made. There were evidently defects in the translation which ought to be made to disappear. One instance, as the hon. men ber for Lévis had pointed out, was that the word "education" had been translated by the word education, which was clearly wrong. It was not necessary to insist upon it, so clear was the fact. The moment that a translation was submitted to a Committee which was thoroughly acquainted with the French language, those vicious locutions would be immediately removed and replaced by proper expressions. But there were certain expressions, peculiar to the English language, which it was perfectly impossible to render exactly in the French language, while, on the other hand, there were expressions in the French language which it was completely impossible to render in the English language; and every day, as they saw in Parliament, speakers who used the English language introduced into it locutions which they were not able to give properly in English, simply because it was impossible to render them properly in Eng lish. For instance, there was the common phrase par excellence, a locution which it was impossible to express with exactness in English; and the same thing was true in the opposite sense, with regard to the word Dominion. The word puissance did not exactly mean what was implied by the word Dominion, and he did not know a word in the French language which could exactly express the idea contained in the word Dominion. The nearest approach to it would be the word Domaine; but this word would sound as ridiculously as, and be subject to subject to much greater objection than, the word puissance. He had no objection to a Committee being named to seek a substitute for the word puissance, but, he believed that, after every possible effort was made in this direction, they would arrive at the opinion that they must adopt this faulty locution for want of a better. Meanwhile, as he had stated at the outset, he desired that the Act in question should be revised in the manner indicated; the thing was impossible at the present moment; but it was extremely important that the docu

ment which formed the basis of our political constitution, and which would he submitted to the schools of Lower Canada, to the scholars, to study as the Constitution under which they were governed, should be drawn up in the very best possible French; and, if this consideration alone presented itselfthat this document ought to be placed. in the hands of the children attending the public schools-from which to draw their conclusions regarding our constitution, that reason alone, from his standpoint, was sufficient to justify the adoption of the motion which had been made by his hon. friend the member for Lévis.

SIR JOHN A. MACDONALD said he quite agreed with the hon. gentleman who had just spoken and the hon. member for South Bruce, that the translation in French of the British North America Act was not legally binding in any way. This was the English Statute, and it had been translated, no doubt, by the translators who were officially employed to translate our own Statutes. Still, he did not know that any legal obligation rested upon them similar to the legal obligation which existed with respect to the official translation either in English or French of our own Statutes. They were published; they were the law of the land; and they could only be amended as his hon. friend the member for Joliette had stated. He did not think, however, that this would apply at all to the translation of a Statute of this kind; but, still, it was of very great importance that the translation having once been made and been widely disseminated, and the expressions which were contained in the French version, no doubt, as was suggested by his hon. friend the member for South Bruce, having been incorporated subquently on very many occasions in our Statutes, should not be altered, however inelegant they might be, if there was not a manifest or evident error in the meaning of the words used. thought it would be a hopeless task to introduce anything like elegance in our Statutes. These had been in use; the Judges and the Bar had been in the habit of using them, and these words had now acquired a

He

not a question of intelligence, or of elegance, that was at stake, but simply a question of logic, of execution, of language, and of lexicology, and nothing else. It remained for them to see whether the word puissance was the best possible translation of the word Dominion; and, whether for a colony, the word puissance could be employed in harmony with the genius of the French language. It was not a question of elegance, but a question of logic and common sense, that they were called upon to decide.

It being Six o'clock, the Speaker

left the Chair.

Bill (No. 12) To incorporate the Société de Construction Mutuelle under the name of the Société de Prêts et Placements, and for other purposes.-(Mr. Malouin.)

one of common assault and allow the prisoner to be examined accordingly. The objection raised was, that it introduced into the Bill the principle of allowing a Judge to be a judge of the fact as well as of the law-to usurp, so to speak, the functions of the jury. It was perfectly well understood, however, that a Judge frequently took upon himself to advise the jury in such a case; but although a common incident in the ordinary proceedings of Courts, it had never been chrystallized into legislation. The Committee addressed themselves to considering how this objection could be overcome, and they decided to limit the operation of the clause to cases which were tried without the intervention of a jury. The consequence was an amendment in that sense of the third clause, and there was also a slight change made in the phraseology; the term "Court" being employed instead of "Justice" "Judge "-an alteration which would, he thought, commend itself to legal gentlemen. In the proviso added to the third clause, there was a slight clerical error, made, he was sorry to say,

ΟΙ

the Merchants' Bank of Canada.-(Mr. Jetté.)

EVIDENCE IN COMMON ASSAULTS BILL.-[BILL No. 3.]

(Mr. Dymond.)

CONSIDERED IN COMMITTEE.

House resolved itself into Committee of the Whole on said Bill.

(In the Committee.)

MR. DYMOND said the Bill had, on its second reading, been discussed at length, and it had been referred to a Select Committee consisting of eight legal gentlemen and the mover. From them it had received careful attention, especially with regard to the third clause, which, indeed, was the only one. that created any discussion. The third clause provided that where a crime, other than common assault, was charged in an indictment, the Judge might try the case if he considered that evidence was made out to justify a conviction for the major offence as one of common assault; at least, he could direct the jury to consider the case as

entirely, namely, the employment of the word "not" instead of " only;" and that would have to be corrected.

MR. KIRKPATRICK said he was of opinion that where the evidence of a defendant was at all admissible, it ought to be compellable. If a man was a good witness for himself, he ought to be a witness for the prosecution also, so that the real truth might be elicited.

MR. LAFLAMME believed that such an extension of the principle of the Bill might prove pernicious in cases where a wife might be called upon to testify against her husband, 1f she consented to give evidence, it was all very well; but it would not be proper to constrain her to give evidence against her husband.

MR. DESJARDINS said that the remarks just made by the hon. the Minister of Justice against the wife being called to bring testimony against her husband, was the best justification of the opposition offered by him (Mr. Desjardins) against the wife being called to bring testimony in his favour; and, vice

versa, if a wife could be induced to appear as witness by her husband, or to depose in a case in which her husband was interested, would they not believe that the husband's influence could be employed to force the wife to give evidence in his favour against the acts, if the wife was present when the act that provoked the accusation was committed? Would it not be presumed from this that, if she declines to testify, the husband is guilty, and that, to avoid this presumption, or to force a favourable verdict, a husband could use his influence to force his wife to testify, and even commit perjury for him; and this danger should

be avoided in both the one case and the other.

MR. BABY said he believed that this was an unwise provision at the present time. Under the criminal law, a wife had no right to give evidence for or against her husband, and he considered that this was an extremely sensible practice; because it was well understood what strong and intimate relations existed between husband and wife, and a wife, if permitted so to testify, would often be placed between her conscience on the one side, and her love for her husband and the wellbeing of her family, on the other. If this provision were adopted, the wife would be really placed in a very diffi cult position, and if it was persisted in, it seemed to him that a very hazardous and very dangerous principle would be thus introduced into their legislation. In the law of England, where we sought the sources of our criminal law-and in England criminalists had made improvementsup to the present time, as far as he knew, criminalists had not introduced this provision, and he thought it would be a very bad thing for this country to show such a tendency. As the hon. member for Hochelaga (Mr. Desjardins) remarked, they would thus expose the wife or husband, as the case might be, to the temptation to commit perjury, and he did not think that, if this clause were adopted, the criminal law would be better administered, or criminal cases be better conducted, or that persons accused would be placed in a better or

safer position, or that condemnations would be less frequent than was at present the case under the existing system. Such were his objections to this clause.

MR. DESJARDINS said that, if the House intended to depart from the principles of the British criminal jurisprudence, even with respect to the petty cases mentioned in the Bill then under consideration, this should be done with the view, as far as was possible, of assimilating to it the system of French procedure; and in this event, in lieu of adopting such legislation as was suggested by the hon. member for North York, power should be given to the Judges to examine defendants; but further than this, they should not go.

MR. LAFLAMME said that this

point would receive the consideration of the Government.

SIR JOHN A. MACDONALD thought the third clause either went too far or not far enough. If the de. fendant in a case was a conscientious, honest man, he would not try to exculpate himself of an offence of which he was guilty, whereas a more hardened offender might not hesitate to swear as to his innocence in order to escape the consequences of conviction. If a man, therefore, was allowed to swear on his own behalf at all, he ought to be a witness under any circumstances. There was a great deal of truth in what had been said by his hon. friend the Minister for Justice in reference to a wife being forced to give evidence against her husband. It must be remembered, however, that if she tried to give evidence in her husband's favour, she was liable to cross-examination, so that she would virtually be a witness for the prosecution as well as for the defence. The principle must, therefore, as he had said, be either carried out in its entirety or not at all. He had great objection to a wife being called to give evidence in a case where her husband was concerned, because such a system would have a tendency to interefere with domestic felicity. If, on the other hand, a woman came forward voluntarily for the purpose of supporting her husband by her evidence, her feelings

of affection towards the man whose wife she was, the man who was the father of her children, might lead her to screen him more than was proper in the interests of justice. Lord Campbell once objected to a man being called as regardin; his personal relations towards a woman, because it would elevate perjury into a virtue. To return to the first point, if it was competent for a person to give evidence in a case, whether civil or criminal, on behalf of a defendant, it should be competent for the same person to give evidence on behalf of the Crown. For instance, to put the case clearly, A.B., a witness, should be regarded as a different person altogether from A. B., a defendant, and was entitled to be examined for the Crown if he was afforded the privilege of coming forward and giving evidence on his own behalf. Otherwise, the mode of procedure in such cases would be an anomaly, and he therefore fully concurred in the remarks made by his hon. friend the Minister of Justice.

MR. DYMOND said he was very sorry that his right hon. friend was not present to hear the second reading of the Bili, when he would have heard its whole scope and principle very fully explained. The present proposal was one of trial or tentative legislation, and, of course, the operation of the Bill could, at some future time, be extended if necessary. A similar Bill, he might mention, had passed a second reading in the English House of Commons, and been referred to a Select Committee. He did not propose to inflict further arguments on the House in support of his Bill, but would merely refer to what had been said as to the admissibility and compulsion of a witness's evidence. He was anxious that the true facts of a case should be got from any quarter, no matter which; we were not very logical in our legislation; the British Constitution itself was exceedingly illogical, and what he had tried to obtain was the practical rather than the logical. Being, however, affected as some of his hon. friends had said, by the Conservative reaction, he was disposed to proceed at first to as limited an extent as possible. He would, therefore, like to sec

the Bill passed in its present form, unless a strong feeling was expressed by the Committee and the House in favour of extending its principle. The objection raised against the admissibility of a wife's evidence was one that applied with equal force to the testimony of a defendant, namely, that there might be a temptation to perjury. But, in cases of common assault, where respectable persons. were often summoned as defendants, there was little or no temptation to commit perjury, because the penalty attachable to such cases amounted, in many instances, only to a slight fine. Most of these cases were the results of petty squabbles, where, it might be, none were present but the defendant, his wife, and a third party, and in order to clicit the truth, it might be necessary to admit the evidence of the defendant or that of his wife. There were gentlemen on both sides of the House better qualified than he was to speak on this matter, but he should have been willing to allow the Bill to pass in its present shape as an experimental piece of legislation.

SIR JOHN A. MACDONALD said he regretted that he was not present to hear not, of course, any desire to interfere the second reading of the Bill. He had with its progress, and he would sug gest that its further consideration be set down for three days hence, in order raised might be obtained. that information regarding the points

MR. KERR said he had listened with interest to the discussion raised in connection with this Bill, especially with regard to the clause now under the con sideration of the Committee. He agreed with the opinion which he believed the right hon, member for Kingston had expressed, that the Bill would work very awkwardly if persons were admitted as competent witnesses if they were not at the same time compelled to give evidence. The tendency of legislation at the present time seemed to be to place females on the same footing as males, and he could not, therefore, understand why a wife, whose evidence was admitted on behalf of her husband, should not be a compellable witness either for or against him. It had been said by some one