almost completely the neighbouring colony | ger, as his hon. Friend had justly observed, of Australia of Imperial troops; and if was most likely to threaten them than they returned there it would be on the un- from any attack by land; and that, while derstanding that a substantial contribution offering these facilities and opportunities should be made towards their cost. The for making such preparations, she held Committee also recommended that the them responsible for their own security. number of troops in the West Indies All who have joined in or listened to that should be diminished. But the force in discussion those who sympathized with those Islands was governed by the force the hon. Member for Salisbury, and those on the West Coast of Africa, the unhealthy who sympathized with the hon. Member nature of which station rendered necessary for Manchester-could, he thought, arrive the keeping up of large reliefs. The at the unanimous conclusion that they had forces, however, on the West Coast hav- highly valued the connection between the ing been reduced, a corresponding diminu- colonies and the mother country, that they tion had taken place in the force hitherto were sensible of the great advantage of maintained in the West Indies to the ex- having those free, industrious, and entertent of one of the five West India regi- prizing communities sharing their own ments; and the result would be seen in blood, their own language, and their own the Estimates of this year. A Committee laws, settled over the whole world; but was now sitting, and when its Report had that they also expected from them that been laid on the table it would be for them spirit of independence and self-reliance to say whether a further reduction might which was the first prerogative as well as take place in the troops on the West Coast the first characteristic of an Englishman ; of Africa, and also in the West India re- that, as a policy of freedom, affection, and giments. Those who were curious enough attachment had been substituted for one of to read the papers delivered to Members coercion and Imperial control, and as Great every morning might have observed that Britain was ready to render them every in regard to three Crown Colonies-Hong aid which could fairly be required from Kong, Mauritius, and Ceylon-he had al- her, so in return she would look to the ready been engaged in requiring from those colonies for energy, self-denial, and selfcolonies contributions towards their mili- reliance, and that, helping themselves and tary protection. So that it would be found doing their duty by the mother country, that there was scarcely one of the recom- they might feel confident that she valued mendations of the Committee which had them in the highest degree, and would not already engaged the attention of the faithfully fulfil all those duties which an Government, and in regard to which some affectionate parent owed to her offspring. progress had not been made. At any rate, it was accepted as their principle and guide that the rule laid down by the House in 1862 should be carried into effect by the Imperial Government. The hon. Member for Salisbury (Mr. Marsh) had alluded to the Act passed in the present Session to enable the colonies to make better provision for their own naval defence; and it so happened that by that day's mail that Act, together with certain regulations which the Admiralty and his own Department had suggested, went out to the Australian Colonies for their adoption. That Act, no doubt, must come gradually into operation, because it established a new principle, and it was to be hoped that it would be the solution of difficulties which had for many years proved insuperable. It was an important fact in the history of this country in connection with its colonies that she was calling upon them, by an Act of the Imperial Legislature, to make provision for their own defence by sea, where dan MR. J. B. SMITH believed that the colonies were more indebted for their peace and prosperity to the mother country than she was indebted to them; but that to flourish in a healthy and enduring manner communities, like individuals, must be selfreliant. The tide of emigration, however, had set in towards the United States rather than towards our own colonies, because the American Government had passed what was called the Homestead Law, giving land to settlers for nothing. Under those circumstances our enterprizing fellow-subjects would not go to distant colonies, where they had to pay £1 per acre for land. POOR FISHERMEN (IRELAND). QUESTION. MR. BLAKE said, he wished to ask the Secretary to the Treasury, Whether that portion of the Act 5th Geo. IV. c. 64 s. 9, which empowers the Lord Lieutenant— "To apply a sum not exceeding five hundred pounds in any one year in providing materials for the repairs of boats of poor fishermen at such ports and places where quays and piers are or shall be built." Under the provisions of the said Act, is not still in force, and whether he can state when the last grant was made under the Act. It was his (Mr. Blake's) belief that the sum of five hundred pounds per annum was still legally available for the purpose for which it was originally intended, and complained that it was not so applied. He also urged the necessity of placing the Fishery Department in Dublin in a more efficient state. Piers and Harbours under the direction of the Fishery Board of Scotland? The reason which has induced me to ask this question is the fact that enormous loss of life has occurred among the seamen on the east coast of Scotland; and, also the fact that I represent a county on the coast of which there are many villages in which the rate of mortality from this cause has been to my mind most appalling. But I should not have ventured to appeal to the House upon any special, much less the recommendations of the Special Comupon any local reason, had it not been for missioners in 1857. I do not think the public are at all aware of the large amount MR. PEEL said, his own opinion, after of loss which is incurred on the north-east taking some pains to examine into the coast of Scotland. I am not going to question, was that there was no power in trouble the House with many statisticsthe Act to which the hon. Member had re- in fact, I shall confine myself to my own ferred, or in any other Act, to authorize county, for there I can vouch for the acthe payment of a sum of £500 per annum curacy of the statistics I give, as I know towards the assistance of poor fishermen almost every individual case of which I am in Ireland. An Act was passed in the about to speak. On the night of the 23rd year 1819 which gave the Lord Lieutenant February, 1857, out of three villages, the the power of issuing to the Commissioners whole population of which only amounted of Fisheries in Ireland an annual sum of to 640 persons, no less than 41 fishermen £5,000 for the construction of fishing were lost. These men were all lost in one piers and harbours; but that Act was only night-being 7 per cent of the entire male to be in force for five years from the end population of the parish, and they left 27 of the next Session of Parliament, and it widows and 79 children. Between the accordingly expired in the year 1825. It period to which I have alluded and the was then renewed until the year 1830; when, under a new arrangement, a body was created, called the "Directors of Inland Navigation." The Lord Lieutenant by the Act of 1830 was authorized to issue to the Directors of Inland Navigation for the completion of piers which had already been commenced a sum of £13,000, which was to be expended in a period extending over five years; and since the expiration of those five years the Lord Lieutenant had no money at his disposal which he could devote to that object. present time there have been various casualties, and yet the Government have, in the meantime, paid no attention to the recommendation of the Commissioners. I believe many persons would have contributed towards the erection of a harbour if the Government had acted in the matter; and it is to the non-existence of a harbour of refuge that I attribute the loss of the lives of many of these men. Had a harbour of refuge existed, I firmly believe the lives of many of them would have been saved, and much desolation and misery thus prevented. On the 27th October, PIERS AND HARBOURS (SCOTLAND). and on the 8th February there were 8 there were 27 men drowned in one night; QUESTION. more-making a total of 35 lost out of a MR. R. W. DUFF: Sir, I rise for population of 500, leaving many widows the purpose of asking the Secretary to and children behind them. I do not ask the Treasury, Whether, in consequence the Government to give any special grant, of the recent great loss of life among the but I maintain that if they will adopt the Fishermen while pursuing their trade on recommendation of the Commissioners, the east coast of Scotland, it is the in- and allow a larger sum to be given to the tention of the Lords of the Treasury to Fishery Board for the construction of piers give effect to the Report addressed to them and harbours, great benefit will thus be by Special Commissioners in February, conferred upon the people whose claims 1857, recommending that an additional I am advocating. In the Report of the sum be granted for the construction of Commissioners to which I allude, they Mr. Blake tion? I doubt whether one-fourth of the revenue recommend that, in addition to the grant! "What proportion is expended in Scotland in of £3,000 now secured by Act of Par- proportion to the sum raised in the shape of taxaliament, an additional sum of £3,000-derived from the country is spent within its bormaking in all £6,000-should be granted ders." locality in which it is raised. Such an argument would be quite untenable; but I do think that, when we have £5,500,000 of money taken from Scotland, and only £440,000 spent there, we have some claim upon the consideration of the Government, especially when that claim is backed up by the Report of a Special Commission. It appears to me that the policy of the Government has been to get everything they can out of Scotland, and at the same time to reduce all the expenditure upon the public works. I trust that the Treasury will deal in future in a more liberal manner with these fishermen, who are a class of men who have always been ready to come forward when they are required for the navy, and at the present moment they form no inconsiderable proportion of the Royal Naval Reserve. In conclusion, I can only express a hope that I shall not appeal in vain, but that the right hon. Gentleman the Secretary to the Treasury will give the matter his careful consideration. I beg to ask the question which I have already read to the House. for the purpose of constructing piers and I am not going to maintain that you are harbours-this sum to extend over a period to spend all the money raised in the of eight years, by which time the works would be executed. They say it is very important that this additional grant of £3,000 should be secured by special Act of Parliament for eight years, otherwise there will not be any trustworthy basis of operation, and the Board would be seriously impeded in the matter. The Commissioners had made certain other recommendations, amongst which were the reduction of some officers, and the abolition of others employed on the west coast, which would increase the revenue. The additional £3,000 which they recommended, and the existing £3,000 at present secured, together with the other sums to be brought in, will in all make a sum of £9,300 a year. Such a sum as this would, in my opinion, be most beneficially expended under the administration of the Fishery Board of Scotland. It is quite impossible adequately to estimate the benefit to be derived. I admit it is quite impossible for the Government to give money, but I think they might increase the amount given to the Fishery Board; and that is what I ask them to do. The grant to the Fishery Board, I am sorry to say, has been diminished, and they do not get so much now as they did in 1855. There is another reason why I think the Government might increase the grant, and that is, since the establishment of the herring brand in 1859, the Government have realized a large sum of money, and that brand is not only self-supporting, but I believe the Government have derived a large amount of profit from it. Altogether they have received something like £25,000; and I think that is an appropriate fund from which the fishermen may ask to have assistance granted for the construction of these harbours. Another reason which, perhaps, I may be allowed to urge, is the fact that so small a proportion of the revenue, considering the large amount raised from the people of Scotland, is expended in that country in comparison of the prejudices which formerly surrounded with the amount expended in other parts of the country. It was only in the early part of the present Session, in the course of an Irish debate, that the Chancellor of the Exchequer called attention to this fact. He said SIR JAMES ELPHINSTONE said, he regarded this as a question which deserved the careful consideration of the Government. The fishermen upon the coasts of Scotland were exposed, from the nature of the tempests which occurred there, to great and unusual dangers, from which the fishermen of other parts of the coast of Great Britain were exempt. The storms which constantly arise on the east and north-east coasts of Scotland were of such a character that when the fishermen were engaged in fishing upon banks, perhaps forty miles from land, a sea would arise which threatened to swamp them before, with such boats as they had, they could reach the very imperfect harbours in which they were obliged to take refuge. He believed that Admiral Fitzroy had done a great deal for these men by the introduc. tion of his meteorological system. Many this class of men had been overcome, and they now paid more attention to the barometers and to the various scientific apparatus for foretelling storms which were placed in conspicuous positions along the coast. From the coast to which his hon. Friend (Mr. W. R. Duff) referred there fishing grounds because they had no place were drawn upwards of 1,000 men for the to run to in the event of a storm coming Royal Naval Reserve; and he (Sir James on. The result of this was that a great Elphinstone) had no hesitation in saying amount of human food was entirely lost. that they were among the finest men to be He believed that the produce from the found in that force. He felt bound to fishing grounds might be doubled if these express in the strongest terms his opinion harbours were properly attended to; and that the grants for harbours upon the he therefore trusted that the Secretary coast of Scotland had not been commen- of the Treasury would be able to give us surate with the necessities of the case, some hope that this subject will not be and he believed there were many points disregarded. on the coast of Banffshire, Aberdeenshire, MR. PEEL said, that having already and at Wick, in the northern part of the addressed the House upon the Question county of Caithness, at which, if the la- of going into Committee of Supply, he bour of convicts were employed, and if was precluded from saying more than a money were raised at a low rate of inte- few words in answer to the question of rest, for the construction of harbours-the his hon. Friend. The hon. Gentleman loans being repaid by a toll upon the coasters resorting to the harbours-great improvements might be effected, which would result in a considerable annual saving of human life. The loss of human life in some of the gales which occur upon this coast had frequently been very great. Within his recollection as many as 100 men had been lost in one of those storms; and the loss of 100 able-bodied men involved the beggary and destitution of many famnilies. Under all these circumstances he begged most humbly to support the recommendations of his hon. Friend. SIR FREDERIC SMITH thought that the hon. Member for Banff is entitled to the thanks of the House for having brought this question forward. The question of providing harbours of refuge had occupied the attention of the House for several successive years; and although a division was obtained in 1859 in favour of carrying out the recommendation of the Commissioners, yet in a subsequent year that decision was reversed. If that recommendation had been carried out, there would have been no necessity for urging the matter upon the attention of the House at the present moment; but the question being, as it were, in abeyance, and there being great difficulty in obtaining the construction of harbours of refuge on a larger scale, he thought they would do well to press on the Treasury the necessity of seeing what could be done by means of smaller works for these poor fishermen. Indeed, it is a question of humanity and public policy. The losses sustained by the fishermen were very severe. These poor people lived entirely by the produce of their fishing, and it not unfrequently happened that for three days out of the seven they were prevented from going to the Sir James Elphinstone was in error in stating that the fee on It would cost £22,000 if carried out partially, but if carried out to the full extent desirable, it was estimated that it would cost £33,000. Therefore, if the House were to vote double the sum recommended, and it were applied to this single harbour, it would take five or six years before there would be sufficient funds to carry out the work. He was glad that the hon. Gentleman did not claim an unconditional grant of the public money for this purpose. Since the passing of the Harbours Act in 1851, ordinary harbours could only be constructed by public money upon certain terms of repayment, and it would be hardly right or fair with regard to fishery harbours that they should be constructed with public money without repayment. He should be very glad if the thing could be done, but he must confess that at the present moment he did not see his way towards carrying out the object desired by his hon. Friend. MR. CORRY said, he was rejoiced to find that reflection had brought conviction to the Admiralty as to the necessity of extending the accommodation in our dockyards. Three years ago when he proposed an expenditure of £1,500,000 in the Channel Dockyards for works necessary to the accommodation of the modern fleet of this country his noble Friend the Secretary of the Admiralty treated his proposal almost with derision. On that occasion his noble Friend said that he (Mr. Corry) was a great advocate for brick and mortar; that his time at the Admiralty was looked on as the golden age, when he was the Palladio of that establishment; that he used to go down to the Board and propose gigantic works; that in going round the yards, if a person asked who constructed this or that great work, the answer was sure to be “Mr. Corry ;" and the noble Lord concluded by asking him to sit down contented and not to alarm the House by statements such as MR. CAIRD said, there was a distinc- he had made, because on a calm review tion to be drawn in the case of the fishing there was no cause for alarm as to any harbours of which the right hon. Gentle- evil results in time of war from a want of man was perhaps not aware-namely, that accommodation in the dockyards. But in consequence of the change which had his moderate proposal was now very much taken place in the modes of sea fishing exceeded; for, assuming that the works all over the coast of Great Britain a larger now proposed were carried out in the most description of vessel was now used than economical way-that was to say, partly by was formerly found necessary. The truth contract, and partly by convict labour-the was, however, that in most of the fishery estimated cost was £4,600,000; and the harbours on the coast of Scotland the Estimate would be increased to £6,000,000 fishermen had very little means at their if the works were carried out in the manner disposal for making improvements, and and with the expedition which he thought they were precluded from adopting that ought to be used. He did not taunt his improved system of fishing which is found noble Friend with the gigantic character requisite for deep-sea fishing, because they of these works, which threw those that he had not the power of leaving the shallow had suggested completely into the shade harbours which nature had provided for -on the contrary, he freely admitted that them. He had no doubt that a great in- though the Estimate of his noble Friend crease in the supply of fish, not only upon was much larger than his (Mr. Corry's), this coast alone, but upon the west coast it did not go beyond the necessities of the -and, indeed, all over the kingdom-case. The plans proposed for works at would be the result, if under proper and necessary precautions money could be advanced for the purpose of improving the fishery harbours. Main Question, "That Mr. Speaker do now leave the Chair," put, and agreed to. SUPPLY-NAVY ESTIMATES.-CIVIL Considered in Committee. (In the Committee.) NAVY ESTIMATES. Portsmouth, at Chatham, at Cork, and at Malta seemed on the whole to be good, and he would give them his cordial support. But though he was satisfied on the whole with the designs, he was not equally. satisfied with the mode in which it was proposed to provide the means for executing them. In proposing the Navy Estimates the noble Lord said "The last paragraph of their Report is of such great importance that I must particularly refer to it, because it bears strongly upon the proposal that I am about to make. The Committee there state The Committee, therefore, having due (1.) £527,985, New Works, &c., Naval regard to economy, no less than to the pressing Establishments. necessities of the service, are of opinion that the |