§ Sir R. Peelasked permission to bring in a bill without notice, under rather peculiar circumstances. A bill had been sent from the House of Lords repealing so much of the act that was passed in 1839 as enabled our ships of war to seize Portuguese vessels concerned in carrying on the slave-trade. At the time the bill was introduced the Government had the most confident expectation of receiving a ratification of the treaty lately concluded with Portugal, under which she undertook to effect that which had been the subject of former negotiation and to declare the carrying on of the slave trade to be an act of piracy. The ratification not having arrived as was expected, an act was brought in giving her Majesty in Council the power of suspending that part of the law to which he had referred; subsequently, however, the ratification of the treaty had been received; Portugal had fulfilled all her stipulations; and the bill which he now proposed, instead of giving her Majesty the power to suspend that part of the law, was to repeal it.
§ Leave given.
§ Bill brought in, read a first and second time.
§ Ordered to be committed.
§ House adjourned at half-past one o'clock,