§ SIR W. CLAY moved the Second Reading. He explained the state of the law. By the 57th of Geo. III., cap. 19, remedy was given against the hundred for damages inflicted by a riotous assembly upon any shop or building, and the inhabitants of the city, town, or hundred, were bound to make full compensation to the person damnified. Up to 1827, that was the state of the law. By the 7th and 8th of Geo. IV., cap. 27, all prior Acts relating to the liabilities of the hundred for injuries by riotous assemblages were repealed. Scotland was omitted from that Act. By an Act passed in the same Session (cap. 31), that liability was partially restored; and the effect of the law of 1827 was, that there should be no remedy against the hundred unless the injuries should have been done by persons who should be decided to have been guilty of felony by the Act. By an Act of the same year (1827), it was made felony to demolish, pull down, or destroy any buildings, wholly or in part, by persons riotously assembled; but it had been held by judges that such demolishing or beginning to demolish was not felony within the meaning of the Act, unless there was evidence that the rioters, if not prevented by the civil power, would have totally demolished the premises. This was a very anomalous state of the law, and, to render it still more so, a different system prevailed in Scotland; for the 7th and 8th of Geo. IV. did not extend to Scotland, but the 57th of Geo. III. did extend to Scotland; so that at the present moment the law in that country was in the same state as that to which he wished to restore it in England. His object was to amend the law, so that in all cases of damage inflicted upon property, the party damnified should obtain prompt redress, whether the act by which the injury was inflicted should be esteemed to be felony or only misdemeanour. The hon. Member concluded by moving the second reading of the Bill.
§ SIR G. GREYsaid, the law had been altered by the right hon. Baronet the 1096 Member for Tamworth when Home Secretary; there had been no opposition to that alteration, and he (Sir G. Grey) could not consent to the restoration of the law to the state in which it had stood before that alteration, so as to make the hundred liable for every pane of glass that might be broken. The reason the principle of the Act now in force was not fully carried out, was owing to the absurd distinction between felony and other offences; for the law said that the offence must be felony to make the hundred liable. Although he was not prepared to go the length of this Bill in altering the law, he was quite willing to consider whether some better test than felony might not he applied to the offence making the hundred liable. At the same time he could not consent to make the hundred liable in every case.
§ Bill read a second time.