The Sun.
London, England, 1842-06-11 00:00:00

HOUSE.

Mr. GLADSTONE said that he rose to offer a sug-
gestion to the House relative to the period for discussing
the Railways Bill in Committee. The measure was
one of great importance, but at the same time, in the
present press of busineSs, he apprehended that it could
iwt for some time to come be discussed by the House, on
any of the evenings usually appropriated to Government
business. Ile would propose, therefore, that the House
should meet at 12 o'clock to-morrow, for the purpose
of entertaining the subject.
Mr. hoped that the motion of the Right
Honourable Gentleman would not be agreed to.—
(Hear, hear.) If there was any urgency for
going through the public business, why had not the
House met last night? and who, he would ask,
were the parties who took the trouble to turn Mem-
bers out of the House ? For his part he had made ar-
rangements which would prevent his attendance to-
morrow ; and he trusted that they would not meet
upon the only idle day which Members had during the
k.
Mr. LABOUCHERE thought it would be extremely
iitleunvenient to take the discussion to-morrow, as, doubt-
less many Honourable Members, who were anxious to take
part in it, had made arrangements that would prevent
theta lacing present. thought the best-course would
be tip kt, it be understood that the House would sit on
Sat.r.rdav week for the purpose of discussing the measure.
1/21r. GLADSTONE acceded to the proposition, and
the subject dropped.
The moti•=in that the House at its rising do adjourn to
ALizida,y was then agreed to.
NOTTINGHAM WRIT.

Sir R. H. INGLIS--The Hon. Member glad that in thee
case of Weymouth there was no compromise; and why, hfi
asked, was not similar credit given to similar assertions of Hon.
Members ?—(Hear, hear.) In 21 taes; in which allegations
of bribery had been made, the petitions had been withdrawn,
and all the boroughs so circumstanced stood on the same foot-
ing as the boroughs mentioned in the Hon. Member's Wits
rassses Indemnity Bill. The point at issue was not whether
the Hon. and Learned Member had a right to take six bo-
roughs and exclude twenty-one, but whether he had laid be-
fore the House a sufficient ground for excluding a portion of his
fellow-subjects—who, by the Constitution, wete entitled to the
elective franchise—from the eXercise of their rights.—( Hear. )
The Hon. Member might contend that the case did not rest
upon his (Mr. Roebuck's) mere ipse dixit, because one of the
Members had accepted the Chiltern Hundreds, and the other
bad refused to answer his question. 1 his was another violent
presumption of corrupt and guilty bribery: If the Hon.
Member had lived in the days when persons were accused of
witchcraft he would, no doubt, have proceeded on the same princi.
ple on which theordeal of water was conducted: if the witches
swam, they were considered guilty, and ordered to be take',
out and burnt ; if they sank, they were considered innocent;
in either case, they perished,—( Hear, hear.) If the Honour-
able Member for Nottingham had said, " I admit the com-
promise," the reply would have been, then you are guilty ; if,
on the other handy as was the fact in the case of Sir John
Hobhouse, he had refused to answer, his refusal would have
been construed into an evidence of guilt.—( Hear, hear.) He
'could not but call the attention of the House to two or three
of the statements contained in the petition. The petitioners
stated that they had expected as a matter of course, and of
law, that that House would, as soon as a vacancy occurred,
have taken the necessary measures to fill up that vacancy, and
to restore to the electoral body of Nottingham that right, that
privilege, and that duty which the Constitution had vested in
them ; but the petitioners said they believed that the writ bac
been withheld by a resolution of one branch of the Legislature.
He hoped that he would at all times treat that House with the
respect which was due to its Members collectively and indi-
vidually ; but in the discharge the duty which had been de-
volved upon him by the petitioners, he could not but say that
a permanent suspension of the writ, by the act of one branch
of the Legislature, was, in his opinion, plainly and flagrantly
unconstitutional. The parties to this petition were nearly a,
numerous as those who voted at the last election; and these
parties declared that they were neither parties to the corn•
promise, nor to any of those corrupt practices which had been
alleged by the Honourable Member for Bath. They stated,
that in no other ca-e of a similar kind, had the writ been sus-
pended, except upon the report of a Select Committee, stating
that the sitting Members or their agents, had been guilty o.
bribery. The writ had been suspended, not by any order et
tee House, but by what his Right Honourable Friend, the
Member for Devonport, had called a tacit understanding.
His Right Honourable Friend the First Lord of the Treasury
had acknowledged fully, freely, and cheerfully, that the issue
of the writ, was a right which ought not to be withheld except
far a reasonable time, and for good cause shown. He would
ask the House whether, en that day, the 11th of June, he has
not a right to ask the House to direct the Speaker to take the
necessary steps for issuing the writ? What was a reason-
able time could not be decided by statute ; it must
depend upon the judgment and feeling of the Ho-
nourable Members who constituted that House.—( Hear.
He felt that in moving that the writ do issue in this instance
he was only asking for what any Hon. Member would fee
himself inclined to ask under similar circumstances. The Hon.
Gentleman coucluded, by moving that the Speaker do issue
new writ for the election of a burgess to serve in Parliament, is
the room of Sir G. G. de H. Lsrpent, who had accepted
the office of Steward of her Majesty's Chiltern Hundreds.
Mr. G. KNIGHT seconded the motion. It could not be
denied that the issuing of the writ was the right of the borough
except in a case of extreme necessity. It was no light matte
to withhold the writ, and nothing but a case of the last neces.
city could justify the doing so. Whatever sum of money hac
been expended in the last election, not a shilling of it had beer
spent in drinking or riot. The franchise of a borough was
once considered a very great matter, and that House was sloe
to entertain any motion of a destructive tendency ; but now i•
was quite another thing; now, if the Simon Pure of the House
thought proper to get up in the most irregular and disorderly
manner, and asked them to depart from their usual custom,
they were to disfranchise six or seven boroughs. He thought
if the House persisted in this course it would do anything but
increase the respect in which it was viewed by the community.
He seconded the motion for the issue of the writ.
Mr. ROEBUCK said, he was sure the House would excuse
him, if, after the manner in which his conduct had been allude,
to, he should address to them a few words upon the present
moti sn. He should first observe, that he could not account fns
the censures of which he had been: the object. He had not
asked for the suspension of the writ for Nottingham. The writ
bad been suspended by a mere motion of that House, and witi
the approbation of the Right Hon. Baronet at the head of the
Government.—(Hear, hear.) He had never spoken upon the
motion—he had never expressed an opinion upon the matter
and therefore he did not see why he was to be appealed to—why
he was to be assailed by the virtue of the Hon. Member Ito
Oxford, and by the supereminent and sublime virtue of the
Hon. Alember fer Nottinghamshire (Mr. G. Knight). The
Hon. Member for Nottinghamshire said, that he (Mr. Roe-
buck) had been invariably telling the House that he was the
only honest man in it. Now he would ask whether that were
a true statement? He put it plainly to the Hon. Member, that
he had no right to make such a charge. If he had not made
such a declaration, he would ask, what was the value of the
Hon. Member's statement ? •
Mr. GALLY KNIGHT—Over and over again you have
stated it.
Mr. ROEBUCK said he supposed that was something like
the announcement of the Hon. Member, that though he hat,
assailed the late Ministry, he was not opposed to their policy.
They all knew now what was the meaning of what the Hon.
Gentleman had said. What he had said in June he denied
January ; and what he meant in January was very different
from what he had said in June. He ( Mr. Roebuck) had said
nothing to the House of himself. He had charged certain
Hon. Members with proceedings which they had not the cou-
rage to deny ; some acknowledged the charge, and others would
not answer. He had stated that in Nottingham a compromise ha
been entered into. Charges of bribery had been made, and
for the purpose of avoiding those charges, it was agreed that
one of the Members for the borougb.should retire. That Hoe.
Gentleman had accepted the Chiltern Hundreds ; and the Right
Hon. Baronet declared that that was a circumstance pregnant
with suspicion. The Hon. Member for Oxford said that he
would not state that Sir G. de Larpent did retire, but he (Mr.
Roebuck) said that he had retired because he wished to avoid
then investigation into bribery. Was that denied? What saki
Right Hon. Baronet at the head of her Majesty's Government
Why, that the subject was pregnant with so much suspiciot
that the writ ought to be suspended. What had he (Mr. Roe-
buck) to do with the suspension of the writ? The Hon. Gen-
tleman opposite had conic down for the purpose of making ate
onslaught on him, and that Hon. Member should very soon
find the value of that onslaught. Why, he would ask, should
he be dragged into this question ? He had had nothing
to do with it ; and, in, fast, he had discussed the question
with himself yesterday, whether he should come down
to the House, and the result of that discussion wa-

that he had staid away because he had never uttered a word
about the suspension of the writ for Nottingham. It was the
work of the House, and sanctioned by her Majesty's Govern-
ment. Could there be any doubt that there had been in Not-
tingham a foul conspiracy to cheat the people of England
buying up a constituency 2.—( Hear, hear.) Well, then,
why did they charge him, when he wished to bring them to
light ?—( Hear, hear.) Was it to hide the poor corrupted
voter, or the rich corrupting candidate? What was it the
were so tender for? They said they had a regard for the
privileges of the people of England. So had he (Mr. Roe-
buck). He wished that the privileges of the people of Eng-
land should not be bought and sold like sheep in the shambles.
For that purpose he brought forward the consideration of a
measure, which may be a subject of laughter to Hon. Gentle-
men opposite, but which was one of grave consideration to
the people out of doors.—( Hear, hear.) It was for their sake
that he stood up and thought he was best doing his duty in not
allowing the interests of this great people to be bartered for
gold to the highest bidder, and that he who did so should be
fixed and crucified before the people. It was between them
and the subject of his inquiry that the Right Hon. Member f
Oxford came. He threw his shield over The past, and said
that he was not to inquire into the subject, for it was onl;
inquiry he asked fur, and not that the writ should be sus-
pended. He would not have risen at all, and would
not have said a word on the subject, if he had
not been so pointedly and personally alluded to by
both the Hon. Gentlemen, and in a manner little in

accordance with the usual courtesy of the House. He (Mr.
Roebuck) never nicknamed anybody, and he wanted to know
how the Hon. Gentleman opposite reconciled it with his sense
of decency, or with the ordinary feelings of one gentlemas
towards another, to nickname him before the House as its
•1 Simon Pure."—(Laughter.) It might be well to laugh ; but
if he (Mr. Roebuck) chose to exercise half that sort of
power exhibited by the Hon. Genteman, he might nickname
him in a manner that would make him very uncomfortable—
but he had regard for his feelings. Under all the circum-
stances, he had done nothing that should subject him to the
imputation of a desire to have the writ suspended. He ap-
pealed to the Right Hon. Gentleman at the head of the Go-
vernment, whether he (Mr. Roebuck) had in the least in-
fluenced his opinions, and whether his had not influenced the
House ? The Right Hon. Gentleman might see a differenco
in the cases of Ipswich and Nottingham, but his opinion had
no influence on his (Mr. Roebuck's) mind, though it had on
the House. In all these cases the Hon. Gentleman had
shown a regard for the privileges and forms of that House, and
be (Mr. Roebuck) bad a right to believe that he had followed
the dictates of his feelings. The Right Hon. Gentleman op-
posite, however, had guided the House in this matter ; the
responsibility, such as it was, rested upon his head; and if the
Hon. Member for Oxford had that respect which he trusted all.
men in that House bad for parties in the Government, he would
have pointed to the Secretary of the Home Department
and not to him (Mr. Roebuck), Re (Mr. Roebuck) did not
dictate to the House, he had no power to do so ; but the Right
Hon. Gentleman, as he ought to do—for his power ought to be
predominant in that House, on that side he meant—( A laugh )
told them how to vote, and r ow they were very much ashamed
of what they had done.—( Hear, hear.) -
After a few words from Mr. G. KNIGHT in explanation,
Sir R. PBEL said, if he had used any influence on this oc-
casion, at the same time, he must say that it was an influence
which reason alone entitled him to exercise. He always said
from the first, that this question was one of a judicial nature,
and he had not attempted to exercise any other influence. He
did not think that it would be at all satisfactory to the country
to state that when there were allegations of bribery, that the
result of the proceeding before an Election Committee should,
in all cases, necessarily be conclusive.—( Hear, hear.) When
the House appointed the Select Committee to determine per-
sonal and individual rights, he did not think that they meant to
interfere with the general Constitution of the country—( Hear,
hear)—and supposing, in consequence of their having passed
a law last session permitting an inquiry into bribery without
proof of agency, that the result was that the investigations were
not conducted as they sited to be, but that compromises were
intend into, he did not think that it would be satisfactory to
come to the conclusion that, in no case the writs should issue.
As he said before, this case being of a judicial nature, ought,
in his opinion, to rent on its own abstract and individual merits.
He entertained this opinion in the case. He knew the impu-
tations he would be subject to by this from the Hon. and
Learned Alember,—that altogether they ought to act upon
principle; they ought not to apply one common rule to all
cases. The circumstances were different in the evidence of
different cases. They must look to those circumstances—
( Hear, hear)—and look to the different cases, and then come
to a conclusion apparently inconsistent; but he did not hesi-
tate to say, that fur every question or charge of a criminal na-
ture it was impossible to apply one universal rule with refer-
ence to the evidence bearing on the case. He took the case
of Nottingham. What was the case of Nottingham at the time
wht n the motion was made for the issue of the writ ? At the
time that proposal was made, the House determined to appoint
a Committee of Inquiry. Under these circumstances, it was
stated by a Member, that the investigation before the Election
compromise.
at Nottingham,
alleged t Committeehat i
ens
f xt Nottinghamie brbribery
e r
yhad a ledhad
taken to a
placempromise. It was
and that for the purpose of avoiding an inquiry into that bri-
ev
bery a compromise had been made. The Committee repotted
that the two Hon. Gentlemen had been rightly returned as
Members for Nottingham. The House then found this strong
fact, that one of those Members who had a right to his seat,
as determined by the Election Committee, the next day ten-
dered his resignatiop. This might be accounted for. It was
probable that certain considerations, such as ill health, might.
have led to the Hon. Gentleman vacating his seat. But his
(Sir R. Peet's) Hon. Friend did not allege that. That he did
not exactly understand. With reference to ill health, if that

The Order of the Day for the third reading of the Witnes-
ses Indemnity Bill having been read,
Mr. ROEBUCK begged leave to state the grounds on
which the present Bill seemed to be necessary. The crime,
if to he might call it, was not one of a solitary nature. The
crime of bribery could not be committed without two? and
what were the consequences of revealing the transaction in the
present state of the morality of the world? The crime was not
one marked out and branded by society, but one which was
tolerated, and therefore it was necessary to have a law to in-
demnify the parties giving evidence. It was not an inquiry to
inflict punishment, but one on which to found legislative
enactments. It was said this was stnosel proceeding, but he
wished to know where was the danger? He hoped the House
would grant him this power by granting the Committee, for be
feared, if they denied it, that the inquiry would be imperfect.
On the question that the Bill be read a third time,
The ATTORNEY-GENERAL said, from the extent to
which the present Bill went, he thought it was fraught with
considerable danger. He would draw the attention of the
House to the second clause, which empowered the Committee,
at its discretion, to report to the Home, certifying that any
witness who shall be examined, shall be held harmless from all
proceedings, and shall be indemnified from all actions, penalties,
and prosecutions, for matters relating to bribery or intimida-
iMn in the borough, that might be the subject of the inquiry,
that might have taken place before the passing of the Bill
No Act of Indemnity had hitherto gone beyond indemnifying
the witness himself for the matters concerning which he
might be examined. This proposition gave an individual in-
demnity for every act of bribery, intimidation, and corruption
of which he might have been guilty prior to the passing of the
Act. He of jected to that portion of the Bill, Ist, because it
carried the indemnity to the witnesses Deyond what was ne-
cessary ; and secondly, because it indemnified all persons
whose names might be mentioned in the report; and who
without becoming witnesses at all were to be indemnified for
every transaction in which they might ever have been engaged.
He considered these Bills of Indemnity as more calculated to
make witnesses than to elicit truth—((;heers)—but he would
not go the length of opposing the Bill, but only those parts of
it which went beyond established precedents.—( Hear. hear.)
Few Bills of this nature had been actually passed. The first was
in 1805, in Lord Melville's case; the next was in IMI9, in the
Barnstaple case ; then came the Grampound case in 1825 ; and
the Penryn case in 1829 or 1830. Lastly came the Stafford ca,e
He considered his Hon. and Learned Friend, the Member for
Bath, was going beyond established precedent, and was intro-
ducing a somewhat perilous experiment. The Hon. and
Learned Gentleman should not go beyond precedent. The law
would compel no man to criminate himself. His Hon.
and Learned Friend wished to remove that impediment, and
so far he (the Attorney-General) did not object to the Bill;
but his Hon. and Learned Friend went further; he said
evidence might be withheld, from a desire not to criminate a
friend, and therefore he would indemnify the man's friend as
well as himself. Now, to that he (the Attorney-General) ob-
jected. The law justified a man in protecting himself, not in
protecting his friend: therefore he would say, let the law take
its course. Remove the impediment as respected the man him-
self, but leave him to the law as respected his friend. It ceased
to be the removal of an impediment, but it was in the nature
of a bribe. He, therefere, proposed to strike out clause No.
2, which was the pniat of difference between himself and his
Hon. and Learned Friend. He should theref ire move, when
the Bill was read a third time, that this clause should be struck
out. He hoped that, on these grounds, the Hon. Gentleman
would allow that clause to be struck out.
Sir R. INGLIS said the objection he had against *Abe Bill
was an illustration of the hasty legislation of the Honourable
Member for Bath on the subject. 'I he Bill which he got
leave to bring in, was not the Bill which he now brought in.
The Bill of the Honourable Gentleman would nor only in-
demnify witnesses, but would indemnify parties.—( Hrar. hear.)
He would not follow the Attorney-General in his argument,
but he would say, that if the present Bill passed. the object
which the House had in view would be dearly purchased.
Mr. HARDY had great oojections to the Bid. It was
monstrous to give indemnity not only to the witness, but to the
party respecting whom he might give evidence. How, also,
were the witnesses to be compelled to give evidence? The
Bill would prove abortive for the purposes fur which it was
framed, and he should therefore oppose it.
Mr. O'CONNELL :could not see that any answer could
be given to the objections raised fly the Attorney-General
against the second clause. He (Mr. O'Connell) thought that
clause ought to be removed from the Bill.
Mr. W YNN concurred in the opinion that witnesses alone
ought to be indemnified.
Mr. ROEBUCK said that the Bill had been drawn up by
two of the highest legal authorities, who had been Lord Chan-
cellors of England, and he thought that he was therefore pretty
well sanctioned in presenting the Bill to the House of Com-
mons. If the House would allow him, he would withdraw the
clause, since the general sense of the House was against it.
Mr. LAW thought that professional men ought to be pro-
tected from giving evidence of privileged communications.
Mr. C. BULLER said that unless they acceded to the pro-
visions of this Bill they would be doing an injustice to the
witnesses who were now being examined before the Committee
lately appointed on the motion of the Hon. and Learned Mem-
ber for Bath. They ought to throw the mantle of indemnity
over those witnesses, inasmuch as they were obliged to make
disclosures which, under ordinary circumstances, they would
not have to do.
Mr. DARBY saidlithat if the Bill of the Noble Lord, the
Member for London (Lard J. Russell) had been suffered to
pass, it would have effected, in a general way, what was now
sought to be obtained in an invidious manner.
After a few words from Mr. WATSON, the Bill was read a
third time.
On the question being put that the Bill do pass,
Mr. C. BULLER rose to propose an amendment, which he
did not expect would meet with the slightest opposition ; it was
to insert " Bridport " in the preamble of the Bid.
Mr. LAW was of opinion that the Bill was quite extended
enough in its operations.
The amendment was agreed to without a division, and the
Bill then passed.