The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1833-07-26 00:00:00

SHIPPING INTELLIGENCE.

FRIDAY, 2Gth July.—Noon, Wind W.—Fair.
ARRIVED.
May, Peille, from Africa ; sailed 19th May, in company with the
Royal George and Moro Castle, for Liverpool.
Liverpool, Ross ;
Nathan Graham, Weatherland ; 1 from St. Petersburg,h.
St. Harlampy, Kruger ;
Concord, Hicks, from Quebec.
Arrived off Port :—Superb, Clucas, from Jamaica.,
Mariote, —, from Charente.

The Annie, Mainlands, hence, at Barhadoq.
The Latona, Dawson, and Vere, Hemingway, hence, at Bonny.
The Thomas Parsons, Macklin, hence, at Calabar.

SAILED.
The whole of the outward bound, consisting of about 70 sail

DIED.
Yesterday, Mrs. Ann Brancker, aged 89 years.

LIVERPOOL ELECTION.

SPEECH OF MR. NICHOL,

ON ENTERING UPON THE DEFENCE OF THE FREEMEN, ON

TUESDAY LAST, BEFORE THE SELECT COMAHTTRE OF THE

110( SE OF COMMONS.

"It now, sir, becomes my duty to offer to the committee a few
remarks by way of opening this case, and I assure them that I
shall occupy them but a few minutes. I will first call the at-

tention of the committee to the case which has been attempted

Mbe set up of a traffic in offices. The committee will recollect

that the other side have taken a pretty wide range with respect
to this traffic. They have embraced in it a period beginning
with the year 1812 and ending with the present year, com-

prising no less a space than twenty-one years, and during the
whole of that time they have only been able to rake up two

cases, and those supported by the most loose• and unsatisfactory
and inconclusive evidence that, I will venture to say, was ever
produced before any tribunal. The principal witness to oue of
those transactions gave his evidence iu so hasty and unguarded

a manner, that upon certain points in the cross-examination
his testimony was shewn to be utterly worthless. He stated

facts as within his own knowledge which, when they came to be
pressed on cross-examination, were proved not to be in any way

within his own observation.
" Sir, the committee will also remember that the latest of these
transactions occurred not less than 14 years ago, and the princi-
pal parties alleged to have been implicated in these transactions

are long since dead; that all those who could have given a

clear explanation of what occurred at that distant epoch are
now removed; that at the moment, or very shortly after, the
charge was made upon the hustings, those transactions were
both solemnly denied by the high and honourable persons who
were attempted to be implicated in them; that an investigation

was at that moment set on foot ; and that that investigation was

....
afterwards abandoned because, as the witnesses have said,
there was no sort of foundation fur the charge. The legal tri-

bunals of the country have been open to the persons who made
these charges from that moment to the present; but to those
tribunals they have never dared to resort. The offences are in-
dictable offences, and those offences they have never brought
to the cognizance of a judge or before a jury, who would, front
their habits of investigating these sort of cases, have been en-
abled to enter upon the investigation in the most searching
manner. But now, after an interval of fourteen years, when
the parties are all dead, they have attempted to rake them up,
and to add to the odium against the freemen which prevails,
unfortunately, from some transactions which occurred a few
years ago; but, as the
_committee must remember, neither the

freemen nor the candidates are implicated in these transactions,
and, as I humbly submit to the committee, they have ❑o bear-
ing whatever upon the corruption of the freemen. Feeling
this most strongly, it is the determination of those who conduct

the case of the freemen not to go into any investigation of these
transactions, considering that they have nothing whatever to do
with them. So strongly was this felt at the moment when the
committee determined to enter into the investigation, that,
during the short adjournment which then took place, a discus.
siou arose as to whether it would not be proper to abstain al.

together from attending during the time that investigation was
going on. But we thought, upon the whole, it was more re-
spectful to the committee to attend; but we attended rather as
spectators than as parties to the proceeding.
"Sir, although Mr. Foster, in the exercise of his discretion,
thought it due to his character to put himself into the box upon
that occasion, he did it in his private individual capacity, and
in no way as the agent of the petitioners. He appeared there
as a person charged by some of the testimony given in that
case, and he came forward anxious to defend his own character,
but the parties here, who have undertaken the defence of the

freemen, feel neither justified nor disposed to go into any de-
fence, nor to enter into any expense upon this part of the trans-
action. • They feel that they should not be justified in expend-

ing any sum of money in defending those individuals, be they
who they may,----whether they be General Gascoyne or the re-
presentatives of Mr. Roger Lee, or Mr. John Lee, or Mr. Quirk,
Mr. Hunter, Mr. Machell, or Mr. Charles Robinson, or Mr.
Foster ; those persons, if they please, have a right to appear be-
fore this committee and defend themselves, and it would he for
the consideration of the committee, if they think it expedient,

and, proper, and necessary, to go into the investigation,whcther
they ought not to call upon the petitioners to give notice to the
parties, that they may appear to defend themselves by their
agents or their counsel.
"But, be that as it may, the persons who appear here to defend
the freemen consider that they have nothing to do with those
parties. The fieemen are in no way implicated in (heir guilt,
and they neither have the funds nor the means of information,
nor the inclination to defend those individuals. I shall, there-
fore, in the course of the defence of the freemen in this case,
throw those two cases completely out of the question.

" I come, then, to the more material parts of the case, the
charges of bribery and corruption, and I will fairly confess, and
I admit athe first moment, that it is not my wish or intenti,:n
in any way to deny or extenuate the guilt of 1830 or 1827. If,
sir, the punishment could have fallen flagrant/ delicti upon the
parties alone who were guilty, and upon all the parties that were
guilty, upon those who bribed equally with those who yielded
to the temptation—if the seine parties had followed up to the
present time the same course and the same system of corrup-
tion—if the punishment could now distinguish between the
guilty and the innocent—if the parties who are now electors
were the same—if the elective franchise were confined and li-
mited to an exclusive body, and you could show that the great
mass of those persons were still corrupt, then I would not seek
to ward off from them the penalties of their delinquency—then
I would be one of the foremost to call upon this committee to
hold out an example to deter others by a punishment propor-
tionably
haods,eslivrh, I%ivaovueldbefoern
otnhee fbaer lreesasdygutioltNa' neeni;
tionahly severe, not only upon those who have bribed, but upon
opt
dying the evil by endeavouring mi n
oofffie.ennicee.;
respectability in station, to add to a constituency some
new body of persons which by its extent in number, and by its
should be the best safeguard and
guarantee against any future delinquency.
" But, sir, now there is no-occasion for this. It is impossible
to distinguish between the guilty and the innocent; it is im-
possible to punish the guilty alone. The crime has not been
continued up to the presentluantnent, and by the reform act a
large amount of new constituency has been introduced, and by
adding 200 per cent. at least to the number of registered free-
men, has prevented any danger of similar disorders arising in
future. The evil, therefore, has not only been remedied by the
repentance and reform of the constituency itself, but the reforr►
bill has done all that can be necessary to prevent the recurrence
of the evil. By this large sddition to their number, it has pre-
vented the freemen from exercising any undue or preponderat-
ing influence in future elections, and therefore we call upon
the committee not only to overlook the transactions of those
who have repented and reformed, but not to punish those wh,)
we shall show to be the-far greater number—those who have
never been attacked and have, never been implicated iu there

•
transactions.
"Sir, I will not detain the committee one minute longer. Thi..t
is the general line of our defence, and I am confident the com-
mittee will give to our case a patient and fair investigation, an
we shall bow with due respect to whatever decision may be tb.t
result of that investigation. Lest some prejudice snotOd arise
against the corporation in -this case, as if they had peen in any
way involved in these transactions, we have brought up 0,3
treasurer of the corporation, and we will put him first into tlia
box to show that the corporation hare never been nap,ic.ate4
at any time in these or any other election transactions,"

DEATH OF THE DI:KE OF ::.•UTHERLAND.—A correspondent
informs us, that his Grace the Duke of Sutherland died ca
Friday last, the 19th inst., at half-p4s4 three o'clock, at bii
nat, Daurobitt Castle,