The Sun.
London, England, 1844-06-29 00:00:00

IMPERIAL PARLIAMENT.
HOUSE OF LORDS, June 28.
The LORD CHANCELLOR took his seat on tho Wool-
sack al Five o'clock.

Lord CAMPBELL and the Earl of WINCEILSEA pre-
sented petitions against the Dissenters' Chapels Bill.
IRISH MARRIAGES BILL.
The LORD CHANCELLOR moved the second read-
ing of this Bill, intimating that he would take the dis-
cussion on going into Committee.
The Archbishop of ARMAGH trusted that the Bill
would be referred to the Select Committee which had
been appointed upon the subject of Irish marriages.
After a few words from the LORD CHANCELLOR,
the Bill was read a second time, and ordered to be com-
mitted on Friday next.
Lord BROUGHAM presented a petition. from Paisley
against the Dissenters' Chapels Bill.
SUGAR DUTIES BILL.
The Earl of DALHOUSIE moved the first reading
of this Bill, and gave notice that he should move the
second reading of the Bill on Monday.
The Bill was then read a first time, and ordered to be
printed.
OPENING LETTERS AT THE POST-OFFICE.

The Earl of RADNOR presented a petition from Mr.
Mazzini, complaining that his letters had been opened at
the Post-office, and praying for inquiry. The Noble Earl
said he should on Thursday call the attention of their
Lordships to the subject of the petition, by moving fur a
Committee to inquire into it. He wished now to ask
whether a warrant had been issued by the Secretary of
State for opening Mr. Mazzini's letters?
The Duke of WELLINGTON said he was unable to
answer the question.
Lord BROUGHAM said the power of opening letters
at the Post-office had existed since the time of Oliver
Cromwell. A few nights ago it was stated that the
practice was established in the reign of Queen Anne.
After a few words from the Earl of RADNOR,
Lord CAMPBELL said it was not intended by the
original Act that letters should be secretly opened and
sealed up again.—(Hear, hear.) The Act provided that
suspicious letters should seized, and might be used as
evidence in a court of law. The Act also provided that
every letter opened or detained, should be opened under
a warrant, in such case, from one of the principal Se-
cretaries of State. General warrants could not, there-
fore, be legal.
The LORD CHANCELLOR said, if a warrant were
issued to empower the Postmaster to open all letters of
A. B. within a certain time, that was a warrant for each
letter to be opened. The Act of Parliament would be
quite nugatory, unless they put this construction upon it.
Lord CAMPBELL did not find fault with the law,
but with the manner in which the law was carried out.
Lord BROUGHAM thought the gravamen of this
case was that of opening the letters, and not the seal-
ing them up again and forwarding them.
Lord DENMAN thought that, when this subject was
brought fairly before their Lordships, they would see
that it was not a question of antiquarian history, but a
question affecting the liberty of every subject of the
realm. He felt convinced that if it were not, that he
would thereby overthrow a colleague—the Noble Duke
himself (the Duke of Wellington), who came down with
a measure to modify that Act which gave the power of
opening letters.
The LORD CHANCELLOR said, that his Noble
and Learned Friend (Lord Campbell) had referred to
the original Act ; perhaps he would read to them the
words of the existing Act.
Lord CAMPBELL said it provided that a warrant
should be issued in each case when a letter was to be
opened.
The LORD CHANCELLOR said that to do that the
Secretary of State would have to go to the Post-office,
and put his finger on a letter, and say " Open this."
Lord DENMAN thought there was another mode.—
(Cheers.) They established a system of espionage at
the Post- office. A spy might write to the Secretary of
State, and say, " You will receive a letter from Ports-
mouth on such a day." Ile felt that the Secretary could not
conveniently exercise this enormous power, unless he
stopped every letter on a certain day. If the Act of
Parliament was difficult to be carried into opera-
tion, so much the better. Such Acts ought to
be difficult of being carried into operation.
The circumstances of this particular case which had
come to the knowledge of their Lordships made it most
imperative on the Government to introduce some new
measure, to render the law clear on the subject.
Lord BROUGHAM observed that they were not
bound to make intelligible every Act of Parlia-
ment ; but, for the last hundred and fifty years, by
all Governments, this law had been acted on in
one way, and now his Noble and Learned Friend
came forward and suggested that the proper way to
carry the law into execution was one which it was
almost impossible to adopt. His Noble and Learned
Friend assumed that they must have a spy who knew
the handwriting, whereas all they knew was, that A. B.
was plotting against the State. This reading of the Act
of Parliament would reduce it to insignificance, and he
thought they were bound to place such a construction
upon it, borne out as they were with the practical sense
of the words, as would signify that a general warrant for
opening all letters was sufficient to justify each indivi-
dual opening.
The LORD CHANCELLOR said, the words of the
Act were that the Postmaster-General should swear
that he would not open any letter or letters except by
express warrant from the Secretary of State—that in -
eluded the plural as well as the singular.
Lord CAMPBELL—That is not the enacting clause.
The LORD CHANCELLOR—It was the oath the
party took, and if there was any doubt about the con-
struction of the Act, they must go to the oath to exem-
plify it. It had been supposed that a Tory Government
had brought forward this Act.— (Cries of " No, no.")
The words which had been left out in the Consolidation
Act had been left out by the Whig Administration.
Lord CAMPBELL had before declared that the Act
had been introduced when he was Attorney-General,
and he was responsible for the words of it. That Act
had not altered the Act of Anne, which required a
special warrant for every opening. The Act had passed
originally in the time of Cromwel. Cromwell had heard
that a letter written from the King to the Queen was to
be brought in a saddle to the Blue Boar, Holborn. He
had waited the arrival of the messenger, opened the
letter, and found that instead of a blue ribbon he was to
have a halter.
The LORD CHANCELLOR had been taunted with
using the words of the oath only. He would now read
the enacting clause. The clause enacted that the Post-
master-General should not detain or delay any letter or
letters except by express warrant in writing under the
hands of a principal Secretary of State.
Lord CAMPBELL—Read on.
The LORD CHANCELLOR —" For every such
opening."—(Tremendous Opposition cheers.) Every-
body knew that—(Renewed cheers and laughter)—but
the point turned upon the word " letters."--(Cheers.)
The Marquis of CLANRICARDE said that a simple
and unlearned man would imagine that a warrant was
necessary for every day's opening at least. It was im-
possible that the matter could stop here.— (Cheers.)
They had heard doctrines from his Noble and Learned
Friend who spoke from the table, and who was then
sitting on the woolsack (Lord Brougham) to which an
Englishman could never submit. It was utterly im-
possible that the Secretary of State could issue a warrant
for the general opening of letters except upon informa-
tion ; and if that were not good information he was
guilty of an act of the most desperate tyranny, and
which no Government could justify. The accusation
against the Tory Government, as they so chose to desig-
nate themselves, was, that in the case which had been
brought before their Lordships by petition they had
caused the letters of a gentleman to be opened with no
good reason for so doing, and therefore that accusation
had been unjustifiably brought against a great public
officer. If it was denied that these letters had been
opened by authority there was an end of the matter; but
if it was not denied, they must inquire whether the
Postmaster-General had opened these letters under
general warrant, and if so, what reason the Secretary ot
State had for issuing that warrant.
Lord BROUGHAM said he had never been more
grossly misrepresented in the _whole course of his par-
liamentary life. His Noble Friend had said that this
was the first time that he (Lord Brougham) had laid
down the doctrine that the Secretary of State had any
right to open letters without any information upon which
to proceed. Now this was a gross misapprehension, to
say the least of it. Every body must admit that the Se-
cretary of State must have general information. No Se-
cretary of State would be justified without information
which would lead him to suspect a party—he was not to
open a letter because he dreamt that somebody was sus-
pected. Ile must have information that the parties
were engaged in treasonable transactions—transactions
injurious to the tranquillity of the realm at home, and
he might add as to the realms abroad. He did not
mean to say that any foreign Minister should be allowed
to come and say, " I suspect A. 8., therefore open his
letters." But if a British Minister received information
that a certain individual was engaged in dangerous and
unlawful practices that that individual ought to be
watched—that the peace and tranquillity of the country
or the due administration of justice required that he
should be watched carefully; he (Lord Brougham) said
that the Secretary of State had a right, by the fair con-
struction of that Act, to issue his warrant, and that it
was a gross absurdity to say that the Act would compel
him to particularise each letter, inasmuch as in 999
cases out of every 1,000 it would be an impossibility.
Mr. Fox did not do so, and he was a man who was not
very much attached to general warrants, and who was
well informed in the law. He (Lord Brougham) had
read the signature of Mr. Fox to general warrants, call-
ing on the Postmaster-General to detain and open all
letters of all foreign Ministers without any specification
whatever, and also to open any letter of which he might
-thereafter give notice.
A NOBLE Loan—ln what year was that ?
Lord BROUGHAM—In the year 1782. Mr. Fox,
therefore, had exercised this power, and had issued a
general warrant for opening the letters of all foreign
Ministers, who were living under the especial protection
of the Crown in this country. And how could these
general warrants be avoided in such cases as these ?
Suppose a Postmaster receives two letters for the same
man, on the same day, which would he take? It would
be, of course, a matter of chance. But he (Lord
Brougham) was really ashamed to trouble their Lord-
ships, by longer arguing on this untenable proposition.
Suppose a warrant were issued to take up three men,
who could say that that was not a warrant to take
up each?
The LORD CHANCELLOR—That was an express
warrant.
Lord BROUGHAM—Yes, that was an express war-
rant, so it was with all warrants issued for the opening
of letters.
The Earl of RADNOR said that his Noble and
Learned Friend had not been discussing the merits of
the petition before the House, but had rather entered
into a technical agreenient on the general question, and
had not entered into the question as to whether any

letters had been opened, or whether this one gentleman
had been injured. That gentleman complained that his
letters had been continually opened for four consecutive
months. That was the question on which he (the Earl
of Radnor) grounded his motion for a Committee of
Inquiry. as to whether this gentleman had been griev-
ously itjured or not. His Noble and Learned Friend
said that if the Secretary of State for the Home Depart-
ment was informed by one foreign Minister abroad that
a certain foreigner living in this country was a danger- •
ems person, that person ought to be watched. He the
Earl of Radnor) said that a man ought only to be watc ed
when he was supposed to be plotting against the realm
of England. They were not to play the part of spies to
foreign Governments. What excited his surprise was
that although this proceeding with respect to this gen-
tleman had been going on for four months,_ and
been the subject of . debate twice in that House,
and three times in the House of Commons, yet all
the six Cabinet Ministers on the other side of the House
had not thought it their duty to inquire from the Secre-
tary of State of the Home Department—their colleague
—into the circumstances. That was what he must say
was most extraordinary. lie should endeavour—feeble
an advocate as he knew himself to be—to see justice
done in the case, and for this purpose he now begged
leave to give notice that on Thursday next he should
move for a Select Committee to inquire into the subject.
The Duke of WELLINGTON said, after the notice
thus given, when the motion of the Noble Lord came
on, it would of course be regularly debated. At that
moment he would only say if the Right Hon. Secretary
for the Home Department had issued a warrant with re-
spect to the letters of any person, he was authorised to
say it had been done in the form usual in the office; and
that the Right Hon. Gentleman had done no more than
every Secretary of State had done since the days of
Queen Anne.—(Ministerial cheers.)
Lord KINNAIIU) wished to ask the Noble Duke
(Wellington) if there was any secret board at the Post-
office, to whom such letters, when ordered to be opened,
w re assigned?
The Duke of WELLINGTON said the Noble Lord
could not. suppose he had any knowledge upon the sub-
ject; but if the Noble Lord would give notice of a ques-
tion on the subject, he (the Duke of Wellington) would
endeavour to get such information as would enable him
to answer it.
The subject was then dropped.
PUBLIC GRANARIES—CORN.
The Earl of WINCHILSEA said he wished to oc-
cupy their Lordships' time for a very few minutes, in
pointing out to them the expediency and sound policy of
establishing public granaries of corn in various districts
of the country, under the control of the Government. It
was well known to their Lordships that, at a certain
period of the year, when the great bulk of the corn
grown was out of the hands of the farmers, that the
market became under the control of a small number of
men, and that these men could, and did, effect a great
and serious rise in the article of wheat, by which they
not only gathered a great individual profit on the home-
grown wheat in their possession, but realised also a fur-
ther larger profit by the import of great quantities of
f 'reign corn. Now, in his (Lord Winchilsea's) opinion,
if any measure could be arranged by which a fair quan-
tity of corn could always be ready at a fair price
for the poor man, they would be conferring on the
country a great public benefit. He had often contem-
plated, with feelings of intense anxiety, what the state
of things would be in this country if there should be a
failure in the harvest. And what man could say there
would not be a bad harvest—nay, no harvest at all, for
the produce of the land was in the hands of the Lord?
And then, if they looked abroad, and found the same
state of things to exist there as in this coun- ,
try, the consequences might be such as it was, indeed,
awful to contemplate. The plan, then, he had to
suggest was that a number of national public granaries
say five or six—should be established, each to contain
from 300,000 to 500,000 quarters, and that they should
be situated in the most appropriate parts, such as Man-
chester, Hull, Liverpool, Bristol, or, in such parts as
might, by competetent judges, be deemed most advisable.
As to the agriculturists, he should say to them, so long
as you can supply the market at say 555. the quarter,
•we will not interfere with you ; but, the moment wheat
rose above that price, he proposed that Parliament
should have the power to open the granaries, and so
keep down the price to the sum agreed upon. For the
purpose of supplying these granaries, he would allow to
Parliament the power of buying corn abroad at the
lowest price they could get it at. When he looked at
the state of the manufacturing districts, and the vast
increase of population, he was of opinion there should be
an ample supply of food, at a fair and fixed rate, always
at their command. He had exactly the same solicitude
for the agricultural population, who equally merited the
consideration of their Lordships. The great body of
agriculturists never obtained the advantage of high
prices. The price of corn was generally at the highest
between the month of March and the commencement of
harvest, at which time the corn was generally in the
hands of speculators. Such a measure as he proposed
would be of great benefit to the agricultural labourers,
14 the rate of wages was regulated by the price of corn.
Ile said this, speakmg from experience as a practical agri-
culturist. This measure would at all events secure one
great benefit to the agricultural interest, namely, fixity
of price.—(Cheers.) It would also, in a great degree,
put an end to the agitation on the subject of the corn-
laws, which was at present producing such an injurious
effect to the country, and during the course of which
the gentry and aristocracy of England were held up to
the hatred of the people as sordid persons, wishing to
enrich themselves at the expense of the community.
lie had brought forward this question from no party
feelings, and there were many persons, for whose opinion
he entertained the highest respect, who approved of his
views on the subject, and he trusted that he should some
day have the happiness of seeing this plan tried.
Lord MONTEAGLE thought the speech of the
Noble Lord a most important one, and if his high cha-
racter were not sufficient. to acquit him of the charge of
being actuated by party spirit in bringing forward this
proposition, the calm and logical tone of his speech
would at once negative such a supposition. It was quite
true that. the corn trade was in few hands. Some of
those in whose hands it was were great capitalists some-
times, but there were others who were mere speculators
trading upon the capital of others. It was true also that
the increase of price benefited the speculator and not
the agriculturist; but, why was this? The trade was
open to any man—there was no license required to em-
bark in it. Why, therefore, was the trade in few hands?
Because by their artificial laws, they made the trade in
corn so gambling that ito man of prudence would em-
bark in it.—(Hear, hear.) By the law the speculator
had every inducement to withhold his wheat from the
market at the time prices were rising, when it was most
wanted—he had the double motive of profiting by a
rise in price and a fall in duty—and when the price
was raised so high that. the duty fell toa
a. shilling, then the market was at once glutteda
and such would ever be the case under the sliding scale.
—(Hear, hear.) He now came to the remedy which the
Noble Earl proposed for these evils, and there was cer-
tainly no inconsistency in his proposition, and much
might be said in favour of some remedy as long as they
continued the sliding scale. If they had adhered to an
unnatural system, they must apply an unnatural remedy
to the evils arising out of it.—(Bear, hear.) But al-
though the Noble Earl might be logically right, yet he
thought that practically he was wrong. The scheme was
no novelty, and he would quote the opinion of Mr.
Burke on the subject, from his tract. en scarcity, which
he had written at the desire of Mr. Pitt. Mr. Burke
said that he feared some such measure had been proposed
as the establishment of public granaries. If such a
scheme were adopted, he should not like to answer for
the safety of the granary, or of its agents, or ofthe town
in which it was situated, in the first storm of popular
phrenzy which fell on it. The construction of those
granaries would be attended by an expense beyond cal-
culation, the purchase of grain would be enormous, and
the loss by waste and corruption of the grain would be
incalculable. He thought the arguments of the Noble
Earl were some of the strongest arguments he had ever
heard against the sliding scale.
The Duke of RICHMOND, in opposing the views
taken by the Noble Earl with respect to the establish-
ment of public granaries, said that it was not the sliding
scale which caused fluctuations in price. It was the
weather which caused fluctuations. The best way to pre-
vent a scarcity in this country was to keep a majority,
such as that which had occurred in another place the
other night, against a repeal of the corn-laws.--(Laughter.)
The Earl of WINCHILSEA replied, and the subject
dropped.
SUGAR DUTIES BILL.
The Duke of WELLINGTON said the second read-
ing of this Bill would be moved on Monday, and he
would then move that the Committee be negatived, and
take the third reading on Tuesday, after the Law of
Libel Bill.
Sir G. CLHRK and others brought up the Dissenters'
Chapels Bill from the Commons.
CHARITABLE BEQUESTS (IRELAND) BILL.
The House then went into Committee on this Bill.
The clauses were agreed to, and the House resumed, and
the report ordered to be received on Monday.
PARISHES (SCOTLAND) BILL.
Lord WHARNCLIFFE moved the second reading of
this Bill.
Lord CAMPBELL thought there was no necessity
for multiplying parishes in Scotland. He objected to
this Bill on the ground of its being unjust to the tithe-
holder in Scotland. Under the 10th section of this Bill
any trustee or tutor to a union could give away for the
site of a church a manse or glebe, provided these lands
did not exceed four acres. „Could there be a more un-
just interference with the rights of property than this ?
The Earl of MINTO thought that when a division of
a parish took place the two incoming ministers should be
placed on the same footing with respect to each other.
The Earl of DUNMORE supported the Bill.
The Earl of HADDINGTON said that the principle
of which the Noble Lord (Campbell) complained was
not a new principle, but bad frequently been introduced
into former Bills. It was very essential to Scotland that
this Bill should pass this session, for he believed it would
go far to heal differences which bad long existed.
The Duke of RICHMOND thought the present Bill
was an infringement of the rights of property, but still
he thought a Bill of the kind was necessary.
After a few words from the Earl of DALHOUSIE, the
Bill was read a second time, and ordered to be commit-
ted on Friday next.
The County Rates Bill was read a second time.
Their Lordships then adjourned.

HOUSE OF COMMONS, June 28.
The SPEAKER took the Chair at Four o'clock.
Sir J. Y. BULLER presented a petition from Brix-
ham against the Dissenters' Chapels Bill.
Major MACNAMARA presented a petitie n in favour
of the Bill.
Mr. BROTHERTON also presented a ?petition in fa-
vour of the Bill from a place in Lancasb:
Mr. EVANS presented a petitioU from Beale, is
Derbyshire, against the,PilL
//iff