The Sun.
London, England, 1869-03-15 00:00:00

ELECTION PETITION,'

The stories told of. Blackburn during the general elec-
tion—stories of intimidation and violent undue influence—
do not seem to have been much exaggerated. Managers
seem to have used all their influences on either side ; mer
were divided, and seemed to have hated one another cor-
dially, and mills became party ones. In reply to the
judge, it was stated that ill-feeling existed among the popu-
lation generally on account of political differences. Mr.
Justice Willes expressed himself surprised and shocked at
the statement. He said if such a system prevailed generally
in a place there could not be a legal election, and he
should have to report upon it. He did not say at present
he was prepared to do so. A number of witnesses were
called to prove that before the municipal elections in No-
vember last they were in the employ of Conservative mill-
owners, and that as they voted for the Liberal
candidates at the municipal election they were, when
they returned to their work on the following morning,
ejected by their fellow-workmen. In one or two instances
the witnesses said the masters were present, and
when remonstrated with upon the conduct of their work-
men, replied that they could do nothing, but they told
the men to come to work as usual on the following day.
Some of them declined to do so, and became the recipients
of a relief fund, established by the working men for such
as were ejected for maintaining their Liberal principles
until they could obtain work elsewhere. The judge
said it was his impression that under the circu-
lar which had been put in on the previous day all the mill-
owners, managers, and overlookers in the mills, were
agents, and the candidates would be responsible for any
illegal acts they committed. The respondents, Messrs.
nornby and Fielden reply that the municipal and parlia-
mentary elections were entirely distinct. In all the mills
there was a considerable amount of clanship, and that at the
last municipal election there was a strong feeling of partisan-
ship and a considerable amount of excitement. The munici
pal elections were decided by personal feeling, whilst in the
parliamentary election there was comparatively no personal
feeling excited, and the decision was founded upon political
principles. There were about sixty or seventy mills
altogether in the borough, employing 35,000 operatives,
and he should shew that in twenty-nine of the Conserva-
tive mills not a single person was forced out of employ-
ment on account of his political principles or votes. There
was not a single instance of intimidation, or of turning a
workman away for the vote he gave at the election of
parliamentary representatives. The sitting members
protested as strongly as any men could protest against any
system of intimidation, and they had endeavoured to
prevent any single act occurring that could in any way
affect the election.

At Hereford the petitioners rely in some measure upon
various cases of treating, but they seem in cases to have
found out mares' nests. Mr. John Harrison, timber
merchant, was examined at some length as to the
circumstances under which he gave a breakfast
at his house at Holmer un the morning of the poll.
He stated that he was married on the 25th August, on
which occasion a presentation was made to him by his men,
and a brooch to his wife by the railway men with whom he
was 'connected in business. On hiS return home on the
14th September he intimated his intention to give the men
a feast in return for their present. 'There was nothing to
preveiit his giving the feast before November 17, but he
fixed that day because he knew it would Le an idle clay in
Hereford. He told the men they might bring a few friends
with them. He expected about 40, but 70 or thereabouts
came. Beef and mutton, brandy, rum, and half-a-dozen of
wine were supplied for the feast. Among the guests three
voted for the Conservatives. On his oath he declared that the
breakfast was not given to influence voters to vote for
Clive and Wyllie. He was a Liberal, but was not on the
Liberal committee, and only attended at the committee-
room on one or two occasions for the purpose of making
some inquiries. He gave Edwards, the clerk to the Liberal
committee, a list of his men for him to seewho were voters,
but he (witness) did not use it for canvassing.
The book had been destroyed some time ago
with other waste paper. The municipal and parlia.
naentary elections at Hereford, as well as at Black-
burn, seem to have been mixed up. Mr. W. Russell,
a member of the town council, said he gave a treat to the
burgesses in acknowledgment of their having elected him
three days previously to the council. After the first two
gallons had been served a complaint was made that the
beer was bad, and he thenordered some gin—three quarts.
It was, he said, a custom in Hereford to pay burgesses -at
municipal elections a day's pay on voting, and he did so .
on the last occasion when he was returned for the Mon-
mouth' ward. He paid between £4 and £5. There
was no actual contest. After the meeting of Clive and
Wyllie's friends at the Greyhound Dog, on the sth
November, some of the burgesses and their wives asked
him to stand treat, and he did so. Was a " captain" of the
district.

The two bills brought in by Mr. Buxton and Mr.
Hughes, one for the creation of a Corporation of London, the
other to provide for the establishment of municipal corpora-
tions within the metropolis, have just been published.
The first constitutes the whole metropolis " the County
of London," and makes the Corporation of the City of London
" the Corporation of London." The second divides the
metropolis info municipal boroughs.

CABINET COUNCIL.—At the Cabinet Council on
Saturday there were present—the Right Hon. VV. E,
Gladstone, the Lord Chancellor, Earl de Grey and Ripon,
the Earl of Kimberley, the Right Hon. H. A. Bruce, the
Earl of Clarendon, Earl Granville, the Right Hon. E.
Cardwell, the Duke of Argyll, the Chancellor of the
Exchequer, the Right Hon. Hugh Childers, the Right
Hon. J. Bright, the Right Hon. G. J. Goschen, the
Marquis of Hartington, and the Right Hon. C. Fortescue.
The stipendiary magistrate at Hull has had a case
before him which made patent the fact that there are more
hippophagists amongst us than most people are aware of.
A butcher was recently detected removing from a knacker's
premises a sack full of dainty morsels of horseflesh, which
he intended-to work up into "polonies." He declared he
purchased the meat for beef, but this the knacker denied,
and blurted out the statement that he held a commission
to supply the " polony man " with three dead horses per
week, and that once he added to the bargain a large dead
dog. He was sent for trial.
THE ORIGIN OF THE MODERN NOVEL.—The
modern English novel, which is in everybody's hands now-
a-days ; which gives employment to crowds of workpeople,
almost qualifying itself to rank amongst the great indus-
tries of the day ; which keeps paper-mills going, and
printing-machines, and has its own army of dependents
and retainers, as if it were cotton or capital--the English
novel, we say, arose not with any gush, as from a foun-
tain, but in a certain serene pellucid pool, where a group
of pretty, smiling, eighteen-century faces, with elaborate
"heads," and powder and patches, were wont to mirror
themselves in the middle of George ll.'s reign ; while
Pope was singing his melodious couplets, and Chester-
field writing his wonderful letters, and Anson fighting
with the winds and seas, and Prince Charlie planning the
'45. From all the confused events of which the world
was full—bewildering destruction of the old, still more
bewildering formation of the new—the spectator turns
aside into the quaintest homely quiet, the most domestic,
least emotional, of all household scenes, and there finds
Samuel Richardson, a good printer, a comfortable, affec-
tionate, fatherly tradesman, kind to everybodyabout him,
and very much applauded by his admiring friends, but
with no special marks of genius that any one can see,-7
-
Blackwood's Macazine. . - - _ .