The Sun.
London, England, 1848-02-15 00:00:00

Obetill3l 11,( Ultb

LONDON, TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 15, 1848.

Those who may have recently perused the narra-
tive of the proceedings in the Parliamentary Com-
mittee upon the Great Yarmouth Election must have
been somewhat startled at the unblushing effrontery
of that very immaculate constituency. All the
decencies of electoral morality had been so flagrantly
outraged, and the corruption of the majority of free-
men was divulged by themselves in a spirit of such
exquisite callousness, that the mind revolts from this
spectacle of depravity, and is almost fain to regard the
franchise as one of the most formidable temptations that
can be afforded to an Englishman. Never was the
necessity of the ballot, as a preventive to wholesale
bribery, more strikingly demonstrated. Since the
virtual disfranchisement of Sudbury there have been
no sueh revelations of baseness on the part of an
entire constituency. It is not as if some half-dozen
individuals had been detected in registering their
votes "for a consideration." It is not as if a stray
housewife had been cajoled into the advocacy of the
interests of a particular candidate by the presentation of
a cider-vat, or the tendering of a litter of guinea-pigs.
There is no isolated instance of a voice being bartered
for a handful of the current medallions struck off
from the ingenious devices of Mr. WYATT ; no inci-
dental confession from a repentant cordwainer, or a
careless yeoman, or a hardened shopkeeper. It is a
plain, unvarnished, undisguised, monstrous, and
deplorable disclosure of corruption the most
gross and venality the most systematic. The
circumstances explained to the Committee by the diffe-
rent witnesses would be ludicrous for their consum-
mate deliberation, were they not loathsome from their
criminality. According to the confessions of several
of the delinquents themselves, the bribery practised
at the Great Yarmouth election has been practised,
not under the mask of a mysterious obscurity, but
with a sort of braggart candour—like a blowing rose
—in the sunshine. The rendezvous on such occasions
has been a public tavern in the market-place of
Yarmouth, immediately opposite the polling-booths,
and confronting the rival hostel of the opposing can-
didate. Over the entrance of one inn (the Angel)
flaunted the red banner of the Conservatives; over
that of the other (the King's Head) fluttered the
blue drapery of the Liberals. In those places of
refreshment the votes of the constituents appear
to have been purchased as coolly as one might pur-
chase a bushel of acorns. In the hotel dedicated to
the. genius of Toryism at least the system of politi-
cal peculation seems to have been practised like an
habitual pastime. There appears to have been no
inducements whatever thrust upon the electors ; they
are described as having flocked to the doorway of
the Angel almost instinctively. Up stairs was seated
the tutelary divinity, or rather the officiating priest
of that temple of corruption ; and up stairs accordingly
flocked those possessors of the elective franchise, who,
with due circumspection, had previously deco-
rated their button-holes with a crimson fa-
vour. At a table, plentifully laden with coin,
sat the legal celebrant aforesaid—an at-
torney—one Mr. Costs—and thither pressed
the freemen of Yarmouth, entering the apartment at
one door, and coming out at another ! Such was the
attention paid to the convenience and the ribs of these
immaculate gentlemen ! We are narrating occur-
rences, not upon the authority of a novelist, but
occurrences which have been authenticated upon
evidence elicited before a Parliamentary Committee.
We are speaking of corruption not dilated into gene-
ralities, but reduced to individual examples. Here
are the specific bribes received by particular mem-
bers of the Yarmouth constituency, and enumerated
in the report of the Votes and Proceedings of the
House of Commons, printed only yesterday :
"That it has been proved to the Committee,"
says the paper, " that E. Woolmer had been bribed
with 31.; Curtis Hall, 31.; Robert Cobb, 3/. ; W.
Lincoln Thorpe, 3/. ; W. Holt George, 31. ; W.
Jones Hare, 3/. ; Benjamin Brown, 31.; Edward
Bowles, 3/. ; Richard Rant, 3/. ; James Soulsby, 3/. ;
Samuel Amis, 3/. and 4/. ; Joseph Newman, 31.;
Samuel Drury, 31., and 31. given him for his brother;
Philip Andrews, with 10s." Poor PHILIP ANDREWS !
Is it surprising that after such revelations Lord
ARTHUR LENNOX and OCTANIUS EDWARD COOPE,
Esq., are declared by the Committee to be unseated ;
and that the Committee further recommends the im-
mediate disfranchisement of the borough of
Great Yarmouth ? For the honour of the
944,000 electors of England, Wales, and Scotland, it
is most devoutly to be hoped that the precedent of the
disfranchisement of Sudbury will be followed by
Parliament in reference to Great Yarmouth. Other-
wise the stain will prove infectious to the constituen-
cies of the United Kingdom. Otherwise the con-
sciences of the holders of the franchise may be ap-
praised in history. Otherwise the Commons may be
leavened by the inferential ignominy of corruption—
a corruption by which the ignoble shame of Sud-
bury has been surpassed by the insolent turpitude
of Yarmouth.

A case of " altar denunciation" has been established
beyond the possibility of doubt. The Rev. Gentle-
man has acknowledged the justice of the accusation,
or, in the words of a provincial contemporary, " ad-
mtiatntesdaetn
thatio he used the expressions that were manu-
factured into a charge against him." If the
had taken place in the diocese of
Tru am, we should doubtless have heard of the vile
calumnies of the English press, and the example of
ST.
GREGORY, or others of the ancient fathers, might
have been adduced to prove that, although no such
thing had ever taken place, and that it was quite
contrary to the practice of the Rev. Gentleman, yet
they would have been quite justified in doing so had
they been that way inclined ; and that, in fact, it
would have been a duty they owed to society to follow
the bent of their fancy—and to hold up the delin-
quents to the indignation of the assembled multitudes.
In the present instance, however, the circumstances
had occurred in the diocese of a prelate who did not take
quite so exalted a view of the priestly authority as some
of his episcopal brethren, and who had the bad taste to
imagine that even an ecclesiastic was bound to respect
the laws of the land in which he dwelt, and to which
he owed his allegiance. Hence an investigation was
directed, and as we have already stated, was rendered
unnecessary by the Rev. Gentleman admitting at the
18. st moment that "he had used the expressions which
had been manufactured into a charge against him."