MR. FITZWILLIAM DICK moved the adjournment of the House.

ments proposed by this Bill. The House, | discussed. Merely uttering his individual therefore, would do well, in his opinion, opinion, he thought the debate had better to go into Committee on the Bill and con- be adjourned. sider its details, for in such matters the really important points were questions of detail. Whether the absolute consent of the landlord were insisted upon or struck out of the Bill, in practice he believed that it would make little difference; but as one course was less restrictive than the other he should vote against the Motion of the hon. Member for Maldon.

MR. CHICHESTER FORTESCUE said, that at that time of night, he would not give any detailed reasons for the opinion which he entertained that his noble Friend had failed altogether to vindicate his own consistency in introducing a Bill this Session, the principle of which directly contradicted his Motion of last year, and the Resolution which he had proposed in the Select Committee only two years ago. The Bill now

MR. NEWDEGATE said, the effect of rejecting the Motion of the hon. Member for Maldon would be to affirm that improvements in Ireland, unlike England, should be made without the consent of the landlord. That would be a novel and startling proposition. He accordingly supported the Motion for Adjournment.

MR. CHICHESTER FORTESCUE believed that, according to the forms of the House, the Bill could not be read a second time that evening, but hoped the Motion of the hon. Member for Maldon would be at once disposed of.

the Debate be now adjourned.” — (Mr. Motion made, and Question put, "That Dick.)

The House divided:-Ayes 115; Noes 97: Majority 18.

Debate adjourned till Monday 13th May.

On Motion of Mr. MONSELL, Bill to amend "The Tramways (Ireland) Act, 1860,” and “The Tramways (Ireland) Amendment Act, 1861," ordered to be brought in by Mr. MONSELL and Mr. SHERRIFF.

Bill presented, and read the first time. [Bill 125.]
House adjourned at half after One o'clock.

before the House involved a more serious and vital departure from the ordinary principles of legislation than anything contained in the Bill of the late Government, and yet was not calculated to attain for the mass of the people any one of those benefits which could alone justify such TRAMWAYS (IRELAND) ACTS AMENDMENT BILL. a departure. His hon. Friend the Member for Galway (Mr. Gregory), and those who supported him, had reason to complain of the way in which the Government had manipulated the divisions. The result of those somewhat complicated manœuvres, which, till a few moments ago, he confessed he did not thoroughly understand, was that it had been made impossible for the House to pronounce any opinion upon the Resolution of the Member for Galway. The Government, consequently, would succeed in getting rid both of the Motion of the hon. Member for Maldon and of the original Resolution, which, if properly submitted to the House, would have been carried by a large majority.

THE CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUER said, the right hon. Gentleman gave Her Majesty's Government credit for an amount of dexterity to which they could fairly lay no claim. What had happened was the result of good fortune, not of any arrangement on their part. He must complain, however, that the House having spent the evening in discussing a particular question was now about to be hurried into a division on the Bill itself, the general merits of which had never been

HOUSE OF COMMONS,

Tuesday, April 30, 1867.

MINUTES.]-SUPPLY-considered in Committee
PUBLIC BILLS-Ordered-West India Bishops
-New Courts of Justice and Offices (£402,000).

and Clergy; Vaccination; Roman Catholic
Churches; Schools and Glebes (Ireland).*
First Reading-West India Bishops and Clergy
[126]; Vaccination [125]; Roman Catholic
Churches, Schools, and Glebes (Ireland) [127].
Committee-Libel (re-comm.) * [112] [R.P.]

PUBLIC WORKS COMMISSIONERS.

QUESTION.

COLONEL FRENCH said, he wished to ask the Secretary to the Treasury, Why the Report of the Public Works Commissioners for the last year has not been laid upon the table of the House?

MR. HUNT replied, that the accounts | beg to ask the Secretary of State for which were embodied in the Report of the Foreign Affairs, Whether any suggestion Commissioners were now made up to the that this country should enter into any end of the financial year, and it was ob- guarantee for securing the future political viously impossible that the Report could neutrality of Luxembourg has been made be laid on the table so early as the present to, or entertained by, Her Majesty's Gomoment; but he hoped it would be ready vernment during the late Communications in the course of a few days. on the subject?

LORD STANLEY: Sir, a great many

IRISH AND SCOTCH REFORM BILLS. communications, practicable and imprac

QUESTIONS.

MR. STACPOOLE said, he would beg to ask Mr. Chancellor of the Exchequer, When the Irish Reform Bill will be intro

duced?

ticable, wise and foolish, have been adsubject of Luxembourg in the course of the dressed to me by various persons upon the last few weeks; but all arrangements which will regulate the political future of

that State must be made in the Conference.

[Sir ROBERT ANSTRUTHER had placed And I may now say that I have every upon the paper a similar question with rereason to hope that Conference will meet gard to the Scotch Reform Bill, and Mr. at a very early date. I do not think it OLIPHANT also had given notice of his in- would be my duty to anticipate what will tention to ask Mr. Chancellor of the Ex-be there discussed; but I think my hon. chequer, Whether, there being no compound-householders in Scotland, he proposed in the Scotch Reform Bill to give the franchise to every ratepaying householder in Scotch burghs?]

THE CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUER: Sir, I will answer the Question of the hon. Member (Mr. Stacpoole) with great pleasure, and I will, at the same time, take this opportunity of answering the two other Questions bearing upon this matter which stand on the Paper. We think that the Scotch Reform Bill is rather more pressing than the Irish, seeing that there was an Irish Reform Bill passed at a comparatively recent date. I may, however, say that the Irish Reform Bill is in preparation. With regard to the Scotch Reform Bill, I hope very soon to produce it; but it is necessary before I do so that some progress should be made with the English Reform Bill. With regard to the Question of another hon. Gentleman (Mr. Oliphant), which comes next upon the Paper, I think it would be more convenient that the provisions of the Scotch Bill should be known when I make the general statement, rather than I should answer interrogatories of this kind with reference to some single provisions. I am quite aware that there are no compound-householders in Scotland; but I scarcely think that Scotland is a country that ought to be condoled with on account of that circumstance.

NEUTRALITY OF LUXEMBOURG.

QUESTION.

Friend has forgotten one fact of which he is, of course, aware-namely, that during the last twenty-eight years, since the Treaty of 1839, Luxembourg has been under a European guarantee, to which the character of signitary to the Treaty of England is one of the parties. It is in 1839 that we are now invited to discuss the future arrangements connected with Luxembourg.

IRELAND — ANTICIPATED DISTRESS IN

GALWAY.-QUESTION.

MR. GREGORY said, he wished to ask the Chief Secretary for Ireland, Whether any Report has reached him as to the probability of serious distress in the western part of Galway during the summer; and whether he has ordered any inquiry on this subject?

LORD NAAS said, in reply, that the only information which had reached him on the subject had been received from a gentleman of considerable importance in the district referred to. He had referred that letter to the Poor Law Commissioners, who would immediately institute an inquiry into the accuracy of the statements it contained.

IRELAND-COURT OF EXCHEQUER.
QUESTION.

LORD DUNKELLIN said, he wished to ask Mr. Attorney General for Ireland, Whether, with regard to the vacant Mastership of the Court of Exchequer, it be intended to adopt the recommendation of the

MR. DARBY GRIFFITH said, he would Royal Commission on the Courts of Com

mon Law and Equity, who in their Second | Parliament must draw in their own minds Report stated that one Master was suffi- a very unfavourable comparison between cient for the three Law Courts?

pre

gular army. Whatever our reserves may the money principle. Young men are be, the regular army must be, in technical taken from school before they have half parlance, our first line of battle. On what- finished their education, and are placed ever plan our army of reserve may be under a crammer to enable them to pass constituted, its training school and source the superficial examination which of supply, both for officers and men, must cedes the first commission. How unfit be the standing army. But that army is and uninstructed they are, and how necesconstituted on a principle upon which no sary it is for the public interests that a army was ever before constituted. The portion of the sums paid for commissions primary and indispensable qualification is should be expended in completing the not professional knowledge, or long and general and professional education of the good service, or superior ability, but money. young men intended for the army may be This principle is admitted, even by the seen from the evidence of the distinguished warmest advocates of the present system, officers examined before the Purchase Comto be indefensible in theory. They all mission of 1857. I should beg to refer agree that if the army had to be consti- the House especially to the evidence of tuted for the first time, they should not Major-General Lord West and Majorthink of resting it upon such a foundation. General Sir Thomas Franks. Lord West My object will be to show that the system saysis also indefensible in practice-so indefensible as to make it essential to our safety that the army should now be reconstituted on a different principle.

For, in the first place, Sir, the army cannot be in any real sense of the word a profession while the purchase system exists. The meaning of a profession is that a man should be able to live by the occupation which he professes; and should look forward to prosper by devoting his best exertions to it. But officers have to pay for the privi·lege of belonging to the army; and, except under very extraordinary circumstances, they can hope for promotion only by making further payments. As a rule, the interest and life insurance on the sums invested equals, and sometimes greatly exceeds, the officers' pay. As a necessary consequence, the class of young men who depend for success upon their education and exertions, and who are the life and soul of every other profession, are to a great degree excluded from the army. Without a large supply of such men it is idle to talk of army reform. If, on the other hand, we succeeded in obtaining them in sufficient quantity, the army would very soon reform itself.

Again, Sir, if we look to the young men whom we get, we shall find that the most is not made of them under the present system. Parents cannot be expected both to give their sons an expensive education and at the same time to pay large sums of money for their commissions. The purchase system ought to have been abolished at the period when officers were required to pass professional examinations. As it is, the professional principle carries on an unequal and discouraging struggle against

Sebastopol, from sickness and casualties, the "When I was commanding a regiment before number of duty officers became very small, and I then urgently requested that some young officers who were kicking their heels at the depot might be sent out to head quarters forthwith. I received

ten of these young officers in a batch, who did not know their right hand from their left, and had never been drilled. I was obliged to send them to the trenches in command of parties of thirty or forty men, much as I objected to have such parties under the command of such very young subalterns. All that I could do with those officers was this: I sent the adjutant on parade, and told him to show them how to march their men off the ground. All that I could say to them was, If the enemy comes on, hold your ground, and drive them back if you can?' In such case much was left to the steadiness of the non-commissioned officers and old soldiers."

Lord West was asked—

་

"In point of fact, those young officers had no more knowledge of professional duties than if they had been so many civilians ?" And he answered, "Not a bit more."

But, Sir, if young officers enter the army raw and untrained, when they are there the purchase system does not provide them with a sufficient inducement to study their profession. For, in the first place, it is not in human nature that men who have bought appointments should be, as a class, equally zealous public servants with men who have received those appointments upon grounds of merit, or even private interest. The chances are that a young clergyman whose father has purchased him the reversion of a living is not so earnest and industrious as one whom his Bishop has noticed and promoted. And to take an instance nearer home, I am told that before the Reform Bill of 1832 there existed a custom of buying a seat in Parliament;

"We never know anything about the excess on the regulation price. It is done unknown to us. I am afraid it is done. I admit that I have reason

to know that it is done; but quite unofficially. I positively know nothing about it; but, of course, I have been long enough in the service to know that such things are done, and I am sorry that they are done."

and that a Member who had paid for his | Now, Sir, on this point the evidence of borough at the rate of £1,000 a year, or the Commander-in-Chief is frank enough. £4,000 between two dissolutions, was not He saysso regular an attendant at the House as one who was the chosen servant of a large popular constituency. In the same way a young officer cannot but feel that when he has paid to some quarter or another, it matters little what, a sum for which his pay, after stoppages have been deducted, is barely the legitimate interest, he has not Now, Sir, what a school is this in which so much obtained a situation as made an our young men are to learn the high investment, and in many cases an uncom- notions of honour which become an Engmonly bad one. He has bought his com-lish officer and gentleman. In this remission. It is his. May he not do what he likes with his own? This idea is so deeply rooted in the army that I have actually heard ensigns defend the system on the ground that the pay was good in-mitted to carry on a questionable traffic if terest for their capital. It never seemed to have crossed their minds that their services deserved any remuneration.

I appeal, Sir, to the personal experience of hon. Members. What are the objects to which the attention of young officers is chiefly directed after they have obtained their first commissions? Is it, as in other professions, to qualify themselves for early promotion by study, and careful attention to their duties ? When they talk of promotion, has it the slightest reference to such old-fashioned conditions as these? Does not their conversation rather turn upon the opportunities for purchase which their own and other regiments afford; upon exchange; upon giving or receiving the difference between full and half-pay; upon the objectionable qualities of the officer who stops promotion by refusing to give more than the regulation price, and upon the amount which the officer who is ready to retire would be willing to take? All this haggling and huxtering, though dignified by the name of treaties and negotiations, is perfectly scandalous when the article chaffered for is the command of men with all the power for good or evil which military rule confers. Demoralizing in its very nature, this system of barter is doubly demoralizing when we reflect that it is illicit and clandestine. "We have it," says Sir De Lacy Evans,

"On the candid and honourable evidence of one of the partners of a most eminent army agency firm that, in several corps, but especially in the cavalry, double the legal prices, and often more than double, were usually given; and it appeared in the evidence of the Commander-in-Chief that

officers who asked permission to make those purchases invariably concealed from the authorities their intention of violating the law."

spect, if in no other, our military education seems to be founded on the Spartan model; and our youth are to be, in accordance with the laws of Lycurgus, per

only they can contrive to escape detection. If the purchase system is not to be abolished, at any rate, in the interests of public morality, it is high time that it should be legalized.

Sir, it will hardly be denied that the first condition of professional efficiency is adequate professional remuneration. Now the professional remuneration of an ensign is nominally 5s. 3d. a day; and out of this he is liable to an annual charge of twelve days' pay for band subscription, besides a contribution of twenty days' pay on first appointment, and twenty days' difference of pay on each promotion. What remains of his pittance barely suffices for his mess expenses even in the most moderate regiments. Now, the rate of pay ought to be such as to enable a young man from his very first entrance into our army to live frugally according to the habits of the day. Any rate short of this forms an almost insuperable bar to the best class of candidates. But when the well-wishers of the English officer propose to augment his miserably insufficient stipend, they are met by the Treasury with the answer that such augmentation would only increase the price of commissions, and would therefore fail to improve the condition of men whose pecuniary embarrassment results from the fact that they have already sunk in their commissions large burden on their slender purses. sums, the interest on which is a heavy These facts tell in the infantry; but they tell with double force in the cavalry. In the year 1859 the competition of rich men had branch of the service to such an extravarun up the price of commissions in that gant height, and the luxurious habits im