The Sun.
London, England, 1854-07-04 00:00:00

IMPERIAL PARLIAMENT.

HOUSE OF LORDS-(YESTERDAY.)
Their lordships assembled at half-past 4 o'clock.
ROYAL COMMISSION.

The Royal assent was given by commission to the
following bills :—Excise Duties ; Customs Duties ; High
Treason (Ireland) ; Accrington Gas and Waterworks ;
Doncaster Cemetery; Havering, Dagenham, &c., Sewers;
Hexham Roads; Trowbridge Roads; Furness Railway;
Shipley Waterworks; Kingston-upon-Thames Gas; Blyth
and Tyne Railway ; North London Railway ; Newport
Improvement; Nene Valley Drainage and Navigation ;
Ryde Improvement; Manchester Court of Record; Corn-
wall Railway ; Chester, Farndon, and Worthenbury
Road, Birmingham and Midland Institute; Blyth Harbour
Docks ; Crystal Palace Company ; Surrey Gas ; Stroud,
Painswick, and Gloucester Road ; Hamilton Water-
works ; Cork and Bandon Railway ; Wadsley and Lang-
set Road ; Londonderry Bridge ; Bideford Roads ;
Dudley, Halesowen, and Bromsgrove Roads ; Tacum-
shin Embankment ; Exhibition of 1851 Commissioners ;
Great Western Railway (station accommodation, &c.) ;
Stamford and Kettering Road ; Bangor Waterworks ;
Bethesda and Llaullechid Improvement ; Beccles Water
and Gas ; Kingston-upon Hull Improvement ; Hull
Cemetery ; Llandudno Improvement ; London, Tilbury,
and Southend Railway ; Lanark Police and Improve-
ment; Edinburgh Roads ; Londonderry and Enniskillen
Railway; Birmingham Canal Navigations ; Birming-
ham Improvement ; Chesterfield Market ; Darling-
ton and Barnard Castle Railway; Dowlais Rail-
way ; East Lancashire, Lancashire and Yorkshire,
and Manchester and Southport Railways ; Edinburgh
Police and Improvement ; East Suffolk Railway ;
Shrewsbury and Chester Railway ; South Sea Company;
South Devon Railway ; Winchester and Petersfield
Road ; Bagenalstown and Wexford Railway (No. 2) ;
Brighton, Cuckfield, &c., Roads ; Ambergate, Notting-
ham, and Boston and Eastern Junction Railway (Ex-
tension into Nottingham, &c.) ; Law Life Assurance
Society ; Bradford Waterworks ; Yeovil Improvement;
Swansea Harbour: Bradford Corporation Waterworks;
Norfolk Railway ; Glasgow Suspension Bridge ; Mallow
and Fermoy Railway ; Hertford and Welwyn Junction
Railway ; Stockton and Darlington Railway.
The Lords Commissioners were the Lord Chancellor,
Earl Delawarr, and Lord Stanley of Atderley.
The following bills were read a second time :—Stock-
port, Disley and Whaley Bridge Railway ; Dublin and
Wicklow, and Dublin and Kingston Railways; West
London Railway ; Bangor and Carnarvon Railway ;
Selkirk and Galashiels Railwap.
The following bills were read a third time and passed :
—North and South Western Junction Railway ; Tralee
and Killarney Railway ; Horncastle and Kirkstead
Junction Railway, Leominster and Kingston Railway.
On the motion of Lord STANLEY of ALDERLEY, the
Customs Duties (Sugar and Spirits) Bill and the
Excise Duties (Sugar) Bill were read a second time.
THE OFFICES OF THE MINISTER FOR WAR
AND THE FOREIGN SECRETARY.

The Earl of IVIALMESBURY rose, in pursuance of
notice, to ask the intentions of her Majesty's Govern-
ment respecting the public buildings intended for
the department of the Minister for War and the
Secretary for Foreign Affairs. The noble earl said be
wished first to direct the attention of the head of the
Government to a rumour which he believe was well
founded, that the department of the new Minister of
War was about to be stationed at the office now occu-
gped
airdebeythe
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of
eEnclosureeeree
it
Commissioners
t waanecessary
thatin Wh
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Secretary of State should have an office which should be
sufficient in every respect for the important business
which he would have to transact ; but he should be
able to show their lordships that a great sacrifice of
public interests would be math, if the rumoured change
were to take place. The office of Enclosure Commis-
sioners was one of the most important and useful of
the public of this country. Within its walls were con-
tained to no less than 50,000 documents, of great value
to the public. In the first place there were about
20,000 maps, which had been drawn at a very great
expense, and could be seen by any person for a very
small sum. These maps were so minute that they might
be called field maps, and any one who wished to obtain
a tracing of one, could do so on he payment of twenty-
five shillings, whereas if he went to a person whose
profession it was to furnish such things it would cost
him seventy or eighty pounds. Another very important
collection of documents in this office consisted of the
exchanges which had been made under the Enclosure-
office. Formerly exchanges could not be made without
a very large expense being incurred in proving titles.
Now, when two parties wished to make an exchange
they had simply to produce their documents before the
commissioners, and the exchange was effected generally
for about 4/, in the case of considerable estates. Further,
within these walls remained the original of documents and
draft copies of corresponding papers furnished to parties,
and these being registered, theofficeserved the purpose of
a registration office. In fact there were in this office 50, 000
documents all arranged with as much care as any mu-
seum. Now be understood that the new Minister of
War was to be transferred with all his staff to the office,
and that in consequence the Commissioners of Enclosure
were to be turned out and sent to St. James's-square.
All those documents, which had been in course of ar-
rangement for two years, were to be removed from the
places in which they were deposited, to a new office
which had been selected for them ; and he spoke, he
believed, under the mark, when he said that a year and
a half or two years must elapse before they could be re-
arranged in their present order. If there were any
pressing necessity for deranging this registration office
the case would be different ; but he had no doubt that
it would cause much less inconvenience to the public, to
send the new Minister of War to St. James-square, than
to remove the office of the Enclosure Commissioners.

He hoped the noble earl opposite (Aberdeen) would
examine the matter himself with the view of ascertain-
ing whether proper arrangements could be made for the
new Secretary of War without ii.terfering with one of
the most useful offices in the country. He wished to
know whether it was the intention of the Government

to do any thing towards the repairing or rebuilding of
the Foreign-office. Their lordships well know its out-
ward appearance. It was a ruinous building which he

could Only compare to some of the old palaces in Cala-
bria. It looked ready to fall, and was, in fact, a dis-
grace to the metropolis. (Hear, hear.) Parliament
was, in its generosity, supposed to have given to the Se-
cretary of State for Foreign Affairs a house to live in,
as well as to perform the duties of his office. Formerly
this house was inhabited by the Foreign Secretary, but
since Mr. Canning's time no Secretary of State had re-
sided in it. Yet the Foreign Secretary of State was
obliged to perform the duties of hospitality on a large
scale ; and he quite agreed with Lord Palmerston in his
declaration before the committee of the House of Com-
mons on public salaries, that that Minister carried on
almost as much business in conversation, and in
society as in his own room. (Hear, hear.) What
was the state of the Foreign-office now ? There
was only one room in which its occupant could
see company ; though the diplomatique corps
amounted to above one hundred persons. Two
years ago the ceiling of that room fell in, and had
the Secretary of State been there at the time he would
no doubt have ceased to be a member of the Govern-
ment. (Laughter.) Before a party could be invited,
this room had to be
Propped up,
be unroofed. (Laughter.) Moreover, as a noble friend
reminded him, there was no kitchen—(laughter)—a de-
ficiency which of course prevented the possibility of any
suitable hospitality. To him, it appeared very disgrace-
, ful to the country that the office should have been
allowed to continue in its present state, and he should
be very glad to hear from the head of the Government
that a new office was about to be built.
The Earl of ABERDEEN said, when it was found
expedient to separate the office of Secretary of the War
department from that of the colonies, it of course became
necessary to find some convenient position in which that
officer might be placed. Their lordships would easily
conceive that it was of great importance that the office
of Secretary of War should be in the immediate neigh-
bourhood of Downing-street and the Horse Guards.
There were only two buildings which complied with
that condition—Gwydyr-house and Pembrokehouse.
theyth might, without any
material inconvenience, be removed to a house which
the House of Cum-
Gwydyr-house was occupied by the Poor Law Commis-
sioners, who were in constant communication with the
Secretary of State for the Home Department ; and the
chief commissioner being in the Rouse of Commons, and
the business of this department also much more con-
nected with the House of Commons than that of the
Enclosure Commissiotiers is, it would have been ex-
tremely inconsistent to remove that office to a distance.
To the Enclosure Commissioners there was not the same
inconvenience ; they were not in constant communica-
mtioennsw, iatnhdaintywoats he
hetroeffig
they themselves had strongly represented to the Board of
Works as peculiarly suitable for them, in St. James's-
square. That house would be rather more than sufficient
office
et
tchra t with
to accommodate them. Of course any removal must be
attended with more or less inconvenience ; but he could
not think it would take two years, as was supposed by
the noble earl, to re-arrange the documents which he
described in another building ; he should imagine that
twelve months would suffice for that purpose. It was
a mechanical operation which might be performed with-
out any great difficulty and with no danger whatever.
If, however, lie found on inquiry that the inconvenience
would be anything like what the noble earl supposed,
there could be no reason why the proposed arrangement
should be carried out. The noble earl had been but too
accurate in his description of the state of the Foreign-
office. It was not only disgraceful but dangerous, as he
well knew from his own experience many years ago.
Notwithstanding the annual inspection which it under-
went at the hands of competent persons—builders--
with a view not to repair it, but to ascertain its safety,
it was in a very bad condition. He had himself felt
qui. te alarmed. At the same time, though this was an
object which had engaged the attention of various Go-
vernments, he could not say that her Majesty's present
Government were prepared to propose to Parliament a
grant for a new building. Plans for a new building.
Were in course of preparation, and they would probably
be completed in the course of the summer, but he could
not say that the Government were now in a position to
propose the necessary grant for a new building. He
hoped when the noble earl again became a tenant of the
Foreign_-office it would be quite fit for his accommoda- ,

tion. - (Laughter )
The Earl of ELLENBOROUGH said that the Fo-
reign-office they were told was in an extremely danger-
ous state, and was a cause of great anxiety ; but it la-ted
as long as the Treaty of Adrianople itself, which had
secured, it was said, the continuance of peace. (Laugh-
ter.) If diplomacy had secured the continuance of peace,
he should have thought better of it than he did before,
and if it now secured the tranquillisation of Europe,
some new building like that alluded to by the noble