The Press. — London, England, 1857-07-04 00:00:00

N l l W 646 opinion throughout the country in favour of becret voting. Admitting that there were cases of intimi dation, he denied that, in general, tenants voting with their landlords voted against their will and their conscience. He protested against the doctrine that freeholders and ten•pound voters were to be accounted infallible, and that in their hands was to be left a free and despotic power of voting as they pleased, without that responsibility, control, and criticism to which the highest functionaries in the State were subject. This was a doctrine contrary to the principles of the British Constitution. He in sisted that the country had a right to know how the franchise was exercised by those who wore intrusted with it. As to the last assumption, although there were many persons who advocated the ballot, yet he did not believe that the general opinion of the country was in favour of secret voting. In America, the ballot was not synonymous with secret voting. You might know by the form or colour of the ticket a man took in what way he voted. " A man may take a blue ticket or a yellow ticket, which repre sents the interests of particular candidates, and then there is an end of secrecy and of security against intimidation." In fine, there would be no resource under the ballot but compulsory secrecy, no man being allowed to state what his vote was. Did any body believe, he asked, that this would take piece in England more than in America? In conclusion, the noble lord observed : For my own part, I will only further say that, if Parlia- ment should decide that the ballot is to be the law of the land, 1, like others, must bow to that decision ; hut until that is made the law, so long as I am permitted to give a vote on this subject, that vote will be recorded against secret voting, and in favour of the ancient mode of open and deliberate voting. Mr. BERKELEY replied, and the house having di vided, the motion was negatived by 257 to 189 ; majorit against, 68. TATION FUND. Lord NAAS, in moving for leave to bring in a bill to repeal the' 7th section of the Superannuation Act of 1834, called the attention of the house to a case which involved the interests of a large body of her Majesty's servants, and which demanded, he said, the immediate interposition of tha house. He gave a short history of the Superannuation Acts and regu lations, pointing out the inequalities of the system, and the hardships inflicted by it on the civil service. He adverted to the two bills introduced by the Go vernment upon this subject last session, and to the report of the commissioners to whom the whole matter was referred, and upon whose recommenda tions (whioh he read) he rested his whole case. They recommended the abolition of the deduction, and he proposed to bring in a bill to repeal the section in the Act of 1834 which authorised the imposition of the tax. The motion was seconded by Mr. HAWKEY. The CHANCELLOR of the ExcneQuEs objected, on the ground that the Government cou'd not add 60,0001. or 70,0001. a year to the burdens of the country. "He did not think that the civil servants had any equitable claim, and it was fcr the house to consider whether they would at once unsettle a system which had worked so long." After an appeal from Sir F. BARING, the CHANCEL• LOR of the EXCHEQUER consented to postpone his opposition to a late stage of the measure. The motion was then agreed to, and leave given to bring in the bill. The house adjourned at a quarter past one o'clock. HOUSE OF COMMONS-WEDNESDAY. MEDICAL PROFESSION (NO. 1) BILL. Mr. HEADLAN moved the second reading of the Medical Profession (Se. 1) Bill. The main feature of this bill which distinguished it from Lord Elcho's with the same title (the next upon the orders of the day) was the institution of a General Council of Medical Education and Registration, to consist of persons chosen by the medical and surgical colleges of the United Kingdom, certain medical societies, and the Universities, with six persons to be named by the Queen ; the regulations of this council in respect W examination of candidates and registra• tion to be carried out by branch councils. Mr. CRAUFURD moved to defer the second reading for six months. He contended that this bill sacri toed too much to the interests of the medical corpo rations, perpetuating an objectionable system ; and that it was impossible that the proposed General C tuncil could work satisfactorily. Lord Elcho's bill (which proposed to establish a Medical Council, to consist of the President of the General Board of H !filth and twelve members to be nominated by the Crown for a term) did not sweep away the corpora. !ions, but provided that the giving a title to practise should not be confined to these bodies, and that the to indidates should be subject to approval by examiners n minated by the Medical Board ; the framework of t is bill being similar in other respects to Mr. H sadism's bill. The debate which ensued turned chiefly upon the comparative merits of what were considered to be she principles of the two bills,—the one proposing 16, T 11E PRESS, JULY 4, 1857'. a representative, the other a nominee council. Mr. Headlam's bill was preferred by Lord Bury, Mr. Hatchell, Mr. Grogan, Mr. Neate, Mr. Vance, and Mr. Briscoe: 1,-,rd Elcho's by Mr. Ewart, Mr. Black, and Mr. Blake; while Colonel Sykes and Mr. T. Duncombe opposed both bills. Mr. NAPIER supported the motion for the second reading of Mr. Headlam's bill. His object, he said, was that the house should proceed upon enlightened educational principles, and the question was whether this bill embodied such principles. Lord Elcho's bill would place the whole medical body under the control of the Crown, whereas this bill gave to the Universities the educational poser, as teachers; the licensing authority residing in the medical bodies, represented in the General Council. The other bill would not secure a sound and sufficient education for the profession : The question for the house was whether the principle of the bill was such as they ought to repudiate and reject. The two bill. were totally irreconcilable. The noble lord proposed to transfer all power to the Crown, as the control of the profession was to be vested in a council nominated by the Crown and presided over by the President of the Board of Health. The other bill proposed that the council should be composed of the representatives of the different Universities and medical bodies. The bill of the noble lord was supported,not by the bodies which had the highest standing in the profession, but by those who by their traffic in diplomas had depreciated the character of the degrees. The rank of a physician ought to be the highest in the profession ; but the bill of the noble lord would bring all down to the level of the general practitioner, and the minimum of education. The bill of his hon. and learned friend would preserve the rank of physician, and would secure the highest teat of education, and preserve the Universities in their proper place as teachers, but not as licensing bodies. The University of London even had admitted that it had no wish to retain the power of licens• ing. The bill of the noble lord swept away ell the medical bodies. If they wanted a uniform qualitication, they ought not to take the lowest as their standard. Mr. COwPER opposed Mr. Headlam's bill, and, adverting to the difficulty of legislating upon a sub ject on which there was such a conflict of opinions, observed that although there had been allegations of humanity, there was no real concurrence of sentiment in the profession. He preferred the bill which had emanated from the select committee, and thought that the influence of the Crown ought. to be felt over the medical body; but the princ.ple of the bill was not the constitution of the council, which was a matter of detail; its real principle was as to what should be the legal qualification of medical practitioners, the standard of which was not im proved : A great objection to the hill was, that it exempted the College of Physicians from the necessity of hcving an examination in the practice of surgery; so that, after this bill passed, the physician would still he a man who might. look with hauAty and fastidious contempt on a very useful branch of the profession. Again, by this bill, medical men, instead of remaining divided into the three branches of physicians, surgeons, and general practitioners, would be classed under the two heads of physicians and surgeons and general practitioners, the two latter being put together. This was a most faulty arrangement, and one that hail always been opposed by those who best understood the interest of the profession. The College of Physicians itself, in a memorial which it presented last year, said it was most important that the distinction between the three osiers of the profession should be maintained. This bill was an attempt to patch up the defects of the present system. It did not provide a new and better aystem of examination as a substitute for the present one, which had been so generally complained of; it would not effect any improvement in the qualification of general practi• tioners—a point of very great importance iu reference to the poor, and he trusted, therefore, that the house would not assent to the second reading. He could not assent to the second reading of the bill. Mr. HEADLAM, in reply, complained that by Lord Eicho's bill the whole organisation of the medical profession was destroyed, and that those clauses whereby the profession was placed under the arbi trary dominion of a council nominated by the Crown, and presided over by the President of the Board of Health, had been proposed and introduced into the bill in the committee by the chairman, Mr. Cowper bimseif. Upon a division, the second reading was carried by 225 to 7s. In the course of the debate Mr. DEASY, the chair man of the Cambridge Election Committee, reported that the Marquis of Biandford had been absent trom the committee on account of the illness of his father, whose death was just announced; and, upon the motion of Mr. Deasy, the Marquis (now Duke of Marlborough` was discharged from further at tendance. The bill was ordered to be committed on Wed nesday next. _ _ _ IdOrd ELCHO then withdrew No. 3 Medical Pro fession Bill, and observed that if Mr. Headlam's bill did not pass in the present session he should cer- tainly reintroduce his own bill next year. The order for the second reading of No. 3 Modicia Profession Bill was then discharged. CHRISTCHURCH (WEST HARTLEPOOL) BILL. This bill was read a third time and passed. ROCHDALE ELECTION. Sir J. Y. BULLER, chairman of the Rochdale Election Committee, which concluded its labours this day, appeared at the bar of the house with the report, which stated that the committee bad deter mined that Sir A. Ramsay was duly elected as a burgess to serve in the present Parliament for the borough of Rochdale, and that there was no evidence offered to show that the said acts of bribery were committed with the knowledge of the sitting member or his agents. The report was then laid on the table. The house adjourned at five minutes to six. HOUSE OF LORDS—TnuaspAy. Lord GRANVILLE, in reply to the Marquis of Salis bury why the office of Admiral of the Fleet had not been filled up since the death of Sir Byarn Martin by conferring that office on the senior admiral on the list or some other deserving officer distinguished for his public services, thought it inconvenient to discuss individual instances of promotion, and first deolined answering the question, but afterwards, on being pressed by the Duke of Northumberland, said the Government were of opinion " that there was no person particularly marked out at the present moment to fill au office of this sort." THE SECOND READING of Lord Redesdale's " Adul terers' Marriage Bill," by which the guilty persons in a divorce case who desired afterwards to be married should be married only by the registrar and not by the clergy, was opposed by the LORD CHANCELLOR and supported by the Archbishop of CarrEanuaT, but rejected by the house by a majority of 62 to 23. THE ROMAN CATHOLIC CHARITIES BILL was referred to a select committee. THE SECOND READING of the Sound Dues Bill, whereby England agrees to pay to Denmark 1,125,0001. as her portion of the 3,890,000/, claimed by Denmark in compensation of the dues, was pro posed by the Earl of CLARENDON, the noble earl explaining that since April last, according to the treaty, no shipping dues had been levied by the Danish Government, and that the transit dues were to be reduced by four-filths. It was not in tended by the Danish Government to remit any part of the money to Denmark, but that for objects of their own the Danish Government would invest it in this country. The motion was then agreed to, and the bill was read a second time. Several other bills were advanced a stage, and their lordships adjourned at half-past seven o'clock. HOUSE OF COMMONS—MuRsDAY. STATUTE LAW COMMISSION. On the motion tor going into committee of supply, Mr. L. KING called attention to the large sums of public money which had been expended by the Criminal and Statute Law Commission without the consolidation of any branch of the criminal or statute law, upwards of 60,0001. having been spent since 1833. He affirmed that the commission had not only done no good whatever, but was practically a sham and delusion practised upon the country ; and moved an address to her Majesty to dispense with the Statute Law Commission. Sir F. KELLY warmly defended the commission, explaining the nature of the wurk and the magnitude of the undertaking, which, he observed, had baffled committees and commissions without number, and the most energetic of law reformers. Far from de serving the censure cast upon them by Mr. King, the commissioners, he insisted, ware entitled to the con fidence of the house and the gratitude of the country. Mr. WHITESIDE objected to the consolidation of the statute law of each part of the United Kingdom into separate sets of statutes. Sir F. KELLY said it was the desire of the com missioners to avoid those distinctions. Mr. NAPIER pressed for the appointment of a Minister of Justice. The ATTORNEY-GENERAL, after observing that a more unreasonable proposition than Mr. Like King's could thirdly be submitted to any assemb:y, said there was no subject upon which he was more anxious than the carrying into effect the formation of a I)epautnent of Public Justice, and he had pre pared a plan, which was now before her Majesty's Government. Lord J. RUSiELL said he was prepared to give further time, but thought the matter did not stand M a satisfactory position. The present, he believed, was a fitting time for the amendment of the law, which should precede its consolidation.—a mea,ure that should not be entered upon prematurely. The motion was negatived without a division. PUBLIC OFFICES. Mr. HOPE called attention to the award of the judges of the competition for the Public Offices, and embraced the opportunity thus offered to develop at considerable length his views in regard to the loca tion of the offices and their combination in one design, with certain improvements, including the • ••••••••••• • ON