VISCOUNT BURYasked, with reference to certain Regulations, signed by George C. Oke, chief clerk, by order of the Lord Mayor, dated Justice Room, Mansion House, July 1871, in which it is stated that—
Declarations will not be received respecting immoral practices, or involving criminal charges, or supposed criminal charges affecting the declarant or other persons, whether or not they are the subject of proceedings commenced, pending, or determined, nor in any other improper case,whether such Regulation are according to Law? In answer to a Question which he had put on Friday his hon. and learned Friend the Attorney General had stated that the Act imposed a statutory duty on a magistrate, and left him no option with respect to refusing to receive a statutory declaration, or to neglect the discharge of any duty imposed on him by law. Now, there was clearly some discrepancy between the Law as laid down by the Attorney General and the practices to which he had called attention. He had, he might add, received a letter, in which it was stated that the alteration at the Mansion House Court had not been made in consequence of any recent case, and that it had been in force since 1865.
THE ATTORNEY GENERAL, in reply, said, he would call the noble Lord's attention to the fact, that there was a slight inconvenience in prefacing a Question by something approaching a legal argument. To the statement he had made on Friday he had nothing to add, nor had he anything to withdraw from it. He certainly did not mean to state, nor did he believe he had stated, that if a magistrate chose to take on himself a full inquiry, and had the means of satisfying himself that such inquiry was complete and satisfactory, he would 126 not be justified in refusing to receive such a declaration as that to which the noble Lord had referred, or any other declaration. What he said was, that the law cast on the magistrates the duty of taking a statutory declaration, which the smallest consideration must enable him to know often contained matter highly objectionable with regard to individuals. In order that a magistrate should satisfy his mind that he ought, or ought not, to receive a statutory declation, he must go through it, unless he was willing to take it on the faith of the professional persons by whom it was prepared. In the case in question, it was not the making the declaration, but the circulating of it which had done the mischief; and if Mr. Chaffers, instead of making that declaration, had chosen to print the paper and circulate it by hundreds of thousands, the object of his attack might let it pass or meet it as had been actually done by indicting him. If the magistrate chose to take upon himself the duty of inquiring, he was of course at liberty to do so. What he had stated was simply that the magistrate did that on his own responsibility, but that the law cast upon him the duty of receiving a statutory declaration independently, generally speaking, of the contents of the document, and that duty he was called upon to discharge like every other.