British subjects is a matter of impunity in foreigners."

Now that is not the law of England. There is no distinction between natural-born subjects and aliens with regard to acts committed within the realms of England. If aliens are in England within the Queen's allegiance, they are her subjects as long as they remain here, and they are liable to the same procedure as natural-born subjects. If they were tried for high treason, or any offence between high treason and the lowest known to the law, done in England, it would be wholly immaterial whether they were aliens by birth or foreign subjects, and it would be most disastrous if it were supposed that such is the disgraceful state of English law, that they, owing allegiance to England, are not subject to the law which binds English subjects. While they are under the protection of English law, they are bound to obey it, and are liable for any infraction of English law, exactly in the same manner as any person who is born within the sound of Bowbells. For conspiracy and every other offence they are amenable to the law of England. It would be monstrous that it should be proclaimed to the world that they who live here and enjoy an asylum, could commit with impunity crimes for which English subjects might be punished. If a foreigner in a foreign land commits a crime and comes to England, we cannot punish him for what he has done in a foreign land; it would be contrary to the law of nations to attempt to do so. But we can legislate for our own subjects all over the world, and make them amenable in an English court for

anything which they have committed abroad. With regard to a foreigner who commits a crime abroad, we have no jurisdiction over the offence; but for everything done within the realm of England he is equally amenable as a native-born British subject. Lord Campbell had heard with astonishment that it was made a question whether it is any offence in England to conspire to murder the consort of the Emperor of the French at the time she was about to give birth to an heir to the throne. He was shocked that there could be the smallest doubt upon the subject. To conspire anything which is "malum in se" in England is an offence to the law, for which the conspirator would be liable to be prosecuted; and if it were to murder one of the lowest subjects in a foreign country, such an offence would most undoubtedly be committed. With regard to the consort of a Sovereign, there is the instance of Lord George Gordon, who was found guilty of libelling Marie Antoinette. The Bill which has been brought in elsewhere does not create any new offence; it only alters the punishment, and if it had been introduced as an amendment of the English code, he should most willingly have supported it, because he thought there ought to be uniformity of punishment in every part of the United Kingdom. He would advise any future Government to go on with this Bill; and if it came up to that House, he felt certain their Lordships would support it.

The Lord Chancellor said that the Attorney-General must have been misrepresented; it was impossible for him so to have expressed himself.

There could be no doubt, that if a native of another country commits a crime abroad and then comes to this country, it is impossible to punish him or give him up, except so far as it can be done by a treaty of extradition. The Attorney-General probably spoke with reference to a case of this sort; or perhaps he referred to the question that had of late been much mooted-namely, what would be the offence of a British subject who should murder a foreigner abroad. Their Lord ships might remember the case of a man named Azzopardi, who was tried for that offence ten or twelve years ago. The case of this man was carefully considered, and the Judges ruled that for a British subject to murder a foreigner abroad was punishable as much as if the crime had been committed in this country. Although he was reported to have been a party to that decision, he had no trace of recollection of the fact; and on considering the matter now, he must say he should feel great difficulty in arriving at that conclusion.

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Lord Lyndhurst concurred in the views expressed by Lord Campbell. With regard to the decision alluded to by the Lord Chancellor in the case Regina v. Azzopardi," three Chief Justices agreed in it. The Government executed the sentence, and the man was hanged.

Lord Brougham concurred with Lord Lyndhurst and Lord Campbell. He did not, however, believe that anything like the doctrine imputed to the AttorneyGeneral had been stated by him. Lords Wensleydale and St. Leonards also concurred with Lord Campbell.

The two Houses met again on the 26th February, when the Marquis of Salisbury, on behalf of Lord Derby, moved the adjournment of the House until March 1st, which, after some observations from Earl Granville, was agreed to.

In the House of Commons a number of new writs were ordered, on the motion of Sir W. Jolliffe, viz., for

Buckinghamshire-in the room of Mr. Disraeli, appointed Chancellor of the Exchequer; King's Lynn in the room of Lord Stanley, appointed Secretary of State for the Colonies; Cambridge University-in the room of Mr. Walpole, appointed Secretary of State for the Home Department; Droitwich-in the room of Sir John Pakington, appointed First Lord of the Admiralty; Huntingdon-in the room of General Peel, appointed Secretary of State for the War Department; Oxfordshire

in the room of Mr. Henley, appointed President of the Board of Trade; North Wilts-in the room of Mr. Sotheron Estcourt, appointed Chief Commissioner of the Poor-law Board; North Staffordshire-in the room of Mr. Adderley, appointed Vice-President of the Committee of Council on Education; Stamford-in the room of Sir F. Thesiger, appointed Lord Chancellor; East Suffolk-in the room of Sir Fitzroy Kelly, appointed AttorneyGeneral; Belfast-in the room of Mr. Cairns, appointed Solicitor-General; North Leicestershire

in the room of Lord John Manners, appointed First Commissioner of Public Works; South Salop-in the room of Lord Newport, appointed Vice-Chamberlain of Her Majesty's Household;

Dublin County-in the room of Colonel Taylor, appointed one of the Lords of the Treasury; Bridgenorth-in the room of Mr. Whitmore, appointed one of the Lords of the Treasury; Cockermouth in the room of Lord Naas, appointed Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland; Tyrone in the room of Lord Claude Hamilton, appointed Treasurer of Her Majesty's Household; Wenlock-in the room of Colonel Forrester, appointed Comptroller of Her Majesty's Household.

Sir W. Jolliffe then moved the adjournment to the same day as in the Lords, and gave notice at the same time that on the next meeting of the House he should move a further adjournment till March 12th. Sir R. Bethell then took the opportunity to retaliate upon the Law Lords for their animadversions upon him on the point of law.

He enlarged on the inconvenience that would arise if in any nation possessing two deliberative assemblies the members did not observe the rules of decency and regularity, reciprocally abstaining from personal and offensive criticism. He then intimated, with the circumlocution technically demanded in such cases, that certain of the Law Lords in the House of Peers had repeatedly been guilty of a practice which might have been pardoned in younger members, but not in grave, reverend, and aged men, who ought to be examples of order, regularity, and decency, (Much laughter.) The practice, he said, had been repeatedly pursued, frequently remonstrated against in private, forborne to be noticed in public; and for his

own part he avowed he felt a great deal of pity for the irritable feeling that prompted these observations. He mentioned three cases in which the Lord Chief Justice had reflected upon himself as Solicitor-General or Attorney-General,-in August last, in discussing the Trustees Relief Bill; subsequently, in discussing the Supreme Court of Appeal, where Sir Richard was represented as attacking the judicial jurisdiction of the Peers; and in his own recent statement of the English law of aliens. He now repeated his statement on that subject, with the corroborative opinion of lawyers whom he had consulted. At common law, English subjects, and therefore aliens, are not amenable for criminal acts which they may do abroad. By statute, British subjects are rendered liable. That statutable and therefore limited liability casts at least a doubt upon the liability of aliens. The whole elastic law of conspiracy is subject to very general and loose definition, on which it is most unsafe to rely.

Mr. Scott, Mr. Whiteside, and Mr. Warren took some exception to the propriety of making these animadversions upon members of the other House in their absence, and the subject then dropped.

On the 1st March, the Earl of Derby, in his place as Prime Minister, made a full and comprehensive statement to the House of Lords with respect to his intended measures and course of policy. The noble Lord began his eloquent address in the following terms:

"I hope, my Lords, that in asking your permission on Friday evening to postpone until this day the statement which consti

tutional usage requires from those who fill the situation in which I have now the honour to stand, I shall not have been thought guilty of any disrespect to your Lordships. On the contrary, considering that during the whole of last week I was engaged day and night in making those personal arrangements which are necessary on the formation of a new Government, -a task which I had not previously the slightest idea of being called on to undertake,—and that consequently I had not had a single moment for reflection on any matter not immediately connected with those personal arrangements; and considering, too, the great importance of the subject, I thought it was more respectful to your Lordships that, having only just acceded to office, and having only departed from the presence of Her Majesty at half-past four o'clock, I should not come down here at five o'clock to lay before your Lordships what must necessarily, under the circumstances, have been but a crude and imperfect statement. Believe me, my Lords-and I say it with all sincerity-I address your Lordships from this place on the present occasion with no feeling of triumph or exultation. I am overwhelmed with the sense of my own incompetency to perform duly the arduous task which lies before me. I am overwhelmed with the sense of the magnitude of the difficulties which I must encounter, and of the questions with which I have to deal. But my satisfaction, my consolation, in feeling myself so unable to deal adequately with these great questions, is

that indulgence will be extended by your Lordships and by the country to one who, having been called suddenly to office by the favour of his Sovereign, has certainly sought for it by no unworthy means and by no underhand intrigues." (Cheers.)

Lord Derby then proceeded to describe the incidents which preceded and followed the dissolution of the late Government. The majority of the House of Commons which had caused it was, he admitted, made up of parties not usually found acting together; yet he had not heard any rumours or reports of combinations and coalitions, which were circulated when he last undertook to form a Government. The late Ministry had acted strictly according to constitutional usage in resigning when in a minority; but when called on to form a Ministry to succeed it, he, fully estimating the difficulty of the task, had hesitated, respectfully requesting Her Majesty to take time to consider whether some other could not be found more fit to undertake the duty. A note from her Majesty on the following day stated that reflection had confirmed Her Majesty in the decision; he had then hesitated no longer. The broad distinctions of political parties no longer existed; they were divided into the most various shades of opinion, and, such were the niceties of division, he believed there were many members of both Houses of Parliament who would find it difficult to say to what political denomination they be longed. Still, he hoped he might obtain for measures of progressive improvement the aid and