Mr. O'Connellshould be sorry to occupy the time of the House with anything personal to himself, but he was sure hon. Members would agree with him in thinking that the case to which he wished to call their attention, justified him in saying a few words. The Times newspaper of Saturday contained what purported to be a report of a 296 speech delivered by him in that House on Friday night last, when the affairs of Spain were under consideration. He trusted the House would recollect that he had not said one word of the Queen Regent of Spain, and yet in The Times of Saturday, he found this passage:—
The morality of the lady who handled the sceptre of Spain at the present moment, was of no importance at all; morality would, of course, add dignity to statesmanlike qualities; statesmanlike qualities, unsupported by morality, might be suspicious, but it was not because a lady was voluptuous in form, and accused of being voluptuous in propensities, that, therefore, she was unequal to the exigencies of government.Such language he had never uttered—it was a total invention—he had said nothing like it. He believed that there were but three words in the whole report which he had spoken: it was a pure invention, and it was rather hard that an unfounded and totally false report of that description should have appeared in a paper which might, a fortnight hence, accuse him of having attacked the Queen of Spain, without any other ground for that accusation than an article of its own, which was a pure invention, but which would be cited against him to support the accusation. It was too bad to invent a speech and attribute it to an hon. Member of that House, especially so when it affected the character of a lady of high rank. Of all this, he thought he had a right to complain, and he begged to give that report the most emphatic contradiction. He appealed, without the least hesitation, to those hon. Members opposite who heard what fell from him on Friday night, whether he had said any thing of the sort. He hoped that, for the future, he should be spared the necessity of contradicting statements of such a nature.
§ The House went into a Committee of Supply, certain Resolutions were agreed to, and the House resumed.