PRIVILEGE—PRODUCTION OF PUBLIC DOCUMENTS.—OBSERVATIONS. (Hansard, 6 December 1867)

§ MR. DARBY GRIFFITH

, seeing the hon. Member for Southwark in his place, rose to call attention to a question of which he had given him public and also private notice, affecting the privileges of hon. Members and the rules of debate in this House. He said that in a debate which was brought on by Lord Cairns, then Sir Hugh Cairns, in June, 1865, on the subject of the proceedings of the late Government in respect to Abyssinia, the 667 hon. Member for Southwark (Mr. Layard) quoted certain documents in the course of his speech, and when interrupted and asked several times by the hon. Member for Poole (Mr. Henry Seymour) and Sir Hugh Cairns whether those documents had been laid upon the table, the hon. Gentleman gave a promise that they should be produced. The papers, however, were not laid upon the table during the whole period in which the hon. Member held office. Late in the Session of 1866 a gentleman came to him (Mr. Darby Griffith), and said that the papers had not been laid upon the table. He accordingly moved for them, and they had been produced on his Motion. The rules of the House on this subject were very important. They required that no paper should be quoted by a Minister which had not been laid upon the table—otherwise a Minister might take advantage of quoting papers of which the House had no knowledge. The hon. Gentleman might represent in explanation of his conduct that, on examination, he found that those papers contained something affecting the character of individuals or injurious to the public, and therefore he did not produce them. But he (Mr. Darby Griffith) submitted that it was the business of the hon. Gentleman, before quoting from papers, to make himself acquainted with their nature.

§ MR. LAYARD

said, he had no reason to complain of the manner in which the hon. Gentleman had brought the subject before the House. No time had been specified for laying the papers on the table, and no Motion had been made for their production. He did not wish, however, to rest his defence on any technicalities. The simple facts of the case were these:—when he spoke on the occasion referred to, the papers were printed with the intention of laying them on the table. A very short time afterwards, however, it was decided that Mr. Rassam should be sent to Abyssinia, and it was thought most advisable by Mr. Rassam, the missionaries, Colonel Merewether, and other gentlemen best acquainted with the subject, that nothing should be allowed to transpire with respect to Mr. Rassam's mission. That was the reason the papers were not produced. They had now been laid upon the table, and hon. Gentlemen knew what they were. So far from containing anything injurious to the Government, their tendency was to justify the Foreign Office in the proceedings which had been taken, and he would 668 have been only too glad to have produced them.