Commons Sitting of 23 December 1806

MINUTES.
Mr. Hobhouse obtained leave to bring in a bill to revise, amend, and render perpetual, the act of the 42d of the king, relative to the trial of Contested Elections; which bill the hon. member stated it to be material to carry through the house with all convenient expedition, in order that the parties concerned in the petitions which were now before the house, and about to be presented, might experience the benefits which it had been found capable of producing. The bill was brought in, read a first and second time, committed, reported, and ordered to be read a third time to-morrow.—The house resolved into a Committee of Supply, lord H. Petty in the chair, and the order, usual at the commencement of a session, that a Supply be granted to his majesty, was moved by Mr. Vansittart, and agreed to.—Mr. C. Wynne gave notice, that he would to-morrow move for leave to bring in a bill to continue and amend the Thames Police act.—The hon. gent. also called the attention of the house to an order made in the year 1805, that a return should be made of the Lunatics and Insane Persons in custody throughout Great Britain, in consequence of which order many returns had been made. But these and other similar returns could not, he understood, be laid before the house, unless the order referred to should be renewed. He therefore moved, that this order should be renewed. Ordered accordingly.—Mr. Biddulph gave notice that as the chairman of the committee of Ways and Means
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had no functions out of that house, and as the present was a period in which it was necessary to make every possible retrenchment, he should to-morrow move a resolution, that no salary should in future attach to that office.—Petitions were presented, complaining of undue returns for Weymouth and Thetford. The former was ordered to be taken into consideration on the 22d, and the latter on the 27th of January.

GALWAY ELECTION WRIT.
observed, that in consequence of a return for the county of Galway, or rather something described as a return for that county, he felt it his duty to bring the subject before the house. The sheriff of Galway had thought proper to return, in compliance with the exigency of the writ, merely that the election was not concluded, and that he should keep it open until all the electors in the county should be polled. This mode of proceeding, the noble lord conceived the house must feel to be as highly irregular as the return to be unsatisfactory, and of course it required investigation. He therefore moved, that the deputy clerk of the crown should appear at the bar to-morrow, with the last return for the county of Galway, and when this return should be laid on the table, the noble lord stated it to be his intention to move on an early day, that the subject should be taken into farther consideration, and that the sheriff of Galway should be called to the bar.
Mr. Corrytook occasion to observe, that there was no law in Ireland, as in this country, to limit the continuance of elections in any other respect than that prescribed by the exigency of the writ, and that the case alluded to by the noble lord, was not without precedent in that country. He remembered an instance where a returning officer had made a special return of the same nature; and possibly the sheriff of Galway might have acted upon the same precedent. Upon this point however, he could not venture to speak with precision, as he was wholly unacquainted with the circumstances of the Galway election; but he thought it necessary, for the information of the noble lord and for the animadversion of the house, to state the precedent to which he had alluded.
Lord Howicksaid, he was aware of the fact stated by the right hon. gent., that the law for limiting the duration of Elections in this country did not exist in Ireland, and suggested for the consideration of the

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house, whether it would not be proper to extend the law upon this subject to that part of the united kingdom. With regard to the precedent alluded to by the right hon. gent., he should be sorry to preclude the sheriff of the county of Galway from pleading the sanction of any precedent or usage that prevailed in Ireland upon this subject. But yet he was rather disinclined to think that any such precedent or usage could vindicate the return complained of, because the difficulties which were stated to have led to the return, could have been easily guarded against by a proper exercise of the discretion vested in the sheriff by law.—The motion was agreed to, and lord Howick stated, that he would fix upon to-morrow fortnight for the farther consideration of this case, as, within that time, all the proceedings would most probably be at an end, and the sheriff of Galway would be conveniently enabled to attend the house.