[359] Lord Lowther voted for a uniform rate, but against any reduction below twopence.
[360] “Hansard,” Vol. LXX., pp. 440, 441.
[361] “Hansard,” Vol. LXX., p. 442.
[362] “Hansard,” Vol. LXX., p. 445.
[363] I give the following draft, which did not, however, take full shape as a letter, as a record of my feelings during the Parliamentary Inquiry of 1843, and of the facts which produced them:—
“Orme Square, Bayswater,
“August 12th, 1843.
“Sir,—The scenes of yesterday, and your part in them, will form my justification for the unusual course which I am taking.
“The open display of your hostility would not alone have moved me to it; but, unhappily, that hostility has taken a form which, if persisted in, will most effectually suppress the greater part of my evidence in reply. You will be aware that I refer not merely to the perpetual interruptions which I receive, but the contradiction of my testimony, of which those interruptions so frequently consisted.
“Sir, I must use the freedom of reminding you of the positions in which we respectively stand. I have appealed to Parliament against the Treasury Board of which you are an active member. This appeal is now trying before a Committee of which you are chairman. You are, therefore, already a party and a judge. If you desire to add to these characters that of witness, I have no power to object; and, if I had the power, I should be far from wishing to exercise it.
“When you present yourself as a witness your statements will be sifted by cross-examination, and I should evince a distrust of my own evidence if I could wish to throw any obstacle in the way of such a proceeding. But I must object—most earnestly object—to your giving evidence while in the act of examining me. Such a course is monstrous in itself, and can only lead to a repetition of personal altercation, to which, although it has been forced upon me, I cannot revert without a deep sense of humiliation. Such courses are foreign to my habits and most repugnant to my feelings.