The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1840-05-22 00:00:00

was in actual existence. As to the complaint against per-
petually renewed revisions, it would be removed by the sim-
ple amendment, that a vote, once established and registered,
should not be again questionable, except for matter having
arisen since the registration. So as to the double.appeal, the
objections might be obviated by easy amendments. It had
been said, but he could not believe it to be really meant, that
the house ought to leave gross abuses in operation, because
their, honest removal would diminish the Irish constituency.
He would do all in his power to prevent that diminution
fairly ; but he would not; eves with this view, keep up a ma--
chinery for the fabrication of illegal votes.
Mr. GISBORNE, in his character of an Irish representa-
tive, thought himself bound to oppose the bill. The house
by divers cries of " Question," intimated that they did not
feel the duty of making a speech to be at all imperative upon
him.
The SOLICITOR-GENERAL contended that to go into com-
mittee on this bill would be to impair the efficiency of the
Reform Act. Annual registration existed in England, and
was loudly complained of. The people had been long expect-
ing measures from the government to reform it (satirical and
repeated cheers); and nothing had prevented the government
from maturing such measures, except the understanding that
no measure would succeed in the other house which did not
go to impair the Reform Act. The learned gentleman then
went over the often-repeated objections of detail, with
reference chiefly to what had fallen from Lord Howick. In
this part of his speech he fell into an error as to one of the
clauses of the bill; which occasioned a great deal of laughter
at the expense of this acute and usually accurate lawyer ;
but the house gave him no quarter, and indeed were now be-
coming generally impatient. The learned gentleman, how-
ever, travelled on into other topics,. not all of them very
relevant. If our readers should be surprised at the absence
of his usual talent, their wonder will perhaps be relieved by
the intelligence that he was speaking against time, for the
purpose of getting the debate carried over to another even-
ing

Joni MILTON who had paired, was not come up, and his
pair was. Mr. O'Connell expected to be beaten on an im-
mediate division, and issued his commands therefore that
the debate should be adjourned, in order to take the chance
of Lord Milton's arrival, and of the chapter of accidents.
Accordingly, when the Solicitor-General sate down, Mr.
HUME moved, and Mr. O'CoNNEI.L seconded, the adjourn-
ment of the debate. A division took place, the motion was
defeated, and another motion of the like nature met the
same fate.
Strangers having been re-admitted, Mr. HUME, seconded
by Mr. O'CONNELL, made yet another motion of adjourn-
ment.
Lord STANLEY then rose, and said it was time for the
house to determine how far this system of impediment should
be pursued. He had expected that the learned member for
Dublin, who had come over burning with resentment, would
have seized the earliest moment for meeting him face to face;
that member, however, had not once offered himself to the
chair, and yet the house was now desired again to adjourn,
in order that he might have an opportunity of being heard.

HOUSE OF LORDS.—WEDNESDAY.
The House of Lords did not assemble this day.
HOUSE OF COMMONS.—Wednesday.
Among a great heap of petitions presented list night in the
House of Commons by different members was one by Lord
TEIGNMOUTH from certain inhabitants of Marvlebone, com-
plaining of the system of the centralization of the police by
Lord John Russell, and praying that an impeachment might

. _
be instituted against him.
The ATTORNEY-GENERAL gave notice, that in the com-
mittee on the Poor Law Amendment Act he should intro-
duce a clause to exempt stock in trade from being rated.
Mr. HUME gave notice, that he should move as an amend-
ment on the motion of Sir R. Inglis to-day a humble address
to her Majesty on the appropriation of church property.
The orders and notices which stood on the paper were then
disposed of seriatim, previous to the resumption of the debate
on the Irish Registration Bill.

THE IRISH REGISTRATION BILL.—ADJOURNED DEBATE.
The dull debate, worn threadbare on Tuesday night, was
then opened by Mr. HUME, who opposed Lord Stanley's
bill in a tiresome speech on Irish affairs in general. He
compared the number of Irish with the number of English
electors, complaining that the proportion of Irish is too
small. He repeated the often-disproved allegation that the
object of the bill was to disfranchiese the people of Ireland.
He entered upon the Catholic question, and condemned the
opinions of a party who, he said, were trying to restore the
obsolete penalties against the Papists. During the whole of
this speech a large body of conservatives, with truly patriotic
patience, sat fast on their benches, and defeated the object
of those radicals who had hoped, not perhaps without some
reasonable ground, that the speech of their Kilkenny com-
rade would reduce the house to a state in which it might be

counted out.
Mr. LUCAS observed,, that the reason why Ireland had
fewer electors than England in proportion to the population
was not that any party sought to withhold from Ireland the
franchise allowed to England, but that Ireland comprised a
lunch smaller number than England of the persons possess-
ing the requisite qualification in property. But he would
rather reduce the qualification from £lO to £a, computed on
any bond-fide test (little as he should be disposed to such a
reduction), than continue a fictitious franchise at £lO. At-
tempts had been made to mystify the English members about
vexation practised by the conservatives. He had to complain
of venation on the other side of the question. There was
now a quarterly registration ; and he mentioned an instance
where 800 notices of registration had been given, and only
about 200 of the parties giving them had appeared to sub-
stantiate their votes. Under the present system this sort of
feint might be practised four times in every year. Yet the
bill before the house, which would reform the registration by
changing the process from a quarterly to a yearly-one, was
earnestly resisted by men professing to be the opponents of
vexation, the very men who, for the most part, were the
zealous champions of. annual. parliaments.
Mr. REDINGTON uttered a loud and voluble declamatior
against the bill.
Mr. GASKELL, though not surprised that after the sign

ficant demands of a certain party in Ireland the ministry
should have opposed the second reading of this bill, was yet
astonished that they. concurred in the present attempt at
interposing vexatious delay, and still more that they had
found no better reasons to justify their conduct than the
arguments advanced by the English Solicitor-General, or
the panygerics pronounced on Mr. O'Connel by the leader
of the ministry. When the existence of gross abuses was
not denied, not by the government, not by those adherents
of theirs who had already introduced bills of their own
against those very abuses, why this sudden hostility to the
remedy ? It looked as if the discovery had now been made,
that the removal of those abuses would affect some party
interest, and that, bad as such abuses might be, they yet
were not so bad as the loss of office. The bill was talked of
'as a measure of disfranchisement. He knew not why,' for
it did not even touch the real franchise ; it disfranchised only
fictitious voters. Were the fictitious voters then so very
numerous that to get rid of them would work a serious dimi-
nution of the whole constituency ? If so, that afforded him,
the strongest possible argument for going into the committee,
when he should be prepared to vote for every clause of this

bill.
Mr.' Rout E, of Cork, opposed the measure, which he re
garded as having been introduced for mere purposes of party.
Wales was a poorer country than Ireland, and yet possessed
a larger proportion of electors.
A long pause now ensued, during which no attempt was
made to address the chair by any of those who on the pre-
ceding night had clamoured for adjournment, to give an op-
portunity to the numerous candidates bursting with the ges-
tation of their speeches. But
The SPEAKER having directed strangers to withdraw, in
order.to a division, and the conservative party being obviously
a majority of the members present, the opponents of the bill
did not venture to let the debate conclude ; to avert which
consummation,
Mr. CALLAGHAN rose, and after a sketch of the history of
registration in Ireland from the date of the reform bill, re-
curred.in the usual terms to the standing libel, the alleged
hostility of Lord Stanley to the Irish people.
Mr. SOMERS spoke on the same side, as the vindicator of
the morality of the Irish.
The O'Connellites were now relieved from all further ap-
prehension of a premature termination to the debate by no
less durable an interposition than that of
Sir. C. GREY, who occupie I his first quarter of an hour with
a general dissertation upon the reasonableness of the adjourn-
ment, with reference to the various questions which were,
or might have been, under consideration on the Tuesday and
on the Wednesday, including copyright and China, and with
reference to the advantage conferred on the house by the op-
portunity of hearing his speech. Nor did he forget, in passing,
to censure the absence of Lord Stanley ; not, perhaps, per-
ceiving that among the absentees at that moment, were also
every one of the cabinet ministers—Lord Morpeth only ex-
cepted, and, greater than all—the great agitator himself. He
then announced, that he was coming to the discussion of the
main question, but instead of doing this, he launched into an
illimitable discourse upon the very subject which the bill had
been the most roughly censured by other members for avoid-
ing—namely, the definition and construction of the franchise
with respect to beneficial value. He contended, that as the
franchise was mere matter of election law, the opinion of the
majority of the judges was not binding on the minority. The
legislature had referred the decision to a single judge of assize,
not to a tribunal of many judges. The exemplary patience
of the house, which had now been exercised in the learned
gentleman's favour for upwards of an hour, was not proof
against such a. strain of argument as this, and lie at last gave
way to the general uneasiness of the house.
Mr. THESIGER animadverted upon the strange irrelevancy
of the foregoing discourse, and on the unsatisfactory nature
of the speech delivered on the preceding night by the Attorney-;
General. That learned gentleman had objected to the want
of convenient places for registration ' • but the 36 and lith
sections of the bill had fully provided for bringing home the
registration to the very doors of the voters. Objection had
also been made to the annual revision. It could not be
doubted, that if there had .not been an octennial system of
registration pre-existing when the reform act passed, that
act would have assimilated the Irish to the English and
Scotch registrations, which were both of them annual. Then,
as to the double appeal, which was the only mode of expelling
a fraudulent vote from the registry, the question respecting
the tribunal to which such appeal should be referred was one
the discussion whereof belonged not to this stage of the bill,
but to the next. Mr. Thesiger then availed himself of his
experience before election committees to illustrate in uvery
lucid manner the monstrous hardships and difficulties im-
posed on those who seek, under the present system, to
expunge a bad vote from a poll—hardships and difficulties
which some such enactments as those of the present measure
were indispensable to redress.
Mr. O'CONNELL rose. He admitted that the bill was
was good for members of parliament, for the £5O freeholders,
and for the clergy of the established church, but it was a bad
bill for the poorer voters. His quarrel with Lord Stanley
lie would adjourn till the bill should be in committee. It
was a bill for annihilating nine-tenths of the constituencies
in Ireland. He read a circular from a district secretary of
the conservative party, stating that the success of the party
" depended wholly on preventing the tenants from re-
registering their votes ;" not fraudulent votes hut any votes.
He read also an admission from a witness, that lie received an
an annuity of £4O a-year, " for swearing against votes."
(That is, the witness was a surveyor employed to make valua-
tions of electioneering properties, and depose to the particu-
asofthem.) The Irish people, proceeded Mr. O'Connell,
attribute this bill to two causes—national antipathy to them,
and malignant bigotry. The antipathy is proved by your
electioneering addresses, and your after dinner speeches, and
your press, your vile Times. (This phrase thrice repeated,
produced as many bursts of laughter.). The member for
Londonderry had cheered, at aubin.; meeting, the assertion
that a Catholic was less mindful
of his oath than a Pro-
testant. He would not venture to repeat that cheer in this
place. Such a cheer had been liaised, too, at Belfast,
by Mr. Emerson Tennent, yet
whom Lord Stanley had selectedele .w
as one of those
.1 coadjutors in
T
the preparation of this bill.subscribers of the
great Liverpool petition then shared the ortattworr's wrath,
and he railed very roundly at various u
who, he said, were calumniators of the great Catholic classes,body.
The union had given Ireland a right to equality. She s
was
the poorer country, and therefore a poorer class in Ireland
were entitled to take the same level with a richer class in
England. She had but 60,000 electors in all, yet there were
3.3,000 in one riding in Yorkshire. He then went through a
series of parallels between various districts of England and
of Ireland; after which he made a laboured argument, for
the purpose of showing that the fictitious votes now existing
were the mere accidents of the carelessness natural to the
first registration, not the results of any systematic fraud.
The bill should have contained a provision for settling the
franchise, which he could not consider as settled by the deci-
sion of the judges. He would move, if the bill should go into
committee, an instruction for the insertion of a clause which
should settle the franchise in the opposite direction; in the
direction really contemplated by the reform act. Let the