§ SIR FREDERICK PERKINSasked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, Whether the case of Robert Millar, a British subject, who on the 11th of September last was arrested at the village of Espezel, Department of Aude, France, by an officer of Gendarmes, in the presence of and after conversation 438 with the Mayor of the place, on the plea that he was without a passport, and who was called upon to deliver up all his papers; was then locked up in the cell of a loathsome prison as a common felon until the next morning; was then inarched under circumstances of great indignity by mounted Gendarmes to Quillan, where he was again lodged in gaol, and on the following day taken to Alet, and finally conveyed to Limoux, where he was for the third time put in gaol, and on being taken before the Procureur de la Republique was finally released on the production of a passport from his portmanteau, which he had in the meantime ordered to be sent on from Carcassonne; whether he is aware that repeated representations have been made by Lord Lyons, Her Majesty's Ambassador at Paris, to the French Government on the matter, which have failed to obtain redress; and, whether, considering that the passport system between Franco and this Country has been abolished, he will cause inquiry to be made into the circumstances of the case, with a view to obtain such explanations and redress from the French Government as are required by the infliction of so serious an indignity upon a British subject?
§ MR. BOURKE, in reply, said, that the Question of the hon. Gentleman seemed to take for granted that the matter had already been under the consideration of the Government, or, at least, of the British Ambassador at Paris. The Government, had, however, heard nothing on the subject, and the Foreign Office was in possession of no information of the kind; but if the hon. Gentleman would communicate with the Foreign Office he should receive all the information possible as soon as it was received.