§ MR. ROEBUCKsaid, he had to present a petition, to which he begged to request the attention of the House. It referred to the measure which the hon. Member for Hereford (Mr. Clive) had given notice of his intention to ask leave to bring in that evening—namely, for the disfranchisement of the freemen of the county of the town of Galway. The petitioners, who were freemen of Galway, commenced by declaring that they relied on the justice of that House to extend the same measure of punishment to all who had been equally guilty of bribery. They then stated that it appeared, by the evidence taken before the Commissioners appointed to inquire into the proceedings at the late election for Galway, that the most noble the Marquess of Clanricarde, Lord Lieutenant of the county, Lord Privy Seal, and a Justice of the Peace, was a party to the bribery and corruption of the freemen at the elections of 1852 and 1857, furnished money for such corruption, and appointed agents to distribute it; that Sir Thomas Burke, Bart., Deputy Lieutenant of the county, a Member of the House of Commons and a Justice of the Peace, was also a party to the bribery and corruption of the freemen 323 at the aforesaid elections, and employed agents at his own cost; and that Dr. Thomas Browne, Professor of Surgery, Queen's College, Galway, and Messrs. Bernard O'Flaherty, T. Moore Persse, and Carter, were likewise proved to have given money and to have employed persons to bribe the freemen at the last election. The petitioners prayed that, in any proceedings taken by that House to punish bribery and corruption, equal justice would be done to all parties—to the great as well as to the small, the powerful as well as the weak.
§ MR. MAGUIREpresented a petition from other inhabitants of Galway to the same effect.