MACCLESFIELD COURT FOR SMALL DEBTS (Hansard, 18 March 1836)

Lord Stanley
said, that he would move that this Bill do pass, without saying a single word that might tend to revive the excitement which prevailed on the subject of this private Bill yesterday evening, and he hoped that the hon. Gentlemen who had then opposed it would be now satisfied, having the printed copies of the Bill in their hands, and that no further opposition would be offered to its passing.

§ Mr. Hume
said, that having been one of those who had opposed the Bill, he begged to say a few words. He had objected to it because it went to continue the principle of imprisonment for debt, a principle which that House and the Government had already condemned, and because it established a law in England that did not exist in Scotland. He objected to the Bill, he repeated, because he regarded it as a violation of a principle over and over again asserted by that House; yet, seeing that in the situation in which the Bill was, it was impossible to take any further step with regard to it, except either to reject or pass it, and seeing that it contained the objectionable principle of imprisonment for debt to the least extent possible, he (Mr. Hume), while he protested against that part of the Bill, and against being compromised by it, was not disposed, after what had taken place, to offer any further opposition to the measure.

§ Mr. Aglionby
concurred in the view of the subject taken by the hon. Member for 401 Middlesex, and would not oppose the present motion.

§ Mr. Harvey
could not but feel surprised, when he compared the fierce resistance which had been made to this motion last night with the very tame and insipid acquiescence in it to night. If he did not know what a sincere friend the hon. Member for Middlesex was to the revision of the Pension List, he should have supposed that he had received a hint—not from the Treasury Bench, for the Members there must of course be friendly to his motion— but from the other side of the House, to devise some stratagem or other by which his motion might be defeated. Knowing this, he should have thought, that instead of his hon. Friend's concurring in the motion of the noble Lord, he would have found ample justification for the course he had pursued in the Bill. True it was, such was the confusion of propositions last night, that he apprehended that those who made them were the most perplexed by them. For his own part, he would say, that to imprison a man, not because he had property, but because he had none, was a monstrous proposition; and if no other person in the House stood up against it, he would. He complained that private Bills were thought beneath a Member's attention, and no one would be heard upon them for a moment, unless it was some great club day, when some party question was expected to come on.