§ Order for consideration of Lords' Amendment read.
§ MR. BOUVERIEmoved, that the House should disagree with the Amendments which the House of Lords had introduced into the St. Albans Bribery Commission Bill. The first seven or eight Amendments had the effect of restricting the inquiry to the last election; while the Bill as passed by that House proposed to extend the inquiry to previous elections, at which it appeared by the report of their Committee, that bribery had been practised. The Amendments introduced by the House of Lords would also be inconsistent with the preamble of the Bill, which alleged that the practice of bribery had prevailed in the borough long previous to the last election. The second class of alterations were such that whereas the Bill, as it left that House, contained strong provisions to compel persons to give evidence (preserving them from any inconvenience by a proviso), the House of Lords had provided that no party should be compellable to give any evidence or produce any document which might tend to criminate him.
§ Motion agreed to; others of the Lords' Amendments disagreed to; and a Committee appointed "to draw up Reasons to be assigned to the Lords, for disagreeing to the Amendments to which this House hath disagreed."