COMMITTEE. (Hansard, 3 February 1860)

§ MR. SPOONER
complained that the hon. Member who had charge of it (Mr. Ayrton) had never stated its objects, and he asked him to do so.

§ MR. AYRTON
said, in the last Session he had fully explained the objects contemplated by it; that he felt it altogether superfluous to repeat what he had then said. After having been amply discussed and considered it was passed by the House, but time did not admit of its being carried in the Lords. The first object of the measure was to repeal a statute which was passed under the threat of an invasion by France during a time of great tumult. The House, he thought, could hardly desire to continue the stringent provisions of an Act which was intended to give the Executive Government of that day additional powers of maintaining the peace of the country. It was necessary at that time, when an invasion was threatened, to take stringent measures to prevent correspondence with the enemy. Some classes of people, who were supposed to be mischievous, were required to register themselves, and so be brought immediately under the cognizance of the Government. Everything printed was registered under the eye of the Government, in order that no treason or sedition might be hatched. He trusted that society in this country at the present day was not to be considered in such a lamentable state as to render the continuance of such restrictions necessary. The Bill also sought to repeal a statute which provided that persons publishing newspapers should enter into recognizance for their good behaviour, as it were, and which did that in a manner, as he submitted, at variance with one of the first principles of law. Was it not monstrous, he asked, that, because a man undertook a laudable occupation, he was, at the very outset of it, to be treated as if he had been convicted of a crime? The Bill repealed a third statute which rather aggravated the evil to which he had just alluded by increasing the amount of the recognizances. That was the whole scope of the measure. The subject had been investigated both by the present and the late Government, and after consulting with the law officers of the Crown they came to the conclusion that all these were gratuitous and unnecessary restrictions, and ought to be dispensed with.

SIR G. LEWIS
said, that understanding the Bill was exactly in the form in which 549 it passed last Session, he should advise the House to agree to it.

§ MR. SPOONER
said, he had no objection to the Bill, but he thought it right to object to the passing of a mere piece of paper of which the House knew nothing.