The Sun.
London, England, 1837-02-04 00:00:00

endeavoured to bring about. He proposed that the debate should
he adjourned upon the motion of any individual Member, but he
wished that the other orders to which no opposition was
given might be proceeded with. Much time would be saved
by this plan ; there would be no partiality in it ; and indeed
he must say, that, in all the motions which he felt
it to be his duty to make for the adjournment of this
House, he was not actuated by any feeling in favour of one
side or the other, though he might hear with greater pleasure
the arguments of Members on the Ministerial, rather than
on the Opposition benches. He hoped the House would
sanction the proposition, with which he should conclude. The
Hon. Member then proposed—
" That- it being desirable, except in particular cases,
?hat the sittings of this House should not be continued
after midnight, when any motion is brought on for
discussion after twelve o'clock at night, and a Member rises to
speak to order, and moves that the further debate on such
question be adjourned to a future day, Mr. Speaker shall im-
mediately declare the debate adjourned, without putting the
question to the House, and proceed to the other Orders of the
Day."
Mr. E WART seconded the motion. He thought its adop-
tion would materially benefit Hon. Gentlemen, and would be
of great advantage to the country. —( Hear, hear.) Under
the present system the labour fell very unequally upon Hon.
Gentlemen,and those who represented large constituencies were
he should say much more attentive to their business than those
returned for small places. Sonic Hon. Gentlemen opposite
were not very particular in being in their places at late hours,
except a few who deserved the character of his Majesty'sOpposi-
tian. Late hours,therefore, were not only injurious to the country
and detrimental to Legislation in that House, but they were
oppressive by their inequality; and his Hon. Friend the Member
for Salford, and other Honourable Members, who sat long
after midnight, came in for an undue share of exer-
tion, of which they bad a great right to complain.—( Cries of
Hear, hear.) He was convinced that justice would never
be done to the country until a portion of the day was devoted to
the duties of legislation, and the best thing that could be done
would be to devote two or three days in the week to the
business of the House, instead of proceeding with nocturnal
legislation. He trusted that the House would not stop with
the present motion, but would go much farther as well for
the benefit of the House as the satisfaction of the nation.

Lord J. RUSSELL was not prepared to concur in the pre.
sent motion, which would have the effect of taking away al
discretion from the House. The practice of adjourning a
twelve o'clock would, no doubt, be very convenient and agree.
able to many Hon. Members ; but there were occasions when
the important nature of the public business might demand
that some particular motion should be proceeded with, not-
withstanding the lateness of the hour. In such cases, under
the present system, the House generally saw the necessity of
proceeding, and consented to the sacrifice of its own conve-
nience, in order that these discussions might be brought to a
close ; but if the proposition now made by the Hon. Member
for Salford were adopted, any Gentleman who wished to throw
an obstacle in the way of any particular measure, however
anxious the House might be to proceed with it, would have it
in his power at once to stop the debate, and to delay the fu-
ture progress of the measure. At the same time he (Lord
John Russell) must admit that he generally concurred in the
opinions entertained and expressed by the Hon. Member for
Salford with respect to the very late sitting of the House,
and it was on that account that he had last year declared that
he thought that Hon. Member had exercised an admirable
discretion in the manner in which, throughout the whole of
the Session, he had moved the adjournment.—( Hear, hear.)
But he did not like to adopt any fixed and settled rule by
which the adjournments of the House might be arbitrarily go-
verned, because he feared that on many occasions such a rule
might be found to intcrfere very seriously with the dispatch
of business. He might remark, indeed, that since the cus-
tom of adjourning at twelve o'clock had become common, so
much public bnsiness had not been transacted as would cer-
tainly have been the case if the custom had not been adopted.
He thought, however, that the practice was, upon the whole,
a convenient one, and therefore he should not interfere with
any motion that the Hon. Member for Salford might from time
to time make for the adjournment of the House ; bnt he was
decidedly opposed to the adoption of any fixed rule, which ho
was satisfied would be found extremely inconvenient in practice.
Mr. HUME said that if the Noble Lord looked bick to the
last Session of Parliament, he would see that a great deal of
time bad been wasted after twelve o'clock in discussing
and dividing upon the question of adjournment. He (Mr.
flume) knew that in particular cases it might be inconve-
nient to be forced to adjourn in the midst of a debate upon
an important subject; but all that was asked upon the present
motion was that no new matter should be debated after twelve
o'clock at night. If Members of the House came down at
eleven or twelve o'cl'sck in the day, as many were compelled
to do to attend Committees, he begged to ask whether it
was not too much that they should be required to continue
in their places at a later hour than twelve o'clock at
night. For his own part he (Mr. Hume) thought that the
public • business would be advanced more rapidly and more sa-
tisfactorily if the lion. Member for Salford's suggestions
were adopted.--( Hear.)
Mr. G. F. YOUNG said that if the question were one
that had reference only to the personal fatigue that the Mem-
bers of the House might be called on to undergo, he should
not be one to support the proposition brought forward by the
lion. Member for Salford ; but as he conceived that the public
business would be much better done if that proposition were
adopted, he should certainly feel bound to give his vote in
its favour. All the worst measures that had passed through
the House within his experience had been carried after mid-
igh t. —( Hear. )
After a few words from Mr. WARBURTON and the ATTOR-
NEY- GENERAL, which were not audible, the House divided,
when the nu :gibers were—
For the motion
Against it

Majority
FICTITIOUS VOTES—SCOTLAND.

Mr. HO R SM A N presented petitions from electors in Sel-
kirkshire, Roxburghshire, Stirlingshire, Pcebleshire, and se-
veral other counties in Scotland, complaining of the practice
of creating and registering fictitious votes in that country, and
praying for a Parliamentary inquiry.
On the petitions being brought up,
Sir GEORGE CLERK said, as they seemed to be of very
great length, he would suggest that they should be printed
before the subject was entered into ; at all events read at length
by the Clerk.
Mr. HOR SNI A N observed that the petitioners stated their
grievance, and the object of the motion which he was about to
bring forward was, that a Committee should be appointed to
inquire into the best mode of remedying it.
Sir GEORGE CLERK—But the House could not know
what the nature of the grievance was unless the petitions were
read.
Mr. HO R SMA N said he was about to state what the
grievance was, but he had no objection to one of the petitions
being read.
The Clerk then read one of the petitions, which, with se-
veral of the others, was afterwards laid on the table.
Mr. HO RSM AN—The question which I am about to bring
under the notice of the House is one of very serious import-
ance ; it is one on which much excitement is at this moment
prevailing in Scotland, and I feel certain that had the ques-
tion been brought forward a little later, instead of during the
first week of Session, every county constituency in Scotland
would have petitioned upon it.--( Hear, hear.) They all feel,
as indeed those who have already addressed you state, that, at
this moment their very existence as elective bodies is not only
endangered, but actually in the course of being extinguished.
Such a grievance, so strongly felt, so generally complained of,
must be sufficient to arrest the attention of this House—and
having once gained that attention, the few facts that I shall
feel it necessary to bring before it, cannot fail to rouse its in-
terest, and call forth a prompt and decisive interference.—
( Hear.) The petitioners complain that they arc being de-
frauded—nefariously and iniquitously defrauded—of the bene.
fits intended to be conferred on them by the Reform Bill.
They find no fault—they allege no insufficiency against that
measure ; on the contrary, their wishes, in this instance, are
bounded to its fair and legitimate operation. But they assert
that it is not allowed to operate as was intended_( Hear,
hear)—that a scheme has been devised by its enemies,
and a system organised with a view to defeating its provisions;
and so fatally successful have these efforts been, that already
many of the counties are virtually deprived of the power so
lately given them of choosing their own representatives, and
that every county in Scotland will ere long be brought to the
same condition.—( Hear, hear.) This is their averment, and
whether it be a just one or not the House shall now have the
power of deciding. Let me first recall to your recollection
what was the end and intention of the Scotch Reform Bill, and
what had been the elective system previous to that Bill, and
what was the change then meant to be introduced. Was it
not formerly the complaint that the people at large had no
share in the election of their Representatives--that the pri-
vilege of nominating him was monopolized by a favoured few;
and that these consisted for the most part of individuals who
had no proper connection with the county that they voted in ;
who had no property, no residence within it ; and who acquired
their franchise by the holding of a merely fictitious superiority.
And what was the principle of the Reform Bill ? That all that
system should cease to be—that nominal representation should
end—that monopoly should be destroyed—that non-resident
electors should be swept away—that fictitious qualifications
should never more be heard of. The choice of the representative,
instead of being vested in the few, was hereafter to be given
to the many. In place of the counties being overrun by voters
who had no connection with the soil, the qualification was in
future to be limited to the inhabitants, and in lieu of a nomi-
nal and fictitious freehold, a real bona fide property Was at all
times to be held indispensable to the franchise. Such, Sir,
and I appeal to the recollection and the candour of Hon. Gen-
tlemen on either side of the House—such was the principle of
that Bill—such it was announced to me by the Minister who
introduced it, and who declared it to be the intention of the Le-
gislature, that not one rag of the old system should remain. A.
new one was substituted in its place, which emancipating Scot-
land,was received with joy. The first general election took place
under the operation of that Bill, and the voters on that occa-
sion (with the exception of the old roll, whose privilege had
been preserved to them for their lives), were really and sub-
stantially the resident possessors of the subjects on which they
had claimed in their respective districts. That election went
against the party which had lately been in power, and it became
evident to them,with the new order of things, their supremacy was
at an end ; but it was equally evident, that if by any misconstruc-
tion or misapplication, or evasion or violation of the recent Act
of Parliament, they could succeed in re-establishing anything
approximating, to the former system, their influence must im-
mediately revive. Accordingly the effort was to be made—
desperate in its character, and demoralizing in its effects, that
effort has been made--and so systematic has been the plan
adopted—so well organized and so comprehensive in its ar-
rangement—and so ready and resolute, and reckless the in-

struments selected for its execution—that at this moment some
of the counties in Scotland, nearest to the metropolis, are as
completely in the hands of the old monopolists as if the
Reform Bill had never been introduced.—(Hear, hear.)
The mode in which this end is attained is by a very
extensive Manufacturing of purely nominal votes, and
by such a series of frauds upon the law as will be sur-
prising, if not incredible, to Eaglish ssars. To enumerate all
the devices through which the ingenuity df their authors has
endeavoured to find some alleviation to their despair would be
quite impossible; but, with the permission of tLe House, I will
describe a few of the most notorious.—( Hear, bej..r.) The
• '
first is by a system of joint tenancies—a farmer, paying a large
rent and having several sons, is made to take them all into his
lease. They may none of them be brought up to his line of
life—they may not reside with him, or near him, or
within an hundred miles 2f him—yet they arc all re-
gistered as joint-tenants. Nay, there are instances of men
being enrolled in this character, who are following their busi-
ness as practitioners in the law, and merchants, and shop-
keepers, in distant towns—men who never saw that, or perhaps
any other farm in all their lives, and who do net even know the
parish in which it is situated. The second mode of creating
these qualifications, is by the creation of a number of life-rent
qualifications of some extensive landowner who, being un-
willing or unable to denude himself altogether of any part of
his estates, makes over a portion of it in life-rent to so many
individuals, who become joint-proprietors. By this transaction
a dozen or score of persons who never saw or heard of
one another in their lives before, and who aro all strangers
to the county, become joint-purchasers of a subject. The
sum to be paid for it is calculated by tables of annuity, ac-
cording to their respective ages. The agent in the trans-
action is usually the political agent of the candidate ;
the disposition is dated the very last day of January,
so as to be just within the sir. months required for registra-
tion.—( Hear, hear.) The parties themselves are very much
ashamed of the proceeding, for it is kept quite secret, the
deed need not be registered, and it is not known of nor seen
by any one except for a few minutes, when produced before
the sheriff, after which it may be immediately destroyed.—
( Hear, hear.) This contrivance was at one time much re-
sorted to, and the votes created by it promised to be very nu-
merous ; but it was soon put out of fashion by the restless
cunning of its projectors, which, sharpened and improved by
practice, and emboldened by success, led to the discovery of
yet simpler modes, and the adoption of expedients of an easier
and cheaper, and far more shameless character. The two
next which I shall advert to are a proof of this.—(Hear.)
And to the one lam now going to describe I boa to call
the particular attention of Hon. Members, as it is the most
flagrant and the commonest of all. The House will scarcely
believe that it is a matter of common occurrence for numberless

votes to be made on a single tenement, without any right, or title,
or interest being acquired by the persons registering—with-
out any transfer whatever of the premises—without the occu-
pation being changed, or the ownership in any way interfered
with, or a single sixpence being exchanged between the par-
ties. Yet so it is—it happens daily and hourly, and this is
the manner in which it is brought about. An individual has '
some premises worth 100/. a-year, on which it is proposed to
him to make ten votes, and being a good Conservative
and fond of his party, be has no objection, provided proper
care be taken of his own interests in the transaction.
Ten persons are introduced to him as gentlemen who
are willing to come to terms, and a political agent is employed
to conduct the purchase. The price paid for the share of
each is to be 200/.—( Hear, hear.) But there are two ob-
stacles to the transaction. None of the buyers have
got 2001. ; they are not in a situation of life to have it.
Some of them are grooms and lacqueys in a neighbouring
establishment—some of them are clerks or dependents of the
agent himself—nay, some of them are as low as farm-servants,
So far from having 2001. apiece, they have not got 200 pence
amongst them ; and even if they had, the premises are essen-
tial to the present owner for the convenience of his trade, and
he cannot let them out of his possession. Here, then, aro two
impediments, apparently insurmountable, at the very outset
of the business ; but by the intervention of the agent afore-
said, they are thus nimbly surmounted. He suggests that the
purchasers, instead of paying down 2001. a-piece, shall give
a bill to that amount, and meanwhile pay five per cent. inte-
rest upon it; and he suggests also that the seller, instead of
yielding up the premises, shall continue to occupy them as te-
nant to the buyers P - the rent he pays each of them being 10/. a
year. Accordingly he gives them a life-rent disposition of the
property, and they give him back a life rent lease. He pays
each of them 101. a year of rent on his lease—(Hear, hear)
—but they pay him back exactly ten pounds a year of
interest on his bill—( Hear, hear)—so that for the sum he
gives out from his right hand, he receives an equivalent in his
left. And thus, by this very fair and honourable expedient,
which is afterwards completed by an oath before the Sheriff,
that the parties are bona fide possessors of the property, ten
additional freeholders are added to the poll, who come forward
at the next election to attest the superior purity of Conserva-
tive principles, and prove to the unbelieving what a re-action
has come upon the country.--( Hear, hear.) Now, Sir, can
the House hear this with patience? or can it doubt what fol-
lows—that votes of course are registered in numbers propor-
tioned to the facility—and from the most unfit of all possible
characters? Persons who are well known not to be worth
a single sixpence make oath that they are worth 101. a
year.—( Hear, hear.) Whole batches of servants in a
nobleman's or gentleman's household—regiments of butlers and
grooms and gamekeepers may be supplied with these fictitious;
qualifications by their masters' orders—and by such extraordi-
nary persuasion, and upon such frivolous pretences, have tiles°
parties been at all times induced to claim, that they have many
of them refused to appear to be examined before the Sheriff;
and some of them, when the oath has been tendered, have
refused to take it. The last plan I have to describe, is one
that has as vet occurred but in one county. It does not go even
the length of feigning a possession in land or houses;
it is a simple bond of annuity for 101. a year, secured over an
heritable subject—so that as many Jul. a year as an individuals.
estate is worth, so many votes can he create without alienating
an acre. How such annuities have been hitherto procured, I
know not—but how they may be procured I know well. They
may be purchased precisely like the subject in the last-men-
tioned case a bill may be given for the price—the interest on
that bill may be an exact equivalent for the annuity—and the
whole transaction, fraudulent and fictitious. But the parties,
nevertheless, swallow the oath. Having thus shown the na-
ture of these devices—and there are many others with which
I shall not deem it necessary to occupy the House, it
now only remains for me to prove the extent to which they
have been practised. I will take for this purpose the six
ceoouunnttiyes adjacent to one another in the neighbourhood of Edin.
burgh, viz.:—the three Lothians, Roxburgh, Selkirk and
Peebles,o
of and
Edinburgh,will atin
present confine myself to them in the
1832, the constituency amounted
to 1,126 ; non-residents, 61 ; life-rents, 42. In the present
year the life-rents had increased to 146. —( Hear, hear)—
and the non-residents amounted to 141—(Cheers)—but
this county was not a fair sample, because many of those
among the non-residents resided in the city of Edinburgh.
Ile would next refer to the County of Haddington, the
constituency in which amounted in 1832, to 513 • the non•
residents were 27, that number had since increased to 151 ;
at first they were but one-nineteenth of the whole constitu-
ency, but at present they amounted to one-fourth. The
life-rents in 1832 were 29, in 1836 they increased to 75. The
present constituency was 714. The next county was Lin-
lithgow in the year 1832, the constituency was 532 ; the
non-residents, 112. The non-residents were now increased
to 202.—( Hear, hear.) The life-rents, in 1832, were
23 ; non-residents, 4. This year the life-rents were 66 ; and,
out of the 66, the non-residents were 63.—(Hear, hear).—
He would then take the county of Roxburgh. In 1832
the number of the constituency was 1,188, and out of this
body not one-seventh were non-residents. At the present
time the number of lion-residents was not less than 444.
—(Hear, hear). The number of life-renters in 1832 did not
exceed 33, and all these were residents in the county. The
number of life-renters enrolled this year was 89, and of these
87 were non-residents. The total number of life-renrers in
this county was 112, and of these 107 were non-residents.-
-(Cheers. ) 'He should have stated that in the observations
he had addressed to the House he had confined himself to six
counties in the South of Scotland, because they laid togetl er,
and also because he believed that in them the system had
been carried out to the greatest extent. He alluded to
the three Lothians, Roxburglishire, Peebleshire, and Sel-
kirkshire. In 1832 the constituency of Peebleshire was 301.
Since that time a great number of persons had been enrolled
as voters; for at the present moment the constituency
amounted to 576. Out of the list of voters in 1832 there
were 15 non-residents ; the number of non-residents at the
present time was 218—(Loud cries of " Hear, hear)—being
nearly equal to the original constituency. There were only
eight persons in the list of voters as life-renters in 1832.
The number of life-renters added this year to the constitu-
ency was 137—( Hear, hear)—and of these 121 were non-
residents. The list of life-renters at the present time was
160, and of these 132 were non-residents--( Hear, hear)—so
that, in point of fact, there were only 28 resident life-renters,
and 22 of these were entitled to be registered in conse-
quence of offices they held as clergymen or schoolmasters.—
( Hear, hear.) In Selkirkshire, in 1832, the constituency
was 180. The number since registered was 444, being nearly
double the amount of the constituency in 1832. The whole
constituency was now 562, being more than double the num-
ber enrolled the year after passing the Reform Bill. In 1832
there were no non-resident voters ; in 1836, the number of
non resident voters enrolled was 288—( Cries of " Hear")—
being more than the original constituency. In 1822, there
were no life-renters, excepting the clergy and schoolmasters,
in number about 12. During the present year, 89 life-renters
had been placed on the list of voters, and of these 87 were
non-residents.—( Hear.) The whole number of life-renters
at the present time was.] 12, and 107 of these were non-residents.
Now, Sir, these are facts by which I think it necessary to il-
lustrate this part of the question. Are they not sufficiently
convincing ? But they are not all—the worst is yet to come—
the crowning point of all—the perfection of this machinery has
yet to be arrived at. I have hitherto described the system in
its two first stages only—the third and last yet remains. I
have shown that it began by the bong, fide purchase of proper-
ties by non-residents --and that it next proceeded to drop all
that was honest in the transaction, and combined non-resi-
dence with a fictitious qualification. But the House has now
to hear of all these counties being drawn into one net—( Hear,
heaie hear)—of the constituencies being bought up and
made up one concern, of a company of trustees and speculators
in votes being established, who monopolise them all, and who,
though not numerous enough of themselves to form one sepa-
rate constituency, in reality engross the power, and exercise
the functions of several. Such is the last scene of this strange
eventful history, and until this was consummated, the plot was
only half successful, and the thraldom of the people but imper-
fectly secured.—( Hear, hear.) Joint tenancies had their in-
conveniences and their risks, and even the infranchising of do-
mestics was neither so safe nor so satisfactory as could be de-
sired ; for farmers might become independent of the Laird,