170 LECTURES. 



SIXTH LECTURE. 



In this lecture details were given as to the arrangements made at 

 the late House of Commons, and contrasted with the provisions founded 

 on them that had been executed for the application of hi3 plans in the 

 new houses. It was only rights however, that he should tell the 

 audience that they were not completed under his directions; and that 

 his plans there met with so many obstacles from alterations, to which 

 he objected, that, in the year 1845, he considered it his duty to call 

 the attention of the government to them, and to the necessity of an 

 inve8tigT,tion. It being evident that he could no longer be responsible 

 for the result, or for the cost, unless sustained in the arrangements 

 authorized by the government and Parliament at the time his plans 

 were adopted. He continued that it would be altogether out of place 

 in so brief a course, to detain the audience with any minute state- 

 ment of his own, or of others, on such a subject ; but it would be 

 equally obvious that he could not pass over this subject without some 

 notice of the principal incidents that had occurred in so great a work, 

 and lie would, therefore, only give a very general outline of the case, 

 and place in the hands of the secretary of this institution a copy of the 

 evidence he was finally called upon to give openly and publicly at the 

 bar of the House of Commons in respect to it, after demanding this 

 or some equivalent opportunity in vain during the six preceding years. 



The investigation he asked for was instituted in 1845, and in the 

 following year a committee of the House of Commons took up the 

 question. The committee included members of all political parties ; the 

 lateSirRobertlngliswaschairman, and LordPalmerstonand Lord John 

 Eussell were both members. After due investigation the committee 

 passed resolutions that were in every respect satisfactory to him^ and 

 they also renewed, as a committee, their expressions of opinion as to 

 the satisfaction given by the plans in the house they then occupied. 

 But in the meantime new proceedings were instituted in the House 

 of Peers, and after this renewed investigation by new referees, and by 

 a committee of which the Marquis of Clanricarde was chairman, in a 

 manner that did not permit, as Dr. Reid had then stated publicly 

 in official documents, a proper investigation ; a resolution was carried 

 in the one house of Parliament, the House of Peers, that virtually 

 negatived the resolution unanimously adopted previously by the com- 

 mittee of the House of Commons, and gave an authority to the archi- 

 tect over the ventilation to which he. Dr. Reid, could not assent. 

 From the day this was officially communicated to him by the govern- 

 ment he never once acted at the new houses, except under protest, 

 though he gave such advice as the government still required from 

 him, till he succeeded in being called to the bar of the House of 

 Commons. But in the meantime the mayor and corporation at 

 Liverpool had adopted, in the year 1841, the same year in which his 

 plans had been adopted for the n»^w houses, parallel plans for their 

 great building, St. Greorge's Hall, and tlie new assize courts. In 

 1846 the Liverpool committee inquired into the disputes at Parlia- 

 ment, and coinciding with the views of the House of Commons, and 



