Sir William Harcourt took the same line, though he was
less violent. He thought a prosecution by the Attorney-General a
farce, and said he wondered that the Government had not proposed to commit the case to the management of Sir Charles Lewis himself. The Solicitor-General replied in a speech of extraordinary ability, in which he moved an amendment declining to treat the Times' article as a breach of Privilege. He quoted largely from Sir W. Harcourt's speech in 1880 against treating Mr. Plimsoll's aggressive placard against Sir Charles Russell (not the Q.C., but the military officer who then represented Westminster) as a breach of Privilege. On that occasion in 1880, Sir W. Harcourt,—though, as he explained on Thursday, he regarded Mr. Plimsoll's words as a breach of Privilege,— was very anxious not to treat them as a breach of Privilege is treated. And he congratulated the House on adjourning its consideration of the case,—the very thing which on Tues- day he had so vehemently deprecated,—and praised the late Sir Robert Peel for refusing in 1844 to treat Mr. Ferrand's calumnious attack on Sir James Graham as a breach of Privilege. Indeed, he warned the House against reviving the use of "the rusty sword of Privilege." The Solicitor- General thought that when a Member was accused of corrupt conduct in the House, it might be taken up as a breach of Privilege ; but this was a charge of misconduct out of the House- He showed that them were ten precedents for ordering a prosecution before the Courts in such cases. He insisted that the prosecution would really be conducted entirely by the legal advisers in whom the Irish Party had most confidence, and that the formal association of the Attorney-General would be mere form ; and, further, he showed that there was a precedent for such a prosecution in the case of Mr. Bradlaugh, when the Liberal Government associated the present Lord Chancellor with Sir Henry James, in order to prevent any imputation of a bogus prosecution.
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