Baring, rt. hon. F. T.
Baring, rt. hon. W. B.
Barrington, Visct.
Beckett, W.
Berkeley, hon. C.
Bodkin, W. H.
Bowles, Adm.
Bright, J.
Broadley, H.
Brocklehurst, J.
Brotherton, J.
Bruce, Lord E.
Buller, C.
Cardwell, E.
Carnegie, hon. Capt.
Clay, Sir W.

Clerk, rt. hon. Sir G.
Clive, hon. R. H.
Cockburn, rt. hn. Sir G.
Corry, rt. hon. H.
Colebrooke, Sir T. E.
Cripps, W.
Damer, hon. Col.
Dickinson, F. H.
Dundas, D.
Douglas, Sir C. E.
Easthope, Sir J.
Escott, B.
Estcourt, T. G. B.
Fitzroy, hon. H.
Flower, Sir J.

Forster, M.
Goulburn, rt. hon. H.
Graham, rt. hon. Sir J.
Granger, T. C.
Heathcoat, J.
Herbert, rt. hon. S.
Hervey, Lord A.
Hill, Lord M.
Hobhouse, rt. hon. Sir
Hope, G. W.

Horsman, E.
Hotham, Lord

entirely altered by the effect of the Amend- | with the Gentleman who had carried the ment, and it would be hardly possible to instructions. That Gentleman would then effect the Parliamentary alterations in less make known his clauses, and on which time than the discussion on the Bill could both would no doubt agree. He would be be reopened. answerable for the introduction of the clauses, and he would then ask the House to go into Committee pro formá on Monday, when a day could be fixed for further progress.

MR. T. DUNCOMBE said, that the Bill had now become the Bill of his hon. Friend; and he would ask if the hon. Gentleman was prepared to bring forward his clauses at that moment? It was proposed that the Government should introduce the alterations in the Bill; but were there not others who might wish to move instructions with a view to amendments in the Bill. The Irish Coercion Bill had been fixed for Monday; but in his opinion they would be better employed on Monday, in discussing a Bill the object of which was connected with the relief of the poor in England, than in proposing a Coercion Bill for Ireland; and he would move that this Bill should have precedence on Monday.

COLONEL SIBTHORP observed, that the right hon. Baronet who had just sat down stated he had not deserted the Bill; but he was of opinion that he had not only deserted the measure, but that such desertion had not been his first. He had seen in the division that night a Lord of the Treasury and a Lord of the Admiralty voting on different sides of the House. He was not aware those official persons ought to have been found where they were seen. The Government would, perhaps, think so, as respected one at least. For himself, he MR. HENLEY objected to proceeding was glad to find that hon. Gentlemen were with the Committee of the Bill at twelve sufficiently independent to exercise their o'clock at night. It would look like a own opinion; and he trusted that they fraud to the people of England to proceed would eventually resolve to shake off their at that hour, and without further considera-subserviency in other matters. tion, with clauses affecting the rating, which was the whole gist of the Bill. The proposition to alter the Bill ought to be for some time before the country, in order that the people could express their opinion of it when a Bill was to be proposed totally different from that which the Government had brought forward at the commencement of the Session; to proceed at once with a measure of which the country had no intimation, would be looked upon by the country as a fraud.

Committee deferred till Monday.

ROYAL OBSERVATORY, GREENWICH. SIR R. INGLIS would ask the right hon. Baronet at the head of the Government whether he had obtained any report as to the injury which it was feared might be caused to the Royal Observatory at Greenwich, by the construction of a railway, the Bill for which was before the House? He was desirous to know if the right hon. Baronet would object to lay any such report on the Table to-night. If the report had not as yet been received, he hoped the hon. Member who had charge of the Railway Bill would postpone the second reading until the report was in the hands of Members.

SIR J. GRAHAM observed, that he had no intention of deserting the measure for which he stood responsible. He had been exposed to the taunts of both sides of the House; but these would not induce him to relax in any course he might consider it his duty to follow. The hon. Member for Oxfordshire had, for one, used expressions towards him which he thought scarcely warranted by the usages of debate or of that House. Of that, however, he wished to say nothing more. He had a suggestion to make with reference to the measure now before the House, which he would offer to the hon. Member for Malton, and if accepted, he thought ultimately it would prove for the benefit of all parties. The suggestion was this, that the House would allow the further discussion of the Bill to stand over until Monday. In the interval he should have an opportunity of conferring ports.

SIR R. PEEL said, that at an earlier period of the evening he was informed that one or two reports had been received; but he had just been informed that all the reports had been received, and were in possession of the Admiraity, and he had no doubt that he would be able to lay them on the Table on Monday. He trusted that the hon. Member who had charge of the Railway Bill would postpone the second reading until the Members of the House had an opportunity of reading those re

COMMERCIAL MARINE.

PETITIONS PRESENTED. From the Parochial Authorities of the Parish of Saint Botolph without Aldersgate, against the Transaction of Business on the Sabbath.-From Board of Guardians of the Reeth Union, complaining of the Costs attending the present System of the Law of Settlement and Parish Appeals, and in favour of the Principle that a Month's Residence be deemed a Settlement. From the City of London, and several other places, for the Establishment of Public Baths and Washhouses. From Cupar, and other places, in favour of the Corn Importation and Customs Duties Bills.-From Durham, Leeds, and Bridgwater, in favour of the Corn Laws. -From Minister and Congregation of the Presbyterian Chapel, York Street, Belfast, for the Abolition of Capital Punishments. From Birmingham, for the Employment and Reformation of Discharged Prisoners.-From Physicians and Surgeons of the County of Cork, for the Better Regulation and more Efficient Support of Medical Charities (Ireland).

PUBLIC BATHS AND WASHHOUSES.

The BISHOP of LONDON, on rising to present certain petitions respecting the institution of Baths and Washhouses for the Poor, said, that he was quite aware how difficult it was to attract attention at the present moment to subjects not connected with the great questions which now occu

SIR G. CLERK moved for leave to bring in two Bills, which were founded on the report of a Select Committee to which the subject of regulations relating to shipping had been referred. The first Bill was to require that all merchant ships should carry a certain number of boats according to their tonnage; and, with regard to steam-vessels, the regulations which the Bill would embody had been submitted to the directors of the General Steam Navigation Company, and they had stated they had no objection whatever to them. Those regulations would require that the holds of steam-vessels should be divided into three compartments, separated by water-tight bulkheads. He also proposed to introduce regulations, to be enforced under a penalty, respecting the manner in which steam-vessels should pass each other, in order to prevent as far as possible the danger of collision; and he meant to give power to the Admiralty to enforce regula-pied the public mind; but the petitions he tions, with a view to steam-vessels using had to present were important, not only certain lights during the night, and also from the signatures which they bore, but providing that a report be annually made from the subject to which they related. to the Board of Trade, by a competent That subject nearly concerned the moral as engineer, as to the condition and sufficiency well as physical welfare of the humbler of the machinery of those vessels, and a classes of the population, affecting their similar report respecting the vessel itself moral welfare through their physical state; by a competent shipwright, and stating if and, as such, he was sure it would meet any accident had happened to either. The with due attention from their Lordships. other Bill referred to the preservation of He wished to call their Lordships' attenwrecked property, and to the amendment tion to the advantage and importance of the and consolidation of the laws upon that establishment of baths and washhouses for subject. To remove all doubts as to the the labouring classes; and the object of the rights of various parties to wrecked pro-petitions he was about to present was, to perty, he proposed to vest the trusteeship of such property in the receivers of the droits of the Admiralty, so as to enable parties preferring any claims to it to establish those claims; and that for one year it should be open to the owners of wrecked property to advance their claims to it; if after that period had elapsed no claims were put forward by the owners, then the rights of the lord of the manor where the wreck had been cast ashore should be considered. The right hon. Gentleman concluded by moving for leave to bring in the Bill.

pray their Lordships to pass a Bill (which he had reason to believe would be shortly submitted to them) to enable parishes to borrow money on the security of the rates for the purpose he had mentioned. With respect to the interest of the money thus loaned, he apprehended that these institutions would amply repay the interest of the capital to be expended upon their establishment; but, even if no interest were to be returned, still the country would derive a great profit in the increased physical comfort and the improved moral state of the working classes. No one in the least acquainted with the subject could doubt how intimately connected with the good of the poor man cleanliness was. They must elevate the poor man from extreme destitution-they must take off from him the urgent pressure of misery before they could assail him, as a moral agent, with any chance of success. Without a change of

the loss of those appetencies for nobler objects which counteracted the baser attributes of our nature. But this was not all. From the evidence contained in the report on the sanatory state of towns, it appeared that overcrowding and want of cleanliness caused an aggravation of the general type of disease in the metropolis. There was a gradual deterioration of the constitution of the English labourer in the metropolis, and it was even necessary to have recourse to a totally different course of medical treatment to what had been formerly adopted, to so great an extent had this change of constitution gone. Where depletion was used formerly, tonics were now obliged to be given. Where tenements were so much overcrowded as at present, the necessary consequence was uncleanliness and loss of health. He himself remembered, when a parochial clergyman, 20 years ago, to have seen a tenement containing sixteen families, in all sixty-four persons, in sixteen different apartments; but that was nothing to the present state of things, where two families with five or six children each were often crowded into one room. It was obvious that a great boon would be conferred on persons so situated, if they had the means put in their hands of washing their clothes and linen apart from their dwellings. The practice of washing linen and clothes at home among the poor was open to ob

this nature he was convinced it was not possible to effect any important amelioration in the condition of the working man. Experience had shown such beneficial results from the institution, when tried on a small scale, as to justify the strongest hopes of the greatest advantages if it were generally brought into practice. The petitions he had to present to their Lordships were the following:-One from the chairman and deputy-chairman of a Committee for promoting the establishment of Baths and Washhouses for the Labouring Classes; another from bankers and merchants of the city of London, signed by the heads of more than 100 firms; another from the chairman and deputy-chairman of the London Dock Company, employing several thousands of workpeople; another from the churchwardens, overseers, and guardians of the parish of St. Martin in the Fields; and another signed by 121 of the parochial clergy of London; and the petitions dwelt upon the importance of habits of cleanliness to the poor, and the duty of giving them the means of forming those habits. The evils, as the petitioners stated them, of the overcrowded state of the poor in the metropolis and other large towns, were well known to him, and he thought that it was a subject which had not been sufficiently attended to. He might be allowed to add that the great improvements which had been made in London of late years had not les-jections. It was almost necessarily done sened the evil; on the contrary it was undoubtedly the case that great hardship had been inflicted on the poorer classes, who were driven out of the wretched tenements that were pulled down to make way for new streets, and driven to go and live in tenements still more wretched. The consequence was, that there were in the metropolis hundreds and hundreds of instances in which not one family, but two families at least, were living in the same room. He knew not whether any plan could have been adopted in making these improvements to prevent this result; but this at any rate was true, that no pains whatever had been taken to supply the defect, except by voluntary associations; but what they had been enabled to effect was but as a drop to the ocean. The effects were frightful to contemplate. A crowded state of a population led to a disregard of the common decencies and obvious proprieties of life; and he shuddered to think at the consequences to the miserable occupants, who had no choice but to occupy such places, or to perish in the streets; for uncleanliness certainly led to

in a manner that scarcely deserved the name; the things being often put into water that had been used for other purposes, and substances that he would only allude to substituted for soap. Then it was difficult to get the clothes properly dried after they were washed. The other part of the institution to which he solicited their Lordships' favour consisted of baths; and baths, he could assure their Lordships, were necessary to the health of those who had but few opportunities of purifying themselves from the dirt derived from their employments, and from the perspiration caused by hard labour. At Liverpool, where the scheme had been first tried, the greatest desire had been manifested by the labouring classes to avail themselves of the institution. In the year ending May 28, 1844, there were of cold bathers 3,882; warm bathers, 16,704; and the receipts were 3031., being an increase of 1037. as compared with the preceding year. London a meeting had been held a year ago on the subject, but owing to various causes no great progress had been made.

In