§ MR. BRODIE (Surrey, Reigate)To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department whether he can state any precedent for treating political demonstrators as political offenders one year and the same people or their associates as ordinary law breakers for making similar demonstrations the following year.
(Answered by Mr. Secretary Gladstone.) As I informed my hon. friend on the 3rd of this month, the question in which division a prisoner should be placed is one for the discretion of the magistrate, and the fact of a prisoner being placed in the first division does not of itself afford any ground for regarding him or her, as a political offender.