said, that, in the interests of the carmen, contractors, and carriers of the United Kingdom, he rose to move that the Bill be read a second time on that day six months. The Legislature had always been particular in maintaining vested rights, and in opposing any attempt to interfere with them. The present Bill was an attempt at interference, on the part of the London and North Western Railway Company, with a very large vested right indeed. He was told that if they succeeded in carrying this Bill, Clause 33 would have the effect of causing total ruin to a very large and important body of men. The amount of capital invested by the carmen, carriers, and others, was no less than £20,000,000. Looking into the Census Returns of 1871, he found that there were at that time no less than 320,000 persons employed in this traffic in England and Wales; and it was estimated that the number at the present time had increased to over 1,000,000 persons in the United Kingdom. The Railway Companies had within themselves an enormous power, not only of interference, but of money, and any attempt on the part of any individual to oppose such great and important interests was almost sure to bring ruin on the persons so opposing. The House was well aware that all monopolies were, more or less, objectionable, and the monopoly of the Railway Companies was a most serious one indeed. Railways in the early days of inland navigation objected to become carriers, and they were the cause of bringing the carriers, and other traders of that description, into existence; but by degrees they had taken upon themselves to become their own carriers, and, in one way and the other, by the introduction into Acts of Parliament of special clauses, they bad succeeded in making themselves traders in a very great many and important particulars. Since the year 1859 the Railway Companies had obtained power to become hotel proprietors, book-sellers at their stations, tarpaulin manufacturers, harness makers, farriers, and, in fact, almost everything which appertained to the traffic and the carriages which run upon their lines. They were now attempting, in the present case, not only to become carriers for themselves, but to establish agencies throughout the Metropolis, and possibly throughout the Kingdom; because, if this attempt should be successful, other Companies would fall into it, and the Railway Companies would become carriers not only for their own lines, but for other lines. He supposed they bad all individually felt the powers already possessed by the Railway Companies. He imagined there was scarcely a Member of the House who had not some complaint or other to bring against the Railway Companies. A monopoly once established became too powerful for public opinion or individual exertions to upset, and the power of the railways, great as it was by the influx of money always flowing into their coffers, and by the very large amount of capital at their command, became almost irresistible. It was so great that it ought not to be used against the public, whose traffic over their lines contributed so much to their prosperity. He was afraid that their desire now to extend their profits arose from the extravagance they had indulged in in the past. It was only necessary to look around, in order to see what enormous sums of the shareholders' money had been invested in the erection of huge railway stations, such as those which existed in the neighbourhood of King's Cross; and now, on every side, they saw the Railway Companies attempting to redeem their extravagance by an increase of tolls, or of fares, over their lines, or by reducing the wages of the railway porters, or of the inferior officials in their employment. He was told that one of the railways, the other day, gave notice that it was going to raise the price of first-class season-tickets. They were remonstrated with, but persisted in their intention. Then railway travellers, in order to protect themselves, intimated that they would use the second-class carriages and season-tickets instead of the first; but, in order to meet any difficulty that might arise in that way, the Railway Companies took off their second-class carriages altogether, and when the passengers presented themselves to take a second-class ticket, they found that the Company had withdrawn all second-class carriages. The consequence was that the passengers would either have been too late for their business in the City, if they had waited for other trains, or they would be compelled to take single tickets by first-class carriages for that day's journey. He was told that, in this particular instance, the second-class carriages were withdrawn for a month. He thought such an act was entirely unworthy of a great Company. Unfortunately, the Railway Companies forgot, as soon as they obtained powers, that they were the servants of the public, and that they were put there to protect the interests of the public travelling on their line. Parliament had protected the Companies to a considerable extent by restricting the competition; and for many years the great main lines had been established throughout England, carrying on the traffic of all the large towns—the consequence being that, by one means or the other, the railway monopoly had passed into the hands of large Companies; and when all chance of competition was destroyed, it was found that these Companies invariably increased their fares against the public. He could assure the House that the persons who were taking an interest in getting this clause removed from the Bill felt very seriously, indeed, the position in which they were likely to be placed. They felt, however, that all-powerful as a Railway Company was, there was an important power over all of them—namely, the power of Parliament, a power which, he was sure, would not allow any great injustice to be done to the general community, and, by so doing, to every individual Member of the House. It was somewhat curious to observe how the Railway Companies were attempting, at all times, to evade the law of the land. One peculiar feature in railway legislation was the manner in which Railway Companies succeeded in introducing into different Private Bills clauses which gave them all they wanted. They did this in order to avoid the effect of the law, and to promote their own interests. It was a most ingenious device, and in many instances had been successful. It was not, how- ever, always successful. In 1859, the Great Western Company applied for powers to Parliament to build a bridge over the West London Railway, instead of a level crossing, and they inserted in that Bill power to alter the rates of fares over the whole of their line. It was only after the Bill had been read a second time that this fact was discovered; and it was mainly through the instrumentality of the Bristol Chamber of Commerce that it was detected—indeed, it was by the merest accident that it was discovered. He had given Notice of opposition to the introduction of the Bill in the interests of the carmen, carriers, and other outside interests; but he hoped the House would agree to the Committee which, he believed, the noble Lord the President of the Board of Trade (Viscount Sandon) was about to propose—namely, a Hybrid Committee, to be nominated partly by the House and partly by the Committee of Selection, which would inquire fully into this question. He had such confidence in the noble Viscount that he was certain anything he proposed would be in the interests of both parties; and he should be quite content, therefore, if the House acceded to that proposal, not to persevere with his Motion for the rejection of the second reading of the Bill. He would move that Motion now formally, and, at the proper time, he would ask to be allowed to withdraw it.

seconded the Amendment.

congratulated the hon. Member for the City of London (Mr. Alderman Cotton) on having changed his views in respect to monopoly since last evening. The hon. Gentleman was of opinion that Railway Companies ought to be checked. He would not follow the hon. Member in the long string of indictments which he had brought against the Railway Companies, nor would he detain the House further than by drawing their attention to this particular clause, which related to wharfingers, warehouses, and town carriers. This clause did not in anyway alter the position of carmen and carriers from what it was at present. The Railway Companies had been accused of attempting to evade the law. Now, their position was simply this. In a particular case an injunction was applied for against the London and North Western Company, and in order to put themselves right in future they proposed to introduce a clause into the present Bill. The terms of the clause had been modified. As it originally stood, it bore a construction which was not intended to be placed upon it; but as it was now modified he believed that, in most instances, it met the approval of those who had been previously opposed to it. As it appeared at present, it applied only to town carriers. The Railway Companies stood in a peculiar position. They were forced to get rid of the goods they carried as soon as they received them, because if they allowed any large accumulation of goods the accommodation at their disposal would be insufficient. They had, therefore, been obliged to make certain arrangements with certain agents for the delivery of the goods. If these arrangements were not made, and if they depended upon chance carriers, they would be unable to clear the goods; and so they were obliged to employ agents where they could not do the work themselves. They claimed, however, that they were legally entitled to do the work for themselves wherever they were able to do so; and, by the present clause, the London and North Western Company were only put on a level with the town carriers. Town carriers were employed to collect goods for various Railway Companies; and it was only for the interests of the public that one Railway Company should under agreement be entitled to carry goods for another Railway Company. For instance, if any individual wished to send three bales of goods by three particular Railway Companies, there was no reason why one Company should not accept the goods and agree to convey them to the stations of the other Companies. If they were compelled to send to the different offices by different carriers, the whole machinery for the collection of goods would be very much complicated. He was afraid the House might have been induced to believe that the town carriers did not receive anything from the Railway Companies for conveying the goods. That was by no means the case. They were paid by the Companies as well as by the public; and the clause which had been introduced in this case was, as he had said before, only introduced for placing the Railway Companies on a level with the town carriers. For these reasons, he supported the second reading of the Bill; but he should accept the promise of the noble Viscount the President of the Board of Trade (Viscount Sandon), that the Bill, when read a second time, should be sent to a Hybrid Committee.

said, the question before the House was one of considerable importance. At present, they had heard the case as far as two of the parties were concerned—namely, the Railway Companies and those who were opposed to the second reading of the Bill. It must not, however, be forgotten that there was a third party whom the House was bound to consider in the matter, and that was the public themselves. The Railway Companies must not complain if any application on their part for increased powers was viewed with great jealousy, because nothing could have been more short-sighted, less liberal, or more inimical to the convenience of the public than the course which the Railway Companies had hitherto pursued with respect to parcels. Their charges were most exorbitant, while their accommodation was very slight; and he believed they had very much injured their own interests by the short-sighted policy they had pursued. Unfortunately, where they had Railway Companies with a practical monopoly, there was a very great want of enterprize; and when a Railway Company came to the House and began to ask for fresh powers, if Parliament should consider it desirable to give them the powers they sought, such powers ought only to be conferred when increased securities were given to the public that their convenience would be studied, and additional accommodation provided for them. He had no wish to object to the second reading of the Bill, because he thought the proposal made by the noble Viscount the President of the Board of Trade was the best way of dealing with the question. He would, however, make one suggestion to the Board of Trade. If the Bill was to be referred to a Select Committee of a hybrid character, he thought it should be understood that the Chambers of Commerce, and others representing the public interest, should be heard before that Select Committee, and that the scope of the inquiry should be sufficiently large to enable the Committee to deal generally with the requirements of the public.

said, he had given Notice of an Amendment; but he need hardly say that he would be quite content on his part to accept the proposition of the noble Viscount the President of the Board of Trade. If that proposal was likely to be agreed to, he should not trouble the House with his Amendment; nor should he have risen at all, if it had not been for some remarks which had fallen from the noble Lord who sat opposite (Lord Richard Grosvenor), who, he had no doubt unintentionally, had misrepresented the existing condition of the Railway Companies. The noble Lord told them that the clause which was objected to in the present Bill did not alter the position of the town carriers. Now, he (Mr. Ritchie) contended that it did very materially alter the position of the town carriers. The noble Lord said the Railway Companies were at present legally entitled to do what they were now asking power from the House to enable them to do. If they were legally entitled to do it, why did they require the confirmation of their power in a fresh Act of Parliament?

said, the Railway Companies asked to place themselves in the same position as the town carriers.

had understood the noble Lord to say that they were already in the same position as town carriers. The noble Lord now said that they only sought to be placed in the same position. He (Mr. Ritchie) still contended that the Bill would place them in a very different position. The town carriers would have opposed to them the great Railway Companies, who had enormous capital, and who would, practically, be able to extinguish the competition of private individuals—such as town carriers—altogether. For instance, the capital of a town carrier was necessarily very small as compared with that of a Railway Company. It would be practically indifferent to a Railway Company whether they embarked a small portion of their capital in a particular business or not, and whether they sustained any loss upon it; while the business they carried on constituted the sole existence of the town carriers. They were thus in a very different position from the Railway Companies. He would only add, in reference to the remarks of the hon. Member for Liverpool (Mr. Rathbone), who spoke last, that he hoped all the Chambers of Commerce, and those members of the general public who were interested in the question, would be able to be heard before the Committee. He hoped his hon. Friend the Member for the City of London (Mr. Alderman Cotton) would withdraw his opposition to the second reading, so that the Bill might be read a second time and referred to the Select Committee proposed by the noble Viscount the President of the Board of Trade.

thought it ought to be borne in mind, in connection with this question, and, indeed, with the whole class of these questions, that it was one of the Rules of the House that no Member was to take any part or interfere in a question in which he had a personal or any other interest. In this case there were two Bills before the House, each containing a clause proposing that the Company to which the Bill referred should have, in respect to an important branch of trade, a statutable monopoly. The noble Lord who spoke on the subject just now (Lord Richard Grosvenor) said that all the Railway Companies wanted to do was to place themselves in the position which common carriers now occupied. They would, however, be placed in a very different position if this Bill passed through Parliament and received the Royal Assent; because they would have not only an equal advantage in keeping their shop open in town for the receipt of goods; they would also practically have the key of the gate when the goods were brought to them to forward by rail, and they might impose their own conditions on the present forwarding agents. By this means they would be enabled to secure the annihilation of the private carriers. It would, practically, amount to that; and he thought it was the duty of Parliament to provide some safeguards in the interests of the public. He had no desire to press the matter to a Division by any opposition on his part at this stage; but he hoped it would be borne in mind that while the railway interest was largely represented in the House on the one hand, the Rules of Parliament on the other precluded hon. Gentlemen in the railway interest from taking part in questions or voting where their personal interests were involved.

said, he would only trouble the House with a very few remarks, because he gathered from the tone of the debate that hon. Members on both sides were willing to accept the proposal he was about to make. He would, therefore, simply explain why Her Majesty's Government did not lend their support to the Motion for throwing out these two Bills on the second reading; and why, on the other hand, they would not be satisfied with the reference of those Bills in the ordinary way to a Select Committee upstairs. With regard to throwing out these two Bills, they thought it would be a great injustice to the two Companies concerned; because, after all, they were only asking for legal powers, under amended clauses, to confirm what had been the usage for many years past. He had no reason to suppose they were acting in anything like bad faith. On the other hand, he felt that the subject raised was a very important one, so far as the great commercial communities were concerned. The Board of Trade had received deputations and communications on the subject of this Bill from almost every large town in the country. There had been deputations from Bradford, Portsmouth, Bristol, and many other towns, as well as important communications from London, all showing the great importance attached to the subject by the trading community. They had also borne in mind that Parliament had of late shown very great jealousy in allowing the Railway Companies to go at all beyond the actual business they had been in trusted with by Parliament as Railway Companies. He gathered that it was the wish of the House to restrict, to some extent, a permanent extension of those Companies in other lines of business than those which legitimately belonged to them. Considering the great interest taken, it was most desirable that the very best judgment of Parliament should be passed on the very large questions raised in these Bills. He therefore intended to propose, on behalf of the Government, that the Bills should be referred to a Hybrid Committee. He hoped to secure the services on that Committee, as Chairman, of some Gentleman of large experience; and he had ascertained that a Hybrid Committee would have the power of hearing the Chairmen of the Chambers of Commerce and private individuals on the subject, so that all the interests concerned would be fully heard. He might also add that he had already laid upon the Table of the House all the Memorials on the subject presented to the Board of Trade, and he proposed to refer them to the Committee, so as to call the attention of the Committee especially to the complaints which had been made. He thanked the House for the manner in which they had received the proposal of the Government; and he should be prepared to make this reference to a Hybrid Committee, when his hon. Friend the Member for the City of London withdrew his opposition.

who was very indistinctly heard, was understood to say that the principal Railway Companies of the Kingdom had already a great monopoly of the traffic in its various branches, and he trusted that the additional powers now sought for to enable them to become carmen, carriers, booking-office keepers, and wharfingers, to the destruction of those engaged in such undertakings, would be refused by the House.

said, he could not see what was the object of sending the Bill to a Hybrid Committee. The noble Viscount the President of the Board of Trade intimated that he should propose to refer the Bill to a Committee, nominated partly by the House itself and partly by the Committee of Selection. He thought that they had had sufficient experience of the Committee of Selection to know that in all matters of importance the greatest care was taken by the Committee to secure the thorough investigation of a Bill upon its merits. He, therefore, failed to see what object was to be attained by appointing a Hybrid Committee instead of referring the Bill in the usual way: It was said that unless the House nominated part of the Mem- bers of the Committee, they would not have the power to instruct the Committee to hear witnesses on extraneous matters. That was not necessarily the case. If he was rightly informed, the House had ample powers to give all these instructions to an ordinary Committee; and as all of them could be given to an ordinary Committee, he thought the House was going out of its way to appoint a Hybrid Committee. He was afraid that of late they had been getting into a habit of appointing these Hybrid Committees unnecessarily. If it could be shown that any object was to be gained by the nomination of such Committees, he would not object; but without some object could be shown, and unless it could be made manifest that a Hybrid Committee would have powers which could not be given to an ordinary Committee, he thought the better way would be to appoint an ordinary Committee, calling the attention of the Committee of Selection to the nature of the provisions of the Bill, and giving them all the necessary instructions as to how the Bill was to be dealt with.

said, he did not know whether he ought to say a few words, because it was not improbable that the Bill would come before him personally; but he wished to give a reason why the Bill ought to be referred to a Hybrid Committee, rather than to an ordinary Committee. If it were referred to an ordinary Select Committee, the Committee would not be empowered to hear evidence where the parties had no locus standi. Another point was that, in a Select Committee, the decision virtually rested with the Chairman. A Select Committee only consisted of four Members; and if the Chairman carried one Member with him, he was able to decide every point. As this Bill would probably have to come before him, in the event of its being referred in the usual way, almost all the material points would virtually be left to his decision, and he should be extremely sorry to undertake such a responsibility. He thought there could be no question that the Bill ought to be referred to a Hybrid Committee.

then moved the following Instruction to the Committee:—

"That they have power to inquire and report as to the expediency of authorizing the said Company from time to time to purchase by agreement or take on lease or otherwise provide, and to establish and hold booking and receiving offices and other premises for the collection, reception, and booking and delivery of goods, parcels, and other matters and things intended to be carried upon or over their Railway, and to collect, receive, book, and invoice any such goods, parcels, and other matters and things; and to make and carry into effect any such contracts or agreements with any other Railway Company or Companies with regard to the collection, reception, booking, or invoicing of any goods, parcels, and other matters and things intended to be carried upon or over the Railways of the respective Companies so contracting, or any or either of them."

asked the Secretary of State for the Colonies, Whether, seeing there has been no invasion of the Colony of Natal, he will suspend military action until an opportunity has been afforded for a peaceful adjustment of the difference with the Zulu King?

I believe the fact that there has been, fortunately, no invasion of the Colony of Natal is mainly due,—first, to the memorable defence at Rorke's Drift; secondly, to the position occupied and held by Colonel Pearson; and thirdly, to the other preparations which were at once made for the defence of the Colony. I am not aware that the Zulu King has expressed any wish whatever for a peaceful adjustment of the difference with us; and for every reason, but mainly for the safety of the White race in South Africa, I think it necessary that the military disaster which has occurred should be retrieved.

I should like to inquire, Whether any further delay is desirable, in the interest of the Public Service, before the House discusses the Zulu War?

Further despatches on this subject will, I hope, be in the hands of hon. Members in the course of a few days. I am not prepared to say it is necessary that there should be any further delay before the House enters upon this discussion. I wish, however, to guard myself in one respect. I cannot possibly say what despatches may be on the way; but whatever information arrives, of any material importance, will at once be presented to the House.

asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Whether the Government propose to place the supreme command of the forces in South Africa in other hands?

No, Sir; as at present advised, they do not.

(whose rising to address the House was met by loud and continued cries of "Order!") said: Sir, in consequence of the answer I have received, I shall have to ask the indulgence of the House—["Order, order!"]—and to put myself in Order, I propose to conclude with a Motion. It appears to me that the point which has been raised by my Question and the answer given by the right hon. Gentleman the Chancellor of the Exchequer are of such a character, involving such grave and important interests—["Order, order!" "Divide, divide!"]—as to demand that they shall be immediately discussed. ["Oh, oh!"] I hope, Sir, that the hon. and gallant Gentleman opposite will give me opportunity of at least stating to the House the object I have in bringing forward this matter. ["Oh, oh!"] Now, Sir, it is perfectly clear that if anything is to be done, if any expression of opinion is to be made in this House on this subject, it must be made at once. ["Oh, oh!"] I will wait until hon. Gentlemen have done. (The hon. Member, who had spoken amid continued cries of interruption, after a brief pause resumed.) I said— (renewed interruption.) Sir, I beg to tell the House at once that if I have to stand here all night I will say what I mean to say. ["Order!"]

The hon. Member is not entitled to use language menacing to the House; and though the hon. Gentleman may be strictly within his right in taking the course he now proposes to take, it is my duty to point out to him that the course of raising discussion at the present moment is highly inconvenient. I have also to observe that the hon. Member, if he desires to debate the answer given by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, will have a proper opportunity of doing so on the Motion for going into Committee of Supply, which is appointed on the Orders to-night.

(whose rising was met with marks of impatience) said: I rise to say, Sir, that if this question—["Oh, oh!"]—perhaps you will hear me? If it were possible to raise this question upon going into Committee of Supply, I would be perfectly willing to do so; but as far as I see the opportunity would not be very great, because there are so many Notices on the Paper already. As far as I understand, it would not be possible to raise this question on going into Committee of Supply under a month. But it is one that if it is to be raised at all it must be raised at once. In a few moments I shall be able, if the House will let mo, to show very good reasons why at least I ask that the answer of the Chancellor of the Exchequer should be discussed at once. [Cries of "Order, order!" and "Withdraw!"] I am strictly within my right. I am sure that hon. Gentlemen are only doing an injustice to the cause they wish to serve in endeavouring to prevent me from extracting from the Ministerial Bench some explanation of the grounds upon which Her Majesty's Government have declined to take any action in regard to this matter. [Cries of "Order!" and "Withdraw!"] I shall very briefly review the circumstances under which the disaster of Isandula occurred. ["Oh, oh!" "Order!"] If I am obliged to raise the question in a somewhat unusual form, I believe it will be understood by the House and the country that it is owing to no fault of mine. I will endeavour to put my observations in as few words as possible so as to save the time of the House.

rose to Order. He wished to ask whether, after the intimation of MR. Speaker, it was respectful to the House that the hon. Gentleman should persevere?

(whose remarks were throughout broken by continued cries and interruption) was understood to say: I am not aware that the hon. and gallant Member has any position in relation to the House or in relation to me, which entitles him to give me a lesson in gentlemanliness or self-respect. ["Oh!"] I consider myself most unfairly treated by hon. Members opposite, who will not give me an opportunity of stating the ground upon which I wish to introduce this subject. Now, Sir, I wish to say in the first place, in regard to this question, that when any General suffers such a defeat as was suffered by General Lord Chelmsford at Isandula, there is a primâ facie case of incompetency against him; and it lies with him to demonstrate to the country and the military authorities that the defeat in question was not owing to any want either of ability or care on his part. ["Oh!" and "Hear, hear!"] The House is fortunately enabled to judge of the propriety of his conduct by his own despatches describing the operations which preceded the disaster. ["Order!" and "Withdraw!"] Hon. Members opposite have an opportunity of withdrawing, if they think fit; but I intend to remain until I have stated my case. ["Oh!"] I do not propose to enter into any criticisms of the general strategy of Lord Chelmsford. That is not in my programme. ["Oh!"] Let it be clearly understood that all I am asking for tonight is an explanation from the Government. We have waited for Lord Chelmsford's defence, and all the information that has been given is a childish despatch, in which he describes the course of operations which preceded and followed the disaster at Isandula. Let it be clearly understood that I am not making any attack upon Lord Chelmsford—I am only expressing a very common opinion on the part of military men, and others non-military, in saying that some explanation is required from the Government to justify their continuing in command a man who seems to have exhibited a great want of discretion, if not of military misconduct and incapacity. ["Oh!"] There are only two heads under which the conduct of Lord Chelmsford can be considered—first of all, there is his conduct in regard to the invasion of Zululand—and in connection with this part of the subject, I wish to say that I have no desire to forestall the discussion which is to take place on the Motion of the hon. Baronet the Member for Chelsea. ["Order!"]

I rise to Order. I wish to ask whether, after the intimation given to the hon. Member for Birmingham by the right hon. Gentleman the Secretary of State for the Colonies, that it will be convenient to discuss the Zulu question whenever the Motion may be brought forward, it is not out of Order to discuss that question now? I must also appeal to the hon. Gentleman himself whether it is right so to attack an absent man without Notice?

I also rise to Order—["Order!"]

In answer to the Question of the right hon. and gallant Baronet, I have to repeat that no doubt it would be more convenient to discuss the question which the hon. Member for Dundee desires to bring under the notice of the House when the Motion referring to the affairs in Zululand is brought forward. At the same time, if the hon. Member thinks it right to proceed after the observations I have addressed to him, I am bound to say he is within his right, though I must again say it is most inconvenient.

(whose rising was again met with marks of impatience): I shall endeavour, Sir, if the House will listen to me, to show my reasons for wishing to bring this discussion on immediately. I think Lord Chelmsford's conduct requires explanation on two points at least. In the first place, we have a right to ask—Why should Lord Chelmsford, when he was in supreme command of the Forces, have acceded to the demand of Sir Bartle Frere to commence an invasion of Zululand, when in a previous despatch he had expressly stated that he had troops sufficient only to defend the Colony. [Cries of "Order!" and" Withdraw!"] The subject has been discussed, and not without some bitterness, in the country, and it is almost the universal opinion that the conduct of Lord Chelmsford shows great military incapacity. ["Oh!"] I think, there- fore, we are entitled, at the very least, to know why the Government are determined to support him by continuing him in his command, and sending him competent subordinate officers to enable him to retrieve one of the most deplorable and disgraceful disasters that ever happened to the British Army. [Continued interruption.]

I rise to Order. I wish to ask whether, after Mr. Speaker has ruled that the hon. Member for Dundee is within his right, it was in Order for hon. Gentlemen opposite to keep up continuous cries of "Divide, divide!" while the hon. Member is speaking?

If the Rules of the House allow an hon. Member to explain his reasons for putting a Question to the Government, any interruption which interferes with that explanation is out of Order.

There seems to be a misunderstanding on the part of many hon. Members. I think I will be able to show, if they will listen to mo, that my proposal is not so unreasonable as they think. A very strong feeling exists throughout the country in regard to the disaster at Isandula, and the continuance of Lord Chelmsford in command of the Forces in South Africa; and, in my opinion, there are very good grounds for that feeling. Now, possibly the Government have good grounds for the trust they put in his Lordship, and all I ask is—Whether they are prepared to give some explanation of the grounds on which he is to be continued in Ms command, in order that the public feeling and excitement may be allayed? [Interruption.] Mr. Speaker, the hon. Member for Hastings (Sir Ughtred Kay-Shuttleworth) is interrupting.

Does the hon. Member conclude with a Motion?

I simply say I am being interrupted by the hon. Member for Hastings. [Cries of "Spoke!" and "Go on!"] (The hon. Member, taking up the Parliamentary Paper containing the despatches relating to Zululand, proceeded to criticize the proceedings of the civil and military authorities before the commencement of military operations. The hon. Member also proceeded to criticize the movements of the columns before and after the defeat at Isandula, as described in Lord Chelmsford's "childish" despatch.)

Sir, I rise to Order. I would like to ask you, Mr. Speaker, if it is competent, on a Motion simply for the adjournment of the House, to discuss a question the merits of which have already been anticipated by a Notice of Motion now standing on the Notice Paper of the House? The hon. Member for Chelsea (Sir Charles W. Dilke) raises the Zulu War question by his Motion; and is the hon. Member for Dundee, under cover of the Motion for adjournment, to be allowed to anticipate the discussion?

The remarks of the hon. Member for Dundee did not reach me; but if the hon. Member who rose to Order is correct in his statement that the lion. Member for Dundee is discussing the policy of the Zulu War, he is clearly out of Order, as Notice has been given of a Motion on the subject.

denied that he was discussing the question of the policy of that war. (The hon. Member then proceeded with his criticism of the military operations, referring especially to the conduct of Lord Chelmsford in dividing his force, leaving one part in an unintrenched camp, while he proceeded in two columns into the interior of the enemy's country, without establishing a communication with the force left in the camp, the result being the capture of the camp with all its stores, and the destruction of the force left in charge; arguing, as was understood, that a General who had so mismanaged a single expedition was not fit to be left in the supreme management of a company; but the hon. Member's reading and comments were received with such continued cries of impatience and disapprobation that no consistent report is possible.) At length—

I rise to Order. There is one hon. Member who more persistently than any other interrupts the hon. Member for Dundee; and I therefore beg to name the hon. Baronet the Member for Scarborough (Sir Charles Legard).

All interruptions are, no doubt, out of Order, not excepting those of the hon. Member for Cavan (Mr. Biggar).

My allegation, upon which I ask that the name of the hon. Member for Scarborough be taken down, is that the hon. Baronet is continuously and persistently interrupting the hon. Member for Dundee. I beg to move that the hon. Baronet's name be taken down.

All interruptions interfering with the hon. Member in possession of the House are out of Order. I call upon the hon. Member for Dundee to proceed.

I wish to ask whether, in the face of what has occurred, the Government will continue Lord Chelmsford in command or not? It is not an unreasonable Question; it is one the country is asking, and will ask; and it ought to be asked in the House of Commons, and the House will require it to be answered. I desire to have an answer, in spite of the interested protests of hon. Members on the other side. ["Order, order!"]

rose to Order. The hon. Member for Dundee has accused hon. Members of having interested motives. I ask you, Sir, whether it is in Order to attribute to hon. Members that they are actuated by interested motives?

It is only right, before the Question is answered, that those hon. Members who could not hear me distinctly on account of the interruptions, should know what were the exact words I used. I spoke of the "protests" of hon. Members on the other side; but I did not describe any particular kind of interest; I did not say whether it was political or military; and I did not intend to impute an interest of an objectionable character. But these endeavours to burk discussion, however slight, upon this question, will only convince the country of the rotten state of things at the Horse Guards. How is it that this noble Lord is maintained in the command after these specimens of incapacity? It is time someone should rise in his place in the House to point out that the Horse Guards is a centre of intrigue, where incompetence is shielded by Court influence or by favour with the Royal Person at the head of it. ["Order, order!"]

asked whether the expressions just made use of—"Court influence" and "favour with a Royal Personage at the head of the Horse Guards"—were in Order?

The words said to have been used by the hon. Member for Dundee did not reach me.

I am perfectly ready to repeat them for the benefit of the hon. Member (Mr. Beresford Hope) if he desires it.

The hon. Member must address himself to the Chair.

I thought I was addressing myself to the Chair, and I am sorry the noise made by hon. Members prevented the Chair from hearing what I said. I was saying that this is a case which undoubtedly will give rise to the notion that there are unfair influences at work for the purpose of maintaining the noble Lord who has distinguished himself in incapacity in his responsible position. I say that on the Papers before us a primâ facie case of incapacity is made out; and, at all events, the Government might say whether they had any grounds for entertaining a contrary opinion. This House cannot exercise any influence upon the dispensing of patronage at the Horse Guards, nor upon the arrangements of the Army; but at least this House, which votes the money for the maintenance of the Army, is entitled to ask upon what grounds Her Majesty's Ministers are able to defend an officer who is responsible for a deplorable disaster? I will conclude by moving the adjournment of the House.

Does any hon. Member second the Motion?

Sir, I shall second it. I am sorry for the interruptions the hon. Member for Dundee has received at the hands of the House, and more particularly so for the sake of the Government, supporters of whom have persistently interrupted the hon. Member—supporters of whom I have always hitherto accounted myself one, and a very strenuous supporter too. I am sorry they should not have allowed the hon. Member—who was perfectly in Order—to state the case he wished to submit to the House. I am bound to say I agree very strongly—not in the remarks he made, for I was hardly able to catch them—but I do concur with the hon. Member in this—that the answers which we receive from the Government upon this most grave and serious question cannot be satisfactory to the House or the country. I had a seat in this House so long ago as the commencement of the Crimean War, and I well recollect the interruptions which then pur- sued the right hon. and learned Member for Sheffield (Mr. Roebuck) and the right hon. Gentleman who is now Her Majesty's Ambassador at Constantinople (Sir Henry Layard) for the grave inconvenience they occasioned the Government by the remarks they persistently made—they and many others in common with them—against the policy of the Government. They charged the Government of that time with incompetence abroad and incompetence at home. I do not wish to make a similar charge against the Government now; but I remember how the two hon. Members I have named were treated then. They moved for a Committee of Inquiry, and they were told they did so out of vanity, out of malice, out of credulity. We have not moved for a Committee of Inquiry—yet; but I do not say that if the House of Commons is not to have, and soon, an opportunity of discussing this most serious question of the South African Colonies and the recent disaster, we may be obliged to force it on the Government. The replies to-night from the Government were, in my opinion, most unsatisfactory. The first Question put by the hon. and learned Member for Louth (Mr. Sullivan) was whether some communication could not be opened with the King of Zululand; and the reply of the Colonial Secretary was, No, that such a course was inconvenient; and there was every reason why, with a view to the safety of the whole population, the military disaster which had occurred should be avenged—["Oh!"]—should be avenged. [Hon. MEMBERS: Retrieved.] Retrieved; let it be so. Is it a reason why you should make war on a savage nation that by the incapacity, and nothing else, of the Commander-in-Chief—["No, no!"]—by the incapacity—["No, no!"]—by the want of strategy, then, of the Commander-in-Chief these brave savages—for they are brave—have been victorious? I wish to press upon the Government that we ought no longer to delay discussing this question. There has been a Motion on the Paper night after night by my Friend the hon. Baronet the Member for Chelsea (Sir Charles W. Dilke). We are now told that more Papers are on the way. More Papers on the way! Have we not Papers enough already? There never was a Government so profuse in the distribution of vast quanti- ties of Papers on every subject for the information of the House. Have not we Papers enough now? Do not we know the policy of the Government? Do not we know the policy of Sir Bartle Frere? Do not we know—["Order, order!"]

The right hon. Baronet is clearly out of Order; he is now discussing the policy of the Government in the Zulu War. That question is embraced in a Notice of Motion of the hon. Baronet the Member for Chelsea, and any discussion of that question is clearly premature and out of Order.

I bow respectfully to your decision, Sir. I was not entering into the policy of the Government. I say we ought to discuss the policy of the Government, because really the state of affairs at the Cape is very grave. A vast expenditure of blood and money has been incurred. ["Order!"] I believe I am perfectly in Order in saying that.

I rise to Order. I ask whether the very sentence the right hon. Baronet is now uttering has not reference to the question raised by the Motion of the hon. Baronet the Member for Chelsea?

The right hon. Gentleman has scarcely concluded his sentence; but he certainly did appear to me to be again trenching upon Order.

Then I will resume my seat. But I appeal to every man in this House whether we ought not to have an opportunity of discussing this question. I feel convinced that I do but interpret the feeling which very generally prevails out-of-doors when I say that the House of Commons cannot too early or too urgently impress upon the Government the necessity of stating to the House and the country what are the real issues at stake in this matter.

Sir, the right hon. Baronet who has just spoken has expressed his deep regret that the observations of the hon. Member for Dundee should have been so interrupted. I venture also to express my regret that, for his own sake, and the sake of his Parliamentary reputation, the right hon. Baronet should have accepted him for his leader, and should have become the humble follower of the hon. Member for Dundee. The right hon. Baronet has said that the hon. Member for Dundee was strictly in Order. Yes, Sir, he was in Order; he was within his right—and you, Sir, ruled that he was—but I venture to think that, notwithstanding, he simply abused the Privileges of the House, and that, too, in a manner which, if frequently repeated, will render it absolutely impossible for the Business of the House to be conducted at all. The hon. Member for Dundee has excused himself on the ground of the great urgency of the question. I venture to say that, perhaps, on occasions of this kind, it is not even for the hon. Member for Dundee to decide alone upon the question of urgency. When I look to the front Opposition Bench, I see upon it the noble Lord the Leader of the Opposition—I see upon it the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Birmingham, who has grown old and grey in the service of his country. I see upon it the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Bradford (Mr. W. E. Forster) and other Gentlemen, whose opinions are valued, and whose reputations are great throughout the length and breadth of England. I must say that, considering their attitude, the hon. Member for Dundee has trespassed too much upon the attention of the House in interrupting Public Business in the manner he has done. I do not wish to pursue this subject for one moment further; but in sitting down I wish to express my regret at one thing above all others, and that is, Sir, that your repeated admonitions and repeated advice, and the manner in which you have pointed out the gross inconvenience that would result from the course that the hon. Member for Dundee has taken, were so deliberately disregarded as they have been.

Sir, I wish to express my deep regret, on public grounds, that the hon. Member for Dundee has brought this matter forward. When the sad news of the disaster at Isandula reached this country, I was much struck by the expression of opinion in the foreign papers—on the calm and dignified manner in which this country and this House had received the sad news, and the evident determination there was to deal fairly with those whose con- duct would naturally be the subject of criticism. If we are to accept the course which has been indicated to us by the hon. Member for Dundee, we should, I fear, be in danger of losing that character for fairness and moderation which we have gained. I would only ask the House a single question—and I would urge the House not to allow itself to be dragged further into a discussion of the military conduct of Lord Chelmsford today—I would simply ask, whether, without any sufficient preparation, except a Question placed upon the Paper, with no information of any sort or kind, excepting the barest statement, a discussion involving such grave consequences ought to take place in this House—whether, while a Court of Inquiry is sitting at Isandula, which will bring before us the whole of the facts—this House is justified, as an Assemblage of fair men, in taking into consideration the military capacity and conduct of Lord Chelmsford? I would like to point this out to the House—that, in the records of Parliament, there is not one single instance in which the character of a General Officer has been brought before this House, or the House of Lords, in consideration of the allegation that a disaster on any particular day was caused by his faulty dispositions or tactics. The disaster of Isandula we may justly call a military disaster; but it is not a disaster of a character which is usually brought before this House. Before Parliament, on various occasions, military mismanagement has been made the subject of deliberation. At the time of the Walcheren Expedition, the matter was brought before the House of Lords by Lord Porchester, and the Government of that day were turned out upon that question. Similarly, at the time of the operations in Portugal and Spain, which ended in the battle of Corunna, Lord Grey brought before the House the conduct of the Ministers and the Executive. Similarly, at the period to which the right hon. Baronet (Sir Robert Peel) has alluded, the conduct of the operations in the Crimea was brought before the House. But, on these occasions, not in one single instance did the House attempt to arraign the conduct of any individual General, owing to a reverse on any particular day. That duty it has always referred to the Executive. But now, what would be the result, if we were to accept the course indicated to us by the hon. Member for Dundee? We have wars continually in various parts of the world. [Loud ironical cheers from the Opposition.] General Officers are unhappily engaged in many parts of the world; is their conduct from time to time to be made the subject of discussion in this House, their character the victim of faction?

I rise for a moment to Order. I would ask the hon. Member what course the hon. Member for Dundee has suggested?

The hon. Member has suggested, not only that this day we should discuss, but he has begun to discuss himself, the character of Lord Chelmsford. But I was on the point of asking what the result would be, if the House were to undertake the duty of censuring the Generals engaged in the field? I will tell you. We should be practically descending to the practice of the worst period of the Reign of Terror in Prance. At that time the French were embarked upon a career of ambition and conquest. It was natural that at the commencement of their revolutionary career they should be very unfortunate; therefore, alarmed and irritated at their reverses, the Convention used to employ Delegates to attend on the Staff of their Generals, and to report home whether these officers were successful or not. If they were successful, the Generals received the thanks of the Convention; if not, they were guillotined. Now, I do not for one moment suppose that in these days we should adopt such severe measures as that; but remember this—If we adopted the course advised by the hon. Member for Dundee, we should, in principle, be following in their footsteps; we should be usurping the functions of the Executive without either the technical knowledge or the requisite quality for such a duty, and, in this particular case, the result, I feel sure, would be grave injury to the character of a distinguished man, and the erection of a precedent which would have most injurious effects on the character of this House and on the Public Service. I have expressed no opinion myself upon Lord Chelmsford. I have my opinion upon the conduct of the whole war, but that is not a matter which I am going to lay before the House. I trust the House will not allow itself to be dragged into a premature discussion upon this grave question.

There is much in what has taken place which, I think, ought to be a subject of regret. I do not desire to enter into any unnecessary criticism of the course which the hon. Member for Dundee has thought it his duty to take. I am sure that he, as a Member of this House, can only have adopted that course under a sense of duty. At the same time, I gravely question the propriety of the decision at which he arrived. And I wish, Sir, to point out that it is not consistent either with the dignity of the House or with the due conduct of Public Business that such a Motion as that which the hon. Member has proposed on the present occasion should be resorted to, under such circumstances, for the purpose of irregularly bringing forward the debate which he has attempted to force on. Whatever might be the subject of debate, it must be inconvenient that it should be brought on in so sudden a manner, and without preparation; and when it has reference to a matter of such great gravity as that which the hon. Member has introduced to our notice, I think the objections to such a course as that which he has followed are doubly and trebly magnified. Whatever may have been the judgment of the hon. Gentleman in beginning to call the attention of the House to the subject, he ought to have perceived—and I wonder he did not perceive—that the sense of the House was decidedly against him. I think that under those circumstances it ought to have been the part of an hon. Member to have taken into consideration what was obviously the general feeling of the House; and I cannot acquit the hon. Member for Dundee of great indiscretion in having persisted and persevered in his Motion as he has done. With regard to the question which he has raised, I think the few observations which have been just made by the hon. and gallant Member for Renfrewshire (Colonel Mure) ought to commend themselves to our attention. There is no desire on the part of Her Majesty's Government to evade any share of the responsibility which they feel properly belongs to them in this matter. It is a very serious responsibility; it is a matter which is of the greatest importance to the interests of the coun- try. The Government have given their most careful consideration to all that has passed, and to all the information that they have received; and in coming to the decision which I announced in answer to the Question of the hon. Member for Dundee, they have done so under a perfect consciousness that they were acting in a matter in which their responsibility was of the most serious character. They have decided, however, with confidence, and they will be prepared, at any proper time, to discuss the matter in any way it may be thought proper to raise it. But I hope that at the present moment we shall not be called upon to proceed with this discussion. It would be very irregular, and exceedingly inconvenient, and I trust that the House will now allow the matter to drop, fully conscious that we are aware of the gravity of the question and of the responsibility which devolves upon us.

I cannot help feeling, with the right hon. Gentleman opposite, that what has taken place this evening must be viewed with regret. It is very much to be regretted that the hon. Member for Dundee has brought forward this subject without Notice. But I must also express my doubt whether the House has consulted its own dignity in the persistent manner in which it sought to prevent the hon. Member for Dundee from being heard. The excuse which might have palliated that proceeding appears to be altogether wanting; for after the scene which we all witnessed during the time the hon. Member was speaking, the right hon. Baronet opposite (Sir Robert Peel) rose to address the House; and although he made some remarks quite as strong respecting the military character of Lord Chelmsford and of those who are responsible for the conduct of military affairs in South Africa, there was no attempt on the part of the House to interrupt the right hon. Gentleman in the same manner in which it had interrupted the hon. Member for Dundee. If we are to do justice on an occasion of this kind, and to exercise any sort of control over the proceedings of hon. Members, we should, at all events, act impartially. Both the hon. Member for Dundee and the right hon. Gentleman opposite appeared to be equally under a misapprehension as to the reason which caused the hostility of the House to the course which they took. The hon. Gentleman said that he was perfectly in Order. Well, no doubt that was so; but if I am not much mistaken, that which aroused the hostility of the House was this—that the hon. Member proceeded to make an attack upon the military conduct and procedure of Lord Chelmsford without Notice, and without having given to those who are responsible any opportunity of knowing that such an attack would be made. I am not going to deny that this may be a question of very great urgency, or that it may not be right in some exceptional cases to bring forward a matter of this character without Notice, even at the cost of some inconvenience. But the hon. Member has never made any attempt to obtain a discussion of this question; he has never attempted to make a Motion in reference to it on going into Committee of Supply; neither has he ever indicated any intention of seriously calling in question the military conduct of Lord Chelmsford. I entirely agree with my hon. and gallant Friend behind me (Colonel Mure) as to the responsibility which attaches to the Government in this matter, and I cannot conceive anything more disastrous than that the House of Commons should attempt in any way to regulate the conduct of a campaign, for which it does not possess, and does not pretend to possess, the necessary military knowledge. It may be necessary for the House at some time or other to discuss the management of the campaign; but it must hold the Government, and the Government alone, responsible for what has taken place—and I cannot conceive any heavier responsibility than that which now rests upon the Government in reference to this subject. They have to consider, on the one hand, that if they judge by results, that if they censure and condemn an officer without sufficient inquiry and without sufficient knowledge, they may do an act of grave injustice to a gallant and an honourable man, and one which may weaken the sense of responsibility, and the spirit of willingness to undertake responsibilities which are so necessary in an officer. On the other hand, they have to consider that, by retaining in his position of command a man undoubtedly gallant and brave, but who, in the opinion of some, has not shown sufficient military capa- city, they may possibly be endangering the success of the campaign, the safety of the troops, and even of the Colony itself. That is the responsibility which rests upon the Government; and I am utterly opposed, whether in a regular or in an irregular manner, to relieve them one atom from that responsibility. As we have not at hand the means of giving them advice, anything that we can do will merely tend to weaken their sense of responsibility. I entirely agree with the right hon. Gentleman opposite (Sir Robert Peel) that this matter of the policy of the Government with regard to South Africa is one that ought to be discussed as soon as possible. I conceive that it was with that object that the hon. Member for Birmingham (Mr. Chamberlain) put his Question to the Government to-night, and the answer which he has received from the Government places the matter in a very different position from that which it has hitherto occupied; and I have no doubt that the hon. Baronet the Member for Chelsea, who has a Motion on the Paper on the subject, will lose no time in informing the House of his intention in reference to it.

in asking leave to withdraw his Motion, explained that his object in making it was not so much to raise a debate as to ascertain from Her Majesty's Government the motives which had induced them to retain Lord Chelmsford in his command.

asked Mr. Chancellor of the Exchequer, Whether the negotiations between His Excellency the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland and members of the Irish Catholic Hierarchy, with reference to the question of University Education in Ireland, were initiated at the suggestion, or by the direction, or were carried on with the knowledge and sanction of Her Majesty's Government, or of any Member of the Cabinet, or of the right Honourable the Chief Secretary for Ireland; whether any undertaking was given or promise held out, by His Excellency the Lord Lieutenant, to any member of the Irish Catholic Hierarchy or any other person, that a Bill dealing with the subject of University Educa- tion in Ireland would be introduced by Her Majesty's Government this Session; and, whether any Memorandum in reference thereto or consequent thereon was furnished to the Lord Lieutenant at the suggestion of His Excellency, or in compliance with his request, by certain of the Irish Catholic Hierarchy; and, if so, whether Her Majesty's Government will have any objection to lay the Memorandum referred to and copy of Correspondence, or Memorandum of any communications on the subject, upon the Table of the House?

Sir, I think that ever since I have been in Parliament the question of Irish University Education has from time to time obtained the attention of successive Governments, and, no doubt, there have been frequent communications on the subject between the Irish Government and persons of all positions interested in the question. It is perfectly true that at the present time the Lord Lieutenant has given his attention to this question, and, no doubt, he has been in communication with many persons of all professions and creeds in Ireland in reference to it. I am not aware, however, that there has been anything in the nature of what the lion. Member calls "negotiations" between the Lord Lieutenant and any persons on the matter, and certainly no undertaking or promise has ever been given by Her Majesty's Government or by the Lord Lieutenant to any person that a Bill dealing with Irish University Education would be introduced by Her Majesty's Government this Session. I am not aware that any Memorandum on this subject has ever been furnished to the Lord Lieutenant at his suggestion, or in compliance with his request, and, therefore, it cannot be laid upon the Table of the House.

asked Mr. Chancellor of the Exchequer, Whether he will lay upon the Table without delay a Copy of the Despatch of Lord Salisbury to Lord A. Loftus, dated January 26, with any replies which may have been received; and, when that negotiation on the subject of fulfilling the provisions of the Berlin Treaty was concluded?

I think I caught earlier in the evening that the noble Lord gave Notice that he proposes to call attention to this despatch, and to found a Motion upon it. If that be so, and he likes to move for this despatch, there is no objection to its production. At the same time, it is not particularly convenient to produce it without the further Correspondence; and it will not be possible to lay upon the Table any Correspondence that has passed between the Russian Government and Her Majesty's Government without the consent of the former. I confess I do not quite understand the noble Lord's second Question. I am informed that the provisions of the Berlin Treaty are in course of execution, and no doubt many communications have passed in reference to points connected with that Treaty; but no special negotiations, that I am aware of, have been entered into in reference to the fulfilment of the provisions.

Lord Salisbury has enumerated a number of schemes which have been set on foot for creating an explosion in Eastern Roumelia directly after the Russians have retired. What I want to know is whether he has succeeded in inducing the Russian Government to abandon any of those schemes?

I wish to know whether the assent of Her Majesty's Government was given to the Russian Government for the publication of the despatch in question?

I have no knowledge how the despatch was Published. I was not aware it was published at all. I have no knowledge about it.

asked the Secretary of State for the Home Department, If he is prepared to support the Licensing Laws Amendment Bill now before the House?

I am not satisfied that I should be in Order in answering this Question. It would, in any case, be most inconvenient to do so; and if the hon. Member will allow me I shall reserve my remarks until the subject is brought forward for discussion.

asked Mr. Chancellor of the Exchequer, Whether the attention of the Government has been called to a paragraph in a newspaper to the effect that a firm in Whitechapel is manufacturing arms for shipment to the Zulus; and whether they are in possession of any information on the subject?

The attention of the Government has been drawn to this statement, and inquiries are being made. I do not think it would be advantageous to make any further statement on the subject at present.

It will be in the recollection of the House that yesterday, in answer to a Question from the hon. Member for the Tower Hamlets (Mr. Ritchie), I stated that certain arms had been exported from Cardiff last week—a number of muskets, and, I think, 560 lbs. of gunpowder—and that these articles had been shipped by two firms—Messrs. James Hutton, of Dale Street, Manchester, and Messrs. Hutton, of the Temple, Liverpool. Mr. James Hutton called upon me this morning, and has informed me that the only goods from his firm which were shipped in the Argus consisted of 180 bales of Manchester cotton goods, and that he would communicate with the firm on whose account these goods were shipped and send their reply to Her Majesty's Government. Mr. James Hutton also informed me that Messrs. Hutton and Co., of Liverpool, in whose firm he had no interest, shipped some flint-lock muskets and African trade powder by the Argus on account of a French house trading at Mozambique. I have just at this moment had a telegram from Mr. A. Hutton, of Liverpool, and I ought, perhaps, in justice to them, to be allowed to read their explanation. The telegram is as follows:—

"Will you kindly explain in the House tonight on my behalf that the 831 guns shipped by me were old flint guns, costing under 6s. each; that the gunpowder was ordinary African trade powder, costing under 30s. per barrel, whereas military powder is worth 100s. per barrel; and that for many years I have made four or five similar shipments annually to the same latitude, which is fully 1,000 miles from Zulu territory? I have had this order since the 23rd of November, and I emphatically deny that it is intended for that country. The voyage there will occupy four months."

In justice to these two firms I have thought it necessary to make this explanation.

said, that Messrs. Hutton were well-known and respected Liverpool merchants, who traded regularly with Africa, and that there was nothing exceptional in the shipments to which allusion had been made. They were not intended for the enemies of our country, nor likely to reach the Zulus; but such shipments had long been a matter of regular trade and part of Messrs. Hutton's general business with the coast of Africa.

asked Mr. Chancellor of the Exchequer, Whether he is prepared to state what facilities he will give for bringing before the House the subject of the Zulu War?

I shall be fully prepared to give a Government night for that purpose; but we are rather in a difficulty with regard to our Business, the Supplementary Estimates and other Business not being in a forward state; but I should be glad to agree with the hon. Baronet as to a day to be given. I could not undertake to give him next Monday, and I do not whether Thursday would be convenient, or if the hon. Baronet would think Thursday week too late; but I will communicate with him in the course of the evening.

assured the House that he rose with great diffidence for the second time at so early a period of the Session to call attention to matters connected with military administration. His diffidence would have been even greater were it not for the success which had resulted from his former Motion, and if his previous experience had not convinced him that the kind treatment which he then received at the hands of the House would be extended to any Member who did not speak too frequently, who understood his subject, and was known to be thoroughly in earnest. While most emphatically disclaiming the desire only to benefit those corps referred to by the terms of his Motion, in one of which he had passed many years of his life, he wished still less to draw any invidious distinction between the various branches of the Army. In mentioning that he had never in his life been within the walls of the Royal Academy at Woolwich; that for three generations no near relation of his had served in the Ordnance corps, although many had with the Guards, Cavalry and Infantry; and that he (Colonel Arbuthnot) had served in a Cavalry regiment, he only desired to show that in dealing with a subject relating to the Ordnance and Scientific branches of the Service, he was likely to be as disinterested as any Member of the House. He wished the House to believe that he approached the question altogether in the public interest and upon national grounds, and to understand that he blamed no Department, either Parliamentary or Executive, for a state of things attributable, in his opinion, entirely to natural causes, which had grown up by the force of circumstances, and for which no one was responsible. At the same time, he desired to say that if he did not succeed in making out a very strong or even unanswerable case, the failure would be his own, and not due to any insufficiency of argument at his disposal. With the permission of the House, he thought it well to read the terms of the Motion which he had the honour to submit to its consideration—namely—

"That an humble Address be presented to Her Majesty, praying Her Majesty to be pleased to order the issue of a Royal Commission to inquire into and to report whether any and what alterations of the Military system now in force are desirable, as regards the pay, promotion, employment, and conditions of service and retirement of the officers of the Ordnance corps."

It would be recollected that until the Crimean War, and up to the year 1854, the organization of the Army differed totally from that of the present time. The Ordnance corps were then entirely apart from the rest of the Army, and formed something between a mechanical and semi-official Department. They were specially represented in Parliament, and were not under the Commander-in-Chief, but had a Master General and a Clerk to the Board, who was a Member of the Government. That last Clerk of the Ordnance was Colonel Boldero, who, though he commenced life as an Engineer, was, during his career, transferred to the Line, a fact that, in itself, was sufficient to show that the line of demarcation between the Scientific corps and the other branches of the Army was more strongly defined now that the whole of the Army was under the control of the Horse Guards, than at the period to which he referred. At that time the Ordnance corps enjoyed great advantages, financial and otherwise, both in England and the Colonies, which, however, were so numerous, intricate, and uninteresting, that he would not dwell upon them, but refer any hon. Members who desired further information upon that subject to the history of the Royal Artillery by Major Duncan. Many of those advantages disappeared with the abolition of the Board of Ordnance, although he was of opinion that a contrary impression existed, and that the country had never realized the change which had taken place. It might be supposed that when the Board of Ordnance was suppressed, and after the Scientific corps came under the Horse Guards, they would share all the advantages and disadvantages alike, common to the other branches of the Service. The case, however, was unavoidably otherwise, and he did not complain of that for one moment. The fact was, that long after the abolition of the Board they still retained special advantages, sufficient to compensate for the disadvantages under which they laboured, and which, at all events, offered sufficient inducements for parents and guardians to send young men into the corps. But in 1871, it would be remembered that an entire change took place. The Army Purchase system was abolished, and the whole Army was placed prospectively on the same footing as regarded entrance and subsequent commissions. That being the case, he contended that the same advantages and disadvantages should apply to all branches of the Service alike, and that was also the opinion of the Royal Commission that sat to inquire into the matter of promotion and retirement, the Report of which stated, at page 78, that—

"There is no difficulty in saying that the different arms of the Service should be treated with impartiality, and that no boon or benefit should be accorded to the officers of one which, under similar circumstances, is withheld from the other, and that each arm or branch of the Service should, as far as practicable, have an equal share of the honours, distinctions, emoluments and other advantages is also a proposition not likely to be denied."

The special advantages and disadvantages he had referred to as existing before the abolition of Purchase in the other arms were as follows:—In the first place, the officers of Ordnance did not pay for their first or subsequent commissions; and though their promotion came tardily, they got their steps without paying for them, and, consequently, received bonâ fide pay, instead of indifferent interest for their money. Then there was the rank of full colonel, which carried with it high pay, and was a thing looked forward to by the officers of those corps; but that rank had been abolished by the recommendation of the Royal Commission. He might remark, with regard to the construction of the Commission, that although it included an officer of the Indian Artillery, the interests of the English Army were not represented by any officer who was serving in England or the Colonies; and he added, upon good authority, that the Commissioners, when at the last moment they went into the question of the effects of their recommendations upon the non-purchase corps, did so in a most perfunctory manner, and without foreseeing what those effects would be. Another advantage enjoyed by those corps, about which he would afterwards have something more to say, was that they possessed a better retiring system. He was simply arguing this question with reference to the effect of the new Regulations upon the supply of candidates for the Ordnance corps, because he felt that one result only could ensue—namely, that when the new Rules in operation were understood, the corps would lose caste, and find themselves without a suitable supply of officers to command them—to guard against which in the future was his object in trespassing upon the time and attention of the House. He now came to the disadvantages under which the Corps laboured, and he ventured to say that these had been very much increased by the recent legislation for the abolition of Purchase, and by the action taken to carry out the recommendations of the Royal Commission on Promotion and Retirement. In the first place, the entrance examination was severer, and, therefore, the education was more costly. He did not say for one moment that more money was not spent upon the education of some Infantry officers than was spent on that of any officer who joined the Ordnance corps; but he still maintained that to obtain a commission in that Service it was necessary to spend more money, because a far higher standard of education had to be attained. The entrance examination was severer, and the course of instruction longer. He admitted that a little benefit was conferred by the reduction in the age of entrance at Woolwich; but, taking the average age of cadets, it would be seen that the Woolwich cadet obtained his commission at a later age than others, had spent more money in consequence upon his education, and was more heavily handicapped at the starting on the race. Passing on to the question of pay, he believed he should be able to show the House that in every rank except below that of captain the Engineers and Artillery received less pay and emolument than the Infantry of the Line. The only financial recommendation of the Commission was one that acted entirely to the disadvantage of those corps, and was to the effect that a saving in the effective pay of the Army should be made by the abolition of the rank of full colonel, which saving mulcted the Royal Artillery in the sum of £52,000, and the Royal Engineers in the sum of about £30,000, annually. By existing Regulations, lieutenant colonels of Royal Artillery and Royal Engineers were especially at a disadvantage. Only about two out of five drew command pay; while adjutants, though captains, only drew 1s. 8d.; while an Infantry adjutant, who was a subaltern, drew 2s. 6d. or 3s. He now came to the question of promotion. It was, of course, known that the Ordnance corps used to obtain their promotion free of expense, though it came tardily; but the Royal Commission appointed to inquire into the matter drew up statistics showing that if the Army had been left as Viscount Cardwell left it, without any scheme for promotion or retirement, the Ordnance corps would have been in advance of the rest of the Army as regards rapidity. Although the actuarial statements drawn up and published might be of authority or otherwise—for he did not place much reliance in such statements unless based upon very large figures—still they went to show that under the scheme recommended by the Commissioners, officers in the Ordnance corps would be from four to six years later in gaining each successive step on the ladder of promotion. He had now to ask the attention of the House to the most serious of all the causes which were at work to deter young men from joining the Ordnance corps, and that was the practical exclusion of the officers from the Staff. He found that with the exception of the two General Staff officers at Woolwich—Colonel Brackenbury at Cyprus, whose appointment he understood was about to cease, and who probably owed his selection to the personal influence of Sir Garnet Wolseley, and one other about to proceed to Natal as Deputy Assistant Adjutant General—there were no officers of Ordnance employed upon the General Staff. If any doubt existed as to the non-employment of those officers, who numbered about one-third of the whole body of officers in the Army, he would like to refer to a case within his own recollection of an Engineer officer who for some time temporarily discharged the duties of a high Staff appointment at an important military station. The post became vacant, and application was made for him to be confirmed in it; but the answer received was—"Ordnance officers are not eligible for appointment to these positions." That answer simply conceded the whole point which he (Colonel Arbuthnot) wished to bring before the House, He admitted that there were occasional cases of men employed in departments where special qualifications were required—such as the Intelligence and Education Departments—but they did not come into the category of the 60 officers employed on the General Staff. Why were the officers of the Ordnance corps excluded from Staff appointments in England and the Colonies? In his opinion, they were all more or less qualified for the Staff by their knowledge of topography, surveying, and military drawing. Field Artillery officers were pre-eminently fitted for Staff employments and commands, because from the nature of their regimental duties at field days and manœuvres, they had better opportunity of studying the movement and the handling of troops. On these occasions the artilleryman got a general view of what was going on; while the Cavalry soldier was either employed on reconnaisance duty, or, if with his regiment, was hidden away behind a hill till required to move, when he was enveloped in a cloud of dust; and the Infantry officer was devoting his time and attention to seeing that when he gave the order "fours right," the men did not form "fours left." If one wanted to get an account of what had happened on a field day, it was much more likely to be obtained from a sub-lieutenant of Artillery than from even a commanding officer of any other Arm. The officers of the Ordnance corps had been invariably excluded from occupying any of the three highest positions to which the officers of other corps could attain, and were, besides, shut out from the positions of heads of the Departments of Clothing, Recruiting, Intelligence, and Education. Out of the officers commanding at the 30 district divisions and brigades in England and the Colonies, only one was an officer of a scientific corps. With regard to the appointment at Woolwich, he saw that the post was to be filled by a distinguished Crimean officer, which was to be regretted; because that standing appointment of an Artillery officer to Woolwich was one of the means by which the line of demarcation between the Ordnance corps and the rest of the Army had been maintained. He would like to see a Cavalry officer sent to command the Woolwich district, and an Artillery General commanding some of the great defensive districts. He believed that it was an object of the greatest importance to break through that line of demarcation, and that he should eventually succeed in his endeavours to do so. It was quite true that Ordnance officers had been appointed to commands at Gibraltar and Bermuda; but he wished to remind the House that in those places the command of the troops was quite subordinate to the position of Civil Governor, and were not purely War Office appointments. Again, it might be asked—"How can you complain, when General Roberts and General Biddulph both hold commands in India?" To which he replied—"If it is just and expedient to employ the officers of Ordnance corps when they get to India, how will it be otherwise than unjust and impolitic to say they shall have no commands in England and the Colonies?" If there happened to be no officers of Artillery or Engineers fitted for any particular vacancy, of course he did not complain that no one was appointed. He did not say those officers must be employed simply on the grounds of numerical proportion; but simply asked why was England to be the only country in the world not to employ on the Staff and in commands its most highly educated officers? Referring again to the Afghan War, he might contrast the selection of generals with that in the Zulu War. In the former, the Ordnance corps had a fair share, while, in the latter, out of five generals now on the way to the scene of operations, not one belonged to those corps. It would be an easy thing to mention scores of officers in foreign Armies who had been employed in independent commands, and whose names were emblazoned on the pages of history. To begin with the French Army, there was the First Napoleon, Marmont, Foy, Drouot, Pichegru, L'Espinasse, and Bosquet; while the Italians had their Delia Marmora, and the Russians General Todleben and Prince Gortschakoff. All these distinguished men were Artillery or Engineer officers. Again, we had only to look to our own Indian Army for the names of Pollock, Whish, Archdale, Wilson, and Napier of Magdala—names of which England was not ashamed. He had moved in December last for a Return of the General Officers of the Ordnance Corps holding independent commands; but although he should have thought it might have been made out in five minutes, that Return had not yet been presented. It had apparently baffled the ingenuity and the research of the War Office clerks, and no wonder, for he believed no such record existed; at any rate, he had never heard of it. Sir Robert Jardine had commanded at Gibraltar, and Sir Fenwick Williams in Canada, and he had heard it stated that Sir John Burgoyne would have commanded in the Crimea had he not been an Engineer officer; but he foresaw an objection that might be advanced, by those who were anxious to do so, to the effect that he was, by making those remarks, criticizing the conduct and the patronage of the illustrious Duke at the head of the Army. He need hardly assure hon. Members that such was not his intention; although he was bound to say that if it appeared to him at any time that the Head of any Department, however high their position might be, and however exalted the rank of the individual was, sacrificing the public interest by errors of judgment, he would not for one moment hesitate to discharge his duty by pointing them out to the House. At that moment, however, his object was a very different one, for he wished not to criticize, but to strengthen the hands of the illustrious Duke, who was Colonel of the two corps in question, who it was impossible could be influenced by any silly prejudices, and whose aim, as everyone knew, was to maintain the Army in the highest state of efficiency. But it was difficult for the illustrious Duke to take upon himself the responsibility of making the great changes indicated, and upsetting a system which he had found in force, and which during a great part of his tenure of Office had been defensible, unless his hands were strengthened by the Report of a Royal Commission. As he was entering the House that evening, an hon. Member had said that he was about to ask the House of Commons to govern the Army; but nothing could be more absurd than that statement; for the matter was not one of discipline, but of organization, and it, therefore, was a most important question for the decision of the House of Commons. He would pass on to another subject, which he did not wish to represent as a grievance in any way. It was a fact that a man could much more easily get into the Staff College from the Line than from the Artillery or Engineers, which alone was an inducement for him to join other corps in preference to the Ordnance. There were some persons who thought that as there was a competitive examination to be passed, selection should be made from those who gained the highest number of marks. If that were the rule, the officers of Artillery and Engineers would monopolize all the appointments. This, however, was a secondary matter. For himself, he readily acknowledged the necessity of limiting the number from each arm of the Service. He only inquired why, if it was thought necessary to limit the number of Artillery and Engineer officers, the Cavalry and Infantry; whose duties were perfectly distinct, should be lumped together? Then, again, it was a perfect waste of money to educate Artillery and Engineer officers at the Staff College, with the view to their filling appointments which were never given to them. It was true that they held regimental Staff appointments, but for these no Staff education was necessary. Ordnance officers laboured under the further disadvantage of being the only ones who could not escape compulsory retirement, and for this reason—because officers of other corps about to come under compulsory retirement could be saved from it and promoted to other corps; while the Engineer or Artillery officer could not, inasmuch as there was no other corps open to him. The circumstances to which he had referred led him to be- lieve that as they had been created by the recommendations of various Royal Commissions, nothing short of a Royal Commission could effectively consider and modify them. Another point was the effect which the recommendation of the Royal Commission to abolish the rank of regimental full colonel had upon the scientific branches of the Army. He had heard, on the highest authority, that it would be the ruin of the Engineers; and he believed it would have the same effect upon the Artillery, by leading to the wholesale retirement of a large number of their most valuable officers. After a certain date—the 1st of October, 1882—no officer would be allowed to continue as lieutenant colonel longer than five years, but would then have the option of being placed upon half-pay, or of receiving a larger sum on retiring from the Service altogether. At the same date the rank of full colonel would also cease to exist, although there would be over 30 lieutenant colonels of Engineers and 50 of Artillery still eligible for promotion as full colonels, and who would have to be disposed of either by their being bought out or promoted before the other officers could hope for any employment. Those officers who had served their five years and been shelved would have to decide between receiving half-pay for an indefinite number of years and the higher terms offered to them on final retirement, and being usually poor men would be compelled to choose the latter, and the State would be very unfortunate in losing from that cause alone the services of so many valuable officers. It appeared to him that the only argument which could be advanced against the throwing open of appointments upon the Staff to the Ordnance officers was that they had already special appointments open to them. But he would ask the House, was it likely that such men, unless having a certain bent of mind, would prefer such an appointment as that of master saddler to the position of a Staff officer? He was of opinion that the line of demarcation between the scientific and other parts of the Army should be broken down, and the appointments in question thrown open to all. He could see no reason whatever why this should not be effected. The loss to the country of the abilities of scientific officers was no less than a national mis- fortune. Take the case of Sir William Palliser, Sir Henry Gordon, or Colonel Colley, whose services could have been invaluable to the State in certain Departments had they not been ineligible, because they were not Artillery officers. Again, it might be said that the supply of Ordnance officers was still equal to the demand; but with that argument he begged to join issue, and would only state that whereas, before the abolition of Purchase, the numbers of those who qualified in the preliminary examination and those who obtained appointments were in the proportion of four and a-half to one, they now stood in the proportion of three to two. The number of those who qualified had fallen off, and it was simply a waste of time to examine men who had not sufficient education to justify the authorities in continuing their examination after the first two days. He asked, was it or was it not desirable to attract the cream of the Army to the Ordnance corps? And had he not shown that those corps laboured under disadvantages which, as time went on, would increase rather than diminish? Was it likely that they could hold their own under the new Regulations; and would it not be a national misfortune if they were to sink into disrepute? There could be but one answer, and that was, that it would be a most unfortunate thing for the efficiency of the British Army and for the English nation at large. Again, he asked, was it not wise to anticipate those possible events with a view to their prevention? As inquiries of that kind were not matters of a day, he trusted the excuse would not be used that it was premature to deal with the subject at that time. How could the subject be investigated better than by a Royal Commission? He had shown that the matters to be inquired into were the results of the recommendation of two previous Royal Commissions; and he contended there were, at least, half-a-dozen points within the four corners of his Motion, the investigation of which was quite as important as anything that had justified the appointment of Royal Commissions in former times. He knew that the strongest feeling existed against sending young men to Woolwich. In a letter which he had received from a General Officer, the writer said that anyone who sent his son to Woolwich must be a lunatic or ignorant of the facts. Leaving the question of lunacy to be settled among the two distinguished Generals, he would read another letter which he had received from another General Officer who took exception to the above-mentioned expression, in which the writer, while foreseeing and admitting every word that he (Colonel Arbuthnot) had either uttered or written as to the disadvantages under which this corps laboured, said—

"The fact is that there are attractions in the Artillery Service that in some measure tend to counterbalance the ill-usage to which we are subjected, and these are—The pleasant life, the friendly brotherhood of the officers commencing at the Academy and continuing throughout; the interesting duties, the moderate scale of expense, and generally the high tone of the regiment. These considerations are sufficiently weighty to induce Artillery officers to send their sons to compete in spite of all the drawbacks."

But all these were advantages which an Infantry officer might claim for himself, just as much as an Engineer or Artilleryman; and were they sufficient to compensate for what was really the case now—the absence of a career? He wished to impress strongly upon the House what it was that the Artillery or Engineer officer had to look forward to. It was this—Those who were lieutenant-colonels, and had been lieutenant-colonels for many years, could only look forward to being lieutenant-colonels still, and a large proportion of them would be shelved without so much as their drawing command pay. They attained that position at an early age, and would have to go on half-pay or on permanent retirement, unless the whole system was changed. Eventually they might become major-generals, and get £450 a-year; but they would not be employed. He did not know what would happen when the full colonels were abolished; but there were very few appointments which, even in the remote future, could be occupied by Artillery or Engineer officers. All the brigade depôts were open to officers of the Line; but there were very few military appointments open to Ordnance officers. He admitted that all his arguments did not apply equally to the two corps—some of them were more applicable to the Artillery than to the Engineers. These were all reasons why a Royal Commission should be appointed. It was impossible even for the able Secretary of State for War they now had —it was quite ridiculous to suppose that either his right hon. and gallant Friend, or the Executive Commanding Officer of the Army could possibly settle all these questions. They required an enormous amount of grappling with; and it would be childish to say, in answer to his appeal—"The matter is being considered now; it is occupying our time and attention, and you are only anticipating what we may very likely do." He therefore urged his right hon. and gallant Friend not to shrink from dealing with the question. He granted that it was a very large and momentous question. His right hon. and gallant Friend might take another line of argument. He did not know that his right hon. and gallant Friend would do so; but he might say that the question was too new—that this was the first time it had been brought before the House; or that the Parliament was too old—nearly in its last Session. He hoped his right hon. and gallant Friend would not rely upon that as an objection. He believed that the abolition of Purchase was carried out the first time it was brought before the House—or, at any rate, in its first Session. At any rate, he could assure the House of one thing—that if the matter was not well enough known now, it would soon be well enough known. The Press had already taken the matter up, and it would, he had very little doubt, be taken up in "another place;" and what was more, and what he was infinitely more concerned in, was that both the military and the civil public—those who understood the matter now, and those who would understand it eventually—would be on his side. This was why he said he had no doubt whatever that the matter would be eventually understood, and that the demand now made would be eventually conceded. He thought, therefore, that it would be very wise indeed for his right hon. and gallant Friend to take the initiative, and for the Government to deal with it by appointing a Royal Commission. He did not for a moment mean to say that his right hon. and gallant Friend was primarily responsible for the present state of things; but the responsibility—and a very great responsibility it was—had been thrown upon the shoulders of his right hon. and gallant Friend in consequence of his acceptance of the Office which he now held. It would be far better, he thought, that at this particular time his right hon. and gallant Friend should grant the inquiry, and declare at once that the Government would appoint a Royal Commission. He apologized to the House for having occupied so much of their time. He had, however, tried to be as short as he could, and he thanked them very much for the patience and attention with which they had listened to him. He would now leave the matter in the hands of the House and of his right hon. and gallant Friend, with the fullest faith in the truth, vitality, and ultimate success of the arguments he had used, and in the impartiality of the House of Commons, hoping confidently that it would be satisfactorily dealt with. The hon. and gallant Gentleman concluded by moving his Resolution.

I think it would be for the convenience of the House that I should rise as early as possible to reply to my hon. and gallant Friend, and state what is the present position of affairs, and what is the view I take in regard to the question which my hon. and gallant Friend has so ably brought forward. I do not think that any apology was necessary on the part of my hon. and gallant Friend to the House for having introduced the subject; but the importance of the subject, and the temperate manner in which my hon. and gallant Friend has brought it forward, entirely justify the appeal which he has made, and I trust that what I shall have to say will prove to him that if it is my duty to resist the Motion in the form in which he has made it, it is not from any feeling inimicable to his objector from any feel- ing of indifference to the subjects which he has thought it necessary to bring before the House. Now, it seemed to me that although my hon. and gallant Friend touched upon many grievances and many cases of hardship—and there are many points in which, perhaps, the working of the Royal Warrant, as far as the Royal Artillery are concerned, is not wholly satisfactory—at the same time, he very briefly touched upon that which, in my opinion, is the pith and root of the whole of this question, and that is, how far the position of the officers of the Scientific and Non-purchase Corps has been affected—not actually, but relatively—by the better terms now given in the other branches of Her Majesty's Service. The main point, as my hon. and gallant Friend has said, is this—Undoubtedly, it is desirable to attract what he calls the cream of the Service to the two branches of the Ordnance corps, commonly called the Scientific branches of the Service. That I answer without hesitation. He points out that they are under certain disadvantages, and he asks that these disadvantages should not be allowed to increase, adding reasons why the Ordnance corps cannot possibly hold their own under such circumstances. I am free to admit that not only now, but for some time past, even when I filled the position which my hon. and gallant Friend near me (Colonel Loyd Lindsay) now occupies—that of Financial Secretary—I could not avoid seeing that the time would come, sooner or later, when the position of the Royal Artillery and the Royal Engineers must claim the attention of the Executive Government. From the moment when the abolition of Purchase took place, and particularly after the Royal Warrant in reference to promotion and retirement was passed, there could be no question that the subject must arise in some form or other; and probably, in the opinion of many who were best acquainted with the subject, the day would be almost immediate. But I confess that even those who took most interest in the subject could hardly have been prepared to see an effect produced in so short a space of time, or to find the Warrant, drafted, as I hope it was, entirely in the interests of the various branches of the Service, should turn out to have somewhat the opposite effect to that for which it was designed. I confess that I have not been able to examine into this matter as fully as I myself desired; but as far as my recollection goes, in the original form of the Warrant, as recommended by the Royal Commission, I do not think that compulsory retirement, at all events, in the lower grades, was recommended to the extent to which it has been carried out in the Royal Warrant. That is, as far as my recollection goes; but I am free to admit that opinions about it were divided. There were many eminent authorities taken into consultation, who were connected with, and deeply interested in, the welfare of the two Scientific corps, who thought it would be better to apply the system of compulsory retirement in much the same manner as in the other branches of the Service. However, when they came to apply those rules to the Scientific branch of the Service, a question arose which, although it was, to a certain extent, latent as regarded the Infantry and the Cavalry arms of the Service, has become one of very great prominence in regard to the Royal Artillery and the Royal Engineers. It is a difficulty which will land you on one or other of the horns of a dilemma. My hon. and gallant Friend did not suggest or indicate a remedy—and it is mainly that where you want, on the one hand, to insure such a flow of promotion in the lower ranks as to enable officers to succeed to posts of importance at a comparatively early age of life, or while they retain all their business activity about them, you are, on the other hand, dealing with a class of officers whose value in many cases in the Service increases with every day of their service, and whom you cannot but regret to see forced, or even induced, to leave the Service. That is a difficulty which must beset you on the one hand or the other; and it is only by balancing the evils that the matter can be tested. Although I fully sympathize with my hon. and gallant Friend in the regret he has expressed at so many officers of great value to the Service being obliged, or feeling themselves obliged, to leave the Service, still I do not see, on the other hand, how that can be entirely avoided, unless you were to put up a flow of promotion, such as that which attracted so much attention in the Ordnance corps some years ago. Now, I confess that I followed with a great deal of interest what my hon. and gallant Friend said with regard to the line of demarcation between the Ordnance services and those of the rest of the Army; and I am bound to say that he appeared to me to take a view much more reasonable than that which has been urged upon me in other quarters, in so far that he is quite willing that the line of separation between the Ordnance and the other Services should be broken down on both sides. Hitherto it has rather been from custom than upon any known rule that one Service has been excluded from the other. My hon. and gallant Friend, on the other hand, would be glad to see appointments of a quasi-civil nature, although they might touch upon professional matters, opened up to the rest of the Army. I think there would be in that case some risk, if I may say so, of interfering with that feeling of comradeship which I am happy to think has always existed in the Royal Artillery, and which, indeed, has been much exemplified in this House. I refer to that feeling which knits the Royal Artillery together as one man. It is upon that feeling that pressure, no doubt, has been put, not only that appointments should be opened out to the Royal Artillery and the Royal Engineers—appointments which are now only open to the other branches of the Service—butthat they should, on the other hand, retain all the quasi-Staff appointments more particularly associated with them at the present time. I was glad, therefore, to recognize, on the part of my hon. and gallant Friend, a disposition to say that if the line of separation is to be made loss distinct, he is prepared to waive as much on the one side as the other. In using that argument he certainly does much to advance the position he takes up. So far as I am myself concerned, during the time I have held the Office I have now the honour to hold—and I speak with all due reserve on these points, because, as the House is aware, the small number of commands and the large number of officers who are eligible for them renders selection for command a matter of difficulty—so far as I am personally concerned, I have no reason to believe that the Artillery or Engineer officers are excluded, by the mere fact of their being such, from appointments which are open to other officers of the Army. I have never gone into the point of the numerical proportion; and I am not at all sure—although I dare say my hon. and gallant Friend has verified the statement he has made—I am not at all sure that, as far as the doctrine of numerical proportion goes, it would not tell against rather than for him. There is one point in regard to what has been stated by my hon. and gallant Friend upon which I wish to be allowed to speak with some reservation, because in referring to it I am dealing with it as an abstract case. It has been said, and cited as an illustration, that Lieutenant Chard, of the Royal Engineers, could not be promoted under the Warrant; whereas Lieutenant Bromhead, who was associated with him in the memorable defence of Rorke's Drift, could be.

I did not say under the terms of the Warrant, but under the existing state of things.

That is an impression I wish to correct. So far as I am informed—and I have taken steps to verify the accuracy of my own belief—there will be the means of promotion. I do not mean in reference to particular officers concerned; but taking this instance as an abstract case, it is perfectly possible for an officer of the Artillery or Engineers to be promoted to half-pay under the Royal Warrant as it now stands, on condition, however, that he is brought back to full pay within the year. No doubt, as my hon. and gallant Friend has stated, that involves a curious way of dealing with the question. But the more we are dealing with officers as a homogeneous body, the more we find ourselves in a difficulty in satisfactorily disposing of the question. In the other branches of the Service, officers obtaining extended promotion are allowed to join other regiments; but that, of course, cannot be the case in a body constituted like the Royal Engineers or the Royal Artillery. My hon. and gallant Friend has touched upon a point which I am free to admit is one that has always caused me some concern; and although I could not but agree, on the whole, with the premisses under which the Royal Warrant was framed, I cannot but regret that in some respects it appears to press extremely hard upon the lieutenant colonels. Lieutenant colonels, who held that rank prior to October, 1877, of course have their rights saved to them, and are not in any way interfered with by the Royal Warrant. Therefore, it is inevitable that those immediately below these officers should be placed between the pressure of promotion, on the one hand, while, by a well intended saving of the rights of officers, they are kept down on the other hand. I am free to admit that this is a substantial grievance, and a case of considerable hardship; and, speaking personally, I should be glad to see my way to redress it. I have no wish to take up too much of the time of the House. My only wish was to explain, as early as possible, how the matter at present stands. I have said that for some time past I have been of opinion that this question would come forward; but I did not expect to see it come forward as soon as it has done. I may say that even some months ago I placed myself in communication with the Inspector General of Fortifications, and with some other officers connected with the administration of the Royal Engineers, feeling that in that branch, at that moment, there was, undoubtedly, some pressure; and that the future of some of the officers who are now excluded from other appointments was not that which existed when the officers of the young Artillery regiments entered the Service. From the Engineers, all conversant with the subject know, it was no very remote step to the Royal Artillery; and I cannot say that I ever felt in my own time excluded from entering the Royal Artillery. But I think it is of extreme importance that we should ascertain accurately what it is that we propose to ourselves to do. I am bound to remind the House that the effect of a new Warrant is extremely difficult to forecast. And in many cases, when you thought you were giving that which was a concession to the wants of a particular branch of the Service, you found, on reference afterwards to other matters, that were not before you at the time, that the change has had an opposite effect to that which you expected, and has told against the interests of those whose interests at the moment you thought you were protecting. Take, for instance, the Warrant which followed the inquiry conducted by my right hon. Friend the Member for Pontefract (Mr. Childers) in reference to retirement. The immediate effect of the change made in conse- quence of that inquiry, I am imformed, so far from expediting the retirement of officers, was to make it more difficult than ever to attain a higher position. That is only one out of many other instances; and I therefore repeat that it is our duty to see clearly before us to what point our inquiries should be conducted, and to endeavour to make the ground clear for the investigation of a Royal Commission. What I should have desired, if time permitted, was to have investigated the whole of the subject, and cleared up every point, and then to have an inquiry; but whether by a Royal Commission or by a Departmental Committee I am not at present prepared to say. It has been my wish to have these grievances ventilated, and get some of these points cleared up. I have thought that by taking evidence, and procuring information from officers, I might have formulated a Report and brought these grievances into some tangible shape; and after that had been done, it would then be for the Executive to take such action as they thought fit to recommend to the House. I still think that that course of proceeding might be taken with advantage. But with all deference to my hon. and gallant Friend, who has made so good a case this evening, I think that to appoint a Royal Commission which could not, from its very terms of reference, deal with other matters relating to the Service, would be disadvantageous rather than an advantage at the present time. It must be borne in mind that all these matters, large and serious as they are to one branch of the Service, are matters which have to be weighed in reference to other branches of the Service, and we must in our own minds pay a due regard to the proportion of the different branches, and take care that while we are doing justice to one branch of the Service we are not, at the same time, falling into the error of doing injustice to other branches. For that reason, it would be necessary to limit and to indicate very clearly the points to which any Royal Commission or Committee should direct their attention; and after that were done, when the ground had been so far cleared to enable the inquiry to be undertaken, it would be found, probably, that no time had been lost. In all probability a Committee or Royal Commission, with such indications before them, would be able to conduct their work within a less period of time than would be consumed if they were to start, in the first instance, without such a preliminary inquiry. I am sorry that circumstances connected with the Army Business before the House—the Army Estimates—have so far interfered with my intentions, and placed me more backward than I hoped would have been the case when Parliament assembled. From the reasons which I have now given, I would ask my hon. and gallant Friend to understand why it is that I find myself compelled to oppose his Motion for the appointment of a Royal Commission. I hope I have said enough to show the House, and those who are interested in the matter, that I am fully aware of the gravity of the subject. I do not yield to my hon. and gallant Friend myself, or to any of the officers of the Ordnance corps—whether Royal Engineers or Royal Artillery—in his opinion that we should get, as my hon. and gallant Friend expresses it, the cream of the Army into the Scientific branches; and I hope, with this assurance, that my hon. and gallant Friend will understand why I am obliged to feel it my duty to oppose, this evening, the appointment of a Royal Commission.

said, he took an interest in the matter now before the House, in consequence of having served on the Committee which inquired into the question of promotion and retirement in the two Scientific corps some 12 years ago. Up to the abolition of Purchase these two corps had attracted, in point of intellectual power, the cream of the young men who entered the Army. He agreed with the right hon. and gallant Gentleman the Secretary of State for War in holding it to be the most desirable that this state of things should continue; but, under present circumstances, they might be certain it would not. The competition for entrance into these two corps was falling off. It was natural that young men with a taste for scientific pursuits should wish to enter them, but it was against their interest to do so. There was no advantage in joining them, and the difficulty of entrance was much greater. Again, in the Scientific corps the pay was rather less than in the Line, and promotion was certainly slower. Then came the question of the fair distribution of com- mands between the different portions of the Service, and the evidence given before the Committee of 1867 showed that the Scientific corps never had anything like their proper share of the superior commands—a circumstance that might be accounted for by their virtual separation from the rest of the Army. The Secretary of State for War had, however, admitted the existence of a difficulty, and was aware of the causes that were likely to diminish the supply of efficient officers. The right hon. and gallant Gentleman had been unable to consent to the appointment of a Royal Commission, but had proposed to collect evidence, and, after classifying and arranging it, to refer the whole question to a Committee. In his opinion, a Royal Commission, with sufficient scope and a good personnel, would be practically well fitted to deal with the subject, involving, as it did, the relations of the two Scientific corps with the whole Army and the principle on which those corps should be manned; but no small improvements in matters of detail would meet the exigencies of the case. He did not know whether his hon. and gallant Friend intended to press his Motion to a Division; but this he knew, that sooner or later the whole question at issue must be fully considered by Parliament.

said, that the recommendations of the Committee of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Pontefract (Mr. Childers) would have necessitated considerable expenditure, without which there could be no proper flow of promotion; but they had never been carried out. Soon after that Committee had reported, a Government with economical views came into Office, and the Chairman of the Committee had to admit that he saw no way of giving effect to their proposals. At the present time, perhaps, some different course would have to be adopted, as the circumstances had changed; and he agreed with the hon. and gallant Member for Longford (Mr. O'Reilly), and with his hon. and gallant Friend who had brought forward the Motion, that some authoritative inquiry was wanted. He thought his hon. and gallant Friend had gained a considerable step in advance for the object he had in view by eliciting the assurance which had been given by the Secretary of State for War. He would advise his hon. and gallant Friend to await the further steps which the right hon. and gallant Gentleman would no doubt take in this matter.

said, he placed entire confidence in the promises which had been made by the Secretary of State for War to inquire into the unwise exclusion of the officers of the Artillery and Engineers from those employments on the Staff of the Army, to which they had a fair right, and would therefore suggest the desirability of not pressing the Amendment for the Royal Commission to a Division. He contended for the expediency of not bolstering up any particular rank or branch of the Service, but of selecting from all the officers of the Army those who were best qualified to fill particular appointments. Now, there was no justification for the present exclusion. Purchase had been abolished, so that the old officers, in regard to promotion, pay, and Staff appointments, ought to be on an equality. He desired that the Artillery and Engineers should be placed on the same footing, in all respects, with Infantry and Cavalry officers. He was perfectly certain that no hesitation need be felt in doing that. Their training and military knowledge fully fitted them for Staff duties. The Secretary of State for War, who was now the responsible Officer for the whole Army, had given promises which would be performed; but how they were to be carried out remained to him a mystery, so long as the Army was at present managed. He (General Sir George Balfour) strongly recommended the hon. and gallant Gentleman opposite not to go to a Division. The difficulties of the Secretary of State for War in undoing the old prejudices against, and exclusions of, Artillery officers were so great that much tact was needed to effect reform. If, however, he did go to a Division, he would be defeated, because the Secretary of State for War could bring to his support an overwhelming number of Members, and he (General Sir George Balfour) did not wish the hon. and gallant Gentleman's good cause to be injured by being defeated. The hon. and gallant Gentleman had done good work that night, and had made such an impression on the Secretary of State for War that it could not fail to be effective in removing the disabilities of a very large section of officers of the Army.

said, he hoped his hon. and gallant Friend would not think it necessary to divide the House. He thought the Secretary of State for War had gone a great way with his hon. and gallant Friend. He was glad to find there would be no difficulty in promoting Lieutenant Chard. When he considered the wonderful conduct of that young officer, he wanted to know why he should not be promoted in his own corps? There were certainly no less than 38 officers at this moment before him; but he hardly thought that any one of them would hesitate to approve the promotion over him of one who had conferred such lustre, not only upon his own corps, but upon the whole Army and the whole nation. If there was no precedent for such a promotion as he (Colonel North) suggested, he hoped a precedent would be made in the case of Lieutenant Chard. A more soldierly despatch than that of Lieutenant Chard was never penned. What made Napoleon the Great the idol of his Army? It was this—he took advantage of such occasions as the one to which he (Colonel North) was referring, and promoted a man who had distinguished himself, no matter what rank he held.

said, that brute force now counted for less, and mind and intelligence for more, than formerly, and, therefore, they should not impose undue limits by confining to a limited sphere the Scientific corps. The hon. and gallant Member who brought forward this Motion advocated a Royal Commission, and the Secretary of State for War opposed it, and he (Colonel Beaumont) was inclined to agree with the right hon. and gallant Gentleman. He rather questioned, per se, whether a Royal Commission would be the best way of dealing with the subject; but unless something were done, he should, for one, not let the matter rest.

said, there were two points to which he wished briefly to call the attention of the House. He saw no reason whatever why Artillery officers should not be appointed to brigade depôts as well as Cavalry officers; and he considered it very unjust that they should be excluded from the Horse Guards Staff. He would be very glad, in the interests of the Army, to see Artillery officers on the Horse Guards Staff, because, independently of the change which they would effect, it would give an im- pulse to education throughout the Army. The public were well aware that none of the great reforms effected in the Army, such as the abolition of Purchase and the five years' rule, had ever originated with the Horse Guards.

said, that while he thought his hon. and gallant Friend had made out his case, he joined issue with him on the terms of the Resolution. He spoke of this grievance as the effect of the abolition of Purchase, but this was not so. The abolition of Purchase had conferred a great indirect benefit on the Ordnance corps, inasmuch as it had removed the principal ground for their exclusion from a full share in the emoluments and distinctions of the Army. There could be no doubt that in the past officers of the Artillery and Engineers had been shut out from many good positions in the Service for which, in point of education and skill, they were well fitted, the ground for such exclusion being not only that their own branches of the Service had many good things to bestow, but chiefly that they did not pay for their commissions, as was the case with the Cavalry and Infantry. The grievance now complained of was to an extent created by the Royal Warrant of 1877, and the fault of that Warrant lay mainly in the fact that the Royal Commission on whose recommendations it was founded were instructed not to inquire into the question of the organization of the Army, and, therefore, had to devise means of procuring a proper flow of promotion under the existing organization. They were thus driven to the adoption of compulsory retirement. The provisions in the Warrant relating to the compulsory retirement of officers in the lower ranks affected the officers of the Ordnance corps even more harshly than the rest of the Army; because, being able to calculate with almost mathematical accuracy the period at which their promotion would come, they knew also when they would be compulsorily retired, and could not, therefore, be expected to take the same interest in their duties while they remained in the Service that would otherwise be the case. In the Infantry and Cavalry branches, where promotion was in some regiments rapid and in others slow, there was an element of uncertainty which tended to mitigate this effect. The principal grievance, however, of which the officers in the two branches of the Service under discussion complained, and justly, was their practical exclusion from the Staff appointments. This exclusion was mainly traceable to the fact that the idea was not yet exploded that the Ordnance corps had some peculiar privileges of their own, and it was to be hoped that at no distant date the officers would be admitted to a fair share—and this was all they asked—of the higher appointments on the Staff of the Army. It had been said that the present system had an injurious effect upon the number and quality of the cadets entered at Woolwich. Feeling considerable interest in this branch of the subject, he had consulted the Governor of the Royal Academy at Woolwich, who said he had no complaint to make either of the quality or the number of the cadets applying for admission—that, in fact, they were of just as good a class as they had ever been. He found that, notwithstanding the high mathematical and scientific qualifications which were required, there were, in the case of Woolwich, four times as many candidates as there were openings, and in the case of Sandhurst, six times as many; so that the difference was not so great as might have been expected. While, in the main, he agreed with his hon. and gallant Friend who had introduced the Motion, he could not see how a Royal Commission could remedy the grievance of which he had complained. They had before them the Report of a Royal Commission which fully bore out the view he had urged upon the House; and he would suggest to his hon. and gallant Friend—more especially the main grievance—that of exclusion from the general Staff of the Army—was a matter of administration in which the responsibility rested with the Executive Government—to accept the assurances which the Secretary of State for War had given to the House.

concurred in the observations of his hon. Friend who had just sat down. His hon. and gallant Friend who had brought forward the subject had enlisted the sympathies of the House, and had received, he hoped, substantial and fairly satisfactory assurances from his right hon. and gallant Friend the Secretary of State for War. They had, therefore, reasons to hope that the two Scientific corps referred, to, and of which they were all so proud, would not, so to say, be loft out in the cold as regarded the higher appointments in the Army for the future; and he trusted, therefore, that his hon. and gallant Friend's Motion would not be pressed to a Division.

observed, that there was not an Army in Europe in respect of which so unjust and impolitic a provision existed as that which had been brought under the notice of the House, or one which bore so heavily on a most meritorious class of officers—a class which devoted their lives to the study of their Profession. He was glad to hear the assurance given by his right hon. and gallant Friend the Secretary of State for War that the grievance under which they laboured would receive due consideration.

said, that hitherto the debate had been carried on either by military men or by ex-officials connected with military administration. He rose, as one belonging to neither of those classes, but as one of the general public, who, both in that House and in the country, were determined that, as far as they could exercise the power, long-delayed justice should be done to those Scientific Services which were the pride and the glory of the Empire. Whilst all, of course, recognized the courage and the heroism of other branches of our Military Services, there might, perhaps, upon the Continent be questions raised as regarded their comparative efficiency; but he believed he was accurate in stating that in no military society in Europe would it be denied that the British Artillery stood without a rival; and yet this regiment, and its sister corps, the Engineers, remained, and would remain for many a long year, in the cold shade, if the British public did not speak out upon the question, and terminate once and for all an unworthy favouritism. He was surprised with some allusions which had been made by the hon. Gentleman the Member for the Stirling Burghs (Mr. Campbell-Bannerman) to the circumstance of a Cavalryman, Guardsman, or a Linesman having purchased his commission, where the Artillery officer had not done so. Why, surely the hon. Gentleman had forgotten the expenses that had been incurred in giving the young man, prior to his becoming a cadet, an expensive scientific preliminary training, and to the time which he had to spend afterwards at Woolwich before the could obtain his commission. Why, anyone of the smallest possible knowledge of the subject must know that the sum of £450 or £800, formerly paid for a commission, was but trifling when compared with the sum necessarily expended prior to entering the Artillery or Engineers. He would urge the hon. and gallant Member who had brought the subject forward not to be content with evasive promises from the Treasury Bench, but to press his Motion to a Division. It was well known that the Horse Guards endeavoured to rule the Secretary of State for War, and even the House of Commons, on military matters, and at one time the present Commander-in-Chief acted as if his authority was superior to the House of Commons; but 15 years ago the House had settled that question. The present Secretary of State could scarcely hope, however well-intentioned, to cope with, what he had heard termed, the Horse Guards Ring in this matter. At the Horse Guards the Scientific corps had never been in good odour, and would obtain but scant justice if that House did not, as behoved it, take the affair into its own hands. He had ventured to speak in this fashion, because it was more than human nature to expect that military men could speak out on a professional subject with the freedom of a layman. And he well recollected that some 15 years ago, when he used to bring forward military grievances in that House, he often had the advantage of suggestions from military men, who selected him, for the very reason of his being a layman, to be the exponent of their opinions. It was evident that the two front Benches perfectly understood each other, and had agreed to "square" the matter; but he was there to tell them that the injustice done to the Artillery was not such as to be smoothed over by soft words. Behind officials, past and present, there stood the great British public, who, when they understood the matter, would assuredly insist that Artillery officers should have justice.

maintained that the late Returns showed that they were now maintaining a lower class of candidates, intellectually considered, for the Artillery than they formerly secured If they left the position of the Artillery officer as it was at present, he might not fall off in physical qualities or in social status; but there would probably be a declension in his attainments in book learning—a matter of great importance in connection both with the Artillery and the Engineers. He did not contend that a picked Artillery officer should have better book knowledge than a picked officer of the Line; but with the average Line officer and the average Artillery officer the case was very different. It was impossible for them to keep up the book learning in the Artillery unless they paid for it. The House would act very unwisely if it did not encourage high mental qualifications for those branches of the Service. It was the opinion of all the great military writers, from Jomini downwards, that the first quality for the Artillery was science. Formerly, our Artillery officers were accustomed to have continuous service, while the Infantry and Cavalry were put upon half-Day. But the advantage of continuous service had been taken away from the Artillery by the retirement Warrant of the year before last, which he had opposed at the time, because he foresaw the evil effect it would have upon the whole Army, and especially upon the Artillery and the Engineers.

observed, that while the Secretary of State for War had promised, as far as he could, to remedy the present state of things, he had said that, as to commands, he did not quite see his way how exactly to proportion them. The military authorities were responsible for those whom they placed in the different commands, and they selected for them the best men they could. But that was not the real point from which the Artillery suffered. The number of General Officers of Artillery was limited in unfair proportion to the remainder of the Service; and the more distinguished an Artillery officer was as a young man, the higher he rose as a young man, and the more his name was known, the sooner that officer was shelved. If he became distinguished—say, like Lieutenant Chard—he received his captaincy and a brevet majority perhaps; but when he became colonel, and got to the top of the tree of full colonels, he had to wait long years before he was promoted to the rank of major-general. He concurred with all that had been said as to the uselessness of referring a question like this to a Royal Commission, and would illustrate the point by referring to the unsatisfactory results of the labours of the Royal Commissions appointed to examine into the complaints of officers of the Indian Service. The appointment of a Royal Commission was, in fact, a very easy way of shelving the question. Therefore, he trusted the hon. and gallant Member for Hereford (Colonel Arbuthnot), accepting what had been stated to-night by the Secretary of State for War, would refrain from pressing his Motion to a Division.

said, he knew he had no right to reply; but, with the indulgence of the House, he might, perhaps, be allowed to say that he should be anxious to withdraw the Motion if any of the assurances, which he was told had been given by the Government, had reached him. He did think it was a remarkable thing that only one Member of the Treasury Bench had risen to take part in the debate. He was afraid, under all the circumstances, that he must put the House to the trouble of dividing.

who had on the Paper a Notice of a Resolution on the subject of the North-West Frontier of India, then rose to address the House on this question, but—

informed the hon. Baronet that he was under a misapprehension, as the Question now before the House was, that the House do go into Committee on the District Auditors Bill.

said, he supposed the Rule was, when the Motion against Supply was carried the Motion stood, and, in accordance with that Rule, this Motion stood till Monday next, unless it was set up again; but he would suggest to the Government whether they would not consider, under the circumstances of this case, that it would be better to set Supply up again, in order to give the hon. Baronet an opportunity of addressing the House.

said, he omitted to mention that he intended to conclude his observations with a Motion for the adjournment of the debate, and, therefore, he wished to give his reasons why he thought the Government ought to agree to the adjournment of the debate on this particular Bill. Those who were interested in the Paper were placed in a very awkward position by reason of the Government being defeated, and they were not prepared to go into several of the questions on two or three very important Bills on the Paper—the Army Discipline and Regulation Bill, which was a very important matter, and which could not properly be discussed just now; the Prosecution of Offences Bill, which introduced the question of English procedure; and the District Auditors Bill, which was not expected to come on, and the opposition to it was not ready. He, therefore, now begged to move the adjournment of the debate.

said, he hoped the hon. Member for Meath would not press his Motion. He thought the hon. Member for Kirkcaldy (Sir George Campbell) hardly saw the effect of the last Motion—it had negatived the Motion to go into Committee of Supply. It was not the intention of the Government to proceed that evening with the Army Discipline and Regulation Bill.

said, he now perceived that he had no right to call attention to the subject of the North-West Frontier of India to-night. He had spoken formerly under a misapprehension that it was because of his not rising more quickly that his opportunity had been lost. The subject was most important, and he hoped the Government would give an opportunity for its ventilation.

observed, that he had no desire to stand in the way of the Government Business on the Paper, and he would therefore withdraw his Motion for the adjournment.

said, he objected to the policy, adopted by the Government of late years, of transferring the charges from the Local Government Board to the ratepayers.

said, the same amount of contribution from the Votes of Parliament would be continued as in former years. The whole of the money which was now applicable to the salaries of the auditors was either derived from Votes of Parliament or local rates. No difference was made by the Bill in this respect. The only difference now proposed was, that the Guardians, with other local authorities, should pay the ad valorem stamp. It was not to be regarded as a Guardians' question, but as a ratepayers' question; and he was astonished that his hon. Friend should try to sow dissension amongst different classes of ratepayers. The Bill would really benefit all classes of ratepayers alike. One-half of the expenses of the auditors would be ultimately defrayed by the local rates. The whole of the salaries of the auditors would be paid by the Votes of Parliament; but the Public Exchequer would be recouped to the extent of 50 per cent.

in rising to move that the House should go into Committee on the Bill that day six months, said, he objected to the Bill because it was a piece of masked legislation, and because there was no means of knowing whether it would pledge Par- liament to an annual expenditure of £5,000 or £100,000 per annum, inasmuch as it left the patronage in the hands of the Attorney General, who was to make as many appointments as he pleased, and fix the salaries of the several officers, subject to the approval of the Home Secretary sanctioned by the Treasury. There was a great diversity of opinion with respect to the appointment of a Public Prosecutor; and although he had heard many of the Judges express an opinion in favour of it, he had to confess that, for his own part, he was not strongly in favour of it. Now, this Bill proposed that the Solicitor for Public Prosecutions should appoint officers all over the country to obey the behests of the Attorney General. All Treasury prosecutions partook more or less of jobbery, and always cost too much. The case of the Welsh fasting girl cost the country many thousands of pounds, but it was only an ordinary case, and could have been disposed of for £50. The Bill must be taken as it stood, and not as it was described on its introduction; and, in his opinion, it was far too dangerous to be allowed to pass. It gave unknown and unlimited powers, and invited Parliament to legislate in the dark. It was masked legislation, which might involve the country in a great expenditure. He moved, therefore, that the House should go into Committee on this Bill that day six months.

complained that there was nothing in the Bill either to define its scope or to prevent its being used to an almost illimitable extent. He highly approved of the establishment of Public Prosecutors; but if such a reform were to be adopted it should be in a straightforward way. He desired to know whether the Bill was intended to inaugurate a great system of Public Prosecutors, or was merely limited to assisting Treasury prosecutions. He should much have preferred that the Government had adopted a system similar to that under which the Procurators Fiscal in Scotland were appointed and performed their duties.

asked for some further explanations as to the object and scope of the measure.

supported the Motion on the ground that the Bill would enable the Attorney General, with the assistance of the Home Office, to appoint prosecuting officials in any number all over the country, without any limitation as to expense. The words of the Bill were of the vaguest description; whereas the powers proposed to be given by the measure ought to be strictly defined.

supported the Bill on the ground that it was intended to remove defects which were constantly complained of by those who had to administer the law. It would meet cases that every now and then arose in which great difficulty was experienced in putting the law in motion, and it would not at all interfere with private prosecutions. In his opinion, many of the dangers anticipated by hon. Members would never be realized.

also supported the Bill. It was of great importance that there should be some one beyond the mere private individual to prosecute. Under the present system, some of the very worst forms of crime habitually went unpunished. This was especially true in cases of commercial fraud, in which those who had suffered most were often the least inclined to undertake the prosecution.

said, that the legislation proposed by the Bill was perfectly plain and clear, and in no way merited the condemnation which had been passed on it by the hon. Member for Glasgow (Mr. Anderson). He (Mr. Bulwer) saw no want of definition in the scope of the Bill. It was intended to apply to the whole of England. It could not be denied that some such measure was necessary. Any proposal for reform in this direction must, of necessity, involve expense. There were many cases in which the need was felt of a Public Prosecutor, and particularly in commercial cases; and the machinery of the existing law, as far as he knew, could not compel a man to prosecute and give evidence fully and unreservedly before the magistrates. There was also a class of offences in which a large number of persons conspired to commit extensive frauds, and, by means of "long firms," succeeded in doing so in many parts of the country at one and the same time. The duty of prosecuting such criminals was so onerous that no private person could be expected to undertake it; and the present machinery for a public prosecution was both cumbersome and expensive.

said, he hoped that if the House determined to establish a great system of Public Prosecutors it would, at least, do so with its eyes open. If the Bill became law, a large number of local legal officers would be required; and he did not know whether the Home Secretary would view with complacency the cost of the proposed change. He thought, before the Government asked the House to pass the Bill, a careful estimate should be laid before them of the anticipated cost, together with materials to enable them to judge whether the estimate was likely to be exceeded.

said, he hoped the House would not refuse to go into Committee on the Bill. For the last 15 or 20 years there had been a general demand for a Public Prosecutor. He would supplement the cases mentioned by the hon. and learned Member for Ipswich (Mr. Bulwer) by adding to them offences under the Bankruptcy Laws, in which the person most interested was often the least inclined to prosecute. The expense of introducing the new system would be rather formidable; but it would be justified by the results, which, if the precedent of Scotland could be relied on, promised to be highly satisfactory.

said, he did not think that there could be two opinions as to the importance of this measure; it was a question that had come before the House again and again, and hardly a year passed without the attention of the public being called to the matter. No doubt, the question was one in which the public took a strong interest; but it was also undoubted that the question was surrounded with difficulties. Many attempts had been made to deal with the matter; but those efforts had been frustrated, by reason of its always having been attempted not to make use of the present system of prosecution so far as it extended, but to introduce an entirely new system, by which the whole of the prosecutions throughout the country would be carried on by the Government and by a Public Prosecutor. Against such a scheme, whether right or wrong, a host of opponents were raised. All those who conducted prosecutions at the present time, and all those interested in the present mode of conducting prosecutions, became at once opponents of any attempt to wipe away the existing system. The great difficulty hitherto found in dealing with this subject had arisen, in some measure, from confounding two matters which might perfectly well be kept distinct. He believed that there was the greatest possible want in this country of a Public Prosecutor—it was felt every day; but, on the other hand, he must, for his part, frankly confess that the mode in which by far the greater number of prosecutions that went on throughout the country were conducted, was eminently satisfactory. It had been because those who had hitherto attempted to deal with this subject had not recognised this fact, and because they thought that if it were necessary to appoint a Public Prosecutor, or Prosecutors, it was also necessary to revolutionize the existing system, that the difficulty had arisen in dealing with the question at all. The distinction should be kept in view, between the existence of a Public Prosecutor, whose duty it should be, either by himself or by his subordinates, to see that prosecutions were carried on to their legitimate results, or, when necessary, to institute and carry on the machinery of a prosecution, and the placing of all prosecutions in the country in the hands of Government Prosecutors. In his opinion, those who now conducted the majority of prosecutions throughout the country did it admirably well, and there was no necessity for superseding them; but the necessity that did exist was to appoint some one whose business it should be generally to supervise those matters. He trusted that in the scheme which was now laid before the House this course would be adopted; and though he quite agreed with what had been said as to the terms of the Bill being extremely vague, yet still he believed that the Bill neither gave authority—nor was it intended by its promoters to do so—to substitute a Public Prosecutor for the persons who now conducted the prosecutions throughout the country, and to impose in all cases a Government organization and Government prosecutors. If the latter were the case, it would, as had been observed, cause a vastly increased expenditure, without corresponding profit to the public. But it would be a distinct advantage to the public to have a Public Officer who would be responsible for public prosecutions, and to whom all those who now conducted them would be amenable. Such an Officer should have a general supervision and control, with the view of seeing that the duties the various persons now prosecuting had to perform were properly carried out. There ought also to be a Public Official whose duty it should be to see that prosecutions were instituted where necessary, and where, at the present time, it was no one's duty to undertake them, and by means of which failure to prosecute many criminals at present escaped. It was monstrous that a private individual who had suffered great loss should be bound to waste further time and money in prosecuting the individual who injured him. He would not leave it to private persons to commence prosecutions, as now, for the purpose of collecting their debts, and then let the offenders go free. It was well known that in some towns the Police Court was used for debt-collecting purposes, and prosecutions were instituted, not with the object of being carried to a successful result, but merely for the purpose of putting the screw on to get payment of money which the parties prosecuted were civilly bound to pay. He thought the greatest possible mischief resulted from such a state of things as this, and from the civil liability to pay being confounded with the criminal responsibility for offence. Moreover, the failure to keep these two things distinct, he believed, contributed to the growing commercial immorality of the country. If once the Criminal Courts were permitted to be used for the purpose of collecting debts, the sharp distinction between the liability to pay money and to suffer for a wrong done was not brought home to people's minds. In any scheme of public prosecutions, the Public Prosecutor should have a voice whenever a private prosecutor set the law in motion. His belief was that this could be done without any great expense, because in most cases prosecutions would still be conducted as now. What was wanted was some Public Official in London, and two or three in certain districts, whose duty it should be to supervise prosecutions, and in cases of special difficulty give assistance to those who now prosecuted, and in some special cases to carry on the prosecution. But it should be the exception, rather than the rule, that prosecutions should be carried on by the Public Prosecutor. If the system he had suggested were adopted, he believed that there would be a better regulated system than the present indefinite one, by which the Treasury took up prosecutions at will; and that great good would be effected by allowing a Public Prosecutor either to give assistance to those whose duty it was to conduct them as they ought to be conducted, or to institute them himself if necessary. This should be the general scheme; but it was desirable that they should now ask for same explanation of a more definite character as to the design of Her Majesty's Government in the present measure. From the vagueness of the Bill, it was impossible to ascertain whether the views he had suggested were to be the guide; and it was difficult to see to what extent such very indefinite powers as the Bill granted might be carried. The matter was one which, however, required very careful consideration. He rejoiced that the Government had taken up the subject, and he hoped that the matter would be brought to a satisfactory conclusion. It was a crying shame that the matter had not been taken up long ago. It was, above all things, necessary that they should have proper investigation and proceed carefully; and be did not think that they should be asked at the present time to carry the Bill through Committee.

It is right I should state the views of the Government with respect to this Bill. In the first place, I must express my most unqualified assent to all the observations that have fallen from the hon. and learned Member for Durham (Mr. Herschell). But I want to say, with regard to what fell from the noble Lord (Lord Frederick Cavendish), that we have not proceeded with this matter in a hurry. If there ever was one single subject brought before the House, with which the House has not proceeded ill a hurry, it is the question of a Public Prosecutor, because we have had measures without end brought before us during the last 10 or 15 years on the matter. We have had a Royal Commission and a Committee appointed, and we have had every possible investigation that could be suggested in order to enable us to come to a conclusion. We have the example of a Public Prosecutor in Scotland and in Ireland, and the practical method in which they deal with the matter is perfectly well known. The investigations of the Committee, and the inquiries of the Judicature Commission and their Report, and the number of Bills that have been presented, have furnished the House with full opportunities of coming to a conclusion in the matter. Let me state to the House what my views upon this subject are. I do not think it is understood that, in this instance, my hon. and learned Friend the Attorney General is himself the Public Prosecutor under the existing state of things. But various inconvenient anomalies now exist. If there now is a case which is supposed to be an important one, an application is made to the Secretary of State to take it up as a Government prosecution, and, if it is decided to do so, an order is at once made to consult the Solicitor to the Treasury; and at the present moment there are a number of prosecutions that, either by law or practice, the Secretary of State may require the Treasury Solicitor to take up. The Attorney General is, therefore, practically a Public Prosecutor. When this question came before the Judicature Commission, the present Lord Chief Justice made a most elaborate Report upon the subject, and he took up a line extremely in favour of the appointment of a Public Prosecutor, about which, as an abstract question, there cannot be two opinions in this House. But the Lord Chief Justice also took up the notion that every act which the law constitutes a crime is, as such, an offence, not against the individual injured, but against the community or State. I do not deny that. When, therefore, an offence has been committed, a prosecution should, in the opinion of the Lord Chief Justice, be instituted, not by the individual, but on behalf of the State by its own Officer, or, in other words, by a Public Prosecutor. If I am allowed, I will read to the House a few sentences from the Report of the Judicature Commission—

"It should be the duty of the police, as soon as a crime is known to have been committed, or a person suspected of a crime has been apprehended, to report the same to the local Public Prosecutor, and it should be made incumbent on the magistrate's clerk to transmit the depositions so soon as taken to that Officer, with any remarks which the case may appear to them to call for. A slight addition to the salaries of these clerks would compensate them for this new duty. It should not only be competent to the Public Prosecutor, but made incumbent upon him to intervene in the conduct of the case at any moment that the circumstances may seem to him to require it. In every case which proceeds to trial, it should be his duty to look through the depositions and to see that the proofs are complete before the case comes into Court. If further evidence should appear to be required, it should be his duty to take the necessary steps for procuring it if possible. It should be his business to prepare the brief and instruct counsel—in short, to do all that the attorney employed by a private prosecutor now does. It should be his duty to attend at all Assizes and Sessions held within his district, and to conduct the prosecutions on such occasions."

That is a complete scheme of public prosecutions by a Public Prosecutor, and it is a scheme to effectuate which several Bills have already been prepared; but I am bound to say that I cannot recommend the House to face the expense of carrying such a scheme into practice. I look upon that as an extreme view—as a perfect scheme; but I am not prepared to take the responsibility of asking the House to adopt the expense which would be incurred by it, and I do not think that the results would be equal to the expenditure. I take a different view of the matter. Admitting that all these crimes are offences against the State—and I most frankly and entirely agree with every word that fell from the hon. and learned Member for Durham (Mr. Herschell) as to the absolute necessity of keeping a broad distinction between crime and debt—I am bound to say, looking at the administration of the criminal law of this country—and in that I also entirely agree with the hon. and learned Member—that, in the vast majority of cases, the present system works quite well enough for all practical occasions. I do not propose, therefore, in the scheme which I have laid before the House, to interfere in the ordinary and usual run of criminal prosecutions, either at Quarter Sessions or with the Petty Cases at the Assizes; but if this scheme is carried into effect, I believe that, without interfering with the machinery at present existing, the general tone and conduct of these cases will be raised, and that the standard of the conduct of cases throughout the country will be equalized. In some parts of the country prosecutions are better conducted than in others; and I believe that I shall establish a system which will raise those which are not so well carried on to the standard of those places where they are satisfactorily conducted. The probable result will be that in 99 cases out of 100, or in 999 cases out of 1,000, it will not be found necessary to interfere with the prosecutions as now conducted. The scheme which we now propose on behalf of the Government is this—that there should be a central Public Prosecutor in London. Some hon. Members have rather run away with the word "Solicitor," as if he were a person undertaking the ordinary duties of a solicitor. This is a mistake—the "Crown" Officer would be a better word. He should be a lawyer, with a fair salary equivalent—I do not like to bind myself to any sum at the present moment—but, perhaps, equivalent to that of an Under Secretary of State. He would be a permanent Officer, and therefore absolutely free from political bias. He would be under the Attorney General, who is, according to law, at the head of all public prosecutions in this country; and he would have under him a staff of officers to assist him in London, and also assistance in the country at different places. The hon. and learned Member for Durham is quite right in saying that we do not want a great number of persons; but if there were one or two attached to each Circuit in the country, that would be amply sufficient to perform the duties. By that means, I believe you would, in the course of a very short time, make a vast improvement in the administration of the criminal law in England. The duties that would have to be performed by this Crown Officer are contained in the second section of the Bill—

"It shall be the duty of the Solicitor for Public Prosecutions, under the superintendence of the Attorney General, to institute, undertake, or carry on such criminal proceedings (whether in the Court for Crown Cases Reserved, before sessions of Oyer and Terminer, before magistrates, or otherwise), and to give such advice and assistance to chief officers of police, clerks to justices, and other persons, whether officers or not, concerned in any criminal proceeding respecting the conduct of that proceeding, as may he for the time being prescribed by regulations under this Act, or may be directed in a special case by the Attorney General."

So that all those persons who are appointed to the different positions will always be at the service either of the magistrates, or the police, or of a private prosecutor; and they would be in a position to assist, by their advice and direction, everybody who is concerned in the administration of the criminal law of this country. Of course, in all such cases, if there occurred an occasion when the prosecution ought to be taken up by the Government, then they would act on behalf of the Government in conducting the prosecutions. I do not mean to interfere with a very excellent Officer, the Solicitor for the Treasury, who is a gentleman of very considerable ability, and a most useful functionary. I believe that the person who would act as the Public Prosecutor would not act as a solicitor at all in the ordinary conduct of cases, or in getting them up. He would employ the Solicitor for the Treasury in any case where there was necessity for a public prosecution by the Government. I do not know that I need say more than this at the present moment. I think I have shown that, on the one hand, it is the wish of the Government not to go into any extravagant expenses, nor to take prosecutions into the hands of the Government in the way which was suggested by the Lord Chief Justice. I think I have expressed my opinion that the wisest course to adopt at the present moment is only to take up prosecutions when it is absolutely necessary, in cases of remarkable fraud, or where otherwise a failure- of justice would occur, and also in every case where prosecutions would be put an end to collusively. We must begin in this matter in some way tentatively; and I do not see that it would be wise to begin, as suggested some years ago, by confining the operation of the measure to the Central Criminal Court. I do not think it right that the country should be precluded from sharing in the benefit of the expenditure, as they would be if the operation of the measure were confined to the Central Criminal Court. If the Public Official in London, under the Attorney General, and the assistants in the country, guided by the rules laid down by the Attorney General and by the Secretary of State, gained the supervision over all prosecutions, a vast improvement in the administration of criminal justice throughout the country will be effected. They would be able to interfere in cases of fraud where there is no one to prosecute, and the system of prosecution throughout the country would be brought to the same standard. Upon the second reading of this Bill I am aware that there was no discussion of its principle, for the principle was practically admitted, and it only becomes a question of how it is to be carried out. I do not gather at the present moment that there is any objection to the principle of the Bill. Some hon. Members seem to be of opinion that it goes too far, and some seem to think that it does not go far enough; but even the hon. Member (Mr. B. Williams) who moved the rejection of the Bill only thought that what it effected should be more clearly defined. I think, after what I have said, that it will be seen that the details of the measure will be under the control of the House to make the matter more definite; and I hope that the House will be willing to consent to Mr. Speaker leaving the Chair, in order that we may go into Committee upon the Bill. I have no wish to press the measure into Committee to-night, as I am desirous that the measure shall receive the most careful consideration; and all the suggestions made to me I will meet in the fairest possible spirit. If Mr. Speaker is allowed to leave the Chair, I am willing at once to report Progress in Committee, in order to give hon. Members an opportunity of considering Amendments they may desire to propose, which shall receive the best attention of the Government.

I think it somewhat extraordinary that the discussion on this Bill should take place upon the Motion to go into Committee rather than upon the second reading. I am one of the projectors of the idea of a Public Prosecutor, and, indeed, I was Chairman of the Committee upon the Public Prosecutors Bill. Somehow or other that Bill broke down, and I believe really by reason that it was opposed by the most formidable body, except the Licensed Victuallers, in the country—for everybody knows that they exercise an influence over hon. Members of this House, which is not equalled by anyone excepting Licensed Victuallers—I mean Solicitors. I think the Home Secretary has made a very good speech; but I do not see his speech in the Bill. He said he was going to do this, and he was not going to do that; but the Bill does not correspond with his speech at all. There is nothing whatever in the Bill but an enormous scheme of patronage under the Attorney General, and a centralization of the patronage throughout the country in his hands. So long as the present Home Secretary holds his Office, no doubt the line which he lays down in his speech will be adhered to; but in the three clauses of the Bill there is no limit, either in hundreds or thousands, to the number of officers who may be appointed. When you pass a Statute the thing goes out of your power, and you give the Executive Government of the day the powers contained in the Act. In the measure which I had the honour to recommend we avoided, what I think is one of the most growing evils in this country, the centralization of patronage in the hands of the Executive Government. We provided that the appointments under the Bill should be kept in the various counties. It is the great vice of the present Bill, that it gives the Home Secretary and the Attorney General an amount of patronage to which there is no limit. You may have an Attorney General appointing numbers of officers all over the country; and although the right hon. Gentleman may toll us that he does not mean to appoint beyond a certain limit, yet we have no safeguard as to what will be done hereafter. We know what pressure is brought to bear upon the Government to appoint an officer at a certain salary; and it is a very bad thing, indeed, in the administration of justice, that patronage should be so vested. So far as I know, this is the first Bill I have seen in which the amount of patronage to be placed in the hands of the Government was practically unlimited. But there is another objection to the Bill. Either this Bill is a good thing to pass, or it is not. I myself have been in favour of a more extended scheme of public prosecution; and I think that the evidence given before the Committee over which I had the honour to preside is overwhelming that there is in this country a very extensive system of compromising prosecutions. If that be so—and it is not in London alone, it is the same throughout the country, and, perhaps, more in the Provinces than here—I do not see how the Bill is going to prevent it. I cannot see what authority either the Solicitor for public prosecutions, or his assistants, will have to compel prosecutions. It is the duty of the Public Prosecutor to institute, undertake, and carry on all such criminal proceedings as may be prescribed by the regulations under the Act, or may be directed by the Attorney General; but, in the case of prosecutions undertaken by a private prosecutor, there is no power in the Bill to compel the prosecution to be continued. The Public Prosecutor, perhaps, might interfere and undertake a case; but I do not see anything to bring him into operation. Supposing a man, after instituting a prosecution—and the thing is actually done—compromises it, how is the Attorney General to know anything about it, or how is the Solicitor for prosecutions, or anyone else, to be made aware of it? That is a fault; and so long as you leave the matter in the hands of private prosecutors, so long will things continue in this state. Nor is it clear how, unless the Public Prosecutor is to have charge of all proceedings from the commencement until the end, he is to know what goes on. I should like to know, that there may be no misapprehension, if I am wrong, if it is within the scheme of this Bill to interfere in such cases; and, if so, how they are to be dealt with by the Public Prosecutor? Having been for many years interested in this subject, I do not believe that you will have a satisfactory administration of justice unless you have something like a Procurator Fiscal, as exists in Scotland, who is responsible for all prosecutions. I agree with what has been said as to there being no limit to the number of persons who maybe appointed by the Government—it maybe 20, or 100, or 500—and the Treasury may or may not control those appointments according to the opinion and exigencies of the Government for the time being. I hope, before the Bill is passed into law, there may be something introduced into it by which it may not become an enormous system of centralization of patronage in the hands of the Attorney General—a system which, as we all know, has a tendency to degenerate into jobbery.

The view which has been apparently taken by my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Oxford (Sir William Harcourt) is, that you should have a system of public prosecutions throughout the country, and that all those prosecutions should be undertaken by a Public Prosecutor. No doubt the theory of the scheme which my hon. and learned Friend would establish is a very admirable one, and it is a scheme which recommends itself as being theoretically perfect. But, in the first place, it would be an enormous and, to a great extent, a useless expenditure, and then, again, it would be an entire revolution of the present system, and an interference with the arrangements which have been made, and a system which, in the main, works well. There has been, undoubtedly, at different times in this country a great cry raised for the establishment of a Public Prosecutor, not because prosecutions are not properly conducted, but because there are many cases of crime which are committed which are not brought to light, and where people are under the impression that a thorough investigation has not taken place; or, where a thorough and complete investigation having become possible, there has been no one to undertake the prosecution, and to make use of the materials to bring the criminal to justice. There are many offences which at the present time, are not dealt with as they ought to be—many offences which ought, in the interest of the community, to be prosecuted, and especially offences under the Bankruptcy Act. More particularly, in the case of offences against the Bankruptcy Act, it is desirable that the offenders should be brought to justice, for nothing more disastrous to the interests of society can be conceived than that such offenders should escape; but, unfortunately, the persons suffering do not usually move in the matter. There are also commercial frauds, in such offences as have been described by the hon. and learned Member for Ipswich (Mr. Bulwer), and it is most desirable that all these offences should be investigated, and that the perpetrators of them should be brought to justice. That cannot be well done under the present system, and therefore another reason arises why there is such a desire on the part of the public that there should be a Public Prosecutor to take the matter up. As the hon. and learned Member for Durham (Mr. Herschell) has pointed out in his very able speech, there is a necessity for a Public Prosecutor in such cases to take up prosecutions on behalf of the community without interference with the system under which prosecutions at present are conducted, because, as a rule, the present system works remarkably well. Prosecutions go on before the magistrates, and are undertaken by the police, and then go to Quarter Sessions or Assizes, and are directed by the magistrates' clerks or solicitors in the various localities. No one complains of the conduct of public prosecutions as a rule; but there is a great need for some Public Authority to be constituted to have supervision over all prosecutions, and to have a right to institute prosecutions when it should be deemed proper. There should be a Staff in London, and two or three Deputies upon each Circuit; and they should have the right to intervene at any moment in the conduct of a prosecution, and take it out of the hands of a private prosecutor, and make it a public prosecution. My hon. and learned Friend the Member for Oxford says he has read the Bill, and does not see in it any provision enabling a Public Prosecutor, when appointed, to act in a prosecution undertaken by a private individual and to take it out of his hands.

said, that his objection was, that cases of collusion would not come to the knowledge of the Public Prosecutor.

The objection which I have stated is one of those put forward by my hon. and learned Friend. I understood him to say there was nothing in this Bill which gave information how a Public Prosecutor could intervene. But if there is any foundation in the complaint which he now puts forward, I think it can be easily remedied, when the Bill goes into Committee, by the insertion of a few words to make it quite clear that the Public Prosecutor shall be at liberty to intervene whenever he thinks proper, and take the prosecution out of the hands of a private prosecutor. Then, he says that a great evil exists at present by reason of prosecutions being instituted and then collusively compromised. I quite agree that this is a very great evil; but I do not know it is the greatest evil that we have to deplore. Still, it is a very serious matter, and I think my hon. and learned Friend is perfectly right in complaining of it. Then he says, perhaps fairly enough, how are you to know—how is the Public Prosecutor in London to know—how are the Deputies in the Provinces to know—that this collusion has taken place? Well, they may not know it; they can only know it by keeping a sharp look out, and by getting information from the various magistrates, and various magistrates' clerks, as to all prosecutions that are instituted. People ascertain these things in ordinary cases by resorting to the usual sources of information; and in this particular case of a Public Prosecutor, he or his Deputy would have a right to require either the magistrates or their clerks to furnish every information and give him every assistance. And if there is the slightest idea that a prosecution that has been instituted is likely to be improperly compromised, the Public Prosecutor will be informed of it by the magistrates or their clerks, and will be enabled to intervene. I do not see, therefore, that there is any great difficulty in the matter. There is another evil, to which my hon. and learned Friend did not so distinctly point. It is this—that in some of our greatest commercial centres prosecutions are often instituted by individuals for the purpose of obtaining remedies for what are really civil grievances. In London, especially, I believe prosecutions are instituted for the purpose of extorting concessions from people which they would not otherwise make—in fact, for the purpose of extorting money. Now, as the case at present stands, it is very difficult to check these prosecutions; but when the Public Prosecutor is appointed, if complaint is made to him that a prosecution is wrongfully brought, he will look into the facts, and, if he deems it right, intervene to stop the wrong that is being done. There is one further point which my hon. and learned Friend has taken to which I will allude. He thinks that the centralization of patronage in the Secretary of State and in myself is very objectionable. If a Public Prosecutor is to be appointed, he must be appointed by some one; and I do not know that there is any very great ob- jection to vest the appointment in the Secretary of State. I do not know that the Secretary of State is likely to exercise that power improperly, nor do I think that there is any great objection to joining with him the Attorney General. But if the Secretary of State and the Attorney General are not to make these appointments, who is? It has been suggested that the appointment should be made by a Town Council, or by the Local Boards throughout the country; but will not greater evils arise from the local authorities and the municipalities having this patronage, than from its being given to the officers of the Government? But my hon. and learned Friend (Sir William Harcourt) need not be so alarmed, for, of course, this measure is only to be tentative. Nor is it possible, in a Bill of this character, to make everything very definite or exact, or to describe with great minuteness every provision that will be made; but I think that every explanation as to what is intended to be done has been given by my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary. If it is necessary to limit the number of appointments to be made under the Bill, it will be very easy to do so when the Bill goes into Committee. Nothing can be more easy than for hon. Members to propose a clause limiting the number of these appointments—such as that there shall only be two or three officers appointed in each district or circuit.

said, that without entering into the details of the Bill, he desired to express his gratification that the measure had been introduced. It had been long wished for; and although it might not go entirely on the lines that were wished by some, still it was an attempt to obviate some great imperfections of the system that now existed, and to introduce a system that would supply the deficiencies. He accepted the measure as a step in the right direction, and trusted it would be beneficial to the country. In his opinion, much crime that was now committed, especially in commercial circles, would not be committed if the administration of justice and punishment were pretty certain. It was owing to the great chance of escaping prosecution that gave a disposition to many commercial delinquents to commit the offences which they now did. They relied at present upon those whom they robbed not caring to spend more money and time in instituting prosecutions against them. He believed criminals of that class would feel, if this measure were carried, that their chance of punishment was much greater, and, their fear of punishment being much more complete, the offences would diminish in number.

said, that the speeches in the early part of the debate seemed to favour the appointment of a Public Prosecutor to undertake all the criminal business of the country. He was considerably relieved when the hon. and learned Member for Durham (Mr. Herschell) made the excellent observations he did; and after the explanation of the Home Secretary, he did not feel that there was much danger of what he dreaded coming to pass. Still, there were some passages in the speech of the right hon. Gentleman which caused him some misgiving, because he spoke of this being a tentative measure, and of the appointments being limited to those of provisional Prosecutors in various parts of the country, and referred to them as limited only in the first instance. That would give the impression that although the country was now proceeding in a very sober, quiet way, yet that, perhaps, the pace might be accelerated, and at a future day the nation might be launched into a complete system of public prosecution throughout the country under the control of the Government. It had been urged that this would be a very great expense, and undoubtedly it would be. Not only would the expenditure be unnecessary, but he thought it was to be condemned from a more important point of view. He felt that there was nothing which could be more prejudicial to the English character than to imitate the example of various foreign countries, and teach people to look to Government for everything. If people would not look after their own property, it was not right that they should be able to ask the Government to do it for them. It was, no doubt, one of the evils of the present system that people would not take the trouble to prosecute in cases where they had been defrauded; but if people were taught to rely on the Government, they would do, as occasionally happened, in consequence of our excellent police system—not lock their doors or bar their windows. By the establishment of a Public Prosecutor, people would not take the trouble to conduct their own prosecutions, but would ask Government to step in and conduct them for them; and, in his opinion, that would be a great disadvantage and blow to the English character. In the reliance of people upon themselves, and not upon the Government, the English differed from Continental nations—a great system of bureaucracy was foreign to them. He hoped that when the House went into Committee upon the Bill such limitations might be put into it as would prevent any chance of our drifting into a huge scheme of public prosecutions. He would say one word with regard to what had fallen from the hon. and learned Member for Oxford (Sir William Harcourt). The hon. and learned Gentleman spoke of the evils resulting from prosecutions being compromised. His (Mr. Floyer's) experience had been in the country; but it had been of long standing. Certainly, he did not remember any case where a compromise had been made which might be considered improper. If such instances did occur, he did not think that any system of public prosecutions would prevent them. With respect to commercial frauds he had no experience, and, perhaps, with regard to them, a Public Prosecutor might prove useful. As limited by the Attorney General, he thought a Public Prosecutor would be a useful functionary; but he should deplore greatly any scheme of public prosecution which would take out of the hands of individuals the conduct of their own cases, and lead people to place that reliance on the Government which they now had in themselves.

It is a pity that the Government should have brought on so important a Bill as this on a Friday night at this hour. Many objections which might be urged to going into Committee on this Bill now have already been brought forward in the course of debate, and I will not further allude to them. I wish, however, to draw the attention of the House to the fact that Public Prosecutors exist at the present time in Scotland and Ireland. In Ireland the system works exceedingly well. But the Bill is not founded upon either of these systems, and it con- tains everything which a Bill introduced into this House ought not to have in it. It is the vaguest, crudest document that was ever introduced into Parliament, dealing with such an important subject as this. It enables the Government to appoint a Solicitor for public prosecutions, and afterwards to appoint any number of assistants and other officers. The disadvantages resulting from that have already been pointed out by the hon. and learned Member for Oxford (Sir William Harcourt). The other provisions in the Bill are simply such as must naturally be adopted if the system is to be worked at all; but it is not until we come to the 6th clause that the great objection to legislation of this character becomes apparent. In order to make this Bill fit for becoming a workable Act, the 6th clause enables the Attorney General and the Home Secretary really to make an Act of Parliament. The Attorney General, with the Secretary of State, may, from time to time, make, rescind, vary, and add to regulations for carrying the Act into effect. The draft of such regulations as are approved by the Secretary of State are to be laid before both Houses of Parliament, and are not to be finally approved until they have remained 40 days upon the Table during the sitting of Parliament. Anyone, however, who has been in the habit of attending this House knows what that means; it means simply that no discussion will be possible, and no effectual objections to regulations laid upon the Table of the House in that manner can be made. This is just what will occur in the case of the pro-sent Act. I look upon the Bill as simply vesting in the Secretary of State, and centralizing in London, all the prosecutions of the country. I will elaborate the argument, if necessary. If we have Public Prosecutors at all, I think we ought to have the number of Public Prosecutors or officers defined in the Bill. The mode, also, in which the system is to be worked ought to be carefully defined. Further, in my opinion, the appointment of these Prosecutors, if not made entirely by the Corporations and by the Local Boards in the country, should, at any rate, be in some degree approved of by them. We have some experience in London of public prosecutions. The Corporation of the City of London undertakes public prosecutions, and directs its own officers to prosecute any case within their control and jurisdiction. Now, however, we are to have a Minister of Justice, who will be termed a Solicitor, and who is to perform the duties devolving upon the Attorney General. In course of time, this officer will grow into a most powerful functionary. Every prosecution, great or small, will have to be referred to this personage, to be called the Solicitor for Prosecutions, and we shall have people living in London under the supervision of this officer. I object to such an officer being instituted in this country, unless we have some means of getting at him in Parliament. If you have a State Prosecutor at all, the head of the system ought to be the Attorney General himself, so that you may have an opportunity of making inquiries, and securing a responsible officer to deal with in this House. The hon. and learned Member for Durham (Mr. Herschell) seemed to me to make a very extraordinary speech. He said he did not wish to interfere with the present system of prosecutions, but to supplement them by giving Government assistance. In what cases, then, will prosecutions be conducted by the public? It is not in cases of small felonies, or in that of persons who have been run over, or suffered some bodily harm by felonious acts, that there will be a subsidy, and the prosecution taken up. In such cases people are put to enormous inconvenience and expense in carrying the law into effect, and I do not see that the Bill makes any provision to meet those cases. The hon. and learned Member apparently thinks that people will continue to prosecute cases when there is a Public Prosecutor, upon whom the duty of prosecuting devolves. In Ireland the police take up prosecutions before the magistrates, and there is in every county a Crown Solicitor, who is appointed by the Government, and whose appointment vests a great deal of patronage in the Government in power. With a Crown Prosecutor, from the nature of the case the responsibility is not placed upon the individual; but in Ireland the number of these Crown Prosecutors is limited by the Act under which they are appointed, and the provisions of it are very stringent. To bring forward such a measure as the present, which requires the most careful consideration, and commits us to the adoption of an elaborate system, and to push it forward on a Friday evening, at this hour—especially when, in the 6th clause, the Attorney General and the Home Secretary are, in fact, enabled to make an Act of Parliament—is not the proper course to take. This is a system of legislation against which I protest. I can only account for it on the ground that, there being a strong desire for a Public Prosecutor expressed by many hon. Gentlemen in this House, the Government, at the last moment, has determined to bring in a Bill of some kind, and have brought in this Bill. I do not at all agree with some of my hon. Friends, who seem to think that everybody should be protected in speculations into which they may enter by holding the terror of the law over the persons who commit some trifling breach of commercial law? The prosecutions for commercial offences ought, in my opinion, to be exceedingly infrequent when undertaken by the Government. We have a favourable specimen in Scotland, recently before us, in the case of the Directors of the City of Glasgow Bank. There is another case in this country, where the Government insisted upon prosecuting; but why, I could never understand. The right hon. Gentleman the Member for the University of London (Mr. Lowe) seemed to get it into his mind that, above all things, it was necessary that this great scandal in the Tichborne case should be prosecuted, and the country has been put to unheard-of expense in so doing. The exact sum of money spent in that prosecution we have never been able to get at; but I believe it amounted to £100,000. For these reasons, I trust we shall not go into Committee on this Bill, and that the question will be dealt with much more fully. Moreover, there are a great many hon. Gentlemen who wish to take part in this discussion who are not now present, thinking that it would not come on. I beg to move the adjournment of the debate.

said, he thought the conduct of the Government, in bringing on so important a Bill when many hon. Members were necessarily absent, was to be deprecated. The Bill practically gave the Home Secretary the power to make such a system as he pleased; and within the four corners of the Bill there was no limit to the number of Public Prosecutors that might be appointed throughout the country. The Home Secretary had, indeed, explained that it was not his intention to appoint many of these Crown Prosecutors. But, although that might not be the intention of the Home Secretary at the present moment, yet he might change his mind, or some other right hon. Gentleman, at a future day, holding his Office, might do precisely as he pleased in the matter. The system of public prosecution in Ireland had been adverted to; and he presumed that the system of Crown Prosecutors in Ireland was adopted because of the indisposition in individuals, for reasons into which he need not enter, to come forward and prosecute offences. But private individuals in England did not have the same reason for being indisposed to prosecute, and therefore there was not the same reason for the Bill. At the present moment the Home Secretary and the Solicitor for the Treasury had the power that the Home Secretary now desired to obtain, and any prosecution could be entered into by the Crown against any offender whom it was desired to prosecute. It was said to be desirable to set an example to private individuals of the mode in which prosecutions should be conducted, by means of having Crown Prosecutors in certain districts; but it was perfectly within the power of the Solicitor for the Treasury to do all that at the present time. Therefore, he felt that it was unreasonable, at a quarter past 1 in the morning, to ask the House to go into Committee on a Bill which only gave the Home Secretary the power which the Solicitor for the Treasury already had. In conclusion, he begged to second the Motion of the hon. Member for Galway.

observed, that the hon. Members who had moved the adjournment had informed them that in their parts of the country there was a system of public prosecution which worked well. Under these circumstances, he should have thought that they would have been the most disposed to facilitate the progress of this Bill. He must confess that he was not quite satisfied that the result of a system of public prosecutions would not be that persons who now felt bound to prosecute would not feel themselves relieved. As there were many hon. Members who took an interest in this subject not present then, he thought it would be fair if Her Majesty's Government would give them an assurance that at a subsequent stage of the Bill there would be a full opportunity of discussing it. Such an opportunity would arise on the Motion for the third reading. If Her Majesty's Government would not give such an assurance, he thought the debate should be adjourned; otherwise, he would ask the hon. Member for Galway to withdraw his Motion.

did not see why, if the system of public prosecutions had been successful in Ireland, it should not be pursued in England. He thought a distinction was too often made between offences against property and attacks upon the person—much more consideration being given to the former than to the latter class of offences. As regarded the question of patronage, he quite agreed with the hon. Member for Galway (Mr. Mitchell Henry). It was a great advantage of the system in Ireland that, as no prosecution could be instituted by any individual without the cognizance of the first Law Officer of the Crown, the prosecution of people was not made a vehicle for obtaining other ends. He would not vote for this Bill, except he saw that there was some mode by which persons could be prevented from using the power of instituting prosecutions for purposes of their own. For his own part, he viewed with disfavour the proposition to make local attorneys the Public Prosecutors. What would happen in happy England if some lawyer—he did not care whether he was Whig or Tory—were entrusted with the discretion of instituting, or refusing to institute, a prosecution? Why, it would be often said that his action was induced by his political leaning—for men of this class were usually the political agents also in country districts. And that such an idea could get abroad he thought would be lamentable. The first consideration was that justice should be respected; and he entirely agreed in the view that the Committee should be postponed, and that the House should have an opportunity of considering the matter, and of framing Amendments, in order that an irre- sponsible solicitor might not be appointed to direct prosecutions in this country without power over them being vested in the first Law Officer of the Crown.

wished to say that the hon. Baronet had entirely mistaken the purport of the Bill, in supposing that it placed in the hands of solicitors in various parts of the country the power of instituting proceedings. The object of the Government was to leave prosecutions in the hands of the persons who now conducted them, but to see that there were persons who should take charge of them, and generally to exercise that check over prosecutions which he understood the hon. Baronet wished so much to see. Therefore, he hoped he would not oppose the Bill. With reference to the number of officers to be appointed, it was in the power of any hon. Member to put down an Amendment that the number of such officers on each Circuit should not exceed two.

hoped that the Motion for the adjournment of the debate would not be pressed, for it seemed to him that there was a substantial agreement in the views of the speakers on both sides of the House. It was only a question of detail; and, for his part, he freely accepted the promise of the Home Secretary, that he would give a reasonable time for them to consider the Bill and propose Amendments. That promise, he trusted, would be taken on this side of the House as sufficient, and they would allow the Bill to go into Committee on that occasion. In respect of what had been said as to the objects of the present Bill, he thought the right hon. Gentleman the Home Secretary should put in writing the scheme he sketched out in his speech, and put it into the Bill by way of amendment. Unless that were done, there was no guarantee, if the Bill were allowed to become law, that some future officers of the Crown might not extend the measure very much further than was intended by the present Members of the Government.

also hoped that the Motion for the adjournment of the debate would not be pressed. The scheme sketched for them by the right hon. Gentleman the Home Secretary would, he thought, recommend itself to the mercantile community and to the public generally. They had seen of late a great deal of abuse of public confidence, and reference had been made to one very great abuse—that of the Glasgow Bank Directors. Whatever might be the opinion of his hon. Friend the Member for Galway (Mr. Mitchell Henry) with reference to that case, he was sure that the perpetrators would not have been brought to justice so speedily had there not been Public Prosecutors in Scotland. The argument both of the Scotch and Irish Members had proved most incontestably that the systems of public prosecutions in those countries had worked well. A fear had been expressed that they might drift too much into centralization. If Scotland had not drifted, nor Ireland, and the power that had been exercised had not been abused, what right was there to suppose that the result would be different in this country? Any Member of the House, becoming aware of any abuse, might, from time to time, put questions to the Government in respect to any such abuse. In connection with criminal prosecutions, he was sure, from his experience and observations, that it would be a great public benefit to have Public Prosecutors. There were various occasions upon which people did not wish to prosecute. Now in many cases they were too ignorant, and did not understand the steps necessary to be taken; but if it were well known that there were Public Prosecutors, crime would be much more generally punished than at present. Those who had suffered by a crime were not always ready to become the victims of lawyers, and undertake prosecutions. It was a common saying, that what was everyone's business was no one's business. The result was, that great public wrongs remained without due punishment. For this reason, he thought it would be a great advantage to have Public Prosecutors; and he felt sure that the best course to adopt would be to consent to the House going into Committee, and those who desired to put Amendments upon the Paper could do so, when the measure could be fully discussed.

said, there was a very strong objection to the Bill, which was, that it delegated authority to the Attorney General and the Home Secretary for the time being. The House of Commons would never submit to such, a course as the delegation of authority to any Minister, however clever he might be, for the result, it was well known, could be nothing but disaster. He thought that the Government should withdraw the Bill and formulate another scheme. The Bill should be made a first Order of the Day in Committee, so that hon. Members might have a fuller opportunity of discussing the necessary Amendments. If the Government would make the Bill a first Order in Committee, he would suggest the propriety of withdrawing the Motion for adjournment.

said, he had always understood that the desire of the Irish Members was that the laws of Ireland should be equalized with the laws of England, and on that ground he thought that support should be given to the measure. There could be no question as to the advantage of having a Public Prosecutor in Ireland. He knew of a case recently whore a gentleman had suffered wrong, and was very anxious to prosecute, as a matter of justice to the community. But he was too poor to bear the expense of a prosecution. He appealed to him (Dr. O'Leary), and after an application had been made to the Attorney General the case was taken up; the case went on, and the conviction was obtained. In that case there would, most undoubtedly, have been a miscarriage of justice, had it not been for the office of Public Prosecutor, which existed in Ireland. It was well to mention that it was the Attorney General who directed that prosecution. With regard to the remarks of the hon. Member for Cavan (Mr. Biggar), he considered that whatever difference of opinion might exist between the Attorney General of to-day and the Attorney General of five years hence, both would have but one duty to perform, and that was simply to discharge an official function. Being officers of justice, they would have nothing whatever to do with Party feeling. Indeed, in his opinion, Whig would be just as ready to prosecute Tory as Tory would be to prosecute Whig. He thought that he would occupy a very invidious position by not giving his assistance to the carrying out of that Act, which would equalize the laws of England with those of Ireland. By way of illustration, he would point out that there had been a great failure in the application of the Food and Drugs Bill for the want of a Public Prosecutor. He supported the Bill with all his heart, and hoped that his hon. Friend would withdraw his Motion for adjournment.

said, the reasons urged by several hon. Members for the withdrawal of his Motion for adjournment only proved to him the necessity which existed for a real discussion upon the measure. He begged leave to withdraw his Motion.

inquired if the Government really intended to afford them an opportunity of discussing the Bill in Committee or not? If the Bill were taken at so late an hour as the present, the opportunity for discussion was simply a mockery and a snare. He thought that the Bill should be made a first Order of the Day. It was evident that the Bill would have to be entirely remodelled, and that new Rules would have to be introduced; and as it was a measure of such a very important character, he thought that the least the Government should do would be to make it a first Order of the Day, in order to give hon. Members a fair opportunity for discussion.

said, he would very much regret that the subject should be proceeded with at that late hour. A great defect of the Bill was that it established no real system of public prosecution, and he appealed to the right hon. Gentleman who had charge of the Bill to afford an opportunity for further discussion.

said, be could not undertake to make the Bill a first Order of the Day; but it should be arranged to come on at a reasonable hour.

understood that Mr. Speaker had only left the Chair pro formâ; but the Motion having been made to postpone the Preamble, he would move to report Progress, because hon. Members who were absent, and who took a warm interest in the Bill, would not have an opportunity of discussing it upon its merits.

seconded the Motion.

hoped the House would keep to the understanding arrived at. It was not desirable to spend another evening in discussing the Preamble. The hon. Member for Meath had expressed a wish to say something more at a future stage of the Bill, and the Chancellor of the Exchequer had stated that it should be brought on at a reasonable hour.

thought it most unreasonable for the Government to ask hon. Members to give up the last practical opportunity they would have for the discussion of the measure. He hoped the Government would agree to the very reasonable Motion to report Progress.

thought they would not be acting fairly towards the Government by supporting the Motion to report Progress.

said, that if the House chose to give up the interests of the people, of course they could not be prevented. He thought that by allowing the 1st clause to pass hon. Members would find they had got into a trap, for the Chairman of Committees would, only allow them to discuss each particular clause as it arose.