falling into the hands of the enemy. Above all, he thought that ministers were reprehensible for endeavouring to throw the blame off themselves, and transferring it upon sir John Moore, who could not now appear to speak in his own justification. He hoped that such conduct would not lessen the ardour and zeal of the army, on which the salvation of the country so greatly depended. Upon these grounds he should vote for a motion that attributed to ministers the loss of seven thousand men, the loss of sir John Moore, eight millions of money, and created the addition of half a million of money to the burdens of the country, and above all disgrace to our councils and our national character.

Earl Grosvenor spoke a few words in favour of the motion.

Their lordships then divided.
Contents
Proxies

Non-Contents -
Proxies -

50

42

-92

83

62

—145

53

Majority against the Motion Adjourned at half past seven o'clock on Saturday morning.

List of the Minority.

Dukes.

Gloucester
Norfolk
Somerset
Devonshire
Grafton
St. Alban's

The Earl of Westmoreland thought the noble lord who brought forward the motion and those who had followed him, had been pretty liberal in their censures on government. According to them, ministers were wholly unfit to hold their places; he did not doubt but they knew of persons who, in their opinion, might be substituted with great advantage. He thought at that late hour it was unnecessary for him to consider what precise line of conduct England ought to have pursued; but this he would say, that honour, justice, and, above all, policy, called upon her to support the Spanish cause by every means in her power. The noble lord opposite, he said, shaped his conduct like most prophets, in order to fulfil his ends. Was it, he would ask of the noble lord, a measure of disgrace to free ourselves from a troublesome and dangerous blockade, and to restore to the people of Portugal the possession of their native land? Upon the whole, he received the noble lord's animadversions on this head as a compliment which merited his thanks. He would beg leave, however, to say, that the brilliant expedition to Alexandria or Constantinople, was never considered by the noble lords opposite as matter of disgrace. In fact, they gave themselves always that liberal latitude which they withheld from others. The noble earl concluded by giving his negative to the motion. Lord Grenville, in a very eloquent and able speech, animadverted upon the'improSpencer priety of the noble lord who had preced- Essex ed, having made use of sarcasms upon Donoughmore such a serious occasion. He then entered | Rosslyn into a critical examination of the two expeditions to Portugal and Spain, and enlarged considerably upon the inconsiderateness of ministers sending out troops so badly equipped and so ill provided with cavalry. He also threw out many reflections upon ministers for having allowed Mr. Frere to interfere with the military operations of sir J. Moore, owing to whose superior judgment our army had been prevented from

Bedford
Argyll
Buckingham
Stafford
Headfort
Blandford
Bute
Douglas
Townshend

Marquisses.

Earls.

Derby
Fitzwilliam
Moira

St. Vincent
Carnarvon
Tankerville

Stanhope
Buckinghamshire
Selkirk
Grey
Charlemont

[MR. FRERE.] Earl Darnley wished to know from the noble Secretary of State, whether it was the intention of ministers to recal Mr. Frere. He had heard that there was such an intention, and if so he should be satisfied; but if not, he considered the conduct of Mr. Frere to have been so improper towards sir John Moore, that he should feel it his duty to call the attention of their lordships to the subject. He could not, however, at present name any day, nor could he state the precise terms of his motion.

to a

of their lordships to the circumstance of several horses being killed during the retreat in Spain, in consequence of there being no shoes for them.

Earl Grosvenor stated, that a misrepresentation had gone abroad of what he had said respecting general Anstruther, who, he was stated to have said, had died for want of nourishment. On the contrary, that officer experienced every possible attention from his staff, and from those around him. Whilst upon this subject, however, he wished to throw out for their lordships' consideration the propriety of relaxing a little the strictness of their orders, as the best way of preventing misrepresentation.

HOUSE OF COMMONS,

Monday, April 24.

[BREACH OF PRIVILEGE.] Sir Charles Hamilton moved, that Daniel Butler, who had been committed to Newgate for a Breach of Privilege, in arresting him (sir C. Hamilton), should be brought to the bar to be discharged.--Daniel Butler was then called in, and the Speaker addressed him as follows:

"Daniel Butler; You, an Officer of the Sheriff of Middlesex, having presumed The Earl of Liverpool said, he was ready to arrest a Member of this House, have to vouch for the zeal and ability of Mr. been adjudged to be guilty of a high Frere, and was convinced his intentions breach of the Privileges of this House, were good, but he had said on a former and for that offence have been committed occasion, and was now of opinion, as were to his majesty's gaol of Newgate.-Peralso his colleagues, that Mr. Frere had, sons of your description, armed with the so far as related to the circumstance men- process of the law to restrain the civil tioned respecting sir John Moore, adopted liberty of the subject, are specially called an improper mode of carrying his inten- upon to use the utmost lenity which may tions into effect. Whilst upon his legs, be consistent with the necessary and faithhe wished to set himself right with respect ful discharge of their duty.-Warned howmisrepresentation that had gone ever, in the present instance, of the misabroad, of what he had said on Friday retake under which you were acting, you specting the amount of British cavalry in nevertheless, in defiance of that warning, Portugal, on the 22d of August, during the persisted, and added insult to outrage. negociation of the Armistice. He was Such conduct might well have warranted a stated to have said, that the number of our longer duration of your imprisonment. cavalry on that day in Portugal exceeded But this House, perceiving by your Petithat of the French, whereas what he meant tion that you are now brought to a just to state was, that it was known to sir sense of your past misbehaviour, is content Harry Burrard, that a considerable rein- to accept this proof of your submission forcement of cavalry was on its passage. and repentance, and sends you forth an It had in point of fact arrived at that time example at once of its justice and mercy. in Mondego Bay, but that could not be-It has ordered, therefore, that you be known at the period of the negociation, now discharged; and you are discharged the knowledge, however, of its being on accordingly; paying your fees." its way thither ought to have had great influence in the negociation. The Earl of Suffolk called the attention

Daniel Butler was immediately discharged; and the address of the Speaker was ordered to be entered on the Journals.

[PETITION OF MR. HENRY WHITE.] | Grand Jury shall be assembled; but it Mr. Whitbread presented a Petition from Mr. Henry White, Proprietor of a Sunday Newspaper, called "The Independent Whig," a Prisoner in Dorchester gaol, for a libel. The Petition, he observed, complained of grievances sustained in the course of the trial and afterwards in the gaol. The Petition was brought up and read by the clerk as follows:

"The Petition of Henry White, citizen and stationer; Sheweth, That your Petitioner is the sole proprietor of the Independent Whig newspaper, which, from its first commencement, has been, and still is, printed at No. 23, in Warwick-square, within the said city of London: and that your Petitioner is now a prisoner in the county gaol of the county of Dorset, in pursuance of the Sentence of the Court of Pleas, held before the king himself at Westminster, (usually called the court of King's Bench) which sentence was pronounced at Westminster, a place not within the said city of London, contrary to the rights and privileges of the citizens of the said city.

has never been contended that the subject should be deprived of the privilege of having his case submitted to a Grand. Jury of his county, before he be put upon his trial, except where pernicious consequences to the state would arise from the delay of calling together such Jury; but this could not obtain in the case of your Petitioner, because a Grand Jury of his county, namely, of the city of London, were actually sitting at the very time the criminal informations were filed against him at Westminster.

"Your Petitioner humbly craves leave to remind your honourable house that it was not even alledged in the said criminal informations that the matter which gave rise to them was false or untrue, though the matter was alleged to be scandalous and malicious, and that it was the usage of the court of King's Bench, till within the last forty years, not to permit any information to be filed for libellous matter, which was not alledged to be false as well as malicious, and indeed the most recent determination on the subject coincides with the opinions uniformly maintained by our ancestors; for, in the case of sir John Carr, and Hood and Sharpe, the plaintiff did not recover in action for a publication which was true, though admitted to be ma

"Your Petitioner having had a criminal information filed against him, of the nature, and under the circumstances above stated, the Solicitor for the crown moved for a Special Jury, to which motion the judges of the court of King's Bench acceded, and a Special Jury was awarded of such freeholders who were entered in the freeholders' Book belonging to the Sheriff, with the addition of Freeholder and Merchant, which Special Jury was struck, not by the Sheriff, but by the Master of the Crown-Office, who is a servant of the crown, the prosecutor in this instance;

"Your Petitioner published in his said newspaper in Warwick-square, within the said city, in the months of December, 1807, and January, 1808, certain Letters, signed "T. C." "Humanitas," "A Sea"man," and "Junius," for which pub-licious and injurious. lications criminal informations were filed, er officio, against your Petitioner by the king's attorney-general, in Hilary term, 1808, at Westminster, a place without the said city of London, although a Grand Jury of the citizens of the said city was sitting at the very time within the said city; in which informations, it was alledged that the above named publications were scandalous and malicious libels, though the said publications were not alledged to be in any particular false or untrue. Now it is not only the privilege of the citizens of the said city, but the acknowledged right of every subject of the British empire who is accused of crimes and misdemeanors, to have an indictment preferred before the best men of his county, who are to determine whether there be sufficient cause to put him on his trial; but, as a Grand Jury is not always sitting, and as danger might arise to the state in some cases from the delay of assembling a Grand Jury, the practice of filing a criminal information before the king at Westminster has been tacitly conceded to the AttorneyGeneral of the crown, at such times as no

and the names were not taken as named by the said Master, but several were passed over after he had named them, because he stated them to be not likely to attend, thereby subverting one of the principles of British justice, which directs that a Jury shall be impartially selected, and attendance enforced by fines of the court; and, indeed, the Master of the Crown-Office might prevent all impartial persons from being summoned on a Jury destined to try between the crown and the subject, if every name be passed over which he

determines to be a person not likely to at- | to form the basis of the conduct of every tend. And this conduct of the Returning Officer is conceived to be strong presumptive evidence that he knows the characters of the persons to be summoned, and has the power of acting with partiality, which power is contrary to the constitution of these realms, and is strongly guarded against by the laws, in cases where no attempts are made to take the trial out of the common course of justice; for, the Under-Sheriff (who summons Juries) cannot continue in office longer than one year, nor be re-chosen till after an interval of two years, lest, from his familiarity with office, he may be enabled to select a partial Jury.

British Judge, to have been also inimical to the letter and fail interpretation of the Act of Parliament entitled, "An Act to remove doubts respecting the functions of Juries in cases of Libel," which Act directs, that "on every such trial, the Court or judge before whom such indictment or information shall be tried, shall, according to his or their discretion, give their or his opinion and directions to the Jury in the matter in issue between the king and the defendant or defendants, in like manner as in all other criminal cases."-Your Petitioner therefore prays to submit, for the decision of this honourable house, the propriety or impropriety of the following words, as used by sir Nash Grose on this occasion, and which instead of delivering an opinion or direction, "as in all other criminal cases," are conceived by your Petitioner to be unprecedented in the annals of modern British jurisprudence. The words that your Petitioner complains of, and which were taken down at the

"Your Petitioner also reminds this honourable house, that, by a statute of the 7th and 8th year of king William 3, (ch. 32), it is enacted, that "every summons of any person qualified to any of the aforesaid services, (namely, serving on Juries), shall be made by the sheriff, his officer, or lawful deputy, six days before, at the least;" but in the case of your Pe-time by Mr. Farquharson, the short-hand titioner, the summonses to the Jury were not delivered six days before the day of trial, nor five days before, nor four days before; from which cause your Petitioner was not able to avail himself of a trial before a Special Jury, contrary to the rights of the subject and the law of the land; and this circumstance of not summoning the Jury six days before the trial, contrary to the positive and explicit enactments of the law of the land, has prevented your Petitioner from being tried by a Jury of such men as had been assigned him as his

peers.

"Your Petitioner was not tried by a Jury of his peers; for, as the court of King's Bench had ruled that a Jury of freeholders and merchants were his peers, it necessarily follows that those who were neither freeholders nor merchants could not be his peers; and yet those who were added to the Special Jury were neither freeholders nor merchants, and therefore were not his peers-and of a Jury composed of men who were all of them neither peers of your Petitioner, nor peers among themselves, a verdict was given. "Your Petitioner also craves the attention of this honourable house, to the words used by sir Nash Grose on the trial, in his charge to the Jury, which your Petitioner humbly presumes to have been a deviation from the spirit of the constitution, which enjoins lenity and impartiality

VOL. XIV.

writer, are as follows:-" In order to shew that they are most wicked, gross, and abominable Libels, it is only necessary to read, not all, but one or two of them. But, gentlemen, under this Act of Parliament, I am to give you my opinion upon these publications, and I have no hesitation in saying that any thing more libellous I never heard read: in my opinion they are gross, scandalous, and abominable Libels!"

"Your Petitioner humbly submits to the benignity of this honourable house, whether these words ought not to have been considered, in strict impartiality, as sufficiently strong, in giving the opinion and direction of the Judge as warranted by the Act of Parliament above alluded to, without the addition of the following unprecedented expression :-" But, really, gentlemen, I think it will be throwing dust in your eyes if I say I entertain the least doubt on the subject."--Your Petitioner humbly submits, whether an opi-. nion and direction of the Judge thus given, and that without having read a title of the Libels in question, or the defence that had been urged to the Jury, comes within the meaning either of the letter of the law, or the spirit of the British constitution. And the necessity of a Jury being peers among themselves as well as peurs to the defendant, has been ever recognized ans insisted upon by the British constitution,

N

because, otherwise, the master and the servant, the creditor and the debtor, the employer and employed, might be inclosed in the same Jury box, in which case it would imply an absurdity to assert that such Jury were peers among themselves; for, the same individuals could not at the same time be both dependants and equals; and, if a Jury be not peers among them-gument, that he might be imprisoned in a selves, they cannot all be peers to the defendant, and their verdict may not be a free and unbiassed verdict.