MR. BRYN ROBERTSTo ask the Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs whether he is aware that a British subject named John A. Evans, a native of Holyhead, was in March last arrested at Buenos Ayres on a false charge of passing as base coin a Jubilee English sovereign, which he had received in payment of his wages from a firm of English shipowners, and confined for fifteen flays in a prison without proper sanitary arrangements or sleeping accommodation, in the company of prisoners of the lowest class, and ultimately, through the intervention of British merchants, tried and acquitted without having received any assistance from the British Consul, to whom he appealed on his arrest; and whether His Majesty's Government will demand compensation for this young man.
(Answered by Lord Cranborne.) A complaint has been received from Mr. Evans of his alleged arrest and imprisonment by the Brazilian authorities at Para, not Buenos Ayres, on a charge of tendering false money. Steps are being taken to verify the facts of the case and to obtain a Report upon it. Until this Report is received it would be impossible to consider the question of compensation.