Mr. Pringlepresented a Petition from the Noblemen, Gentlemen, &c. of Selkirk, praying that that county might not, by the Scotch Reform Bill, be united to Peebles, with which it had little or no connexion, being separated from it by a wild mountainous country, thinly inhabited, and with scarcely a thoroughfare. Their public business was conducted under separate statutes, and on different principles. They were not calculated for any political union, and the effect would be, that the lesser county would be disfranchised.
Mr. Cutlar Fergussonassured the House, that the measure for uniting the Scotch counties had excited much attention in that country, and had produced great discontent, but at present he would content himself with giving notice, that he would move, as an instruction to the Committee on the Scotch Reform Bill, that the present number of Scotch county Members should not be diminished.
An Hon. Membersaid, as this was the only instance of uniting counties in the whole of the three Reform Bills, he should certainly oppose it.