The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1835-06-26 00:00:00

LONDON POLICE REPORT.

MANSION-HOUSE, MONDAY.
THE NEW ACT RESPECTING VOLUNTARY OATHS.—Alder-
man Thomas Wood sat for the Lord Mayor.
Mr. Hibbard, a merchant of the city of London, applied to
' -the alderman to receive a voluntary oath to the correctness of
some documents to be submitted to the American authorities.
Alderman Thomas Wood said that he felt himself to be in a
very serious difficulty, inasmach as if he allowed the oath to be
taken before him be should subject himself to an indictment,
and if he refused to allow it to be sworn he should occasion
much commercial inconvenience. He was disposed to run the
hazard of personal injury to himself in order to prevent such
an embarrassment as the refusal might give rise to, and he be-
lieved that a section of the act would bear him out in the con-
struction which be should give to it relative to cases of the kind
submitted to him. The 12th section ran thus :—" And whereas
a practice wholly contrary to the policy of the law has been per-
mitted to prevail of administering and receiving oaths and
affidavits taken and made in matters not the subject of judicial
inquiry, nor in anywise pending, or at issue before the justice
of the peace or other person by whom such oaths or affidavits
have been administered or received; and whereas doubts have
arisen whether or not such proceedings are illegal; for the more
effectual suppression of such practice and removing such doubts,
be it enacted that from and after the Ist day of June next it
shall not be lawful for any justice of the peace or other person
to administer, or cause, or allow to be received, any oath, affi-
davit, or solemn affirmation, touching any matter or thing
whereof such justice, or other person, -bath not jurisdiction or
cognizance by some statute in force for the time being. Pro-
vided always that nothing herein contained shall be construed
or extend to any oath, affidavit, or solemn affirmation before
any justice, in any matter or thing touching the preservation of
the peace, or the prosecution, trial,- or punishment of offences."
Now the act was not known to the public until after the Ist of
June, and he, therefore, considered that the section just read
would not be in operation until June, 1836.
Mr. Hibbard said that the practice was a most inconvenient
one, and he should wish to see it done away with.: He, however,
thought that act did not contemplate the case before the
alderman. That case related to a judicial inquiry in the United
States.
Alderman T. Wood said that he, as a magistrate, had nothing
to do with the United States. If the section to which be had
alluded were in operation an indictment would lie against him,
but be thought lie would be justified in admitting the oath,
although in a subsequent section (the 15th) it was stated "that
this act shall commence and take effect from and after the 15th
day of June, in this present year, the year of our Lord 1835."
This section included all parts of the act, in his opinion, except
the 12th section.
Mr. Hibbard.—What is to be done in the case of powers of
attorney in the colonies ?
Mr. Holder said that powers Of attorney were made evidence
by act of parliament, and were not at all contemplated in the
new act.

Alderman T. Wood then allowed the affidavit to be made.
In several cases teleting to lost pawnbrokers' duplicates he
afterwards substituted the declarations of the applicants in the
place of their oaths.