The Press. — London, England, 1853-06-25 00:00:00

JIINE 25, 1853. years hence they would not know any better. Upon the danger of disturbance from delay he could not judge decisively, but urged that, if they wished the Indian Government to be strong, it must not be left unsettled, and if they thought it wanted improvement it should be improved forthwith. Mr. Lowe then proceeded to offer a detailed defence of the Govern ment scheme, whose provisions, he contended, were well-timed an d jutlicious. Mr. Pius condemned the departure from the old Whig principle that all government should enemata from the Crown, which the bill prevented. He cha racterised it as a half measure, or a hybrid measure, altogether unworthy of so strong an Administration as we now enjoyed, and from whom a large, liberal, and substantial reform was to be expected. Of the two he preferred retaining the existing system, with its manifold faults, trusting to time and the wisdom of Parliament to devise hereafter seine plan of adminis tration worth having or rendering prominent. Sir It. 14. halms objected to the bill, because it was indefinite in duration and mutable in character. It destroyed much which it did not replace, and con tained too large an infusion of the monarchical element. To the amendment he objected on account of the uncertainty iu which it would have been the subject for two or three years. Of the two he should vote for the bill and against the amendment, but he should prefer abiding by the system of 1833, if par liament could be persuaded to keep it. Mr. BAILLIE acknowledged that delay was injurious, but believed that crude legislation would do still more harm and foster more discontent in India. The necessity for great changes was admitted by ministers ; the house would probably find a necessity for greater. Under these circumstances the demand for delay was just and reasonable. Observing that in India the name of the Queen was ignored, and, while the " Company" still figured as the the only sovereign, though virtually abolished in 1833, he insisted that such insult and humiliation should be abolished, and the authority of the Crown proclaimed in every town throughout British India. Mr. HERRIES apprehended so much evil from delay, anti found so many things to approve in the Govern ment measure, that he elected not to stop its progress, and so embarrass both the Indian and home Govern ments, but take his chance of getting it improved in committee. On the motion of Mr. HuME, the debate was then adjourned. NUNNERIES INSPECTION HILT.. After the presentation of what Sir it. H. Iseult computed at " hundreds and thousands of petitions" for and against Mr. M. Chambers's Bill for the Re covery of Personal Liberty, the second reading of that measure was moved on Wednesday by that right hon. baronet. He remarked that the clamour raised against the bill was founded on a mistake, and the petitions asking for its rejection were filled with mis descriptions. There was not a line in it which alluded specifically to the Church of Rome, or a phrase that could wound the feelings of the members of any community. It did but provide a remedy for an evil which, it was admitted by everybody, might possibly exist, and for which, therefore, Parliament were bound to provide a cure. Mr. PHINN objected to the bill for the very reason alleged by Sir R. Inglis in its favour, namely, be cause it was general in its application. Being intended to apply to a particular body, it was dishonest to give it a general denomination. He denounced it, also, as destroying that great first principle of liberty which declared every Englishman's house to be his castle. He proceeded to argue that the habeas Corpus Act was abundantly sufficient for all the pur poses contemplated in the present bill, and scouted the insinuation that Roman Catholics were so sub missive to the priests as to allow their relations to be incarcerated against their wills. Quoting some of the circumstances that had transpired relative to Taunton Agapemone and the Plymouth establish ment, Mr. l'hinn threw out a surmise that the bill before them was designed to draw away public atten tion from certain transactions within the Church of England itself. Extracting from a speech of the Bishop of Rochester a witty defence of the convent system, and a sneer against those who liked every measure which the Roman Catholics disliked, and merely because they disliked it, the hon. member moved that, instead of reading the bill a second time, it should be referred to a select committee to consider whether any, and what, regulations were necessary for the better protection of the inmate 4 of conventual Cl4llllllll/111.111C111.4. Mr. IN/UIC Burr, who seconded the amendment, professed his detestation of the surreptitious cha racter of the bill. It was unmanly and cowardly, he said, to profess one thing and legislate for another. If they wished to regulate nunneries, do it openly, instead of establishing an odious Protestant inqu►si tion for the sake of repressing Roman Catholic convents. The hon. member proceeded to dissect the provisions and foreshadow the operation of the bill, which, he declared, in the end would prove both an outrage and a mockery. THE PRESS. Mr. FIJIAN regretted that a measure so offensive should have been offered to the Legislature. He gave the mover and supporters of the bill all credit for their good intentions, especially in having excluded all specific attacks upon Roman Catholic establish ments from its pr►visoes. But this, he declared, was not sufficient. The Roman Catholics still felt them selves injured and insulted. Mr. Fagan then de tailed, with much minuteness and many laudations, the formalities which surrounded the conventual system, and argued that it was altogether impossible for any case of personal restraint to exist of such nature as to demand or to justify legislative inter ference. Mr. NAPIER, approving of the purpose for which the bill was framed, aril by no means believing that it deserved to be called cowardly or unmanly, feared that it would not carry out that purpose effectually, and therefore wished for further deliberation. Con sequently he supported the ainendment. His chief objection was that the bill, while providing a remedy for violent restraint applied to the person, did not touch the question of the compulsory disposition of property ; and he spoke at some length to show the importance of that question, the frequent instances in which redress was desirable, and the ►ncompetency of the existing laws and tribunals to afford it. Lord J. Itusssi.i. at n u►nnoed his discovery that the bill was objectionable both as respected its assump tion of evils to be remedied and of the remedy it pro vided for them. Of the first it set forth no positive statement, nothing but general allegations, unsup ported by farts. But the remedy was still less de fensible : I own I should be much astonished if the house were ever to consent to the passing of such a measure. it does nut indeed empower the Secretary of State to mune per lams who shall visit those convents ; but it does empower the Lord Chancellor—who, besides being a great judge, is likewise a member of the Executive tioveniment—to name commissioners ; and any one of those eommissioners, on seeing reasonable ground to suppose that any remade is detained in any house or building against her will, is em powered and required, with tho assistance of the justices of the peace, to make finvible entrame into such a build. ing. I ask, whore is the safety of our houses alter such a provision ? I speak not now of convents, or of detention in convents; but, I say, what oppression may be exercised if a commissioner named by the Lord Chancellor—and we know not what Lord Chancellor we may lave--is to be em powered, and even required, to break into any house in which he has—not on any affidavit, not on the testimony of any witnesses examined on oath—but on what, in his own wind, he considers reasonable ground to suppose that a female is detained against her will ? I have no doubt that, putting aside altogether this question of convents, there are at the present moment, and indeed at all times this country, some houses—private houses—where there may be persons who, others might say, were de• tallied against their will. But at no time has the Legisla ture thought tit to set aside that general rule of law, that sacred part of the constitution which protects the private houses of Englishmen, and which is embodied in the com mon phrase that every Englishman's house is his castle. (Hear.) To endeavour to provide, us is proposed by this bill, for these chance or aocidental cases, would be, by way of endeavouring to secure the liberty of the subject, to set up a tyranny. (Hear, hear.) I therefore could have no hesitation iu voting against the second reading of this bill." Respecting the amendment the noble lord declared that he could not admit even sufficient basis whereon to found a committee of inquiry ; ail the allegations were so vague. Further, there were faculties inhe rent in every subject of full age to bind him, or her, self for three, or even thirty, years, and thus effec tually to part with their liberty by a voluntary act which the law as it stood recognised and sanctioned. Without changing, therefore, the general system, and so interfering with personal liberty in one sense, it WAS imposible to devise any means of securing per sonal liberty in another, as proposed by the advocates of the present bill. In relation to property, on which Mr. Napier had enlarged so strongly, the case was yet stronger. Either the evils existing required to be dealt with by some comprehensive law, or it was un just to interfere at all. He would not consent to partial legislation. Mr. Moons denounced the whole affair from be ginning to end. The bill, he said, was a prevarica tion in its very title. The first reading had been secured by a pettifogging fraud ; and it had been argued, supported, and agitated for " with an amount of insincerity and dishonest seeming which the measureless hypocrisy of this pharisee of nations could alone have supplied." (Laughter.) All Boman Catholics, he declared, knew that their relations were happy and safe in the conventual establishments. None but Protestant bigots could entertain a suspi cion of undue interference, to say nothing of incar ceration. There had not Leen a case made out fur the bill sufficient, in legal parlance, "to hang a cat." He believed that the nuns were as free as any mem ber of Parliament—and freer than some—between their "whips " and their constituencies. Mr. WARNER liked the bill because it recognised the fact that the priestly power was advancing, and that it was the duty of Parliament to vindicate the supre macy of the civil law. 178 ME. HENCHY promised to vote against the bill, and Mr. It. PALMER in favour of the amendment. MI6 COMMIX objected to both. Mr. CHANNERS replied. He had heard much elo quence but no arguments which even touched the principle of his bill. He had been asked for het-, and he had founded his measure entirely upon a basis of fact, though not in the narrow sense enter tained by many hon. members, not on a single fact picked up here and there, and to which the obvious reply would be that they were merely exceptional:— " He tested his CON upon the general result of all the literature of the Church which established convents, sud upon all codes, MIMIC ordinances, Mlnd decries of emu ells, emperors, legislators, and statesmen who had been living in the land where convent* were established. (('heers.) He rested it upon the last and met authorita tive council of the Homan Catholic Church, which had to tied with the very evil the exislesee of which he was nut bound to prove, but the iodises liability to which he *Kneed. If this were it less*n lovely if historical iii vestigation, whether persona were sselnded in these eau& lialiments of their own free will, or were the victims of hardship anti injustice, he would have the hon. member for Edinburgh, Lord Mahon, Prescott, and Hallam, put in a library, and on the shelves should be ranged the wit nesses on whose test cony the ease should he decided. And who were the witnesses'? Authors of the current literature of a thousand years, tram the sixth to the six teenth century—poets, philueopheni, analysts, divines of all ranks. from the Pontiff to the mendicant Mara. Aud what had they writteu? He would set amide every witness against whom there could be suggested any blau, He would eliminate from that groat mass of testimony all to which reasonable or unreasonable exception could be taken. And did any man presume to tell hitu that in the educated assembly which he had the honour to address there was one who would nut blush, in the presence of the illustrious council he hail assembled in unaginathst, to hint a doubt that the feet, as he had Mated it, was made out to every mind competent to understand the fume of argument, Mid to appreciate it ? (Hew, hear. )" Sir °minor: Barre intended to oppom both the se cond reading and amendment. Sir JOHN PAKINOTOM decided to vote against the bill, in order that he might vote for the amendment. The house then divided:— For the second reading Against 207 Majority —29 Six o'clock having arrived, the house rose without deciding upon the fate of the amendinend, which now stands as the substantive question before it. On Thursday the further discussion of the subject was postponed for a month, by consent. INCOME TAX. The second reading of the Income-tax Bill wee proposed in the House of Lords on Tuesday by the Earl of Anzenzze, who recapitulated some of the sums total of revenue and expenditure as set forth in the budget-speech of the Chancellor of the Exche quer. After eulogising that speech and its author, the noble earl rested the proposal to renew a tax whose burdensome and inqtdiutorial character he fully admitted upon this chief reason—that they could not do without it. Hereafter, however, things might look better; and he entered into some calcula tions tending to show that the revenue of the country in future years promised so to improve an to enable the house, if it pleased, to fulfil the programme drawn out by Mr. Gladstone, and allow the income tax to he reduced successively to Od. and bd. in the pound at the termination of two and four yearn from the present date, and cease entirely at the end of the seven yearn' lease. Alluding to the plan suggested by the late Government for graduating the incidence of the tax, the noble earl stated that, after much de liberation, all schemes for that purpose had been rejected as impracticable ; and ended by declaring that, while they asked for a renewal of this tax as it stood, they had provided for the remission of a large mass of taxation in such modes as should he most beneficial to the great body of the people, and add most to their comforts. The Earl of DEUDY was so well convinced of the necessity of the tax that he would not oppose its re newal. At the same time, he believed that necessity to have been in a great degree self-created by the present Government, and also that the House of Commons had been induced to adopt it by the lure held out to the Liberal section of a new impost on real property. Without contesting the arithmetical conclusions to which Lord Aberdeen had arrived, and of which there were no means of checking the accu racy, lie submitted that at best they were entirely hypothetical, and that the proposal of our obtain ing such increase in the aggregate as would more than make up for the loss upon remission was purely speculative. The idea of the tax ever ceasing, under the present system, was mere delusion ; and he believed that in adopting it now, with all its injustice and in equalities, they were submitting to an impost of which, though nominally granted only for seven years, neither Lord Aberdeen nor himself would ever live to see the end. Lord l'oesaati and Lord BERNERB objected etrongly to the tax on the score both of the general prin ciple and the details.