that the Bill might be committed pro | of Health of Aldershot, in favour of the formá, to allow of the insertion of continuance of the above-named Acts, Amendments by the Chief Secretary for Ireland. said, that the Petitioners deprecated the course that had been taken by the Government, and set forth the good results that had followed the enforcement of the Acts. They also stated that, at Aldershot, there had not been one single case of hardship caused by the application of those measures since their introduction. He (the Earl of Carnarvon) feared that the Bill which had been brought forward for the better protection of young girls could hardly become law this Session; and, if it did not, the state of the towns which had formerly been, but were no longer, subject to the operation of the Contagious Diseases Acts would be very deplorable. THE LORD CHANCELLOR said, that, with regard to the apprehension expressed by the noble Earl opposite (the Earl of Carnarvon), the Bill for the protection of young girls was to be considered in Committee on Monday, and that there were reasonable grounds for supposing that it would, at any rate, pass through their Lordships' House during the present Session. Petition read, and ordered to lie on the Table. PAWNBROKERS BILL.-(No. 79.) SECOND READING. Order of the Day for the Second Reading read. THE LORD CHANCELLOR, in moving that the Bill be now read a second time, said, that for some time great difficulty had been found, under the existing state of the law, in tracing stolen goods, and discovering the persons who had received them, and the present Bill was intended to obviate some of those difficulties. Their Lordships were aware that there were various local Acts in force in different parts of the Kingdom, and notably in Glasgow, under which there existed powers which had been found considerably more efficient than the general law as it existed in England, and in London in particular. Under these circumstances, a Bill on the subject was introduced in their Lordships' House the Session before last, and referred to a Select Committee, which prosecuted its labours during that Session; and in 1882 the Bill was again fore their Lordships' Committee, to meet the Director of Criminal Investigations, and to consider, with an Inspector appointed by the Home Secretary, the provisions of a separate draft Bill; for the Home Secretary at once determined to sever the provisions respecting pawnbrokers from the others contained in the Stolen Goods Bill, and to have a perfectly separate Bill for pawnbrokers, for the purpose of amending the Pawnbrokers' Act of 1872. The Secretary of the Pawnbrokers' Association attended at the office of the Director of Criminal Investigations on the 15th of February, and the draft prepared at that time was communicated to him. The Secretary carefully went over it, and various important alterations were made in deference, at least in part, to his suggestions. On the 19th of February Mr. Hardacre wrote to say that he, and the Committee with whom he was acting, were not authorized to represent the entire trade, and requested, on their behalf, that the draft Bill should be made public to the trade generally. But it was not thought convenient that before it was 1248 introduced and passed through that | brokers' Association, a very able and House, but too late to become law. In respectable gentleman, Mr. Hardacre, that Bill there were a number of clauses who had given valuable evidence berelating, among the rest, to pawnbrokers. He believed the profession of pawnbrokers was carried on by a large number of persons, the majority of whom were of the highest respectability; and there could be no doubt of their great importance in many ways, especially to the poorer classes. Nothing, therefore, could be further from the intention of Her Majesty's Government than to show disrespect to any of the upright and honourable men engaged in the business, or to impose upon them any unreasonable, or unnecessary and inconvenient restraints. But, on the other hand, it was a matter of notoriety that, even without any guilty connivance on the part of pawnbrokers, the most respectable of them might sometimes have stolen articles put off upon them, which, at the time, they had no means of knowing to be such; and if sufficient means had been furnished of tracing those articles, a discovery of the guilty parties might have been made. There could, also, be no doubt that in so very numerous a class of persons there were, and necessarily must be, some less scrupulous than others, who might wilfully wink at sus-introduced into Parliament it should be picious circumstances, and take pledges circulated in that manner, or that such a without proper precautions; and it was, course would be conducive to the speedy therefore, impossible, in dealing with this passing of the measure. The earlier part subject, not to make provision for such of the clauses in the present Bill were cases. In the Bills which were intro- similar to those passed last year by the duced in the two preceding Sessions the House, and the clauses dealing with inwhole subject of stolen goods was dealt formation to be given to the police were with together, and in them were certain in accordance substantially with the clauses made especially applicable to rules which had been approved by 588 pawnbrokers as well as the other and diffe- out of 617 pawnbrokers of the Metrorent class of dealers aimed at-the second- polis as desirable to be generally folhand dealers, or marine store dealers. The lowed by the trade. They were to the pawnbrokers, however, did not like this effect that there should be a careful association in a Bill relating to stolen searching of the police lists of property goods, and that clauses applicable to lost or stolen, that prompt information in other persons, not exactly on the same suspicious cases should be given to the footing, should be applied to them, and a nearest police station, that there should considerable desire was felt, as far as pos- be a prompt production of articles simisible, to meet their views; but their objec- lar to those described as being stolen, tions were not altogether overcome. On that a search of their books and stock the 12th of February this year, the should be made at the request of the Home Secretary, who was desirous to police, and the institution of a close do everything reasonable to meet the inquiry concerning property of special views of respectable members of the value or bearing distinctive marks, cortrade, received a deputation from that responding with those of the articles albody; and in consequence of what passed leged to be stolen. There were, also, at that interview an opportunity was some clauses inserted as to pawnbrokers' given to the Secretary of the Pawn-licences, which provided that certain The Lord Chancellor convictions should be endorsed on the licences; and that, after a given number of convictions, followed by penalties of a certain amount, the licences should be forfeited. The difference between this Bill and the Bill of last year was rather in the direction of mitigating than of increasing the stringency of the provisions; for instance, the power originally given to the police to search pawnbrokers' books, under certain circumstances, was withdrawn. He begged to move the second reading of the Bill. cording to the statistics, there were no less than 207,780,000 pledges taken in the course of the year throughout the United Kingdom, and the proportion of stolen goods was only 1 in 14,000. In the Metropolis more than 6,000,000 unclaimed pledges were sold by auction in the course of the year, and at those sales the police were able to identify articles that had been stolen, and the proportion of stolen goods was only as 4 to 250,000. They should take these facts into consideration, together with the one that without the poor could not get on Moved, "That the Bill be now read 2." the assistance of pawnbrokers; and if -The Lord Chancellor.) THE EARL OF WEMYSS said, he did not rise for the purpose of offering any opposition to the Bill, as he thought that everyone must sympathize with its objects; but as it was to facilitate the discovery of crime, he feared that some of the provisions of the Bill would be found too stringent, and would tend to defeat themselves, and to suppress the business of pawnbroking. The noble and learned Earl upon the Woolsack had borne testimony to the good character borne by the majority of pawnbrokers, and was amply justified in doing so, by some rather curious statistics that had been published in the January number of The Quarterly Review, in which it was shown how dependent the poor were upon pawnbrokers for their existence. Those figures showed that something like 300,000 families in the Metropolis were in the habit of pawning small articles, and that if they did not do that they would have, to quote the words of The Review The pawnbroker was, in fact, the poor man's banker; and this question, therefore, was a poor man's question. In fact, if the pawnbrokers in the East of London were, from any cause, to suspend business for a time, it would tend to nothing less than a revolution. He believed there was a great deal of exaggeration in the notion that they were in the habit of grinding down the poor, and it was only in a very small proportion of cases that stolen goods got into their possession. In what relation did pawnbrokers stand to stolen goods, and how often did they receive them? Ac VOL. CCLXXX. [THIRD SERIES.] these figures were at all correct—and he saw no reason to doubt them-the cha racter of the pawnbroking trade ought to stand very high; and it was to be hoped, considering the importance of pawnbrokers to the poor, that no unnecessary restriction would be placed on their business. He hoped in Committee the greatest care would be taken to modify what he considered the unduly stringent provisions of the Bill. THE LORD CHANCELLOR said, he had willingly acknowledged that the majority of pawnbrokers were very respectable and honourable men; but the fact remained that a great many stolen articles found their way to the pawnbrokers' shops, which, under the present state of the law, could not be traced; while the small number of cases in which they were discovered was the strongest possible evidence in favour of the necessity for the Bill. He THE EARL OF CARNARVON said, he agreed with the noble Earl on the Cross Benches (the Earl of Wemyss). would suggest that the clauses of the Bill should not be made too stringent. In his opinion, the House would do well to pause before so interfering with the pawnbroking trade; and, at any rate, not to do so more than was absolutely necessary. The pawnbrokers were, in several parts of London, the poor man's bankers. He would admit that there were good and bad pawnbrokers; but thought it would have been extremely unfair to have placed pawnbrokers in the same category with secondhand dealers and marine store dealers. EARL FORTESCUE said, he would point out that competition left the pawnbrokers only small profits, which would be still further reduced by every legislative requirement which gave them ad 2 S ditional trouble; therefore, the greater the demands that were made upon them with regard to preparing daily lists, the greater would be the charge made upon the poor who had to resort to pledging their goods. THE EARL OF LIMERICK said, he fully concurred in the suggestions that had been made by his noble Friend (the Earl of Wemyss) and the noble Earl (the Earl of Carnarvon) that the clauses of the Bill should not be made too stringent. As an instance, he would ask their Lordships to look at Clause 6, which he considered enabled "suspicion" to be carried too far, and that innocent persons would suffer injury under it. LORD TRURO said, he sympathized very much with what had been said on behalf of the pawnbrokers by the noble. Earl (the Earl of Wemyss); but, on the other hand, he thought the general public would thank the noble and learned Earl (the Lord Chancellor) for bringing in a measure that would aid the police in the recovery of stolen goods. He supposed that legislation was considered desirable, because the police did not receive the amount of assistance they thought they ought to receive in their efforts to trace stolen property. He was glad to hear that the number of instances of the discovery of stolen goods followed by conviction was so very small; but still there was a class of cases in which it was difficult to obtain convictions, and in which the goods stolen did pass into the hands of pawnbrokers. While there were some who carried on large businesses reputably, there were others who did not restore stolen goods as they might do; and the additional powers conferred on the police by the Bill would probably be exercised with advantage to the public, who would not have any cause to regret the introduction of the measure. EARL GRANVILLE said, although only the last speaker (Lord Truro) and his noble and learned Friend upon the Woolsack had expressed opinions favourable to the Bill, the general tone of the discussion had been in its favour. The argument of the noble Earl opposite (the Earl of Wemyss) that the transactions of the pawnbrokers were very large, and that there were few discoveries of stolen goods in their hands, was one Earl Fortescue that cut two ways, and, while proving the inadequacy of the existing law, suggested that some additional powers might be required. When it was said that there ought to be no unnecessary rigour in those powers, the question whether there was or not entirely depended upon the provisions of the Bill; and the argument would hardly be pushed to the extent of impeding the restoration of stolen property. As regarded the present Bill, he thought it had not been alleged that its provisions were at all too rigorous. It was simply a question as to whether there should be greater immunity with regard to stolen goods, or that pawnbrokers should be required to go into a little more detail. After a few words of explanation from the Earl of WEMYSS, Motion agreed to; Bill read 2a accordingly, and committed to a Committee of the Whole House on Friday next. NAVY-WARRANT OFFICERS. QUESTION. OBSERVATIONS. VISCOUNT SIDMOUTH, in rising to ask the First Lord of the Admiralty, Whether the Board of Admiralty have taken into consideration, or purpose shortly to consider any statements purporting to proceed from the warrant officers of the Navy with reference to widows' pensions, relative rank in the Service, and other matters? said, the first anomaly he wished to call attention to was that compassionate allowances were not granted to warrant officers. Pensions were also either denied, or were on a smaller scale than those of any other officers in the Navy; and they were not according to length of service, as in other cases; and they had not been revised for 80 years. The warrant officers had the charge of stores of great value; but the allowances on that account were fixed at 6d. a-day. The duty was a very responsible one in the case of a large ship with an immense number of shells and munitions of war, and it was felt that the allowance ought to bear some proportion to the responsibility. As a class, they were different men from what they wore a few years ago; they educated themselves so as to keep pace with the introduction of machinery; and they felt that they were entitled to some slight distinction in uniform to indicate their altered position and duties. From his acquaintance with the Service, he should be the very last person to encourage anything like agitation on the part of those employed in Her Majesty's Navy; but he thought that he was doing justice to the Rules of the Service in calling attention to these matters which had been brought to his notice. There was a very proper provision in the Navy Regulations that the Admiralty should not be addressed on questions of this kind. The warrant officers and seamen could not, therefore, adopt such a course; but they had asked him and others to state their views, and therefore he now asked the Question which stood in his name on the Paper. LORD ALCESTER: My Lords, in reply to the noble Viscount opposite (Viscount Sidmouth), I would state that an anonymous pamphlet, purporting to represent the unanimous appeal of the warrant officers of the Fleet, has been sent to certain Members of the Board of Admiralty, including myself; but we cannot believe that it is what it professes to be, or that a body of welldisciplined men, acquainted with the Regulations of the Service, could have fallen into the error of making such an application, inasmuch as they must have known that combinations of the kind are entirely prohibited. In support of that statement, with your Lordships' permission, I will read the extract from the Queen's Regulations bearing on the subject to the House "All combinations of persons belonging to the Fleet for the purpose of bringing about alterations in the existing Rules and Regulations of the Royal Navy, whether affecting their interests individually or collectively, are prohibited, as being contrary to the established use and practice of the Service, and injurious to its discipline." But, while saying that, I can assure the noble Viscount, and your Lordships generally, that the Board are always ready, in the interests of those serving under their orders, to listen to any reasonable representations, praying for the amelioration of their position, which they may receive from officers of any branch of the Service, provided that such representations are made in accordance with the Rules of the Service as laid down in the Queen's Regulations. LAND LAW (IRELAND) ACT, 1881- QUESTION. OBSERVATIONS. THE MARQUESS OF WATERFORD, in rising to ask the Lord President of the Council, Whether he will state the total amount of loans to tenants which have been sanctioned under the Land Law (Ireland) Act, (1881), Section 31, specifying separately the amount lent for farm buildings and the amount lent for drainage and reclamation; also the amount of loans asked for in the applications pending, but not yet sanctioned; and what steps the Land Commission takes to ensure that the money borrowed is expended in a satisfactory manner upon the improvements for which the loans are sanctioned? said, the Question which he had placed upon the Paper was one of some importance, as he was informed that a very large number of tenants had made, and a still larger number were likely to make, application for loans for the improvement of their holdings, either by the erection of buildings, or the reclamation of land, by drainage or otherwise, under the 31st section of the Land Act of 1881. He felt sure that everyone would be only too glad that the tenants of Ireland should be encouraged to improve the holdings which they occupied, more especially as, owing to the Land Act, the landlords were so effectually prevented from laying out money on their properties; but the question arose as to whether this money, which appeared to be granted so easily by the Government, was really expended in a manner that would be of use to the tenants themselves, by making permanent and real improvements upon their holdings in the best and cheapest way in which those improvements could be effected. From his experience of the manner in which tenants' improvements were carried out, he considered that there was an absolute necessity that the most careful personal inspection should be given, not only during the time the improvements were in progress, but also that a Report should be sent in upon them by competent Inspectors, as to whether they were really necessary and likely to be of permanent advantage to the holding. He had had a good deal to do with laying out improvements desired by tenants, for which he was pre |