MR. JAMES MACGREGOR had certainly brought under the notice of the Board of Trade a memorial, setting forth the claims of this new company for a charter; and in doing so had not desired to establish what had been termed a monopoly. The Iron Screw-ship Company would not displace any other company in the same trade, for he understood that no British ships were employed in the Canada trade from the port of London. His object in bringing the memorial to the notice of the Board of Trade was because he thought that to build British ships of British iron to trade to British ports, was doing a public service; and he could not help thinking that such a purpose must prove generally beneficial. If Dr. Johnson was right in saying that a ship was a prison with the additional disadvantage of the risk of being drowned, he thought that a man who assisted emigrants to make a shorter voyage did a service to his country.

MR. HUME concurred with the noble Lord (Viscount Goderich) that by granting this charter the right hon. Gentleman (Mr. Henley) would be violating the great and important principle of unrestricted competition. No charter could be given without granting exclusive privileges, and no exclusive privileges could be granted without interfering with individual adventurers. When a great work could only be accomplished by the congregation of an immense capital, which could not be obtained without a charter, a charter might be granted; but that was the only exception which he admitted. But it was not usual to ask for documents pendente lite; and as the Motion, by its wording, might seem to cast some suspicion on the President of the Board of Trade, and after the explanation which had been given, he hoped the hon. Gentleman (Mr. Brown) would withdraw it. SIR FRANCIS BARING understood the right hon. Gentleman (Mr. Henley) objected to this Motion because the ques

ended. But it was usual when questions of great importance were pending before other departments, to produce papers and correspondence on both sides before those questions were definitively settled. It appeared to him that calling for these papers by no means cast the slightest imputation upon the right hon. Gentleman that he would act unfairly in discharging his duty, and it had always been the practice to grant such information unless the public convenience could be alleged against the concession.

MR. HENLEY said, letters and papers on the subject were coming in day by day, and therefore, before he saw the whole case before him, he thought it would be inconvenient to lay the papers on the table of the House. As the whole case was not before him, he could not form a judgment upon it, and on those grounds he considered it inexpedient to accede to the Motion. That was what he had intended to express by his previous statement. He still thought it was inconvenient to agree to the Motion, because only half the case would be before the House.

MR. TURNER had been surprised to hear an hon. Member advocate the grant of a charter on the ground of unrestricted competition. The company came for privileges not enjoyed by shipowners in general, their object being to induce a number of persons of small capital to embark in the undertaking. Unless there was a want of capital in the trade-unless a charter was necessary on grounds of public utility, it was surely unjust to allow a company to overbear private individuals. The hon. Member for Kidderminster (Mr. Lowe) said, the law of unlimited liability prevented many from embarking in trade. He had no question such was the case, and very properly. Euglish people were quite prone enough to speculation, as successive panics, which occurred periodically, proved; and if the parties were not liable to the extent of their whole property, those panics would be of much more frequent occurrence. They all recollected the American panic

of 1837 and 1839, and the East Indian panic of 1847, which were traceable entirely to excessive speculation. He was in America in 1837, and in one of the largest streets in New York there were not two solvent firms. The law of unlimited liability was in effect, that no person should be induced to enter into any engagement without seeing his way clear to perform that engagement. He hoped the President of the Board of Trade would be very cautious in granting a charter for any object which private means and private enterprise could accomplish. In this instance private means were quite sufficient, and if the principle was adopted in this case, every large proprietor of ships in the United Kingdom would have as good grounds for demanding the same privilege. The effect of the incorporation of this company would be simply to raise their shares to a premium in the market; and, under all the circumstances, he hoped that the right hon. Gentleman would exercise great caution in granting the charter. MR. R. M. FOX begged leave to set the House right with regard to this company, of which he would state in the outset that he was one of the directors. The Government of Canada was anxious to obtain steam communication with this country; but private enterprise had been appealed to in vain, and at last this company was started. The opposition to the charter did not proceed" from private enterprise," but from parties who received from Government 140,000l. a year for carrying the mails; and it also came from the Collins line, who were strongly aided by the public money of another country. He would also call the attention of the House to the fact, that the incorporation of the company would enable them to offer very great advantages to the Irish emigrant, who would avoid the miseries of going to Liverpool, and might embark either at one of the western ports, or at some port of call, such as Cork or Belfast. The fact that men of the highest station in Canada and Newfoundland (which island was deeply interested in this matter) were connected with the company, ought to have saved them from the imputation of an anxiety to raise the value of their shares in the market. It was a bona fide undertaking, which was intended to be carried out without asking for a single shilling from the Government. A contract had been entered into with the Government of Canada, and if the charter

was granted, there would be steam communication between the two countries; if not, he believed that Canada would go without it for a very long time.

MR. V. SCULLY said, it might be a reason for not granting a charter in this case if there were no peculiar facilities granted to other companies; but they knew very well that there were two large and powerful companies who were largely assisted by this country and the United States, and in consequence they had a monopoly now. He wished strongly to impress upon the House the importance of steam communication between Ireland and Canada, which appeared to have been left entirely out of consideration.

MR. HUDSON said, the Act of Parliament left it to the Board of Trade, whether a charter should be granted or not, and his constituents were quite satisfied with the sound judgment of the President of the Board of Trade. In many of the principles laid down he perfectly concurred; but there were cases where it was most desirable that limited responsibility should be given, but the Board of Trade might foster projects which did not come within the scope of private enterprise. He thought that private enterprise was much more likely to be successful, than enterprises undertaken by companies managed by boards of directors. He hoped the hon. Gentleman would not persevere in the Motion he had made.

MR. ALEXANDER HASTIE was of opinion that, if the President of the Board of Trade would leave the matter to the enterprise of private parties, steam communication would be established not only between England and Canada, but between England and China. Screw-ships were building for the latter trade, Emigrants, he believed, would be as well accommodated by a company without a subsidy or a charter, as by one with a subsidy or a charter. He recommended his hon. Friend to withdraw the Motion.

BILL.

Order for Second Reading read. Motion made, and Question proposed, "That the Bill be now read a Second Time."

and again in 1843, 1845, 1848, 1850, and 1852, Bills were brought in by the late Member for Rochdale, recognising the principle of a tenant's property in his own improvements, and of prospective and retrospective compensation for them-a principle which was now tardily, and little more than nominally, but still irrevocably, admitted by the right hon. Gentleman-he thought that hon. Members would agree with him in thinking that, when any effectual measure regulating the relations of landlord and tenant in Ireland should be passed, no matter whose name might be on the back of it, the chief merit would be due to Mr. Crawford. It would be impossible for any man who was interested in the prosperity of Ireland, not to have been struck with the unwearied zeal, the entire self-devotion, the singleness, and singularity of purpose, by which the exertions of the hon. Member for Rochdale for so many years were marked. He was a man of large landed estate, familiarly acquainted with the duties, the rights, and the practical management of real property. On his first entry into Parliament he engaged in an endeavour which, if those who differed from him were to be believed, must seriously compromise his pecuniary interests as a landlord. He put forward a plan for the amelioration of the condition of his countrymen, the first clause of which contained a recognition, as belonging to others, of property to a large amount in the shape of farm-houses, farmoffices, and permanent improvements of every kind on his own estate. tended that the law and custom of landed property in Ireland had produced a state of things so unlike the state of things in England and in Scotland, that he, and other proprietors circumstanced as he was, had no colour of honest claim to deal with such property as their own. He declared that, having practised what he preached, from the time he succeeded to his estates, he had thereby greatly advanced, not only the prosperity of those whom it had pleased Providence to make dependent upon him, but his own pecuniary interest. He demonstrated that the national disgrace of perpetual famine in Ireland, and of no remedy, as we were told by the right hon. Gentleman, being suggested for it by all the Committees which received evidence on the subject from 1819 to 1845, except the getting rid of the inhabitants of a not overpeopled country, would certainly be removed by the abundant employment and

MR. SERJEANT SHEE said, that, in bringing under the consideration of the House the course which he proposed to take with regard to this Bill and to another Bill on the same subject, which stood in his name on the Orders of the Day, he was anxious that the House should understand the circumstances under which he had undertaken a task of very great importance, and in discharging which he should need all its indulgence. The right hon. Gentleman the Attorney General for Ireland, in the very able exposition which he gave the House a few evenings ago of the new code of Landlord and Tenant by which he hoped to resuscitate the fortunes of his country, respectfully noticed the labours of an hon. Friend of his (Mr. Sharman Crawford) who was long a Member of that House, and to whose exertions towards bettering the condition of the agricultural classes in Ireland the right hon. Gentleman handsomely attributed, as the primary cause, much of the credit he anticipated from his own proposed measures towards the same object. He had no wish to depreciate the efforts of the right hon. Gentleman, or of those who, agreeing generally with him on this question, had gone before him on the same path. It were ungenerous, with these evidences of his learning and industry before him, not to thank him for the many hours of anxiety, snatched, as he had told them, from the rare leisure of a life of no ordinary toil, to be devoted to the intricacies of this question; but when he reminded the House that in the years 1835 and 1836, VOL. CXXIII. [THIRD SERIES.]

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