place by the Speaker; once, for obtaining the draft of a bill which had been laid on the table, and thus tampering with the records; and, the second time, for publishing a pamphlet against the Corporation Act, for which offence, contrary to the known resolutions of the House, even his haughty spirit, quailing before the dread of further punishment, stooped to apologize.d There is a story current of the Speaker, Arthur Onslow, who, in his anxiety to tighten the lax bands of discipline, used to fulminate in deepest baritone the threat of naming the disorderly member, “Order, sir, I will name you presently, order, order; I will name you;" that he was one day asked by an inquisitive rebel to his authority, using the privilege of a very young member, what would actually be the consequence, if the Speaker should name him. The Speaker, after a grave pause, replied solemnly, "The Lord in heaven only knows!" But this answer must have been made in a spirit of pompous waggery, or a resolution not to relieve the mysterious terrors of ignorance; for he well knew the penalty, that the member thus called upon by name would have to withdraw, and, even should the most lenient view of his case be taken, to be committed to the custody of the Serjeant. Thus, on the 15th of December, 1692, Mr.[Speaker, in obedience to the order, called upon a member by name, who was immediately directed to withdraw, and afterwards reprimanded.' From the forbearance of the different Speakers, and their natural reluctance, except on extreme pro Parliamentary History, vol. iv. • Hatsell. vocation, to name a member and thus compel this severe penalty, the instances of its exercise have been comparatively rare. But there are sufficient instances to prove that the power is not in abeyance or obsolete. When, on a later occasion, Mr. Fuller, the member for Southampton, entered the House in a state of inebriety, and too audibly mistook the Speaker for an owl in an ivy-bush, he was at once named, and handed over to the Serjeant. The next day, the Speaker, Charles Abbott, administered to the culprit a severe but dignified rebuke." His successor, Manners Sutton, also named Mr. Otway Cave, when obstinately refusing to explain or apologize for the use of unparliamentary language, though repeatedly called upon to do so." The further punishment, which the House, of necessity, retains in its own hands, is the ordering any member who may incur their displeasure to the custody of the Serjeant, and, should the offence be grave enough to require it, to the Tower. This power was at first exercised with some degree of caution and forbearance. In 1601, Mr. Francis Bacon said, “I have been a member of the House these seven parliaments, and yet never knew of above two that were committed to the Tower. The first was Arthur Hill, for saying, "The Lower House was a new person in the Trinity;" as these words tended to the derogation of the state of this House, and gave absolute power to the other, he was imprisoned. The other was Parry, that, for a seditious and contemptuous speech made Parliamentary Debates for 1809. i Petyt's Miscellanea. even there" (the orator pointed to the place where the privy councillors sat), was likewise committed. But this forbearance could not last long, in an assembly swayed by party virulence, and impelled by a tyrant majority, to whom the remark of a Latin historian is too frequently applicable: major pars, ut plerumque fit, meliorem vicit. Their sentences were often marked by grievous partiality, and productive of intolerable hardship. With such rampant despotism was the power abused by the Long Parliament, that eleven presbyterian members were voted to the Tower in one day. Sir Edward Bainton, a member, for saying, beyond the walls of St. Stephen's, that "Mr. Pym had betrayed his country," was sent to the Tower, there to remain a prisoner during the pleasure of the House! The rage of persecuting brother-members appears to have been softened at the Restoration, when the good-tempered king requested, as a personal favour, that they would resume their old English habits of good-temper and goodhumour. When Sir James Fagg was sent to the Tower, in 1675, for transgressing the orders of the House, a member suggested that he was the first member who had incurred such a sentence for fourteen years.' But, as the times grew more critical and the debates more exasperating, the temptation of removing an obnoxious antagonist, and stifling the expression of unpleasant truth, became too strong to be resisted. It has been shewn in the first volume with what frequency and caprice, on the slightest provocation, for a passing remark obnoxious to the majority, on any trivial pretext of outraging the king's person or government, *Gray's Debates. 'Livy. the orator of the weaker party was consigned to the peculiar prison of the House. This penalty was sometimes inflicted on members for other offences than those of speech. In 1689, Captain Churchill was committed to the Tower for requiring and receiving money for convoys. He had refused to take some merchant ships under the protection of his man-of-war, without receiving a present of £200; and his punishment was made a party question; Admiral Russell and Mr. Smith, urging that he was zealous and hearty for the government, and hoping" that an ounce of misdemeanor would not weigh down a pound of merit." Sir Edward Seymour on the contrary advocated extreme rigour: "It is said he is a gentleman of merit, but no man of the fleet can come before you, but as much may be said for him. But who would not for £200 have a reprimand here, and go do the same thing again! Send him to the Tower, and declare him not capable to şerve at sea again." This doctrine of loose morality and summary vengeance prevailed, and Captain Churchill was remanded to a short term of imprisonment, ingenuously confessing that he would rather fight three battles with the French than one with the House of Commons. This precedent was followed in February, 1693, when Lord Falkland, for begging and receiving £2000 from King William, contrary to the ordinary method of issuing and bestowing the King's money, was voted guilty of a high misdemeanor and breach of trust, and committed to the Tower during the pleasure of the House." He remained there two days, and was then on petition discharged. ! Parliamentary History, vol. v. Journals, vol. xi. In the inquiry against the Duke of Leeds, Sir Thomas Cooke, having refused to give an account how a large sum of money belonging to the East India Company had been distributed, was committed to the Tower, and a bill introduced to compel him to state to whom he paid the money, but rendered unnecessary by a reluctant confession." Knight and Duncombe, two members, for not giving satisfactory explanation of the false indorsement of exchequer bills (as in truth they could not) were voted to the Tower, and afterwards expelled. Imprisonment in the Tower was frequently adjudged as a previous penalty to expulsion, when the vengeance of the House could not be satisfied by shaking off the guilty member, and sometimes inflicted as a separate penalty, when a few days' incarceration seemed inadequate to the offence. The burden of the cost must have been considered heavier than the duress. The second Lord Clarendon, in his Diary, the day after his committal to the Tower, makes a memorandum of the grievous expense: "Mr. Dod brought me a note of the fees, which came to £120, viz: the Governor, £100; Gentleman Porter, £20; Gentleman Gaoler £10." In lieu of the Tower, a temporary dismissal, similar to a rustication at Oxford, was sometimes attempted to cure the vagaries of an offending but not incorrigible member. Exercised now and then under the Tudors, in the case of Wentworth and other free-spoken burgesses, it was revived in the Pensioner Parliament, when they suspended Alderman Love, for not having taken the sacrament. This zealous dissenter soon conquered his scruples, and became active in the n Journals, vol. xi. Diary of Henry Lord Clarendon. |