1459] 34 GEORGE III.

some suspension of the severities they
were condemned to suffer until they were
able to determine upon the competency
of the court of justiciary, whether an ap-
peal did not lie to a supreme court of ju-
dicature, or whether some revocation
Mr. Palmer
could not be established.
had since presented a petition to his ma-
jesty. Was that petition referred to the
judges, or had the report of the judges
upon it been signified to Mr. Palmer?
Those who had interested themselves in
Mr. Palmer's case had omitted no mode
of obtaining relief. It was very confi-
dently reported, that although sentence
was passed, yet there was good reason
for believing that a sentence so abhorrent
to the very spirit of our law, would not
be carried into execution. Upon these
grounds it was, that the business had
been delayed until it was actually proved
that every hope of lenity was unfounded.
Let gentlemen recollect that the measure,
which had now been judged as criminal,
was instituted formerly, and promoted by
those very persons who now pronounced
that judgment. Instead, therefore, of
punishing a few individuals with such un-
remitting rigour as they had done, they
ought to be thankful that the whole coun-
try had not risen up in arms to enforce
them to their first solemn and repeated
promise.

He

Mr. Wilberforce ridiculed the idea of humanity as applying to Mr. Palmer, although he had not read his trial. thought the whole business suspicious, because Mr. Adam had postponed his motion, which motion alone appeared capable of giving them full information on the subject. He declared upon his conscience, that he did not conceive the sentence ought to be suspended.

The House divided; Yeas 34: Noes 104.

Feb. 27. The order of the day being read, for resuming the debate on the question for receiving Mr. Palmer's Petition,

Mr. Sheridan said, he understood the chancellor of the exchequer was now ready to consent to the receiving this petition. Indeed, the question was so plain, that the petition ought to have been brought up at once and read. He had found several precedents exactly in point, but it would be unnecessary for him to detail them all. He mentioned, however, the case of an individual as being exactly in point with the present petition. This man was convicted before the recorder, and was ordered to be three times pilloried. The parliament ordered the proceedings in this case to be laid before them, declared them to be illegal and oppressive, and reversed the sentence. Mr. Anstruther said, that all that par- Their standing committee of courts of liament were at present informed of was, justice, he said, was a mockery upon the that Mr. Palmer was convicted of sedition, country, if the subject had not a right to apand being now on the point of receiving ply to that House for a redress of grievances the sentence due to that crime, had peti- when he conceived himselfinjured by the adtioned the House on its legality and jus-ministration of justice in any of the courts of tice. This petition the House thought so novel in its nature, as to require time to consider of the propriety of receiving it. If, however, it had been received, it could not have been considered that day, and the same argument would then have applied for delaying the execution as at present. The consequence, therefore, of this doctrine would be to enable any convict to delay his own sentence. The responsibility of ministers in this case was exactly what it was in every other, and no more. As he could not see the least reason for delaying the sentence, he should of course oppose the motion.

The Marquis of Titchfield said, that since the petition was to be accepted, he thought the sentence ought to be suspended, if it was urged by no other arguments than the dictates of humanity.

the kingdom. He therefore pressed it to the consideration of the chancellor of the exchequer, whether it would not be well to assent to the production of the record in the case of Messrs. Muir and Palmer, in order to enable them to discuss the merits of that business the more fully. He concluded with moving, "that the Petition be Committed."

Mr. Pitt did not object to the motion, but the inconvenience which would result from the House taking up the case of every individual who might petition against the execution of his sentence must be obvious; he, however, admitted that, on communicating with others upon the nature of this case, he found there were grounds for bringing up the petition.

Mr. Fox said, he was exceedingly alarmed when a doubt was expressed as to the propriety of receiving this, or any

petition that stated a complaint of a sen- | ceed. The 13th and 14th Charles 2d enatence, or any part of the proceedings of a bling justices to remove the poor from court of justice. The right of petitioning in parish to parish, gave a great latitude to that case, and the duty of the House to at- magistrates to indulge caprice.or passion, tend to such a petition, were so clear, that he in cases where objects came within the wondered they ever could have been ques- letter, though not the contemplation or tioned. The doctrine on that subject was spirit of those laws, but particularly so indisputable, and so well exemplified where (as almost every day happened) a by the conduct of the parliament which person was getting an honest livelihood in sat in 1641 (a parliament which, in the another parish by industry or ingenuity early part of its proceedings, did more in any art, or at any species of labour not good to this country than all the rest put in request, or to be had in his own. In together), and which was almost exclu- such cases great hardships were endured; sively occupied in receiving, deliberating in the first place, by the object himself, and deciding on such petitions as that of in being forced from an honest, profitable Mr. Palmer, that a doubt on such a ques- livelihood to a state of bare dependent tion at the present moment excited his as- subsistence; in the next place, by the tonishment. So far was it from being parish to which he was removed, in being doubtful that parliament should attend to thus loaded with an unnecessary portion the petitions of individuals, complaining of expence; and, in the next place, by of the injustice or the irregularity of their society and the country at large, in being sentences, that almost all the numerous thus deprived of the person's contributive cases in which parliament interfered, and share of labour, and the advantage to be corrected the proceedings of courts of derived from it. To his knowledge, there justice, were necessarily the cases of indi- were many magistrates who, though very viduals. The Long Parliament, however desirous to mitigate the rigour of those faulty it might have been, had, in this re- laws in the instances he alluded to, spect, rendered the most essential ser- thought themselves incompetent to do so, vices to their country, by receiving and and imagined, from the wording of the attending to the petitions of persons con- acts, that there was no discretion vested ceiving themselves aggrieved by the deci- in them to exercise their judgment in the sion of the star chamber. The parliament interpretation of them, or to take into had not only received these petitions, but their consideration whether the person had in many of them, either reversed the was likely to become chargeable or not whole proceedings or the sentence, as ap- before removing him. No risk, he said, peared necessary, and compensated the could possibly be incurred in urging this remedial experiment; for it had been tried before, in the 1st and 2d William 3d. There it was enacted, that the person should be permitted to remain, on his getting the officers of his proper parish to certify that he belonged to it; but it was found too difficult to prevail on parish officers to do so; for they generally thought it hard, that when another parish was perhaps for thirty or forty years reaping the benefit of the person's labour, that they should be burthened with his support and maintenance in the time of his old age and infirmity; and thus the provisions and salutary intention of those acts were com

sufferers.

The Petition was then read.

Poor Removal Bill.] Feb. 27. Mr. East moved for leave to bring in a bill" to prevent the Removal of Poor Persons to the place of their legal settlement until they are actually chargeable." He said, that this was a subject on which he should have entered rather with hesitation, as so many able men had before failed in their attempts in it, did he not know, that since those attempts had been made, some changes had taken place that would give him better ground to stand on. He said, that in consequence of the unfeeling neg-pletely frustrated. lect of officers, and the rigorous exercise of the powers of overseers and churchwardens, many unfortunate creatures had died by being removed while in a stateof health unfit for it. The bill he proposed to bring in was intended to enable justices, on seeing persons unable to move, to suspend their removal till they were fully able to pro.

Leave was given to bring in the bill.

Petition of Mr. Christopher Atkinson for expunging from the Journals the Resolution for his Expulsion.] March 3. Mr. M. A. Taylor rose, to present a Petition from

See Vol. 24, p. 89.

their duty to carry their disapprobation of them to the foot of the throne. Feeling that the treaties in question contained such stipulations, he had been induced to frame the motion with which he should conclude. He should not recur to the grounds upon which this country had been engaged in the war with France. The opinion of a minority was recorded upon that subject; but he could not forego the opportunity of expressing the satisfaction he experienced at having con

one third of which only was to go as a reward to the informer or prosecutor. He put it, then, to the House to consider, how very inadequate an inducement the third part of five shillings was to any man to take upon himself the trouble of seeing the law carried into effect; and he would propose to amend that act, by enabling magistrates to pay the prosecutor his expences. He then adverted to a manifest breach of the sabbath, which seemed to have the sanction of the generality of the people. He meant the case of the jour-tributed his efforts to assist his right hon. neymen bakers, who, for the whole week had not less than nineteen hours of the twenty-four employed, and of course could have no time to devote to the service of their Creator but Sunday. He thought therefore, as it had been insisted upon that the people would suffer from their not baking on Sundays, that at least a specific portion of that day (suppose from ten to one o'clock) should be allotted to that purpose. He therefore moved for leave to bring in a bill "to explain and amend the act of the 29th Charles 2nd, intitled, an act for the better Observation of the Lord's day, commonly called Sunday.""

Mr. Joliffe conceived the proposition was absurd, and would be nugatory. It was absurd to propose that the bakers should be compelled not to work, as an exemption from a hardship, when they had it in their own power at present to relieve themselves from that hardship, if they considered it to be one, since there was no law which compelled them to labour on that day. He imagined that the next step would be to prohibit roasting and boiling on Sundays, from which the next gradation would be easy enough, namely to prohibit eating.

The motion was agreed to.

Debate on Mr. Whitbread's Motion for a Separate Peace with France.] March 6. Mr. Whitbread rose, to call the attention of the House to the various Treaties which had been entered into since the commencement of the war. It was not his intention to dispute that part of the prerogative by which the crown was vested with the power of contracting alliances and entering into treaties with foreign powers; but he held it to be the incontrovertible right of the Commons to take such engagements into their consideration; and if they found any stipulations in them derogatory to the honour of the crown, or incompatible with the interests of the people, it was

friend (Mr. Fox) in his noble endeavours. to prevent this country from being plunged into the present unfortunate war. Neither would he dwell upon those topics of invective and inflammation which had been so liberally and successfully used, to persuade the people to concur in that destructive measure. But these artifices were not new; individuals and nations, engaged in the most glorious struggles for liberty had been calumniated with the same epithets which we now bestowed upon the French. In the manifesto by which that furious tyrant Philip the 2nd proscribed the illustrious prince of Orange, that venerable character was designated, in the very terms now in use to describe the Jacobin rulers of France; and by comparing the manifestoes published during the American war, with those of the present day, we should see the same charges of impiety, immorality, hatred to order, and every other species of accusation, brought without reserve against the Americans, which we now lavished on the French. The issues of the two contests to which he had alluded, were known; and from them he might presume to augur what would be the event of the present struggle. But at the time the French nation were unjustifiably libelled by the charge of deism and atheism, it was not asserted, that we had drawn the sword in support of the Christian religion, nor to induce a belief of that, of which no man in his senses ever yet could have really doubted, the existence of a God. When the murder of the unhappy Louis was held up to our view, we were told that we were not engaged in a war of vengeance upon that crime; and when the tyranny of the Jacobin government was so frequently and forcibly painted, and it could not be pourtrayed in colours too strong, it was absolutely denied that we were at war for the purpose of interfering in the internal affairs of France. These were only incentives; and he would take the