"Mr. Baron Bramwell: 'No doubt they are. It is very easy to go about professing integrity. To commence actions against people for penalties when the plaintiff cannot pay the costs, is a cheap way of becoming a patriot--cheap and, I think, nasty. I find that the Act gives me a discretion. The affidavits made by the defendants have not been answered. I shall make the order.' "The order was made accordingly. "The petitioners were informed and believed that the report quoted was substantially and literally correct. It was reprinted and commented upon by various other journals, and no attempt to question its accuracy was made, either on the part of the learned judge or of any other person. "The petitioners were persuaded that the language asserted to have been used by the learned judge on this occasion cannot be deemed by, nor appear to Parliament either befitting the station of him who used it, or just towards the suitors in this prosecution, who were taking legal steps, under a sense of public duty, to put a stop to practices which tend to corrupt the source of all law. "The petitioners submitted that the order made on this occasion is contrary to all precedent, and inconsistent with the intention and enactments of the said Corrupt Practices Act, which by Section 13 expressly limits the obligation on the plaintiff to find security for costs to those cases only where he may seek to recover, by order of the judge, the costs of prosecution for offences against the Act. "The petitioners urged that they did not deserve to have their motives and characters thus questioned and sneered away, nor did they think that such language as that imputed to Baron Bramwell can tend to add to that respect for the law and those who administer it which the petitioners trusted may never be lost amongst Englishmen. "On the contrary, such language appeared to the petitioners calculated to cause the people to believe that a complicity with such practices exists amongst the administrators of the law; subversive at once of justice and of the representative portion of the Legislature. "The petitioners, therefore, prayed the honourable House of Commons to take such steps as might appear to it most fitting, to bring the matter under the notice of Her Majesty and her advisers in such a mode as may prevent a repetition of the same." This remarkable petition, which may be read in the records of the House, bore the signatures of the following persons:-- Thomas Doubleday, James Eadie, James Watson, James Hay, Jos. Cowen, jun., Robert Sutherland, Thomas Gregson, Thomas Allen, Jos. Barlow, Thomas Spotswood, jun., John Emerson, Robert Ramsay, William Douglas, James Reed, and thirty-three others.