The Sun.
London, England, 1852-10-25 00:00:00

N°. 18,750.] LONDON,

TIIE FIFTII AND CHEAPER EDITION

or
THE RIGHT HON. B. DISRAELI'
POLITICAL BIOGRAPHY OF
LORD GEORGE BENTINCK.
Revised, in 1 vol. post Bro., price 10s. 6d. bound,
Is now ready.

„ -
Colburn and Co., Publishers, 13, Gnat ➢farlborough street.
To b 3 had of all Buoksellers.

BETTS'S PATENT BRANDY.
The highest medical authorities recommend Brandy and water
as the best customary beverage, attl prtrtmularly as an efficient pre-
ventive of diarrho,itic complaints at this season. They equally con-
cur in preferring BETTS'S PATENT BRANDY- as the purest and
Most wholesome. It is unequalled for preserving fruits, home-made
wines, &c.

Sold throughout the Kingdom, by respectable wine and spirit men
chants, in glass bottles, protected by the Patent Metallic Capsules
and at the DISTILLERY, 7, SNIITIIPIELD-BARS, in dozens
bottles and cases included, at 18s. per gallo ; or in stone jars 0,
two gallons and upwards, at 16s per gallon, pale or coloured.

J. T. BETTS :Ind CO:,
French Brandy Distillery, 7, Smithfield-ban, St. John-street.

GREAT WESTERN and CITY JUNCTION
RAILWAY COMPANY.
Provisionally Registered. Capita!„ 300,0001., in 15,000 Shares, of 201.

eao

Doposit, 2/. per Share,

This Railway is "riled to commence at a point adjoining the
Station of the Grer4-7:::,.`etern Railway Terminus at Paddington, and
passing thence ne Grand Junction Canal through certain
fields In the line ll e'-)ss the Edgware road upon an arch near the
Kilburn Turnpil at then over the London and North-Western
Line near 11, F r..-New Station, and proceed northward until it
forms wit . to projected line of the North and South-
Western, Hampstead, and City Junction Railway, and thence by it
and the East and West India Dock Railway to the City, affording to
the traffic on the Great-Western Line direct communication with
the City-IV Railway. • -

The proposed linaewill afferl railviay accomtnaclation to the entire
large and populcds district lying to the west of the Regent's-park,
including Bayswater, raddington, Malaa-hill, St. John's-wood, and
Kilburn.

[PRICE SD,

THE WEST GLOUCESTERSHIRE
ELECT lON RIOTS.

On Friday the trial of the body of men charged with
rioting at Bridgegate, Gloucestershire, on the occasion
of the late contested election, beating the police, obstruct-
ing the voters on their way to the poll, and extorting
money by intimidation, came on before the Gloucester-
shire court of quarter sessions, and created intense inte-
rest throughout the county. On the bench and in court
were the lion. Grantley Berkeley, the unsuccessful can-
didate, and there was a numerous attendance of magis-
trates. The prisoners arraigned, and against whom true
bills were found were 21 in number. Their names were
Joseph Wiltshire, Philip Britton, Thomas Wilcoeks,
William Stone, Joseph Franklin, Richard Williams, Si-
meon Weaver, Joseph Iles, James Goodwin, William
Brain, Benjamin Miller, Jonas Davis, George Davis,
William Burchell alias Lovell, George Hendy, Charles
Lovell, Robert Freake, David Arnold, Aaron Rogers,
Thomas God win, and William Wilcocks. They were
charged with having, on Monday, the 19th of July lust,
at the parish of Wick and Abson, together with divers
others evil-disposed persons, unlawfully, riotously, and
wantonly assembled to disturb the peace ; and that they
then and there made a great noise and disturbance, and
assaulted and beat Thomas Hazel, Henry Knight, E.
Broad, W. David, Thomas Wood, Charles Breakspear,
William Hardy, and Rumsey Laughby, of the Glouces-
tershire police force, while in the execution of their
ditty; and also assaulted and beat F. B. N. Dickenson,
Esq., one of the magistrates for the said county. Two
other prisoners, William Osborne and William Jenkins,
who are charged with highway robbery and extorting
money from the voters, are left for trial at the assizes.
The prisoners all pleaded not guilty. Mr. Skinner and
Mr. Pigott, were counsel for the prosecution; and Mr.
Cooke and Mr. Powell for the prisoners. Th evidence
was very voluminous, but the principal facts as deduced
from the testimony of the witnesses for the prosecution
—chiefly magistrates and policemen—may be put in a
narrative form. It will be remembered that at the elec-
tion for the western division of this county, party feel-
ing ran very high. The candidates were the old mem-
bers, Mr. Hale, in the Conservative interest. and the
Hon. Grantley Berkeley in the "Liberal Protection "
interest. The latter gentleman being opposed by Mr.
Nigel Kingscote in the Liberal and free-trade interest. Oa
the first polling-day, Monday, July 19, a large body of
men armed with bludgeons and hurdle•rails, attacked the
committee-room of the Protectionist candidate, throwing
stones and breaking the windows. There wore only a few
police:on the spot, and after making an ineffectual attempt
to disperse the mob, which, according to the account of
one of the officers, numbered a thousand people, they
were obliged to beat a retreat over the fields, and were
followed a considerable distance across the country by
the mob, who pelted them with stones, beat them with
sticks, and tore the clothes of some of them to rags. Mr.
Mirehouse, a magistrate, read the Riot Act, but the mob
paid little attention. Some of the police were carried
away for dead, but subsequently recovered. The police
called upon the people to "aid and assist" them, but they
held aloof or refused. The conduct of one woman, how-
ever, the wife of a policeman, named George, was most
courageous. Placing herself between the mob and the
police, she fought nobly in behalf of the civil force, and
kept them back, for they were sufficiently manly to
refrain from striking a woman. The magistrates pre-
sent, Messrs. Mirehouse, Dickenson, and Hughes, sent
for the military, but they did not arrive ; and the mob
was quelled soon after the disappearance of the police.
Some of the mob had yellow cards, Mr. Kingscote'e
colours, in their hats. The prisoners were marked by
the police, bat were not apprehended until Sunday night,
the 15th of August, a month after the election. The
trial was brought to a close at 8 o'clock on Saturday
night. The jury, after a patient investigation, found the
prisoners guilty of a common assault only. The Chair-
man sentenced two of the prisoners, Osborne and Jen-
kins, to 12 months' imprisonment ; Brum' Davis, and
Lovell, 9 months ; T. Wilcox, Britton, Iles, Jones,
Davis, Arnold, and Wiltshire, 6 months ; and Treake,
Rogers, two Godwins, W. Wilcox, Miller, Hendy, Stone,
Burchill, and Weaver, 4 months' imprisonment.

The survey of the ground has shown the line to be free from en-
gineering difficulties, and can be constructed at a very moderate
cost.

Application will be made to Parliament in the ensuing session for
an Act to authorize the construction of the line.

Detailed prospectuses of the undertaking, with the namos of the
Directors, are in course of preparation, and will be ready in a few
days. In the meantime, applications may be made to the Solicitors,
Messrs. Davies, Sou, Campbell, and Hand, 17, Warwick-street,
Regent-street.
25th October, 1852.

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(From the Daily. News )
Just after the Elections there was very great, talk of
petitions, but as the time draws on for their 'presenta-
tion, those best informed upon the subject begin to let
out that after all there will be but a few. is to be the
• old story over again, " Great cry and little wool." Par-
liamentary agents have found out that the corruption
was, after all, below an average. Some even go so far as
to assert that so pure a general election never came
under their notice. It would serve a good purpose, if
those gentlemen were every one of them summoned
before a specially appointed committee of the House, and
required to produce the statements and notes of evi-
dence as to every case that had been laid before them,
and to declare the several considerations upon which they
had decided on not proceeding with each particular
petition. Some, no doubt, would be found to have been
abandoned as a matter of compromise, some because
safely
ex-
posure iu this particular instance would really for the
future place the representatives in the hands of the
honest, and deprive the agent of his Jong-held power to
put up some one to be plucked at every election; others,
becaue it had suddenly become more advantageous to
stop the petition than to go on with it ; and a goodly
number would be found to have been abandoned because
there was no petitioner in the field able to afford such
taltihWewemhinoere '
expense as would content a parliamentary agent, it is
utterly in vain to say that on investigation the cot-.
caption
active part in the contests. was excite-
ment of the moment that spread the report of unea..
envied corruption. It was the rare exception that
wherever there was a contest unfair means were used,
appeal
itinormn s
aonuyt tos
nhha vaesbs
assertion
ns mtannl 10.
and in those places there are plenty of people to be found
who make no secret as to how the election was lost
or won. There were rumours on the polling days in
several places which have not since died away, bat hare
become corroborated and confirmed; and we are not with-
out instances in proof, that if the whole number of pe-
titions be few, tke smallness of the number is not the
result of the rareness of corruption, or of any insuper-
able difficulty as to getting at the facts, but is in many,
if not in most instances, owing to the enormous cost of
petitions. As elections are at present conducted, a can-
didate—even where, in a moderately large constituency,
he fights ifair battle—must make up his mind to pay
heavily his way to Parliament. It is a road to be passed
in any case only by a considerable scattering of gold and
silver. A man may have ambition or love of some cause
enough at heart to spend the money in an open contest;
but when he is beaten by bought votes, it is another
matter to spend as much more as the election cost him
in a patriotic effort to unseat the buyer of the seat. The
bribery-beaten candidate may reasonably enough consi-
der that it is the duty of the Parliament to weed itself
of its corrupt members, and that the nation or the con-
stituency, and not the individual, should pay the cost.
It is in vain to cry out against corruption, so long as its
putishmeut is guarded against by an enormous fine upon
the prosecutor. No petitioner need look to spend less
than five hundred pounds, and he may be plucked to the
extent of one or two thousand, and then have the satis-
faction of knowing that the corrupt electors are still in
full force, and that he has no better, if not a worse,
chance, of being returned than before.
As elections now stand—even in the most flagrant in-
stances—members are left in the full enjoyment of their
purchased honours, and constituencies in undisturbed
possession of a national trust, which they systematically
betray. Those acquainted, for instance, with the myste-
ries of the management of the franchise at Maidstone,
know that when an election is on foot a certain club of
voters meet in a private parlour in a publio house to
talk over the merits of the candidates—and pipes are
smoked, and the weather gone over, and crops discussed,
and beer and gin and water tippled—and by and bye,
through, it may be, some mysterious 'hole in the wall,
there appears a 5 in chalk on a little black board over
the fire-place; the eyes of the company find their way
in that direction one after another, heads are shaken in
dissent, and on goes the drinking, and the smoke
thickens, and the conversation becomes political, and in-
stead of the 5 appears a 7. No one notes the change;
the chances of the candidates are gone into with some
zeal; the nominee at the club is no favourite yet; if he
be an old member there are no end of complaints against
him; he has been a member so many years, and still
there's smelt tax, and the hop duty is neither abolished
nor changed to an acreage. If a new candidate, he is.
unknown, and they must be cautious how they take new
men. AlO comes out upon the board; faces brighten;
there's a long pull at the pipes; every glass is filled as
if by some common impulse, and the chairman gives the
health of the candidate, and then, old or new, there are
speeches and cheers, his committee named, and his
election is safe.

The mysterious ten has done it all. It is notorious
that at the last election positive evidence of bribery in
the shape of cheques fell into the hands of the opposing
party, and led to a compromise, by which one of the
Derbyito candidates was withdrawn, and a section of the
Literals and the Tories agreed to a walk over. At the
last moment, however, an independent portion of the
constituency resolved to resist the compromise—brought
torevard a man of their own, Mr. Leo, and polled for
him, but without success. At the close of tho election a
petition was very urgently spoken ot, but after a time
re,. ct.,oled down. The qu.stion begun to bo asked,
what good could come of it ? Mr. Lee might unseat his
opponent, but his 51.4-porters would, by no fair means,
win in the faro of the figures over the mantel-piece, and
the instructions to shopkeepers and others from the
°utility round. Tho honest few could not afford amongst
themselves to face a petition.
The cost of the Tf-titian protects alike the bribers and
the bribed. Those who have the monfl, have nothing
to gain by its exdenditure, and tho:o who have not,
though they feel the di,grace of such a representation,
have no remedy. Tradesmen in the metropolis combine
to prosecute swindlers, who would escape in numbers, if
the charges were to be borne in each instance by an
individual. Surely the public are deeply enough inter-
ested in having an honourably chosen Parliament to
raise a fund for the unseating of those who by corrupt
influences deprive the honest electors of their ♦oice in
the state. Maidstone is far from being a single instance.
Colchester, at the last election, went, there is little doubt,
knee-deep into its old practices. There is no lack of
proof of bribery, and open-housekeeping. Mr. Hard-
castle was defeated by those practices, and would, in all
probability, have petitioned, but the vacancy at Bury St.
Edmunds gives him a chance of getting a seat at less coat
than by petition at Colcheeter, and so no one means to pay
fur exposing the doings of the Chief of the Woods and
Forests and his colleague, and their allies of the Eastern
Counties Railway.

At Bury St, Edmunds a petition was determined upon,
and Stuart must have lost his seat. The appointment to
the vice-chancellorship, however, leaves the seat open,
and no one with sufficient funds has any longer an
interest in the exposure of the member. But surely, if
a general fund had been subscribed for the purpose, the
Vice-Chancelior would have found a petition between
_ would
o ub lids
him and the Chiltern Hundreds ; and the public
haveappointment
mightpp opportunity r tbuon iotyo a os
considered
earsocde ascertaining i n
thein gl i
ghhotwo f f
aa
pre-
ventive to detection.
of
follialinogn-ideas 13
andaid
grumbling over unfulfilled promises,
Rochestervotespicked enough
onn known p
of y ,
looseet
unseat both the present members ; but
upe i
early k
places and
payments to
it is so well known that the same corrupt means would
be used again, and would return any other men
of the
same politics, whilst the present Ministry continue
in office, that probably the late members would consider
it a mere idle waste of money to petition. But other
constituencies, earnest and honest, and whose votes are
neutralized by those bought and coerced seats for Ro-
chester should surely be ready to contribute to throwing
the borough open to another contest, and so again and
again, until it become an ascertained fact that it is mere
money thrown away to attempt to bribe in Rochester.
Then there is Ipswich, from which Mr. Adair's 'Tyr,
for the ballot and reform, is to be neutralised
bby Al
Cobbold's thick and thin support of Lord
throughperj the
be-
cause Mr. Hubhouse does not see his a
expenses, first of a petition, and then
Ipswich pretends
tested election. And yet no one inhos ;
unless the
that Cobbold gained his seat by wofYanother con-
of his bank be fair
tug to his brewery, and the
power of some thirty public. hto:Tsel sebefro, more or less belong.
r chances of the seat for Ips-
wich costs of the seat,i
to be looked for that the few
means. It would be absurdo for an individual to pay the
is so irce y
wich ; and it
most active of . the Liberals, and on whom falls all the
, tiona, should tax themselves to so
theamount.eiec'The country generally has no less
labour of
heavy an he matter than Ipswich itself. The beer
an interestbinok.
bought seat is a vote gained by foul
shop and .
~,s, a t the great mass of the people, and it is
mleansinterestnb-nsand their duty, for the purging of Parlia-
ment,subscribe for punishment of the wrong done the
their
to
hone ,
st part of tne constituency of Ipswich.
a
yrm outh is a case of another kind, looking at the
return—and with such knowledge as any
one who has
investigated the matter, may have of the practices plied
on the late occasion—there is no doubt that Mr.
hiCullagh might gain the seat by a scrutiny of the votes;
but a scrutiny is of all modes of procedure against a sit-
ting member the most expensive. Counsel exert their
ingenuity in contriving delays; they will spend a day,
or perhaps more, over the cross-examination of a single
witness; they will make long speeches upon a class of
points seemingly raised for the purpose, and ending in
nothing; and all these days the petitioner is at the cost
of keeping witnesses in town, and sending for fresh testi-
mony.

Tile present system of elections is altogether vicious.
The candidate, even where the election is to bo pure,
comes forward to pay expenses himself', or else, as in
some few instances, his party subscribes, and pays, and
so on the face of it he occupies the position of one seek-
ing a direct advantage for himself, and not the advantage
of the electors and the country. If expense be essential
to the choice of a representative, it assuredly should be
borno not by the candidate, but by the constituency. It
is one of the public constitutional acts of the borough or
county to chose members of Parliament, and if booths
are to be erected, committee-rooms engaged, poll clerks,
messengers, &c., employed, the charges should be met
by the borough or county, and not by the returned mem-
bers and beaten candidates, and so also in the case of
petitions against the return. If there be bribable elec-
tors in a constituency, it
just
is the interest of the constitu-
ency to be rid of them, as it is their interest to be
; and the member or can-
didate upon to pay for the rid o f psihcokuplodck no e t
more o r b burglars;
ex-
posure and prosecution of bribers and receivers of bribes
than a persun who has had his pocket picked to be called
upon to pay the cost of transporting the pickpocket. If
bribery is to be put an end to, there must be an end of
levying the coat upon the petitioner.