§ MR. MITCHELL HENRYasked Mr. Attorney General, What effect the acquittal of Bishop Duggan of the charges preferred against him in consequence of the Report of the Judge in the case of the Galway Election Petition has upon the Bishop's political status; and, whether the Bishop who has been tried, and the Bishops and priests who have not been tried, equally remain under what the Judge termed "seven years' penal servitude?"
THE ATTORNEY GENERAL,in reply, said, he did not quite understand what the hon. Gentleman meant by the Bishop's "political status." Whatever it might mean, he apprehended that the acquittal of the Bishop from the charges which had been preferred against him had no effect upon it. What effect his conviction might have had was quite another matter; but certainly his acquittal had absolutely no effect. It remained exactly what it was before. With regard to the second branch of the Question, as to "whether the Bishop who has been tried, and the Bishops and priests who have not been tried, equally remain under what the Judge termed' seven years' penal servitude,'" the answer was not quite so easy to give. From the authentic report of the learned Judge's Judgment, which was furnished to hon. Members of the House by order of the House, he found that what Mr. Justice Keogh stated on the subject was this. He did not find there the expression which the hon. Gentleman quoted, but he found these words—
I will guard the franchises of the people of this country for seven years at least, for the statute will not allow any one of those persons" (i. e., those persons whose names he reported to the Speaker of the House of Commons) "to be again engaged in conducting or managing an election, or in canvassing for a candidate aspiring to be the representative of the county of Galway.789 The law on that subject was certainly somewhat remarkable. It was contained in 31 & 32 Vict., c. 125, s. 43, 44, and 45. The 43rd section, in substance, declared a candidate who had been found guilty of bribery to be incapable of voting, of holding any office, municipal or judicial, and incapable during the next seven years of sitting in Parliament. Then, any agent who had been found guilty of bribery was by the 45th section subjected to penalties very similar to those to which the candidate himself was liable; and the 44th section enacted that any candidate who personally engaged as canvasser or agent for the management of an election any person who within seven years previous to such election had been found guilty of any corrupt practice—which included undue influence—by any competent legal tribunal, or who had been reported guilty of any corrupt practice by a Committee of the House of Commons, or by the Judge of an Election Petition under that Act, should have his election at once declared void. That was the language of the Act of Parliament on the subject. But it had been said, with some amount of truth, it was hard that a person who had been reported to the House of Commons as guilty of corrupt practices, but who was afterwards tried and acquitted by a jury, should rest under the stigma that a candidate engaging him as an agent should by such engagement void his election. But it must be remembered as a matter of justice, as had been more than once pointed out, that the evidence given before an Election Judge, as formerly before Election Committees of that House, was entirely different from that which could alone be given on a criminal trial afterwards, before a Judge and jury.