The Sun. — 1842-06-15 (London, England)

COPYRIGHT BILL.  The LORD CHANCELLOR said he had consulted with his Noble and Learned. Friend, and they had arrreed to certain amendments, which would be inserted in the Bill.  The Bill then went through Committee, and was or• dered to be read a third time on Thursday,  WITNESSES INDEMNITY On the Order of the Dur<rr the second reading of the Witnesses Indemnity Bill,  Lord BROUGHAM rose to bring forward his motion that the Orders of the Day be suspended, to facilitate the progress of the Bill. Notwithstanding the House of. Commons had rejected the Bill which he had brought in, and which their Lordships had sent down to the other House, for ComMittees of both Houses to inquire into practices of a corrupt nature at elections for Members of the other House, still he was convinced that a Committee of Members of the Commons alone could never do justice to such cases. He denied that their Lordships had any desire to interfere with the rights and privileges of the other House ; but what was contemplated now in both Houses wus to legislate prospectively on a matter of criminal justice. That House (the Lords) was a co-ordinate branch of the Legislature, and was the highest Court of Criminal Justice ; and was it not a place in which legislation upon criminal justice should commence ? To • deny this, and say that the House should be excluded from legislating for crime because that crime was connected with elections to the other House, was so extravagant that he would not stop to combat it. The iirikery of an officer of justice • was a crime on which thesit'ause had already legislated, and the bribery of a man at an election for a Member of Parliament was as much under the cognizance of their Lordships as any other act of bribery unconnected with elections. Suppose it was proposed to amend the law with respect to riot, larceny, assault and battery, conspiracy. or even murder, Were they to be told that they Might legislate respecting these as committed in ail other places but at elections, and that they should expressly enact in any Bill commenced by them that the Bill was not to extend to any riot, larceny, assault and battery, conspiracy or murder, connected with an electioß for a Member of the House of Commons? He held it perfectly clear that it was competent to the House to take up this subject as much as that of any other crime. He thought that after what passed recently as to the extent of crime which was committed all over the country,. in England, Ireland, and Scotland, and that these enormities were of such a nature as to prevent the possibility of a free choice of the people, mid to render elections a mockery—when all morality was set at defiance, and immorality scattered abroad, cast over the land—and when there was no punishment for the past, and rus prevention for the future, in the present state of the law, there was nothing left but to legislate upon the subject, and as that was not done elsewhere he had moved their Lordships for a Committee to inquire with a view to legislation. He had presented for this reason as early as be possibly could, a Bill for facilitating the inquiry, if the house of Commons chose to adopt a like course. That Bill .met :with the almost universal approbation of their Lordships, and was despatched to the abet_ House about & month