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THE SOLICITOR GENERAL FOR IRELAND (Mr. PLUNKET) said, it was true general clauses somewhat similar to the provisions of this local measure had appeared in the Juries Procedure Bill, proposed with the intention of carrying out the Report of a Committee founded on the evidence taken in favour

of the suggestion. Great opposition had been offered to the proposal, however, on the part of the hon. and learned Member for Limerick, and he thought also on that of the hon. Member for Drogheda; and it was then deemed the better course to withdraw the clauses affecting the country generally, and to introduce a new Bill dealing only with the county of Dublin and the county of the city of Dublin, as to which he believed there was unanimity of feeling. The Bill had the support of both hon. Members for the county and for the city of Dublin, who had ascertained the wishes of their

constituents on the subject. It had been pressed very earnestly on the Government, and the Government desired to lose no time in passing it, if possible, during the present Session of Parliament. They had been strongly urged to do so, among other public bodies by the Chamber of Commerce, and by large numbers of individuals. If, however, the hon. and learned Member was resolved, on his own responsibility, to defeat the measure, and was prepared to oppose it at that stage, there was little hope of passing it so late in the year; under these circumstances, he should not oppose an Adjournment of the Debate if it was moved for.

Motion made, and Question proposed, "That the Debate be now adjourned," -(Sir Charles W. Dilke,)-put, and agreed to.

Debate adjourned till Monday.

WAYS AND MEANS. Considered in Committee.

(In the Committee.) Resolved, That, towards making good the Supply granted to Her Majesty for the service of the year ending on the 31st day of March 1877, the sum of £28,703,043 be granted, out of the Consolidated Fund of the United Kingdom. Resolution to be reported upon Monday.

House adjourned at Nine o'clock.

HOUSE OF LORDS,

Monday, 7th August, 1876.

*

MINUTES.]—PUBLIC BILLS-First Reading—
Elementary Education* (204); Pollution of
Rivers (207).
Second Reading Cattle Disease (Ireland)
(195); Savings Banks (Barrister)* (198);
Superannuation (Unhealthy Climates) * (199);
Bishopric of Truro (201); Erne Lough and
Committee-Juries Procedure (Ireland) (196).
River (189); Ardglass Harbour (193).
Committee-Report-Poor Law Rating (Ireland) *
Winter Assizes (Ireland) *

(197).

Third Reading (200), and passed.

*

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Order of the Day for the Second Reading, read.

THE DUKE OF RICHMOND AND GORDON, in moving that the Bill be now read the second time, said, the measure was one which affected very materially both Ireland and this country. In England the law was that animals were slaughtered compulsorily which were suffering from pleuro-pneumonia, and the person who owned the animals was compensated by the local authorities who were stationed in various parts of the country. The local authorities in England who performed those duties were composed of magistrates of quarter sessions, but in Ireland there was no local authority formed in the various districts of the country, the local authority being the Lord Lieutenant and the Privy Council in Dublin. It was found that mischievous results arose from there being no local authority, because cases often occurred in which the compulsory slaughter of animals suffering from disease was not ordered. In fact, there was in Ireland no compulsory slaughter. Her Majesty's Government had thought that such a state of things as this ought not to be allowed to remain, and had therefore introduced the present Bill for the purpose of affording a remedy. The object of the Bill was to enable the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland to confer on the Boards of Guardians throughout the country, some of the powers which he now exercised absolutely, to make arrangements

and was worked by the Government through Inspectors. He attached great importance to the carrying out of the

tee of the House of Commons, of which Committee he had been a Member. That Committee was appointed to consider whether the law in Ireland as to the treatment of animals infected with disease should be assimilated to that in England. The general opinion of the Committee was that the Irish system, a centralized one, was better than the English system, which consisted in giving a great deal of power to the local authorities; that it worked more satisfactorily, and all it wanted to make it perfect was to place at the disposal of the Veterinary Department a larger number of Inspectors. This Bill introduced to a large extent the English system into Ireland. He was convinced, however, that the duty entrusted to Boards of Guardians would not be discharged by them nearly as efficiently as if it were left to the Veterinary Department, and he suggested that the existing system in Ireland should be preserved. He was afraid the mode proposed would give rise to a great deal of jobbery.

for preventing the spread of disease amongst sheep, cattle, and horses-horses being now included for the first time under the term "animals." Boards of recommendations of the Select CommitGuardians had no power to make any such regulations under the existing law. The powers proposed to be conferred included the appointment of Inspectors, and the appointment of Valuers; and the latter part of Clause 4 provided that in maritime ports, the appointment of Inspectors should be under different provisions from those under which Inspectors were appointed in the other parts of the country, and that such Inspectors should be under the power of the Lord Lieutenant. The Boards of Guardians were to compensate the persons whose animals were slaughtered under the Act, a portion of the compensation being paid out of the "Cattle Plague Fund." The 15th clause enabled the Lord Lieutenant to frame Orders and take the execution of the Act into his own hands. He did not know that there were any other matters to which he need call attention. He believed that the Bill would be a very useful measure, and if it passed into law it would afford a proper and sufficient staff of Inspectors in Ireland, so as to prevent the importation into this country of diseased animals. That would be beneficial to both countries, because agriculturists in this country knew very well that we were indebted to Ireland for a large portion of the stock imported into England. The noble Duke concluded by moving the second reading of the Bill.

EARL SPENCER approved of the Bill, as he knew well the great importance both to England and to Ireland that Irish cattle should be kept in a satisfactory sanitary state. He had always urged that the same regulations should be enforced in both countries, and during the time he was in Ireland the orders respecting the Cattle Plague were made more stringent. Against that Moved, "That the Bill be now read 2a." increased stringency there was a strong -(The Lord President.)

feeling; but he had always maintained that, if owners of cattle in Ireland would LORD EMLY thoroughly agreed with not submit to proper regulations for the noble Duke opposite (the Duke of preventing the spread of disease, they Richmond and Gordon) that there was need not be surprised if in England a necessity for introducing some measure stringent measures were taken with redealing with the subject, and trusted gard to the importation of Irish cattle. that the effect of the Bill would be to He was, therefore, glad to see a measure get rid of the various complaints of which was founded upon the Report of which they had all heard so much with the Committee of 1873. When in Ireregard to the importation of disease into land he thought the same Orders should this country. But he confessed that it be enforced there as in England; but appeared to him that the mode in which the Law Officers declared that there was the object was to be arrived at did not no power to levy a compensation rate for seem to be a wise or desirable one. In the purposes required, and Ireland was England a great deal of power for pre- therefore left under a different law. He venting the spread of cattle disease was trusted the Bill would be the means of given to the local authorities. In Ire- doing great good both in Ireland and in land the system was a centralized one, this country. We could not rely wholly

Moved, "That the Bill be now read 2a." -(The Lord President.)

THE BISHOP OF EXETER desired to

on the Board of Inspection, but we must | liberal ideas manifested by Lady Rolle, carry into effect stringent orders, as they and, therefore, he now moved the second were carried into effect in England for reading of the Bill. the extermination of this fatal disease among cattle. Unless power were given to the local authorities to act at once, considerable delay would arise before the cattle in an affected district could be destroyed, and during which the disease would spread. It was of no use waiting for their machinery to be ready before taking action for the repression of disease, and he therefore thought that in Committee some Amendment should be made in order to give a still more speedy operation to the measure. could see no objection to the Lord Lieutenant having power to constitute those different parts of the country in which the local authorities should be made immediately aware of the outbreak of disease.

He

Motion agreed to; Bill read 2a accordingly, and committed to a Committee of the Whole House To-morrow.

BISHOPRIC OF TRURO BILL.-(No 201.)

(The Lord President.)

SECOND READING.

express his gratitude to the Government for having brought in the Bill. As the measure was not to come into operation until a sufficient endowment was provided, he hoped no long period would elapse before sufficient provision was made for the purpose. He could assure their Lordships that a division of the diocese was necessary for the due discharge of the duties of it. Those duties were far too large to be satisfactorily performed by the same person.

Motion agreed to; Bill read 2a accordingly, and committed to a Committee of the Whole House To-morrow.

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ADDRESS FOR PAPERS.

LORD STRATHNAIRN: My Lords, your Lordships have given such constant proof of useful interest in the Army that

Order of the Day for the Second Read- I do not apologize for soliciting defering, read.

THE DUKE OF RICHMOND AND GORDON, in moving that the Bill be now read a second time, said, it was a very important Bill, affecting a considerable portion of the western part of the diocese of Exeter. Their Lordships would not have forgotten the statement which the right rev. Prelate the Bishop of that diocese made at an earlier part of the Session as to the enormous amount of duty which devolved upon him and the impossibility of properly discharging it. The right rev. Prelate had shown in an unmistakeable and a liberal manner that he was prepared to assist in carrying into effect the alteration of his diocese. The circumstance of Lady Rolle having set apart £1,200 per annum for the purpose of forming a new Bishopric of Truro was the reason why this Bill had been introduced. That sum, together with the amount which the Bishop of Exeter had consented to give out of his revenues, would enable the Bishopric to be formed. He thought there could be no objection to carrying into effect the

entially, but earnestly, your Lordships' attention to a military subject, always very important, but especially so in present times, when the best guarantees of honourable peace and of the safety of British policy and engagements are an efficient Army and Navy. The subject is the inherent defect in the organization of the two Army Reserves, liable to serve abroad, which, for the sake of clearness, and because they cannot exist without civil employment, I call Civil Employment Reserves. The senior of them is the First Class of the Army Reserve which was formed in 1867; but as it is now in a state of extinction, numbering only 53 men, I shall make no further mention of it, except historically, and to observe that the Minister of War in 1870 induced nearly 2,400 of its men by a bounty of a guinea, in spite of his denunciations of the evils of bounty, to volunteer for the First Class Army Reserve which he was then organizing. The Second Class of the Army Reserve of 1867 are the pensioners who do not serve abroad. They are good and experienced soldiers, about 14,000 strong, serving under the salutary influ

"That they may be called out on permanent service by Proclamations in a great emergency, or in times of imminent national peril; that they then become liable to general service with the Army; that whenever the Force is called out for training, or in aid of the Civil Power, and for exercise, all the provisions of the Mutiny Act and Articles of War apply to them."

ence of pension, that best incentive to | of examples is sufficient to prove it. good conduct. The Irish pensioners, in The pay and allowances of the English spite of the efforts of disaffected country- Reserves, for it is needless to observe men to seduce them from their duty, that no Englishman would serve volundid faithful service under me during five tarily in an unpaid Reserve is a difficulty years of Irish agitation for a red Repub- which three successive Ministers of War lic, a favourable result which it would have been unable to overcome. They be a delusion, as I shall show, to expect cannot, as their own official acts prove, from the Irish soldiers of the First Class reconcile the jarring interests of the civil Army Reserve, raised in 1870, serving employés of the Reserve soldier of without pension in the Irish districts. economy and of the rights of the country This, the First Class Army Reserve, is, to an efficient Reserve for its protection. since the collapse of the First Class of the But the Prussian sic volo sic jubeo system Army Reserve of 1867, the only one liable passes over all these obstacles at once by to serve abroad. It was formed on the giving their Reserves no pay, no alconditions of service of the Army En- lowances, except during their training, listment Act of 1870, which state, in which their very severe, but perfect its Preamble, that the object of the Act drill, does not require to be so long is to shorten the period of Army service, or frequent as English Reserve trainand to establish a Reserve Force which ing; which brings to light another immay be called into active service in a portant difference between the two serperiod of emergency. The War Office vices-that is, that if Prussian drill were Regulations of 9th February, 1871, state introduced into the English Army, the more explicitly the very important duties service would become unpopular, and and obligations of the First Class Army recruiting would at once fall off; our ReserveReserves, therefore, to be efficient, require more drill than the Prussian. I now beg to submit to your Lordships a brief history, official facts, of the two Civil Employment Reserves of 1867 and 1870, which shows that their payment by civil employment is incompatible with the welfare of their soldiers, and the training and discipline of war Reserves, whose duty it is to protect this country and its vast interests in great emergencies and imminent national peril. Your Lordships will see the varied difficulties against which the Reserve soldier has to contend in obtaining civil employment or work. They commence with the fundamental one, that, as a rule, the civil employer would prefer the non-military workman, whose time and service are exclusively at his disposal, and not curtailed and interrupted, as is the case with the Reserve workman, by his military duties and obligations. Your Lordships' will learn from official documents the sacrifices which have been made of training, discipline and finance, to remove or modify the causes of unwillingness of the civilian to employ the Reserve man, and of the Reserve man to enter the Reserve, of which the daily pay is insufficient, and civil employment too precarious, to ensure him the means of existence. With the view of remedying these two causes of the unsuccessful working of the system, from 1867 to

For the proper appreciation of this subject it should be borne in mind that the organization of the two Civil Employment Reserves is based on an untried theory, the policy of a great military economy to save the greater part of the expense of their pay and allowances by means of the civil employment of the men of the Reserves. It is reasoned in favour of this system that it is a copy of the Prussian. But that is a perversion of the plainest reason, and of the simplest logic. For with the exception of both being short service, the two systems are as different as it is possible to be; the copy does not possess one feature of the original, the Prussian being rigid, despotic conscription; the English, constitutional, voluntary service, so voluntary, that, 24 hours after a recruit has engaged, he may declare off, should he think better of it. It follows that the organizations of Prussian and English Reserves are as different as compulsion and free-will can make them, a fact so palpable that one out of a series

1876, the War Office in 1870 doubled | employer. This Reserve is erroneously the daily pay given in 1867 to the Re- called General Peel's; but that successful serve, and trebled it in 1876. Having Minister of War, who united useful thus increased considerably the financial military experience with administrative burdens of the country to remedy the want ability, disapproved the system, and proand uncertainty of civil employment, the posed a different one. The responsible War Office reduced in large proportions military authorities in 1867 fixed the the amount of training considered neces- training of the Reserve at 28 days' drill sary for the Reserve in 1867, because it in- with the Militia, and 12 days under terfered with and prevented the Reserve Staff serjeants of pensioners. But this soldiers getting civil employment. These amount of training brought into play additional heavy charges in the Army the jarring interests which I have menEstimates for a Reserve, whose charac- tioned. The civil employer would not teristic was to be its economy, and the take into his service a man whose work large curtailments of its instruction were was to be interrupted every year by 40 accompanied by other measures affect- days of military training and duties. ing discipline, as well as drill, to prop And, on the other hand, the Reserve up a system, whose organic defects can- soldier could not live on his daily pay, not fail to bring about its fall. To make which was only 2d. The Reserve of the Reserve popular, and to make up, 1867 therefore broke down, as will be still further, for the uncertainty of civil seen in 1870. The unwillingness of work, the late Minister of War, although civilians to employ Reserve men is he had strongly condemned, in Parlia- grounded on the strongest of motivesment, bounty, and abolished it on ac- self interest. For, in the first place, there count of its bad effects on discipline, is the inherent disadvantage already alpermitted the Reserve to receive on the luded to, which, in other words, is simfirst day of each quarter three months' ply that the Reserve workman serves two pay in advance, which is the same as masters-one, himself; the other, the bounty, and even worse, as will be real master, the Reserve soldier's milishown in its effect on the Reserve tary superior. It is waste of time to add soldier. This concession was followed that, as a rule, the civilian must prefer by two others, equally impolitic, to the a civilian workman, of whom he is the civil employer and the Reserve man— sole master. In the second place, a call the first, exemption of the Reserve, as a to arms or to training of the Reserve body, from training, under the Mutiny men engaged in the very varied work of Act and Articles of War; and the other, this country-from steam, gas, and iron, exemption of individual Reserve soldiers to agricultural, prison, or railway work from training in Government, or respon--interrupts, and is prejudicial to that sible employment of a higher class. It is difficult to say which of these two exemptions is the most regretable, in the interests of discipline, military instruction, and the fair and impartial allotment of the soldier's duties, which is one of the most important features of the Queen's Regulations. After this preface, my Lords, I beg to pass to the history of the Reserves of 1867 and 1870. So dominant was the spirit of economy, and so great the hopes of civil employment for the soldiers of the Reserve, that the Government, when they formed the First Class of the Army Reserve in 1867, only gave its men 2d. daily pay each, which is a small fraction of the pay and allowances which they had in their regiments, leaving it to them to obtain the difference by civil employment-that is, wages for work, from the Government downwards to the lowest class of civil

VOL. CCXXXI. [THIRD SERIES.]

order and system which are indispensable for its success. The better the workman, the greater the loss; and an unexperienced substitute may derange or blow up a gas work, let loose convicts, turn a break, or shunt a railway carriage the wrong way. I now beg to adduce difficulties; the Reserve man has to encounter, in obtaining civil employment or work sufficient for a livelihood, much more an equivalent to his liberal, regimental pay and allowances, which cannot amount to less than 2s. 6d. or 38. a-day. The Reserve soldier starts with a natural difficulty in obtaining such wages by work, or anything like them, for the combatant or enterprizing spirit of the village or manufacturing town, whose distaste for labour has led him to enlist, is not the man to settle down to hard work. But, besides this drawback, he has to struggle with the constant

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