§ MR. H. LABOUCHERE (Northampton)I beg to ask the Attorney General whether his attention has been drawn to the case of George Newman, who was found guilty of having fraudulently pocketed £10,000, this being the difference between the amount he gave for some land he leased from the Commissioners of 1851 and the amount for which he sold it to George Newman & Company (Limited), and who is now undergoing a sentence of five years' penal servitude; whether he is aware that the Lords Justices have declared that on this point he was wrongly convicted, as he had expended the bulk of the £10,000 to obtain the contract for the 357 land from the Commissioners; that Lord Halsbury, in delivering judgment of the Court of Appeal in regard to this matter, said, that the money was spent in a process described by various polite names, but which, if facts are as he (Newman) alleges, amounts to bribing different persons, some of them named, for the purpose of obtaining this contract; and that it was perfectly manifest that, considering the circumstances of the case, and considering the mode in which the contract was obtained from the Commissioners, the matter urgently requires investigation, and in the public interest it is positively necessary that some investigation should be held in respect of the obtaining of that contract; and what steps are intended to be taken in order that this investigation shall take place?
§ MR. ASQUITHsaid, he had directed an investigation to be made as soon as the judgment of the Court of Appeal was given, and the Report which he had just received was now under consideration.