VISCOUNT BURYsaid, that he had received from the Lord Mayor a communication to the effect that at the Mansion House Court an alteration had been made with respect to Statutory Declarations in that Court, and he would now ask the Attorney General, Whether his attention has been directed to the subject 31 of statutory declarations; and, whether he is willing to introduce such amendment of the Law as will render statutory declarations less liable to abuse?
THE ATTORNEY GENERALsaid, that it might, perhaps, be convenient to the House if he were allowed to answer the two Questions on the Paper relative to this subject together. He was asked by the noble Lord the Member for Berwick, whether his attention had been called to the subject of statutory declarations, and to the late proceedings, which had more or less given great personal pain to the persons connected with them, and had been the cause of general regret. He was also asked by the noble Lord whether he was willing to introduce such amendment of the law as would render statutory declarations less liable to abuse. That statutory declarations were liable, like all institutions, to abuse, he was not about to dispute, but the question assumed that which was not warranted by the fact, that all statutory declarations were liable to abuse. The Act of Parliament which governed the law to which the noble Lord had referred—the 5 & 6 Will. IV, c. 62—substituted statutory declarations for a variety of affidavits, which had been permitted to be made for various purposes. It dealt in a great many sections with a variety of distinct cases in respect to which affidavits had been required, and the 18th section was the one under which the statutory declaration in the case now referred to was made. After a variety of special provisions, the Act in that section proceeded to enact that in cases where confirmation of written documents, of allegations, of the execution of deeds, or of other matters, might be required, it should and might be lawful for any justice of the peace, public notary, and officer legally authorized to administer oaths, to take and receive declarations in a form specified in a schedule from any persons who voluntarily came and made them before them, and, if any such declarations proved to be untrue, the persons making them and knowing them to be untrue should be deemed guilty of a misdemeanour. The hon. Member for York (Mr. Leeman) had put a Question on the Paper asking, Whether, in the opinion of the Law Officers of the Crown, any magistrate has statutable authority to receive and attest a voluntary declaration 32 like that permitted to be made by Alexander Chaffers before Mr. Vaughan at Bow Street on the 4th of April, 1871; and, if so, whether it is not desirable to terminate or limit such an authority? The words of the Act were—"It may and shall be lawful for a Judge," &c., and they imposed a statutory duty on the Judge, and left him no more discretion to refuse to receive a statutory declaration than to neglect to discharge any other duty imposed on him by law. He was, therefore, of opinion that Mr. Vaughan was bound to receive the statutory declaration made in this case, and a moment's consideration would satisfy anyone that it must be so. These declarations were made by scores, in the metropolis at least, before persons occupying very responsible positions, and they were made from 10 o'clock in the morning till 6 o'clock at night, and if they were to inquire into the circumstances under which they were made, they would be trying under most unsatisfactory conditions a number of cases, and the general business which they were appointed to conduct would materially suffer. In the instance referred to in the Questions on the Paper, the declaration was brought to the magistrate by an attorney, and he believed that a magistrate always gave to a professional person a reasonable credit that the document he brought was a proper document, in a proper form, and brought on a proper occasion. It would be a very great evil if the business of honest, upright attorneys were to be interfered with and impeded, because since the passing of the Act he had mentioned there had been found one scoundrel to abuse the legal process which in hundreds and thousands of other cases had been employed in the transaction of justifiable business. If was the duty of the magistrate to take the declaration, and no magistrate had a right to assume a jurisdiction which did not belong to him, and refuse to receive a declaration which might be material and important. The noble Lord the Member for Berwick asked whether he was prepared to alter the law. Now, the only alteration of the law which he could conceive practicable was, not to prevent the making of statutory declarations, but to append to the making of false and slanderous declarations the same or more severe penalties than at present the law provided. 33 In the case of perjury the punishment rested on the assumption that the perjury was committed in the course of judicial proceedings, and he did not think it would he wise to depart from the principle of the statute relating to perjury, or alter the clauses declaring the penalties for perjury. Where a statutory declaration was made in the way in which the one alluded to had been made, containing a libel, and a libel uttered for the extortion of money, there already existed by law the punishment, on conviction, of three years' imprisonment with hard labour; and no one who knew what prison discipline was would deny that, even in the present case, a conviction followed by that punishment would not have been sufficient, he would not say for the moral turpitude of the offender, but for the purpose of deterring others from following his example. Therefore, he did not see that any alteration of the law was required, because he was not aware that statutory declarations had been abused, except in this instance. Before he sat down he would give an illustration, which had occurred in his practice, of his meaning. A man under circumstances of the greatest possible aggravation seduced his ward, of the age of 15 years. He was compelled to make a settlement on her, to be paid quarterly, and four times every year the ward was obliged to bring an action to get her money. Four times in every year the man put in an iniquitous defence, which on every occasion he was obliged to withdraw. Being engaged in the case, he at last applied for a summons before a Judge, in order to have this iniquitous plea struck out of the proceedings, on the ground that it constituted an abuse of the process of the Court; but he was told that because one or two scoundrels abused the process, that was no reason for altering it, or otherwise great injustice might be done in other cases.
§ ARMY RE-ORGANIZATION—ANGLESEY MILITIA.—QUESTION.
§ MR. RAIKESasked the Secretary of State for War, Whether the arrangement proposed in the Memorandum of the Commander in Chief, by which the Anglesey Militia (256 strong) is to be one of the Militia Battalions for North Wales, while the five Regiments (about 34 1,700 strong) belonging to the other counties are combined to form the other, is the consequence of the first-named Regiment being one of Light Infantry while the others are Rifles, or if this is not the cause of this proceeding, whether any other reason is to be alleged for it; and, whether he will state to the House any decision that has been arrived at as to transforming the other Militia Regiments of North Wales into Light Infantry as the Regiments of the Line to be localized in North Wales, are of that description?
§ MR. CARDWELLSir, the battalions are exhibited in the Appendix, in the form in which they appear in that document for the reason suggested by the Question. It is intended to re-distribute these corps so as to furnish two battalions of nearly equal strength.