Lord Broughamhad a very important petition to present, and he was glad he had the opportunity of doing so in the presence of his noble Friend the First Lord of the Treasury. It was agreed to, at a public meeting held in Glasgow, and was signed by from 6,000 to 7,000 persons, and they prayed for the merciful interference of the House on behalf of the five cotton-spinners who were sentenced to seven years' transportation for a conspiracy in January, 1838. The petitioners stated, that those five men were found guilty by a majority of only one of the jury of the two minor counts of the indictment, namely, assault and threats; that their moral character was unimpeachable, and their conduct 1029 while on board the hulks exemplary. The petitioners, therefore, implored their Lordships to take the hardship of the case of these men into their serious and merciful consideration, and he would add one word in support of that prayer. If these men had committed the same offence fifty or sixty miles to the south of Glasgow, viz., in England, they could, by law, have been sentenced only to three months' imprisonment; but, by the mere accident of locality, they were sentenced to seven years' transportation, and, of these seven years, eighteen months had already been passed in the hulks; and, by a blunder to which they were no parties, committed by the persons intrusted with the management of, the Crown Law Office in Scotland, they; had been arrested, and kept three months in prison before trial, so that they had spent twenty-one months in confinement, or seven times as long as they could have been imprisoned if they had committed the same crime sixty miles to the southward, in Westmoreland or Cumberland. He really did not think it for the credit of the law, that so great a want of uniformity should exist in the measure of punishment to be inflicted, nor for the credit of the mercy of the Government that the equalisation of the punishment had not been effected by their interference. He hoped the cases of these men would be taken into the merciful consideration of her Majesty's Government. He should not, on the present occasion, give any notice for a particular motion on the subject, because he was reluctant to propose any unusual interference on the part of that House; but he submitted the case to the attention of the Government.