The Sun.
London, England, 1844-08-07 00:00:00

three of roue session.. It had been introduced both by
the late and present Goveennient at different times, and
had only been postponed in consequence of the pressure
of public business. At last, this measure had been
considered and brought to maturity, in the present
session, in. the house of Commons, and now came
recommended by that House to their Lordships'
consideration. And this was the measure which was at
this period of the session to be put off, night after night,
though it had for its object the amendment of many of
those evils in the present law of which the Right Rev.
Prelate complained.—(Hear, hear.) The real question
then was, whether they should enter into the discussion
of a Bill having this amendment for its object. The
Right Rev. Prelate had alluded to the subject of work-
house chaplains. lie (the Duke of Wellington) la-
mented that the Bill did not contain all the amendments
of the existing law on this point, which he thought it
ought to have contained. But the Right Rev. Prelate having
entered into that subject very forcibly, then warmed up,
and came to what was his real object, which was the
repeal of the existing law. That was what the Right
Rev. Prelate wanted ; he wished them to return to the
system that existed before the present law was enacted.
They ought not, he said, to pass this Bill, which was
not intended to amend that law, but at once to repeal it.
Now, if the Right Rev. Prelate pleased to give notice
that, in the course of this or the next week, he would
bring in a Bill to repeal the existing law, and bring into
operation the 43d of Elizabeth, he might rely upon it
that notice would bring down to that House a sufficient
number of Peers to discuss that or any other sub-
ject—(Loud cries of " Hear, hear")—which deserved
their attention. But he entreated the Right Rev.
Prelate not to set to work to repeal the existing law, by
preventing the passing of a Bill which had for its object
the amendment of the evils of which he himself com-
plained. Now, the abuses of the (Al law, which had
been referred to, grew out of the operation of the Act
of Elizabeth, and so great were the evils, that in many
parishes of England they consigned to ruin the land of
those parishes by causing a total cessation from cultivation
and labour. And everywhere the evils were such as to
require attention ; and they did receive the
attention of some of the greatest men who
ever appeared in England—Mr. Pitt, Mr. Whitbread,
and Mr. Sturges Bourne. Each of these endeavoured
to introduce and carry through Parliament Bills to
amend the 43d of Elizabeth ; but every one of them
failed, finding they could not attain their object ; the
abuses were so great and so various, varying in almost
every parish throughout England, that it was absolutely
impossible to remedy there except by the establishment
of a central and uniform system of management. That
was an epitome of the history of the Poor-law Amend-
ment Bill; and from that Act, they could not depart
without going back to the old system of abuses. With
respect to the Act of 1834, he had never himself acted
as a poor-law guardian. In consequence of his duties,
he could not reside long enough in the country to do so.
But he was in the habit of residing for portions of the
year in two different parts of the country ; and while
there, he often visited the workhouses of those districts,
and he must say that it was impossible for any places to
be better managed than those workhouses were ; and
Ise believed they gave great satisfaction. He spoke of
what he knew ; he had frequently stated this in that
House in reply to a Noble Earl not now present,
who was a strong opponent of the poor-law, and
he always should do so whenever he was called on.
The Right Rev. Prelate had complained of many things
in the existing unions, some of which this very Bill was
intended to remedy. Now one of the things of which
the Right Rev. Prelate had complained, was the separa-
tion of man andlwife ; and he said that he had never be-
fore heard of such a thing. Why did the Right Rev.
Prelate never hear of workhouses under the old system
of the law of Elizabeth ?—(Hear, hear.) Did the Right
Rev. Prelate never heard of hospitals ?—(Hear, hear.)
Why the common decencies of life required that where
a large nnmber of persons were brought toge-
ther, the males and females should be separated.
It could not be otherwise—the laws of decency required
such separation.—(Cheers.) Not only had this always
been the case in the hospitals, but it had also been the
case in workhouses under the old law of Elizabeth.—
(Hear, hear.) Then, with respect to education, it would
be much better if the Right Rev. Prelate would suffer the
Bill to go into Committee, and propose a clause to ensure
that schoolmasters should be properly qualified, instead
of declaiming, as he had been doing to-night, about the
inferiority of the present schoolmasters.—(Hear.) No ;
that was not the object of the Right Rev. Prelate.—
(Hear.) The object of the Right Rev. Prelate was not
to amend the Bill.—(Cheers.) The object of his motion
was not to postpone the Bill to-night, in order to give
their Lordships a better opportunity of considering it to-
morrow or the next day. He did not wish to go into
Committee on the Bill at all—he wished to destroy it.—
(Hear, hear.) If the Right Rev. Prelate were in earnest,
let him state his objections, and propose his amendments
in Committee, and see if his Noble Friends would adopt
his suggestions or not. On the subject of chaplains he
knew that, according to the system of legislation esta-
blished between the two Houses, no amendment could
be proposed on that point, but he might propose
amendments on other points if he chose. By doing that,
he would be rendering a service to the house and to the
country, but to pretend to stop this Bill to-night, in
order to defeat another measure which circumstances
had rendered absolutely necessary, was unworthy both of
the station and the abilities of the Right Rev. Prelate.
Ile hoped their Lordships would not attend to the
Right Rev. Prelate's suggestions, but would go into
Committee, and allow the Bill to proceed as far as it
could do to-night, and would then proceed with the
other business before the House.—(Hear, hear.)
The Marquis of NORMANBY would not detain their
Lordships long. He concurred fully in all that had fallen
from the Noble Duke ; but as last night he had given
his support to the motion of the Right Rev. Prelate, for
adjournment, considering that one o'clock was too late an
hour to go into Committee on a Bill of such importance, he
wished to say a few words. He could not but express
his surprise at the course which had been adopted by
the Right Rev. Prelate to-night. He had last night
proposed a postponement of a few hours only, without
stating the course he intended to pursue, and he (the
Marquis of Normanby) had certainly never anticipated
the adoption of such a course on the part of the Right
Rev. Prelate, as proposing the rejection of the Bill,
almost every clause of which was a relaxation of the
old law, on the harshness of which the Right Rev.
Prelate had so long descanted.—(Hear, hear.) There
was in fact no connection whatever between the argu-
ments of the Right Rev. Prelate and the motion with
which he had concluded—(Hear, hear)—and he believed
that he could assign the real reason why the Right Rev.
Prelate moved the postponement last night. The fact
was, the Right Rev. Prelate wished for a Mier audience.
The Right Rev. Prelate had last night complained of
the smallness of the number of Peers who were present,
and he (the Marquis of Normanby) had cautioned the
Right Rev. Prelate not to be too sanguine as to the re-
sult. He had told the Right Rev. Prelate that those
chairmen of boards of guardians who had been there
last night would not be there to night, and the result
had shown that he (the Marquis of Normanby) had
been the better prophet as to the success of the ex-
periment. Ho should reserve his defence of the general
measure to the time when the Right Rev. Prelate should
bring forward that motion, to which the Noble Duke
had alluded, for its repeal.—(Hear, hear.) The Right
Rev. Prelate, however, had not acted quite fairly—he
had quoted a letter written by the Poor-law Commis-
sioners, in 1839, at which time he held the seals of the
Home Department, on the appointment of chaplains; but
the Right Rev. Prelate had omitted to state that since
the date of that letter there had been a decision of a
court of law on the subject. The Right Rev. Prelate
had not said one word about the first clause of the Bill,
and yet that clause amended the existing law as regarded
the bastardy clauses in the very sense in which the
Sight Rev. Prelate had urged their Lordships to amend
them for the last ten years. Now, if the Right Rev.
Prelate had assumed a tone of triumph on the occasion,
he might have been excused. No doubt they must own
that the bastardy clauses had not answered the objects
which the original proposers of the measure had in view,
He agreed with his Noble Friend in opinion that, as far
as those clauses were concerned, the experiment had not
succeeded. The Right Rev. Prelate also objected to the
size of the unions. He (the Marquis of Normanby) had
always thought the unions too large, but really it ap-
peared to him as if the Right Rev. Prelate had not read
the Bill—(Hear, bear)—for the Bill contained provisions
to lessen the size of the unions.—(Hear, hear.) Then,
with regard to the schools, the Bill provided for the es-
tablishment of district schools, which would cure the
evil of which the Right Rev. Prelate complained.—(Hear.)
The Bill also relaxed the law in relation to the granting
of out-door relief, a subject to which the Right Rev.
Prelate had also alluded. With regard to the 26th
clause, which related to that subject, his Noble Friend
(Earl Fortescue) had proposed au amendment in which
he could not concur ; widows generally wore their weeds
for twelve months only, but he was not aware that their
distresses left them at the same time. The Right Rev.
Prelate had apologised for his warmth and excitement;
now he must say that he had observed no symptoms on
the part of the Right Rev. Prelate of anything like warmth
or excitement.—(Hear.) The Right Rev. Prelate had
spoken as he always spoke—with great ability and great
tact, but he had shown no warmth—(llear)—and, in-
deed, considering the state of the House, it would have
been remarkably odd if he bad shown much exciteinent
There was, however, a great deal in this. The Melt
Rev. Prelate had not' intended that speech ally
s
for their Lordships' ears--(Hear, hear)—a dno cis
t
the Right Rev. Prelate felt that if the speech should have
the good fortune to reach those for whom it was really
intended, a little confession of warmth would e
couldno make
it ankoet
it tell the less effectually.—(Hear, hear.) i
think that any person could be considered as labouring
under warmth and excitement, who had availed himself,
as the Right Rev. Prelate had done, of a quibble.—
(Hear, hear.) The right Rev. Prelate had said that
he union houses resembled prisons, and had quoted a
letter of Mr. Tufnell, in which he stated that the exte-
rior of those houses resembled prisons ; but in the same
letter, Mr. Tufnell stated that the ladies who had visited
them had found them so comfortable, that they were
afraid persons would be desirous of getting admitted to
them. Now, seeing that the poor were more concerned in
the comfort of the interior, than in the appearance of the
exterior of those houses, he thought the Right Rev. Pre-
late was not justified in the quibbling use which lie
had made of Mr. Tufnell's authority.—(Hear.) He
himself had recently visited the Bethnal Green work-
house, and when he compared the condition of the poor
in that house with that of the labouring poor in the
eastern parts of the metropolis, he could not but be
struck with the contrast, and this was more particularly
the case as regarded the children.—(Hear, hear.)
Having held the office of Secretary for the Home Depart-
ment for two years, he could bear his testimony to the
justice, humanity, and kindness with which the Poor-
law Commissioners exercised their functions.—(Hear.)
Lord WROTTESLEY, as a chairman of a board of
guardians, and as one of those who had originally col-
lected evidence on whcih the new poor-law was founded,
could not but protest against the first nine clauses of the