BOROUGH OF WARWICK.

HC Deb 26 February 1834 vol 21 cc836-46

Sir Ronald Ferguson

rose to move the second reading of the Warwick Borough Bill. He had hoped that, in doing so, it would not have been necessary for him to say one word in addition to those of the mere motion; and he should have preferred that course, for he was anxious to hear, at that stage of the proceedings, if any thing could be urged in a Reformed House against such a measure. He was glad the petition which had been just presented to the Mouse was before it. It certainly was somewhat curious, to find a body of rate-payers professing to be so pure, that they feared the contaminating influence of the elective franchise. He hoped, however, that after such professions the petition would be found less exceptionable than that of last Session. The petition of last Session had stated, that those signing it paid poor-rates to the amount of 47,223l. 6s. 8d.; and then, upon examination, it appeared that the poor-rates for the whole parish of Leamington Priors amounted only to 22,356l. Further, to the petition were affixed the signatures of 119 ladies, who were stated to pay in poor-rates 7,882l. Also, there was to the petition the signature of Dr. Leeward, a medical gentleman, residing in Warwick, who was stated to pay 46l. 13s. 4d. to the poor-rate at Leamington, while in fact he paid nothing. It, was not necessary for him to go further into that petition; and with respect to that just presented, as it prayed to be heard at the Bar of the House by Counsel, against the Bill, he did not feel it then necessary to refer more particularly to it. He therefore moved, that the Warwick Borough Bill be read a second time.

Sir John Hanmer

said, that although the hon. and gallant Member had expressed an expectation, that no opposition would be given to the Bill, still he could not help rising to declare his astonishment at such a measure having been introduced upon such a foundation. He contended, that the allegations put forth by the Report of the Committee were, in fact, only suppositions, being without the least substantial support or confirmation from the evidence. He did not mean to say that the evidence did not contain some proofs that some irregularities had been practised at Warwick, but he denied that the evidence at all justified the charges in the Report. There was no person in that House more adverse than he was to bribery, and he would willingly do every thing in his power to prevent it; but that was no reason why he should condemn the innocent. In this case bribery had been proved in twenty one cases; and of those cases a moiety had voted for the candidate opposed to the one against whom the Report was levelled. That was a mode of proceeding he could not approve. The circumstances under which his hon. friend had been a candidate ought to be remembered. The family of his hon. friend had long been connected with the town of Warwick, but, after he was defeated as a candidate in 1821, he refused again to stand for that borough, until he received a requisition to do so, signed by some hundreds of its most respectable electors. Therefore it could not even be pretended that his hon. friend had sought to introduce or to practice corruption. He contended, too, that there was nothing to justify the Committee in their Report. Indeed he must say, that the Report, looking at the evidence, astonished him; and he was at a loss to understand how it could have been adopted. He regretted extremely, that an hon. Member was prevented from attending by illness, who would have been so much more able than he could pretend to be, to draw the attention of the House to some of the facts of the case. Since he had entered the House, he had certain papers put into his hands, and with the permission of the House he would make some allusions to them. With respect to that part of the Report which bore upon the Earl of Warwick, he should say nothing. He felt that it might be very well left to rest entirely on its own merits. He would therefore at once proceed to the question of treating. The Report stated, that there had been treating after the testing of the writ. Now, that he denied. There was no proof whatever in the evidence of such having been the case. Treating before the testing of the writ there had been; but, as the case at present stood that was no offence. He, indeed, could wish to see the law altered; and if the hon. and gallant Officer would introduce a Bill to that effect, it should have his support; but still at present treating before the testing of the writ was not prohibited by law. Then a very grave and heavy charge was brought by the Report against his hon. friend. It was asserted, that riot, and confusion, and bloodshed, had been caused by the introduction of the tenantry of his hon. friend. Now, really such a charge ought not to have been made on light or uncertain grounds. He denied its truth, and he contended and was prepared to prove, that it was not at all supported by the evidence. The House would remember, that there had before been riots in Warwick, at an election. In 1831 there were riots, and those riots were occasioned by the Birmingham Political Union. He held in his hand copies of a number of placards, which had been posted at the instance of, or in connexion with that body, and their object was to "rouse," as it was called, the inhabitants of Warwick to rally round the standard of Reform. The hon. gentleman then read two or three of the Bills to which he had alluded. His conviction being, that by effecting the proposed junction, the House would be neither doing an act of justice to Warwick, or of favour to Leamington, he would altogether oppose the Motion.

Mr. Langdale

thought it was a difficult matter to bring a charge of bribery directly home to a candidate; but if it could be shown, as in his opinion it had been, that a systematic course of bribery had been traced to regularly organized Election Committees, acting in the name of a candidate, that would be found sufficient. It appeared from the evidence, that a regularly organized Election Committee was sitting in the rooms of the very house in which the bribery, in some instances, took place, and, in that house, as well as others, there was a regular system of treating going on. It mattered not to him whether charges such as these were substantiated against Sir Charles Greville, or against any other candidate; it was sufficient for him (Mr. Langdale) that this system of rioting, treating, and so forth, had taken place, in order to establish in his mind the necessity of some steps on the part of that House. The statement made of the conduct of the orange party, and of the pink and blue party, in their efforts to possess themselves of the town, showed sufficiently the nature and extent of the riots, and called for the interference of that House. If it should turn out that they were unable to unite Leamington with Warwick, then the only other alternative they had was, to disfranchise the borough of Warwick altogether. If this were not a case for interference, then he could not say what it was that would justify the interference of the House in any case. Under all the circumstances of the case he would support the Bill.

Sir John Hanmer,

in explanation, said, the Report of the Committee attached mach blame to the riots which took place, and so they did the riots which took place on both sides. He was not there to defend those riots; but, in his opinion, the law, if properly put in force, was sufficient to put them down.

Mr. Halcombe

did not wish to detain the House, but he felt called upon to obtrude himself upon their attention for a short period upon this very important question. He thought that the great measure of reform had so renovated all the branches of our Constitution, that an end was put to all kinds of corruption. In saying this, he did not mean to deny the right of that House to interfere where a systematic course of bribery and corruption was known to prevail, and take from such borough that franchise of which it was found to be undeserving. But, while he agreed in this to the fullest extent, he called upon hon. Members to look at the situation in which the borough of Warwick was placed. The report stated, that gross bribery and corruption had taken place in that borough; and when they come to inquire, they find that only 2l cases of the kind had been pointed out, and of these, only ten could be attributed to the Committee or the friends of Sir Charles Greville, the other ten having voted the other way; and the whole amount of bribery was 75l. 3s. 6d. He had taken some pains to find out who those persons were; and he found that they consisted of persons in the greatest poverty, who had received 1l. 5s. each. There was one individual, a person holding land, who received a sum of 9l.; but that was as a remuneration for a loss of a considerable quantity of straw, and could not, by any person, be considered in the nature of a bribe. The ten persons bribed, who had voted for Sir C. Greville, were looked upon as those who had completed their guilt. He had looked over every tittle of the evidence, and he would venture to say, that it was not of a nature to substantiate such a case of bribery against the borough of Warwick as would warrant the interference of that House in the way of disfranchisement. Let them look at Liverpool and other great towns, and they would find, not only that bribery had taken place, but that treating, riots, and tumults, had taken place; and yet were they prepared to disfranchise those places? Certainly not. That House had no right to interfere in such a way, unless where an extensive system of bribery had been proved. Were they prepared to disfranchise the borough of Warwick without further evidence? He heard those cheers, and he understood them. He knew that it would be attempted to introduce further evidence; but he was sure the hon. Chairman of the Committee, who had just cheered, was of himself of too delicate and honourable a mind to take any step that was not fully borne out by facts. If riots were to be a ground of disfranchisement, he trusted that hon. Members would turn their eyes to other towns. There was Coventry on the one hand, and Birmingham on the other; but he would allude more particularly to the former, which had been uniformly remarkable for riots fifty-fold more serious than any which had ever taken place at Warwick. Only one word more. If they did go to disfranchise the borough of Warwick, let them not do so upon evidence not taken upon oath. They had a remarkable case in point in the inquiry respecting the borough of Hertford, where an individual who had sworn positively to facts which, if true, would seriously affect that borough, had, on his statements being found to be wilfully false, been proceeded against in the Court of King's Bench, and found guilty of perjury. He could assure the House, that he was not inimical to inquiry into corruption at elections; the principle upon which he went was quite opposed to corruption; he wished that justice should be administered in all cases, and, apologising to the House for having detained them so long, he would not further trespass upon their attention.

Mr. Tower,

considered that the present was a subject which ought to occupy the serious attention of that House. There could be no doubt but that inquiry should take place into the charges connected with the borough of Warwick. This House was now in a good temper to enter into such charges, and the people of England would not be satisfied unless such an inquiry were fearlessly and honestly entered into.

Mr. Baring

could not refrain from adverting to the observations which had been made by the hon. member for Harwich (Mr. Tower). The hon. Member had expressed his regret that the hon. Member for Dover had taken so narrow a view of the subject. He (Mr. Baring) believed that what was called, in Parliamentary Debate, an enlarged view of the subject, only meant the view taken by the Speaker, whilst what was termed a narrow view, simply meant the view taken by his opponent. He must confess, that he differed from the hon. Member, and thought that it was he who had taken a narrow, a very narrow, view of the question, whilst the views of the hon. member for Dover were enlarged and enlightened. The hon. member for Harwich seemed disposed to overlook the general results and effects of the present proceeding on the Constitution of the country, and upon the constituency of that House in elections. All the hon. Member viewed, was the effect of the measure upon the individual borough of Warwick. He was not going to trouble the House on this part of the subject, for the hon. Member admitted, that the question, as far as it concerned the conduct of the Earl of Warwick, was put off to another day. He had, however, paused in his enlarged views, in order to throw out some insinuations, which he (Mr. Baring) conceived was not a very liberal mode of meeting the question. Without going into the subject, he should have no hesitation in saying, on the little that he had seen of the case, that, if the House should think proper to proceed on the evidence before it, still there was not a particle of that evidence that could throw the slightest possible slur on the character of that nobleman connected with the borough, no more than it could throw a slur on any Gentleman in that House. There was not the slightest circumstance, looked at impartially, which could authorise any man to put on the books of that House a notice of a Motion to criminate the conduct of the noble Lord. He would, however, reserve himself to meet this part of the subject on a future day. It was alleged, that the corruption practised at the last election for Warwick was of so atrocious a nature that it required some proceedings of that House to punish the guilty persons; and yet, by the measure proposed, the guilty persons were not to be disfranchised, for the intended proceedings were to leave these persons in the possession of all their rights, and merely to add to Warwick the householders of the town of Leamington. What was the case? Warwick had a constituency of about 1,300 persons, and of these only twenty or twenty-one were proved to have taken bribes. This was the utmost. He called upon the House to consider whether they were not laying down a new precedent of a very dangerous nature. They had been told that, as the present was a Reformed Parliament, it must have a new sense of justice, and new notions of right and wrong; but, he would ask any hon. Gentleman, whether a proceeding of this nature and description were consistent with justice? Could it be reconciled to any notions of equity? The House was about to establish the precedent that when any borough, having a constituency of 1,300 electors, should have twenty or twenty-one of them corrupt or bribed at an election, it should be forthwith either disfranchised or be sluiced with some other constituency. Would not this doctrine put it in the power of any twenty people to disfranchise at pleasure any borough in the kingdom? No borough in the United Kingdom in which there were twenty designing men willing to combine to be bribed, could avoid being disfranchised upon this principle In such a case, very soon there would not remain any small borough representation in that House. He begged the country gentlemen to consider what would be the effect of dividing that House between county Members and the Members for large towns, which they dared not touch when bribery prevailed in them. Look at the case of Liverpool. Bribery was there ten times greater than it was at Warwick; and yet the punishment was to be dealt out to the latter place, in which the alleged bribery bore the proportion of only 20 to 1,300. If this were to be the precedent, the House would, at length, be divided between the county Members and the Members for large towns, who would be ready to tear each other to pieces for the ascendancy of their opinions. The precedent the House was about to establish broke up that form of representation which had been so long a part of the Constitution of the country. He looked at the case in the largest point of view, and, certainly, in a much larger than the hon. Gentleman that had just sat down. The doctrine now broached was not only of essential importance to the future condition of the House, but to the whole Constitution of the country. The House was now dealing with the boroughs of Warwick, Stafford, Hertford, and many other cases of a similar description, and if they proceeded thus they would completely alter the whole constituency of the same nature. A noble Lord had brought in a Bill in the last Session to suppress the practice of bribery at elections, but his Bill had not been followed up. Why should not some general measure be brought in which might apply to all places? If, however, the present particular case was to be the measure of a general Bill, he would maintain, that it was impossible that anything could be more unjust. What would the House do with the 1,'200 or 1,300 electors of Warwick who had done nothing wrong? He would not take the sense of the House upon the subject, and, therefore, he would not address it any longer or occupy more of its time; but he did beg hon. Members to consider—he particularly begged those who thought the landed interest in danger, in the present distribution of power, to reflect, how much danger they incurred by the present proposed mode of treating small towns, a mode which was neither just nor prudent.

Mr. Tancred

thought it was impossible for any man, fairly considering the evidence, not to conic to the conclusion, that the constituency of the borough of Warwick was so overborne, as not to be able to exercise the elective franchise to the benefit of the country. The great enormity of the case consisted, not in the extent to which bribery was carried, but in the description of persons by whom that bribery was committed. It was well known that the noble Lord who owned the castle was recorder of the borough, and it was proved that the town-clerk, his nominee, had been the prime agent in every corrupt transaction. It was also proved, that several Aldermen were implicated in acts of bribery and treating. Immediately after the election, in 1831, a system of fraudulent rating was commenced, in which the land agent of the Earl of Warwick was engaged, and no less than 128 persons were added to the poor-rates on account of land belonging to Lord Warwick, and shortly before the registration, this land agent, the town-clerk, and an Alderman of the name of Henry Smith, were proved to have met at the Warwick Arms, and to have there men with fictitious receipts for the purpose of creating fraudulent voters. Of these 128 persons, eighteen were not inserted in the registry by the overseers, seventy-eight were rejected by the revising barrister, and thirty-one out of the remaining thirty-two, voted for Sir Charles Greville. The proof of the existence of bribery was, he thought, complete, inasmuch as a check for 8,000l. signed by Lord Warwick's land-agent, was presented at the bank by the town-clerk, and it was shown that the money had found its way into the hands of those persons who distributed the bribes. The hon. Member also contended that there could be no doubt that treating and rioting had prevailed to a very disgraceful extent. He was an elector of Warwick, and he had himself been a witness of the destruction of the property of the inhabitants of Warwick by rioters who had no connexion whatever with that borough, but who had been organized and sent in from different parts of the country, armed with tremendous bludgeons, which no one having a regard for human life would have used. The consequence of these riots was, that, in one instance, life was sacrificed. Under these circumstances, unless some change was effected by the House in the constituency of the borough, he should be at a loss to conceive what object Parliament had in view in giving the elective franchise to the people.

Lord Eastnor

would not enter into the question of whether or not sufficient corruption had been proved in the borough of Warwick to justify its disfranchisement; but, as far as the interference of Lord Warwick was concerned, he hoped the House would not form opinions unfavourable to that noble Lord, until the whole of the facts were before them. It had been stated to the Committee, that Mr. Brown was no longer the steward of Lord Warwick; and his continuing to act in that capacity from the month of November till the month of March, had been occasioned solely by the non-arrival of his successor. Besides, did the House think it likely that the steward of an individual should be engaged in committing open bribery for him. It should be remembered also, that when it was suggested to the noble Lord to make voters, he expressly said, that he would not do so. The hon. Member, prejudging the question, had stated, that Warwick was subservient to the control of the Earl of Warwick. The only control which the family of the Earl of Warwick exercised over the borough was the control of charity and beneficence; and if they were crimes, the noble Earl must plead guilty. In 1804, he was returned o that House under the most honourable circumstances, without any distinction between those who were his father's tenants and those who were not—the whole of the inhabitants having for him the most genuine feelings of good-will. No corruption was practised, nor had jealousy or envy then gathered strength enough to impute it. This favourable disposition of the inhabitants to his Lordship was continued after he went into the Mouse of Peers; and this was to be called borough-mongering. He (Lord Eastnor) had questioned the noble Earl as to the correctness of the return from the overseers, and the noble Earl had stated, in answer, that he had no doubt of its being as free from error as possible.

Mr. Bolton King

was anxious, as one of the representatives of the borough in question, to address a few words to the House. He considered the proposed measure of disfranchisement necessary, not merely for the purpose of salutary punishment, but as indispensable to the maintenance, in future, of all freedom and purity of election in Warwick. The hon. Member took that opportunity of denying the correctness of a statement attributed to the hon. and learned member for Dover, to the effect that he (Mr. King) had gone to Warwick as the nominee of Mr. Tonics—a statement which he could not otherwise characterize than as fabricated and false.

Mr. Halcombe

begged distinctly to declare, that he had never uttered such a statement, nor could he have had any grounds for saying so.

Mr. King

said, that the authority on which he proceeded, was a report of the hon. and learned Gentleman's speech which appeared in the Mirror of Parliament, and of which he held in his hand an extract.

Mr. Halcombe

repeated his denial with some energy, and declared that he was not to be held responsible for any reports which might appear in the Mirror of Parliament.^*

Bill read a second time.