asked the Lord Advocate, Whether he proposes to introduce a Bill to carry out the recommendations of the University Commissioners to lessen the present excessive expenditure of electing Members of Parliament for the Scottish Universities?

in reply, said, that he was afraid that at that period of the Session the press of Business would absolutely prevent the Government from taking up the question.

asked the Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, Whether his attention has been called to a Despatch addressed to the Commodore on the Australian station by Mr. Consul Layard, dated Noumea, May 14th, 1877, in which the latter states that he recommended, in the case of the alleged murder at Tanna, that the murderer should be required from the tribe and hung at the yardarm of a British vessel of war; and, under what instructions from the Foreign Office a British Consul is empowered to advise the execution of natives in the Pacific?

Sir, the attention of the Government has been called to the despatch in question. No instructions have been issued from the Foreign Office empowering British Consuls to advise the execution of Natives in the Pacific. We do not understand the passage alluded to by the hon. Baronet to mean that Mr. Consul Layard gave advice to Lieutenant Caffin as to executing a convicted murderer. Mr. Consul Layard certainly did express an opinion to that effect in the despatch alluded to, which was addressed to the Commodore on the Australian Station and not to the Lieutenant, who carried out the orders of the Commodore. Whether the advice was given or not, there is no ground for thinking that if the advice was given it was erroneous in point of law.

asked the Postmaster General, When the Report of the two officers of the Postal Telegraph Service sent to America last year to investigate and report upon the Telegraph system of the United States will be printed?

Sir, the Report in question is of a confidential character, and one which it is not intended to print and circulate. The information contained in it was supplied by private telegraph companies in America with the understanding that it would not be made public.

asked the Chief Secretary for Ireland, Whether his attention has been called to a case which came before the magistrates at Cork on the 17th instant as regards the detention of two children, brother and sister, named O'Brien, at present in the Industrial Schools at Cork, at Marble Hill and Union Quay, by which it appears that their mother and step-father, being in a position to support said children, applied to the Right honourable Gentleman for their discharge, pursuant to the 33rd section of the 31 and 32 Vic. c. 25, and were refused; and to ask the grounds of such refusal, and why the ratepayers and Exchequer should be still burthened with their support while their natural and legal guardians are willing to support them?

Sir, my attention has been called to this matter, and I am informed that the applications to which the hon. Gentleman refers were sent, according to the usual practice, to the Inspector of Industrial Schools for his Report. After consultation with the managers of the schools, the Inspector reported that, in his opinion, it would be detrimental to the future welfare of the children if they were to be prematurely discharged. He also said that it was evident that the object of the mother and stepfather in making the application was to escape their payment of a contribution towards the maintenance of the children. Under these circumstances the application was refused.

Might I ask the right hon. Gentleman if he has any objection to furnish a copy of the Report?

If the hon. Gentleman gives Notice of this Question I will consider the matter.

asked the Secretary of State for War, Whether Captains in the Army serving in India, who may complete twenty years' service (from the date of attaining twenty years of age), and who consequently become ineligible for promotion under the Royal Warrant of 13th August 1877, will, under the provisions of Clause 92, Army Circular, 1st May 1878, be compelled to defray the cost of their passages to England and that of their successors to India, thereby being deprived of nearly a year's income on retirement, although practically they will be compulsorily retired, inasmuch as they are debarred from further promotion; and, whether, if this be the existing regulation, he will be so good as to give the matter his favourable consideration, with a view to its revision?

Sir, in answer to the hon. and gallant Gentleman I may say that the officers will not be required to make the payments referred to. The regulations at present are not quite clear; but I hope that in a short time they will be amended, so as to make them distinct. It may, perhaps, be necessary to consult the India Office on the subject.

asked the Secretary of State for the Home Department, If he is aware that some uncertainty and consequent anxiety exists in regard to the Law and practice of holding post mortem examinations upon the bodies of persons dying in lunatic asylums; and, if he would consider the desirability of issuing some authoritative memorandum indicating the conditions on which such examinations are by Law enforced or permitted?

in reply, said, he had been in communication with the Lunacy Commissioners on the subject, and they had informed him that their opinion with respect to it was very strongly expressed in a Report which they had presented in 1870, and also in the evidence given by Lord Shaftesbury before the Select Committee of that House last Session. If, after looking at that Report and the evidence, the hon. Gentleman wished to put any further Questions, he should be happy to make additional inquiries.

asked the Secretary of State for the Home Department, Whether his attention has been directed to the prosecutions which have been instituted in various parts of the country against licensed victuallers for vending spirits of different degrees of strength under-proof, and the conflicting decisions which have been arrived at by local justices thereon; and, whether, considering the uncertainty which prevails upon the matter, he is prepared to consider the subject with a view to the fixing of a specific standard of under-proof at which spirits, and especially gin, can be retailed without any actual or implied infringement of the Food and Drugs Act?

Sir, the attention of the Government has from time to time been directed to the prosecutions which have been instituted against licensed victuallers for selling spirits of different degrees of strength under proof. The policy of the Sale of Food and Drugs Act was to leave it to the local tribunals to give decisions in accordance with the evidence in each case; and, in order to provide against the inconvenience which might result from varying views among the locally-appointed analysts, it was provided that the opinion of the Commissioners of Inland Revenue might be taken in disputed cases. I have no reason to doubt that in course of time, by this means, and by the decisions of the High Court of Justice on typical cases brought before them on appeal, greater uniformity of procedure will be arrived at. Meanwhile, I may say that the statements and facts submitted to me tend to show that there is a natural process of deterioration in the strength of spirits by lapse of time, which should caution local authorities against the institution of proceedings in doubtful cases, and that there is a margin between the degree of about 17 per cent under proof, which may be taken to be the figure at which spirits are delivered over to the licensed victuallers, and the point or points at which the Superior Courts have supported convictions within which at present some uncertainty must be admitted to exist. There are difficulties in the way of fixing a specific standard, and Parliament has not thought it proper to insert any such in the Act; but means are provided by which, in doubtful cases, retailers of these articles can protect themselves from prosecution, either by retailing under warranty or by labelling the article sold as of a particular degree of strength below proof.

asked the Under Secretary of State for India, Whether his attention has been drawn to a statement in the "Times" of the 15th instant, said to be based mainly on official data, to the effect that the mortality caused by the recent famine in the Madras and Bombay Presidencies and Mysore is not far short of six millions; and, whether the Government is in possession of any information tending to confirm or disprove said statement?

Yes, Sir, my attention has been called to the statement alluded to. The Returns which we have at present received from India are very imperfect, and by quoting them I might run the risk of misleading the House; but as soon as we are in possession of fuller information it shall be laid on the Table of the House. The Returns disclose, I regret to say, a very lamentable loss of life; but, so far as they go, they do not lead us to suppose that the mortality at all approached to that stated by the Correspondent of The Times. I would point out that the diminution of population, whatever it may be, is due not only to mortality, but to a very large emigration of people who have left the distressed districts in search of work or sustenance.

asked the Under Secretary of State for India, Whether he is aware that, as stated in the "Calcutta Englishman" of the 25th ult., a body of soldiers of the 31st Native Infantry, stationed at Cawnpore, under orders for Malta, flung aside their accoutrements in the presence of their Commanding Officer, and demanded to be allowed to share the imprisonment of some of their comrades already under arrest; whether the mutineers insisted upon the recall of a Native Subahdar, who had been removed from their command; and, whether it is true that the Native officer in question was immediately restored to the command demanded for him by the insubordinate soldiers, and that the arrested mutineers were released without delay?

Sir, we have received no official information on the subject. There appears to be no reason for attaching any importance whatever to those proceedings.

asked Mr. Chancellor of the Exchequer, Whether, as the consent of the Council of the Secretary of State for India was not obtained before the expenses of moving the Indian troops to Malta were defrayed out of Indian revenues, he will explain to the House by what authority this expenditure was sanctioned, when it is provided by the 41st section of the Government of India Act of 1858 that the expenditure of the revenues of India, both in India and elsewhere, shall be subject to the control of the Secretary of State in Council, and no grant or appropriation of such revenues, or of any other property coming into the possession of the secretary of State in Council by virtue of this Act, shall be made without the concurrence of a majority of votes at a meeting of the Council?

Sir, there has been no appropriation of the revenues of India for this purpose, but simply an advance on account for services rendered to the Imperial Government. Consequently, no case has arisen such as is indicated in the Question of the hon. Member.

asked Mr. Chancellor of the Exchequer, When the Government propose to take the Education (Scotland) Bill as a first Order of the Day; and, whether, in the event of his being unable to name a day before the Whitsuntide Recess, he can do so after that date?

Sir, it would certainly not be in the power of the Government to fix any day before the Whitsuntide Recess when this Bill could be a first Order, and I am not able to say when we can take it after the Recess. As the Bill has already passed the House of Lords, there will, I think, be ample time to proceed with it before the end of the Session.

asked the Under Secretary of State for India, What allowances in quarters, rations, money, or otherwise, are the wives and children of the European soldiers ordered from India to Malta receiving at present?

Sir, while they remain in India they receive free quarters and subsistence allowance; if of European, or, in some cases, of mixed descent, at eight rupees a month; if otherwise, at six and a-half rupees a month; their children, under 16, at two and a-half rupees a month. The wives and children receive, in addition, half and quarter rations, respectively, free.

asked the Secretary of State for the Home Department, If his attention has been drawn to a paragraph in the "Sheffield Telegraph" of the 23rd instant, relating to the manner in which witnesses were examined before the magistrates; if he has any reason to consider those statements well founded; and, if there is any cause for his interference? Also, Whether the statement in the "Sheffield Telegraph" of the 23rd instant is well founded, that of four magistrates trying cases arising out of disputes between employers and employed, two were cotton manufacturers, and that the two other magistrates were old and infirm; and, if so, whether the court might not be otherwise constituted?

Sir, if I had received the smallest complaint from the district where this is supposed to have occurred, or a request that an inquiry should be made into it, I should have made one at once; but I do not feel called upon, upon complaints made in any article written in any country newspaper, to make inquiries into the conduct of magistrates. However, before coming down to the House I made inquiry at the Home Office, and I find that no complaints whatever had reached me from the district referred to.

asked the President of the Board of Trade, Whether any facilities, and if so, what, are proposed to be given in those cases where Bills have been dropped in previous Sessions relating to the use of power on tramways other than animal, and whether the matter of such Bills can be dealt with during the present Session of Parliament, either by enlarging the scope of the Committee now sitting on that subject, or by separate Bill, or in some other way?

Sir, in answer to my hon. and learned Friend, I beg to say that there does not appear to me to be any necessity for enlarging the powers of the Committee to whom all Bills of this Session relative to the use of mechanical power upon tramways have been referred, as the Committee have prepared clauses and regulations upon the subject, which they will insert in all the Bills and Provisional Orders, which clauses will afford facilities for the settlement of the question. These clauses and regulations could only be made applicable to Tramway Acts and Orders of previous Sessions by a general measure; and I do not think that in the present state of Public Business it would be possible to legislate—supposing we considered such legislation desirable—in the matter this year.

asked the hon. Member for Hackney, Whether it was his intention to proceed to-night with the Motion of which he had given Notice in reference to the movement of the Indian troops?

could assure the hon. Member and the House that he was most anxious to call attention to the very important financial question raised; but he understood his hon. Friend the Member for Kirkcaldy (Sir George Campbell) intended to proceed with his Motion first. Therefore, he (Mr. Fawcett) would be precluded from going to a division; and as he did not wish simply to move his Resolution, but desired to have the vote of the House upon it, he was compelled to postpone it for the present. If no earlier opportunity presented, he would move it on the Indian Budget.

I beg to ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Whether he is yet in a position to give the House any information as to the negotiations which are stated to have been recently in progress and the prospect of an early assembly of the Congress?

I am not yet in a position to give any detailed information upon the subject; but I may say, within the last few days, the prospects of a Congress have materially improved.

in moving for a Select Committee to inquire into the cost, direct and indirect, of Her Majesty's Indian Troops serving beyond the old Indian limits east of the Cape of Good Hope, said, he did not design the Motion to be one hostile to the Government at the present stage of events. Though no one felt more deeply than he the wound that had been inflicted upon the Constitution by bringing over those troops without the consent of Parliament, yet he considered that the case might be made the best of, and that a sort of ex post facto sanction might be obtained for it in the shape of a Vote in Supply for 7,000 men. He had declined to give way to the hon. Member for Hackney (Mr. Fawcett), because he could not concur in his Motion, the direct effect of which would be to raise an Indian financial debate at an inopportune moment. Also, as regarded the strength of the Indian Army, he differed from the hon. Member for Hackney. The hon. Member's Motion was not logical, for it did not follow, because 7,000 troops had been moved from India to Malta, that the Army of India was too large. They must always have a Force ready for an emergency, and when that emergency arose they might well receive some aid from the Indian troops, just as India, in an emergency, had the aid of British troops. His objection went more to the manner in which they had been used. He thought that the result of a further inquiry on this subject would be more favourable to the use of these Indian troops than was the Report of Colonel Anson's Committee which sat upon the question in 1867. That Committee was presided over by no less a person than the present Marquess of Salisbury; and its Members reported that, in regard to the military and political aspect of the matter, the highest authorities were very much—it might be said hopelessly—divided, but that with reference to the financial aspect of the question authorities were agreed that there would be no saving by the employment of Indian troops in garrisons other than in India. At that time the Mutiny of 1857 was fresh in men's memories, and there was much prejudice against Sepoys. Major-General Hodson, for instance, could imagine nothing more "suicidal," because the presence of Sepoy troops anywhere must lead to murder and bloodshed. He believed, however, that the result of a further inquiry at the present time would be more favourable to the character of Native troops. He was convinced that a great change in the Native Army had occurred since the Report of that Committee was made, and his object in proposing the present Motion was that the Report itself should be supplemented, modernized, and brought down to the present day. He believed that the days of the Indian Mutiny had gone by; that their Native Indian troops had very much improved; and that they were good and faithful subjects of Her Majesty. Since 1867 the short-service system and the Army Reserve had been introduced. A great difficulty of short service was the large amount of foreign service which their troops were compelled to undergo; and therefore he thought the Government would welcome any measure which would relieve them of a considerable amount of such service with safety and advantage to the State. As to the financial view of the question, if the objections which were found to exist in 1867 to the employment of these troops should now be found not to be insuperable he should be very favourably inclined to the experiment of trying, to a certain extent, the use of Indian troops in order to relieve some of their British soldiers at certain stations. His impression was that a measure of that kind would be good both for their Indian troops and for their own troops; and that the employment of a limited number of the former in the way he had indicated would improve their discipline and render them more available in case a great emergency should arise—which God forbid!—when Her Majesty's Government would have to draw upon Indian soldiers to a larger extent than they had done at present. In connection with the question of finance, he had said that Indian troops serving out of India received larger pay and allowances than British soldiers, and the discrepancy was still greater in the pay of the officers. On that point it would be desirable to have some inquiry. He was inclined to think that at present the officers of Her Majesty's Indian Army were somewhat overpaid, and if they would avoid extravagance some alteration in the rate of pay must be made. The practice of giving civil employment to officers in India tended very much to detract from the efficiency of the Staff Corps in that country, and led also to the high pay which the officers received. The remuneration in civil employment was so great that it was found necessary to raise the pay of the officers of the Native Army, that they might not be tempted away. It was impossible to increase the number of those officers as long as their pay was so abnormally high, though, for his part, he believed the number of officers was already large enough. He wished that they should ascertain from the proposed inquiry whether for normal purposes, and as a rule, they could employ some of those Indian troops in their foreign stations; whether such employment was so successful as to justify a farther use of such troops; and, thirdly, if in time of great need they were driven to resort to India for an increase of their military strength, they could do so with advantage? He admitted, without putting faith in the gushing accounts they had seen, that so far the experiment had been successful. The troops had come forward willingly, without difficulty or demur, no doubt influenced by the high pay and allowances. As regarded the character of the troops, some people appeared inclined to talk of them as if they were extremely wild and savage men, whom it would be difficult to keep in order. He had no fears on that score. Their present Indian soldiers were taken from the plough, and, as far as regarded order, might be trusted to serve in any part of Her Majesty's Dominions. He was no military man, but he had an intimate knowledge of the Indian troops; and he asserted, without fear of contradiction, that they were quiet, orderly, and easily managed. He thought something might be done for the relief of British soldiers by employing Indian troops in unhealthy stations; but, if they were so employed, it would not be fair to give them all the bad and none of the good. He would suggest that they might bring a few of the Native Indian troops home, in order that we might see them and that they might see us. He believed that contact with those troops would remove many of the prejudices entertained in this country; that when they knew them better they would find that they were not semi-savages, as some had supposed, but orderly, pleasant, and good-natured people, and that we should like them pretty well, while they in turn would like us. He would not employ them for real duty in this country; but if an honorary detachment of those troops were brought to do duty at Aldershot and to attend Her Majesty, the Constitutional difficulty might be overcome provided only the Government would condescend to get the authority of Parliament for a measure of that kind. When they became better acquainted with those troops he thought they would take a more favourable view of them. In regard to the financial aspect of the question—how it was proposed to raise the money by which the Vote was to be met—he was afraid, from the statements which had dropped from the Chancellor of the Exchequer, that it was not proposed to raise it, but to borrow it. The present Estimate amounted to £750,000; but he did not doubt that the other charges not yet brought into the account would bring the amount up to £1,000,000, or more; and he thought the right hon. Gentleman would do well to recast his Budget, and raise more money by taxation.

said, it was unnecessary for him to trespass long on the time of the House, for on an examination of the Resolution which the hon. Member for Kirkcaldy had moved, it seemed to him that there was very much to which the Government could agree. And although, in point of form, it might be necessary to demur to and to negative that Resolution as an Amendment on going into Supply, he was prepared, subject to certain reservations, to grant the greater portion of what the hon. Member proposed. The hon. Gentleman had pointed out, with great truth, that, as the Report of the Committee of that House, which sat about 11 years ago, under the Presidency of his noble Friend then Viscount Cranborne, referred to a date now considerably remote, some revision might now have become requisite in the terms under which those troops might be employed. Moreover, however carefully that Committee might have examined that question, and whatever might have been the value of the evidence it took, its Report, nevertheless, was one rather of a speculative character, and pointing rather to what might be done under certain circumstances than dealing with the actual facts. Now, accepting the facts as they now stood, it seemed to have become very expedient to inquire most carefully into that matter, to see where faults might have occurred, and what remedies could be proposed, and, above all, to weigh very carefully the financial effect of the measure and its indirect effects on the other Estimates of the year. The Committee, which was moved for by his late lamented Friend (Colonel Anson), examined into that subject very generally. It was appointed, if he recollected rightly owing to a Report that was made by a Committee which sat in a previous year, and which dealt with the case of China, in which a very remarkable mortality of European troops had occurred. That brought the matter prominently before the notice of the House; and, taking advantage of it, his late hon. and gallant Friend thought the time had come for endeavouring to obtain from this country the assent to a more general employment of Native troops out of India. Well, that Committee examined the question of employing those troops rather as a matter of every-day necessity than in the mode at present proposed to the House; and it undoubtedly intended that they should, in the first instance, be employed mainly in climates where it was not desirable to employ Europeans. That might have given the Report of the Committee a bias in a particular direction, and the circumstances were now so far different that there might be points upon which further inquiry had become necessary, and where a Committee, carefully selected, might present a Report that would prove of value to the country. He had, indeed, so far anticipated the hon. Member for Kirkcaldy (Sir George Campbell), that he had intended, as soon as the fact had been ascertained of all those troops having arrived at Malta, and the arrangements had been fully carried out, that a Departmental Committee should be appointed to examine very much the same question, and to see where shortcomings and defects had arisen, whether the arrangements as to employing European and Native troops, or as to employing both together, required modification, and, in fact, to bring all the knowledge that was required on the subject up to the present day. He thought that matters of detail could be more properly dealt with later in the evening; but while he conveyed, on the part of the Government, their assent to the appointment of that Committee, it became his duty to say that he did so mainly in the direction indicated by the hon. Member's proposal as it stood on the Notice Paper—namely—

"To inquire into the cost, direct and indirect, of Her Majesty's Indian Troops serving beyond the old Indian limits east of the Cape of Good Hope."

The hon. Gentleman had argued some of the questions of which he spoke with reference to a very much wider range of subjects, and appeared to consider many matters that were not strictly included in the terms of his Resolution. As to the whole organization of the Native Indian Army, that was a question which itself would occupy a Committee for a considerable time, and it was hardly one which could be tacked on to an inquiry which, in the first instance, was evidently directed to another point. In the same way, the operation of the Staff Corps rules, he submitted, were rather subjects for an inquiry apart from the question of the employment of those troops at home, and still more would the question of the civil employment of officers in India form no proper part of the inquiry before that Committee. It was not only undesirable that the scope of that inquiry should be made too wide, but he would point out that if the field were made so diverse, it would be impossible to present the recommendations in such time that practical effect could be given to them. One lived long enough to be surprised at nothing; but, considering what had recently occurred, he confessed his surprise at hearing the hon. Member absolutely propose that the Indian troops should serve not only at Malta and Gibraltar, but that they should actually be brought nearer home. However desirable that might be from the hon. Gentleman's point of view, that was a hypothetical question which he preferred to put aside for the present; and all he would do was to join him in saying that it could only be done with the distinct assent of Parliament. Though it was his duty to demur to the form of the Amendment, the Government were willing, in substance, to agree to the Motion for a Select Committee. He thought it necessary to point out that the Committee could not be appointed for some little time, as most of the information already received as to the financial and commissariat arrangements had come by telegraph. No doubt, when the troops had arrived at Malta, there would be numerous small questions to be adjusted which were not as yet before the House; and, after their arrival, it would be necessary for them to settle down before an inquiry could be conducted satisfactorily. He would not refuse an inquiry, though he was obliged to oppose an Amendment to the Motion for going into Supply.

said, he was glad that the Government had thought fit to accept the proposal for the appointment of a Committee, because he believed that the ground of investigation was of great importance to the future military power of this country. He was one of those who hoped to see Parliament elaborate a system by which the Indian Army might become for Imperial purposes more generally useful than it was now; but it was impossible that this could be brought about so long as the enormous discrepancies now existing between the pay of the Indian Army and that of the British Army were allowed to continue. They had always adopted the principle of paying European officers highly—he would not say too highly—for service in India, and they had also admitted the principle that when the Indian regiments were expatriated they also should receive extra pay. He believed a great deal of the enthusiasm recently shown by the regiments for foreign service was intimately connected with the extra pay which they would receive; but what could not be permitted to endure was their employment, with great variations of pay, in the various ranks of the Service. Possibly the Committee that was about to be appointed would be able to devise some remedy. He trusted the proposed Committee might be able to propose such a scheme as would make general service on the part of the Indian troops out of India not the exception, but the rule, and that in these days of speedy communications India would be reckoned, not as bounded by its own narrow limits, but as an integral part of Her Majesty's Dominions, sharing the joys, sorrows, and glories of the Empire. He believed that the recent discussion on this subject would help to clear away many prejudices against the employment of Native troops.

said, that as a Member of Colonel Anson's Committee, he wished to remind the House of the terms of Reference to that Committee. He confessed he had heard with considerable surprise the announcement of the Secretary for War that within 10 years he had thought it necessary to appoint another Committee on this subject. It was the intention of Colonel Anson, in moving for this Committee, to inquire into the duties performed by the British Army in India and the Colonies, with the view of ascertaining how far it was desirable to employ certain portions of Her Majesty's Indian Army in Colonial service, or to organize a Force of Native troops for general service in European climates. Colonel Anson himself thought the first question indicated by the terms of Reference was too large for the Committee to enter upon; and the first paragraph of the Report, written by its Chairman, Lord Salisbury, showed the necessity for limiting the terms of Reference. That paragraph was to the effect, that the Committee had thought it best to limit their inquiry to the consideration of the duties of the British Army in India, so far only as they affected the Native troops; and their inquiry had no reference, as the hon. Member for Kirkcaldy (Sir George Campbell) had said, to the employment of these troops in unhealthy places. Much of the evidence also taken by the Committee related to the transport of Indian troops to Malta and Gibraltar; and one of the principal questions was, both how they were likely to be received in those fortresses, and what would be the expense to this country of garrisoning them with Indian troops. The main objection to the proposal was the great expense which would be involved in their transport and pay; that was the point at issue now, and the House would have to decide whether the objects proposed by the Government could not have been effected at a less cost by the employment of White regiments taken from the Mediterranean garrisons. As for the proposal to bring any of the Natives to this country, there were many objections to that course, specially the fear of blood feuds, the practice of mutilation from a fancied insult to their women, and other objections, which need not now be specified. Colonel Anson himself, one of the bravest and most gallant spirits in this House, was yet not sufficiently brave to make the proposal of the hon. Member for Kirkcaldy—namely, to bring over Probyn's or Fane's Horse to relieve Her Majesty's Life Guards at Buckingham Palace. It had cost £750,000, or rather more than £100 per man, to move these troops, and the question really was, whether the Government could not have effected its political objects at much less cost by the employment of White troops moved on from other garrisons to Malta. Perhaps the most extraordinary part of this matter was, that the Commander of the most expensive Expedition, in their experience of little wars of late years which they ever had, was the only General officer called in to advise the War Office and the Home Government. Upon this they had had a lesson before; for in the Abyssinian War they fought a barbarian King, whose troops never came into the field but once—namely, at Arogee—when the English troops apparently did the fighting, and the Natives did the running away, and an expenditure of £9,000,000 was incurred; whilst in the Ashantee War, where two or three day's desperate bush fighting took place, the struggle was brought to a successful issue within the time and expense estimated by the War Minister—not for £9,000,000, but £900,000. He recommended that fact to the consideration of the electoral body of this country, when they came to judge of the enormous expense incurred, in following up their policy, by adopting the extravagant Estimates of a distinguished Indian General.

I regret that the hon. Member for Kirkcaldy (Sir George Campbell) should have brought forward this Motion on the present occasion. He is, of course, within the undoubted exercise of his right, and the Motion is both valuable and important; but it would have been equally appropriate if introduced upon an ordinary occasion on a Motion for going into Committee of Supply. I regret he has persisted, because it has prevented a number of hon. Members from uniting together and challenging the opinion of the House upon the direct issue raised by the Government, that we should go into Committee for the purpose of voting a considerable sum of money to meet an extraordinary expenditure. That is the question more immediately before the House at this moment; and while, no doubt, it would be very proper at some future time, or at some remote period of the Session to which the right hon. and gallant Gentleman the Secretary of State for War (Colonel Stanley) looks for ward, to hold an inquiry into the merits and efficiency of Indian troops as compared with European troops, yet that is a question which any hon. Gentleman can answer for himself without the assistance of a Committee. We do not want a Committee to prove that the use of Indian troops in Europe is, to say the least of it, a piece of gross extravagance. It would have been of more advantage to the House if we had had no bye-issue raised. We are asked by the Chancellor of the Exchequer to go into Committee to vote a large sum of money for an Extraordinary Public Service; and I think we are entitled, before we go into Committee, to be satisfied by the Government that this large sum of money is intended for a Service necessary for British interests; and I think we have also the right to be satisfied that, if necessary, it is proposed to conduct the expenditure in the most economical manner. If the Government does not satisfy us on these points, the House is entitled to reject the proposal made by the Government, that we go into Committee of Supply to grant them this money. I venture to say the Government have entirely failed to satisfy the House on these points; and we are without information that would justify us in the opinion that this Extraordinary Service is one necessary for the maintenance of British interests, or calculated to promote peace in Europe. In fact, the Government came and asked the House to take a most important step blindfolded. We know how on a former occasion, on a question of home policy, the Prime Minister described his policy as a "leap in the dark." He is now asking us to take a "leap in the dark" as regards foreign policy. We are not treated by the Government in a fair and candid spirit, when they thus seek to commit us to an important act of public policy without any reasons to justify it. When we met this proposal with criticism, and urged objections, we were told by Members of the Government, in language of injured innocence,—"Our mouths are closed; regard for British interests imposes silence upon us; but if we could our tale unfold, it would satisfy every critic, would remove every objection, and prove to an admiring country how necessary were our measures for the interests of the Empire and the welfare of Europe." Of course, when we are appealed to as a matter of confidence to support the Government, that appeal is received in a very different spirit on the two sides of the House. The hon. Members on the other side display a child-like simplicity in their confidence, and are prepared to accept anything, and to give the Government carte blanche to spend any amount of money, and for any purpose. But we, on this side, hold a very different view. It was, I think, Lord Chatham who said confidence is a plant of very slow growth; but to have any growth of confidence at all, there must be some root for it. When we look back for the last two or three years, we do not find that Government have given any grounds for confidence. We are now told there are prospects of the meeting of Congress, and hopes of peace, and I am sure we all receive that intelligence as satisfactory and encouraging.

I must point out to the hon. Member for Burnley that the question immediately before the House is the Amendment of the hon. Member for Kirkcaldy. In the event of that Amendment being negatived, the Question will be put that I do leave the Chair, when the observations of the hon. Member will be in Order; but they do not now appear to be directed to the immediate subject of debate.

said, that any inquiries with regard to the mere expense of the troops would be comparatively worthless in connection with a settlement of the larger and more important question of uniting the Armies of the East and the West. At present, such an experiment as his hon. Friend had advocated could only be tried upon a small scale, when they considered the existing constitution of the Indian Army; and hon. Gentlemen should not hurry off with the idea that, because of the movement of a small Force from India to Malta, the larger and more important question had been in any way settled. He did not deprecate such a trial, considering it a mere experimental measure; but the Army of India must be placed on such a footing as would enable the experiment to be fairly tried. At the same time, he was of opinion that, for political and financial purposes, it was undesirable that they should have a homogeneous Army in their Eastern Empire, as it might be a danger to the State.

said, he was glad to learn that this Committee would be granted; for he believed the result of the inquiry would prove that, except in an emergency, Indian troops could not be employed in Europe with any advantage—military, political, or economical. He trusted, he might add, that the appointment of the Committee would not be delayed very long, but that it would enter upon the proposed inquiry, if possible, within the present Session. The Estimates before the House for the movement of the Indian troops amounted to nearly £750,000; but there were several points which had altogether been omitted from consideration. It had been stated that 7,000 troops were to be brought from India; but he could not ascertain that more than 6,100 would be available for that vast charge. The average cost of each would be about £123; whereas they might, he believed, obtain from the resources of this country and the Colonies soldiers for an outlay of not more than half that sum.

I wish to know whether the hon. and gallant Member is in Order in discussing a question which might be more conveniently debated on the Vote itself?

said, the remarks of the hon. and gallant Gentleman were relevant to the Question before the House.

said, that another matter which had not been mentioned was, that four batteries of British Artillery were to be brought from India, which would involve a considerable expense. There was also another matter to which he wished to direct attention. He had had the honour of commanding some of the troops which were now on the way to Malta, and should be the last man to say anything in disparagement of them. Properly officered, they might be fairly matched against any troops that were likely to be brought against them. He dissented, however, from the views of those who wished to see any portion of those troops as an organized body introduced into this country. If any advantages were to be derived from the movement they were political, and he would not say one word to diminish their effect. As Malta was an island, and England was an island, the Native officers might form their opinion of England from Malta alone; and he thought, therefore, that the suggestion of his hon. Friend behind him, that some of those troops—selected officers only—before their return to India—which he hoped would be in a few months—should be brought over here, so that they might carry away with them a proper idea of the power of this country. That idea might, if acted upon in a judicious way, be productive of advantage.

said, he believed the result of any inquiry would be to show that the employment of Indian troops might be carried out with advantage to this country. Under the present system, anomalies and inequalities existed between officers of the Indian Army and those who commanded regiments not serving in India, which gave rise to much dissatisfaction; and he hoped that any official investigation would have the effect of putting an end to them. He trusted, also, that the inquiry would result in giving direct encouragement to a policy which, if not financially objectionable, was, in his opinion, politically most desirable—that which would draw, in case of need, upon our Indian troops for Imperial purposes, thus reminding them that they were part of one great Imperial Army, and members of one nation.

said, he did not clearly apprehend how much of the question it was proposed to refer to the Committee. The Committee of 1867 had dealt with the whole subject both in its political and financial bearings, and their inquiry, which had lasted over a whole Session, had been of a most exhaustive character. No point was left untouched in the inquiry, as far as the employment of the Indian troops out of India was concerned. The Committee dealt with the subject under several heads—first, the question of pay; second, the difficulty of using Indian troops side by side with British; third, the cost of providing the kind of food to which they were accustomed; and, fourth, the comparative value of the British soldier and the Sepoy; and the conclusion they arrived at was that it would be "unwise to make any considerable change in the direction proposed;" but that in certain Colonies where sanitary conditions were unfavourable to Englishmen, Indian troops might be used by way of experiment. He fully admitted that since 1867 circumstances had greatly changed—the Suez Canal, for instance, had been opened, and the telegraphic system had been extended; but he confessed he had great difficulty indeed in seeing the precise points which the Secretary for War considered as requiring fresh elucidation. However, if undertaken, it ought to be conducted in the most thorough manner, and the terms of Reference ought to be stated with extreme precision, that no room might be left for doubt as to the duties of the Committee.

said, that after the concession which had been made by the Secretary of State for War, he should wish to withdraw his Amendment. ["No, no!"]

I am pleased to find the discussion on the Amendment has come to an end. When I was called to Order I was speaking of the fact of the important intelligence that the meeting of Congress is more probable than it was a few weeks ago, and that there are expectations that the peace of Europe will not be further disturbed. I am bound to say I do not think the fact that so far the Government have been successful in preserving peace is any reason why we should not be in a position to discuss with perfect freedom the question before us. The Government have been playing a game of great risk and for very high stakes; and, unfortunately, whatever the result may be, the interests of this country must be damaged and we must suffer considerable loss. I will not anticipate war; but if that had been the result, who can doubt the untold calamity and suffering which would have fallen upon the country? However popular such a war might have been among the "Jingo" party, if we had been brought into war by the course pursued by the Government, the pages of history would have condemned that course as discreditable, and the war as infamous. But I hope there will be peace, and that the expectations expressed by the Chancellor of the Exchequer will be justified. If there is peace, no doubt we shall be told by the Government, and by those who give the Government their support, that this follows as the result of the Government policy. But we hold a directly contrary opinion. We believe that this policy of demonstration and menace, so far from tending to bring about a peaceful solution of the difficulties, was a dangerous policy, and might have led to the worst results. Is it not possible for you to see that in negotiations carried on between nations or between Governments there must be something of human nature, and that you must treat Governments as individuals?—and is it not possible to see that if you treat a great people with distrust and menace, you will excite on their part the same feelings of mistrust, and a suspicion that you are actuated by other motives, and have other objects in view than those you avow? From information received from Russia, I know there was no confidence amongst the Russian people in the declarations of Her Majesty's Government, and the idea got abroad that they were determined on war, and that no concessions would prevent a war. In this state of feeling a very little would have led to war. This is our contention—that the Government, by a temperate, firm course, without these warlike demonstrations, would have secured all that they have secured, supposing the Congress meets. We do not believe it was necessary to bring these troops from India, or to make military demonstrations to secure that the voice of England should be heard. It is difficult to meet the proposal of the Government. They not only refuse to give us information, but they do this—they give us, in reference to their measures, certain information, and in a short time this information is found to be incorrect; so that they either tell us nothing, or they tell something not correct. I am sorry to observe the Home Secretary is not in his place; but I suppose the Chancellor of the Exchequer can give us information on an important point, to which I must direct attention. I have said the Government do not give us any information, or they give us information which is incorrect. They have gone further. They acknowledge that in a very important decision they have taken in regard to Government policy, they were influenced by information afterwards proved to be false. That is a statement to which I would call the attention of the Chancellor of the Exchequer. The Home Secretary gave us this information in distinct terms; and in regard to this movement of Indian troops to Malta, and to our complaint of their taking that decided step in secrecy, the Home Secretary said—

''We had received certain information from a high authority, which has since, happily, turned out untrue. No one was more glad of that than myself; but there were rumours, which came from such an authority, that we were bound to pay respect to them."—[See ante, 501.]

He rests the case upon these rumours, which happily turned out untrue. I suppose at some future time, when we have the "Blue Book" history of these proceedings before us, we shall have some information as to who this high authority is from whom proceeded these rumours which had such an effect upon Her Majesty's Government. Then, perhaps, we can have the right hon. Gentleman in the witness-box and ask him to tell us what were those rumours, upon whose authority they reached the Cabinet, what effect they had upon the Cabinet when received, and again what followed when they were found to be incorrect? It may have been that in consequence of these rumours the Indian troops were ordered to Malta, and then, when these rumours were found to be false, it was too late for the Government to change their policy. So far as we know, that may be the information gathered from the speech of the Home Secretary. Now, I presume, sooner or later we shall get full particulars of the high authority upon which Government depended; but, in the meantime, I think we need have no difficulty in tracing whence these rumours came. They probably came from Constantinople. We have heard of such rumours before, and we know the effect they have had on the Government—they came from Her Majesty's Ambassador at Constantinople. Perhaps, at some future time, we shall know whether the high authority is, or is not, the same right hon. Gentleman who is in the habit of conveying alarming rumours to Her Majesty's Government to influence their decisions. It is a most unfortunate circumstance, that during the whole of these transactions there has been a Party with great influence whose aim and interest it was to secure a declaration of war from England against Russia with Turkey for an Ally. That Party has made use of the telegraph and the newspapers, and they have had the entrée into the saloons of Ambassadors, and by every instrumentality have endeavoured to make such an impression upon the Government as to induce them to make war in the interest of Turkey. I venture to say that when this now secret history comes to be inquired into, and the policy of the Government brought to the test, it will be found that most important decisions of the Government were taken in consequence of the influence of that Party whose interest it was to drag the Government into an alliance with Turkey against Russia. My hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Bath (Mr. Hayter) has pointed out so distinctly that the employment of the Indian troops, in consequence of the very extravagant expenditure, is one entirely without justification; and it will not be necessary for me to enlarge on that branch of the subject. Even allowing that this policy on the part of the Government was necessary for the promotion of British interests—a proposition which I entirely dispute—we cannot be asked to vote this enormous sum of money without taking into our account the fact that the House of Commons has already placed at the disposal of the Government a very large sum of money. Let me remind the House that on the Army and Navy Estimates and the Vote of Credit we are already committed to an expenditure of something like £32,000,000. Is not that sufficient for an armed demonstration? That is not all. Does any hon. Member suppose that this £750,000 is the last of the bill? We shall have a very considerable sum of money to pay beyond this amount. I believe that it is an altogether extravagant expenditure; and are we to be told that the time has passed when we can object to that expenditure? That time has not gone by, and we are not in any way now precluded from objecting to the policy which has been pursued. The right hon. Gentleman the Chancellor of the Exchequer has admitted, that while it would be a very great inconvenience if the House rejected these Supplementary Estimates, yet in that case the expense would not be thrown upon India. Therefore, it must be understood that if we vote against this expenditure for Indian troops, what we are doing is not throwing that charge upon India, but calling upon the Government so to avoid expenditure in other services, that they may provide out of such savings the fresh expenditure incurred. It will be far better to reject the Vote than to throw this additional burden upon the backs of the people of this country, who are suffering at the present time from great distress—from financial difficulties and privations of the most dreadful character. Is this the time, when for years past we have been passing through a state of commercial depression which has affected almost every capitalist in the Kingdom, when the people have a difficulty in finding employment, and, in some cases, even the common necessaries of life, to adopt such a Vote blindfold? The expenditure has been entirely unnecessary, and the object aimed at might have been secured by greater economy. Altogether the Government is left without a single excuse for the proposals they have laid before the House of Commons.

said, that even at the risk of being accused of factious opposition, and of taking a course which was useless, and which could lead to no practical result, he thought it right to enter his protest against the course taken by the Government. The Chancellor of the Exchequer had assured the House that the prospects of the meeting of the Conference had materially increased; but the satisfaction with which that assurance was received was greatly lessened by the recollection of the number of satisfactory assurances which had come from the same quarter, but afterwards turned out to have been without any solid foundation. He was of opinion that there had been a dexterous manipulation of public information. For a long time past delicate and momentous questions had been under the consideration of the Government, large sums of money had been voted, the Reserves had been called out, and the Indian troops moved, and up to this moment no one knew what the object was at which the Government aimed. He contended that this was not a proper position for the House to be placed in; and he protested against the absolute and irresponsible right of a small clique, in concert with the Crown, to settle great questions of foreign policy, and to make war or peace without reference to Parliament. He protested against the House of Commons being made merely the holder of the purse-strings of the nation, and having the power only to say—"We will not pay." The conduct of the Government was, he held, wholly unconstitutional, and might have the effect of rousing a most unfavourable feeling out-of-doors. Not only were the Government pursuing a policy of secrecy, but in their diplomatic negotiations with Russia they had imposed silence on Russia herself. He believed the Government would not deny that they had imposed silence upon Count Schouvaloff in regard to the objects of his mission; and he asked if it were not true that they were contemplating, in reference to the negotiations, certain conditions which went far beyond anything that had yet been made known? He saw an article in The Times of that day which stated, in effect, that no influence could ensure good government in Turkey but that of a Power whose authority in the East was generally recognized, and that England was that Power. Such a policy might lead to the most serious consequences, and the sooner it was disavowed by the Government the better. He regarded the employment of these Indian troops as impolitic and inexpedient. It was calculated to excite the jealousy of European Powers, to create a reactionary and dangerous effect in India, and to blunt the moral sense of the English people. It would be a dangerous and unhealthy principle if they were to lay it down that in future wars England would find the money and India would find the men.

Sir, the House need not be afraid that I am going to abuse its patience by entering at length upon the wide subjects which are affected by this Vote. It has afforded me already its attention with great liberality and kindness, and therefore I shall show my gratitude by moderation upon the present occasion. I have not heard that it is intended to divide the House at the present stage of these proceedings; and I do not think that it would be very desirable that a division should be taken without Notice upon a subject of so much importance, when a division would give no fair test of the opinion of the House. I wish to express my own disapproval, and protest against this proceeding on two grounds—the one that I think it is impolitic, and the other that it is illegal. The impolicy of the use of Indian troops is a matter upon which I entertain a strong opinion; but, at the same time, I do not hold it as an ultimate and unchangeable opinion. It is a large question, involving a great number of considerations perfectly distinct from one another. We have had no argument from Her Majesty's Government upon the subject; and I feel that it is a question so novel, so extensive, and so complicated, that no prudent person, whatever his first impressions may be, would wish to give them vent as absolutely irrevocable. My own present opinion is, that it is a most impolitic and most dangerous measure; but, at the same time, that opinion itself would not have led me, before you, Sir, quit the Chair, to express my verbal protest against the proceeding. I feel, and those who think with me, that the vote which we are about to be invited to give is an illegal vote, a vote for a distinctly illegal purpose; in my opinion, we are taking the most consistent course in stating that opinion before we go into Committee. I am of opinion, not only that this measure is illegal, but that it is illegal under a number of distinct and separate heads, any one of which, so far as argument has yet gone, is quite sufficient to convict it of illegality. The first and most important of these is the question of Common Law. It is, I believe, in violation of the Common Law that we are called upon, without any attempt to rectify the previous proceedings, to give a vote for the purpose of supporting an addition to the Standing Army, which had been made by the Executive Government, upon its own responsibility, in violation, I will not say of the Bill of Rights, but of the Common Law, of which the Bill of Rights was a declaration and expression. There were several matters of fact alleged for the purpose of showing that the proceeding was not under that head illegal, and I would wish briefly to point to the signal and unexampled manner in which the allegations of facts that were made, with perfect truth, and sincerity, by Members of the Government have, one after another, broken down. The first allegation was, that when the late Government, in the year 1870, proposed an addition of 20,000 men to the Army, they had no legislative sanction for the numbers so added to the Army; but the researches of the Government were not, unfortunately, extended to Schedule B of the Act—because in the Schedule will be found the number of 20,000 men recorded in the usual manner, with all the sanction that the Legislature can give to it. Another allegation was, that in the case of New Zealand a Force was sent from the Indian Establishment without authority, and that such sending of the Forces by a former Liberal Government constituted a precedent for what has now been done. If that had been done so, it would have been little material to the case, because in New Zealand war had actually broken out, and the question was one of establishing peace in the country. It appears, however, that such Forces were never sent at all, and that the Forces which were sent were English Forces not upon the Indian Establishment. Important as these errors are, the plea that was raised upon them was nothing like the importance of one which was made explicitly by the Attorney General in this House, and which appears to have been advanced still more boldly in "another place"—an allegation which, if substantiated in point of fact, would have gone some way to establish the doctrine set up on the part of the Government, that it is the Prerogative of the Crown to raise and maintain Armies generally—that the Prerogative was limited by the Bill of Rights as to the United Kingdom, but that beyond the United Kingdom no such limitations exist. If that proposition can be established, it would, no doubt, be most material for the support of the proceedings of Her Majesty's Government. There was only a single case alleged which went directly to establish that proposition, but it was an important case. I refer to the case of Ireland, and if the allegation breaks down there, the failure is still more conspicuous and egregious than in the other cases. It was alleged that for a length of time after the Revolution—and by a still higher authority than the Attorney General—that during the whole of the last century a standing Army was kept in Ireland without the authority of Parliament. What is the fact? The fact is that from the first Mutiny Act after the Revolution the authority of Parliament was given explicitly and expressly for the maintenance of Forces, with a view to the reduction and subjugation of Ireland. That process was repeated in the very next year—the year 1690. To the first two Acts I have referred, and I take the others down to 1698 on the authority of my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Taunton (Sir Henry James), in all of which years the Mutiny Acts provide and renew the authority for the maintenance of Forces in Ireland. In the year 1698 an Act was passed, constituting a regular Establishment of Forces for Ireland, which was fixed at 12,000 men. In the year 1767 that Act was repealed, and another substituted, which recited that it had become necessary to employ a certain portion of the Force kept on the Irish Establishment out of the country, and that, for the purpose of putting the Government in a condition so to employ a portion of the Indian Establishment, it was needful to enlarge the Irish Establishment; and, consequently, by the authority of Parliament, the Establishment was increased from 12,000 to 15,200 men. So stood the Act until the time of the Union. This is the only precedent as far my information goes, and the facts show that the standing Army of Ireland was maintained for 70 or 80 years after the Revolution, and down to the time of the Act of Union, under the express authority of Parliament. If that be so, and no one has contravened the allegation of my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Taunton, Ireland at that time stood in exactly the same Constitutional position as that which Malta now holds. So much for breach of the common law. Besides that, we have the Indian Government Act, and so far as I am able to understand, there are three distinct allegations that that Act has been broken, to no one of which has any tolerable semblance of an answer been given. The 41st section of the Indian Government Act requires the consent of the majority of the Council to any charge upon the Revenues of India. There has been no such assent by the majority of the Council, and that, according to us, is a distinct breach of the law. "No," as I understand the Government say, "there is no breach of the law, because there has been no charge upon the Revenues of India." The money has been paid out of the Revenues of India; there is no doubt at all about that; and there are no legal means for its repayment. I apprehend that when money has been paid out of the Revenues of India, and there are no legal means for its repayment, a charge has been imposed upon the Indian Revenue. If that be not so, you lose all power of defining what is the meaning of the phrase—"charge upon the Revenues of India." Well, Sir, this matter is tolerably simple, and may be said to rest thus—the East India Company in former times had not power for the general employment of Forces all over the world, but only within certain limits, which were defined by Charter and Acts of Parliament. The Charter limited their employment by a geographical definition, and that definition was the Cape of Good Hope on the one side and the Straits of Magellan on the other side. Within the region so limited the Forces of the East India Company might be employed, but beyond those limits they could not. In 1858, Parliament constituted the Military and Naval Forces of the East India Company into the Indian Naval and Military Forces of Her Majesty; and, in so doing, defined in the strictest manner that they should be Military and Naval Forces only upon the same terms as they had been for the East India Company. The care, the precision, and the minuteness of detail, with which this limitation is contained in the Indian Government Act is most remarkable; because it is not merely said that they shall be Her Majesty's Indian Military and Naval Forces on the same terms as they would have been had they continued to be the Forces of the East India Company, but it is said that they shall be under the same obligations to serve Her Majesty as they would have been under to serve the Company, and shall be liable to serve within the same territorial limits only, for the same terms only, and be entitled to the like pay, allowances, and so forth. It is perfectly true that that refers to the Forces that were then actually in the service of the Crown, and that a subsequent reference is made with regard to persons thereafter rendering that service; but, although that reference is made, there is no enlargement whatever of the terms contained in the Act of Parliament. There is a reference to other Acts of Parliament, but that reference only makes the case and the arguments all the more stringent, for we find in those Acts the geographical limits within which the East India Company's Forces might be employed distinctly recognized and affirmed. Then comes the 57th section of the East India Company's Act, which gives the Queen power, by order in Council, to alter or enlarge these terms; and it is not for me to dispute that, supposing contracts with individuals maintained, the Queen has Parliamentary power—a peculiar Parliamentary power—to enlarge the terms. But Her Majesty can only do so by Order in Council. There is no such power by oath of enlistment, by the Articles of War, or by anything else. Not only so, but care has been taken that Parliament shall be made part and parcel of the proceedings; because the provision is, that such Order shall be laid before both Houses of Parliament "within 14 days of the meeting thereof." Well, we have had it from the highest authority, from the Solicitor General, that it was the duty of the Opposition to find out whether there was any Order in Council or not. My hon. and learned Friend the Member for Barnstaple (Mr. Waddy) took the best way of finding out whether there was such an Order in Council. He inquired of the Government, and from the mouth of the Government we now know that such an Order in Council does not exist. This is the third breach of the law. The first is the breach of the common law; the second is with regard to the assent of the majority of the Indian Council; and the third is that which refers to the local limits within which the Forces are to act. Well, Sir, this a matter of great interest; because, hon. Gentlemen looking back over what has occurred in former years, cannot fail to be struck with the fact that in every one of the cases in which Indian Forces have been hitherto employed beyond the frontiers of India they have been employed in such a way as to come completely within the definition of the territories of the East India Company's Charter. The Solicitor General has said that this was an affair connected with the conditions of the contract between the Government and persons who were then serving in Her Majesty's Forces. If that had been all, it would have been perfectly easy to save their rights. It would have been totally unnecessary to put in these elaborate provisions about Orders in Council. It would have been a very simple matter to have introduced a saving clause or proviso on this point. The only reading of the Act, to any man who looks at it with an impartial eye, and endeavours to learn what was the animus of the Parliament which passed it, is obviously this—that the intention of Parliament was that the East India Army, in its Native Forces, should continue to be, as it had been, a local Army. The opposite contention would make out that Parliament was outside one of the very largest questions it was possible for it to decide—namely, that the Indian Army, which had up to that time been a local Army, should from that time become only a portion, separated by geographical boundaries only, of Her Majesty's Army. Instead of that, I think a wise course was taken. Power was left to the Crown to act by passing Orders in Council, and then by making those Orders known to Parliament, in order that Parliament might have the opportunity of pronouncing its opinion thereupon. Well, then, there comes the other clause—Section 55; and here it is very difficult to make out what is the exact contention of the Government. In fact, the Attorney General in this House stands in one sense altogether alone, for he is the only man who has made a distinct contention of any kind. We know at least what we are dealing with when we have to do with him; but from the other Members of the Government I defy any hon. Member to extract one particle of doctrine. They speak of alarming intelligence which proves to be untrue. Sometimes it is a telegram from Constantinople, sometimes it is something else; but, invariably, it causes some step of immense importance to be taken, and then the intelligence turns out not to be true. We were told that this power would be gently used, that it would be exercised with the utmost care and discrimination; but what the Constitutional principle is on which the Government mean to take their stand we know not. We only know that the doctrine of the Attorney General has been declared in terms perfectly clear and unequivocal, and that those terms have not been disavowed by any Member of Her Majesty's Government. Well, then comes, I was going on to say, the section with regard to the use of the Forces beyond the frontiers of the Indian Possessions; and here my contention is very simple. It is that the clause has been broken—flatly, plainly, and egregiously broken—by the doing of this act without the consent of Parliament. "Consent of Parliament" here means the previous consent of Parliament; but if that is contested I should like to have some case quoted, either from Statute or Parliamentary usage, according to which the "consent of Parliament" means some act done by Parliament after the fact. In its various Parliamentary applications the term has not one meaning. In the case of Bills affecting the proprietary rights of the Crown, the consent of the Crown has to be signified before the Bill quits the House.

made a remark, which was inaudible.

My right hon. Friend really ought to have some compassion upon inferior intellects. He says that the consent of the Crown was to be given previously to the employment.

At the expense of the Revenue of India.

Then the consent of Parliament did mean previous consent? Although I believe the law has been broken in three respects, the two points on which we are mainly at variance are as to the territorial limits within which the troops may be legally employed, and, secondly, as to whether any charge has been actually made on the Revenues of India? Well, Sir, having made these remarks, it is not my intention to divide the House. On the contrary, I think I have given good reasons why it seems to me better that we should not divide at the present stage. But, inasmuch as we are called upon, in my opinion, to sanction an act contrary to the law, I wished to register my dissent against such a proceeding. I may be told that this, after all, is to meet a charge which has been already incurred. Well, of course, that is true as to a portion of the charge. I apprehend, however, that this will be both a prospective and a retrospective Vote; but looking at it as it is proposed in principle, and as implying a recognition of the propriety and legality of what has been done, I have ventured to state these objections to the House.

said, the right hon. Gentleman had alluded to the 55th Section of the Government of India Act, which he considered had been infringed by the action of the Government; but the argument founded on that section had already, he thought, been sufficiently disposed of by the remarks which had been made by his right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer. The fact was, they were not applying the Revenues of India to this purpose at all. They were being, as a matter of account, advanced, but they would be repaid; but no charge would be put in any form upon the Revenues of India. Then, the right hon. Gentleman said that an Order in Council was necessary to enable the Government to act as they had done, and that that Order in Council ought to have been laid before Parliament. The Section of the Act had two objects—the first being, that if it were desired to alter the conditions and terms of service, it should be done by Order in Council; and the second object was to enable the Governor General in Council, from time to time, to alter the forms of attestation, and the oath to be taken on enlistment, without the necessity of coming to Parliament at all. There had never been any necessity to issue an Order in Council, but the Governor General in Council had issued an Order altering the form of attestation; and, under the Act, read by any man in the light of common sense, it showed that it was impossible, looking to the words of the clause, to consider that any Order in Council was necessary.

said, the hon. Gentleman had inadvertently fallen into an error. The alteration in the oath and form of attestation was made in 1856, in order to render the troops liable to serve beyond the seas—in the Mauritius, China, &c.—from which, until that alteration, they had been exempt, as their former oath only bound them to "march" wherever ordered. If there were any doubt as to the intentions of the Government of 1858, it could be solved by reference to the Report of the Commissioners of 1858–9 with regard to the amalgamation of the Indian and Imperial Armies. From that Report, it was clear that there was no idea that the local Army of India could by any possibility be employed in Europe.

said, if the House were to be asked to go to a division on this question, he could not give a silent vote. He was convinced at the time the £6,000,000 Vote was agreed to, that the majority of the House was unquestionably determined to support the Government in its course of foreign policy. He should have been content to let this matter pass but for the extraordinary statement of the right hon. Gentleman the Home Secretary, that Her Majesty had the undoubted right in time of peace to move Her troops from one part of Her Dominions to another; and of the Attorney General, that the Mutiny Act did not extend further than the British Islands. When he heard those statements, he thought they had receded 200 years, and that he was reading the accounts of the old Star Chamber. If Her Majesty's Government had come down and said that this was a matter of emergency—that they were not at liberty to give their reasons, but must trust to the good sense of the House to leave any discussion to the future—he, for one, would have given a very different vote. But when the Government affirmed it as an absolute right, it became a Constitutional question of importance. If the Mutiny Act did not extend beyond the British Islands, under what authority were the troops tried by court martial, as he had seen done in Canada and Nova Scotia, and elsewhere? He regretted to be compelled to vote against the Speaker leaving the Chair; but he thought this was no question of giving encouragement to Russia, but one of whether they should give up those liberties which their forefathers prized.

was totally unable to see that any question of Constitutional law had been raised by the removal of these troops from India to Malta. The question turned on the meaning of the word "Kingdom" in the Bill of Rights; and, as in common law, the ''Kingdom'' was defined to be "where the King's writ ran," it followed that Malta did not come within the Bill of Rights, as the noble Marquess the Leader of the Opposition had contended. The Bill of Rights was a declaratory Act asserting the rights and liberties of the English people. When even foreign troops were brought into this Kingdom Parliament was informed by Message after they were so brought in; and if Indian troops—British subjects—had been brought in, it was not necessary to obtain the previous sanction of Parliament under the Bill of Rights. Nor was there anything in the Mutiny Act to limit the Prerogative of the Crown to move a portion of the troops serving from one part to another. The talk about the danger of the movement was a mere bugbear. No man in his senses could seriously contend that the removal of Indian troops to Malta could in any way endanger the liberties of the people of this country. Troops could not be moved without money, and as Parliament had to be asked to pay the cost, Parliament had a check over the movement of troops. The late movement of Indian troops to Malta was no violation of the Constitution, for by the Constitution the Government and the disposition of the Forces were vested in the Crown. If the movement of Indian troops from India to Malta were against the Constitution, why was not a Resolution moved to impeach the Ministry? Instead of that, an ingenious Resolution was brought forward mis-reciting and mis-stating the law. That Resolution was supported by statements which, if true, would have justified an impeachment of the Ministry. In 1858 the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Greenwich (Mr. Gladstone) moved a Resolution, declaring that except for the repelling of actual invasion, the Government should not be allowed to employ Indian troops beyond the boundaries of India without the consent of Parliament. That Resolution was not worth the paper on which it was written, if such employment of Indian troops were a violation of the Constitution. Lord Palmerston said that such an attempt to restrict the Prerogative of the Crown was unconstitutional. In the other House the subject was more maturely considered, and that Resolution was rejected. Therefore, there was a Parliamentary decision against the present contention of the right hon. Gentleman. He (Sir George Bowyer) did not know why the noble Lord moved a Resolution. If let alone, he did not believe the noble Lord would have moved a Resolution. Everyone present at the debate on that Resolution saw that the noble Lord, to use a law phrase, did not like his case, and had an up-hill game to make. The objection which had been made to the act of the Government in moving the Indian troops was not only a Party move, but it was one which was most ill-timed and most inopportune, inasmuch as it tended to weaken the influence of the British Government abroad.

said, they were getting familiar with assertions of Prerogative, and with arguments that were enough to make them afraid for the future; not that the National Party would not be victorious, but because a disruption of the even balance at present existing in the country would certainly come about if the course now in favour were persevered in by its injudicious advocates. The argument with respect to Ireland, which had been relied on by the Government in the late debates in both Houses, had been based upon a mistake, the fact telling exactly the other way. The policy of the Government in regard to the movement of Indian troops to Malta was simply to create a sensation in Europe. The movement of these troops to Malta was not justified by any emergency. The Government themselves had said that they did not now believe that there was an emergency, but that, in the first instance, they acted on information received from a high authority. Who was that authority? If it were their Ambassador at Constantinople, that accounted, perhaps, for the fact that the information was at once alarming and unreliable. If there were a real emergency, was India the place from which 7,000 men could be obtained the most quickly? Now, what effect would the introduction of Indian troops have on the Government of Russia? Why, they would form the opinion that that was the largest number we could spare from India. The Government were now going forth as a great military nation, and were assuming that bluster and swagger which brought the Second Empire to its fall. What had been the character for which England had been distinguished for many years? Why, if she had been distinguished for anything, it had been moderation. But that character had recently been greatly changed. The policy of the Government had been a boastful, bragging policy, and quite foreign to the nature of Englishmen. He warned the House against supporting such a policy at the present time.

said, there was a greater than the merely local question before the House. He considered it most unwise, ungenerous, and unpatriotic on the part of hon. Gentlemen opposite, in a great crisis like the present, to raise such an issue, more especially after the Chancellor of the Exchequer had assured them that there was a hope of a Congress assembling. Other countries could not imagine or realize that any body of men, least of all could they imagine Members of the British House of Commons, raising such a discussion, unless, indeed, they objected not merely to the movement of the Native Indian troops in a legal point of view, but altogether to the foreign policy of Her Majesty's Government. A wrong issue was, therefore, placed before the House. Did any hon. Member, he asked, believe for one moment that by the movement of these troops the liberties of this country were endangered? There were dangers to the liberties of the country, on the other hand, arising from the action taken by hon. Gentlemen opposite, and dangers to Europe as representing the faith of Treaties. The majority the other night showed the feeling of the House with reference to this subject, and, more than that, he thought it showed the feeling of the country. For his part, he believed that the step taken by the Government had done more than anything which had occurred in this generation to strengthen the union of India to Great Britain. He did not think that military men were jealous of the Indian troops. In fact, if these troops could be brought to England and reviewed by the Queen, he was certain they would be received with enthusiasm by the whole country. The course now taken was calculated to damage the action of the Government, for it was not understood in its true light abroad. He believed the Government, by the action they had taken in ordering these troops from India, had done the best thing they could to maintain their Indian Empire and the greatness of the country, and, above all, to maintain the rights of Treaties and the liberties of Europe.

said, he did not understand that the duties of the Opposition ceased after once taking a division upon a question. That was not the way he understood that the liberties of this country had been built up. No doubt, they were in a minority in the House at that moment; but he was not convinced that the Government possessed the confidence of the country. The question was one which the mere money evil did not properly appraise. The assumption of the Royal Prerogative was something infinitely greater than the mere money payment. The act of bringing over Indian troops had drawn upon the Government grave reprobation, and it was the duty of the Opposition so to oppose it that posterity might fully appreciate the position it had taken up. He should consider it his duty to vote against the Motion that the Speaker leave the Chair.

said, he was sorry that the right hon. Gentleman the Secretary of State for the Home Department had left his place, as he wished to take that opportunity to make an explanation with regard to some observations which fell from the right hon. Gentleman in reply to him (Mr. Newdegate) during the debate on Thursday last. The right hon. Gentleman then said that he (Mr. Newdegate) had contended that the previous consent of Parliament to the movement of Indian Native troops out of Her Majesty's Indian Possessions was necessary. He (Mr. Newdegate) then rose to explain that that was, in his opinion, the purport of the expressions used by the late Lord Derby in moving the 55th clause of the India Act, and that he (Mr. Newdegate) had not merely given his own opinion, but he had quoted the late Earl of Derby. The fact was, that this question, which the hon. Member for the Isle of Wight (Mr. Baillie Cochrane) seemed to think so trifling, and complained of its being interposed at what he described a great emergency, was a very grave Constitutional question. The question was this—and it was clear from the exposition of the hon. and learned Member for Durham (Mr. Herschell), and from that of the hon. and learned Member for Taunton (Sir Henry James), clear also from what had fallen from the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Greenwich (Mr. Gladstone) that evening, that it was not the exercise of the Prerogative in declaring war that was questioned—there was no question about that, but the real question was this—whether, by moving the local Native troops from India, without the concurrence of Parliament, Her Majesty's Government had not used the Prerogative in this sense—the sense of having converted the Native Indian Army from a local Force into being a part of the general and Regular Forces of the standing Army of this Kingdom and Empire? Now, that was not a little question. The question was no less than this—whether by some operation, confined to Her Majesty's Ministers, without the previous knowledge or consent of Parliament, they had not so interpreted the India Act of 1858, that the Forces, which, by the 54th, 55th, and 56th clauses of that Act, were clearly described as a local Indian Army, not under the command of the Field Marshal Commanding-in-Chief of the acknowledged standing Army, but who were under the command of the Governor General of India, and that only for local and Indian purposes—whether, he repeated, by this undescribed process, Her Majesty's Ministers had not, in time of peace, managed to convert part of the Indian local Army into being part of the general Forces of the Kingdom; whether, by the use of the power, as it was alleged, contained in the 57th clause of the Act, by which Her Majesty had power, by Order in Council, to decide the terms of enlistment of this local Indian Army, the Government had not, as stated by the Under Secretary of State for India (Mr. E. Stanhope), so used and interpreted that clause, as to supersede the whole meaning of the three preceding clauses; and, strange to say, they had failed to produce any Order in Council which could satisfy the requirements of the 57th clause itself? Now, that, he repeated was not a small question; and, in saying this, he went upon what had been stated that evening as, in the opinion of Her Majesty's Government, the justification of their course, stated by the Under Secretary of State for India. If the question rested only upon the 55th clause of the Act alone, he could understand there being some doubt, though it was a doubt in which he could not share; for it was a doubt that did not seem to have entered into the mind of the late Earl of Derby when he framed that clause. But he would read the clause to the House. The 54th clause was to this effect—that when an order to commence actual hostilities was sent to India, the fact should be communicated to Parliament. Now, that clearly related to war carried on upon the frontiers of or within the Indian Territories of Her Majesty; he did not think any lawyer could read the clause, and dispute that conclusion. The next clause, the 55th, said—

"Except for preventing or repelling actual invasion of Her Majesty's Indian Possessions, or under other sudden or urgent necessity, the Revenues of India shall not, without the consent of Parliament, be applicable to defray''—

not the expenses only of actual war, but—

"the expenses of any Military operation carried on beyond the external frontiers of such Possession by Her Majesty's Forces charged upon such Revenues."

Therefore, the terms of the clause conveyed—and this was irrespective of a declaration of war in India—that without the consent of Parliament to repel invasion, or some such urgent necessity, neither the Revenues nor the Forces of India should be used for any military operation beyond the frontiers of India. In proposing this clause, the late Earl of Derby said—

"If the troops were employed out of India, it would be for Parliament to decide whether they were employed upon Indian or Imperial objects;"—[3 Hansard, cli. 1697.]

because, according to the universal practice of the Government of India, equally while it was in the hands of the East India Company as since, these local Forces were used for Indian purposes outside of India, and to Indian purposes three of these four clauses clearly related. But surely the late Earl of Derby, with those three clauses before him, when he introduced the 55th clause, must have known what was the purport of the clause which he so introduced. He (Mr. Newdegate) had quoted it before, but he would quote two sentences of the Earl of Derby's speech again. The Earl of Derby' first words were—

"The object of the clause was to impose a certain restriction upon the Prerogative of the Crown through the intervention of Parliament."—[Ibid.]

Those were his first words. His last words, when introducing the 55th clause, were these—

"If the clause were not agreed to, it would be perfectly competent for any unconstitutional Sovereign to employ the whole of the Revenues and Troops of India, for any purpose which the Crown might direct, without the necessity of going to Parliament for the advance of a single shilling."—[Ibid.]

Let the House observe that these words point to an advance of money. He (Mr. Newdegate) could not believe that it was seriously argued by the Government that the Indian Treasury had not advanced a single shilling, and it had not been pretended that the Treasury of this country had done so. Clearly, then, if the Indian Treasury had advanced a single shilling, there was no pretence for saying that in this case the consent of Parliament had been obtained to the expenditure of that shilling. Clearly, according to the understanding of the late Earl of Derby—who substituted this clause for another, in order to place, as he said in his first words, a limitation or restriction upon the use of the Prerogative—the sense and meaning of the terms of this clause, taken in connection with the 54th, 56th, and 57th clauses of the India Act, had been broken and violated by what had been done. But did the proof of this stop here? This very question was raised in the year 1867, with respect to the Abyssinian War; and he had the words of the Chancellor of the Exchequer then before him, spoken on the 26th of November, 1867, during the debate on the Abyssinian War. In July of that year, and previous to the Prorogation of Parliament, the present Earl of Derby, then Lord Stanley, had announced that it was in the contemplation of the Government to use the Indian troops for the Abyssinian Expedition; and while the right hon. Gentleman the Chancellor of the Exchequer was speaking in this House in the following November, he said that no objection had been taken in this House by any Member of this House before the Recess, whereupon Mr. Bernal Osborne got up and said—"Yes, one did," and then asserted that Colonel Sykes had objected. Could there be any clearer proof that at the end of the previous Session, which closed in the month of August, 1867, this House had been informed that it was the intention of the Government to use the Indian Forces? But he would go further yet. When, in 1858, this 55th clause had been inserted in the India Act in Committee in the House of Lords, this occurred—he quoted from Hansard, vol. cli. 2008—

"GOVERNMENT OF INDIA BILL.

"Third reading, Clause 55, enacting that, except for preventing or repelling actual invasion, the revenues of India shall not, 'without the consent of Parliament,' he applicable to defray the expenses of any military operation carried on beyond the frontiers.

"Lord CRANWORTH wished to remind the noble Earl (the Earl of Derby) that the 'consent of Parliament' meant an Act of Parliament; while the consent of 'both Houses of Parliament' would be inferred by Addresses to the Crown.

"Earl GRANVILLE had asked more than once what was meant by the words 'consent of Parliament,' but he never received an answer. He should like to hear from the noble Earl opposite what was meant by the term.

"The Earl of DERBY said, the consent of Parliament might mean either an Act of Parliament or a Resolution passed by both Houses."

And what did the late Earl of Derby do in 1867? The Indian troops left Bombay on the 7th of September in that year. That was when they moved. Simultaneously, the Earl of Derby issued Notices for convening Parliament, which assembled on the 19th of November; and, in seconding the Address in the House of Lords, the late Lord Hylton plainly stated, and purposely stated, that Parliament had been convened, as soon as circumstances admitted, because it was felt that the Constitution required the consent of Parliament to the use of these troops for Imperial purposes out of India. What was the next proceeding at the commencement of the Session, which began on that 19th of November, 1867? Why, the proposal of a Vote of Credit, which was granted by Resolution of this House, which thus assented to, and identified itself with, the action of the Government. Let the House now compare the proceedings in 1867 with the proceedings in this Session, when Parliament separated for the Easter Recess without having received the slightest intimation that this exceptional use was to be made of the Indian local troops, and had remained until this very day, after a division had been taken in the House on this subject, without the means of giving its consent to the action of the Government by passing any Resolution in Supply. He held, then, not only that the Constitutional practice had been broken, but that a most vicious and dangerous precedent was being set. That opinion he held distinctly, not upon his own authority only, but on that of accomplished lawyers, who had kindly assisted him by examining this Statute, and who had told him that that which had now been done by Her Majesty's Government was, in their opinion, illegal, and, even if it were not technically illegal, that it was wholly unconstitutional. He also contended that the action of the Government, in changing the terms of the enlistment of the Native Indian Army without an Order in Council, with a view to changing the character of that local Army of India, and to make that Army a part of the Regular Forces of this country, was a stretch of the Prerogative that was unjustifiable, and that would hereafter, if not now, be reprobated by Parliament. No one could be surprised that, entertaining these opinions, he (Mr. Newdegate) had voted for the Resolution of the noble Lord the Leader of the Opposition. He was no less anxious than Her Majesty's Ministers that this country should be prepared to exhibit her strength if necessary. He had voted against the Government on this Constitutional question. But he was the survivor of two non-official Members of that House, who, at the commencement of the Crimean War, doubted whether the Government of the day had made adequate provision of small arms for the Army. In conjunction with the late Mr. Muntz, then Member for Birmingham, he (Mr. Newdegate) ventured on the great responsibility of persuading the House to appoint a Select Committee on the Supply of Arms, thus superseding the action of the then Administration. This was in the year 1854. The Select Committee on the Supply of Arms then appointed, after a careful inquiry, took the same view as the late Mr. Muntz and himself—that the War Office and the Ordnance authorities had erred in trusting to their own then imperfect manufacturing establishment and to foreign supply, instead of entrusting large orders for rifles to the English arms trade. The Ordnance Authorities asserted that the English arms trade could not be trusted to supply more than 30,000 rifles a-year. The House of Commons compelled the Government, nevertheless, to send large orders to the English trade. The answer of the trade was the supply of 272,000 rifles in two years and three months. The result justified the conduct of the late Mr. Muntz and himself; but he (Mr. Newdegate) felt at the outset that they incurred a grave responsibility. He (Mr. Newdegate) was prepared now to incur as grave a responsibility, if necessary, as he did in 1854, for the sake of upholding the strength and greatness of this country; and yet, because he differed from Her Majesty's Ministers on this Constitutional question, it was pretended that he lacked patriotism and courage; because he had voted for the noble Lord's Motion, was he to be told that he was changed from what he was in the year 1854, and that he would hesitate to maintain the honour of the country? The hon. and learned Member for Wexford (Sir George Bowyer) said that the division on that Motion was a Party division. Well, the hon. and learned Member said that he had registered himself in the Parliamentary Companion as a Home Ruler, and in favour of a national Parliament in Ireland, whilst he (Mr. Newdegate) had for years registered himself as a supporter of the great principles of the Act of Settlement. The hon. and learned Member for Wexford (Sir George Bowyer) voted with Her Majesty's Ministers, and he (Mr. Newdegate) voted against Her Majesty's Ministers, in the division of Thursday last, and the hon. and learned Baronet declared that to have been a strictly Party division. If the hon. and learned Baronet were right, this gave a rather curious view of Party connection in the House. He (Mr. Newdegate) had voted with the Leader of the Opposition, because the noble Lord had most dutifully and properly raised a great Constitutional question, upon which he (Mr. Newdegate) agreed with the noble Lord; he voted, not with the view of impeding or delaying the action of the Government, but to preserve a great principle of the Constitution, which, when observed, let all foreigners know that there could be no doubt if Her Majesty were compelled to declare war—which God forbid!—that, although Her Majesty did this on Her own authority, Her Majesty had, in so doing, the advice, the consent, and the support of the Commons of England.

said, the hon. Member for North Warwickshire (Mr. Newdegate) was, no doubt, regarded by the Party opposite as one of the most unpatriotic men of the country. The Tory Party seemed to think that true patriotism consisted in following a Leader and stifling one's conscientious convictions, even upon the most important questions. They were asked that night to go into Committee of Supply, in order to vote money for an Indian Army which the Government had brought into Europe, in his opinion, contrary to law; but whether this transaction had been legal or illegal, before voting money for it, he should have required to be convinced of its necessity. It had been admitted by the Government that in bringing these troops the law had been set aside, and the entire step had been defended upon the plea of an emergency. If, when the law had been violated, it was enough for a Minister to rise in his place and state that there was an emergency, it would be easy at any time to defy the law. Surely it was the duty of the Minister to describe the emergency, to define it, to show its dimensions, to make it clear to the average intellect of the nation. Nothing of the kind had been done. No Minister had shown, or even attempted to show what this emergency was. He denied that there was an emergency. He was aware that if he stood alone in this denial, it might have little weight; but he denied it in company with a large portion of his fellow-countrymen and many Members of that House, who represented the largest constituencies. In that denial he was supported by men of the foremost intellect of the nation, as witness the declarations which they had publicly signed, and by the awakening voice of the constituencies as evidenced at Reading, at Tamworth, and at Northumberland. Nor did he fear to refer to the Election at County Down; for, when the Prime Minister rushed in hot haste to the nearest telegraph station to thank the electors of that county for the support given to his foreign policy, the Irish Members of that House, knowing that the Eastern Question was never referred to during that contest, had the strongest evidence of the growing sensitiveness of the Government to the opinion of the country. When he denied that there was an emergency, he meant, of course, an emergency which, were it not removed, would justify a great war. Where were we to find the emergency?—he supposed, if anywhere, in the Treaty of San Stefano. But, according to that Treaty, Constantinople remained in the same hands, the water-way to the Black Sea was undisturbed; and would any Minister tell the country that some 50,000 British lives, and, perhaps, £150,000,000 sterling, were to be sacrificed to make Bulgaria greater or less, or to prevent Russia getting a town more or less in Asia? The emergency was a sham and not a real emergency. If any of them should ever live to see a real emergency, when the vital interests of the Empire were attacked, the Minister of England, if he be fit to be Minister, would not send to a distant country in Asia for costly and inefficient troops, but would appeal to his own countrymen, and that appeal would be abundantly responded to. But, if there were no emergency, then the Government had committed a grave offence. Surely, it was a criminal thing for the Government, without reason and recklessly, to disturb every feeling of security in a country where millions of men have to live by exchanging the produce of their industry with other nations? He (Mr. Bright) represented a great commercial constituency; there were thousands of men in that constituency who at that moment were under the greatest pressure, and for whom the struggle to live became daily more difficult. The Members of the Government had no direct knowledge of these things. With, perhaps, only one exception, the Cabinet was taken from the county families and the landed gentry. They had both their private and official incomes, and, whatever happened, they lived in luxury and ease. It might be very pleasant for the Government, and especially for the Prime Minister, to be acting the part of disturbers of Europe; but what was pleasure to them was death to the country. The Prime Minister had had a great career at home—his ambition had been satiated, and he now sought a wider arena, and was satisfied with nothing less than to compete with European Potentates. What were the results? Two years of surprises and alarms had largely tended to paralyze the commerce of the world, and starving families, and violence and riot were the natural outcome of the Beaconsfield policy. With one hand the Government shook the confidence, and, therefore, injured the industry of the country; with the other it imposed fresh burdens upon that industry, so that taxes grew with the inability to pay them. The last Government was charged with harassing every interest in the country; this Government took a bolder course, it not only harassed every interest in the country, it harassed the world. If a real national emergency had existed, an English Minister would have acted with English candour, and would have come down to the House with a clear statement to ask for the support which would have been freely given by a united Parliament and country. But the Government, conscious that no emergency existed, except one of their own making, shrank from a searching discussion, and, therefore, determined to act without the co-operation of Parliament. When questioned as to why the House of Commons had been kept in ignorance of the movement of Indian troops, the Chancellor of the Exchequer informed the House that the Government had not thought it necessary to make any statement on the subject. When, however, it was discovered that even the present House of Commons resented this disrespectful treatment, the Government began to find reasons for its extraordinary conduct; and when those reasons were not vague and mysterious, when they were such as were capable of examination, they proved utterly worthless. The Leader of the House told them that it was important to keep the expedition secret, in order to obtain the transference of the Indian Army at a cheaper rate. It was at once shown him that publicity, by increasing the competition among shipowners, would have reduced freights. The Chancellor of the Exchequer was never again heard to refer to this subject. Then the Government told them that it would have been most unwise to divulge the secret, because practical difficulties might have prevented the realization of the object, and then they would have looked foolish in the eyes of Europe. It was impossible to conjecture what were the practical difficulties which could prevent England from moving 7,000 or 70,000 troops from one part of the world to another. It seemed to be only a matter of expense. The Home Secretary, however, threw some light upon this question. He said the practical difficulties had reference to the monsoon; but the hon. and gallant Gentleman the Member for East Aberdeenshire (Sir Alexander Gordon) with Indian experience, told the Home Secretary that the monsoon did not occur before the month of June, and with this explanation no more was heard of the practical difficulties. He would not, after so much debate, discuss whether the conduct of the Government, with regard to the Indian troops, had been unconstitutional or not, whether it had been illegal or not; but he must say that this disrespectful treatment of the House of Commons, this insult to Parliament had tended to intensify suspicions of an unpleasant kind. He found suspicions of a novel nature growing in the minds of some of the most sagacious politicians amongst them. When he asked for the grounds of these suspicions, he was referred to the remarkable disclosures in the life of the Prince Consort, to the ideas on Constitutional questions advocated in the great Tory Review, to the character of the Prime Minister, and to the conduct of the Government. How far the fear of an approach to personal Government extended in this country, was shown by the avidity with which the letters of "Verax" had been received. The sale of that pamphlet had been great throughout the country. He had reason to believe that it had been read by most Members of both Houses of Parliament, and to his knowledge it had found its way to many foreign countries. No wonder that Englishmen dreaded personal rule. It had brought unexampled calamity and humiliation upon the finest country in Europe. With a wise Sovereign and a prudent Minister, a country might have no immediate suffering from personal rule; but the day might come when we might have an unwise Sovereign and a reckless Minister, and then who should foresee the disasters that might befall them. Much had been said of the influences for good or evil upon India of the proposed employment of Indian troops in European warfare. Everyone admitted that they governed India mainly by the sword. India remained subject to this country, because of the 60,000 British troops they had there, and from the belief that in case of need, they could indefinitely increase that number. What, therefore, must be the surprise of that people to learn that they were unable to fight their own battles in Europe, but had to appeal to India for aid. For a period of more than 60 years, they had only once, and for a short time, had the strain of a European war. During the whole of that period they had been increasing in numbers and adding to our vast resources, and now, when there was a chance of our being at war with only a single Power, not in the stress of conflict, but before even a blow had been struck, they sent to India for help. Could any course have been taken more likely to impress Eastern nations with a mean conception of our military resources? In the farewell order to the troops embarking at Bombay the Viceroy spoke as follows:—

"Soldiers! you have been selected for the first Expedition that has ever left India to strengthen the British Forces in the Mediterranean. Whether your duties be those of peace or war, I am confident that in the faithful and devoted performance of them, you will safely uphold the honour of the Empire which is now confided to your hands."

India was here told that her own soldiers were needed to strengthen the British Forces in Europe, and the Viceroy declared that the honour of the Empire was confided to mercenary troops, not one of whom would shed a tear if these Islands were sunk in the ocean to-morrow. If these views obtained sympathy with the people of the United Kingdom, he should regard that as the beginning of the end of a great Empire. He could not consent to increase the burdens of the people without just cause. He did not accept the rule which appeared to be adopted by the Party opposite—our country, right or wrong. He must exercise his own individual judgment upon matters coming before that House, more especially when they were of the gravest importance; and he would give no sanction to a war which was not in the broadest sense necessary, and the demand for which was not founded on the clearest views of justice.

denied that any hon. Member on that side of the House wished to charge the hon. Member for North Warwickshire (Mr. Newdegate) with unpatriotic motives. On that side the right of private judgment was recognized, and the hon. Member might speak and vote against the Government upon this matter without fear of being dispossessed even of his accustomed seat. Although they might differ from the hon. Member, no man on that side of the House would dream of showing him personal disrespect. The hon. Member for Manchester (Mr. Jacob Bright) thought that there had been no emergency, and that the interests of this country had been in no degree menaced. He took exactly the opposite view. The circumstances of the past two years had been among the most momentous in their history. Had the country acted unanimously, and had the Opposition shown more consideration towards the Government, the points now in dispute might have been settled some time ago. Only the other day, a Liberal of influence, referring to the situation, said—"The Liberals are in a hole. If we have war it will be a bad thing. If we have peace it will be a Tory triumph, and I do not know which is worst." He was afraid that this was a fair specimen of the spirit which animated much of the opposition to the Government policy. The £6,000,000 already voted would perhaps have to be supplemented by £6,000,000 more; but, in his opinion, the money would be better spent than the £12,000,000 which the late Government devoted to the abolition of Purchase in the Army. This money had been spent in showing what they never believed in before—their own strength. The movement of these Indian troops was of great political importance. It had been said that 7,000 Englishmen might have been placed in Malta at less cost than these 7,000 Indian troops. But that was not the question. The question was, whether, in addition to their English Forces, they had anything else to fall back upon? India had been represented as a place where we might possibly be attacked. But this movement showed that India, instead of being a source of weakness, was a source of strength to England, which stood at present in a position of more acknowledged power than she had occupied at any time during the last 30 years. The policy of Her Majesty's Government, to unite the strength of the Empire, was the right policy, and he trusted that the Vote would be supported as one of the wisest that had ever been passed by the House.

said, it seemed almost time for the House to consider what the question was they were now discussing. That Question he took to be whether the Speaker was to leave the Chair in order that the Estimates which had been laid on the Table might be considered. He would not have troubled the House during this debate had it not been stated that it was the intention of some of his hon. Friends to divide against the Motion. He wished, therefore, to explain why it was impossible that he should take any part in a division of that kind. So far as he knew, the course it was proposed to take was without precedent, and certainly, whether with or without precedent, it was one which, so far as he could perceive, carried no meaning with it whatever. He knew it was a very usual course, when it was proposed that the Speaker should leave the Chair for the purpose of going into Committee of Supply, to intercept that Motion with a view to ascertain a definite proposition. But he was perfectly at a loss to perceive what they were now to ascertain, what protest they were to make, or what they were to gain by a division which might be taken on the Question, and the sole Question, before the House. The effect of negativing the Motion would simply be that the discussion of the Estimates would be postponed, he supposed, to next Thursday; and it was a matter of the most perfect indifference to him whether these Estimates were considered to-night or next Thursday. But he might as well state now, what he had intended to state in Committee, why he was not disposed to offer, at this stage, any further opposition to the Vote which the Government had asked. He was unable to understand why the Government proposed that these Estimates should be considered at this particular moment. The House was perfectly unable to discuss them with full information. The moment which had been selected was too late to preserve the authority of Parliament; the affair was almost completed, and, as had been pointed out over and over again last week, there was little option left to the House except to vote the money rendered necessary by the measure taken by the Government. But if it was too late for the proper and legitimate authority of Parliament to be preserved, it was too soon for any complete or thorough discussion of the policy of the measure. The House had been told last week by several Members of the Government that they were not in a position to lay their full justification before Parliament. Now, if the Government proposed to take a decision upon these Estimates as an approval by the House of the policy of moving the Indian troops, they were scarcely dealing fairly by the House. How was it possible for the House to discuss fully or to assent to the policy of the Government when they themselves told the House that they were not in a position to place their full justification before it? There was some mystery, some conflict of evidence, about all this, which was perfectly bewildering; and he, for one, until the time arrived—as he hoped it would arrive some day or other—for its being made perfectly clear, despaired of solving it. The House was told immediately before the Easter Holidays that there was nothing whatever which gave occasion for increased anxiety; but in the course of the debate last week they were informed that this measure had at that time been resolved upon, and that information had been received from "a high authority," which had since been found to be untrue, but which, in the opinion of the Government, rendered this step necessary, and, at the same time, that for military reasons the preservation of absolute secrecy was absolutely necessary. How these statements were to be reconciled he really was unable to understand; and until the Government could lay their full justification and all the reasons for their policy before the House, it seemed to him that it was not dealing fairly by the House to ask it to assent to the Vote, if that assent was to be supposed to convey an entire approval of their policy. In any division which he might challenge he was bound to vote on the supposition that he should be successful, and he was also bound to look at the consequences in that light. Now, what would be the meaning of the rejection of these Estimates? It would either be that the expense of the movement of these troops would be thrown illegally upon the revenues of India—and that was what no one wished to do—or, as the Chancellor of the Exchequer told them the other night, funds might be found to meet the expense, but only at the cost of the total disorganization of the Naval and Military Services of the year. In the present state of Europe he was not disposed to give a vote which would have the effect of entirely disorganizing the Naval and Military Services of the country. What would be a further meaning of the rejection of this Vote? It might mean, that though Parliament would, no doubt, find the means for recouping the expenditure which had been incurred, it had decided that these troops should be sent back from Malta to India with the least possible delay. That, again, was a course which he would not be prepared to support by his vote. It was one question whether it was wise in the first instance to order this expedition, and a very different one whether, having been ordered, it should be immediately ordered to return. He, certainly, was not disposed by any vote of his to be a party to presenting in the face of Europe a spectacle of such irresolution as conduct of that sort would imply. Now, being unwilling to vote for a course which would result in any of these alternatives, and the House not being in a position to discuss fully the policy of the measure, they had no alternative, it appeared to him, but, under protest it might be, to pass these Estimates. They had made—and were entitled to make—their protest against the unconstitutional manner in which this thing had been done. Their objections had not been removed by what they had been told, nor swept away by the great majority against them. They were told that full information could not yet be laid before them. But their protest was directed not only against the conduct of the Government, of which a full explanation might yet be forthcoming, but also against the claims which the Government put forth when their defence was rested, not upon the plea of emergency, but upon the ground that it was unnecessary for Parliament to be consulted at all. Their objections had not been removed, but they had fully discussed the matter, and their opinions had been overruled. If the reserve was still maintained by the Government, as to the necessity for secrecy, they must apply it still further to the policy of this measure. It was quite clear that there were many and very serious objections that might be made to the policy of employing Indian troops in Europe. Many of these were stated by his hon. Friend the Member for Hackney (Mr. Fawcett), his right hon. Friend the Member for Pontefract (Mr. Childers), and others. For the reasons he had stated, he did not intend going into them now; but still there were many great and important questions of Indian and European policy involved. He might mention one, which had not hitherto been referred to, which was the effect of this policy on the future administration of the Suez Canal. The present arrangement by which the Suez Canal was utilized was well known; it was free for the passage of their troops to and from India. That arrangement was perfectly assented to by the other Great Powers of Europe; but that position of affairs might be very seriously and materially altered, if it were understood that the British Government were going to adopt the policy of bringing Indian troops to be made use of in a European war. The Russian, the German, the French, and any other Government would look at the Suez Canal in a very different light if that policy were to be adopted by the British Government. There were other points raised by this policy, but how could they discuss them now? Everything depended on the emergency, the necessity under which the Government acted, which they had informed them they could not yet lay before the House. Therefore, any discussion must in the meantime be imperfect and inconclusive. Many might vote against the Speaker leaving the Chair as a protest not only against this particular measure, but also against the whole policy of which it was a part. They would be perfectly justified in doing so, because they had from the very first, throughout these transactions, protested against the whole policy the Government had adopted of military preparation. He and many others had not been altogether able to agree in that view. They had admitted that circumstances might arise which would justify the use by this country of its naval and military power to protect the interests of the country, and assist in securing a permanent and enduring peace; and, holding these views, they had not offered that opposition which had been offered by others to a policy of preparation. But this Vote might, perhaps, be interpreted by Government as an expression of confidence in their whole policy. He wanted to point out the limits within which that assertion might be said to be true. He had said their full case was not before them; therefore, it was impossible for Parliament to approve a policy which had not been fully explained; but, so far as it had been fully explained, it had been a policy of preparation, and nothing more—a policy of preparation, no doubt, contemplating the possibility of war, but directed, in the first place, to the maintenance and security of peace. For that policy the Government might claim justly that they had received the sanction of Parliament; but they had received nothing more. The sanction they had received was a sanction to military preparations; but they had not received, as yet, any sanction of Parliament to an active or actual use of those military preparations. If they called on Parliament for such a sanction, the decision of Parliament must depend on considerations of which as yet they knew nothing. In his opinion, the failure of the negotiations a few weeks ago for the meeting of the Congress afforded no justification for a recourse to hostilities. Of what had occurred since they were absolutely ignorant. They did not know what had been the nature of the negotiations between the Courts of London and St. Petersburg. They did not know the differences, if any, which still existed between the two Governments; but it was difficult to think that they were such as to justify a recourse to warlike measures. He did not think it necessary to detain the House longer on this occasion; but he would express his strong conviction that if the Government presumed on the support they had hitherto received to their policy of military preparations as a support of their whole policy, they would incur a most heavy responsibility if—resting on that support—they committed the country, without a clear and unmistakeable warning, to any active hostile measures. Believing, then, that a discussion of the policy of the Government was for the present impolitic, and presuming the Government had reasons for wishing to obtain the sanction of the House to this Estimate this evening, he did not now wish to interpose any preliminary discussion. If at all advisable, that discussion might be better taken in Committee; but, even in Committee, unless the Government were prepared to make further disclosures of their views and intentions, he saw no alternative but to vote, without serious discussion, the expenses of the Expedition which had been incurred, and which it was impossible for Parliament to refuse.

need hardly say that with the larger part of the observations of the noble Lord opposite he entirely concurred. He gathered from what he had said that, while he entirely and most justly held himself and those with whom he acted clear to pronounce his opinion when he thought proper upon the whole course and policy of the Government, he did not think the present moment one when it was desirable to embarrass the Government by making a difficulty with regard to the particular proposals they now made. The question of bringing Indian troops to the Mediterranean was one which had two branches—first, whether it was Constitutional to adopt that measure; and next whether it was politic and expedient. Upon the Constitutional and legal character of the step they had a debate of great importance, which lasted during the whole of last week; and, upon the whole, the decision of the House was very unmistakably pronounced. The right hon. Gentleman the Member for Greenwich had again to-night raised some of the points which the Government thought had been sufficiently disposed of, and he hoped it would not be necessary for him to enter again into that controversy. With regard to the question of policy and expediency, no doubt it was difficult to argue fully at the present moment, for the Government was not in a position to put forth all the considerations which led them to advise Her Majesty to take that step, nor was the House in a position fully to discuss them. Of course, it was open to hon. Gentlemen to challenge the whole policy of the Government, to say their policy had been wrong ab initio; but it was a policy which they had consistently taken and pursued, and they believed it had not only been supported by a majority of the House, but by the general feeling of the majority out of the House. In taking that particular line, which they believed to be the right one, it had not been their desire or intention to plunge the country into war. On the contrary, they had pursued it as a means of precaution—as the wisest and best method of avoiding a very serious and disastrous conflict—for, no doubt, such a conflict would have been disastrous to the whole human race. Her Majesty's Government were as desirous to avoid that calamity as any hon. Gentleman in any part of the House. They believed they had taken a right course, others might think differently. The Government would be prepared at the proper time to defend the course which they had adopted. There had been, no doubt, several steps which the Government had thought it their duty to advise during the different stages of the negotiations that had been going on. Some of those steps had been represented as steps tending to, and intended to, plunge the country into war. They had been told that the sending of a Fleet to the Sea of Marmora, the calling out of the Reserves, the frank and bold, and he hoped temperate, statement of their objections to the Treaty of San Stefano, and other steps which they had taken, among which the bringing of these troops from India to Malta had been one, were of that character; but all those steps had not only not brought the country into war, but had been, he believed, the cause of measures best calculated to avert war, and to bring about a peaceable and desirable settlement of the difficulties with which they had had to contend. Their policy, in the estimation of some hon. Gentlemen, might not have been the wisest or the best policy; but he could truly say that it had been a sincere policy; and that they would be perfectly prepared when the proper time arrived to discuss it, and to defend it. With regard to the special measure which was now under consideration, the noble Lord, in the course of what he must own as his exceedingly fair observations to-night, had asked the Government why, after what had passed, they thought it necessary to bring forward the Vote at the present moment. He (the Chancellor of the Exchequer) would give an answer at once. They proposed to ask Parliament to give this Vote, and to authorize by it the expenditure which had been incurred for bringing those troops to Malta, in order to avoid that which they were charged, and erroneously charged, with wishing to do—namely, the throwing of the expense on the Indian Revenue. They had felt from the first that if this measure was one that ought to be taken—as they thought it was—it was one that ought not to be made a charge upon India; and they therefore announced, at the earliest period they could do so, that as soon as they had taken an Estimate of this particular operation they would submit it to the House, in order that Parliament might place them in the position of being able to repay not only this not very large advance, but also all prospective expenditure which might be incurred by this operation, and in order to make it clear to all the world that the Indian Revenue would not be charged with the amount. Even if the Vote were refused, the Government would still hold the Revenue of India harmless; but, as had been pointed out, the refusal of it would put their Estimates into some confusion, because it would be necessary to make a change in their expenditure in order that what had been spent in this particular operation might be met out of other portions of their revenue. But he apprehended there was no question about that. The House knew perfectly well what was spent in that respect. The Government had incurred this expenditure upon their own responsibility, because they believed it was a right step to take, and that it was one which the country and the House, upon full consideration, would hold to be right. But, at a future time, it would be for Parliament, upon reviewing the matter, to censure the Government if they thought the Government had acted wrongly. With regard to the particular question which was now before the House, he held with the noble Lord that that was not a moment at which it was particularly convenient to call for a division, because he really did not see what was the issue upon which they were going to divide. The question was, whether the House should go into Committee in order to hear the statements of his right hon. Friends the Secretary of State for War and the First Lord of the Admiralty, and, after hearing those statements to consider whether it would give the Vote? He did not think the principles which the hon. Members had at heart would gain anything by further prolonging this discussion, and he could scarcely imagine that the House would be inclined, without good reason shown, to stultify or set aside the decision to which it came last week.

observed, that many of the officers of the troops that had been moved from India to Malta were employed in the Civil Service in India, and that thus civilians in India were deprived of the promotion they would otherwise have obtained. Another consideration to be borne in mind was that the removal of any considerable portion of their Indian troops from India would have to be followed by a corresponding reduction in the Armies of the Native States—a course which would be certain to create dissatisfaction with their rule.

wished to explain why he could not adopt the course suggested by the Leader of the Opposition, and abstain from voting against the Motion for going into Committee. The noble Lord had said that to vote against that Motion would be unusual and unprecedented; but the course of conduct on the part of Her Majesty's Government had been unusual and unprecedented. Any doubts which he (Mr. Fawcett) might have had as to the propriety of taking a division had been completely removed by the speech of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Greenwich (Mr. Gladstone), who had shown that the action of the Government was unconstitutional, illegal, improper, and impolitic, and also by that of the noble Lord (the Marquess of Hartington), though for a different reason. The noble Lord had urged that, if taken at all, the division ought to be upon the Vote of this money in Committee. But he differed from the noble Lord in that respect, because, if they divided on the Vote in Committee, it might be supposed that they wished the expenses of moving these troops to fall upon the people of India. The most straightforward course would be to divide on the Motion for going into Committee. Their object in wishing to postpone the Vote was to obtain the requisite information from the Government to enable the House to judge whether it was just to grant the money for the purpose of moving the Indian troops.

said, that after the lengthened debate that had already taken place upon the subject of these Indian troops, in which the general opinion of the House had been equally pronounced upon both sides, it would not be for the public advantage, or for the convenience of the Committee, that he should enter into the question of the policy that had led to the despatch of those troops. That was, no doubt, an important question, and the Government would be perfectly ready to meet it when the proper time arrived for its discussion. If he were to enter into that question then, it would probably raise a debate which might be prejudicial to the negotiations now pending; and, therefore, he should confine his remarks to a brief explanation of the Estimate he had to submit. The despatch of the Native Indian troops, as the Committee were aware, was decided upon by the Government upon the 27th of March last. On the 12th of April following a commission was given to the Indian Government to make arrangements for the embarkation of the troops; and owing to the fear which was entertained by the Indian Government of the probability of bad weather, and with a view of avoiding the monsoon, the departure of the troops was hastened as much as possible. The general question as to the employment of Native Indian troops out of India had been discussed that evening in another form, and the Committee, to the appointment of which the Government had assented, would examine into that question, and when it had reported the matter could be discussed much more conveniently than it could be now, and he should therefore not touch upon it. The troops sent to Malta consisted of six regiments of Native Infantry, four companies of Native Sappers and Miners, two regiments of Native Cavalry, and two Field Batteries of the Royal Artillery. The Estimate he now presented to the Committee was, of course, only an approximate one. They asked for a Vote of not exceeding 7,000 men, although, the number would not actually much exceed 6,000 men. The large proportion of these charges were of a nature that would arise whether the time the troops remained out of India was long or short, and it had been thought right by the Government to take the pay up to the 31st March next, that being the end of the present financial year. The Force consisted of 112 British officers, 122 Native officers, 6,040 men, 1,500 followers, and 1,373 horses. The principal items connected with the pay and allowances of the troops, which they had taken, in round numbers, at £180,000, were—provisions, about £40,000; forage, £55,000; miscellaneous supplies, £30,000; and for general purposes connected with the movement, £50,000, bringing the total up to £350,000. He was obliged to guard himself by saying that he did not know the actual details of the expenditure which would be caused by camp arrangements in connection with the troops and camp followers; but he had no reason to apprehend that the sum he had mentioned would be exceeded. It was proposed to camp the Infantry regiments at the glacis on the fort, the Cavalry and Artillery would be camped on the road leading to St. Antonio and Aquila, and from the accounts he had received he understood that all the sanitary arrangements would be satisfactorily concluded before the troops had arrived at their destination. He did not know that at that late hour the Committee would wish him to go into further detail. He trusted that on the understanding that the whole question of the policy of the Government might be hereafter discussed the Committee would agree to the Vote to which he had alluded, and which he now placed in the Chairman's hands.

did not intend to discuss the general policy of this Vote, and he did not wish to see the opposition to it carried any further; but he should like to know whether in this Vote the ordinary method would be followed of first voting the men and then the money? He had not clearly understood the statement of the right hon. and gallant Gentleman, as there had been so much confusion while he was speaking. If the usual course were not taken, he should like to hear what was the reason for such a departure from the ordinary rule.

said, that he had upon a previous occasion taken the opportunity to express his opinion on the policy of this step, and he had not altered his opinion that the measure was not justified.

The hon. Member is not in Order in dealing with the general question, but must confine his remarks to this Vote.

would confine himself to the Vote. He was not adverse to the experiment of employing Native Indian troops; but his objection to this Vote was, that the occasion was inopportune, that the number of troops brought to Malta was just enough to irritate the Russians and cause suspicion among the other European Powers, and not enough to be of much practical use. The Estimate before the Committee bore out his opinion, that those troops would cost a great deal more than European troops. Having said that, he should not vote against the grant, because they had already taken the money from the Indian Treasury, and he was anxious to repay that money as soon as possible. He differed from the noble Lord who so ably led Her Majesty's Opposition, and did not think it would be well to postpone this matter. The Government had now put this measure before Parliament, and were asking for a Vote for 7,000 men. As to that, it was "better late than never," and a salve to their consciences might now perhaps be found in the ex post facto assent of Parliament to the moving of those Indian troops. In pursuance with his view, he hoped the House, now that the step had been taken, would make the best of it. It was an interesting and important experiment, which, he hoped, would be made the most of. He suggested that some of those troops should be brought into this country, and he did not see why "Probyn's Horse" should not be employed as sentries at the Horse Guards. Such a step would, at least, afford great satisfaction to the juvenile population of London, and then the Horse Guards might be sent to India, where, no doubt, they would do good service.

since he spoke last, saw that the men and money were to be taken together in one lump. That was unconstitutional, or, at least, exceptional. It was desirable that the House should legalize the moving of those troops as far as possible; and, therefore, he should prefer to have the men and money voted separately. He certainly expected to have some further explanation.

said, if the hon. Member wanted a precedent, he ought not to look at the general Estimate, but any Naval or Military Supplementary Estimates.

said, it had all along been intended that the number of men should be stated to the Committee, and the Vote had been put in the most convenient form for that purpose, and, he believed, according to precedent.

asked the Government for detailed information respecting the transports, particularly as regarded the terms which had been made with the owners. It was necessary the Committee should have these details, in order that they might see what kind of bargains the Government had made.

admitted that a great difference of opinion existed as to whether the Government might not have obtained the transports at a cheaper rate. His own impression was, that if they had announced to the world that it was their intention to bring several thousand troops from India, and that they would require about 50,000 tons of shipping, the expense would have been considerably more than what they had arranged for. In this matter the Indian Government had acted on behalf of the Imperial Government, and there was every reason to believe that they had done their best, that they had exercised every possible care as regarded economy. The exact amount of tonnage taken up was 46,000 tons, and that was a very large drain to make upon the resources of one port, or one district, in any part of Her Majesty's Dominions. Although the Vote was founded upon information received by telegraph from the Indian Government, to the best of his belief, it was a full and complete representation of the liability which had been incurred; and the first item included the Suez Canal dues, and other charges of that character.

was one of those who served on the Committee which sat after the Abyssinian Campaign, and a very large portion of the enormous expense which was incurred, in reference to the 14,000 men engaged in that war, was for transports. He was quite sure the Government were perfectly alert in this matter, and that they did not need to be cautioned. At the same time, he begged to point out that if these vessels were to be retained any length of time, it was quite certain the Vote they were called upon to pass would be inadequate. He should like to know for what term the ships had been engaged, and whether they had a running contract at so much per ton per month?

also served on the Abyssinian Committee, and, anything more extravagant than it was proved the charges for transports had been, could not be imagined. But that Committee could do nothing. It was too late. The money had been spent, and although a great portion of it had been utterly wasted, yet the bills had to be paid. Some of the things which had been done were both foolish and ludicrous. A number of ships were paid for several times over in point of value, owing to the wasteful contracts which were entered into. It was said that in this instance the reason why the Government did not make known their intention to Parliament was, that they were afraid if they did so the rates of freight would be greatly increased. Now, on that point there was a great difference of opinion, and many men of business, out-of-doors, were of opinion if the Government had come forward with a frank statement, and had invited competition, there would have been no difficulty in obtaining much more favourable terms than those they had done. He scarcely liked to state all that was said on the subject out-of-doors; but a great many people believed as many rupees per ton per month had been paid as shillings ought to have been. Many owners would have been glad to have accepted shillings where they had now got rupees. One very serious item in the Abyssinian Account was the charge for demurrage, and he should like to know what arrangement the Government had made as to that matter in the present Expedition? He regretted that the First Lord of the Admiralty had not placed full particulars of the contracts before the Committee, instead of contenting himself with saying that he had nothing but telegraphic information. If any ordinary house of business had entered into contracts of this nature, they would have had the full particulars in their hands before this time, and he was at a loss to know why the Government could not do what an ordinary house of business would have done. The Government had full command of the telegraph, and the right hon. Gentleman might, and ought to, have come down to the Committee, and laid before them a full account of the terms upon which these contracts had been entered into. The Conservative Party were in power during the Abyssinian Expedition, and they came down to the House and stated, over and over again, that from £2,000,000 to £2,500,000, would be the entire cost, yet they all knew that finally the account amounted to £9,000,000. Now, what he wished to guard against was the repetition of anything of the kind in this case, in order that the interests of the taxpayers might be protected. He made no objection to the Vote, because it was for the Indian troops; but he desired more information regarding it, solely in the interest of the taxpayers. He knew economy was out of fashion in this House, and people who advocated it were almost ashamed to use the word. It was looked upon as everything which was disagreeable; but, when they had trade decreasing and pauperism increasing, it was time they turned their thoughts in the direction of economy, because this was a very large sum for such a small blaze of fireworks from the Prime Minister. If it should happen that the Government had to change sides, do not let them hereafter come down and complain of heavy taxation. In his opinion, the expenditure which had already been incurred was most lavish, and they were apparently about to do the same as they did in the Abyssinian War, where the interests of the many were sacrificed to the interests of the few. Fixing the sum at £398,000 seemed very much like the 1s. 11¾d. which they were in the habit of seeing in the windows of drapers' shops. The First Lord of the Admiralty was a thorough man of business, and let him check the Indian Government, and get from them the full particulars of what they had done, in order that it might be seen whether they had gone about their work in a businesslike manner.

said, as far as he could learn from the Indian prints, these vessels had been taken up on monthly pay for four months from the 17th of April; but the pay of troops was taken for 12 months, and that would seem to imply that they were to be kept from India for that time. If, on the other hand, they were only to be kept four months, then they would be in the middle of the monsoon, when it would be impossible for these ships to make the passage.

considered these ships had been taken at 50 per cent more than they might have been obtained for. Some of the sailing ships were to receive 10 to 11 rupees per ton per month, and the steamers from 20 to 22 rupees. Why had sailing ships been engaged at all? The work on board of them was performed slowly, and it could be done in half the time on board the steamers. At the present moment there was a large amount of unemployed steam tonnage in India, and, if this had been taken up, the troops could have been landed in Malta within 14 days, instead of the voyage occupying three weeks as it did with the sailing vessels. He maintained that the manner in which these transports had been engaged showed an utter absence of business knowledge.

thought there would not be the least difficulty in showing that the Government had made the best bargain they could. While it was perfectly true that there was a great deal of unemployed tonnage in India, it was not true that tonnage was in excess at Bombay. No doubt, the Government could have got vessels in Calcutta and Madras from 10 to 11 rupees per ton per month, but that would have involved great delay; and, in order to carry out their project, the Government were compelled to accept the freights they could get in Bombay. The whole success of the thing depended upon its being done there and then, and he did not consider the Government had paid an unreasonable price.

said, that the remarks which had been made as to the extent of the profits reaped by Indian shipowners were well illustrated by a telegram which was sent from Bombay to Calcutta during the Abyssinian War—"Great panic here upon a false report of peace." He believed that there was a great deal of unemployed tonnage in India. If the Government had waited and had sent to Calcutta for steamers, they would have obtained transport for half the price. Instead of that, the Government had gone to a large expense in order to enable the Prime Minister to do the thing in a fireworky, brilliant manner.

observed, that there was one point to which he wished to call attention, as it did not appear to have been noticed before. He should like to know whether, when the occasion presented itself, the ships of the Royal Navy might not be utilized for the purposes of transport? In the Crimean War, the French Navy had the duty of conveying the French troops. He heard also, from General Baker, that one of the Turkish frigates had been used as a transport. It conveyed 5,000 men from one place to another, a journey occupying one day and a-half. Perhaps, in the present case, the Navy might be more utilized.

observed, that it was, no doubt, perfectly legitimate, under certain circumstances, to send Indian troops to Malta; but the question was, whether the Government had not in this instance paid too much for their transport? That was an important point in its bearing on the future employment of these troops. If the transport had been arranged by gentlemen accustomed to the tonnage market, probably 30 per cent, or, perhaps, one-half of the expense, might have been saved. As the hon. Member for Birkenhead (Mr. Mac Iver) had said, although there might not have been many ships in Bombay harbour, there was a large excess in Calcutta. Between the two places was only a few days' voyage; and if the Government had inquired in the Calcutta market, they might have procured three times the quantity of shipping obtainable in Bombay, and at about half the rates they had given. The House needed such information as no Minister at present seemed able to give on these points, Although the employment of the Indian troops was, in his opinion, not only legitimate but salutary, yet he thought the arrangements for transporting them night have been effected at half the sums expended in the present case. As the House was now asked to vote so large an amount for the transport, it might give an impression, not only in the House but in the country, that the cost of conveying the Indian troops was so heavy as to make their employment in large numbers practically impossible, which, in his opinion, was erroneous.

expressed his willingness to receive suggestions on votes of this character from hon. Members on both sides of the House. He was ready to admit that the expenditure of the Indian Government in these natters had suggested to Her Majesty's Government the necessity of watching their proceedings. All he could say was that, so far as he was concerned, he would take care to watch its expenditure most narrowly in order to avoid, if possible, the extravagance that marked the Abyssinian Expedition. He was, however, bound to point out that, although the demand to get ships from Calcutta might possibly have been made, the amount of saving would be much less than that suggested by the hon. Member for Hull (Mr. Norwood). The actual charge for freight was £200,000, but the rest of the charge was made up of various items; £55,000 alone out of £256,000 was for pilotage, toll dues, including the Suez Canal charges, and other matters. It was true there was not at present before the House information on which they could rely; but he might say that 22 rupees had been paid for one ship. Until he knew the amount accurately, he must decline to give further information, though there were cases in which steamers and sailing vessels had been taken at 9 or 10 rupees per ton per month. The period which the charge of £200,000 represented was one of three or four months; in some cases it was for a slightly less in others for a slightly longer, period. Before that period had expired, there would be time to consider whether the ships should continue to be employed or be discharged. His noble Friend the Member for Haddington (Lord Elcho) had spoke of the expediency of employing the ships of the Royal Navy for the purposes of transport. He would undertake to say that every economy would be practised; but if his noble Friend were as well acquainted as he was with the present condition of Her Majesty's Navy, he would know well that a ship of war as now constructed was hardly capable of taking on board any addition to its proper complement of men. No doubt, it was possible on an emergency for a ship belonging to the Turkish Navy to take on board 3,000 to 5,000 men for a day and a night. They might be taken on board in that way for a short time; but when the period was extended to three weeks, it would be necessary to make proper provision for the men, and he was afraid that the class of ships of which Her Majesty's Navy now consisted could not be largely used for the purposes of transport. When he was in a position to do so, he would lay before the House all information with regard to the liability which the Indian Government had incurred with reference to the movement of the Indian troops and to the contracts which had been entered into with shipowners for their conveyance.

would be perfectly willing to accept the assurance of the right hon. Gentleman that full information should be given on condition that at as early a period as possible the particulars of all contracts should be laid before the House. A case had been brought to his notice in which its Bombay agent telegraphed to an English house that the Government wanted transport. They wrote him to accept 18s. per month, but shortly afterwards he telegraphed back that he had got 20 rupees per month, or about double the amount he was instructed to take. If such things took place—and he had the information on the best authority—it was right that full particulars of the contracts should be laid on the Table of the House. He did not accuse the right hon. Gentleman of any extravagance; but they knew what took place in India—and especially in Bombay—at the time of the Abyssinian War. The evil traditions with reference to expenditure that hung about Bombay made it more than ever necessary to watch the expenditure.

wished to express his belief, that if the Government showed no reticence with regard to the contracts, there would be no disposition to oppose the Vote.

said, that before the Committee passed this Vote, he wished to call attention to the Lunacy Board. A good many years ago an inquiry was held, which recommended that the Lunacy Commission should be amalgamated with the Board of Supervision in Scotland. Paupers in Scotland were under a divided authority, the Board of Supervision had the control of the sane paupers, while the lunatics in the same poorhouse were in the charge of the Lunacy Commission. In consequence of that divided control, pauper lunatics were kept in a much more expensive way than the ordinary paupers. The Lunacy Inspectors had, for example, in one case with which he was acquainted, ordered that large mirrors should be placed in the common rooms of the lunatics. Altogether their interference had caused a largely increased expenditure in the maintenance of pauper lunatics in Scotland. The right hon. Gentleman the First Lord of the Admiralty had said that the matter was under the consideration of the Government; and he wished to ask whether the Government had yet come to a conclusion, and determined, with the view to economy, to transfer the duties of the Lunacy Commission to the Board of Supervision?

observed, with reference to the statement that the paupers in the poorhouses were under the control of the Board of Supervision, while the lunatics were looked after by the Lunacy Commissioners, that the fact was that the Commissioners in Lunacy had charge of the whole of the lunatics in Scotland, whether paupers or non-paupers. The distinction between the Scottish system and that existing in this country was, that in England wealthy lunatics were under the care of Chancery, and pauper lunatics were either under the care of Boards of Guardians or of the Commissioners of Lunacy. There were thus two classes of lunatics—those in workhouses and those in asylums. In workhouses, the lunatics were under no special authority but that of the Boards of Guardians; while the Asylums were managed by the Lunacy Commissioners. The hon. Gentleman who had brought forward this subject was less perfectly acquainted with it than he usually was with matters which he brought before the House. The truth was that no two public Departments could work together more harmoniously than the Board of Supervision and the Lunacy Commission had done for many years past. No change that could be made would effect any saving to the public in the administration of Lunacy in Scotland. In 1870, there was a discussion in the House with regard to these questions, and some of the evidence given before the Commission appointed was, as he had reason to believe, afterwards withdrawn by the parties who made the statements with regard to the excessive expenditure. The explanations given showed that the statements were made under a misapprehension of the facts.

said, his complaint was that there were two authorities having jurisdiction in the same poorhouse—the Board of Supervision and the Lunacy Commissioners. He complained of the expenses to which the Inspectors in Lunacy had put the ratepayers by insisting on pauper lunatics being better kept than ordinary paupers. As the expenses of the maintenance of these lunatic paupers had increased very largely, there was ground for interference. So far as he knew, the Report of Lord Camperdown's Commission had never been contradicted, and upon that he relied.

said, that with regard to the lunatics having been put upon a superior dietary to the other paupers, it was well known to be essential that they should receive more nutritious diet than was usually given to paupers.

said, it had been in contemplation to amalgamate these two Boards. He did not think, however, that there would be any actual reduction in the expenditure from so doing. As to the distinction between the two classes of paupers, it was clearly necessary that there should be such a division; and, so much was the importance of the distinction felt, that not long back the Government gave pauper lunatics in Scotland the same allowance as was made in England. He did not think that if the distinction between the two classes of paupers were abolished there would be much saving of expenditure.

wished to know till what hour the Government intended to go on with Supply?

hoped the Committee would take two more Votes in Supply before Progress was reported.

complained that they had already been in Supply between seven and eight hours. He objected to proceeding with the debatable Votes at that late hour.

did not think that the discussion which would arise on the Irish Votes would conclude that evening in any reasonable time. The best arrangement would be to report Progress when they came to the end of the Scotch Votes.

proposed to move to report Progress at the first Vote that gave rise to considerable discussion.

said, that before the Vote was agreed to, he wished the hon. Baronet to consider the propriety of having something done with a view to putting Scotland on the same footing as England with regard to the grants for medical attendance and extra food for the sick poor, and for the education of pauper children. There should be some corresponding grant in Scotland for the maintenance of pauper lunatics in workhouse schools. The same difficulty was felt in Scotland as in England—where to put them? The course adopted in England was pursued in Scotland, only that country not having the same population or wealth, the maintenance of the lunatics pressed very hardly upon the ratepayers. Therefore, Scotland asked for the same consideration as other parts of the United Kingdom. Nor did they get anything in aid of the education of pauper children, or any grant corresponding to their population or taxation, in aid of medical relief to the poor. He trusted the Chancellor of the Exchequer would introduce a measure for providing a grant in aid of the education of the children of the poor, and that some arrangement would be made to increase the grant in aid of medical relief to the poor to the same proportion as in England. At present, the amount allowed for vaccination in England was equal to the whole sum granted in aid of medical relief in Scotland.

said, he hoped that the hon. Baronet would also promise to have a revision of the sums voted for the medical service in Ireland, and that he would be able to give to the Irish Members a similar assurance to that which his hon. Friend had asked for.

thought the hon. Member for Forfarshire (Mr. J. W. Barclay) must be aware that the difference between the two countries must arise very much from the difference between the Poor Law and its action in each country. There was more thrown upon the country in Scotland than in England under the existing Act, and all he could say was, that the subject was one well worth inquiring into.

said, that the hon. Baronet appeared to be under some misapprehension. The sum of £10,000 was voted for the relief of the ordinary paupers in Scotland, while, in England, a sum amounting to about £180,000 was voted for the same object for which £10,000 was voted in Scotland. Now, what was wanted did not involve any necessity for a change in the law. It was in the practice that they wanted a change made in that respect. The fact was, that they gave to Scotland, in payment of medical relief, less than one-eighteenth of the sum that was voted in England.

said, that that grant for Poor Law expenditure had nothing whatever to do with Lunacy. It was merely for the Poor Law workhouses in Scotland; and a few years ago a large deputation of Scotch Members of Parliament from both sides of the House waited upon the Chancellor of the Exchequer to represent the great injustice that was done to Scotland in that matter as compared with England, and the Chancellor of the Exchequer agreed with that representation. Accordingly, there was a Scotch Bill introduced to remedy that evil; but, like most of the Scotch measures, it was allowed to sleep, and, doubtless, it was sleeping still.

said, that that Bill had already been brought in by the Government, and it was proposed to leave that very question to the Bill. He could not promise to re-introduce the Bill that Session, but he hoped to do so before very long.

wished to support the demand which had been made by the Scotch Members as regarded the assistance to medical relief. The allowance that had been made to England was 18 times as large as that which was given to Scotland. His hon. Friend the Member for Youghal (Sir Joseph M'Kenna) had wished that the hon. Baronet should also direct his attention to the allowance made to Ireland. Now, he (Mr. Parnell) thought that Ireland was very fairly treated as regarded medical relief. It had always struck him that in the Estimates presented to Parliament the amount paid by Parliament to Ireland was one of the most advantageous Estimates presented; but he thought it would be fair to the Scotch to give them a larger allowance than they possessed at present.

said, he understood that the arrangement was that in England the Government paid one-half of the medical expenses of the Unions; but, in Scotland, a lump sum of only £10,000 was paid. Now, two years ago, a deputation had waited upon the Chancellor of the Exchequer, who then gave them an assurance that the amount would be increased. All that they asked was that the same treatment should be extended to Scotland as was enjoyed by England, and that the Government should vote to the Poor Law Board one-half of the medical expenses. He did not think that Scotland had been well treated in that matter; and, therefore, in order to give the Government time to consider the matter, he would move to report Progress, and ask leave to sit again. He believed that no other step would be effective. There had been a promise made, two years ago, that something would be done, but no Progress had been made; and, so long as they allowed themselves to be put off by promises, nothing would be done.

hoped, that after what he had stated, the Committee would at least consent to take that Vote.

said, he really thought they ought to have some assurance from the Government that the promise given two years ago would be acted upon. It was merely a vote of the House that was required; and if the hon. Baronet would undertake that the promise made by the Chancellor of the Exchequer should be fulfilled without reference to further legislation, he should be very sorry, indeed, to put the Committee to the trouble of a division.

said, that the promise given by the Chancellor of the Exchequer was one made upon a condition. An attempt had been made to carry out the engagements of that condition, and he felt that any pledge he might give them would be merely carrying out the intention of the Chancellor of the Exchequer.

said, that he saw the right hon. Gentleman the Chancellor of the Exchequer in his place, and he wished to remind him of the promise he gave to the deputation that came up from Scotland two years ago, that the medical grant to the Poor Law Boards of Scotland should be placed on a similar footing to that in England. At the present time the grant was 18 times greater in England than was the case in Scotland. Some excuses had been made to the effect that the cases were not similar; but the responsibility of bringing in a Bill rested upon the Government, and he did not think it was fair to Scotland that, because the Government could not pass their Bill through, Scotland should be kept short of its fair and proper allowance. All that they asked was to be put upon a similar footing to England; and he hoped that the Chancellor of the Exchequer would offer them some opinion on this point.

said, he was not quite sure what the point under discussion was; but he understood that it was with reference to a promise which he gave to a deputation from Scotland two years ago. What he understood then passed was that he admitted that the case was one that required consideration; that an alteration should be made, and that the medical officers should be placed upon the same footing as in England, but that that would necessitate an alteration of the law. And he was in hopes that that might have been dealt with by an alteration in the Scotch Poor Law to that effect. He thought the Bill was introduced in consequence of the visit of the deputation, but it had not made so much progress as it might have done, though he believed there was an intention to proceed with it.

said, that the fact was that legislation was not necessary to do Scotland justice. He thought it would be very well if the amount to be paid to England, Scotland, and Ireland for local purposes could be estimated, because it was admitted that they received less money from the Treasury than England or Ireland, while they were twitted in that House with receiving a greater amount than they were entitled to. So long as monies were paid from the Imperial Treasury for local purposes, he thought it would be well if the people of Scotland were put upon the same footing as those of Ireland and England, for which purpose there need not be any change in the law whatever. He considered it would be advantageous to appoint a Select Committee to ascertain what proportion was paid to each of the three divisions in that Kingdom.

said, he certainly must add his emphatic protest against the delay which had taken place in not having already acceded to the request of the deputation, a request which was generally considered to be conceded at the moment. There was a very strong feeling in Scotland on this question, and that deputation represented opinion from all parts of the country. They asked for very few boons for Scotland, and nothing but what they believed was justice; and, therefore, he hoped that another year would not pass without an attempt being made by the Government to deal with that particular point, and render justice to Scotland.

said,that the hon. Member for Meath (Mr. Parnell) had stated the case of Scotland quite correctly. The fact was, that where Scotland got £1,000 for Poor Law medical purposes, England got £18,000; and yet, where Scotland paid £1 to the National Exchequer, England only paid £7; so that while Scotland paid one-seventh, she only received one-eighteenth. A Bill had been brought in, but a variety of things had arisen which had stopped its progress. For his own part, he was not at all satisfied with a Member of the Government getting up, and saying—"You may depend upon it this will not be lost sight of." It might be taken up many times, and it might not be taken up at all. There was no need for any alteration whatever in the law, and it was in the power of the Chancellor of the Exchequer to put an additional sum in a Supplementary Estimate for the purpose.

said, that since he had last addressed the Committee on the subject, he had examined the Returns, and could new speak very confidently upon the subject of the unfair treatment of Scotland in comparison with either England or Ireland. He did not think, on the other hand, that the remedy for the evil which he admitted existed ought to be postponed until some general Poor Law Bills could be brought in, but should be dealt with as quickly as possible.

in moving that the Bill be now read a second time, said, that the Return which was moved for by the hon. Member for Gloucester (Mr. Monk) showed the actual amount of the indebtedness of the trustees of the bridge to the Government. The result of the proposals in the Bill would be to pay the sum of £10,000 to the Government in lieu of all indebtedness on the part of the trustees of the bridge, which indebtedness was being added to at the rate of nearly £1,000 a-year. It was thought a good bargain by the trustees to have transferred to them the future management of the bridge, whilst they paid at the same time, in discharge of all outstanding debts, the sum he had mentioned. The conditions on which the trustees accepted this were that they should reduce the toll, which was very oppressive, at once upon taking the management, and that any surplus receipts which might afterwards be made should be applied in further reduction of the toll. He believed that thus the public would benefit as well as the Government, who would at once get rid of a charge upon the country, and wipe off a debt which at present stood without any prospect of its being discharged.

said, he should only trespass upon the attention of the House for a very few moments. When this Bill was brought in, it was one nominally to compound a debt of £40,000, with interest, which had accrued since the year 1822 on the Conway Bridge, for a sum of £10,000. It did not appear upon the face of the Bill what was the amount of interest paid, or the cost of maintenance, and he, therefore, moved for a Return, which his hon. Friend the Secretary to the Treasury at once granted. That Return was now in the hands of hon. Members. The hon. Baronet had explained pretty fairly to the House how the case stood. The whole question which the House had to consider was, whether the bargain that had been made was a good one or not. The sum which had been advanced by the Government, in addition to the £40,000, was £39,068. Therefore, the whole amount of the debt was £79,068. The average amount of the tolls was £535 per annum, and there was besides a sum of £260 paid as a kind of rent-charge by the London and North-Western Railway Company, making altogether £795 a-year. From this had to be deducted the average cost of maintenance—namely, £185, leaving a net sum payable to the Government of £610. Now, what the House had to consider was, whether it was desirable to compound a debt of £79,000 for £10,000, when they were receiving at the present moment a net sum of £610 a-year. No doubt, as his hon. Friend had said, the cost of maintenance might be larger in future years; and he had, in fact, kindly furnished him with particulars, showing that the cost would amount to about £22 a-year more than it did at present. But the Government would still be left in receipt of a net sum of £580 a-year, and he must say that he thought, under these circumstances, they had made a bad bargain in offering to accept the sum of £10,000. These facts were now before the House, being contained in the Return which had been laid on the Table; and if the House thought it desirable that this debt should be compounded for the sum in question, he should certainly not raise any further opposition to the Bill.

thought it was hardly reasonable that the House should be asked to read this Bill a second time at so late a period of the Sitting. He had, however, communicated with the Lord Advocate upon the subject; and he understood from him that if the Scotch Members would allow the second reading to pass just then without any opposition, the Government would undertake that on the Motion to go into Committee on the Bill an opportunity would be afforded for a full discussion of its provisions. The same remark would apply to the succeeding measure—The Lord Clerk Register (Scotland) Bill. He might just state that there were parties in the General Register and Subsidiary Offices who thought they would be injuriously affected by these Bills, and a deputation had, he believed, left Edinburgh that night for London for the purpose of seeing the Lord Advocate and the Home Secretary on the subject. However, he was not going to detain the House, and if the Government would accede to the suggestion he had made, he should not offer any further opposition to the second reading.

thought the suggestion of the hon. Member for Edinburgh was a very reasonable one, and he was quite prepared to accede to it.

said, he should like to know what was meant by this Bill? He did not approve of the practice of taking the second reading of Bills as a matter of course; because, afterwards, if any objection should be raised to a particular measure, the House might be told that it had already accepted its principle. It was of late very much in vogue to take the second reading of Bills, and have the discussion upon them on going into Committee. He thought that if any explanation of the principle of a measure were given at all, it should be made when the House was asked to read it a second time.

said, that with respect to the question of principle, he quite concurred in the opinion that had been expressed by the hon. Member for Swansea (Mr. Dillwyn); but in this case the whole thing was fully explained when he asked for leave to introduce the Bill, so far as the principle was concerned. He did not think he need go further into the matter at the present moment.

must really ask the Home Secretary to reconsider what he had just said. He was present when leave was given to bring in the Bill, and not a single word was said on the subject.

trusted that the House would excuse him for one moment. Technically, he might have been wrong in saying that when he introduced the Bill he explained fully its object. On that occasion, he might have got up and simply said that the Bill would carry out what he had stated the night before. The whole thing, however, was fully explained.

said, he could testify that some explanation was given in advance, and his impression, was that it was in answer to a Question put by the hon. and gallant Gentleman the Member for East Aberdeenshire (Sir Alexander Gordon). He was not aware that there had been any understanding that the discussion on the Bill itself should be taken at a later stage. It seemed to him that such an arrangement was attended with great inconvenience—the second reading being the proper stage at which to take the discussion on the principle of any Bill. He merely wished to say that, founding himself entirely on the answer to which he had referred, there was to him something extremely objectionable in the manner in which it was proposed that the Under Secretary of State for Scotland should be paid. The proposal seemed to be that he should be paid by salary to be provided out of the Office of the Lord Clerk Register of Scotland. Now, it seemed to him that if it were right to appoint an Under Secretary of State for Scotland—and as to that he offered no opinion—he ought to be paid in the same manner as other Under Secretaries of State were paid. He believed the Statute directed that if any saving were effected, the proceeds should be applied to the reduction of fees in that Office; and, therefore, it was not within the power of Parliament to take this money and apply it to this object. But he asserted that it was really a reflection upon the appointment to take a salary from one Officer of State in Scotland and apply it to this purpose. He repeated, that if it were desirable to appoint an Under Secretary of State for Scotland, he ought to be paid in the same manner as other Under Secretaries of State were paid.

desired to correct one statement that had been made by his hon. Friend the Member for Buteshire (Mr. Dalrymple). The Statute which referred to the reduction of fees in certain contingencies did not apply to this Office, but to the Register of Sasines.

quite agreed with the remarks of the hon. Member for Buteshire respecting the way in which it was proposed to pay the Under Secretary of State for Scotland. Moreover, if he was not mistaken, the amount of his salary was to be £1,200. [Mr. ASSHETON CROSS: £1,500.] He (Mr. Barclay) did not think there was any other Under Secretary of State whose salary was so small. He hoped that this matter would be duly attended to; and that if it were deemed desirable that an Under Secretary of State for Scotland should be appointed, he would be put in as fair, honourable, and independent a position as any of the others.