Commons Sitting of 18 February 1830

MINUTES.
Mr. BROUGHAM took the oaths and his seat as Member for Knaresborough.—Mr. STANLEY brought in a Bill to amend the Laws respecting the leasing powers of Bishops and Ecclesiastical Corporations in Ireland.—Mr. R. GRANT gave notice that on Monday next he would submit to the House a Motion for removing the Civil Disabilities of the Jews.

BURNING OF HINDOO WIDOWS.
Mr. Protheroein presenting a Petition from the ladies and female inhabitants of Worcester, praying that effectual stop should be put to the burning of Hindoo Widows. He begged leave to ask, for the satisfaction of those who had intrusted him with this Petition, and of other persons who took an interest in the subject, whether the report which had gone abroad, that the Indian Government intended to abolish the practice of burning Hindoo widows, was correct?
Mr. G. Bankessaid, he would be happy to give the hon. Gentleman and his friends every satisfaction in his power. He had, a few nights ago, laid a paper on the Table relative to this subject; and a Report relative to it would also be speedily laid before the House. The statement in the newspapers respecting an order of the Governor-general forbidding the practice was not confirmed by any official document that had come home. But there was great reason to believe, from the information of individuals, to whom the sentiments of the people of India were known, that a considerable change had taken place in their feelings; and that, at no great distance of time, the practice would be abolished. But no step should be taken that would offend the religious prejudices of the natives. Nothing would be done by the Government in haste; but they most seriously wished that the object of the Petitioners might be carried into effect.

SUB-LETTING ACT IN IRELAND.
Mr. O'Connellin presenting a Petition from several parishes in Dublin against

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the Sub-letting Act, said, that the population of Ireland was not a demoralized population. On the contrary, it was the most moral population in Europe. He instanced the last Commission for the City and County of Dublin, when only eleven persons were tried for felony, and the last Quarter Session for the County of Dublin, when not one person was so tried.

LABOURERS' WAGES.—TRUCK SYSTEM.
Sir J. Wrottesley, in rising to present a Petition from a number of workmen employed at Bilston, in Staffordshire, against the practice of paying Labourers' Wages by goods, begged pardon of the House for the formal manner in which he was about to bring it forward. But the subject to which it related bore so strongly on the poor, that he felt himself bound to ask permission of the House to state it fully, and he trusted that Gentlemen would listen for a few moments to the observations he intended to make. The practice to which the Petition referred was one to which his own observation had been directed; but, in speaking of it, he would not confine himself to facts which came within his own knowledge; he would quote the principal points contained in the Petition which he had the honour to offer to the House. The Petitioners stated that the town of Bilston was connected with very large collieries and iron-works, for which very great rents were paid. They said, that a numerous body of men were employed there, who were chiefly paid in goods by their masters. They next stated, that if a workman sought for redress, he was immediately discharged. They complained that the masters resorted to various expedients to evade the law: they delayed to settle with the men sometimes for six weeks; and when the latter, in want of sustenance, applied to the masters, they supplied them with goods, thirty per cent above the market price. Other masters, they alleged, paid the workmen in money in one counting-house, with which they were obliged to purchase goods, the property of their employers, in another. They state, that as many months elapsed before the masters paid the bills which the workmen were compelled to run up with the shopkeeper, the latter forced the poor workmen to pay exorbitant prices. Under these circumstances, they called on the House to amend the law, in order to put an end to this ruinous prac-
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tice. He begged leave to state, in confirmation of what the Petitioners said, that he was convinced that every allegation made by them was perfectly true, and that the picture was not exaggerated, but extenuated. Previously to 1826 this practice prevailed to a certain extent. At that time, however, the payment of wages in goods was the exception, and the payment of wages in money was the rule; but now, he was sorry to say, the case was altered —the payment of wages in goods was the rule, and the payment of wages in money was the exception. It was not in his power to state the exact cause of this; but no person could deny that it was contemporaneous with the alteration of the currency. That was a subject, he believed, not very popular, because it was treated in a manner which prevented people from understanding it. In his opinion, it ought to be divided into four different parts—first, the Bank restriction; second, the standard of value; third, the alteration of 1826; and fourth, the influence of the Bank of England on the currency of the country. He was one of those who never complained of the necessity of returning to cash payments in 1819. He believed it was indispensable, and therefore he never raised a word of objection against it. He was of opinion that the standard of value was proper, though it might appear high at 3l. 17 s. 10½d. per ounce of gold. But, though high, it was already settled, and he believed that any attempt to go back from that standard would be attended with far greater difficulties than would arise from continuing it. But he admitted that the time might come, the awful time, when the country might be obliged to make an alteration in that particular. He only contemplated that time when the nation should be so exhausted and so poor, that it would be compelled to compound with its creditors. That time, he was happy to say, was not yet come, and he hoped it was very far distant. But, the alteration of 1826 rested on entirely different grounds from that of 1819; and, in his mind, they could not allow the validity of those reasons on which the withdrawal of the 1l. notes was founded, while they suffered the existence of small bank-notes both in Ireland and Scotland. With respect to the small notes, the mischief occasioned by them was rather to be found in the abuse of the system than in the practice itself; and what system, he would ask,

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was not liable to abuse? But how had Government proceeded? They trusted the bankers at present with the issue of 5l., 10 l., or 100 l. notes, and yet they would not trust them with the power of issuing 1l. notes. With respect to the bankers, a statement had been made which ought to have considerable weight in discussing this subject. It was proved that seventy bankers, who had stopped payment in 1826, yielded, on an average, a dividend of 17 s. 6d. in the pound. Then why were they reproached as having acted dishonestly. It had been stated, both in that House and in the House of Lords, that the business of this country had become too extensive for the Bank of England. It was said that the structure was too weighty for the basis on which it was placed. He knew that country bankers were prevented, at the present moment, from issuing paper in consequence of want of confidence in the Bank of England. Then, he said, abolish that monopoly, and form two more companies, with charters, and a limited responsibility. There never was more capital in the country than at present. Let it then be appropriated to our own use—do not let it go to foreign countries to increase the trade and industry of those who are now our rivals. He might be asked, what had this to do with the payment of labourers in goods? He would answer, that it had much to do with that subject. From the neighbourhood of the place whence that petition came, at least 1,000,000 l. of paper currency had been abstracted in the last two years; and they could not afford to replace that circulating medium by introducing 1,000,000 l. of gold. The consequence was, that they had been obliged to resort to barter. This was not confined to the large manufacturers of iron; for, such was the state of the currency in that country, that few persons would buy goods until they saw some means of paying for them without money. It appeared to him that they must repeal the measure of 1826, which would be the most efficient remedy for the distress so prevalent at present. He thought that the best termination which could be put to the disputes between the masters and the men would be to enable the labourer to choose his own master. He did not despond, bad as was the state of the country, and few persons had better opportunities of ascertaining its situation than he had. If this system of barter were
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continued, the terms should be obligatory on the parties. Something like a fixed rule should be established between the master and the man; because, if the former stipulated to pay in goods, and the price and quality of the article were not defined, there would be no means of judging what was the nature of the contract between the parties. His hon. friend and colleague had given notice of his intention to introduce a Bill on this subject. He should have his best assistance; but he was not blind to the difficulties which stood in the way; and he trusted that Parliament would not sanction any measure of this nature without great caution.
On the Motion that it do lie on the Table,
Mr. Herriesremarked, that as he and some of his right hon. friends had lately had some communication on the subject with those who were personally interested in it, he felt that it would not be right to allow the petition to be laid on the Table without making a few observations. He would, however, entirely disconnect the question to which the petition referred from the subject of the currency, with which the hon. Baronet had endeavoured, very ingeniously, but not quite satisfactorily, to connect it. In his opinion, the object which the Petitioners had in view would be better promoted by discussing the matter without reference to any other topic than the grievance complained of. Of the difficulties which would attend the removal of that grievance without an interference between the employers and the persons employed; of the difficulties which would attend the application of an adequate remedy without the danger of injuriously increasing on the manufacturer and the capitalist the price of labour —of these considerations, which were of such vital importance, it would not be proper for him, on that occasion, to attempt to enter; the more especially as the hon. Member for Staffordshire had given notice that it was his intention, at a very early period, to move for leave to bring in a Bill, by which it was hoped that the evils now complained of might be remedied. Under these circumstances it would be worse than idle to anticipate the discussions to which the introduction of that measure would naturally give rise. But, as the subject had been mentioned elsewhere, he would merely observe that his Majesty's Government had expressed

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to those who were deeply interested in the subject their perfect disposition to inquire into it, without, however, pledging themselves to the adoption of any ulterior measure. He would not go into the other question which the hon. Baronet had so unsatisfactorily connected with the present. His reason was, that the currency was a question which ought to be discussed not incidentally, but on a due notice given. The state of the currency, however, had no connection with the grievance complained of in the petition. That grievance had been complained of, and measures adopted for its removal at periods when no question existed as to the state of the currency. It had been complained of even so far back as in the reign of Edward 4th. It had been the subject of several Acts in the latter part of the reign of George 3rd; and it had been complained of in that year of supposed prosperity, 1825.
Mr. R. Gordonprotested against the inference attempted to be established by the right hon. Gentleman, that the question of Barter had nothing to do with the currency. He was sorry that the right hon. Gentleman, and others of his Majesty's Ministers, were so ignorant of the true state of the country, as to suppose that the system of Truck was to be considered apart from the question of the currency.
Mr. Littletondoubted the policy or expediency of connecting the subject of the petition with the currency. It was his intention to bring the question before the House on Thursday, when he should move for leave to bring in a Bill to render more effectual the laws for the payment of wages in money.
Mr. Benettcontended, that the system of Truck was immediately connected with the currency. As matters stood at present, no manufacturer could continue to carry on business without obtaining a double profit, first as a manufacturer, and next as a huxter. He sincerely hoped that the hon. Member for Staffordshire might find it possible to carry his meritorious measure into effect.
Mr. Bensontrusted, that the measure relative to the payment of wages in money would receive due consideration from Government and the House.
Sir R. Wilsonsaid, the hon. Member for Staffordshire would be a public benefactor if he could put an end to the system Of Truck, which was similar to the practice
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prevalent in South America under the title of repartimiento.
Sir John Wrottesleysaid, he found it quite impossible to disconnect the subject of the Petition from that of the Currency.

LAW REFORMS.
Mr. Secretary Peelrose to make the Motion of which he had given notice respecting the Reform of the Courts of Law. Before he proceeded, he begged that so much of the Royal Speech at the opening of the Session as related to the measures for the improvements of the Courts of Law might be now read.
The Clerk of the House then read as follows:—"His Majesty commands us to acquaint you that his attention has been of late earnestly directed to various important considerations connected with improvements in the general Administration of the Law. His Majesty has directed that measures shall be submitted for your deliberation of which some are calculated, in the opinion of his Majesty, to facilitate and expedite the course of Justice in different parts of the United Kingdom; and others appear to be necessary preliminaries to a revision of the practice and proceedings of the Superior Courts. We are commanded to assure you that his Majesty feels confident that you will give your best attention and assistance to subjects of such deep and lasting concern to the well-being of his people." The right hon. Gentleman then proceeded to say, that in moving, pursuant to notice, for leave to bring in a Bill for ascertaining the Fees and Emoluments of Officers in the Courts of Common Law, he thought it might be convenient and advantageous to the House that, at an early period of the Session, he should avail himself of an opportunity of presenting to it a general outline of the measures connected with the improvements in the Administration of the Law referred to in his Majesty's gracious Speech from the Throne at the commencement of the present Session. He was quite aware that each of these measures would require a separate and deliberate consideration, but still he considered it of importance, that previously to entering upon the separate consideration of each of them, the House should be in possession of the views and objects of his Majesty's Government in a connected form, for the purpose of enabling it to form a judgment with respect to the

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general scope and tendency of the proposed measures. He was convinced that his Majesty's confidence in the House, (which he had graciously expressed in his Speech from the Throne), and his reliance upon the disposition of the House to lend every attention and assistance in the progress of these measures, had not been misplaced, and would not be disappointed. He was himself confident, whatever shades of difference might exist in the opinions entertained by Members of that House upon political questions, however different their views as to the precise extent of the distress mentioned in the Speech from the Throne, and which was unfortunately more or less prevalent throughout the country—whatever difference might exist on the subject of our foreign or domestic policy, he was confident, however, the attention of the House might be occasionally occupied with these considerations, that hon. Members would not be so exclusively engaged in them as to allow such matters to withdraw their attention from the perhaps less interesting und animating discussion of legal improvements, which were, however, far from being of slight consequence to the permanent welfare of the country. He alluded to the intended measures for the improvement of the general Administration of Justice. He felt confident that Members would indulge him and favour him with their attention while he stated the general outline of these measures. He had no doubt that they would make allowances for his want of professional education and professional experience, a circumstance that might render some of his explanations less intelligible than they would otherwise be upon such a subject. He was also satisfied that the House would take into account the necessary occupation of his time in other matters, which the peculiar duties of his office rendered still more pressing than the present subject, (important as it was) and that they would overlook any errors or oversights which he might commit. The technical details of the subject he left to the discussion of others who were better qualified than he was, by their habits and education, to deal with them; but he considered it to be a part of his duty to present to the House, in a popular form, the great and general principles of the improvements to be proposed, so as to render them intelligible to others who, like himself, did not
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possess the advantage of professional knowledge and experience. The House was aware that, some short time since, his Majesty, in compliance with an Address of the House, had appointed two Commissions of Inquiry—the one for the purpose of inquiring into the practice and proceedings of the superior Courts of Common Law—the other to inquire into the state of the law relative to real property. He must give credit to the hon. and learned Gentleman opposite for a great share in the appointment of those commissions which he had suggested in the able, learned, and comprehensive speech delivered by him in the Session before last, upon the subject of Legal Reforms. Though there was a qualification of the proposal with which that speech concluded in the course subsequently taken, it was apparent that the object of the speech was the appointment of Commissions of inquiry into the state of the law, with a view to its improvement. The House was aware that reports had been made by each of those Commissions, which in each case did the highest credit to the views of the Gentlemen who composed them, and to the mode in which they proceeded to fulfil their duties and accomplish the intentions for which they had been appointed. With respect to the report of the Common Law Commissioners, it embraced several matters of the highest importance to the due administration of Justice and to the despatch of business in the Superior Courts of Common Law, and the increased activity of those Courts. The second report of the Common Law Commissioners would be presented to his Majesty in a few days. It was a report embracing objects of much higher consideration and importance than the first. From the communications he had had with the Commissioners of Inquiry into the practice of the Common Law he could inform the House, that the second report, which he trusted shortly to have it in his power to lay before the House, would embrace—First, the expediency of investing the Superior Courts with new powers of a summary and equitable kind, calculated to economise time and money in legal proceedings, and prevent the too frequent resort to the aid of Courts of Equity. The second point adverted to by the Commissioners was a subject of great importance —it referred to the verification of written documents before trial. The

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third recommendation related to compulsory arbitration in matters of accounts. The fourth to an abridgment and simplification of the obsolete and useless forms of pleading. There were also other matters introduced in the forthcoming report, which were of scarcely less importance to the due administration of the law, but he had mentioned these, deeming them of the highest consequence. The Commissioners appointed to inquire into the state of the Law of Real Property had also made one report, and he trusted he should be able to announce at an early period the production of another in continuation of their labours upon that important subject. With respect to both Commissions, every Member, who had turned his attention to the subject, would freely and readily admit the great importance of our being enabled to consider the whole question of legal reform simultaneously and in a systematic manner. We ought not to attempt partial reforms, but endeavour to effect a general improvement in the practice and administration of the law. The whole subject of the law, the subjects of inquiry before each Commission, were so intimately connected and interwoven together, that until we were in possession of the entire views of the Commissioners in relation to them, it would be desirable to postpone partial reforms in the law, and wait till we had the whole question fairly before us. Perhaps there were parts of the system, which, under circumstances of peculiar urgency, we might venture to touch; but, generally speaking, the whole was so interwoven, the several branches of inquiry were so closely connected, and the inconvenience of partial legislation was so great, that he fully concurred with the Commissioners in deprecating the adoption of partial and isolated measures, and in waiting till we could deal with the whole subject at' once. He must advert to another Commission that had been recently appointed, not in consequence of an Address to the Crown, but directly on behalf of his Majesty; it was instituted for the purpose of inquiry into the present state of our Ecclesiastical Law, with a view to revising the proceedings had in suits in the Ecclesiastical Courts from the commencement of a suit till its close. So much for what he might call the preliminary proceedings that had been adopted for the furtherance of legal reform. He purposed, at a future period, to present
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to the Legislature the views and opinions of the Commissioners—the results of the inquiries of those intelligent, disinterested, and dispassionate men, on the subject of the Superior Courts—of the Laws of Real Property—and of the practice and proceedings of the Ecclesiastical Courts. The immediate object of the Bill which he was then about to ask leave to introduce was, to facilitate the future promotion of legal improvement—to lay the ground-work of reform in the practice and proceedings of our Courts. Its principle would be to regulate the appropriation of fees now received by individuals holding patent offices for life, or a specific term of years. His experience of legal reforms had satisfied him that the existence of patent offices formed one of the greatest obstacles to improvements in the law. It therefore became absolutely necessary to look at the whole question, and devise a measure by means of which the establishment of vested interests in Courts of Justice should be brought to an end. In almost every attempt to introduce partial reforms in the law, we were met by vested interests, which impeded our operations. The usual course in such cases was to provide the means of compensation for the holders of patent offices; having enacted the abolition of their fees, we ascertained their value, and gave the parties a claim on the consolidated fund for their amount. But it frequently happened that the effect of taking away the fees of one officer in a Court was directly and materially to increase the fees receivable by another officer; and when, at a subsequent period, we came to deal with the interests of the second officer, a claim was raised for compensation, not only to the amount of the original value of the office, but to the extent of the increased profits which he had derived in consequence of the previous reform. He feared that this had been the case more particularly in Ireland, in consequence of the adoption of partial measures of reform. The public had thus been exposed to considerable inconvenience and great pecuniary loss. He was therefore for looking all at once at the whole question of vested interests, with a view to provide a mode by which, without any act of individual injustice, officers should in future hold all legal situations of a subordinate nature in dependence upon those by whom they were appointed, so as to enable Parliament to proceed to

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legal reforms and alterations, without giving to individuals who might be affected by them a claim to compensation. The immediate object of the Bill he meant to introduce would be to provide, in the first instance, that no officer who should be appointed after an early day, to be named, should have any claim to compensation, on the ground of proceedings in Parliament to alter or amend the practice in Courts of Justice. As for existing vested interests, he proposed to provide for them in the following manner. He proposed, that Commissioners (say those already appointed, in order to save expense) should be empowered to institute inquiries to enable them to ascertain what had been the amount of fees received in a given number of years by the several patent officers in Courts of Justice, and by those possessed of vested interests in legal offices, either for life or a term of years. He would confine the inquiry to the amount of legal fees (without committing himself to matters of detail) which had been received for the last ten years, believing that to be the fairest period upon which to take an average: for if we took a shorter period—say one of seven years —the increase which took place in some species of fees in 1825, in consequence of changes then made, would swell the average beyond what it ought to be. Having ascertained the amount of legal fees accruing to the holders of patent offices within the last ten years, he proposed, in future, to have all such fees received on the public account, and that those individuals having a vested interest in the offices from which they arose should be paid respectively according to the average of their receipts for ten years. When we came to the consideration of alterations in the practice and proceedings of our law Courts, we might see whether the amount of fees now receivable might not be materially reduced in several branches of those proceedings. Still it would be open to Parliament to decide whether it would be expedient, in consideration of the fees now paid, to provide a fund sufficient for the compensation of persons who possessed vested interests in offices—that would be a subject for after consideration. At present he merely proposed that the fees in question should be received on the public account, and that they should constitute a fund for the payment of the officers in the manner sug-
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gested. He saw no reason for imagining that such a fund would not be sufficient to discharge the claims of these individuals, estimated upon an average of ten years. In 1828 the number of causes tried in the Superior Courts considerably exceeded the average of the preceding-five years, from 1823 to 1827, both inclusive; so that there was a probability of an increase rather than a decrease of fees. The question of fees once set at rest, Parliament would be at liberty to deal with every question of legal reform in future according to its own merits, without being influenced by other considerations. He had brought in a Bill to facilitate the recovery of Small Debts, by improving the mode of process in County Courts and reducing the charges upon legal proceedings for the recovery of such debts. That was a measure which he considered one of very great importance; but it became necessary to investigate the situation of certain officers, whose interests would have been injured by the operation of the Bill, and he was afraid to provide a compensation for these parties, lest, by so doing, he should increase the profits of others, and so throw an impediment in the way of future reforms by affording such individuals grounds for claiming additional compensation upon another occasion. Among the measures which it appeared to him possible to adopt, without waiting for the period of full and final reform, was one which at a former period had excited much attention in the House, and in those parts of the country to be immediately affected by it—he alluded to the proposed abolition of the separate and local jurisdiction in Wales, and the assimilation of the jurisprudence of that country with the legal practice and proceedings of the English Courts. He was satisfied that those Gentlemen who felt most desirous of upholding the independence and dignity of Wales would enter upon this consideration calmly and dispassionately, for the purpose of discovering whether the time had not arrived when, for the accomplishment of the great object of assimilating the legal jurisdiction of the two countries, and for the interest of Wales as well as England, the English system might safely be introduced into Wales. There were four separate and independent jurisdictions in Wales, and eight Judges to administer justice, who enjoyed judicial offices, which might be held

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in conjunction with a scat in that House, and who were further enabled to practise as barristers in this country. It was also the custom that the Welsh Judges should be attached permanently to one circuit, instead of varying the places of administering justice, as in England. He was aware that at present there was only one Welsh Judge who occupied a seat in Parliament, and he was also aware that it would be impossible to name any one who possessed more honourable or independent feelings than that Gentleman, but at the same time he thought, generally speaking, that it would tend greatly to the maintenance of the dignity of the judicial station, if our salutary, wise, and prudent distinctions between the political and judicial character were adopted with respect to the Welsh Judges. It would also be a great improvement in the jurisdiction of Wales to prevent the same Judge from going permanently and invariably the same small circuit. He had the highest degree of confidence in the honour and integrity of the Welsh Judges, but it was impossible for any gentleman to avoid forming local and personal connexions when he was in the habit of going the same circuit for several years: sure he was that such local and personal connexions would not be allowed by these gentlemen to act on their conduct or character unfavourably to the due administration of justice, but the House might depend upon it, that it was not enough that the administration of justice should be merely impartial—it was important to prevent the existence of any impression to the contrary—it was important to establish a conviction in the public mind that no personal motives could by possibility influence a Judge in the discharge of his duty. He therefore thought that it would be of the greatest advantage to Wales, and to the general administration of justice throughout the country, that the judicial institutions of Wales should be placed upon the same footing as those of England [hear.] Heretofore there was a question whether the legal proceedings of Wales were not more economical in some respects than ours. Doubts had been entertained on the subject; and it was said that there existed in Wales a form of action more economical than existed in this country. If there were, we could have no difficulty in adopting it [hear], provided the change seemed advantageous. If there were any process, by which, following the
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example of Wales, we could expedite and cheapen justice, there could not be a fitter consideration than that relative to its adoption—we need not deprive Wales of any advantages which she enjoyed at present, at the same time that we conferred additional benefits upon her. The whole object of the Law Commissioners was to curtail every merely formal proceeding, every practice which was obsolete, antiquated and purely technical, and not necessary to the right administration of justice. The extension of similar advantages to Wales would hardly be objected to. There was another point to which he wished to refer: on account of the present augmented state of business in the Courts of Common Law, it was his decided opinion (adopted upon considerations wholly apart from the situation of Wales), that it was necessary to add to the number of Judges in the Superior Courts, with a view to prevent the continuance of the present arrear of business. The Commissioners proposed not to add to the number of Judges who sat together in banco in each Court, the present number of four appearing to afford great advantages over every other number that could be adopted; because, in a court where the majority was to decide, there could be no better majority than that of three to one. They had also considered the inconvenience which would result from multiplying the number of the Judges in the same tribunal, and it was not their wish to make the number of Judges five. In proposing, therefore, to add one Judge, they did not intend to add to the number sitting in banco, but to make him sit as a Judge by himself, who should preside over the trial of such matters as might be committed to one Judge. But if, on grounds apart from the administration of justice in Wales, an addition was made to the Judges, the House would be in a condition to consider whether, when a part of the Judges were unoccupied, the eight Welsh Judges should be retained. To retain both would be to entail a great expense upon the country, on the supposition that the increased number of Judges could perform the Welsh business. These two considerations, therefore, must be combined. If it could be shown that the Judges could perform the Welsh business, then, no doubt, considerations of economy were in favour of such an arrangement. The salaries of the eight Welsh Judges were 9,800 l. Looking towards the assi-

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milation of the jurisprudence of Wales to that of England, in the last appointments to Welsh judgeships, it had been notified to the individuals nominated, that they would have no claim to compensation in the event of the Legislature revising or abolishing the offices they held. By this means there would be an ultimate saving of 9,800 l. a year to the country, and, to Wales, an ultimate saving of the four separate judicial establishments attached to each circuit. The saving thus effected would very nearly provide for the salaries of the new Judges who would be appointed, if the House should agree to the proposition which would be made on that subject. Again, in that spirit of economy in which he trusted the House would give the Ministry the credit of looking at this, as well as at every other subject that came before them, they had adverted to the act by which the salaries of the Judges had been raised to 5,500 l. They had taken into their consideration the objections which had been urged against that statute, considering that it was perfectly open to public men to review and to reconsider any measure, whatever part they might have taken in it. The result of their consideration was this—that a salary of 5,000 l. for all Judges hereafter to be appointed would be quite enough to provide for the maintenance of the dignity of the office, and apportion the salary to the retiring allowance. It was the intention of his Majesty's Government therefore to bring in a Bill which would fix the salaries in future at 5,000 l. a-year. He mentioned this circumstance only for the purpose of showing that there was no unwillingness on the part of the Government to assign due weight to all practicable propositions for reduction. And now, as he was upon the subject of the administration of justice, he might, perhaps, be allowed to avail himself of the opportunity of calling the attention of the House to a matter which was not immediately connected with the Bill which he was then moving for leave to bring in. With the permission of the House he would state the amendments which it was proposed to make in the Criminal Law. This subject had now for some years occupied the attention of the House. In 1825, an Act passed, the object of which was to consolidate the laws relating to criminal offences. This Act, among other things, removed many technical difficulties, re-
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gulated the expense of prosecutions, as well as rewards for the apprehension of offenders, and it regulated the proceedings in estreating recognizances. This was followed by four other Acts. The first abolished what was called "benefit of clergy," and certain other forms, and provided that a pardon under the sign-manual should have the same effect as a pardon under the Great Seal. The next consolidated the laws relating to burglaries, to embezzlement, and to other criminal acts against property. The third consolidated and amended the Acts relating to malicious injuries to property, and regulated actions brought against the hundred. The fourth related to offences against the person. Thus considerable progress was made in the amendment of our criminal jurisprudence. By the Acts which he had introduced, he had the satisfaction of stating, that no less than two hundred and seventy-eight Acts had been repealed, and that all the provisions of these two hundred and seventy-eight Acts worth retaining had been included in eight Acts. He thought he might say that, practically, no inconvenience had resulted from the repeal of these two hundred and seventy-eight Acts, and the substitution of the eight in their place. In the present Session he hoped, with the assistance of his right hon. friend, the Master of the Mint, to introduce a Bill which would consolidate and amend the laws relating to the Coin of the realm, in which it was his intention to propose the removal of the penalties of high treason from the offence of coining. He should also introduce a Bill consolidating and amending the laws relative to the office of Justice of the Peace; and a Bill to consolidate and amend the laws relating to Forgery. If these Bills should meet with the approbation of the Legislature, and pass into laws, he thought that he should not be overrating the progress that had been made in the amendment of our jurisprudence, when he said that nine-tenths of the cases which came before the Courts would have been brought within the laws consolidated since 1825. There was only one other subject to which he was anxious to call the attention of the House. It related to another part of the kingdom. The House would recollect that, in the last Session of Parliament, a measure was proposed which had for its object to increase the salaries of the Scotch Judges.

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At that time it was impossible not to perceive that it was the general wish of the House that the consideration of the subject should be postponed. There appeared to be an impression that other measures relative to the jurisprudence of Scotland were called for; that such measures ought to be speedily brought forward, and that they should be disposed of before any steps were taken to increase the Salaries of the Judges in Scotland. Since the period at which that debate had taken place, much of the time and attention of the Government had been devoted to a general review of the Scotch jurisprudence; and he trusted that he—or, he should rather say, his learned friend, the Lord Advocate—would be able, in the present Session, to propose measures which would materially improve the administration of justice in that country. It was their opinion, an opinion which had met with the concurrence of the highest legal authorities, that the time was now arrived at which the Jury Courts should be abolished, and trial by jury, in Civil cases, transferred to the Court of Session. In proposing the transfer of Jury Trials to the Court of Session, the object was to facilitate the adoption, and to secure the maintenance of trial by jury. The time must come at which trial by jury must be ingrafted on the administration of justice in Scotland, and, in their opinion, the present was the best time. The jury system had been tried now for fifteen years in that country, under the Chief Commissioner of the Jury Court, and, so far as he could form an opinion on the subject, he thought that great advantages had resulted to Scotland from that mode of trial. On the abolition of the Jury Court, the present Chief Commissioner would be entitled to a large proportion of his salary, as a retiring pension; and they proposed, therefore, to retain his services, by transferring him to the Court of Session, to give his assistance in Civil trials. The next alteration they proposed to make was, to abolish the separate jurisdiction of the Admiralty Court in Scotland. They proposed to transfer to the Court of Session all the Civil part, and to the Justiciary Court all the Criminal part of the jurisdiction at present exercised by the Admiralty Court. They thought that the Sheriffs might perform all the duties of the Admiralty
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Court, and that by these arrangements no inconvenience could possibly result from the abolition of this Court. They also proposed to alter the Consistorial Court. The proposition was, to reduce the number of Judges in that Court from four to one, and to send the original jurisdiction, now exercised by that Court, in cases of legitimacy, marriage, and divorce, to the Court of Session. By these alterations in the Admiralty Court and the Consistorial Court, it would be seen that the business of the Court of Session must be considerably increased. In the Court of Exchequer, too, alterations would be proposed. They should propose that the number of Barons in that Court be reduced by two. They thought it in the highest degree desirable to retain that Court, not only in conformity with the articles of the Union, but in consequence of its acknowledged utility; but, at the same time, they were of opinion that two Judges, instead of four, would be quite sufficient to transact the business of the Court. From these reductions it would be seen, that ultimately a very considerable saving would be effected, and yet he hoped that the reductions would not stop at this point. Notwithstanding the vast increase of business which would be thrown upon the Court of Session, in consequence of these alterations, he hoped—but he would not pledge himself on this point— he hoped that they should be able to effect a reduction in the number of the Judges of this Court. He hoped that they should be able to reduce the number of the Lords of Ordinary from seven to five. He trusted, therefore, that in consequence of these reforms and reductions, the House would not oppose the proposal for an increase in the salaries of the Scotch Judges, since he apprehended that the effect of the meditated alterations would be a saving to the country of many thousand pounds. He must also add, that he trusted he should be enabled to reduce the number of principal clerks in the Court of Session by two. He believed that he had now presented to the House in a general manner all the subjects which at a future period would be submitted to them in detail. He had purposely abstained from entering into detail on the present occasion. Avoiding all technical expressions, he had endeavoured to offer a popular view of these matters, and to give such an outline of the proposed

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alterations as would be intelligible to those who had not had a professional education. The time would of course come at which all the proposed measures must be discussed separately and in detail. He trusted he had said enough to show that the Government had considered these subjects solely with a view of making the administration of justice equal, impartial, expeditious, and as little expensive as possible. [hear] Whatever might be our attachment to the free institutions of the country, sure he was, that there was no part of those institutions more intimately connected with the comfort and happiness of Englishmen than that which enabled individuals to protect the rights which belonged to them, and to obtain redress for the infliction of wrongs. The earnest desire of the Government was to secure comfort and happiness to individuals, and prosperity to the country; and when they approached the administration of justice in the country, with the view of amending it, he thought they could not give greater evidence of the sincerity of that desire, than by making justice as cheap and as expeditious as possible. He had now only to move "for leave to bring in a Bill for regulating the Payment of Fees to Officers in the Superior Courts of Common Law."
Mr. Broughamexpressed his satisfaction at what had fallen from the right hon. Gentleman, and agreed that the present was not the fit opportunity for discussing in detail the matters to which the right hon. Gentleman had alluded. He thought it right that the proceedings should commence by such a Motion as the right hon. Gentleman had just made, because the evil of fees was at the root. In many instances, the cutting down of the emoluments of larger offices had been attended by this consequence, namely, throwing inordinate increase into the emoluments of lower offices. In this way, some of the very reforms, which had had reduction for their object had in reality produced increased salaries. With respect to the other parts of the right hon. Gentleman's speech, if he should have occasion to differ from him on a future occasion, it would only be, because he thought the right hon. Gentleman did not go far enough. As to the Welsh jurisdiction, when the time was come it must be put an end to. To the abolition of it there were two objections—the first was, that
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there would be an increase of expense; the second was that there were some peculiar advantages in the system. Now, to the first the answer was ready. The right hon. Gentleman proposed to reduce the salaries of the Puisne Judges by 500 l. a year. This reduction, there being nine Puisne Judges, would amount to 4,500 l. Add to this the salaries of the Welsh Judges, namely 9,800 l., and they would have ultimately a saving of 14,300 l. a year, exclusive of what would be saved in the salaries of clerks, prothonotaries, and so forth. He thought therefore, that the right hon. Gentleman had completely met this objection. The other objection was answered without difficulty. If there were, which he must be allowed to doubt, any peculiar advantages attaching to the Welsh system, there could be no reason why Wales should have the monopoly of them. Let them be extended to the whole country, and Wales would have no reason to complain. Thus much, if such advantages did really appertain to the Welsh system; if there existed no such advantages, there was an end of the question; and in either case, therefore the second objection fell to the ground. But there was one light in which it was very important that this question should be viewed. Pf they abolished the eight Welsh Judges, and substituted for them two or three Puisne Judges, see the vast difference in point of patronage. Did the Government receive equal patronage for that with which they parted? Was the appointment of two or three Puisne Judges equal to the giving away eight places to persons who might be, and some of whom were, Members of Parliament, but who, above all, might be chosen for qualities other than those which fitted men for the bench? In the appointment of the Judges of Westminster-hall, he had never had any fear of the Ministry; no, not even those Ministers upon whom he had looked with the most deeply-rooted distrust; because he did not believe that any Minister would dare to face in Parliament the representatives of a watchful people, after having jobbed in the appointment of Judges. He would not, however, say so much of the appointment of Welsh Judges, for to such appointments the eyes of the country were not directed in the same way, and Welsh Judges, therefore, might be ill-selected, and improperly chosen. He thought, therefore, that this patronage was dangerous in the extreme.

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In Westminster-hall, the men who were Judges must be such as the community and the profession pronounced to be fit for the office; but a Welsh Judge might be a man of whom neither the profession nor the community knew any thing, and who might be indebted for his promotion to family connexions, or to something else rather than the qualities which fitted men for the bench. This, then, he repeated, was a dangerous though a valuable patronage. Moreover, it tended more or less to diminish the independence of the bar. Men there were in Westminster-hall who, in the hope or expectation of a Welsh judgeship, were led, not to the expression of opinions which they did not hold, but to the suppression of opinions which they did hold. For the purity, therefore, of the administration of justice, for the sake of the independence of that class of men out of which the Judges must come, and for political reasons of no small importance, he could not help regarding this subject as one of the highest concern. The next point of the right hon. Gentleman's speech was that which related to Scotland. He could not help thanking the right hon. Gentleman for the reductions he proposed, though, in his opinion, they might be carried further. When the comparatively small bar of Scotland was compared with that of England, and when the amount of the legal business of the two countries was contrasted, was it not strange that Scotland should have twenty, and England only twelve Judges? The necessary consequence of such a system was, that the salary of a Judge in Scotland was less than an advocate in extensive practice could afford to take. If the House were of the same opinion, the obvious course would be to reduce the number of Judges, and to make the salary of those that remained such as would induce persons of skill and reputation to take upon them the judicial office. He thought, that by the reduction proposed, and the consequent saving to the country, the right hon. Gentleman had made out a very strong case for the increase of the Judges' salaries. He agreed with the right hon. Gentleman that every possible means should be taken to uphold the trial by jury in Scotland. For this purpose, nothing could be of greater importance than to consider the constitution of the Courts. He meant to impute nothing to the
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Judges, nor, indeed, to any one else, when he said that they had come but slowly in to the institution of trial by jury in Scotland. From this fact, however, it became the more necessary to support the system with a firm and steady hand. If trial by jury had nothing else to recommend it, but the expense it saved by shortening the proceedings, it would still be of the utmost importance to the people. While he was on this subject, he could not help expressing a hope, that one great impediment to the extension of trial by jury in Scotland would be taken into consideration. Every body knew that the rules of evidence acted upon in Jury Courts were at variance with the practice of Scotch Advocates. Hitherto, the evil resulting from the circumstance had not been felt in the Jury Court in Scotland, and for this reason, namely, that in the Chief Commissioner were united the Scotch Advocate and the English Barrister. The nomination of Judges was restricted to the Scotch bar, but his hon. and learned friend to whom he had alluded happened to be a Scotch Advocate as well as an English Barrister. His hon. and learned friend, therefore, carried with him the necessary qualification, and to this he added his own experience in the Jury Courts of this country. Should the office of his learned friend, however, by resignation, or some other cause, become vacant, in that case they must have, as Judge, a Scotch Advocate who might never have witnessed a trial by jury in his life, except now and then during the few years that trial by jury had existed in that country. Surely this was not a desirable occurrence. He could not help thinking that nothing would go farther toward extending trial by jury in Scotland than the assistance of some English Barristers, who, thoroughly versed in the rules of evidence, and in the practice of our Jury Courts, would open their minds to the manners, the habits, and the usages of the people of Scotland. In a word, he thought it would be extremely advantageous to remove the restriction which now confined the nomination of Judges to the Scotch bar. In the Scotch Court of Exchequer that restriction did not exist; but although all the Judges of that Court might have been English, it had happened that since the Union, there had never been more than one of them appointed from the bar of this country, the others had been

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taken from the Scotch bar. Now since the Government had voluntarily restricted their power of appointment to one, though they might have appointed four from the English bar, he could not but think it would give rise to no complaint, while he was quite sure it would be attended with great benefit to Scotland, if one of the Judges of the Jury Courts were always taken from the English bar. As to the projected changes in Westminster-hall, the House could not, as the right hon. Gentleman had very justly observed, enter upon the discussion of them at that time. He might, however, generally state, once for all, his views on that subject. The right hon. Gentleman greatly deceived himself if he expected that by adding one Judge to each of the Courts in Westminster-hall, by throwing open all the Courts—by destroying the monopoly of barristers in the one, and of attornies in the other—by allowing all kinds of business to originate indifferently in all the three Courts—nay, even if the right hon. Gentleman could make the bar in each Court, the attornies in each Court, and the Judges in each Court of equal ability, which was of course impossible, but even if the right hon. Gentleman could do all this in addition to what he proposed to do, the right hon. Gentleman would still greatly deceive himself if he supposed that, without some compulsion, he could equalize the business of the Courts; and for this plain reason—the Court of King's Bench was in possession of the business; it was the favourite Court; the suitors would betake themselves to that Court, and because they did so, the Court contained the best practitioners, while, for the same reason, it usually had the best Judges.—He did not mean to say that the difference between the business of the Courts would continue, under the new arrangements, so great as it was at present; but he contended that the business would not be any thing like equalized if the suitors were left to themselves. The House probably was not aware of the increase which had taken place in the business of the Court of King's Bench. Notwithstanding the difficulty of getting through the business which, for some time past, had been brought before that Court, notwithstanding the pressure of the arrears of business both in banco and at nisi prius, the business of the Court had increased to the amount of between seven and eight
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thousand causes in the last year. Now see what had happened in the other Courts. The Court of Exchequer, in which God knew there never were any arrears, in which there was so little business that one would have supposed it was impossible there could be less; so little, that it was a common joke in Westminster hall to say of the Barons of the Exchequer, that "they were no sooner down than they were up," for they often sat at ten o'clock and rose at a quarter past ten, and if it happened that they ever sat from ten to twelve, it was reckoned a very long sitting—in this Court, in such a Court, far from there having been any increase of business, there had actually been a falling-off, while in the King's Bench the causes had increased to the number of seven or eight thousand. If, therefore, the Courts should be made as equal as possible, still, unless there was some compulsion on the suitors, it would be utterly impossible to equalize the business of the Courts. The more he examined the subject the more he was led to believe that the thing would be impracticable, unless they resorted to compulsion. To be sure, it would be useless to make the attempt unless men of acknowledged talents and learning were found to preside in the other Courts; and indeed it would be cruel to force a suitor into a Court in the Judges presiding over which he had no confidence; for the suitors in the Courts at Westminster were not like those on a circuit, where they must take the going Judge. In Westminster-hall, however, if a suitor were compelled to go into a particular Court, he ought to have the Judges so distinguished for legal knowledge and talents as that it might be to him almost a matter of indifference into which Court he went; but again he would say, that unless some measures of compulsion were used, he did not see how the business of the Courts could be equalized. These were the points which suggested themselves to his mind at that moment; but of course he reserved to himself the power of objecting in future to any parts of the measures to be introduced, when they should come in detail before the House. As far as the right hon. Gentleman went, he most cordially concurred with him; but he would reserve to himself the power of protesting against any part of his course, if he should not think that he went far enough.
Mr. Fergusongave also his concur-

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rence to most of the arrangements referred to in the speech of the right hon. Gentleman opposite; but he did not rise so much to state that concurrence, as to express his surprise that the right hon. Gentleman had not said one word about any reform in one Court, as important as any of those mentioned—or he should rather say the most important of all — he meant the Court of Privy Council. He had hoped that the right hon. Gentleman, in the progress of that salutary reform which he was about to introduce into our Superior Courts, would have brought under the consideration of the House some plan for improving the constitution of the Court of the Privy Council, which, though one of the most important, was, in his opinion, one of the most imperfect in the country. He would admit that it was usually presided over by a Judge of great talents, the Master of the Rolls taking his seat there on important occasions, and other Judges of eminence occasionally presiding, but then it was only when the business of his own Court did not interfere. The duty was in fact looked upon as a secondary office. It was, he presumed, unnecessary for him to point out to the House the importance of having fit persons to preside over a Court of which the decisions involved the property of millions of the subjects of this country residing in the colonies and in the East Indies. The Judge who generally presided in that Court, was, as he had stated, a man of eminent legal talents, but he was assisted, sometimes, by a Lord of the Admiralty, sometimes by a Paymaster of the Forces, sometimes by the Chief Commissioner of Woods and Forests, or some other individual under Government—all of them highly respectable in their several situations, but not, from education or habit the best qualified to sit as Judges in a Court where cases of such vast importance came for final adjudication. He did earnestly invite the attention of the right hon. Gentleman to this Court, and he hoped, that as that right hon. Gentleman's exertions had already been productive of such beneficial results to the judicial administration of the country, as would entitle him to the lasting gratitude of the public, he would add to the motives of that gratitude by directing his mind to a Court in which reform was so greatly to be desired. As he had taken the liberty to offer himself to the notice of the House on this point, he would, while he was on his
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legs, venture to add a few words on that part of the right hon. Gentleman's statement, in which, personally, he was most interested,—he meant that which related to the proposed reform in the Courts of Scotland. He could state from his own knowledge, and could prove it by documents, that there were no Judges of any Court in the United Kingdom who were more constantly, more usefully, or more meritoriously engaged in the discharge of their judicial functions, than those who presided in the Court of Session in Scotland. He did not think that any reduction in the number of Judges in that Court should take place. In the remark made by his hon. and learned friend (Mr. Brougham) as to the necessity of promoting the extension of trial by jury in civil causes in Scotland, he entirely concurred. He knew that prejudices existed against it among many of the practitioners in that Court, but he also knew that that mode was the most effectual for coming at the truth incases of disputed facts, and that altogether it was the most free from faults. He would not go to the other points to which the right hon. Gentleman referred, but in passing would say a word as to the Consistorial Courts. No course was, in his opinion, more objectionable than that of having only one Judge in such a Court. There ought to be several. He would therefore venture to suggest that the Consistorial Court should be abolished altogether, and the business of it transferred to the Court of Session, rather than it should be continued with the presidency of only one Judge. He could state, on the authority of a venerable Judge, Lord Stowell, that never was the judicial power of any Court administered with greater ability or more sound discretion than by the Consistorial Court of Scotland. He also concurred with his honourable and learned friend, the Member for Knaresborough (Mr. Brougham), in thinking that it would be the wisest policy to place an English barrister at the head of the Court which should have to try civil causes by jury. In no other way could the country derive so much benefit from the establishment of trial by jury in civil causes. Of the great importance of the services rendered by the venerable Judge at the head of that Court, no one who had an opportunity of knowing the Court could doubt; and he also admitted that if the country should be deprived of his invaluable services, it would be extremely difficult to supply his

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place. The appointment of an English barrister in the Court who had to try jury cases would have the effect of keeping the other Judges steady in the attainment of those important advantages which might be expected from an extension of the civil trial by jury in that country, and this had been already proved by the experience of what had been effected there by the appointment of an English Judge. When he spoke in what he considered as duly deserved terms of praise of the Judges of the Court of Session, he could not say the same as to the process of that Court. The written pleadings which had been regulated with a view to save the time of the Judges, and to shorten the proceedings, had not had that effect. The written pleadings were now longer than usual, and the proceedings in Court were not shortened by the law restricting them. Looking at the whole of what the right hon. Gentleman proposed, he thanked him for the great attention he had bestowed upon this important subject; and when each separate measure came before the House, he should be ready to give it his most serious consideration. With respect to the alterations in the Welsh Courts, he for one should wish to see a fusion, as much as possible, of English and Welsh judicial administration, but he hoped that in the changes to be made attention would be paid, as far as possible, to the feelings of the people in that part of the kingdom. He fully concurred with the right hon. Gentleman and with his hon. and learned friend, that no Judge ought to have a seat in that House. He would extend that principle to others holding judicial situations, as well as to the Welsh Judges, for example, to the Master of the Rolls, and to the Masters in Chancery. No Judge who had to decide in important questions, involving the property of others, ought, in his opinion, to have a seat in that House.
Mr. Humebegged to express the satisfaction he felt at the proposed changes, as far as they went; and as they had now been submitted to the consideration of the House, the sooner they were effected the better. He hoped, however, that in making them the country would not be put to any unnecessary expense. In making those changes, he did hope that the House would consider whether the number of Judges in the Court of Session in Scotland was not much greater than was required. The Scotch Judges had not one half the business
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to perform which was done by the Judges in this country; for instance, the Barons of the Exchequer had not ten causes to try in a year. That was a sufficient reason for reducing the number of Judges in that Court, and in his opinion, the business now done by the four Judges might be effectually performed by one. The business of the Court of Session was not of that heavy nature to require fifteen Judges, and he thought that about half that number would be sufficient. They had, it was well known, not much to do, and they sat only for five months in the year; meeting at ten in the morning, and not sitting later than three. He would say, then, let those which were unnecessary be reduced, and let the reductions save the country the expense of the increase proposed to be made in the salaries of those that remained. The right hon. Gentleman talked of prospective advantage and ultimate saving. He (Mr. Hume) had often heard of those kind of savings, but he had never seen any of them realized. He would suggest, therefore, that a course should be adopted which would bring those savings about at once. While on this subject, he would observe, that in a few days he would make a Motion, to which he hoped the right hon. Gentleman would not object, for a return of the number of hours which the Judges in the Courts of Scotland sat in Court during the year.
Mr. Ferguson, in explanation, said that he had not expressed a wish that things should remain as they were in the Scotch Courts. He gave the right hon. Gentleman credit for what he proposed, but he was not a defender of the state of things as they now existed in those Courts.
The Attorney-Generaltrusted, that a the several subjects were not now before the House in detail, it would not be expected that he should then enter into a minute examination of those matters which hereafter would come fully before them. His right hon. friend (Mr. Peel) had only proposed to give the House a general view of the course to be hereafter pursued, and he trusted the House would feel that he was more entitled to credit for the extent to which his explanation had gone, than to blame for any omission of more minute detail of every part. He fully concurred with his right hon. friend in the remark that they owed much of those judicial reforms to the very able exposition given on a former occasion by his hon. and learned

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friend, the Member for Knaresborough, to whose suggestions, in the progress of those measures, he should be disposed to pay that attention to which, from his extensive acquaintance with the subject, they were entitled; but he owned he could not concur with him in that which he threw out respecting the compulsory introduction of business into particular Courts—for he saw what appeared to him to be such strong objections to that course, that he could not resort to it, except in case of the last necessity. He had had some experience in the Court of King's Bench; and he must say, that though there was now an arrear of business in it, yet it was conducted with so much dispatch, that sometimes cases were disposed of in one term the actions in which had commenced in the preceding, which was as quick as the forms of law would permit. He would not go further into the subjects before the House, as more fit opportunities for discussing them would occur when each was brought separately forward. He would content himself with giving notice, that on an early day he should move for leave to bring in a Bill for assimilating the Administration of Justice in England and Wales. He was anxious to name a day on which he might hope to have the assistance of his hon. and learned friend (Mr. Brougham) for he should be unwilling to bring it on in his absence, and he hoped that this day week might be convenient to him.
Mr. O'Connellnever heard anything that gave him more satisfaction than the clear and distinct statement of the right hon. Gentleman; and instead of being surprised that he could not go more minutely into the technicalities of the subject, it was matter of astonishment that he had been able to compress so much in so short a statement. There was healing in what he said. It was a clear admission of the necessity for improvement—of the fact, that the Government are not hostile to a change—that it did not even oppose the vis inertiœ of a silent resistance, but that it wished for a reform of notorious and long felt abuses. He only regretted that when the Court of Admiralty was mentioned, something had not been said of another Court of Admiralty besides that in Scotland. No doubt it was not forgotten, although it had not been alluded to. He only meant at that moment to hint at the question of blending the
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jurisdiction of the Admiralty with the Consistorial Court, and giving an equitable jurisdiction to the Courts of Common Law, with the hope that was held out that there would be a complete amalgamation of all the Courts; so that justice could be obtained by one simple and intelligible mode of proceeding, instead of a party being compelled to resort to several different modes of recovering his right. If a Judge were fit for one Court, he must be fit for all. As a proof, he might refer to the late Attorney General, who might have been Chief Justice of the King's Bench, but who was actually Chancellor—a fact which proved him to be fit for either Court. He did not wish to leave the Chancery as it now was. Its process was as cumbrous as possible; and if it were now to be created ab initio, there was no one who would venture to recommend such a vicious course of proceeding as it exhibited, and which was rather a nuisance than a benefit to the country. He asserted that there ought to be but one simple mode of proceeding for all people in the recovery of their rights. The next thing he should wish to see was the establishment of local tribunals throughout the country. Why a man in Cornwall or Cumberland was to be compelled, in order to obtain a debt there, to send up to London for a bit of parchment, and what magic there was in such a process, he knew not, and he should, therefore, wish to see the evil abolished. There were to be Courts for the recovery of Small Debts in every county. Why not Courts for the recovery of Large Debts? If the Judge were fit to decide on one, he was equally fit to decide on the other. Surely he should not be told in that House that the business of the rich and wealthy required a different Judge from the business of the weak and poor. He did not look to London for the establishment in one focus of a number of Courts, with great Lawyers and rich Judges—but he looked for the establishment of a number of tribunals that would dispense justice in the different counties in the kingdom to their various inhabitants. The third matter which he wished to notice was the subject of Special Pleading. He was most happy to hear that the technical system of pleading was to be abolished; and that its forms were to be reduced to something like common sense. Such forms were an outrage to those who could

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penetrate their meaning, while they were utterly unintelligible to the mass of mankind. The right hon. Gentleman himself had afforded a proof of their difficulty and unintelligibility, by having been himself unable to go into the minute details of technical knowledge. Why should there be anything in the laws with which that right hon. Gentleman was unable to make himself fully acquainted? Was it not disgraceful to the laws that a Gentleman of his talents and industry should be ignorant of a very material part of them? If it were thus, why not abolish the witchcraft of these forms, and make the law, which was to govern all, intelligible to all? Was it not disgraceful to a country like England that decisions should take place in her Courts upon the forms of the pleadings as contradistinguished from the merits of the case? [hear, hear.] He trusted he should live to see the day when a Judge would be ashamed to say he decided a case on forms, on those forms which a Counsel or an Attorney might mistake, but which could not affect the right or equity of the claim set up by the party himself. A great deal had been said on the subject of Fees. They ought to be abolished. There should be no turnpike tolls on the road to Justice. Under the present system, a man who was not able to pay the fees of the officers of Justice was deprived of Justice, for he could not go into the Courts to claim it, so that it was only given to those who could well afford to pay for its purchase. The first great reform in the law ought to be to make law cheap. The Judges and the officers ought to be paid by the public, and a man who wished to assert his right in a Court of Justice ought not to be stopped on his entrance there with a demand of fees, which, if he could not satisfy, would prevent him from recovering his right. The hon. Member near him had complained of there being only one Judge in a Court. He (Mr. O'Connell) thought that was quite enough; and he had the authority of England in his favour, since not only was there but one Judge in the Court of Chancery, in the Vice Chancellor's Court, and in the Court of the Master of the Rolls; but we had recently deprived the Chief Baron of the company of his learned brothers, and had made him a solitary Judge in an Equity Court of his own. There were few who recollected well what the Courts were, that
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would not say one Judge was sufficient in each, and that the other three only delayed the party, God knew how long, before he could get his case decided. He threw out these ideas as preparatory to what he recommended the right hon. Gentleman to bring forward as a thing necessary above all others—he meant the formation of a Code for England. All other countries had Codes, and why should England be behind them in the simplicity of her laws? The principle of Codification was good. Many persons, no doubt, would object to a Code as not sufficiently comprehensive; but what the right hon. Gentleman opposite was now doing, and what he had done, in consolidating the principles of two hundred and seventy-two Statutes into eight, was Codification, and he ought to proceed until he had established a complete Code. It might be said that the cases likely to arise for legal adjudication in this country would be too numerous and too complicated to be comprehended in any one Code; but we had at present a law for almost every case that could arise, and where such a law did not exist, the matter was left to the discretion of the Judge, which was the worst of all law, because it must be an ex post facto law.
Mr. Peel, in reply, said, that he had avoided going into any detail as to the construction of the Scotch Courts, but referring to what fell from the hon. Member for Aberdeen, he should have no objection to such returns as those for which he intended to move, but he feared that the returns of the number of hours which the Scotch Judges sat in the Court of Session would not go far to establish the hon. Member's case — that the number could be reduced to half. Their attendance in Court would not show the amount of the business they had to perform. Great part of the business of the Scotch Courts was clone in writings; and besides the hours of attendance, the hon. Member should know how much of the time of the Judges was occupied out of Court in examining those written documents. Besides, it should be borne in mind that the Scotch Courts had much business in law and in equity, and that many matters connected with elections were brought before them. If, therefore, the hon. Member wished to see the whole extent of the business of the Scotch Judges, he should alter the form of the returns for which he had expressed his intention to move. He

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would say a word on what fell from the hon. Member for Clare, and he must say that he was glad to hear the tone of temperance and moderation with which he had adverted to this important subject. The hon. Member had acquired fame and popularity by his conduct elsewhere, but he could assure him that he might acquire greater fame and greater popularity by giving his efficient aid to reform the state of the law of the country. With respect to the hon. and learned Member's suggestion about special pleading, he must observe that he was not prepared to go so far. This, however, was a subject into which he would not enter, as it was one with which he was not sufficiently acquainted. However, much information on that point would be derived from the report of the Commission on the Common Law Courts. The suggestion of the hon. Member as to Codification, was one in which he could not go with him. It was, no doubt, very popular, but the hon. and learned Gentleman should consider what had been the result where it had been adopted. Let him only see what had been the extent of the comments on the Code Napoleon. In short, the more concise any legal Code was made, the more its interpretation was left to the discretion of the Judge. Now he had often heard it objected to English judicial administration, that too much was left to the discretion of Judges, but the more we allowed general rules of law to form our Code, the more we must necessarily leave to the discretion of Judges, and thus the adoption of a Code would be open to one of the hon. and learned Member's strongest objections—that of an ex post facto law for a new case in the discretionary interpretation of the Judge. There was a medium to be observed between the system, too much in practice in former times, of making a specific act for each case as it arose, which produced that mass of legislation that we were now endeavouring to consolidate, and that of making a Code which would be too concise to embrace more than general principles.
Mr. O'Connellsaid, the right hon. Gentleman had misunderstood what he said about a Code. He was not for making now a new Code of laws for the country. We had already the materials in English law for an excellent Code, and the comments of the Judges would form so many philosophic experiments by which the fitness of certain parts of it might be decided.
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The Code Napoleon was good as far as it went, but its fault was that it did not go far enough. It was not sufficiently comprehensive to embrace many subjects which it ought to have included.
Leave was given to bring in the Bill.

PARLIAMENTARY REFORM.
The Marquis of Blandfordspoke to the following effect.—I rise, Sir, to answer the call made on me last Session; and following the course suggested for my adoption by my right hon. opponent, the Secretary of State for the Home Department, I rise to offer for the consideration of this House, "a practical detailed measure:" and first, Sir, I must preface the observations I shall have occasion to address to you, by calling to the recollection of this House the course pursued by me upon the occasion I have referred to. I then, Sir, considered it my duty to divide the House upon the Question whether Parliament would or would not be pleased by a formal resolution to recognise the existence and venality of the close and decayed boroughs, for that really was the whole of the question which I thought it advisable to submit to the House, under the very singular opposition I met with from the right hon. Secretary for the Home Department. The venality of these boroughs is as sure as their existence, and both are equally notorious; but there is a wide difference between the notoriety of such offences, and a Parliamentary recognition of their existence. Mere notoriety begets defiance of public opinion and a fearless habit of offending. But if Parliament, by a formal vote, had put its brand mark upon these transactions—if by some general resolution it had stigmatized them as crimes against the law of Parliament and the Constitution of the country, a good foundation would then have been laid for the reform of what had been declared to be wrong and true, for the prevention of what had been denounced as illegal. But it did not seem good to the majority of this House to hurt the sensibilities of the Boroughmonger, by calling his trade by its proper name, or to injure his interests by saying, that his gains were condemned by Parliament and the country. The people, however, will speak out, though Parliament may chuse to keep silence, and may try to impose silence upon others. The voice of the country is not to be stifled by a vote of this House— it will attempt in vain to smother truth—

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not all the finesse of all the political intriguers, nor all the power of all the political despots, will be able to stem or turn aside the current which is now setting in, full and strong, against the present system of chaffering for seats in this House. It is in vain to attempt to deck these transactions in all sorts of gaudy colours, and to call them happy methods of introducing to public notice modest merit and latent talent, and virtue, and patriotism, and I know not what besides. It is in vain to reckon up the Whigs and the Tories of note, and of no note, who have contrived to bring themselves, and their independence, into Parliament, by these back-gates and bye-ways. The thing retains the same character of corruption, whether it generates the venal Statesman, or the useful Member of Parliament; the splendid fly that soars in this House upon the wings of eloquence, or the grub that feeds upon the vitals of the country—Corruption is the father of them all. Neither will all the speeches of all the approvers of such a system be able to make corruption incorrupt, or convert the Borough business into a blessing, or legalize the wholesale trade of selling seats. As matters now stand, the fury of the law may be said to mistake its objects—it passes over the daring outrages upon the Constitution, in order to fall with redoubled violence upon the petty assaults, and petty larcenies, committed against the rights and liberties of the subject, and the purity of elections. The storm of Parliamentary enactments has fallen upon the small tradesmen, and retail dealers in the bribery line—
"Dat veniam corvis, vexat censura Columbas."
Many a wordy statute pours its thunders upon the head of the starveling who sells his vote, and dines upon his degradation; but our Code contains no store of wrath, no pains, nor penalties, nor censures, for the great and extensive ready-money trade in returns to Parliament. Seats, two or ten at a time, may be bought and sold, and all concerned will continue, all, "all honourable men" — and they will find in this House not merely apologists but panegyrists—they may be even extolled for true patriots—and the ready-money method of getting a seat is extolled too, and is called patriotic, and expedient, and constitutional, and just as it ought to be. But, Sir, I cannot concur in such sentiments; such panegyric and such philosophy are alike adverse to my views and
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convictions—and happily for the country, and all its great interests, his Majesty's Ministers do not appear to participate in these opinions—I certainly have never heard them take that line of defence, or rather empty declamation, and most impotent delusion. They have never set foot upon that slippery and hollow ground —so that, in spite of the negative by which the right hon. Gentleman opposed my resolution last Session, I shall continue to think that Government may be disposed to treat the question of Reform, not in the spirit of party politicians or borough traders, but upon the principles of truth and reason. Agreeably, therefore, Sir, to the terms of my notice, and in conformity with what I would fain hope I might find to be the disposition of the Government, I will endeavour to make the question one of principle, and not of party. I will refer it altogether to the decision of the Law and Constitution. I will make them the criteria of what is right and wrong—true and false—sincere and corrupt,—in respect of our Parliamentary Returns.
Now, Sir, without going into any abstract question about the right of popular representation, without touching the historical controversies upon that point, without investigating the origin of Parliaments or Parliamentary Councils, it may (and, as I think, safely) be laid down that national Councils, of some sort and denomination, are coeval with our existence as a nation. Normans—Saxons — Britons—all had them. These are facts capable of being established by recorded evidence, not truths deducible by arguing from natural principles and probabilities. We find the vestiges of popular representation, the elements of a Parliament, in all parts and periods of our history. To trace the steps by which this primitive right was moulded into its present shape and size—to shew by what collision of contending interest it has been compressed and restrained from without—by what elasticity from within it has often struggled for expansion— to cast up the number of all the political conflicts in which the question has been involved, though interesting, are unnecessary speculations. The inquiries we have to deal with are, whether the people are, or are not, at this time represented according to the manifest purpose and design of the Laws and Constitution of the country—or whether by the lapse and

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vicissitudes of time great changes have taken place in the state of our Parliamentary Representation, or rather in its very principles and efficiency; and whether any thing can be found in the altered state of our political relations, foreign or domestic, to prevent a return to the original practice, and the fundamental principles of the Constitution. As to the question then, whether the people are, or are not, represented in a manner conformable with the principles and purposes of the Constitution: notwithstanding the ingenuity of a Palcy, or the eloquence of a Canning, I assert that they are not so represented—it is contrary to those principles, that decayed and desolate places should return Members to this House—it is contrary to those principles that seats in this House should be bought and sold. And first, as to the fixedness of the returns of Representatives from towns and boroughs, the same number from the same places, let what will be their state, and condition, as to the density, or thinness, or nothingness of their population—their wealth or their poverty — their commercial or agricultural strength or weakness. Now here, Sir, we find at once a wide departure from the principle that gave birth to the returns of citizens and burgesses. Without wishing to re-invest the Crown with its old discretion of issuing its summons to this or that town or borough, according to some real or supposed superiority which it possessed over others, I cannot but observe that the variableness perceived in the issue of the King's writs, and the returns made upon them, suggest this important conclusion—that in those ancient days, which some may be disposed to call days of political ignorance, civic or municipal prosperity seems mainly to have determined the fitness of the city or borough for the elective franchise. I am aware that there are some outstanding questions upon this point; and that it has been contended that the King in early times was wont to summon none but the royal boroughs— none but his own tenants on burgage tenure, to come to his Councils, and settle their rates of contribution to his wants: but this will not account for the nature, number, and diversity of the early returns; and I think it is clear, from the history of the places themselves, that much depended upon their prospe-
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rity. When towns and boroughs were seen to thrive, the King's favour was also seen to follow their good fortune; and when their gold was seen to glitter, the Crown discovered the means of satisfying its necessities, and found abundant reasons for calling upon them to send their citizens and burgesses to Parliament: for whether it was the King, or the King's officer, who selected the cities or boroughs, it makes no difference to my argument; it was their wealth and prosperity which determined the choice — their ability to defray the expenses of their citizens and burgesses during their attendance in Parliament—their rank as trading towns—their right to be represented, by reason of their commercial weight and greatness— in short, Sir, whatever might be the motive, public or private, which determined the royal choice, it was the consequence of the town, under some relation or another — I mean its political consequence—which pointed it out as a proper subject for these Parliamentary honours. If, then, this change-ableness in the issue of writs of summons be admitted, as it must be, for it is an historical fact, it will not only throw light upon the present unintelligible returns from places of no consideration; but further, it will suggest the fitness of recurring to primitive principles, and of transferring elective franchises from old fossways and crumbling castles, from the solitude of the plain and the ploughed field, to the busy haunts of men—to the industrious, and the intelligent, and the independent, among the sons of agriculture and commerce. But besides this departure from the ancient principles and practice of Parliamentary Representation, there is another which has taken place, and which may be said to have arisen out of it. When boroughs became the sepulchres of departed greatness and prosperity, retaining nothing of their former condition but their name, and their soil, and their custom of returning one or two Members to Parliament, they became the property of the rich and the powerful; and instead of being dependent, as they originally were, upon the pleasure of the Crown for their writs of summons, they became dependent upon the pleasure of their purchasers, for the returns to those writs—and their writs of summons and charters of incorporation (like other paper and parchment securities,) became marketable commodi-

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ties, conveying to the buyer the certainty of honours, and the contingency of profits in this House—this also is a manifest departure from constitutional principles and practice. When towns and boroughs were first called upon to send representatives to Parliament, it was not intended to decorate these places, in their decay and downfall, with immortal honours, or to make their lifeless bodies fetch high prices, like subjects for dissection—it was not the design to invest the silence and desolation of ruined streets, and market places, with the everlasting right of sending a couple of Members to the National Council. It was never meant to help on the speculations of craft, or the gains of avarice, or the projects of ambition, by making seats and franchises, articles to be bought by the best bidder.
But, Sir, these departures from ancient principles, these violations of ancient practice, have not only taken place in the manner of making returns from these close and decayed boroughs (in which returns nothing can now be discovered like "fraunche et due election," according to the ancient statute—nothing like the principle in the ancient writ, "quod omnes tangit ab omnibus approbetur;" but there are still more remarkable violations and departures in respect of the qualifications of the Burgesses returned. By the ancient laws and practice thy were to be "resident in-dwellers, and freemen of the borough or city they represented, and no others"—"Nuls autres in nulle manière." It is true that these laws were repealed— it is true also that to the repealing Act we may fairly ascribe much of the mischief that now exists. Boroughs are now supplied with representatives from every other description of persons, except residents and indweliers, or persons locally connected with those boroughs. We may look through the whole series of Cornish returns, and scarcely find a Cornish name in a list of their burgesses: we cannot even say "stat nominis umbra;'" name as well as thing are both gone—the close and decayed boroughs of Cornwall have passed into the hands of strangers to the county. The interest of the Stannaries are sometimes confided to speculators in the mines of Mexico and Peru. Paper is seen to triumph over the influence and interest of its tin. By the mere operation of paper and parchment, Cornish seats have been transferred like shares in a Joint Stock
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Company, at the market price, to some great capitalist of London. And Sir, there is another principle, a principle well developed in a Writ of 47th Edward 3rd, which it is most important to attend to, and apply. It is there laid clown as a necessary qualification, that Borough Representatives should have a suitable knowlege of local interests: the Writ in question required the Sheriff to return "de quolibet Burgo duos Burgenses qui in navigio et exercitio mercandisarum notitiam habeant meliorem;" and the Writ concludes with an injunction that none are to be returned who want this necessary local or rather municipal information. The knowledge which was required in the Burgesses was a plain practical knowledge for every day's use; it was not a superfine knowledge of political economy; that sort of science which has filled the country with bankrupts and bookmakers, which produces thick octavos, and thin purses, and makes men very rich in fine phrases, and very poor in pocket. This was not the kind of knowledge which King Edward required for his Burgesses. They were to be knowing men "in exercitio mercandisarum," in a good sound tradesman-like information, such as was bottomed upon common sense and common experience— not upon theory and hair-splitting, and the lollies of a fanciful philosophy. The result, then, of all these references to Parliamentary antiquities is, that Borough Elections ought to be as free as those of Counties—that the Members returned ought to have some original connexion with the places they represent. They ought to have also local knowledge, a plain practical knowledge of the trade, and trading interests, of their constituents. But to all this it may, perhaps, be replied that the system is ancient, that the practice has passed into usage, and become an established custom, and that it is not safe to disturb what time has sanctioned and settled. To all this, however, the words of Lord Bacon will supply the shortest, and readiest refutation. "Time (says he) is a great innovator," meaning that time itself, and what is called the march of events, produce such changes in the circumstances, relations, and affinities of old institutions, as to make them different in fact and effect, though they may continue the same in name; they may even become so different, as to require adjustments and adaptations to the vicissitudes of time, in

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order to secure their original utility; and that great man has followed up his remark by such pertinent illustrations of it, that I cannot forbear citing them in support of my own views upon this question: neither will they be thought the worse for being ingrafted upon some of the old adagia of our laws. "Leges," (says he) "novis legibus non recreatœ acescunt"—laws not refreshed by new laws wax sour—"qui mala non permutat in bonis non perseverat"—without change of ill, a man cannot continue the good—to take away abuses supplant-eth not good orders, but establisheth them —"Morosa moris retentio res turbulenta est œque ac novitas"—a contentious retaining of custom is a turbulent thing, as much so as innovation—a good husbandman is ever pruning in his vineyard, or his fields, not unseasonably, not unskilfully, but lightly; he findeth ever somewhat to do." And so, Sir, it is with respect to the subject of Parliamentary Reform; and I assert, upon this high authority, that to defend as a tiling that is j praiseworthy, or to recommend as a thing that is expedient, the present ownership in seats and suffrages, and writs of summons to Parliament, because it is ancient, is a sort of revolutionary doctrine; it is to hold the language and opinions of revolutionary men; it is to think, and talk, and act contrary to the principles of our representation, and the analogies of our law, and the spirit of our Constitution, and the judgment of our best writers. The theorist who sets about the defence of venal and proprietary boroughs, may, perhaps, be able to cite many ancient and modern appointments by ladies, as well as gentlemen—for, if I rightly recollect the words of the Record, Dame Dorothy Packington, in the 14th of Elizabeth, sent two Burgesses to Parliament from her town of Aylesbury; and notified, under her hand and seal, that they were her Representatives; and that whatever they did was to be considered as her act and deed.; In spite, however, of this high authority, and all other ancient precedents, it will not be possible to make these crooked transactions strait: it will not be possible to correct their deformities, or to cleanse their foulness, or to legalize their unlawfulness. They are, and ever must remain foul spots upon our drapery—dark and dirty places upon the apparel of this House. Neither are they to be washed out by rhetorical ablutions; by
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descanting upon the beauty which results from the intermixture of imperfections, and the harmony which arises from discord, and the practical advantage of departing from the letter of the law, and of doing a little evil that good may come. All this, and a great deal more may be said, and admired, by the lovers of dexterous declamation; but if ten times more were to be said, and ten times better, it could not have the effect of altering the essential character of these transactions; for these questions still recur, Is it agreeable to the Constitution of the Commons' House of Parliament, that there should be any thing-like settled succession in the course and order of sitting in this House? that there should be any thing like purchase in the mode of getting into it? that there should be any thing like an heir loom—any thing like an heritable, or a marketable, or a testamentary property, or interest attached to these benches?—a sort of property or interest which a man may call his own if he buys it, or is born to it. Such things as these, Sir, are too monstrous to admit, I will not say of decoration, but defence; and when we find able men, politicians, or philosophers trying their best tactics to save these things from attack and overthrow, one cannot help lamenting their waste of fine words, and fine wit—their misuse of the florid in style, and the subtle in argument, and the sarcastic in reply. I might, See, proceed to point out other changes produced by time. Changes have taken place in respect of the qualifications both of the electors and the elected; and changes in the mode of discharging these great public trusts of representation; and changes in men's opinions of them, and in the way in which they are now considered, and spoken of, and sought for. Instead of being called hardships and burthens, from which poor towns prayed to be relieved, they have become lucrative deputations, beneficiary appointments, from which poor towns contrive to derive a profit instead of the Sheriff being obliged to secure the appearance of his citzen or burgess by manucaptor, and even by the seizure of their goods and chattels, he is sure to find plenty of candidates for a vacant seat, and no lack of cost or contrivance to obtain it. Instead of receiving wages—(Knights 4s., Citizens and Burgesses 2s. a day)— many honourable Gentlemen would be glad to hold their seats at no higher cost, than the daily payment of ten times the

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higher sum. But though time has changed the face of all things, both in and out of Parliament; though it has changed all the great interests of the country, and all the relations of public and parliamentary life; and the whole moral, as well as political economy of the nation—it has produced no change in the real objects and purposes of parliamentary representation. It has not in any way affected the reasons which made the Commons of England demand and obtain an adequate appearance by proxy in the great Council of the nation. It has not weakened, nor obscured, any one of the plain and simple propositions contained in the writs of summons to the Sheriffs of the realm. What was good law and good policy upon the issue of the first writ for Knights, Citizens and Burgesses, five hundred and sixty-five years ago, continues to be so still; and there is not a better way of arriving at the Reform which is so much desired, than by reverting to ancient principles, to the manifest designs of our forefathers, to the records of their prudence, as well as of their prowess; and I believe that surer, safer, and readier guidance will be found in the light of their wisdom and the brightness of their example, than in the dreams of the enthusiasts, or in the doctrines of the philosophy of the present day; and I am convinced that it will be found that the best sort of Reform will be the restoration of what time has impaired, the cleansing of what corruption has polluted, the rectifying of what craft has twisted aside from its proper use and real design.—Nothing, Sir, it appeal's to me now, remains but that I should simply and as shortly as I may be able, state the outlines of the Bill which I hold in my hand, and which in its principal provisions I have endeavoured to construct upon ancient principles—principles which have appeared to me best fitted for amending and repairing the Constitution of this House—"Sum ex Us qui antiquos mirantur."—Now, then, Sir, I propose by this Bill, which is to restore to the Commons of England their rightful share in the Legislature, to place upon record, by way of recitals, the fundamental principles of representation, as I find them in the books, when both the theory and the practice were in the state of their greatest purity; that the clear meaning of this Bill may never be misunderstood. I find from the time of Henry 3rd, and
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throughout the subsequent reigns of the three first Edwards (a period at which Sir Matthew Hale, and other text writers, declare the law of England to have reached the highest degree of perfection), that there can be no doubt that the Citizens and Burgesses returned to Parliament, by virtue of the King's writ to the Sheriffs of the different counties, were elected and chosen by the inhabitant-householders of the large and populous towns, paying scot and lot; and so it was declared by a Committee of the House of Commons of which Lord Coke (the great oracle of the law of England) and the learned Mr. Seldon, were both Members; for during the reigns above alluded to, and down to that of Edward IV. the practice of granting royal Charters had not been introduced—the first grant being in the seventeenth year of that reign, by which Charter the right of sending one Burgess to Parliament was granted to the Borough of Wenlock.—I propose, then, by the First enactment of this Bill, that a Committee of twenty-one Members of this House (to be chosen by ballot), shall be appointed within ten days after the passing of this Act, and hereafter within the first ten days after the commencement of each Session, with full power to ascertain the exact state of every city, borough, and port in the United Kingdom.—Secondly, That as soon as the said Committee shall have ascertained the fact that any city, borough, or port, had fallen into decay, and ceased to be such populous and wealthy place, as was originally intended to send a Member or Members-to serve in Parliament, or that the franchise granted to any city, or borough, ought to be considered as forfeited by mis-user or non-user, that it shall be the duty of the Committee to report such facts to the Secretary of State for the Home Department; and that such report shall be deemed and taken to be that which, during the purity of the representation, would have taken place, and actually did take place in many instances; namely, the petition of such city or borough to be relieved of the burthen of sending Members to Parliament. Thirdly, That upon receiving such Report, it shall be the duty of the Secretary of State to announce in the Gazette that such city or borough has ceased to send Members to Parliament, or that the franchise thereof has been forfeited for mis-user.—Fourthly, The Com-

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mittee are directed to begin their investigation and reports with the burgage tenure boroughs, because these are known in their present state to afford a direct proprietary interest. — Fifthly, That as soon as such announcement shall be made in the Gazette, the Committee shall select such populous unrepresented, or inadequately represented, towns or places, with the hundreds, districts, or parishes surrounding the same, as the Committee shall think proper, in order to fill up the seats rendered vacant as above; and it is provided that the right of voting in such towns or places so selected, shall be according to the oldest qualifications known to the law, and the practice of the country; namely, in all the inhabitant householders paying scot and lot—or in other words assessed to any tax, parochial or parliamentary; and the Committee are directed to report such selection to the Secretary of State, who is to cause the same to be published in the Gazette, and to send copies thereof to the Lord Chancellor, the Speaker of the House of Commons, and the returning officers of such towns and places; and such report is to be deemed, and taken to be, the enfranchisement of such towns or places to send Members to Parliament.—Sixthly, As the object of this Bill is to restore the representation to its ancient purity, I propose, among other excellent old laws now either repealed or become obsolete, to restore the principle and practice of paying Members the wages of attendance, according to the value of money at the present day, which I consider should be 21. a day for citizens and burgesses, and 41. for Knights, or Members for counties. No part of our representative system is better established, and it remains the law to this day. If this principle had been strictly adhered to, as it ought to have been, few of the abuses that we now have to complain of could have existed—for, as fast as towns fell into decay they would have been relieved of the burthen of sending Members to Parliament, and other larger and more wealthy and populous towns would have been enfranchised. — Seventhly, I propose, after all populous towns and places shall be represented, that the vacant seats which may remain should be filled first by a representation of those counties in Scotland now subject to alternate representation only, and then by adding one or two Members to such other counties in the
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United Kingdom as the Committee may think stand most in need of such addition; and it is provided, that before the Committee shall add to the County Representation, they are to increase the number of the electors of all those cities and boroughs (now open, and not justifying a Report upon the grounds stated in this Bill), by adding thereto such Hundreds and Parishes round the same as the Committee may think proper, in order that the electors so augmented may be fully able to bear the burthen of paying the wages of attendance.—Eighthly, In order to ensure to any householder assessed to any tax the right of voting, I propose to enact that any such person, who may not be included in any of the places to be enfranchised, may vote at the enfranchised town or place nearest to his residence, provided he agrees to be assessed for payment of the wages, &c. With respect to Scotland, I feel that after the Petitions for Reform from Edinburgh, and almost every borough in Scotland, now before the House, it would be most unjust towards the people of that part of the United Kingdom, and also most unwise and impolitic, to leave the representation in Scotland in the state in which it is: and, therefore, I mean by the foregoing enactments, that its representation shall be reformed and placed upon the same footing as that of England. —Ninthly, Having gone through the enactments as applicable exclusively to cities, boroughs, towns, and ports in the United Kingdom, I propose, as was proposed by Mr. Pitt, in respect of counties, that the right of voting shall be extended to copyholders, and certain leaseholders, not only because the greatest authorities in the law of England, with Lord Coke at their head, have laid it down that copyholders have an estate equal to freeholders, but because these copyhold lands and beneficial leaseholds, as they exist at this day, were tenures utterly unknown when the right of voting was limited to freeholds; and above all, because their copyhold and leasehold lands bear the same proportion of taxes, parochial and parliamentary, as is borne by freeholds. Freeholds also that happen to be situated in any town that is a county by itself, ought not for that reason to be taxed and unrepresented. I therefore propose, that the owners of such property shall be entitled to vote for the county at large. Then, again, with respect to Scotland:—it is a

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fact well known to the gentlemen from that part of the kingdom, that voters for counties are manufactured by a sort of trick: that is, by separating what is called the superiority from the property; and thus voters have been created that have not a foot of property in the county. Is this representation of the landed interest? I propose, therefore, to put an end to all such fictitious means of creating votes; and as a large mass of landed property is now held by what are called feu-rights, that is, beneficial leases for lives, or long terms of years, and subject to a full share of taxation, I propose that this property, like the copyholds in England, shall be represented. — Tenthly, I propose that all persons now in possession of a right of voting for counties in Scotland, arising merely from superiority without property, shall be entitled to vote for the city or borough that shall be nearest to their places of residence, provided they agree to be assessed for the wages of their representatives.—By the Eleventh enactment of this bill, I propose to enact that no person, now having the right to vote for any city or borough, shall again exercise such right unless he be resident within the same; but that all such non-residents shall be entitled to vote for the city or borough nearest to his place of residence: it being the object of these enactments, that no person shall be disfianchised.—As I consider it necessary that regulations should be adopted, to prevent the enormous expense that often takes place at elections, I propose by the Twelfth enactment, that it shall be the duty of the Committee to make such regulations as they think proper for this purpose; and also to render the act of voting as little inconvenient as possible to the electors.—I find our system of representation greatly altered for the worse by some modern Acts of Parliament: these I propose, by the Thirteenth enactment of this Bill, to repeal. In the first place, it is notorious that the only reasons given for passing the Septennial Bill have long since ceased to exist. Therefore I propose to repeal that Bill, namely, the 7th of George 1st. In the next place, I do not find, from the time of Henry 3rd, down to the 9th year of the reign of Queen Anne, that there was any law that made it necessary for citizens and burgesses to be possessed of landed estates of the annual value of 300 1. or any other sum, in order to be qualified to sit in this House;
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while I find, that from the most ancient times, namely, by the 1st of Henry 5th, c. 1. it was wisely enacted, "that such citizens and burgesses of cities and boroughs be chosen men, resident, dwelling-, and free in the same cities and boroughs, and no other in any wise." I therefore propose to repeal this modern Act of Queen Anne, as it relates to the qualification of citizens and burgesses to sit in Parliament.—By the Fourteenth enactment of this Bill, I propose to repeal a still more modern, and a still more monstrous violation of our old law, namely, the 14th George 3rd, c. 58, which was the first act that was made to repeal the wise enactments of the 1st of Henry 5th, requiring that the elected should be chosen from among the resident inhabitants of each place. But as some boroughs have the right by Charter to choose from among themselves, or others, I propose that the Committee by their Report shall confirm such right either to these boroughs, or to such towns as they may select in their place; and I propose to enact that any inhabitant of any town being elected, shall satisfy the 1st of Henry 3rd, as to being free of that place, for the purpose of serving in Parliament. I find by the Act of the 12th and 13th of William 3rd, "for the better securing the rights and liberties of the people," after solemnly declaring that "the laws of England are the birthright of the people thereof," it is enacted, "that no person who has an office or place of profit under the King, or receives a pension from the Crown, shall be capable of serving as a Member of the House of Commons." Now, I hold these wise laws of our ancestors to be the land-marks of the Constitution; and therefore, I propose that the 6th of Queen Anne, c. 7, which, by allowing placemen to vacate their seats and be re-elected, has entirely defeated the wise provisions of the 12th and 13th William 3rd, be repealed; and I propose to declare that the Act of King William was intended to apply to all offices and places of profit under the King, that then existed, or should thereafter exist.—Lastly, Sir, I consider it expedient to repeal, not only such acts as have been passed for upholding what Bishop Burnett and the great Lord Chatham called "the rotten parts of the Constitution," but also such as touch the eligibility of Members to serve in Parliament, if the same shall have been made

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in a particular case, and from personal motives towards any individual; and particularly when the rights and interests of a large and learned body of men have been thereby improperly affected. Now, I consider the Act that was passed against Mr. Horne Tooke in 1801 in this light, and as the late Lord Thurlow. whose authority I presume may be quoted in this House, pronounced this Act to be uncalled-for, unjust, levelled at a single individual, and infamous, from having an ex post facto operation against Mr. Tooke, and all who had then taken holy orders, several of whom had actually sat in this House; and as Mr. Tooke himself did, in reference to this Act, leave a most severe satire behind him upon this House (which, I think, ought to be wiped away,) by thanking his old friend, the then Prime Minister, for his great lenity and kindness in only proposing such a Bill (which Mr. Tooke accepted as the highest compliment that could be paid to the end of his political life) because, if the Minister had proposed a Bill to have had Mr. Tooke taken out of this House, and hanged in the lobby, the same majority would have been equally ready and willing to have passed it. Therefore, for the honour of Parliament, as well as in gratitude to the memory of this learned, uncorrupted, sincere, and dauntless Reformer, in whose steps I am now presuming to tread, I propose, by the Fifteenth enactment of this Bill, that this Act shall be taken off the Record of the Statute-book, and cancelled, or otherwise defaced, to the end that no such Act shall be visible in after ages, and that it shall be wholly repealed.—There is still one other principal enactment more, and that arises from the present and alarming state of the country. I believe this measure to be absolutely necessary to our safety, and I would wish to see the provisions of this Act executed in the most deliberate and considerate manner: but I cannot shut my eyes to the imminent peril of our situation, and to the fact, that it might become of the last importance for the country to have the benefit of the provisions of this Act before it could be possible for the nation to receive it from the Reform Committee. I consider it, therefore, proper to have an enactment to the following effect: —" That if this Parliament shall be dissolved before the Reform Committee shall have reported upon the Cities and Boroughs as it is required to do, so that the country
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shall not be in possession of the benefits contemplated by this Act, then and in that case no writ for the election of Members to serve in Parliament shall be sent to those places that have so fallen into decay as to be unable to bear the burthen of paying the wages of attendance according to the provisions of this Act, and where there is notoriously a direct proprietary interest or domination in returning the Members of this House, and such places shall be enumerated in the Bill; and I propose to enact, "that writs in place thereof shall be sent to the Sheriffs of such Counties for the returns of citizens and burgesses of such large, populous, and unrepresented or inadequately represented towns, as his Majesty, with the advice of the Privy Council shall think proper: and that the returns of Members to serve in Parliament from all such towns, as well as from all other Cities and Boroughs to which the King's writ is sent, shall be made by the votes of a majority of the inhabitant householders, assessed to any tax parochial or parliamentary, and consenting to be assessed to the wages of attendance: and that all the provisions of this Act shall be in full force and virtue, the same as if the Reform Committee had made the reports which are hereby directed to be made." Then there are enactments to secure the regular attendance of the Committee—to exclude from the operation of the Bill the Universities of Oxford, Cambridge, and Dublin—and that each Member of the Committee shall take the oath I will now read;—"I do solemnly promise and swear that, laying aside all private interest or motives, I will to the best of my judgment, faithfully execute all the provisions of the Act under which I have been appointed a Member of the Reform Committee, according to the plain and obvious meaning of the said Act, as set forth in the preamble and enactments of the same; and if it shall appear to me that any improvement can be made in the said Act for the better fulfilling the clear intentions of the Legislature as therein expressed,—I will not fail to propose that such improvement shall be reported to the House of Commons, or to vote for it if proposed by others, and that in a matter of such importance as restoring to the House of Commons the perfect confidence of the nation, and securing for ever the rights and liberties of the people, I will consider it my duty to be regular and punctual in

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my attendance on the said Committee, sickness, or any other unavoidable cause alone preventing such attendance." Finally, Sir, as respects the question of Compensation, I do not propose any compensation to the proprietors of boroughs, because I maintain that it never was intended by the law that it should be possible for any body to qualify any thing like a proprietary interest in the representation of the people, and that all such interests are obtained either by means positively and strictly forbidden by the law, or in consequence of a manifest perversion of its spirit and real meaning. On this point it was well observed by the late hon. Member for Durham, in 1821, that "it would not be depriving them of any thing they ought to have—it would be depriving them only of the corrupt and unconstitutional practicability of selling seats in Parliament, or bartering them for places, pensions, sinecures, and other appointments in the gift of the Minister." I will not, therefore, at the present day, be the proposed of any compensation to the traffickers of seats in Parliament. I am aware, Sir, that Mr. Pitt, and Mr. Wyvill, and many honest Reformers of that day, did adopt the principle of compensation; and I have heard that when it was proposed to Mr. Pitt on the part of certain proprietors of boroughs to accept the honours of the peerage in full compensation, he spurned at the idea; and that he returned precisely the same answer which I have heard the present Minister returned, when a dukedom and other stipendiary compensation were required for services in Parliament. "The dukedom is out of the question, but the other terms of place and stipend shall be complied with, whenever the vacancy happens." Now, Mr. Pitt has been reproached, and I think very justly, for making so many of these proprietors of boroughs. Peers of Parliament, and allowing them to keep their boroughs into the bargain. An actor in this scene (Mr. Home Tooke) has recorded his opinion, in explaining the philosophy of the preposition "along" "Thanks to Pitt, it is along of him that we not only keep our boroughs, but get Peerages into the bargain." "Curses on Pitt, it is along of him, that the free Constitution of this country is destroyed." "I suppose that Lord Lonsdale, Lord Elliott, and the father of Lady Bath, would not mean to impute any fault to the Minister in the
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former of these sentences, though the people of England do certainly impute an inexpiable crime and treachery to him in the latter." Not only, then, have the greater part of these proprietors been thus already compensated in advance; but among whom have the millions of debt, under which this nation is now sinking, been distributed for the most part, but among these proprietors, their relations, friends, dependents, and tools? Still, though I will not be the proposer of compensation, if there were any danger of this Bill being lost for want of giving compensation, in the case of certain burgage tenure Boroughs where no Peerage had been obtained, I would think it better, much as I disapprove of the principle, to give compensation, than to allow this measure to be delayed for a single year; because I know that millions and millions would thereby be saved to the country; and because I would buy off an unjust claim, rather than be subject to the delay and danger of a long and expensive litigation. But, Sir, when I find from a petition presented to this House in 1793, that it was offered to be proved at our bar, that a majority of the House of Commons are returned by less than two hundred individuals, how can the nation afford any thing like compensation for the command of a majority of the House of Commons? The thing is beyond all price; it must be granted as a matter of grace from within these walls; or by the Holy God it will come, as the great Lord Chatham predicted; (and, in truth it seems advancing with rapid strides) with vengeance from without. Now, Sir, I will not trespass much longer upon the attention of the House; but before I conclude, I am desirous of noticing two arguments which have been urged against Reform; both of which I think it not improbable may be used against me this evening. I am aware, Sir, that it has been asked in this House by a late splendid orator, and with somewhat of triumph, by reason of the silence that followed the question, "If it be meant to carry back the Constitution to former times, name your period." The question, I must confess, always appeared to me sophistical. I am for renovating the Constitution in the important particulars I have referred to. I am for repairing the breaches which time has made in its walls.; and for conducting these repairs, and restorations upon

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ancient principles—and am I to be told that my plan is absurd, or my proposal unreasonable, because I cannot mention the Anno Domini when those principles were all found co-existing and co-operating at the same time? Those principles were developed by degrees, and from time to time; and I confess I see no absurdity in saying that some of these ancient principles of the Constitution are to be sought for in Magna Charta. Some in the Act De tallagio non concedendo; some in the Statutes for regulating the frequent holding of Parliament; some in the Statutes for fining Sheriffs for mal-practices; some in the Statutes for fixing the qualification of Burgesses; some in those for securing frank and fair elections; and some in the Petition and Bill of Rights. All these principles I call ancient principles, and a return to them would be a return to ancient principles, although those principles do not bear the date of the same year. To tell me that I shall not have the benefit of this range of inquiry, but that I must confine myself and my observations to a particular year, is to play the dictator in argument, and to impose grievous conditions, indeed, upon the inquirer after truth. I wish to restore the Constitution to its proper form and energies, and to do it upon ancient principles—not the principles of this or that particular year of our Parliamentary history, but as they may be found diffusively, some in Magna Charta, some in this, some in that Writ of Summons; some in this, some in that Act of Parliament; but still forming a large aggregate of good Constitutional authorities for amending and repairing the Constitution of this House. The other argument which has been used against this measure, and to which I will very briefly advert is this; and strange to say it is one, which wears the mantle of Whig authority. It has been insisted that "No Reform can ever be peaceably carried otherwise than by a friendly Administration, and that all plans which will not bear the test of this condition, are either delusions or instruments of Revolution." Now, Sir, as I have before said, I really am disposed to hope that the present men in power may be inclined to look with no unfriendly eye upon such a measure. It must be evident to them that if an Administration will not peaceably concur in plans of Reform, and the system of abuse
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shall reach its acmé, a convulsion must occur. Disorganization cannot be avoided, if they shall continue pertinaciously hostile to political amelioration, and shall: refuse to yield to the public urgency. Be these matters, however as they may, I can safely affirm, that nothing is further from my intention than to render my measure obnoxious to the charge of being an instrument of delusion, whatever other character it may attract. And now, Sir, as I strongly feel this public urgency, and as I am convinced that no one will be found at this time of day hardy enough to contend that the necessity of Reform is either the mere vapour of a dream, or the shadow of a shade, or empty whim and fanciful nothing, I do most confidently anticipate the proximate accomplishment of this great, this just, this wise, this Constitutional measure. Sir, lam aware that by adopting the course pursued by the hon. Member for Durham in 1821, by simply moving that this House will resolve itself into a Committee upon the state of the Representation, and then in that Committee proposing Resolutions embodying the principle of my Bill, I might possibly catch many votes, as there must doubtless be many hon. Members favourable to some extent of Reform, who will be unwilling to go the length I propose to carry the House. But, Sir, I should at this time of day deem such a manœuvre unworthy of the grand object I propose. I am for going straight forward at once to a clear and definite object. I am strongly upheld by precedent upon the main principle of my Bill; namely, the extension of the right of voting to all taxed householders; and the other provisions and repeals contained in it, appear to me so just and becoming, that no arguments will avail to warp my intentions, or induce me to cut down my Bill, to suit the views or interests of any party. I now move for leave to bring in a Bill to restore the Constitutional influence of the Commons in the Parliament of England.
Mr. Humeseconded the Motion.
Mr. Pendarvissaid, he was willing to bear his testimony to the necessity of Reform, in evidence of which he would state that the county of Cornwall was by no means benefitted by the number of Members that it returned to serve in Parliament. Until the noble Mover had communicated them to the House, he had not been aware of the provisions of his Bill, nor was he

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prepared to go all the lengths of that measure. On the contrary, he was disposed to express his entire approbation of the resolutions proposed in 1809 by the hon. Member for Westminster, which would have given a right of voting to all who were in a condition to pay taxes.
Mr. Benettprofessed his admiration of the noble Marquis's speech generally, although he could not promise him his unconditional support. In the present calamitous state of the country, it was, in his opinion, an object of the first importance, to administer relief to the people, and most sincerely sorry was he to see that no disposition to grant that relief had been manifested by the Government. When he looked to the two past Sessions, with a grateful recollection of the important measures which they had passed, to the great benefit of the country, he had hoped that the present Session also would have been similarly distinguished. But he now saw that Parliamentary Reform must precede every suggestion for public advantage, and on that account he would support the Motion of the noble Marquis. People who were but lukewarm in the cause, or at heart disinclined to it, were accustomed to lay hold on the details of a proposed measure, and stop it in limine, under pretence of disliking such provisions. A similar advantage he trusted would not be taken on the present occasion. It was only fair that they should permit, the Bill to be introduced in the first instance, and then they might mould or oppose it as should hereafter be deemed expedient. Corruption had in these latter times advanced very rapidly, and it was now but too well known that the present Parliament did not enjoy the confidence of the people, The existing Government was an honest and well-meaning Government, heacknow-ledged, but no honest Government could be said to derive strength from the support of a Parliament which was not trusted. With respect to the conduct of the noble Marquis, he thought he deserved the highest credit for integrity and disinterestedness. It was not probable that he would long sit as a Member of that House, and in removing elsewhere, the success of his measure would operate to his prejudice, and he therefore advocated a Reform which must hereafter tend to the curtailment of his own power. Such a Reform, as far as he could judge, was at no period more necessary than now.
Sir Robert Wilsonsaid, that he had much doubted the noble Marquis's sincerity last Session, when he first introduced a Motion upon the subject, as it did not appear to him that he had really put on the armour of a Reformer. He then thought that the noble Marquis had ostensibly avowed himself a champion of Reform for the purpose of attaining better vantage ground to attack Ministers for having carried another measure which he conscientiously opposed. He had at present however, no longer any doubt of his perfect sincerity, and felt confident that if it were in his power to-morrow he would execute all that he had proposed. In short, he believed in the reformation of the noble Mover. The principle of the measure he should always support, as he was sent thither by his constituents for that purpose. If Reform had been long since accomplished he was convinced that many of the burthens under which the people suffered would have been withdrawn ere now, and many obnoxious laws would have been effaced. Some of the latter, indeed, had been repealed, owing to the liberality and wisdom of the right hon. Gentleman opposite. He was sorry not to see the Attorney General in his place, as he had wished to have made some allusion to the law of libel, which that right hon. Gentleman had been pledged, under the administration of Mr. Canning, to reform. This was assuredly one of those laws which ought to have been repealed, inflicting, as it did, transportation on a second conviction. If the Parliament had been reformed, we should not have heard of men being dispossessed of their property by a borough proprietor, because they had presumed to exercise their rights as free men. We should not then have heard of British citizens being treated on the footing of goods and chattels. The Members of that House were daily disputing as to whether the present distress was to be considered partial or general, but that question would have soon been set at rest if every Member were personally acquainted with the circumstances of his constituents, and able to declare them. He would advocate and support a fair and free representation, and he was not authorized by his constituents to go further. It occurred to him that the measure proposed was partially objectionable, as it gave somewhat too despotic a power to the Committee, who were permitted to denote, ad libitum, what

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boroughs were fit for representation, and what not so. For his part, he was most agreeably surprised at the suggestion that Members should have wages, and certainly could not bring himself to resist what was so pleasantly recommended, [laughter] On the whole, he was favourable to the introduction of the Bill, and hoped that it would meet with a successful reception.
Lord Nugentexpressed his willingness to vote with the noble Marquis, as the defects in the representation were so numerous that he had long acknowledged the general necessity for Reform. His sentiments on this point he had already taken too many opportunities of expressing to require his doing so on the present occasion. Although he consented so far to support the Bill, he avowed himself to be comparatively ignorant of its details.
Mr. Hobhousewas anxious to hear what the opponents of the Motion could say to it, as hitherto they had heard nothing but arguments in its favour. He could feel no nicety in declaring that he had always voted for Reform, and always would vote for Reform, and all the measures that had the least resemblance to that under their consideration; and for this plain reason, viz. that he conceived the present system the worst possible system of representation that ever existed in a free Government. He would not take up the time of the House in urging the reasons for this opinion, but he would say that every day convinced him more and more of the truth: of this position. We had the forms of freedom with all the disadvantages of the most corrupt system of representation that was ever devised. He would vote for the Motion, because he was satisfied that the Bill could not possibly make us worse than we were, because the Parliament was not collected with the consent of the people but with their complete disassent; because it. was not assembled by their will, but against their conviction; and because the Members were not assembled to do the business of the people, but their own. He could not understand why some reformers should oppose the Motion, for it could not do otherwise than good. He did not understand the Bill, but he understood: that it was the object of the noble Lord to reform the House, and that was enough for him. He was anxious to vote for this measure, because the House had of late been fixing its attention on particular cases; and when it could fix its fangs
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on a special case of corruption, to use the language of a noble Lord, they thought by sacrificing a rotten borough that they should satisfy the people. They were mistaken. The evil was not in one or two boroughs, it was in themselves. Si quœris monumentum, circumspice. Unhappily, however, they were rather disposed to look any where for the evil but in themselves. He was sorry that they should so waste their time, for they deluded nobody but themselves. The hon. Member for Clare said the other evening in speaking of a corrupt borough, that he would kill the wolf, but he (Mr. Hobhouse) quarrelled with the metaphor, as well as with the fact. While they were hunting this one poor wolf, they were allowing the choicest of their flock to be devoured; their homestead was invaded—it was in the possession of the enemy, and they satisfied themselves by hunting to death some one poor mangy feeble animal. He had lately met with an old paper, purporting to be a plan for a Reform of Parliament, supposed to be proposed for the Parliament of Charles the First's reign. It was found about eighty years ago among some old Parliamentary Papers—probably some of the Members had met with it as well as himself, but as it was pleasant he would just quote the heads of it. It was called a Scheme for the better governing the Nation,' and it pretended to have been submitted to the Protector, Oliver Cromwell. In the first place it recommended the total abolition of the House of Peers, as a body that was expensive, inconvenient, and unnecessary. Next to come to the House of Commons: In order to obviate the confusion of frequent elections by large bodies of men, and in order to put an end to bribery, it proposed that the Protector should have the nomination of all the Members, who were to be in all five hundred, and were to be the representatives of all the cities and counties of Great Britain. The Peers might be Members of this body, if the Protector pleased. The Members were not to purchase their seats for different counties, as was customary; that practice was to be repealed, and they were to pay down 1,0007. a-piece, which was to go to the Treasury. They were for this 1,000 l. to receive 350 1. a-year, paid out of the Treasury; and this sum was not to be paid if they absented themselves without leave,

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or voted against the Protector. Each time they voted against him they were to be fined 51. for the first vote, 10 l. for the second, and so on. They were to pay a sum also for every speech they made against the Protector. Me would not enter into further details; but the conclusion of the scheme was, that the nation by it would be saved a great expense, and useless bribery, corruption, and terrorism would be done away. The question was, whether the Reform proposed would content the nation or not; and it was foolish cajolery for them to suppose that the nation would be long contented without Reform. The scheme he had mentioned was proposed seventy or eighty years ago; but it appeared as applicable now as at that time. The best Reform that could be introduced would not change the class of individuals who would sit in that House. The Representatives of the people would still be taken from the principal gentry, the merchants, and the best portion of the lower and middling classes. But a Reform would send them there on a different principle, and with different motives; and, so assembled, they would: act on different principles. He did not mean to deny that great talents—the highest talents of the nation—found their way into that House; it was there where the stake was to be played for; "and where the carcass is, there will the eagles be gathered together"—but individuals of the greatest power and talents came there, not to advocate the national interests, which they did only occasionally; they: came there to advocate their own or their patron's interest. They had always some sinister motives, tempting them to act for the disadvantage of the country. He would not further trouble the House than to express his determination to vote for every general measure of Parliamentary Reform.
Mr. Twisssaid, he should not have troubled the House if it were not that the hon. Member opposite had expressed his desire to hear what the opponents of the measure could say against it. He thought the opponents of the measure were absolved from saying anything against it by the opposition the Motion of the noble Marquis had already met with on the other: side of the House. All that had been said in favour of the Bill was the mere assertion—that the House did not represent the people. That assertion embraced
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too large a question to allow him then to go fully into it; but he would meet the assertion by another. That House was constitutionally supposed to represent the people, and he was sure that it would oppose the Motion of the noble Lord. The hon. Member for Westminster admitted that the change he recommended would still bring the same class of persons into the House, so that they were called on to make a great change, the result of which was to be a House of Commons nothing different from the present. This reminded him of a story told of Mr. Sheridan, who was a little nervous during his last illness, and being one day annoyed by the servant running against the plate warmer, and making a great noise, he swore at him; the fellow apologised by saying that he had broken nothing. "What!" said Sheridan, "do you make all that noise for nothing?" So the Gentlemen who supported this Bill would make all this noise and excite all this disturbance for nothing. All those who had followed the noble Lord, and understood his plan of Reform, found fault with it; those who did not understand it voted for it. His hon. friend who said that no change could be for the worse, was quite consistent in voting for it. Those who thought with his noble friend would vote for the Bill; but those who did not go all his lengths, and those who did understand the measure, would vote against it. Some honourable Members doubted the sincerity of the noble mover; and though he had no suspicions of that kind himself, he could not avoid supposing that his present Bill was intended as a mockery of the whole question of Reform—it was a snake in the grass. Between the satire of the noble Lord and the sarcasms of the hon. Member for Westminster, he thought the opponents of the measure had no occasion to come forward to oppose it; they might leave it to be defeated by its friends
Sir F. Burdettobserved, that the hon. Member who had just sat down, who had attempted to throw a ridicule upon the Motion of the noble Lord, had so utterly mistaken the purport of the paper read by his hon. colleague, that he seemed to think the paper an irony on the present state of the House. The hon. Gentleman had mistaken, and perverted, and misunderstood the argument of his hon. colleague, who had admitted, as he (Sir F. Burdett) ad-

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mitted, that the House was composed of men of as enlightened understandings and as addicted to the English principle of freedom, as could be found collected together in any part of the world,—a compliment which he was willing to pay them. But his hon. friend (Mr. Hobhouse) had contended that they were returned to the House under an influence which rendered them incapable of exerting the noble faculties of their minds, and made them injurious instead of beneficial to the country they belonged to. His hon. friend contended that notwithstanding the admitted ability of the Members, they must, under existing circumstances, be thus influenced; but that under different circumstances the result would be not the same, but the very reverse, and that there would then be no conflict on their part with the public interests. If a person were returned against the law of England, against the Constitution of England, and against those most sacred privileges which were founded upon the acknowledged sovereignty of the people of England, where was the security of the people? It was a high breach of the Constitution and of the privileges of the Commons of England, that a Peer should interfere in the election of a Member of that House. That was the principle which stood recorded in the Journals of that House; and it was owing to a Petition lying on their Table, from a society of patriots calling themselves the Friends of the People, and of which society Mr. Fox and Mr. Grey were Members, which Petition a right hon. Gentleman, whose loss he deeply lamented (Mr. Tierney), was said to have drawn up on the part of the Friends of the People,—that paper, in the year 1793, declared, that one hundred and fifty Members of that. House were returned, not only by the interference, but on the nomination of a very small number of Peers. The Petitioners offered to prove this fact, at the bar of the House. The House was much the same in these days as at that time. He deeply regretted that that right hon. Gentleman did not now live to vote on this question, as he always did vote, and always stood forward with great ability, in defence of those fundamental rights of the people of England which he (Sir F. Burdett) advocated. With respect to the Motion before the House, he was bound to say, that he could not comprehend at once all its details; but he understood it to be a great measure of
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Reform, which the noble Marquis had supported by very considerable ability, and he understood that its object was to endeavour to restore to the people of England a share of the Constitution of the country, to which they had as good a right as a Peer had to his title, or the King to his seat upon the Throne. He regretted to see that, the democratic branch of the Constitution did not retain its proper share of power, and every endeavour to restore the liberty of the people he would do all in his power to advance. The very denial of the House to disfranchise East Retford, was a refusal to adopt the plan of Lord Chatham, to infuse new blood into our crazy Constitution, to enable it to bear its infirmities. When it was considered that a great portion of the talent and understanding of the country was not permitted to find a vent for its opinions in that House,—when great abilities, and every thing enlightened in the empire were excluded by the present system of things,—and when the House absolutely threw away an opportunity to gain some credit with the people, by the disfranchisement of what was called in that House, a corrupt borough, but which he (Sir F. Burdett), did not consider more corrupt than many others, and when the House refused to admit representatives from the great town of Birmingham, and as a plaister to the sore, proposed to throw open the borough to the hundred of Bassetlaw, the people might naturally feel irritated at the House for refusing to grant any concession to their moderate, perhaps too moderate, wishes. He trusted that this Motion would unite the whole country with the people of Birmingham in demanding that fair and full Reform which the people of England were entitled to, and a redress of that worst of grievances, a corrupt representation of the people. He trusted that the noble Lord would persevere in his schemes of Reform, and that he (Sir F. Burdett), after thirty-five years of unremitted efforts, might see the object accomplished. Notwithstanding the length of his career in that undertaking", let the standard of Reform be again raised, and he would be as ardent as ever he was, and prepared to enlist under its banners, be they reared by whom they might. The only struggle really worth making, was for a Reform in Parliament. The only distinction in that House should be those Members who were in favour of Reform and those who were not—those for the people

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of England and those against them; that, was the only true distinction, and every man would know where to take his place. After the termination of that calamitous reign, the reign of George 3rd.,—he called it calamitous in respect to its foreign policy, its encroachments upon the liberties of the people, and the burthens of taxation cast upon the country, which, in spite of the virtues of the man, made that a most calamitous reign for the country, what he would ask was the situation of the country? Plunged in distress and overwhelmed with debt. He had gone through the whole process under the present system of representation, and a most ruinous one it had been. Early in life he came into that House in order to defend the Constitution of England. He purchased his seat of a borough-monger. He purchased it of the Duke of Newcastle. He was no patron of his; he took his money, and by purchase he obtained a right to speak in the most public place in England. With his views, and with his love of the liberty of his country, he did not grudge the sacrifice he made for that commanding consideration. If he had abused the right he had purchased, and passed through corruption to the honours of the Peerage, he should not enjoy the satisfaction he then felt. But he felt it to be a greater honour to be one of the people of England, in whose hearts the love of liberty could never be deracinated, than to enjoy the highest title which it was in the power of the most profligate Minister to bestow. Having thus gone through the whole system of corruption, he could not help having a fellow-feeling for the electors of East Retford, who had had the good sense at least to sell themselves, not others. Having been detected, it was very well for the House to punish the offence; but who could say "I am free?" He then felt a great compunction towards the electors of East Retford; for their behaviour, so far from being a mischief, was really a mitigation of the system. It seemed as if the House were acting on the principles of ancient Sparta, where theft was no offence, but the detection was punished. It was the mal-adroitness, not the commission of the act, that was prohibited,—not the crime, but the want of address in committing it. The House was in the same predicament. The Members for rotten boroughs were nominated by Peers, and of course they could not oppose the opinions of their patrons. A man of honour could
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not sit in the House and vote against the opinion of the Peer who nominated him. By such a principle the people were excluded from the House of their Representatives, though they gave them power. True it was that some Gentlemen said "we represent the people of England at large" this was a fallacy which reconciled many consciences. Such was the mode in which elections were managed, that no person could stand for a county without being-ruined, or at least run into difficulties, He (Sir F. Burdett.) had gone through all this; he had stood for a county, though he would not have given two-pence for the representation of that county, his object having been to expose the abominable system and the oppressive tyranny of solitary confinement in England. To expose those abuses it was that he stood upon the hustings at Brentford, though he really would not have given two-pence for the representation of the county. He could have got returned for East Retford at a much cheaper rate, and have been a more independent man. He had also gone through the remedial operation, as it was called, of the Grenville Act; so that, he had sounded all the shoals and shallows of the system, and it was not wonderful that he should be a great advocate for an alteration. The plain question was this—ought the House to be an assembly of retainers of the Crown, or of representatives of the people of England? He would put it upon that issue. At the end of the American war there appeared a person whose eloquence and talents would have enabled him to restore the country, but who proved the remote cause of all our present distress. Mr. Pitt burst forth with an eloquence which dazzled the judgment, but there was another cause which conciliated more partisans than even his eloquence and his abilities. The strongest hold he had on the partiality of the people of England, was his advocacy of the principle he (Sir F. Burdett) was then advocating. It was Parliamenatry Reform which lifted Mr. Pitt to the cabinet and to political power. Mr. Pitt told the people, when the taxes were only 15,000,000 l. a-year, that without a Reform in Parliament they might expect fresh wars, corruption of every kind, and an increase of the public burthens. He had afterwards; fulfilled his own predictions. He (Sir F. Burdett) had experienced still more of the operation of the system than

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he had mentioned. He had been a convicted libeller. Yes a convicted libeller; and he should not scruple to venture again, when he conceived that the rights and liberties of the people demanded the risk. He did not forget, however, that by the new Law of Libel, a law which was a disgrace to the Statute-book, he might, by a second conviction, suffer the punishment of transportation. For aught he knew he might again be tried for libel; and if he were convicted, as convicted he most probably would be—for he knew not of what stuff juries must be composed, to return such verdicts as they had recently seen—he might be sent to pass the rest of his life at Botany Bay, or at any other foreign dependency of England, and if he quitted England it would be to him of little importance where he might end his then miserable life. That would not, however, deter him; nor would it, he trusted, deter any honest Englishman, from pursuing that course which was dictated by a sense of public duty. Though he was not willing to invite any man to court danger unnecessarily, nor to oppose himself single-handed to the united force of a powerful, and, perhaps, a vindictive Government, he would himself never quail before it, nor stand in awe of our atrocious Libel Act. Say it he must, be the consequences to himself what they might, that as the House was now constituted, our personal liberty, the liberty of the press, every liberty that we enjoyed, were enjoyed, one and all, as mere sufferance. What the right hon. Secretary might be inclined to do,—what his hon. and learned friend the Attorney General might be instigated by the Cabinet to do, he could not venture to predict. Of his hon. and learned friend he wished to speak with affection—even with gratitude—for he had been his able, and honest, and intrepid defender. He could not believe that his hon. and learned friend had instituted the late prosecutions of his own accord, he could not believe that he had followed them up, except with great compulsion; but be that and be all things as they might, he hoped that he should have the fortitude never to desert those principles of Constitutional liberty which he had set out in life by asserting, and which he was not reluctant to die in defending. He thought that no objection could be made in the present stage to the proposition of the noble Marquis. It was
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so usual to allow a Bill to be introduced into the House that he could not conceive it likely that any opposition would be made to the Motion for leave to introduce this Bill. He did not mean to say, that the measure met altogether with his approbation, for it did not go to the extent to which he himself should be inclined to push it. He had himself proposed two modes of Reform, one of which consisted in giving the right of suffrage to all persons who paid direct taxes in the shape of either church-rates or poor-rates. Let that mode be adopted, or any other mode, for infusing fresh spirit into the House, and he should be content. He understood that there was already on the order-book a Motion for giving the right of election to the great manufacturing towns of England which were at present unrepresented. He trusted if that Motion were carried, there would be another proposed for communicating the same right to the great, manufacturing towns of Scotland, which were in a similar predicament. But the representation of all our large towns was so absurd in practice, and formed such an anomaly in our Constitution, that the whole system deserved to be revised. Some hon. Gentlemen had talked much that evening of assimilating the law of England and Ireland. Now, with regard to Ireland, it should be recollected that. Ireland already enjoyed a reformed representation, and that Ireland as now represented—for she had got rid of the small boroughs—would form the model of an efficient Reform for England. It was not, however, his duty to go into that discussion at present: it was sufficient for him to feel now as strongly as ever he did, the imperative necessity of Reform. He hoped,—and from the information which he had recently received from different parts of the country, he believed,—that the people of England were at last beginning to bestir themselves, and to place sufficient, confidence in their own power of exertion. He understood that petitions would be sent to the House so backed by ability and union,—such union as he had recently seen with pleasure exhibited at Birmingham,—and mixed up with so much caution and discretion, that it would be impossible for the House not to take this important question into its most serious consideration, with the honest intention of adopting such a Reform as was suited to the state of the country.
The Attorney Generalrose to address the House, but his commencing observations were inaudible, and during the whole of his Speech he was very indistinctly heard, owing to the emotion which he appeared to feel. After some remarks upon the Motion of the noble Marquis, he proceeded to say, that he had not risen so much for the sake of speaking upon it as for the sake of observing on the extraordinary conduct of his hon. friend opposite, who, in a debate which had no allusion to him (the Attorney General) personally, had thought proper to cast the weight of his heavy censure upon him. He thought that as there were two Motions already upon the order book, which would afford some regular opportunity for discussing his conduct, he might have expected that at least, in candour, his friends—from his enemies he could expect nothing but hostility—would have abstained from introducing such a discussion until he had received due notice of their intention. But as his hon. friend the Member for Westminster had introduced him to the notice of the House, he would commence by assuring his hon. friend that there was no act of his professional life on which he looked back with greater satisfaction than that in which he had had the distinguished honour of appearing as his defender. This he could at least say, that whether he had defended his hon. friend ably or not, he had done it honestly, zealously, and sincerely, for he felt at that time, and he felt now, that the prosecution which was instituted against his hon. friend was a prosecution which ought never to have been instituted at all. He would not shrink from stating his opinion upon that prosecution at all times and in all places; but if his hon. friend would look into the proceedings to which he had just alluded, and would impartially consider all that had been done or said in the course of them, he was persuaded that his hon. friend, for whom he felt the utmost regard and affection, would find that he had neither done nor said any thing inconsistent with the principles on which he had defended him. He could not accept the compliment which his honourable friend had wished to pay him, in supposing that the late prosecutions had been forced upon him by the compulsion of the Cabinet. Those prosecutions required to be looked upon not incidentally in the course of another debate, they were of sufficient
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importance to be considered by themselves: they formed part of a subject which deserved consideration as a whole, and as a whole they must be considered, in order to see the reasons on which the verdicts were founded. Those prosecutions—he said it without reserve—were approved of by him, for he thought them necessary to the well being of the community. Such was his humble judgment,—for he arrogated to himself no superiority of judgment over other men.—but as an honest man, he thought, after the completion of the great measure of last Session, which in spite of all the warmth with which it was opposed was now working most beneficially for the country, that he saw in a portion of the press a disposition to licentiousness and falsehood which rendered it necessary to keep it in some check. Unless his hon. friend meant that the liberty of the press should become the tyranny of the press, and that no man should assert his right of private judgment except under the peril of being attacked by the most wicked and virulent falsehood, both in his private and in his public capacity, he must admit that there were occasions upon which some castigation must be administered to the offences of the press. There was, in his opinion, no means of destroying the licentiousness of the press, except by showing that it contained in itself the destructiveness of its real liberty. As to the Libel Law, winch the hon. Baronet had denounced with so much warmth and justice, he would only observe, that he had been in the ranks of those who had both spoken and voted against it, and that if an opportunity were given him, he would be ready to fall into the same ranks again. Let him, however, remind his hon. friend the Member for Westminster, if he had not entirely forgotten what had fallen from so humble an individual as himself, that one of the arguments which he had used against that Bill, and in which he had the concurrence of several of his learned friends whom he then saw in the House, was, that the licentiousness of the press might be corrected by the law as it then stood, and that it wanted no other correction. The House was, however, of a different opinion; and thinking some other corrective necessary, passed the Act in question. He was not ashamed to say in public—what all men were ready enough to say in private,—that no single individual could now resist the tyranny of

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the press; so that we were come to that condition so well described by the Roman historian, in which "nec mala nec remedia pati possumus." In what he had said, he did not wish to offend any man. If he spoke with warmth—and it was perhaps impossible for an individual, assailed as he had been, to speak otherwise—he meant no disrespect either to his hon. friend the Member for Westminster, or to any other hon. Member who heard him. He could not, however, accept the insidious compliment which had been paid him, when it was said, that he had been instigated by the Cabinet to institute the recent prosecutions. He had already refused, and he must refuse again, to shelter himself under so mean-spirited a defence. In joining the present administration, it was distinctly understood that he was not to abandon any opinion and not to compromise any principle. He had joined it with the sincere approbation of his warmest political friends. In so doing he had nothing of which to repent; no reproach had been cast upon him, and he had the proud satisfaction of reflecting that he deserved none. He would not remain for a single hour in office with any administration which should presume to order him to perform the duties of his situation in any respect contrary to the dictates of his own conscience. He thought that the press of this country ought to enjoy full liberty, unshackled by any previous censure, but at the same time he thought that the press would not long enjoy that moral influence which it ought to possess, if every opinion or every falsehood which it promulgated were treated with indifference,—if its rhapsodies in praise of some men and its calumnies in depreciation of others, were both to be considered as idle words full of sound but meaning nothing. He wanted no new law, he repeated, for the correction of the errors of the press. He was satisfied with the Libel Law of Mr. Fox, which when first passed after a struggle continued for several years, was hailed as a great triumph by the friends of popular discussion. That law gave to the jury and took from the judge the power of determining what was and what was not a libel. He believed that there was not at present a judge upon the bench who would not leave it to the jury to determine whether any writing accused of being libellous were a libel or not. To the tribunal of a jury he had appealed in
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the recent prosecutions: they had found the publications which he had brought before them to be libels, and he would venture to say that if his hon. friend the Member for Westminster had been a Member of those juries, he should have had his concurrence in their verdicts.
Lord John Russelsaid, that he had known his hon. and learned friend (the Attorney General) for many years, and had never known him profess any opinions but such as were favourable to the cause of freedom. He should therefore wait to hear his explanation of his conduct in the recent prosecutions before he ventured to give any opinion upon it. He could not, however, refrain from remarking, that there had lately appeared in the newspapers words attributed—perhaps incorrectly—to his hon. and learned friend, which, if they were correct, he must say could not be looked upon without regret. It was only the other day that he read in the newspapers words said to have been used by his hon. and learned friend, which led him to suppose that his hon. and learned friend objected to the public's canvassing the opinions of judges and of juries. He hoped that his hon. and learned friend would be able to explain these words away at the proper time. The noble Lord then proceeded to state, that in voting with the noble Marquis upon the present occasion, he did so not upon the grounds upon which the noble Marquis had put it, but upon the grounds upon which he had not put it. He voted for it not because he thought that it was a question which ought to be referred to a Commit-tee of twenty-one, but because he thought that it was a question which ought to be referred to a Committee of the whole House. The noble Lord ridiculed the idea that the House had acted unfairly to such boroughs as it had disfranchised for corrupt practices, inasmuch as it was notorious that practices equally corrupt prevailed in every part of the country. There was no ground for applying, as the noble Lord had done, the hacknied quotation,
"Dat veniam corvis—vexat censura columbas."
The columbœ, who received 20 l. for their votes, and then went and swore that they had received nothing, as was done at Grampound, could not be considered as very innocent doves, [a laugh]
Mr. Secretary Peelsaid, he was unwilling to give his vote unaccompanied by a few observations, lest he should be deemed

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to be acting disrespectfully to the noble Marquis who had brought the Motion forward. But as he disapproved both of the object which the noble Marquis had in view, and of the mode in which he sought to accomplish it, he should imitate the fairness of the noble Marquis himself by declaring that he should give his most decided opposition to this Bill, in its very first stage. He certainly did not expect to have had a general discussion that evening on the question of Reform, and he thought that the desultory speech of the hon. Member for Westminster was a sufficient proof that it was not convenient to have such a subject thus irregularly discussed. The Bill had a most extraordinary title, it professed to be a Bill not for preventing but for regulating abuses in the elections of Members to serve in Parliament. The House then was called on, not to put down but. to regulate and preserve abuses by the noble Marquis's Bill. The speech made in support of it by the hon. Member for Westminster was particularly open to the objection that there was in it "eloquentiœ satis, sapientiœ parvum" [a laugh]; for though there was in it of declamation much, of argument there was less than he had ever heard in any former speech of the hon. Baronet. If he had stepped into the House accidentally, and without knowing the subject of the debate, he should have supposed the hon. Baronet to have been delivering an eloquent speech, not in favour of, but in opposition to a Reform in Parliament. The hon. Baronet admitted though the House was improperly constituted that it contained men of the greatest talent in the country—individuals, whose respectability in private life could not be questioned—Members, who, to use the hon. Baronet's own phrase, were addicted to all the qualities which were calculated to raise the character of the country, and who were equal to any others in any part of Europe. It was an important admission coming from the hon. Baronet that the present system of representation assembled men of eminence, talent, and private virtue, [Sir F. Burdett nodded assent] actuated by the purest views; [Sir F. Burdett, "No, no;"] and what rendered this admission the more extraordinary, was, that the hon. Baronet concluded it by contending that the mode in which these eminent, and able, and virtuous men were sent here, vitiated all their good qualities, and rendered them noxious and dangerous.
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When the hon. Baronet entered into a history of the Constitution of the House, his arguments were all in favour of the small boroughs. The hon. Baronet was one of those individuals who would go down to posterity as one of the most distinguished men of his day: and yet he had told them, "When I was first returned to this House, I was returned for a small borough, owing no obligation to the party who returned me;" and he had then proceeded to contrast his election with that small borough with his election for a populous county. He said, "I was a candidate for the representation of a large county. I carried my election at a large expense; and yet" he added, twice over, "for the honour of representing that county, I would not give two-pence." Under such circumstances, seeing that the hon. Baronet valued his election for a small borough more than he did his election for a populous county,—seeing that Mr. Pitt, whose talents the hon. Baronet admitted to have been sufficient to render him, if he had been properly disposed, the saviour of his country, had first entered Parliament for Appleby, and that many other eminent men had made their first Parliamentary debut in a similar manner,—seeing that Mr. Fox, when excluded from the representation of a large town, found refuge in a small borough,—he thought that the hon. Baronet and the House ought to weigh well the practical good effected by the existence of these small boroughs before they involved them all in one sweeping condemnation. As to the Motion of the noble Marquis, he was quite certain that the House would never agree to it. The noble Marquis moved that the House should devolve on a Committee of twenty-one Members chosen by ballot, the power of destroying all the boroughs which that Committee should suppose were incapacitated by corruption, or otherwise, from sending Members to Parliament. He would never be a party to that wholesale depreciation of the Elective franchise; and he would never give his assent even to the first stage of a Bill which conferred such power upon any Committee. A Committee so constituted might inflict great wrong and injustice. It might be a Ministerial, it might be an Opposition Committee—but be it what it might, he would never consent to allow any Committee to report to any Secretary of "State, that a borough had forfeited its

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privilege, and to order him to give notice in the Gazette, that such a borough had forfeited its share in the representation. Next he objected to the noble Marquis's plan for paying Members of Parliament. They had that night been occupied in discussing the propriety of Reform; and yet the Bill which was to effect that reform contained a proposition, enabling them to appropriate to themselves 250,000 l. annually—a very modest proposal, and one well calculated to recommend the House to public confidence. The noble Marquis was for allowing two guineas a-day to every borough, and four guineas a-day to every county, Member; thus showing that he estimated a county Member at double the value of a borough Member. Now taking three guineas as the average sum paid to each Member, supposing the House to sit six days in every week, and the Session to last for twenty-five weeks, the sum annually paid to six hundred and fifty-eight Members would amount to a little more than 250,000 l. ["Hear," and laughter] On these grounds, and thanking the noble Lord for the manly and straightforward manner in which he declined proposing the appointment of a Committee for the purpose of catching a few stray votes—thanking him for having openly declared his plan of Reform—he would state, with equal fairness and equal sincerity, that it was his intention to take the sense of the House on the Motion, and that he was opposed to bringing in the Bill.
Viscount Howickobserved that, from the manner in which the benches of that House were filled, it was impossible to expect any great object, for the benefit of the people would be carried. The hon. Baronet below him (Sir F. Burdett) had not been able, with all his great talents, his well-known perseverance, and his tried integrity, to prevent the passing of any one of those measures which had brought the country to its present state. Mr. Pitt, who commenced his career as a reformer, soon deserted the interests of the people. His great energies were first displayed in the strenuous support of those interests, but that he soon found was a losing game. He saw that the voice of the people in that House was weak and powerless, and that the voice of another class, which had been raised to influence, was all-powerful there; and to that class he attached himself. They now beheld before them a
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large portion of that party on whom Mr. Pitt relied, loudly clamouring for what was little less than national bankruptcy. [hear] Such was the state of the House, that it might be justly asserted that the people of England were not represented in Parliament. The consequence was, that a system of profligacy and extravagance had been pursued which had brought the nation to the verge of ruin; and those who caused it were now afraid to meet and encounter the distress. They came down to that House almost in despair, and to relieve themselves they called for the sacrifice of the national faith; they were anxious to defraud the national creditor of what was due to him under the most solemn pledges, [hear] He knew that this was not a very popular feeling on the subject, but he could not avoid stating his opinion boldly. To him it appeared that nothing could essentially serve the country but a perfect and complete reform of that House.
Mr. O'Connellsaid, he certainly should not have risen at that late hour, had he not been pointedly alluded to by his hon. friend, the Member for Westminster (Mr. Hobhouse). On a former occasion he did most cheerfully join in hunting down the mangy wolf, and now he would as readily join in the pursuit of the remaining portion of the flock.—[This allusion of the hon. and learned Gentleman was to the conclusion of a speech of his own in the discussion some days before, on a Motion respecting the Borough of East Retford.] If they had scotched one wolf, they certainly ought not to let the others escape. As for the Committee of twenty-one, he was as little disposed to support it as the right hon. Secretary. He was decidedly of opinion that no authority short of the Legislature itself should possess the power of disfranchising Boroughs or Cities, —but these details were matters of secondary importance—he looked to the principle of the measure; it was a Bill to secure the popular representation of the people, and beyond that it was a Bill to exclude placemen and pensioners from Parliament; as such he would support it, though he confessed that the plan for paying the Representatives of the people did not meet his approbation. He neither wished for wages from the people, nor for salaries from the crown. But when the right hon. Secretary talked of the wages as so likely to alienate the confidence of the people, he should have remembered

719
that seventy-eight Members of that House received 180,000 l. of the public money. No doubt all these were right hon. men, and conscientious men; and yet, when any of them gave a conscientious vote, they felt heavy consequences.; witness the fate of the hon. and gallant Member for Sligo. Whether a Groom of the Bedchamber, or holding a higher or a lower office, the moment he presumed to give a conscientious vote, that moment the hand of the King himself struck his name out from amongst the household. Within a short space he was in and out of office; he voted for his conscience and against his interest, and immediately thereupon a new writ is moved for the place represented by his successor in office, who, no doubt, was also a conscientious man; but let him beware how he yielded to the dictates of his conscience. If he dared to oppose the Minister he must resign office instantly. As a representative of the people, he must denounce—his sense of duty called upon him to denounce—any man who, for his services in that House, took money either from the Crown or from any other quarter; but though opposed to the principle of payment, he would call upon the House, in the name of the country, to accede to the great principle of popular representation. It was a matter of the most complete notoriety, that two hundred and forty-three Members of that House were nominated by Peers, one hundred and fifty-nine by Commoners, and that twenty-two sat for Treasury boroughs; thus there were four hundred and twenty-four with scats in that House, who were anything but the Representatives of the people;—One hundred and thirty-four were all who really represented the people. This statement he made from information obtained so far back as the year 1793; humble and insignificant an individual as he was in himself, he would challenge any man to meet him on that ground, and he would pledge himself to prove the accuracy of his statement. Since the period to which he referred there had been an accession to the House of one hundred Members, and certainly that circumstance did not tend to augment the proportion of representatives of the people. Among the Irish Members he could find only twenty-one who were popularly elected, or rather, he should say, who were not nominated by individuals. Now the question which the House would decide by its vote that
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night was, whether or not that state of the representation was constitutional or otherwise. He would say, that all who paid taxes directly or indirectly were entitled to a vote in the election of the Representatives who were to dispose of those taxes. As a radical reformer he would always maintain that principle. He would, as a reformer, appeal in support of it to the great principle of democratic liberty which made England the great and productive country which she had been for centuries. France and Spain were broader and not less fertile, but it was the great spirit of democracy which made the land of smaller dimensions overtop those which possessed the blessings of nature and all physical advantages, without the moral benefit of free institutions—yes, he would repeat, it was that democratic spirit which had imparted to her all of national glory that she ever possessed. He would not refer to ancient States—those would be mere schoolboy recollections; but he would ask, what gave to Venice eight hundred years of glory abroad and happiness at home, but the same democratic spirit? What but the same spirit gave four hundred years of freedom to the wild mountains of Switzerland, and enabled her sons by their irresistible valour to bear down the iron chivalry of Europe? What gave the States of Northern America, the prosperity, the wealth, and the solid glory which were raising them to an elevated station amongst the nations of the earth? what but the spirit of democratic freedom! That spirit then he would invoke for the resuscitation of England, for giving security, to the Throne, and placing the national prosperity upon a permanent basis. What was the result of the present system? They had 800,000,000 l. of debt—and then to meet that, they had a pleasant speech from the right hon. Secretary, and a stale jest from the hon. Member for Wootton Basset (Mr. Twiss) towards whom he meant no personal disrespect; that was all the public would have in the newspapers to-morrow. Of the great principles of Reform, he had that night heard nothing which could induce him to alter his views. He never could be brought to believe that two hundred individuals were better judges of the interests of the people than the people themselves. He hoped that as the French Budget had been rejected, so would the

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Supplies be refused by that House till the prospect of a liberal system were held out. Every day he lived he was the more and more convinced that nothing could be more debasing than the present system of Representation. When he saw Gentlemen otherwise of the highest honour, from the mere contact and association corrupted to the purposes of an oligarchical tyranny, he could not bring himself to speak of the system but with abhorrence and disgust. He raised his voice on behalf of the people; he called upon the House, which had shorn the talons of the Monarchy, to use its power to cut short the fell fangs of the oligarchical faction which lorded it over the land. Let the House but do that, and it would have little difficulty in giving to the Constitution its pristine and genuine form.
Mr. Broughamcommenced by declaring, that he considered the conduct of the hon. Members for Aylesbury, Cornwall, and Wiltshire to be unfair, they having stated that, although they approved of certain portions of the noble Marquis's Resolution, and would vote for his having leave to bring in his Bill, yet that they did so with the intention of opposing it at some future stage of its progress through that House. He also considered that this project of suffering the measure to exist for one moment, that they might strangle it in the next, was senseless and ridiculous. He would pursue a different course. It was not because he disapproved of some points in that Resolution that he was to pronounce a sweeping condemnation of it, for there were others which met with his most decided approbation; and if he looked upon the question with no other view but that one, he should feel himself bound to give the noble Marquis his vote. He differed certainly from the noble Marquis in the first part of his project, as far as any one man possibly could differ from another. He also disagreed with him as to the policy of wages or payment for Members; yet, when he looked to other parts of that Bill, if he did not falsify all his just professions—if he did not run counter to all his former votes, he could not refuse to give the noble Marquis the opportunity of bringing in his Bill, and so afford him the chance of having its provisions carried into effect. Amongst the desirable objects of this Bill, he found that all copyholders were to have a right to vote—that the
722
expense of elections were to be diminished, by permitting votes to be taken at places immediately in the neighbourhood of the voters—that the Scotch cities and counties were to be placed upon the footing of those of England—a great Reform applied to that portion of our representative system which was completely without defence. In England they talked of a virtual representation—they held up one point, namely, the representation of counties, as a defence for the more exceptionable part; but in Scotland there was no such pretence. In all Scotland there was no trace, no sign, no vestige; of free Representation; the cities and counties there were worse than the most rotten boroughs of England, for they had there the complicated and peculiar evil of an election within an election, wherein both were bad. Of all the impure species of return, that by the votes of non-resident freemen was the worst; and all must agree that, if there be a safe Reform—a Reform which should unite all voices, it would be that of cutting off non-resident voters, [hear, hear] There were also other parts of the measure deserving of his warmest praise, and which ought to ensure the vote—he would not say of a majority, but. of a very large minority, of the House in its favour. His own opinion was, that the Motion would have been better and more acceptably produced under the form of a general Resolution than under that of a specific plan. He begged, therefore, to suggest to the noble Marquis, some alteration to this effect. Such an Amendment would be equally direct for its object, and not incompatible with the noble Marquis's design, because it would lead to a specific measure. For these reasons he thought it would be better, and less dangerous to the great question of Parliamentary Reform, if the noble Marquis would permit him to substitute for his Motion, a general Resolution, to the effect that this House is of opinion that a Reform in the Representation of the Country is expedient. He proposed this, not for the foolish purpose of catching a few votes. For who could suppose that it signified one straw whether the question were lost by ten votes more, or by ten votes less. If any man were so stupid, so senseless, so grossly ignorant of the resources of that great question, as to fancy it could be influenced by the paltry difference of a

723
few votes, he should hold his opinion as of less worth than even this difference between the ten votes more or the ten votes less, [cheers] But he felt that the Motion of the noble Marquis was encompassed with many difficulties, which he was anxious to remove. The measure was harnessed with details disagreeable to many persons, who might fear to vote for it, lest by so doing they might appear to sanction those obnoxious details. Thus the noble Marquis had placed those Gentlemen in this predicament—either they must vote for the Bill, and so leave it in doubt whether they did or did not approve of all the details, or else they were subjected to the still more painful alternative of voting against the measure, and so laying themselves open to the suspicion of having relaxed in their zeal for a cause which they had for so long a time professed to advocate. He, therefore, most respectfully begged to offer his humble efforts in substituting a general Amendment for the special Motion. Before sitting down, he wished to allude to some expressions which had fallen from the hon. Member for Wootton Basset (Mr. Twiss). He had heard with infinite indignation that hon. Gentleman charge the noble Marquis who introduced the question (as, he thought in a very zealous and able manner), with having made an ironical Speech in favour of the proposition—and also charge the hon. Member for Westminster (Mr. Hobhouse) with having supported the motion in a tone of more stern irony than that adopted by the noble Marquis. The hon. Member had, with very questionable taste, alluded to the noble Mover, and the appellation of the snake in the grass which he had applied to the Bill of the noble Marquis was unwarranted by the frank and honourable manner in which the noble Mover had avowed his conversion. If his hon. and learned friend would bring forward, with such distinguished talent as the noble Lord had displayed that night, Motions for the good of his country, or, when others brought them forward, if he would support them with one half the ability and sincerity of his hon. friend the Member for Westminster, he would hail, with pleasure, his acquisition to the patriot list of that House.
Mr. H. Twisssaid, he had not the remotest idea of imputing to the noble Marquis any such feeling as the hon. and
724
learned Gentleman adverted to, and therefore he did not deserve the unjust, erroneous, and he would say, unbecoming-remarks that were made of him.
Mr. Broughamcertainly did hear the hon. and learned Member speak of two sorts of irony—the one more ludicrous, the other more stern. As to his observation being unbecoming, he thought the hon. and learned Gentleman should thank him for giving him an opportunity of explaining a point, with respect to which, but for that explanation, it would appear that the whole House would have been totally and entirely mistaken.
Mr. Stanleysaid, he felt it to be his duty, being called on to give his vote one way or another, to declare, that he would vote against the Bill. He could not support a Bill now, which he knew he must oppose hereafter.
Colonel Daviessaid, that the Amendment was general, and the hon. Gentleman might vote for that.
Mr. Maberly Mr. Maberly, though a Reformer, could not support the Motion. He hoped the hon. and learned Member for Knaresborough would move his Amendment, which he would support. If he did not, he would leave the House without voting.
Lord Althorpdeclared, that he would vote for the Motion of his noble relation, if it were pressed to a division; but, agreeing with his hon. and learned friend, he thought the best course would be to adopt the Amendment. He therefore moved, "That all the words after the word 'that' be omitted, in order to insert the following:—"It is the opinion of this House that a Reform in the Representation of the people is necessary."
The House then divided on the Question "That the words proposed to be left out stand part of the Question," when the numbers were—For retaining the words 160; For omitting them to make room for the Amendment 57; Majority 113. The original Motion was then negatived.

List of the Majority and also of the Minority.

MAJORITY.

Atkins, Alderman

Astley, Sir J. D. Bart.

Ashurst, W. H.

Ashley, Hon. W.

Apsley, Lord

A'Court, Capt. E. H.

Alexander, J.

Ashley, Lord

Arbuthnot, rt. hon. C.

Acland, Sir T.

Arbuthnot, hn. Col. H,

Bankes, H.

725

Bankes, W.

Greene, T. G.

Bankes, G.

Hill, Sir R.

Batley, H.

Hill, Lord A.

Buxton, T. F.

Holmes, W.

Burrell, W.

Hay, A.

Benson, R.

Hope, W. H.

Byron, T.

Hope, hon. Sir A.

Barclay, C.

Herries, rt. hon. C

Barclay, D.

Heathcote, Sir W.

Bright, H.

Holmesdale, Lord

Baring, B.

Hastings, Sir C.

Boyle, hon. J.

Irving, J.

Campbell, J.

Jones, J.

Campbell, A.

Knatchbull, Sir E.

Cust, hon. E.

King, Hon. R.

Castlereagh, Lord

Kekewich, S. T.

Carrington, Sir E.

Knox, hon. T.

Clive, hon. R.

Lygon, hon. H. B.

Cooper, B.

Loch, J.

Cartwright, W. R.

Littleton, E. I.

Clerk, Sir G.

Labouchere, H.

Courtenay, rt. hon. F. P.

Langston, J. H.

Cockburn, Sir G.

Lushington, Col.

Calvert, J.

Martin, Sir B.

Calcraft, rt. hon. J.

Mountcharles, Lord

Craddock, Col.

Meynell, Captain

Callaghan, G.

Moore, G.

Capel, J.

Morgan, Sir C.

Corry, hon. H.

Marryat, J.

Corry, Lord

Manners, Lord C.

Colborne, R.

Morgan, Captain

Corbett, P.

Macleod, J. N.

Darlington, Lord

Murray, Sir G.

Downie, R.

Milbank, M.

Doherty, J.

Maitland, Hon. A.

Dottin, A. R.

Morland, Sir S. B. Bt.

Downes, Lord

Mildmay, P.

Daly, J.

Malcolm, N.

Denison, J. E.

Norton, G. C.

Dundas, R.

North, J. H.

East, Sir E. H. Bart.

Northcote, H. S.

Eliot, Lord

Owen, Sir J. Bart.

Estcourt, T.

Owen, H. O.

Estcourt, T. H.

O'Bryen, W.

Egerton, W.

Palmer, R.

Ewart, W.

Perceval, S.

Freemantle, Sir T.

Petit, L. H.

Foster, L.

Peel, rt. hon. R.

Fergusson, C.

Peel, W.

Gower, Lord F. L.

Peel, J.

Graham, Marquis

Peach, N. W.

Graham, Sir J.

Peachy, General

Grant, rt. hon. C.

Powlett, Lord W. J. F.

Grant, rt. hon. R.

Palk, Sir L. V., Bart.

The following is a Copy of the Bill as proposed by the noble Marquis:—
A BILL
To restore the Constitutional Influence of the Commons in the Parliament of England, and to secure for ever the Purity of Representation, and the Freedom of Election, of Members to serve in the Commons House of Parliament.
WHEREAS it has been declared and admitted from time immemorial, as well as by ancient statutes, "that the Commons of

Palmerston, Lord

Trench, Colonel

Roberts, W. A.

Twiss, H.

Rose, Capt. G. P.

Townshend, hon. J.

Ross, C.

Thompson, L.

Rice, T.

Valletort, Lord

Strathaven, Lord

Vyvyan, Sir R.

Somerset, Lord R. E.

Van Homrigh, P.

Somerset, Lord G.

Vernon, G. G. V.

Scott, Sir W.

Villiers, T. H.

Smith, R. V.

Walrond, B.

Spence, G.

Wallace, T.

Spottiswoode, A.

Wood, Colonel

Scarlett, Sir J.

Wynn, rt. hon. C. W.

Scott, H. F.

Warrender, right hon. Sir G.

Sandon, Lord

Sidney, P. C.

Walpole, Colonel

Sanderson, R.

Ward, W.

Sefton, Lord

Wigram, W.

Surrey, Lord

Wall, B.

Stewart, Sir M. S.

Whitmore, W. W.

Slaney, R. A.

TELLERS.

Stanley, Hon. E.

Dawson, G. R.

Thynne, Lord J.

Planta, J.

MINORITY.

Althorp, Lord

Nugent, Lord

Benett, J.

O'Connell, D.

Bernal, R.

Palmer, F.

Birch, J.

Pendarvis, E. W.

Blake, Sir F.

Poyntz, S.

Brougham, H.

Protheroe, E.

Butler, C.

Ramsbottom, J.

Burdett, Sir F.

Robarts, A. W.

Calvert, N.

Robinson, Sir G.

Cholmeley, M. J.

Russell, Lord J.

Clive, E. B.

Russell, J.

Denison, W. J.

Saville, L.

Davies, Colonel

Smith, W.

Davenport, E.

Sykes, D.

Dawson, A.

Taylor, M. A.

Ebrington, Lord

Thomson, P.

Easthope, J.

Warburton, H.

Fergusson, Sir R.

Webbe, Colonel

Fortescue, hon. G.

Wilson, Sir R.

Gordon, R.

Wells, J.

Hobhouse, J. C.

Whitbread, H.

Howick, Lord

Whitbread, S.

Ingilby, Sir W.

Western, C.

Jephson, C. O.

Wrottesley, Sir J.

Lambert, J. S.

Wood, Ald.

Marjoribanks, S.

Wood, J.

Marshall, J.

Wyvill, M.

Marshall, W.

TELLERS.

Martin, J.

Blandford, Marquis of Joseph Hume

Monck, J. B.

England were ever a part of the Parliament:"
And whereas it is one of the most ancient and undoubted prerogatives of the Crown, with the advice of the Privy Council, to summons, by writ issued out of Chancery, Sheriffs of the different counties to return Knights, Citizens, and Burgesses to serve in Parliament for such counties, and the cities and boroughs within the same:
And whereas the purpose and object of conferring on the Crown this high and transcendant prerogative, was to insure, by the return of such