§ LORD PORTMAN, having presented a Petition for Amendment of the Artizans' Dwellings Bill, of the Board of Works of the Holborn District, said: I take the liberty of asking your Lordships' attention to a matter somewhat personal, but still lone as to which it is desirable that I should offer an explanation to your Lordships. In the observations made by the noble and learned Lord (Lord Chelmsford) in the discussion on the Artizans' and Labourers' Dwellings Bill the other night, I supplemented his statement by a paragraph which, as I thought, he had omitted, Now, the noble and learned Lord omitted to state to the House that he quoted from The Observer; and, as I was not aware that there wore two paragraphs of a somewhat similar nature in two different papers, I naturally imagined that he was quoting from The Daily Telegraph. It would seem that The Observer had an article of much the same kind, but without, the words which to me were so offensive. The passage in The Daily Telegraph of Monday, the 25th, was, as I stated—
Any fair and reasonable objection will be gladly entertained, and any proper safeguard admitted, by those who have charge of the measure; but the Peers, who own so much property in the metropolis, and who therefore owe a proportionate duty to its inhabitants, will oppose this most salutary and necessary piece of legislation at their peril.These were the words I used and for having used them I am accused this morning of practising "a ruse." But those who have known anything of my conduct for the last forty years will not, I feel sure, suppose me capable of practising anything like a ruse upon your Lordships, or of making any statement which I was not prepared to support or did nut believe to be true. I am not in the habit of playing that sort of game. I am too old to do so now. But it is due to The Observer that the acknowledgment should be made that its correspondent did not betray it into the use of the same language which found admittance into The Daily Telegraph.