The Sun.
London, England, 1831-10-08 00:00:00

-

to be found for him ? Yes, he went to a large and popu-
lous town, and stood upon the merits of this Bill—

Earl lIAIIIIOWBY denied that he had turned his sou
out of Tiverton. At the time of the transaction he was
1,500 miles from this country, and knew nothing of it.

The LORD CHANCELLOR had not blamed the
Noble Earl : he had merely mentioned his family.—
But the explanation undoubtedly was all in his (the
Lord Chancellor's) favour; for out of the borough of
Tiverton the Noble Lord went.—(Cries of "order.") Well,
he believed the Noble Lord never offered himself, but
it would take a great deal of trouble to convince him
(the Lord Chancellor) that he gave up his place without
any difference of opinion between him and his constitu-
ents. And why was was there such difference? Merely
because the Noble Earl's personal connexion with the
borough swayed the electors. The great charge made
against the Rill was, that it was based upon population,
and that this was a great change in the Constitution.
Would you say of the English county representa-
tion, that population was the basis of it, you would
be met with derision. Freehold was property--copy-
hold was property, and all that was left as it was. The
basis of the Bill was property, and that only. The
ten-pound qualification in London and the large
towns, be would admit, was low; but in the country
it assumed a different aspect, for in most places a
person paying 101. rent was a man of some conside-
ration in the world. A 201. qualification was the first
intended, but on inquiry Government found that in a
town of 15,000 population there were only 20 persons paying
201. rent, when by reducing the qualification to 101. they
secured a constituency of 1,500 voters. But then, says
a Noble Lord, you may have, for ought you know to the
contrary, a population of 4,000 paupers. Good God ! my
Lords did anybody ever see ingenuity so taxed to find out
an absurdity ?—(Hear, hear.) That a town of 4,000 in-
habitants should contain a population of 4,000 paupers
(Hear, and laughter.)—Who is to pay the poors' rates ?
(Cheers and laughter.) The number of paupers, I am
sorry to say, is generally in proportion, and in pretty ac-
curate proportion, to the number of the inhabitants. So
that in the snug population of 2,000 you would likewise
have them.—(Hear, hear.) But if you take an extreme
case—am I not to be allowed to take an extreme case ?
and, with permission of your Lordships, I will take an ex-
treme case.—(Hear,' and laughter.) What say you to
the close boroughs ? Will they, or any of them, whether
possessed by Jew or stock-jobber,, orspeculating attorney,
will they secure me against an alien or an enemy.—( Hear,
hear.) Will they? My Lords they did not.—(Hear.)
There is the Nabob of Arcot, who notoriously had from
fifteen to twenty Members in the Commons House of
Par liament. Influence of propel ty—sacred lights of the
Aristocracy—you who have English duties to discharge
and English rights to exercise, where was your power to
secure us from the members of an alien's agent—of the agent
of this Nabob of Arcot—when he came to the sacred doors
of a House of Parliament with a lack of Sicca rupees in
his right hand, and the Star Pagoda, not in his left, be-
cause he could not hold it, but with his left hand signifi-
cantly pointed at it.—( Hear, hear, hear.) Now, my
Lords, after all, this is not an extreme case. It has
happened. But who ever beard of a town with a popu-
lation of 4,000 paupers.—(Hear, bear, hear.) No such
place was ever known in this country ; but the Nabob
of Arcot was known to have from 15 to 20 repre-
sentatives in the House of Commons.—(Cheers.) Now,
my Lords, to return to the 101. householders, from whom,
by the way, I have hardly wandered. This excessive sen-
sitiveness respecting property as a test—this anxiety to
make the only canon of representation that property
should confer the elective franchise, may do with poli-
ticians and theorists in North America or in South Ame-
rica, where there are new empires to carve out and new
constitutions to frame, but it never would answer in this
country. Property can only be the criterion with re-
ference to the conferring of the elective franchise. With
those who hold that corporations ought not to be dis-
franchised, and that the rights of all freemen (ight to be
maintained, to assert that property ought to be the sole
basis of the elective franchise, was the most monstrous in-
congruity—the most gross, and palpable, and ludicrous
inconsistency, that possibly could be fratned.—(Hear.)
Who ever attended a borough election without hearing the
question mooted before the assessor against a freeman's
voting because be has not paid the parish dues? yet his
right is, as a freeman, to vote. Now it is stated that there
is not in our Bill even this protection for property—that
such a man would not be excluded—that there is not a
clause to this effect in the Bill. It is, or it is not ; if it is,
I say the exclusion is snore extensive than in the case
of freemen. If it is not in the Bill, I ask is not
the question fit for the Committee? To talk of pro-
perty as the criterion of eligibility to the franchise
argues either a gross inattention to the arguments
which have been advanced and even to the known
facts of the case. The right as regards boroughs
is held in England by the following classes:—By those de-
riving from simple inhabitancy for a given period (and
these form the scot and lot boroughs of which, I regret to
say, there are very few in the country); by freemen re-
sident and non-resident, and the non-resident enjoy the
right equally with the resident ; and by those holding by
burgage tenure, who are by far the greatest number of all.
Now here, my Lords, it is said is property; property in a
burgage tenure borough confers the right of voting. Aye,
property it is, but property only of the borough proprietor.
—(Hear, hear.) The property resides only in him. No
property rests, as men would insinuate, and as the law and
Constitution of the land intended, with the voters.—
(Hear, hear.) He receives his burgage tenure qualifica-
tion at two in the afternoon of the day of election ; votes
for his patron at three; and at four he delivers his title up
to his patron's solicitor, to be used at the next election
according to his sovereign will and pleasure.—(Hear,
hear.) This you call property.—(Cheers.) It is a vile
abuse of terms to call it property. But it is nothing to
say this. I assert that it is worse than an abuse of terms,
though others may hold it right; I say that it is an abuse
of the Constitution of England—a scandalous enormity,
which can no longer be endured..—(Cheers.) Not merely
that a Noble Lord, but that a speculating attorney, or a
stock-jobbing Jew should, by vesting his capital in a few
wretched houses or some mouldering brick walls—or a de-
cayed tree or a summer-house, possess the power of thrust-
ing Members into the Commons House of Parliament, by
making a false, collusive instrument, confer upon any
man the right to vote as if he had property, when he (the
proprietor) knows well the man has no such right, and
when the man himself does full well know it also—l say,
my Lords, is a thing which no longer can be tolerated.
The Act is first one of the grossest cheatery, and next it
became the greatest hypocrisy, when it is called a right
annexed to property.---(Cheers.) If the Noble Lord thinks
that the Nabob of Arcot should enjoy, by barter, a right of
returning fifteen or twenty Members to Parliament—lf he
thinks that the individual who, by gambling, or any other
of the means by which boroughs are conveyed from one
hand to another ; and that by investing himself with the
a
power of vote-creating attached to the property, he has
right to return members to the other House, they have
read the Constitution with other eyes than mine, if they
think that that is the English Constitution. But if it is
the English Constitution, then the Noble Lords are right
and I am wrong ; an i all I have to say is, that all the
great men who have praised the English Constitution were
as much mistaken as I am.—(Hear.) But, as I said, my
Lords, I have not taken an extreme case, and I certainly
have not fallen into the same error which I once did in
arguing a case of a Barony by tenure at your Lordships'
bar, when I contended that the right was transferable, and
quoted precedents from transactions in the other House.
My Lords, I then argued that a tailor might acquire the
barony, and transfer it to another tailor. The same case
occurred in the House of Commons. A tailor's assignees
might return another tailor for a burgage-tenure borough
.--nay more, a tailor and a waiter at a tavern did actually
sit for a borough in the House of Commons; and one
of the two was actually raised to the honours of the
Parpnetage7 (Hear, hear, hear)—by fine voting—
which is like fine speaking—proper words on the
proper oceasion—right votes on the right side—on the
right questions.—(Laughter.) This waiter who had pro-
bably got the borough in payment of a gambling debt at
the club witere he was marker, by this system was actually
raised to the Barozietage ; and I have so great a respect for
the House of Commons 4nd the Bat onetage Of England,
I must take leave to add, that peradventure had he per-
sisted in the same course of giving right votes upon the
right questions, he might have made his way onward until
he bad actually reached chore walls. This might seem
strange to say, but, after all, it was right votes on right
questions whip!' elevated many to the high honours of 'the
Peerage. Some were raised for Cher own merits, but fre-
quently, as I said, for voting right—some for bleeding in
their country's battles—some for having held official situa-
tions—seine for their individual acts. I assert it is not merit
oply that raises the man. Service in the army and navy
has elevated men—so has the administering of justice on the
bench—so has the enlightening of our fellow-men in other
made
many
r:),Waterloo,
a Peer,
as I have said. I speak in the presence of many who are
departments of the State—hut those have not made one
peer for every score in this House. Political service,
without a sear in the constitutional conflicts of SaintSte=
Laren's, has made more Peers than all the blood that
was'
fields
questions fhave
romßlenheim
n to
shed
dhti nv
oatlelstohne the right
here under circumstances totally different, and I do not know
that I address one who was elevated for such service. Cer-

tainly it is allowed that Mr. Pitt created an unprecedented
number of Peers—all from the ranks of his steady voters.
He never made an enemy a Peer. I was consequently
much surprised to hear my Noble and Learned Friend ex-
press his astonishment at the constitution il exercise of the
Kingly prerogative on a recent occasion. Now we come
to a charge, not only from the Noble Earl, but others,
which was brought forward as the master-key to unlock
all the sittices of the indignation of this House. This new
Bill, say the Noble Lords, excludes all influence of pro-
perty, and destroys the vested rights of individuals (mean-
ing of Peers and others, who are proprietors of boroughs.)
Why this is pure representation. But are we not dealing
with a representative form of Government? Are we not
to inquire what are the rights of the Commons' House of
Parliament? Oh, but this is nothing less than rank re-
presentatien—(Hear, and laughter)—nothing less than a
total abandonment of the right of electing their representa-
tives to the people. It is infamous, abominable, uncon-
stitutional, and inconceivably pernicious.—(Hear, and
laughter.) When, we are asked, was such a thing ever
known in England? When were such rights acknow-
ledged as those proposed to be conceded under the present
system ? Oh, this is quite intolerable—it is not restora-
tion—it is :downright revolution. And yet Edward VI.
restored or created about twenty boroughs. The good
Elizabeth revived or created twelve and forty-eight, making
sixty. In a word, front Edward IV. to the restoration,
about two hundred boroughs were revived or created.
If I remained silent the Noble Lord might suppose
I was convinced, and judgment would go against
me. Therefore I now speak on my own authority,
and that of others, which I am sure will be more re-
spected. I will use their words, and will read to your
Lordships what is said by a certain Mr, Prynne, and
by a great law sage upon the subject. After speaking
of sixty-four boroughs, which were for the most part
in Cornwall, Prynne says, " They are all new, and
for the most part (the universities excepted) very mean,
poor, inconsiderable boroughs, set up by the late returns,
practices of sheriffs, or ambitious gentlemen desiring to
serve them." This is their origin. They do not extend
to the first of Richard 1., the first year of legal memory,
but to the practice at the Restoration, the very worst time
in English History, " and courting, bribing, feasting
them for their voices, not by prescription or charter (some
few excepted), since the reign of King Edward IV., be-
fore whose reign they never elected, returned burgesses to
any English Parliament as they now do 128, to all." The
other authority to which I shall refer, is a resolution of
a Committee of the House of Commons of 1693 and 1694,
of which Committee Serjeant Bladon was the Chairman,
and on which were some of the greatest sages of the law
—Coke and Selden, and Noy, afterwards Attorney-Gene-
ral. The Noble Lord then read a resolution to the effect,
that more than the freemen were entitled to vote in bo-
roughs, and that by the common law the right resided in
all inhabitant householders. What then does this resolu-
tion declare ? Is it not that the common right by the
law of the land is in all the inhabitant householders ; not
in those who pay ten pounds or one pound, but in every
man who has a roof over his head ? I take upon me then
to lay down, that by the common law all inhabitant house-
holders have a right to vote, and that if to-morrow, in
the exercise of his prerogative, his Majesty were to issue
a writ to Manchester, or to any other town in which there
was no prescription, no corporation, all the inhabitant
householders would have a right to vote. What was it
then they proposed to do in the Bill ? Actually to limit
the right—to limit it to the 101. householders.—(Cheers.)
We are accused of being rash innovators—idle dreamers
and fanciers of things—and yet it appears we have been
only limiting an ancient right. It has been said that great
inconvenience would arise from conceding this 101. right
of voting ; but he really had heard no proof of it. He
then proceeded to say, that he lamented the Noble Earl
had been so ill advised as to allude in terms of such little
courtesy and kindness—he might say civility—to the
manufacturers of Birmingham and Manchester—when he
ridiculed them as philosophers. I, said the Noble and
Learned Lord, have long represented those people of the
House of Commons, when I had no Censituents and they
no Member, and much they felt the want of a Member to
represent them. I now represent them here ; and in re-
ference to all matters of classical learning, wishing, as I
do, that they should never scan a hexameter, or even recite
an epigram—iu all wit and elegance of mind, and per-
sonal demeanour, they must " hide their diminsshed
heads," and bow down—as, God knows, both they and I
have good right to do—in the presence of my Noble
Friend. But to say that I would take his opinion
upon any practical question—upon any question affect-
iug life or property—upon any manly question—upon
any question that a Statesman, a lawyer, a philoso-
pher, or a patriot might entertain—to say that I would
put his opinion in competition with that of these
steady, gallant, sensible, judicious, reflecting, and un-
affected men, and because unaffected, always coining
to calm conclusion, and not to be seduced from it by
adventitious circumstances from giving their judgment fair
play, is a thing that cannot be, nor is flattery so gross, nor
can friendship go so far as to make me even dream of such
a proposition. My Lords, I will read your Lordships an
extract of a letter which I hare received from an intelli-
gent friend of mine at Manchester, giving me an account
of the meeting at that place, and describing the character
and conduct of those who were engaged in that meeting.
He says—" We had some very good speeches. You will,
perhaps, be surprised to hear, that the best speaker at the
meeting is a common mechanic. Ile expressed himself
with the utmost clearness of diction, and force of reason-
ing ; and in the whole of his speech not a single observa-
tion escaped hint disrespectful to the higher orders of so-
ciety. In that and other respects he showed as much
good taste and good feeling as if he had been nursed in St.
Stephen's. There were many other speakers of the same
class who were not far behind him ; and I can assure you,
that their capacity to form a judgment of the measure un-
der their consideration will be despised only by those who
do not know them."—(Hear, hear.) There was another
remark made by the Noble Earl on which I wish to make
a few observations. The Noble Earl said, that it was the
undoubted right of the Crown to appoint its Ministers;
yet that it might happen, if all close or nomination bo-
roughs were destroyed, a great inconvenience would
arise ; fur that if a change of Ministers took place
without a dissolution of Parliament, an Attorney or
a Solicitor-General, or even a Secretary of St rte, whose
presence in the House of Commons was essential to the
advantageous transaction of public business, might, never-
theless, be kept out of the House, although one of the
most estimable individuals in the country, until a general
election—and even at a general election, without any fault
whatever being alleged against him. My answer is—
first, that I think that is an inconvenience which would
admit of a remedy ; and, secondly, I will venture to say,
that if I ant compelled to make a choice between per-
petuating that corrupt borough system in England, which
even the most moderate Reformer unequivocally condemns,
and that corrupt county and borough system in Scotland,
which is equally reprehensible—l say, my Lords, if I
have no choice between the continuance of that system
and the inconvenience to which the Noble Lord has al-
luded, I would shake off the rottenness, and I would em-
brace the inconvenience.—(Hear, hear.) But, my Lords.
I am not so hopeless as the Noble Earl seems
.to be of
finding a remedy for this inconvenience. I flatter myself
that on enquiry and consideration some means may be
devised to correct it; and I shall be perfectly ready in the
Committee to listen to any proposition which may have
that object in view. if that proposition should not seem
likely to introduce greater mischiefs than that which it is
intended to cure, it will meet with my concurrence; but
it no such proposition can be discovered, I shall have no
hesitation in undergoing the inconvenience, rather than
retain the present corrupt system.—(Hear, hear.) The
last observation of the Noble Earl to which I shall advert
(and the Noble Earl's observations comprehend almost
every thing that has been said in the course of this de-
bate in opposition to the measure under your Lord-
ships' consideration), is the Noble Earl's lamentation at
the course which my Nobl: Friend at the head of his Ma-
jesty's Government has pursued, and at the unnecessary sa-
crifices which, as the Noble Earl says, my Noble Freind
has been pleased to nuke. "He might," said the Noble
Earl, " have met the demands, he might have conciliated
the wishes of ell parties, he might have at once secured
the tranquillity of the country, and perpetuated his own
power; he might have stood between the living and the
dead, and have stayed time plague, He would then have
had that support from my Noble Friends and myself, of
which the course he has pursued has deprived him." My
Lords, I know that no :man regrets more than my Noble
Friend that his public duty has compelled Lim to relin-
quish the support of the Noble Earl, and of other Noble
Lords ; for no man would more highly prize that support.
Believe me, my Lords, that it was not without the greatest
pain that we felt ourselves compelled to adopt a course
which subjected us to that evil. Believe me, my Lords,
that it cost us many a bitter pang to be under the neces-
sity of rejecting assistance so valuable. Believe me, my
Lords, that no love of popularity, disconnected with our
sense of duty, could have induced us to make such a sa-
crifice—could have wrung from us the decision to submit
to such a loss. It was because we were well aware that
his Majesty's Government could not flatter themselves
that the support of those Noble Lords, honest and
implicit as that support would no doubt have been,
could.ligity
i have enabled us to stand a single day against the
wish of the people of this country : of the people,