternately. This was a very dangerous doctrine to assert, for if it were admitted every man condemned for a particular offence would say—"There are only so many Roman Catholics upon the panel; but, according to the population of the district there ought to be more." There could, of course, be no doubt that the panel would be an improper one if it contained the names of Protestants only, or of an unduly small proportion of Roman Catholics, supposing this to have been done with the design of putting into the box partisans of the prisoner; but it was not legally true that a valid objection could be raised against a panel on the ground per se that there were not upon it persons of different religions. In this respect there was no distinction between the law of England and that of Ireland, and what would be said if a jury panel were objected to in this country because it was composed wholly of members of the Church of England and had no Dissenters upon it? Such a circumstance would not be illegal unless it had been brought about with a wrong and improper motive. In the particular case under discussion the opinion of the Roman Catholic Judge, as to whether the panel was improper or not, ought to have been laid before the House, which, however, had received no information on this vital point. If the learned Judge gave his opinion that the panel was improperly framed, he, for one, should at once bow to the decision and declare that the conduct of the Government was right. If, on the other hand, the Judge had given a contrary opinion, he should condemn the Government. The House had no moans of aiming at a satisfactory conclusion on the matter before the Judge's opinion was stated to them. Until then the House could only come to a decision on the subject in a lame and impotent manner. This was a matter of great importance, because the first thing requisite in Ireland would be to maintain the Executive in the public esteem, and anything which tended to throw a slur upon a Judge, as, for instance, the not taking his opinion into account was calculated to lower his influence. He (Dr. Ball.) might say from his own experience that it had been the habit to consult the Judges on such cases, and he therefore blamed the Executive for not having done so now. The second point which called for some comment was, that when the Government had determined to get rid of the Sheriff they superseded, without consulting any Judge, the names that were returned to them. Such a circumstance showed that this exercise of the prerogative was a very delicate and difficult thing. The Government selected a Sheriff of their own absolute and arbitrary choice without seeking the assistance of any independent person. Now, it was most desirable that every appointment in Ireland connected with the administration of justice should, as far as possible, come through a disinterested channel—a channel removed from politics and from all personal influence; and that constitutional channel was the Judges. But here, again, the Judges were passed over, and the Executive chose to act entirely on their own authority. How much more satisfactory would the right hon. Gentleman's position be if he could cite the opinion of Judge Morris to the effect that circumstances imperatively called for the action of the Chief Secretary. This House and the people of Ireland would, he felt assured, have been better satisfied if the Government had produced an authoritative communication from an independent Judge.

said, he was much struck by the anxiety of the Government to induce the House to overlook the words of the Motion—

"That, in the opinion of this House, the conduct of the Government in the dismissal of Captain Coote from the Shrievalty of the county of Monaghan, and the appointment of his successor has been unconstitutional, and calculated to impede the due performance of public duty."

The Solicitor General for Ireland, having regard to other cases which would shortly come before them, had tried to impress upon the House that each of those cases was to be looked at separately. If the House adopted such a course, however, it would not be very likely to form a just appreciation of the public policy involved in this question. The only apology for the action of the Government in this instance was, that they acted with a view to public policy in the prevention of the undue exercise of religious and party fooling on the administration of justice. There was no question that the exercise of the prerogative in the supersession of a Sheriff was in some cases justifiable, and that it was not of necessity unconstitutional. But what was necessary to justify a supersession of the ordinary practice? It was that the act should be done distinctly for the purpose and with the result of securing the safety of the subject and the preservation of the State. Her Majesty's Government had not been eminently successful in their prosecutions in Ireland. He doubted whether in a similar period while any other Government had been in Office there had been such a marked failure in the administration of justice in Ireland. But the Government in this case had superseded one appointment by an interruption of the constitutional practice, for the purpose of making another appointment which was practically no better than the one they superseded. Therefore they could not plead, in justification of their unconstitutional practice, any success in the constitutional object of securing the due administration of justice. The House was bound to take notice of all these cases, because there was a general impression abroad that the present Government did not intend to mete out even justice to the Protestants of Ireland.

said, that the right hon. and learned Gentleman the Member for the University of Dublin (Dr. Ball) had not put the case correctly. The issue put to the triers was not whether there was a larger number of Protestants than of Catholics on the panel, or what was the proportion, but whether the jury panel had been tampered with and so constituted as to prejudice the prisoner; and that had been decided in the affirmative. It had been remarked that the two men first called on the panel were Roman Catholics; but it was evident, from this comment, that the facts were not known. On the day in question there were two courts sitting for the trial of criminals. In one of them, over which Judge Lawson presided, a number of Roman Catholics were to be tried, and that court was filled by Orangemen, who were anxious to be put on the panel for the purpose of convicting the Catholics. In one court there were Catholics to be tried for the alleged murder of a Protestant, and in the other there were Protestants to be tried for the alleged murder of a Roman Catholic. A great deal had been said of the Judge in the case. He was a Roman Catholic; but it must be borne in mind that he had been promoted to his office by the Conservative party, not because he was a Roman Catholic, not to satisfy the people of Ireland that a fair and just proportion of Catholics would be raised to the Bench, but because he was notoriously a Tory Catholic and a Conservative. He must not be understood as wishing to disparage the merits of Justice Morris as a Judge; but he intended to call attention to the fact that in charging the jury he made certain points more prominent than he would have done had he been a Protestant. If he (Mr. M'Carthy Downing) was to be tried to-morrow on any charge in Ireland, he would elect to be tried by a Protestant Judge, because the Protestant Judges had always been as discriminating as any Catholic on the Bench. He thought the decision adopted by the Government in dismissing Captain Coote would have the best effect, and that if they pursued a like course in all similar cases they would succeed in establishing a confidence in the administration of justice.

supported the Motion, remarking that while on his side the House the constitutional question had been again and again asked, it had been by the other side again and again burked. The hon. and learned Gentleman the Solicitor General for Ireland in especial had carefully avoided answering it—for he knew that if he had done so, his answer must have been in favour of Captain Coote and of justice.

said, it was not correct to say that the means of communication with Monaghan were imperfect, for he was a director of the railway, and he knew that the facilities for intercourse were better than existed in any other part of the country; and he might mention that although the barony of Farney contained 221 Roman Catholics eligible as jurors, and there was railway communication with Monaghan, only two were summoned. After some observations from Mr. WHALLEY and Mr. CONOLLY,

, in reply, said, that he regarded the answer he had received from the Government as altogether unsatisfactory, and therefore felt bound to divide, and should take another opportunity of bringing the subject again before the House.

, in moving the Amendment of which he had given Notice, said, he moved the Amendment with feelings of deep regret—regret that there should be occasion for an Amendment, which he admitted to be one of great importance—regret, because he was sorry even to appear to be in opposition to this Government measure, to which he had looked forward so long with hope—and further, with regret, because he would be prevented, in consequence of the necessity for confining himself mainly to the subject of his Amendment to omit noticing a considerable number of points in the Bill which to him were of the greatest interest. He should have wished to point out that if it had been possible it would have been a great improvement if the Bill had contained some provision fur the formation of a separate Department of Education, and also for increasing the number of training colleges in the country, where the masters would have been trained who would be wanted for the numerous schools that would have to be provided. He could have wished also to point out a reason why it would have been well not to give a year's grace to denominational schools, why school Boards should be appointed everywhere, that those Boards should be appointed not by Vestries, but by the occupiers in school districts voting by ballot, and why, considering how heavy existing rates are, we should have thrown one half of the cost of school Boards on the Consolidated Fund; why compulsory attendance should have been made immediate and universal, and why admission to all elementary schools ought to be free. But upon all these interesting points he must omit to dwell, in order that he might occupy the House in justifying his Amendment. In doing so, it would be necessary that he should review the whole of what was called the religious difficulty. The Amendment that he had moved did not in words refer to more than one portion of it. It stated that it was inadvisable that this religious difficulty should be relegated to the school Boards; but it did not make any reference to the manner in which the religious difficulty ought to be settled by the House. But he could not treat one portion of the subject adequately without referring to the other, and therefore he proposed to state his views on the whole subject. He called the attention of the House to the enormous change that would be brought about by this Bill in the relations of the State to education, and through education to religion. In a few years, under the operation of this Bill, we should have school Boards in almost every district of the country. He believed that the Vice President of the Council admitted that this would be the case; and it was natural that it should be so, because in those districts where the Bill did not provide for the immediate formation of these Boards, the present school managers, feeling that if the Boards were to be formed they would have preponderating influence on those Boards, they would be anxious that they should be formed, in order to throw on them the burden of maintaining the schools. Besides this, attendance would become compulsory throughout the country, and the basis of our school system would have been removed. It would no longer rest on voluntaryism, it would rest on the national purse, and instead of hundreds of thousand of pounds being voted by Parliament, we should find that millions would have to be voted out of the rates and taxes for the education of the country. These were great and important changes, and they affected this religious question to a great degree. Some thought that the religious question was scarcely felt to be a religious difficulty, that the religious difficulty scarcely existed. But that was not the case. It was true that we only voted £500,000 per annum for our schools. But, notwithstanding that, he would quote from a speech of Dr. Rigg, only a few days ago, to show that even now this difficulty was felt, and felt to a considerable extent. [The hon. Member quoted accordingly.] Now, if this religious difficulty existed, although the connection between the State and education was so slight, what might we expect to be the state of the case when there were school rates levied all over the country for the purpose of assisting education, when compulsory attendance would be also general, and when the Dissenter was called on to pay for, and send his child to a Church of England school, when the Protestant was called on to pay for and send his child to a Roman Catholic school, or a Roman Catholic to a Protestant school? This religious difficulty, under these circumstances, will assume much greater proportions. How did the Bill propose to meet it? It was said that where there was no school Board formed, the present religious teaching was to be continued, when the Boards were formed the character of the teaching was to be decided by those school Boards, and that in all cases where an objection was taken to this religious teaching a Conscience Clause was to come into operation as a protection to the religious conscience of the parent. He believed that the meaning of this was that in towns there would be in most cases, if not in all, contests for seats at the Town Councils, and contests within the Town Councils for seats at the school Boards, for it would be felt that upon these contests would depend the religious character of the education of the children of the town; in rural districts the religious teaching would take the colour of the dominant sect of the district, usually that of the squire and the parson. Now, in one-half of the country parishes at the present time—he was speaking roughly, it might be more—but in about one-half at the present moment no Government aid was granted; in the remaining half the grants amounted to about one-third of the total cost of the schools. Henceforward all these schools would receive grants out of the rates and taxes amounting to at least two-tliirds—it might be in some cases to the whole sum—and in every one of those cases in the rural districts they would find that the minority would have to pay for the religious teaching of the majority. Although it was true that the Government and the ratepayers would only pay nominally for the secular teaching, it must be borne in mind that the religious teaching of the school would have no existence but for this secular basis. It appeared that the effect of Clause 7 would be to materially strengthen denominationalism, and he thought that the object ought rather to have been to check its growth, and weaken its influence, so that it might ultimately vanish from the land. If he were correct in that opinion, that denominationalism in England would be strengthened, what would be the result in Ireland. It followed as a matter of necessity, or at any rate of justice, that it must be sanctioned there. He thought it would have been wiser to have introduced the Irish national system into England, rather than to export English denominationalism into Ireland. Had the principles of the Bill combined literary and moral instruction, with separate religious teaching, he did not think there would have been any opposition to the Bill; there certainly would not have been much on the ground of the religious difficulty. Under existing circumstances they would not reach any solid foundation short of separate religious teaching in all Government-aided denominational schools, taking care that the absentees from that religious teaching should not be liable to any disability, and that in all schools aided by rates the teaching should be entirely unsectarian or it might be secular. He would point out to the House what might perhaps be considered a warning, that there was a still lower depth than that. It might be if this agitation should be continued for a lengthened period that a party would arise in this country with a great and growing influence that might ultimately prevail, which might demand that in every school aided by the Government there should be exclusively secular education. This was not what he asked now; it was one of the possibilities of the future. He knew that the Vice President of the Committee of Council on Education had stated that neither the religious nor the irreligious difficulty should be allowed to stand in the way of the educa- tion of the people. Now, this was a bold statement; but he imagined that the Vice President of the Council had misunderstood the nature and extent of the public feeling upon this question. ["No, no!"] He would give the House some of the experience which he himself had gained during the agitation of the last few months. One of the objects of the organization with which he was connected was to elicit the opinion of the country upon all the questions which were likely to arise in connection with this subject, in order to obtain a basis upon which legislators might form correct opinions. He approached the religious question without airy prejudice whatever. At least, as he was a Churchman, he approached it without any of the prejudices of the Dissenters. When, fourteen months ago, he called some friends together to consider whether the time had not arrived for some public movement in favour of education, they considered how this religious question should be treated. They were men of all creeds, and they came to the conclusion to recommend to the country that education in our national schools should be unsectarian. When the Educational League became known to the country, they were asked what they incant by unsectarian." They answered that they meant that in the schools there should be taught no creed, catechisms, or tenets that were peculiar to any sect; but no sooner had they furnished that answer than they received numberless questions as to what they meant about the Bible, and they answered that they were not prepared to ask for an Act to exclude from the schools only one book, and that book the Bible; but they added, out of respect to the Roman Catholics, that the reading of it should be before or after the ordinary school hours. His own desire was that no more of religion should be excluded from the schools than was absolutely necessary; but then came the question, how much must be excluded? The difference between an unsectarian and a secular system appeared to be this—that in both you would exclude all Christian dogmas, but in an unsectarian system you would not have to exclude Christian precepts. He had never been afraid of the bugbear about those awkward questions which exceptional children might put to a master asking the authority for such precepts; but if in the answer were involved the acknowledgment of a future state of existence or of a God, he still thought that would be unsectarian teaching. The school life of the child would be entirely apart from sectarian influence, and later in life there would be more of Christian harmony and sympathy among the members of the different sects. The League was assailed on both sides by the secularists and by the Churches. The secularists told them that if the Bible were to be read in the schools the sects would immediately quarrel; and they pointed out that in Holland and in the United States there had arisen agitations to exclude the Bible from schools, and a speaker at Birmingham told them that in an Ulster school, where reading the Bible after school hours was the only religious element, the boys would in the playground divide themselves into Bible and non-Bible boys, and pelt each other with stones; and that even, the girls took part in the affray. These things went to show that an unsectarian system would, as the secularists said, be unattainable. Now, what was the opinion of the Churches upon the subject? He had attended many meetings, and read most of the speeches that had been made, and he had arrived at the conclusion, from reading the opinions of that great party, that unsectarian education was unattainable. They were told that the word unsectarian was tricky; that the thing was unmitigated nonsense; that it was impossible. The argument everywhere was that religion must pervade the whole of the school teaching, that all morality was based upon religion, that all religion was based upon religious dogmas, and therefore that these dogmas must be taught in our schools. Now, what did this mean? It meant that the dogmas of the managers of these schools, or of the majority at the Board, should be taught in the school. Let there be no mistake about this. Archdeacon Home said, on this subject, that unsectarian religion would be religion out of which all religion had been picked piece by piece. The Union felt that they could not advocate sectarian schools without coming face to face with the difficulty that if they should have such schools in this country they must have them also in Ireland. Lord Harrow by, who was President of two great Union conferences at Manchester and Binning- ham, said that if they gave assistance to denominational education generally, the system must be extended to Roman Catholics, that there was no use struggling against it. He (Mr. Dixon) found similar sentiments everywhere, that Protestants and members of the Church of Rome united upon the same platform, and Archdeacon Hamilton, at Newcastle, exultantly declared that the Church of England, the Church of Rome, and the Wesleyan body, hand in hand, would smash the League. Now, if his interpretation of the position of the Churches was correct, if the Churches held that they were fighting for religion, and meant by religion the teaching of, religious dogmas in all our schools—if, for the sake of that, they were willing to destroy the Irish system, he would ask the House to consider what would be the effect of the operation of the 7th clause of the Bill. He thought that the first result would be to fasten the teaching of religious dogmas upon every school in every district in which there was a dominant section, and this would be to devote the public funds to the maintenance of these dogmas, and if, as many believed, any Conscience Clause they could imagine would be inoperative, the children of the minority would be taught a religion to which their parents objected, and the minority would be forced to pay for the teaching of such doctrines. In all these cases there would be created sectarian strife, and there would be deferred for an indefinite period the attainment of perfect and complete religious equality. He warned the House that this was a subject of great importance. Already the tocsin had been sounded and the forces were mustering; and it would be found that the Churches were on one side, and the Nonconformist bodies on the other. Which would be likely to prevail? If they consulted history they would not be left in much doubt; and behind these armies there stood an enfranchised people, and the people had always given their votes in favour of equality. If the clause were to be passed by the House in its present shape he did not think that we should have peace in England until the Churches had laid down their arms defeated. It had been already whispered to him that if the clause should pass then, at every future election in the boroughs to be a Dissenter would be a qualification for a candidate, and to be a Churchman would be a disqualification in the eyes of the Liberal party. But they were told that, although in nearly every school there might be religious teaching based on dogmas, nevertheless efficient protection would be given by a stringent Conscience Clause. The Conscience Clause had been tried and found wanting, and had been finally rejected by the Nonconformists. It did not really give the protection it professed, and the poor were frequently unable to avail themselves of it, because the influence of their superiors in social position was too strong to be resisted. Moreover, how was it to be worked? Its inherent evil was that many parents would not dare to avail themselves of it; and it was not right in the agricultural districts to ask the people to say yes or no to this important question. In the thousands of small schools in the country districts there was but one room in the school, and where were the children to go while the religious teaching was being conducted? He thought a time-table Conscience Clause was the only one that would work. There ought to be separate religious instruction apart from the secular teaching, easy for the children to come to and stay away from, and no disabilities should attach to any children who absented themselves. It might be said that the illegitimate influence he condemned might still operate, though the religious teaching was given at a separate time; and he dared say in some cases it would be so; but then they must make that influence as small as possible, and defend the children from it as far as they could. If it were urged that after all the difference between the two different modes of working the Conscience Clause could not be great, then there would be all the less for the Government to concede in consenting to a time-table Conscience Clause. Unless given and received voluntarily, the influence of religious teaching was weakened, if not lost. It had been said that the result of the opinions advocated by the League would lead to wholly secular, and. therefore, "godless" schools. But supposing that the schools should become secular, would that really be so great an evil? He hoped that the hon. Member for Carlisle would lay before the House his experience on the subject, which would show that in the large se- cular schools with, which he was connected the religious influence was more distinctly impressed on the scholars than in other cases. He had received a letter from a very competent authority in Ireland confirmatory of the same view, and the language of the Rev. Mr. Cox, an eminent Nonconformist divine, and of the Bishop of Ely, pointed in the same direction. He would repeat his objections to the manner in which the Bill dealt with the religions difficulty. If appeared to him that wherever a school Board was formed, as it would be in nearly every district, there would be, or might be, a contest for sectarian predominance; and wherever one sect was predominant in a school district, there the colour of that sect would be necessarily given to the religious teaching of the school. Now, the object of his Amendment was to declare that that was a fatal blot in the Bill. He hoped, before they went into Committee, the Government would come to the determination that the clauses should be considerably modified, and that it should not be left to school Boards to decide this religious question—a decision that could only be arrived at after much strife, and, he feared, much religious animosity. He trusted that by leaving the question to the House to decide, it would resolve it by declaring that all rate-aided schools should be unsectarian, and that all other elementary public schools should have the religious teaching separately given. He had no doubt he should be asked, Why not leave this question to be debated in Committee. Why take the unusual and grave step of moving an Amendment to the second reading? He would have preferred to have put an Amendment of a minor character upon the Notice Paper; but he believed this was the only manner in which he could bring the subject forward now, and he was anxious to lose no time in doing so, in order that by an immediate, a pointed, and a direct reference to it, this question might gain an importance which otherwise would not be given to it. He had watched, as far as he could, the indications that the Government chose to give as to their views upon this question; but he had not yet received an impression sufficiently favourable with reference to their probable action. He was sure there would be a feeling of deep disappointment throughout the country unless this, the first, occasion was taken for expressing very decided and strong views as to the manner in which the Government had thought well to treat the religious difficulty. If the Government should not think it right to make any kind of declaration, then it would be for the country, during the short period that might intervene between the second reading and the Committee, to express its opinion in such a manner that the House might have no doubt as to the public feeling. But if the Government should think that the manifestations which had been lately made upon this most important clause had been of such a character that it was advisable some kind of declaration should be made, and if that declaration held out a hope that the evils he had pointed out would be seriously considered with a view to their removal, then he should feel that the object for which the Amendment had been placed upon the Paper had been gained. And when he took into consideration those admirable provisions of the Bill which declared that in this country efficient schools should be brought to the door of every child, and that attendance should be made compulsory—if he could only feel that the Government would deal with the religious difficulty in a manner more in accordance with the expectations of the Nonconformists, he should have the conviction that the Government would receive, as their well-merited reward, a nation's gratitude. The hon. Member concluded by moving his Resolution.

, in seconding the Amendment, said that three great measures had been laid on the table of the House by the present Government during the present Parliament — the Irish Church Bill, the Land Bill, and the Education Bill—and it was curious to observe that all these Bills were limited in their application. This Bill was limited to England, but as the two other Bills must exercise a powerful influence on another part of the Empire, he felt that the decision at which the House might arrive upon this Bill would operate powerfully not only in England, but also in Ireland and Scotland. For his part, if he thought that we should have a final settlement of the question on a religious basis, giving one religious body a preference, he would extend to the Irish a privilege which we claimed for ourselves. It was impossible that the Government in considering; this question should not take into account the existing schools, which were both, large in number and were already doing a good work. But any measure to be complete must be of another character, The denominations had been at work a great number of years, and had done as much as with the machinery at their disposal could be expected; but it was impossible to make adequate provision for the educational destitution of the country without compulsory powers, and unless the State took the matter more directly in hand, the children in our large towns— and he feared he must add in the rural districts also—were now allowed to receive out of doors an education of the most pernicious character; while the Government were bound to take care that there should be harmony between the new system and the old—the new system should not be based upon the old model. With regard to the measure of the Government, the question divided itself into two parts—first, the provisions they had a right to ask for in the shape of a Conscience Clause in the denominational schools now existing; and, secondly, the conditions under which the new schools to be constituted under the Bill should be conducted. He was not going to attempt to determine whether any, or what, religion should be taught in the new schools, but he objected strongly to Parliament abandoning its duty by refusing to determine so serious a question, and leaving the discussion to be threshed out in vestries in the smaller, or the meetings of corporations in the larger towns. They had been assured by the Government that the Conscience Clause was not to be a delusive one; but he found no guarantee of this kind in the Bill. Without separating religious and secular education, he did not see how it was to be secured. The object of the Irish system, as stated by the Commissioners of National Education, was "to afford combined literary and moral, and separate religious instruction;" and this was all that he, and those who thought with him, desired Parliament to do for English schools. He trusted that they would hear no more about the schools which they desired to see, being irreligious. One of the objections to the Government Bill was that it provided for denominational inspection, but no results were asked for in religions teaching, and the Inspectors might not belong to the sects whose schools they examined. Nothing could tend more to mar the operation of the measure than to introduce religious strife into these Boards. If the question were relegated to them, they must consider it in the best manner in their power; it would, however, be a great fault in the Bill if it were allowed to foster and increase religious animosities. He had as strong a feeling as any man in that House in favour of religious training, and he believed that no education without it was worthy of the name. But the ordinary education and the religious education could not proceed at the same time. They could not at the same moment be going through the multiplication table and be inculcating religious doctrine. The only tiling he asked was that there should be complete separation, and that religion should not be taught by a stipendiary agency. Religious teaching ought to be undertaken by the religious bodies. He had been both a Sunday-school scholar and a Sunday-school teacher, and from his experience he believed that if the street Arab had a good secular teaching the use of Sunday-school teaching would be greatly increased. He hoped the Government would see its way to meet the demands of those who were not opposed to religious training, but who sought for religious liberty, and desired to secure the rights of all parties. The position of the working classes in regard to this question, must not be forgotten. He feared that the greater part of them did not not identify themselves with any religious body; but looking at the matter from a outside point of view, those who dwelt in towns were strongly opposed to anything savouring of sectarianism; and they found themselves represented by Members from the boroughs. But persons of the same class in the counties, who no doubt shared the feeling, had no direct representation in that House. He hoped, however, that Parliament would consider the claims of both these divisions of the population, and would find out a satisfactory mode of dealing with the difficulty.

My hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham (Mr. Dixon) at the commencement of his remarks regretted that the importance of the question involved in his Amendment would prevent him touching other very important points of the Bill in which he felt great interest. I was glad, however, to hear my hon. Friend expressing his belief that under the provisions of the Bill school Boards would quickly become universal, and compulsory attendance be generally insisted upon, because I agree with him in entertaining the hope that the effect of the Bill will be that school Boards will be established throughout the country, and that in a short time attendance at school will be rendered compulsory. One other remark of my hon. Friend I must speak a few words of comment on. He stated that he thought the Bill would result in millions of pounds sterling being raised by rates. [Mr. DIXON: And taxes.] I certainly understood my hon. Friend to say rates, and to confine himself to that mode of raising money. I refer to this, because I do not want hon. Gentlemen, who feel naturally sensitive with regard to questions of rates, to suppose that the provisions of the Bill can result in the raising of millions of money by means of rates. Practically, the Bill provides for a rate not exceeding 3d. in the pound, in order to the carrying out of the requirements of the Act. That amount of rate would very rarely be exceeded; indeed, in my opinion, a smaller levy would be quite sufficient to work the Act; but should the whole sum be required, a 3d. rate throughout England and Wales would only, according to the authority of my right hon. Friend the President of the Poor Law Board, produce a sum total of £1,250,000. Having stated this much, I will at once proceed to the important Amendment of my hon. Friend. I was very glad to gather from his closing remarks that he does not mean his Amendment to have that effect on the Bill which, on the first sight, it would appear to have if passed. He seemed to speak with thorough heartiness his approval of the great leading principles of the measure. My hon. Friend the Member for Knares-borough (Mr. Illingworth)—whom, as one of my constituents and also as a Colleague, I may congratulate on the favourable beginning he has made in the debates of this House—in seconding the Amendment did not speak as though he intended the Motion to be hostile to the Bill; but I must assure my hon. Friends that viewed in the light of Parliamentary history and precedent theirs is, in fact, a hostile Amendment. Amendments have often before been moved to the second reading of a Bill, but I believe no single instance can be found of an Amendment of this kind having been moved, where the avowed object of those promoting it was not to throw out the Bill if not also the Government who had brought it in. I will not suppose that it is the wish of my hon. Friend to throw out this Bill, for he is too earnest in the cause of education to entertain such a wish. But we must take the Amendment as we find it, and I cannot help thinking that Gentlemen on both sides of the House will feel that the questions which have been raised to-night are not questions as to which we ought to be asked to decide upon abstract Resolutions, but which we ought to discuss and decide after the fullest deliberation in Committee. As it was to be an Amendment to the second reading, I do not know that it was easy to frame it otherwise; but the Amendment is certainly vague, and I would even add unfairly vague, though I acquit my hon. Friend of any intentional unfairness. Amendments of this kind are generally brought forward by Gentlemen influenced, no doubt, by feelings of duty, but still hostile to the Government and their measures; and, with the skill which is found among framers of hostile Resolutions, these are generally so constructed that Gentlemen with opposing views, but who all wish to get rid of the Bill, will be able for different reasons to vote for the Amendment. But friends of a Bill scarcely ever propose an Amendment with that intention. I can scarcely suppose that my hon. Friend, when he put his Amendment on the Notice Paper, was aware that the vote put by you, Sir, from the Chair would be "Aye" or "No" to the second reading; I imagine he thought it would be "Aye" or "No" to his Amendment. But let me point out that those who are prepared to vote in favour of this. Amendment may mean three distinct things. The Amendment is very explicit as to what ought not to be done—that the question of religious instruction ought not to be determined by the local authorities. But my hon. Friend does not ignore the existence throughout the country of a question of religious instruction, and he knows that if it is not to be settled by the local authorities, it must be settled somewhere. The Amendment leaves it doubtful how it is to be settled; and, as I have said, leaves it open to the advocates of three distinct views to vote for the Amendment, however much they may differ among themselves. If the religious question is not to be determined by the local authorities it may be left to the Government of the day to prescribe how it shall be dealt with; or this may be prescribed by Act of Parliament in the very measure that we are now about to pass; or if it is not to be prescribed in either of these ways, it may be proscribed, and no religion whatever may be allowed to be taught in any school supported out of local funds. As regards the first of these views, I need not dwell much upon it. I do not suppose there is such an amount of confidence felt, by the House or by the country in Earl De Grey or myself that they would be willing to entrust to us the task of prescribing what the religions instruction should be. And I hope that no such trust ever will be reposed in any central authority, enabling them to decide what the religious instruction shall be in every varying locality. My hon. Friend, I am quite aware, does not mean that. The next question is, shall we prescribe the nature of this instruction by Act of Parliament? My hon. Friend said the Amendment did not state what religious instruction should be given, and indeed, I could scarcely gather whether my hon. Friend meant that there should be any religious instruction at all, and, it any, what. I will ask hon. Members who think that Parliament should prescribe religious instruction in every locality in the kingdom, to consider what an outcry would be raised if we were to say such and such a religion shall be taught in every elementary school, whether the majority agree or not. I am sure it will be felt that Parliament never could take that course. Several Notices have been placed upon the Paper by hon. Members who, I believe, sympathize more or less with the hon. Member for Birmingham, but yet who evidently feel that these are points which can more properly be pushed to a division in Committee. There are five of these Amendments which would limit the discretion of the local authorities in the settlement of the religious question. I do not for a moment dispute that the mode we take of leaving the question to the local authorities to settle is one to which objection may be very easily raised. I never was blind to that. I have only felt that of all the alternatives open to us this was the one to which least objection could be taken. But it is a question upon which we can only fairly deliberate if we have at the same time to discuss the alternative proposals. And it is hardly fair to ask us to vote in favour of an abstract Resolution, unless you tell us exactly what you would propose by way of substitution. The hon. Member for Manchester (Mr. Jacob Bright) is among those by whom Amendments have been placed upon the Paper, and his Amendment limits the discretion given to the local Boards, and provides that no religious catechism or formularies in support, of or in opposition to any religious sect shall be taught in the schools, but that the reading of the Holy Scriptures shall not be excluded. I am anxious to come to the discussion of that very important Amendment for this personal reason among others — It will be recollected that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for the Home Department and I have twice brought before the House, in 1867 and 1868, educational measures which originated with a Committee in Manchester, composed of men of all religious denominations, but of immense experience on educational matters. In those Bills exactly the same discretion was left to the local Boards as in this Bill. I remember well that when the Committee first submitted that provision to me, the objections which were callable of being urged to it started up in my mind—that there would be differences of opinion, and contests in boroughs; and it was not until we had long discussed the matter together that I came to the conclusion that any evils which might be attendant on the adoption of that course would be outweighed by the evils of any other course. Late last year I had the opportunity of consulting the Committee again, and ascertained that they still held the same view. This year, I believe, if we had not brought in a Bill, my hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, representing that Committee, would have brought forward a Bill on. their behalf. But the Amendment shows that they have changed their minds, and I am honestly and sincerely anxious to know why they have changed their views, for I am persuaded they could not have done so without good reason. Then comes the Amendment of my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds (Mr. Baines), that no denominational catechism shall be taught in any school. The hon. Member for Sunderland (Mr. Candlish) has a similar clause, and the hon. Member for Stroud (Mr. Winterbotham) has an Amendment providing that no religious instruction shall be given in rate-supported schools, but that the Holy Scriptures may be read. The hon. Member for Colchester (Dr. Brewer) desires that the school Boards shall prepare schedules in which they shall prescribe the religious instruction to be given. What I want my hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, and the other hon. Members who have given Notices of Amendment in Committee, to bear in mind is that, by the very terms of their Amendments, I claim their votes in favour of the second reading. There is not one of those Notices which does not leave some discretion to the local school Board, and there is not one of them, therefore, which is not opposed to the spirit of this abstract Resolution. But I claim the vote of my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham himself. The Education League, of which he is at the head, and may be regarded as the representative, though they now appear to be going rather against this measure, have done a great deal in exciting interest in educational matters all over the country. Only a few weeks ago they prepared and circulated the heads of a Bill to be introduced in 1870. Among those heads was this—

"No creed, catechism, or tenet peculiar to any sect shall be taught in any national-rate school, but the school Board shall have power to grant the use of the school-rooms out of school hours for the purpose of giving religious instruction, provided that no undue preference be given to one or more sects, to the exclusion of others."

It may be said that by this was meant that all parties should be treated with equality. Well, I prescribe the same thing in my 22nd clause. But when you give the managers of a rate-fund a power to do something, even according to certain conditions, you are giving them a great deal of power, and, at all events, you cannot say the religious question is nowhere left to them if they have the power to prescribe the time when and the place where such instruction is to be given. But much more, the school Committee is to have power to permit the reading of the Holy Scriptures. If they have power to permit, I suppose they will also have power to disallow. I think, therefore, I may claim the vote of my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham against his own Resolution. I have read these Amendments, and I now refer to resolutions passed by different meetings in which great interest was taken in this question. It has been the fate of my right hon. Friend at the head of the Government and myself to see many deputations lately on this matter, and we have obtained much valuable information from them; but we have almost always found that this difficulty, which my hon. Friend tries to sweep away at once by an abstract Resolution, was a difficulty to which they also were compelled to yield. I do not know that there is any part of the kingdom where there is more feeling on this subject than in Wales. I am not surprised at that. What has passed there within the last year or two may well make Welshmen sensitive. A most earnest, intelligent, and influential deputation came to us from Wales. It had partly emanated from a conference of Nonconformist ministers in Wales. The first resolution of this conference had said, that—

"That any system of national education fully meeting the requirements of Wales must be free, secular, unsectarian, and compulsory."

And the second said that it was not intended to exclude or to oppose the reading of the Bible. Upon asking for an explanation of the phrase secular and unsectarian, I was informed that the school should be secular in education and unsectarian in management. The hon. Member for Merthyr (Mr. Richard), however, than whom I do not believe there is a more candid man in this House, frankly confessed that there was a differ- ence of opinion among themselves, and it was thought that by using the two words they might get over the difficulty. The resolution of another deputation, from the Committee of the Congregational Union, was to the effect that there should be no dogma taught in the rate-supported schools. I asked whether the word "dogma" was intended to apply to the dogmas held by one sect of Christians as against another, or to the dogmas held by all Christians, and I found it did not mean the latter. Now, I do not quote these inconsistencies in order to obtain any paltry argumentative triumph; I do so from no motive of that kind. I only bring them forward to show that all who have endeavoured to deal with the question have discovered its difficulties, and ought from their own experience to sympathize with the Government in reference to it; and let me add that they ought not to support my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham in trying to meet it by an abstract Resolution, as to which each may feel somewhat differently, but hasten to go into Committee on the Bill, where we may fairly discuss the whole question, and deliberately consider all the Amendments, in order to determine whether there should be any limitations in the discretion given, and if so, what? That is what I say to all hon. Members who are in favour of unsectarian education. Unsectarian education is a very difficult matter to define in an Act of Parliament; but I deem it not at all difficult to reach in practice. If we cease to try this almost impossible task of finding words to put into an Act of Parliament determine that education shall be unsectarian, almost the first effect of the Bill, when passed, will be to give religious, though unsectarian, training— training in the great moral truths; for children mostly under twelve years of age are not those to whom it is easy to teach theological doctrine. My hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham scarcely knows his own position. He said he was in favour of unsectarian, or, it may be, even secular education; but my hon. Friend went on to say, I do not ask for secular education now. I say more, Sir; I not only do not ask for secular education now, but I trust I never shall ask for it. The hon. Member for Knaresborough said there might be secular schools that would not injure religious training. I agree with him. There are such schools, and a part of this Bill provides that when the majority wishes for a secular school, a secular school they shall have. But I ask the House to consider for a moment what would be the effect of decreeing by Act of Parliament that in elementary schools supported by the rates, whether the majority wished it or not, religion should be excluded? Our opinions in religion may be different; but I think we all of us agree, the enormous majority of the country agrees, that the standard of right and wrong is based on religion, find that when you go against religion you strike a blow against morality; and if we could solemnly by Act of Parliament tell the parents of children to be educated that religion is a subject not to be mentioned in the schools, they would suppose that we cared little about religion ourselves, and that in our opinion it were best left alone. We are told that some active intelligent artizans— men to whom we look forward with hope that they will take part in the political government of the country—we are told that they have great doubts on this subject, and that they dislike any religion being pushed on them in this way. I believe that to some extent that is the case, and there is something in their past history to explain it; but if the House wishes to perpetuate that fooling, the way to do it is to decree that religion shall be tabooed. I speak not merely having regard to the present, but as having hope for the future. Surely the time will come when we shall find out how we can agree better on these matters — when men will find out that on the main questions of religion they agree, and that they can teach them in common to their children. Shall we cut off from the future all hope of such an agreement, and say that all those questions which regulate our conduct in life, and animate our hopes for the future after death—which form for us the standard of right and wrong — shall we say that all these are wholly to be excluded from our schools? It is not merely duty to the present and hope for the future; but it is the remembrance of the past that forbids us to exclude religion from the teaching of our schools. I confess I have still in my veins the blood of my Puritan forefathers, and I wonder to hear descendants of the Puritans now talk of religion as if it were the property of any class or condition of men. I regret to find that my hon. Friend the Member for Knaresborough seems to think that religion belongs specially to the minister. It belongs to the schoolmaster; it belongs to every man; and I am sure my hon. Friend when he thinks over it will see that it is not his place to sanction the doctrine that the priest or the minister muse step in between a man and his Maker.

explained, that he never intended to say anything of the kind. What he said was, that it belonged to religious bodies to teach religion.

I would say that it belongs to all religious men to teach religion, and the master of the school, we trust, will be a religious man. To no religious man can we say, leave religion alone. My hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham talked of the feeling's of the working men. I have some experience of the working men. I know their sympathies, I know their doubts and difficulties: I wish I know how to answer them; but I am sure of this, the old English Bible is still a sacred thing in their hearts. The English people cling to the Bible, and no measure will be more unpopular than that which declares by Act of Parliament that the Bible shall be excluded from the school. There are countries in which the Bible is excluded. I believe in some parts of the United States in is excluded at the present moment, I have heard a good deal about a coalition being entered into against religious teaching at schools; but I confess I did not expect to see that possible coalition reinforced by the Evangelical Nonconformists. The possibility of that coalition. however, reminds me of some words that have been put into my hands lately which were written by one for whose genius we have all a great respect, Speaking of the old English Protestant Bible the words are better than anything I can say, and therefore, if the House will allow me, I will read them. I dare say that a great number of hon. Members will at once recognize the author. The words are as follow:—

"Who will not say that the uncommon beauty and marvellous English of the Protestant Bible is not one of the great strongholds of heresy in this country? It lives on the car like a music that can never be forgotten—like the sound of church hells which the convert hardly knows how he can forego. Its felicities often seem to be almost things rather than mere words. It is part of the national mind, and the anchor of national seriousness. The memory of the dead passes into it. The potent traditions of childhood are stereotyped in its verses. The power of all the griefs and trials of man is hidden beneath its words. It is the representative of his best moments, and all that has been about him of soft, and gentle, and pure, and penitent, and good speaks to him for ever out of his English Bible. It is his sacred thing, which doubt has never dimmed and controversy never soiled. In the length and breadth of the land there is not a Protestant with one spark of religiousness about him whose spiritual biography is not in his Saxon Bible."

And do hon. Members suppose that even if we thought it right to try to do so we could pass a Bill to enact that, regardless of the wish of the majority, this Bible was not to be used, or that if such a Bill were passed it would not encounter great opposition? Some persons have remarked that it was scarcely fair for me to say that we might only get rid of the religious difficulty to replace it by an irreligious difficulty. The religious difficulty is a great difficulty I admit; but if we were in our educational zeal to exclude this book by Act of Parliament the irreligious difficulty we should thereby create would be far greater. By retaining its use in schools some indidividuals may object to pay the school rate on account of the particular religion supposed to be favoured at the schools; but were we to say that the majority were not to have their children taught the Bible even if they desired it, we should have the school rates objected to, not by individuals, but by large multitudes. I think that the House will now expect me, after dealing with the Amendment and the grounds by which it appears to be supported, to say something with regard to that portion of the Bill against which the Amendment was directed. Now, this portion of the Bill is contained in the 14th clause. I am aware that both the hon. Mover and the hon. Seconder of the Amendment think that it is also contained in the 7th clause; but that is a mistake on their parts, because the 14th clause is the first that deals with the management and the maintenance of schools by school Boards. In the 14th clause we say—

"Every school provided by a school Board shall be a public elementary school, and shall be conducted as such under the control and management of such Board."

In the first place we say that the burden of proof lies upon the objectors to show us why the school Boards should not be treated precisely the same as any other managers are treated. They are bound to manage the schools, and it is only fair that, having that onerous duty imposed upon them, they should have the same power conferred upon them as is possessed by other managers. But it is said that they should not have the power of religious teaching placed in their hands, and that the Government have avoided and shirked the question by throwing1 the decision of it upon the school Boards. I will state the reason why we propose to leave the decision of the matter to them. We think that they are the persons the most concerned and the most interested in the question; we think we have amply provided in this Bill—and if we have not done so we must amend and amend it again until we have provided—that the school Board shall be elected by the persons most interested in the subject — namely, the parents, who we think are the best fitted to determine the question of religious or non-religious teaching. That was our simple reason for leaving the question of religious teaching to be settled by the school. Boards. Then it was stated that by this proposal we should be giving rise to religious quarrels, and that the elections of the members of the school Boards would be determined upon religious grounds only. I do not deny that such may sometimes be the case; but I can only say this, that as far as I have been able to study the matter it seems to me that we should cause more religious quarrels by deciding the question of religious teaching ourselves. Upon this point, of course, hon. Members will entertain their own opinion, and when we go into Committee upon the Bill we shall be most glad to consider any Amendment which may be proposed for limiting the powers of the school Boards. I think I ought, however, to say why we think that we shall cause more religious quarrels by not leaving the decision of the question to the school Boards. We think so upon this ground. That we should be stepping out of the province of Imperial legislation, and attempting, by Act of Parliament, to establish a rigid rule regardless of all the varying circumstances and wishes of different localities, and the result would be that we should meet with opposition from all quarters, and give rise to more heartburnings than if we left the matter alone. And this we assert not from a priori grounds, but from what is actually occurring in other countries at the present moment. Take the Irish system, for instance—and I am far from saying that in Committee we may not obtain great advantage from the consideration of that system — yet, whatever its merits it has not prevented religious disputes. In the United States again, the system there adopted, notwithstanding the enormous benefits it has conferred on the community, is said to be in great danger. The question of the exclusion of the Bible in that country has been raised, and men are rallying round the point in dispute on both sides. And why is that system in danger? Because it does not do what this Bill proposes to do—namely, to leave the question of religious teaching to the discretion of the school Boards. In Cincinnati I am sorry to say it has been decided by the school Board that the Bible shall be excluded; but among the last news from America it will be found that the Supreme Court has reversed that decision, and this has endangered the whole system. This danger could not have arisen under the present Bill, because it will be within the power of the school Boards to adopt secular education if they please. In Germany we find that a different course has been taken, the exact teaching being prescribed. Almost equal difficulty has occurred there. The hon. Member for Birmingham cited the case of Holland as that of a country in which the Bible is not used in schools; but I think the hon. Member is hardly aware of the position of Holland in the matter. The actual state of Holland may be seen from the following statement which I have received from a Dutch gentleman, who made inquiries at my instance. He is well known to many hon. Members, and is well acquainted with English life, and is of Liberal opinions. I wanted to know from him the feeling of the mass of the parents. He says—

"There is no doubt that with universal suffrage the system prevailing would hardly be kept up, and that the Bible, the Catechism, and the priest in Roman Catholic parts of the country would reappear. The great hardship of having excellent denominational schools unprovided from the Exchequer simply because they teach religion is growing on many people who themselves are opposed to denominational education. Only the other day one of the leaders of the Radical party told me he was gradually coming round to the opinion that the communes should be left free in the choice of their system, and that they should be allowed to have religion taught wherever there was a majority in its favour, with provisions to protect the minority, exactly the system I congratulate you on having proposed for England. There is no doubt that the number of schools started by Roman Catholics and Evangelicals in opposition to the Government school is steadily on the increase. It is felt that the Government school teaching no religion not only leaves a gap, but tends to make the children utterly careless or even hostile to religion, looking upon the hours spent out of school with the clergy as so much wasted time irrelevant to the practical interest of life."

He says local disputes do not disappear, because disputes arise as to who should appoint the master; and, he adds—

"Our system leads to another dangerous consequence. At each General Election the question divides the voters; it excites and inflames all the religious passions, and prevents other questions being properly attended to."

I do not say that opinion is a conclusive one; but it is the opinion of an eyewitness who deserves attention, and I mention it in justification of the Government's proposal. That proposal, I would have hon. Members believe, has been put forward, not as an arrière pensée, but as the best means at our disposal for solving a difficult problem. We must make up our minds that nothing we can do here will prevent disputes. We may declare that the school shall be secular; we cannot declare, and we do not wish to declare, that the school shall not be taught by men who have religious feelings and opinions. My honest belief is, that if quarrels occur about anything, they will occur about the appointment of the masters. People of strong religious convictions would say that as the school is secular it will have strong rationalistic tendencies, and, consequently they will do their best to secure a religious teacher, who will give a religious tone to the school which would then be in some sense religious. I do not myself look forward to quarrels in the Boards; but even if I did I should still say, pass the Bill; it is better these quarrels should occur, and that men in electing Town Councils should think about religious questions, than that ignorance should continue. But I do not believe these quarrels will happen, because I have confidence in the common sense of the country. I trust to one fact and one principle. The principle is municipal government, and the fact is the practical history of education. I do not dispute the existence of the religious difficulty, nobody who cares about education can afford to underrate it. The religious difficulty has kept the country in comparative ignorance for ten years past; but it has been a difficulty felt, not so much by those concerned with teaching as by those who wish to concern themselves with those who are concerned with the teaching. It is a difficulty felt, not so much by the parents of the children or the masters or the school managers; for wherever there has been a parent wishing to get his child taught and a teacher ready to educate him, the difficulty has, generally speaking, been got over. Therefore, I say that, if you bring this practical work home to the school Boards, and tell them it is their duty, and they must do it, and that if they fail the State will do it for them, my firm belief is that the difficulty will disappear. I will give an illustration; and will take it from a secondary school, such as many of us might send our own children to, for I want to bring this question home to ourselves, that we may deal with it as if it were our own case. I would here remind the House that these difficulties of which we make so much in the case of poor children do not arise in the case of our own children; and I doubt whether those parents have more doubt in their minds upon the subject with reference to their children than we have as regards ours. I take my illustration from a letter addressed to me by Mr. Evans, of King Edward's School, Birmingham.—

"This school contains nearly 1,900 pupils, of whom more than half are Nonconformists of thirteen different denominations (there were seventeen a short time ago). They all receive a considerable amount of religious instruction, and I may add that the examiners have from time to time reported very favourably on the high average attainments of the boys in divinity. Professor Lightfoot, Canon Westcott, and Dr. Benson were educated here. Any parent who either orally or in writing should express to me his wish to withdraw his son from a religious lesson, on the ground of conscientious scruples, would be at liberty to do so. Of such permission, however, no advantage has been taken except in the case of Jews, who do not attend lessons in the New Testament. The system appears to give entire satisfaction—to none more than to the Rev. C. Vince and, the Rev. R.W. Dale, who both have sons in the school. The liberty of conscience thus allowed is not secured by any legal instrument or Conscience Clause, but rests simply on custom, and an understanding between parents and the headmaster."

And here is the deduction Mr. Evans draws—

If, however, the governors of this school—a self-elected, and, for the most part, a Conservative body—together with the headmaster, a clergyman of the Church of England, have, of their own accord, devised and carried out a scheme so liberal and so popular, have we not a right to expect an equally liberal scheme of religious instruction from the local Boards constituted as proposed in the Government Bill?"

That is a practical view of the case, and I really do wish my hon. Friends, taking the same view of polities and belonging to the same Radical school as myself, would have a little more confidence in what I have always supposed to be one of the chief Radical tenets, and that is trust in municipal government elected by the ratepayers. As I said before, this is not so much a difficulty felt by the parents as by the ministers of religion, some of whom wish to get the children to attend certain schools, while others wish to keep them away. This is where the difficulty mainly sowings from; but with a school Board elected by the ratepayers—that is, by the parents taking an interest in the education of their children, as they do at present, and as they will do to a greater extent in the future, we shall have those who are likely to aggravate the religious difficulty met by a cry of "Hands off; lot us get education as best we can." What we should prefer is a school where the children would get Christian though not controversial training, and in the enormous majority of cases that is what the children would get, at least in the towns. I will not deny that there are some cases in the rural parishes which require special attention. Some oases have come before me in which there has been an attempt made on the part of the clergyman, sometimes backed by the squire, to exercise an illegitimate influence upon the children of Dissenters. Generally speaking, I may say in every case that has come practically before me, that influence has been exercised either to prevent these children going to a Sunday school, or to make them go to a Sunday school. Well, Clause 7 is very strong, indeed, on this point. Sorry as I am that any such attempt should be made and anxious as I am that these attempts should be discontinued, we cannot change society. What more can we do than give the power of election to the parents? Hon. Members may say the election of Vestries is not sufficiently guarded. [An hon. MEMBER: The Ballot.] Well, that is a matter we must talk about in Committee. I am not aware what are the councils of the Cabinet on that matter but there seems to be an expectation that the Ballot is not very far in the distance, and if it should be applied in any case it might be applied in the case of these elections. We have provided that the feelings of Dissenters should be consulted and their rights protected if they care to take advantage of the means we place at their disposal; if they are careless the fault is theirs. But our Nonconformist friends tell us—This is concurrent endowment over again, and the church rate contest over again." I wish hon. Members would consider what it is they are now dealing with, and what it was they dealt with when the phrase "concurrent endowment" was invented. In the one case the matter was religion and nothing but religion; in this case it is religious accompaniments to secular instruction—the main object. Hon. Members who think we must come to secular education, and nothing but secular education, have some right to say that they will act upon the principle of opposition to all concurrent endowment. I do not gather that many hon. Members; are prepared to go so far as that; and if they are not they are at this moment sanctioning this principle of concurrent endowment, if, indeed, it applies to education at all. There is concurrent endowment of the denominational schools at the present time. There is, likewise, concurrent endowment of the Roman Catholic and Protestant schools according to the Irish system, in praise of which we have heard so much; and there would be concurrent endowment if the proposals of the hon. Member for Birmingham were carried into effect, for if you are to provide a building for religious instruction by different denominations, what is that but concurrent endowment? I think hon. Gentlemen generally will find out that they can hardly apply that principle to education. We come back, then, to that which relates more to the real matter in hand—namely, the practical object aimed at by our Nonconformist friends, and the manner in which the religious question is treated by the present Bill; and I speak now not so much of Clause 14 as of Clause 7. All I can say of Clause 7 is—"Let it go into Committee, and if it can be shown that we have not carried out the principle of that clause we must amend it until the principle is carried out." That principle was in our minds the most perfect protection of the religious opinions of the Dissenters and of the secularists — of every parent, in a word, with regard to his views of religion or even against religion. We wished to give every parent the most complete power to withdraw his child from any religious education of which he might disapprove, and, at the same time, we desired to provide that his child should not lose the secular instruction to which he has a right and for which the rates are paid. We think that principle is carried out by the clause, but, if it he proved to us that it is not, we must amend the clause until it does carry out the principle. I think the hon. Member for Birmingham must have felt, when he was objecting to that clause, that he was making a speech, which ought properly to have been delivered on the clause in Committee rather than in support of the present Resolution, which has nothing to do with the clause. My belief, and I think it is shared by many Members who, in other respects, take different views on this question, is that if we could make Clause 7 perfectly effective many objections to Clause 14, and also to the clause which gives power to aid denominational schools, will be removed. The key to the whole Bill, as far as it relates to the religious difficulty, is this—We have framed Clause 7 in the belief that it is effective, and that it will give most complete protection in regard to the religious feelings of the parents. I quite admit, however, that if the Bill were to pass into law without that clause being effective it would not carry out our wishes or the wishes of the country. I must now allude to one or two other objections which I confess I was rather sorry to hear. I have seen it stated very often in the public Press, and several gentlemen have likewise told me, that the Bill cannot be a good one, because it aids one denomination more than it aids another — or, in other words, that it gives more assistance to the Established Church than to any other denomination. Indeed. I have been sometimes told that what little I have had to do with bringing in the Bill must have been done with tire intention of specially aiding the Church. Well, I can only say that I am innocent of any such attempt, and of all belief that such a result would be produced. My object, and I may say our object in framing the Bill has been education and education alone, We determined that nothing we might do should discourage religion, and surely we should have been blamed if we had discouraged it. We were also determined that, while not discouraging religion, we would not treat one religious sect with greater indulgence than another. Now, I believe we have thoroughly carried out that principle. If not, when we go into Committee hon. Gentlemen will have opportunities of pointing out any case in which we have treated the Church of England with more indulgence than other religious bodies, and if a flaw can be detected it must, of course, be removed. It is quite true that there are throughout the country a vast number of Church schools; but it is not our fault that they are in existence; and it is allowed by all who take an interest in the subject that we must not destroy before we build up. If, by passing this measure, we destroy the present educational agencies, it will be long before we could do as much good as we should have done harm; and, therefore, as a friend of education, and of education only, I was anxious that we should help every person, whether he belonged to the Church of England or not, who was willing to spend either his time or his money in promoting education among his poorer neighbours. We wished to help them as far as they help us in our efforts, and upon one condition —namely, that the help should not be afforded if any attempt were made at persecution or illegitimate proselytizing. We must admit, after all, that this is a matter affecting the interests of the whole country. The task is a very difficult one, and we cannot afford to dispense with any social force which will aid us in accomplishing it. Well, I find in existence a powerful social force depending very much on denominational zeal and ardour; and I am not saying anything against that zeal and ardour, proceeding as they do from men who have a faith which helps thorn in this world, and fills them with hope in regard to the next. This is not a feeling which I ought to despise, especially when I find it has induced many men to spend much time and money, and to lead self-denying lives in order to promote that secular education for which, we all care so much. This, I repeat, is a social force which we cannot dispense with. We must, of course, protect parents residing in country parishes, and this is a point which will require to be carefully looked at. But with regard to the country parishes alone, if we were to drive all the clergy from the educational camp, I, for one, do not know how we should be able to replace them. We only propose to take their help for the future on what we consider fair conditions; but do not let us throw away and reject aid without which we cannot hope to promote education, especially in the rural districts. And this is not the only great social force which exists. There is another, and most glad am I to welcome it. It is the force of the popular feeling among the parents of the children, especially the intelligent parents, in our densely-peopled towns. I rejoice to see them taking the matter into their own hands, They feel they are doing a duty which they owe to themselves, to their children, and to their own class. But by this Bill we provide that wherever they feel an interest in the matter, they should have it in their own hands. I look forward in the hope of seeing town after town in which parents will feel so strongly on the subject that they will make such arrangements that the education of their children and the children of their fellow-artizans shall be conducted under their own management and in the manner they approve. Then I am told that hon. Gentlemen opposite support the Bill. [Ironical cheers.] I hope we shall never come to that mode mode of treating questions, which would oblige its to conclude that because Gentlemen on the other side of the House support a measure it must necessarily be a bad one. It is not only this year that some hon. Members opposite have been prepared to support a Bill like this; some of them, like my right hon. Friend (Sir John Pakington), from whom I have learnt much respecting education, would have supported it long ago. Indeed, in this matter, the right hon. Gentleman has been in advance of most Members on either side of the House. However, hon. Gentlemen opposite will not deny that this Bill, although it has been most kindly received by them this year, would not have been so received by them at an earlier date; but are we to complain that hon. Gentleman opposite have found out that some measure of this kind must be passed? They have made what they regard as great concessions, for which I thank them. Last year, for instance, they would hardly have been prepared to accede to a strict Conscience Clause being imposed in schools in which much money had been voluntarily expended without any expectation that such a clause would be applied to them. Nor probably would they have been prepared to do away with denominational Inspectors, or to accept the principle of a rate for educational purposes, to which last year strong objection was expressed. I am most grateful to find they are looking at the subject in a way which gives hope that a satisfactory Bill may be at length passed. Although my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham complains of a part of this Bill, he knows that it has within it that great principle which he and I have been so long contending for —a legal provision for schools throughout the country. Conservatives generally have opposed the principle until now. It is not for us to complain that they have come round to our views, and I certainty regretted to hear the scornful cheers of the Members below the Gangway, as if they were ready to blame hon. Gentlemen opposite for lending their support to the Bill. ["No, no!"] It does, in my opinion, great credit to their hearts and heads. They have discovered that new conditions of society exist. They perceive that the measure which we passed three years ago renders it necessary that we should find new forms in which to clothe the old spirit, which I believe to be at the bottom of both Conservatism and Radicalism, and which seeks to preserve all the great institutions of the country on the one hand, while it desires to tear up the weeds which lie at the roots of those institutions on the other. It is a great credit to them, also, that they accept this Bill, although with misgivings, and with the feeling that it is opposed to many of the views which they entertain, because they wish to contribute to the promotion of the great work of popular education. I do not know that I have any right to say a word either to my Nonconformist Friends or to my fellow-Radicals. I am not a Dissenter. I wish I could see my way clearly to belong to any religious community. [Laughter.] An hon. Member laughs; but it is no laughing matter. But though I do not belong to either Church or Dissent, yet I have a feeling of attachment to both, and I would warn my Dissenting Friends against standing in the way of this Bill merely because it is supported by the Church, when every hope of making any necessary Amendments in Committee is held out to them. To my Radical Friends I would say—"Consider well before, in obedience to any passing breath of popular feeling, you give up the great principle of municipal control and election." As to my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, what more can he and his friends of the Education League desire than they obtain in this Bill? With the exception of the principle of free schools, which I think does not meet with much acceptation, there is no principle adopted by the League which cannot be carried out in any locality where the majority of the population desire it; and surely my hon. Friend does not wish to push his educational dogmas down the throats of the majority. But wherever the majority of the population believe in his dogmas they can carry them out. I trust that after the explanations I have given he will not think it right to take his Amendment to a division. I ask him not to do so, mainly on the ground that I cannot bear the thought that this, which I believe to be one of the strongest Radical measures which could be proposed which, though indeed it has been called timid and tentative, will yet make legal provision for schools throughout the country—should pass the second reading in the face of Radical opposition. It is a Bill in framing which we have endeavoured to carry out two principles—the most perfect protection to the parent and the securing of the most complete fairness and impartiality in the treatment of all religious denominations. If, in order to carry out these principles, it is necessary to amend the provisions of this Bill, that must be done. I ask the House, then, not to give its assent to a mere abstract proposition. Let us join in Committee in the endeavour to find some way by which the difficulties which have been pointed out may be met, and I have not the slightest doubt that we shall succeed in the attempt, and thus bring this great work to a satisfactory conclusion.

No objection can be taken on the part of the Government to the Motion; but we have been placed in a peculiar and unexpected position, and I am desirous that we shall be permitted to carry forward this debate to-morrow night. In fact, unless we are allowed to do so, I cannot see how we shall be able to proceed satisfactorily, in consequence of the intervention of the Bill dealing with the state of Ireland, of which my right hon. Friend the Chief Secretary for Ireland has given notice to move the introduction on Thursday. On looking to the Notices for tomorrow, I find there are two with regard to which it is absolutely incumbent upon us to make some arrangement. The first relates to a Bill to relieve Lords Spiritual (hereafter consecrated) from attendance in Parliament. If the hon. Member for Wakefield (Mr. Somerset Beaumont), in whose name that stands, will withdraw it for to-morrow, we shall undertake to consider it at a convenient period of the Session. [Laughter.] Well, I will undertake that he shall be under no disadvantage with regard to time. This is a case of great necessity, and nothing could be more unsatisfactory than that the debate on the second reading should be interrupted for an indefinite period. The second Notice is by the hon. Member for Liverpool (Mr. Graves), and relates to the rate of inland postage. I admit he is entitled to look for some solution of that matter with reference to the approaching Budget of my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer; but I hope he will accept my frank assurance that, if he waives his precedence to-morrow, he shall suffer from no serious inconvenience by doing so.

expressed his willingness to accede to the request made by the right hon. Gentleman on the part of the Government.

said, he would consent to postpone his Motion. He could not do so, however, without a protest against the practice which seemed to be growing up of turning Tuesdays into Government nights, and thus encroaching on the privileges of private Members. In giving way, however, on the present occasion, it must be on the distinct understanding that he should have an opportunity of bringing forward his Motion before the Financial Statement was made by the Chancellor of the Exchequer.

said, the Life Assurance Companies Bill stood on the Paper for to-morrow. It was with great reluctance his right hon. Friend the Member for Shoreham (Mr. Stephen Cave) had postponed it last week. It was rather hard upon private Members, in the month of March, to take from them their opportunities of bringing on Motions.

asked what arrangements it was proposed to make for the continuance of the debate after to-morrow?

hoped that it might be concluded to-morrow night.

said, that it must not be supposed there was any understanding on the part of Members below the Gangway, that the debate would close to-morrow. There had been four nights' debate on the Irish Land Bill, and it would hardly be dealing with a great question in an adequate manner to hurry it to a close in less than two.

said, he should reserve the observations which he had intended to make to-morrow in moving for leave to introduce a Bill for the abolition of the existing Game Laws until the second reading, if he had an assurance from the Government that no objection would be offered to the introduction of the measure.

said, that no objection would be offered on the part of the Government to the introduction of the Bill.

said, he hoped that counsel would be heard before the Committee, as important interests were involved.

said, that would be for the Committee to decide.