LORD BROUGHAMpresented a Petition from Bever Blundell, Esq., F.S.A., for giving accused Persons the Right of being examined on their Trials. The noble and learned Lord said, that Mr. Blundell complained of what he considered to be an intolerable grievance to which he had been subjected in consequence of the imperfect state of the law. Mr. Blundell, seeing that a person had been committed for trial charged with threatening the life of an attorney, wrote to the committing magistrate, giving an account of the transaction, and expressing his belief, from his knowledge of the accusers, that there was no truth in the charge. The accused person was kept in prison five or six months, his family sent to the workhouse, and, in short, he was utterly ruined. When the case came before the grand jury, of whom the committing magistrate was one, the bill was ignored; but the poor man, unable, as he said with his dying breath, to bear up against the obloquy to which he had been subjected, committed suicide. 146 The attorney proceeded against Mr. Blundell for writing the letter; but, instead of suing him for damages, in which case he would have had an opportunity of being beard, as well as his accuser, he indicted him for libel, and Mr. Blundell's mouth was therefore closed. The result of the trial was, that Mr. Blundell was found guilty; but the Judge who tried him, Mr. Justice Hill, was so dissatisfied with the proceedings, that he absolutely refused to pass sentence upon him at the trial. The case was therefore remitted to the Court of Queen's Bench. In this Court also, not only was Mr. Blundell unable to state his case, but Mr. Justice Hill was absent from indisposition, and his notes were in so imperfect a condition that they could not be used. Mr. Blundell was sentenced to eight months imprisonment, and he complained—and, in his (Lord Brougham's) opinion, justly—of the state of the law. He did not go quite so far as his friend Sir Samuel Romilly, and say that defendants in criminal cases should always be examined; but he thought that when they volunteered their statement, and offered themselves for cross-examination, their evidence ought to be received, more especially in cases where the other party had been examined.
§ Petition to lie on the table.