The Sun.
London, England, 1814-05-03 00:00:00

IMPERIAL PARLIAMENT.

• ' HOUSE OF LORDS, Mon: mitt; MAY .2.
Being regular Cause Day, the fore-part of this was decried
to judicial-bitsiness.—Counsel were fully heard-res ,w2;;,,,,t the
Causes of Appeal of Tregenwell v. Sydenharo, mmi Smith v.
Robinson ; the judgments upon Which were p”stpoued.
On the Cause of Sinitald v. Bcitrain and others, Counsel
was partly heard.—To proceed again on i'Vedhesday.

y

Tlicir Lordships thin adjourned during pleasure, and at
about .five o'clock the House resumed.
CIVIL LIBERTY.
The order for summuning.their Lordships., he-
Ingtread,
Earl STANHOPE 'rose to bring forward the Pro-
positions, and to present -the Petitions, of which
he had given notice, relative to this,subject. 'His
Lordship prefaced them with a speech of very con-
siderable length. Before he presented the Peti-
tions, he said, that in order to enable their Lord.:
ships the better to understand the allegation, be
should glance' at the provisions of the Act passed
last.year. That Act went to- provide for the re-
lief of poor persons confined for debt in the King's
Bench, Fleet, and Marshalsea prisons. it enabled
any. Justice of the Peace, or Alderman of the City
of London, the latter to the prisoners in the Fleet,
to order such relief as he may think proper to he
given, provided that the same slO not exceed 6d. per
diem. This scanty and inadequate allowance was
to be awarded after certain: oaths were taken by
the prisoners applying for relief ;; they were to
declare their inability to subsist .without it; but
notwithstanding this declaration upon oath, this
allowance, scarcely enough to hold body and Soul
together, ;.vas refused to be given, in one of these
prisons. This was not.. only inhuman,- and not
countenanced by law, but directly contrary to,un
express Act of.Parliatnent, After alluding
extreme misery and 'wretchedness to which many
of the poorer prisoners for debt are exposed, his
Lordship said he felt it his duty to bring'the sub-:
ject before the Honse, more immediately in con-
sequence of a Petition that was put into his hands,
and he, confessed its allegation went' to the state:
ment .of grievance and oppression, than which
greater .he never knew. The system, of which
the case formed a part, May %yell- be called
the English:: Slave Trade. The Petition went
to the statement of four distinct acts of illegality,
as well as of inhumanity. The first described an
illegal extortion of fees, which struck him,to bean
unjustifiable and oppressive, that he communicates(
the matter to a Noble Secretary of*Staie, who,
directed inquiries ,to be made at the. prison, in
consequence of which the fees were repaid, which
he regarded as a full acknowledgment of the feel,

being illegally extorted. The second allegation
was, that the requisite oath had been taken on
tlk nth August, but that the commencement of
the allowance was withheld till /sth. Seinem-
bar. There was no legal pretence after the parry
had sworn lie could not subsist Without it ; awl
what could be more cruel than to keep a fel-
low-being six weeks literally starving ? The
third and fourth allegations, as described by his
Lordship, related to certain unjustifiable"" prO-
ceedings, with respect to a refusal, on- the iCavt
of those whose duty it was to- take, fora time,
the affidavit- of the petitioner, , and a subse-
quent refusal to return the same to the party, in
order that he might forward it, thus, acting like
the dog in, the 'manger ; and further, to an illegal
stoppage of the allowance. for several weeks, pre-
vious to hiS being discharged under the general
Insolvent Act--piactices which, his Lordship ar-
gued, by a reference to the Act, were Contrary to
the spirit of its provisions. Ile then presented
the Petition referred to, which was from
Wright, and being read by the Clerk, stated tliose
points to which the Noble Earl generally adverted,
and described the severe distress to which the pri-
soner was reduced in consequence of h.s iMprison-
ment, which was originally fora small sum. The
concluding prayer of the Petition was for the,abo.-
lition of the practice of Imprisonment for Mesne
Process.7—The Petition being ordered to lie on the
. ,
table,

The Noble Earl proceeded to observe upon the
hardships aid. grievances which resulted in many
eases from the liraetice of hoprisonnitnt on iNlesiie
Process. Their. Lordships would recollect the
four petitions he had presented some time since
on the same subject. -Of these,, three of the pe-
titioners alleged they never owed any thing to the
persons who imprisoned them ; one Maney
particular, set forth the circumstance ; and anti-
ther, Mr. Baldwin, was detained after a de-cisiou
of the Court, which declared, that he never ought
to be imprisoned at all in the case ; this was,
however, after he had beep destituted
_of his
berty Upwards of eleven months ; :aad after a sob-
segnemt tlecision, he was withheld a fortnight on
another pretence. Surely that was. not .the. way
in which the justice of the country (might to be
administered; or, if such practices were counter
nanced by any rules of Court, it was high time
such a system should be done away; rtivl as such,
he trusted their Lordships,, would take the Fr.
mises into their serious consideration. His Lord-
ship then.presented'a second petition, which was
from (as we-could collect> William Blair Penney,
complaining
.ot alleged, illegal, and oppressive
proceedings in, the petitioner's case, under the
same system; and praying
itp the same. effect. TLe
Petition being read, was also ordered fo lie on
the table.

The Noble Earl proceeded to animadvert upon
practices of illegality and oppression which he
observed to exist under the present, system of im-
prisonment for debt, particularly with respect to
abuse and extortion in the articles of fees. Ile
referred,to an Act which went particularly to the
'regulation of such matters, which, aniciog other
provisions, required that a table should, be "exhi-
bited in some public and conspicuous part ot7 the
prisons, of the fees ,legally payable to, the
officers of the same, in order that all prisoners

ray Lave- free. and easy access thereto. lie
• th,,t ght there could be no objection to a
motion fur Jaying a statement of 'the fees
al!,.weir to be so taken,. on their-Lordships'
ral•le. Ire then moved to that effect, that in the
cases of the King's Bench, Fleet, and Marshalsea
Prisons, be laid before the house, which was or-
' &semi accordingly. Before he should moee their
Lordships to give a roding to two Bills which
lie was about to present for their consideration;
he begged-their Lordships` serious attes•iion to
the great importance of the subject to which they
referred, but •more especially to. that part which
reipected• imprisonment on Mesne Process. in
• this part of the' discussion, he read a letter
which he had received from one of the highest
Law Authorities in the country, a man greatly
• -pre-emineut in the profession ; and blended his
obsoeations with copiOUS ex.tsacts from the re-.
port_ of their LOrdships' Committee some time
upon the subject, of which a Noble marl,
_lately gone to India,_ had been Chairman. He
particularly dwelt upon the powers, which, under
-the existing system, may be used by unprincipled
or vindictive-men, in causing the incarceration of
honest .-and unollending individuals, by their
merely swearing to a fictitious debt, and which he
illustrated by some instances, and the
,inade-
ouaeyof the means of redress to such' injured in-
divldua's was also adverted to' by. him. In many
points of view,stlicre was as much inconsistency
as inhuMauity in the system, which was in Many
cases as injurious to the creditor as to the debtor.
Frain a .calculation to which he referred, i ap-
peared that -out of 520 cases, four hundrell and
,thity-eight creditors recovered neither debt' nor
costs. In illustrating What he conceived to be,
the chicanery and absurdity of legal practice in
many-- cases; he instanced a declaration for the reco-
very of a tailor's bill otarbout 1001. in which' there
were twelve counts, of whicheleven were mere nul-
lities, and only one Which Borg the resenildance of
fact. The case of a ,pair of leathei breeches,
stolen in a village in his part of the county, .fur-
nished another instance of the absurdity of the
practice of many of the Courts, as laid down by
an egotistical Attorney, who stated, that force of
arms was used in various shapes in carrying off
the breeches. The fictions of law, in which
causes 'were removed •by fiction into Courts to
which rationally they never could have appertain-
ed, was
.also humorously descanted upon. The
practice and conduct of several lawyers were such.
as to render them objects of just and general ap-
prehension, as Strikingty appeared in the instance
•of the late Alderman Sir B. Watson, who lost his
leg while swimming in one of the American ports,
many years ago. The 'Alderman was violently
•• exclaithing one day against Lawyers; a person
Who heard him asked the late Alderman Wilkes
the reason, When the latter " Do not you
know that be has lost one of his legs already by a
shark 1"--(Much laughter.)—He: trusted their
Lordships would bear feelingly in mind, whit he
regarded with pleasure and admiration, the ex-
cellent observation of Alexander, the present Em-
peror of goskia, who, when he was told that strong
Institutions wet e necessary, said, " Strong butlibe-
ral institirCons,conformable to the knowledge and
improvement of the times." Such-was just what
• lie (Lord S.) wanted, 'and which he thought
should be the ruling principle in actual legislation;
and as to the grand consideration of rolorm, be
trusted they would all remember what was admi-
rably said by a Noble Member of, that }louse cwe
believe the Earl-Moira], then absent--•-the saying
was. replete with infinite wisdom and sagacity—
" Better, my Lords, that reform should begin at the
head than it should begin at the tail !" The unhappy
state of things in France, which began in lawless
anarchy, and terminated in military despotism,
Rasa striking practical Comment upon the text.
His Lordship then' presented his first Bill, which
was for the abolition (as the title expressed it) of
the unjust and unconstitutional practice of impri-
sonment on. Mesne Process for Debt. Having
moved the first reading, 'the pre-enaCting clause
•was accordingly read, and the Bill was' or-
-tiered to beprinted for the use and considera-
tion of their Lordships. The Noble Earl then
proceeded to introduce his, second Bill, which
seemed to go 'generally to the regulation of
Process ..-s in cases 'of Debt, especially in those
of Mesne Processes, to counteract, so far, what
was proverbially termed the glorious uncertainty of
the law. The object of the Bill, was to establish
A general and regular course of proceeding for the
better protection of poor and uninformcdpersons
against petty logging Attornies and, other persons
-7-s(a laugh); to prevent the arrest of persons for
debt, where the original amount was not the clear
sum of At least 151. exclusive of casts ; and to
pre-
vent,
as far as dbe done, Attornies fruits hav-
ing an indiyidital interest in setting persons toge-
ther by the ears, These his Lordship described to
be among the objects and scope 'of the Bill, which
be then presented, and moved" should be read a
first time, which was accordingly done. Previous
to his motion.for printing the fill, the Noble Earl
made some general observations upon the salutary
effects which such a measure would produce. Under
the existing system, many of the Reverend Calling,
and Officers, both in time Army and Navy, were well
known to suffer., He would therefore call upon
the Rev. Bench to, support that which would go to
relieve their Spiritual Brethren ; upon Officers,
-Members of that House, to protect the interests
of their brother Officers in both tines of service;
arid upon their Lordships generally to protect.the
public at large, by supporting the measure. He
concluded by moving that the Bill ,be printed, his
wish being that both measures should lie over for
the deliberate and Mature consideration of their
Lordships. The 13111 was accordingly•ordered to
be printed.