Northern Times.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1859-08-18 00:00:00

place her( _
word or two

on ti.

fresh in our minds

have had upwards of forty

elections, but I am told thal if..all those had petitioned
who had prosf of the corrupt practices, the numbers
would have been double what they are. Now lam go-

in.... to say something which I am afraid, in these days.
when we have set phases, will be considered to be un-
charitable; yet heaven forgive me when I say that I do

not believe parliament is in earnest in its expressed de-
sire to put down bribery, for otherwise it would have
been accomplished long since. For what do these
election petitions mean, after all ? Let
a word or two about them whilst we are

from them. What is an election petition
that when a man is deprived of his seat by venial
practices he appeals to a certain tribunal, and that tri-
bunal the most costly in the civilised world. For I will
venture to say that a man who presents an election peti-
tion to the House of Commons, goes before a tribunal
in comparison with which the Court of Chancery itself
becomes dirt-cheap indeed. The principal obstacle to a
petition at all is that the party praying for a redress of
his grievance—the grievance of having been deprived
of the fair chance of free and unbought suffrages of the
electors—feels that no man can tell him what it may
cost him. It may cost him £5, or it may cost him £5,000,
and therefore no parliamentary lawyer who has either
candour or conscience will venture to tell him that he
can guarantee him against the expenditure of any sum
whatever. The consequence is, the cost is so great that
most men will not incur it. But supposing that he did
prosecute his petition, how did it end ? And this was
his (Mr. Cobden's) great charge against the House of
Commons. The petitioner, in all probability, proved
corrupt proceedings on the part of his opponent, and a
portion of the constituency ; and the consequence was,
that his opponent was unseated. That, however, did
not give the petitioner the seat, but merely said that
there should be another election in the same borough ;
and so, if the petitioner chose to come forward
again and incur the same expense, those
" free and independent " electors who had already
sold their votes on the former occasion, would a
second time have the privilege of selling them, another
election being nothing less than a second harvest to
those corrupt voters who made merchandise of their
electoral privileges. Such being the case, what wonder
was it that hundreds of those who so lost their seats
'Would not venture to petition ? A friend of his in the
Eastern Counties, who lost his seat at the late general
election, told him that he had the clearest possible case
against his opponent, but he would not petition. And
why ? He had petitioned once before, and his expensesamounted to £5OO a day, and if he had petitioned again
he had no guarantee that it would not have cost him a
similar sum. Now, this being the state of things, he
might be asked what was the remedy for it ? He re-
plied, that were the House of Commons in earnest, a
remedy would easily be found. In the first place let
these enquiries be made cheaper and more accessible.
Spare the aggrieved party the enormous expense
to which, at present, he was subject where he
proved that he had a case. "Where there was a
good case, let the expenses be borne by some one else
besides the petitioner ; for, if it was right that this
system should be put down—if one faithful and true'
representative depended, indeed, upon purity at its source
--then who so much interested m not allowing those
who were corrupt to go unpunished, or who so fitting
to bear the expense, as the whole of the country itself,
should that be considered, under the circumstances, ex-
pedient ? Well, then, let the inquiry be carried on in
such a manner that it should not be ruinous to the peti-
tioner. But beyond that, he said, let there be some
punishment inflicted upon those who were detected as
the guilty parties in those transactions. He would
venture to say that if, when a case of bribery were de-