§ The Attorney-Generalmoved for leave to bring in a bill to amend the Imprisonment for Debt Abolition Act, passed last Session of Parliament, in as far as relates to proprietors of newspapers being obliged to insert advertisements in their newspapers for the sum of 3s. The bon, and learned Gentleman said that by a clause in the act proprietors of newspapers were compelled to insert, as advertisements, the schedules of insolvent debtors, whatever their length, for the sum of 3s. The clause had been taken from a former act, and he did not expect that any practical inconvenience would have arisen from it. Representations, however, had been made to him which induced him to move for leave to bring in a bill to correct a provision which he now believed to be extremely unjust. It would be quite as fair to deal with any professional property in this way, as with that of newspaper proprietors. They might as well compel a lawyer to travel a certain number of miles for a wholly inadequate compensation, or a merchant to sell his goods at a price below the market rate. Nothing could justify such an encroachment on property but overwhelming necessity, which certainly did not exist in this case. There were other circumstances in which advertisements were required by law to be inserted in newspapers, but there 1316 was no other example of a penal enactment fixing a particular sum as the price. The act of last Session made it necessary that notice should be given in the newspapers before the discharge of an insolvent. It would not do to allow newspaper proprietors the power of excluding the advertisements, or of charging an extortionate sum for them. He would, therefore, propose that the insertion should be compulsory on a reasonable compensation being offered.
§ Motion agreed to.
§ Leave given.