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

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• Imptriat tiarliament.

HOUSE OF LORDS.—MONDAY.
Lord LYNDHURST gave notice that he would, on Tuesday,
move for copies of the correspondence between the Neapoli-
tan government and Mr. Macgregor, on the subject of the
sulphur monopoly.—Adjourned.

HOUSE OF COMMONS.—MoNnAr.
An immense number of petitions was presented for and
against Lord Stanley's bill.
Lord MORPETH presented a petition against the bill from
Belfast, signed by more than 8,600 inhabitants ; and another
from Liverpool, signed br upwards of 16,000 persons, also
against the Registration Bill of the noble lord. (Cheers.)
Mr. W. BARRON presented a similar petition from Water-
ford.
Lord SANDON presented a petition from Liverpool, signed
by 23,137 persons in thred days, in favour of the bill of the
noble lord. (Cheers.) Of these 20,000 had added their
professions and residences. Ile believed this petition was
the most numerous and respec;able that had ever proceeded
from that town. They prayed the house at once to go into
committee on the bill, and, disregarding factious opposition,
to carry it to a third reading. (Cheers.) He begged leave
to read a passage from the petition. The petitioners said
the objections to the bill were of a threefold character—viz.,
personal, fraudulent, and mistaken : personal, because not
founded against the principles of the bill, but against the
noble lord who introduced it, and therefore unworthy of the
attention of the' house ; fraudulent, because, under the pre-
tence of keeping up an extensive franchise, the real design
of the opposite party was to keep on the registers persons
not legally qualified to vote, or persons to vote in lieu of
dead men, whose names were still retained (laughter),—and
it was the duty of the house to resist all such dishonest and
disgraceful attempts (" hear, hear," and laughter) ; mis-
taken, because they proceeded upon misrepresentations of
the bill ;—and the petitioners had no doubt that, if the house
went into committee on the measure, all honest and reason-
able objections would soon be satisfied. (Cheers.) The
noble lord and Mr. Cresswell then carried up the bulky
petition to the table, amidst general laughter.
BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE.
Mr. GOULBURN wished to know when Lord J. Russell
intended to move his proposed alterations in the Poor-law

Amendment Act.
Lord J. RussEnt could not name the time, but would
state the course which he intended to pursue. He would
first go into committee on the Canada Government Bills ;
he would next proceed with the Ecclesiastical Duties and
Revenues Bill; be would then propose the bill for continu-
ing the poor-law commission; and after that proceed with
the measure for altering certain provisions of the Poor-law
Amendment Act.
IRISH REGISTRATION BILL.

At half-past five o'clock, the order of the day having been
read for the committee on the Irish Voters' Registration
Bill,
Sir W. SOMERVILLE rose to resist the further progress of
the measure. He contended that the lower class of voters
were not, as many seemed to suppose, a body so numerous
as to overbear the £2O and the £5O electors, and admonished
the house to proceed with caution and forbearance. He
thought every single clause of the bill objectionable ; but he
proposed, in moving that it should be committed on that day
six months, to dwell only on its two main features. The
first was the cost of the annual registration ; £5 would be a
ruinous mulct to a poor cottager, though it would be nothing
out of the funds of the Carlton Club. It was to him incom-
prehensible how any man could support this bill who lived
in Ireland, and knew how much that country required tran-
quillity. The other great evil was the appeal. Were the
registration appeals to be heard before or atter the civil and
criminal business? In either case, one or other class of
suitors must be mischievously and even indefinitely delayed.
Instead of throwing an invidious duty on the judges, he
should like to withdraw it even from the assistant barristers,
and remove that apprehension of political bias which must
always prevail among the people, while their judicial officers
are invested with political functions. The real object of the
present bill was only to remove the Irish liberal members.
In general, the noble lord was the obstructor ; but he was
himself obstructed by those Irish representatives, and there-
fore he was anxious to disseat them.
Mr. JAMES GRATTAN seconded the motion. He thought
the bill peculiarly injurious to the Roman Catholics, because
the electors whom it would disfranchise happened to be
chiefly of that faith.
Mr. LEFROT observed. that, unless this bill should give
the means of revision, there was no way of correcting the
registration, except through an election committee ; but com-
mittees perpetually refused to open the registry. The last
Longford committee, on which sat eight of the present sup-
porters of the ministry, had refused to open it ; hut, aware
of the inconvenience of their own refusal, they had passed a
strong resolution, asserting the necessity of some immediate
remedy for the want of revision. Surely those eight gentle-
men would vote at least for the speaker's leaving the chair.
Another Longford committee had opened the registry, and
struck off a great number of votes as fictitious ; but there
had been no means of taking them off the registry ; and, at
the next election, they had all been ready to poll afresh.
'Twelve committees had opened the registry ; and the total
of the fictitious votes disallowed by them was between 1400
and 1500, not one of whom could be prevented, under the
present law, from voting again. The learned member then
cited opinions pronounced in former debates by various of
the present opponents of the bill, in favour of its leading
provisions ; and among them were Mr. O'Connell and the
Attorney-General. It bad been said, that the franchise
wanted clearer definition. The judges of Ireland had already
defined it. Legislation, therefore, on this head was not
requisite; but, if it were, why not introduce a clause forlhat
purpose in the committee? Gentlemen said, there ought to
be an increase of the Irish constituency ' • but if so, let the
increase be a fair, not a fraudulent one. As to the petitions
against this bill, they would have been entitled to no weight,
had they come in waggon loads, when it was considered by
what delusion they had been got up ; Mr. O'Connell having
told the Irish people it was actually admitted, that the object
of the bill was the profligate one of destroying the franchise
of Ireland, and transferring the elective power to the land-
lords.
Lord CLEMENTS said that the real fault of the people was
only that they did not vote with their landlords.
Sir R. BATESO:: regretted that this should be now made
a party question. Its leading provisions had theretofore
been fully approved of on the other side of the house, but
now it was made a political matter by a section, who feared
it would affect their own interests. As to the petitions, they
had indeed been numerously signed, because orders had come
down that on the Easter and following Sundays each priest
should, from the altar, direct every man of his congregation
to sign at the door before he quitted the chapel. He had
his,self asked a little party of them what it was they had
signed ; and their answer was that they did not exactly know,
but they believed it was something about Mr. O'Connell.
The language, too, of intimidation and abuse employed by
some part of the Irish press had been so gross, that Billings-
gate would have been ashamed of it.
Mr. LYNCH complained, that there was already much un-
ce, tabity as to the franchise, from the discordance between
the decisions of assistant-barristers, and the want of unifor-
mity even among the judges. To reproduce this evil every
year would be a great aggravation. He would prefer a fran-
chise of which the test should be the poor-rate ; but though
he might be unable to carry that, he had at least a right to
require that the existing franchise should be defined. The
true object would be, not to multiply exclusions from the
franchise, but to afford facilities for obtaining it. What man
of timid, retiring character, would brave the obstacles set up
by this bill?
Mr. LITTON said the franchise was already defined. For
a considerable time there had been some uncertainty whether
the £lO clause of the reform act did or did not require that
there should be an interest for which a solvent tenant would
give a clear value of £lO a year. All the judges, except one,
did, after an argument of two days, decide that there must
be such an interest. The one dissentient judge ventured, on
his next circuit, to act on his own opinion, thus opposed to
that of all his brethren, and some assistant-barristers fol-
lowed him. Upon this Lord Chief Justice wrote to Lord
Chief Justice Denman, requesting to be informed whether,
in crown cases reserved (which are precisely analagons,) the
judges hold themselves bound by the opinion of the majority,
as they are where the judgment is given on matter of record;
and Lord Chief Justice Denman's answer was, that they do
hold themselves so bound. This proved that the franchise
was no longer undefined ; and Mr Litton added, that he un-
derstood the one dissentient judge td'have since acted on the
opinion of the majority. But, as some of the assistant-bar-
risters still held out, and decided, votes on the principle de-
clared by the majority of the judges to be illegal, there was
no security to the constituency, without an appeal to a tri-
bunal whose judicature would be uniform. It had been said
that the franchise was to have been legislatively defined in the
bill introduced by Mr. Attorney-General Woulfe—that is,
an attempt was made by that bill, under pretence of removing
doubts, to declare the law in direct opposition to what it had
been declared to he by the judges in theirconstruction of the
reform act. And now the house was to be told that no bill
should pass for the prevention of the grossest fraud and per-
jury, unless this repeal of the reform act were included. The
learned gentleman closed his speech by assuring the house
that Mr. O'Connell's efforts against this bill and against the
union had become wholly powerless in Ireland, where every
old woman now understood that his movements were a mere
pecuniary speculation. -
Lord JOHN 'RUSSELL began by describing this as the most
formidable attempt ever made against the reform act, as tend-
ing, not like former motions, to follow nut the spirit of that
act by extending the franchise, but to retrograde by an ef-
fort at contraction, and treat the man who demanded the fran-
chise as a public enemy. Nor was he much consoled to find
that the attack was only on one part of the United Kingdom,
because in all parts he could see evils requiring equal atten-
tion—the annual vexation of registry in England, fictitious
votes in Scotland, intimidation and bribery in all the three
kingdoms. To none of these evils did gentlemen opposite
apply themselves, but. only to the one instance in which a
party purpose was to be answered. In England the voters
were not troubled to prove their title unless objected to,
though they certainly were exposed to the vexation of annual
question. He had himself proposed a bill for removing this
annoyance in England. The present bill gave no relief to the
Irish ; it left them all their own disadvantages, and in-vented
for them others in addition. Was the system of this bill to
be introduced into England ? If not, Ireland was treated
with inequality and injustice; but if yes, he would warn the
people of England against so monstrous a change. In the
statute of George IV. which gave the appeal against the re-
jection of the vote, a jury was to determine on matter of fact ;
but in the present bill, which gives the appeal against the ad-
mission of the vote, the jury, that is the popular principle, is
wholly struck out. The franchise is not directly defined by
the bill; but the bill sends the appellant to the judges, who
have already defined it just as the authors of the bill desire.
It would have been more consistent with good faith to define
the franchise directly. Lord John proceeded to object to the
absolute power which the bill proposed to give to the judges,
making them supreme not only over the law, bat over the
House of Commons. He disliked to see power so bestowed,
because the judges had always exercised such powers in a
narrow spirit. Now as to the annual revision. In England
it was managed by associations on a very expensive system.
How was that expense to be borne in Ireland, a country so
much poorer ?
Lord STANLEY observed, that though it had been very
usual to take the second reading of a bill by consent, and re-
serve the discussion until the motion for going into commit-
tee, it was not at all customary to make a fresh opposition on
that motion, after a contest of two nights and a division on
the second reading. The mover of the amendment, how-
ever, had dealt fairly ; he had attempted no shuffle, and
talked of no bills which were never intended to be brought in.
Lord Stanley then adverted to the personnl attacks which had
been levelled against himself. Mr. O'Connell's abuse he was
sure no gentleman would expect hi in to notice at all, but some
of that member's perversions of fact were too gross not to re-
quire refutation in this, the only place where he and Mr.
O'Connell were likely to meet upon this conflict. He then
dissected some of Mr. O'Connell's statemeets to the people
of Ireland, and showed, passage by passage, the misrepre-
sentations contained in them. The present amendment went
to declare, that to the existing evils of fictitious voting no remedy
should be applied. In proof of these evils he cited the regis-
tries of Dublin city, Dublin county, Longford, Waterford, and
other places, where he alleged that the nominal constituency
on the roll amounted to two, sometimes to three, times as
many persons as actually remained alive and qualified to vote,
and he referred not only to various cases of votes given in the
names of dead men, and on leases for lives which had ex-
pired, but to a speech of Mr. O'Connell, made in 1832, in
which Mr. O'Connell himself foretold all these very frauds,
and contended for an annual registration as the only effectual
means of preventing them. Among other illustrations then
given by Mr. O'Connell had been a story of a man who came
up to vote as John Moran, and being desired to write his
name, took up the pen without any hesitation and wrote