HC Deb 28 May 1839 vol 47 cc1068-75
Sir C. Burrell

rose to call the attention of the House to the report of the Committee on the Parrett Navigation Petition, alleging forgery in the petition against the bill. On the 22d of April, a petition was presented from the Company of the Proprietors of the Parrett Navigation, alleging that Previously to a bill for granting further powers to the company being referred to a Committee of your honourable House, a petition was presented against the same, purporting to be a petition of the merchants, traders, and other persons interested in the navigation of the River Parrett, in the county of Somerset, and of the inhabitants of the several towns, villages, or districts supplied with goods or merchandise by means of the said river, and purporting to be signed by upwards of two thousand persons, which petition was referred by your honourable House to the Committee upon the said bill. That the Committee of your honourable House met to take the said bill into consideration upon Tuesday, the 12th day of March last, and continued its sittings fur eight subsequent days, when they reported to the House the result of their inquiry upon the said bill and petition. That on Monday, the 8th day of April instant, Mr. Henry Lovibond, a merchant in Langport, an individual whose name appeared to the petition presented against the said bill, informed Mr. Broad-mead, your petitioners' solicitor, that the petition which had been so presented to your honourable House was not the real petition which was actually signed, the two petitions containing different allegations. That he was always decidedly opposed to having any tolls transferred to the canal, and he joined the opposition on the express ground that no such transfer should be proposed. That the petition signed was sent to town by Jacob Stower and Job Bradford, and before he (Lovibond) arrived there, the real petition was cut off, and another, with an allegation that the tolls should, in a given event, be transferred to the canal, substituted for it, and he never signed the new petition at all. That he remonstrated with the other parties upon the change that had been made in the petition. That he was to have been examined as a witness against the bill to prove certain calculations against the com- pany, but he was not examined lest the fraud should be discovered. That the above statement was made in the presence of Mr. Murly, the solicitor to the said Henry Lovibond, and Mr. Broadmead appealed to him for the truth of it, who admitted that it was true, and that, if the said statement so made by the said Henry Lovibond be true, a forgery must have been committed in the petition so presented to your honourable House, such petition containing the name of Henry Lovibond, and there being no other person of that name interested in the said bill. On the 23d of April, the House had appointed a Committee to inquire into those allegations, and on the 1st of May that Committee had reported that the petition which had been presented to the House was not the real petition which was actually signed, the two petitions containing different allegations. The report said, That the statement made by Henry Lovibond, that the petition so presented, though bearing his signature, was not signed by him or with his consent,' had been proved, and that therefore a forgery had been committed in the petition so presented to the House, and that it appeared to the Committee that Benjamin Lovibond, an agent for the petitioners, was cognizant of the forgery before the petition was presented to the House. He (Sir C. Burrell) considered that this was a gross breach of the privileges of the House, and he therefore moved that Benjamin Lovibond be taken into the custody of the Sergeant-at-Arms.

Mr. Williams Wynn

seconded the motion, which was immediately agreed to.

Mr. Benjamin

Lovibond was then brought to the Bar of the House, and

The Speaker

addressing him, said, that his conduct had been under the consideration of a Select Committee of that House, who had reported that a petition presented to the House on the Parrett Navigation was not a petition which had been actually signed by all the parties whose signatures it professed to bear. He was charged with having forged the name of Henry Lovibond and John Lovibond and others. This was the report of the Select Committee, and he had now to ask him what he had to say in his defence.

Mr. Lovibond

accordingly read from a written paper which he held in his hand a statement, in which he alleged that he had been retained as a solicitor to oppose the bill, and that the retainer was signed by all the parties whose names were appended to the petition which he had presented. On the 7th of March he arrived in town for the purpose of preparing a draught of a petition in accordance with his instructions; and having, with the best assistance he was able to obtain, prepared such a petition, he sent it down to his agent in the country for signature. Subsequently two of the merchants who were opposed to the bill came up to town, with a petition signed by the opposing parties, which did not contain some allegations contained in the other petition, and contained one allegation not made in the original draught. No reason was assigned for the alteration, and acting under the advice of his Parliamentary agents, he deemed it most advisable, no material alteration having been made, to present the first petition. Henry Lovibond had never repudiated his signature, but had recognized it by subsequent acts; and he submitted, therefore, that no forgery had been committed either by the statute or the common law of this realm, since the subsequent recognition of an agent's acts by a principal, was equivalent to a previous authority given by the principal to the agent. The object of both petitions was the same, and no inconvenience had resulted or could result from what he had done. If, however, the House was of opinion that he had invaded their privileges, he must express his deep regret for the irregularity which had been committed, as an invasion of their privileges was entirely unintentional on his part.

Mr. Lovibond

was then ordered to withdraw, and withdrew accordingly.

In answer to questions put by several hon. Members, the witness stated, that Messrs. Jones and Walmisley were the Parliamentary agents who advised him to substitute one petition for the other, they both being present at the time, and he did so under the impression that he was acting perfectly right, and that he should be imposing on the House by not doing so; that on the 8th of April Mr. Broadley agreed to give Mr. Henry Lovibond 160l. for his railway, which the House had refused to give; and then Mr. Broadley got a clause moved on the third reading of the bill fixing that amount on the public by means of a toll; that the number of 2,000 signatures were collected at Langport, the parties signing under the impression that they were opposing the Company, and petitioning against any further toll being levied on the river Parrett; but the petition sent up by Mr. Merley was, in fact, not the petition that had been first signed; and his attention was drawn to that fact by Joseph Stours and Robert Wallis, upon which he made the alteration. In appending the name of Henry Lovibond to the petition, he did so because he thought he was justified by his general retainer, not thinking that Henry Lovibond would not sign the petition.

The witness having withdrawn,

Sir C. Burrell

said, in justice to Mr. Walmisley, he would remind the House, that he denied the account of the transaction given by the witness in his evidence before the Select Committee. He should move, that Mr. Walmisley be called in and examined.

Mr. Wynn

said, the only ground for calling Mr. Benjamin Lovibond to the bar of the House was, to hear if he bad any thing to advance in explanation of the charge made against him in the report of the Select Committee; but he could not see any use in calling in Mr. Walmisley, whose evidence was already on record and before the House. He thought the case was now sufficiently before the House, and that they might proceed to act upon it. The House had heard Mr. Lovibond, who had admitted the act with which he was charged, although he had endeavoured to excuse himself by an allegation, or an argument as he had called it, that he thought he had a right to do so. But it was quite clear that he had been guilty of tampering with a petition which had been presented to that House.

Mr. Hume

concurred in the view taken by the right hon. Gentleman, that the hearing of further evidence was unnecessary; he was satisfied with what he had already heard.

Lord John Russell

thought the evidence already before the house quite sufficient to guide its judgment. He was at a loss to conceive how any man of education could think of making such an excuse as that which the party had offered to the House; and how he could have supposed that it would be admitted as a sufficient warrant for his conduct that he had been advised to act as he had done by a Parliamentary agent. He (Lord John Russell) really thought that a man's own sense of propriety would have taught him better. He would suggest, therefore, that Benjamin Lovibond should be given into custody, and brought to the bar to be reprimanded by the Speaker.

Sir C. Burrell

thought a mere reprimand for this offence, particularly in the present state of the House, was wholly insufficient. He, therefore, hoped the noble Lord opposite (Lord John Russell) would not think him discourteous if he (Sir C. Burrell) proposed (as he had originally intended to do) that this Gentleman be put into the hands of the Sergeant-at-Arms:

Mr. Pease

did not think, that, on inquiry, the offence would be found so grievous as at first sight it appeared. The whole proceeding had certainly been one of gross irregularity, but he concurred with the noble Lord below him, in thinking that the course proposed by the noble Lord would entirely satisfy the justice of the case.

Mr. Jones

said, he had always been opposed to the House acting as jury and judge in their own matters; but when a contempt like the present had been committed—a contempt by which the jurisdiction and rules of the House had been violated—it must be punished summarily if it was to be punished at all. Looking at the nature of this offence, he was prepared to agree to the motion for the committal of this Gentleman to the custody of the Sergeant.

Lord John Russell

remarked, that it was extremely desirable that in matters of this sort the House should come to some opinion on which a division would be unnecessary. He did not at all wish to insist upon his own opinion, supposing the hon. Baronet opposite did not mean that this party should undergo a protracted confinement, but that he should be brought up on the next meeting of the House.

Sir C. Burrell

was understood to say he had no personal feeling in the matter: he was ready to meet the views of the House generally.

Mr. Erle

said, that it appeared to him that the real facts of the case were not at present understood by the House. Those facts, as he collected them from the report, were, that the party who had appeared at the bar came up to London to oppose the bill in question on behalf of the merchants of Langport; that in London he prepared a petition, and sent it down to an agent in the country to obtain signatures; the agent struck out a ma- terial allegation in the petition, and having obtained the signatures, returned it to town. He should state, that the petition was not sent round, but slips of paper, for signatures against any increase of tolls, were sent about the country, and then appended to the petition, and, therefore, in point of fact, the signatures really did not belong more to the original than to the altered petition. On reading the petition on its return, Mr. Benjamin Lovibond discovered that an allegation (of importance in his judgment) bad been left out by the agent in the country, and he, therefore, took the list of names which had been merely pasted to the petition sent up from the country, and added them to the petition containing that allegation as originally prepared. He had stated to the House that he consulted his Parliamentary agents, and that they having advised him to get some names affixed to the sheet on which the petition itself was written, he went to one of the merchants of Langport, who was in London, as part of a deputation sent to oppose the bill. That Gentleman signed his own name and that of his partner, and the name of Mr. Henry Lovibond was also added to the petition, but not by that gentleman himself. Mr. Henry Lovibond, however, heard the petition read in the committee-room; he paid money from time to time to Mr. Benjamin Lovibond for his attendance and services under that very petition now objected to, and for nine days he never raised an objection to it. Thus the matter rested until the parties were about to proceed with the bill in the House of Lords, when the company of the Parrett Navigation proposed to Mr. Henry Lovibond to give him 160l.. to leave the opponents of the bill and to join the promoters, and then it was, that Mr. Henry Lovibond came forward and said, that his name to the petition in question was a forgery. Now he submitted, that as it appeared from the statements, that in the opinion of Mr. Austen the one petition would have answered as well as the other, that as no fraud was intended, however gross the irregularity had been, the House would deal with mercy, and concur in the proposition for a reprimand. He could not avoid reminding the House, that in the Southampton election case, where the petition having been altered after signed by the petitioners was objected to, the committee, finding that no fraud was in- tended, proceeded with the inquiry without attending to the alterations and interlineations.

Mr. Freshfield

concurred in the opinion, that this was a case in which the least possible punishment would be sufficient.

Mr. Hume

thought, as there had been no attempt at fraud, the adoption of the proposition of the noble Lord, the Secretary for the Home Department, would amply satisfy the justice of the case.

Mr. Miles

said, that the individual who had appeared at the bar had applied to him to undertake the opposition to the bill, and had stated, that he had a petition signed by 2,000 persons of the first weight and respectability. He (Mr. Miles) was engaged on other matters, but recommended him to put the petition of such weight and character in the hands of some other Member who could attend to the case. Now, he had given that advice, not on the recommendation of the case by Mr. B. Lovibond, but on his representation of that which now turned out to be what he must call a forged document, and therefore a fraud had been endeavoured to be committed, by his being asked to present a petition which actually had not been agreed to by those whose signatures were affixed to it. At the same time be trusted, that a reprimand would have the same effect as if the individual were placed in custody. He was sure, that if this party appeared again as agent before the House, he would never forget the mercy dealt to him, or the reprimand so properly awarded.

Mr. Williams Wynn

remarked, that though a reprimand might be amply sufficient to prevent this party from offending again, still it was desirable to show the public that the practice, now too prevalent, of tampering with petitions would not be suffered with impunity. The case had been fully made out before the committee to whom the inquiry had been delegated, and he must say, it was necessary to mark the offence with a punishment of a higher nature than a mere reprimand. He thought the party ought to be committed—it would only be for two days, when on the next sitting he might present a petition and be discharged. He should not move this at present, but if the House fell into his views, he was ready to do so.

Sir C. Burrell

said, that he was of opinion the course suggested by his right hon. Friend would be most likely to maintain the privileges of the House and to prevent a repetition of any such irregularities in future. He should therefore now, in the first place, move, that the report of the committee be agreed to.

Motion carried.

Sir C. Burrell

then moved, that Mr. Benjamin Lovibond be committed to the custody of the Sergeant-at-Arms.

The Solicitor-General

moved as an amendment, that Mr. Lovibond be called to the bar of the House on Thursday, to receive a reprimand from the Speaker. By taking this course he thought they would be making a sufficient example.

Mr. Williams Wynn

did not conceive, that this was at all the proper course. If the House thought, that a reprimand was sufficient, that reprimand should certainly take place immediately. He could see no possible advantage which could result from the postponement of the reprimand for two days.

It was then ordered that Mr. Lovibond be brought up to the bar, and be reprimanded by the Speaker.

Benjamin Lovibond was accordingly called to the bar, where he was reprimanded by Mr. Speaker, as followeth:—

Benjamin Lovibond, The House has considered the report of the select committee to which your conduct has been referred, and I am directed by the House to acquaint you, that you have incurred the severe displeasure of this House; that you allowed a petition to be presented, connected with a bill of which you were the agent, knowing that at least one of the names appended to that petition was a forgery. You have also misrepresented the opinions of a considerable body of the petitioners, who were desirous of placing those opinions before this House, with reference to a bill then in progress. You have been decidedly guilty of a breach of the privileges of this House, in tampering with a petition; and if such conduct was to pass without censure, it is manifest, that petitions would either cease to be regarded as authentic, or, if regarded, the House would be led, without intending it, to do injustice to individuals, whose interests are affected by the petitions.

You have expressed your sorrow for the offence, and the House in its lenity has thereupon directed that you be reprimanded; and you are reprimanded accordingly.—Entered in the journals.