The Sun.
London, England, 1837-11-14 00:00:00

legal evidence of their freedom, had at all events been
admitted to that freedom under titles which a lawyer
would regard as questionable, if not absolutely invalid.
The borough of Clonmel before the Reform Bill
was under the influence of the family of Bagwell.
They were Whigs, who kept up their power there for
corporate and Parliamentary purposes by means which
Whigs are apt to designate as peculiar to Tories.
After the Reform Bill, however, the bulk of the Par-
liamentary influence appears to have been confiscated
into the hands of Mr. O'Connell, and the struggle was
then between a certain Mr. Dominick Ronayne, an
Irish Counsellor, now deceased, who, while he inha-
b:ted this upper world, was a follower of the Agi-
tator's party, or, as it is commonly called, a joint of
the Tail ; and Mr. Bagwell, the head of the old
proprietary family, supported by the Conservatives of
the town, who, the witnesses tell us, adopted him as
the less of the two evils. The other and greater
evil, however, was destined to oppress them in the
election and return of Mr. Dominick Ronayne, who
was twice Member for that borough, and whose scat,
on his decease, was obtained by Mr. Serjeant Ball,
another adherent of the same leader. As BelfaSt
had its Mr. Fogarty to carry out Radical theories and
register fictitious votes, so Clonmel had its Mr.
Guthrie, not less deeply imbued with a popular zeal
for the liberties of his " unhappy country." He
set off at score by declaring his opinion " that it
was the intention of the Legislature to extend the
elective franchise to almost, if not altogether, univer-
sal suffrage ; that was his opinion, and he would do
so." He kept his word like a man of honour, and re-
gistered the rubbish by cartloads. This was done upon
much the same system as at Belfast. The voter was •
examined, and stated a value of 101. On his cross-
examination, or on the examination of witnesses in
contradiction, it was proved, and this in a vast num-
ber of cases, that if the house were vacant, no solvent
tenant would give 10/. a year for it. Hereupon Mr.
Guthrie used to ask the witness whether it was not
worth 10/. to hint; which, by the aid of rooms to let
to lodgers, and by other additions quite foreign to the
intrinsic value of the house, the voter would easily
make out. On receiving the poor man's answer, that •
to him the house was worth 10/., Mr. Guthrie was
usually satisfied to believe him, against the testimony
even of experienced valuators, andc the fictitious vote
was then installed in due form upon the registry.
To put a narrow construction, Mr. Guthrie said,
" would not be to carry out the meaning of the
Act; and it having made the claimant a compe-
tent witness, he considered that he should place a
good deal upon the person's own swearing." These
words are from the evidence of a Mr. Lonergan, who
is in politics a partisan of Mr. Guthrie, and by pro-
fession an attorney ; and thus, on the testimony of a
legal gentleman, we find Mr. Guthrie, who is a bar-
rister, and who, from having been appointed to act in
the registration and other judicial duties of the Quarter
Sessions, might fairly have been supposed to know
something about the principles of legal evidence—we
• find this assistant barrister stating it as his opinion,
that because an Act of Parliament has made a certain
class of parties to the suit competent witnesses in it, a
peculiar reliance is to be placed upon their swearing.
A lawyer any where else than in Clonmel would have
supposed that the competency of the witness was a
matter quite unconnected with, and wholly uncondu-
cive to, his credibility ; that to render him competent
was just barely to make his evidence admissible, and
could have nothing in the world to do with the value
of that evidence when admitted. Nay more, a lawyer
would have argued, that any testimony which the man
bears in his own cause, and which, but for the enact-
ment of the Reform Bill in this special case, must on
principle have been excluded by reason of the incurable
partiality of almost every individual of the human race
to his own interests, was a testimony which, so far
from being selected for especial credit, would require
to be sifted with peculiar caution. Not at all. Mr.
Guthrie's forte being theory rather than law, he takes
a course of his own ; lie kicks down the rule, gets
astride on the exception, and gallops his hobby
rough-shod over all the rights and. franchises of the
borough. Such an assistant-barrister as this must
have been a real ornament to the General Association.
He tells the people of Clonmel, that it was the in-
tention of the Legislature to extend the elective fran-
chise almost to universal suffrage. The intention of
what'part of the Legislature ? If he means that the
Whigs, who framed the measure, while they talked of
it as a full, final, and fixed one, were many of them,
well content to leave it so loose or so elastic that, when-
ever their party purposes might require its extension,
it would stretch to let in any requisite amount of de-
mocracy, we may perhaps be of opinion that Mr.
Guthrie has formed no very inaccurate notion of the
views of his patrons. But if he means that any of the
more intelligent and moderate Reformers had any
intention of extending the franchise " almost to univer-
sal suffrage," or that any such intention was acknoze-
' ledged even by the most violent members of the Whig
Government who introduced that Bill, he commits a

mistake almost as gross as the errors of his rcgistratio
itself. It happens that there is an exposition, by audio
rity, in his very teeth—an official exposition, upon the
precise point which he has made available for the
adMission of so many fictitious votes : that is, the refer-
ence to the value which the occupier of the house
might be able to work out of it by the letting of lodg-
ings and other modes of employment, instead of a
reference to the value which the house would fetch in
actual rent if then vacant. The question, what was
intended in this particular by the Reform Act ? had
been raised on the registry for Londonderry during
Lord Grey's Administration : and the following is the
decisive answer of Lord Stanley, then Secretary for
Ireland, to the question asked of Government on this
subject by the inhabitants of that city, through the
Right Hon. George Dawson :
" The words of the Irish Act in this ease,' says Lord
Stanley, are precisely similar to the English, and you are
certainly entitled to my full testimony as to the intentions
of the Gdvernment and the Legislature. It is understood
on all hands, that the Householder Suffrage did not de-
pend upon the profit or advantage which the claimant de-
rived out of his holding, but upon the occupation of a
house of a certain class, the being able to pay for which
would appear to be the test of his filling a certain station
in society which would entitle hint to exercise the franchise
I have no hesitation, therefore, in saying that the intention
of the Government was to give the right to the occupier
of every house worth (not to him, but intrinsically worth)
101. a year." ' •
Thus, then, we have it, on the testimony of one of the
most distinguished Members of the Whig Government,
that the Suffrage was " understood on all hands" to
depend " upon the occupation of a house of a certain
class, as indicating that the occupier filled a certain
station in society which would entitle him to exercise
the franchise." With reference to this definition, we
only pray the attention of our readers to the evidence
of Mr. W. Smith, respecting a house which the wit-
ness seems to consider a fair sample of its class :
" Q. Is any part of the house let off?
" A. In general, in all those sorts of houses, there are
lodgers taken in, perhaps two or three families: I have
seen six families lodging in a small room.
Q. What is the usual rent—l speak of lodgers?
" A. Some pay 4d. a-week, some perhaps 2d.,—just
room for them to put a little straw and a little covering,
and lie down in a corner."
And the man who thins his miserable 2d., by the
risk and wretchedness of harbouring all this squalid
poverty, is the class of householders registered by the
assistant-barristers at Belfast and Clonmel, as a person
indicated by his occupation to be one " filling a certain
station in society which would entitle him to exercise
the franchise ! " Thus are sent to Parliament the knot
of Irish Members, who, if the petitions be not wisely
and liberally supported, must swallow up the represen-
tation of England and Scotland'—Tunes.
A fair opportunity now presents itself of ascertain-
ing who are indeed the enemies and who are the
friends of the Established Church, of distinguishing
those really desirous of promoting that great and bene-
ficent intention of Christianity—the diffusion of " peace
and good will amongst men "—from those who as-
sume the guise of religion, to facilitate the accomplish-
ment of the most selfish and base purposes. A cham-
pion for the Church has appeared io a quarter where
might least have been expected, and such are the
terms he proposes for the adjustment of the Church
question, that, of Churchmen, at least, none but the
most fanatic, or those seeking to make religion sub-
servient to political designs, can hesitate to second his