The Sun.
London, England, 1837-10-31 00:00:00

THE SUN, LONDON, TUESDAY, OCTOBER 31, 18

than as a donation to some charity— to th:.: " Victoria
Almshouses," for instance, which are proposed to be
founded, as a 'solid and beneficent memorial of her Ma-
jesty's visit, and which might be amply endowed by
appropriating to that purpose a sm::11 portion of the
money intended to be foolislitly squandered upon a ge-
neral illumination.—Mornilig

chester, that is consistent with your present answer?—l tell
you I did not get it for your support-1 did,it for the sup-
port of Mr. Mayhew.
"` You were understood to,sny that when you wrote to
the Treasury to counsel money to be sent
.down to promote
the-cause of Reform, yours was a distinct application on
the part of Mr. Mayhew, to Mr. Harvey's exclusion ?
Not to his. exclusion, but my application was for Mr.

Mayhew.
"‘ As distinct from Mr. Harvey ?—I (lid not say to Mr.
Harvey's exclusion ; but on Mr. Matthew's account it
was that I made the application, and not on Mr: Harvey's.
" By. the Committce—Did your Lordship at the elec-
tion exert yourself 'on public political grounds to assist in
procuring the return of Mr. Harvey as well as the other
gentleman, he being a Reform candidate?—No, 1 did not.
The gr;at- battle was for Mr. Miyhem Ile was the per
son in -danger.
"` He was not returned•?—Yes, he was.

As the moment approaches for the meeting of Par-
liament the curiosity of the public becomes daily more
intense as to the course which the Whig-Radical party
will pursue. The suspicion has become general that,
with respect to one very important class of subject 3,
they will adopt the ordinary resource of conscious fee-
bleness and injustice, and struge,lc for debit. The sub-
jects to Which we allude arc those of disputed returns.
With resiwet to these, Ministers have determined, it
is said, to put off the evil day as long as they can, and
for this purpose are resolved to propose the postpone-
ment of the trial of all disputed elections until after
Christmas. It is particularly desirable, therefore, that
all the Conservative Members should be in their
places at the opening of the Session. A full and con-
stant attendance on this occasion is of greater practical
importance than is generally supposed. A defective
muster of Conservative Members would give Minis-
ters courage to propose some course of proceeding to re-
tard, if not to prevent, the purification of the House
Commons, by the ejection of Members impro-
perly and illegally returned. The importance of put-
ting the disputed elections into an immediate course of
investigation is too evident to require that we should
point it out. And we are the more sparing in our
admonitions upon this subject that the anxiety of the
Ministerial faction for postponement instructs Con-
servatives what they ought to do much more clearly
and authoritatively than any language that could pro-
ceed from us. We earnestly implore every Conserva-
tive Member of the House of Commons, however, to be
at his post regularly and constantly during at least the
first month of the Session. During that period they
will have to defeat the Ministerial project for post-
poning the trial of the election returns ; and during
that period also, if they should succeed in defeating
the Ministerial project of postponement, the election
Committees will have to be struck. These two
motives for early and punctual attendance should
alone be sufficient to bring every Conservative Mem-
ber of the House of Commons to his post on the
first day of the Session, without the further and
more powerful consideration that it is his duty to take
care lest the Civil List of the Sovereign during a
reign which every Englishman reasonably hopes, and
ardently desires, may be a long one, should be incon-
veniently and disrespectfully reduced, by the present
Ministers, in their too eager desire of popularity ; or
extravagantly enhanced, in their sycophantic and mis-
taken eagerness to propitiate the favour of their Royal
Mistress. Every imaginable inducement conspires,
indeed, to impress upon the Conservative Members
of the House of Commons the • necessity of a full
and steady attendance of their whole body at the com-
mencement of the session. It is to the election peti-
tions, however, that we would chiefly direct the atten-
tion, not of Members of Parliament only, but of the
whole British community, -within doors and without.
Tbis is the ground upon which the main conflict of the
early part of the session will take place. The
practical questions to be decided by this conflict are
two, and both are of the utmost importance ;one of
these questions is in effect which of the two parties
in the State, the Conservatives or the Destructives,
shall have with them a majority of the present House
of Commons ; the other, morally and politically of still
greater and more enduring interest, is, whether intimi-
dation, perjury, and corruption shall henceforh have
unbridled sway in the election of Members of the
Legislature. The partisans of Ministers have by
their conduct and language during the recess enabled
us to guess with sufficient confidence what will be the
tactics of their leaders at the commencement of the
Session. Every possible obstruction, it is clear, will
be thrown in the way of such investigations as seem
likely to lead to a diminution of the feeble and pre-
carious Ministerial majority. Never was there an occa-
sion on which ample funds for the prosecution of elec-
tion petitions were so much needed as on the present,
when the very existence of the Government depends
on the maintenance of elections effected by violence,
intimidation, or corruption. This it is which has
induced us from the first to applaud and promote the
Irish Election Petition Fund. The object which this
fund has in view is in the strictest sense national,
and the country will do less than justice to itself if the
subscription should not be in the strictest sense na-
tional also. For purposes which can scarcely be mis-
understood an outcry has been. raised against this im-
portant and valuable subscription, as if the conduct and
object of its promoters were illegal or unconstitutional.
We have heard and believe that some persons of ex-
traordinary weak nerves have withheld their mite from
the fund, from an apprehension that it is not strictly
within the spirit of the law and Constitution. We
must remind such feeble-minded persons that the ene-
mies with whom they have to contendact with infinitely
less cf scruple. They not only encourage subscrip-
tions for electioneering purposes, but upon any great
emergency they do not hesitate to permit their Secretary
of the Treasury to be the distributor of the fund, so that
the subscription fund to promote the election of Whig-
Radicals, and the SecretServiceMoney at the disposal of
Government, may be blended in such manner as to defy
the possibility of separation. The famous case of Mr.
Ellice and the Colchester election can scarcely yet
have been forgotten. The facts came out, as our
readers will recollect, in the-course of an inquiry by a
Committee of the House of Commons as to the con-
duct and character of Mr. D. W. Harvey, who had
been, and is still, so far as we know, excluded from
one of the Inns of Court. The Committee thought
the matter relating to Mr. Ellice of so much importance
that it made it the subject of a special report to the
House, which we here extract from Hansard's Par-
liamentary Debates :
"COLCHESTER ELECTION—ALLEGED BREACH
OF PRIVILEGE.

" And for that purpose the five hundred pounds were
advanced by the Secretaty of the Treasury for the pur7
poses of the election ?—Yesf
" After a short conversation as to the mode of proceed-
ing, it was understood that Mr. O'Connell was to make a
motion on the subject whenever Mr. Ellice should be in
the House. The report was ordered to be laid on the table."
The evidence of Lord We'stern distinctly accuses
Mr. E. Ellice, the Secretary of the Treasury, of having
paid money from the Treasury to promote the election
of a particular candidate at a contested election.
Whether this accusation were true or untrue it is not,
now necessary to inquire; but we may observe in passing
that Lord Western, who had had much to do with the
transaction, was not a very likely person to make an
unfavourable and unjust representation of the proceed-
ings of Mr. E. Ellice. And what was Mr. Ellice's
explanation ? It is this explanation and the manner
of its reception by the House of Commons which
touches the question of constitutional law as respects
the Irivh Election Petition Fund. Mr. E. Ellice, the
Secretary of the Treasury, admitted that he had paid
5001. towards the electioneering expenses of a Mr.
Mayhew, a candidate for Colchester, in conjunction
with Mr. D. W. Harvey. But he vindicatod himself
from the imputation of having paid this money from
the Treasury by the assertion (an assertion, by the way,
in confirmation of which no tittle of evidence was
ever produced from that time to the present), that the
money was part of a subscription fund, created with the
view of aiding and assisting the election of Reform
Members. Subscription funds for electioneering pur-
poses were at that moment in great favour with all the
Reform Ministers, and all their adherents. The mere
unsupported assertion of Mr. Ellice, that he had acted
as the agent for the distribution of such a fund, was
.deemed in that clay so great a merit as completely to
exonerate the Right Hon. Gentleman froth censure on
account of his having handed over 5001. to Lord
(then, we believe, Mr.) Western at the Treasury, and
in circumstances which led the latter to believe, and
state before a Committee of the House of Commons,
that the sum of money was advanced by Mr. Ellice in
his official character as Secretary to the Treasury. Upon
this mere allegation Lord Althorp said thatins Right
Hon. Friend had done nothing but what was quite correct
and commendable. Mr. Spring Rice said the same
thing. Lord John Russell said the same. Mr. C.
Buller was so enraptured with the conduct of his
friend the Secretary of the Treasury, who had kindly
mixed up his official duties with the distribution of a
joint-stock electioneering fund, that, upon the strength
of it, he claimed for the latter the title of a second
Scipio Africanus, a nickname which the Right Hon.
Gentleman will probably carry with him to the grave.
The small men of the party concurred in the motion
exculpating Mr. Ellice with wonderful unanimity.
Mr. C. Fergusson, Mr. H. Bulwer, Mr. Tennyson,
Colonel Evans, Mr. Sinclair, Mr. O'Dwyer, Mr. Ruth-
yen, and Mr. 'Wason, severally made speeches in its
favour. And the final vote, in favour of a resolu-
tion importing not merely that the raising and dis-
tribution of a subscription fund for electioneering pur-
poses are lawful and meritorious acts, but that they are
acts of such surpassing merit that in circumstances of
a most suspicious nature the mere assumption of them
may well suffice to exempt a Secretary of the Treasury
from suspicion—was carried in the • House of Com-
mons by a majority of 114 to 34. It will scarcely be
pretended that it is less useful and meritorious to create
a fund for the purpose of rectify;ng false returns than
for that of promoting party elections. Yet this must
be affirmed by those who, in the face of the above de-
cision of the House of Commons, insinuate a doubt
as to the legal, political, or moral fitness of the sub-
scription to correct and purify the returns sent from
Ireland at the last election.—Morning Post.

" Mr. O'Connell brought up a report of the Committee
appointed to consider the circumstances of Mr. Daniel
Whittle Harvey's exclusion from one of the Inns of Court,
which was read as fellows :
" The Select Committee -appointed to inquire into all
the circumstances attending the rejection of the claim by
Daniel Whittle Harvey, Esq., to be called to the bar, and
to report their opinion thereupon to the House, and who
were empowered to report from time to time to the House,
have agreed to the following report :
"‘ In the- course of the examination of the Right Hon.
Lord Western, the following evidence was given, which,
though not immediately connected with the investigation in
which the Committee is engaged, they feel it their duty
to bring to the knowledge of the House without delay :
" Did you not yourself write to Mr. Ellice, calling upon
him as an officer connected with the Treasury, to send
down a sum of money for the purpose of carrying on Mr.
Harvey's election at Colchester ?—No—I wrote for it to
carry on Mr. Mayhew's election at Colchester.
" Do you mean to say the letter was not written to sup
port Mr. Mayhew and Mr. Harvey jointly ?—Yes, it is
my firm belief it was not to support them jointly ; it was the
farthest from my thoughts to have done so ; it was to
support Mr. Mayhew.
" Your belief is strong to establish in your mind the
distinction ?—Yes.
" Now, in point of fact was any money sent from the
Treasury to Colchester, in consequence of your letter?—
Yes, I understood there was.
" Can you state who the parties were who shared that
money ?—No ; I .cannot state who the parties were who
shared that money ; but I understood, from yourself, I
think, that there was a dispute about it, and an egregious
dispute, and my recollection is that it was sent for Mr.
Mayhew ; I think he had three contests within a short One.
"' By the Committee—How much was the money ; do
you know ?—I think it was 5001.
" Did Mr.:ll,laylrew and Mr. Harvey stand for the same
interest ?—Yes, I believe they did stand on the same inte-
rest, but they were most violently hostile to each other, as
I understood.
By Mr. Harvey—Who were hostile ?—Mr. Mayhew
and Mr. Harvey ; that is my impression.
" Does your Lordship know that Mr. George Saville,
of Colchester, was, at the time we have been speaking of,
the treasurer of a common fund to secure the return of Mr.
Mayhew and Mr. llarvey ?—No, I did not know that ;
you are asking me as to matters which I say are irrelevant.
My desire was that money should be deposited in Mr.
George Saville's hands.
Did Mr. George Saville receive a sum of money, in
point of fact, at your instance ?—I believe so.
" I ask you whether, if it shall appear that the sum of
money which, through you influence, was obtained from
the Treasury, was obtained in aid of my election at Col-