The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1853-01-04 00:00:00

ELECTION PETITIONS.

THE wholesale manner in which petitions have
been presented, alleging bribery and corruption
against Members returned to serve in ;this present
Parliament, has very naturally excited public atten-
tion to the form of procedure under which such
charges are made. We can readily understand the
mortification which an unexpected defeat may ex-
cite after fallacious hopes have been freely indulged
in, but we have yet to learn the justice or common
honesty of gratifying this feeling by making false
charges of the gravest character against a success-
ful rival. It may be urged that such charges,
couched as they are in technical phraseology, are
mere words of course, but that does not at all lessen
the baseness of making them, when their promoters
know full well that, so far as concerns the men
whose acts they impugn, there is not a shadow of
proof, or even probability. There was never, per-
haps, a contested election held wherein acts, which
a straining of the letter of the law might term
bribery or treating, were not committed through the
over-zeal of some indiscreet partisan ; but will the
most extreme stickler for purity of election for one
instant pretend that such acts, even if proved, afford
the slightest excuse or palliation for gravely charg-
ing the successful candidate with having used such
means to obtain his seat which a majority of the
electors were only too anxious to secure to him
It is an insult to common sense to imagine that
there can be a defence for such a course, and it re-
mains for the Legislature to provide some more
efficient protection than at present exists against
such a scandalous abuse of the privileges of electors.
As the law or practice now stands, there is not
even the remedy which is interposed against false
charges of much slighter import. If in ordinary
affairs a man be :accused of any offence against
the laws, the information must be made on oath,
and if false, the accuser may be indicted for per-
jury; but a gentleman in the high position of a legis-
lator, whose characterfor honour and integrity should
be, like that of CiESAR'S wife, above suspicion, may
be recklessly accused of acts which, by common con-
sent, should stamp him with infamy; and the foul
slanderer, having allowed this charge to hang over
his victim's head, perhaps for months before its false-
hood can be proved or the charge withdrawn, incurs
no other penalty than his own costs, which may be
provided for from a joint purse, unless in the rare
instance of a committee pronouncing the charge to
be frivolous or vexatious, by which all the costs are
thrown upon the accuser. There is, however, ano-
ther and, if possible, more serious evil, which the
recent change of Ministers has brought more pro-
minently before public notice. If, in the petition
alleging bribery and corruption, the seat should also
be claimed for the unsuccessful candidate, no new
writ can be issued until it has been decided by an
Election Committee ; so that, in the case of accept-
ance of office, no re-election of the Minister can
take place until the decision on the petition has been
given. It is to the absence of such a claim for the
seat, in the petitions against their return, that Sir
JAM ES GRAHAM, the ATTORNEY-GENERAL, and
others of the new Ministers have been enabled to
return to their constituents for re-election ; but such
an important proceeding should not have been at
the mercy of an unscrupulous petitioner, who, by
this means, might have prevented any member of
the House of Commons from accepting office. It
is, however, as well perhaps that the danger has

Mr. Clough, in-door superintendent of police, stated
that, on the 27th November, he received a letter from
Col. Hogg, the head constable of Wolverhampton, stating
that certain persons there had a quantity of goods in their
possession which they were disposing of in that town, and
he (Col. Hogg) had reasons to believe that such goods had
been improperly obtained, and that they came from
Liverpool. Afterwards, in consequence of some informa-
tion received by one of the detective office is, he went to
Mr. Eastee's premises, and comrnunicated,with that gen-
tleman. The officer himself would state to the magistrates
the circumstance which had led to the prisoner now before
them being apprehended.
Detective-officer Povey here said that, in conse-
quence of instructions which he had received from
Mr. Clough, he made a search, and found that cer-
tain articles had been pledged with a pawnbroker in
Mill-street, in this town. In a pocket book, (one
of the articles so pledged) he found a private mark, and,
having his suspicions aroused, he took it to Mr. Eastee's
place of business, when that gentleman identified it as his
Property. at.) " Tt feronian's work "
Witness and Mr. Eastee then took a cab, and went to tfie
pawnbroker's, where Mr. Eastee identified the whole
of the articles pledged as his property. In the mean-
time they found that the prisoner's father had ab-
sconded, and that some one had gone up to the
prisoner's father's house, in High Park-street, to inform
them of what was going on. Immediately afterwards
witness took a cab, and drove to the house in
High Park-street. On his going into the house the
mother of the prisoner went to a table, on which was a
large tin box. She made a " grab" at it, and begged him
not to let Mr. Eastee see the contents, as it would
he the means of ruining the family. He took the
box, and on examining it, found that it con-
tained not less than fifty pawn tickets ; and in another
part of the house he found eleven other tickets, making
in all sixty-one. By Mr. Clough's directions, witness and
Mr. Eastee afterwards went to Wolverhampton, and
there they received information that the prisoner, with
his uncle and aunt, and another person residing in Wol-
verhampton, had forsome time been pledging articles there,
and otherwise disposing of them in a suspicious manner.
Mr. Eastee identified a great number of these articles, as
having been taken from his establishment at Liverpool.
Some other evidence having been tendered, Mr. Clough
asked for a remand until the case was more complete, and
until all the parties were in custody, as there had evi-
dently been a system well organized by the prisoner's
family in Liverpool, and the uncle and aunt in Wolver-
hampton, to defraud Mr. Eastee to an enormous extent.
Mr. Clough also stated that the uncle and aunt were now
in custody at Wolverhampton.
Ultimately the prisoner was ordered to he taken before
the magistrates at Wolverhampton, as, although he was
taken into custody in Liverpool, he was connected with
the suspicious sales and pledging of the property at Wol-
verhampton.

The property identified by Mr. Eastee as being in pawn
at Wolverhampton, is estimated at from £BOO to £l.OOO ;
and he has reason to believe that he has been defrauded
by the family of not less than from £1,500 to £2,000.