§ MR. R. POWERasked the Secretary of State for the Home Department, If 125 his attention has been called to the Reverend Canon Moore's speech as reported in the "Spalding Free Press," in which paper he is reported to have stated—
That he had to defend himself against the House of Commons, who were misled by the representation from the Home Secretary that he had denounced us; that he had in some measure or other conveyed to the magistrates of this bench his disapproval of their sentence. The only communication we have had from the Home Secretary was rather 'complimentary than otherwise, and was simply in effect that he felt bound to reverse the sentence.'And, if there is any objection to lay upon the Table the Correspondence between the Home Secretary and the Reverend Canon Moore?
MR. ASSHETON CROSSSir, as a magistrate of long standing, if I had sentenced a person to four years' imprisonment and received a communication from the Secretary of State for the Home Department stating that he felt bound to peremptorily reverse the decision, I should have accepted such a communication as being a severe rebuke rather than as—"rather complimentary than otherwise;" and I cannot but think that the rev. gentleman showed by the letter which he wrote to the Home Office that he felt it as a rebuke in the sense that the same thing should not occur again. I have no objection to lay the Correspondence on the Table.