The Sun.
London, England, 1840-03-26 00:00:00

which the voter was compelled to appear
before a Committee of the House of Commons, and
undergo the most searching scrutiny into the nature of
his claim. In his own case, not less than COO voters
who had voted against him, had received summonses to
to ,ppear before an Election Committee, to substantiate
their claims. Was that bringing justice home to the
door of the poor man ?—(Hear, hear.) Was that
the system which Hon. Members on the other side were
anxious to perpetuate?—(Hear, hear.) It was to
apply a remedy to so enormous an evil, and so glaring
an injustice, that the present Bill was introduced. If
there were serious objections to the present measure,
why did not Hon. Members opposite, bring forward
some measure to correct the existing evils ? Why,
not less than five Bills had been brought in by Hon.
members opposite, some of them members of the Go-
vernment, and all of them had been abandoned. These
Bills were in themselves prima facie evidence, that
legislation was necessary on the subject.—(Hear, hear.)
He believed the only real ground of objection to the
Noble Lord's Bill was that, notwitstanding all its evils
and absurdities, the present system was found to work
well for the party on the other side of the House.

Sir WM. SOMERVILLE would oppose the second
reading of the Bill because he believed it to be a mea-
sure of disfranchisement, and fr•:ught with much evil
to the representative system i❑ Ireland. He admitted
there might be some abuses with respect to the sys-
tem of certificates under the existing law, but he could
assure the House that no instance of the kind had
ever come under his observation. At what price was

the improvements of the Noble Lord's Bill to be re-
ceived? At a price which he (Sir William) would
, not consent to pay for them.—( Hear.) First, there
was the annual revision, which even in England had
excited the greatest discontent, and which, of course,
in Ireland would be doubly prejudicial to a poor pea-
santry under the yoke of rich landlords, and subject
' to influences which nothing but the most exalted pa-
triotism could withstand ; to that provision he objected
decidedly, and that involved the principle of the Bid
.--(Hear, from Lord Stanley)—he did not think he
could support the Bill. Then as to the appeal to
the Judge of Assize, why, in 1829 Sir R. Peel had
expressly conceded to the popular voice that there
should only be a single appeal. And when in the
Lords it was proposed to make a double appeal, Lord
Lyndhurst said it would give rise to contests of the
most troublesome character— (Hear, hear) the
Judges would be turned into registrars of voters, and
it would be much better to give it to the Judges at
once—(Hear)—for not a 101. householder hardly
would escape from the vexation and expense of the
appeal.—(Hear.) The expense would indeed wholly
vitiate the right of appeal so far as for the benefit of
the freeholder. Why a 101. freeholder would have to
expend half the value of his freehold, nay more, to
def.nd his vote at the Assizes.—(Hear.) Another Spot-
tiswoode subscription would disfranchise three-fourths of
the Irish voters.—( Hear, hear, hear.) The Noble Lord
had the passions and the prejudices of most political
men, and he (Sir W. Somerville) could not but suspect
the quarter from which the Bill emanated, and the ani-
mus by which the Noble Lord had been actuated te-
wards Ireland ; and could not but also fear that the
Noble Lord was desirous of taking advantage of the
obscurities of his Irish Reform Bill, to impose fresh
obstructions on the electoral franchise of the poorer
Irish voters.—(Hear, hear.) There was at this mo-
ment a wide-spread conspiracy, among the Irish land-
lords, to disfranchise the poorer Catholic voters of Ire-
land. Evidence had been given before the Committee
of the Lords on the state of Ireland, last Session, that
many Irish landlords continued to get rid of the fran-
chise of their poorer voters, by refusing, for instance,
to give thein leases for fourteen years, a term which
would give a vote, but only for thirteen years and a
half. And such practices would soon force on the Le-
gislature a new franchise, founded on the rent paid, or
on the poor-rates ; for landlords could not be permitted
to usurp all the electoral power, and make the Parlia-
mentary franchise a positive undisguised farce.—(Hear,
hear.) The Bill certainly did some good, but no prin-
ciple of morals could be so lax, as to justify doing a
little good to effect a great evil.—(Hear, hear.) He
Entreated that a measure so inherently improper, that
it could not be beneficially altered, should be at once
rejected.—(Hear, hear.)
Mr. CORBALLY agreed in thinking that the Bill
should be immediately rejected.

Mr. J. GRATTAN believed there was a very strict
investigation into votes in Ireland. The consequence
of embarking in the Noble Lord's precipitate course of
legislation, would be most dangerous. There was great
difficulty as it was to get voters to come forward against
their landlords. It was monstrous to see how they.
were pitted against each other on this which was
made a party question. It was impossible the Noble
Lord could be aware of the expenses of registration.
He would admit the present state of registration was
objectionable, but the proposed system was much worse.
He thought the annual system of registration worked
ill in England, and he was sure it would work worse
in Ireland. He wished the Noble Lord when he made
statements would give cases in which the registration
system, as it existed at present, had been abused.
Who, he would ask, was to pay the expenses of the
public officers who were to attend at these registra-
tions ? Feeling as he did on this subject, the
irksomeness and ofinsiveness of forcing in-
dividuals to come up to register against their
wishes, he could not, in the discharge of his duty, do
otherwise than protest against this Bill, and give it
every opposition in his power.
Mr. EMERSON TENNENT would give the Hon.
Member one case, which was an illustration of the evils
complained of. The question had not yet been dis-
cussed on principle. The question was whether the
present system of registration in Ireland stood in need
of amendment, and whether they were prepared to
apply a remedy to those evils. He should be surprised
if he found on the division on this question that gentle-
men who bad, year after year, been complaining of the
Irish Law of Registration should come forward and
negative their own statements by voting against this
Bill. The case to which he alluded was the case of
Belfast. In that town there wer3 1,900 bona fide voters
on the register, aad yet on the register there appeared
6,000 persons. Many were dead, many were in
Ane thousands hid given up their qualifications,
and yet not one of their ( seificates could be cancelled,
nor could one of these voters be removed from the
vegiater. He would ask if this was a state of th'ngs
that in common justice should be suffered to continue ?
—(Hear, hear.) Was this fair to any candidate ? It
might be said that a penal prosecution for perjury was
a protection, but in nine cases out of ten it was impossi-
ble to substantiate the proof of wilful and corrupt perjury,
Persons who had been absent for years might return on
the @ve of an election, and, by connivance with his land-
lard, obtain a colourable title of tenancy, in which case
an indictment for perjury must fail. He therefore
demanded the same right in Ireland which was pos-
seeeed in England—of removing a vote from the re-
gister. The great benefit of the Bill, in his mind, was the
facility it gave of getting rid of votes from the regis-
ter—(" Hear," from Mr. O'Connell)—of removing the
do id men. He approved of the other provisions of the
Bill, and could see nothing objectionable in the pro-
visions which had been objected to by Hon. Members
opposite. if the Bill furnished weapons of impedi-
ment, thee were as op .rt to the one party as to the
other. The question of costs had been represented
as an impediment to the exercise of a constitutional
right. It was a legal right, and every man who claimed
to 34tablish a legal right must be at the cost of the esta-
blishment of it, and he had the protection of costs
being given against any individual who should raise a
fraudulent opposition to him. He considered the pro-
posed plan a great improvement on the present system
of registration in Ireland. The proposed system was
precisely similar to the English one, except in the par-
ticular of an appeal being given on the question of
registration from the Assistant-Barrister to the Judges.
This had been objected to, but he would ask to whom
would Gentlemen give an appeal from the tribunal
of the Assistant Barrister ? Every other Court in Ire-
land might be appealed from, and was it to be con-
tended that Assistant Barristers were to possess a
power not possessed by the Lord Chancellor himself?
and surely an appeal to the Judges was preferable to
an appeal to a Committee of that House. With re-
gve,et to the particulars required by the proposed Bill,
which amounted to ten, some of them wore required b;
the present law, and the other three were particular.
which inflicted no hardship on the voter, ss they only r
l re.
quired him to state that which he must now staten in.
ores Court when he came up to register. He trusted
Honourable Members would not virtually declare the
system, which was unanimously condemned in Ireland,
should be continued.

Mr. M. J. O'CONNELL said Hon. Members had
objected. Gentlemen who opposed this Bill had not
given objections to its principle, but if s> they had
themselves followed the example set them ; but it was
absurd to talk of principle as distinct from details, and
the Bill was one of detail. But the claptrap was that
it would assimilate the law of England and Ireland.
He knew not what assimilation was, but if ever there
I..•as a hypocritical pretence of it, it was the present.
He wished not to say anything partial of the Judges
but ffe thought the power this Bill would give them
would he most injurious to Ireland, and would excite
suspicions of their partiality. The Bill threw addi-
tional obstacles in the way of the franchise. The notice
was so intricate, it would require a professional man to
draw it up. 'With regard to the place where Sessions
were held, great merit had been claimed for the pro-
posed regulations, but under the old law the Lord-
Lieutenant had the power of holding Sessions at what
time or place he might think proper The
part relat-
ing to appeal he thought the most objwecetrieontable isnithe
h
Bill. What would be the result if
o
a law ? Would not every man against whom° pass
leastt
shadow of objection existed be dragged before this
• and if the Judge happened to be of the,
ituirdgo ort," would it not be decided againstlf
e did formerly support an appeal unto.
7rAY,ll.' of Assize, on further experience he had
7
" different conclusion. It was clear all the
the other existing laws in Ireland would
by coafizing it to cases of death and disqua-

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