said "No." I listened to hear whether it then stood. He thought they ought he was supported by any other voice; but to be careful as to the appropriation I failed to find any negative but that of the hon. Gentleman. I repeated the question a second and a third time with the same result; and although it is true that a second voice is not necessary in Committee, a second teller is necessary in case of a division. Therefore I thought it unnecessary to trouble the Committee with a division when there did not appear to be a second teller. MR. DARBY GRIFFITH said, he was glad to find the Chairman concurred with him that it was a privilege in Committee that a single Member might raise the question on a clause by calling for a division. If that was so, though no second voice was heard, tellers might subsequently appear. In his case, there were, in point of fact, tellers, and one hon. Member raised his voice with him. He did so rather feebly, no doubt, but perhaps his lungs were delicate. House resumed. Bill reported; as amended, to be considered To-morrow. FORTIFICATIONS (PROVISION FOR COMMITTEE. Order for Committee read. Motion made, and Question proposed, "That Mr. Speaker do now leave the Chair." SIR STAFFORD NORTHCOTE (who had given notice on going into Committee to move "That it be an Instruction to the Committee, to set forth in detail in the Schedule to the Bill, under the head of each station, the name of the works in each district to which it is proposed to apply the sums to be granted by the Bill; the total estimated cost of each work, and the amount proposed to be applied to it before August 1, 1863,") of the money they voted. There was a difference of opinion as to certain of these works, and it was considered more desirable to carry out some of them than others. The question was, whether they had then the means of giving effect to their opinion upon the details of the Bill-whether they could reduce the expenditure upon certain fortifications, whether at Portsdown or at Plymouth. If they did so, according to the ordinary rules of appropriation they would effect nothing by reducing this Vote, because it seemed to him that the Government could use the money promiscuously for any purpose mentioned in the schedule of the Bill. If the House were to express its opinion against any particular part of the Bill, he took it for granted that the Government would take care not to proceed with that portion of the works, but there was nothing in the form of the Bill to prevent their doing so in spite of a decision of the House. They were very much in danger of passing Bills like this year after year; and if the House were to rest merely upon an honourable understanding with the Government, without a very strict appropriation clause, there was no saying to what extent the power might be used by the Government. Of the £2,000,000 granted two years ago certain sums had been set down in the schedule for particular stations, and they been spent upon these stations, and he had now returns of how the money had found that at several of these places there had been considerable excess. He knew that £350,000 of that was to be spent upon works already sanctioned by Parliament, and not set forth in detail in the schedule; but he found that at Portsmouth more than £120,000 would have been spent in excess by the end of this month beyond what was sanctioned by the schedule; while at Plymouth, £68,500; at Portland, £112,000; on the Medway, £40,000; and at Dover, £66,000, more than was sanctioned by the schedule, had been expended; and the expenditure at all the military stations had been £440,000 more than was granted by Parliament. Deducting even the £350,000, there was said, that he forbore from moving his Amendment, because he had been informed by the Speaker that he should not be in order in doing so. At the same time, he was anxious to make an appeal to the Government to make some alteration before hon. Members discussed the Bill in Committee. He wished to know how the sum of £1,200,000, lately granted, was to an excess of expenditure of £90,000. be expended, and to have a detailed account appended to the schedule. By this means they might discuss the Bill better than in the general form in which How had that money been obtained? Why, £150,000 had been obtained for a central arsenal, which had not yet been fixed upon, and that money had been tory, and he should be ready to adopt the course he proposed if he saw how it could be reconciled with the ordinary practice of the House with regard to appropriations. He was quite ready to follow the precedent of a Committee of Supply. The course proposed by the hon. Baronet was somewhat stricter. What the hon. Baronet proposed was to insert every item, whercas the Appropriation Act only adopted the total of a Vote. What the Appropriation Act required was that the money spent should not exceed the total of the Vote; but within that Vote the separate items, although, no doubt, the Department observed each as strictly as it could, were not enforced on it by law. But in the making of contracts for instance, when an Estimate for a barrack was contained in the Army Estimates, the whole amount being £80,000, and the annual Vote being £20,000-the invariable practice was to make the contract for the entire sum. That practice was followed with referenco to these forts. If, for example, the whole amount allotted to Portsmouth was stated in the Bill at a certain sum, and the contractor for one part of the works became bankrupt, or, an interruption occurred to the works from some other cause, it might be convenient and economical to the public that the sum intended for that work should be spent on some other work within the same schedule. If he were to adopt the proposition of the hon. Baronet, and make the Return a part of the Bill, it would become an appropriation of every item in that Return, which would be much stricter than the practice ever followed in Com spent on works at Portsmouth and elsewhere. What he asked was, that the House should not go into this matter blindfold. He did not wish to express any particular opinion upon the fortifications mentioned in the Bill; but it was important that they should keep the matter in their own hands, so that they might be assured that the money would be applied to the purposes for which it was voted. He proposed, when they came to the appropriation clause in the Bill, to move a proviso, limiting the power of the Government with regard to the application of these monies. If the Government would allow them to go into Committee pro formá, they might then discuss the matter, and decide which works should be sanctioned and which not. If not, he must at a future time propose the Amendment which stood in his name, which would render necessary the alteration of the schedule; and if there was any probability of his Motion being carried, the Government would see that time might be saved by adopting his proposal. He felt sure the Government would treat the House with perfect fairness, for in the whole of this business the Government had acted in that spirit: they had always freely shown what they had spent, and what they proposed to spend. The plan had been originally sanctioned by a willing majority of the House, and he thought the Government had no course but to persevere in the plan. All he desired was to put the matter in such a shape that they might deal with it practically. He should content himself, on the present occasion, with earnestly asking the Government to adopt the course which he had sug-mittee of Supply. He should be quite gested. SIR GEORGE LEWIS admitted that there was a difference of opinion as to some of these forts; and the Government had found it their duty to object to many of the opinions that had been expressed. But on one subject he thought they were all agreed that whatever might be the decision of the House, it should be founded on clear data; that there should be no misunderstanding as to the proposals of the Government; and that when once there was a decision of the House, embodied in an Act of Parliament, it should be strictly observed by the executive Government. He was therefore quite prepared to take any course which should correspond with that principle. The hon. Baronet had stated with fairness that the information the Government had given was satisfacVOL. CLXVII. [THIRD SERIES. ready to enter into an engagement with the Ilouse that he would not, in the case of any one fort, exceed the total amount stated in the Return which was upon the table; and if that could be engrafted upon the schedule, he should make no objection; but beyond that he was afraid that it would be difficult to go without unnecessarily tying the hands of the War Department. He should be quite willing to make any arrangement which would carry into effect the general principle that the Government should not take any advantage of the House, or enter beyond their expectations and intentions upon any of the works included in the list. MR. LINDSAY said, that when the noble Viscount at the head of the Government brought this subject before the House two years ago, he alleged as the reason 3 D for asking a large Vote for fortifications the increasing armaments maintained by neighbouring Powers and especially by France. He referred to her great army, and more especially dwelt upon the fact that she had a navy which could not be required for purposes of defence; and that while she had increased her naval force our fleet had, owing to the change from sailing ships to steam ships, been diminished in number. On the faith of that statement the House readily granted a Vote of £2,000,000. Similar statements had been constantly made; but it was only within the last month that there had been laid upon the table, by command of Her Majesty, authentic reports respecting the naval and the military forces of France. Those reports appeared to him to differ in material particulars from the statements which had been made during the last two years, both by the noble Lord at the head of the Government and by the noble Lord the Secretary for the Admiralty, and he therefore thought that it would be well for the House to postpone the consideration of these fortifications until they had further information upon this subject. He was about to move that the consideration of further expenditure upon the fortifications authorized by this Bill should be postponed until there had been laid before the House the reports of our naval attaché at Paris showing the state of the French navy at various periods during the years 1860 and 1861. The House would not have sanctioned so large an expenditure-it was questionable whether it would have sanctioned any expenditure for fortifications, but for the impression which was created by the statements of Her Majesty's Government that we were fast becoming, in comparison with France, only the second naval Power, and should not be able to maintain the command of the sea. What, however, were the facts? That we possesed more efficient steam vessels mounting twenty guns and upwards than all the rest of the world, France included, and that we had twenty more line-of-battle ships (the noble Lord the Secretary to the Admiralty himself admitted seventeen) than all the other nations of the world together. In 1860 the House voted £12,800,000 for the navy, and the number of men voted was 85,500, or 6,000 more than were voted while we were at war with Russia. The noble Lord the Secretary to the Admiralty, in asking for those Votes, stated that France had 244 steam vessels that could be mannned and sent to sea in a few weeks, some in a few days, and asked where we should be if hostilites broke out. The Government were not satisfied with the enormous wooden fleet which we then had, and during the year 1859-60 they built 85,000 tons of wooden ships, consisting of line-of-battle ships, frigates, and so forth. Yet at that time they must have known that France had long ceased to build wooden ships, and that one ironplated ship could destroy all our wooden ones. In 1861 the House voted for the navy) £12,029,000 besides £250,000, an instalment of £2,500,000, which was voted later in the Session. The number of men was 78,200. The noble Lord, in moving those Estimates, observed that it was impossible that our force, either in men or ships, could be fixed without relation to the forces of other Powers, and stated that France had then two very large and powerful iron-cased ships, which they ranked as line-of-battle ships, mounting fifty-two rifled guns each; four powerful vessels which they called iron-cased frigates, mounting from forty to thirty-six guns; four of a very formidable class, called floating-batteries, mounting fourteen guns each; and, in addition to all these, five gunboats of a very formidable character. He thus made it appear that in March, 1861, France had built or was building fifteen iron-cased ships, while we had only seven under construction; and on the faith of that statement of things the House readily granted the large sum of money which he had mentioned. There was a very long discussion upon those Estimates, and in the course of it the noble Lord stated that the Magenta and Solferino would be ready for launching in a very short period and might be sent to sea in a few months, and that of the four frigates one was then at sea and the others were ready. He was in Paris ; and having confidence in the statements of the noble Lord and the noble Viscount as to the immense preparations of France, he took occasion to speak to the Minister of Marine, and the Minister of Marine said that the iron-cased ships were not in the advanced state which was represented. The Minister of Marine, moreover, placed in his hands the means of contradicting these statements. He (Mr. Lindsay) also mentioned the subject to M. Chevalier, who wrote him a note which he read to the House at the time. He, however, thought it necessary to trouble the House | had himself previously made on the authowith an extract from that note "You have a full statement of our navy in a blue-book placed in a solemn manner before your House. You have it from the lips of the Minister of our navy. You were told by our Minister, privately as well as publicly, that of iron-cased vessels France has only one at this moment fit for sea, namely, La Gloire. That in a short time there will be a second one of a similar character ready for sea. I tell you, too, it will be necessary to have two more built; but two years must elapse before we are in a position to complete six iron-cased vessels ready for sea." Now, observe those two years dated from the 19th February, 1861. The noble Viscount, however, who doubted the assertion, said it was no use shutting their eyes to notorious facts, and to go on pretending that the policy of France for a length of time had not been to get a navy equal, if not superior to our own. The Estimates were voted in March or April, and on the 31st of May the right hon. Member for Droitwich (Sir John Pakington) came down to the House, and stated, on the authority of Admiral Elliot, who had visited all the dockyards of France except Toulon, that La Gloire was completed, that the Magenta and Solferino were to be launched in June; and the hon. Baronet summed up the matter in these words "The practical point we arrive at is, that the French are rapidly preparing 15 powerful armourplated ships, to be added to 9 of a different description also covered with armour, giving them in the whole a force of 24 armour-covered ships, exclusive of the old batteries which were used during the Russian war. . . Admiral Elliot assures me. ... that in every one of the yards which he visited the utmost efforts are being made to press all those ships forward to completion. I have no wish to excite alarm by making this state ment. The point to which I invite attention is, that whatever may be the motive of France, the practical result is that we are rapidly becoming the second maritime Power of Europe." [3 Hansard, clxiii., 416-17.] The Return of the strength of the naval and military forces of France, and the state of advancement of the iron-cased ships and batteries building on the 1st of January, 1862, did not confirm the statements made by Admiral Elliot after his flying visit to the Franch dockyards, and endorsed by the right hon. Baronet the Member for Droitwich. It was now clear that in May, 1861, no such progress had been made in the French iron vessels to justify the statement which was made to the House on the 31st of May by the right hon. Baronet on the authority of Admiral Elliot; and that the statement he rity of the French Minister of Marine, and M. Chevalier was literally correct. The Government, finding the House alarmed at the representations of what was doing in the French yards, asked for a supplemental Vote of £250,000, as an instalment of £2,500,000, to build six iron-cased ships of 6,300 tons each, and attaining a speed of 14 knots an hour; and in the month of July that sum of £250,000 was voted, in addition to the original Estimates of £10,000,000 or £12,000,000. Many Members opposed the proposal of the Government, and he was one of them. He warned the Government against the danger within, should the American war continue, and the people be thrown out of employment, and he advised them to consider that, rather than an imaginary danger from without. The noble Viscount, however, notwithstanding these facts, still adhered to his opinion and reiterated his statement as to the supposed increase of the French navy. "In addition to a fleet of six iron vessels," said the noble Lord, "France has laid down ten other vessels, making together sixteen formidable ships of war, in addition to eleven floating batteries." The Secretary to the Admiralty, moreover, stated that other nations were adding to their iron-cased ships, and we must keep pace with them; and the noble Viscount said that the great preparations of France rendered indispensable corresponding preparations on the part of England. The sole reason for the expenditure which was given to the House was the rapid increase of the French navy, and at the same time discussion was deprecated, because it would give offence to France, and the people of England were convinced that the French Emperor had acted most honourably and fairly towards them. Some had said, "Oh, France won't meddle with us as long as we have our hands free; but only wait till we get into trouble with some other Power, and then see how the Emperor will act." Well, we had recently had a difference with another Power, which assumed a threatening aspect, and the Emperor had behaved in the most friendly spirit. It was the French despatch which, in a large degree, helped to extricate us from the American difficulty. Now, under all these circumstances, he (Mr. Lindsay) thought, that before the House proceeded to consider the further expenditure of money upon fortifications, it was very desirable that full and exact 1543 information should be supplied as to the those vessels, the Magenta and Solferino, our present position, and an our reserves |