§ Order for Committee read.
§ MR. RUSSELL GURNEYsaid, that having looked at the Notice Paper, he found that there was no reasonable prospect of his being able to carry the Bill during this Session, but that he would take the earliest opportunity, if the Government did not take up the subject, of introducing a similar Bill next Session. As illustrating the necessity of passing some such measure, he stated that only yesterday he was trying a case, in which he was obliged to direct an acquittal on account of some defect on the part of the prosecution, when a paper was afterwards found on the floor where the attorneys in the case had been standing, and on the paper was written—
This case has arrived at this point: the parties have arranged for £150; you and——(another person being named) must put it in the best way you can, it being a case so closely touching the line dividing debt from crime.That sort of thing frequently occurred; but they had not generally such direct evidence as to the cause of the failure of prosecutions.
§ Order discharged; Bill withdrawn.