The Sun.
London, England, 1841-02-24 00:00:00

r. ference to thi Report of that Association which bad
been eluded to by the Noble Lord, that he hal never read
a more ai>le and comprehensive document on the whole
question of,reg*.straeiln. He would add, that if the Noble
Lard followed the recornrrendatisns it contained, he could
not be much attvarianee ivith the opinions entertained by
Hen- Members on his (Or. S. O'Brien's) side of t::e
Huu e. He regretter', however, that the Bill of the Goe
vehement did not abolish the necessity for the payment of
rates and taxes, with the exception of the poor-rater.
With regard to the regitation clause?, they bad his entire
concurrence, as they went on the fair principle of re-
movieg from the regist et all those who ha& ceased to pos-
sess t-e right to be there, and to facilitate the acquisi-
tion : f the franchise by those who had a right to it.
The [lon. Geatleman proceeded, at consilerable length,
to make observations on the several clauses of the Bill,
stating the grounds on which he assented to some, and
diffcrel trom others. With regard to the clause which
related to po'lir.g he thought that the Bill did not go far
cnougle He would wish to see all elections coneloe3, if
possible, in one day.
Sir R. I3AT E SON &cid, after the speech of the Noble
Lord (Stanley) last rveaiag, it would ill become him to
trespass long upon the House ; but he could not sit silent
and hoar tLe easstituency r f Ireland se misrcpre en:ed as
hid heard them last night.—( Hear, hear.) • He did not
understand the Noble Lord to wish that the la'idlords
should control the votes cf their tenants in at uncon-
stitutional manner, but that they should only exercise
the legititnat infleen c of property. The tenants
in In I Ind had the greatest repugnance to register.
Because, if tl ey did tiiey would be compere]. to vote
against t,.eir 1 cedlordF, under terror of remorseless persecu-
tion fur themselves and farei is in this wreld, and the
threat of eternal punishment. in the next.—( Weir, Le.ir.)
That aas the intia.idet on under which the people sufferee,
and that was the cause of the f .11ing off is the registry.
It heal beet said that all parties in Ireland were oppose I
to the Bill of Lord Stanley. But the contrary was the
fact in the wealthy and iseelligent province of Ulster, al-
most the entire uopulation of which was in favour of that
Bill. This was shown by the petition presented last night,
with 91 000 signatures, every one of the petiti mere has-
leg written his own name, and ridded his place of rei-
cienec.—(Elesr, boa-.) In the ether province a large
part of the weAchy and intelligent inhabiter-As were
friendly to the mcasur e As to the proposed qualification
ef 5/. r i•el value, it would be in many ca es practically
lower than the fa--famed 40:. freeholders, who were con-

soldered in 1829, evea by the grea'est Liberal, a body cf
voters whom it was doeirablu 6,4) pct rid .f He bPg;',le
the independent gentlemen of England not to treat this
a party question, but to look upon it soLly as. one
of vAil importance to the ihterests cf Ireland.
As a resident Irishman be supp rted the Bill of the Noble
Lord near bill, considering as he did, that the system of
mibdiviiing land was the source of the raek-i eats, and of
many of the cal unities of Ireland. Ho believed,, therefore,
that if the 51. rating proposed by the Noble Lord opposite
spt adopted, it would destroy all the good produced by
the est .blishmeat of the 101. franchise, and that it would
lead to ti e misery and Lelgary of the Irish people. The
Noble Lord bad appealed to the it fears of the repeal
saitatioe, but ie fe t that no fe.r heed be entertained on
the subject—none, at least, need be felt as regarded the
province of Ul ter. He believed that matter had been
fettled by what eccurred at the late visit of the Hon. and
Learaed Me -fiber for Dublin to Belfast. On that occr.-
sion, in spit.: of the pomp of tie preparations, tie attempt
to etiPst Vie people of Ulstirr in favour of the repeal agi-
tati in had proved a total failure. The Hon. B tronet cor-
ciuded by expressing a hope that tie Bill r f the Noble
Lord the Secretary for Ireland would be reje.t.icl by the
House, and that the Bill of the Noble Lord the Member
for North Lancashire would soon become the I.lv of the

Mr. CAREW did not mean t) erist-or into any detail•
with regard to the Bill of toe Noble Lord. It was ad-
mitted on an hands that there were many ahu,es in the
pre;eat system of registration, and none were greater
than those arising from the vexatious procoe-li gs to which
those who claimed a right to be on the register were ex-
posed. Such persons acre kept in many instances for a
verek waitir.g about the Registration Courts, and losing
their valuable time, and were often reje::ted on mere
technical grounds, which could not but appear to the
voter to be a most vexatious proceeding.—(Cneert.) The
o:nsequence of these vexatious proceedings bad been that
there was growing up among Cse constituency of Ireland
an apathy and a disinclination to exercise the franchise.
The Bill of the Noble Lord the Secretary for Ireland was
calculated to remove those evils and that apathy, and
the:efore it should have his lit d.rty support. Is was cal.
culated to extend the right of voting—that every
one would look upon the possession of the fran-
chise as indispensable to his personal comfxt.—
( Hear), lie had received a letter from a clerg,-
man of the Church of England, residing in Queen's County,
in which he described the evils of the present state of re-
gistration ; thA letter staoi th:t the p:ao of Lord Mor-
pcth had Leen h_iled ith universal satisfaction ; and the
writer went on to say that he hid tecently attended a Re-
gistration Cotrt, wLizh appeare l to him to be nothing
mere than an arena of hard swo.ring, in which the man
who swore the h trdest was the most succ2ssful.—( Cheers
from the Opposition)—that the honest voter, who had
sworn to the value of his property, and who was in a con-
ditias to he better acquainted with its value than any
other person, was sit aide upon the bard swearing of
some hired valuator.— (Loud cheers from the :Ministerial
side of the House.) He would ask if such proceediegs
were not revolting to all persons possessed of religious
feelings 2-.IP hoped the House weuld consideL tie pr
frAtr-titti.-ifro-A-

.IpOSlte, he coulcrilure lei]
House that fire-eixths of the people of Ireland were 4,p-
-posed t., Lord Stanley's .41'.—(Loud cheers ) If ever
an opportunity had occurred for the House to conciliate
the good feeling of the': people of I eland, it was on the
present occasion ; and by hoped they would embrace it,
11 passing the Bill of the Governmeot, which was calcu-
late] to remove the evils of the registrati m system, and
to enlarge the franchise, while toe Bill of the Noble
Lord, the Member for North Lancashire, was one calcu-
lated entirely t destroy the franchises of the people of
Ireland.—( Cheers. )
Lord HOWICK would remind the House that the
question they were elle t) decide aa,, whether in
attempting to amend the system of registration in I/elate-I,
they should olio endeavour to give a clear definition of
the electoral franchise. —(Cheese.) The question was
not whether they should adopt all :be details c f his Noble
Friend's Bill, not whether they shculd determine that a
5/. rating should bestow the cinalification for the franchise,
not whether it would be ads isable to apply the test of rate,
for the purpose of ascertaining the fr.irchise, in any given
anannet, bus • simply whether. in amending the sys-
tem of registration, it would be desirable at the same time
to introduce some method of making the feitnehi:e depend
upon the assessment to ae Peor-rates.—(Chcerr.) That
wise the question which wes really before the Houle. Now,
putting aside all recollections of the angry discussions of
last year, and of the party feelings whims had been then
excited, he thought that he might assume tle,t wi h rega.d
to the oece eity for alteration the system of registration
all parties were agree', and b-t'a sides of the House were
also to:erably egreei as to the alterations to be made ; for
wheth r he looked at the Bit of his Nob'e Friend opeoti c
or at that of his Noble Friend on that side of the House,
the differences between the two systems were not so
great, but that one Bill might be made perfectly to
-resemble the other without undergoing greater altera-
tions in Committee than almost every other important
measure had undergone in the course of its progress through
that Ilouse. Be would now address himself as briefly as po.-
slide to what he considered to be the real question before the
llousc, and in so doing he should not quote from-any docu-
lwent, or go into any statistical details of whch he thought the
House had had more than suffic'ent during the debate. The'
simple question was, in a measure for amending the system
of registration, ought they or ought they not to attempt some
improvement in the definition ofthe franchise? W,thout going
so far as to sty, that they were bound under all c'reutn-
stances, in a measure for amending the registration, to in-
troduce some provision f,r a better definition of the fi anchise,
he would express his decided opinion that such a provision was
in th) highest degree desirable and expedient, and that it was
also in the highest degree desirable and expedient, that both
subjects should be included in the same Bill. Throughout
the whole course of the debate no one had denied the existence
of great evils as connected with the unsettled state of the f, an-
•chisein Ireland. The Hon. Member who had just sat down,and
\who had given as a r.ew Member such promise of his future ex-
ecllence—( Hear, hear)—had read a letter to the House de-
scribing the proceedings that took place in the Registration
Court.. They hadon the one hand the tenant brought up to
sewar that his land was of the value required, and on the other
the landlord to swear that it was pot,--41sey had, in short, men
sioieging up one after the other to do all they could to defeat
the voter. Then, by the present system, the Revising Barrs-
tar is to /decide whether the wee is good orma, wad thena.th
ey-
bare the Jude,es called upon to deckle whether the Revis n.'
Barrister was right, and very often the whole subject had to
be gone over again before a Committee of that Hou,e. Now,
was not that a state of things discreditable to a civilized coun-
try?—(Hear, hear.) Was not that a state of things which
Parliament ought to put an end to, and was it not a state of
things calculated to sap the toundations of all order in Ire-
land-4 Hear, hear)—and to place one portion of society in
opposition to the other? He thought that no man in that
House would deny that such was the case, and no person could
deny that those evils were closed by the uncertainty of know-
ing what was the rate of value on which the voting
in Ireland depended.—(Bear.) It was this difficult./
in ascertaining the value that was the cause of all that he had
described, and such being the case, the question was how were
they to clear up those doubts ? Could the difficulty as to the
construction of the words of the Act be cleared up ? Should
they take the construction put upon it by the Hon. Member
for Dublin, reckoning all the labour of the tenant, and thereby
giving him a beneficial interest ; or were they to take it as a
10/. beneficial interest beyond the rent ? If it were possible to
make the former the proper construction by a declaratory Act,
he should not approve of that course, because he believed it
would have bad consequences in Ireland; it would, in fact, lead
to the consequences which the Hon. Member for Cavan had ,
told them would flow from the measure now before the House.
But then should they introduce a declaratory Act to say that
the tenant must be enabled to pay 101. more than the occupa-
tion rent, perhaps his Noble Friend oppoSite would tell him
there was no necessity for that declaratory Act, because there
was such an Act already; but what would his Noble Friend
say with respect to the decision of the majority of the 'Juts !es
binding the minority ? He had heard with di•may the opinion
Tut forward that the minority of the Judges were not bound by
the majority. If such an opinion were given any weight to
there would be an end of society altogether. But then came
the question, had the House the power to compel others to act
according to their views on the subject? He feared that that
was tot the case ; but that was not all, the swearing-
at tie registration was most contradictory, and had
they
_got rid of the root of that evil ?—( Hear, hear.)
Had they yet got rid of the real cause of that contradictory
swearing of which they had all complained? In his opinion
they had not. Did this contradictory swearing begin when
the dispute arose as to the proper construction of the term
beneficial interest? Why, notoriously this complaint existed
previously to 1829, during the system of the 40s. freeholders.
It existed between 1829 and the passing of the Reform Act,
under the system of the 10/. freeholders. So notorious was
the abuse, that it was made use of as an argument for the
change. And he thought the argument was well founded ;
he thought that the change did get rid of a great deal of
perjury. Under the words as they now stood he believed that
an Irish peasant, who felt that his whole existence depended
upon his maintaining possession of his farm—that he had'no
other means of obtaining a livelihood—he believed that that
man, according to what he conceived to be the real interpreta•