THE ATTORNEY GENERAL said, he | every court should be in harmony with was much obliged to his hon. Friend for all the other courts in the kingdom. He having brought this matter before the could not help thinking, therefore, that House. The Bill was surrounded by a the establishment of any court of justice, mystery which he had vainly endea- however small, was a matter of public voured to penetrate. Here was a Bill concern, and that precautions should be which, under the guise of a measure taken in order to prevent great innovasimply for the abolition of the Court of tions being introduced under cover of a Hustings, would practically create a su- Private Bill. perior court with unlimited jurisdiction MR. DODSON agreed with his hon. in the City of London, while it further and learned Friend that the hon. Memproposed to extend the law of foreign ber for Westminster had rendered good attachment beyond its original and ex-service by calling attention to the ciristing limits a provision which ap- cumstances connected with this Bill. peared somewhat to derogate from the Had the hon. Member been in a position prerogative of the Crown. His efforts to offer to the House on a second readto ascertain how these clauses found ing the remarks he had addressed to it their way into the Bill had been wholly now, in all probability the measure unsuccessful. At the back of the Bills would not have passed that stage. were the names of his hon. Friend the Speaking for himself, he might say that Member for the City of London (Mr. if at that time he had been acquainted Crawford) and several worthy Alder- with the provisions of the Bill he should men; but not one of them had the re- certainly have voted against the second motest idea how the Bill came to be reading. The hon. Member for Westframed thus. He thought that perhaps minster had stated that a belief was prethe City Remembrancer would be in a valent among some persons that anyposition to give some information on the thing might be deposited as a Private subject; but that learned gentleman Bill, and that Amendments to any exalso declared he had not the slightest tent might be introduced in Committee. idea how the clauses had crept into the This, however, was not the case, even Bill. This Bill, which in its germinal with an unopposed Bill. Indeed, the form was a small measure for the abo- present Bill was a proof of his assertion; lition of the Court of Hustings, had for as soon as he became aware of its illustrated the Darwinian theory, and provisions he sent for the gentlemen spontaneously developed itself into a who were acting for the promoters, and Bill for the creation of a superior court having informed them that, in his opinion, of law. Its further progress had been it would not have passed the second stopped; and he hoped no such attempt reading if the House had been aware of would be made again. Whoever drew its nature, he intimated that it ought to the clauses he had just referred to made be withdrawn. In answer to their proa very gross attempt to abuse the Pri- posal that the Bill should be amended vate Bill legislation of this House. With in Committee, he said it could not be respect to the suggestion made by his so amended without being practically hon. Friend (Mr. W. H. Smith), as to transformed into another Bill. The hon. the amendment of the Standing Orders, Member for Westminster proceeded in that must, of course, be dealt with by his remarks on the supposition that a the Chairman of the Standing Orders Private Bill had an easier passage Committee; but he certainly thought through this House than a Public Bill; that some safeguard should be devised but this was just the reverse of the fact. to prevent proceedings of this sort. It A Private Bill had to go through as might be desirable, for instance, to make many stages in the House as a Public a provision to the effect that Bills of this one, and was subjected besides to sort should be submitted to the con- peculiar ordeals of its own. Notices must sideration of the Home Office. Formerly, be given by advertisements in the local no doubt, the courts which were estab- newspapers in the months of October lished by Private Bills were courts with and November as to its intended provery limited jurisdiction; but now it had visions; and it had to go before the come to be regarded as a maxim of legal Examiners in order that they might asreform that the administration of justice certain whether the Standing Orders should be regarded as a whole, and that had been complied with. Even if it that was used to induce hon. Members to allow their names to be put upon the back of Bills. Backing Bills, however, was a dangerous operation in any way. and the danger seemed to extend to Bills in that House. He thought it would be affording a necessary protection to hon. Members themselves if the House were to put a stop to the efforts being continually made to induce Members to put their names on the back of a Bill on the statement that it was a mere formal matter involving no responsibility whatever. were an unopposed Bill," it must go, | mittee present, would say that they after the second reading, before a Com- would be perfectly willing, by amendmittee, which would examine it clause ment of the Standing Orders, to get rid by clause; and, while under the con- of any blot that existed in the way sideration of the House, it was subject thought most expedient. He was not at to examination by officers appointed for all surprised at cases of this kind occurthat purpose, whose duty it was to in-ring, when he considered the solicitation form the House of any provisions in the Bill that might appear objectionable. In the Lords, the Bill would have to pass through the same stages, and undergo the same scrutiny. It would, besides, be sent to the Judges to be examined. It was, then, next to impossible to introduce objectionable clauses in a Bill without discovery. The hon. Member had stated that a Bill of this character could not possibly, as a Private Bill, meet with opponents. This, however, was not the case. It was true that Private Bills for the amendment of local courts were not of very frequent occurrence; but several had been introduced in the course of the last few years, and had been opposed either by communities or bodies of practitioners who had interest in the proceedings of the courts sufficient to give them a locus standi. The circumstances connected with this Bill had drawn his attention to a casus omissus in the Standing Orders of the House, which, if supplied, would meet the objections of the hon. Member. By Standing Order No. 41, it was provided that printed copies of certain Bills should be deposited before the meeting of Parliament, not only in the Private Bill Office, but also in the Department of the Government with which their scope and character most naturally connected them; but, curiously enough, there was no provision that Bills relating to local courts should be deposited with any Department. He would, therefore, venture to suggest that, as an Amendment to this Standing Order, it should be provided that every Bill for the establishment or the amendment of the procedure of local courts should, at the time it was deposited in the Private Bill Office, be also deposited in the Home Office. If the hon. Member for Westminster would withdraw his Motion, and confer with him and the Chairman of the Committee on Standing Orders, he believed they would be able to amend the Standing Order No. 41, so as to remove the blot which the hon. Gentleman had pointed out. MR. SCOURFIELD, as the only Member of the Standing Orders Com MR. JAMES said, that it seemed to be supposed that this was an inferior court seeking to attain the powers of a superior court with extensive jurisdiction. It should be borne in mind, however, that the Lord Mayor's Court was, without doubt, the oldest court in this country. It existed before the Courts of Queen's Bench and Common Pleas, and he believed even before the time of the Saxon Heptarchy. It existed when there was only a Port-Reeve in London, before there was a Mayor. It possessed the peculiar power of foreign attachment, and had now the advantage of being presided over by so distinguished a Judge as his right hon. Friend the Recorder. Some years ago, before the judgment of the House of Lords very much curtailed the jurisdiction of the Lord Mayor's Court, a Bill was prepared to be submitted to the House as a Public Bill upon this subject, and he believed the present one had been introduced as a Private Bill by mistake instead of as a Public one, and there was no one connected with the City of London who was not glad that the mistake had been discovered. MR. CRAWFORD said, that as his name was on the back of the Bill, he wished to state that he knew nothing whatever about it. He was applied to with the other Members for the City, including the right hon. Gentleman the First Lord of the Admiralty, to put his name upon the back of it, and he said— Certainly," as he had done on former occasions. He had not, however, been bored to do so in the Lobby. MR. STEPHEN CAVE was surprised | was withdrawn. Yet, towards the end that his hon. Friend the Governor of the of the Session, in July, whilst the parBank should put his valuable name upon ties opposed to the Bill were passing any paper without knowing what was a resolution congratulating themselves inside it. That was a very dangerous upon its withdrawal, at that very time practice. He rose, however, for the the Royal Assent was being given to a purpose of suggesting that Private Bills Bill in another form, which carried out should be revised after they had passed the objects of the original Bill. Somethrough Committee for the purpose of thing really should be done to prevent ascertaining whether any provisions af- Bills slipping through the House at 2 or fecting the public interests had been 3 o'clock in the morning, in such a way slipped in. There were many instances, that the most vigilant persons might be especially in such Bills as Gas and Water deceived. Bills, in which clauses very adverse to public policy were almost surreptitiously introduced. He thought such Bills should receive official examination before being read a third time. the MR. WATKIN WILLIAMS said, that this Bill was nothing less than a gross scandal to the legislation of the country. The attempt to bring it forward as a Private Bill arose from the conviction that if it were brought forward as a Public Bill it would be scouted at once. The Bill attempted to confer on this Court a jurisdiction far exceeding any that existed in this country or in any country in the world. There had been for many years past an attempt to extend process of foreign attachment against the opinions both of lawyers and politicians, until the attempt was put an end to by the judgment of the House of Lords in "Cox v. the Lord Mayor of London." Further, this jurisdiction, until it was stopped, was continually drawing this country into serious complications with foreign Powers. Foreign potentates were sued in this Court the Pacha of Egypt was recently sued there under a process of foreign attachment. This Bill would reverse the decision in "Cox v. the Lord Mayor of London," and it would give a jurisdiction extending over the whole world wherever they could bring in foreign attachment. There was also this extraordinary provision, such as no civilized country in the world had ever adopted that no defendant should be allowed to plead to the jurisdiction of the Court. He might observe that attempts such as these were not confined to Private Bills-there were some things in connection with the passing of Public Bills which were scandalous and astonishing. In 1869 a Public Bill was brought forward which he was requested to oppose, and having intimated that intention to those in charge of the Bill it MR. JESSEL said, that during the short time he had been a Member of the House he had been instrumental in stopping more than one Public Bill which had been brought in by private Members to alter, or, as it was called by the promoters, to amend, the law. He was astonished to find that no means were provided by the Government to examine Bills brought in by private Members affecting the law and jurisprudence of the country. Any private Member might, without check, introduce a Bill, however absurd, making the largest alterations in the law. He had drawn the attention of the Law Officers of the Crown to several Bills of that character, and in consequence they interfered and stopped the Bills. But the Law Officers of the Crown were not appointed for that purpose. He thought that every Bill brought in by a private Member which would alter the law ought to be examined by a competent person, and that a Report upon it should be made to the Government, so that the Law Officers might be able to advise the Government on the propriety of allowing the Bill to proceed. Such a course would stop these amateur attempts at legislation. could mention an instance similar to that just stated by the hon. and learned Member (Mr. W. Williams). A Bill was brought in, the result of which would have been to effect a revolution with regard to the law of mortgages. He mentioned the matter to the Solicitor General, who stopped the Bill. A very short time afterwards a Bill was brought in under another name, and in the same Session, to effect an object similar to that aimed at by the Bill which had been stopped; and that Bill also had to be stopped. Such matters should not be left to mere accident. He MR. W. H. SMITH said, he would withdraw his Resolution, on the under standing that the course suggested by | he (Lord Elcho) said was that erroneous the Chairman of Ways and Means should be adopted. Amendment, by leave, withdrawn. Main Question, "That Mr. Speaker do now leave the Chair," by leave, withdrawn. Committee deferred till Monday next. SUPPLY-ARMY ESTIMATES. REPORT. Resolutions [March 23] reported. First Resolution read a second time. LORD ELCHO rose to move that the number of men be reduced by 10,000. The Motion of the hon. Member for Sheffield (Mr. Mundella), to reduce the Estimates by the lump sum of £3,000,000, followed the rule of thumb, and thus left it open to the Prime Minister to reply that the hon. Gentleman had failed to show how the proposed reduction could be effected, and though 91 Members voted with him the Motion came to nothing. The hon. Member's proposals were threefold:-in the first place, that we should cut off the honorary colonels; in the next place, that by doing away with Army agency and making paymasters do much of the work of quartermasters we should save £60,000; and, thirdly, that we should remove from the Army all men who were either morally or physically unsound. The Resolution of the hon. Member for Huddersfield (Mr. Leatham) appeared to be of a more practical character; it was that a reduction of 20,000 men should be made. It was more practical, because, as the hon. Gentleman observed, 20,000 men more or less mattered very little; in other words, it was not a point which affected our position in Europe or our security at home. In that he (Lord Elcho) was very much disposed to agree. But what he himself proposed was that we should reduce our Army by 10,000 men in order, paradoxical as it might seem, to improve it and give it greater efficiency. Last year his right hon. Friend (Mr. Cardwell) had proposed to add 20,000 men to the Army, and the artillery had already received 5,200 of that addition. But his right hon. Friend the other night complained that he (Lord Elcho) had accused him of giving erroneous information to the House. What, however, figures had been put into his mouth, inasmuch as he had stated that which was not borne out by the facts. His right hon. Friend said last Session that we had artillery enough for 60,000 men; and so we had if we took the proportion of three guns for every 1,000 men, for the number of guns was 180. He denied, however. that the right hon. Gentleman was justified in taking that proportion. According to our Field Equipment Book we had not guns last year, according to the English proportion, for 40,000 men. We could not at the time have found the proper proportion of artillerymen for 180 guns on a war establishment. His right hon. Friend stated to the House this Session that we had 336 field guns, capable of expansion to 408 guns, equivalent to artillery for 150,000 men, and he gave as his ground for making that statement that Colonel Hamley, in some work or other, had given certain proportions of guns to armies, and that the Prussian proportion was of a certain standard. But his right hon. Friend was not justified in basing his argument upon such data; for since last year a Committee had been appointed by the War Office, which had laid down certain proportions of guns to men, and that was not the Prussian proportion of 2-7 to every 1,000 men, but three guns to every 1,000; so that his right hon. Friend, tested by the proportion laid down by his own Committee, had guns not for 150,000 but only for 136,000 men. His right hon. Friend. however, said that he had the means of expanding his 336 guns into 408; but he (Lord Elcho) held in his hand figures to show that we had not men to man these guns. Now, the right hon. Gentleman the Prime Minister had, the evening before, stated that hitherto a bad custom had prevailed of reckoning guns for which there were no carriages. [Mr. GLADSTONE: For which carriages were only made the year after.] That was to say that we had no means of using those guns at the moment, inasmuch that the carriages for them were not made until the following year. But what was the Government doing now? It should be borne in mind that, although we could manufacture carriages to almost any extent, we could not deal with soldiers and artillerymen in the way we could manufacture carriages. And had we, he would ask, artillerymen at the present, even taking the depôt garrisons into account, to man 408 guns on the war establishment, even on home service, if necessity should arise for doing so? His impression was that that could not be done even though we were to take the whole of our depôts-which, it should be borne in mind, were required for the purposes of India and of our Colonies. Were we even to starve every other service we should still be under the requisite complement. As he (Lord Elcho) had stated, he thought it would be well, when they heard so many complaints made about the increase of something like £1,000,000 for supplying material of war to our Army, that the House should understand the sort and amount of stores in the way of guns and men which were necessary. We had not in this country artillery for more than 136,000 Regular troops according to our English proportion of men to guns; to man those guns was the utmost we could do, and that by starving other services. But then we had made no provision in the way of field artillery for the Militia none for the Volunteers. He wished, therefore, to know from the Government whether they were taking even the simplest steps to provide field artillery for our Reserve Forces? Now, there was a very valuable system in existence in this country which he would recommend to the attention of his right hon. Friend the Secretary for War. He alluded to a system which had been devised by Mr. Darby, who was formerly Member for Sussex, by means of which agricultural horses and waggoners in their smock frocks were organized to draw 18-pounder guns 30 miles in the course of a day, besides manoeuvring over steep ground such as that at Brighton, in a manner which was the admiration of all artillery officers who witnessed the manoeuvres at that place. Now, that was a description of force which would cost the country nothing except the guns and ammunition, and if the farmers were willing to use their horses for the purpose, there was no reason why the system should not be established throughout the whole country with the greatest facility. Information on that point might easily be obtained by means of letters addressed to Lords Lieutenant of counties. Now, the number of guns which we should require if we were to have anything like the proportion of guns to men which existed in foreign countries would be about 1,400 or 1,500 guns, and a proportionate number of artillerymen. He held in his hand an extract from a work which had been recently published by the Archduke Albrecht of Austria, who was Generalissimo of the Austrian Army, in which he stated that Germany, including North and South, had for its first line 1,794 guns, and for its second line 54 guns, which gave a total for Germany of 1,848 field guns. In this country we had only 408, all told, and these, he maintained, we were unable to man; and if we were to lose men or guns, we had no means of replacing them. The late war, he would add, had clearly shown that the force which it was most effective and most desirable to keep up was the artillery; and we should, he contended, do all in our power to recover our lost position in that respect, or rather to establish a position which we had never held by keeping an ample supply of artillery to meet an invasion, or in case we should want to send a force abroad. He was anxious that, of the 20,000 men voted by this House last August as an increase of force, 10,000, instead of 5,000, should be given to the artillery. This would add infinitely more to the strength and efficiency of the Army than by giving the 5,000 to the cavalry or infantry; and he would remind the House that 4,800 men were equivalent to manning, on a war establishment, 170 additional guns. He hoped the House would look mainly to the artillery in this re-organization of the Army, and would insist that the field batteries were properly kept up; and that some provision was made, of course in the cheapest form, for the Reserve Forces. His other proposal was to knock off 10,000 from the cavalry and infantry, and strengthen our military system upon something like a principle which should be enduring, and really ensure for us a greater number of men in the end. This proposal might appear paradoxical; but all who were interested in military matters knew that the number of men voted by this House varied from year to year. From below the Gangway constant Motions were made to reduce the number of men, and, if the Division were a close one, or a strong feeling were expressed by the usual supporters of the Government, though it |