asked Mr. Chancellor of the Exchequer, Whether there are not some writers in the Customs Department appointed prior to June 1870 whose annual increments of salary have been stopped for nearly three years; whether Writers of the same class at the Board of Trade and at the Admiralty have not within the last year had their position and prospects improved; if he would explain to the House why such improvement has been withheld from Writers in the Customs appointed prior to June 1870, notwithstanding that the Select Committee on Civil Service Writers distinctly recommended the restoration of increments of salary to such Writers; and, whether it is the intention of Her Majesty's Government to place the Customs Writers on the same footing as the Writers in the Board of Trade and Admiralty.

There are some writers in several Departments of the public service, including the Customs, who were appointed prior to 1870 and whose annual increments have been stopped by the Order in Council of August 19, 1871. I understand there has been no general alteration made with regard to the writers employed at the Board of Trade and the Admiralty, but that on the re-organization of the Board of Trade some opportunities occurred for providing upon the establishment for many gentlemen employed as writers, and at the Admirality there has been a new class recently added to the establishment into which writers have been taken. There is no intention to withhold from the writers in the Customs the same advantages given to writers, as such, in the public service; but the question is one which, as I said yesterday, has been referred to the Commission now just beginning to sit. Their attention has been directed to it and I hope satisfactory arrangements will be made.

asked the Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, What truth there is in the statement which has appeared in The Angsburghe Allgemeine Zeitung of March 25, to the effect that the English Foreign Office have issued instructions founded upon the opinions of the Crown lawyers, that only those slaves who are found in slave dhows who have not become the property of resident Arabs are to be freed?

No such instructions have been issued by the Foreign Office; but I think it fair to state that there is a question now before the Law Officers of the Crown upon the subject of the capture of slaves above the coast of Zanzibar. When those questions have been answered the Secretary of State for Foreign affairs will consider whether it is necessary or not to send further instructions upon the subject.

asked the President of the Board of Trade, Whether he will postpone the second reading of the Chain Cables and Anchors Bill in order that public bodies and others interested in the question may have an opportunity of considering the effect of the alteration proposed by the Bill—namely, voluntary instead of compulsory testing of chain cables and anchors?

The Bill is not, as described, for substituting voluntary for compulsory testing of cables and anchors, but for abolishing legislative penalties on the sale of untested chains, which so far from proving compulsory, have proved abortive and yet indirectly mischievous. No signs of opposition, but only of general concurrence, have yet appeared; but in deference to the hon. Member the second reading shall be postponed to Thursday week.

asked Mr. Attorney General for Ireland, Mr. Justice Morris having stated to the Member for the County of Wexford that the Irish Judges of Law and Equity had considered the question of Irish appeals, and that their opinion was unanimous against the abolition of the Appellate Jurisdiction of the House of Lords, Whether he is aware of that opinion, and is prepared to give duo weight to it; and, whether Her Majesty's Government is aware that the Right Hon. J. Napier, First Lord Commissioner of the Great Seal holds the same opinion?

, in reply, said, he could not speak as to the unanimity of the Irish Judges; but he was aware that a very large number of them were opposed to the transfer of the Appellate Jurisdiction from the House of Lords. He was also aware that the Irish Judges unanimously passed a resolution, which they communicated through Baron Dowse to Her Majesty's Government, and which was afterwards produced in this House on a Return which he moved for. That resolution stated that if the Appellate Jurisdiction for England was transferred from the House of Lords it was their unanimous wish that the appeals from Ireland should go to the same tribunal as those from England. He believed Sir Joseph Napier's opinion was the same with the majority of the Judges on both questions—namely, in favour of the House of Lords remaining as the Appellate Tribunal, but if it ceased to be so, then, in favour of all appeals from all parts of the United Kingdom going before the same tribunal.

rose to call attention to the increasing powers and responsibilities and unsatisfactory constitution of the Marine Department of the Board of Trade; and to move that a Select Committee be appointed—

"To inquire whether any alterations are needed in its constitution or procedure in consequence of the important changes which have taken place in the Mercantile Marine during the last few years."

The hon. Member said, he hoped the President of the Board of Trade would assent to the appointment of the Committee, on the ground that he would find his hands considerably strengthened by inquiry, and that he would express a willingness to co-operate in ascertaining whether steps could be taken to restore the good feeling which used to exist between the Department and the shipping community. The Motion was not brought forward with animus against members of the Department, who, on the whole, discharged their duties well. He regretted that the Commission on Unseaworthy Ships had not reported upon the evidence they had taken on that subject, as that Report and evidence would, he believed, have strengthened the case he now submitted to the House. By the Merchant Shipping Act of 1854, the general superintendence of the Mercantile Marine was delegated to the Board of Trade; and since then, partly by authority under that Act, and partly by that conferred upon them by supplementary Acts, they had been charged with the superintendence of local Marine Boards, the examination of masters, mates, and engineers, inquiries into wrecks, casualties, and losses of life. These were important matters, requiring a strong and efficient Department to deal with them. Contemporaneously with these important changes the Board, if there was one in the ordinary sense, had considerably diminished in importance and weight with the public generally. He thought it was a great mistake in the formation of the present Government that the President of the Board of Trade was not given a seat in the Cabinet, as it showed that the right hon. Gentleman the Prime Minister did not attach sufficient importance to the mercantile community. The Department required a great amount of technical knowledge, and, as a Minister could scarcely be expected to possess this, it was all the more necessary that he should have the assistance of officials who were thoroughly versed in the technicalities of the subjects which had from time to time to be dealt with. There used to be two professional assistants and a Surveyor General; now there was a permanent Under Secretary, who had been brought up as an official in the Department, and an assessor, whose office was to be abolished as soon as he resigned. He had the highest opinion of the permanent Under Secretary; but as that gentleman's hands were not strengthened by a staff of practical officials, the result had been that the legislation undertaken by the Department had been very unsuccessful. He complained, moreover, that when any legislation was contemplated, the Department took no pains to ascertain the opinions of gentlemen who might be interested in and acquainted with the subject, and the consequence was that they dealt in a helpless way with large matters, and in a tinkering way with small ones. Two or three years ago it passed a Chain Cables and Anchors Act, without consulting the shipowners. The manufacturers met to discuss the Bill, and said it must necessarily be inoperative, and that, if it passed, they would defy the Board of Trade, which they had succeeded in doing. The Act was, therefore, entirely useless. Some years ago there was a Committee ap- pointed to inquire into the question of compulsory pilotage. They reported in favour of the adoption of that system, but no action whatever had since been taken upon that Report by the Board of Trade. Then, after much debate in that House, and great promises on the part of the Board, a code of laws for the regulation of the Mercantile Marine was laid upon the Table by the hon. Member for Reading (Mr. Shaw Lefevre). It consisted of no fewer than 750 clauses. The House of Commons shuddered at the prospect of discussing all those clauses, and would have nothing to do with it; while if the measure had been a consolidating one of some 100 or 130 clauses, there would have been a chance of its passing, and placing the general law on a clear and satisfactory footing. That would have been a very great boon to the Mercantile Marine. He had supported the Motion for a Committee of Inquiry into the sailing Rules brought forward by the right hon. and gallant Member for Stamford (Sir John Hay); but the Committee was not granted, because it was said the present Rules were so perfect, so well understood, and so generally accepted; but he now found by a Parliamentary Paper that the Board of Trade was going to make alterations in those Rules, and had promised shortly to submit them to the French Government. He could not ascertain, however, that they had consulted anyone who was practically conversant with the matter, nor had they given any notice of their intention to make changes. What he complained of was the heedless and almost reckless way in which the Board had lately been acting. Ship-owners and builders were continually receiving new regulations, new orders, and new circulars, many of them inconsistent and contradictory. Then again, with respect to the question of the lighting of the coasts of the United Kingdom, the course taken by the Board was not only unsatisfactory, but had year by year been growing more expensive to the shipowners who had to pay. A Committee which had inquired into the subject some time ago recommended a radical change, but from that time to this nothing had been done. The Board of Trade had confided to the Trinity House the management of the lighthouses under their general control. The result was that when a shipowner was in a difficulty, and went to the Board of Trade, he was referred to the Trinity House, and when he went there he was told that they were so hampered by the rules of the Board of Trade that it was impossible to give help. The poor shipowner or master was thus kept running from pillar to post, and got no satisfaction; while at the same time, within the last few years, the cost per light had risen from £270 to £1,300, or five times as much. The shipowners, therefore, had a right to demand that steps should he taken to render the management of the lights as efficient and economical as possible. Important changes had been made in the position of Merchant Shipping by the Act of 1873. It might be said—and he would admit it—that we had had too little experience to enable us to decide whether the principle of that Act was a sound one; but, at all events, the time had certainly come to inquire into the working of that Act, and to ascertain whether it was satisfactory to the persons affected by it. If it should be found that its effect was to make the Board of Trade obnoxious to the whole shipping community, and that the Act was being carried out in a partial and arbitrary manner, some action ought to be taken by the Legislature. Prior to the Act of 1873 the Board of Trade only took cognizance of passenger steamers, which a few years ago were comparatively few in number. In 1873, however, the Board of Trade took over the management and superintendence of the whole shipping of the country. That shipping had undergone great changes. In 1863 the amount of steam shipping was 510,000 tons, but in 1872 there were 1,500,000 tons of steam shipping, and it had gone on increasing ever since, and now the whole of that steam shipping came under the superintendence of the Board of Trade. This at once introduced a new element in the work which the Board of Trade had to do. Shipbuilding knowledge became essential, and yet in the knowledge of what constituted a well-formed ship, the Board of Trade were entirely deficient at the present time. It was hard that shipowners should have their property stopped, and their characters injured, without any capable body to whom they might appeal. This assertion was con- firmed by experience; but it would be sufficient to refer to the cases of the Parga and the Eastern Monarch, as well as to the item of £5,000 in the Estimates, to make good claims that might arise from the mistakes of the Board of Trade. Since he had taken up this matter he had received innumerable complaints from various parts of the country of the frivolous and vexatious interference of the Board of Trade with the shipowners. There were no general rules laid down for the action of the surveyors, and on this point he might cite a case which he had himself investigated. A ship of 2,000 tons was being built on the Tyne, but her engines were supplied from London, and the Board of Trade absolutely refused to give her any certificate unless she were sent to London to be inspected—her boilers having been inspected in London, it was necessary that the whole ship should be inspected there. It struck him that to insist upon a vessel costing £30,000 making a voyage from the Tyne to the Thames for the purpose of being inspected was a very unbusinesslike proceeding. It should be remembered that when a ship was stopped by the Board of Trade, the fact was remembered against her whether the accusation turned out to be well or ill founded. In the case of a ship at Whitby, against which some anonymous complaint had been lodged, the action of the Board of Trade was equally frivolous and capricious. He believed that the Board of Trade had at the present time got a most unsatisfactory set of surveyors at the different ports, and that the work was done in a careless manner in consequence of the men not having had sufficient training or experience. In one case, where a man was appointed, his only qualification appeared to be that he had been a midshipman in the Royal Navy, and yet he had to decide upon all important matters connected with the seaworthiness of ships. He believed there was a general feeling of distrust in regard to all these appointments. The men did not pass through any examination, and nobody knew on what grounds the appointments were made. The fact was that the surveyors were not what they ought to be, because the Board of Trade did not pay their officials a sufficient salary. The matter was a small one, but to the shipping community it was all-important; because on the judgment of those men frequently depended the characters and the reputations of shipowners, and at their instance they were liable to have misdemeanours and all other sorts of offences laid to their charge. It was the more necessary that the Government should reject a cheeseparing policy in this matter, because private firms did not hesitate in paying good salaries to efficient surveyors. With regard to the manner in which the Courts of Inquiry were constituted by the Board of Trade, the House was aware that when an inquiry was about to be held, the Board sent a couple of nautical assessors to sit with the magistrate and assist him in deciding the case. The magistrate of course had no practical knowledge on the subject, and the consequence was that the nautical assessors were practically Judge, jury, and everything else, and upon their decision it depended whether a man who had the misfortune to experience some casualty should be allowed to go on in charge of his ship, or whether he should be ruined for life. Nobody knew how these assessors were appointed, and they were not permanent officials of the Board of Trade. He remembered on one occasion conversing with an assessor who was about to advise upon a case in which the tonnage of the ship and the amount of the cargo were the leading points, and that assessor was perfectly ignorant of the simple fact that a ton according to the Merchant Shipping Act was 100 cubic feet. The largest private steamship owner in the world, Mr. Burn, the head of the Cunard Company, and whose ships had met probably with less casualties than those of any other line, had said that the Board of Trade was a name without a substance, there being no Board, properly speaking; that no public Department with which shipowners had to deal gave them less satisfaction; that the constitution of the Board was proved to be unworkable, and that the Board was offensive to the shipowners of this country, and to none more than to honest and respectable ones. In conclusion, the hon. Member begged to move the Resolution of which he had given Notice.

, as a Member of the Royal Commission, thought it necessary to reply to some observations of his hon. Friend who, he was not surprised, had brought the subject before the House. His hon. Friend expressed regret that the Commission had not reported on the question of seaworthiness; but the fact was they were not prepared to report. The question of seaworthiness involved many most important, difficult, and delicate matters—the construction of ships, measurement, insurance, inquiries by the Board of Trade into accidents and losses, the conduct and character of seamen, and it was perfectly impossible, until all these had been duly considered and weighed, that they could report upon that question.

explained that he made no complaint about the Commission not reporting on the subject; he merely stated a simple matter of fact.

hoped the House would think that the Commission were the best Judges of the proper course to pursue on the question of seaworthiness, and he would promise that when the proper time arrived for reporting, it would be found they had devoted their best attention to the subjects referred to them. His hon. Friend had said he was not quite sure whether the operation of the Act of 1873 came within the scope of the Order of Reference. He could relieve his hon. Friend's mind on that point by informing him that the Commissioners had gone at great length into the operation of the Act. Again, his hon. Friend had said that the Board of Trade were unfit to cope with the work which they had undertaken. Now, the Board of Trade had undertaken the work that had been forced upon them by the House of Commons, and they were perfectly aware of the responsibility which had been imposed upon them. In his opinion, the Act of 1873 was introduced by the late Government rather hastily, in obedience to the call of public opinion at the time, which was not very well-informed as to the actual extent of the evil intended to be remedied by the measure, and it did not receive at the hands of Parliament the careful consideration it deserved. Never- theless, he thought it was too soon to begin another investigation into the working of that Act. The charges preferred by his hon. Friend against the Board of Trade ought rather to have been brought against Parliament itself and over-legislation. Now, he wished to make a few remarks in defence of the action of the Board of Trade. According to his hon. Friend's statement, the Board of Trade Surveyors had carried out the provisions of the Act of 1873 in a partial and unsatisfactory manner. He could quite understand that they had not given satisfaction to the shipowners in many of our ports; but with reference to the action of the Board of Trade, he would mention some simple facts which he thought ought to be known for the justification of the Board of Trade and its officers. Out of 264 ships which had been detained by the action of the Board of Trade for alleged unseaworthiness, 234 had been found unseaworthy, and only 13 of those ships had been shown to be seaworthy; 17 were still sub judice, the surveys not having been decided upon. With regard to overloading, 22 ships had been reported by the officers and referred to the Board of Trade. Six of those ships had been lightened in consequence of that representation. There was another test which he would apply to the action of the Board of Trade. There had only been half-a-dozen cases in which owners had availed themselves of their right of appeal, and only in one appeal case—that relating to the Parga—was the decision adverse to the Board of Trade. Compensation had been paid in four cases, without going to law at all. The really important public officer who was required if the House determined to carry out efficiently the provisions of the Act was a Public Prosecutor. That was the deliberate opinion he had formed on the information and evidence put before the Commission. His hon. Friend had, with justice, complained that a Department charged with the surveillance of the trade of England did not hold the rank to which it was entitled. He (Lord Eslington) had no hesitation in expressing the opinion that the head of the Board of Trade ought to be a Member of the Cabinet. As long as the grip of the Treasury was on the salaries of the Surveyors it would be difficult to secure the services of the most able and competent men; but, nevertheless, those officers had, on the whole, done their work in a very admirable manner. He thought it would be most desirable, in re-constructing the Board of Trade, to strengthen the Permanent Staff. His hon. friend spoke of the frivolous objections taken by officers of the Department with regard to lights; but the House would be startled to hear that no light had yet been manufactured which came up to the standard required by the Act of Parliament, and in fixing such a standard, Parliament had done a great deal of mischief. There could be no doubt that the less they interfered to affect or restrict trade the better. His hon. Friend had blamed the Board of Trade for having encouraged the passing of the Chain Cables Act; but the truth was that that Act was passed by that House with the sanction of some of its leading mercantile Members, in spite of the remonstrances of the Board of Trade. ["No!"] An hon. Member expressed his dissent from that statement—such was his impression—but, at all events, the Board of Trade were now convinced that Parliament had acted injudiciously in passing it, and the compulsory testing clauses were now to be repealed. He knew that some of the permanent authorities of the Board had always been opposed to it. He agreed with his hon. Friend that, although there were at present highly competent men at the heads of the various Departments of the Board, there would be the greatest difficulty in replacing them, and that Parliament should Occupy itself with the re-construction of that Board. There was a very strong opinion entertained by the commercial community that shipowners, when their ships were condemned as unseaworthy, if they thought that their ships were seaworthy and safe, should have a power of appeal upon the spot and at the moment. In his opinion, that was a very fair claim on the part of the shipowners, and he believed the Associated Chambers of Commerce at a meeting last month at the Westminster Palace Hotel unanimously passed a resolution embodying a recommendation to that effect. He trusted that these recommendations would receive the attention of the President of the Board of Trade.

said, that before the Act of 1873 was passed, there was no doubt that the knowledge acquired by Parliament was such, that it became imperatively necessary to strengthen the hands of the Board of Trade or some Department in order to provide the public a greater amount of security to life and property, owing to the disregard of the sea-worthy qualities of vessels. To the written law of the Board of Trade no objection was offered, but there were the unwritten laws used by Inspectors, who, in consequence of being threatened with personal responsibility if they made a mistake, sometimes imposed very unfair and vexatious restrictions upon shipowners. Shipowners received very various treatment at the hands of different surveyors; thus, in some cases, the surveyor of an emigrant ship would be satisfied with inspecting certain samples of the articles of food to be used in the course of the voyage, while another would require every package on board to be opened, and it was impossible to carry on business under these circumstances. It was very proper that the sending of an unseaworthy ship to sea should be regarded as a misdemeanour; and he should like to see any shipowner prevented from recouping himself in full by means of insurance in such a case if the vessel was lost. The great thing wanted was that the Board of Trade should separate inspection from direction, and confine their Inspectors to the former, making them abandon the latter altogether; because direction in the hands of the Inspectors was mischievous, interfering with private action, and over-riding men of great experience who had been familiar with the special business they were carrying out all their lives. He took the opportunity of pointing out to Lord Carlingford, before he brought in the Merchant Shipping Bill, that one effect of it would be to increase enormously the price of chain cables without any advantage whatever to the public, and this had really been the case, and it was now even proposed to go so far in the opposite direction as to remove all penalties from using untested chains—a course equally objectionable, and to his mind proving the absolute necessity of more consultation and cooperation between the Board of Trade and the mercantile community, before rashly entering upon legislation which often, as in this case, might have been well intended, but for want of practical knowledge was found to entail as many objections as it removed. The Act of 1873, however, contained some very useful provisions, which he should be sorry to see repealed. When the House came to examine the whole question, the conclusion at which it must arrive would be that some further information was required on the various points to which his hon. Friend had referred. The only question, however, before the House was the appointment of a Committee, and whether that should be done now, or whether it was more desirable to wait and see to what extent the Royal Commission on Unseaworthy Ships dealt with the subjects of complaint. He thought it would be desirable to wait for the Report of the Royal Commission. They had, however, the assurance that the Committee would be granted, and that being so, whether it came now or afterwards was unimportant.

said, it was impossible to exaggerate the importance of the question which had been brought before the House by the hon. Member opposite (Mr. T. E. Smith.) He did not rise for the purpose of attacking his right hon. Friend the President of the Board of Trade, who had been too short a time in office to master all the subjects with which he would be called upon to deal. All, however, were agreed as to the great talents evinced by Mr. Gray. He most cordially agreed with the hon. Member who brought forward this Motion that it was impossible for the Board of Trade, in its present position, to fulfil its duties, He also agreed with him that it was very much to be lamented that the President of the Board of Trade was not a Cabinet Minister, for no one who was not could bring to bear on the Cabinet that weight of authority which would be required to induce them to take up the important subjects which demanded attention. His right hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Stamford (Sir John Hay) had often brought before the House the question of the rule of the road at sea, but always without success; and the argument urged against him was that any attempt to disturb it would only lead to confusion and consequent loss of vessels and lives. But how did the case stand now? His right hon. Friend was aware of the fact that Her Majesty's Government had been memorialized by all the principal Powers in Europe to revise the rule of the road on the ground that it led to great loss of life and property. As the rule now stood, if he had not, in his own experience, deviated from it he should not then have the honour of addressing the House of Commons, but should have been at the bottom of the sea. Then we had endless absurdities in the present system of lights. The multiplication of authorities having jurisdiction in the matter of lights prevented our having that uniformity and continuity of system which was carried out on the French coast. Something was due to the unfortunate way in which the House of Commons tried to deal with maritime questions, the result of which was illustrated by the passing of a provision requiring ships to carry something which did not exist. With regard to the Board he did not want to curtail its powers, but largely to increase them.

supported the Motion of the hon. Member for Tynemouth (Mr. T. E. Smith), and said that at null, Newcastle, Liverpool, and London there was general dissatisfaction with the constitution and action of the Board. It was felt that, to some extent, the commercial supremacy was at stake, because of the vexatious interference of the Board of Trade. Indeed, some ships had already been put under foreign flags. One point of objection was the action of the Board of Trade surveyors at the different ports. Often they were men not equal in ability or position to the representatives of the great shipping firms with whom they came in contact, and yet over whom they had at present arbitrary and uncontrolled powers. That was a matter which, it was felt, required immediate attention and alteration. It was not right that when ships were built according to the rules and requirements of the Board of Trade, and when these ships were ready for sea, a newly-appointed Inspector should come and find fault with what his predecessors had done and refuse to give the vessel a certificate. Another ground of complaint was the constitution of the Courts of Inquiry. That was a great grievance, and another argument in favour of the appointment of a Committee of Inquiry. In every maritime district there were different trades and various circumstances which required diversity of action, and he thought it desirable that the Local Marine Board should be entirely re-constructed, so that each district could have more control over its own affairs. The prevailing dissatisfaction among the shipping community would not exist if there were not some good ground for it, and he would appeal to the House to support the Motion of the hon. Member for Tynemouth for a Committee.

concurred in what had been said as to the existence of general dissatisfaction at the present state of things, but maintained that the blame rested mainly, not with the Board of Trade, but with the public and the House of Commons, who had devolved upon the Board of Trade functions which it was impossible for it to perform efficiently. From a statement of those functions it must be obvious how far we were deviating from those principles which had made the country's Mercantile Marine what it was. Recent legislation had diminished the responsibility of shipowners, and placed the responsibility on a Government Department which was unequal to the duties devolved upon it. The course which ought to have been pursued was exactly the reverse. They should have concentrated responsibility on the shipowners, leaving them free to carry on their trade, but punishing them whenever they did wrong. The want of a public prosecutor, or some one who would undertake his duties, had caused most of the recent heart-burnings and outcries, and the want was one easily remedied.

complained that shipowners were not only placed under exceptional laws, like the Merchant Shipping Act of 1873, but they were also responsible to the Common Law of the land and liable to the interference of well-meaning but mistaken philanthropists. They were also subject to illegal interference on the part of the Board of Trade, and in substantiation of that assertion he would refer to the case of the Western Ocean, which was recently detained, upon the ground that it was unseaworthy, but the owners of which had since obtained £600 as a compensation for that detention, and also to the case of the Mary Anne, the owners of which had brought an action against the Board of Trade for illegal detention. Besides, when an action was to be brought against the Board of Trade, if they declined to name a defendant the shipowner was put to the expense of filing a petition of right and proceeding against the Queen to recover damage for the illegal detention of his property. This state of things could not go on. Either the shipowner should be left to his responsibility under the Common Law, or the Board of Trade should take the entire responsibility of ships being sent to sea in a seaworthy condition. This could only be done by the Board of Trade laying clown specific rules for the building of ships. He had every confidence in the permanent officers of the Board of Trade, and trusted that shipowners would no longer be compelled to go on working in the dark, but that the Act of 1873 might be carried out in a more satisfactory manner.

observed, that notwithstanding the statements of the hon. Member for Tynemouth (Mr. T. E. Smith), all who had had experience of the Department would agree that the Board of Trade had amongst its staff men of almost unequalled ability, and that the business was conducted in a most business-like manner, and would compare favourably with any other Department of the public service. In Mr. Farrer, the Permanent Under Secretary, the Board of Trade had an officer of great experience and undoubted ability. He had been at the Board of Trade for many years, and had the principal share in drafting the great Merchant Shipping Act of 1853. Mr. Farrer had also been the mainspring of all the legislation for the regulation of the Mercantile Marine since that time, and his evidence before the Commission on Unseaworthy Ships and the Pilotage Commission showed the great range of his knowledge. Mr. Gray, the Secretary for the Marine Department of the Board of Trade, in addition to great experience, possessed a knowledge of all matters concerning the sea which might be described as unequalled; and with reference to the lower appointments, the Board of Trade had 12 assessors, two of whom had been admirals, five captains, and five merchant captains; 30 or 40 engineering surveyors, 16 wooden shipwrights, 16 merchant shipwrights, and 20 officers who were connected with the Emi- gration Department. The hon. Member who brought forward this Motion and others had apparently misconceived the scope and purport of the Act of 1873, which they had described as bringing the whole Mercantile Marine under the Board of Trade in the same sense that passenger ships were brought under their control before 1873. The Act of 1873, however, gave no general powers of survey to the Board of Trade, it only gave them power, if an information were laid either by their own officers or others, to hold an inquiry and to detain a vessel if it were unseaworthy or overladen. He was not surprised That certain shipowners should find themselves aggrieved at the action of the Board of Trade, but cases of real grievance were more rare than hon. Members might imagine. The Shipowners' Society had, it was said, collected numerous cases in which shipowners complained of having been harassed in their business; but the few cases in which mistakes had been made were not a fair specimen of the action of the Government. Under the Act of 1873 the Board of Trade had taken action in 264 cases. Of these 234 vessels were found unseaworthy; in 17 cases the survey was now pending; and in only 13 had the vessels been found seaworthy. In only six cases had the decision of the Board of Trade Courts been appealed against, and in every one the decision was affirmed. In only five cases had compensation been paid in respect of mistaken apprehension, and the total amount was only £700. When the action of the Board of Trade and its surveyors was looked at broadly he believed it would be found that it had been proper, reasonable, and in the interests of the public. He would remind the hon. Member and those who thought with him that the Board of Trade was always placed between two fires—the shipowners, who thought they were unduly interfered with, and the seamen and others, who demanded greater interference. The Board had been even more attacked for disregarding the interest of the seamen, and for allowing vessels to go to sea in an unseaworthy condition. Their action, however, had been most valuable in the interests of the seamen, and he could quote many cases in which the Board of Trade had stood up against the shipowner in defence of the sailor. The Act of 1873 had been passed in defence of the seamen, and too short a time had as yet elapsed to ask for its repeal. Upon the whole the principle of the Act was sound and good, and although he should be sorry to see it carried any further, as it might tend to greater dangers than at present existed, still he regarded the Act as wise and calculated to promote the interests of the country as well as of the seamen. The Unseaworthy Ships Commission were taking a deal of evidence as to the Act of 1873 and all the points alluded to by the hon. Member—the action of the Board, the want of an adequate staff of surveyors, &c., had been brought before the Royal Commission. It would, therefore, be premature to pass an opinion on these points, still more upon the much greater question whether the Board of Trade should institute a periodical survey of all vessels whatever. Until the Report of the Royal Commission was known, the House was not in a position to inquire into the constitution of the Board of Trade. He quite concurred in the regret expressed that the Board of Trade were not represented in the Cabinet, for their functions had become very important and were daily increasing. During the illness of Mr. Bright, when he (Mr. Shaw Lefevre) was practically in command of the Department, he found it very inconvenient that the office was not in any way connected with the Cabinet. He would conclude by saying that, in his opinion, the time had not yet arrived for considering this question in the way the hon. Member proposed, because it was probable that the Royal Commission which was now sitting would recommend a considerable enlargement of the duties of the Board. He trusted, therefore, that the hon. Member would be satisfied with the discussion which had taken place, and not press his Motion to a division.

said, he was glad the discussion had taken place, because it would have the effect of removing many misapprehensions which had prevailed as to the action of the Board of Trade. The hon. Member for Tynemouth (Mr. T. E. Smith) asked for a Select Committee to inquire whether any alterations could be made in the constitution and procedure of the Marine Department, owing to the increase of work which had recently been cast upon it. In the first place, the hon. Gentleman's proposition was illogical. If the work were badly done that would be a reason for a change in the constitution; but as the allegation was simply an increase of work, it was not logical to infer the necessity of re-constitution, provided the work of the Department was well done. But what the hon. Member, and indeed the speakers who followed him, objected to was the action of the Board of Trade under the recent Act of 1873. That Act had already excited a good deal of discussion. But the really fatal objection to the hon. Member's proposal was that the subject itself was within the province of the Royal Commission that was now sitting, and if there ever was a subject on which it was undesirable to have two independent and simultaneous inquiries it was this. If it was desirable to reconsider such recent action, the subject had better be referred to one body only, so as to avoid the possibility of conflicting conclusions and inconsistent Reports. It would, at all events, be bettor to wait until the Royal Commission had reported before fresh counsellors were taken in. It should be remembered that frequent change in the law led to confusion, which might be worse than even bad law. The first question they had to consider was, whether Parliament was already prepared to re-open the Act of last year, and, secondly, had the Board of Trade discharged faithfully and discreetly the duties imposed upon them by that Act? With regard to the first question, everybody would allow that Parliament did act under strong impulse when it passed the Act which ordered the Board of Trade to stop ships from going to sea on information being received of their unseaworthiness. Hon. Members would recollect very well that on the strength of the representations made by the hon. Member for Derby (Mr. Plimsoll)—whom he was sorry not to see in his place—they were ready almost to pass any measure which he might recommend; but they would also recollect that the hon. Member did propose a measure of a most sweeping nature, which proposed to subject every ship in the Mercantile Marino to an inspection by a Government Surveyor. It was the President of the Board of Trade who stood between Parliament and the hon. Member for Derby, and induced it to pass a more moderate measure with a view to save the lives of Her Majesty's subjects by giving the Board of Trade the power to inquire, upon trustworthy information being conveyed to them, of ships about to sail unfit to go to sea. The shipowners should be grateful to the President of the Board of Trade for having given the House this alternative to passing the Bill of the hon. Member for Derby. The House probably, therefore, did not repent of its Act. In regard to the second point, he must honestly and sincerely say, from his three months' experience in the office he now held as President of that Board, that it had discreetly and faithfully discharged a most difficult duty. The Act of 1873 made the interference of the Board of Trade discretionary, and he believed it had exercised a wise discretion, and had not carelessly proceeded on every case brought before it. It had been said that the President of the Board of Trade ought to be what was commonly called an expert in the multifarious business brought before him. He would have to be a Jack-of-all-trades, and very likely a master of none. Such a notion sprung from a wrong view of the nature of the office. The Board of Trade was not intended to take a share or interfere in the various mercantile enterprises of the country. What it had to do was to guard the interest of the public in relation to the great mercantile enterprises. If the Board of Trade were to share in the private enterprise of the country it would cause great mischief, and be acting in direct antagonism with the spirit and genius of the nation. He might also say that he did not agree in the suggestion that the President ought to have a council of advice. The plan was tried some 20 years since, and proved to be a failure; for while it delayed and obstructed the performance of public work, it only afforded a cover for inefficiency and irresponsibility. The great mass of duties imposed on the Board of Trade were by general consent well discharged. The Department was notoriously well manned. Every speaker had allowed that in the Permanent Secretary (Mr. Farrer), the public service had a servant most capable and most devoted. The Marino Department was differently constituted from what the hon. Member for Tynemouth seemed to suppose. It had been re-organized within the last few years, and consisted of the Marine Department, the Harbour Department, and the Finance Department, of which the heads were Mr. Thomas Gray, Mr. Cecil Trevor, and Mr. R. G. C. Hamilton, who, as everybody knew, were most efficient public servants. He believed that with regard to technical qualifications, as well as vigour and devotion to his work, no man was Mr. Gray's superior. In the course of this debate it had been said there was a want of professional knowledge in the Departments. The fact was Mr. Gray had the opportunity of consulting Captain Digby Murray, while Mr. Trevor was assisted by Admiral Bedford; and besides those naval officers there was a staff of clerks, who were immediately and constantly connected with them. There were marine engineers, shipwrights, emigration officers, nautical assessors, and nautical examiners. Besides, the heads of the Departments had the advantage of consulting with officers of the Trinity House and the Admiralty, and they were in constant communication both with Lloyd's and the Salvage Association. The hon. Member for Tynemouth (Mr. T. E. Smith) was wholly mistaken in what he had said about those officers having been reduced in number. In point of fact, any alterations in their number had been in the way of multiplication instead of reduction. As to the surveyors, who had been so much abused to-night, they were for the most part shipwrights or marine engineers. It might be said that, in con-sequence of the smallness of the salaries, the Board could not secure the services of men of higher position; but they were in every case men of respectability, and qualified by experience and character. Passing from the personnel of the Board to its machinery and work, they were owing almost entirely to the provisions of the Merchant Shipping Act of 1854. It consisted, in the first place, of the registry of ships, for which there was a general registration office. There were also local Marine Boards at the ports, where the examinations of masters and mates were conducted, and the engaging, discharge, and protection of crews. The Emigration Department, which had been undertaken by the Board of Trade in the last two years, was a most important branch of its work, and the examinations in that Department were of a most minute description. The Lighthouse and Pilotage Department was in connection with the Trinity House. The Finance Department superintended Mercantile Marine Fund, money orders, savings bank, salvage, and distressed seamen. He would now make a few remarks on the work imposed upon the Board of Trade in connection with the stoppage of unseaworthy ships under the Act of 1873. The action of the Board had been described as "vexatious." The Board of Trade, on receiving any information, before stopping a ship, required the surveyor to fill up a Return containing most minute particulars of the condition, size, destination, and cargo of the vessel; and if they thought that there were reasonable grounds for believing the vessel to be unseaworthy, they instantly instituted a survey. The practical result was that 264 ships had been stopped, and out of these 234 had been adjudged to be unseaworthy. Considering the haste with which this difficult and delicate duty had been imposed on the Board of Trade, he was astonished that there should have been so few mistakes. Out of the 30 unadjudged vessels, 13 were still tinder inquiry, and only in five cases had compensation been granted on the ground that the charge had not been sustained. Six appeals had been made, and all withdrawn. The number of surveyors had been increased from 84 to 148, and every care had been taken to test their qualifications. No doubt it must often be very annoying to great shipowners to have any inquiries made respecting their vessels, but he must show the House how complaints of undue interference were got up. In a circular emanating from the North of England Steam Shipowners' Association the following passages occurred:—

"Our president, T. E. Smith, Esq., M.P., has given notice that on the 21st of April, he will Call the attention of the House of Commons to the increasing powers and responsibilities and the unsatisfactory constitution of the Marine Department of the Board of Trade, and move a Resolution. It is desirable that Mr. Smith should he supplied with as many facts bearing upon the subject as possible; and if you have Suffered from vexatious interference on the part of the Board of Trade officials I shall feel obliged by your sending me full details of the same, including names, places, dates, &c., in order that I may arrange and forward them to Mr. Smith at least a week previous to the day when the hon. Member proposes to address the House on this question."

This reminded him of a quack doctor in a market-place shouting out, "Is nobody ill?" The Chamber of Commerce of South Shields sent to the Board of Trade a memorial, in which they stated—

"That in many instances the surveyors appointed to carry this provision into execution are ignoring the spirit of the Act, and so interpreting and working it as to produce grievous loss, and it may be ruin, on many honest, thrifty, and experienced shipowners, whose vessels are well found and quite efficient, having regard to the nature of the service for which they are intended. Your memorialists, judging from the cases submitted to them of incapacity and undue interference on the part of the Board of Trade Surveyors, are convinced that persons have been appointed who do not possess the requisite practical knowledge of shipping matters or the peculiar qualifications that are so essential for the proper and satisfactory performance of the highly important duties pertaining to the office of surveyor."

To this the Board of Trade replied—

"These paragraphs contain a distinct charge against the Board of Trade officials, and the Board feel it their duty to call upon the memorialists to give a full, clear, and distinct statement of the cases to which they refer. When this is done the Board of Trade will, if it appears to be necessary, institute a strict and searching examination into those cases."

And the Chamber rejoined—

It was deemed undesirable, after weighing the tenour of your reply, to enter specifically into past cases of undue interference, inasmuch as many of the instances submitted to us have, we understand, been brought directly under your notice by the parties most intimately concerned."

Similar correspondence had taken place with other shipowning bodies with similar results. Nor had the shipowners made out any case of hardship before the Commission. The Board of Trade had taken all possible means of getting to the bottom of complaints, and they vanished when approached. The hon. Member for Tynemouth (Mr. T. E. Smith) complained of the regulations made by the Board for the survey of passenger steamers; but unless the Department laid down some regulations everything must be left to the discretion of the surveyors. The House would bear in mind that the Act of 1854 required a solemn declaration on the part of the surveyor that the passenger ship was in hull, machinery, and equipment sufficient for the service. An honest surveyor would, before making such a declaration, desire to be guided by efficient rules and regulations rather than act on his own discretion. And though in respect of the rules which had been attacked that evening the able Assistant Secretary of the Marine Department had to bear the brunt, still they were prepared by him in concert with experts of the highest authority; as, for instance, when there had been a question about the efficiency of chain cable testing machines, the action followed on the advice of Sir William Armstrong, and the rule for the strength of boilers was adopted on the advice of Sir William Fairbairn. He would not pretend to say that the survey was the best that could be devised. For his own part, he confessed he thought that the survey of those ships in the interest of ignorant passengers was, to a certain extent, antagonistic to the general principle that the Government should not interfere with private enterprise. It was an exceptional action imposed by Parliament, in the public interest, on the Board, and the least satisfactory part of the duty it had to perform. While, however, Parliament imposed the duty, the Board should endeavour to place the best possible rules before their surveyors for their guidance, and in no case theoretical rules, but only such as were of recognized necessity for safety. If by better payment of the surveyors or an alteration in the present system the survey could be improved, no one would rejoice more than himself. The two subjects which had been so fully discussed were now before a competent tribunal of inquiry—namely, the Royal Commission on Unseaworthy Ships. That Commission had largely entered into those particular subjects, and were about to make their Report. He thought they should have that Report in their hands before proceeding to further inquiry, and he hoped, therefore, the hon. Member for Tynemouth would, under the circumstances, be content with the very useful debate which had taken place, and not press his Motion to a division.

said, he thought that if the Inquiry for which his hon. Friend (Mr. T. E. Smith) asked took place either this year or next, it should not be confined to the Marine Department of the Board of Trade, but extend to its entire constitution. He (Mr. Norwood) trusted that when the Report of the Royal Commission was laid before the House a more satisfactory state of the law would ensue. He was strongly of opinion that, instead of a Trade Department, a Minister of Trade and Commerce should be appointed, who would hold the rank of a Cabinet Minister. If that step were not adopted, at least the President of the Board of Trade should hold a position equal to that of the other Heads of Departments. At the same time, he would bear his testimony to the general ability and care bestowed by the officers of the Board of Trade, and especially of the Marine Department, upon duties of great delicacy.

was also of opinion that the scope of the Inquiry, whenever it took place, should be extended to the administration of the various branches of duty committed to the Board of Trade. The hon. Member for Derby (Mr. Plimsoll) was absent in consequence of indisposition; but, if he had been present, he would have borne testimony to the remarkable efficiency with which Mr. Gray discharged his duties at the Board of Trade.

agreed that it might be premature to enter into the proposed Inquiry while a Royal Commission was sitting. He should, therefore, not put the House to the trouble of dividing.

, in moving for leave to bring in a Bill to make provision for more effectually securing the Ulster Tenant-Right, and to amend "The Landlord and Tenant (Ireland) Act, 1870," said, that he intended to revert to the old practice of making a statement as to the nature of his Bill on asking leave to introduce it. In introducing this measure, he did not intend to undervalue the Irish Land Act. That Act had established great principles, and had done much good; but, at the same time, no one would pretend to say that it could be accepted as a final and complete settlement of the Irish land question, and he believed that a very large majority of the Irish Members were more or less under engagements to their constituents to seek Amendments of the Land Act in very essential particulars. That Act had failed to give to the tenant that security of tenure without which there never could be real peace and contentment in Ireland; it had failed in staying emigration and in checking capricious evictions. By the Bill he proposed to submit to the House, he proposed to amend the provisions of the Land Act relating to the Ulster tenant-right. He also proposed—although he did so with hesitation—that something like it should be extended to the rest of Ireland. The Ulster custom, as it was termed, was a very peculiar one, and was of some interest, both historically and politically. It had existed for a long period; and under it the tenant from year to year was able before the passing of the Land Act to sell his interest in his holding often for a larger sum than his landlord could obtain for the land. Although it was not backed by the force of law, it had operated effectually as a custom in the counties of Antrim, Down, and Armagh; and he might here say, in answer to the statement so often made of small farms being the bane of Ireland, that in Armagh they numbered more than the rest of Ireland put together, and yet its population was numerous and prosperous. The county of Down was equally so, and from them both sprung the great and flourishing town of Belfast. The market value of this property of the tenants in their holdings under this custom amounted to no less than £20,000,000. The Land Act itself gave no information as to the custom; but it was left to the tribunals which were to administer that Act to find out by evidence what the custom was and to give it the force of law. It might be taken as established by the decisions of the Land Court in Ireland that under this custom the tenant had a right to sell his interest in his farm; that the landlord had a right to exercise some choice in the selection of the in-coming tenant and in the application of the purchase-money; that the landlord could never take possession of his tenant's holding without paying the market value of his tenant's interest in it; and that the landlord could not raise the rent so as to interfere with the value of his interest. What was the origin of this extraordinary custom? He believed it was to be traced back to the original colonization of Ulster in the time of James I. That was the opinion of the late respected Mr. W. Sharman Crawford, who did so much to extend to the other Provinces of Ireland the benefits of the Ulster custom, and whoso son all were happy to see in that House. Another authority on the same point was Mr. Senior, some time a Poor Law Commissioner in Ireland; and there was, he believed, no doubt on the subject. All the grants made by King James to the persons who undertook to colonize Ulster prohibited them from letting their lands at will, and no tenure was to be of less duration than for three lives of 21 years. "The undertakers" to whom King James made these grants did not fulfil the conditions imposed by the grants; but though they failed to do what the grants bound them to do—namely, to give leases to their tenants—yet they durst not disturb their tenants in the occupation of their farms. He believed the Ulster tenant-right arose from the non-fulfilment of the conditions imposed on "the undertakers" of the Ulster plantation. Sometimes the tenantry openly rebelled against attempts to deprive them of the benefits of the Ulster custom. The landlords well knew that the tenants would resort to violence if what they believed to be their rights with reference to the Ulster custom were interfered with. In 1870, Lord Donegall exacted fines on the renewal of leases beyond what the custom sanctioned, and the consequence was an insurrection. A body, called the "Hearts of Steel," assembled, and broke down fences, and when the ringleaders were placed in Belfast Gaol, 100,000 of these men presented themselves and demanded and obtained their release. Afterwards some of the rioters were indicted for high treason, but a northern jury acquitted them; and the end of all was that Lord Donegall renewed the leases at the old prices. It was chiefly by the bravery and valour of men who had been driven from Ireland in consequence of disturbances originating in landlords' wishes to evade the Ulster custom that the great British Colony in North America was wrested from the British Crown. Several witnesses who were examined before the Devon Commission said they believed that any attempt to interfere with the Ulster Custom would lead to violence. A question had arisen under the Irish Land Act as to the real value of the tenant-right which had been recognized by it. This was a matter of immense importance, owing to circumstances of recent occurrence. In 1843 a Commission was issued by Sir Robert Peel's Government directing an inquiry in regard to land and tenant-right in Ireland, and on the nature of the Ulster tenant-right being by this means brought to light, many of the landlords were impressed with the notion that an embryo copyhold was growing up against them. Strong steps were, in consequence, taken by some of them to prevent the continuance of the custom. The tenant had hitherto been at liberty to sell his interest in the farm for the highest price he could get from the man who, with the approval of the landlord, succeeded him. To this old practice some of the landlords continued to adhere, but others had begun to limit the price, sometimes to a very small figure. This infringement of the custom amounted to a simple confiscation of the rights of the tenant, and the tenantry of Ulster very naturally complained of it. To remedy the evil he desired to propose that it should be declared illegal to impose any restriction on the price or on the manner of sale, unless the restriction had been customary for a period of not less than 40 years. It seemed to him, as a lawyer, that the Land Act intended to clothe the Ulster tenant-right with an authority similar to that of the local laws existing in various parts of England, and that it did not mean a practice which had been begun, perhaps, only a year before, but a custom which had existed through many generations. There were only nine clauses relating to Ulster tenant-right in the proposed Bill. Other two clauses, however, had been inserted, one of which extended to town holdings the law relating to tenant-right. It sometimes, though not often, happened that a tenant-right did exist in practice in connection with such holdings, and it was to these that the Bill would apply. He had known large sums of money expended on the faith of the custom continuing. There was another provision to which he attached great importance. It embodied an important principle, and that was that the Ulster tenant-right might be enforced not only in tribunals under the Land Act, but whenever it happened incidentally to arise before any of the Courts of Law or Equity. He proposed that the question should be set at rest as to whether tenant-right took effect after lease. It had been decided by Chief Justice Monaghan that the lease was no bar; and in this Bill he proposed to declare that it should not be so where the custom had previously existed. Such were the provisions of the Bill relating to tenant-right in Ulster, and every one of those provisions would, he believed be found to be just, and not to go beyond the principles which had been laid down in the Land Act. He came, in the next place, to a more difficult part of the subject, and that was the application of the Ulster tenant-right to other parts of Ireland. To extend it pure and simple would obviously be nugatory, and what ought to be done therefore was to apply to the rest of Ireland the principles on which it was based. He found in a work written by the present Lord Chief Justice of Ireland, describing his travels in Italy, allusion made to the effect which was produced by the wise law of the Emperor Joseph, by which tenants were made owners in perpetuity. The learned Judge went on to say that it would not be creditable to the collective wisdom of England if no attempt were made on a comprehensive scale, for the improvement of Ireland, adding that if the custom called tenant-right was good for Ulster, its principle should be fearlessly applied to the other Provinces of that country. Now, it was difficult to make that application; but he should propose that, as the House had already sanctioned the payment of compensation to the tenant on eviction, the measure of that compensation should in every case be taken as if the tenant held his land at a fair rent, and under a protection analogous to that of the Ulster tenant. He proposed further to allow the landlord to escape from that if he permitted the tenant to sell his interest, as the Ulster tenant, at a fair rent, and to let the holding then be subject to the tenant-right the landlord would have thus created by his own voluntary act. He did not mean to say that was all which would be required, and he should wish to obtain upon it the opinion of the Irish people. There was great difficulty in legislating in the matter for the rest of Ireland, and he was by no means prepared to contend that he had succeeded in surmounting that difficulty; but he believed that, if there were not some corresponding protection to that existing in Ulster extended to Ireland generally, a very dangerous policy would be pursued. While submitting the provisions he had indicated, he proposed to make certain changes in regard to the working of the Land Act. He proposed to repeal altogether the clauses of the Act which allowed a tenant rated over £50 to "contract himself out" of its provisions, which was offering an inducement to landlords to consolidate farms, to drive out small holders, and which tended to increase emigration. He regretted very much, he might add, that on many large estates in Ireland compensation for past improvements had been taken away, and that new agreements had been sent round to tenants to be signed, by which means they were entrapped into giving up a right to receive compensation to which they were fairly entitled. That was a matter which the House would feel was entitled to consideration. Again, a tenant was allowed compensation for improvements made by himself or his predecessor; but the Courts had put upon that the construction that if, at any previous time, the tenant surrendered his holding, his claim to all the improvements was cut off. He had therefore framed a clause to prevent his right of compensation being barred in that way. The Land Act also contained a provision that the tenant might be evicted without compensation if he violated any rule of the estate. Many of the rules of an estate were arbitrary laws made by the landlord, in some cases prohibiting the tenant from marrying without the consent of the agent, prohibiting him from giving any one a night's lodging without the same consent, and, in fact, regulating the most minute affairs of the tenant's household. He might mention the case of a boy of 13 years, against whom that rule was enforced. The boy was a stranger, and he applied at the houses of several tenants to be allowed shelter for the night. Deterred by the rule, and apprehensive of the consequences which it threatened, they refused to admit the boy. A poor widow, moved by compassion, admitted him; but the tenants came to her, and said—"If you allow that boy to remain in your house to-night we will be all ejected from the estate." The woman was alarmed, the boy was obliged to leave her house, and what was the result? The poor boy was found dead next morning. He (Mr. Butt) did not like to mention names, but he mentioned facts. He proposed therefore to repeal that provision of the Land Act and also to make some other alterations in the procedure of that statute into which he need not then enter. He was sensible that his measure was not an adequate dealing with the land system of Ireland; but there was no time to be lost in grappling with that question, because emigration was now fast draining away the best portion of the population of that country. They must not mistake the temporary palliative of the Land Act for the permanent redress of the grievances existing under the land system. They should give security of tenure to tenants in Ireland, such as was enjoyed by tenants in other countries. There was now no security of tenure for a tenant that he would not be evicted. Only give the tenant security and the land in Ireland would be rendered by their skill, energy, and industry infinitely more productive than it was under the existing system. The Governors of our Colonies bore testimony to the unwearying and successful industry of the Irish cultivator when he enjoyed security of tenure. The hon. and learned Gentleman concluded by moving for leave to bring in the Bill.

assented, on the part of the Government, to the introduction of the Bill; but he wished it to be understood that this did not imply agreement with the views of the hon. and learned Member who introduced it, or the reasoning with which he supported it.

, in moving for leave to bring in a Bill to provide for compensation to workpeople of joint-stock companies and of private employers of labour in cases of accident arising from causes beyond the control of the person employed, and occurring during the hours of lawful employment, said, his object was to facilitate the means of effecting compensation in cases of persons who met with injuries in the service of their employers, in cases wherein the injury was not caused by rash acts of their own. He might say that there was much—very much to be modified and mitigated in cases of accidents. It was only a few days ago, that the case of a boy, who was injured by an accident, was brought under his notice. The injury was serious; but the boy failed to get any compensation, and was living upon charity. It had been said that when persons took employment, they took it with all the risk that attached to it. That might be true in some cases; but the tendency of legislation now was rather against the capitalist. He did not propose to do anything which would place a distinct burden upon the shoulders of the capitalists or the employer, but rather to define a risk which was at present indefinite, and by so doing rather to diminish litigation than to encourage it. He proposed, therefore, to do away with those impediments which prevented a person injured during his employment suing his employer, but to limit the amount of compensation recoverable to a sum not exceeding a year's wages or salary receivable by the person who had been killed or injured. To simplify the mode of recovery he proposed to extend the jurisdiction of the County Courts in order to enable them to deal easily and cheaply with the cases as they arose, and believing that in most cases it would not be a matter of litigation, but of friendly arrangement, he further proposed to give power to the employer to make a settlement with the relatives of the man who had been killed, or with the injured man himself. He proposed to insert a clause fixing a limit of time, after which no claim should be made, so that there should be no contingent liability hanging over an em- ployer's head. The Bill would apply to working women as well as working men.

rose to call the attention of the House to the Minute of the Committee of Council on Education, substituting the Third Standard of the Education Code for the Fifth Standard as the standard to be reached by the children of out-door paupers, and to move—

"That, in the opinion of this House, it is undesirable that the Guardians of the Poor should be relieved from the duty of providing for the education of the children of parents in the receipt of out-door relief under section 3 of 'The Elementary Education Act Amendment Act (1873)' as soon as those children reach so low a standard as the Third Standard of the Education Code."

The hon. Member said, he was sorry that the first action he had to take in the new Parliament should be apparently to offer any opposition to his noble Friend (Viscount Sandon), who so worthily represented the Education Department in that House. The appointment of his noble Friend when the present Government came into office was hailed with the greatest satisfaction on both sides of the House, for most of them remembered the part his noble Friend took at the London School Board and in the education debates in the last Parliament; therefore he regretted that his (Mr. Kay-Shuttleworth's) Motion should in any way be hostile to him. So long ago as the 18th and 19th year of Her Majesty's reign, an Act was passed by Mr. Denison to provide for the education of the children of persons in receipt of out-door relief. That was a measure of a hopeful character and a good deal was expected from it, and probably the reason why it, had had so little effect was because it was permissive, leaving guardians to take advantage of it or not just as they pleased. Last Session, however, his right hon. Friend the Member for Bradford (Mr. W. E. Forster) brought in a Bill which repealed that Act, and provided by its 3rd section that when out-door relief was given by the guardians to the parents of any child between five and 13 years of age, or to any such child, it should be a condition for the continuance of such relief that the child should receive elementary education in reading, writing, and arithmetic. But there were certain exemptions from the liability of the guardians, the principal exemption being that when a child had reached such a standard of education as might from time to time be fixed for the purpose of this Act, by the bye-laws of school boards, or where there were no such bye-laws by Minute of the Education Department, the guardians should be exempt from the duty of sending the child to school any more. His right hon. Friend and his Colleagues issued a Minute on the subject in December last, which fixed the point of exemption at the Fifth Standard of the Education Code, and that Standard required certain proficiency in reading, writing, and arithmetic—namely, reading a short ordinary newspaper paragraph, writing the same or ten fines of verse slowly dictated, and being able to do sums in simple and compound rules and in practice, and to make out bills of parcels. When the new Ministry came into office they issued a new Minute, which repealed the Minute of his right hon. Friend and substituted the Third Standard for the Fifth, thereby most seriously lowering the scale of proficiency in reading, writing, and arithmetic, to be required before releasing children under 13 from attendance at school. Now, practically, it was found that children passed from one Standard to another in the course of one year, so that the effect of lowering the standard from the Fifth to the Third was to reduce the child's education by two years. Another Act was passed last year—the Agricultural Children Act—under which an imperfect half-time system of work and education was provided for children in the rural districts. That Act—imperfect, timid, a compromise as it was—laid down the Fourth Standard as the one that should be reached by children in the agricultural districts. They were cither to be 12 years of age or to reach the Fourth Standard before they could be employed full time. He did not know whether his noble Friend had had his attention called to one of the cones- quences of the Minute he had issued as affected by the Agricultural Children Act. The Board of Guardians would be obliged by this Act to send a child under 12 who was employed in agricultural work to school until he could pass the Fourth Standard; but, under the Minute of his noble Friend, it was absolutely impossible for the guardians to provide means to enable the child to go to school after he had passed the Third Standard. The consequence was, there was nobody whatever to pay for the education of this child after it had passed the Third Standard and until it had reached the Fourth. He was very anxious to hear how his noble Friend was going to get over that difficulty. When this Minute was issued, the Agricultural Children Act was entirely forgotten, though it was the very last thing that should be forgotten by hon. Gentlemen opposite, seeing that one of their own Colleagues (Mr. Clare Read) took such an honourable and prominent part in passing the Act. He was one of those who contended that all our standards were too low, and that we must not be content to rest where we were. He did not expect we should advance very rapidly; but he did look for constant, if slow progress. He had been much impressed by what had been told the House by the hon. Member for Sheffield (Mr. Mundella) and others, of the standards which other countries had been able to attain, and thought we should imitate them. He doubted very much whether this Third Standard represented half education. He thought it represented something lower. His noble Friend and his Colleagues ought to have looked for guidance in this matter to the school boards in the Provinces. They acted with local experience; they had practical knowledge of all the difficulties. What standard had they laid down under the power given them by the Education Act for framing bye-laws compelling school attendance? One of these bye-laws usually provided that at a certain standard children should be exempted from attendance at school. He had examined the bye-laws of a number of school boards, and the result was this. He had taken at hazard 29 school boards who had adopted compulsory bye-laws, and he found that of these only one laid down the Third Standard as the limit at which a child might be exempted from further attendance at school, and that was the board of an agricultural village in Norfolk. Five had fixed the Fourth Standard, and no fewer than 19 the Fifth. In 11 out of the 19 there was a provision that the children, after attaining the Fourth Standard, might attend school only half-time; but two, one of which was Bradford and the other Bodmin, to their great honour, had fixed the Sixth Standard. Bodmin provided that after reaching the Fifth Standard, the children should have to attend school only two days in the week, and Bradford that they should attend half-time. In two cases there was no exemption at any Standard. In short, the predominant opinion of the school boards seemed to be that children should attend school until they had reached the age of 13—some boards fixed 12—or had passed the Fifth Standard; and he hoped the time was not distant when no school board would be content with less than the Sixth Standard. He was rather curious to hear what vindication could be offered by his noble Friend for this hasty alteration of a Minute issued so recently as December, 1873, by his right hon. Friend the Member for Bradford, and for a course which instead of encouraging school boards to oblige children to attend school until they reached the age of 13, or had really had a fair education, would set an evil example to school boards of releasing children from school before they were half educated. He trusted his noble Friend would not at the outset of his official career identify himself with a retrograde and deplorable movement, but that before the end of the debate he would make such a statement as would save the House from the trouble of going to a Division. If his noble Friend should not give a satisfactory explanation of his policy, he would take the sense of the House on the Resolution which he now begged to move.

, in seconding the Resolution, said, that no question more important in the interests of education could be submitted to the House. The Resolution so ably moved by his hon. Friend dealt with a Minute which he ventured to designate as most untoward, and which, if it had any meaning at all, was intended to paralyze that movement in the direction of improved education which it had been the strenuous effort of his right hon. Friend the Member for Bradford (Mr. W. E. Forster) to create. The Minute of the noble Lord opposite (Viscount Sandon) contravened, he maintained not only the words, but the spirit of the Act of 1872, and of the supplementary Act of last Session. It was distinctly stated in the 3rd clause of that Act that Standard IV. was the lowest up to which children of parents in agricultural districts were to be educated. That clause was approved of by an hon. Member who was not an enthusiastic educationist, but a practical man, who knew well the real wants of children in those districts, and there was a distinct reference to them in the Act. By a most disingenuous construction, however, these words had been made to mean the very opposite of what was intended, and the standard had been lowered when the intention of the Legislature was to raise it. Apart from the legal aspect of the question there was the moral side of it, and he would ask upon what grounds the reduction of the Standard from V. to III. could possibly be justified? They must know perfectly well that Standard III. was an illusory standard, especially in the case of children in agricultural districts. It was an education which could never penetrate their hearts or exercise any influence upon their lives; it would be a mere bit of veneering or coat of varnish. They had not the grounds before them on which his noble Friend the Vice President had based assent to this Minute; and he therefore could not help anxiously asking the question whether they were to take it as the foreshadowing of a retrograde policy on the part of the new Government? He told his noble Friend that it would be presumptuous in him to tamper with the policy laid down by his predecessor in office, and yet they found the Minute was dated the 17th of March, a very few days after he took office. The subject appeared to him to be a grave and serious one, affecting as it did at least 200,000 children belonging to the poorest classes in the agricultural districts, and he trusted they would hear a satisfactory explanation from the Government. He should cordially support the Motion of his hon. Friend.

said, his noble Friend (Viscount Sandon) would explain presently the reasons which had induced him to issue this Minute. He thought his noble Friend, considering the exertions which he had made in the cause of education, might have obtained credit from the last two speakers for a desire to stand by the principles which he had always maintained, and for having no wish to break down the principles on which the national system of education was based. He (Mr. Sclater-Booth) wished to point out that the obligation of providing education for the children of parents in the receipt of out-door relief fell, not upon school boards, but upon the guardians of the poor. He might add that the substitution of the Third for the Fifth Standard had been very much pressed on his noble Friend by himself. Boards of Guardians in different parts of the country had represented that they had experienced the greatest difficulty in bringing the children in question under the operation of the system. They found, on the one hand, that parents were discharging themselves from relief in order that they might still enjoy the earnings of their children [Opposition cheers]; but, on the other hand, they complained of the great expense that would be cast upon the ratepayers if parents were to be deprived of the earnings of their children. It was thought, therefore, important that the Act should be put into operation in the most tentative manner. Hon. Gentlemen opposite cheered when he said that parents discharged themselves from relief rather than submit to the alteration in the law; but the fact told in favour of his argument, because the children of parents receiving out-door relief ought to be in the workhouse schools, which were highly efficient and maintained at great cost to the ratepayers. All parents of children receiving out-door relief were not paupers in the strict meaning of the word. He had lately had an ap- plication to know whether a man earning full wages was to he considered as coming within the operation of the Act because on account of one of his six children who was blind or an idiot he was in receipt of some relief. They decided that it must be so. Yet that was clearly a perversion of the intention of the Legislature. Surely the man ought to have paid for the education of his children. It did not follow that as soon as a child reached the Third Standard he would be in a position inconsistent with his hon. Friend's (Mr. Read's) Act; because if he sought employment as an agricultural labourer he would be prevented from obtaining it, and would then finish his education at the workhouse school, or pressure would be put upon the parents to finish his education for him. It was desirable that the education provided under the Act of last year should not be of the highest standard. Besides, this was only a temporary alteration of the Minutes of Council. It was certainly the intention of his noble Friend, and it was his intention in urging his noble Friend to make the alteration, that it should not be harsh in its operation either as regarded the parents or guardians. A Circular had been issued to the guardians on the subject by the Local Government Board, the effect of which he would leave his noble Friend to describe. He repeated, he thought it highly expedient that the education to be provided in this abnormal way for the children of parents receiving out-door relief should not be of the same standard as that provided by the school boards. Having advised his noble Friend to make the alteration in question, he was anxious thus early to bear his share of the responsibility.

said—I believe that the mistake which the President and Vice President of the Council have committed is largely due to the disjointed manner in which the education of this country is carried on. Here we have the case of two distinct Departments dealing with the education of pauper children—the Committee of Council and the Local Government Board. The latter, having had long experience of the education of paupers, could have given abundant testimony as to the effects of low and high education in the training of paupers; but, until the President of the Local Government Board spoke, I believed that he had not been consulted by the Committee of Council when they prepared their Minute of March. If he were, then his recommendation to fix a low standard of education for paupers is against all the published Reports and experiences for the last 20 years. Under the old parochial system, when education was limited to a low standard, very much resembling that of Standard III., scarcely more than a third of pauper children could be traced to places of productive employment. Pauperism and mendicancy passed from generation to generation, and one of the most effective means to break up this vicious succession was to educate children to a much higher standard than had been previously attempted. Accordingly, the union schools were altered in character. The children were no longer treated as educational paupers, but were taught history, geography, grammar, and other subjects of a higher kind. Under the old system of low education, 50 to 60 per cent of the children of the workhouse schools were returned on the hands of the guardians as unprofitable servants. Under the new and higher education of the best union schools not more than 3 or 4 per cent were so returned. Allow me to make a single quotation from the evidence of Mr. Tufnel, the Inspector of Union Schools, He says—

"Many persons object, as to the book knowledge communicated in the schools, that we are over-educating the children: but my reply has always been that I never wished them to receive more education than is necessary to ensure that they shall never become paupers again. If we educate them so that they fall below this mark, we probably entail upon the parish the expense of £200 or £300 in each ease when a failure lakes place. Now, as the difference of the cost between a good and bad education is not more than about 30s. a-year for each child, I maintain that it is excessively uneconomical, putting aside higher motives of Christianity or morality, to under-educate the child for the sake of this miserable saving."

This, then, is the argument of the Inspector who has the most extended and varied experience of our pauper schools—that a high education is economical and productive to industry, and a low education wasteful and productive only of a new generation of paupers. I confess my surprise that this truth has to be repeated at the present time, for the evidence in support of it is so overwhelming that I am embarrassed in dealing with it. I content myself with referring to a single instance, which is described in the evidence given before the Agricultural Employment Commission. Those Members in this House who have passed middle age will have a lively remembrance of the wretched condition of the Scilly Islands some 30 or 40 years ago. The inhabitants were always on the verge of starvation, and were kept alive in winter by constant contributions from the mainland. For generation after generation these wretched islanders had been paupers. Why is it that no cry of destitution reaches us from these islands now? Because Mr. A. Smith, once a Member of this House, in addition to agricultural improvements, introduced a high system of education among the inhabitants on a compulsory system introduced and upheld by himself. In the schools of these islands education did not end with Standard III., but included history, geography, the elements of mathematics and navigation. The children educated at these schools were uplifted from the slough of pauperism, and became eagerly sought for by the employers of productive labour, and by ships which stopped at the Seilly Islands for the purpose of obtaining such well-educated boys. Pauperism wholly disappeared from the islands, and when the Agricultural Commission made its Report it was stated that it was difficult to find persons poor enough to accept the offerings made at the Communion Service. With such evidence before us as to the effect of low education in continuing generations of paupers, and of higher education in uplifting them from their degraded condition, this late action of the Committee of Council is incomprehensible. It is altogether inconsistent with the position which the State has taken up in regard to national education. Formerly, when the State contributed small sums to schools throughout the country, it doled out money to education as it doled out charity to paupers, and it was not surprising if education was stinted in its character. But when Parliament determined that education should become a national concern and a national duty, the relations of the State to education became altogether different. Then the purpose of the State was to obtain well-educated citizens, capable of adding to the production powers of the nation. When compulsion was added to the educational system, it became a logical necessity that the education of our schools should be raised. To compel a child to remain at school to 13 merely to learn a standard which ought to be reached at nine years of age, would be an unmitigated tyranny. Schools under a compulsory law must offer education adequate at least to the extent of the age at which compulsion ceases. As this improved condition of education which follows as a corollary the enactment of compulsion does not yet exist in our primary schools, Parliament has been pleased, as in the present case, to relieve children from compulsion when they have attained a certain standard. That standard was fixed by my right hon. Friend the late Vice President of the Council (Mr. W. E. Forster) at Standard V. which requires a child to read a short paragraph from a newspaper, to write a sentence on dictation, and to do sums in practice. Can any boy be fairly launched into the world in a less unprepared state with hopes for the future, especially when he has been taken out of the ranks of pauperism, with all its depressing influences? The noble Lord the new Vice President of the Council (Viscount Sandon) apparently thinks he can, for my noble Friend is satisfied with two standards lower. But if the Reports of his own Inspectors, again and again repeated in their annual Reports, are to be believed, such a low standard of education is rubbed off in three years' wear and tear of life, and the cost of giving it is wholly wasted to the nation. It has been contended that the 73rd section of the Scotch Education Act is much the same as the Minute of March. It is no such thing. That clause enables one of Her Majesty's Inspectors to liberate a child upon a certificate from him that it can read, write, and do elementary arithmetic. But there is no Inspector in this Kingdom, certainly not in Scotland, that would give a certificate to this effect for a child that could only pass Standard III. The Act of last year, which we fondly hoped might secure education to out-door pauper children, will merely result in unproductive extravagance, if this low standard of education be held out as sufficient for pauper children. Besides this evil, which is large enough, there is another of far greater magnitude involved in the recent Minute of the Committee of Council. By the Act of last Session the State put itself and the local government of the country in loco parentis to pauper children, and became responsible for their education. Surely it is a most serious and responsible act for the State to tell the whole parents of the nation that they may be satisfied if their children attain Standard III., and that they may be justified in removing them from school; but that is actually what the Committee of Council do by their Minute. They announce that they, acting in loco parentis, are satisfied with Standard III., and the parents throughout the Kingdom will not be slow in imitating this example. Now, if this be the result, as it is probable it will be, of the action taken by the Education Department, then it is useless for us to vote from year to year upwards of £2,000,000 for primary education in the country, for it is beyond the region of doubt that children who leave schools with no other attainment than the lower standards can make no use of them in future life, and will grow up ignorant men and women. Last year we were induced to make a great effort to mitigate the pauperism of the country by means of education. The pauperism of this country, and the misery which hangs upon its outskirts, is a terrible evil, and one which cannot be mitigated without much effort. The age of miracles is past, and we cannot remove mountains by a large faith in our little doings. The burden of pauperism is heavy upon England, and requires every force which we can apply to remove it. Last year we gave to the Committee of Council powers to apply their hand to the removal of this burden; but when we find the new Committee shutting their hands and applying a little finger to the task, educationalists may well despair. The House has now the opportunity of deciding whether it is wise to relax our efforts in a manner opposed to all past educational experience.

was of opinion that the introduction of this Minute was due to the exigencies of a Department of the State, as shown by the speech of his right hon. Friend (Mr. Sclater-Booth), rather than to the dictates of the judgment of the Vice President of the Council, whose contributions to national education had always shown that the noble Lord had at heart the best interests of the persons immediately affected by that Minute. He (Mr. Pease) agreed with the right hon. Gentleman (Mr. Lyon Playfair) that there could be no doubt that the low standards of education and the great want of education throughout the country had produced our pauperism, and that if they were continued we should still increase our paupers instead of bringing them up useful, honest, and intelligent citizens; it was particularly upon that ground that he opposed the standard now proposed to be adopted. In carrying out Denison's Act, when it was permissive, the Boards of Guardians had no restrictions placed upon them, and when the limit of even the Fifth Standard was placed on them it was a limit, and by this Minute a still further limit was placed on the Boards; consequently, in many unions the pauper child would be deprived of advantages that it had enjoyed. In many instances the Board of Guardians had done more good among the pauper children than the standard of the Council of Education would do for them. They were told that this was a paupers' question; but he contended that it was a great national question, involving the future rather than the present. No doubt the requirements of the law were complied with by this Minute; but it was in the letter and not in the spirit of the Act which made Denison's Act compulsory.

said, he could not help thinking that some of the remakes used in this debate were sensational rather than distinguished by practical utility. The Act of last Session made that compulsory, which was before optional under Denison's Act, and provided that a certain amount of education should be given. He would remind the House that this question did not relate to children in work-house schools, but to an entirely different class—namely, the children of out-door paupers. To children brought up in workhouse schools the State might be said to stand in loco parentis; but he denied that it stood in that relation to the children of out-door paupers. The section provided that—

"It should be a condition of the continuance of relief that elementary education in reading, writing, and arithmetic should he provided for each child."

Were not these requirements amply provided for by the Minute of his noble Friend? ["No!"] What was elementary education but reading, writing, and arithmetic—and was it not amply provided for by the simpler standard of the Code? If such sums in "Practice" as were given in many of these schools were part of "elementary education," all he could say was that his education had been grievously neglected. The right hon. Gentleman the Member for the University of Edinburgh (Mr. Lyon Playfair) said that if these children were only educated under this standard they would become unproductive members of society and lose all the education they had got; but he could not help remarking that that observation did not come very well from the front Opposition Bench, the occupants of which had done so much to discourage night schools, which were intended to supplement the education provided in the elementary schools. Some very startling disclosures had been made on this subject, for it appeared that night schools which were very flourishing a few years ago had I been so much discouraged by the right hon. Gentleman (Mr. W. E. Forster) that they now received only half the amount of the grant formerly made to them. It might be said that most of the parents receiving out-door relief, whose children were now in question, ought never to be paupers at all; and in this opinion he was disposed, speaking broadly, to concur; but he challenged any hon. Gentleman to bring forward a practical system for doing away altogether with out-door relief. One section of persons receiving this relief were those who had been reduced by accident or illness to destitution, and the first duty of their children as they grew up was to contribute to the necessities of their parents. Practical persons—not mere theoretical philanthropists—would consider whether on reaching the Third Standard, these children might not help to provide for their parents' necessities, especially if they were the children of widows struggling for a livelihood, instead of advancing to a standard which would not, after all, give them intellectual proficiency. He was sure the House would approve the Minute, as combining a moderate amount of elementary education with the primary duty of maintenance of parents, though, as time went on, a higher standard might be hoped for.

said, he was anxious to recognize the services of the Vice President of the Council in the cause of education and the great interest he took in the question, and it was on this very ground that he was wholly unable to comprehend the aim and object of the Minute of 18th March in this year. He thought the House and the country were entitled to have solid and substantial reasons given for so summarily repealing the Minute of December last, which decided that Standard V. should be the limit of exemption under the Elementary Education Act Amendment Act, 1873, and deciding that Standard III. should be sufficient. It was important to consider what the undoubted effect of this new Minute would be. In his opinion, it must tend to lower the standard of education throughout the country, because it would be alleged and believed that, in the opinion of the Government and of those having the direction of educational matters, the Third Standard was a sufficient qualification for all children. It had occurred to him that the general opinion of the country upon this point might be tested in some degree by looking through the bye-laws of school boards sanctioned by the Committee; of Council since the passing of the Elementary Education Act, and with that view he had carefully gone through the appendices to the Reports of the Committee of Council for Education for the years 1872 and 1873, and he found that out of 194 school boards whose bye-laws had been allowed, 125 had adopted Standard V. as the limit of compulsory attendance, 11 had adopted Standard VI., 47 had adopted Standard IV., and only four had adopted Standard III. Now, what did these figures show?—clearly, that public opinion in these districts where school boards had adopted bye-laws with compulsory powers, was practically unanimous in adopting a higher standard than the Third, and that being so, the great inconvenience would follow that we should have school boards where the standard of exemption was the Fourth, Fifth, or Sixth, whilst the Third was the normal Standard for the rest of the unions in which the school board district was situated. It was quite impossible to suppose that this state of things could go on; and as, in his opinion, Standard V. was already low enough, he considered the new Minute to be of a retrograde character, and damaging to the progress of education.

thanked hon. Members opposite for the friendly way in which they had alluded to his appointment. He had not expected that the debate on this subject would have taken so wide and important a scope; and he hoped the House would forgive him if he attempted to bring them down for a moment from the high flights of philanthropic aspiration in which some hon. Members had indulged, to the lower regions which, being in office, he had to deal with on the present occasion. The question was simply, in the first place, what was the character of the population that were affected by the subject, and, in the second place, how much of the population would the Minute embrace? Of the 22,000,000 which composed that population nearly 10,000,000 were already under the action of bye-laws, and therefore more or less under the influence of compulsion, and were not touched by the Minute. The population affected by by the Minute amounted to between 12,000,000 and 13,000,000. The last Returns brought the number of the children of out-door paupers up to about 140,000, so that they might suppose roughly that the Minute affected a population of between 70,000 and 80,000 children. They were orphans, children of old or permanently disabled parents, unmarried women, of prisoners, soldiers, and sailors, and persons out of work or suffering from long illness, a large proportion of them being the children of wives deserted by their husbands, or of widows. Returns showed that though of very tender age they were to a very large extent in service or work of some kind, earning from 2s. 6d. to 3s., 4s., and 4s. 6d. a week, and that was an important matter which should not be lost sight of when they were considering the question of taking these children, with their earnings, from their parents for a certain number of years. His right hon. Friend's proposal last December was to prevent their leaving school until they had passed the Fifth Standard of the Revised Code, which consisted in reading a short ordinary newspaper paragraph, writing from dictation a short newspaper paragraph or ten lines of verse, and doing sums in practice and bills of parcels. He had looked particularly to see what were the numbers of children who had passed this Fifth Standard, and he found that out of the 1,190,000 in attendance, only 40,500 had been offered for examination, and only 22,000 had passed. Then he went back to Standard IV., under which a few lines of poetry selected by the Inspector were to be read, a sentence slowly dictated once, by a few words at a time, from a reading book to be written, and compound rules in arithmetic; and he asked how did all the children in all the schools, including the best in the country, before the pauper children were brought upon them, pass this Standard? Why, out of the 1,190,000 in attendance, 74,800 were offered for examination, and only 42,000 passed. Under these circumstances, he asked was it wise or sensible to direct that when the best educated children in the country had so much difficulty in passing this Standard, we should compel the children of the out-door paupers either to pass it or to remain at school until they were 13 years of age? That meant to compel them to sacrifice all their earnings and to bring such inconvenience to the poorest and most degraded homes as would raise in the hearts of the parents the bitterest feeling with regard to the new educational scheme. He much doubted whether that would be a wise course to pursue. Then he passed to Standard III., to adopt which was supposed to put you in the black books of the friends of education. That Standard required a child to read a short paragraph from a more advanced reading book, to write a sentence slowly dictated once by a few words at a time from the same book, and to do sums in long division and compound money rules. How did the children in the country generally pass that Standard? Out of the 1,190,000 in attendance 620,000 were offered for examination and only 372,000 passed. Surely, when the children of the more highly educated classes found such difficulty in passing that Standard, it was not a fatal re-action to limit the requirements to be exacted from the out-door paupers to that Standard? What had been done in this matter? The Local Government Board, after full consideration of the subjects, issued a Circular on the 30th of March. 1874, forwarding the Minute of the 18th of March, in which they stated that the latter—

"fixes the third Standard for the years 1874 and 1875 only. The Board learns from the Educational Department that they will fix a higher standard of education for the subsequent years, and, in order to enable the Department to determine what standard shall be so fixed they have requested this Board to furnish them at the end of the current year with information as to the number of children who may he exempted from attendance at school as having reached the third Standard. The Board, therefore, must leanest the Guardians to keep such a record of these eases as will enable them hereafter to supply the information required."

The Lord President of the Council and himself had thought, therefore, that the best course was to require those children of out-door paupers to pass this Third Standard, as they found that so few of the higher educated children in the country could pass it. At the end of the year the Local Government Board, with whom they had acted in complete accordance, would inform them as to the number of out-door pauper children who had passed this Third Standard, and if necessary, in 18 months that standard would be raised. He admitted that that was not an heroic treatment of the question from the educational point of view; but when the very lowest class of people were being dealt with, it was necessary to proceed with the greatest possible caution. Although there had been a great deal of talk about compulsion, it must be remembered that every school board in the Kingdom was at its wits' end how to deal with this class of children. They let these children off on every possible excuse, and even if they sent their school teachers after them, they were not to be caught. These children were living from hand to mouth, and to keep them in school would be to starve them, unless they were supplied with food as well as with education. Therefore, he felt that in exercising caution in this matter they would be assisting rather than pushing back the great cause of education. But what were the objections to adopting the Third Standard for this class of children? It was said that the school boards would at once lower their Standards if such a course were adopted. He did not think that they would do anything so foolish. The standard, the school boards would know very well from his Minute embodied in the Circular to the Boards of Guardians only lowered to Standard III. for 18 months, and the greater portion of the children with whom the school boards had to deal were of a higher class than out-door pauper children. It was further objected that if the course proposed were adopted, the standard must be lowered for agricultural children under the Act of 1873, and that all agricultural children would have to be exempted after they had passed Standard IV. Agricultural children, however, were of a far higher class in the social scale than were outdoor pauper children, who were among the most unfortunate and ignorant of the population. It was further suggested that the Government had the power of making what conditions they pleased, seeing that they provided a portion of the funds which supported the schools; but what was their contribution compared with the earnings? Then it was suggested that the half-time system should be adopted; but the House would see that it would be a difficult matter to apply the system at once, and without much greater preparation, to out-door pauper children. As for the broad question of all, he could not express too strongly the importance which he attached to carrying the whole feeling of the population with them on this great question of education. Hon. Members on both sides of the House must be aware that the enthusiasm in favour of education was not so great at present as it was some time ago—that the interference by school boards with parents and children was creating a re-action which they would have to lament. [Dissent.] He could only express his own opinion on the subject. He wished to prevent that reaction going further, and therefore he thought that they were bound to do all they could by tact and management to prevent that feeling among the labouring classes from endangering the ultimate success of their educational schemes. As far as the Government were concerned, they thought it was their duty at the initiation of a new system of compulsion and interference with the labour of class unused to such treatment, to make the matter as simple as possible for these people for the next 18 months. He wished to remind hon. Members opposite that when the Act of 1870 was before the House he was the only person who brought forward an Amendment to make Denison's Act compulsory—the very Act which the Govern- ment three years after were obliged to make compulsory, and that he had been obliged by the attitude of the then Government to withdraw his proposal. He did not recollect that the hon. Members for Durham (Mr. Pease), Hastings (Mr. Kay-Shuttleworth), and Newark (Mr. Bristowe), gave him any encouragement on that occasion; and his right hon. Friend who was then Vice President of the Council (Mr. W. E. Forster), assured him that it was entirely a Poor Law affair. Children who could not pass the Third Standard must even now remain at school to the age of 13, and comparatively few, he was assured by the best authorities in the Education Department, were likely to pass even that Standard within the next 18 months. Great suffering, he thought, would be caused even by that regulation as to age, but that matter must be risked. He was not prepared to go beyond the decision which the Education Department had adopted until information was obtained next year as to the results of that decision. He was sorry to differ from so high an authority as his right hon. Friend opposite; but he felt confident that he (Mr. W. E. Forster) would give him the credit of having done what he thought was best under the circumstances, and would not think that he had been actuated by any of those dark ideas of re-action and pushing back the tide of education which some of his hon. Friends opposite had rashly and most unjustly attributed to him.

said, it was with regret that he had found himself in opposition to his successor in the Education Department. Considering the difficulty of the work which his noble Friend had to do, he thought his noble Friend deserved special sympathy. He fully believed that both the President and the Vice President of the Council were anxious to carry into effect the Education Act. If his noble Friend had had three or four months' experience of the work he had to do, he did not believe that this Minute would have been passed. He was bound to state to the House the ground on which he thought it right, on behalf of the Education Department, to issue the Minute which his noble Friend had deemed it his duty to cancel. His noble Friend the late President of the Council (Lord Aberdare) was not in London at the time that he (Mr. W. E. Forster) thought it necessary to issue the Minute; but he afterwards agreed to the step he took. Last year the House passed unanimously an Act providing for the education of the children of out-door paupers. He was rather alarmed to hear the right hon. Gentleman at the head of the Poor Law Board (Mr. Sclater-Booth) and the Vice President of the Council speak of those children as if less education was required for them than for other children. [Viscount SANDON dissented.] His noble Friend shook his head, but that appeared to him to be the purport of his remarks. In his (Mr. W. E. Forster's) opinion, there was no class of children for whom it was more necessary to provide education than for the children of parents who were unable to provide it for them; because such children, if uneducated, would be a source of trouble and expense and a nuisance to the rest of the community. In considering what should be the standard of education for such children, he did not for a moment forget those considerations which the right hon. Gentleman and the noble Lord had stated. But he knew that the House passed the Act with a knowledge of the inconveniences which had been referred to, and with a determination that the necessity of the parents should be relieved by an additional charge upon the rates, and that upon the whole it was better that a real education should be provided for these children than that it should not. He had also to bear in mind that as to the vast majority of these children, it was exceedingly unlikely that they would obtain any kind of knowledge except what they got at school, and therefore that such a standard should be adopted with regard to them as would require them to attend school sufficiently long to enable them, at least to read well. He maintained that the Standard which he fixed for them was the lowest standard that could be adopted to insure that the education given to those children who, when they left school, returned to the homes of uneducated parents, should be efficient. These children must be regarded as the children of parents who were unable to pay for their education, and the effect of the Act would be this—that it would not be in the power of guardians to pay for the education of these children after they had reached the standard defined by the Education Department. What he (Mr. Forster) said was, that he should take care that the money of the ratepayers was not wasted; that the Act should not become a delusion; and that the children should at least be able to read. His noble Friend had thought it right to cancel that Minute, and replace it by the Third Standard. Now, he had no hesitation in saying that every one of the Inspectors would confirm him in this—that under the Third Standard children returning to an uneducated home would soon lose the ability to read. He was well aware that one argument might be used against the Fifth Standard, and that was that the children might be at work. But that was an argument against the Act altogether. It was surely intended that a real education, and not a sham one, should be given to these children; and if the noble Lord had consulted the Secretary to the Poor Law Board, who brought in the Agricultural Children Act last year, he hardly thought he would have been advised to adopt the course he had taken. What was the position in which it placed the children under the operation of the Agricultural Children Act? The Agricultural Children Act of last year declared that after the 1st January next, no child under 10 years of age should be employed who had not attended school 250 times in the past year; and no child between 10 and 12 should be employed who had not attended 150 times—unless the child had passed the Fourth Standard. Well, what was the consequence? Any Inspector would go to a school in an agricultural district, and find that several children of out-door paupers attending it could pass the Third Standard. He would thereupon inform the Guardians of the fact, and they would then have no power to pay for the further education of these children. It must be assumed that the parents had no power to pay, and when January next year came, these children would not only not get their schooling, but they would also not get work, as the farmers would not be allowed to employ them. Surely this ought not to be. The noble Lord was, he feared, tinder a misapprehension when he spoke of the Act as applying only to places where there were no school boards, by which he, no doubt, meant boards with compulsory bye-laws. If he took the advice of the Law Officers of the Crown, he would probably not read it in that way. It said that the standard fixed by the Education Department was to apply to all places where there was not a bye-law passed for the purposes of this Act. Now there had been no bye-law passed anywhere for the purposes of this Act; and therefore the real effect seemed to be, that in Manchester, Bradford, Liverpool, and London, for example, the Guardians would not be able, unless fresh laws were enacted, to pay for the education of the children of out-door paupers after they had reached the Third Standard. Probably, on considering the matter, the noble Lord would see that he had in this way brought about a collision, which, no doubt, he would regret, between the action of the school boards and the action of the Department. It was but fair to acknowledge the difficulty with which the Education Department and the Poor Law Board had to contend. The object of the House had certainly been to secure a real education—that of reading, writing, and ciphering; they meant to do what was done by the Scotch Act—namely, that the children should not be released from compulsion until they were able to read and write, and had some elementary knowledge of arithmetic. No doubt there might be a hardship in taking the children away from work. To some extent there must be a hardship, and an additional burden cast upon the rates; but if the children received a proper training, the rates would eventually be relieved. The noble Lord might have met the difficulty without degrading the standard of education. He might have said that up to the ago of 10 the children must simply be taught, no regard being paid to standards, and that after that ago he would be satisfied with that number of attendances, which was made, by the Code he had laid upon the Table, the condition of the annual grant. It might have been laid down that the children must either reach the Fifth Standard or go regularly to school; or that they must produce a certificate from the school board or school managers that they had attended school 150 times in the course of the year. This last condition would have enabled work and schooling to go on together, which was the object desired by most hon. Members, and this would have been far better than degrading the standard, and sanctioning the principle of a low education. Even now it might not be too late to reconsider the question, and he hoped there would be some assurance given that this would be done. He was aware of the power of the Government; but if no disposition was shown to meet the objections that had been raised, he thought it would be the duty of hon. Members to protest, by their votes, against the course proposed to be taken. This course would really amount to a nullification of the Act passed last year, because the standard which children were now to reach was not education at all—it was not the power so to read that the acquirement would be kept in after life. He was sorry that his noble Friend, perhaps in the heat of discussion, had seemed to sanction the notion that we ought to be content with this miserable Third Standard. He stated how many had passed that Standard, and how many had been unable to pass it; but he forgot that a very great proportion of those who succeeded tried in the following year to pass in a higher Standard. The Third Standard had been framed in the hope that children under the age of 10 would reach it. The noble Lord seemed to think that the amount of education which it represented was sufficient for children up to 13. Perhaps the greatest evil which the Education Department had experienced was the fact that so many of the children stopped at the Third Standard, and there was reason for deep regret if anything was said or done which was calculated to make the school boards set value on the amount of education so obtained.

understood the right hon. Gentleman (Mr. Forster) to say that pauper children should be better educated than other children—["No!"]—but he said they must take things as they found them. Owing to the way in which the Poor Law had been administered in this country, the children of out-door paupers were, as a rule, worse educated than any other children. That was due, in the first place, to the rough-and-ready way in which Denison's Act had been put in force in the rural districts. Guardians had asked whether a child was at school or at work, and on finding that a child was at work they did not insist on his-going to school. The ratepayers employed pauper children to ease the rates, and kindhearted people found them work in order to minister to the necessities of the parents. That was the case as they found it, and not as they hoped it would be hereafter. Why did not the right hon. Gentleman (Mr. W. E. Forster) try to make the two Acts uniform? Why did he put the Fifth Standard in his own Act when the Fourth had been inserted in "another place" in the Agricultural Children's Act? If there had been uniformity, in all probability the present difficulty would not have arisen. He (Mr. Read) wished to reduce out-door relief; but he did not wish to do it in this cruel and one-sided way. The Act fell like a bombshell upon Guardians on the 1st of January last. He was present at the Board of Guardians presided over by the Earl of Kimberley, who sharply criticized the Act. Every child in receipt, of out-door relief had to leave his service and go to school until he was 13. The consequence was, that children were taken from work and sent to school, and in one instance a boy who was employed at 6s. per week was sent to school and given 1s. 6d. and half a stone of flour per week—a poor consolation for his widowed mother. The right hon. Gentleman said it would have been sufficient if certain attendances had been insisted upon. Why did he not do something in that way? [Mr. W. E. FORSTER: I said the noble Lord might have met the difficulty he felt in that way.] The right hon. Gentleman was six months in office after the Act passed, and had done nothing to make this Act work smoothly. If he had been at the Local Government Board, he would have been astonished at the opposition it encountered among the guardians. He would have heard that complaints were lord and general. He could point to places in which there was no school to receive children at less than 6d. a week. That fee had previously been paid by the guardians; but now they could pay only 2½d., and the result was there was "a reasonable excuse" for not sending the children to school at all. Another excuse was furnished by the fact that schools were presided over by uncertificated teachers, and another by the expulsion of rough boys from schools conducted by mistresses, in which they created disturbances, and went as far as to kick the legs of the governess. It had been said that the Fifth Standard was the one which the children of out door paupers might he expected to pass. He should not like to be examined in that Standard himself, and he believed there were other Members also in that House who would not like to have to pass it. He was in an average school in the country the other day, which was conducted by a certificated mistress, and out of 54 pupils only one could pass the Fifth Standard. ["Oh!"] It was to be hoped that condition of things would improve; but the way to improve was to begin moderately and to take public opinion and the poor with us. He did not think hon. Members were aware of the extreme accuracy with which in these days the Inspectors insisted upon arithmetic, and examined in practice and bills of parcels. Village schoolmistresses, although good in teaching reading and writing, were generally deficient in the power of imparting arithmetic, and therefore he thought the Fifth Standard was one which very few children in the country could pass, or would pass, for some years to come. The right hon. Member for the University of Edinburgh (Mr. Lyon Playfair) had spoken of giving a child that education which would never again admit of its becoming a pauper, and he (Mr. Read) should like to know what sort of education that was. We had in our workhouse schools the best system of book-learning we could have, and there were more educated paupers from these schools than any other. It was found in the City of London that, although the children got such an excellent education in these schools, yet in consequence of their proximity to the workhouses, and constantly mixing with paupers, the degrading badge of pauperism stuck to them, and, notwithstanding their education, they continued paupers to the end. The first duty of a pauper child was to learn how to earn a living. The great object should be to correct that indifference and inertness which constantly clung to paupers, and impart to them habits of industry and independence, so as to raise them from the scale of pauperism. He should be glad to give pauper children the best education the State could afford them; but he he thought that when they considered the case of the pauper child as he was, the Third Standard would be amply sufficient for the next 18 months.

I will not stop to argue with the hon. Gentleman who has just sat down, for though I do not doubt he is a very good friend to education, I am perfectly unable to conceive how, upon the grounds which he has placed before us, he ever was able to reconcile his mind to giving the poor any education at all. I will pass to the noble Lord (Viscount Sandon) who has, I think, fallen into a fault that is very unusual. The noble Lord is new in his office, and it is the tendency of most of us when we first get into an office of importance and responsibility, to over-estimate its value and importance. What I complain of the noble Lord is, that he has under-estimated the duties of his office, and that which he is called upon to do. I do not confine myself to assertion; I say what I do in no spirit of disrespect to the noble Lord. I apprehend there are two duties cast upon the noble Lord in the most important office which he fills. The one is that, as this system of education is partly carried on by Acts of Parliament, and partly by Minutes of Council, the noble Lord ought so to frame the Minutes of Council as to carry out the spirit of the Acts of Parliament. The second duty incumbent on the noble Lord is that, as through his hands passes an enormous sum of public money, which is given by Parliament with the view of promoting the real and thorough education of the people, it is his duty by every means in his power to seek to uphold the standard of that education, and to make the money that he disburses the means, not only of still maintaining, but of elevating the standard of education all over the country. I am sorry to say that I do not think, judging by his speech to-night, that he is sufficiently aware of the magnitude of those duties, nor do I think that in this matter he has adequately discharged them. The question is, what did Parliament mean when it made, so far as it has made, education compulsory? Did it mean that that was to be a colourable proceeding—that the formula was to be gone through under the pretence of doing something, and then we were to stop? Was not Parliament aware, when it passed the Elementary Education Act, of all that has been urged to-night about the hardship of taking children away from their parents when they were earning money, and compelling them to learn? Parliament looked at the thing in the face, and did it knowing that; and I am sure Parliament was too wise and the feelings of Parliament too liberal. The House was too liberal then to have incurred the admitted evil of taking children from work for any purpose otherwise than that they should receive a real and thorough education; it would have been cruel to have deprived the parents of what the children would have earned without the latter receiving some real and thorough benefit. Does the Minute of the noble Lord give that real and solid benefit? I say it does not. Twelve years ago I prevailed upon Parliament to lay down these standards, of which I was the inventor, when people were not supposed to be very much alive to the question of education. We treated children up to six years of age as infants, and we then endeavoured to form a scheme by which they might attain additional learning year after year between the ages of six and 12, so that, as a matter of fact, what you are asking the House to do, is to say that the children of the poor shall be sufficiently educated to be sent out into the world with an education suitable for a child of nine years of age. I say, too, that if we want a child to read and write well, we ought to teach it more, rather than less, than the Fifth Standard. It was never intended that we should stop here, and I say that if you do, you are dealing a deadly blow at education. It is for the Education Department, for the noble Lord, or for the Government—Liberal or illiberal—to define what the standard of education is to be, and I say you are doing a serious injury to the cause of education if you adopt the Third Standard, because you will be doing your best to make the school boards of the country follow your example. If the Education Department lowers the standard of education, I say that is running directly contrary to the purposes for which it was formed, and instead of elevating the education of the people, we may as well have no education at all. I feel strongly on this point, and it is most painful to me to see this done, especially, too, as it has been done so precipitately; only three weeks, indeed, after the present Government had taken office.

said, he had hardly expected, after the speech of his noble Friend (Viscount Sandon), that the hon. Member for Hastings (Mr. Kay-Shuttleworth) would really go to a division; but if he did, he wished to point out that the speech of the right hon. Gentleman who had just sat down tended to confuse the issue before the House, and, indeed, to reverse that issue. If there was any question between what was real and what was colourable in the case, it was hon. Gentlemen opposite who were in danger of making those proceedings colourable; because they pretended they were giving an education which they did not give and could not give, whereas the Government said they would only give one which they really could give. Parliament, judging à priori, had thought it desirable to provide that children of the class confessedly the most backward and neglected should be educated to the Fifth Standard. He would not go into the difference between the Fifth and the Third Standards, because that was not the point. ["Oh!"] Well, it was only the difference between reading and writing more perfectly or less perfectly. The question was whether the Fifth Standard was one which children of that class could reasonably be expected to attain? The Government believed that if they really wished to promote education and gain the confidence of the people in carrying out the principle of compulsion, they must convince them that what they were doing was possible and practicable. In calling on that miserable class of children to pass a standard which experience had shown that but a very small proportion, even of the best children they had to deal with, were able to pass, they were manifestly asking that which it was unreasonable to ask. It must take some time to bring them up to the standard at first, although by-and-by, when the work had been going on for some years, the task might be found easier. The question really seemed to resolve itself into the difference between the view as taken by the right hon. Gentleman who had just sat down, who looked at this matter from an official point of view, and the noble Lord, who looked at it not so much from an official as from a practical point of view. It was all very well and very proper to frame schemes of education in Downing Street; but when they were for the first time compulsorily taking children of that class away from their parents and from their work, they must be careful not to insist on what was plainly impossible, otherwise they would set the people against them and run the risk of breaking down their whole system. He maintained, therefore, that the course adopted by his noble Friend was a wise and prudent one. His course was not to reverse the policy of the last Government—["Oh!"]—and not to lower the Fifth Standard. Hon. Gentlemen opposite might cry "Oh, oh!" but upon this point he accepted the statement of his noble Friend, who had issued a Minute to all the Boards of Guardians stating that this was only a temporary measure to last 12 or 18 months, and they were at the end of that period to report upon the result. If they were told that in doing this they were doing something reactionary, he confessed he did not know how to expect policy to be fairly judged. The Government were endeavouring to carry out this policy in the most practical way. It was not a question between two different methods. The object they sought to attain was the same in both cases, and the question really was whether they should proceed as fast as they could, or attempt to go on at a rate which was absolutely impossible.

, in reply, said, that as it was the wish of the House to proceed to a division, he would not stand in the way for more than a few moments. He would merely remind them that the Fifth Standard had been fixed by the Education Department, that it had been adopted by most of the school boards in the country, including that of London, of which the noble Lord (Viscount Sandon) had been an active member, and that even in the Agricultural Children Act the Fourth Standard was the minimum required. It had boon reserved for the present Government to disregard all these precedents, and to say that children must not be sent to school after passing the Third Standard. It remained to be seen whether that course would be approved by Parliament.