§ Order of the Day for the Third Reading read.
418§ Moved, "That the Bill be now read 3a."—(The Lord Bramwell.)
LORD DENMANsaid, he had a Notice on the Paper to move the rejection of the Bill. He hoped it was not unseemly in him to oppose a Bill which had been so often carried in their Lordships' House, and which was nearly being referred to a Grand Committee in "another place." Such Committees, however, were devices of the last Parliament. He had great respect for the noble and learned Lord (Lord Bramwell), who was not called to the Bar till he was 30 years of age; and before 1838, for six years he (Lord Denman) had the advantage of hearing Sir James Scarlett and Sir John Campbell; two Sir Fredericks—Pollock and Thesiger—one grave, the other gay; and two Sir Williams—Erle and Follett—and they were often on different sides, and one must have been wrong. The Bill was faulty in every way—notwithstanding the amelioration by the Amendment reported. He believed the noble Marquess the Leader of the Opposition opposed the principle of the Bill, when he said, in this House, that he should attach no importance whatever to evidence extorted by interrogations by police officers. He thought it might amuse their Lordships to quote from The Critic; or, A Tragedy Rehearsed (by Sheridan), the significancy of the mode of entrance of the ancestor of the noble Marquess——
§ "Puff—I only hope the Lord High Treasurer is perfect—if he is but perfect.
§ "(Enter Lord BURLEIGH, goes slowly to a chair and sits.)
§ "Sneer—Mr. Puff.
§ "Puff—Hush! vastly well, Sir! vastly well! a most interesting gravity.
§ "Dangle—What, isn't he to speak at all?
§ "Puff—Egad, I thought you'd ask me that! Yes, it is a very likely thing—that a Minister in his situation, with the whole affairs of the nation on his head, should have time to talk! But hush! or you'll put him out.
§ "Sneer—Put him out; how the plague can that be if he is not going to say anything.
§ "Puff—There's the reason! Why, his part is to think; and how the plague do you imagine he can think if you keep talking.
§ "Dangle—That's very true, upon my word.
§ (Lord BURLEIGH comes forward, shakes his head, and exit.)
§ "Sneer—He is very perfect indeed! Now, pray what did he mean by that?
419§ "Puff—You don't take it?
§ "Sneer—No, I don't, upon my soul.
§ "Puff—Why, by that shake of the head, he gave you to understand that even though they had more justice in their cause, and wisdom in their measures—yet, if there was not a greater spirit shown on the part of the people, the country would at last fall a sacrifice to hostile ambition.
§ "Sneer—The devil! did he mean all that by shaking his head?
§ "Puff—Every word of it—if he shook his head as I taught him."
§
He (Lord Denman) did not presume that he could teach the noble Marquess; but in his protest against a Bill for admitting wives as witnesses against their husbands he mentioned the present Bill which had passed this House, and deprecated the interrogation of persons on their acts by magistrates before, and by counsel on, their trials. He, perhaps, had better been silent himself; but he could not refrain from quoting the last verse of a sonnet, written in 1531, by Lord Vaux, commending silence—
Wherefore for virtue's sake
I can be well content;
The sweetest time in all my life
To deem in thinking spent.
He would not make the Motion, which stood in his name.
§ Motion agreed to; Bill read 3a accordingly, and passed, and sent to the Commons.