HL Deb 15 May 1884 vol 288 cc394-5
LORD DENMAN

, for the third time, called attention to a case of Privilege. He had complained of his name not being on the rota of Peers, hearing the appeal by Mr. Bradlaugh, of not having seen the decisions of the Lord Chancellor, of Lords Blackburn, Watson, and FitzGrerald, although he had given his own judgment to the Lord Chancellor. If he had seen those opinions he might have referred to the case of Dunn qui tam against Hinchily, by which in Lord Raymond's Reports, second and third volumes, it was ruled, that a suitor for a penalty need not repeat, at the end of his declaration, that ne sued for himself as well as for the Lady the Queen; because as defendant had paid neither, he must pay 40s. a-day to the informer. He (Lord Denman) further complained that his words—which he had handed up at the time to the reporter—were not included in the Law Report of cases in the House of Lords, for he had attended to every part of the argument; and having been for above 17 years at every cause at Nisi Prius before the first Lord Denman and the Judges who assisted him at Nisi Prius, and having heard all the eminent lawyers, from 1832 to 1849, he was competent to form an opinion as to which of any set of advocates or Judges was right. He also found that in the O'Connell appeal, not only the name of Lord Wharncliffe, but also the names of three other noble Lords were inserted in the Law Report—namely, of the Earl of Stradbroke, of the Marquess of Clanricarde, and the Earl of Verulam, which with their reasons for not voting were given; and the only cause of their abstention from voting was, that they had not heard the whole of the appeal; and the Marquess of Clanricarde specially declared that he had the right to vote, if he should insist upon it.

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