Petitions presented. By the Earl of KINNOUL, from the Freeholders and others of the County of Perth, against the Bill for the Reform of Parliament, and thanking the House of Peers for their firmness and decision in resisting the former Bill. HOUSE OF COMMONS, MINUTES.] Bills. Read a second time; Contempts in Returns ordered. On the Motion of Mr. Alderman Wood, of all raw, thrown, and manufactured Silks Imported and Exported, and brought into Consumption, from 5th January, 1831, to 5th January, 1832, distinguishing the different descriptions of Silk, and the Countries whence Imported, with the amount of Duty; of the amount of Drawback paid on the Exportation of British Silk manufactured goods for the year ending 5th January, 1832; distinguishing Stuffs and Ribbons of Silk only, and Stuffs and Ribbons of Silk mixed with other materials; of all Foreign manufactured Silks, Imported without Payment of Duty, for Manufacture, or Printing, &c., on condition of being afterwards Exported, in the year ending 5th January, 1852, and distinguishing the different descriptions of Silk-On the Motion of Lord KILLEEN, of all Superannuations granted to Constables in Ireland, stating their periods of Service, and the Cause of their Superannuation, and of all Stipendiary Magistrates, the dates and their appointments, Services, and Emoluments:- On the Motion of Mr. HARVEY, for the Names and Residences of all Persons employed in the Receipt and Collection of the Revenues arising from all Property under the management of the Commissioners of Woods and Forests, with the Amounts collected, and the full Emoluments such Persons receive, and an Annual Account for the last seven years, of all Charges made by Persons employed as Auctioneers in the Sale of Crown Property; of the amount of ad valorem Duties paid on the Sale or Mortgage of Real Estates dur ing the years 1829, 1850, and 1831:-On the Motion of Mr. HUME, an account of the Gross Amount collected in each of the last five years from Seamen's Wages in the Royal Navy for the use of Greenwich Hospital; and also the Amount collected from the Seamen in the Merchant Service for the same purpose:-On the Motion of Mr. Alderman VENABLES, a Statement of the Aggregate Amount of Money ordered by the Commissioners of Bankrupts to be divided as Dividends among Creditors for two Months, anterior to the 11th of January, 1832; and the like Account for two Months anterior to the 11th of January, 1851-On the Motion of Mr. JEPHSON, the Charter of the University of Dublin; of the number of Students admitted to Scholarships during each of the last five years, and of their present Number; of the number of Fellows entitled to Vote at an Election of a Member for the University of the number of Students who have taken the degree of Bachelors of Arts, during each of the last five years; of the number of Bachelors of Arts who have attended the Divinity Lectures during each of the above years, and the Number who, during the same period, have taken the degree of Master of Arts; of the number of Masters of Arts now on the Books; of the Average Amount of Annual Fees payable by a Non-resident Master of Arts for keeping the Name on the College Books, and whether any and what change has been made in the Amount of Charge during the above period:-On the Motion of Mr. MAURICE O'CONNELL, of the number of Days the Court of Exchequer Chamber in Ireland has sat for the despatch of Business, and the Names and number of Cases heard in each of the last two years:--On the Motion of Mr. ATT wood, of the amount of Tonnage Duties, and the rate per Ton, paid at Calais, on each voyage by the Post Office Steam Packets from Dover; stating by whom the said Tonnage Duties are paid; of the amount of Tonnage Duties, and the rate per Ton, paid at Dover on each voyage by the Post Office Steam Packets belonging to the French Government; of British and Foreign Tonnage, which have entered the several Ports of Great Britain, distinguishing the several Countries, for the last six years, ending 5th January, 1832:-On the Motion of Sir ROBERT INGLIS, the amount of Monies which would have been applicable to his Majesty's Civil Government in England, if the Hereditary and the Temporary Revenues of the Crown enjoyed by his Majesty King George 2nd, had been enjoyed by his Majesty King George 3rd, from 25th October, 1760, to 29th January, 1820; and by his Majesty King George 4th, from 29th January, 1820, to 26th June, 1830; distinguishing each year; and distinguishing also the Hereditary and the Temporary Revenue of the Crown respectively; shewing also, first, the amount of the Annuity received by their late Majesties in lieu of those Revenues; secondly, the amount of Monies granted by Parliament for the discharge of the Civil List Debt, during the said period; and, thirdly, the difference to the Public on the Balance of the said Account, so far as the same can be ascertained. Petition presented. By Sir HEDWORTH WILLIAMSON, from Durham, against the General Registry Bill:-By Lord KILLEEN, from the united Parishes of Skreen and Rathfigh, for an increased number of Representatives for Ire land-By Mr. SANDFORD, from the Glove Manufacturers of Worcester, against the Importation of French Gloves, and from the Magistrates, Clergy, and Inhabitants of the same Town supporting the above Petition, and confirming its statements:-By Mr. HARVEY, from Henry Wilton of Sawbrook Court, London, against the Bankrupt Act Amendment Bill; and from John Batty Tuke, Esq., pray. ing that the Crown Lands may not be let except by Public tender:-By Mr. CHARLES CALVERT, from the Students of Medicine, Webb Street, Southwark, for the removal of impediments to the Study of Anatomy:-By Mr. Alderman VENABLES, from the Glovers of Woodstock, complaining of the State of the Trade, and praying for the prohibition of French Gloves:-By Colonel Davies, from the Glovers of Great Torrington, with the same prayer :By Colonel PAGET, from the Inhabitants of Berwick to be entitled to Vote for the County of Northumberland. PROPERTY OF INTESTATES.] Mr. Harvey moved, that a return of the property received by the Crown, belonging to the Intestates, with an account of how it was appropriated, should be laid before the House, and of the number of acres of land in England now inclosed, and to what extent the same might be capable of improvement. This Motion he had before made, but the returns to it had not yet been presented. Sir Charles Wetherell objected to the production of this account, as involving a great many difficulties; the Motion was couched in much too general terms-the precise nature of the documents required ought to be specified. Mr. Spring Rice wished to explain why the return relative to intestates had not been made. He bad inquired into the matter, and found that to make up such an account as the hon. Member had moved for, and the House had ordered, would compel the Solicitor of the Treasury to suspend all other business in his office for six months. He wished to forewarn the House of the great expense also which the return would cause. He had no objection whatever to produce it; but he should wish that the House should first of all be in possession of an estimate | of the probable expense of making out the return. If it chose to order the return after such an estimate was laid before it, of course it was in the power of the House to do so; but he wished that the House should, in the first instance, know the expense. Mr. Spring Rice could not take upon himself to say, that during the last thirty years-the period embraced by the motion-such accounts as those sought for had been annually rendered to the Treasury; but this he knew, from the manner in which the department of the Solicitor to the Treasury was conducted, that the accounts of that office were as regularly rendered as they possibly could be to the Treasury. Mr. Hume again suggested, that, under such circumstances, an abstract of those accounts might, without much difficulty be procured. Sir Charles Wetherell said, that if the question went to a vote, he should support the hon. Gentleman, the Secretary to the Treasury. Mr. Harvey was ready to accede to the proposition of the hon. Gentleman, and to limit his Motion to the last seven years. Mr. Harvey would undertake to say, that the whole expense would not be 50l. The right hon. Gentleman had shown him a return for one year, and he was sure that similar returns for every year might be prepared for 40s. each. The amount of some estates which went in this way into the hands of the Crown was immense and he had been told only a few days ago of one estate of upwards of 100,000l. which thus went into the possession of the Crown. This was a source of public revenue, which was quite unexplored, and an account of which ought to be before the House. If there was a difficulty of making out the returns, from their magnitude, that was an additional reason why the House of Commons should inquire into the matter. The Solicitor of the Treasury was very well paid-he attended to a great variety of business, and ought to have time to furnish such an account. If the business of his office were con-bers that on Thursday last, previous to ducted properly, it would not, he was sure, take one clerk three days to make out the return. Mr. Hume said, it was the duty of the Solicitor of the Treasury to lay an annual account before the Treasury, and there could therefore be no difficulty in making the return, unless indeed the Solicitors had rendered no account to the Treasury, in which case the return ought to be immediately and imperatively called for. He would recommend an abstract, and he was sure that it might be prepared for a few shillings. Mr. Spring Rice had not refused the production of the paper. His observation was, that before the Motion was agreed to, it would be proper that they should be acquainted with the probable expense to which it would lead. If the hon. Gentleman would move for the accounts for the last seven years, which would probably just as well answer his purpose, they would be prepared much more easily and at considerably less expense. Mr. Hume would wish to know whether the accounts of the Solicitor to the Treasury were not annually rendered to the Treasury? Motion withdrawn, and notice of a Motion on the subject given for the next day. BREACH OF PRIVILEGE.] Mr. Perceval said, that he rose for the purpose of calling the attention of the House to a breach of one of its most important privileges. It would be in the recollection of hon. Mem his moving for an address to his Majesty to appoint a day of general fast, he took occasion to enforce the standing order of that House for the exclusion of strangers. On the succeeding morning, there appeared in several of the newspapers, a report of the proceedings that had taken place in that House during such exclusion of strangers from the gallery. Under these circumstances, he felt it is duty to bring such a matter under the notice of the House. He did so, because he thought it incumbent on the House to assert and maintain one of its mos important privileges-that of the exclusion of strangers from its debates whenever there should appear sufficient reason to it for doing so-a privilege which would be utterly without value if it were to be in the power of any hon. Member to report their proceedings while that standing order was enforced. He did so, because this standing order was one of those high and invaluable privileges which they had received from their predecessors, and which they were in duty bound to preserve and hand down unimpaired and inviolate for the use and service ot their successors. If, by their negligence and carelessness in the non-enforcement | instance had been given of the speech of their undisturbed rights, they were to which he had had the honour of then adallow this privilege to be thus openly, dressing to the House, there was so much grossly and directly invaded, and there- of what he had said, that it evidently must by suffered to fall into utter and en- have been furnished by an individual who tire disuse, though they themselves heard that speech, and who was present at might not reap the inconvenience that the debate; yet, at the same time, he had would thence arise, their successors, no no hesitation in saying that no plain indoubt would, and the true blame must intelligent man could possibly read that that case attach to those upon whose shoulders at present rested the duty of preserving that privilege entire and unimpaired. They had no right to say, that they would treat with disregard the breach of that privilege, because, in a given instance, they might not clearly see the use of enforcing it. He trusted to be able, in a few words, to demonstrate to the House the utility of enforcing its standing order in this particular instance; and, with that view, begged to call the attention of hon. Members to the circumstances under which this breach of privilege had occurred. It was the undoubted privilege of that House to exclude strangers during its proceedings and under such circumstances, the publication of its debates was a direct and wilful contravention of that privilege, flung in the face of the House, who had evidently excluded strangers for the purpose of keeping its debates secret from the public. Probably that statement, and his having called the attention of hon. Members to the circumstance that they, as the guardians of the rights and privileges of the House, were in duty bound to maintain them, constituted in themselves sufficient grounds for the Motion which he was about to submit to the House. He begged leave, however, to observe, that the individual who should choose, when the standing order was enforced against the admission of strangers, to publish the debates of that House, with out either the intervention of those usual channels of conveyance whereby a certain degree of accuracy was ensured in the transmission of their debates to the public, or without any other means of guarding against their errors, must feel that in thus contravening the orders of that House, he was taking a course that would lead to much misrepresentation, and he must feel, that being debarred from those channels of information upon which a dependence could be placed, he ought to be held responsible for those blunders and inaccuracies which might go forth to the public in such a publication. In the report which in this report without seeing that the design with which it had been drawn up was to throw the speech which he had made into complete and utter ridicule. He charged that individual, whoever he was, that made the report, with direct and deliberate falsehood. The direct and deliberate falsehoods that were to be found in that report he should state to the House; and he further charged that report with the general intention of throwing ridicule on the whole of his speech. He should now lay before the House the gross misrepresentations which that report exhibited of the sentiments that had fallen from him (Mr. Perceval) on the occasion in question. In the commencement of that report, he was made to assign as his reason for enforcing the standing order against the presence of strangers during the debate, "that he would not allow the public to know the blasphemies that might be spoken in answer to this speech-that the blasphemers, if any in this House, might not be able to give publicity to their blasphemies." Now, there was just so much of what he did really say in that part of the report, as to show that it was given by a person who was present on the occasion, but it contained in it, at the same time, nothing of the true animus and spirit of the observations that he then made use of. What he really did say with regard to the point, at the time, was, that it would ill become him, after the attention, both patient and respectful, with which he had been listened to on a previous occasion, when bringing forward a similar motion, to impute to any hon. Member in that House an intention to treat such a subject in a blasphemous or irreligious manner; but he added, that there were individuals out of that House who, as on the previous occasion, would try to make his speech the subject of blasphemous animadversion, and some of his near friends and relatives had objected to his bringing forward the Motion for that reason. He had said, that he had replied to them, "that without at all yielding to the force of such an objection, he had at once at hand the means of obviating it that he had the power, as a Member of that House, of excluding strangers from the gallery during the debate-of thus taking away the possibility of any paper publishing it, and, in that way, of preventing that blasphemy which they dreaded on the subject." That was what he really had said, whereas this report made him talk of the blasphemy that might be spoken by the hon. Members in that House in reply to this speech. He should state to the House another instance of the gross misrepresentation which characterized this report, in proof of the expediency of this Motion, and also as tending to show, that when strangers were excluded, if any individual should have the power of attempting to give in full what then passed, they would be exposed to the greatest possible misrepresentation. In another part of this report he was represented as having said, "that he was sincere, and that he was arguing these truths in his usual way, when he is under an influence." No individual who read that phrase could for a moment doubt that the intention of the person who published what he said in such a shape, was to throw ridicule on his speech. What he said on that occasion simply was, "that upon any subject, when he entertained strong feelings, he might be afraid that his speech would partake of the warmth of feeling by which he was influenced, but that he was not in the present instance carried away by warmth or passion-that he but rarely trespassed on the House, and that he had been only induced to do so on this occasion by a strong sense of duty." There was another passage from this report of his speech which, he would undertake to say, no man who heard that speech, or who at all knew him (Mr. Perceval), could have put down and deliberately published, without knowing well that it was a falsehood. He was made to say, "Let the kings and priests be expelled, and all such mummery be averted, unless you will listen to my voice for a fast and humiliation." He would assert, that a grosser perversion could not possibly have been committed by an intelligent man of the sentiments that fell from another, than that passage exhibited, and that it was altogether an entire falsification of what had been said by him (Mr. Perceval) on that occasion. He thought that he only had discharged his duty to himself and to the House in bringing this matter under its notice-to himself in freeing himself from the falsifications which that report contained of his sentiments; and towards the House, in calling its attention to the due enforcement of one of its standing rules, so that hereafter it would not be in the power of any individual when strangers were excluded to publish their discussions, thus exposing hon. Members to the risk of having their sentiments grossly falsified and misrepresented. He should conclude by moving that the printer of the paper which he now held in his hand, The Times, should be called to the Bar of that House. He begged to observe, that the report of which he complained appeared under the regular head, and in the usual parliamentary report in two papers-the Morning Chronicle and The Times; while in another paper-the Morning Herald-it was put less ostentatiously at the end of the parliamentary report, and with a paragraph stating that it did not come from their usual sources. He thought it, however, better to select a single paper, with a view to try the privilege of that House, and for that purpose he had selected The Times. He believed that before he made his Motion, the first step to be taken was to hand the clerk a copy of the paper, and have it read at the table. Paper accordingly handed in, and the passages complained of read by the Clerk. Mr. Perceval moved, that " John Joseph Lawson, the printer of The Times newspaper, be ordered to attend at the Bar of that House upon Thursday next." Mr. Cresset Pelham seconded the Motion. Mr. Hume said, that there could be no doubt, that by the rules of that House, the publication of its debates was in itself a breach of the privileges of that House. He did not understand distinctly, from what had fallen from the hon. Member, whether he meant to complain of every species of reporting; for, as the hon. Member must be aware, it undoubtedly did so happen that every kind of reporting of their debates was in contravention of the privileges of that House. He apprehended, however, that the observations of the hon. Member on this occasion, did not apply to reporting generally, but that he intended to complain of the particular instance of the report of his own speech. Now, unless the hon. Member meant to complain of reporting generally, his observations must apply to over again endeavoured to get repealed. the reporting that had taken place in this Again he would repeat, in reply to the particular instance, and then the question complaint of the hon. Member as to the arose, how far that was his object, and, inaccuracy of his (Mr. Hume's) report of secondly, who was the individual meant on his speech, that he had attempted to give this occasion. He (Mr. Hume) had no as faithful an acconnt of it as he possibly hesitation in saying that, on the occasion could; that it was not possible for him, alluded to, when he found that he could unpractised as he was in such a matter, to not raise the question concerning the ex- follow an hon. Member in full through a clusion of strangers, that he did then exer- speech that occupied nearly an hour and a cise that power which belonged to him as half; that whenever a similar occasion a Member of that House-that he did arose in which those who could thus folwrite down every thing as accurately as he low, hon. Members were excluded from could--that the same was done by other the gallery, in order to prevent the publiindividuals, with respect to the debate cation of their debates, he would endea which then occurred; and that, having done vour to supply a report of them-and so, when the debate was over, he had given perhaps more practice would make him what he had written to a gentleman out of perform it better than on this occasion, and the House, to do what he pleased with it. that in that way he should do what in him It so happened that on that occasion he lay to prevent the hon. Member, or any did not come in the way of the reporter other hon. Member who should hereafter for The Times, nor did he see any one attempt it, from excluding the public from connected with The Times, but if he had a knowledge of the proceedings that took met the reporter of that journal, it was as place in that House. He had often before probable that he should have given the dwelt upon the inconvenience of leaving report in question to him as to any other their debates to be published in an unindividual. He had not had time to read authorised form, and he had urged the the whole of that report after it was propriety of having reporters duly appointpublished, but he had read the com-ed for reporting the debates of that House, mencement of it, and his impression was, that it was correct. He had not given the quotations at length, as they appeared in the Morning Chronicle, but he apprehended the Scripture quotations were filled up from the parts of verses he had given. Further, as to the general report itself, he bad heard other hon. Members say, that it was a tolerably correct account of what the hon. Member had said. He had made the report of the debate on this occasion, because it was attempted to exclude the public from hearing or knowing what took place in that House through the usual channels of intelligence, and he should do so again whenever a similar attempt was made. If any one was guilty of crime in this instance, he was the criminal, though he believed he had only exercised a right which belonged to him as a Member of that House. He could assure the hon. Member, that he had no other desire but to do him justice and to tell the truth. In doing what he had done, he had not committed a greater breach of the privileges of that House than was every day committed by the publication of their debates, which, he repeated, was in direct contravention of a standing order of that House-an order that he had over and and who would be responsible for the correctness of the reports which they furnished. While, however, he was for the adoption of such a measure as that, he was as much alive as any hon. Member in that House to the extraordinary and admirable accuracy with which the debates of that House were at present given to the public, whenever an occasion arose in which it was necessary to give them at any length. He had frequently, on such occasions, looked through column after column of the reports of their debates without being able to detect a single solitary error in them. A facility of making such reports was not possessed by him; but he could assure the hon. Member, that if he had not the power, he had at least the will, and that so far from having any intention to impart a false gloss to his statements, or to misrepresent his opinions, he had every desire to do him all the justice he possibly could. If there were any mistake in the report, the hon. Member might thank himself, for if he had not excluded strangers, his speech would, no doubt, have been accurately reported. The Speaker rose and said, I feel it necessary to interpose at this stage of the proceeding. Of all the extraordinary |