LORD BROUGHAMpresented some petitions. He took this opportunity of supplying a defect in the statement which he had made some nights before respecting the important subject of absolution by Roman Catholic priests. The course which he had recommended of forbidding all access of priests to persons under sentence, and which he had described as pursued by the Emperor Napoleon, and by another person of great administrative powers, though less distinguished, had been also followed by a third ruler. The second he had not named—it was General Maitland, when Governor of Malta. He had to deal with mutinous troops; and the refusal of access to their priests when convicts lay under sentence, was known to have produced the most immediate and general effect in preventing the offence. The third example he had through inadvertence omitted to mention—it was that of his illustrious, revered, and beloved Friend—unhappily now no more—the Marquess Wellesley. He, rising superior to all prejudices and all the influence of a false—a misplaced humanity, had, with the manly vigour which ever marked his government, both made it the rule to transfer convicts instantly from the place of judgment to the place of punishment—an invaluable method of increasing the effects of penal infliction by the swiftness of its pace after conviction; and also made it a peremptory provision that from the moment of conviction the prisoners should never see the absolving priest. He (Lord Brougham) entertained no doubt that the most salutary consequences would result at the present time from adopting the same bold and decisive course.