Star. — London, England, 1819-03-20 00:00:00

ropo gd would tend to the better pserra rime,' and die prevention of poaching re. Game :`- 4 ,.t to be con - I a : el as good property as any other ‘ ..c . 4ace nn es..ite. The sale of it ought to be le- L.t a licence or some other plan be adopted, 't:leicial elects would soda be obvious to ialiereat observer. Some Gentlemen . ; ht t h a t such a would tend to invalidate ,ins.. Ix: them recollect , that horse - dealers are an d yet their licence does not invalidate pro :el,, li e approved also, as an Honourable Mem '• : .ear him (Mr. Wilberforce,) had remarked, that ▪ hr the prevention of mime would greatly dto the im provement of public morals. When a ye . ".tc::crWilS o nce granted, people would not risk their an d lives for game. After passing this y o u ought to confine your severe laws to those ,topurchase stolen game, to the thief as well as the :tttchker. lie had no objection to make this part I.r.v tremendously severe. He though the : .e , ;nt s ystem of cinalifications very deficient, and ts,./nmended to the Honourable Mover (Mr. Brand) ran t a licence for a qualification through the of some clause. ;!Ir. CHIPPS could not believe that the number criminals would be diminished by the operations i f : h e n ew law. He would therefore oppose it. fir. BRAND, in reply, hoped that the Bid would be Wirth! to pass into a Committee, when it might receive such amendments as might render it less ob pionable to those who now opposed it. His object f u gained if the moral feelings of the House were awakened to the system of Game Laws, which was opposed by the concurrent interests of the lower orders. The House then divided— For the second reading 0.-For the Amendment 83—Majority for the •27. The Bill was thea read a second time, and c:.!eretl to be committed on Wednesday next. Pit23I:NTS TO FOREIGN MINISTERA. Do Order of the Day having been read for taking ;go coa idcration the Report on Civil Contingencies, D J the adjourned Resolution liar granting £79,154. Ls giii. for Arrears cf Contingencies of a Civil nature, Mr.IILiTCIiINSON said, he hoped the Right Noa. ticatletnan opposite (Nlr. Arbuthnot) had by ;::s time come to the opinion that the part of the C:ret amounting to £22,510. 6s. 7d. intended for !...1:;oxes to Foreign Ministers, was one of the most es::,icAinary and extravagant proposals that had cc: came before the House of Commons. It was !!•.e d.f.y of that House to keep a strict watch over ... - e expenditure of the public money, and in doing so ;:ey strengthened the hands of Ministers themselves, :3,'. enabled them to realize their professed intentions ofeconorny. There were many of the items, of which re proposed grant was composed, to which he ob 'wed, besides what had been expended in presents. Rethought that it was most extravagaut to have year £3195. 12s. in furnishing, not the whole of the Llial Yacht, but only one room in it, as it would be An by the papers before the House. He also con c'ied that £8432 for the expenses of the Noble Vis :...it and Noble Doke (Lord Castlereagh and the i).:ke of Wellington) at Aix-la-Chapelle, was more t-..a was necessary. That expense, he was convinced, to not contributed one iota to the furtherance of the pet object then in view. He had no doubt both the grhle Negociators might have remained at home, ad have suffered the business to be carried, on by ice usual Messengers of the State, without any detri ant to the Public service. For he believed that no ;i:4l had been discussed at Aix-la-Chapelle, and :ea all had been previously agreed upon between 'ac Allied Monarchs before they had their meeting.— Re objected to £13,300 having been spent to enter un the Grand Duke Nicholas, and contended that :::e provision for spch Royal Visitors ought not to come out of the public purse. He thought the charge e £20,000, for law expenses excessive, as well as tlit of £10,397 for fees, and objects of that &scrip- Ul. Bat when he came to the enormous sum of e 2,510 6s. 7d. for snuff-boxes, he could not con.; tine on what ground such „extravagance and extra edinary waste of the public money could be justified —(Hear, hear, hear). He trusted the House would sot be satisfied with a mere reference to established mom. lie had heard of an elevated individual, the Wu' Duke Nicholas, having so far attended to cus tan and followed the example of the Noble Lord, as tabev.ow a snuff-box on the coachman who had had tilonoar of driving .him in this country—(Laugh o+» lie hoped the Noble Lord would not cloak 4c37.41 with such a precedent. If ne effectual relief geld be granted to the suffering portion of the. peo : e, :e thew a wish to economize would tend g,rm- th :szquillize them. After such votes as had lately :• 1 7assed--after rzfusing to reduce the number of -e 1. - Ids of the Admiralty, the House could not be in looking closely at the estimates laid on It was but a few days since a salary of year, as Royal Equerries, had been refused :3 Officers mast highly distinguished for their* :,s, whilst such a sum as that wasted in snuff would probably have been more than to pay those salaries during the whole of their e. coasidriiitg the ar,,e which they had attained. couvinccd that t y watching attentively over ez:per.diture, thousands miFlit be saved to Ile then moved the following Resolution: the V.IZI of ,C3e.,510 Gs. Id. which, in the papers be linate, was stated to have been expended in snuff-boxes, , ” • F u:tae and improvidxnt expxnditure of the public 'a SPEAKER stated, that as the Resolution be :4e •ile House was one fur £79,1.54., the best made '' , ':rwatiir.ent would be to propose to deduct the. O ota t,f it. •k li~'fCHj NSOl (!id not wish to refuse that "Icis'-'.ce it had been expended, but to express the 'rarri - the House as to the nmrawr in which the tae been applied. SPEAKER then suggested the propriety of : 1 2.4ret.'..) : to the sum proposed, and then bringing licnourable .Tember's CASTLEREAGH, in rising to give the ex .•a.„ required by the Honourable 'Gentleman, Lfr. promise to speak to every point, as there ttaally out of his own. department, and he must icier to his Right Honottrablo friend Ir. Artrathaut). He perfectly undersioixithe } Jo" :.Cllrable ( ;C:ltlerliaa I . :0C to have 3314 any thing PeriAmal charge by his agition, but to have gl,t it forward merely out of a sense of Omty to as economical aPPlic.l6'no f the pu 114walc With resrct to the fittUsg oat of the %;euld s.iy nothinq for he knew kkeuVillP the observations of-the Honourable Member had been rather of a political than a financial nature. He had contended that no helefit had been derived from the mission : that all had been conclucled•before-hand, and that the business might as well have been con ducted by the usual State Messengers,. as by the Noble Duke and himself.. But as the Honourable Gentleman had remained silent when the Treatrand Protocol of Aix-la-Chapelle had. been laid on the table, he (Lord Castlereagh) should not now take the time of the House w i t h t h e d e f ence o f its provi sions. With respect to the expense, it amounted to only £3,000 for each of the negotiators, and if the Honourable Member compared it with former items of that kind, he would find that economy had by no means been neglected. An objection had been raised to the expense incurred on account of the visit of the Grand Duke Nicholas; but a spirit of courtesy now existed between this Government, and those of the other Powers of Europe, which he (Lord Castlereagh) conceived should not be dis couraged—(Cheers, chiely . from the Opposition And the House would not think that this country had made any great effort of hospitality towards the two brothers of the Emperor of Russia, when it should know that the Emperor of Austria ,had re ceived almost all the Sovereigns of Europe in his capital, and entertained them for months at his own expense, during the Congress of Vienna. With re spect to the snuff-boxes, it ought to be observed that the charge was not for one year, but for two, from 1816, to July, 1818. Fur the last three years the Diplomatic Department of this country had not been in a natural state. But even on this point there was a criterion to which the House could refer on the subject. Other Members besides the Hon. Gentleman had also thought it their duty in former times to turn the attention of the House to that point, and if he looked into the Journals, he would find that the result of that enquiry had sliewn, that in seven years, an average of 10,0301. a ye.tr had been applied to the purpose of making presents to the Ministers of Fo reign Powers. The sum now complainedof, though in more busy times, had scarcely exceeded the usual average amount. He was aware that a dkposition naturally existed, to consider every thing in the shape of a present, as a thing which might have been dis pensed with. He also admitted the necessity of con sulting economy most closely. But he should contend a"ain - si the al;olition of thi; species of expense as prejudicial to the public .service. lie could not con sent to abandon a system as old as monarchy itself in this country and on the Continent. It was true that the United States adopLed the principles of not al lowing their Ministers to make or to receive any pre sents; but he should think it most unwise and inju- rious in this country to take such a tone amongst tie nations of Europe—( Cheers front the Opposition.)— It might also be contended, that the presents re ceived by the East India Company were brought to, market for the benefit of the funds of the Company. But presents in Europe were given on public trans actions, and not what was acceptable to other States, but for the treaties approved by the respective Courts, for they were only made when the ratifications of treaties were exchanged. Neither were those pre sents made particularly to the Secretary of State, but to the person who had actuallinegociated the treaty. In the two last years there had been twenty four such presents, and he (Lord Castlereagh) hav ing been more employed in the diplomatic line than was usual for a Secretary of State, had received five. Would it be decent that such presents should be put to auction?--(Hear, hear, hear!) With respect to the diplomatic line itself, he knew of no profession in which it was more difficult to live without injuring one's domestic affairs, and he never heard of any in dividual who had left it as rich as he had entered it. (Hear, hear, hear!) At the same time he did not mean to disparage the merits of those who exposed their lives in the army and navy. As to replacing the presents in question, it would be most difficult to do it. Most individuals preserved them as memo rials of the services they had done—(Hear, hear!) And he owned that the value which he attached to those which he had received was connected with and derived from the transactions in which he had been engaged and for which they had been bestowed— (Loud eheersfrom all sides qf the House). His family, he hoped, would attach no other value to them after —him—(Cheers). He therefore should think it im proper to abolish a practice, which had not been car ried beyond what Mr. Pitt had contemplated, when he had laid the Civil List before the Howe. It would be unwise in this country to abandon such a system, unless there was a disposition in all the other European States to do the same. It would be pre judicial to the public service. It was a practice placed under so many guards, as to its limitation, and coming so directly under the eye of Parliament, that it was impossible it should he abused. He could not conceive that an amount of 1.:10,000 could be considered an improvident expenditure of the public money, if it was not applied without the knowledge or against the feelings of the country—(Loud cheers front all parts of the Horse). Mr. FORBES complained that Officers in the Navy, to whom the Noble Lord had alluded in the course of his explanations, incurred a considerable loss from the state-of exchanges, from which Diplomatic Mi nisters were exempt. Lord CASTLEREAGH said, that the point had been settled in the Civil List three years ago, when salaries had been fi:ed, and £50,000 had been set apart to cover any deficiency produced by the course of Exchagge ; an arrangement which had produced considerable good. Sir M. W. RIDLE.I7 gave the Noble Lcrd creel for the correctness of all that he had stated. But that. Noble Lord had not gone far enough, and had not done justice to himself. For the country was in debted to the Noble Lord for having considerably diminished the number of presents which would have been given and received for the Treaties concluded at Aix-la-Chapelle, and by which he would have greatly profited.—( Loud cheers, chiefly from the Op positioa.)le had raised -his voice against them, aud, instead of many, had caused them to be reduced to one.—(Loud cheers.) —With respect to the other items, it might be expected that whatever Royal Dukes came to visit us, should at least have the means oftravelling through the country. Qr „if we were to pay their expenses, we.ought at least .to take care how they are charged, and not .toiat diem be asked one.hundred pounds a 4j, .p Svie t howl in Ediubursl2 , 4o 7 , hor4-.41c,4111M0P119, the application of £3OOO to furnish a single room in the Royal Yacht in a style of extraordinary magniti ' cence, most injudicious. And he objected stiti more to the £3OOO or 124000 spent in maintaining the Alien Offize—an establishment disgraceful to the honour and character of the country. Igr. CANNING wished to stiPthe Hon. Baronet right. What he had stated resecting the disinte rested conduct of his Noble Friela was correct with regard to every thing but time .and place. It was at Vienna, during the discussions of the Congress,; and when so many Treaties were concluded, that he had proposed on the part of this country, that they should' all be considered as one and that only one present should be made. This proposition having been adopted, had produced this difference, that whereas 45 presents would have been given, only one had been received by his Noble Friend. After a few words from Mr. CLIVE and Sir M.W. RIDLEY, the Resolution was agreed to. The question was then put on Mr. HurcutstsoN's Resolution, which was negatived without a division, the shout of Noes being particularly loud on the side of the Opposition. Mr. C. HUTCHINSON said, his object would at present be answered by having his Resolution entered on the Journals. It would go against the precedent being established. lie gave credit to the Noble Vis count for what he had heard, and had no intention of imputing any thing personally to him and to the practice which had prevailed. TRIAL BY BATTLE ABOLITION BILL. The ATTORNEY-GENERAI. moved the Order of the Day for the further consideration of the report on this Bill. Sir FRANCIS BURDETT said the Bill was called a Bill for the Abolition of Trial by Battle, but it went also to take away the right of appeal, with which, he conceived, it had nothing whatever to :!o, any more than with an indictment at common or statute law. In fact, the Trial by Battle might be considered as completely obsolete. The principle was—" cesqante ratione cessat lex ;" and he conceived that here, as well as in the cases of trial by ordeal, by fire and water, and by receiving the sacrament, and other cases where the,judicia De i were resorted to in the absence of other means of proof, the law had completely ceased, and might be considered as quite obsolete. These were in fact all done away, :,nd why should not the Trial by Battle be considered as done away also? He was aware of the objection which would be made to the appeal, which he con . tended ought to be albr,ved in c;t;es Of murder—that it exposed percons to a sk.:ond trial for the same of . . fence. Ile was as much an etemy to a second trial generally as any man ; but .he conceived, that in the case of murder, the appeal ought to be allowed, because it wen to check the illegal exercise of the power of the Crown in pardoning criminals.— The trial by battle was only resorted to in cases where it was supposed all other mode of proof failed, and then the parties looked to the judicia Dei, or judgment of GoD. This was in a great measure the case in the instance of Colonel Ramsay and Lord Rae. The Court to which the matter was referred, i l at which the Earl Marshal presided, came to the de termination of allowing the wager by battle, but it was only on the supposition that no other mode or proof remained. This was in itself an argument to shew that the wager of battle was only a sort of el :issue, remedium. He confessed that, looking to the present attempt at abolishing the right of appeal, and considering the quarter in which it originated, he could not (though he meant nothing personal whatever to the Honourable and Learned Mover, the Attorney General) view it without strong feelings of constitutional jealousy. It was, he conceived, a measure which went to increase the power of the Crown, inasmuch as it went to deprive the subject of an appeal against what might be an illegal and un just extension of the power of the Crown in pardon ing criminals in eases of murder. He was not ob jecting to the abolition of the second trial in must cases, or to the wager of battle ; but he contended, that this right of the subject should not be done away with. In support of it he had some of the highest legal authorities. Lord liolt and Mr. Dun n,ng had said, that it was one of the main pillars of the Constitution; and the Peers of the Revolution, when they objected to the practice of trying any one of their body by Commissions appointed by the King, soon afterwards passed a resolution, that this should not at all trench upon the right of appeal. He was also anxious that this right should be pre served from the instances which had occurred in the present reign, in which the most scandalous abuses had been practised of the power of the Crown in granting pardon to persons convicted of murder.— An Honourable Member for Knaresborough (Sir J. Mackintosh) had said, that the clamour on this sub ject had arisen from the writings of Junius on the case of the Kennedys. Here certainly was a case where the power of the Crown had been abused.— These men had been found guilty of murder, and had been pardoned. The circumstance which led to their pardon was a proof of the force of his argu ment—that the power of the Crown was often abused in the pardon of criminals. The sister of these men was the mistress of the then Lord Sandwich. If she had been honest her brothers would have been hanged —but because she was the mistress of a person who had some political influence, they were pardoned, after having been found guilty of a foul murder. The Hon. Baronet next alluded to the case of the man for the murder at Brentford, at the time when Wilkes was Candidate ; and also to the case of a young man a gardener, who had murdered his master, an old man of 80 years, in both of which cases the crimi nals were pardoned. Here he conceived was an undue exercise of the assumed power of the Crown. Hi said an assumed power, because by stet. 2d of Ed ,ward 111, the pardon of murderers was expressly pro. hibited, except in cases of self-defence. If it was absolutely necessary, at that time, to have this law of appeal, it was more so in the present day, when a sort of military government was resorted to ; when soldiers were introduced on almost every occasion in stead of the civil power, when such aid was unneces sary. He could not omit to notice an anecdote of the opinion of the Noble Lord to whore he had alluded : A crowd of persons had collected round a 'house in Holborn, where it was supposed a number of im ,pressed men wem, who had been kkinapped to be seat so America. - *the nsilitasy, and the platter was contmunicated APPlication was made for the aid -tcitord Akik, lie ..d the Wise. asho twastent incae th dis h p i e m rse w ? ha l t i l ie le a w n ° sa ti • l er d Wa d° B s :a til t ' e he cr°fr 'wou d id did g mt ive orders to fire upon them,. for such were the inslruce bons be had received. Then, Sir, (replied pna consequence e: ny ad,tdehr were L pv e s uchoonnuro not )p i tui on ists ) i f ya e sot i , h o uial u ilsel illoaai tll i d ..w:bei th rles a i:l t atc e nho i ga t i n l et te de r t h." y b: o te Thed(r ion sol rs of the police were found ordered tshitiehiclieoliiito o ut z tib b lite u e part} a ni e ei t ,t y ,t was in th rd a . t H d o a lte continue d i opinions otls o i a toe s n h i z. heal upon power, e h 0 1 a: . v tn 'f lic A h P fv e e a i i ght so ou i F el h; . . not tiros opinions to have at the present rnonient, when the military system ecemed, in many instances, to have superseded the civil—when barracks were erect ed in every part of the country. The law of appeal would, he conceived, he some protection, though per haps a weak one, against the abuse of such a system. As to the argument, that the law of appeal was- in consistent with Bert principle s.viiich went against two trials for the same offence, and that its abolition was connected with that of the wager or battle, he should only say, that no two objections coold be more easliy obviated. It would be only necessary to bring in small Bill to do away with the wager of battle, and to repeal so much of the Statute of Henry NH. as allowed one trial for a particular offence bea plea in bar of a second trial for the same (dence, leaving the appeal open in cases of murder. In order to have this matter iuliy discussed, he should move that the Bill be recommitted; and he would afterwards mdve the amendments ‘vhieh were necessary. The Hon. Baronet then alluded to the case of " Ashford v. Thornton," which was so fully betine the pubiic a short time ago, and regretted that the appellant •in that case had not common sense enough to pursue his appeal to the last ; because then it would be seen whether the:.law was really considered one which ought to be acted upon or mot—whether the Chief Justice of the Ccurt of King's Bench would have gone into Tuthill-fields to see two men beat each ether, first with cudgels, and afterwards with sand bags, for a whole day. lie was sorry the law had not been brought to such a test, as he was convinced the result would be an argument in favour of what he had asserted, that it was one which ought not to be acted upon. The Report was then ()lettered to be taken into fur► Ater consideration, and on the motion that the amend ments be agreed to, Sir F. BURDETT moved, as an amendment, that the Report be taken into further consideration. Mr. Serjeant COPLEY said, as he understood the intention of the Honourable Baronet, it was, that the Law of Appeal should. continue without the Trial by L':tttle. In his feeling o 1 the subject he should- prefer that the Bill of his lionourable.and Learned Friend, (the Attorney-General,) should be lost altogether, than that it should be passed with such an accompa niment; for he wished, that if the Law of Appeal were to continue, it should be contieued with as many objections as possible. • The Honourable Baronet had objected to the Wager of Battle as an obsolete law. He was surprised to hear such an assertion, after the recent decision in the Court of King's Bench. If it were so, was it not astonishing that such an objection should never have occurred to the Learned Counsel; who had condticted the case for the appellant ; or to the Learned Judges who presided? That such a de cision as they had come to was (if the law was obso. lete) sufficient to render the Court of King's Bench ridiculous, could not be denied ; and that very cir cumstance would in itself be a sufficient ground for the Legislature to ititerfere—(Hear). The Honoura ble Baronet had cited the authority of Lord licit in support of that law, and certainly a more enlightened man could not be mentioned as a Lawyer ; but the Honourable Baronet had omitted to mention, that this opinion of Lord Holt's was one on a party question. The Honourable 13aronet should have recollected that the whole ef the authority in this respect, did not equally bear him cut. There were other authorities which the Honourable Baronet might have found in the same place where he had discovered thisopiniun of Lord Hods, and which, in fairness, he should not have omitted—one was of Lord Chief Justise Trehy, a man as enlightened on the subject as any other who could be named.— Yet this lawyer had given his opinion quite in oppo sition to that which the Honourable Baronet had mentioned. ' Another authority was that of as emi nent a Statesman as any which he could 'tame—a man who bad been one of the 'brightest ornaments of that House—he meant Mr. Fox. That eminent Statesman had strongly objected to the law of ap peal ; but he supposed his (Mr. Fox's) was on autho rity to which the Honourable'Baronet would not be ready to bow. He had exprersed himself in favour of the power of the Crown to pardon: he had shewn that it was a power held, for the benefit of the people, and that they had a claim upon it ; . but perhaps the Honourable Baronet had no respect for such autho rity. Passing that subject, however, he shnufd en= to anether part of the Honourable Baronet's speech. The Honourable Baronet had denied that the Crown had the right to pardon in cases of murder? He would ask why should this power be talcen frOm the. Crown? It was exercised fcr the benefit of 'the people, and ac cording to the practice of every civilized nation this power wan - vested in some'eart ef the Government. Would the Honourable Baronet. who was the pre.- fessed friend of civil liberty, deny thht 'the power of pardoning an offence ehould.exlst in some branch cif the Government e and ilk ahl exist, in what branch could it better be placed than in, that which by an analogy of prerogative ought to hold it—the Crown? It would net be maintained that, it should be vested in a private individual; 'who 'Might be induced to exercise it from party or 'factious motives. One great objection to the Appeal olif Murder was, that it might be used -fere purposes 'of vengeance, to support it faction, or newer private views, by being employed as the thehrte of extorting money.— This last had happened in the cage of the Keonedys ; for the widow there had beery bribed 'by 500 gui neas, which to iherease'ehe temptation, were connirit before her, at the suggestion of Lord Ashburton. It was also attended by Many absurdities ; for instance, a widow, told bring an Appeal if she did marry again, bet a.clangtster could not. The Honourable Baronet, *so 'amlious for' the rights of the subject, ought to be the last 'titan to insist upon the ciwinu. ance of the 'Appeal I for all' the ordinary guards in va s es di , aldie.; and instead of information upon oath, andit Initfeend; wafEdavit. .by thenppelf. u p on