be decidedly in favour of the view which he felt it his duty to take of the subject. He concluded with moving, that the attorney-general be instructed to prosecute the said George-Frederick duke of Leeds for the said offence. The learned gentleman added, that he meant also to propose the prosecution of four of the aldermen concerned in the agreement with the duke of Leeds. There were some shades of difference in favour of the mayor, who was implicated only to a certain extent; from that consideration he thought it more advantage. ous for justice, rather to have him brought forward as a witness, than prosecuted as a delinquent,

The motion for the prosecution of the duke of Leeds being put,

Mr. Giddy thought that the speech of the honourable gentleman was one of the most extraordinary he had ever heard, though in substance he did not differ from the report of the committee. Had he been a member of the committee, he should have concurred in the report, agreeing, as he did, that the transaction alluded to was a breach of the privileges of the house, and contrary to the law of the land. Knowing, as he had done from his youth, the gentlemen who were implicated in the transaction in question, and highly as their general character was entitled to respect, he could not in that house, after what had appeared, stand up as their champion on the present occasion. At the same time he did not think this a case in which the house was called on to interfere in the manner proposed. Independently of the prosecution proposed, the house had in their power a measure to which he could have no objection, but which he should be rather prepared to re

commend, namely, to open the right of voting in the borough in question. Of a motion to this ef fect early in the next session, he had no objection to give notice, provided the present motion should be negatived,

Mr. C. W. Wynne was happy to see the question at length before the house. A great part of what he should have felt it necessary to state, he now thought was com pletely uncalled for, after the resolution which the house had already adopted, that the parties had been guilty of a breach of the standing orders of the house, and a vio lation of the law of the land, and of the freedom of election. Hẹ was never more astonished in his life than that, after such a resolution had been come to without debate, the honourable member (Giddy) should have opposed the motion for a prosecution. In doing so, he should think the honourable gentleman little consulted the dignity of the house. If they were to agree to negative the present motion, it would have been infinitely better, that when the preceding resolution was moved, they had at once got the better of it, by agreeing that it should be taken into consideration that day three months, than that they should, after entering the notice of such an offence on their journals, suffer it to pass with impunity. The resolution they had already agreed to was a verdict of guilty, and were they to suffer this to pass without punishment? He confessed that he felt for the noble duke, knowing as he did, that though his family had bought the borough, they had not sold it again, and that the members returned for it hitherto had come uninfluenced, To negative the present motion, he thought, would be most dangerous

to

to the dignity of the house. The mode now proposed was the ordinary mode of proceeding. Not an instance could be pointed out of a case of corruption, voted to be so on the face of their journals, in which they had not proceeded in this manner. Such a resolution as that which they had now passed, could not be allowed to remain on their journals a brutum fulmen.

Mr. Tremayne bore testimony to the conduct and character of the clergy in Cornwall. He thought that in such a case as the present the punishment ought to fall on the borough itself, which had generally sinned. He should rather propose, that the right of voting for that borough should be thrown open to the whole freeholders of the hundred, which was a widely extended district.

Mr. Brand argued strongly in favour of the motion. What had been disclosed in the course of it only strengthened his conviction, that inquiry into the state of our representative system must take place sooner or later. He regret ted that no favourable opportunity had occurred to him for bringing before the house this session the great question of parliamentary reform; and yet his regret was somewhat diminished when he considered that the present question, though so long deferred, and of which such repeated notices had been given, could command only so thin an attendance. He anticipated with pleasure the bill to be brought in by an honourable member (Mr. D. Giddy), and he could wish its operation to be to throw open the borough of Hellestone 'amoug the surrounding hundreds.

Mr. Bankes doubted whether, if the motion were carried, and the prosecution instituted, there would

be any probability of its success, from the nature of the evidence upon which it must be founded; and if it were unsuccessful, he considered that its failure would do more injury to the cause of reform in general than the practical success of the present motion could do good.

Mr. Preston took the same view of the question as the honourable member who preceded him. He doubted whether the prosecution could succeed. He should therefore move, as an amendment, "That the house, early next session, would take into its consideration the state of the borough of Hellestone, with a view of extending the right of election there." The amendment being seconded,

Mr. Astell, who was chairman of the committee that had reported upon the Hellestone election, stated, that in the committee he had urged what he considered as reasons against their reporting to the house> in the way they had. His reasons were, that he did not think any success could attend upon the proceedings that were likely to be had upon it in that house. Those reasons were now strengthened, and he should therefore certainly vote against the motion, and in support of the amendment.

Mr. S. Wortley contended, that there was nothing to prove any corrupt motive in the parties whose conduct was before them. Illegally. they certainly had acted, in refe rence to a late act of parliament; though previously to the passing of that act, perhaps not even that epithet could have been applied to the transaction. He had pressed this upon the committee, and they were decidedly of opinion that there was no evidence of any malus animus, and therefore the word corrupt had M4

bees

in having been confined in Newgate nine weeks, and for part of that time without any bed, unless he had chosen to share one with a felon under sentence of death.-4th, That it was impossible that the practice of the house, of refusing to discharge a person in confinement except on a petition acknowledging his offence, could be adhered to in this case; for Mr. Crogan could not comply with this custom without, giving up the power of prose cuting for perjury the witnesses in consequence of whose testimony he had been committed, even setting aside the repugnance he must naturally feel against acknowledging himself guilty of an offence of which he was conscious he was innocent. The noble lord, after having ably pressed on the house the injustice of continuing Mr. Crogan in confinement under these circumstances, and after adverting to the disproportion between the punishment and the offence, in cases of commitment generally, concluded by making his motion, that he be liberated; which was carried.

June 25.-Mr. Creevey began by stating that he never had any intention of complaining, so far as he himself was individually concerned. He had suffered the trial to go on, and he had let it come to judgement before he thought it necessary to make this statement upon a case which affected the privileges of every present and every future member of that house. He would not ask the house to come to any resolution; but he would mention, as an inducement to be heard patiently, that this was the first case in the history of parliament, of any member being arraigned and condemned in a court of justice for any words spoken in that house, al though they might be afterwards

printed and published. The honourable member then went into a detailed statement of the transaction, recapitulating all the facts of the case, as they had already appeared in the course of the judicial proceedings had upon it. Having gone through this statement, and contended that, in declaring his opinions in his place as a member of that house, he was not amenable for so doing to the jurisdiction of any court; he illustrated his argument by a reference to several cases of impeachment by the commons, and among others to that of lord Bacon, asking, how it would have been possible for any member of the house of commons who conducted that impeachment, to have delivered his reasons for voting in favour of it, without uttering expressions which would be defamatory, as applicable to lord Bacon? If he had explained on the hustings to those whose representative he wished to become, why he had voted in that house for the expulsion of Mr. Hunt for peculation, how was it possible that this could be done without defamatory words? and how, according to the doctrine laid. down by the judges, could Mr. Hunt be prevented from, calling him (Mr. C.) to account in a court of justice? The same remarks applied to his votes in the cases of lord Melville and the duke of York. If he went to his constituents with an explanation of his conduct on these occasions, he was told by justice Le Blanc, that its being a bona fide representation of what he had said in that house, and the justice of the remarks, had nothing to do with the question. Such a doctrine must cut off all correspondence between the representative and his constituents-this, too, at the time when Reports were permitted by the prac

tice of the house: so that, by the judges' law, members of parliament were left at the mercy of reporters, unless they chose to throw themselves on the mercy of the judges. Thus much from the reason of the case (and what was reason was said to be law) he should infer, that it was impossible that a member should not be allowed to give a bona fide account of his conduct to his constituents; and if the account were not a bona fide one, it was to the house alone, he contended, that he should be obliged to answer. The honourable gentle man went at large into the practice of parliament, and concluded by proposing his resolution, which consisted of a narration of the judicial proceedings in his case, and the circumstances attending it.

Mr. Bennet seconded the motion. On the question being put, Mr. C. Wynne said, the question for the house to consider was simply this, whether any member of hat house had a right to publish whatever he thought proper, as a speech spoken by him in parliament? for to this extent would the privilege claimed by his honourable friend go. The privilege of par liament implied that every member should have full and uncontrolled liberty of speech within those walls; but it could not extend to any thing said or published beyond them, without giving to every member of the house of commons a right to libel whom he pleased, under the pretence of discharging his parlia mentary duty. This had been the decided opinion of Mr. Fox, than whom there was no man who better understood the privileges of parliament, or who was more attached to the liberty of the press. Mr. Wynne took a view of the cases cited by his honourable friend,

every one of which, he thought, made strongly against his argument. The case of lord Abingdon, which Mr. Creevey considered as very different from his own, appeared to him exactly in point. The greatest injury that could be done to the privileges of parliament, would be an attempt to extend them beyond the limits fixed by our forefathers.

Several other members spoke on the occasion, but no one seemed to justify the argument of the honourable mover. [There is no member of that house for whom we entertain a greater respect than we have for Mr. Creevey; but, in this case, we are quite sure his conduct was not correct.

We recollect the time when a member of that house ut tered one of the wickedest libek that ever proceeded from the lips of any man, by arraigning the characters of a number of persons, as acquitted felons, against whose lives a most foul conspiracy had been contrived; and in justification of which not a particle of evidence was produced: and would it have been right that the right honourable gentleman, for he was, we believe, a privy-councillor, should in his cooler moments have sanctioned the publication of the libel, of which he was probably ashamed, though he had not honour enough to retract what he had uttered as an ebullition of passion or phrensy?]

Mr. W. Wynne rose, pursuant to his notice, to bring before the attention of the house the formation of a society which existed in direct contradiction to the law of the land. He did not feel it necessary to apo logize for the lateness of the session, as it was at all times the duty of that house to watch over the public peace. The honourable member then proceeded to read certain parts

of