The Sun.
London, England, 1860-02-22 00:00:00

IMPERIAL PARLIAMENT.

HOUSE OF LORDS—(YESTERDAY.)
The LORD CHANCELLOR took his seat on the woolsack
five o'clock.

ENDOWED SCHOOLS.

Lerd CHELMSFORD presented a petition from Roe-
hampton against the endowed schools bill.
CHURCH RATES.

The Bishop of CARLISLE presented petitions against
the abolition of Church rates.
TIIE LAW AND EQUITY COURTS.
The LORD CHANCELLOR, said he had the honour to
lay on the table of their lordships' house a bill for the
fusion of these courts. The object of the Lill was to
enable parties to a suit to obtain a final or satisfactory clod-
On in the court in which their proceedings were
first conemencod. Tho noble and learned lord made a few
observations on the inconvenience at present experienced
owing to the system now in existence.
After a few words from Lord BROUGHAM, the hill was
read a Iret time.

PRIVATE BUSINESS.
On the motion of Lord ItEnEsDALE the following bills
were read a second time :—The Auchterarder Common
Muir, Glasgow Town Clerks, London Hydraulic Power
Company, Edinburgh Royal College of Surgeons, Fergus
River Navigation Improvement, Southall New Cattle
Market, Waterford and Kilkenny Railway, East India Coal
(limited) Company, and Dublin City Steam Packet.
THE PLEA OF NOT GUILTY.
Lord BROUGHAM introduced a bill for the purpose of
substituting a new plea in criminal trials for that of not
guilty. In many cases the plea of not guilty was merely
regarded as a form, and it would be much better if some
means were provided for superseding such a procedure.
The bill was read a first time.
•
SIGNOR BUONCOMPAGNI.
Earl GRANVILLE read a letter he had received from
Mr. Corbett, the Charge d'Affairs at Florence, stating
that he had not, as has been alleged in debate, attended any
official reception of Signor Buoncompagni. At the same
time, he said had he done so he should not consider it any
impropriety.

COMPANIES (ISCO) BILL.
This bill was read a second time.
sT. MARY-IN-RYDAL MARRIAGES VALIDITY

BILL.
This bill passed through committee.

TASMANIA

The Earl of CARNARVON
_presented a petition from

found to., ~

members retired after so shore that there
was a fear that the council might altogether fail.
To remedy this it was enacted that the members
should. retain their seats for the whole of the six years for
which they were elected. He thought, however (as we
understood), that this act was only complained of to
strengthen the complaint that judges were not allowed to
sit. He (the Duke of Newcastle) did not think that such
an arrangement was injudicious.
The Earl of DERBY presented a petition from tl.e
clergy of Tasmania, praying for the disallowance of the act
upon other grounds than those just mentioned. The noble
earl said on the formation of the colony large reserves were
made in favour of the clergy. These reserves had been re-
served bythe Crown, and the first pecuniary payment made
to the clergy was £3lO a-year. It was afterwards arranged
that £15,000 a-year should be placed at the disposal
of the Colonial Legislature for distribution amongst the
clergy, but a further modification was made, by which the
salaries of the bishops became chargeable upon tho colonial
funds, and the salaries of the clergy were again very much
reduced. When it was recollected that the larger sum had
been guaranteed to the clergy, it was highly objectionable
that, without notice,' their salaries should be suddenly
reduced. The act of the colonial legislature which
affected the rights of the clergy was passed through the
two houses, and received the consent of the Colonial Go-
vernment in a few days.
The Duke of NEWCASTLE said tha' , after some hesi-
tation, he had advised her Majesty not to agree to the bill
for amending the constitution of the Legislative Council of
Tasmania.

CHINA.—EXPLANATION.
The Earl of SELKIRK moved " That a humble address
be presented to her Majesty for copies or extracts of letters
from the Earl of Elgin to the Earl of Mahnesbury, No. 103,
dated the 9th of May, 1858, respecting affairs in China, •
with enclosures; No. 107, dated the 11th of May, 1858,
with enclosures ; No. 110, dated the 15th of May, ISSB,
with enclosures ; No. 112, dated the 20th of May, 1858,
with enclosures ; and from the Earl of Elgin to the Earl of
Clarendon, No. 99, dated the 28th of April, with enclosures ;
and No. 100, with enclosures."

The Earl of ELGIN—I do not rise to object to the mo-
tion, but as the papers, foe which the noble lord has moved,
relate to a matter affecting myself, not in the position I now
hold as a member of the Government, but in the position I
occupied in China, I trust I may be permitted to address to
your lordships a very few words by way of personal explana-
tion. lam not in the habit of trespassing on your lord-
ships' attention, and therefore I hope that when I proffer
this request, as I do most reluctantly, and only from the
conviction that an explanation is essential to vindicate my
character and conduct, I shall meet with your lordship?
indulgence. lam aware of the great inconvenience, and,
as a general rule, of the great impropriety of referring in
this house to what passes in another place. At the same
time I cannot help thinking that my position as ex. Minister
to China, more especially in the present critical state of
our relations with that country, is one of a somewhat
peculiar and anomalous character, and this may perhaps
justify me in the expectation of receiving something more
than au ordinary measure of indulgence from your lord-
ships. It does so happen that both Administrations—the
one from which I received my first official instructions,
and the other under which my important duties were per-
formed—have passed from their political state of existence.
At the present moment, therefore, there is no person in
office who is personally cognisant of many of the transac-
tions which occurred during the greater part of my mission
in China, or who is able from his own knowledge to answer
any inquiry that may be made, or to remove any erroneous
impression that those transactions may have produced.
Perhaps I may be allowed to mention, in illustration of what
I mean, that a few days ago, when it was asked in the
House of Commons with something like a taunt and a jeer,
why the noble lord who negotiated the treaty of Tien-tsin
did not himself proceed to Pekin to exchange the ratifica-
tions, if there had been in the other house any official per-
son qualified as I have described,the answer might have been
given that, in point of fact, I was nevi". charged with the
ratification of the treaty, that the treaty was never placed
in my possession, that I never had the option of going to
?akin. (Hoar, hear.) Ido not mean in making that state-
ment to cast the slightest reflection upon my noble friends
opposite for the course they adopted in regard to the treaty
of Tien-tsin. On the contrary, I think they acted properly
and naturally in charging the Minister who was to remain
permanently in China with the duty of exchanging the ra-
tifications of the treaty; but I venture to say that, if the
question to which I have alluded implied any insinuation,
it it implied—as I suspect from the manner in which it was
put it did imply—any doubt as to my willingness and readi-
ness to discharge a difficult and disagreeable portion of my
mission, its sting would have been removed by such an
answer as I have now stated. Upon another occasion, when
some very severe reflections were cast upon me by an hon.
gentleman whom T do not consider to be quite responsible
for those reflections, because I read thorn, as well as the
greater part of the rest of his speech, in an American review
some days before he addressed the House of Commons—
when I was charged, almost in the words of an article
which I think I am capable of saying who the •
author was, with having shown undue harshness to
the Chinese, and with having pressed demands upon them
which some of the representatives of other nations did not
venture to put forward, my accuser might have been re-
minded that I did not go to China without instructions that
it was not altogether a matter of choice to me whether I
should make this or that demand upon the Chinese Govern-
ment, and, above all, that I should have assumed a serious
responsibility if I had abstained from pressing the demand
for a resident Minister in Pekin in the face of the positive
and peremptory instructions that if I were forced to have re-
course to coercive measures, I was not to make a permanent
arrangement with the Government of China, by which was
meant, I presume, because we always use euphemisms in
speaking of China, that I was not to make peace with China
except after having obtained that eencession. Here, again,
I do not mean to rest the justification of my demand for a
resident Minister iu Pekin upon the fact that such was my
instruction. I am ready to justify that demand upon its
merits, for I am confident that if we intend to maintain per-
manent pacific relations with some 400,000,000 of the human
as
race, scattered over a country some 1,500 milehlulzllonb)duct
many broad, if we intend that our merchants shall
in peace
their trade and commerce with that vast po
with the
we must establish direct diplomatic relations
in some shape or other, under some modification Pita or another,
not because I doubt the
Im-
perial Government of Pekin.
planation
but because
ohnianiveonwia,shed an ex,
ofO theb givenle
Foggested would at least
think the answer which I havee
of having been
e
unduly
mainnd the thatn of
nlsliosouflcid
have relieved me from the imputationowett ards the Chinese and froth
harsh and severe in my
"nduthat the spirit indicated
by the
the still graver imputatioton
tally
different front that evinced
by of my despatches was
f other nations.
These •
representatives o o 111 COD,
by the
veniences were el.'
y little felt by me last year, because at
lo which surround 1
that time a certain ha ei all the results of
lthoueh, no doubt, many of the proceedings
my mission—a
t'were fairly
to which I was a party
objections open t inquiry—indis-
posed persons to raise or to indulge in criticism.
But the circumstances of the present time are very diffe-
rent. A very great calamity has occurred, and it is per-
fectly natural and right that the acts of the diplomatic
agents who have been employed in China for some time
past should, so far as they have a bearing upon the present
state of affairs, be open to investigation and censure. Ido
not complain of that. All I ask is that when I am attacked
where I have not the means of defending ,
I may be
excused if I take the liberty of making my defence in this
place, and if I appeal to your lordships for permission to do
so. (Hear.) With respect to the particular subject re-
fer red to in the despatches which have been moved for by
my noble friend opposite, I shall only say that it has given
me more pain and distress than all the other circumstances
which occurred in connection with my mission put together.
I gather from the usual sources of information that a gal-
lant admiral with whom I was associated in the discharge
of very important duties in China naturally took advantage
of an opportunity afforded to him by a discussion upon
Chinese affairs some short time ago in the House of Com-
mons to enter into a review of all the transactions in which
he had been engaged in China, from the commencement of
the unfortunate affair of the lorcha Arrow down to the
termination of his connection with that country; and in
the course of that review he gave his own version of tbei
circumstances which prevented him from supplying me
in the north of China in April, 1858, with that particular
description of force--namely, gunboats drawing little
water—for which I had applied, which I certainly under..
stood him to have premised, and which I considered tra
be essential to enable me to carry out the policy which
I was ado vouriug to puma m that quarter. I can-