Star. — London, England, 1825-06-10 00:00:00

! ' PARLIAMENTARY AUCEEDIAGS. HOUSE OF LORDS, "JUNE. 9. The Committee of Privileges resumed the inquiry on the aird ner Peerage, and the Counsel proceeded with tbc examination of witnesses. Mr. Fassnrieco produced a copy of the Act of divorce of Cap twin and Mrs. Gardner examined by him with the Regpiilw of Par li.ornent.—Adjounsed to Monday. The House then resumed, and Lodge v. Hanby, Clerk. an Ap peal front a Decree in the Court of Exchequer, regarding the small tithes of the Parish of Lancaster, in the County of Lancaster, was called on.. Mr. Ma arts addressed the noose. It involves a ques. tion of the esteot of the rights of the Vicar. The I.ocp Anyeicsve of Sccrryiwo and others, from the Com mons, came up and stated that i Bill, called a Bill to Amend an Act for the Alirm tit of Prisoners in Scotland, had been taken by 11.;st ike from the table of the Commons and brought to this and that !bey were commissioned to request it might be returned. The LORD CHANCELLOR replied that the Bill should be returned. Ibtocnrs and others brought up from the Commons, the Irish Bankroptcy Bill, with the amendment agreed to; the Irish Chancery Bill. at.d several Private 13111 s, Which were read a tirst time. The Articles of Clerks' Bill, the Attornies and Solicitors Bill, the Colombian Postage Bill, and the Stealing in Mines Bill, went respectinir through Committers- and were reported. Earl DARNLEY postponed the second reading of the Qua rantine Lain Bill to this day week. in consequence of some Re. turns not having yet been laid before the House.—Adjeurned. • HOUSE OF COMMONS. Sir G. COLE . presented a Petition from several hfinufacturen of British key, and, Iron Masters, against the reduction of the duty on Tway:: Iron.—Ordered to be printed. The House went into Committee upon the Excise Measures Re. !Malian- BlM—Report ordered to be received to-morrow. The Mauritius Trade Bill ~reed a third time and passed. DAWSON brought up the Report of the Committee upon the Sale of Offices in the Courta of King's Bench. and Common Pleas.—The Report was agreed to, and a Bill ocdered to be brought in pursuant to the same. The House resolved itself into a CoMmittes upon the Court of Common Pleas elapses were agreed to without amend ment, and the House having resumed, the Report was ordered to be received to-morrow. The Judges' Salaries Bill also went through a. Committee of the whole House: and was ordered to be reported to-morrow. The King's Bench Bill and the Exchequer Bills Bill were cora. milted, and ordered to be reported to-morrow. The Conveyance of Newspapers to the Colonies Bill was read a second time, and ordered to be committed to-morrow. IMPRESSMENT 01 SWAIM Mr. HUME moved, pursuant to notice, for leave to bring in a Bill to femedy the defects of the naval sys tem,. with respect to Impressment. If he should be akle to provide for the wants of the Navy, by volun tary enlistment, in place of that unconstitutional means of supplying the service with men now resorted to, he hoped it would be deemed he was conferring a real benefit upon his country. He begged to state that he had the concurrence of Naval Officers in the plan he proposed to embody in his Bill, and he did not wish to press his Bill, if allowed to bring it in, hastily through the House. He thought that if volunteers were pro cured to fill the ranks of the Navy, a most important a melio. ation would be the consequence. One great cause of complaint in the sea service was, that men were subject to be punished without a Court-Martial, or any mode of inquiry whatever. There were thirty six Articles in the Naval Code of Laws. From Article 2 to 35, distinct offences were enumerated, and the punishment poiated out ; but it was with Article 36 that he thought he had good reason to quarrel. That Article provided that all other offences should be pu nished according to the practice and custom of the service. Now this was so indefinite, that there could be no protection whatever against the *use of the law. 'What he wished was, that the sailor should be placed in this respect upon the same footing as the sol dier, and every other individual in the community ; and that as many offences as ros..ible should be defined,in order that he might know what the law under which he served was. He had been told that the sailor required to be treated in a different manner from other individuals. But he had not been able to find any reasonable ground for such an opinion. He found different ships in the same fleet, treated in respect of punishment aboard, in a very different way; and the cause of this evidently was, that there was no uniform system of law or disci pline, the discipline of each crew being left to the will of the individual commander. He asked to hays the British seaman placed in as good a situation as the slave in the West Indies. By an existing law, no slave could be punished till twenty-four hours had elapsed, froM the commission of the offence, or the issuing of the order. He wished the same regulation to be n ade with reference to the British seaman. His condition on board of ship was known to be very different from this; he was tied up and flogged at the will of his Commander, and often for the most trivial offence. The Honourable Member proceeded to mentibn cases where severe dis cipline had been observed towards the crew. He need mention but two cases, cne of which occurred twenty years ago, and the other last year. The Hon. Member then read from some papers an account of floggings on board a ship on the passage to the East, in the year 1805, commanded by Captain Cockburn. One man was star ed because his musket did not go off when he pre-en•ed it, and one of the mates was also started, for remarking upon the severity of the punishment. The narrative dwelt upon the frecreacy of this mode of punishment, which was giving the lash upon the spot, without waiting for any inquiry or deliberation, and was much practised in the Navy. The other case was one , in wh , ch an officer had been superseded only last year,, for severely and frequently punishing his men. This case was well known at the Admiralty. Many other in stances of a similar nature could be adduced. In one instance, out of a crew of 63, 59 had been punished.— He should like to have a return of the number of pu nishments and the names of the ships and Captains within a given period, and in that case he was sure it would be seen hnw much the seamen in his Majesty's service were subject to the caprice of their superiors. The only reason that the Naval Members of that House did not take up this matter was, he supposed, that they were afr4id of offending the Admiralty. That was the apology he offered tor taking the matter it! 'son to complain of the co:lrse taken upon this occasion by the Hen. Mecnker for Aberdeen. *C - mtrary to the usual courtesy of l'ArliAtnent, hehad come down to the House pteptrrid to make charges ag.ilst him, without having given him the slightest intimation of his intention. Uader these circumstance;, he cer tainly felt himself tole in a very awkward condition, Ott distaace of time, 1805, being so great that he could not exercise that command over his memory which should enable him to make so full an answer for his conduct to the House as he, under the charges of the H mourable NleLber, wished to do—(Hear, heat) He perfectly well knew that the discipline of the Navy tweet) , years age was a very different th i ng to what it was now. But about the time to which the Honourable Member referred, those changes which had since been, by a . progressive course, effected, were newly intro duced. And he very well remembered having given orders to the Officers of his ship not to start the meri— t/fear, hear). It was very well known that amongst the subordinate Officers of a ship, the practice used to be carried to a much greater extent than was now tolerated: and in the very instance alluded to by the Honourable Member, he had actually quarrelled with one of his lieutenants for starting a man after he had given orders to the contrary, and that Officer bad since left the service —(Hear). This was all he was able to say in answer to those ch urges wi'h which tl.e Honour able Member had taken him by surprise. If he 'would bring them forward in a more specific shape, he would be prepared with a more complete refota•ion. In the arguments which the Honourable Member advanced in support of his motion, he seemed to say that a pi efer ence was given to the merchant service over the Navy. Now, in that he was misinfirmed ; for what seamen would do for the merchant service at 545. they would do for the Navy at Ms. It bad been already stated, and he now repeated it, that the owners of merchant vessels had made application to have the Officers of the Navy restrained from taking the men when they 'offered themselves. Orders to this effect had in fact been sent out to the different naval stations, and were it not so, it was well known that merchant ships would lose all ;lien. hands. This war quite notorious, and a tolerable proof that there was not that 'distaste for the service of the Navy which the Honourable Member seemed to inculcate. Tne Honourable Member thought that some pecuniary inducement ought to be held oat to enlistment. The pension system, in his opinion, I operated in that way. He had also drawn a compa-1 rison between the enlistments in the sea and land MP vices in favour of the limited period of the latter. If so happened that the enlistments in the Army were mostly for life, whereas in the Navy it was not so, the men being generally paid off at the end of a war. He had also spoken of the arbitrary power of punishment in the Navy, and said he wished to see the sailor ' ; put upon the same footing as the soldier. But the fact here was the reverse of what he had stated.— The system of punishment in the Army when in the field, or in the execution of field movements, was much I more arbitrary and severe than the Navy. Upon these occasions, punishment was inflicted without delay or trial of any sort; and he believed there were many Members in the House who could bear him out from I actual knowledge, when he stated that even during the last war instances had occurred of men being hanged I , in this manner. Yet their ships were differently situated in this respect from the army. They went out upon a ' , voyage round the world, and were sometimes absent for three years. How then was it possible for them to summon a Court Martial? And if luminary punish ment were not inflicted, either it must be foregone al together, or the men must be put in chains and kept in that condition, perhaps for the remainder of the voyage. The Hon. Member actually wished to take frcm the 'navy a power which was held to be legal by a Captain. of a merchantman. By the newspapers of that day he perceived a judgment in the Admiralty Court, in which it was af fi rmed that the Captain of a merchantman did possess the power of ordering his men to be flogged. He had received many letters upon this subject, from which, however, be did not mean to quote; but he could state a case to the House in which an Officer as aired him that be had preserved his ship by a prompt and exemplary punishment in presence ot the crew s When they were actually about to engage a very su perior force of the enemy. It had for some time been the policy of the Admiralty to discourage corporal punishment; but it would be destructive of all disci pline to deprive Officers of the Navy of such a power. All that could be done in this respect, he was con. winced was done. Those Officers were encouraged who found the means - of keeping their men in order without punishment ; and those who were thought to exceed in this particular were put out of commission. They now received very frequently'blank returns of the quarterly punishment of ships. This being the improving state of affairs, the Admiralty having set itself the task of dispensieg with corporal punishment as far as was practicaTt, the House, he was sure, would not in terfere to check their successful course, and pro bably destroy all they had done. It would have 31 dangerous, effect, he was convinced, to take away altogether the power of punishment from the; Officers of the Navy. It was one thing to take it. away, another thing to modify it. With respect to: the second case to which the Honourable Member had referred, the case of Captain Jervoise, the punish ments in that case appearing to be' more frequent thaw coincided with the wishes of the Admiralty, the Officer was superseded. It was, however, his. duty to state, in justice to that Officer, that his men had been fre quently changed doting the period that these frequent punishments had taken place, and that the/glom the case appeared much stronger against him than upon its real merits it deserved. It was also his duty towards that Officer to state, that , facts had since reached the Admiralty, chewing that his crew, 'when he joined the ship were in an excessive bad state; it had in fact been made evident to the Admiralty, that they were a most extraordinary bad ship's company. He did not mean to say that the Admiralty Were not justified in what they did, according to the circum. stances of the case as they appeared. to them at the time. At that time the last quitter's return. had , not reached them, but when it did come, it appeated that the punishments had almost entirely abated ; and it ap peered that when the CaptiOn left . the ship, he had brought it into as. high a state of efficiency — and good larder as any ship intis Majesty's they. He ought also to state that the Admiral commanding on the station shad been frequently applied to for a Cultic Martial, but the rules of the service would not admit ot hii granting one. Such was now the state of the Navy in this re spect that he believed be overstated when he said, that six in a quarter for each ship was the. average of pn ni-hments. Ile thought the effect of the Hon.alember's Bill would be to shake the foundations ot the Navy, and that done, whit would become of the country ? The - Hon. Member seemed to balk Rims op the Idelicol a total abolition of impressment- wag the Prop view of t!.e question. • If tht HoOse would allow the Government to keep up a war complement ofuttamen during peace, then the power of impressment would not be necessary. But unless that were the case it was obvious that Government. upon a sudden emergency. when they wished to send ail their ships out to seitemust have the means of laying their hands upon all seamen in the merchant ser vice. The Navy was now so much improving, that he had no hesi tation in saying that it was now, and would become still more so, the favourite service. He thought it would be highly imprudent to attempt to reorganize the Navy at the present moment. The Hon. Member completely misinterpreted the 56th article of war. Drunkenness was the most common offence for which panbhmeat was administered, and that offence was made the subject of a se parate article. He did not believe complaints would be made again, and he hoped the House would not interfere with the exist ing system. He concluded by giving the question a direct nega tive--(Hear, hear). Sir I. COFFIN expressed his perfect willingness to vote on the question without any fear of the Admiralty. He believed the mo tion to be very mischievous ; and, as the Hon. Mover was no sea man, he would say to him, Ne sister trlim erepidem—(Laughter). 111 r. ROBERTSON supported the motion, because be was eon. vinced from his own experience, as an officer in the East India Com pany's service, that discipline could be maintained without flogging. Nine cases of punishment out of ten, arose from the miscon duct of the officers. rather than from that of the men. The system had been improved by enquiry ; why not enquire further? Sir J. YORKE ridiculed the argument of the Hon. ' Member (Mr. Ro§ertson) that East India ships were as well disciplined as those of the Navy. No flogging took place in the Navy, except after a solemn examination of the facts. Evidence was heard with as much gravity as in a Court of Justice. He agreed in all that had. fallen from his gallant Friend below him (Sir G. Cockburn) and should oppose the motion. He repudiated the assertion, that all the want of dis cipline in the Navy arose from the faults of the Officers. It was a gross calumny, as gross as the assertion that the sailors were free from faults—(Hear).—Mr. ROBERTSON explained. Sir F. BURDETT said, the motion of his Hon. Friend was founded on the recommendatidns of many writers of great weight and authority. If the sailors were well paid and well treated, flogging would be unnecessary.. During these plethoric times, when money was so lavishly granted by the Government, there was no reason why the sea service should not be somethir.g better paid. The sailors endured hardships without example, and deserved that the House should. adopt some efficacious and just means to save them from the evils of imprisonment and flogging. All that his Hon. Friend (Mr. Hume) asked was, for leave to lay before. the House a plan to mitigate all these evils ? No en quiry was necessary because the facts were known. A great part of the evils in the Navy arose from the un-' due discretion placed in the hands of young and inex perienced Officers. Flogging was to an honest gallant English seaman a worse punishment than that of death. Without absolutely doing away with this degrading punishment, it was his desire to interpose between the offence and the punishment some time for reflection. Why not adopt the methods pursued in the Army, and institute Courts Martial ? The fact stated by the Hon. Member (Mr. Robertson) was important, that he was able to regulate an undisciplined crew without flogging: The House ought to inquire whether the same thing could not be done in the Navy ? By offering proper advantages, rewards and fair treatment to the seamen, better men would bh obtained, and a less severe dis cipline would be necessary. The nation was quite rich enough to allow some money to do away with this detestable home slave trade. Such, motions as the present would do great goad, even though- they were finally :ejected. lie was ready to Wilk that the controul exercised over the officers of she Navy 'lllB Admiralty, hid done much good ; bat the discussions in had done quite as much. He trusted his Hon. Friend migit be permitted, to lay his plan before the House. If it was bad, let it be thrown out, but at all events let it be dheussed—(Hear). Sir G: CLERK doubted - whether the case made out by the Honourable Member (Mr. Hume) was so ex tremely satisfactory. Something more was necessary before the House could consent to do away with the long-established system of the Navy. The . notion of a Court-Martial on board of a ship of war would be in. convenient and inefficacious. At present the particu lar punishment in qoation was inflicted by the Captain, on his own responsibility, and therefore it was less fre quently inflicted than it would be by a Court-Martial. There were no instances of valuabli seamen being flogged by beardless boys. No one had ever held that corporal punishment was to be entirely abolished. It was at presenk under a strict controls!, and that was all that could be expected or desired.--Indeed, no die. eipllne could be kept up on board s ship.of war except by corporal punishment. The Captain.ought .to have' the power to inflict it, altd he was obliged to make a return of every instance of it to the Admiralty. As.to preventing impressment by raising wages, it was quite ridiculous, for the commercial navy would always pay , heavier wages than the war navy could. The ether parts of his plan, to limit the duration of service-and to allow pensions,had been already done by the Act of 1815. There was no ground for doing anything more en these points. It would be very unfair. to take away the Captain's share of the prise-money, as all prizes were made under great responsibility. TM Hone ought not to tamper with the system under which the Navy bad existed so long, and covered itself with so mach glory.—(Hear). Sir F. OMMANNEY rose amidst cries of It Question," and expressed his dissent from the motion.—Mr. H.112d 11 briefly replied. Mr. SYKES rose amidst cries of is Question." He said that:, having lived ail his life near a seaport. he coed, from his. own' knowledge, bear testimony to the horrors, cruelties, and evilsiof dor impressment system. The practice was inhuman, brutalizing, and detrimental to the interesttof the Navy. The House then divided, and the numbers were— . nr the motion Against it . . • 45 Majority against the motion —22 1118 W CHAHTER SCHOOLS. Sir J. NEWPORT said,• that the question upon which the motion stood, with which be meant to con clude, l;y within a narrow compass. The system upon which , the Charter Schools in Ireland were founded, violated.tverr principle of humanity and justice. It had been his fate, for the last 25 years, to attempt to bring about. some change in these institutions, but every effort of his. only ended in evasion. Assurances of amendment were held forth which were never realized. lo far from the system being ameliorated, it was dete ,forated. These schools Were originally founded on the application of the Archbishops and. other Clergymen, and it was acceded to by Parliament on the ground that they were intended for the support and education of the children of the. poor; but the Commissioners who were appointed to inquire into the state of these schools, reported that they were totallrinefficient for their object: Tote first Charter School was founded in 1734, and upon the supposition that they were intended for the professed object. a Dutchman left 46,000/. to be appropriated to their maintenance. A Mr. Thackeray was subsequently appointed to inquire, and the result of his investigation. was, that these schools afforded little satisfaction. The report of Mr. Lee stated that they were vicious, and That nothing good was to be obtained by them. The Hon. Member then-proceeded to read a long extract from this report, 'adverting to the enormities practised upon the bays by the masters, particuhrly in Sligo. They frtcpently seized the boys by the threat and almost strangled them into suffocation. Some of Them inflicted a hundred lashes . with a leather thong upon a boy itt the same day, merely because he did not work a srm in long division; others, for the same cause, flagella d a boy, as the Commissioners stated, into a d eadial state. Indeed, so bad was the system of educati.'n, that the boys in many of these schools did not know %el:ether Europe meant a man, a place, or a thiag. In one of the schools founded upon the bequest of Use late Bishop Pocock, out of thirty-six pupils,. thete were only thirteen who could read, there were o .ly six copybooks amongst them, the master was incapable of teaching, and there was no usher. Afid this would appear t`ie more remarkable, when he formed the House that upon the same authority; within two miles of this place there was a school for the poor children of the paris`i, in which there were ninety-six pupils, aU of whom could read ; and near this again, so anxious were the poor people fcr instruction, that a stable was convertei into a tell() 1- room, and so crowded was the attendance, that the young children were put into the manger. In one of these charter schools, near Clonmel, the master was au old cripple, who had only two children to instruct, and not one book. Not only were cruelties practiced upon the unfortunate children, but all complaints were prevented by the Secretary refusing to present a me morial. In his charges against these schools, he did not mean to include all the Clergy of Ireland ; he only meant to include the Clergymen of those parishes in which the schools were established, which amounted to about thirty. The Hon. Member concluded with` moving , 4 That an humble Address be presented to his Majesty, expressive of their deep sense of the regret and indignation with which they perused the Report of the unwarrantable cruelties practised upon several chil dren of the charter schools in Ireland, as contained in the representation of the Commissioneri of Education; and praying that his Majesty be graciously pleased to direct that the Law Oaten of the Crown institute criminal prosecutions,against the authors and abettors of these dreadful outrages." Mr. GOULBURN entirely concurrei ivikh the sentiments of detestation of the acts charged agiinst the masters of the charter school, whether they were expressed in the resolution or in the si-eec 11 of the Honourable Baronet. He was. therefore, re lieved from the necessity of travelling through the painful details which the Report contained. But he was not free from difficulties arising as to the mode in which the question ought to be presented to the House. If the division turned upon the alternative, whether he was to agree to the proposition of the Honourable Baronet, or to concur with mischiefs which had been stated, he would certainly choose the lesser evil, and take the first alternative. But he sub mitted to the Honourable Baronet, whether the ends of justice would not be satisfied by leaving the mat ter to those to whom the law gave the power, to t tke what proceedings they might think fit; and if their conduct should not appear satisfactory, then Parlia ment might b' called upon to interfere?' An oppor tunity had not yet been offered to the Government to give effect to any views %shish the perusal of the documents before them might have suggested ; nor of holding communication with parties from *horn they must look for the requisi:e information.. :In the gene-. ral case, it was considered to be the most expedient, when such questions occurred, to leave to the Execu tive the adoption of any criminal proieedings whieli, under the circumstances, it might be proper to pursie; 'and still more so ought that course to be-followed in ithe present instance, becAuse the Commissioners had referred to a bulky Appendix, containing a great mass of facts, without which the Report itself could not be appreciated. He admitted that the Honourable Baro net had made out a case sufficient to justify Parlia-: meat in agreeing to . the resolution ; and if that was the general feeling, notwithstanding hit assurance that the Government would bring the actors in the transactions to punishment as far as they were ame nable to the law, he would not raise his voice against it —(Hear, hear). It was not for him to offer any opi nion about the future system which ought to be adopted; bin as the defects of the system were clearly' set before the House, be had no doubt that the recommendation of the Commissioners would be at tended to by the Noble Lord at the head of the Irish Government at the earliest opportunity ; and that in such a manner as equally to check the continuance of the system, and to prevent the unhappy children being thrown on the world without protection—(Hear),- btr. S. RICE hoped his Right Honourable Friend' would not withdraw his motion, as notwithstanding the many valuable Reports already on the table, par ticularly the Fourteenth Report, expressly on the Char ter Schools, nothing had been done, owing solely to the want.of some decisive step on the part of the House. The Charter School system might be taken as a specimen of the old exclusive Protestant system it Ireland. In that light only were they supported'both, , by the Irish Legislature and the Imperial Parliament since the Union. The whole mischief, in short, of these schools, arose from their exclusive character, which rendered•them mere traps for Catholic dild ea, and created the abuses with 'which they have always abounded. Since the foundation of these Charter Schools they had cost the country one million, and subsequently to the Union no less than six hundred thousand pounds. To shew that the religious purposes of the schools were not attained, it was sufficient to mention that in one-school none of the boys had ever heard of St. Paul; two only had heard of the Patriarch_ 1, Job: and with respect to their. geographical know ledge, scarcely any of them knew whether Europe was a thing, .a place, or an individual ! He should, therefore, on the proper occasion, move that in stead of granting the furthersum in the Estimate& of this year to.the Charter School!, it should be voted to the Government, for the general•objeets• of education. Mr. GOULBURN explained. Mr. Secretary PEEL denied that the inqpirr intothe Charter Schools of Ireland was forcedion.the Govern ment. The moment it was proposed he cordially. cos-- curt-0 in the appointment of the Commission, and-the individuals he (Mr: Peel) selected colic Members of it. were chosen entirely on the ground or their peculiar fitness -fot the office. One, a Mr. Glasford, he ham never seen, but hatunderstood that be was well fed for the duty. With respect. to the Report, hel. thought, however, that they were not now ripe to, enter , fully on the subject ; hitt this he mot say, tint the: Charter-School system. would not admit of cOtrection,.. and _ought, as soon as possible, to. be extinguished.al together f nor .had the Report been laid en the-tabletwo) day% *hen directions *tie sent to Ireland not*to any . norn,:chilfiren inta.khe Schools:. 'tlver . y.mrans, is .short,.should.be tam Consistent with. a 'come usi..nate• consideration. for those • already' connected with the - foundations, to gridually abolish the gratuitous mode of education pursued in them. If a piblic pi o , ecuqua WAS to be the tesult of the disclosures- of f aud, orpn , was gnu ar,..,67 ••.. ......__ ___ _ .P hand. He was convinced that if the proper means p, r, were taken—if bounties were offer e d , and limited terms ,; ;(ii' of service,. as in the Army, plenty of volunteers would be found for the Navy. No difficulty vas ever found, be believed, in supplying the Marine Service. Yet they were suhjected to the same laws; and. it was evi- dently these regulations that made the difference in fa- your of the Marines. They ought to have greater pecuniary emoluments, and a greater share of prize- -1 , money allowed. Ile should think that a Captain would . , gladly give up the whole of his prize money for the sake of having an entire crew of volunteers. The Prise List ought ~ to be altered altogether. the greater proportion, behm allotted to the men instead of the 'Officers. It was on the principles which he bad stated, a bodied service of ten years for elitist:sent, II thA be ofialwd to Wing before the House a Rill if the nature for which he now Contended. The Hon. Member then moved for sleeve to bring in mill to amend the fad Gee. 11. cap. 33. fur the itmen ett o sol miming bis hlsfeety's Weep. i Sir RGE COCKBURN said, he had some re 4. rf -' r ) - t