The Sun.
London, England, 1839-03-02 00:00:00

fore the House was for the appointment of a Committee.
His motion was a very simple one—it was for a return
—( Hear, hear)—and he could not conteemplate that
they cod have a return of any appointmeiot that did
I not contain the date of the appointmene, .the party
granting the appointment, and the name of the party
receiving the appointment. It might be .very true,
.as the Honourable Member for Liskeard had
stated, that those facts were before the Home,
in two documents. That was just the matter be cm-
plained of. . What he was surprised at was that there:
should have been a return in the last Session of Parlia-
ment, setting forth the fact that. a Member of that
House had accepted an office of profit and emolument,
and yet that it should not have invited the attention
of Right Hon. Gentlemen, who were so anxious to
preserve the rules and orders of Parliament.--(A
laugh). This was a matter of great surprise to him.
He had no desire to attack the seats of these Right
lon. Gentlemen, all he wished was to bring these
facts under the notice of those Hon. Members who were
so eager for the preservation of the privileges of this
House. He would move for no Committee• on the
nthject, he never intended to have done so. He would 1.
/04 ve it to those Hon. Gentlemen to deal with it as
they thought fit. He wished to draw the attention of
those
.who were so anxious for the preservation of the
privileges
of this House to these cases, so that the
same justice.'
might be done in the one case as in the
other. He haei no desire to put the Hon. Gentleman
to inconvenience, ihecanso.he himself had been put to one;
he had no wish to seod !Sips before his constituents ; he
was not actuated by any Vindictive feelings—all he
wished was, if possible, to n. eke the public believe
that uniformity of practice on this subject prevailed
in that House, and he would movh "An I ad-
dress to her Majesty for copies of any appoint-
ments made by the Earl of Durham, as .Load Com-
missioner of the British North American Colonies,
previous to !tie departure from England, and dtaring
his stay in Canada ; specifying the name of each per son,
the amount of salary, any, and the nature of the duties I
to be performed.”—AgreOtd to.
FROM `..UHE LORDS.
A rrelifi-ge Tin-fri--the Nettie eef Lrardi brought up
the Borough Courts' Bill and some .other Bills, which
were laid on the table.
RAILWAYS (IRELAND :r
On- Lord MORPETH being called on twanave that
the House should resolve itself into a Committee of the
whole House on the reports of the Irish Railw.ey Com-
missioners, .
Mr. LUCAS said that before the House rasolvol
itself into a Committee, he was desirous of saying a few
words on the subject of Railways. He felt that the peo-
ple of Ireland had great reason to complain of the manlier
they had been treated by her Majesty's Government •
on this question of Railways. It would be in the re-
collection of the House that two and a-half years age
Commission had been issued to investigate this subject.
He was not one of those who quarrelled with the Corn,
mission ; on the contrary, he. thought the Commission
was very desirable, and was calculated to promote the
best interests of the country ; but what he complained
of, what the Irish generally complained of was, that from
that time up to the present they had no intitnation
of what was the state of their proceedings. The
Commission issued by his late Majesty had been Fen-
tiered null and void by the demise of the Crowrt—
a new Commission had been issued by her present
Majesty on October 20, 1836, and ahe Commissioners
had been ordered to report before 31st March, I 837. The
report had been considerably delayed, but was finally
given in in July 1838. Since that time there had been t
no possibility of getting any information from the Go- .
vernment as to what course they intended to pursue.
There were three courses open to the Government upon 1.
the subject. The Go-vernment might have said they
would take the making of these railways into their own
hands—they might have said they would have nothing
to do with them, and merely confine themselves to op-
posing in Parliament any lines which had not received
the sanction of the Commissioners—or thirdly, the!
might have taken a middle course, and said they watrld '
give assistance to those lines of Railway which had been
recommended by the Commissioners, and would note
support any others. Now ha was personally aware that
no effort had been spared to obtain an answer upon the f.
subject of that Commission, and he knew also that no 1.
answer bad been obtained from the Noble Lord oppo-
site. The consequence of that had been, that the public
had been very much dissatisfied—they were naturally on
the tiptoe of expectation as to what the Government in-
tended to do. Private individuals had been deterred from
meking the necessary surveys, and taking any steps for
originating railways of which they chanced to approve.
The Noble Lord had now allowed the month of March
to arrive without giving any information on the subject.
The consequence of which was, that two years would
elapse before any steps could be taken for the formation •
of these railways. What was the case with regard to
railways which had been proposed, and in which surveys
had been made, and expenses to a large amount had a
been incurred before the Commission had betas
.issuecl ? :-
Why they were lying now in abeyance? One of the
parties interested had placed a petition in his hands, r
which he had not had an opportunity of presenting to
the House at an earlier scrim] of the evening, but he
had been requested by the parties interested in it, to
state that they themselves were at a considerable loss at
the present moment. They would be satisfied if the Noble V
Lord only declared that he would take the Irish railways
into his own hands, or that be would not take them, or
that he would give assistance, in certain cases ; for,
until that point was ascertained, they could take no
steps to promote the undertaking in which they were
embarked. He knew that that particular Company,
the Irish Central Railway Company, had applied
leave to pressnt a petition to that House ; and in con_.
sequence of the delay in the presentation of the Report
of the Commissioners, that House had conceded what
they asked, as a proof that the delay was unusual and
prejudicial. Now. with regard to the Commissioners
and their proceedings, lie must say, that he for one was
disposed to look at them tsith all posssible prepossession
and favour. lie could not conceive but that gentle-
men of their character would go to the task with no
oilier feelings than those of impartiality and candour.
The petitioners, however, were not quite of that opinion.
But they could not disguise- from themselves that tire
proceedings of the Com Missioners were looked upon•
with very great suspicion ; and the public in Ireland
were very jealously alive to their proceedings, and the
measure to he founded upon them by the Learned
Lord. The public generally, but more particularly the
English public, ought to have been informed of any
measure which the Noble Lord intended to pursue,
founded upon that recommendation. They ought to
have the omens of assuring themselves that the recom-
mendations of the Commissioners were founded upon
proper and just data. Upon the authority he had al-
ready mentioned, he was prepared to state that the
recommendations which the Irish Commissioners had
made with respect to the Great Central Railway in
Ireland were wholly erroneous, inasmuch as they were
based upon wholly erroneous data. He did not wish
at the present moment to go into details—he slid not
conceive that it was the proper time, but he wished to
impress upon the members of her Majesty's Government
that these petitioners were prepared to substantiate
these important facts either at. the bar of the House
or before a Select Committee, that the Commissioners
in making these recommendations had used different
data, and had founded their reasoning upon totally dif-
ferent data, so far as concerned the northern and
southern lines of railway, to what they had done with
the western line. He did not wish to detain the House
upon that occasion, but he had particulars in his pose
session showing that the Commissioners had used one
state of data for the northern and southern lines, and
another for the western line. These alterations and
omissions consisted in this, that in computing the traffic .
of the western road, they had altogether omitted the
trade carried on by the canals, when it was notorious, by
the experience of England, that although canals did not
suffer yet, at the same time the Railways derived a
censiderahle trade from running near them. They had
also thrown out of consideration all the trade that
was conves-ed by common carriers, which alone a
Inou
eout
to a very large sum, and thirdly they had thrown
catale now
of consideration also the entire of the
not a proper
carried by sanal,
iwel'aesration 1:37 the Corn_
wascalculation which
()W. a year. The Com-
missioners,amounting to .
for
thrownthemwhoi ;cti
t' thati
ot fo ryasoe consideration
oknow an
omitted the whole of the pas-
sengersmissioners had farther
.inal
boats, although in
now passingej •byc. Report they said that by
another part O. Lien'
railways the passenger-traffie
the establishment of.
lcease.
upon canals would entrrey
passengers new travelling
by canals
they slaw(' that the
such means, yet they entirely
would no longer travel by
threw out of comic
consideration the whole of this traffic in
I They threw data for the western line. en-
fixing the
y out of consideration the cattle carriage,, although
ttiireciWestern Railway had a direct line passing through
Baliinasloc, the great cattle district in the west. In fie.
ni e the data for the northern and southern lines they
had taken into their consideration the whole of the pas.
sengcrs travelling on parallel lines of road, and he was
instructed to say that in all the subjects complained of,
that they had taken different data, and drawn -different
inferences for the southern and northern lines from
what they had done on the western line.- They
divided the passengers into two classes, the pr-
mary and secondary—the primary, those passing from
one terminus to another—the secondary, those passing
along part of the line.
He believed they had taken
•the northern and
ration an
these passengers into consideration
southern lines, and thrown them out in considering tho
western line. One other point to which he wished to
direct the attention of the House was, that in, separating
the secondary from the primary passengers they hadr
adopted different calculations for different railways.
Tiny had considered on the southern line the primary
passengers as 8 to 5, on the northern as 7 to 4, and on
the western line in a directly opposite ratio, viz. as
5 te, 9. Undoubtedly the public were entitled to look
with jealousy on statements so various on various roads.
In their calculations on the western line they had laid 1
the utmost expense upon the article of coals, whereas
'on that line, on account of water carriage, there was