LORD BROUGHAMin presenting a Bill for removing Doubts on the Plea of Persons indicted, said, he quite agreed that the Bill of the Lord Chancellor, just laid upon the table, would be an excellent measure; for it was absolutely necessary to give additional powers to the admirable common law courts of this country, and he could call to mind numerous instances in which such an extension of power would have saved enormous expense and delay to suitors. He begged to lay upon the table a Bill rendering it unnecessary for prisoners to plead "guilty" or "not guilty" at their trials. Some such measure had long been earnestly desired by numerous visiting magistrates and chaplains of gaols, who had petitioned their Lordships on the subject. By the construction of the English law the 1450 plea of "not guilty" simply meant that the person pleading it wished to be tried; but it appeared by the number of petitions that had been presented by magistrates, chaplains of goals and others, that it very frequently happened that in the interval between commitment and trial the prisoner, either from the internal conviction of conscience, or through the exhortations of worthy and reverend men conceived that he would only be adding to the crime by pleading "not guilty;" the consequence of which was that many prisoners pleaded "guilty" to indictments upon which no conviction could have been had, rather than tell what they conceived to be a falsehood in the presence of the Court. To obviate this he had introduced the present Bill, which would enable prisoners to be put on their trial without calling upon them to say anything to which a conscientious objection could be raised. The question he proposed to substitute for the question at present put by the officer of the Court, whether the prisoner says he is guilty or not guilty was the question, whether he desires to be tried or pleads guilty; and in case the prisoner answers that he desires to be tried, that answer should be taken to be a plea of not guilty to all intents and purposes.
THE LORD CHANCELLORobserved that one of the Bills which he laid upon the table on a former occasion contained similar provisions to those proposed to be inserted in the Bill of the noble and learned Lord; but he failed to carry the measure. He hoped that better success would attend the present measure.
LORD BROUGHAMsaid, that he had looked through the various law Bills of the last few Sessions, and had failed to discover any provision of the kind; but he should be very happy if the noble and learned Lord would adopt this Bill as his own child, and carry it through.
§ Bill read 1a.