§ MR. MACNEILLsaid he desired most respectfully to direct the attention of Mr. Speaker to what he conceived to be an abuse of the Notice Paper of the House, and of the privilege of asking questions. On July 13 notice was given that the following Question would be asked to-day. It was a question affecting private character and snaking personal charges, and it had not been asked:—
Sir Mancherjec Bhownaggree: To ask the Secretary of State for India whether his attention has been drawn to the fact that a native piper id Bombay, called the Gujarati, has in its issue of the 13th ult., in writing on the sanitary measures under consideration for the 179 protection of the British Army, described the same in English as the Government traffic in women and in the vernacular as the Government brothel system; also that the same journal stated with reference to the statue of Her Majesty which the people of Lahore had decided to erect in commemoration of the Diamond Jubilee, that the high State Officers had carried this proposal with the help of guns and bayonets; and whether the authorities in India had taken any, and if so what, steps to bring this journal to trial and to stop the continual efforts made by it to incite the native population against British rule?The Rule, as he understood it, was distinct that when a personal accusation was embodied in a Question on the Notice Paper, and got an extensive circulation through that agency, that Question ought not to be withdrawn, but the hon. Gentleman who put it on the Paper should have the courage to ask it. ["Hear, hear!"]
§ *MR. SPEAKERI do not see that the observations of the hon. Gentleman raise any question of order or privilege. The Question which the hon. Member has just read is not one which casts any reflection on the personal character of any individual. It is an attack on the policy of the Indian Government by an Indian newspaper, and the hon. Member who put the Question down was equally entitled to take it off, and he has taken it off. If the hon. Member, however, desires to have the Question answered, of course he is at liberty to put it down himself on the Notice Paper. [Laughter.]
§ SIR M. BHOWNAGGREE, as a matter of personal explanation, said that as the hon. Gentleman opposite had charged him, impliedly if neat explicitly, with not having the courage to put the Question which appeared on the Notice Paper, he wished to state why he did not do so. It would be seen that the Question which he put ended with almost the same inquiry as that he did not put, and therefore he did not think it necessary to occupy the time of the Secretary of State for India or the House by putting the second Question, the withdrawal of which the hon. Gentleman, without any adequate justification, had objected to. That was the reason, and the only reason, why he withdrew the Question.