The Life of Thomas, Lord Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald, Vol. I

by Earl of Thomas Barnes Cochrane Dundonald; H. R. Fox Bourne

At his own house, known as Holly Hill, in the south of Hampshire, Lord Cochrane remained quietly, though with no attempt to hide himself, until the 20th of March. He then, in fulfilment of his original purpose, returned to London, and on the following day entered the House of Commons at about two o'clock in the afternoon. Very great was the astonishment among the officials in attendance caused by his appearance, "dressed," according to one of the newspaper reports, "in his usual costume, grey pantaloons, frogged great-coat, &c.;" and by some of them the intelligence of his arrival was promptly communicated to the Marshal of the King's Bench. In the meanwhile, considering himself safe within the precincts of the House at any rate, he proceeded to occupy his customary seat. To that it was objected that, until he had taken the oaths and complied with the prescribed forms consequent on his re-election, he had no right within the building. He answered that he was willing to do this, and, to see that all was according to rule, went at once to the clerks' office. There it was pretended that the writ of his re-election had not yet been received, and that it must first be procured from the Crown Office, in Chancery Lane. Awaiting the return of the messenger, ostensibly despatched for this purpose, he again entered the House, and there he was found, at a few minutes before four, by Mr. Jones, the marshal, who, on receiving the information sent to him, had hurried up, with a Bow Street runner and some tipstaves. The runner, walking up to Lord Cochrane and touching him on the shoulder, bluntly claimed him as his prisoner. Lord Cochrane asked by what authority he dared to arrest a Member of Parliament in the House of Commons. "My lord," answered the man, "my authority is the public proclamation of the Marshal of the King's Bench Prison, offering a reward for your apprehension." Lord Cochrane declared that he neither acknowledged, nor would yield to, any such authority, that he was there to resume his seat as one of the representatives of the City of Westminster, and that any who dared to touch him would do so at their peril. Two tipstaves thereupon rudely seized him by the arms. He again cautioned them that the Marshal of the King's Bench had no authority within those walls, and that their conduct was altogether illegal. The answer was that he had better go quietly; his reply that he would not go at all. Other officers, however, came up. After a short struggle, he was overpowered, and, on his refusing to walk, he was carried out of the House on the shoulders of the tipstaves and constables.

There was a halt, however, in this disgraceful march. The Bow Street runner expressed a fear that Lord Cochrane had firearms concealed under his clothes, and he was accordingly taken into one of the committee-rooms to be searched. Nothing more dangerous was found about him than a packet of snuff. "If I had thought of that before," said Lord Cochrane, not quite wisely, "you should have had it in your eyes!" On this incident was founded a foolish story, to be told next day, amid a score of exaggerations and falsehoods, in the Government newspapers. "Being asked why he had provided himself with such a quantity of snuff," we there read, "he said he had bought a canister for the purpose of throwing it in the eyes of those who might attempt to secure him, unless the opposing force should be too strong for resistance, observing that he had found the use of a similar weapon when he was in the Bay of Rosas, as he had thrown a mixture of lime, sand, &c., upon the Frenchmen who attempted to board his ship, and found it effectual." Another zealous organ of the Government added that he had also provided himself with a bottle of vitriol, to be used in the same way.

Had a penknife been found in his pocket, perhaps the Marshal of the King's Bench, the Bow Street runner, the tipstaves, and the constables would all have fled, deeming that the possession of so deadly an instrument made the retention of their captive too dangerous a thing to be attempted. The snuff having been seized, however, he was again lodged on the officers' shoulders and so conveyed into the courtyard. He then said that, being now beyond the privilege of the House, he was willing to proceed quietly. A coach was called, and he was taken back to the King's Bench Prison.

The indignity thus offered to him was small indeed in comparison with the indignity offered to the Parliament of England. In former times the slightest encroachment by the Crown, by the Government, or by any humbler part of the executive, was fiercely resented; and to this resentment some of the greatest and most memorable crises in the long fight for English liberty are due. But rarely had there been a more flagrant, never a more wanton, infringement of the hardly-won privileges of the House of Commons. Had Lord Cochrane been detected and seized violently in some out-of-the-way hiding-place, the over-zealous servants of the Crown would have had some excuse for their conduct. But in appearing publicly in the House, he showed to all the world that he was no runaway from justice, that he was willing to submit to its honest administration by honest hands, that all he sought was a fair hearing and a fair judgment upon his case, and that, believing it impossible to obtain that through the elaborate machinery of oppression which then went by the name of administration of justice, he now only asserted his right, the right of every Englishman, and especially the right of a Member of Parliament, to appeal from the agents of the law to the makers of the law, to call upon the legislators of his country to see whether he had not been wrongfully used by the men who, though practically too much their masters, were in theory only their servants.

"I did not go to the House of Commons," he said, "to complain about losses or sufferings, about fine or imprisonment; or of property, to the amount of ten times the fine, of which I had been cheated by this malicious prosecution. I did not go to the House to complain of the mockery of having been heard in my defence, and answered by a reference to the decision from which that defence was an appeal. I did not go there to complain of those who expelled me from my profession. I did not go to the House to complain generally of the advisers of the Crown. But I went there to complain of the conduct of him who has indeed the right of recommending to mercy, but whose privilege, as a Privy Councillor, of advising the confirmation of his own condemnations, and of interposing between the victims of legal vengeance and the justice of the throne, is spurious and unconstitutional. When it is considered that my intention of going to the House of Commons was announced on the day on which my absence from the prison was discovered; I say, when it is considered that, as soon as it was known that I had left the prison, it was also known that I had left it for the express purpose of going to the House of Commons to move for an inquiry into the conduct of Lord Ellenborough; when it is considered that every engine was set to work to tempt or intimidate me from that purpose, to frighten me out of the country or allure me back to the custody of the marshal, that assurances were given that the doors should be kept open for my admission at any hour of the night, and that I should be received with secresy, courtesy, and indemnity; and when it is considered that I was afterwards seized in the House of Commons, in defiance of the privileges of the House—can there be a doubt that the object of that apprehension was less the accomplishment of the sentence of the court than the prevention of the exposure which I was prepared to make of the injustice of that sentence? That recourse should have been had to violence to stifle the accusations which I was prepared to bring forward, that terror of the truth should have so superseded a wonted reverence for parliamentary privileges as to have admitted the intrusion of tipstaves and thief-takers into the House of Commons, to seize the person of an individual elected to serve as a member of that House, and avowedly attendant for that purpose, is extraordinary, though not unnatural."

It must be admitted that the question of breach of privilege was somewhat more complicated than Lord Cochrane considered. His opponents did not think with him that he was still a member of the House of Commons. That membership had been taken from him, formally, though wrongfully, by his expulsion on the 5th of July, and he had himself recognized the expulsion by accepting re-election from the constituents of Westminster on the 16th of the same month. According to precedent, however, that re-election could not be perfected until the customary oaths had been taken; and, through a trick contrived in the clerks' office, he was hindered from taking them before the arrival of the marshal and his consequent arrest. Yet there can be no doubt that, in the special circumstances of the case, this arrest was especially indecorous, and, in the method of effecting it, altogether illegal. If he had no right in the House of Commons, he was a common trespasser, and ought to have been at once removed by the servants of the House, who alone could have power to touch him within the walls. To allow him a seat therein, without molestation, until the arrival of the servants of the King's Bench Prison, and then to allow those servants to enter the House and act upon an authority that could there be no authority, was wholly unwarrantable, a gross insult to Lord Cochrane, and, to the customs of the House of Commons, an insult yet more gross. But to the hardship and the insult alike the House of Commons, servile in its devotion to the Government of the day, was blind.

A miserable farce ensued. While the House was sitting, a few hours after Lord Cochrane's capture, a letter from the Marshal of the King's Bench was read by the Speaker, in which his bold act was formally reported and apologized for. "I humbly hope," he there said, "that I have not committed any breach of privilege by the steps I have taken; and that, if I have done wrong, it will be attributed to error in judgment, and not to any intention of doing anything that might give offence."

The short debate that followed the reading of that letter is very noteworthy. Lord Castlereagh spoke first, and dictated the view to be taken by all loyal members of the House. "From the nature of the arrest and the circumstances attending it, I do not think, sir," he said, "that the House is called upon to interfere. I am not aware, as the House was not actually sitting, with the mace on the table and the Speaker in the chair, when the arrest took place, that any breach of privilege has been committed. It must be quite obvious to every man that the marshal has not acted wilfully in violation of the privileges of the House. No blame can attach to him, since he has submitted himself to the judgment of the House of Commons after having done that which he considered his duty as a civil officer. Having had Lord Cochrane in his custody, from which he escaped, the marshal was bound not to pass over any justifiable means of putting him under arrest whenever a fair opportunity occurred."

Most of the members thought, with Lord Castlereagh, that this was a "fair opportunity." Only one, Mr. Tierney—and he very feebly—ventured to express an opposite opinion. "I consider this," he said, "to be the case of a member regularly elected to serve in Parliament, and coming down to take his seat. Now, sir, the House is regularly adjourned until ten o'clock in the morning; and I recollect occasions when the Speaker did take the chair at that hour. Suppose, then, a member, about to take his seat, came down here at an early hour, with the proper documents in his hand, and desired to be instructed in the mode of proceeding, and, while waiting, an officer entered, arrested him, and took his person away, would not this be a case to call for the interference of the House?" Mr. Tierney admitted that he approved of Lord Cochrane's arrest, but feared it might become a precedent and be put to the "improper purpose" of sanctioning the arrest of members more deserving of consideration.

To please him, and to satisfy the formalities, therefore, the question was referred to a committee of privileges. This committee reported, on the 23rd of March, "that, under the particular circumstances, it did not appear that the privileges of Parliament had been violated, so as to call for the interposition of the House;" and the House of Commons being satisfied with that opinion, no further attention was paid to the subject.