§ LORD STANLEY OF ALDERLEY, in asking, Why Her Majesty's Government did not accede to the memorial presented to the Home Secretary on behalf of the imprisoned solicitors, Messrs. May and Mair? said, he had placed another Question on the Paper—namely, to ask the Lord Chancellor, Whether he will replace Captain Pearson on the Commission of the Peace or else remove from it Messrs. Wright, Bullock, and Clarke, whose conduct has been blamed by the Commissioners as "a leading cause of the corruption on the Liberal side?" but he would not ask the latter Question at present. The noble Lord observed that, should any of their Lordships deem it necessary for him to disclaim any sympathy with bribery, he might best repel such an imputation by saying that he had always wished to see the other House contain more old Indian officials and rising young men, who were now kept out of it by the prevalence of electoral corruption, and fewer men who had made large fortunes, and who took a parochial view of politics. He had confined the Notice which he had put down to the cases of the Macclesfield solicitors, and should not touch upon those of Deal and Sandwich, because he did not wish to interfere with the province of his noble Friend the Warden of the Cinque Ports (Earl Granville), who, he had no doubt, had already made all the representations that could be expected from him in a case where public feeling had been so much shocked by the undue and disproportionate severity that had been dealt in a few exceptional cases, whilst so many and greater offenders had escaped notice. The circumstances of Deal and Macclesfield were, moreover, quite distinct, for the population of Deal was engaged in the healthy and apostolic occupation of fishing, diversified by heroic attempts to save the lives of drowning seamen; and it might be alleged that these simple-minded men had been corrupted by those who were sentenced for bribery at Deal. But at Macclesfield the population was engaged in the less wholesome occupation of silk-spinning, which was their chief industry, relieved 368 only by night-poaching. All the traditions of that borough were corrupt; and the senior ex-Member related that his earliest recollections of an election, when a little boy, were of his having distributed tickets for beer outside the polling booths to the voters on his side. It could not, therefore, be said against Messrs. May and Mair that they in any way corrupted Macclesfield. Indeed, if that town were threatened with the fate of the "cities of the plain, "the righteous men who might save it from doom would have to be sought for amongst its solicitors. He might as well now say that he had no personal acquaintance with either Mr. May or Mr. Mair; but he had always heard them well spoken of, and they were much liked. Mr. May's father had done good service, and had always given excellent advice to a rather turbulent municipality, which advice, unfortunately, had not always been followed. How could the Government persist in their severity to Messrs. May and Mair under the pretence of wishing to purge the land of electoral corruption, whilst they had severally and collectively been guilty of the practices which they now professed to wish to eradicate? He said professed, for if these professions were sincere, would this high-minded Government have allowed its friends and agents to have accepted the large sums which had been given by individuals for expenses which could not be legitimate? A noble Duke, who resided at the other end of his (Lord Stanley of Alderley's) county, gave a large sum—£20,000 it was said—in support of the Government candidate. Would the noble Earl who would probably reply to him (the Earl of Rosebery) be so good as to inform the House how much he really contributed to the Mid Lothian Election? If all the Prime Minister's speeches at Mid Lothian and at the Great Northern Railway stations on his way thither had been printed, and a copy sent to each elector, it would hardly have accounted for a quarter of the sum which the noble Earl was said to have given, which report, he (Lord Stanley of Alderley) believed, had never been contradicted. He was one of those who signed the Memorial to the Home Secretary on behalf of the imprisoned solicitors; a Government organ said of them that they were more distinguished for good nature than for discretion. Under cover of this 369 certificate of good nature he might make many observations which might not be agreeable to the noble Earl or the Government; but he would refrain. He might be told that these cases of money given for electoral purposes, and which the givers must have known went beyond the requirements of legitimate expenses, were old cases; that he was raking up ancient history, or that the Government had since then become alive to the necessity of endeavouring to check electoral corruption. In that case, why did a high-minded Government not request its friends to refuse the subscription of £1,000 for the North Riding Election by the Viceroy of India; and request the Viceroy to devote this money to some charitable purpose in India, instead of compromising them, and putting them in their present inconsistent and illogical position of allowing the principals to escape—nay, of encouraging them to acts for which subordinate agents were punished with a severity which had shocked the feeling of the country. He was in Cheshire at the time the sentences were given, and there was but one opinion among all classes, high and low, as to their severity. There was the danger that this might create a sympathy for bribers, and make it more difficult in future to procure evidence, in order to check electoral corruption. Bribery at elections had been recently carried out not only with money, but with money's worth; and that had been done especially by Members of Her Majesty's Government. It was not long ago that Mr. Gladstone endeavoured to promote the candidature of himself and his friends by expressing a wish to do away with the Income Tax. Quite recently Mr. Porter, the Solicitor General for Ireland, put out electoral placards, promising reduction of rents if he were elected. That was done in such a scandalous and barefaced manner that it raised a general outcry; and since that the beaten candidate for the North Riding, though he was supported by published letters from the Prime Minister, resorted to similar appeals to the more sordid instincts of the electors. The noble Lord concluded by saying that he did not expect a favourable reply, not because this case did not deserve one, but because he never got favourable replies. He did hope, however, that the considerations which he had placed before 370 the Government would incline them to clemency; and he expected much from the intercession of the noble Earl (the Earl of Rosebery) with the Home Secretary; because whilst he had endeavoured to avoid exasperating him, he had tried to bring him to the state of mind of a good and pious man, whose name he forgot, but who used to say that he never saw a criminal in manacles without thinking that but for the Divine mercy he might have been in that position; and the noble Earl might paraphrase that saying, and think that but for his good fortune in living under a not very rigid Government he might have found himself, if not in the position of the Macclesfield solicitors, at least removed from the Bench.
THE EARL OF ROSEBERYI am sure your Lordships will appreciate the difficulty in which I find myself in dealing with the exhaustive speech of the noble Lord who has just sat down (Lord Stanley of Alderley). He has ranged over such a vast variety of topics, including my own personal character, and my liability to be removed from the Bench of Magistrates, that I shall not be doing justice either to myself or to the subject if I speak on these extraneous topics without more preparation than I have been able to get on the present occasion. As to the subject of the different sums that have been spent by various Members of your Lordship's House, including myself, as the noble Lord points out, in election matters, it does not, I think, follow that such sums were spent in corruption. The noble Lord appears to think that all election expenses are necessarily corrupt; and if that is his opinion, it would, I think, be well for him to refrain from anything of the sort. As regards the actual matter in question, I have heard nothing in the noble Lord's speech to make me think that the Home Secretary would be disposed to re-consider the sentences of the two gentlemen. They were found guilty by a jury of their fellow-countrymen, sentence was passed upon them according to law by the presiding Judge, and no Memorial has since been presented to the Home Secretary that I am aware of giving reasons why these two gentlemen should be released. There was, indeed, a Memorial presented, asking, from motives of commiseration, that they should be released; but it did not give 371 reasons sufficiently strong, in the opinion of the Home Secretary, to justify him in interfering with the sentence of the Judge. That is all the answer that I can give to the noble Lord.
LORD DUNSANYexpressed a hope that the tactics which were pursued in Ireland at the last General Election would not be followed in the counties of England. While it was a very bad thing to bribe with one's own money, it was much more objectionable to bribe with someone else's acres. The Government, no doubt, thought there was a difference between the position of a solicitor and a Solicitor General. The promises which Mr. Porter, the Solicitor General for Ireland, made to his constituents about all the present Government was about to do for them was nothing-short of bribery. Indeed, a regularly organized system of bribery was being at this moment carried out in Ireland through the agency of the Land Commission. The Solicitor General for Ireland might know how to keep outside the meshes of the law, though violating its spirit, while these solicitors had been less happy. Nothing, he contended, that had happened in connection with elections in England was half so demoralizing as that which had taken place over all Ireland, where a great agrarian conspiracy had been magnificently rewarded, and had influenced the votes of the whole country. That was the doing of the Government; but it was not very creditable to them.