§ The Order of the Day being read for the attendance at the bar of the House of Mr. Charles de Lacy Nash, secretary to the committee of the company, the Yeoman Usher informed the House that Mr. Nash was in attendance; whereupon, on the Motion of Earl GRANVILLE, he was called in and examined. He stated that he was not the secretary of the Waterford, Wexford, Wicklow, and Dublin Railway Company, but that he was the secretary of an association of shareholders in that company, and that he had sent in to the Railway Commissioners, of his own accord, a copy of a return from the chairman and secretary of that company, because an order had been made by their Lordships in last March for the production of that return, and great delay had occurred in obtaining it from the company. The original return was made under an order of their Lordships issued in March, 1846, and his copy of it—which was a literal and exact copy, without any addition on his part—was made by himself from the original in the Private Bill Office. He had written on his copy "Courtown, chairman," in his ordinary handwriting, and not with any intention of having it supposed that it was the genuine autograph of that nobleman. He had no power to put in the original return, nor could anybody put in that return without the authority of Parliament. If the original had been missing ever since he made his copy, he knew nothing about it, and certainly had not abstracted it himself. His object in sending in his copy to the Railway Commissioners was to make the case of the shareholders of that company known to that body. A similar copy had been exhibited to the solicitors of Lord Courtown, and they had admitted it to be correct. He had never heard till that moment that the original return was now lost.
§ The witness was then ordered to withdraw.
LORD BROUGHAMmoved that the evidence be printed, and that the witness be 1038 ordered to attend at the bar again on Friday next.
§ Ordered accordingly.