§ MR. WHALLEYsaid, he had to present a Petition from George Brown Skipworth, Esquire, and justice of the peace, of Morton House, Lincolnshire, praying that the fine of £500 which he paid, or rather which was paid for him, in consequence of a sentence for contempt of Court might be refunded. The Petition came from a gentleman of high respectability, and being very short, he would take leave to state its substance. It stated that the Petitioner on the 25th of January 1873 was summoned to Her Majesty's Court of Queen's Bench on a charge of contempt of Court for speaking 878 at a public meeting at Brighton on behalf of the then Claimant to the Tichborne estates, who was about to take his trial in that Court for perjury. With regard to the charge the petitioner asserted that at such meeting he was influenced solely by a love of fair play and a desire to see justice administered according to the laws of the land. That he could be acting with no disrespect to the Court in simply speaking his honest thoughts and exercising a strictly conscientious duty. That to shut a man's mouth when in defence of right, and preventing expression of public opinion in a defendant's favour would, in the Petitioner's opinion, be calculated most seriously to damage and prejudice his case, and militate seriously against a well-known rule of law—that a man was always presumed to be innocent be fore he was proved to be guilty; but that if, on the contrary, the Petitioner had declaimed the Claimant as guilty before trial, he might have laid himself open from a properly constituted Court to a charge of that nature by prejudicing his case, and deserved both fine and imprisonment; but in no other way could he conceive such a charge to have been applicable. Nevertheless, the petitioner was on the 29th of January, 1873, sentenced by the Court of Queen's Bench to three months' imprisonment and a fine of £500 for contempt of Court; that he underwent the full term of imprisonment, and declining on conscientious grounds to pay the fine he must have remained still longer a prisoner, but that a friend unasked, and notwithstanding the previously expressed declaration of the petitioner that he would neither pay the fine himself nor allow the country to pay it for him, as was offered to be done by voluntary subscription, paid the amount on the day the three months' imprisonment expired. ["Order, order!"]
§ MR. SPEAKERI must remind the hon. Gentleman the Member for Peterborough that he is now going into details. He is at liberty to state generally the substance and the prayer of the Petition, but beyond that he is not entitled to go. If he wishes the Petition read by the Clerk at the Table, he can have it so read.
§ MR. WHALLEYsaid, he would of course at once defer to the opinion of the Speaker; but the petitioner wished the House to know that he considered this payment on his account a debt of 879 honour to be repaid even with interest; but having infringed no law—["Order, order!"]—or committed any such offence as was alleged against him, and therefore under no legal or moral obligation to pay the same, he felt it incumbent on him to exhaust every available means of obtaining restoration of the amount from the coffers of Her Majesty's Treasury, which he inferred either held or had control of the same. ["Order, order!"]
§ MR. SPEAKERI must draw the attention of the hon. Member to the fact that this Petition is irregular. No Petition can be received for refunding any sum relating to the public service or any debts due to the Crown, or for the remission of duties payable by any person unless it be first recommended by the Crown. This Petition not having been so recommended, cannot be received.
§ MR. WHALLEYPerhaps I may be allowed to say that the Petition does not refer to any sum due now to the Petitioner. ["Order!"] But it is to ask the House under the circumstances stated in the Petition to intervene with the Government and to direct the Treasury to repay the sum of money not paid by the petitioner, but by some other person without his consent.
The Petition, being irregular, was not received.