HC Deb 26 February 1847 vol 90 cc538-9
SIR DE LACY EVANS

drew the attention of the House, according to the notice he had given, to a statement which had been made relative to the suppression, at Cambridge, of a list of voters whose claims had been admitted by the revising barrister. The imputation had been cast upon this gentleman that he was concerned in the suppression, and his character had therefore been injured. He would show to the House that this imputation, was wholly unfounded, and that the circumstance, apparently so strange, had arisen in an error for which the revising barrister was not at all responsible. The matter occurred in this way: the revising barrister appended his signature to the petition of these sixty persons claiming to be placed on the registration, and having done that, he had done all which was required from him. Two months after he saw in a local newspaper that these voters were omitted from the list which had been published; and he then immediately wrote to the town-clerk of Cambridge, Mr. Harris, expressing his astonishment at the omission. Mr. Harris replied that he had published the list entire, which had been given to him by the revising barrister. The revising barrister wrote again, and denied that this was the case; and after some further correspondence and inquiry, the missing list was found in a drawer, where it had escaped notice, in the office of the town-clerk. It further appeared that the list contained the names, in equal numbers, of opposite political parties; and it could not be supposed that what had occurred was other than a mistake.