The Sun.
London, England, 1852-11-30 00:00:00

vernment and the Buddhist idol had been discontinued,
and the custody of the relic was left with the Buddhists
themselves. However, instead of giving the 3001.,
which the Government has hitherto allowed to the Bud-
dhist priests, he proposed that they should have compen-
sation in the shape of land to an equivalent value.
Sir R. H. INGLIS wished to make one observation
upon this answer.
Mr. GOULBURN rose to order. It was exceedingly
objectionable to have observations made upon answers to
questions.
Sir R. H. INGLIS wished simply to ask whether the
right hon. gentleman was prepared to lay the papers re-
lating to this subject on the table
Sir J. PAKINGTON had no objections whatever to
produce the documents.
THE CAPE.

In reply to Mr. F. PEEL,
Sir J. PAKINGTON entered into some explanation
of the nature of the papers which he intended to lay be-
fore the house on the subject of the franchise in the
Cape

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;
170/117.-7%

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of the voters and their numbers on the register ,
against several of these names certain sums were mark
indicating, no doubt, the amount they had received, 1-.l_
were about to receive, for their votes. They furthe
found a letter, to which he must call attention. This was„
the letter : "A good and safe man, with judgment:'' tzriktJAS.S.V
and quickness, is wanted immediately at Derby. I
suppose that you cannot leave your own place ; if not,
send some one whom you can trust in your place. Let
him go to Derby on receiving this and find the County
Tavern, in the centre of the town. Send his card to
Cox, Brothers, and Co., Lead Works, as coming from
Chester. That will be enough.—Yours, W. B.—Mon-
day." Besides this, the police found upon the man two
cards, similar to the one he held in his hand, which had
been delivered by Radford to Flewker, with the address
of "J. Morgan, Shrewsbury." This man was brought
before the magistrates, and when there he made no
secret of the business he had been engaged upon—
he admitted frankly that the book did contain the
names of voters who had received sums of money
from him, and others who were yet to be paid, and
he added, " after all it is but a very small affair, that the
voters were satisfied with 2/. or 3/. a piece, but at
Shrewsbury two votes would be worth as much as 20 in
Derby." (Hear, hear, and a laugh.) There was one
thing he (Sir A. Cockburn) thought perfectly clear from
this statement—that this man Morgan was at the
time engaged in corrupting the voters at Derby by means
of bribery. (Hear, hear.) That was a point which
admitted of no doubt. (Cheers.) But then came the
far more important and the more painful question. How
far, on the evidence of this man, the right hon. gentle-
man the Secretary at War was to be considered as hav-
ing been accessory to this work of corruption ? This
letter he had read, had been sworn to be in the hand-
writing of the right hon. gentleman. It was found in
an envelope addressed to Mr. John Frail, clerk of the
course, Shrewsbury, and bore the impress of the seal
and postmark which, to some extent, went to show toad
the letter was a genuine one. (Cheers.) But beyond
this, the right hon. gentleman had never denied that
the letter w.l.s genuine, and he took it that it
must be assumed to be so. And, if so, how far did
the letter implicate the right hon. gentleman ? One •
thing cannot fail to strike the most casual observer. That
was, that this man went to the place, where he was
committing this bribery, by the direction and at the
instance of this letter of the right hon. gentleman's.
(Hear.) The letter, it would be observed, contained a
course of explicit directions, and it would be found that
Morgan, the briber, complied with those directions so
given, to the most minute'! particular. The letter di-
rected that a man should be sent from Shrewsbury to
Derby immediately on its being received. Now, the
letter was dated on the Monday and not the Tuesday
morning. Morgan was seen on the platform of the
railway station at Shrewsbury, ready to start by the
8 o'clock train. That train, however, did not go by
way of Stafford, and he was obliged to wait for a later
tram, which was the earliest that would arrive at Derby.
The next direction was that that he should go to the
County Tavern, which he would find in the centre of the
town ' • and on his arrival went immediately and estab-
lished himself there, and the County Tavern became
the scene of acting, and the place where the bribery
was carried on. Next, the man was directed to send
his card to Cox, Brothers, and Co., lead works. On this
point he had the statement of the landlord of the inn,
given with great reluctance, for the man was a staunch
partisan, and not willing to give evidence against his
party if he .could avoid it ; but he stated that no sooner
had Morgan arrived at the inn, than he gave a card to
him to take to Mr. Cox, at the lead works, which he
gave to the ostler, who delivered it to Cox. Then the
letter directed that the card should bear the address
" Chester," and on the card which he (Sir Alexander
Cockburn) had in his hand, and which, in all human pro-
bility, was the one sent to the lead works—on that card,
as well as on the one seized by the police, there was the
address, " Chester." All the directions, then, were
obeyed to the very letter. Another observation on this
part of the case. It was quite impossible that this
letter could have been written by the right hon. gentle-
man without previous concert with the parties at
Derby—that was with Radford and the others. In
the first place, the right honourable gentleman
could not himself have known the County Tavern,
or that it was a place that would afford the necessary
facilities ; but Radford, it could be shown, was a gene-
ral frequenter of that tavern. Nor was it likely the
writer of the letter would have directed the man to send
the card to Mr. Cox, at the lead works, on his arrival,
unless there had been some preconcerted arrangement
by which the card, on being sent there, would be certain
to do its office. He next turned to the letter, to see if
it threw any light on the object for which the man was
to be sent from Shrewsbury to Derby, and for which all
this machinery was set in action. And the first thing
that struck him, as showing the animus of the writer,
was—for what legitimate purpose was a perfect stranger
to be sent all the way from Shrewsbury to Derby—a dis-
tance of seventy miles ? If a safe man for the election
was all that was required, could no such man be found
in Derby, or in any of the neighbouring towns ? The
experience which they have all had in the cases in which
systematic bribery had been brought to light must
have made them acquainted with the fact that when
wholesale bribery is about to take place, it was always a
stranger that was brought into play. The presence of a
stranger was always less suspicious, and if you succeeded
in cutting off the trail, detection was less likely to follow,
and was sometimes impossible. Any article would, there-
fore, be used for cutting off the trail in a case like this.
Then came the next question—why was a false address
used ? (Hear, hear.) Every one knew that if a stranger
could be got for the purpose of bribery, and he could leave
the place without leaving any trace behind him, detection
was so far less easy. No one wanted a false address for a
legitimate purpose. If you wanted, after a man had done
his work, to cut off all chances of following him, then
one of the means would be for him to give a
false address. He (Sir A. Cockburn) then asked for
what purpose did this man give a false address ? Nothing
was so common as for a guilty man to endeavour to
shroud himself from detection by shrinking from creating
ordinary suspicion, and he could only say that if the
right hon. gentleman laboured under any suspicion, he
had only himself to thank for having been accused of a
guilty purpose. He (Sir A. Cockburn) looked back on
all this as part of a combination ; and he would take the
liberty of putting this case : He had himself assisted in
the administration of justice, and he saw before and
around him a number of legal friends who were equally
accustomed to do so ; and, at the same time, he ob-
served many hon. gentlemen, who, in different districts
of the country, were in the habit f assisting in the admi-
nistration of criminal justice ; and he would put to them
the case of a man taken, flagrante delicto, and on him was
found a'letter directing him to a certain place, directing
him what to do when he got there, and putting him in
communication with a person who was to instruct him
with regard to the result of the work he was about to do,
and directing him to assume a disguise to prevent detec-
tion ; and if on a criminal trial the party writing the
letter was charged with being an accessory before the
fact, would it not be the duty of a judge to tell the jury
that such facts, unanswered and unexplained, was evi-
dence of complicity ? He said only if unanswered or
unexplained ! Heaven forbid that he should say that the
present case was not capable of being answered or ex-
plained ; all he meant to say was, that it demanded in-
quiry. In his long professional experience he had often
seen how appearances might deceive, and how often, in
what seemed an irresistible and overwhelming case, the
introduction of new facts put the matter in a new light.
He did not say that this was not such a case, but he did
say that it was a case which demanded sifting and inquiry,
and that the public mind would not be satisfied without
such an inquiry. (Hear.) But for the circumstances
to which he was now about to advert, he should
leave the case here, satisfied that he had done enough to
induce the house think it worthy of an inquiry. But
there were other circumstances which rendered in ne-
cessary to go further. The right. hon. gentleman had
spoken out, and declared at a meeting of his constituents
that the facts which he had stated were the result of a
conspiracy and infamous fraud, and that the case against
him was supported by fraud and perjury ; and he (Sir A•
Cockburn) had heard from all quarters that the friends
of the right hon. gentleman declared that the letter
found on Morgan, even if genuine, had reference not to
the election of 1852, but to a prior election, and was
written when he was not fettered with the responsibi-
lities of office, "' and therefore it was unfair and un-
generous to visit him with the consequencepanldf
staalet
hypothesis were true, and if this was
ould be uni
onawor ldo r,hhiys owf
ehne
transaction, he agreed that it ,a
house to rake it up. (Hear.)
api:hlieed:o.toose,behyre thefe.lt ipt
we
in-
cumbenttai-a
he (Sir! A. Cockburn) was
tioners to bring the case before
mind
Not
tetohniy there
was
fYbteoihnligsBsaconspiracy against the
on himfotro
any foundation
such
or that the letter in question re-
right hon. gentleman,
,erred to an election prior
thsearteis
gentleman, but
due to the right hon. it was also
a course
himself ; for nothing would give him greater
due to find that
mortification and regret than to he had been
made the instrument of carrying out a base and villain-
out plot against the right hon. gentleman. He had to
satisfy his own mind on the point, and he found that
materials were not wanting to guide him in the investi-
gation, for the charge of conspiracy having been con-
cocted, had put every one in Derby on his
Mr. Flewker, and those who had adoptedhs mettle.
is
infor-
mation, were anxious to throwlight
and to obtain information in on the matter,
order
the letter which was Morgan'ser to show whether
re-
ferred to the election of 1852 or possession
appeared
a prior election.
had found on inquiry that it
that
the
eright
hon.
gentleman had corresponded wi th Mr. Flewker on a
previous occasion with regard to an election at Derby,
but he was satisfied that the letter in question had no
reference to any
election
previous to 1848. It appeared
that the right honourable gentleman had not interfered
in the election for Derby in 1847, and that Mr. Frail
was a stranger to that borough so far as electioneering
matters were concerned, till 1848. It was important to
make this clear, and he should be able to do so by the
correspondence of the right hon. gentleman himself. Mr.
Strutt and Mr. Gower were returned for Derby in 1847,
and a petition was presented against their return. The
right hon. gentleman was applied to for his assistance in
carrying out that petition, and he wrote to Mr. Flewker
on the 21st of November, 1849 --" Ashbury-park.—
Dear sir, I received your letter in London yes-
terday, just as I was starting. I should think it a
good thing, indeed, to unseat Mr. Strutt for Derby."
He (Sr A. Cockburn) did not complain of that. They
were all influenced by kindly and amiable feelings to-
wards each other ; but when they came to an election
they were not over nice. The letter went on—" But I
fear that I have not the means of accepting your pro-
posal, as I have not funds at my disposal, just after the
expenditure attending a general election, to pay the costs
of the petition." He (Sir A. Cockburn) supposed that,
after this election, considering the number of petitions,
the funds were more flourishing. (Hear.) "If you get
up a case, and a subscription for the purpose, I can pro-
mise a subscription of 100/. ; but I cannot do more. I