The Sun.
London, England, 1854-03-31 00:00:00

IMPERIAL PARLIAMENT.

HOUSE OF COMMONS—(YESTERDAY.)
THE POOR-LAW BOARD.
Mr. BAINES then entered into some explanations
of his present position. He said that be had introduced
the Removal and Settlement Bill in a form which was
in accordance with the recommendations of 1847, and
had been asked whether it referred to Irish paupers.
He had replied that it did not. When the bill was
within a few days of the second reading, some Irish re-
presentatives had addressed a memorial to Lord Pal-
merston, and had obtained a decision that Ireland ought
to be included in the bill, a decision given without his
being aware of it. On reflection he had been satisfied
that no personal disrespect was intended to himself, but
having at heart the interests of the bill as it stood, and
as the Irish members and others thought that this bill
was to be moulded to include Ireland, while he was con
vinced the Irish question was not ripe for legislation, he
conceived that, by retaining his office, his character and
efficiency as a public servant would be impaired. Acting
upon these grounds, continued the right hon. gentlemen,
I did, on Tuesday last, send to the noble earl at the
head of her Majesty's Government my resignation of the
office which I have so long held. (General cheering,)
In the course of the day I received from that noble e::;.;1
a most kind letter, to which I have his permission to
refer, and one passage of which runs thus :
" I very sincerely hope you may be induced to recon-
sider the decision at which you have arrived. At all
events, I hope you will agree to suspend the execution of
your present intention until it be seen whether anything
can be done to remove the difficulties connected with the
present state of the measure to which you refer."
Upon the receipt of that communication, I not only
considered the case again most anxiously, but I deter-
mined—for a man's own feelings are not always to be
trusted in his own case—to refer myself to the judg-
ment of two gentlemen, whom I am proud to call my
friends, a noble lord and a right hon. gentleman, whose
characters for personal and political honour stand as
high as those of any gentleman in this house. The ques-
tion which I put to them was this—" Looking at all
the facts of the correspondence which has now passed, I
begged to ask your opinion whether I can, with honour
to myself, without injuring my efficiency as a public
man, and without disadvantage to the public service,
retain the office I now hold." I determined to be guided
by their opinion. They favoured me with their opinion,
and I acted upon it ; and the following day I commu-
nicated to the noble lord at the head of Government
the result of my own consideration and the advice I had
so received ; and it is with the noble lord's permission,
again, that I read a passage from the letter I wrote in
reply to the one I had received from him :
" As your lordship is pleased to express an opinion that-
serious inconvenience to the public service would be occae
sioned by my retirement at present, and as I find that the
friends with whom I have confidentially advised upon thio
subject consider that I may remain without injustice to
my own character, I beg leave so far to qualify the decision
which I had formed yesterday as to adopt the suggestion
kindly made in your lordship's note, remaining in my office
at present. I feel, however, that I must request per-
mission to renew the tender of my resignation hereafter,
in case I find that I am unable to acquiesce in the ultimate
decisions of the Government with regard to the Settlement
and Removal Bill, and the other questions connected with
it." (Loud cheers.)
That was the letter which I sent to the noble earl. The
house will now see the position in which I stand. I
have nothing to add. I hope I have not gone very far
wrong in the matter. It is my earnest desire to be quite
right. The hcuse has all the circumstances before it,
and I leave theta to its candid consideration. (Loud
and general cheering.)
Mr. FRENCH explained that no disrespect was in-
tended to Mr. Baines by consulting Lord Palmerston
without apprising the former.
Lord PALMERSTON—I can assure the house, and
my right hon. friend will believe me when I do so, that
no man who has any knowledge of the personal cha-
racter and high feeling of my right hon. friend could
suppose that whatever course be, upon full considera-
tion, might think it right to pursue was not a course
which he and those who might advise him would deem
to be most consistent with his private honour and cha-
racter. (Hear, hear.) lam glad that the decision of
those by whom he agrees to be guided has been such as
he has described. But I can assure him that those
who have the happiness to be his colleagues in the Go-
vernment would consider it a great misfortune to them-
selves and to the country to have lost the benefit of his
able services and exertions in the important department
which he has so well for the country administered. (Cheers.)
I mu sure it is unnecessary for me to say that, in the
transaction which led to the doubt upon the mind of my
right hon. friend, nothing could have been further from
the thoughts of any of those who had anything to do with
it, and I speak most particularly for myself, than to
do anything which could for an instant have impressed
upon the mind of my right lion, friend that there
was the slightest want, on the part of his colleagues, of
t hat regard and respect for hint, individually and offi-
ci ally, to which he is so justly entitled. (Hear, hear.)
I happened not to be present in the council at the time,
but the moment I got the decision of the cabinet I corn-
municated it to him, as well as those from whom the
m•emorial mile. But, so far from its being the intention
of the-aitritiet, as I understood it, that any chango.hould
110 made in my right hon. friend's bill, I distinctly stated,
and I requested my noble friend opposite, with whom I
had been in communication, to communicate with my
right hon. friend as to the best manner in which the
obj ect of the memorialists could be accomplished. I
never for one instant considered that it was essential that
a change with regard to Irish paupers should be made
in tile same bill which my right lion, friend brought for-
ward as to English paupers. There were a variety of
circumstances which might, on the one hand, require
fuller information before any measure might be devised,
and. which, on the other hand, would require that mea-
sure to be entirely distinct from the bill of my right hon.
friend. I can only repeat the pleasure that her Majesty's
Government derive from the decision which my right
hon. friend has come to ; and lam sure the country
would concur with us that it would be a great _misfor-
tune at any time, and more especially at the present
moment, to lose his valuable services. (Cheers.)
Mr. T. DUNCOMBE confessed that it was with sur-
prise and great regret that he read that morning of the
resignation of his right hon. friend the President of the
Poor-law Board. (Hear.) It would be in the recollec-
tion of the house that, when the present board was formed
in lieu of the old Poor Law Board, they were told that
they were henceforward to have an officer placed in that
house—a minister to whom the house might apply for
the information it required—an important person, who
was not to be treated as a mere subaltern of the Govern-
ment, and kept in utter ignorance of all the decisions
of the Government. (Hear,. hear.) Now, he really
thought that the explanation which had been given by
the noble lord (Palmerston) was not saitisfactory to the
house, even if it was satisfactory to the right hon. gen-
leman—(cries of " Hear")—because the right hon. gen-
tleman had not been treated with the consideration with
which he (Mr. Duncombe) maintained he ought to have
been treated. He little dreamt that there was flirtation
going on between Tiverton and Tyrone. (Cheers and
laughter.) Ho did not know that there was this great
Irish cloud ready to burst over his devoted head.
All he wished now to say was, that he thought the right
hon. gentleman had extricated himself entirely from
every charge and imputation of a personal nature. The
right hon. gentleman had been placed in. a most painful
as well as a false position. So likewise bad that house,
the several deputations, and the public. It was impos-
sible that the house could discuss the question as it then
stood. It would be playing Hamlet without the part of
Hamlet, to proceed to deal with the poor law and to
omit all reference to the Irish and the Scotch poor.
Therefore, he suggested that if the Government had not
arrived at any decision on the point—if there was to be
no removal of the whole poor of the three kingdoms—
that the whole question should be postponed until the
next session. He (Mr. D.) was delighted to hear that
the right hon. gentleman's resignation had been delayed,
and that the country would have the benefit of his ser-
vices for some time longer. But come when that resig-
nation might, he (Mr. D.) was bound to say that when
it did come the Crown would lose an efficient Minister,
and the poor would lose a • sincere and considerate
riend. (Cheers.)
After some observations from Mr. PACKE and Colonel
DUNNE,
Mr. DISRAELI—As the right hon. gentleman has
appealed to the sense of the house in this matter I think,
perhaps, it may not appear unimportant if I state that,
so far as I can collect the feelings of lion, gentlemen who
sit on this side of the house, the right hon. gentleman
has made a statement which in every respect has left his
honour untarnished. (Hear, hear.) I congratulate the
house and the country, therefore, upon the right hon.
gentleman's resumption of that office, which for the mo-
ment we believed him to have quitted, and the duties of
which he has discharged in a manner to entitle him to
public confidence and private respect. And I can say
that the right hon. gentleman has moreover caused the
administration of an unpopular law to be treated with
respect by the country. On my own part, however, I
must say, that when I heard this morning from a quarter
which is reckoned as authoritative, though not so much
so perhaps with regard to those individuals of subordi-
nate rank as with respect to those having a seat in the
Cabinet—(a laugh)—and being in a still more exalted po-
sition—l must say that I did not feel in such complete
despair on the subject as I know was felt by lion. gentle-
men on both sides of the house. For it is a remarkable
circumstance, that within the space of less than
a twelvemonth no fewer than five members of the present
administration have felt it to be their duty to resign
office, and then, almost immediately after, to return to
their respective posts. (Laughter.) Last spring we
had a Lord of the Treasury, an officer of the Irish
Government, and a clerk of the Ordnance, who created
considerable alarm by quitting those posts to which they
had only just succeeded—(laughter)—and we had not
quite recovered from the tremors of the spring, when,
in the autumn, something occurred of the same kind,
still more appalling ; for a statesman retired from office,
whose retirement occasioned great consternation, not
alone in ibis country, but over all Europe, and whose
prolonged absence of three days might have produced
the most unfavourable effect upon the negotiations then
pending to avert a most just, but, as I believe, a most
unnecessary war. (Laughter.) We are now threatened
with the loss of one of the most respectable members of
the administration, and the country to be deprived of
services the loss of which would be universally deplored.
In all these cases, however, those hon. gentlemen had
returned to office. Ido not object to this ; but I would
suggest to her Majesty's Government, that in the course
of the recess they should devise some machinery by
which to terminate the internal bioltorbag that exists