§ On the question, that the Report of the Committee be received,
§ Mr. Brandrose and observed, that, according to the standing order of their House, new notices ought to have been given to those individuals who had signified their consent to the cutting of this canal. The present was a Bill to amend a former Bill passed in the last session; but the amendments were of a description that wholly altered the original Act. It totally changed and varied the line of the canal; and it became a question for consideration, whether those who had assented to the first plan, were bound to consent to the second; he should therefore move, that the Report be received this day six months.
§ After a few words from Mr. Western and Mr. Harvey,
§ The Speakerobserved, that the question which had been raised by the hon. member was one important to the safety of their own proceedings, and the interests of private property and he therefore wished the attention of the House to be particularly given to it Here was a Bill, founded upon one that had passed last session, but essentially changing its object 621 and character, and which assumed as a principle, that the parties interested in the first were formally bound to consent to the present, though avowedly producing an opposite result from that to which they had originally assented, He could not better illustrate his own conception of the case, than by supposing a canal to be cut, one end of which should terminate at a coal-pit, and the other at a chalk-pit: the persons interested in this undertaking consent to it; but if, afterwards, it were resolved to stop short, and to carry the canal neither to the coal-pit nor the chalk-pit, but only through an intermediate space, it could hardly be assumed, that the parties who had in the first instance agreed to the plan were also consenting to the alteration, when it accomplished neither of the purposes they might be supposed to have in view. Something analogous to this he conceived the present question to be; and it was for the House to consider how they would dispose of it.
Mr. Yorkesaid, the House was not correctly in possession of the object of the amended Bill. Its object was, to proceed immediately with part of the work; but it by no means implied that the whole line of canal would not be subsequently cut.
§ After a few words from Mr. Brand, Mr. S. Lefevre and general Manners,
§ The Speakersuggested, that the better way would be to let the Bill proceed through its present stage, and postpone the third reading for eight or ten days; to give the parties time to petition upon the question of the standing order. This proposition was acceded to by Mr. Brand.