The Sun.
London, England, 1838-02-27 00:00:00

notice the language used by the Hon. and Learned Member,
because he has risen and justified it in his place.
Mr. LANGDALE—I do not rise to justify the language
used by the Honourable and Learned Member for Dulin ;
but has not the same charge been brought by Hon. Members
opposite against the Roman Catholics who are Members of
this House, of which number I am one ? I should like to
know—not in how many instances during the last election
Honourable Gentlemen opposite, in their addresses to their
constituents, did make such charges as these, but in how many
they did not.—( Hear, hear.) I say it is too much, when I
see so many Honourable Gentlemen opposite who have over
and over again urged that a breach of their oath has been
frequently committed on the part of the Catholic Members—
I say it is too much that they should complain so loudly when
this charge is brought against them.—( Hear.) I shall very
much rejoice if these words, thus brought home to the breasts
of lien. Gentlemen opposite, shall have the effect of making
them more cautious for the future. With regard to the ques-
tion as to how the decisions of Election Committees are made
I must own I have considerable difficulty on that head. I can
only bring before the House the impression which was made upon
my own mind at the time when I first was fortunate enough to
obtain a scat within it. I was applied to on that occasion by an
Honourable Gentleman, a friend of mine, to attend upon a
ballot about to be struck in this House, and, innocent as I
then was--(Great laughter)—my natural impression was to
say, as I did, " Why should you apply to me ? Are we not
bound to give a verdict according to the evidence?"—(Great
laughter, and cries of " Hear, hear.") What was the reply
of that gentleman ?—(" Name, name," and " Go, no.") His
reply was, that with such impressions as these I might as well
absent nsyself.—(" Hear, hear.") One word more, and I have
done. lam not aware that any distinction is to be drawn be-
tween the case of a Member of Parliament coming to the table
of this House to be sworn and that of a juryman sworn to try
an action at law.—( Hear, hear.) I ask the Noble Lord
who has brought forward this motion if, in a case where a
jury was about to be sworn, he should give vent to an ex-
pression of joy and congratulation at having a friend on
that jury, there would not be a burst of indignation on the
part of the Court, and whether he would not obtain the
strongest possible reproof from the Judge presiding over
it ?—( Hear. hear, hear.) I draw no distinction what-
ever between the two cases ; and if the House will permit
me I will read a passage on this point from a work which is,
I believe, a small authority with Hon. Gentlemen opposite,
viz., Fraser's Magazine.—( Hear, hear.) A writer there, in
discussing the question of the Grenville Act, said, with re-
gard to the decisions in the last Parliament, " They (the
members of Election Committees) decided according to their
political feelings—( Hear, hear)—but it would be mere folly
to call this forswearing themselves."—(Hear, hear.) The
Hon. Gentleman then concluded by saying that he did not
approve of the words "false and calumnious," being applied
to the charge which had been trade, as he could not say that
charge was altogether false —( Hear.)
Mr. COL QUHOUN said the Noble Lord the Member

for Northumberland recommended them to pass to the Order
of the Day, and urged the House to sit down quietly in the
face of such a charge as this.—( Hear, hear.) But let him
ask if an individual Member of Parliament were to be charged
with perjury would he not immediately bring such a charge
under the notice of the House—( Hear)—and if he did not
would he not be unworthy a seat in it ? The charge which
had been brought against them affected the whole House.—
( Hear)—and he maintained that, taking all the circumstances
into consideration, there was no other way of bringing the
question to a fair issue than that of adopting the motion of
the Noble Lord. It was to no purpose to talk of the charge
being made in the Chronicle, or in the Times ; it had come
from the mouth of a Member of that House—( Hear, hear)—
and the House was thereby placed in a very different position
with regard to it.—( Hear, hear.) He maintained that the
Hon. and Learned Member for Dublin, in his character of a
representative, was not, in making this charge, to be treated
in the same way as persons not professing such character. If
any Member of that House was to charge the Noble Lord the
Secretary for the Home Department as guilty of perjury, he,
as an honest man, would rise indignant at the imputation ;
and, while he (Mr. Colquhoun) did that Noble Lord the jus-
tice to say, that he sought as much as any man to maintain his
own character in that House, he must remind hint that the
characters of every Member of it were equally worthy of being
protected.—( Cheers.) He should have thought, he must con-
fess, that the Noble Lord, the moment that the Noble Lord the
Member for Northamptonshire made his motion, would have
risen to oppose it ; but no, the Noble Lord talked of an inquiry
into the charges of the Bishop of Exeter. " Let us," said the
Noble Lord, " have a grand field-day upon them." But
let the Noble Lord himself open the battery and mount the
breach, and he had little doubt that the Right Rev. Prelate
would find some defenders even in that House. But he
conceived that, if any charges were to be brought forward
against the Bishop of Exeter, the proper sphere for their in-
troduction was the House where the Bishop had made his
speech.—( Hear, hear, and cheers.) As the Noble Lord
seemed so anxious for the inquiry into the charges against the
Bishop. perhaps they would ere long hear of its being pro-
posed in another place. The Hon. Member after a few fur-
ther observations, which were inadible, sat down amid loud
cheers.

Mr. EATON could not tamely sit down and hear a charge
of perjury made against that House. He should vote for the
motion of the Noble Lord, the Member for Northampton.
shire.—( Hear.)
Mr. \VYNN said, Honourable Gentlemen opposite did not
attempt to justify the charge that had been made, and the
Noble Lord, the Member for Northumberland, recommended
the House to plead guilty.—( Hear.) Surely that could only
be because they thought the charge of so trifling a nature that
an assertion one way or the other was of no importance.—
( Hear.) But he asked them if they meant that whenever
a body of Members should hereafter be called upon to try
the case of a disputed election, and should make a decision not
in unison with the opinion of the Hon. and Learned Member
for Dublin, that he shouly jus'ify and repeat the same charges
in that House? Let them consider that these charges were
made by an Hon. Gentleman who was himself presently to
come before one of the these very tribunals, and that if the de-
cision should be against him he might threaten to accuse the
persons forming it of perjury, and that such an accusation
could not be punished if the House adopted the amendment
of the Noble Lord opposite.—( Hear, hear.) The admission
of the charge of perjury by Hon. Gentlemen opposite held
out to him an encouragement to vote for passing to the Order
of the Day—( Hear, hear)—and he did not see how, under the
circumstances, any man could hereafter be blamed for im-
pugning the decision of an Election Committee.—( Hear. )
I know not how you, Sir (continued the Right Hon. Gentle-
man, addressing the Speaker) so to discharge your duties.
Let me ask you what gentlemenaesir, are to do when any Hon.
Gentleman having made a charge of the same nature, per..
haps, as that now raade by the Hon. and Learned Member
for Dublin, shall re-assert iiin that House? Any Hon. Gen-
tleman might say " he (Mr. O'Connell) made no apology, and
though you, Sir, object to it, I will re-assert the charge I have
made, as he did. Let me see if the House will punish me,
after abstaining from punishing him. They dared not do it."
—( Hear, hear, bear.) On these grounds, then, he (Mr.
Wynn) knew not how this assertion of the Hon and Learned
Member could be met more fairly than by the motion of the
Noble Lord.
Lord E ASTNOR should not have risen to make any ob-
seryatiens had it not been fur what had fallen from the Hon.
and Learned Gentleman respecting the Marylebone Election
Committee, on which he had sat. That Committee was cer-
tainly composed of Members of that side of the House, and
wore no doubt looked on as a "perjured Tory Committee"—
( A laugh)—but he had flattered himself, when the circum-
stances of that case were such that the Counsel of the sitting
Member could not advise him to defend his seat, that that
Committee would have been free from the charge of perjury.
He did not think, until he saw his printed address, and until
he heard the speech of the Learned Member that night, that
Sir Samuel Whalley himself had thought the Committee
worthy to be so accused. He ( Lord Eastnor) considered the
Committee decided truly.—( Cheers.) He should vote for
the motion of his Noble Friend.—( Cheers. )
Mr. BROTHE RT ON thanked the Hon. Gentlemen oppo-
site for vindicating the conduct of the Salford Committee.—
(A laugh.) He was persuaded that the question in that case
was not fairly understood out of doors, and would stand the
test of any investigation. He would take that opportunity of
telling the House that the Hon. Member for Wenlock had
been kind enough, before the Committee had even sat, to in-
form him what would be the result of the sitting of that Corn-
mittee.—( Laughter, during which the Hon. Member resumed
his seat.)
Mr. HORSMAN rose amidst renewed cries of, " Divide,"
and " Question." The Noble Lord (as we understood the
Hun. Member) who bad spoken from that (the ministerial)
side of the House had contended that the charge against elec-
tion Committees was not confined to one side of the House, but
that it applied in common to all sides of the House. If the
question was, whether the charge against the Members of elec-
tion Committees was true or not, he had no hesitation to say that
a majority of the House ought to vote that such a charge was sub-
stantially true.--( Loud cheers from the Opposition, answered
by loud cheers from the Ministerial side of the House, and re-
torted by renewed cheering from. the Opposition benches.)
There were two topics which appeared to have been avoided
in the course of this discusion by the Hon Members opposite,
the first of which bore reference particularly to the Hon. and
Learned Member for :Dublin. It would seem as if it was
thought by Hon. Members opposite that the charge of per-
jury against Members of that House was altogether new and
unprecedented ; but certainly there was no necessity to go out
of the House to find a precedent for a charge of that character.
It was but a few days since a petition had been presented by a
Member of that House, charging the Roman Catholic Mem-
bers of that House with the crime of perjury. That petition
had been presented by the Hon. Member for East Kent, and
the reeeipt of the petition was opposed by the, Hon. Member
for Finsbury, on the ground that the charge it contained was
an insult to a class of Members who composed a very consi-
derable body of the Members of the House. The Honoura-
ble Member who presented the petition, in order that the
House might judge of its nature, had moved that it should
be read by the Clerk at the table of the House. It was
not denied that the petition contained an imputation upon
certain Members of the House, and after some observa-
tions the lion. Member for East Kent seemed disposed to
withdraw the petition, when the Honourable Member for the
University of Oxford got up in his
place, and argued in
favour of the reception of the petition. He was so strenuous
upon the point, that he insisted on the petition being received,
and ultimately the petition was given in containing that spe-
cific charge; and this was a circumstance that seemed alto-
, gether to have escaped the recollection of Honourable
Members opposite. The Honourable Member for Kil.
marnock and the Honourable Member who had preceded
him seemed to have overlooked this fault altogether.
But, however, this was not surprising, as Hon. Gentlemen of
their ability were often remarkable for shortness of memory