The Sun.
London, England, 1842-08-09 00:00:00

breakfasts al in one house 22/. was paid., and at each
of thoee netises before and during the election there were
voters found in different states Of inebriation. He had
merely i-elected particular 'eases, but there were forty or
fifty others befbee the Committee ; and though this
might be coeintratively pure for Ipswich, yet it would he
moat iniptire for any other place. The Committee had
no alternative ; the whole case depended on the question
elf agency or non-agency, ; and Messrs. Aethnr ton
Cook, Bristo, and Steward, were itelieputebly agents.
Other cases, where only small sums teere given, had been
called before the House, euw it had been held to be
briber✓y. There was the Case of Beecham, where Mr.
Peter Borthwick was convicted of bribery, only for
having given away a snuff-bole—(lmud laughter,)
Talk of party spirit acting in the Committee-Mein,
he thought it was now acting ()UWE' the Committee-room,
and warping the judgment nembers opposite.
lie could speak, with the petihet teens conscia .recti, that
he had never guided the detisiot of. a Committee more
strictly according to die Merits of the ease than he lied
done in this instance, and no malt in that House more
regretted that it had had the effect of dismissing from
the ,benches-opposite so old a friend as Mr. G ladstone.—
(Ikar, hear.) The iienoticuble Member for Stirling,
who lead appeared shocked at . the statements
had; made, he hoped would never introduce a
‘tnes. bribe for a vote into that county. The vote of
gentlemen opposite on this occasion a oak! be- a test
of' the sincerity of their declarations on this- subject
slime the commencement of this Parliament. If they
merely suspended the writ it would be a proof of their
earnestness ; to 'do .
,s 0 would be no punishment to
Ipswich; since i&2O nine petitions bed been sent up
against -it, of which six were proved and three failed.
Their decision on this might be a terror to ether bo-
roughs and constituencies, but if they sent back the writ
it would encuarage the praetitioners in their old work,
and give the sahetien of the House to bribery and treating.
Whether coming in a large or small shape the practice
was monstrous, and fraught with that venom which
would tend to destroY the House itself. It would in=
crease the tide ot'public opinion, which he feared was set=
ting against it; to stop which, and to res*ore the respect
in which it ought to be heal, ought to be the united efe
fort of all parties on both sides office House.
Mr. STUART said, as he had been su pointedly ale
hided tre he wished to state the grounds. on which he
gave his vote on the Committee. In the case of John
Downing., he believed that a corrupt contract had been-
entered into by Mr. Bristo ; with regard to treating,
the evidence proved that the sitting Members did every-
thing in their power to prevent it, and he conceived they
were not concerned in the cases that had been mentioned.
•With regard to_the agency, on which the case entirely
rested, there was no pre ed. of it as to Messrs. Bristo
and Arthur llott . Cook, but he acknowledged it,
in the case of Mr. Steward, who, however, was an agent
for rhspecial purpose, and having exceeded his instruc-
tions his principal was nut bound _by his acts. There
was great doubt e:liether some of the payments laid be-
fore the Cetnenittee were illegal payments or note and
it was proved that, as to some cf them, the sitting Mem-
bers had objected to them, and reduced them from their
first amount to what they thought fair and equitable.
Ile regretted that so much personality had been mixed
up in this discussion, as every one was entitled to form-
his own opinion on the very conflicting evidence- that
had been adduced
.; he, however, did not im-
pugn the decision to which the Committee had
come. With regard to the list of persons to
to he ciNfrancieed, proposed by the Hon. Member for
Finsbury, it included some who had been rather more
guilty 'than others at former elections than the present
one, and though he said he would not disfranehiet the
borough, yet he rather made out a elm foi. doing so,
than one against these individeally. Ile objected to the
name of fir. Steward appearing in that list, for though
as an agent he might have exceeded his instructions, he
had dune nothing to warrant his name being included in
it. But with regard to many of the others, he colitessed
if the whole of the race were swept may it would be a
public benefit.
Mr. LEFROY observed that the division of the Com-
mittee was three to four, and that the casting rote was
that of the Chairman, who, however, he had- no doubt
gave it conscientiously. He thought that charges had
been proved to a certain extent, but that it was their
duty carefully to look at the hands through which it
went. With regard to the agency of Mr. Bristo, there
was no proof' that be was anything more than a special
agent, and could not bind his principal if he exceeded his
instructions. lie thought that it was right that sonic distinc-
tion should be made bet Ween the presen t case and the former
ones. In former cases, thousands had been spent; in the
present instance the sum amounted only to a few
hundreds, He felt it his duty under these circumsten-
ces, eo oppose the motion of the Hon. Member opposite.
11r. WILLIAMS said the conduct of the late Ipswich
Committee was, in his opinion, fair and honourable. He
tared nothing who were the Members whose conduct was
complained of: If they had been Members on his
(Mr. Witfam's) side of the House, and if the same facts
had been proved, he would have come to the same con-
clusion as he had done in the case of Lord Desert and
Mr. Gladstone.
The ATTORNEY-GENERAL said, the question
now to be considered was not whether the persons re-
ferred to in the motion of the lion. Member ought to
be disfranchised, for what had their disfranchisement to
do with the issuing of the writ ?—(Hear, hear.) It was
not right that the whole electors of the borough should
be disfranchised, because twenty-one persons had been
convicted of bribery. A writ ought never to be sus-
pended beyond the ordinary period, except in cases
where the ultimate object was the disfranchisement of
the whole: of the. electors. Against several of the par-
tiett, there was no case of bribery : certainly there was
none .so tar -as be could see against Fuller. It was
with great reluctance he entered upon such a discus-
sion as the present, and had he sufficient influence with
thellon. -Member for Finsbury, he wouhe had that lion.
Geetlemen consulted him, have warned him against making
_his motion, the obvious tendency of which was to raise
-such discussions, It appeared to him (the Attorney-
General) that the :Committee had not made out a case
except against a very small number of persons—too
small to be of inthleece sufficient to warrant the with-
holding of the franchise from any portion of the electors
of the borough. ... .
Mr. C. BULLER said that if the Hon. Member for
Renfrewshire and the Committee wanted any vindication
of their proceedings, it was supplied by the Hon. and
Gallant Member for, Lewes, who, efter having advanced
the most violent charges against them, was unable to
substantiate them, and was completely thrown overboard
by every Member of the Committee who sat on that (the
Ministerial) side of the House, all of whom bore Most
handsome testimony to the conduct of the Chairman and
the Members of the Committee. They had done great
service by throwing light upon the miserable pretexts
under which bribery was carried on. They showed that
the law was not to be violated with impueity, no matter
what the amount of the bribe might be. The amount
made no difference in the moral turpitude of him who
gave or received a bribe. He (Mr. Charles Buller)
was unwilling to vote in favour of motions
for suspending writs. They had no right to
suspend a writ unless they had some practical object
in view, for the ultimate effecting of which the suspen-
sion of the writ was necessary. But here there was a
practical object to -be-attained; namely, before going to,
the election to disfranchise a certain portion of the con-
stituency proved to be unworthy of the franchise. If
ever there was a ease in which it was of practical im-
portance to disfranchise persons who had been proved to
have received bribes, he thought that the borough of Ips-
wich presented such a case. It was a town in which it
was difficult to deal with a wholesale disfranchisement:
Ever since the Reform Bill there were more Members
unseated for the borough of Ipswich than for
any other borough.--(Hear, hear.) The corruptible
part of the constituency of that borough had never
been stated to be large in proportion to the whole. The
largest nutnber of the persons bribed of whom he had ever
heard was 70 ; but the result of that was that, the honest
parties being nearly balanced, those few corrupt
voters turned the scale, and they neutralised their votes.
He said now as he said before, that by sending the writ
deem to Ipswich without taking further precautions, they
were inviting fresh corruption on both sides, and sub-
jecting the constituency of that town to a very bad influ-
ence, and subjecting the constituencies throughout Eng-
land to the bad effect of that example, and above all
subjecting that House to the imputation which the public
would cast upon it, that it expressed its indigna-
tion against bribery in 'general, but, when particular
instances came before it, only gave encouragement to it.
Mr. DARBY would not have said a word, but that the
Hon: Member for Lewes had been attacked in the place
of another Hon. Member. He thought that when a Com
mittee had decided, that decision ought not to come before
the House: When Committees were not competent to give
just decisions, it was time to consider whether some
other tribunal ought not to be appointed. He said that
the Hoe. Member for Finsbury had compelled him to go
into the evidence and the investigations of that Commi-
tee. When he was asked to convict certain parties of
bribery, was he not to look at the evidence, to judge
whether those parties were guilty of bribery or not ?
He took the case of Mr. Blount, and, according to the
evidence, if he (Mr. Darby) was asked to vote that that
man was guilty of bribery, he would say no, he would
not ; and by the evidence taken before that Committee,
he Should decline disfranchising those persons named in
the• Bill of the Hon. Member for Finsbury.
Mr. WYSE said that he never saw a more strict at-
tention paid to the general hearings of any case, than by
the Committee which sat upon the Ipswich Electior..
Sir R. PEEL said, it was not his intention to impugn
the decision of this CoMmittee, inasmuch as the pre-
sumption was that the majority, acting on allegations
upcn oath, delivered a correct and honest judgment ac-
cording to their belief ; and when he (Sir R. Peel) saw
the disposition was to question the adjudication of this
Committee, and to refer to some other decision, he felt
perfectly confident that the decision of the tribunal which
was vaguely hinted at, would undergo precisely the same
severe scrutiny, there would be the same reflections on im-
partiadly to which the House of Commons was subject ;
and when the House of Commons admitted that it was so
influenced by political feelings that it could not trust
its own Members acting upon oath, then he would say
that the House of COIIIIIIOIIS would have consented to
strike a blow at its own existence.—(Hear.) He presumed
the House could not appoint a new tribunal, and consent
to abide by the dictum of that tribunal, without seeing
the evidence from which they had drawn their conclu-
sion, and when they saw the evidence, they would doubt;
and he ventured to say that there would be the same then
as now. Who did that Judge vote for et the last elec-
tion ? and such like.—(liear, hear, and laughter.)
And where would they find such angelic judges
free from all party feeling.—(Hear, hear.) Who was to
appoint them?—(Hear, hear.) Was it to be the Govern-
ment ? Would they nut be influenced by the Govern-
ment ? If the majority of that House was to appoint
them what would the minority say ?--(Hear, hear.)
They must look at ell these, and many other points,
before :Ashy appal:lee a
hear.) He, fur one, should never cease to deplore
that day when the House should appoint some