The Sun.
London, England, 1842-07-27 00:00:00

SPIRIT of the PUBLIC JOURNALS.

FROM THE EVENING PAPERS OF MONDAY.
GLOBE.—The evidence given before the Com-
mittee on Election Compromises bears out to the
fullest extent the conclusions arrived at in the Re-
port, which it must be acknowledged has been
drawn up with a moderation that even the Times
does not hesitate to eulogise. When Mr. Roe-
buck first stirred the subjects of bribery and
compromise it was curious to observe how
indignant many Hon. Members were at the sup-
position that they could possibly have been engaged
in anything wrong ; and there were some who even
courted inquiry into the proceedings they were al-
leged to have been parties to. It appears, however,
from the evidence, that Mr. Roebuck stated nothing
which inquiry has not confirmed. The cases to which
he alluded with suspicion have been developed and
proved to be true, by the very individuals concerned
in them. There is one good that will certainly result
from the inquiry which has just taken place—it will
cause the House of Commons to legislate for the pre-
vention of corruption and compromise. There are many
evils which may remain for a long time notorious,
but are quietly suffered to exist until they are brought
palpably beneath the attention of those with whom
the duty rests of applying a remedy. Of such a
nature are the abuses arising out of elections, with
regard to which nothing is developed in the evidence
sow before us that will astonish any one ; but
until the facts were brought in black and white be-
neath the eye of the Legislature and the country,
the necessity for curing the evil did not appear impera-
tive. But with the Report and the evidence on the
subject now before them, it is impossible that the
house of Commons can with decency permit the matter
to rest where it does during another session of Parlia-
ment. We remember the Times lamenting, not very
long ago, that there were no nomination boroughs
that could be regularly bought, as under the old
system they used to be. We certainly agree with
our Contemporary, in thinking that the practice al-
luded to was better than that which has -lately pre-
vailed at such places as ,Harwich and Nottingham.
The: wholesale purchase of a seat made the pre-
tence of popular representation a farce, it is true ;
but it was only a farce, without any of those disgust-
ing and degrading scenes which now constitute a
portion of so many electioneering drams. If the
privilege of sitting in the House of Commons is to be
bought at all, it is better that it should be done upon
the old plan, than by subjugating all the moral and
intellectual faculties of the electors—" cooping" them
in houses by thirty or forty at a time, making
.them
drunk, and " littering them down on straw in the
kitchen of one of the candidates." Such, according
to the evidence of Mr. Charles Parkes, the agent, ap-
pears to have been the course pursued at Nottingham
—and similar scenes are acted, at every general elec-
tion, in many places to which Mr. Roebuck's inquiry
was not extended.
STANDARD.—One of the expeeied, and, no
doubt, one of the designed effects of the secresy in
which the Roebuck Committee shrouded it: elf, was
to keep the evidence selected and garbled eve.' as it
would be from that proportion of the people, at ,east
99 out of 100, who receive their political informatiOn
from newspapers. If the Committee had been open,
its disclosures would be reported day by day —par-
ties accused would be apprised of their positron, and
warned to defend themselves, by new evidence ;
parties unjustly screened would be subjected to the
possibility of exposure by witnesses before advisedly
kept back. In a word, justice would be done upon
both innocent and guilty ; and, above all, the public
would be made aware of what was going on, and
an universal interest would be secured for the
inquiry. As the thing has been managed, the evi-
dence, such as it is, like all incomplete evidence,
without prospect of addition, is wholly destitute of
value and of interest, and to ensure it against being
read by any but a very few, it is let out all together,
in a folio volume of one hundred and eighty-eight
closely-printed pages. We suppOse, indeed, that
we must print it by instalments, but we are
pretty certain ' that we shall print what will not
be read, now that all interest has terminated
in the termination of the inquiry, and the feeble
Report in which that inquiry has resulted. The
country now knows that there have been compro-
mises, and that there has been bribery ; but tite
country knew all that before, and the Committee's
Report adds nothing either to the extent or accuracy
of the knowledge. How different would the case
have been if the investigation had been prosecuted
openly and honestly—supported and urged day by
day by popular feeling. The Committee would have
been able to hunt every bribe to its origin.al pay-
mezter ; and if a deficit of evidence had interrupted
the course of proof for a moment the gap would be
supplied at the next moment by hundreds of volun-
teer witnesses.
FROM THE EVENING PAPERS OF YESTERDAY.
GLOBE.—The Mines and Collieries Bill, which
some, of our Contemporaries seemed to consider as
endangered by the opposition raised against some of
its essential clauses by certain Noble Lords inter-
ested in perpetuating the abominations it was
framed to remedy, has passed through the ordeal of
Committee in the House of Lords. We are no
less thankful on the score of humanity than we are
for the preservation of due respect in the
_public
mind for the acts of both branches of the Legis-
lature, that these apprehensions have not been
realised. If the intention was ever seriously enter-
tained of denuding the Bill of the clauses which con-
stituted its main excellencies, and without which it
would have been a mere mockery, that intention was
prudently abandoned. For Peers of ,the highest
rank to have allowed themselves to interpose their
own private interests as impediments to a measure
which was framed to prevent practices as much
opposed to the decencies of life, on which morality
must depend for protection from_ invasion and sub-
version, as they are to humanity, would have been to
adopt a course of all others the most likely to bring
their order into contempt, and thus to shake the
foundations on which it, and every other institution
f the
the
Bill, o
which
, h ie
of the country, must depend for protection and per-
petuity. The objection to the humane measure, now
danger,proh iNbv as
i t edassignedafter
a
thoapthpeilysecbtei3o-onnsd o
day named in the Bill, the
employment of females
of any age in mines and collieries. The Noble Lord
(Ashley) to whose devotion to the subject the victims
to a depraved system are so much indebted for the
means of their deliverance from the deep degrada-
tion and vast extent of suffering it entailed up on
the formidable opposition them, had so far yielded to ' to
the measure which
had been invoked against it, as to
.extend .the limits of, the. period below,.3Thick,Aiale
children might continue to be employed, and the
date to which
the present law was originally re.