HC Deb 19 February 1894 vol 21 cc719-20
COLONEL BROOKFIELD (Sussex, Rye)

On behalf of the hon. Member for East St. Pancras, I beg to ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department whether his attention has been called to the report appearing in The Montgomery County Times of the 10th instant, of a speech delivered by Mr. Richard Lloyd, at a meeting of the North Wales Liberal Federation held at Newtown on the 8th instant, in which he stated that— They had been told that evening that the hon. Member for Montgomery was in Parliament by the help of Baron Pollock. The Judge was the last of the Barons, and if the next Judges were to be according to his sample they would rather be without them"; whether he is aware that Mr. Richard Lloyd is a Justice of the Peace for the County of Montgomery, and was one of the promoters of the Petition against the return of the hon. Member for the Montgomery Boroughs, headed by Baron Pollock and Mr. Justice Wills; and whether any steps are proposed to be taken to protect one of Her Majesty's Judges from a charge of partiality in the discharge of his duties, made by a gentleman holding Her Majesty's Commission of the Peace?

MR. ASQUITH

Mr. Lloyd informs me that he did say that the hon. Member was in Parliament by the help of Mr. Baron Pollock, by which (he tells me) he meant that if that learned Judge had been of the same mind as his colleague, Mr. Justice Wills, who tried the Petition with him, the hon. Member would have been unseated. Mr. Lloyd denies that the concluding sentence in the first paragraph of the question is an accurate report of any words of his, and declares that nothing could have been further from his mind than to make any charge of partiality against Mr. Baron Pollock. Mr. Lloyd also denies that he was one of the promoters of the Petition. He is a Justice of the Peace. After Mr. Lloyd's explicit disclaimer of any intention to impute partiality to Mr. Baron Pollock—a charge which I venture to think too intrinsically absurd to be suggested by anyone against a learned Judge of such high reputation and long public service— I do not think that I am called upon to take any action in the matter.