Baronial Privilege

Seldom do proceedings of the House of Lords interest Italians but last week they were cheering for young Lord de Clifford when he was tried by his peers for a felony. Reason: de Clifford is a disciple of British Fascist leader Sir Oswald Mosley, the only foreign Fascist whose portrait hangs in Rome at Fascist Party headquarters. Like the good Fascist he is, Lord de Clifford bought himself some time ago an Italian supercharged Lancia in which to burn up the road between Belisha beacons. While doing so one night the Italian Lancia met a British Frazer-Nash head on and killed Douglas George Hopkins, the sporting secretary of the Frazer-Nash Car Club, who was driving with his sister Sheila and her friend Rosemary Reynolds. A constable verified from the wheel tracks the impression of all concerned that Lord de Clifford was not driving on his side of the road and a coroner's jury demanded his indictment for manslaughter, which in Great Britain, as in the U. S., is a felony.

That technicality made it necessary for de Clifford to be tried by the House of Lords, since under the Magna Charta a peer indicted for treason or a felony which includes homicide, rape, bigamy, burglary, robbery, larceny, counterfeiting and forgery must be tried by his peers. Such a trial costs thousands of dollars and, since the county in which the crime is supposed to have taken place must pay, a tradition exists for piling on every expense that can be thought of. For last week's trial, which cost some $50,000, it was not enough to install six microphones and loudspeakers in the Royal Gallery of the House of Lords; they had to be especially gilded to blend with the antique decor. For draping the chamber with suitable hangings favored drapers got at least $2,000. Since there was much nose-holding at these costs, and since there was already much more nose-holding at the offer of nearly half of Ethiopia by His Majesty's Government to Fascist Mussolini, the

House of Lords had a special opportunity to refurbish England's honor by giving Lord de Clifford exactly the same sort of justice a commoner, who had been driving 40 m.p.h. in the middle of the road through a foggy night to a death-dealing smash, might expect in any English court.

The last trial of a peer by the House of Lords was 34 years ago, when Lord Russell was convicted of bigamy and sentenced to three months in jail, the usual sentence for a bigamist in England being two years. After serving ten days, Lord Russell was pardoned by King Edward.

With hundreds of years of precedents such as these before them last week, the peers, walking two by two in reverse order of precedence, solemnly entered the House of Lords, each doing his best to take a back seat. Thus the dukes, who entered last, found nothing vacant except the front seats appropriate to their topnotch status.

Seated on the woolsack in his best robes and formal full-bottomed wig, Douglas McGarel Hogg, Viscount Hailsham and Lord High Chancellor, commanded Sir Henry John Fanshawe Badeley, Clerk of the Parliaments, to call the roll. About 100 of the realm's approximate total of 860 peers had arrived, this making an unusually large House of Lords.

Each Lord rose to answer "Here!" All then departed in their trailing robes and black cocked hats from the House of Lords into the open street, whence they proceeded to the Royal Gallery. In this Gallery's gallery a fashionable crush had poured in around slender, fragile U. S. Ambassador Robert W. Bingham. Bright-eyed with anticipation, he had arrived first, as he nearly always does at spectacles of British pageantry.

An empty Throne symbolized the King. Upon the Dais in front of it, slightly more uncomfortable than on his usual woolsack, Viscount Hailsham sat down. The peers doffed their cocked hats. Garter King of Arms, a figure in black and cloth-of-gold, read the King's Commission signed by George V: "Know ye that Edward Southwell Russell, Lord de Clifford, stands indicted before us. . . ."

"Oyez, oyez, Edward Southwell Russell, Baron de Clifford, in the name of the King come forth and save you and your bail or else you forfeit your recognizance!" cried the Clerk.

At this Lord de Clifford, whose mother was a six-foot showgirl, came towering in --six feet five inches of gangling but impeccably groomed youth. Escorting him to the bar, where he fell on his knees upon a velvet cushion, the Gentleman Usher of the Black Rod boomed, "Oyez, oyez. God save the King!"

The indictment charged de Clifford with "feloniously killing and slaying" Motorist Hopkins.

"What do you say, My Lord?" came the Voice from the Dais.

"Not guilty."

"How will you be tried?"

"By God and my peers."

Attorney General Sir Thomas Inskip clipped out a dry, unemotional prosecutor's speech for the Crown: ". . . The police constable found the defendant's Lancia car near the middle of the road, and, like the deceased's Frazer-Nash, it was badly damaged. ... I shall submit that, if your Lordships' defendant was driving in a reckless, careless, negligent manner on this occasion and by so driving caused the death of Douglas George Hopkins, your Lordships should find him guilty of the offense of manslaughter."

Defending Lord de Clifford, Sir Henry Curtis-Bennett recalled that the defendant had admitted to police that he was driving on the wrong side or middle of the road, saying he had done so because the other car was approaching at tremendous speed and in his judgment that was the way to minimize or avoid an accident. "In the agony of the moment, just before the collision," cried Sir Henry, "he did as he thought best!"

This was the entire defense. All witnesses called were for the Crown. Then Sir Henry, for the defense, moved that the Crown had made out "no case."

After their Lordships had taken time out for luncheon, the Voice from the Dais informed them that the advisory judges shared Sir Henry's opinion. Cried the Voice from the Dais: "Is the prisoner guilty of the felony of which he stands indicted?"

One after the other each peer present rose, bowed with hand on heart to the Throne, and unanimously declared, "Not guilty, upon mine honor!"

With much further pomp and picturesque shouting the trial was concluded. the symbolic wand of office snapped across Viscount Hailsham's knee, and Baron de Clifford gangled out to be handshaken by scores of other Mosley Fascists and their sympathetic ladies. In Rome a ludicrously mistaken impression spread that Sir Oswald Mosley and British Fascism had scored in London a second major triumph last week. British motorists wondered if ''in the agony of the moment" will now be accepted as a defense in British police courts. Correspondents predicted that Lord de Clifford's was the last such trial by the House of Lords which British public opinion will tolerate.

At week's end it was announced that next month Lord de Clifford will be tried for simple "dangerous driving" in Old Bailey before the bar of ordinary British Justice. Should he be convicted of dangerous driving the admonition of the Attorney General to the House of Lords that they must convict him of manslaughter if he was guilty of reckless driving would be of no effect, since the House of Lords has irrevocably acquitted Lord de Clifford of manslaughter.

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