The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1839-03-15 00:00:00

(From the Times) .
"Lawson, printer of this jourtial, who has just been
released from the consequences entailed upon him through a
flagitious law of criminal libel, was on the point, very possi-
bly, of suffering under the visitation of another law, capable,
with dexterous management, and a good Whig guidance, of
being improved into a national curse, not unworthy of rival-
ship with the law of libel itself, namely, the " law of privi-
lege," as understood and inflicted by some of those to whom
its administration has been of necessity intrusted. Mr.
Lawson, we -say, was on the point of undergoing this second
persecution, had not Lord Lyndhurst and other peers felt
the cruelty of his position, and rescued him from it by a
solemn and recorded Vote.

To the parliamentary i;port of the Lords' proceedings we
refer for an outline of the legal transaction, which, but for
the beneficent interference of the house, might have ended
in an oppression as grievous, and in a defeat of justice u
iniquitous and odious, as ever disgraced the Star Chamber
of old.

An action for libel on the part of a Mr. Polack had been
met by a plea of justification on that of Mr. Lawson. To
make good this plea, satisfactory evidence was required to
be given of the facts. The facts were contained in a body of
testimony printed-and published by order of the House of
Commons, being sold, as is notorious, by their printer, Mr.
Hansard. But the tender of these documents, thus officially
published, was objected to by the plaintiff in the cause, by
reason that they were not authenticated by officers of that
assembly before which the evidence had been delivered—
viz., a committee of the other House of Parliament, from
whose records they had, with full consent of their lordships,
been transferred to those of the House- of Commons.,
By Mr. Lawson a respectful petition was addressed to the
House of Lords, explaining the difficulty in which he was
placed through the operation of rules, which, partly com-
prehended under the law of evidence, partly under that oT
libel, had refused him the benefit of papers published by the
House of Comnions, and compelled him to throw himself on
their lordships' justice for an authentication of the originals
by their lordships' own officer. The committee of privilege
to•which the petition was referred rejected the prayer of it,
as being inconsistent with their privileges !
Lord Lyndhurst differed with the committee, and moved
the house that the prayer of the petition be complied with.
On his lordship's address to the house we sballnot pretend
to make further commentary, than that it was full, striking,
and impressive ; denying that any breach of privilege had been
committed by Mr. Lawson, and abundantly demonstrating
the enormous tyranny which would be exercised by withhold-
ing from the petitionery—qn. foe " " -4 'l4
vilege," the only means of self-defence within his reach—the
only channel through which the Court of Queen's Bench
could arrive at a knowledge of the truth, and, therefore,
through which the rights of the subject could be vindicated,
or the interests of justice protected.
A minute, and merely technical, reply was attempted in one
quarter to this manly and masterly appeal of Lord Lyndhurst',
which, however, does not at all astonish us, nor did it seem
to produce conviction, as we learn, on many of those who
heard it.

But it was followed by Lord Brougham in a spirited and
brilliant strain of lucid argument, mingled with contemptu-
ous and fearful sarcasm—proving, first, that if the law of pri-
vilege had been literally (though it was absurd to say it had
been in substance) violated by Mr. Lawson in his publication
of documents printed and sold by order of the House of Com-
mons, their lordships could no more, without enormous in-
consistency, visit such an act with punishment than they could
the daily publication of their own speeches, from the mere
sight of which in a newspaper he drew a ludicrous picture of
the Lord Chancellor averting his eyes in a paroxysm of dra-
matic horror.' Secondly, that it was no breach of their Lord-
ships' privilege whatsoever, seeing that the papers published
by Mr. Lawson had been documents first read at the table,
then printed by order of the House of Commons, and there-
fore adopted by that house as their own, and to be described
and treated as their property and proceedings—no longer
those of the House of Lords ; therefore, that if any breach
of privilege had had been committed, it was of the Commons'
privileges—not those of their lordships' house, and not call-
ing for any of that extraordinary tenterness or soreness which
had been betrayed by their committee. But thirdly, that it
was no breach of the privileges of the Commons, because the
act of unrestricted publication by whew was a sanction of this
circulation in print of the same documents by every subject
of the realrh.
Of Lord Holland—not the Lord Holland of better days—
it is needless to add a syllable to the benevolent maxim, " de
mortuis nil nisi bonum." " 'Tis true—'tis pitiful."
At all events, that the action brought against Mr. Lawson
may now be tried upon its merits has been decided by their
lordships,' who supported Lord Lyndhurst's, constitutional
motion by a division of 31 against 18.