On Mr. Craufurd's extraordinary effort to stop public discussion in
the House of Commons on Tuesday we have commented else- where, but even the step taken is hardly so strange as the reason given for it by Mr. R. N. Fowler, M.P. for Falmouth, in a letter to Thursday's Times. Mr. Fowler states in that letter that he supported Mr. Craufurd in clearing the galleries as a sort of pun- ishment for the indelicacy of certain persons who had sent round disgusting documents to Members of Parliament on the subject of contagious diseases,—which persons, he seems to imply, were some of them present in the galleries of the House. Mr. Fowler states that when he gets home at three in the morning from the House of Commons, he sometimes has to sit up examining and destroying circulars not fit to be left about in his house. That is certainly the most eccentric notion of a reason for suppressing reporters we have ever yet encountered. The House was cleared not from any feeling of delicacy, for the persons intended to be specially ejected were the specially indelicate, and still less from any wish to pre- vent the public from knowing the real opinion of the House on a difficult and important subject, but for the chance of punishing a certain group of suspected visitors. A man who will suppress reports of Parliamentary debates simply in order to revenge himself on unwelcome correspondents who keep him up at night, would burn down his house, like Charles Lamb's Chinese, simply in order to roast his pigs. It is odd enough to entertain such reasons, but odder still to publish them.
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