§ MR. S. WORTLEYsaid, he was anxious to call the attention of the House and the public to a matter of considerable importance as related to the privileges of that House, and to the conduct of inquiries before its Committees. He had the honour, 642 or the misfortune, as the case might be, to be a Member of the Ceylon Committee, which was a select one; and he believed the ordinary rule was that the proceedings of Select Committees should be conducted with closed doors. The Ceylon Committee had had referred to it questions of importance, involving personal charges against high functionaries in that colony; and the Committee, in order to make their inquiries as public and as satisfactory as possible, had up to this time allowed the proceedings to be carried on in public, admitting the public to the Committee rooms. Unfortunately, however, this liberty had been abused, and he had the pain of observing in some of the public prints accounts, purporting to be the substance of the evidence taken before this Committee, at a period when the evidence was extremely incomplete, and even in the midst of the examination of one particular witness, and which accounts happened not only to be incorrect, but were extremely partial, and calculated to do great injury to those who were now under charge, and prevent the course of justice. Under these circumstances, he was anxious to ask his hon. Friend the Member for Inverness-shire, as chairman of that Committee, if he felt at liberty to state whether any steps were to be taken by the Committee, to prevent the recurrence of irregularities of the nature he had described?
§ MR. BAILLIE, in answer to the question of his right hon. Friend, regretted to state that certain portions of the evidence—indeed, he might say, as his hon. Friend had done, very partial reports of the evidence—taken before the Ceylon Committee had appeared in some of the public papers, and the Committee were certainly of opinion that incomplete portions of evidence, selected perhaps by parties who might have a peculiar bias, were calculated to prejudice the ends of justice; and therefore, very unwillingly, they did come to a resolution that day that the proceedings in future should be taken with closed doors, and he thought the Committee perfectly justified in adopting that resolution.