had made a great flourish of trumpets about the taxpayer, and about the small receipts from Boulogue, and had referred him to the Estimates. Well, in looking at the Estimates, he found a similar charge, even on a much larger scale, might be made against French ports which were now represented by a Consul, and where the salary of the official who represented England was very much higher. He (Sir Eardley Wilmot) instanced Brest, Cherbourg, Havre, Bordeaux, and Marseilles (giving the figures), at all of which places the annual receipts were comparatively insignificant, in one even less than the receipts at Boulogne. The fact was, that the receipts were no criterion whatever of the work done, for they represented balances after all the necessary expenses and outlay and money advanced by the Consuls had been deducted. His hon. Friend, therefore, could build no just arguments on the figures he had quoted. up there; and it was not wonderful that mischief should be done when so many people were employed. £700 a-year was paid to the physician of the Embassy, and in addition to that there was the hospital establishment. It was worth while to consider whether the superintendent of the hospital could not be utilized for the purpose of attending the Embassy, and thus save £400 or £500 a-year to the country. He also wished to call attention to the Consul at Réunion. He knew that he was origi nally appointed to look after the coolies; but as his services were no longer required for that purpose, he should like to know whether the Government would continue the office? MR. BOURKE said, with regard to the observations that had been made as to the Student Dragomans, the late Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs (the Earl of Derby) had announced his intention to institute such a class of interpreters. An examination had been held for the appointments, and certain gentlemen had been chosen, some of whom had already gone to Constantinople. The other dragomans, to whom reference had been made, were mentioned in a former Vote, and stood on quite a different footing to the new ones. With respect to the office of resident physician at Constantinople, he might inform the Committee that the post had already been abolished, and would not appear in the Estimates for the ensuing year. With regard to the general observations that had been offered on the Vote, he might say that the Government would make all the reductions they possibly could in the Consular Service. There was no reason for laying down general rules as to the appointment of Consuls or Vice Consuls at particular places; but the Government would deal with each case on its peculiar circumstances. With regard to the observation of the hon. Member for Birmingham (Mr. Muntz) as to the Consul and Vice Consul in South America, no doubt these Consuls cost money; at the same time he could not hold out any hope of reducing this cost, because while the commercial classes of this MR. WHITWELL hoped that the salaries of Consuls would not be increased where the work was now efficiently done. So far from places in the East having been neglected, the salaries of the Consuls and Vice Consuls there had already been increased. Although there was only one Vice Consul at Phillippopolis there was another at Beyrout, not far off. The hon. Member for the Isle of Wight (Mr. Baillie Cochrane) was mistaken in supposing that the Foreign Office had neglected its duties and had not obtained efficient men at the salaries paid. Let them take the cases of the Student Dragomans, for which there was an item in the Vote of £1,900. It was well known that great advantage had been derived from the student interpreters in China; and as the item for the Student Dragomans was in the Vote, the Committee would be glad to hear whether the students now being instructed were English, Armenians, Greeks or others; and also what language, whether Arabic or Turkish, they were learning, and whether it was contemplated to place these dragomans, when thoroughly instructed, in some of the larger places in Asiatic Turkey? MR. D. JENKINS said, that every-country derived great advantage from body felt that it was time that the Consular establishments in Turkey in Europe should be inquired into. It was monstrous to see the number of officials kept Sir Eardley Wilmot the Consular Services in South America, and so long as they did not object, it would be necessary to maintain these posts. MR. BOURKE imagined that they were Englishmen. He had not received any information to the contrary. MR. WHITWELL asked whether the | Reports from that place on various subStudent Dragomans were Englishmen jects connected with the Island. The or natives? Consul of New Caledonia was appointed a few years ago when the cession of Fiji was made. He was glad the hon. Member had called attention to the subat-ject, and he could assure him that if they had any opportunity of cancelling an appointment that should be done. Vote agreed to. MR. O'DONNELL would ask the tention of the Committee to the item for Borneo. The Consul at Borneo received a salary of £300 a-year, and £250 for a house. He was also Governor of Labuan. On looking to the amount of fees received on behalf of the Government in 1876-7, he found that the Consul in that place received no fees whatever. Therefore, he received £300 a-year salary and £250 for a probably non-existent house, and he got a further salary as Governor of Labuan, where he probably had a house also. If he was not mistaken, the Consul at New Caledonia got £700 a-year, and if the Government could give some information about the duties of that gentleman, and those of the Consul at Borneo, he should feel obliged. With regard to the Consul at Réunion, who had £1,000 a-year salary and office expenses, he had received recently an account written by a French traveller, who gave a deplorable account of the condition of the native subjects in that place. He should feel obliged if he could be directed to the recent Report of the Consul at Réunion on the coolie emigration in that settlement. He would also particularly ask to know something about the Consul Generalship at Borneo. He believed there was an intention to extend operations in that direction, because considerable portions of Borneo had been granted by the legislative rulers to a British trading company. He did not know whether that trading company was likely to lapse into secession to the Crown. MR. BOURKE said, that the Company referred to had no official connection with the Government, and the Government had no official information as to what the Company was. With regard to the Consul General, he had the same duties as were performed by Consuls in other parts of the world. He had to look after persons who came to trade in Borneo, of whom there was a considerable number. It was desirable that the Governor of Labuan should also be Consul of Borneo in order to save expense. With regard to New Caledonia, the Government did receive valuable (3.) Motion made, and Question proposed, "That a sum, not exceeding £31,634, be granted to Her Majesty, to complete the sum necessary to defray the Charge which will come the 31st day of March 1879, in aid of Colonial in course of payment during the year ending on Local Revenue, and for the Salaries and Allowances of Governors, &c., and for other Expenses in certain Colonies." MR. O'DONNELL said, that on that Vote he desired to raise a question of an important character having especial reference to the salaries of the Commissioners in South Africa. The Governor had £2,000 a-year as salary from the Colonial authorities, and had £1,500 derived from pension under the Crown. It seemed to him that the Government ought to have brought that question forward in a substantial form that would have enabled them to review the proceedings in South Africa for some time past; and he thought the Members of that House had a legitimate grievance against the Government for bringing on this Vote somewhat out of the way and without Notice. Had the Vote been brought on in regular order, instead of being taken as a Vote in Class III., after Votes in Classes I. and IV., the Committee would have been able to discuss the matter and might have been able to clear up some of the causes of the revolt, and information might have been given that would be interesting to the Committee on the affairs of South Africa, the crisis through which that country was passing, and whether our Governors had employed the best means for diminishing the area of the disturbance. Before they came to that, he would ask two general questions with regard to the grant in aid of the local revenue of the Falkland Islands? He would also ask what was the nature of the grant of £1,400 for clergy in Canada, and Nova Scotia, and North America? Canada and Nova Scotia were self-governed, and arrangements were made for the payment of their clergy. Why, then, should that House be asked to contribute to Missionary Societies, and to societies for the propagation of the Gospel? Certainly, it appeared to him that this was a matter that required explanation. With regard to the Falkland Islands, he found the grant in aid of local revenue amounted to £2,974. If he was not mistaken, the whole population of the Falkland Islands was only about 800 or 900, and he wanted to know why they required this grant in aid of local revenue? SIR MICHAEL HICKS - BEACH said, that with regard to the Vote for the clergy in North America, these were life pensions to persons who had been in the service of the Government, he believed, as old Army chaplains for duties done years ago. The Vote was gradually, year by year, becoming less and less. In 1876 the Vote amounted to £1,976. The hon. Member would see that a considerably lower sum was asked in the present year. Parliament had made these grants for good reason; but, in due time, they would cease altogether. The Vote for the Falkland Islands was, no doubt, considerable; but, if they looked at the character of the Falkland Islands, it would be seen that it was important to this country to maintain them as naval harbours between Australia, America, and England. Therefore, as the population was small, and the revenue could not be large, it was necessary to supplement the local revenue by a further sum. It was thought probable that in future years the grant would be considerably diminished. Sheep-farming was extending in the Island; the duties on tobacco and spirits had been raised; and it was quite expected that the House would be asked for a smaller Vote next year. MR. O'DONNELL hoped that on the item relating to South Africa, the Government would not object to a brief discussion. If he had had Notice of the Vote, he should probably have brought on a Resolution on the Question that the Speaker do leave the Chair; but, on the present occasion, he could not go into the matter with anything like the fulness that he should have done under other circumstances. Still, he might state some of his reasons for objecting to this item. In the first instance, it Mr. O'Donnell appeared that the Chief Governor of South Africa and of Griqualand West, was exceedingly well remunerated with nearly £6,000 per annum from the Colonial Revenues, in addition to a personal allowance of £1,500 a-year as a distinguished pensioner of the Indian Government. That would be £7,500; and he did not see why there should be a grant of £2,000 given to him when the Colonists had already provided a munificent grant for their Governor-in-Chief. Besides that, he had to object to the manner, as far as he had been able to observe, in which Her Majesty's High Commissioner for South Africa had discharged the functions for which it was proposed to remunerate him. He believed he was not exaggerating the case when he said that Sir Bartle Frere hardly adopted a policy suitable for South Africa. He was practically sent to South Africa to carry out the Federation scheme of Her Majesty's Government, and to press that by all legitimate means upon the Colony and the Colonial body of the Legislature, and he thought it would not be denied that when this small revolution broke out in Griqualand, the course Sir Bartle Frere distinctly took to promote the area of the disturbances which they had to deplore at the present moment was injudicious. When the revolt broke out in Griqualand, Sir Bartle Frere issued an Ordinance for general confiscation in the hope of entirely suppressing the revolt. One consequence in Griqualand was, that the refugees from the consficated land flowed over the border into lands communicating with their own. Sir Bartle Frere seemed to have taken no means to restrict the military commanders in the measures they took to carry out this policy of confiscation. It would be admitted that one of the main weapons used by Sir Bartle Frere against the insurgent tribes consisted of the absolute destruction of and the razing to the ground of habitations all throughout the country. It was not the burning of a hut here or a hut there, not the isolated destruction of only one place or another place, according to the necessities of warfare, but all over the country arose the flames from burning huts. The Kaffir villages were systematically burnt down. When no one remained in the village but the women and children, they were driven out of their huts with all the barbarities that savage tribes | against the Kaffirs. It might readily be were wont to use towards their here- assumed that all the black men were ditary enemies, so that the non- enemies, and in thus following them up, combatant element of the Kaffir popula- the tribes were punished that gave them tion suffered even more than the com- refuge. In that way those tribes were batant Kaffirs. There might be a driven in immense numbers to the other certain amount of justification for this tribes to take part in the revolt against course of conduct if it had been crowned us. At the present moment it was not with success. They found that Sir merely a revolt. Who could say to what Bartle Frere pursued in the burning extent it might reach? Such was the down of these Kaffir villages a course unquestionable and unquestioned authosimilar to that pursued in Ireland in the rity exercised by the chiefs, that the de16th century under Elizabeth, and later fection of a chief necessarily involved in the 17th century by Cromwell. Sir the defection of his tribesmen. Her Bartle Frere made the country a waste. Majesty's Government, therefore, ought The necessary results of these operations to have proceeded with the greatest care was the death from starvation of a large and consideration in making war upon portion of the Native women and chil- men who went to war against us with a dren. The camps were often crowded by blind belief and loyalty which to them poor refugee women, whose stock had was a religion. The policy of Sir Bartle been driven off by the Forces carrying Frere had not been of that character; out the policy of Sir Bartle Frere. He but he was sorry to say there had been would refer to the policy of Sir Bartle too little discrimination of that kind exFrere in carrying off the stock and hibited. At a trial not long ago at cattle immediately; but he must repeat King Williamstown, out of some 60 that to such an extent were the camps of prisoners of war-rebels, if they the Colonial Forces crowded by starving pleased; but, after all, the tie of loyalty women and children that an order was which could bind these men to our rule issued expelling these poor starving ought not to be scrutinized too exactly, people from the British camp. That and he, therefore, thought he was justispoke volumes for the result of the fied in speaking of what were called operations carried out by Sir Bartle "the rebel prisoners" as to all intents Frere. With regard to stock lifting or and purposes prisoners of war-ho cattle lifting, in every page almost of found that out of some 50 or 60 of these the Blue Book they found an account of prisoners brought up at King Williamsa brush with the Kaffirs-so many town, more than 40 of them were senKaffirs killed, so many hundred of tenced to periods of penal servitude cattle carried off, so many sheep, a whole ranging as high as eight years, and country cleared of cattle, and villages going down to two and three years, and burned down in various places. In all that very few indeed were released. He this there was proof of the unchecked was of opinion that it was unfair to ardour of the troops, not so much the apply to these persons the laws of sediRegular troops, as of the unchecked tion and treason, and that it was unpoardour of our auxiliaries, which was litic to treat the Kaffir prisoners of war such that the seizures of cattle were so captured in the battle-field as persons great that the lands over the frontier liable to be tried, and tried with all the were black with them. There was one formalities of the Penal Code, and sencase in particular which struck him. An tenced to penal servitude for merely attack was made on Kaffirs who were obeying the commands of their chiefs passing through the frontier to friendly-commands which were all the territory. The frontier was black with more welcome to them because their the masses of cattle, and very naively animosity to our rule and their was this described in the despatch in the sympathy with the tribes already in Blue Book, when it was said that the revolt had been fomented by the sweepKaffir cattle were not easily distinguish- ing measures of confiscation and conable from the others. In the Colonial flagration adopted by Sir Bartle Frere. papers it was admitted that the seizure In mentioning Sir Bartle Frere he had of stock belonging to friendly tribes was no desire for a moment to raise the a mistake. He was afraid that no check was put upon the Forces operating slightest question as to the personal humanity of that gentleman; but many perfectly unanimous expression of horror among the leading and rival journals in South Africa. The Cape Argus spoke of the untried prisoners of war in the following terms: men of high personal humanity became, | With regard to the treatment of these through circumstances, types of the prisoners of war, he found there was a greatest tyrants the world had ever witnessed. There was another question to which he desired to call the attention of the Committee, and he approached it not only with reluctance, but with a certain amount of disbelief. He had not observed, in any despatch, that the Kaffir prisoners of war, or the Kaffir wounded, left on the field, were receiving any attention whatever. Again, if they were to impress the Native tribes-untutored barbarians-with respect not only for our power but our civilization, he thought they would do that better by treating them according to the dictates of our higher civilization, rather than by descending to their level, and meting out to them the savage rules of savage warfare. With regard to even untried prisoners of war, he was afraid that the policy of the Government in South Africa had not been such as to diminish the feeling of intense animosity which had already spread so widely among the Native populations against our rule. He assured the Committee that he was compressing his observations within the smallest possible compass, even at the risk of doing considerable injury to his cause by omitting essential facts; but he was afraid there was so much impatience at the discussion of questions of this character, that he felt bound to have a certain regard to that feeling. With regard to the question of punishment of prisoners of war under the sedition and treason-felony laws, he found from The Cape Argus of the 4th April that at King Williamstown five prisoners were sentenced to eight years' hard labour, 40 prisoners were sentenced to seven years' hard labour,. one to six years, five to five years, one to three years; so that there were some 50 prisoners captured in the battle-field and tried as rebels by such a refinement of legal process as sentenced Nuncomar long ago to death on the gibbet when it was found inconvenient to apply the strict letter of the English law in order to get rid of an opponent to the Governor General of India. He thought the precedent of the execution of Nuncomar by the strict British law ought not to be repeated at this date, in the 19th century, and that Kaffir prisoners of war ought not to be tried as mere rebels, and ought not to be punished by penal servitude. Mr. O'Donnell "The story of the Black Hole in Calcutta is being repeated in King Williamstown in the Cape Colony. We had heard of these horrors before, but could not believe things were so bad in Tuesday's Standard and Mail. It appears that as they are represented in a telegram published 262 persons are confined in an iron building 102 feet long by 12 wide. The height is not given, and therefore we cannot get at the cubic space allowed to each prisoner, but the square measurement is only about 4 feet for each person. It is impossible for these creatures to lie down, and, to add to their misery, they are half starved. Thus, with foul air, insufficient food, and limited space, they are subjected to tortures equal to those of the Inquisition. A number of the prisoners are mere boys, from 11 to 18 years old, and one is a little fellow only six. Yet this is a Christian country, and there are a number of clergymen in King Williamstown. Be it remembered also that the persons tortured in this brutal fashion are awaiting trial-but they are only niggers." Then the editor of The Cape Mercury, having his attention attracted to the matter by the horrible reports which had gone forth, actually visited the prisons, and he says "He found 262 adult Kaffirs cooped up and crammed together within the walls of three little iron sheds. Each of these sheds he found to be 34 feet long, 12 feet broad, and about 10 feet in height. In cach of these low and narrow sheds about 90 men were huddled together. They were never allowed to go out for a single moment on any occasion whatever, or at any time, which are necessary for the healthy condition of by night or day. For the 700 cubic feet of air a human being, each of these wretched prisoners, in a climate of sweltering heat, had but 46 cubic feet-15 men had to live on one man's proper allowance of air. The gaolers asserted that cach prisoner got a pound of porridge twice a-day; but the visitors ascertained that on the previous day, a Sunday, only one meal had been given, and while they were actually on the spot, about 2 P.M. on Monday-the prisoners not having broken their fast for 24 hours-two dishes or tubs of porridge, containing some 40 lbs.that is, less than half a pound for each of the famished creatures-were laid on the floor of the shed, and the gaolers who brought them in immediately disappeared and locked the door. get no more food until next day, begged the The agonized prisoners, knowing well they would gaolers to apportion their scanty supply amongst them, but their piteous appeal was heard with silent scorn, and the consequence must have the weaker ones of their food, or that the porbeen either that the stronger prisoners robbed ridge was measured out in full shares as far as it went, and that most of the starving crowd had |