Mr. Hobhousepresented a petition from certain inhabitants of Westminster complaining of the power of committal for libel before trial, which had been exercised by a magistrate in the case of Mr. Gathorne Butt. The hon. member said, that the power of committing before trial in cases of libel was first given to magistrates by a bill which was introduced in 1808, as an amendment to the revenue laws. By that bill, authority was given to magistrates to commit individuals to prison who were accused of libel by the attorney-general, unless they could obtain bail. That bill passed through the House in four days without observation; doubtless because nobody supposed that a measure which professed to relate only to the amendment of the revenue laws could contain such an important provision respecting cases of libel. The bill went up to the Lords. It happened there that a very acute man, and one who had the good of his fellow-subjects sincerely at heart—he meant the late lord Stanhope—looked into the bill, and finding in it the clause conferring the powers to which he had adverted he drew the attention of the House of Peers to the subject. The bill was defen- 320 ded by the lord Chancellor and the other usual defenders of such sort of things; and it was opposed by lord Holland and other noble lords, who always took an active part in every thing that regarded the liberty of the subject. They delayed the bill for a time, but were not able to stop it, and it finally passed into a law. The bill was defended by the ex officio defenders of all such things, the lord Chancellor and the late lord Ellenborough. But it was remarkable, that the lord Chancellor declared of it, that it would be a very good bill, with some amendments in the committee. It went through the committee, however, without any amendments; so that the bill, of which its defenders could only say, that it might be a good one, was now on the Statute-book. Lord Stanhope, when he discovered the bill, made inquiries respecting the origin of it in the House of Commons, and no one would own that he produced it. But this act, which gave the power of imprisoning any one who was accused by the attorney-general, or a grand jury, of libel, was not deemed enough in 1817; and, by lord Sidmouth's famous circular, power was given to the magistrates to apprehend and hold to bail, or commit to prison, any one accused of libel, on the oath of any malicious person. An individual might thus be held in prison on a charge of libel, before trial, and before even any bill was presented. He found, under the version of the law, in that circular, that five hundred persons had been imprisoned, nothing like one half of whom had been convicted, Thus any ignorant and malicious person might cause another to be committed to gaol on a charge of libel. He hoped the ministers would take the opportunity of inquiring into this subject; and he assured them, that nothing could more please the country, or do them more credit, than to look over the Statute-book, and sweep away the legacy of odious laws that had been left them by their predecessors. They might surely now purge the Statute-book of those laws; for, whatever was the pretended necessity for them, no one denied that the people were now happy and contented, and persuaded that his majesty's ministers were the very best persons in the world to manage the affairs of the nation.
The petition was read, setting forth, "That it appears to the petitioners, from the principles laid down in the case of Mr. Richard Gathorne Butt, and from the treat- 321 ment which he experienced on a charge of libel that, a most arbitrary and unconstitutional authority is assumed by the local magistracy to commit to prison, before trial, any person who may be accused, however falsely or ignorantly, of the offence before mentioned; that this doctrine, totally unknown to our ancestors, and highly dangerous to the liberties of the present age, was enforced with unexampled severity in the case of the individual in question, who was committed by sir Nathaniel Conant, the late chief magistrate at Bow Street Office, on such charge, and remained, before trial, forty eight days in the gaol of Newgate, and on his bringing an action for damages, for what he and the petitioners believe to be an illegal imprisonment, the judges of the court of Common-pleas supported the conduct of the magistrate of the police, and contended that such commitment was conformable to the laws of England, which the petitioners can neither understand, nor would they willingly believe; the petitioners therefore request of the House to take into consideration this alleged state of the law, and to provide such remedy for the probability of abuses under it (as is asserted to stand), as may restore to the people the security which the petitioners think they are entitled to enjoy, and to the law itself that reputation which has hitherto endeared it to the nation as the leading bulwark of its rights."
§ Ordered to lie on the table.