The Sun.
London, England, 1838-02-27 00:00:00

THE SUN, LONDON, TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 27, 183 S

in proportion as they were admired for the brilliancy of their
other talents. Those who had brought forward this charge
against the Roman Catholic Members did not seem at all to
have any impression of the grossness of the imputation of
perjury until such a charge was trade against themselves.
—( Hear.) He would now come to the motion of the
Noble Lord. The Noble Lord had already received thanks
for the part he had played that evening. He certainly
was anxious to offer the Noble Lord his cordial thanks for
the manner in which he had brought forward his motion ; and
as to the feelings which actuated him they were entitled to
admiration. As to the result, he trusted that the Noble
Lord would have reason to be satisfied. If the Noble Lord,
in the career that was before him, would always make
motions calculated to be so happy in their results as the
present he hoped the Noble Lord's political career would be
as splendid as it was likely to be long. There was one
point which in the course of the discussion Honourable Mem-
bers at the other side of the House had particularly avoided
to touch, and that was as to the substantial truth or false-
hood of the charge brought forward, and to the statement made
by the Hon. Member for Dublin. They had confined them-
selves to discussing the point as to whether the present election
tribunals were bad and unjust ; but they had not attempted to
bring forward one fact._(" No, no," from the Opposition
benches.) He repeated that the charge had been met by gene-
ral assertion. On the last day that they had a ballot in the
House, two Committees were ballotted for. Each Committee
was composed of Members opposed in politics to the Member
petitioned against, and what was the consequence ? Why, that
each Member gave up the defence of his seat without going
through the mockery of a trial, and one of the Members pub-
licly stated in the newspapers his reasons for so doing.—
(Great cheering from the Opposition Benches.) Yes, he
repeated the fact, the Conservative Member had a Liberal
Committee, the Liberal Member had a Conservative Com-
mittee, and each gave up without the mockery of a trial.—
( Cries of " Oh, oh," and " Name, name.") He would name.
They were the Hon. Member for Tynemouth, and the Hon.
Member for Marylebonc. Hon. Members who had made
the ambiguous charge against the Hon. Member for Dublin
had not been behind on this occasion. The charge was not
applied to both sides of the House, but was confined to one
particular side of the House, and to one particular occasion.
The Hon. Member spoke of the Spottiswoode conspiracy, and
of the manner in which that conspiracy had been instituted,
and for the particular purpose of going against the Irish elec-
tion returns, and it was upon those grounds that the Honour-
able Member had said that the English and Scotch gentle-
men did act with injustice on those Election Commit-
tees. He would not take the question on the general
evil of Election Committees, for he thought that the Spot-
tiswoode conspiracy was the greater evil. The Spottis-
woode conspiracy was suggested long before the elections took
place. It was suggested in the Tory Journals. He was
stating facts well known to every Member in the House. On
the grounds that he had stated that conspiracy had been en-
tered into, it was unjust and uncalled for, and on those grounds
the Hon. Member for Dublin was justified in stating that
there was a disposition to act unjustly with respect to those
petitions.
Mr. PLUM PTIZE was ready to allow that he had a few
days ago presented a petition from a large body of Protestants
in this country, and which petition certainly contained strong
language ; but he denied that the parties in question imputed
to any Member in the House the charge of direct perjury.—
( Hear, hear.) On that point the best proof he could offer
was that the House had allowed the petition to be received.
The petition in question stated no more than this, that the
Bill of Roman Catholic Emancipation contained an oath
which was to be taken as a security to the Protestant
Church that they would not abuse the powers conferred
on them, and that, notwithstanding the penalty thus pro-
vided and the oath thus framed, the Roman Catholic
Members, notwithstanding the oath they had taken, voted
for the alienation of the property of the Church and the
abolition of Church-rates ; and the petitioners prayed that as
the security provided by the Emancipation Bill was not suffi-
cient, and as the oath was not taken according to the meaning
of the Bill, they prayed that further security should be given
by the expulsion of the Roman Catholic Members from Par-
liament. He felt that in supporting this petition he had only
discharged a duty which he owed to the petitioners, and that
did not bear the construction that had beon put upon it in the
course of the debate.—( Cheers.)
Mr. HOGG was understood to say that Hon. Members
who exhibited so much sensitiveness and indignation on the
subject of the Spottiswoode subscription seemed very anxious
not to allow any questions to be put to Mr. Coppock on the
subject of election petitions generally when he was before the
House. He ( Mr. Hogg) had no hesitation to state that a pe-
tition was presented at the instance of Mr. Coppock by a
Liberal Member ; and the agent who had been employed to
get up the petition had admitted to him (Mr. Hogg) that the
petition was without a tittle of foundation —( Hear, hear.)
The Gentleman who had communicated with him (Mr.
Hogg) had stated that the petition had been put in, in
order to keep a Tory Member from sitting upon an Elec-
tion Committee. —(Cheers from the Opposition.) He
hoped the House would allow him to read a letter which he
had received from the Gentleman to whom he had alluded.
The Hon. Member proceeded to read the letter, which was in
substance to the following effect, and was (as we understood)
from the agent who had been engaged in preparing the peti-
tion. The letter stated that the writer had been engaged in
presenting a petition to the House of Commons against the
return of him (Mr. Holtz) and of Mr. Fox as Members foe
Beverley, andwhich petition charged the sitting Members with
having been guilty of corruption at the last election. The
writer proceeded to say, that pending the fate of the petition,
he had not thought it right to interfere, but now that the pro-
ceedings respecting the petition had terminated, he felt it due
to himself, from the position which he held at the late
election, to inform him (Mr. Hogg), that ho was not, and
could not, become a party to so disgraceful a proceeding.
—(Loud cheers from the Opposition Benches.) lie (the
writer) had told Mr. Coppock, when the petition was got up,
that it ought to be withdrawn, and to this Mr. Coppock
had stated in answer that the petition had been presented in
order to prevent him (Mr. Hogg) from sitting upon election
committees. He begged further to assure him ( Mr. Hogg)
that Mr. Clay, one of the opposition candidates at the last
election for Beverley, was no party to the petition, and that he
concurred with him (the writer of the letter) in deprecating
the entire proceeding as vexatious and ungentlemanlike.—
( Cheers.) This surely was a fact that ought not to bo over-
looked.
Sir E. SUG DEN said, the Hon. Member for Dublin, in
the speech which he had that evening addressed to the House,
had put the case in this way. He said that, seeing the danger
that was likely to arise from having the seats of justice tainted
by corruption, his object was to bring before the public and the
House the defective state of our own judicial tribunals.
Whatever might be the value of such an explanation
as this, ho was sure the House would not fail to feel
how painful it was to any Honourable Member to be ex-
posed to such an imputation as that which the Honourable
Member for Dublin had allowed himself to make. The
case as made out by the Hon. Member in his justification
was this—that the House had a defective tribunal, notoriously
defective, and against which the whole country cried out. The
I-ion. Member said that this tribunal he had attempted to
amend, but that they would not concur with him in doing so ;
and that therefore the whole might of the indignation of the
country should rest with them for having prevented that tribu-
nal from being altered. However, the objection of gentlemen
at that side of the House to the alteration of the tribunal was,
' that the alteration was proposed after the question that called
for adjudication had arisen. They had no objection to enter
upon the question of considering what hereafter should be
the tribunal. It had been said that this tribunal was a tribu-
nal open to every species of objection ; and yet for the remedy
of these objections what was proposed ? The Noble Lord
the Secretary at War, and the Hos. Member for Liskeard,
proposed that the Committees should consist in future of
five Members instead of eleven. But what would be the
effect of narrowing the number ; for if it were true that the
Committees were bad ii their constitution, by narrowing the
number they would only give greater facilities for those abuses
which the Hon. Member opposite alleged to exist. No pro-
position had yet been made to the House for the establish-
ment of any tribunal which was not open to some object co I.
The Hon. Member for Dublin had stated that he was anxious
to offer a remedy, but that the House would not adopt it. He
perfectly well recollected this proceeding. When the lion.
Member for Liakeard proposed his Bill, the Hon. Member
for Dublin got up and proposed to introduce another Bill.
This was thought irregular and was objected to ; bat the ob-
jection was got rid of by changing the title of one of the
Bills. When the Bill of the Honourable Member for Lis-
keard earns on for consideration, he told the Honourable and
Learned Member for Dublin that he was sere he had not penned
a line on the subject. The evening that the Hon. Member
for Liskeard's Bill was before the House, down came the
Hon. and Learned Member for Dublin, and took his seat near
the Noble Lord, acting in concert with him, as he supposed,
on
and stated that he would waive his own proposition in favour
of the measure brought forward by the Hon. Member for
Liskeard.—( Laughter from the Opposition Benches.) So
that when the Hon. and Learned Member stated that he had
offered a remedy to the House for these alleged defects in this
tribunal, the facts were as he ( Sir E. Sugden) had stated
them, and the remedy was not one proposed-by the Hon. and
Learned Member for Dublin, but by the Hon. Member for
Liskeard. As the law at present stood every Member of the
House was liable to be called to serve upon one election Com-
mittee. He was liable to be punished if he refused to attend
in his place, and still further liable to be punished if, having
bean called to serve upon a Committee, he refused to do so.
He agreed with what had been said by the Hon. Nlember for
Dublin as to the danger that would arise from casting suspi-
cion upon the judicial bench. The individual was guilty of a
great crime who, without sufficient proof, or without suffi-
cient grounds, brings a grave charge against a judicial tri-
bunal. What then was to be said of the conduct of the
Honourable Member for Dublin, who had brought against
the Members of that House an imputation of foul perjury ?
( Loud cheers.) He did not say so in any technical sense, but
he had deliberately made a charge which amounted to this—
that the Members of that HouSe gave judgment knowingly
against their oaths.—(Cheers.) He ( Sir E. Sugden) de-
clared on his solemn word as a gentleman that he did not
think that there was a single Member of that House who
could be guilty of such conduct. If ho thought there was a
single man in the House who could be capable of such con-
duct he would spurn him, as the lowest and meanest of crea-
tures.—( Cheers.) He believed Members of that House to
be totally incapable of deciding cases from unjust motives or
from any partial bias. He wished to draw attention to the
fporre ei sen
Dublin.atu r e
He
ef thehad charge
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IMemberishand
Scotch Gentlemen in that House with the commission of
wilful and corrupt perjury. He had broadly stated that
Ireland was not safe against the foul perjury of English