The Sun.
London, England, 1827-06-23 00:00:00

cleat, 7 gave his casting cote against the questio.
The words " England and; Wales," therefor
were excluded from the clause: The amend=
thent was then put, "'That the Words Greif
Britain and Ireland', be inSerted."
. Content, 37 I Not , content, 43.
IVlajority.against the insertion of the words, 6.
—So that the effect of- these two divisions is 10
exclude every part of the United Kingdom from
the clause and. thus render the Bill utterly nu-
gatory ; and the old law of averages will, we pre-
sume, still obtain.—lbid.

It is almost incredible; yet the fact is so, thitt
a Morning Paper and an Evening Paper afe
affecting to decry Lord Lansdown aslnimical to
a free press, because, say they, he wanted to have
up some supposed printer of the debate in the
House of Commons, in . which Mr. Canning
was supposed to have + reflected on some sup-
posed proceedings -in the Honse of Lords.
Why, in that debate (the debate of last Wed-
nesday), his Lordship expressly says twice, that
" he did not recommend that course of proceed-
ing which he had mentioned,"—namely, that of
calling up printers to the bar ; and when he
mentioned the course it was only the way of rea-
soning ex absurdo, or ad absurdum, in this
Manner—" If you do want.to know what has beenil
said -in the other House, the only way is to call up
some printer or othei of the debates."-4A laugh.)
—And yet upon this 'foundation is, an attack, as we
before said, levelled at his. Lordship as wishing to
persecute the press. We would advise_ the Jour-
nalists by whom these abSurd.imputations are cast,
to stick to truth: 'they .have no• idea what advan-
tage the character of doing so will give them, when
they come to light upon any real grievance, or re-
prehend any positive offence.—/bid.
The fiction by which both Houses of Parlia-
ment are supposed to know nothing of the re-
ports of their proceedings, involves those Houses
very often in awkward practical contradictions of
their own theory. The publication of the re-
ports being considered a breach of privilege, the
fiction that Parliament has no knowledge of such
publications, is adopted to save the Legislature
from the alternative of either admitting the right
of the Press to give such reports to the world,.
or else. allowing daily breaches of privilege to go
unpunished. Now-it does appear very absurd;
that' Members of Parliament should frequently,
as they do, allude tb what is said in those very
reports,lof the existence of which they are sup-
posed to have no knowledge. What a striking
instance of this sort of inconsistency occurred
in the House of Lords the other night ! The
intemperate, and perhaps unconstitutional lan-
guage which Mr. Canning had indulged in with
reference, to that branch of the Legislature, ex-
cited a warm and even angry discussion among
their Lordships. But how did they become
acquainted with the fact that Mr. Canning had
used any such language ? They could not, by
the Constitution,- know what passed in the House
of Commons,, except by the bringing up of Bills
--by message, or by conference between the, two
Houses. Their Lordships were, therefore,
under the necessity of admitting that their source
of information was the public prints, which con-
tained reports of what had been spoken in
another place--:-and thus that great vehicle of
opinion, the Press, was indirectly recognised, as
conveying intelligence of what passed in one
House to the Members of the other. It is true,
when the Earl ot-Winchelsea repelled the insi-
`;ons of Mr. Canning about " factious mo-
tile indignant terms which he did,
' Lansdowne, endeavouring:to

uat.

Nes,

the AlarvisTr—i-,„.,„,-,
- /
shelter his new co eag,...-•
the storm which his indisc,,'et sally Of illownhead, sug-
temper had brought upon his very
gested a mode of proceeding which savoin-f
much of the high doctrine of privilege—perhaps td
much so to come with good grace from a ci-derant
Reformer, and one who has talked much of the
li-
berty of the Press—that mode was to have the prin-
ter of the obnoxious words imputed to Mr. Canning
brought to the bar of the House, and called upon to
state the grounds on which he had proceeded. Now
the Marquis of Lansdowne very well knows, that
however accurate the report might be, an admission
by the printer at.the bar of the House, that he had
sent it forth to the world through the Press, would
involve him in the consequences of a breach-of pri-
vilege, as the regulations of Parliament now stand.—
It would be in vain for him to say that the printed
words were a faithful; transcript of what fell from
Mr. Canning. This would be considered no justi-
fication whatever,- and as all the printers of newspa-
pers in London were implicated in the same offence,
the House must either do what would amount to . a
practical renunciation of their doctrine of privilege
in this respect, or come into very unpleasant colliiion
with the Press. It is true, the Marquis of Lans-
downe added that he " was far from recommending
a hasty exercise of that discretion with which the
House was vested." Why, then, did he suggest the
mode at all ? What object could there be in such a
proposition, unless to save Mr. Canning from the
consequences of his own intemperance, and to make
the innocent suffer for the guilty ? Why should
not the House of Lords rather, if they wished to
follow up the business, demand a conference with
the other House, and settle their dispute in that
way ?—Morning Herald,
Again the House of Lords have succeeded in
thwarting the Government. Our readers will
sea from . our Parliamentary Report, that the
Corn Averages Bill has been by vote, which we
will not call factious, reduced to a state which
(should the evil pot he remedied in a future
stage) would render it inoperative. The object
of the Peers, who have disfigured this Bill, is
stated by themselves to be, to determine the
averages, not merely from the prices in the ports
England and. Wales, but front the prices in,
the n; land of England, and also From the
ports and :_nland towns of Scotland and Ireland.
The
.corn of Scotland, :ind particularly Ireland,
is of an inferior qiixaliti, ccrigquently lower in j
price than that of England. Again, the corn in'
the inland parts of the country, whi
bch, with re-
and other (irreat towns
. •
gard to the metropolis,
and places of exportation, )s generally lower thim
it is on the coast, by the roe of conveyance.
The effect of including these additional places
(supposing there were machinery in ex. isteace
for carrying the law into execution ln them,
which there is not) would be to extend consider-
ably the protection to the home grower, and, as
the Noble Lords no doubt think,
_to force up
prices in the how-market. By allowing da-
maged corn,
as well as corn of inferior quality,
to enter into the averages,
.they AVIPI4 gain ad-
ditional protection. The more fair and may.iy
course would have been at once to say the price
fixed by Lord Liverpool in the Bill which many
of us sanctioned, as. that At which the low
duty should commence, was not sufficiently high:
JTo show the injustice of the principle on which
this alteration of the plan of taking the averages
Is. proposed, we shall assume that the Corn im-
k.,9,ively for the want of the people
P'on°rttecloaSt. Upon wliAtzround then shall the.peo-,
pie on the coast, who are airway paying a high price
from a dOcient supply, be burilened with the
additional tax caused by the difference of price
between the coast and the inland places, where
ino supply is required ; or, by their including in
the averages, countries in which the price is low