COMMITTEE. (Hansard, 29 July 1857)

§ MR. BERNAL OSBORNE
said, I wish to tender my thanks to the hon. Gentleman the Member for Staffordshire (Mr. Adderley) for the independent course which he has adopted in bringing forward this Bill, and I think that not only my thanks, but those of the House, are due to him for giving hon. Members some protection against the presentation of election petitions. I, unfortunately, have, to a certain extent, been the victim of a mock petition; and I think it is highly desirable that the House and the country should know the circumstances under which it has been endeavoured to extort a seat at my expense without any shadow of ground on the part of the petitioners. A petition was presented against me and my hon. Colleague, the Member for Dovor, early in the present Session of Parliament. In that petition I was accused of every Parliamentary crime that a man could be charged with in the most Parliamentary language. The names of the petitioners purported to be Hammond and Clayton, election agents at Dovor, who I ascertained to be mere men of straw, and mere tools made use of by a gentleman late a member of this House, Mr. George William Hope, who, by a very curious coincidence, was by my late father turned out of his seat for Weymouth for bribery and treating, and who, I suppose, feeling that the sins of the father should be visited upon the children, petitioned against my return. Now, it will be seen that very soon after that petition was presented, Mr. George William Hope made a proposition to my hon. Colleague, who beat him on the poll by 420 votes. He no doubt supposed that, as my hon. Colleague was a young Member, he would be too happy to take advantage of his suggestion, that if he would retire at the end of the present Session of Parliament from his seat, he (Mr. George William Hope) would withdraw his petition against him. When my 686 hon. Colleague mentioned that proposition to me I said to him, "If you do any such thing you will be a greater noodle than I take you for." That was proposition No. 1, on the part of Mr. George William Hope. Soon after that Mr. George William Hope—and I think that I am almost justified in saying that this comes very near to a corrupt compromise—Mr. George William Hope, thinking that the present Members for Weymouth (where he had before been himself turned out for bribery and treating) would be turned out, made a proposition to my election agent that in case the hon. and gallant Colonel below me (Colonel Freestun) and his hon. Colleague (Mr. Campbell), were turned out, and the Government did not oppose him (Mr. G. W. Hope) at Weymouth, he would withdraw the petition against my return for Dovor. I need not say that I scouted that in the same way that my hon. Colleague scouted the other proposition. That was proposition No. 2. On the day before the Committee was struck, a communication was made to the hon. Member for Wells (Mr. Hayter), by Mr. George William Hope to the effect that if he obtained a pledge that he, Mr. George William Hope, should not be opposed at Dovor, (where he had been beaten by upwards of 400 votes) in case of an election being occasioned by the sending out to India of the regiment to which my hon. Colleague belongs, the petition would be withdrawn. That proposition was communicated to me, and I told the gentleman that brought it that I should have considered it a personal affront if it had not been made to me in a Parliamentary way. Sir, I feel strongly on this subject. I may be thin-skinned, but I am not one of those who think that Members of Parliament ought to submit quietly to these charges without rising in their places to decry a system which will, I believe, bring this House into contempt. Well, this was proposition No. 3. In the interim, finding there was nothing to be done with me, Mr. Elope went back to my colleague again. A correspondence was entered into with him, in which it was endeavoured to frighten him by declaring that the case was so strong against him, such flagrant acts of bribery could be proved, that he had no chance of retaining his seat, but that if he, on going abroad with his regiment, would resign quietly, the petition should be withdrawn. My hon. Colleague very properly said, that he would enter into no sort of corrupt compromise, and that if the 687 petition were vigorously prosecuted his seat would be as vigorously defended. This occurred on the Saturday. On the Monday the Committee was struck, and when it came to the table to be sworn, a letter was put in from Mr. Hope's solicitor, without any intimation to me, stating that the petition was withdrawn. Now, I understand this Bill was opposed on the first stage, but I think I have adduced reasons to show why it should pass into a law, and why a stringent measure should be adopted to protect Members from having their characters whispered away, as has been attempted in my case, and that of my hon. Colleague. During the present Session forty-nine of these election petitions have been presented, of which upwards of twenty-one had been withdrawn by compromises effected, I believe, in the lobby. Now, I hope we shall have some law which will not allow these petitions to be compromised, for let the House be assured that, unless we are sensitive of our own honour, and treat these things not as mere matters of course, we cannot expect the constituencies of this country to be sensitive of their honour. Sir, I was determined, upon the first opportunity which presented itself to bring this subject before the House. I believe I have no remedy in prosecuting these men of straw, Messrs. Hammond and Clayton, but were I advised that I could prosecute Mr. Hope or bring him to the bar of this House, I should certainly avail myself of that remedy, cost what it would. One hon. Gentleman told me lately that his election had cost him £300, while the defence of his seat against one of these petitions cost him £2,000. Whatever expense, however, the petition in my case might have put me to, I regret its withdrawal, because I could have wished to have made the facts even more public than I have now done; and I am sure that my hon. Colleague shares that regret equally with me.

§ SIR GEORGE GREY
said, that no doubt every one would agree that some alteration should be made in the law; but because great abuses were known to exist that was no reason why the Committee should pass a measure which was not calculated to provide a good and sufficient remedy for those abuses. In assenting, therefore, to the first clause of this Bill he should reserve to himself the right of objecting, and he should object to some of its other provisions. Instead of hasty legislation of this sort, it would, he thought, have 688 been better to have proposed an inquiry into all the compromises which had taken place in the course of the Session. The House would then have been in more complete possession of the facts, and would have been better able to devise a remedy.

§ SIR GEORGE GREY
said, this and other clauses were wholly opposed to the policy of election laws of late years. The 11 & 12 Vict. was repealed, and then Clause 3 enacted that if any petitioner was desirous to withdraw his election petition at any time after the presentation thereof, he must petition the House for that purpose, stating the reasons for the withdrawal, and asking the leave of the House; and the House, upon receiving the report of the Examiner of Recognizances, was to determine whether the withdrawal should be allowed. Now, this afforded no means of testing the allegations of the petition; and in fact such a provision would virtually tend to bring the trial of election petitions into this House, and on that account would be very objectionable.

§ SIR WILLIAM RUSSELL
urged the expediency of adopting some stringent measure to prevent the withdrawal of petitions. Under the present system members of this House were shuffled like a pack of cards in the hands of the agents. He had been quite prepared to prove that the petition presented in his case was frivolous and vexatious, and he had given strict instructions to his agent on no account to consent to its withdrawal; but it had been withdrawn without any notice having been given to him. He thought, therefore, that at least some notice ought to be given to the Members concerned before the withdrawal of these petitions was allowed. Three or four most dishonourable proposals had been made to him, as the Committee had been informed; it had been stated that the petitioners had very strong proof against him, while at the same moment they offered to bribe him to a compromise. These proposals, however, he had most indignantly refused, stating that he was determined to fight his seat up to the very moment of leaving the House.

§ MR. ADDERLEY
said, he could not plead guilty to the charge of attempting hasty legislation. The measure he originally introduced had been drawn up by high authorities, but he had, in deference 689 to the Attorney General, accepted the Amendments he proposed, and the Bill was now word for word the Bill of that hon. and learned Gentleman. The whole of it had been drawn up by the Attorney General, who had attached his name to it on the notice papers of the House. The time (twenty minutes to six o'clock) would not allow him (Mr. Adderley) to enter into the defence of the Bill, nor did he stand up for its provisions in preference to his own; but he certainly thought the matter of such urgency that it ought to be dealt with in the present Session. Next year there was likely to be other important business before the House; they would perhaps have forgotten the subject by that time; and were hon. Members voluntarily to submit to such treatment on the part of agents and attorneys? As to the statement that the Bill would bring election petitions for discussion in this House, he supposed that if there was any point which required investigation the House would refer it to a Committee. The clause only enacted that the petition for withdrawal "may" come before the House, and that the petitioner should assign the grounds upon which a withdrawal was asked for. If the House saw that inquiry was necessary they would refer the subject to a Committee.

§ MR. AYRTON
said, he had on previous occasions stopped the progress of this Bill, and should do so again now, upon what he thought very satisfactory grounds. The hon. Gentleman (Mr. Adderley) brought this subject before the House when smarting under an election petition; and if he wished for a further reason why the progress of the Bill should be stopped he found it in the speech of the hon. Member for Dovor (Mr. B. Osborne), which he was glad had not been delivered from the hon. Gentleman's usual seat on the Treasury bench. That speech was certainly not conducive to the character and the credit of the House, relating, as it did, to persons on a matter which had been the subject of judicial inquiry.