The Sun.
London, England, 1861-03-21 00:00:00

BAROMETER-20.33.

WIND—W.-North-Westerly—fresh; with fine weather,
but cold, with a flying shower of hail.
It rained very heavily last night, with a stormy wind.
The weather has been very unsettled of late, and now the
equinoctial gales are on or passing over.

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THE SUN.

LONDON, THURSDAY, MARCH 21, 18C

The Wednesday sittings of the House of Com-
mons in the Session of 1861 are certainly acquiring
for themselves a peculiar celebrity in the way
either of notable defeats endured, or notable vic-
tories achieved by the chiefs among the Liberal
Independents. Yesterday was quite en regle after
this fashion. Again the hero of the scene was Sir
JOHN TRELAV NY. A gain there was a rapid cut-
and-thrust debate between the antagonistic forces
ranged upon the Ministerial side of the House
(particularly below the gangway), and those (con-
fronting them) on the side of the Opposition.
Again—not by any means the first or even second
time merely this session—there was a division at
the end of the debate with divers members of the
Government in the minority. and the amount of the
majority, as given in by the tellers, hailed with
ringing " cheers" from the Opposition.

one
but

The occasion yesterday was the motion for the
second reading of Sir JOHN TRELAWNY'S Bill
for the better assessment of the County Rates,.
and the more judicious regulation of the
County Expenditure. Both intentions on the
part of the honourable baronet admirably good,
yet both of them together, by means of yes-
terday's division, unmistakeably defeated. This
division, it will be perceived at a glance, took place
not upon Sir JoHN's motion for the second reading,
a motion seconded by that staunchest of Liberals
the hon. baronet the member for Westminster, but
upon Sir MATTHEW RIDLEY'S amendment that the
Bill should be read a second time at our Anglo-
Greek Kalends, namely, six months afterwards.
This resolute amendment being carried by 163 as
opposed to 125, or in other words, by a clear majority
of 38 in a house (including Speaker and Tellers)
numbering very nearly three hundred members—
to be precise, just 293 altogether. The principal
circumstance by the way incidentally noticeable in
this cliscussion and Division of yesterday afternoon
being the remarkable fact that a distinguished
member of Lord PALMERSTON'S Cabinet, no
less a person than Sir GEORGE LEWIS,
her Majesty's Secretary of State for the Home
Department, spoke against and yet voted for the
Bill of Slr JOHN TRELAWNY ! With him voting,
among others, his colleague in the Cabinet, the
Right Hon. CHARLES VILLIERS, and the first law
officer of the Crown, Sir RICHARD BETHELL, her
Majesty's Attorney-General. Alluding to the ex-
traordinarily. anom-dous course thus pursued by
Sir GEORGE LEWIS, the humorous ex-Secretary
to the Admiralty, the now ever outspoken
Mr. BERNAL OSBORNE (ever outspoken ,now
that he is no longer Secretary to the
Admiralty) observed that—" The right hon.
gentleman the Secretary for the Home Depart-
ment said that that was not a case in which the
Government would interfere. But," added the
hon. gentleman, " he (Mr. OSBORNE) wanted to
know what was the case in which they would
interfere ? The Wednesdays were being com-
pletely lost to the House in consequence of the
-vacillating course pursued by the Government in
reference to measures brought forward by private
members. Last Wednesday his hon. friend the
member for East Surrey was patted on the back
and kicked at the same time, and that day it was
the turn of his hon. friend the member for Tavistock
to become the victim of the seductions of the
right hon. gentleman," Having hurled which
Poisoned dart of sarcasm at the Minister of State,
M=• BERNAL OSBORNE did not hesitate to follow
it
up with another yet more keenly barbed,
and Btee_e d in
F a yet deadlier irony re-
minding the
House how Sir GEORGE LEWIS had,
as far back as 1843, himself asserted that nothing
hardly could be
more crude and incomplete than
our whole county
rate ft,`" t
j CRI—" but then," said
3lr. OSBORNE, ,4 the
right hon. gentleman was only
a poor
-law commissioner, whereas now he fills the
office of Secretary of State for the Home Depart-
ment!" It is difficult on reflex'
ion not to bear ve that
this otherwise excellent and most dest •
rable Bill of
the hon. member for Tavistock
failed
in a very
great measure by reason of its needless complexity
and its readily avoidable elaboration. Accorainn.to
Sir JOHN TRELAWNY'S own acknowledgment;es-
terday, it contained actually upwards of one
hundred unnecessary clauses ! The hon. baronet eau
hardly object to this very startling assertion if he
only reverts for a moment to his own admission in

the course of his remarks early yesterday after-
noon, his own distinct admission that while
the Bill contained no less than 132 clauses,
" only thirty of these clauses were impor-
tant for his purpose !" The very first clause,
as he observed, " involving, in fact, the main prin-
ciple of his measure. It proposes," he said (that
Ist clause), "that a financial board should be
elected on a certain day in each year by the guar-
dians of the union. Each board of guardians
should select two members of that board. One
member should be a guardian, and the other a
justice of the peace, both possessed of rateable
property in the county of the annual value of £lOO
sterling"—and so on. There, we take it, lies the
whole objection to the proposed scheme as a prac-
tical improvement. Had Sir J. TRELAWNY made his
project simpler it might even now have prospered as
it, or something very like it, will—•must—prosper
eventually. Here—although the principle upon
which the projected reform was based by Sir JOHN
TRELAWNY was certainly sound enough, namely,
the great and popular principle that taxation
should, both in reason and in justice, be directly
connected with representation—there was too much
of the wheel-within-wheel scheme of modification
and rearrangement. In illustration of which it will
be enough to remember that Sir JOHN'S rejected
plan was to be carried out, in a sort of roundabout
process, according to that favourite route traversed
by the habitues of the Circumlocution Office, the
old approved route of a Circumbendibus. The Board
of Guardians to elect the proposed Financial Board,
the new Financial Board to make the rates. Et voila
tout! Behold your last bran new plan, good Farmer
Bull, for getting at some more equitable method
county rate assessment ! Recollecting this
damnatory flaw in the bill—while we cannot
regret the loss of many of the ♦arious advan-
ages that must, in all human probability, have
resulted from its beneficent operation when it
should have been judiciously modified in committee
—we can hardly wonder that it should have been
summarily rejected, under the circumstances, by the
impetuous throng of county members and impul-
sive country gentlemen making up the bulk of our
heavy handed Opposition.

Sir G. C. Lzwts has now in hand for renewal
and amendment, that solemn farce of legislation,
the Corrupt Practices at Elections Prevention
Act. We have had a little experience of its
powers, and have seen the truth of Sir W. HAYTER'S
opinion that it was a dead letter from the time
of its enactment. It has often been observed
that its title needed one slight alteration—the
substitution of the word " Protection" for " Pre-
vention ;" since in practice its machinery of
powerless auditors and commissions of inquiry,
have had for their direct result either to protect
delinquents from discovery, or to protect them
from punishment when self-convicted.
Wakefield has just furnished an illustration
of the latter operation—protection from punish-
ment. First, indeed, came the case of Mr.
LEATHAM, a case so managed as actually to excite
the sympathy of the public for a confessing delin-
quent. He could be prosecuted only through his
having been refused by the Commissioners the cer-
tificate granted to all who answered truthfully—but
from that day to this, the public has never known
why he was refused the certificate. His
offence was great enough, by his own
confession, but then that confession had been made
under the undoubting belief that he was thereby
securing for himself indemnity against penal con-
sequences. We would not insinuate any want of
partiality on the part of the Commissioners ; on the
contrary, many of the public had the impression
that because Mr. CHARLESWORTH so strangely
prevaricated that it was impossible to give him a
certificate, the Commissioners, to avoid the
appearance of partiality, refused the indem-
nity also to the other candidate, though no
fencing or prevarication appeared in his evi-
dence as reported. But Mr. LEATHAM'S case is
not unlikely, after all, to break down ; it is
certain, at least, to be " hung up" for a long time
in the Court of Error, before which it has yet to
come, and which will have to decide the question
whether the prosecution was commenced within
the time required by the Act. Thus the LEATHAM
case may be considered to have failed; partly as
having in it an element of unfair play, which the
public do not like, and partly because justice has
moved with a' faltering step, and a slow one
indeed.

And now we have the cases on the other side.
Three of them have just come off, been decided, we
cannot say, at York. And a pretty exhibition it has
been of the Preventive Act of Mr. WALPOLE and

Lord JOHN RUSSELL, who combined, so amiably

to produce an act, which should show that the real
and well-known means for preventing corruption
of all kinds, by making it useless, was but a silly
nostrum of such weak minds as the elder MILL,
GROTE, MOLESWORTH, Col. TEIOMPSON, as the vi-
sionary philosopher BEN TLIA m, and that politician so
utterly destitute of common sense, WM. COBBETT.
Well, at York we have just seen the working of the
ultimo ratio of the Prevention Act. A Royal
Commission had placed the gross bribery beyond
doubt. I; abuimus confitentes. Some unlucky ones,
out of the many, were selected as examples of what
those who scorned the folly of the ballot box could
do "in their wisdom." We may safely affirm that
these lofty-minded legislators never had a better
chance, and never will have, of exhibiting their
powers. And a precious exhibition it is. It discloses
the fact that corrupters—for the receivers of bribes, as
the less guilty, were passed over in the magnanimous
desire to fly at higher game—could be arraigned
and, by special good luck tried, but that a conviction
was not so easy a matter. One lucky sinner got
through completely, a verdict of not guilty recorded
the jury's opinion of the quality of the evidence
amongst " a I;,ad lot all together." What they
thought of the individual himself, law, very pro-
perly, does not ask.

Two more shared a different fate. •On one
case the jury could not agree. They enjoyed
the advantage, towards arriving at a just conclu-
sion, of being locked up all night, we presume, as
usual, without food or fire in this genial weather;
but cold and fasting could not enlighten the mind
of the one dissentient, the Hull juryman, who was
said to be a violent partizan ; he had evidence which
satisfied him that it would not do to send to prison
one of whom eleven others were confident he had
incurred that penalty. Next morning, therefore,
finding that the jury could not agree, and were not
likely to do so, Mr. Justice HILL discharged them
to their breakfast, which they doubtless enjoyed.

But the first was the great case. In that of
REGINA V. CROWTHER one juryman could be a
martyr to bribery, to the extent of starving and
freezing for some twelve or fourteen hours ; but
he was preceded by a far nobler martyr, one who
could look unappalled on six months' imprisonment
and a fine of £5OO rather than repeat in court the
very evidence he had given before the Commis-

sinners. The formal reason, indeed, this member

of the noble company of martyrs gave was,
that he should criminate himself ; he knew,
however, perfectly well that he would not,
and two judges concurred that he could