asked the Chief Secretary for Ireland, Whether, having regard to the public interest felt in the preservation and extension among the Irish people of a knowledge of the grammar and literature of the Irish language, and to the fact that in the Irish speaking districts of Ireland the parents of the children attending the National Schools are generally unable to afford any payment for extra fees, the Treasury will sanction the removal of Irish from Class b to Class a in the programme of extra subjects issued by the Commissioners of National Education in Ireland; and, whether, considering that the need of working for a subsistence obliges a great proportion of the pupils of the National Schools in Ireland to give up attending school long before the course of instruction can be completed, the Treasury will sanction the payment of results' fees to teachers in respect of pupils in the second class and upwards proficient in the Irish language?

Sir, I must preface my reply to this Question and to other Questions respecting education in Ireland by acknowledging that I have not yet had time to consider the working of the Irish system. I hope to do so when I go to Ireland. If the hon. Member will confer with me privately I think I can show him that his object would not be attained by the removal of the Irish language from Class b to Class a in the programme of extra subjects. As regards his second Question, I cannot encourage the teaching of Irish or of any other difficult extra subject to children in the second, third, and fourth classes. The hon. Member refers to the need of working for subsistence. That need obliges children in the lower classes to give their time almost exclusively to reading, writing, and ciphering.

asked the Under Secretary of State for the Colonies, with reference to the answer which he gave regarding the imprisonment of Cete-wayo, Whether it is within the competence of the Cape Parliament to deal with a prisoner of war who has been captured by the Imperial troops?

Yes, Sir; provided, of course, the requisite Act, when passed, receives the sanction of Her Majesty.

asked the President of the Local Government Board, Whether it is his intention to furnish the House with a Statement of the condition of Local Finance similar to that made by the late Government in 1877 and 1878?

, in reply, said, the so-called local finance statement had hitherto been made in connection with the Public Works Loans Bill, and that, as this measure had already gone up from the House of Commons to the House of Lords, the appropriate opportunity for making the statement this year had passed. The Annual Local Taxation Returns, however, which were in the hands of hon. Members, would give all the information which would form the basis of such a statement could convey.

asked the Secretary of State for War, Whether he will place the medical officers of the Guards on an equality with the other medical officers of the Army as regards pay and promotion under the Royal Warrant of November 27th, 1879?

Sir, the propriety of preparing a new Warrant for medical officers of the Guards is under discussion at the War Office; but, considering the great advantages which these officers enjoy in other respects over the rest of the Army medical officers, I cannot undertake that their pay and rate of promotion shall be identical. There never has been any difficulty in obtaining a sufficient number of medical officers for the Guards.

asked the Secretary of State for India, If he will communicate to Parliament the proceedings of the Legislative Council of India of the 2nd March 1880, so far as the Addresses of the several Members refer to the General and Military Expenditure, with the Statements relating thereto; and Copy of the Instructions from the India Office ordering charges for Frontier Railways to be charged under Army?

, in reply, said, he had privately informed the hon. and gallant Member the previous day that the proceedings of the Legislative Council would be laid on the Table if moved for. There would be no objection to taking the same course with regard to the other Papers asked for.

asked the Financial Secretary to the Treasury, Whether, taking into account the necessity for having the proposed fishery piers and harbours on the coast of Ireland reported on with as little delay as possible, the Treasury will augment the present very inadequate engineering staff of the Board of Public Works?

, in reply, said, the Government were fully alive to the necessity of having the works carried out as soon as possible, and would provide, as far as lay in their power, for their early commencement.

asked the First Lord of the Treasury, Whether he will afford the House an opportunity of considering and expressing an opinion upon the Landlord and Tenant (Ireland) Act Amendment Bill by giving a day for the Motion for its Second Reading?

Sir, I suppose the meaning of this Question, which is rather vague in its phraseology, is, whether it is in our power to say that part of that portion of the time of the House appropriated to Government Business should be put aside in order to allow time for the consideration of the second reading of this Bill. I am sorry to say that there is such an extreme pressure on the Business of the Government at the present period of the Session, that it is wholly impossible for me to entertain the idea of parting with the time which we desire to turn to the best account. I hope that the hon. Member, considering that half of the time of the House is at the command of individual Members, will be able to do as others have done, and find an opportunity of discussing his Bill in the time at the disposal of private Members. At the same time I must say that I can only hope so; but I think it is very desirable it should be so, and I shall use every means in my power to bring the measure before the House. I think it is a subject which it is very desirable the House should have an opportunity of discussing. I cannot say what may be the state of the Government Business later on in the Session, nor can I venture to give any pledge with reference to any period which will be some time hence; but I shall express a desire that if it becomes impossible through other means, and in default of any opportunity to get a day for the discussion of this Bill, we should be happy to try and do so. I may say that the present state of Business does not allow me to hold out any hope of being able to give a day to the Bill.

I wish to ask you, Mr. Speaker, to give instructions to the House as to a matter of great importance in reference to the keeping of seats. I beg you to give us instructions as to whether the putting of a hat on a seat, in order to keep it, does not mean a real working hat and not a colourable imitation, a system which allows a Member to deposit one hat and go about his business in another. I wish also to ask whether it is not against the Rule of the House for a Member to endeavour to keep his seat by putting therein pieces of paper or card instead of his hat?

The usual practice of the House has been that a Member may retain a seat for the night by placing his hat upon the seat before prayers. That practice has prevailed for a considerable number of years, and the idea has always been that when so acting the Member is in immediate attendance upon the House or on a Committee. With regard to the retaining of seats with papers or gloves, that has never been allowed. No Member can retain a seat for the night by placing his card or gloves upon it before prayers.

I beg to give Notice that on Monday next I will ask the Attorney General for Ireland whether it is a fact that the magistrates of the borough of Belfast invariably inflict a penalty of 40s. and costs on any person brought before them on a charge of using insulting language towards the Pope or other minister of religion; and, if so, whether his attention has been called to the language reported in the Northern Whig and Ulster Examiner to have been used by the Rev. Isaac Nelson—

Sir, I rise to Order. If I have caught correctly the intention of the Question, it is invading the sacred precincts of the temple of religion, and asking that the language of a minister of religion—a Protestant minister of religion—in the pulpit, which I take, Sir, to be outside the cognizance of this House, should be considered by the Attorney General for Ireland.

not rising.

continued his Question in the following words:—To have been used by the Rev. Isaac Nelson—now a Member of this House—on Saturday last from the pulpit of his church, in the precincts of the said borough of Belfast, to the effect that "the greatest curse Europe has had for centuries was the man that called himself the successor of St. Peter;" and "these men"—i.e., the Roman Catholic clergy—"are trading on the ignorance of the ignorant, and lording it in the name of religion over the consciences of men;" and whether, under the circumstances, the Attorney General will not consider it advisable that the Irish Executive should direct a prosecution against the Rev. Isaac Nelson for the use of such language, as calculated to provoke a breach of the peace within the said borough?

Sir, I beg to give Notice that on Monday next I will ask the right hon. and learned Gentleman the Attorney General for Ireland whether or not the gentleman who is alleged to have used these expressions has not since completely denied having used them?

I beg to give Notice that on Monday I shall also ask whether a fine is not also inflicted on anybody who may insult King William the Third in the same manner?

rose to call attention to the present position of the Ordnance Survey of Great Britain, and to the desirability, in view of affording increased facilities for the transfer of land, of the immediate completion of that Survey. Now, the Survey had not yet been finished, and if it were worth finishing at all, it was desirable, he contended, that it should be completed as soon as possible, according to the last Report presented, which came down to the 31st December, 1878. Turning to that Report, he found that it was the opinion of practical surveyors that the Survey, on what was termed the 25-inch scale, was adequate for all practical purposes; and there could be no doubt that they were a great convenience to the landowners of those counties for which they had been published, and that, altogether, 31,380 square miles, out of a total area of 50,000 miles in England and Wales, had been mapped on that scale. But his object in calling attention to the subject was far wider. The Government had held out to the country the expectation that they would be able to deal with the Land Question in all its branches; and he knew that his right hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham (Mr. Bright), whom he saw below him, was anxious to give facilities for the acquisition of small properties. Now, the real difficulty in the way of the operation of all the Land Transfer Bills—such as those of Lord Cairns— which had been proposed was the question of the identity of the land with which it was intended to deal; whereas, if an authoritative map, containing a description of the land, could be consulted, the difficulty would, to a great extent, be removed, and half the battle would be won. Every other nation in Europe had a cadastral map; and if we possessed a cadastral map upon the scale indicated, which should be accessible, at a small cost, to anyone who chose to go to an authorized office to look at a plot of land offered for sale, all those visits which were now paid to the property, for the purpose of ascertaining its metes and bounds, would be dispensed with, and the transference of the plot of land be made as simple as the transfer of a ship. This Ordnance Survey had been going on for over 20 years, and it was calculated that it would go on for 20 years longer, at a cost of something like £100,000 a-year. Now, would it not be better, he would ask, to grant a lump sum once for all, and have the work done quickly? There was no doubt it could be completed in three or four years at the most, if the Government only chose to supply the necessary means. It would be not only a great advantage to landowners, but would effect a real and substantial improvement in the system of land transfer, and with little trouble might be made to show by whom the land was owned. He begged to move—

"That it is expedient that provision he made for the immediate completion of the Ordnance Survey of England and Wales."

seconded the Motion. His opinion, founded on practical knowledge, was that the work might be completed in four years, or in five at most. He believed, too, that the work would really cost less if done quickly than if dawdled over, while its advantages, which every purchaser of land in a county where the Survey had been completed could appreciate, would be experienced immediately. He suggested that in the mining districts of North Wales the scale of the Ordnance Survey maps should be so adjusted as to admit of ready comparison with that of the plans of the seams of coal and iron.

said, he represented one of the counties which had been for the last two years undergoing the process of being surveyed. In the spring of 1878 the Ordnance Survey sent their men down to the county in question and put up a large number of poles with flags on them; but nothing had been done since, and now most of the flags had been blown off the poles. If they were to wait another 24 years before this Survey was completed the process of surveying would have to be begun again—so many new roads were being constantly made, new fences planted, new railroads constructed, and new buildings erected; so that by that time the surface of the earth would be considerably changed. He hoped the Chancellor of the Exchequer would see his way to completing the Ordnance Survey in the course of the next four or five years.

pointed out that there would be a continual return for this outlay, which, therefore, ought not to be regarded as money thrown away. In some eases, non-commissioned officers engaged on the Survey had been taken away for all sorts of other Government purposes. The staff being thus reduced, it was, of course, impossible to go on with the Survey at a proper rate of progress. It was very important to have the boundaries of parishes properly defined, as in his own county difficulties had arisen by reason of there being no authoritative map which could be appealed to in case of dispute. He hoped the example of their friends in Scotland would be followed, and that this important improvement would be carried out without delay.

said, that for a long time this question had been annually pressed on the attention of different Governments during the discussion of the Estimates. Last year his right hon. Friend the Member for Rutland (Mr. Gerard Noel) said 17 years must elapse before the Survey could be completed. Why could they not vote £300,000 a-year for this work, and complete it during the next six years? It was a home concern, and one essential to the well-being of the people— especially at a time when so much was said about affording facilities for the sale of land. He had known many small proprietors who had had to pay considerable sums to valuers for making plans of their property; whereas, if the Ordnance map had been completed, the land might have been much more cheaply identified and transferred. No one could go through any district without seeing that vast changes were being effected on the surface of the land; and it was desirable, on that account, that there should be no further delay in the completion of the Survey. He trusted his right hon. Friend the First Commissioner of Works, who had on different occasions displayed so much energy, would turn his serious attention to this important subject.

said, that in the county he represented the want of this Survey was severely felt. In those counties which had been surveyed there was less litigation in regard to boundaries than was the case elsewhere. He could say, from his own experience, that there was a general desire for the Survey. Assessment committees were sometimes unable to determine within 100 acres or so how much land a farmer held; and there were cases in which the boundaries of parishes were not accurately known. He would not discuss the relation of the Survey to the transfer of land; but it would probably do more to facilitate that transfer than many Bills that might be brought before the House. This was one of the few questions on which there seemed to be no idea of grudging the cost; and, considering the numerous useful purposes which would be served by a completed Survey, he earnestly trusted that it would be proceeded with without further delay.

said, that no one who took an interest in the question of land reform could doubt the importance of a satisfactory Survey, without which the transfer of land could not possibly be facilitated. Having from time to time put Questions as to the progress of the Survey, he had come to the conclusion that the scheme had hitherto been hampered for want of ways and means; and he hoped that the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Clackmannan (Mr. Adam) would make a raid upon the Treasury in search of sufficient funds. It had always been said that it was difficult to obtain a sufficient staff of surveyors; but he believed that, if adequate funds were forthcoming, that difficulty would be surmounted—especially as it was always easy enough to engage surveyors for the most extensive railway undertakings. He might ask what efforts had been made to procure a sufficient staff for the Survey? Had any advertisement ever been issued asking for competent surveyors? It was the duty of the Government to show by their actions that they were doing all that they could to obtain efficient persons. He had no doubt that the Chief Commissioner of Works would recognize the want as one that ought, if possible, to be supplied.

said, it was very agreeable to find the House for once absolutely unanimous. He could assure hon. Members that the Government willingly recognized the importance of the Survey, and wished, if they could, to accelerate its progress. The hon. and learned Member for Coventry (Sir Henry Jackson) had spoken of the rate at which the Survey had gone on. He might mention that this year the number of square miles already surveyed amounted to 32,915, the area surveyed during the year 1879 being 1,577 square miles. It was to be remembered that the surveyors had a great deal of other work to do besides the actual survey, and that their services in connection with many of the Public Offices prevented the employment of the whole staff on the Ordnance Survey. The hon. and learned Member for Coventry had always been an enthusiast on the question, and had done good service on the Committee that had been presided over by the present Judge Advocate General (Mr. Osborne Morgan) by putting questions to the Lord Chancellor and other witnesses of which the effect had been to elicit the great importance, from a legal point of view, of an adequate survey. He himself would not discuss the matter from that point of view, but would speak of it only as far as it affected his own Department. The hon. and learned Gentleman was led too far when he was led to believe that the mere money question would have the effect of hastening the Survey. The Government wished to see the Survey completed as quickly as possible; but it was not merely a question of money. They agreed with the words of the Resolution, and wished they could adopt it; but, considering the difficulty of finding skilled labour, could not accept it in its entirety. It would be for the convenience of the House that he should state the present position of the Survey and the means of accelerating its progress. Hon. Members were aware that the Survey of England had originally been begun on a one-inch scale, and many of the Southern counties had been surveyed on that principle; afterwards a six-inch scale had been adopted; and, finally for the counties, surveyed at first on the small scale, a scale of 25 inches had been employed. On that latter scale the Midland districts and the South Eastern counties had been surveyed, together with Devonshire, Buckinghamshire, and some others of the Southern counties. Norfolk and Suffolk were now being surveyed; and the map of the latter county, being prepared at the instance of the War Office, would not be long delayed. He was sorry to say that, according to the present rate of progress, the Survey of the whole of England could not be completed before the year 1898. ["Oh!"] He repeated—at the present rate of progress. The extent of country surveyed in each year was about 950,000 acres; and as there were ten divisions under the Survey Department, the average rate of working in each was about 100,000 acres a-year. At that rate, as he had said, he was afraid that the Survey could not be completed before 1898; but he trusted that some measures might be taken to increase the rapidity of the operation. The great difficulty was in getting skilled labour for the Survey; therefore, he could not hold out any great hope of its expansion. It was sometimes said that there was nothing that money could not do. Even if he were granted £500,000 to make a sudden expansion of the Survey, it would hardly be possible for him to do it. The present annual grant for the Ordnance Survey was £133,500, and the annual amount available—after deducting certain special expenses—for the direction of the work was £113,000. The different directors of the Survey had successively given their opinion that even with additional grants the absence of a sufficient amount of skilled and special labour would always impede the work, and that they did not see their way to obtain such special and skilled labour. Years would have to elapse before civil servants could be trained to the work. This opinion, which had been endorsed by the present head of the Department, whom he had consulted on the matter, was expressed by the late General Cameron in the following terms:—

"I do not think it would be possible to complete the Survey of the whole of England and Wales in nine years.

"There would be great difficulty in obtaining the additional number of Sappers which would be required, for we cannot get a sufficient number of eligible men for the Survey at present, owing to which the strength of the Survey Companies has been for many years below the Establishment—and, supposing even the number of men to be forthcoming, years must elapse before they could attain to the Survey experience and efficiency of the present force. The number of civil assistants could, no doubt, be increased more readily; but, as in the case of the Sappers, the new employés would have to be trained, as no sensible numbers of trained men can ever be obtained from outside, and the process of training requires considerable time, especially in some of the branches of the Survey—the engraving, for instance.

"I do not think, therefore, that even if the annual votes for the Survey were increased considerably, the period of completion could be accelerated more than three or four years. It would entail considerable additional expense to attempt any further saving of time beyond this, and might lead to very unsatisfactory results.

(Signed)"J. CAMERON, Lt. General.

"19th May, 1878."

An examination of all the circumstances appeared to him to make it very difficult to give any promise that the Survey could be advanced as rapidly as his hon. and learned Friend (Sir Henry Jackson) wished. The Government was most anxious to advance the Survey, and he should report the matter to the Chancellor of the Exchequer with the view of getting an increased grant to do as much as could be done. Even if that additional grant were given, he was still afraid they must not expect the Survey finished in the rapid way that many hon. Gentlemen seemed to expect. The matter would have the close attention of the Government, and no effort would be wanting to try to bring the Survey to a completion.

said, the House was greatly indebted to the hon. and learned Member for Coventry (Sir Henry Jackson) for bringing this subject under the consideration of the House, and also for the favourable response it had met with. What his hon. and learned Friend urged was that this Survey, which was one of the greatest benefits that civilized Governments could confer on civilized nations, should be proceeded with as rapidly as possible. When the cadastral Survey of England was commenced, we had been the only civilized country in Europe that had not one before that. His hon. and learned Friend had got the usual stereotyped answer—the answer which, perhaps, our Representative who had gone as Special Ambassador to Constantinople would receive from the Turk—"Non possumus" —and his right hon. Friend had rather chosen to put his "Non possumus" on the score of want of skilled labour than of liberality. The right hon. Gentleman had rather horrified the House when he told them that, at the present rate, the Survey would not be completed till 18 years hence. In the first place, he had told them that all the money in the world could not hasten the operations; but later on, and warming with his subject, he had said that, at any rate, he could somehow or other, even without spending money, reduce it by three or four or even six years. He did not think the right hon. Gentleman would seriously dispute that if the grant were increased to half as much again, in due course of time— although, perhaps, not next year or the next—the work would be soon completed. The answer given by the right hon. Gentleman amounted simply to this —that the Government admitted the importance of the question, but were not inclined to increase the Civil Service Estimates by adding largely to the Vote. One hon. Member (Mr. Rowley Hill) had referred to Scotland, and said that England should press this question on the Government in the same way as Scotland had done, whereby they had secured a complete Survey before England. He wished, as a Scotchman, to explain the real history of the matter to the hon. Member, in order to show him what a long-suffering and patient race the Scotch were, and what injustice they had put up with. The whole of England, with the exception of the six Northern counties, was surveyed before a sapper had done anything in Scotland. This led to a Commission being appointed in 1851 to consider the subject of a Scotch Survey, and at that time they were disposed to be content if they could get only a one-inch map, as the whole country up to that period was quite unsurveyed. It was deemed advisable to have a six-inch map also; but the Commission condemned the six-inch map, and then the question had to be re-considered when his right hon. Friend (Mr. Gladstone) was Chancellor of the Exchequer. His right hon. Friend was then a Liberal-Conservative, and so was he. They were both in Lord Aberdeen's Government. He, happily in his stupidity, had remained pretty much what he was, not having been able with his limited vision to see those lights which constantly broke on the vision of his right hon. Friend. However, at that time his right hon. Friend, as Chancellor of the Exchequer, referred the matter to him, and in considering what should be done, the best advice was called in by the Treasury, and they came to the conclusion that a great error had been committed originally in not having had a proper cadastral Survey at the time of the Tithe Commutation Acts. The most important question was that of the scale on which the maps were to be, whether it should be one of 26 inches or of 25 inches to the mile. He fully agreed with the hon. and learned Member for Coventry that the question was one of great importance in connection with the transfer of land, and he hoped that the House would press the subject on the Government's attention.

was much disappointed at the answer of the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Commissioner of Works, in which he thought there was "as much won't as can't." The right hon. Gentleman had said there was great difficulty in getting skilled labour. But if more money were forthcoming, who could doubt that the labour would be forthcoming? They were led to hope that next year a good system of transfer of land would be introduced, and yet the House was told that the Survey would not be completed till 1898. The present system of land transfer was disgraceful to the country; and he had read in a book of Mr. Caird's that the legal expenses attending the transfer of land were equal to a charge of several years' purchase on the land of England. An essential preliminary to a good system of land transfer was that there should be a proper map; and if they had only the courage to start on right principles, and had some person recorded as the freeholder of every acre of land in the country, there could be no difficulty. What was wanted was more courage, so that difficulties might be overcome, not avoided by doing nothing and saying that nothing could be done. He was astonished to hear about 1898. One could hardly believe one was living in the 19th century, when one heard, after working at this Survey for 25 years, they were to wait 18 years more for its completion. The fact was that the work ought to be done at a blow, even if that were not possible in some very short space of time; and the House would gladly vote the money instead of wasting time and money in the way things were being done. He trusted that more attention would be given to the matter than had been the case in the time past, for in 1869 almost precisely the same statement had been made by Mr. Ayrton as was now made by the First Commissioner of Works. He thought the thanks of the House were due to the hon. and learned Member for Coventry for bringing the subject before the House.

said, he had not intended to make any observations on the subject; but the statement made by the right hon. Gentleman the First Commissioner was so extraordinary, that he felt bound to say that he thought the figures given to the right hon. Gentleman must have been furnished to him by a gentleman who was thoroughly incompetent. In the present age, when it was considered that they had a high class of talent—in fact, he might almost say that they had too much talent—he ventured to disagree with the right hon. Gentleman when he said that it was impossible to get gentlemen who were competent to discharge the duties of completely surveying England. Most hon. Gentlemen would be aware that when a Water Bill or a Gas Bill or a Railway Bill, or any Bill involving large interests, was coming before the Committee, there was any quantity of talent to be obtained both for and against the promoters. The sappers and miners had produced a large number of clever and able men, and many of these men were now in private employment, and their services could be obtained. There was another institution which produced a great number of able men, and that was the Valuation Staff in Ireland, presided over by Sir Richard Griffith, many of them as good men as England had ever seen. He thought there would be no difficulty among those men in obtaining a sufficient amount of talent to survey every county in England. With regard either to buildings or men, there were plenty of either to be had if they were required. He believed that the House was ready, and even anxious, to provide the means for completing so important a work as that under discussion. If they advertised in any county in Ireland for a county surveyor, and the appointment was open to competition, he ventured to say that for a situation worth only from £100 to £400 or £500 a-year there would be hundreds of applicants, and that was sufficient to contradict what the right hon. Gentleman had said about the difficulty of obtaining skilled men. There was another fact which would make them not satisfied with the prospect of the Survey not being completed before 1898. It was that most hon. Gentlemen in the House, and most gentlemen who took an interest in the legislation of the country, agreed that they must have some new land laws and some legislation on the subject, and the beginning of the end of the evil in regard to conveyance of land was a good map. He ventured to say that if the right hon. Gentleman at the head of the Department was willing to have the work done, and the House was willing to grant the money, plenty of good men could be found to do the work.

said, that the people of Wales had paid a large sum towards the Survey, and until it was completed they would derive no benefit from it. The counties which had the most active Representatives in that House had been the first to benefit by the Survey, because they had worried the Government. In Wales they had been backward in that respect, and consequently they were punished. It was absurd to say that there was not sufficient men for the work at a time when many surveyors were without employment. He prophesied that if surveyors were advertised for, from 150 to 200 applicants would come forward without delay. If the Chancellor of the Exchequer would give him the requisite sum of money, he would undertake to have the Survey completed in five years. To talk of 18 years as being necessary to its completion was simply childish. Why, more than one-half of them would be dead before then. The most expensive part of the work was finished, as the thinly-populated counties were the only parts of the country now requiring attention. He hoped the First Minister of the Crown would give his attention to this matter, and insist on the work being pressed forward with adequate promptitude.

suggested that the sum required should be raised by the issue of Terminable Annuities and the amount spread over the period of 20 years, which it was said the work would take at its present rate of progress; £100,000 a-year would balance in that time the sum of £2,000,000. That would get rid of the money difficulty; and, no doubt, skilled civilians might be obtained if the money were forthcoming, so that the work could be speedily got through. He hoped the Government would give the House reason to expect that something would be done next year.

said, it was with some regret that he had heard the right hon. Gentleman (Mr. Adam) explain to the House that the resources of Great Britain were incapable of supplying sufficient strength for completing the Survey of the parts of England yet unsurveyed in less than 18 years. It was a disgrace to the country that such a statement should have to be promulgated. It had already been going on for the last 40 years. The right hon. Gentleman said there were difficulties in the way; but that was always the cry raised by the Departments when any proposal was made to change the system which had hitherto prevailed. Apart from the necessity of having the Survey promptly completed with the view of providing facilities for the transfer of land, he thought there was some reason to complain that, although the Survey of Scotland was completed two and a-half years ago, it appeared that the right hon. Gentleman had no force adequate to complete the engraving of the maps. The money, therefore, which had been expended during many years in completing the Survey of Scotland was wholly unproductive of any good to Scotland, and must remain so till those maps were given to the public. If the right hon. Gentleman had economy in view, he would point out to him that he might expect considerable returns from sales of the maps, if he would only complete them. He thought it was very hard that although the Survey of Scotland was completed two and a-half years ago, the maps of more than three-fourths of the Kingdom were not yet published. He thought nothing more discreditable than that could be conceived. If it was said the resources of Great Britain were not sufficient to complete the Survey and engraving of these maps, then the House of Commons had better not trust to any Department, but advertise for the work being done by contract. If the offer was made to engravers throughout the country to engrave the maps of all Scotland, it would be done at, perhaps, considerably less expense, and in a less number of months than the right hon. Gentleman wanted years. He trusted the"Non possumus" ground of argument adopted by the Government would not prevail, otherwise they would be disgraced in the eyes of foreigners by professing their inability to accomplish a task which only needed energy and attention.

did not wish it to be supposed he had said that the 25-inch map had been completed. He believed there were five counties not yet ready for the engravers.

observed, that according to the Report of the Survey presented to Parliament, the whole of Scotland was completed by the 31st of September 1878.

said, that with regard to the abstract proposition there could be no doubt. Anybody who knew anything about real property law was aware that the difficulty of identifying land was a great obstacle in the way of its cheap and simple transfer, and a really good map would in nine cases out of ten obviate that difficulty. On one occasion within his own experience the identification of a farm which he disposed of was made by means of an Ordnance map, and the entire expense was 4s. 1d. He was perfectly prepared to agree with those who contended that it was of the greatest possible consequence that the cadastral Survey should be pushed on. Without a good map they could not have a good system of land registration and land transfer; but there were practical difficulties in the way of giving effect at once to the proposal of his hon. and learned Friend behind him. The question, after all, was one of money, and if the House wanted to have the thing done it must be prepared to pay for it. For himself, he admitted that, in his opinion, it would be one of the best investments for money which could be found; but to say that it was possible that the Survey could be completed in three or four or five years was, he thought, going too far. He was sure that the House might safely leave the matter in the hands of the Government, than whom nobody could have a greater interest in the completion of the Survey.

also bore testimony as to the value of the Survey, but thought there was a disposition to attach too much importance to the military as distinguished from the civil element, and that if more regard was had to the latter a good deal of the difficulty would disappear. He could confirm all that had been said as to the necessity of completing the map if the transfer of land was to be facilitated. He believed if the First Commissioner of Works were to consult the body of Civil Engineers on the subject, they would put him in the way of finding a sufficient number of competent persons to prosecute the Survey.

referred to what took place in the year of the railway mania, when there was no difficulty experienced by the promoters of several thousand miles of railways in getting a sufficient number of surveyors and engravers to prepare maps that in their accuracy satisfied the Committees of the House. In Canada the Government had had the whole Dominion accurately mapped out. He did not think there would be any difficulty in completing the Survey in a very short time. If the Chancellor of the Exchequer would only provide them with the money, they could soon get it done. It was impossible to overrate its importance, and it was not creditable to this country that it should be so far behind others in this respect. In his opinion, money expended for that purpose would be the best outlay they had had for a long time.

said, that in his own experience he knew of a Welsh county, the Survey of which had been commenced some years ago and then suspended, owing to the surveyors being called off to other service. The work had not been since resumed.

pointed out that at the present moment he was very much in the position of the late Chancellor of the Exchequer—he had not a shot in the locker. He did not suppose anybody imagined that it would be in the power of the Government to deal with the subject at the present time by a Supplementary Estimate. It was not in their power, and they could not undertake it. They could not organize any of the measures which might be necessary for the extension of the present machinery and operations in such a manner as to enable them to deal with it this year. The question must be looked at, therefore, rather with reference to the future. As to the future, he was not able to give the opinion he might give if he had great practical experience in the matter. Very important questions had been raised as to the method of extending the staff now employed in doing the work and training new men for it. It had also been suggested that the Government might go into the open market and endeavour to get the assistance of professional civil engineers and those whom they employed. Upon these suggestions he would not give any opinion at present. With regard to the second, he was not aware as to what amount of practical difficulty might arise in endeavouring to combine the highest skill and training of a Public Department with those who might be called volunteers. It had also been argued that an additional staff should be trained. But the training of apprentices could only go on at a certain rate, and there would be danger of their finding themselves, when the work came to an end, with a larger staff than they could profitably employ, and anyone who remembered the extreme liberality of Parliament towards those whose services were dispensed with would see that this involved a very serious question. The Government would not, in their desire to meet the wishes of the House, overlook the gravity of the considerations they had to deal with. On the other hand, having stated these difficulties, he frankly made the admission, or rather the assertion, that the possession of a good cadastral map was quite essential to the establishment of a sound, easy, and cheap system of land transfer, and was a matter of the greatest value to any country, and it was a subject which commended itself to the Government with special urgency, because they had undertaken, with a strong sense of public obligation, to fulfil that undertaking, to examine the questions connected with the holding of land, in view of improving the conditions under which it was held, and the state of those who held it, and of benefiting the country at large. The House would be good enough to bear in mind that it was quite a mistake to suppose that nothing had been done for the purpose of extending the operations of the Survey. He had not a minute account of the annual Votes given for a series of years for the conduct of the Ordnance Survey. But the present annual Vote was £133,000, and that was a sum double what used to be voted at a former period. Therefore, the extension of these operations was not to be considered a matter that was always restricted by the Government. On the contrary, successive Governments had always been willing to extend them. He thought he had said all that his hon. and learned Friend could expect to extract from him; and he should be sorry that the declaration he had made, though general in its terms, should be found hereafter to remain without fruit.

intimated his readiness to withdraw the Amendment. ["No, no!"]

desired to say that in the event of the Question going to a division, while the Government would vote for the Previous Question, they did not want it to be supposed that doing so in any way pledged them for the future.

, in rising to draw attention to the condition of children in Irish Workhouses; and to move—

"That it is expedient that immediate steps be taken to remove poor children from the evil influences consequent upon association with adult paupers, and to provide them with an adequate system of industrial training,"

said, that this was not the first occasion on which he had had the honour of bringing forward that question in that House. Twice before he had laid the case of the poor children in Irish workhouses before the consideration of the Government and the House, and upon the last occasion that he did so the Government had consented to the appointment of a Committee to consider what steps it would be advisable to take in regard to the matter. But it was late in the Session, and it was thought well not to press too much the appointment of that Committee; and, therefore, the matter had rested until the present occasion. The first point to which he wished to direct the attention of the House was that in regard to the condition of children in Irish workhouses there was very great disparity in the arrangement existing in Ireland and in England. He had no desire altogether to praise the workhouse system in England; but he must admit that some very material progress had been made in advancing the condition of children in English workhouses, and he thought it would be found to consist mainly in two points, and first in the fact that the children had been separated from the adult paupers, and in many of the English Unions had been removed to districts far from the workhouse. That was a plan which had been adopted in the Metropolis, in Birmingham, and in Manchester, and others of the principal towns in England were following in the same direction. The other point of progress was that an attempt had been made to apply a system of industrial training in order to give the children a chance in the world on leaving; but he feared from all he knew that the children in Ireland had not got that chance. Now, there was in the Irish workhouses an almost entire absence of any attempt whatever to supply the children with industrial training, and that was proved to be the case from evidence not given upon mere hearsay, but which came from responsible officials and clerks of Unions, in their evidence given some two years ago before a Commission appointed to inquire into the state of the workhouses. The Poor Law Inquiry Commission sat some two years ago under the presidency of Major Trench, and the system of industrial training in workhouses was fully gone into. Among other queries addressed to the clerks of Poor Law Unions was—"What system of industrial training have you in the workhouse?" To this question the answer was repeatedly—"None whatever." The clerk to the Killarney Union said that a boy was employed in tailoring, another shoe-making, and a dozen or so were occasionally employed in the workhouse garden; but it was usually found that no employment was given, with the exception of the occasional weeding of the garden, sometimes pompously translated "the pursuit of agriculture." The result of the absence of industrial training was, he was sorry to say, that the children were brought up in idleness and ignorance. This was a strong assertion, but it was true; for how could the children fill up their time when the}' were left for many hours entirely without supervision? They were thrown on their own resources, and then they corrupted one another, the more innocent being corrupted by those more skilled in life. This was particularly the case owing to the entire want of supervision. A Roman Catholic priest, writing to a gentleman who was much interested in this question, said a considerable number of workhouse children were illegitimate, and it was not rare for the children of one mother to have four or five different fathers. The women took refuge with their children in the workhouses in the winter, and in the warm weather they went out to work or beg, and the children became quite familiar with their mothers' habits of life, and were utterly demoralized. A number of such families came together in the workhouse in the winter, and it was no use to expect that the efforts of teachers and chaplains could undo the work that had been done. In some Unions, again, the children were locked into a ward for 12 hours to sleep without anyone to look after them. But worse than this was the fact that, owing to the want of classification, the children were continually associated with the adult paupers, who, in many cases, had brought themselves to the workhouse by absolute recklessness, if not by vice. The children, unfortunately, in some workhouses occupied the same day rooms with the adult paupers; and, further, for the sake of miserable and paltry economy, some of the worst characters were employed to nurse the aged and young women. Then in Ireland the system was that any girls remaining in the house after they were 15 years of age were permitted to go from the children's quarters to the common day room, and associate with persons of the lowest class—with harlots and thieves; and their education in vice, if there was anything wanting, was very soon completed. The result could be nothing but a harvest of crime, and the perpetuation of a race of paupers to become a burden on the ratepayers of the country. The Local Government Board gave no facts or figures, so that the results could not be positively followed; whereas, in England, an accurate list was kept of all children who passed through reformatories and industrial schools, and the children were followed, so that, speaking last year on the subject, the late Secretary of State for the Home Department was able to tell the public of England that from 1856 to 1878, by the action of such schools on the juvenile population of the country, juvenile crime had been decreased 50 per cent. But the reports of clerks in Unions told what, in the judgment of those experienced officials, were the results of the present system. One said that only in a few cases he knew children so reared to turn out well. Another said that the children grew up lazy, and preferred living in idleness to working. Another said that, speaking from an experience of 27 years, he thought workhouses were the worst possible places to bring up children in. Colonel Chichester, whose name was well known to persons interested in the subject, had taken great pains to obtain the opinion of chaplains of workhouses—Presbyterian, Protestant, and Roman Catholic—and their statements were published with the authority of their names. One described the national workhouses as cesspools; another said that the boys turned out idle and came back to the house, while the girls made shipwreck early. A Roman Catholic chaplain described the present system as depraving and pernicious, and a Protestant chaplain said it was almost certain ruin to female virtue, and that all feelings of delicacy were forgotten. It might be said that these opinions were out of date; but they had been confirmed within the last few weeks by the master of the Limerick Workhouse, where the Guardians were up and doing. That official had recently stated that of 500 girls who had passed through the female school in the last 12 or 15 years, 50 fell from virtue, 12 were prostitutes, 7 had been convicted of various workhouse offences, and 43 became habitual inmates of the workhouse. Only one voice was raised to defend the system, and that was the voice of Government officials, the Inspectors; but even among those gentlemen there was one, Captain Hamilton, whose name was universally respected in the South of Ireland, who had stated that the whole workhouse system of Ireland must be remodelled, and had re-| commended that children of a certain age should be trained in Union industrial schools, the influence of which he thought was next to that of a good home and domestic life. Although he (Mr. Moore) believed that to be the general feeling throughout the country, he would not make a very large proposition at present, but would put a small practical issue to the House. He knew so important a question could not be attempted to be discussed in this short Session; but he would take upon himself the opportunity of indicating one or two plans by which he thought reform could be carried out. He wished to divide the children in workhouses into two classes—those who sought a temporary shelter there owing to poverty or sickness, and whose parents were still alive, and might afterwards maintain them; and those who were orphans and deserted children. He would not attempt to suggest any plan for dealing with the former, knowing the difficulty of the matter; but in the case of the orphans and deserted, there was a positive necessity for dealing with them, for they must not be allowed to be thrown upon the tender mercies of workhouse officials. In this time of distress he was not prepared to suggest anything which would throw any heavy extra burden upon the ratepayers; and, therefore, he would put a modest proposal before the Chief Secretary, whose appointment had given so much satisfaction in Ireland, as the best thing he could do, to give Boards of Guardians power to send orphans and deserted children to industrial schools, contributing for their maintenance the same amount as they cost in the workhouse. Such a proposal had been carried into effect in New York, France, and other places, with great success; and he would, therefore, conclude by earnestly commending his proposition to the consideration of the Government and the country.

said, he was afraid that if the proposal of the hon. Member for Clonmel (Mr. A. Moore) were adopted a very heavy increase of taxation would have to be borne by the Irish ratepayers, inasmuch as the Guardians would have to pay a much larger sum for the support of the children in the industrial schools than was necessary for their maintenance in the workhouse. He did not see either what advantage there would be in training up children as artizans, when that class of labour was sufficiently abundant. The children were mostly the children of agricultural labourers, and would, in the ordinary course of things, be labourers themselves. He thought the contaminating influence of adult paupers on the children, if its removal was all that was required, might be easily met, without sending them to industrial schools, by keeping the children from the adults in the workhouses themselves; but he would point out that in the very best classes of schools, as everybody knew, there was a grave moral danger which resulted from the mere accumulation of children. The hon. Gentleman's classification was imperfect, and any attempt to deal with the question, having regard only to orphan and deserted children, would be imperfect, and any expense which should be incurred in carrying it out could only result in failure. They had tried in Ireland, to some extent, the boarding-out system, and so far as it had gone it had been a success, and had been found to work fairly well. That was the experience of most Boards of Guardians, and he should be glad to see the system extended beyond its present limits. Indeed, in an extension of that system, rather than in the direction suggested by the hon. Gentleman, would be found to lie the solution of the question. For instance, he thought that a widow or widower, in poor circumstances, with several children, might be allowed to send them to be boarded out. The English had had a great experience of the relative merits of the two systems; and, as far as the Reports of the Local Government Board went, the boarding-out system seemed to be preferable. He should regard with considerable anxiety the introduction of the experiment into district industrial schools in Ireland, because of the expense which it would throw upon the ratepayers, who, at the present time, could not afford to pay any additional taxation. He thought, in conclusion, that the matter was one that might very fairly be inquired into by a Committee representing the different shades of Irish public opinion. If such a Committee were granted, the greatest advance would have been made in the solution of the question.

said, that the hon. Member who had brought the Motion forward (Mr. A. Moore) had made an interesting speech, and called their attention to the condition of the children, which certainly demanded it. He (Mr. W. E. Forster) hoped that he should not be blamed if he said that he did not feel that he was then in a position to give a very clear opinion as to the merits of his hon. Friend's proposal, or as to the question generally, as he required some further time to study the circumstances of the case. In the first place, he should have to find out more completely than he could ascertain from the present discussion what was the exact position of the children, how many of them were fluctuating, and how many were the children of paupers in workhouses. They were two very distinct classes. Then the hon. Member made a proposal with regard to industrial schools. He felt that he could hardly say whether these children should be sent to these schools till he knew more about them, and what sort of schools precisely they were. It was quite true that the Poor Law Inspectors, in their Reports for last year, admitted that there was necessity for some improvement, and that it should be, to some extent, in the direction suggested by his hon. Friend. The Report of the Commission alluded to by his hon. Friend also certainly contemplated special schools in large cities, and the better administration of schools in rural Unions. He feared, however, that the Commissioners were too sanguine, considering how very difficult it had been found in England to give pauper children a really beneficial education. The antecedents of the pauper class were usually so disadvantageous to the child, that mere instruction in a good school did not counteract or efface their influence, though that fact only made every possible exertion on their behalf still more imperative. He should make it his business, when he went to Ireland, to find out why the Report had not been acted on more extensively. The expense of industrial schools would probably be somewhat heavy, judging from what he knew of such institutions in London; but he would look into the matter thoroughly. in the hope of finding it possible to send the children both of the towns and of the rural workhouses to good schools in the districts. Very likely these schools might be established more economically in Ireland than in England; but this year was not exactly the time at which they could set them to work. In that country the proportion of the rural population to that of the cities was very much larger than it was in England; and he dared say that his hon. Friend was looking quite as much to the condition of the children in the rural districts as in the cities. It was a serious disadvantage to a pauper child to have no other than pauper associations. However good might be the arrangements of pauper schools, there was something about their influence and their discipline which was depressing to the children. For their after life it was better that, if possible, they should have been associated with another class of children. He felt, however, that that was not an easy question, but was one on which it would be very foolish for him now to give any very definite opinion. By the Rules of the House his hon. Friend could not take a division on his proposal; but he might rest content with having called the attention of the Government to it. For himself, he could only say that he should deem it his duty to look into the subject. It should be borne in mind that an industrial school was a quasi-criminal school, children being sent there by order of a magistrate. He was not sure that they could take hold of pauper children, and send them there in that way; although, perhaps, that difficulty might be got over. The number of orphan and deserted pauper children in Ireland was about 8,000 or 9,000 altogether. That was, no doubt, a great many more than there ought to be; but still he believed that number compared very favourably with the proportions existing in England. In conclusion, he would say that the disadvantage of having a Committee this year would be that they should be examining into the matter in what he trusted was an exceptional time and under exceptional circumstances; but if his hon. Friend found next year that no improvement had been made in consequence of the Report—and, for himself, he hoped the case would be otherwise—then he should be glad to have a Committee as early as possible, so as to obtain all the suggestions on the subject which were likely to be valuable.

said, he was perfectly satisfied that for orphan and deserted children the boarding-out system would be found to be the best. It was both the most economical, as regarded the ratepayers, and it was the best, he maintained, for the interests of the children themselves, for it replaced, as it were, the children in the position which Divine Providence meant for them, and which they had lost by the death or by the desertion of their parents. This system was peculiarly applicable to Ireland; because, from the affectionate disposition of the peasantry of the country, it had been found in almost every Union where the boarding-out system had been availed of, that when the children came to the age of 12 or 13, when the payment for them ceased, their foster parents had adopted them, and the number of the children who had been returned from boarding-out Unions was very small indeed. The children became merged in the general population. There were numberless instances of that; but, unfortunately, the board- ing-out system in Ireland had not had a fair trial. Only few Boards of Guardians boarded the children out, though they had power for some years past to board out all orphan and destitute children who, with the exception of some of the great towns, formed the great majority of the children in the workhouses. He did not think that quite half of the Unions had availed themselves of the system of boarding out; but where it had been availed of it had worked most admirably. He would suggest to his right hon. Friend that the solution of this question was to be found in a great extension of the boarding-out system in Ireland, which should at least be made compulsory on the Guardians in the case of orphan and deserted children.

observed, that he had some experience of the operation of the industrial and the workhouse schools in Ireland, and believed that the extension of the industrial school system, especially in the case of young girls, would effect one of the most desirable improvements in the condition of the Irish poor. Girls in the workhouses were obliged at the age of 15 to go into the adult ward amid women of bad character, if not actual prostitutes, and their association with such evil companions not unfrequently led to their early and utter ruin. The demoralizing results of workhouse training were, in many instances, most deplorable. The other day he received a letter from the Bishop of Raphoe, asking him to do all he could in and out of the House to promote industrial schools. He had been surprised at the objections urged to the Motion of his hon. Friend the Member for Clonmel (Mr. A. Moore) by the hon. and learned Member for Limerick (Mr. O'Shaughnessy). He thought that if that hon. and learned Gentleman had read the evidence which had been given on the subject he would have viewed the Motion in a much more favourable light, for one of the most important witnesses was the hon. and learned Member's father. Dr. O'Shaughnessy, of Limerick. The Rev. Mr. O'Dwyer had said that it would be better for a virtuous girl under 18 to starve than to enter the workhouse; and Dr. O'Shaughnessy had stated that at the age of 15, if there were not a separation of the adult classes, he feared that the case was hopeless. He (Mr. Callan) had found everywhere a united opinion that an extension of the industrial school system, more especially in the case of young girls, was one of the most desired improvements in the condition of the Irish poor. Such were some of the unfortunate results of workhouse training. Take the case of a widow and her two daughters who went into the streets to beg, as the right hon. Gentleman the Chief Secretary for Ireland stated; they were taken before a magistrate, and the two daughters were sent to an industrial school, where they were taught a useful trade, being kept in the school until they were 16 years of age, and then when they left the school they were able to command a good price for their skill at the trades they had been put to. If, however, they were kept in the workhouse, they would have been sent into the adult ward, where, as stated by Presbyterians and Roman Catholics, they would learn nothing but idleness. A girl who was not a quasi-criminal, whose mother went into the workhouse, was turned adrift to earn her bread without knowing any trade on the same occasion. When in the North of Ireland he brought the matter before Dr. Logne, the Bishop of Raphoe, and his Lordship said that no later than the previous day he saw a woman who came to beg, and he asked her why she did not go into the workhouse, where the children would be taught reading and writing, when she replied she would sooner let them starve on the wayside than subject them to the horrors of a workhouse. That was not the fault of the workhouse officials, whom he had found to be most attentive and careful; it was the effect of the system; and he hoped and trusted that the Chief Secretary for Ireland, on paying his next visit to the country of his adoption, would endeavour to ascertain the two great difficulties that stood in the way—namely, the difficulty of cost and the quasi-criminal difficulty. The Bill that would come before the House on the 23rd June had for its object the apprenticing of workhouse children from the age of 10 to 16 to the managers of industrial schools; and he wascertain the more the light hon. Gentleman examined into the matter, the more he would be convinced of the necessity, not of having a special Committee of Inquiry, but of placing himself in communication with the chiefs of the Local Government Board in Ireland, and those who, like his hon. Friend, took an interest in the question; and if the right hon. Gentleman would do that, he (Mr. Callan) was sure that between himself and the Attorney General for Ireland an arrangement would easily be come to that would have the effect of removing all the disabilities that at present attached to the system that prevented Guardians sending the workhouse children to the industrial schools.

, in rising to call attention to the Revenue of India, derived from the cultivation of the poppy and the traffic in opium, and the duties levied thereon; and to the position of the relations between this country and China in relation to the trade in opium, said, that he was precluded by the Forms of the House from moving the Motion which he had placed upon the Paper—namely—

"That this House is of opinion that Her Majesty's Government, whilst asking admission into China for all exports from Great Britain, India, and British Possessions on the terms granted to the most favoured nation, should not, in carrying out existing or negotiating new Treaties, insist upon terms facilitating the introduction of opium, which the Government of China is unwilling to grant; and this House is also of opinion that Her Majesty's Government should encourage the Government of India to take steps for their gradual withdrawal from participation in the cultivation of the poppy and manufacture of opium, and dependence on a revenue derived from its cultivation and transit."

He should offer no apology to the House for again bringing before it the question of the opium trade. The difficult position of the Indian Government with regard to the revenue derived from opium was pretty well known; but he was compelled to make it part of the case which he proposed to lay before the House. The subject had come before the House, from time to time, in connection with recent transactions with Burmah and China, and occasionally in the debates upon Indian finance; but there had been no specific opium debate since the one which took place at the instance of the hon. Member for the Wigtown Burghs (Mr. Mark Stewart), in the early life of the last Parliament—in the year 1875. If his hon. Friend had not been subjected to those exigencies which were inseparable from representa- tive institutions he would have introduced the question that night; and, as it was, his hon. Friend would supply any omissions that might be made in the statement which he (Mr. Pease) was about to make. Putting Party feeling aside, he was glad to see his hon. Friend back again in his place in that House. The controversy upon the opium traffic had not been the inheritance of any one particular Government. It had been before various Administrations, and had not been, he was glad to say, the monopoly of either side of the House. Hon. Members on both sides of the House had taken part in it, and none more effectually and with greater advantage to the House than his much lamented Friend, the late Mr. Russell Gurney. He admitted that, having regard to the present financial position of India, the question was a difficult one to deal with. At the same time, our position towards China and the Chinese people had been and was one which it was impossible to justify. It was opposed to the precepts of the religion we professed, and at variance not only with international, but moral law. Many statesmen had, from time to time, indicated their feeling in regard to the question. The right hon. Gentleman at the head of the Government, in speaking of the first China War, said—

"Although the Chinese were undoubtedly guilty of much absurd phraseology, of no little ostentatious pride, and of some excess, justice, in my opinion, is with them; and whilst they, the Pagans, the semi-civilized barbarians, have it on their side, we, the enlightened and civilized Christians, are pursuing objects at variance both with justice and religion."

In 1879, in the debate upon the Indian Budget, the Prime Minister made use of the following words:—

"The revenue from opium is not to be counted upon like the revenue from land, or like that from salt, which, be it objectionable or not, is under our control. The opium revenue we may accept with more or loss compunction and regret as ministering to our present necessity; but we have no right to reckon upon its full continuance."—[3 Hansard, ccxlvi. 1744.]

This very year, in reply to the hon. Member for Guildford (Mr. Onslow), the Prime Minister said—

"The Indian revenue never can be solid and substantial so long as it is largely dependent on the opium revenue."—[Ibid., ccli. 932.]

Again, in a letter written this year the right hon. Gentleman said—

"I have witnessed three wars in China. The two first of these wars were directly connected with the opium traffic, and grew out of it; and I was among the most earnest and, I may say, the most determined opponents of both those wars."

Lord Salisbury, the late Minister for India, addressing a deputation in 1876, said—

"The Government does not view with any favour an extension of the system, and there is no project of the kind in existence. Without taking the view as to its moral condemnation which is held by many persons present, I feel that there are inconveniences of principle connected with it which would have prevented any Government in the present day from introducing it. I entirely disclaim any intention to push the Bengal system farther."

The late Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs (Mr. Bourke) said—

"The opium question had often been debated in the House, and he never heard anyone say aught in favour of the traffic from a moral point of view."

The present Under Secretary of State for the Colonies (Mr. Grant Duff) admitted that—

"There was a great deal to be said against this Bengal monopoly on politico-economical grounds. He supposed no one would invent such a system now-a-days; but we did not invent the system; we inherited it from the East India Company, and carried it on in the same way."

We had even carried it on to a greater extent than the East India Company, and had brought to bear upon it the result of our advanced civilization in the way of transit and of trade. For years we had been steadily increasing the cultivation of opium. The Indian Government derived a revenue from opium from two distinct sources—one from Bengal opium, in regard to which the Government practically subsidized the cultivators; and the other, from a transit duty, which had varied from 400 rupees up to 700 rupees, or £70 per chest, upon the opium which found its way to the port of Bombay. He could not better describe the cultivation of Bengal opium than by giving a few words from the evidence of Mr. Cecil Beadon. Mr. Beadon was asked before the East India Committee—

"In what mode is the land then selected for cultivation?—When any ryot wishes to cultivate opium, he goes to the sub-agent and asks to have his name registered, his land measured, and to get a cultivation licence and the usual advance. The sub-agent makes inquiries, ascertains that the man is really bonâ fide an owner of the land which he proposes to cultivate with opium, has the land measured, and then makes the advance upon the security of the person himself to whom the advance is made and his fellow-villagers. The advance is made shortly before the sowing season. The ryot then sows his land, and when the plant is above ground the land is then measured by one of the native establishments, and if the ryot has sown all that he engaged to sow, he gets a second advance; if he has not sown so much he gets something less in proportion; or if more, he gets a little more. There is a sort of rough settlement at the second advance. Nothing further takes place till the crop is ripe for gathering, and when the ryot has gathered the crop, he collects it in vessels and takes it to the sub-agent's office, there he delivers it to the sub-agent, as the agent of the Government, and receives the full price for it, subject to further adjustment when the opium has been weighed and tested and examined at the agent's factory. The opium is then collected at the sub-agency and forwarded to the factory; there it is exposed for a considerable time in large masonry tanks, it is reduced to a uniform consistency, and made fit for the market, some for home consumption, and some for sale in Calcutta for exportation—the greater quantity for exportation. It is there packed in cases and sent to Calcutta, and in Calcutta it is sold by auction at periodical sales, and exported by merchants for consumption abroad.—Is there any regulation by which the Government limit the extension of land so cultivated, or do they always accede to every request?—It is limited according to the financial needs of the Government; it is limited entirely upon Imperial considerations. The Government of India, theoretically, at least, if not practically, decide how much opium they will bring to market; and, of course, upon that depends the quantity of land that they will put under cultivation and make advances for.—Are great precautions taken to prevent any person cultivating the land with opium without a licence?—It is absolutely prohibited."

In 1835 the net revenue derived from the trade was £838,000; 10 years afterwards it had increased to £2,181,000; in 1854–5, 10 years later, to £3,333,000; in 1864–5 to £4,984,000; 1874–5 to £6,215,000; and in 1877–8 to £6,521,000. The estimate for 1878–9 was £7,584,000; for 1879–80, £6,500,000; and for 1880–81, £7,250,000. Thus, in less than 40 years, there had been an advance from £2,181,000 to £7,250,000, or more than £5,000,000. The percentage of the Indian Revenue derived from opium was in round figures from 1800 to 1820, 4·77 percent; 1820 to 1840, 7·66; 1840 to 1860, 14·69 percent; 1860 to 1870, 16·17 per cent; and last year it was nearly 17 percent. The Bengal Revenue for 1877–8 was £3,773,960. The land, against the wish of the ryots, had been more and more occupied by poppy cultivation. In 1872–3 there were 517,000 acres under cultivation; in 1873–4, 456,069; and in 1874–5, 543,541 acres. The trade had been almost entirely with China. In 1833–4, out of 22,785 chests exported, China got 21,000; in 1843–4, 30,000 out of 34,800; 1853–4, 60,000 out of 66,900; in 1863–4, 62,000 out of 70,800; and in 1873–4, 80,000 out of 88,600. These figures showed that the Indian Government had been more and more dependent upon the income derived from fostering this trade, and less dependent upon its own legitimate sources of Revenue. He came now to the most important part of the subject—namely, our dealings with the Chinese in reference to this traffic. He declined to judge our transactions with the Chinese by the low standard of the financial wants of our East Indian Empire. As a Christian nation we must deal with such a question on certain laws laid down by that Gospel in which almost everyone in the country believed — by that high moral law and International Law which civilized nations observed or ought to observe. In our dealings with China he was prepared to prove that we had violated every principle of the Christian religion, of International Law, and of moral law. In 1840, we went to war with China because the people of China, after protesting against the traffic, at length seized the opium at Lin-tin belonging to English merchants. They only did that which we did every day in the Thames when we seized smuggled tobacco and destroyed it. They seized the opium illicitly brought into Chinese waters and destroyed it, and in retaliation we went to war with them—burnt their ships, destroyed their buildings, killed their people, and then, as usual, we made a Treaty. By that Treaty we acknowledged the power of the Chinese to prohibit the introduction of opium. Speaking in 1840, the present Prime Minister said—

"They gave you notice to abandon your contraband trade. When they found that you would not, they had a right to drive you from their coasts on account of your obstinacy in persisting in this infamous and atrocious traffic. You allowed your agent to aid and abet those who were concerned in carrying on that trade; and I do not know how it can be urged as a crime against the Chinese that they refused provisions to those who refused obedience to their laws whilst residing within their territories. A war more unjust in its origin, a war more calculated to cover this country with disgrace, I do not know, and I have not read of. The right hon. Gentleman opposite spoke of the British flag waving in glory at Canton. That flag is hoisted to protect an infamous contraband traffic; and if it were never hoisted except as it is now hoisted on the coast of China we should recoil from its sight with horror."

The second war arose out of the smuggling of opium. The Chinese seized the lorcha Arrow, a vessel of the pirate class that was engaged in smuggling. It was distinctly proved that she was not under the protection of the British flag at the time she was seized; but we, nevertheless, went to war with China and destroyed her ships, her people, and her buildings, as usual, and simply because she had done that which by the law of nations she was clearly entitled to do. He declined to enter into a history of that war, detestable as it was in its origin and its effects. We sent out Lord Elgin to China, and he made a Treaty in which he insisted on opium being received as an article of traffic. The smuggling trade was to be done away with; but only by forcing China to take that which she had formerly prohibited. She was forced to take it at the point of the bayonet. The Chinese Commissioner, Keveilang, pleading with Lord Elgin for some forbearance as to carrying into execution certain of the Articles, wrote as follows:—

"When the Chinese Commissioner negotiated a Treaty with your Excellency at Tien Tsin, British vessels of war were lying in that port; there was a pressure of an armed force, a state of excitement and alarm, and the Treaty had to be signed at once without a moment's delay. Deliberation was out of the question; the Commissioners had no alternative but to accept the conditions forced upon them."

That was taken from the Correspondence relative to Lord Elgin's Mission. Lord Elgin himself freely acknowledged the correctness of this description of the situation. He said the concessions obtained in the Treaty from the Chinese Government were not in themselves extravagant; but in the eyes of the Chinese Government they amounted to a revolution. They had been extorted, therefore, from its fears. Sir Rutherford Alcock, the late British Minister at Pekin, confirmed this view—

"To keep as clear as possible of all foreign Governments is a very natural desire on the part of those who have thrice in a single generation had objectionable Treaties imposed upon them at the point of the bayonet."

Our present Minister in the Chinese Metropolis, Sir Thomas Wade, expressed himself most emphatically to the same purport—

"Nothing that has been gained was received from the free will of the Chinese. The concessions made to us have been from first to last extorted against the conscience of the nation in defiance—that is to say, of the moral convictions of its educated men—not merely of the office-holders, whom we call Mandarins, and who are numerically but a small proportion of the educated class, but of the millions who are saturated with the knowledge of the history and philosophy of their country."

In 1869 the Chinese Government desired the English Government to put in force one of the Articles of the Treaty of Tien Tsin, made at the close of the second war, which stipulated that the Treaty might be revised every 10 years; but we had steadily declined to do anything of the kind, and, having got our pound of flesh in the bond with China, we steadily adhered to it. Sir Rutherford Alcock and the Chinese Government held lengthened negotiations, and in a despatch the Chinese Government said—

"The Chinese merchant supplies your country with his goodly tea and silk, conferring thereby a benefit upon her; but the English merchant poisons China with pestilent opium. Such conduct is unrighteous. Who can justify it? What wonder if officials and people say that England is wilfully working out China's ruin, and has no real friendly feeling for her. The wealth and generosity of England is spoken of by all; she is anxious to prevent and anticipate all injury to her commercial interest. How is it, then, she can hesitate to remove an acknowledged evil? Indeed, it cannot be that England still holds to this evil business, earning the hatred of the officials and people of China, and making herself a reproach among the nations, because she would lose a little revenue were she to forfeit the cultivation of the poppy. The writers hope that his Excellency will memorialize his Government to give orders in India and elsewhere to substitute the cultivation of cereals or cotton. Were both nations to rigorously prohibit the growth of the poppy, both the traffic in, and the consumption of, opium might alike be put an end to."

Sir Rutherford Alcock took that despatch to Calcutta. What happened to it we know not. All we know is that it came to England, and that it was produced before the East India Finance Committee. There, however, the whole matter seemed to have rested. The Chinese, in order to rid themselves of the burden we had imposed on them, did not end here. In 1876, owing to circumstances to which it was unnecessary to allude, a new Convention was made with China by Sir Thomas Wade, which was known as the Convention of Chefoo. The 3rd Article of that Convention re- ferred to the opium trade as follows:—

"On opium, Sir Thomas Wade will move his Government to sanction an arrangement different from that affecting other imports. British merchants, when opium is brought into port, will be obliged to have it taken cognizance of by the Customs, and deposited in bond, either in a warehouse or a receiving hulk, until such time as there is a sale for it. The importer will then pay the tariff duty upon it, and the purchasers the li-kin. In order to the prevention of the evasion of the duty, the amount of li-kin to be collected will be decided by the different Provincial Governments according to the circumstances of each."

But that article up to that moment had never been ratified. Worse than that, they had availed themselves of those Articles of the Convention which were to the advantage of English trade, and we had abstained from ratifying those of which we did not approve. In May, 1879, Lord Salisbury, replying to a Question of Lord Carnarvon in the House of Lords on the subject, said—

"The li-kin is not the ordinary taxation of the country; it is a species of octroi levied at the boundary of every Province; it is levied very-much at the discretion of the provincial Governors; they can raise it or lower it as they please, but there is always this security for the foreign trader—that as long as the collection of the duty is left in the hands of Chinese officials, smuggling, when the duty becomes high, is not a very difficult matter; and, therefore, there is a natural check upon these provincial Governors which prevents them raising li-kin to an extravagant amount. With respect to opium, this Convention proposes what undoubtedly would be a very drastic remedy—that the collection should be placed in the same hands as that which collects the Customs—that is to say, European hands. In that case smuggling would he absolutely barred, and the tax upon opium might be raised to any amount provincial Governors pleased. That would be a result which, practically, would neutralize the policy which hitherto has been pursued by this country in respect to that drug."—[3 Hansard, ccxlvi. 6–7.]

Thus, a Convention by which the Chinese sought to get rid of a drug that was demoralizing their country had not yet been ratified by the English Government, because it would be subversive of the policy of our dealings with China, which were based upon the facilities afforded for smuggling. He had now shown that in 1840 we levied an unjust war upon China, and extorted $18,000,000 from her in payment of the expenses of the war and of the opium she had destroyed; that we extorted it from China for doing that which she had a perfect right to do; that in 1860 we again made a Convention by which we forced upon her a tariff duty for opium, which she desired, above all things, to treat as a contraband article; that in 1869 we declined to revise the Treaty of Tien Tsin, and that as lately as 1879 the Minister of this country for India went down to the House of Lords and declined to ratify the 3rd Article of the Convention of Chefoo, because to do so would be to neutralize the policy we had previously pursued. We had done this wrong to China at the expense of our honest trade, because we had prevented the merchandize of England from going into China—our trade, other than opium, having shown no vitality and no extension. The Chambers of Commerce of Liverpool, Manchester, and Glasgow, had memoralized the Government to ratify the Convention of Chefoo, under which the opium trade would be put down, and our manufactures taken into China. Again, we had done this evil at the expense of our missionary enterprize with China. Since he placed the present Notice on the Paper, he had been told by a distinguished member of the Roman Catholic faith that their Missions as well as the Protestant Missions were stagnant in China. The name of a missionary was most unpopular in China. The Chinese people simply said —"You brought us opium." What could we expect when we inundated a country at the point of the bayonet with poisonous drugs and then asked her to enter within the Christian fold? And they even refused to baptize the people who used the drug that the Christians imported. He might be asked why did not China take the same line as a European country would—as Germany, France, or as America, under similar circumstances? The simple answer was that she dare not. Having had three wars with England in which we had burnt, destroyed, and bombarded her towns, they were afraid of doing more than enter a simple protest. He urged that if the Article enforced by the Treaty of Tientsin had been a blessing instead of a curse to China, we had no right to force it upon her. We were doing the people of that country a double wrong; first, in asking them to take an article which we knew to be positively injurious to them; and then, in forcing it upon them against their wishes and contrary to International Law. Should we feel disposed to enforce such a claim against America or Germany by force of arms? He might be told that it was far better to have an open trade than a smuggled trade; but we were not the people to say whether it was to be an open trade or a smuggling trade, or whether they preferred 30,000 chests of a smuggled trade to 80,000 chests of an open trade. Another argument was that, if we did not supply China with opium, somebody else would. All we had a right to insist upon was to trade with the Chinese upon the same terms as the most favoured nation. Even if other people would supply them with the drug it was no reason why we should; if other people chose to do wrong that was no reason why we should. It was almost equal to saying that we were to take blood-money because, if we did not, somebody else would commit murder. Then they were told, especially by the right hon. Member for the Elgin Burghs (Mr. Grant Duff), that this was a case of stimulants, and that we in this country had no right to find fault with the Chinese for wanting stimulants. The real question, however, was whether the Chinese wanted our stimulants, and they said they did not. Then, again, opium was a poison. The English people called it a poison, and put it in an Act of Parliament, which did not include brandy, whisky, or gin, as a poison. In Japan, we entered into an arrangement with the people, who did not wish for our opium, that they should not have it. It was altogether a forbidden traffic. It was said to be a regulated trade, and that it was regulated very beneficially. He confessed that he had not yet seen the benefit that had risen from the regulation; but he had seen and read a great deal which convinced him that it was anything but a benefit to the people of China. There was a curious despatch of the Directors of the East India Company to Lord Cornwallis as far back as 1817, which stated—

"The sentiment expressed in our despatch of 18th September, 1816, will have prepared you to expect our approbation of the measures adopted by you for the purpose of supplying from the Government stores a quantity of opium for the internal consumption of the country. We wish it, at the same time, to be clearly understood that our sanction is given to these measures, not with a view to the revenue which they may yield, but in the hope that they will tend to restrain the use of this pernicious drug, and that the regulations for the internal sale of it will be so framed as to prevent its introduction into districts where it is not used, and to limit its consumption in other places as nearly as possible to what may be absolutely necessary. Were it possible to prevent the use of the drug altogether except for the purposes of medicine, we would gladly doit in compassion to mankind."

Sir Thomas Wade, in a Memorandum of the revision of the Treaty of Tientsin, writes thus—

"It is to me vain to think otherwise of the use of the drug in China than as of a habit many times more pernicious, nationally speaking, than the gin and whisky drinking which we deplore at home. It takes possession more insidiously, and keeps its hold to the full as tenaciously. I know no case of radical cure. It has insured in every case within my knowledge the steady descent, moral and physical, of the smoker, and it is so far a greater mischief than drink that it does not, by external evidence of its effects, expose its victim to the loss of repute which is the penalty of habitual drunkenness. There is reason to fear that a higher class than used to smoke in Commissioner Lin's day are now taking to the practice."

Missionary experience extending over a long series of years gave exactly the same account of the effects of opium; and it was only this morning that he had found an extract from a paper which showed how completely the Chinese were setting themselves against the further introduction of this drug. The London and China Telegraph of May 18th, said—

"It is reported that a rising has taken place on the southern confines of Shantung, about 600 li from Chinkiang, owing to the authorities insisting on the destruction of the poppy plants. A body of cavalry was sent down the river from Chinkiang on the night of the 29th March, with instructions to proceed as quickly as possible to the seat of the disturbance."

And the same paper for June 1st gave amongst the Shanghai news the following:—

"The Provincial Governor Tan seems determined to continue his fight against opium smoking. He is the man who ruled Soochowfoo before he was promoted to his present office. He has issued proclamations, shut up opium dens, punished offenders; in short, done all that he could to put a stop to the vice. He has recently ordered a census to be taken, for the purpose of finding out the name, residence, and employment of every opium smoker in the city. He has ordered the smokers to break off the habit, and gives them three months in which they must do so. If at the end of that time they are still offending, they shall be punished."

Unfortunately, the Indian Revenue was becoming more and more dependent upon the opium trade. A few years ago it only formed 5 per cent of the Re- venue, and it had now reached 18 per cent. As soon as money was wanted the Indian Government sent out Circulars containing injunctions to "grow opium." [General Sir GEORGE BALFOUR: No, no!] His hon. and gallant Friend said "No, no;" but he could show him clearly that it was the fact, and could give him high authorities for it. On the 22nd April, 1869, the Hon W. Grey, Lieutenant Governor of Bengal, writing from Barrackpore to Mr. C. H. Campbell, said—

"I have a telegraphic message from Simla, urging that every possible expedient that you can approve should be used even now to extend the opium cultivation next season to the greatest possible extent."

Sir Richard Temple, in a Minute dated 27th April, 1869, wrote—

"I am clear for extending the cultivation and for insuring a plentiful supply. If we do not do this the Chinese will do it for themselves. They had better have our good opium than their own indifferent opium. There is really no moral objection to our conduct in this respect."

Mr. Grey, again, on the 29th April, 1869, urged increased cultivation, remarking—

"This would just suffice, and no more, to put us on smooth ground again."

Sir John (then the hon. J. Strachey) wrote from Simla on the 20th April, 1869—

"It seems to me that immediate measures of the most energetic character ought to be taken with the object of increasing the production of opium."

The hon. Member for Kirkcaldy (Sir George Campbell), in a remarkable speech, said that we regulated the trade, and by regulating it we served both God and Mammon. [Sir GEORGE CAMPBELL: I spoke, not of regulating, but of taxing the trade.] He supposed that taxing would have the effect of regulating the trade. But as to serving both God and Mammon, that seemed to him to be one of those problems which a censorious world often suggested that the countrymen of his hon. Friend were endeavouring to solve; but a higher authority than his hon. Friend had declared it impossible. It was difficult to understand how God was served in any shape or way. He contended that we did regulate the trade, and that our regulations were entirely dependent upon the wants of the Indian Government. We sent out 42,000 chests in 1874, 45,000 in 1875, 45,000 in 1876, 47,000 in 1877, and 49,000 in 1879, and we had been accumulating stock all the time. Our stock rose from 34,000 chests in 1874 to 88,000 in 1878. When India wanted money, and the finances of India were low, out came more opium. The stock in hand on the 1st of January, 1880, was 81,000 chests, and the sale in 1880 was to be 56,000 chests, instead of 49,000, and there would be 70,000 or 80,000 chests in hand at the end of the year. India was in a very dangerous position in regard to their Revenues. If China took upon herself to-morrow to say that this opium should not be brought in, and that they would be free from the Treaty of Tientsin, the English Government, even with India at its back, dare not go to war with China again in the face of the public feeling of the people of this country and of the world. No Minister who took that course could rely upon the support of the people of the country. Another risk also was run —namely, that the people of China might undertake the cultivation of the drug for themselves. If China said—"We will no longer pay you the £10,000,000 we are paying yearly for this drug, and instead of buying it of the East Indians we will cultivate it ourselves;" although they would probably produce an inferior article they would have it in their power to damage the trade essentially, and make a large inroad upon the Revenue of India. There could be no doubt that this view of the uncertainty of the Revenue had been taken by Indian statesmen from time to time, and a very remarkable Minute of Sir William Muir went into that question. Hitherto we had never dared to do right to China from a fear of losing our Indian Revenue. The noble Lord the Secretary of State for India had entered upon Office with the Revenues of India in a very disorganized condition. They were not asked this night to go into the question of the Afghan War, and to consider whether that war had been necessary or unnecessary, just or unjust. In dealing with the question now before them, they knew that the Afghan War bad to be paid for, and the noble Lord could only solace himself with the reflection that if there had been no Afghan. War there would probably have been a large surplus Revenue in India, by means of which he might have been able to deal with the question, and to limit growth and exportation of opium. The noble Lord would have to turn his attention to the finances of India; probably they had been turned in that direction already, during the comparatively few days he had held Office. He asked for no impossibilities from the noble Lord. There was a way, and comparatively a simple way, of beginning to deal with the matter; and that was to begin to do right. These great moral evils could not be redressed in a moment. A revenue of £7,000,000 could not be given up without a thought. But if the3rdArticleof the commercial section of the Convention of Chefoowere ratified, or ratified to such an extent as to give the people of China some power of suppressing the traffic; if they could gradually bring themselves to the point when the Foreign Office of this country should say to the people of China—"We shall no longer force upon you an Article of the Treaty of Tien Tsin to which you object," the desired object might be attained. If the horrid war with Afghanistan were over, and the cost paid for, the matter would soon be made to right itself, and there would soon be a surplus Revenue in India. All that he asked from the noble Lord was that he would give his best consideration to the question, and the moral evil and wrong we had been doing towards the Chinese for a period of 40 years. There could be no argument in favour of the traffic; no man could argue in favour of it upon moral grounds. The only difficulty was the financial difficulty; and the financial difficulty would have in the end to give way before the moral difficulty; because, in his humble opinion, it was impossible for a country to continue that course of injustice towards a people which had so long characterized our dealings with China. As he could not divide the House upon the Motion which stood in his name, he would be satisfied with having called attention to the subject.

My hon. Friend the Member for South Durham (Mr. Pease) has treated the subject in the most exhaustive manner, and has taken up almost every point in connection with it. Since I brought the matter forward in 1875 it has grown in importance, and ought now to engage the serious attention of the Government. I am heartily glad that it is not a Party question in any sense of the word, for hon. Gentlemen are to be found on both sides of the House who condemn the traffic in opium. I wish the noble Lord the Secretary of State for India had been in the House at the commencement of my hon. Friend's speech, in order to hear it in its entirety. Now, Sir, this question presents itself in two aspects—moral and commercial —and both these aspects have been already touched upon. I will therefore chiefly endeavour, in the remarks which I will venture to lay before the House, to take up one point which has not been touched on. It is a very important point—in fact, one of the most important points in dealing with this question—it refers to Burmah. The point is this. The Indian Government are the agents, practically speaking, through whom opium is sent into Burmah and used there. By the laws which they have made, they are responsible for permitting opium to be sent to that country; and although it is said to be done in the main to prevent smuggling, and therefore is made lawful, still on that account even we cannot, on examining the question, approve of the manner in which the traffic is carried on. Before our annexation of the country, and up to the year 1826, it was a penal offence in Burmah to grow or have anything to do with opium. It is still so in that part of the country which is not under British sway. What our Government do is this. They establish depots at various centres, and there they farm out licences to different individuals. Whoever is the highest bidder is the individual who has the advantage of selling opium and establishing a central depot himself, and these farming-out officials practice a very lucrative business. The amount which is paid to the Indian Government is 14s. 6d. for two pounds weight, or one seer. The sum for which it is sold is £3 18.?. 6d., and £1 is to be allowed for licence duty payable to the Government of Burmah. There can be no doubt that since opium has been permitted to be circulated and consumed and eaten throughout Burmah a vast amount of crime has ensued. We need only turn to the official Reports, and those of private individuals, to arrive at the truth of the statement. In the month of January, 1879, a Petition was got up to the Chief Commissioner by a very large number of inhabitants, praying that they might be relieved from this traffic. That Petition was couched in strong language: —

"If you must have revenue to this amount, take it in any other form; double the capitation tax; hut do not raise it by encouraging the spread of a vice, for the sake of indulging in which our sons are converted into robbers of their parents."

The meaning of that is simply this: that when a man once indulges in this low and base appetite, he will even rob his own family to satisfy his craving. Politically, the consequence of this state of things to us is very bad, and our rule is much disliked in Burmah. Ought we not to make our commerce with that country a blessing rather than a curse? Or are we to go forward on the same lines that have already been pursued in China? I should like to ask the noble Lord when he looks into this question, especially with regard to Burmah, if he would give the House some information —more information than we have at present— which is obtainable from our officials in that country? We cannot blame the officials in that part of the world if they share the opinions held by their superiors. There are strange stories as to the spread of the opium trade; but if the orders come from headquarters, and if the head-quarters believe that they are acting wisely in not gradually suppressing the trade, but in gradually extending it, then you cannot blame those officials who are working under this Government and reflecting their opinion. It is all important that this House should take the matter into serious consideration. If it is anxious to see this nefarious traffic extended, it is perfectly justified in allowing the continuance of the present state of things; but if, on the other hand, we lay down an absolute rule that we are not going to extend this system, but are going gradually to withdraw from the trade in as fair and equitable a manner as possible, we ought to speak with a clear and not uncertain voice, and show the officials in Burmah and the Indian Government what our views on this question really are. And, Sir, if you take the Native officials, as compared with the British officials, in that country you will find they are to a man against the extension of the opium trade. They see the dangers of it, they feel how it is degrading their countrymen, and they are more anxious, therefore, than any one in this country can possibly be, to see it entirely put a stop to. Mr. Crossthwaite, the present officiating Judicial Commissioner, attributes the increase of crime to the consumption of opium, yet you will find that very few officials will go out of their way to oppose its extension. There is only one district in Burmah in which these opium farms do not exist, and that is entirely owing to the people themselves, who have petitioned more than once against the extension of the farms to their neighbourhood. That district is Shive-gying. The opium revenue may be said to be automatic; it increases quicker than any other tax, though the increase is limited by the means of the people who tax themselves heavily. It is a very difficult matter now to get tax collectors for the ordinary Revenue. Poverty arises chiefly from opium smoking. The people will not pay their taxes, and what is a collector to do? This tax, no doubt, is more easily collected than many other more sober taxes would be; but it has this disadvantage—that there is a limit to the means of the persons buying opium, and, therefore, they cannot continue to buy the drug, except for a very short time. So that, although you may raise a large revenue for this and next year, your revenue ultimately will fall away, because the persons whom you have pauperized by this odious traffic are no longer able to come forward with money to purchase the means for their self-gratification. Then, what are the main arguments for the opium trade? It has been said by my hon. Friend that the main argument is that it is a stimulant. There is no doubt about that, or that it is a good medicine. But there is this distinction between it and alcoholic liquor—that while in one case you do not necessarily drink in order to become intoxicated, in the case of opium you do smoke it or eat it in order that you may become intoxicated. It is often said that if you object to the use of opium you ought to object to the sale and consumption of ardent spirits; but we know perfectly well that the consumption of ardent spirits does give a stimulus, and is extremely useful at times, hut opium simply intoxicates, and the unfortunate creature cannot get out of its thraldom. When once the smoker acquires the habit, his craving for opium becomes stronger and stronger, day by day. He can do nothing but smoke, and the consequence is that in time he is unable to pay his taxes, and he is imprisoned. But an opium smoker would sooner suffer death than go to prison in order to be deprived of his pipe for five or 10 days consecutively. There is another point connected with it, and that is the way in which in Burmah this drug is fostered and is diffused throughout the country. It is not done admittedly by public officials; but it is done in the way I am about to describe. Chinese pedlars get hold of a small quantity, and they go and tempt the youth of the country, and in that way a craving is formed. Now, why should not these persons be repressed, if, as it is said, the old mode of smuggling would be far better than the way in which the traffic is at present managed? We do not wish that the penalty of death, as was the old law, should be imposed for the sale or consumption of opium; but we consider that if some severe penalty were provided you would put a stop to persons trading throughout the country in the way I have mentioned, and you would have opium sold purely and solely for medicinal purposes. The Government practically say that if these persons must 6moke opium they must smoke Indian opium; they must not be allowed to smoke Chinese or any other—in short, "if they have opium at all, they shall have ours, so that the State may profit by it." There is no crime in the estimation of the Burmese greater than that of opium smoking. They view it with the greatest disapprobation. They think that the man who has once been contaminated with this vice is utterly lost, and when you see whole families ruined by it you cannot wonder at it. These Burmese are said to be a very noble people; they are, perhaps, the most noble and manly—full of strength and vigour—of any nation in that part of the world. There is another point I should like to press on the noble Lord, and that is that the Indian Blue Books should tell us a little more than at present about this matter. We find it extremely difficult —those who are interested in this subject—to ascertain what extension the sales are making, and what are the views of the officials on this subject. We hope there may be a decline and a gradual withdrawal of Government monopoly, for it all depends upon that. Would a Government monopoly in this country in ardent spirits be tolerated for one moment? Why, the first thing you, Sir, would have to do, would be to call on some hon. Member who would be in this place to bring in a Bill to abolish such a monopoly. There is a marked difference between the time that I had the honour of first introducing this question and to-night, and it is this—that since then we have had a very serious famine in China, especially in the Northern parts, and we have had whole Provinces there practically devastated and left in the most wretched possible condition. Many of the Chinese attribute that to Divine vengeance; they believe it is partly owing to growing opium in such large quantities, and now there are large tracts of country in the Province of Shan-si in which the cultivation has been almost entirely stopped. Again, in Honan and Chihli the same has happened, according to Mr. Davenport, our Consul. In the two large Provinces, Sze-chuen and Yun-nan, it is still being grown. We know one reason why it is grown. Allusion has already been made to the complaints made by Sir Rutherford Alcock, when he first came home from China. After representing the zeal and anxiety on the part of the Chinese Government to do away with the forced introduction of opium in China, he told the Viceroy of India and his Council—

"He had no doubt that the abhorrence expressed by the Government and people of China for opium, as destructive to the Chinese nation, was genuine and deep-seated; and he was also quite convinced that the Chinese Government could, if it pleased, carry out its threat of developing cultivation to any extent. On the other hand, he believed that so strong was the popular feeling on the subject, that if Britain would give up the opium revenue and suppress the cultivation in India, the Chinese Government would have no difficulty in suppressing it in China, except in the Province of Yun-nan, where its authority is in abeyance'"

Yun-nan, as everybody knows, is very far removed from the central seat of Government. It is also well known that the poppy in Yun-nan produces opium inferior in strength to the Bengal opium; therefore, while it is a great deal smoked by the poorer classes, the upper classes are always anxious to get the stronger opium which comes from India. A great deal of the finest land is taken up with this cultivation. It is reckoned that 1,000,000 acres in India alone are sowed with the poppy; and the whole argument against the Motion of my hon. Friend is this—that if you do away with it in India, the Chinese will grow far more in China. That is not our business. We want to do what we believe to be right. We want to act upon principle, and do let us try to be logical, when we have principle to guide us. What will be the consequence if the trade is stopped? We shall find ourselves deprived of that large Indian Revenue without which at present India would be, practically, bankrupt. The right hon. Gentleman the Member for the Elgin Burghs (Mr. Grant Duff), a year or two ago, called this India's "magnificent estate," and said he should be sorry when it was swept away, and suggested—

"That the British Government might prevail upon India to diminish her import of opium into China by, say, 1,000 chests a-year until it ceased altogether."

Now, that is just the Motion before the House. We know it would be the most impracticable thing to come forward to-night and ask the Government to sweep away this great monopoly, which brings into India a revenue of between £7,000,000 and £8,000,000 a-year. But we know it can be done gradually. We know that would satisfy any reasonable Member of this House, or any reasonable individual outside; and, therefore, we hope this may be taken into consideration by Her Majesty's present Government. The Prime Minister made use of words, some time ago, which I thought at the time predicted a happy ending of the question. He said—

"We have no right to reckon upon the opium revenue as if it were a domestic revenue, because it is so largely dependent on the policy and legislation of a foreign country.… The opium revenue we may accept with more or less compunction and regret, as ministering to our present necessity; but we have no right to reckon upon its full continuance."—[3 Mansard, ccxlvi. 1744.]

Sir, if we do not make a stand now, where are we to stop? It has already been pointed out to the House that thousands of chests are now being sold in comparison with the first imports about 1775. First of all, 2,000 chests of opium were sent to China by way of speculation. About 4,000 chests were exported to China in 1800; in 1824, 12,000 chests; in 1834, 20,000; and then passing on, taking an average of five years between 1834 and 1854, they were about 58,000; taking another period of five years, between 1854 and 1859, they were 74,000; between 1859 and 1864, they were 67,000; between 1864 and 1869, they were 81,772; and since that time the import from India to China has been between 80,000 and 90,000 chests. It is impossible to ignore the feeling of irritation and bitterness which exists between this country and China. Why should it exist? What did Mr. Cobden say? He said—"We do business with China easier than with any other nation." What is the case now? We are ignoring the old ground of friendly feeling with that great Empire—an Empire containing 400,000,000 inhabitants, willing to take our cotton goods, and we simply stultify our own position by adopting a position which we believe—or, at least, many of us believe—to be entirely wrong. Again, we have been reminded that the trade in opium is a great barrier to missionary work. We have undoubted testimony from gentlemen, many of whom are at this moment in this Metropolis, who assure us that the great difficulty they have in propagating the gospel of our common Christianity is this opium trade. It is a reproach levelled against them wherever they go; and the only answer they can return is that, although we send it, they are not compelled to smoke it. We know that is a very feeble answer to China. Allusion has been made to the Chefoo Convention. I do not think it will be necessary for me to go into that Treaty to-night; but I do urge the noble Lord to try and clear up, if he possibly can, this question. It has been in abeyance since 1877. We must not ignore the fact that the Chinese Government have done what they could in opening the Treaty ports and admitting freely our merchandize. I do not propose further to occupy the time of the House; but I do sincerely ask the House to give the matter their best consideration. It is a far more important question, and I believe it has ramifications far wider than any of us can now conceive. We know great complications are threatened; we know Russia may possibly come to China, and induce a vast revolution. With Russia's aid, China might be able to show a firmer front than hitherto; and therefore viewing this question commercially, morally, as well as politically, I ask the House to give its best consideration to the matter, and, when it is called upon, to give a warm and cordial support to any logically-framed proposition that may be brought before it.

said, he sympathized with a considerable part of the speeches they had heard; but he wished to correct the statement that the Government of India were striving to increase the area of the Government cultivation of opium. That was the case eight or nine years ago; but it was not the policy now, and he trusted the former policy would not be reverted to. Some injustice had been done himself in regard to his views on restricting the traffic. His idea was that there should be some check on the trade in that article. He entirely agreed with the representations that had been made as to the evil effect of opium consumption. The Government check upon the sale of opium, by raising a revenue upon it, restricted the supply, and prevented so much reaching the Chinese as would be the case under a system of Free Trade. As to Burmah, the system of sale was the same as that in India. There was, in fact, no difference between the system of granting licences at a heavy price for the sale of opium there and the system of granting licences for the sale of drink here. So long as we, did not prohibit the manufacture and sale of spirits in this country, we had no right to find fault with the Indian Government for not stopping the manufacture and sale of opium under restriction and taxation in the East. He could not justify the opium wars with China; but he argued that the Indian Government was not responsible. They arose from quarrels at the Chinese ports, which might as easily have arisen with respect to other merchandize as with respect to opium. The result of our recent policy carrying out the"Civis Romanus" idea, was to make foreign nations unwilling to receive us, our goods, or our religion. Before Englishmen were supported by English guns they were allowed by strange nations to trade with and. travel among them. But of late, and since they came to know us better, they were anxious to exclude us. Coming now to a matter more open to controversy—namely, the clause of the Treaty by which we insisted on the Chinese taking our opium at a fixed tariff, whether they liked it or not, he must leave the justification of that to Her Majesty's Ministers. The matter, however, was not so very simple as his hon. Friend seemed to suppose. He was very much struck with what he saw at an interview with a Chinese Ambassador some time ago. The Ambassador did not at all jump at the proposal to stop the opium traffic altogether, but rather seemed anxious to get the revenue from it into his own hands. He did not see that there was any real desire to induce Her Majesty's Government to abandon the traffic. If that were so, then, having the welfare of the people of India at heart, he was not prepared, out of mere Quixotic feelings, to take a step which would have the effect of depriving them of the revenue arising from this traffic without lessening the traffic. If the Chinese must be poisoned by opium, he would rather they were poisoned for the benefit of our Indian subjects than for the benefit of any other Exchequer. ["Oh, oh !"] He was by no means in favour of their being poisoned; but he repeated, that if they must be poisoned, he would rather it was for the benefit of the Indian than the Chinese Exchequer. He agreed with his hon. Friend that it was very desirable that the Indian Government should try to free themselves from dependence upon this traffic, as it was very precarious, and political events might bring it to an end. But, taking this opium revenue as a mere transit or export duty, he did not think it a source of revenue which the Indian Government should divest itself of so long as the Chinese took it. If they should, in a Quixotic spirit, limit the cultivation of it in India, they would have an increased cultivation of it arising in Persia, Turkey, and America. Speaking confidently from experience, he could say that the cultivation of opium was not injurious to the people of our own opium districts. The matter depended very much upon ethnological considerations. Some races of mankind had a natural appetite for opium, and some had not. The people of the districts where opium was grown in India did not consume the drug to a large extent. The physical and moral nature of the opium consumers was deteriorated by its use; but that was not the case with the people in the Indian opium districts. The question which, in his mind, was the real, crucial, and at present the only practical question, was the direct Government connection with the cultivation, manufacture, and sale of opium. He looked upon the direct Government connection with the traffic with great dislike. He wished to get rid of it. But, on the other hand, he believed if we raised this revenue by means of Government agents, in a manner less injurious to the people of India, to producers, and consumers than could otherwise be done, it would be rash to fly from evils that we knew to others that we knew not of. Whether it was possible for the Government of India to divest themselves of all connection with the trade was a question of extreme difficulty. We had not sufficient information on the subject. Having been connected with one side of India, and made diligent inquiry into the matter as regarded the other side, he, if anyone, had. the means of understanding the question; and yet he would not say he had been able to understand it. The Bengal side raised objections to the abandonment of the Government connection with the traffic; but in Bombay, where the Government had no connection with it, the system had succeeded, the quality of opium that went to poison the Chinese was as good, and the revenue from it, if not quite so large as in Bengal, was very large indeed. He thought, therefore, that an attempt should be made to free ourselves from direct connection. The Government withdrawal from it, however, must be gradual. Comparing the cultivation of indigo and opium, indigo was raised under a system which was free as far as British merchants were concerned; but, so far as the ryot was concerned, the system was not free, and in Behar, very great abuses had been found to exist in connection with it. Indigo was grown to a great extent under a system of compulsion. Opium growing, however, was carried on under a different system, the relations between the Government agent and the ryot who grew opium being such as resulted in benefit to the latter. Therefore, he should hesitate before agreeing to an extension of the system prevailing as regarded indigo to the case of the ryot, who devoted himself to the growth of opium. He did not think that the export of opium from India could be restricted without the imposition of a heavy duty. The direct connection of the Government might, however, to a certain extent be diminished. With this object in view, he would like to try the effect of introducing a freer system in certain districts. Let a system of free enterprize be tried in some places. Then, if the opium proved to be successfully manufactured, the revenue well collected, and the ryot were fairly treated, the system might be extended. If the system proved unsuccessful, they could always revert to the Government system. In his opinion, the Government should neither pledge themselves hastily to a complete change of the present systern, nor bind themselves to its maintenance, but should engage themselves to inquire into the whole subject.

wished to call the attention of the House to the fact that it was admitted that spirits produced very great evils; but, on the other hand, medical men were constantly found prescribing spirits for medicinal purposes. Had the hon. Member for Kirckaldy (Sir George Campbell), who referred to this question, ever known a medical man prescribe opium-smoking for similar purposes? The question of the moderate use of spirits and the question of opium-smoking stood on distinct grounds. The action of the Government also in regard to spirits was distinct in character from their action in regard to opium. Our legislation in reference to spirits interfered with the consumer; a heavy duty was imposed upon the article, and its sale was prohibited except under licence from the authorities constituted by Parliament. Now, our course of action with regard to opium was of an entirely different character, for its tendency was distinctly to encourage the consumer. We made advances to the ryots to cultivate, and then manufactured opium for the Chinese market at Patna and Ghazeepore, which was the system we pursued in Bengal. In Bombay we raised a transit duty on Malwa opium. We placed ourselves in the position of producers and manufacturers of opium. Before the cases could be parallel, the Government must become the producers and distillers of spirits, and have a gigantic monopoly of those luxuries. In that case, what would be said if the Government proposed that they should in future exclusively manufacture gin? Against the views expressed by the hon. Member for Kirkcaldy he might quote those of Sir William Muir, almost, if not quite, as great an authority as the hon. Member himself, who was of opinion that the country should cease to cultivate and manufacture opium, and should levy a transit duty instead. This was a very serious question. We were trustees for the people of India, who were unrepresented in that House. The Indian Revenue, in times of peace, was derived mainly from three sources, none of which, to his mind, was altogether satisfactory— namely, from the land, which yielded a high revenue; from salt, which was one of the necessities of life; and from opium. This opium revenue was the most objectionable of all. We were raising a large revenue by pandering to the immoral and depraved taste of a foreign people; but the worst was that we had produced that taste in that foreign nation. If, in 1843, when Lord Shaftesbury brought this question before the House, they had been prepared to deal with it, he believed it would then have been in the power of the English Government to put an end to this evil. He was afraid that that power had passed away, because the Chinese had got a great taste for opium. But that was not a justification of our gratifying their depraved taste. He did not think that the House would consent to abandon altogether the revenue derived from the trade in opium, and he would, therefore, urge upon the noble Marquess the Secretary of State for India to consider whether, without loss to the Revenue and with great advantage to the feelings and conscience to the people of England, he could not introduce into Bengal the Malwa system of raising a transit duty.

Sir, I do not rise to make a speech on the the general policy, but merely to state to the House what is the present position of the negotiations upon this question. There have been several allusions in the course of the debate to the existing position of the Chefoo Convention, and I think, therefore, it would be right, at this stage of the debate, that I should lay before the House the existing position of this question. I think, Sir, it is the more necessary that this should be done, because there seems to be some slight misapprehension on the matter in the minds of some hon. Members of the House. The hon. Member who placed the Notice on the Paper (Mr. J. W. Pease), asks the House to say—

"That Her Majesty's Government, whilst asking admission into China for all exports from Great Britain, India, and British possessions on the terms granted to the most favoured nation, should not, in carrying out existing or negotiating new Treaties, insist upon terms facilitating the introduction of opium, which the Government of China is unwilling to grant."

Now, the negotiations which have been taking place within the last three years have been rather the negotiations in which the opium question was dealt with on the Chinese side, and, so far as any change has been made or contemplated, it has been a change proposed by the Chinese to suit their ideas. Therefore, you must not suppose that any steps have been taken of a nature to increase the opium trade with China. On the contrary, the steps which have been proposed and considered would, if carried into effect, be likely to decrease it.

I beg pardon for interrupting; but did not the English Government delay or refuse to ratify the Treaty in accordance with the wishes expressed by the Chinese?

I do not say the hon. Member has made a mistake; but I think what he said with regard to the actual position rather seemed to imply that we had been engaged in negotiations which were intended to force a large quantity of opium upon the Chinese. But no change has been made. Any dealings with the question of opium have been dealings by the Chinese instead of by us, and no proposals have been made by us. The negotiations are still going on. The hon. Member behind me has said that we have refused to ratify the Opium Article of the Chefoo Convention. That is not the case. There has been no refusal on the part of the Government to ratify that Article. He now qualifies his statement by saying there has been great delay; and I cannot deny that. He possibly was thinking of what was said last year by Lord Salisbury in the House of Lords. Lord Salisbury said, what was undoubtedly true, that there had been great differences of opinion as to the exact meaning of the Article, and what its working would be. He said a view was taken of this Article that it would enable the Chinese Government to do as they pleased; and some persons had supposed that, practically, it would prevent the importation of opium into China. He also said the Government proposed to wait until the clause was put into a less ambiguous form; and he pointed out that it was best to wait till further particulars were received from the Chinese Government, and the matter was free from doubt as to its exact position. From that no departure has been made. There has been no refusal to ratify the Chefoo Convention. There has been great delay, I admit; but Pekin is a place where negotiations have never progressed very fast. It should be remembered, too, that these are not isolated negotiations between this country and China. We had to take into account the whole of the foreign Ministers at Pekin, and consult them. It is true that our trade with China is enormously greater than that of all other countries put together; but the whole of the Powers had to be consulted at every step, and every Power had to refer home for every step which was taken, to get instructions. Therefore, immense delay has taken place in these negotiations. But these negotiations are still proceeding. I wish it to be understood that, in so speaking, I am not using a mere phrase. Conferences were held in the autumn of last year, and there are Conferences between the Ministers of various Powers almost every week. We have notes of what takes place at these Conferences, but we have not full information of what has passed up to the latest date. We have proposals made by the Chinese Government and by Sir Thomas Wade; and I have reason to suppose that the French mail, which left Shanghai on the 19th of May, will firing to this country a compromise Agreement between Sir Thomas Wade and the Chinese Government, in which the Representatives of the other Powers have concurred. They have been very prolonged negotiations; but we have reason to believe that those negotiations will lead to a general Agreement. That being so, I will only, on behalf of the Foreign Department, make this further observation. That, when we have the Agreement before us, the Government will have to decide whether they will ratify the Convention, or whether they will agree to the fresh proposals made by Sir Thomas Wade. That is a matter of policy upon which I cannot speak tonight; but we shall have the advantage, before the debate closes, of hearing the views of the Indian Secretary on the subject, and it is only for me to state the exact position of the negotiations.

Sir, the promoters of the present Motion have no reason to find much fault with the speech of the hon Member for Kirkcaldy (Sir George Campbell). Indeed, the very clear and emphatic opinion he has expressed against the participation of the Indian Government in the opium traffic must be held to be of great value as coming from so experienced and distinguished an Indian statesman. But there was one expression that fell from my hon. Friend which I heard with great surprise and regret. He said that if China was to be poisoned, they might as well have the profit to be derived from such poisoning, It is much as if one said, if there is to be murder, we may as well have the blood-money. I cannot but contrast that sentiment with one which fell from a Chinese statesman. In 1869, at the time when the revision of the Treaty of Tientsin was under discussion between England and the Chinese Government, Prince Kung, the President of the Foreign Board in China, wrote a very remarkable despatch to Sir Rutherford Alcock, from which I ask permission to cite two or three sentences He is referring to a suggestion that had been made that the Chinese Government might check-mate the British Government in regard to the opium trade by removing the prohibition against the growth of the poppy in China. He says, writing in the name of the Board—

"Those who make that suggestion argue that, as there is no means of stopping the foreign (opium) trade, there can be no harm, as a temporary measure, in withdrawing the prohibition on its growth. We should thus not only deprive the foreign merchant of the main source of his profits, but should increase our revenue to boot. The Sovereign rights of China are, indeed, competent to this; such a course would be practicable; and, indeed, the writers cannot say that as a last resource it will not come to this; but they are most unwilling that such prohibition should be removed, holding, as they do, that a right system of government should apprehend the beneficence of heaven, and seek to remove any grievance which afflicts its people; while to allow them to go on to destruction, though an increase of revenue may result, will provoke the judgment of heaven and the condemnation of men."

I venture to think that, in this instance, the principle laid down by the heathen statesmen is "sounder," and I may say more Christian, than that of my hon. Friend. I am very glad that my hon. Friend the Member for South Durham (Mr. Pease) has brought this question forward. For though I am afraid it is rather a forlorn hope to expect that, in the present condition of Indian finance, the Government can deal with the question of the revenue derived from opium, it is right not to let the public conscience go to sleep in the presence of what I cannot but regard as a great national sin. I pity the noble Lord the Secretary of State for India (the Marquess of Hartington), upon whom devolves the miserable duty of finding some defence for this nefarious traffic. If he, or anyone, thinks I am using too strong language in reference to it, I can shelter myself behind the example of the Prime Minister, who, speaking in this House 40 years ago, in reference to the first Chinese War, which was called, and justly called, "the Opium War," said, in language already cited by my hon. Friend (Mr. Pease)—

"The Chinese gave you notice to abandon your contraband trade. When they found that you would not, they had a right to drive you from their coasts on account of your obstinacy in persisting in this impious and atrocious traffic."

The right hon. Gentleman had since then spoken in a different tone of the trade; for, when the question was brought forward in this House some years ago by my hon. Friend the Member for Carlisle (Sir Wilfrid Lawson), the right hon. Gentleman undertook a defence of the trade which I heard with regret and pain. For, I fear it is true of statesmen as of other men, perhaps of statesmen more than of other men, that familiarity with evil has a tendency to deaden the moral sense. There is one fact that can never be sufficiently emphasized in connection with this subject, and that is, that this trade has been forced by us upon the Chinese against the persistent and earnest remonstrances of their Government, The right hon. Gentleman, on the occasion to which I have just referred, speaking of the Treaty of Tien Tsin, said—

"The Chinese Government arrived at the wise resolution that, under all the circumstances of the case, it was not possible for them to struggle against an appetite so strong and a tendency so decided as that which possessed a large portion of the Chinese people; and, consequently, they determined to deal with opium as a commercial commodity, and to admit it into the country upon payment of a duty."

But the fact is, that the Chinese Government came to no such resolution, adopted no such determination. They were compelled to yield by force. This is the account given of the matter by the Chinese Commissioner Kweilang, when pleading with Lord Elgin for some forbearance in carrying out the Treaty of Tien Tsin—

"When the Chinese Commissioners negotiated a Treaty with your Excellency at Tien Tsin, British vessels of war were lying in that port; there was a pressure of an armed force, a state of excitement and alarm, and the Treaty had to he signed at once without a moment's delay."

And, indeed, Lord Elgin himself admits, in the most explicit manner, that the concessions of that Treaty "were extorted from the fears" of the Chinese Government. There is something to me inexpressibly humiliating in the fact that for 40 years the Christian Government of this country has been persistently insisting upon thrusting a deleterious and poisonous drug upon the Chinese, against all the objections and remonstrances of its Government renewed again and again. The truth is, that nothing can be advanced in defence of this trade but that it is a profitable iniquity. I have listened to several discussions on the subject in this House, and have read much that has been said of it out-of-doors, and all that really is said in defence is this— we want the money. All other defence is virtually abandoned. Almost everything we allege against the trade is admitted; but there is always one reply. It is true that opium spreads demoralization, disease, and death among the Chinese. It is true that the trade disturbs our relations with the Chinese Government, and breeds ill-feeling and bad blood between us continually. It is true that it shuts out legitimate commerce which might otherwise find scope in China. It is true that it hardens the heart of the Chinese against Christianity; as the uniform testimony of all Christian missionaries of every Church and Sect is that it forms by far the most formidable obstacle to the success of their efforts. All this may be true; but we want the money for the Indian Exchequer. I do hope that the noble Lord, though, in the present deplorable condition of our finances in India he may not be able to deal immediately with the subject, will say something which will hold out a hope that, at some future time at least, some effort shall be made to be rid of this traffic, which dishonours the British name and lies heavily on the conscience of many members of the community.

I somewhat regret that my hon. Friend has thought it necessary to bring forward this important question at so early a period of our tenure of Office. The present Government has as yet had very little time or opportunity to examine many important questions with which it has to deal, and it can hardly be expected that it has been in our power thoroughly to examine the present position of this great, complicated, and, at the same time, most important question. This is a subject which has engaged the attention of the Governments of Great Britain and of India, and from time to time the attention of this House, during a very long series of years. It is one about which there has always been considerable difference of opinion, and one as to which that difference of opinion does not seem in any degree to diminish, but rather to increase. In the circumstances, it is hardly possible that the Government should have had time to make up its mind upon a subject of so much importance and complexity; and although my hon. Friend has to-night only asked me to give my best consideration to the subject—and I have no difficulty in promising to do so to the best of my ability—still I think it was his intention, if he had had the opportunity, to invite the House to agree to a Resolution which lays down principles of policy that are certainly very different from any which have yet been accepted by the Government or by Parliament. From the very slight and inadequate examination I have been able to give to this question, it is not my intention on this occasion to assent to any Resolution, or to say anything which would have any tendency to disturb, to endanger, or even to diminish, so important a branch of Indian Revenue as that derived from the opium trade. This is not a time at which we can afford to tamper with any branch of the Indian Revenue. The House has had before it within a very few days statements showing the unexpected and very serious cost of the war which has been waged, and which, I am sorry to say, is still continuing—a war entered into in the supposed interests of the people of India, and the cost of which is at present altogether uncertain. At such a time as this it is not desirable to ask the House to express an opinion which might have the effect of diminishing prospectively the amount of any source of revenue that the Indian Government at present enjoys. But, whether the subject is brought on at this time or at any other, I must make some protest against the invitation, addressed by my hon. Friend and some of his supporters to the House, to consider this question entirely from the point of view of the dictates of morality, as they are entertained by some Members of this House, and to altogether neglect the subject as it relates to India and Indian policy. My hon. Friend says he should be sorry to be suspected of judging this question on the low standard of Indian finance. But it is a question of Indian finance. Among all the eloquent declamations on this subject I have not yet heard any suggestion that any but the Indian Government and the Indian people should bear any loss the Indian Revenue may sustain from the cessation of this tax. No one has suggested that, in deference to our moral feeling, we are to recoup the Indian Government for the loss it would sustain. Of course, I do not mean to say that we, being charged with the government of the great Empire of India, can discard the dictates of morality; but, on the other hand, I say that we must consider this question as an Indian question, and not be led away solely by those feelings of morality in which we might justly indulge if we were dealing with our own interests, and not with the interests of the millions of India. Morality of this kind is extremely cheap; and we should, perhaps, hear less of the immorality of this traffic and of the expediency of putting an end to it, immediately or prospectively, if these speeches had to be accompanied with a demand made on the English taxpayer for the £6,000,000 or £7,000,000, or some part of it, which it is proposed so lightly that India should surrender. It is acknowledged by my hon. Friend that the Indian Government cannot now dispense with that revenue; but he says— "Avoid unnecessary and expensive wars and reduce expenditure, and the Indian Revenue may soon be in a position to bear the loss of this revenue." I entirely agree with my hon. Friend that we ought, in the interests of India, to avoid unnecessary wars. But I cannot say I am very hopeful of making at present a large reduction in the ordinal Indian expenditure; and even if this were done, I cannot concede to my hon. Friend that the abandonment of this source of income would be the first thing to follow an improved condition of Indian finance. Is my hon. Friend perfectly sure, looking at the question from an Indian point of view, that there are no taxes which weigh upon the people of India, and which it is our duty to get rid of and remit before we surrender any source of income which does not so oppress and retard the development of the country? Is he quite sure that there are no profitable and necessary modes of investing capital for which this revenue might find means, but which we cannot undertake if we are to abandon a source of income which, whether it be objectionable or not, is, at any rate, not drawn from the pockets of our Indian subjects? My hon. Friend contends that we ought not to prevent China from prohibiting the opium trade, and I will not follow him in a retrospect of the history of our China Wars and of our Treaties with China. I am willing, however, to concede to him that some of those wars and part of our transactions with that country may not have been strictly defensible; but when he tells us that we ought to surrender the advantages extorted by the Tientsin Treaty, and to allow China to return to the policy of prohibition, I must remind him that that policy was tried for many years with results satisfactory neither to China nor to ourselves. From the beginning of the century to the year 1860 that policy prevailed, and I ask my hon. Friend and the House with what results? They were an enormous illicit trade, accompanied by the demoralization and degradation of all concerned in it—the demoralization of the merchants engaged in it, of the sailors, of the Chinese officials, and, in short, of everyone connected with that trade. It further resulted in conflicts between the Chinese and the merchants who embarked in that illicit trade, and who, I am sorry to say, were mostly men of our own nation. These conflicts led to diplomatic quarrels, which usually ended in war. What is there to show that a return to prohibition now would not again be followed by the same state of things? And does my hon. Friend think that any such policy can be effectually prohibitive, and that the prevention of smuggling is possible? I hold that it is not likely to be absolutely suppressed, and that it will produce all the injurious consequences of which we have had more than enough experience in former times. It is far better, if the trade must continue, that it should be conducted under recognized regulations and under proper control, and that it should be so managed as to be made to furnish a revenue not only to the Indian, but also to the Chinese Government. My hon. Friend referred to the Chefoo Convention and the right of the Chinese Government to levy a duty. It appears to him to be an unwarrantable interference with the rights of any nation to attempt to lay down the exact amount of duty it may levy. My hon. Friend the Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs has explained the position in which the negotiations with reference to that Convention now are. I admit that there has been great delay in the ratification of the 3rd Article, to which my hon. Friend has referred. The Government of India have not refused the ratification of the Article, and are willing to concede to the Chinese Government some re-adjustment of the import duties; but we have a right to contend that the readjustment should be on some fair and uniform principle. If it is reasonable for us to protest as vigorously as we can against a return to the policy of prohibition, we may protest, with equal logic, against anything in the shape of a prohibitive duty. Such a duty, I am confident, would have the same effect as a prohibitive policy, and would encourage that illicit trade from which so many evils have always resulted. But it is said that the effects of the opium trade are so demoralizing that we ought to assist China in resisting it by prohibiting the exportation of opium from India. In the first place, it should be proved that opium is really so demoralizing not only in its abuse, but also in its use, that the sale of it ought to be absolutely prohibited all over the world. That, in my judgment, has not yet been proved. There is great difference of opinion and a great discrepancy of evidence as to whether the use of opium in moderate quantities is so hurtful, after all; and till it is proved to be more injurious than other stimulants, it cannot be urged that it is the duty of the British Government to assist the Chinese Government in the total prohibition of the trade. And, even if we did prohibit its exportation from India, it is by no means certain that we should very materially assist the Chinese Government in the prevention of its use in China; for it must be borne in mind that much of the opium consumed in that country is grown by the Chinese themselves. It is very difficult, dealing with a country so little known as China, to estimate what amount of opium is produced in China, as compared with that which is imported into it. But if hon. Gentlemen will take the trouble of consulting the Consular Reports from China which are laid on the Table of the House, they can satisfy themselves that a very large proportion of the opium which is consumed in that country, although authorities differ as to its exact amount, is grown in China; and when we are told that the Chinese Government really and seriously desires to put a stop to the use of this drug alogether, and is only waiting for us to assist in prohibiting its importation, and will then take steps to prevent its production in China, I think they are asking us to proceed on a very doubtful assumption. It is well known that the use of opium imported by sea extends but a very short distance into the interior of China; that it is mainly confined to the ports and their neighbourhood, while that which is used in the inland districts is raised in China itself. And when it is seen that, in spite of all the regulations of the Chinese Government to prevent its growth, it is grown in large quanti- ties there, I can hardly believe that they are animated by that ardent wish to abolish the use of opium altogether; but I think they are much more likely to be influenced by some economical theories, or by some desire to make a larger profit themselves out of this trade, in their negotiations with us. Sir, I cannot discuss the different practical suggestions which, from time to time, have been made for either suddenly or gradually withdrawing from this traffic. My hon. Friend has not proposed any this evening. He has only asked that the Government should take measures with a view to such a gradual withdrawal. I certainly should be glad if I thought that the Indian Government were in such a position that they could afford to dispense with this source of revenue; but I do not at present see any great prospect of that happy result. The hon. Member for Kirkcaldy (Sir George Campbell) has discussed at considerable length the subject of the opium monopoly of the Indian Government. That is a point on which I do at present desire to give any decided opinion. It is a question which has been discussed for many years in India itself, and as to which a great difference of opinion exists among Indian officials. But I do not think that the simple abolition of the monopoly, and the levying of an export duty at the port of shipment, is a practical measure. A monopoly of some sort there must be; and it does not appear to me a matter of principle of any great importance whether, if there should be a monopoly, the Indian Government conducts it or leaves it in private hands. The production of opium would be immensely increased if the cultivation were altogether free; and not only would the exportation probably be greatly increased, but our own dominions in India would be flooded with cheap opium, to the demoralization of our own subjects. Therefore, the simple retirement of the Government from the monopoly, and the levying of an export duty at Calcutta, as at Bombay, would not at all accomplish what the hon. Member for Durham and his Friends have in view. Whether in the regulations a change could be effected, I do not at this moment venture to express a confident opinion. But, in my opinion, there must be a monopoly of some descrip- tion. I have already discussed, to a certain extent, the suggestion that we ought to prohibit the exportation altogether. I think it would not be desirable, not only in the interests of the Indian Revenue, but also because it would simply have the effect of increasing the Chinese production of the drug. I ought to add that there are other countries which produce opium, and they would do so to a greater extent if we retired from the trade. In Persia, opium is produced to a considerable amount, and probably Persian would replace our own opium in China, if we prohibited its exportation. At all events, it appears to me that the subject is one which the Government ought not to approach without the most careful consideration and the deepest reflection. My hon. Friend asks me to give the question my consideration. It has, I know, long received the most careful attention of the Government of India. They have had the subject of the Chefoo Convention before them. All that I can do to induce them to do their part to bring the negotiation which is going on to a satisfactory conclusion I am prepared to do. But I certainly am not prepared to say anything, or to assent to anything, that would endanger or tend to diminish this source of revenue in the present state of the finances of India. It might be very easy for us to utterly destroy the revenues of India, and thereby to ruin her finances for an indefinite period. But it is much more doubtful whether it would be possible for us to do anything that would check the consumption of opium in China, or to confer upon the Chinese people some of those benefits which my hon. Friend thinks it is in our power to bestow. I am glad that my hon. Friend will not be able to take the sense of the House on this Motion to-night. I think there is no doubt that the attention of the House should be called to this matter from time to time; but I do not think it would be desirable, until we have had a fuller opportunity of considering the subject in all its details, that the House should be asked to express its opinion on this question.

thought that the noble Lord rather reckoned without his host in saying that they would not be able to take the sense of the House on that occasion; for so dissatisfied were he and those who sat near him with the statement of the Government that, for the purpose of enabling them to express their opinion, they intended to divide the House on the adjournment of the debate. He must, for himself, say, that nothing lower in tone than the speech of the noble Lord had he ever heard in all his life. The only thing he could compare it to was the speech of John C. Calhoun, in defence of slavery, in the Congress of the United States, which the noble Lord and other Members of the Government might have seen summed up in The Bigelow Papers, in these words—

"John C. Calhoun, sez he,

Human rights ha'nt no more

Right to come on this floor

No more'n the man in the moon, sez he."

That, he regretted to say, was really very much the tone of the speech of the noble Lord. The noble Lord had said he could not afford to tamper with this source of the revenue; but he forgot that it was a source of revenue which might any day be taken out of his hands, and which he might not be able to deal with at all. In the last Session of the last Parliament the present Prime Minister, referring to some remarks made by the hon. Member for Guildford, said—

"I marvel at the sanguine temperament of a Gentleman, who, upon looking at the excess which has come to our revenue from opium, is able to describe that as solid and substantial. Money is money, and its solidity is the same from whatever source it is derived…. but with regard to the future, the whole nature of our opium revenue ought to be a perpetual warning and caution to us. The Indian Revenue never can be solid and substantial so long as it is largely dependent on the opium revenue."— [3 Hansard, ccli. 932.]

Those were the views of the Prime Minister. Now, they did not ask the noble Lord to direct the Chinese or control them. He must say, so far as this country was concerned, the subject appeared to him to lie much more within the Department of the Foreign Office than the Indian Office. The immorality of our traffic consisted in this—that we forced our opium into the ports of China. The noble Lord had said this was not an oppressive mode of raising the revenue. Did he not consider it in that light when they send their Fleets and their Armies to insist upon this opium traffic? The late Mr. Cobden had said that if we took the whole value of all the exports to China during the last 40 years, and put against it the cost of the armaments and Consular Service to foster the opium traffic, we should be found to be heavy losers in the transaction. Therefore, if ever there was a revenue that was wrung out of our pockets it was this revenue. We did not enjoy it, the Indians enjoyed it, and we paid for it. As to the objection, that when the Chinese Government enforced, the policy of prohibition the result was universal demoralization, constant collusion, and all sorts of evils—why was that? Simply because on every point Great Britain had frustrated the Chinese influence to enforce the policy of prohibition. From the beginning of the century the Chinese did their best to enforce the prohibition, and the whole history of the trade showed that. It had been said that the Chinese were not sincere in their efforts to put down the traffic. The fact was, that the Chinese again and again attempted to do so, and again and again protested against our action. Sir Rutherford Alcock, our own Plenipotentiary, had expressed his firm belief in the sincerity of the Chinese to suppress the traffic. As to assisting the Chinese, he did not want us to assist them. He wanted this country to let the Chinese alone—to allow the Chinese to govern their own country in their own fashion. He felt sorry that he had to speak in this manner, and was sorry it had not sufficed the Representatives of Her Majesty's Government to say that they could not be expected on so short a tenure of Office to pronounce an opinion on this subject; but when they found the leading Member of the Government denouncing at one time this opium traffic in the most unmeasured terms, and the noble Lord that night coming forward with a statement which might perfectly well seem as a prelude to a permanent retention of the tax, it was time to protest against the retrograde movement which appeared to be threatened. It was idle to argue about Indian finance without having in view some plan by which India would be able to support itself without having this opium traffic. The salt tax had been referred to, and also the land tax; but those were taxes within India itself and under our control, and we could alter or retain those taxes as we liked. But the opium traffic was dependent on the Chinese. In consequence of the most unsatisfactory statements of the Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, and the noble Lord the Secretary of State for India, and in order to give the House an opportunity of expressing an opinion, he begged to move that the debate be adjourned.

I must point out to the hon. Member that there is no Amendment before the House, an Amendment having already been negatived. The Question before the House is that I do now leave the Chair.

moved that the debate on that Question be adjourned.

desired, as one recently charged with some responsibility for the government of India, to make one or two observations on this Amendment. He could not think that any advantage could possibly be gained by the adjournment of this debate. As he understood the Mover, and those who supported him in this debate, their object was to press on the Secretary of State for India this subject as requiring his care and attention during the next year. The noble Lord might have sheltered himself with simply saying that he would give the subject that attention; but, instead of doing so, he told the House that, after three or four weeks' experience, he could not say that he was prepared to give up altogether, or take steps little by little to abandon, the opium revenue. They must remember that it involved no less than £7,000,000 or £8,000,000 sterling. It was a source of revenue which was not a burden upon the people of India. If, therefore, they were going to abandon it, either all at once or by degrees, they must make some provision for imposing other taxation on India, or they must do what would be more just under the circumstances — namely, require the people of England to take upon themselves that charge. It was, therefore, a very serious question. But, perhaps, he was addressing those who were prepared to take up the fiat justitia, ruat cœlum principle, and who said the opium traffic was demoralizing, and must at all costs be abolished. But if they were to consider that point, should they not also consider the question of alcohol in this country? What must be the effect of abolishing the cultivation of the poppy in India? The Chinese would continue to grow it. Its cultivation would be increased in Persia. If they adopted that extreme step, which would deprive the people of India of that important branch of revenue, they would not be abolishing the traffic. On the whole, he thought the noble Lord had been well advised not to abandon that source of income or pledge himself to take any step towards its abandonment. He had told them he would look into the subject with the utmost care, and that he would enter upon the question without prejudice. It seemed to him that the central object put forward by the hon. Mover had been gained; the noble Lord had undertaken to look into the matter in the course of next year, and therefore he did not think anything would be gained by the adjournment of this debate.

said, the Motion for adjournment had not been made because the Government refused at once to abolish this system, but because the excuse of the Government had been put forward in a speech that must have filled the breasts of many hon. Members with pain and humiliation. He did not say it was a speech abounding in cynicism; but he must say he had not in the last six years heard a speech from a Statesman and responsible Minister of the Crown projected from so low a level of political morality. Revenue, revenue, revenue, rung throughout the whole speech of the noble Lord. He almost sneered at the doctrine of justice and morality. He put these aside, and told them to treat the question as a matter of revenue and finance. He did not know whether the hon. Member for Northampton (Mr. Bradlaugh) had been listening to the debate, whose entrance into the House was to destroy all their ideas of Christian morality; but it seemed to him that Member might almost be Minister for India. He did not know whether the "Heathen Chinee" was in the Gallery of the House. If he was, he must be edified by our superior Christian morality, which put revenue above justice. For his (Mr. A. M. Sullivan's) part, having listened to that passage quoted by his hon. Friend the Member for Merthyr (Mr. Richard) from the despatch of a Chinese Minister, he would prefer the moral principles therein nobly expressed to the cynical doctrines he had just heard from the Treasury Bench. No defence had been, or could be, offered for this hideous iniquity by which Great Britain sought to put money in her purse. For 2,000 years no nation in Europe had had a greater blot upon her in the pursuit of mere wealth at the price of popular degradation than this opium traffic had put upon the name of England; and it was to the honour of this country that on the present occasion men bound to the newly-born Government by the strongest Party ties, impelled by conscience— for, after all, conscience was still a power in the House of Commons—desired to show their sense of indignation at the character of the defence, if defence it could be called, put forward by Her Majesty's Government. The Ministry might have said that they were inheritors of the errors of the past; that while every Government had a noble opportunity of retrieving the mistakes of its Predecessors, no one expected that the serious policy of such Predecessors would be precipitately reversed. He could have understood a plea of that kind coming from a Ministry whose public utterances had led everyone to believe that they felt strongly the iniquitous character of this opium traffic; but all the noble Lord had to say was that if England did not profit by this abominable trade, some one else would. This was a petty excuse for a moral crime to be put forward by the Government of a Bible-loving nation like England, which sought to convert the "Heathen Chinee" from Paganism to Christianity. He could point out many means of obtaining wealth which were defended by the criminal classes on a plea such as that which had been put forward. The Chinese had struggled against the continuance of this immorality; but the military power of England had defeated their struggles. He should like to hear an English Minister say that while the Government of the country deemed revenue to be useful, it valued much more the greatness of the national name—a greatness which rested upon something higher and nobler than the triumph of her arms in defence of an iniquitous system like the opium traffic. He felt no doubt that the people of England would prefer themselves to be taxed, rather than revenue should continue to be derived from the system which had been defended from the Treasury Bench of a Liberal Administration. The doctrine of fiat justitia had been mentioned, but only to be cast aside; and he should, therefore, like to ask whether the India Office demoralized its occupant, and whether the touch of this opium revenue could affect with moral torpor a Liberal Statesman who ought to be impelled by the ardour of youth? He, in this connection, commended to the consideration of hon. Members the words spoken by the Prime Minister many years ago before he wore official bonds, and, he had almost said, entered upon a life of official slavery. It might be too much to struggle on the present occasion against a combination of the two front Benches; but he hoped this debate would have an effect in the country and create a public opinion which would justify Her Majesty's Government, if not next Session, certainly in the one that would follow, in removing this hideous blot from the escutcheon of the British nation.

said, that the hon. Member for Glasgow (Dr. Cameron) had stated that he had very seldom heard in that House a speech of such a low tone of morality as that of his noble Friend the Secretary of State for India, and the hon. and learned Member for Meath (Mr. A. M. Sullivan) had expressed a similar opinion. The hon. Member for Meath said that he thought it would not be going too far to describe the speech as discreditable, both to the House and to the noble Lord. For his part, however, he was bound to say that, so far from entertaining the opinion of those two hon. Gentlemen, he thought that the noble Lord the Secretary of State for India was just as anxious for the well-being of China as they were themselves, and that he had simply shown caution and prudence in the observations he had made, which, if he had not done, might have led to incalculable evil to the people of India, whose interests he was bound to consider. Let them consider for a few moments what this matter amounted to. The practical sense of that House knew well that, at that moment, India had not a single sixpence of revenue to spare. The amount of taxation raised was not sufficient to meet the demands now made upon her Exchequer. He was not going that evening even to allude to the causes which, had placed an exceptional demand upon her. He had, on more than one occasion, come forward in that House and asked that India might be given some relief; but he had never yet succeeded. Now, that being the case, if she had not a single sixpence to spare, and the noble Lord well knowing that England would not come forward with a single sixpence to help her, it was of no use for him to disguise the fact. It was very well to talk of the English people being willing to make up the financial loss that the abolition of this revenue would cause. But what proof had the noble Lord that, even if he did away with this £8,000,000, he would get a single sixpence to replace it? If this £8,000,000 of revenue were sacrificed, the noble Lord knew that it would be impossible at the present moment to raise it in any other manner in India. The sources of taxation in India were very small and limited. No one knew better than the hon. and learned Member for Meaththattheycouldnotraise£8,000,000 additional from the land in India. It would be much the same as a proposal to make every Irish peasant cultivator at the present time pay twice his rent. They could not get a sixpence more from land. What were the other sources of revenue? They had recently increased to the greatest possible extent the salt duty in those Provinces; but to raise £8,000,000 more taxation would double the salt duty throughout India. That would, in effect, mean taking food from the starving people, and bringing upon them suffering so great that he would not attempt to describe it. Could it bo raised from the Income Tax? They knew that if they wanted to raise £8,000,000 in England, it would be easy to do so by simply increasing the Income Tax 3d. or 4d. in the pound. But in the case of India, when the Income Tax was 2½d. in the pound, instead of raising £5,000,000, as in England, so poor was India that only £500,000 was produced. At the same time, that tax gave rise to such great discontent from one end of India to the other, that the great Statesman who was then responsible for the government of India, said that although he knew they had not one surplus European soldier in India, yet, taking danger for danger, he would rather reduce the European Army in India by one-half, than take the responsibility of again imposing an Income Tax. To raise £8,000,000 in India they would require an Income Tax of an enormous amount. Why did not the hon. Member for Glasgow and the hon. and learned Member for Meath, when they attacked the morality and the good feeling of the noble Lord the Secretary of State for India, come forward with some definite proposal with regard to Indian Revenue? Why did they not come forward and tell the House how £8,000,000 additional revenue could be raised? Why did they not say that they were prepared to have the Income Tax of this country increased 3d., 4d., or 6d. in the pound, in order to meet the deficit in the Indian Revenue to be caused by the abolition of the opium duty. If they formulated a proposal like that it would be a practical proposition, and would have more effect, and would be much more worthy the consideration of the House, than all the vague declamation they had listened to that evening. They had heard a great deal about the immorality of their traffic with the Chinese; but, for his part, he could not see that there was much difference between raising a revenue from opium and raising £26,000,000 as they did in England, to a great extent from the intemperance of the people. No one was more opposed than he to many of the proposals for temperance legislation brought forward in that House, although he was as much a friend of temperance as any man could be. But he had no hesitation in saying, that in Ireland, or even in the back slums of Glasgow, he could find as great immorality traceable to the traffic from which the spirit revenue was raised, as they could find in China produced from opium. Then, again, it must be remembered that if they abolished the revenue from opium, no one could doubt that the effect would be to cheapen opium in China. It could not be kept out of China, and its growth would be encouraged. If the duty were removed from an article, the effect would be to reduce its price; and, in reducing the price, how could they possibly say that they would restrict the sale? On the contrary, he thought he could prove, beyond all possibility of dispute, that by the abolition of the opium revenue in India they would unquestionably reduce the price of opium in China. By so doing, they would increase its use, and intensify every evil which they so greatly deplored. He could not but think that, considering the recent accession of the noble Lord to Office, he would have been guilty of the greatest imprudence if he had come down to that House and pledged himself to sacrifice nearly one-fifth or one-sixth of the entire Indian Revenue without seeing his way to replace it by some tax less burdensome to the Indian people. He was aware that it was said that the opium revenue was uncertain, and that the right hon. Gentleman the Prime Minister had been quoted that evening upon the subject. But when the right hon. Gentleman made those remarks upon the opium revenue, he did not make them with the slightest idea of saying that the Secretary of State for India ought to come down to that House and abolish it. So far as he understood the drift of the observations of the Prime Minister, when he made his speech his sole object was to show that, whether we wished it or not, a change in the policy of China might affect the demand for Indian opium, and might materially affect the revenue derived from opium in India. He made that observation, not with the idea of asking the Secretary of State to abolish the opium revenue, but to point out to those who were responsible for the administration of the Indian Finances that one source of their revenue was uncertain, and, that being so, there was greater reason for exercising prudence, caution, and economy, with regard to the finances of India. He believed that he was not misrepresenting the arguments of the right hon. Gentleman the Prime Minister. Of course, the noble Lord the Secretary of State for India, in making the observations he had done, knew very well the sort of things that would be said about him in consequence of the speech he had made that evening. Knowing that, he was more entitled to their respect for his courage in being willing to face this amount of odium rather than to do anything by want of caution which he felt would do harm to the people of India, or throw the Indian finances into a worse position than they were at the present time.

said, that he should like to be allowed to say a few words before the Motion for the adjournment was put to the House. If there was one man. more than another who disliked to go into the Lobby against the right hon. Gentleman the Prime Minister it was himself; but they had had again that evening a melancholy instance of a man coming down to that House after dinner, without having been present earlier in the evening, and without having heard a single speech in the debate, and then answering the arguments which he himself alone had raised. The right hon. Gentleman the Postmaster General had excused the noble Lord on the ground of his recent accession to Office; but he thought that the right hon. Gentleman had not done him the honour to listen to what he said at the end of his speech. He said, emphatically, that he did not wish a sixpence of that revenue to be taken away from India at the present moment; but he said that, in his opinion, a Christian, moral country like this ought not, year after year, to enforce the Treaty of Tien Tsin, when beseeched by the Chinese to modify it, and froml876 to 1880 refuse to ratify the Convention of Chefoo. Heasked simply that the Convention of Chefoo should be taken into consideration, and that the Chinese, by municipal duties, or by other means, should be allowed to hold the opium traffic in check. He said, also, that if that were done the noble Lord would probably, in the meantime, be able to re-adjust his Indian finances. He was perfectly aware that they could not take £6,000,000 from India without providing that amount of revenue from other sources. He was not the man to put the Government of India or the noble Lord in that fix. But the noble Lord's speech was a defence of that which he considered to be a moral wrong towards the Chinese. That wrong could not be redressed in a single moment. It had, however, been declared a wrong by the voice of a great number of people in England and Scotland. He believed it to be wrong; and if the noble Lord had admitted that, he should not have wished to divide against the Government. But he felt that they had a duty to perform; and when they believed a thing to be morally wrong, they must obey the voice of religion and the convictions of their consciences.

Sir, the division which will take place will be for the adjournment of the debate upon the proposal for going into Committee of Supply. My hon. Friend who made the Motion, and who supported the adjournment is, I am sure, the last man who would desire to prevent us from going into Committee of Supply. But he has indirectly made this a method of giving expression to his feelings of dissatisfaction at the opium revenue. That being so, what are the terms upon which the division will be taken? I am very desirous that there shall be no doubt as to what is meant by those who will vote for the adjournment, and also as to what is meant by those of my hon. Friends who will vote against it. I will venture to state the interpretation which I put upon the position in which I stand, and upon that of those who support the adjournment. This is not the first time, even during the present Session of Parliament, in which Members of this House, and bodies of Members of this House, have felt it their duty, for reasons honourable and laudable in themselves, to act against the dictates of that judgment which I should hope would have restrained them. That is my opinion of the position in which those Gentlemen stand who now feel disposed to support the Motion for the adjournment. Let us see whether that is the case or not. I have listened very carefully to the speech of my noble Friend near me (the Marquess of Hartington), and I will give the purport of that speech. He began with a statement as to his sense of the embarrassed position in which he was placed in being called upon to give distinct pledges to the House upon a subject of the utmost difficulty and complexity at that time when he had been but a very few weeks in Office, and when, during that time, he had been called upon by considerations of duty absolutely imperative to give his mind and attention to other matters yet more urgent, involving human life as well as the honour and credit of the country, in such a way, that it had been impossible for him to give proper examination to this subject. Having stated that, and having made that plea, then, with the ingenuous courage which distinguishes him, almost beyond any other man in the House, he proceeded to point out the character of the difficulties which surrounded him, and which were so many reasons against his giving a promise that he might find himself eventually unable to fulfil. We have heard much of the painful questions connected with the revenue derived from the opium traffic. I most fully concur that this is not only a difficult, but a most painful, question. We have already had two, I may almost say three, wars upon this subject. Let us consider what is the position taken up by the people of England with regard to these wars. On the first occasion no distinct appeal was made to the people; but it was unquestionably true that, as has been truly said, I, for one, denounced, in the strongest terms, the opium traffic. The nation, however, did not take the part of those who protested against that war. In 1857 we were launched by the acts of one of our agents into a war with China, and the steps taken by Sir John Bowring were the subject of much debate. In the House of Commons the Government of Lord Palmerston was divided, and from the opinions which I then expressed I have not in the slightest departed. What then happened? The House declared its judgment, and the noble Viscount, then the head of Her Majesty's Government, took a course he was constitutionally entitled to take, and appealed to the people. In that appeal he was emphatically sustained, and many Members were dismissed from their seats in that House upon the vote which they gave, and the country returned a very large majority to support an Administration pledged to carry on a second Opium War. It is material that it should be understood that, whatever may be the amount of painful reflection caused by the part this country has taken, that what took place upon this matter was not done clandestinely, but was approved of by the people upon the only occasion on which a distinct appeal was made to them. The next point is, that a very great change has taken place in China. The Government has substituted for the old system a totally different one. Down to 1860 the opium traffic with China was subject, not only to all those objections which the supply of such a drug entails, but there was added, in addition, all the mischief and corruption of a contraband traffic. A contraband trade is bad enough and demoralizing enough in all conscience, under any circumstances. Under the best circumstances, and the best circumstances are those in which the country where the trade is carried on exerts itself to the utmost to prevent the importation, the trade will be bad enough. But that is not the case in China. In China, although it is doubtful whether the Central Government is sincere, yet it is certain that the provincial Governments and the local agents are in collusion with the contraband trade. Therefore, all the moral evils which result from this traffic are supplemented, and amplified enormously by the distinct moral evils which belong to a contraband trade. It has been charged against me in this debate, that I have been led to describe the decision of the Chinese Government to admit the importation of opium as a wise one. So far as I can form a judgment, I am inclined to believe that it was wise on the part of the Government of China to legalize the importation of the drug, rather than allow it to go on as a contraband traffic. Therefore, Sir, I am by no means prepared to admit that, after further consideration, no improvement can be made. It appears to me that one very large, and very grave, and very serious group of evils has been got rid of. While I do not deny that much remains for very grave, and serious, and painful consideration, do not let it be understood, Sir, that I am a person viewing this subject with indifference, any more than I think the speech of my noble Friend justified, in the slightest degree, the imputation that he viewed it with indifference. What is the imputation against my noble Friend? It is, that his speech was projected from a very low level of morality. Let us see, then, whether we can escape from the mischiefs supposed to belong to this low level of morality by a resort to that high level of morality which is now recommended. If we are told that considerations connected with the financial condition of India, and the impossibility of supplying this income, or of undertaking to supply this income from another source, are not admissible to this debate, that allegation can have no meaning at all, unless it be that we are to assume the obligation on the part of the people of England. We must be prepared for one of two things. Either you are to assume the obligation on the part of the people of England, or else, as we are told by my hon. Friend the Member for South Durham (Mr. Pease), we are to content ourselves at the present moment with giving a promise of something to be done in the future. Well, Sir, it would be a very I high level of morality, indeed, from one point of view, if we were prepared, on behalf of our constituents, to add 3d. or 4d. in the pound to the Income Tax, and to assume the payment of these £7,000,000. That, I admit, would be to take our stand on a very high level of morality. But nobody is prepared for that. That is not in question. It is no part of the debate, and, consequently, it is not that high level of morality by which we are to escape from the low level of morality on which my noble Friend is accused of standing; it must be some other level of morality. Let us see what that other level of morality is. It has been described very fairly by my hon. Friend the Member for South Durham, a Gentleman whose clearness of mind, whose soundness of judgment, and whose uniform moderation in all these proceedings entitle him to be heard with the utmost respect, and, as he knows, he is heard with the utmost respect. But is not my hon. Friend in danger of falling, and of letting us down upon a level of morality which I affirm to be not higher, but lower, than the level of the morality of my noble Friend? There is a kind of morality which, in my opinion, is the lowest of all, and it is the morality of a Government which makes promises without knowing that it has the means of fulfilling them The real offence of my noble Friend is that he has refused to make a promise, being three weeks old in Office, and having had questions which I need not now even name, the consideration of which would have been sufficient of themselves, I venture to say, to supply an incoming Government with work enough to fill all its time—being in that condition, my noble Friend has declined to make any promise whatever upon this subject. He has admitted it is a subject which has the strongest claim upon him for full and thorough explanation. But what are we asked to do? The hon. and learned Gentleman the Member for Meath (Mr. A. M. Sullivan), to whom I give — do not let him question it for a moment — the fullest credit for the sincerity and earnestness of all those sentiments he has so eloquently expressed, asks why we cannot, at any rate, give a promise for the Session after next? These are very easy terms to offer to my noble Friend. In my opinion, no more dangerous seduction could be offered to a Government to propose such terms. It is hard enough that we should be encouraged to deal in promises for next Session; but, Heaven help us if we are to be encouraged to dispose of our present difficulties by promising that we will do something in the Session after next ! My hon. Friend the Member for South Durham is not so definite. He does not ask us to do this; but he wishes to express inarticulately the same sentiment, if I may say so, by voting for the adjournment. He wants Her Majesty's Government to encourage the Government of India to take steps for their gradual withdrawal from participation in the cultivation of the poppy and the manufacture of opium. I will first, Sir, just take leave to get rid of that part of this Resolution which speaks of our encouraging the Government of India to take steps for their gradual withdrawal from participation in the cultivation of the poppy and the manufacture of opium. Sir, if we ought to encourage the Government of India to do a thing, we ought to compel that Government to do it. It is not really a matter of encouraging the Government. The Government of India is subject to the Government of this country, and whatever we really want that Government to do we have the power to make them do. Therefore, the real question is that we are asked to say that Her Majesty's Government will promise to take steps for the gradual withdrawal from participation in the cultivation of the poppy and the manufacture of opium. Can we promise that? Many is the thing a man wishes to do which, notwithstanding, he dare not, consistently with his duty, promise to do, for he must not promise to do it till he sees the means and can measure and estimate the means by which he is to do it. And that is really the question at present in issue. If a division is to be taken on this adjournment, why do we vote against it? By doing so, we mean that, with our present knowledge, and in our present condition, we decline to make such a promise. For myself, I may say truly, that I am not ashamed of the strong language in which I have spoken of this subject on former occasions. I spoke then of a system in which the evils of the opium traffic were combined and concentrated in the evils of the contraband traffic; but still I admit that much remains. I entertain the sincerest, the most earnest desire, and so does my noble Friend, that it may be in our power, safely and with justice to the people of India, to take steps for the gradual withdrawal from connection with this traffic; but I cannot give a promise upon it until I see the means by which that process is to be effected. Therefore, let it be understood on the part of Her Majesty's Government that, while we resist this adjournment on account of the construction that has been put upon it, it is simply upon that ground that we desire to reserve to ourselves the free and deliberate examination of this question. I have no doubt that my hon. Friend opposite the late Under Secretary of State for India, would wish himself to take his stand upon the same ground. What he said was perfectly consistent with such a view. None of us, I hope, in this House view this matter with indifference. I am certainly of opinion, as I said at the close of the last Parliament, that this opium revenue, instead of being a sound and solid, is a slippery and a dangerous, part of our Indian Revenue. India cannot be economically safe as long as she is dependent upon it. These are the feelings which I endeavoured to express in a speech which, as has been said by my right hon. Friend the Postmaster General was not a speech on the moral aspect of the case, but was one dealing purely with its financial aspect. I do not know whether I myself have given room for any of those severe strictures which have been applied to the frank and manly statement of my noble Friend. In my opinion, it was a frank and manly course to set out fully before the House all the difficulties which impede it in a path which may be admitted to be one of philanthropy and justice. I do not believe, if we were declaring the principle of an ultimate policy in regard to this question, that we should take a very different view. It is, in our point of view, a narrower question. It is, whether our present position, according to our present means of dealing with the subject as a responsible Government, justifies us in giving a pledge before we can feel a reasonable certainty of being able to redeem it. But, on the other hand, it is a very broad question; and I am quite certain there is no principle which lies nearer the root of political morality, and is more necessary to be strictly clung to by every Administration in this country, than the principle which dictates that no promise shall ever be given by a responsible Minister, or a responsible Government, to the House of Commons until that Minister knows that it will be in his power to accomplish that to which he has engaged himself.

intended to oppose the Motion for adjournment, because it seemed to him to be an anomalous one. The arguments against this traffic, as it existed some 30 years ago, no longer applied, and the objections to the trade in opium were now on the same level with the objections to trade in rum, whisky, bang, and other substances used by different nations for the purpose of intoxicating themselves. There was no security that our withdrawal from this traffic would not result in an increased sale of opium in China; and for his part, if they were now merely examining how the least possible injury could be done to the human race by the opium traffic, he believed that they would arrive at the conclusion that the removal of the duty would merely have the effect of increasing the consumption of the traffic, or else of transferring a large revenue from our Exchequer to that of the Chinese Government.

said, with the permission of the House, he would withdraw the Motion for adjournment. He and his friends had no wish to embarrass the Government; and had the noble Lord the Secretary of State for India spoken in a tone in any way resembling that used by the Prime Minister, they would never have thought of moving the adjournment at all. The noble Lord might not have intended it, but his speech appeared to be a defence of the opium traffic, and to commit him to a policy which the Prime Minister now assured them was never intended.