§ LORD REDESDALEMy Lords, your Lordships will probably have all seen, and perhaps read, the Report of the Committee that was appointed to inquire into the retirement of Mr. Edmunds. A censure is passed in that Report upon the Committee to whom the petition of Mr. Edmunds for a pension was referred. On 1574 behalf of myself and the other Members of the Committee, I cannot allow the matter to remain without bringing it under the notice of your Lordships' House. I bog, therefore, to give notice that tomorrow, I will, at the request of the Committee, call the attention of the House to that portion of the Report which states the opinion of the Committee as to the conduct of the Select Committee on the Office of Clerk of Parliaments, and I shall move that the passage of the Report in page 14, beginning "The Committee have examined, &c," and ending "not have been recommended," be read, and also will then move the following Resolutions:—
In doing this I wish it to be distinctly understood that I have no wish and do not intend to enter the least into the Edmunds case, or into any of the facts affecting any one cither in this House or elsewhere; but simply to clear the Select Committee from that which is felt to be a reflection on them. The expressions in the Report seem to have caused an impression on the part of newspapers and in other quarters which renders it necessary the Committee should show that the course which they pursued on the occasion referred to was the only one they could, with propriety, have adopted.
- "1. That the petition of Mr. Edmunds stating that after having served the House Seventeen years as Reading Clerk and Clerk of the Private Committees he desired to retire, and praying the House to grant him such allowance as to their Lordships may seem fit, having been presented on Tuesday, the 14th of February, by the Lord Chancellor, without any Comment being made thereon by him or any other Member of the Government present on that occasion, and referred to the Select Committee on the Office of the Clerk of the Parliaments without any special Order or Instruction in relation thereto, that Committee, when they met on Thursday, the 16th of February, (Mr. Edmund's Resignation having been already accepted by the House), had no Question to determine on the Petition so referred to them but the amount of retiring Pension to which he was entitled, and would have exceeded their Duty if, without special Instruction from the House, they had proceeded to inquire into his Conduct in any Matter unconnected with his Duties in this House.
- "2. That the Report having been presented on Friday, the 17th of February, was Ordered to be laid on the Table, and was not agreed to until Friday, the 24th of February, whereby sufficient 'Delay was interposed before the Question was finally disposed of in favour of the Pension' for any Lord acquainted with Circumstances, which ought to have been known to the House before the Report was adopted, to have brought the same under the Consideration of the House."