strength of the minority on a late debate on the subject would do good. Lord Folkestone expressed his surprise, that the hon. gentleman should acknowledge that a violation of the Act had been committed, and yet declare his intention to vote against inquiry. Mr. Calcraft conceived that his Royal Highness, during his whole life, had been exceedingly ill treated in money matters. Those who had formerly been severe towards him, were now endeavouring to make amends; but yet his Royal Highness had never been so ill-treated as he now would be if this committee were refused: 100,000l. had been voted for a specific purpose, and when this was questioned, it was owned that a direct misapplication of that sum had taken place, and that this had been advised by subordinate persons of whom the House had no cogni ought to be made out in order to induce the House to enter into an investigation of this subject by a committee. The very appointment of such a committee would imply a censure. He was not quite certain that he understood the argument of the supporters of the motion, particularly of the right hon. gentleman who spoke last. He did not understand whether that right hon. gentleman unequivocally contended that the money had been granted alone for the expenses which would be incurred by his Royal Highness on the assumption of the royal authority, and had no reference to the expenses which his Royal Highness had before that period been liable to. In the Appropriation Act, and in the resolution of the Committee of Supply, the House would find the words have been or may be.' At the time, the introduction of these words was opposed by gentlemen opposite, but the objection was over-ruled; because it was intended that the sum should be applied to the past as well as the future expenses of his Royal Highness. Now, unless it could be shown that the sum had not been applied to the expenses of his Royal Highness, there could be no foundation for the present motion. The general propositions of the right hon. gentleman were such as no person would contradict. The public had not been injured by the application of the sum in the manner which had taken place; and therefore to call for a committee was altogether unnecessary. Mr. Stuart Wortley had no hesitation in saying, that the Act of Parliament had been violated, in as far as it was a breach of the Act to apply the money to other purposes than those expressed in it. It appeared that all expenses of his Royal Highness's household in 1811, which were extra expenses beyond those which he would have incurred as Prince of Wales, were only, strictly speaking, payable out of the grant. But yet the hon. gentleman opposite had not made out a case which called upon the House to vote for a committee. By going into a committee they would be conveying an idea to the country that the money had been improperly applied; but of that there was not the least notion entertained. The country had not lost one farthing by it. It gave him great pleasure in coming to this conclusion. At the same time he acknowledged that the expenditure of the Civil-list had undoubtedly created a strong sensation in the country, and he felt convinced that the zance. Lord Milton expressed himself to be as much surprised as the noble lord (Folkestone) at the little connexion which could be traced between the argument and the conclusion of the hon. gentleman who preceded him (Mr. Wortley). He trusted, however, it was possible that his support might yet be obtained, before the question went to a vote. In order to secure it, he wished to give notice, that if the question should be negatived, it was his intention to move a resolution, declaring, "that it appeared to the House, that the sum of 100,000. granted to his Royal Highness on the commencement of his Regency, had been applied by the commissioners to purposes contrary to those specified in the act of parliament." The House then divided: 105 225 Majority against it......--120 Abercrombie, hon. J. Cavendish, hon. C. 1 Lord Milton then moved, "That the copy of a letter, dated 20th of May 1815, from Robert Gray, esq. to the right hon. Nicholas Vansittart, respecting the manner in which the sum of 100,000l., granted to his royal highness the Prince Regent by the Act 52 Geo. 3, c. 7, has been applied,' might be read; and the same being read, his lordship next moved, "That it appears to this House, that the sum of 100,000l, granted to his royal highness the Prince Regent by the Act 52 Geo. 3, c. 7, was made over to the commissioners appointed by his Royal Highness under his privy seal as Prince of Wales, dated 11th of February 1812, for ascertaining and settling all claims and demands upon his Royal Highness to the 18th day of the same month, contrary to the aforesaid Act, and in violation of the Act appropriating the supplies for the service of the year 1812." The motion was negatived without a division. The Chancellor of the Exchequer observed, that he proposed at so late an hour of the night, to omit several parts of the new plan of increased duties, till there should be a fuller attendance of members and an ampler opportunity of discussion. Amongst these were the stamps on promissory notes, bills of exchange, law proceedings, and bankers' licences. He had no disposition to take the House by surprise, or to press to an advanced stage any measure which had not already received the apparent sanction and approbation of the House. Sir Charles Monck inquired whether the right hon. gentleman intended to bring on that part of the schedule which related to the new tax on advertisements. The Chancellor of the Exchequer stated, that he had had conferences with several persons who appeared to represent the sense of those individuals who were more immediately interested in the measure, and an arrangement had been agreed on which was supposed to meet the views of both parties. The general result of this arrangement was, that the progressive duty on advertisements should be abandoned, and that in lieu of it there should be imposed a common duty of an additional sixpence, making the whole duty 3s. 6d.; and also an additional duty of one halfpenny upon the paper itself. Sir Charles Monck conceived that a new question arose out of this plan for transposing the new duties on advertisements and newspapers. It was generally considered that the universal circulation of knowledge produced by the daily journals and other periodical publications, was one of the most extensive and substantial advantages resulting from the liberty of the press. The House, therefore, ought to determine whether it might not be a duty they owed to the public, whose interests were most concerned, to step in between Government and the editors of newspapers, who, he could easily apprehend, might coincide in an arrangement convenient to both, but by no means equally beneficial to the public. He confessed he was very averse to seeing the necessities of the state supplied by means which seemed to tend to the suppression of general information. The right hon. gentleman, he hoped, would at least have no objection to postpone the resolution for the present. The Chancellor of the Exchequer assented to the wish of the hon. baronet. The other Resolutions were then agreed STAMP DUTIES.] The House having to, and the Report was ordered to be reresolved itself into a committee of supply,ceived to-morrow, HOUSE OF LORDS. Thursday, June 1. The An innocent West India merwould go. chant lending his money to one who, without his knowledge or participation, might employ it in this traffic, might be some caution ought to be used in that subjected to punishment, and therefore respect. Then, again, a person might be tried at any of the colonies by a comthe verdict of a jury. The noble marquis, mission, and found guilty of felony, without who was so much a friend to the liberty of the subject, ought hardly to support such a proposition. For his own part, he was alarmed that British subjects should in this way be made liable to such a severe punishment. They might be tried at Sierra Leone, where an unfortunate case The Marquis of Lansdowne said, that of this kind had lately occurred. the object was to render the persons employing their capital, or consenting to have it employed in this traffic, guilty of felony; but he was not aware that the provisions of the Bill would at all comWest India interest was much more fully promise innocent persons, and, as the no doubt their case had been attended to. represented in the other House, he had was to place this on the footing of piracy, As to the trials in the colonies, the object which certainly might be tried in all the jurisdictions of the country; and as to case at Sierra Leone, there was no doubt what the noble earl called the unfortunate that the persons to whom he alluded were really guilty; but the sentence against them had been reversed from the want of a formal document, or an irregularity in point of form of some description. The execution of the law and the appointment and if they appointed ignorant persons to of the officers rested with the ministers; If any objection in the detail those situations, the blame rested with occurred to the noble earl, the best time them. to state and amend it would be in the committee. FOREIGN SLAVE TRADE BILL.] Marquis of Lansdowne moved the second reading of the Foreign Slave-trade Bill. He did not anticipate any opposition to the motion; but conceiving it to be the duty of those who moved the second reading of a bill to state its general nature and object, he should do so in the present instance, as shortly as he could. It had unfortunately happened that since the abolition of the Slave-trade in this country, the Slave-trade of foreign nations had been carried on in a great measure by means of British capital, and the penalties imposed by the act of 1806 had been found insufficient to check that practice. By this advance of capital, a slave might be purchased in Africa, carried to the West Indies, and landed in the islands, where the importation of slaves was permitted, for about 251. In the British West India islands, where no such importation was permitted, the price of a slave was 1001. The profits of capital employed in the cultivation of the islands was about 10l. per cent., and there was a temptation to employ it in this prohibited slave traffic of about 401. per cent. The consequence was, that a great deal of British capital was so employed; and the object of this Bill was to check that practice, which contributed so materially to the preservation and extent of that nefarious comUnless a measure of this kind were adopted, the former provisions of the Legislature would be rendered in a great degree nugatory, as a person who still wished to carry on the Slave-trade might If he were to do so under another name. go into minor considerations on a subject of this magnitude, he might say, that it was certainly the interest of this country, and especially of the West India proprietors, that this Bill should pass; for the facility of introducing slaves into the foreign islands, and the procuring at a rate so comparatively cheap, would enable them to enter into a ruinous competition with our own West India islands. Such was the object of the Bill, and these were the grounds on which he moved the second reading. If any amendments in the detail should appear necessary, they might be suggested in the committee. merce. The Earl of Westmoreland had no objection to the principle of the Bill, but he was alarmed at the extent to which it The Bill was then read a second time, and committed for Monday. ROSEBERRY DIVORCE BILL.] The Marof the earl of Roseberry's Divorce Bill be quis of Lansdowne moved, that the report received. The Earl of Lauderdale rose for the those amendments, which went to annul purpose of moving the rejection of all the marriage settlement, and also that clause of the Bill by which the offending parties were prevented from contracting a legal marriage. Before he stated his reasons he was anxious to say, that no one could have a higher respect than he had for the noble earl in whose favour this Bill had been introduced; and he was far from contending that this case was not, in some respects, one of great atrocity. It had been settled as the law of England, that a divorce d mensa et thoro did not enable the parties to marry again. The husband, therefore, came to this House asking a boon from their lordships, the privilege of marrying again, which the law did not give him: but this Bill not only gave him what he asked, but also relieved him from the marriage settlement. Now the settlement was a civil contract entered into with the wife and her friends for her benefit, and could not at law be impeached on account of the adultery of the wife. Why, then, should their lordships, because the husband solicited one advantage, give him another? He had heard the highest legal authorities declare in that House, that these contracts ought not to be interfered with, and he knew of no principle upon which the Legislature could justify such interference, where the object was merely to enable the husband to marry again; and there was in effect this injustice in the case, that while a husband might have this advantage against an offending wife, the wife could have no such advantage against an offending husband. This Bill, though its avowed object was to give the husband the power to marry again, was, in effect, by the destruction of the settlement, a bill of pains and penalties against the wife, and that without any evidence to justify the infliction. Their lordships had had lately before them a Bill for disfranchising the electors of a certain borough; and it was held that a bill of that description was one of pains and penalties, and a bill which ought not to be passed without such proof as the House required with respect to bills of that nature in other cases. This, too, was a bill of pains and penalties, as far as concerned the annulling of the settlement; and their lordships ought not to adopt that part of it without similar precautions. In the preamble of the Bill, it was at first stated that the lady by her crime had forfeited all right and title to the provision under her marriage settlement. That proposition, he believed would now be admitted to have been false in law; and accordingly the Bill had been in that particular amended: but if it was false in law, he could not perceive upon what principle the House could agree to allow that part of the Bill to stand which did in fact provide for such a forfeiture. As to the clause probibiting the intermarriage of the offending parties, that was founded upon a standing order of this House, that it would pass no divorce bill without such a clause. His first objection to that clause was, that it was not conformable to the standing order; for it only provided that such marriage, if contracted, should be adjudged and held to be illegal. If the marriage was only to be adjudged illegal, he presumed that it must remain legal till otherwise declared by the sentence of a judge. The standing order was, that such marriages should be illegal by the Act without any sentence of a judge. [The Marquis of Lansdowne said, the Bill has been amended in that respect, and such a marriage declared to be illegal.] He understood that the clause had been amended in this particular, and made consonant to the standing order. Why, then, his first objection to the clause in that view was, that it was unnecessary, because it only did that which the law already did, provided any one member of the community chose to enforce it; and if it was of consequence that no such marriage should be allowed to remain valid, some individual would, in all probability, apply to the proper tribunal to have the marriage declared illegal; and it would be better to leave it to the ordinary tribunals to deal with these matters than to interfere in this way. His next objection was, that the insertion of this clause might endanger the fate of the Bill. Their lordships were aware that a general measure had been suggested, and had received the assent of that House, to render such marriages illegal in all cases: but that general measure had been rejected in the other House. Then the standing order was adopted in that House, that it would pass no bill without such a clause: but that had already, in several cases, been dispensed with, and ought to be dispensed with in the present, rather than expose the noble earl to the loss of his remedy by the rejection of the Bill altogether. The adoption of the standing order in question, under the circumstances which he had stated, would make it appear to the other House somewhat like an attempt to legislate by the authority of this House only; and the insertion of such clauses would therefore be regarded with peculiar jealousy. If it was fit that these marriages should be declared invalid, it ought to be done by a general measure, passed with the approbation of both Houses. These were the reasons which induced him, in the discharge of what he conceived to be his duty, to move, that the clauses annulling the settlement and declaring any marriage of the parties illegal should be left out. remedy must be sought by application to Parliament in each individual case. It would be much better, as he thought, that a general law should be established in this as in all other cases, by which the parties would be enabled to see the whole consequences which must follow from their actions, and that this law should be administered in the ordinary way by the Judges. As it was, however, they had only to consider what was proper in each particular case, and do that which appeared to be just and proper under all the circumstances. Then with respect to his noble friend's first objection to the clause, declaring the marriage illegal, if it was fitting such a marriage should be held illegal, it was, in his opinion, necessary that it should be declared so in this Bill. Under the existing law, matters of this kind were left to the Ecclesiastical courts; and he under Lord Grenville said, that he was very far from agreeing with his noble friend, that the only object of the Bill was to enable the injured husband to marry again. The object was completely to dissolve the marriage, and consequently all contracts depending upon it. The difficulty was, when the marriage between the parties was to be dissolved, to find a principle upon which the settlement could be supported. The settlement was a contract made in contemplation of the marriage, and of its conti-stood that it was only under particular nuance; and when, by the misconduct of circumstances, and at particular times, that the wife, the contract was broken, he could the object could be attained. The parties not well conceive upon what principle the by living abroad and out of the jurisdiction settlement, which was made solely for the of the court, till the death of one of them, purposes and upon the foundation of the might render it impossible to annul such marriage, could be allowed to stand. The a marriage, and by this contrivance the effect would be, with respect to the in-issue might be legitimatized. He was injured husband, to leave his estate burthened formed also, (for he could only speak from with the obligations of a contract which information,) that a sentence of nullity his wife had chosen to put an end to. It might be avoided by a species of collusion, was even difficult under such circumstances not very creditable to any court of justice, to find a principle upon which to found the by setting up an informer, and in this way alimony which this Bill provided for the preventing such a question from ever being wife; for as the marriage was to be dis- fairly brought to issue; and, after the solved, on account of the misconduct of the death of one of the parties, the legality of wife, it did not immediately appear on the marriage, he understood, could no what ground the husband was to be sub- longer be questioned. With respect to the jected even to this burthen. He totally other objection of his noble friend, he addisagreed with his noble friend, therefore, mitted that a general measure would be on the subject of the clauses annulling the much more preferable; and on that head settlement. As the marriage was to be dis- he still remained of the opinion which he solved, every contract which was founded had given when that measure was introupon it, and made in the contemplation of duced into that House, but which had its remaining unbroken, ought also to fall. unfortunately as he thought failed in the Then, his noble friend objected to the other. He was of opinion, that such marclause by which any intermarriage between riages ought to be declared void by a the offending parties was declared illegal, general law, as contrary to sound morals, and the objections rested on two grounds to the law of the land, and to the scrip-1st, That this was only doing what the [tures. When the general measure failed, law already did, if any one chose to en- this standing order was made: but he force it; and 2nd, That even the remedy could not agree with his noble friend as to given to the injured husband, by enabling the object and view with which it was him to marry again, would be endangered made. His noble friend who then sat on by the insertion of such a clause. Before the woolsack, and who had introduced it, be addressed himself particularly to these knew too well the nature of the British objections he could not help observing constitution, and had too great a value for generally, that in his opinion it was much it, to do any thing so subversive of its to be regretted that in these cases the principles, as to attempt to legislate by (VOL. XXXI. ) (20) |