lished, they had fulfilled their promise, and had made recommendations for the amendment of the law. He readily admitted that the law was extremely defective. When Notice was given by the noble Lord (Lord Eustace Cecil) of the present Motion, he caused an independent inquiry to be instituted into the working of the law, and thus discovered many defects which must be removed. He believed he was not anticipating improperly the Report of the Commissioners, by saying that one point they specially dealt with was the necessity so strongly insisted upon by the hon. Member for Frome (Mr. T. Hughes) of doing away with the absurd, antiquated, and useless jurisdiction still retained in some parishes in London. He believed the noble Lord would say that he had, like the deity of old, "granted but half his prayer;" but he trusted he would not add the rest dispersed in empty air." With regard to the suggestion of the hon. Member that the Government might carry out some such scheme as he shadowed forth, he would remark that although, with regard to great political measures like the Irish Land Bill, the Government could successfully appeal to the loyal attachment of their own party, yet, on questions like the present, independent Members would scarcely be inclined to waive their own opinions as to the remedy to be provided, and a proposal to cover the country with inspectors, to inquire into the proceedings in every shop, would somewhat try the attachment of many followers of the Government. However, he frankly admitted that there did exist a very considerable evil. While making this admission, he would say, without complaining of the use his noble Friend made of the speech of his right hon. Friend the President of the Board of Trade, that the noble Lord's remarks on that speech rather tended to mislead the House as to the right hon. Gentleman's meaning. His right hon. Friend did not deny that adulteration, even though it might not be noxious and poisonous, was a fraud which ought to be punished; but he said in mitigation of the evil that what was deficient in quality was sometimes compensated by the lowness of the price. The noble Lord had stated that milk was adulterated with water in the proportion of 6 to 9. He was delighted to hear that the evil was so much less

Mr. Bruce

than he anticipated. But supposing the milk were supplied pure, there could be no doubt that the price would be higher than at present, and if the pathetic appeal of Liston to the milkwoman-to put his milk in one cup and the water in another-had been successful, there was no doubt that he would have had to pay as much for the small quantity of milk as he had before paid for the milk and water mixed together. He (Mr. Bruce) was not there, however, to defend any adulteration whether noxious or otherwise. In his opinion it was a very grave offence, and analogous to obtaining goods under false pretences. A man who sold a 34 lb. Îoaf for a 4 lb. loaf obtained money by a false pretence, and the same applied to one who sold as genuine a spurious article. This evil prevailed widely, and that the remedies hitherto applied were inadequate he freely admitted. This might be owing to the defects in our legislation on the subject, and his hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham (Mr. Muntz) had brought forward a measure providing that every local body in the country should be compelled to employ an analyst. He confessed he did not see how the difficulty could be effectually grappled with except by the diligence of officials, whose duties it should be to inquire into these cases and to examine into all complaints which might be made to them. If his hon. Friend had pressed his Bill it would, no doubt, have received a candid consideration from the House. Here he might remark that the Government were not open to the charge made by the noble Lord that they cast impediments in the way of legislation by private Members. A very large proportion of the time of the House was in the hands of private Members, and these questions could be well dealt with by them. The Government had given the Bill of his hon. Friend (Mr. Muntz) every consideration, and were prepared to afford him every facility for proceeding with it next Session. He (Mr. Bruce) was not prepared, like the noble Lord, to sketch out the remedies. He was, however, prepared to admit the evil, and would undertake to give the matter his best consideration. The question of weights and measures had been referred to a Committee, and that Committee had made certain recommendations, which he hoped to be able soon-in all proba

bility next Session-to embody in a Bill. With respect to the other portion of the Question, he could not pledge himself to introduce a measure, the provisions of which he had not sufficiently considered; yet admitting, as he did, the evils which existed, it would, of course, be his duty to endeavour to provide a remedy.

MR. STEPHEN CAVE, as the only member of the Royal Commission on Standards who was also a Member of the House, would like to say a few words on this subject. He thought the noble Lord (Lord Eustace Cecil) had done excellent service in bringing the question before the House. It was one which required frequent and special attention from those who professed to legislate for the good of the people, especially for those in the lower grades of the social scale. What could be more inconsistent for them than to remove political disabilities, to insist upon education, to lay down strict rules as to the habitations of the people, to regulate the number of cubic feet of air which are to pass through their lungs, to insist upon the duty of landowners to provide fit and proper habitations for the labouring class, and yet to allow them, year after year, to be the victims of the grossest frauds-frauds which not only robbed them of a portion of that scanty food which too many had so much difficulty in procuring, but worse than that, frauds which, together with reduced quantity, gave them quality so bad that the food failed to afford them that nourishment so essential to enable them to perform their daily work? And even worse than that, which substituted for the wholesome stimulant the refreshing beverage, compounds so noxious that a man who intended to do no more than take that moderate amount which persons in his position could do with impunity and advantage, was so overpowered by the poisonous drugs with which his liquor was adulterated that he proceeded to excesses which caused more than half the crimes of violence in the country, and excused the strong language of those philanthropic people inside and outside the House, who had proclaimed a crusade against the use of fermented liquors, which might be directed with more justice and better chance of success against the sale of these abominable poisons. He thought it was Sydney Smith who gave in former days an amusing catalogue of the

taxable articles, from the materials of the cradle to those of the coffin, which a man was compelled to use during his passage through life; and, a few days ago, he saw in an American paper a similar estimate of the additional cost imposed upon almost every article of dress and use by the heavy duties of the United States. But those were taxes most part of which, at any rate, went to meet the exigencies of the State, and were, moreover, imposed on all alike; whereas these frauds, of which his noble Friend had given instances, had the great vice of protective duties-namely, that they went, not into the Exchequer, but into the pockets of individuals, and fell, moreover, almost exclusively on those classes which were least able to bear them. They heard a great deal in those days of the free breakfast table, and of the pressure of indirect taxation on the working classes. He wished the working classes were a little more alive to the amount of taxation levied upon them by some of the most violent declaimers in the cause of what was called financial reform in the shape of short quantity and bad quality. They heard, from time to time, denunciations of the extravagance of Governments, and elaborate calculations of the deduction from the wages of the labourer and artizan for useless pageants and bloated armaments. He should like to see a similar table of deductions from their wages by means of short weights and measures, by unwholesome meat and milk, adulterated bread, sugar mixed with potato flour and worse things, tea literally maris expers; besides the enormous cost to individuals and to the ratepayers on account of the intoxication, and crimes, the result of intoxication, caused by the sale of beer mixed with deleterious drugs. He saw, himself, a few days ago in a bye street, the driver of a coal cart diligently watering the sacks of coal or coke to increase their weight. Bread, the chief necessary of life, was perhaps most tampered with. One could hardly take up a local newspaper without seeing convictions for short weight. Latterly, there had been prosecutions for adulteration of bread, chiefly with alum, which was said, by the medical men who gave evidence, to be unwholesome and indigestible. In the Food Journal was an account of a sample of sugar received from Cheltenham

"So fearfully adulterated (to use the words of the journal) with chromate of lead, that we wonder how the unfortunate partakers of it survived to tell the tale."

It seemed to have been used to improve the colour of inferior sugar. Chromate of lead was also used in confectionery; and, for the satisfaction of those who liked such things, he might say that, in one of the cases before the Bench of magistrates, witnesses for the defence declared that cakes and buns could not be made without it. Alum was also used in cheap wines to give dryness and fix the colour. With regard to milk and cream, a paper published by the Royal Agricultural Society last year, stated that not only was the adulteration with water from 30 to 50 per cent, but the measures were 25 per cent short. And in that, as well as other cases, one of the worst consequences of the system was, that the whole trade became demoralized, and the man who wished to be a fair dealer declared that he was obliged to follow suit, otherwise he could not live. Well, then, the question was-"Is the law in fault, and, if so, how can it be amended ?" He might say here that the Standards Commission had been considering this subject very carefully, and their Report, which would shortly be issued, went very fully into the question, especially that portion of it which related to fraudulent and incorrect weights and measures. He would remind his hon. Friend the Member for Frome (Mr. T. Hughes), who appeared very impatient in this matter, that he did not allow him to remain in Office long enough to give effect to his suggestions: and as to the Report of the Commissioners, his hon. Friend had only read their third Report; but if he waited till their fourth Report was in his hands, which would be in a few days, he would find that there was no foundation for his charge of their having neglected these points. The question, indeed, would be found fully gone into in the forthcoming Report of the Commission. It would not be proper for him to forestall this Report. But he might make this observation, that when it was stated and no doubt truly stated-that the number of convictions for incorrect weights was not large, and that of these only a small proportion, variously stated at from 8 to 25 per cent of the whole, are for practices positively fraudulent, yet it must be remembered that, as had been Mr. Stephen Care

accurately stated by the hon. Member for Frome, the inspection was carried on in many places in a wholly unsatisfactory manner, and this also should be borne in mind-namely, that the worst cases of fraud were not committed by means of false weights and measures-which were tolerably easy of detection, but by using correct weights and measures in a fraudulent way. The Irish law provided for those cases, and in certain instances inflicted imprisonment. In England there was no such provision, though in a few cases lately magistrates had convicted and imprisoned offenders of this class under the charge of obtaining money under false pretences. That, however, notwithstanding what had just been said by the Secretary of State for the Home Department, was generally considered to be somewhat straining the law. No doubt in all such cases a public inspector and prosecutor was requisite, with power to deal with such frauds. The poor who bought small packages of sugar and other commodities on a Saturday night in a crowded shop were great losers by these malpractices. The packets were already weighed and placed in readiness on the counter, and the buyers had no means of checking the weight, and even if they had, they had no money to prosecute, and being generally in debt to the shop, dared not complain. Consequently, Mr. Scholefield's Act was almost wholly inoperative, as he had ventured to predict it would be when it was passing through the House. Then, again, punishment by fine was in most cases inadequate. Imprisonment had lately been inflicted with excellent effect in the case of sellers of diseased meat, and the publication of the names of offenders, either according to the French system by a placard, like those detailing offences against decency and order, which were suspended on the park gates and in railway stations, or in the newspapers, as was done in some metropolitan parishes, would act as a most wholesome check to fraudulent tradesmen. But, then, on the other hand, care must be taken that these are real cases of fraud. He must say that tradesmen had reason to complain of the indiscriminate administration of the law in many cases; and he thought that magistrates should dismiss many of the trivial cases on which they now convicted, for to punish a man for incorrect weights