—The motion was followed by a warm discussion,
which was terminated by Lord J. RUSSELL, who
consented to give up the clauses, and they were
accordingly erased from the bill.—Upon clause 24 (the
travelling expenses clause), Lord R. GROSVENOR
moved an amendment, proving that it shall not be
lawful for candidates to pay such expenses for their
voters.—Lord J. RUSSELL adhered to his original
formula, in which the negative particle did not appear.
–—The house divided, for the amendment 68, against it
147.—The omission of clause 37, called the declaration
clause, was moved by Mr. HENLEY. This clause, he
remarked, compelled members to declare that they had
never, in the whole course of their lives, committed any
one of 736 specific offences.—On division, the motion
was carried by a majority of 126 to 86. The declaration
was accordingly struck out of the bill. Various amendments,
of verbal or technical character, were agreed to,
and the question was at last put, that the bill do pass.
The house divided, ayes, 107; noes, 100. The bill
was then finally passed.

On Monday July 31st, Lord PALMERSTON moved the
second reading of the Public Health Amendment Bill,
the object of which was to continue for a limited period
the acts which established the board of health. Lord
SEYMOUR moved, that the bill be read that day three
months. After a long debate, this amendment was
carried by 74 to 65; so the bill was lost.

Lord PALMERSTON stated, in reply to Mr. Monckton
Milnes, that a government prosecution would be instituted
against Lieutenant Austin, the governor, and
Mr. Blount, the surgeon of Birmingham Borough
Prison, on account of their ill treatment of the
prisoners therein confined. The delay in the publication
of the commissioners' report on this subject he explained
to have arisen from its voluminous bulk and peculiar
nature of its contents, which required a very deliberate
consideration from the law officers of the crown.

On the house going into a committee of supply, Sir
W. MOLESWORTH stated in reply to Mr. Wise, that the
fees for the Admission of Visitors to Westminster
Abbey were required for the payment of custodians.
These were absolutely necessary to prevent the atrocious
pilfering and plundering of the monuments, which had
suffered more by visitors than by time or civil commotions.
—Mr. M. MILNES made an indignant protest
against the cupidity of the ecclesiastical authorities of the
abbey, who demanded the enormous sum of £200 for the
two square feet asked as a site for the erection of a statue
of the poet Campbell.—Sir W. MOLESWORTH undertook
to state to the dean and chapter the feelings of the
house on the subject.—On the vote for restoring the
statue of Charles I., at Charing Cross, Mr. WISE
thought the vote might stand over, for though he
admired the work of art, he did not think the regard in
which the subject of the memorial was held rendered
the repair one of immediate interest.—Sir W. MOLESWORTH
explained that the repair must be immediate
and ample, and read a detailed report of Sir R. Westmacott,
to show that the present condition of the work was
dangerous.—Mr. DISRAELI, in supporting the vote,
reminded the past speakers that, considering the question
of the restoration of a work of art the character of King
Charles as a patron of art should be remembered. He
added, that the statue had once been lost, if not through
a vote, through the temper of the House of Commons,
and he thought that, having regained this chef-d'Å“uvre
of Le SÅ“uer, the house ought not to risk it again.—
The vote was agreed to.

On Tuesday August 1st, Lord PALMERSTON, in
answer to Mr. Frewen, explained that the release of
Mr. Jeremiah Smith, late Mayor of Rye, from prison,
to which he had been sent on conviction of perjury, had
been granted on account of the precarious state of that
person's health.

Lord D. STUART called the attention of the house to
the termination of all obligation on the part of this
country to continue to Make any Payments on Account
of the Russo-Dutch Loan, and he moved a series of
resolutions, the effect of which was that Russia, by her
neglect to maintain at the Sulina mouth of the Danube
the works necessary to prevent obstacles to its navigation,
had violated the treaty of Vienna and injured the
commerce of this country; that upwards of £4,000,000
had already been paid towards the principal and for the
interest of the Russo-Dutch loan, and that £3,386,000
more would be required; and that, inasmuch as the
convention of 1831 between England and Russia secured
the payment to the latter of part of her old Dutch debt,
in consideration of her adhesion to the general arrangements
of the congress of Vienna, the withdrawal by
Russia of that adhesion made it proper to suspend the
payments. He supported these propositions in a speech
of great length, most of it delivered to a house of
considerably fewer than forty members.—Mr. D. SEYMOUR
seconded the motion.—Sir W. MOLESWORTH, in resisting
the proposition, described it as a repudiation of our
Russo-Dutch debt, which, being at war with Russia,
we were the more bound in honour to pay than if we
were at peace. He showed that we were engaged by
treaties and acts of parliament to fulfil our obligations;
and he made an appeal to the house to resist a proposition
which would have come better from the obscure
delegate of some bankrupt transatlantic state than the
representative of a great metropolitan constituency.—
On a division the motion was negatived by 57 against 5.

Sir W. MOLESWORTH obtained leave to bring in a
bill to make better provision for the administration of
the laws relating to the Public Health. It was, he said,
framed in conformity with the opinions expressed by
the house on the preceding day. These he understood
to be, that there ought to be a department charged with
the administration of the public health act, of the
nuisances removal act, and which should also have the
general charge of the health of the country. The
opinion of the house he further gathered to be that the
board of health was not a good one for carrying out
these objects, and that there ought to be some one in
that house responsible for the administration of the
law, and capable of explaining it, but that such
administration should not become a portion of the
duties of the Home-office. He proposed to constitute
the new board precisely as the poor-law board was
constituted. Its president should have a seat in the house,
and should have a secretary and an under-secretary.
The superintending inspectors should be salaried officers
of the board, and therefore incapable of taking private
work. He proposed to give Mr. Chadwick compensa-
tion to the amount of £1,000 a year, and paid a tribute
to the valuable services which had been rendered by that
gentleman.

On Wednesday, August 2, the house went into
committee on the Russian Securities Bill. Lord PALMERSTON,
for the Solicitor-General, moved an amendment
for remodelling the first clause. The provision of the
new clause was to the effect that if, during the continuance
of war between England and Russia, any
British subject, in any country, should take Russian
stocks, scrip, or bonds, issued since the 29th of March
last, he should be guilty of a misdemeanour, exceptions
being made in the cases of executors and creditors.—
Mr. HENLEY required to know whether the government
took charge of a bill so materially altered by them.
He considered that the bill as altered aimed at an
object quite different from that of the former bill, and
he thought that it would be easily evaded.—Lord
PALMERSTON expressed his belief that, when parliament,
by assenting to the bill, had laid down a general
principle, there would be little need for provisions to
induce commercial men to obey it.—Mr. WILSON
thought that the new clause, though remedying many
of the defects of the bill, required the addition of
words preventing its having a retrospective action.—
Mr. GLYN thought that the bill ought to have been
introduced by government and upon a much broader
basis. The proposed alteration would render the bill
nugatory.—The ATTORNEY-GENERAL would not much
have regretted the absence of the bill had it never been
introduced at all, but he thought its principle a right
one, though he objected to its partial application.—-Mr.
T. BARING said that the bill attempted to effect what
it was impossible for legislation to do in the face of
public opinion. He remarked upon the opposite courses
which members of the government had taken in regard
to the bill, and he urged that such a measure, if introduced
at all, ought to be founded on a general principle.