HC Deb 25 February 1864 vol 173 cc1068-9
MR. DARBY GRIFFITH

said, he would beg to ask the First Lord of the Treasury, Whether the Government has received information, that by order of Prince Frederic Charles of Prussia, numbers of the Inhabitants, and almost all the Clergymen of Gravenstein and its neighbourhood, have been arrested as spies, and a warning has been issued to the inhabitants, complaining of their Danish sympathies, and informing them that all those arrested as spies, in future, will be executed; and, if that be the case, whether such wholesale treatment of the loyal inhabitants of an invaded country as spies, and thereby subject to summary execution, be in accordance with the modern usages of war among civilized nations?

VISCOUNT PALMERSTON

In answer to the hon. Gentleman, I have only to say that Her Majesty's Government have received no information upon the matter to which his question relates.