The Express.
London, England, 1847-01-29 00:00:00

THE EXPRESS, FRIDAY EVENING, JANUARY 29, 1847.

under the influence of his excited feelings, and the circum-
stance be had alluded to, his rimer ption of the report was to
be received as correct, or whether they would give some
credit to the report of a committee of their own body, con.
etitured so he had oated. (Hear.) So much as to the affair
of 1842. But in the spring of 1844 the hon. member thought
fit, in a speech made in that house, to go a step further, and
allege that I (said Sir J. Graham) and Mr. Lewis, the
Poor law commissioner, had conspired together to
obtain a false report, for the Purpose of crushing
the hon. member. I thought it my duty in his
presence to call the attention of the house to an attention
directly affecting not only my personal honour, but the high
office I had the honour to bold in the service of her Majesty.
I denied the accusation in a manner as solemn as though I
had been upon oath in a court of law, and I called upon the
hon. member either to retract the charge, or to take the
necessary steps, for which I offered him every opportunity,
to substantiate it; but the hon. member refused to
submit himself to the jurisdiction of this house,
and demurred to it as a fair tribunal to investigate a charge
' made by one of its members against another, and having
made that accusation, and refused to substantiate it he left
the house, and, sir, it now stands on your journals that that
accusation was unfounded and calumnious. (Cheers from
both sides.) To own to this point I think common candour
will admit that the preaump'ion is strongly in my favour.
(Hear.) But in July or August last the hon. member re-
newed the accusation in a more substantive form, and pub-
lished two letters in the Times, containing, in writing, the
charge he had more than once verbally made. Mr. Lewis,
acting by advice, at once took the opinion of counsel
whether the letters so published were not inlietable. The
hon. member, ou a former evening, said that he wrote those
letters fur the purpose of bringing the poiat at issue directly
to the test. But Led that really be n his object, it is rea-
sonable to presume that he would have at once acknow-
ledged himselt the author of thew. I am, however, greatly
misinformed if, for three weeks after he was applied to on
the subject, he returned any answer ; and Mr. Lew is was
compelled to send to Yorkshire, by his attorney, to ask the
question whether the hon. member woe the author or not ;
and even then, unions I am also misit formed, he declined to
give any answer; and it was not until two days after his
arrival in London, when he was a naked, that he ac-
knowledged himself the au' hor of the letters—(Hear)—and
not, them, I believe, until the Tiros had intimated that
they would be prepared to produce the original letters to
prove the authorship, if called upon. (Cheers and a laugh.)
So much for the hon. member's desire to bring the matter
to the test. (Hear, hear.) Then the form the matter took
in the courts of law was an application for a rule for a crimi-
nal information, and the honourable member combated by all
the means in his power the cooking that rule absolute, and
it was only after full argument that the court de-
cided to make it absolute ' • and here, in passing,
I would observe that the affidavit upon which the
hon. member has relied to-night, that of Mr. Barker, was
used in the Court of Queen's Bench on the last argument
upon the rule nisi, when there was no possibility of answer-
ing it; but it was before the court; and nothing but my
respect fertile awn flow of the administration of justice and
the knowledge that any interference on my part would be
criminal in the highest degree, restrain.; me from reading to
the house the judgment of the Lord Chief Justice of
England, speaking on behalf of the whole Court of
Queen's Bench, in deciding that the rule should be
' ebeolute. In that court I have filed an affidavit
on oath, solemnly denying that I was a party in any conspi-
racy whatever to obtain any false report for the purpose of
aerhing the hon. member. (Ilear, hate.) But the hon.
member sale, that the real naturcoithe transaction between
me and Mr. Lewis will never be known until the day of
judgment. Before the day of judgment, however, an op-
portunity will be given of obtaining, in the most authentic
dorm, and in the most unexceptionable manner, full infor-
mation as to all the circumstances and all that passed as to
the case in question, for I am ready to appear as a witness
and explain before the court every part of the transaction so
tar as lam concerned. (Hear.) And having made that de-
claration, and considering the matter as one still pending
before the courts of law, and that any long delay in the
decision of the court is impossible ; fir Mr. Lewis having
entered into neuritic* two or three days before the com-
mencement of the session to proceed4thecase will necessarily
go before a jury in the course of five or six weeks ; the house
will feel that I am not refusing to give the hon. member
every fair advantage, when I say, that under such
circumstances for me to enter into any detail here of the
points upon which I am about to be examined, would be
highly indecorous on my part, and an interference with the
administration of justice. (Cheers.) The house would un-
derstand that in regard to the transaction witn Mr. Mutt, I
will not shrink from giving at the proper time the fullest
explanation. There are, however, some points which have
been touched upon by the hon. member, to which I am
anxious to refer. The hon. member has naked where is the
honour of Mr. Lewis ? I say Mr. Lewis has taken
the necessary steps to vindicate h:s honour that
step which the hon. gentleman most desires ; (hear, and •
I laugh) and, at the proper time, it will be seen whether he
has really departed from the course of an honourable and
I faithful servant of the crown, or whether the accusation of
the hon. member which as against me this louse has declared
to be unfounded and calumnious, will not also be declared
by a jury of his countrymen, to be • false and malicious
libel as against Mr. Lewis. Another point I will
lay a word upon is, the charge as to Mt. Jenkins Jones
having bartered an office for tome corrupt consideration, ,
and the honourable member has referred to a passage of
the report of the Andover committee, in which the
present attorney-general expressed as to me an obser-
vation remarkable alike for its brevity and its severity.
(A laugh.) That opinion, however, appeared to be like
that given bye counsel to his employer, and in the impetuosity
of the moment, he (Sir J. Graham) therefore attached no
importance to it. He must, however, inform the house, that
in that matter he had acted upon the advice of the law-
officers of the Crown, the Attorney and Solicitor-Ganeral at
the time. The facts of the case came to Lis knowledge as
Secretary of State, that Mr. Jones hail plea led guilty to the
charge of the corrupt barter of an office, anti that the court
had sentenced him to a years' imprisonment. Regerdless of
applications that were made to him, he resolved that the
prisoner should be brought up fir judgment, and he
thought he should have given the most unsound advice, if
he had advised the remission of the sentence, at all events,
until a considerable portion of it had teen undergone.
(Hear, hear.) Nor did he give any such advice until the
party had suffered eight months of the imprisonment. In
the whole of that transaction he assured the house lie had
acted from the purest motives, and the advicehe had
given wasfounded on the view he took of his public duty as
a minister of the crown. lie would now refer to a motion
which had been originally brought under the notice
of the house by a question put by the honourable
member for Finsbury. Towards the close of the
session of 1815, that hon. member put a question to him re-
lative to the practice of bone-crushing in the Andover union,
and in consequence of that question Mr. Parker, the assistant
poor law commissioner employed at that time in the district,
was directed to make inquiries. That gentleman's report
could not be presented until the last day of the session, and
the hon. member now accused him (Sir J. Graham) of seek-
ing to suppress it altogether. It was impossible that
he could have had any such object, or that the report
could have been suppressed ; fur the lamely beiug made
by order of the commeoionen, the report was recorded in the
minutes of the office, and would have been necessarily pro-
duped ' but he did think, and still thought, that the produe-
eion of the report on the last day of the session, when no ex-
planation could have been given, nor any mitigating cinema-
stances stated, would have been improper and have led to misap-
prehension, and, accordingly, he resolved not to lay it on the
table until the next session, but to give a verbal explanation
of what had taken place. He was of course open to the
judgment of the house for his conduct in this matter,
lmt in this case, alto, he had acted with what he felt to be
his duty. (Hear., hear.) But the hon. member had referred
to • note made by a public servant, of • conversation said
to have occurred between that servant and a minister of the
mown, anti which should have been in confidence, seven or
eight months before, and called upon him (Sir J. Graham)
to set his recollection against each a note. Speaking delibe-
rately, to the best of his recollection, he thought there were
some expressions in that note which he had not used. Some-
Wag had been said about hie not having attended the An-
dover committee. He had not been above three weeks in Lon.
don before he surrendered his office, and it was open for the
committee at any part of the inquiry to summon him if they
thought fit to do so. lie was quite ready to be examined,
and should have been happy to give all the explanation in
Ida power. Ile did not think the house would draw any un-
lavourable inference from this circumstance. There was
one point more to which he would advert : the charge as to
dr removal of Mr. Day from his office. As to
Mr. Mott and the Bolton case, he had no Fre-
aks recollection of the circumstances. He did re-
f member that the hon. member for Bolton made a state-
ment of the extreme distress there in 1842. Mr. Mott was
the commissioner of the district, end his belief was that it
was in his capacity of assistant-commissioner that he made
I the inquiry alluded to ; and he had every reason at the time
to believe that the report was accurate. With regard to the
patronage of the commission, however, he never interfered
with it; and when it was decided upon reducing the num-
ber of assistant-commissioner from ten to nine, though the
commissioners might have stated confidentially to
him the reasons why they preferred one and parted
with another, it was not at his instance that any
one of the assistant-commissioners had been dismissed.
The hon. member for Knareaborough had been so fortunate
as to obtain the support of ail members on his motion
respecting Mr. Clemente, but were he to bring it forward
now, he (Sir J. Graham) doubted if he would find for it a
seconder. (Hear, hear.) With regard to Mr. Twideton,
that gentleman had, at his (Sir J. Graham's) entreaty,
relinquished the most advantageous situation an aesistant-
commissioner could hold, fur the benefit of the public ser.
vice. (Hear.) In the critical period of 1842, Mr. Twisleton
had rendered such services as to prove his ability at a public
servant. But the hon. member for Knaresborough imputed
to him some corrupt procceding—an imputation which he
(Sir J. Graham) had never heard until that moment.
(Hear.) He only knew that under the most difficult cir-
cumstances Mr. Twialeton had discharged the moot diffi-
cult duties to the entire satisfaction of the government.
(Hear.) He was no political friend of his (Sir J. Graham's),
having been appointed by the noble lord opposite, and it
was only his conviction of his abilities and fidelity that
had led him to impose upon him the duty of aiding in the
inquiry into the operation of the poor-law in Scotland. It
wee uncertain that he could resume hie post of assistant-
commissioner ; but he (Sir J. Graham) gave him his assur-
ance that if en opening occurred, his superior merits should
not he overlooked, and on that account he did ask the Poor-
law Commissioners to remember Mr. Twialeton's claim. It
subsequently appeared that he wished to proceed on a tour
abroad; and when Mr. Day was removed, the Poor-law Com-
missioners in the exerciseof their discretion, eppoiuted Col.
Wade. lie hoped in this ttatemont he had not been betrayed into
one angry expression such as tne hon. gentleman thought tit
to make use of towards him. (Hear, hear.) The matter