HC Deb 25 April 1870 vol 200 cc1787-806

Order for Second Reading read.

THE ATTORNEY GENERAL

, in moving that the Bill be now read a second time, said, he must enter into an explanation of its provisions, as he had not done so on the introduction of the Bill. The course which it was proposed to take in this Bill was entirely in accordance with precedent. That House had over and over again acted upon the Reports of Commissions which had been appointed, in pursuance of Addresses to the Crown, to inquire into the existence of corrupt practices at elections, and Parliament tad disfranchised boroughs in which such practices had been proved to have extensively prevailed. He need not in support of that statement go further back than the Reform Bill of 1867, by which four boroughs were disfranchised on the Reports of four Commissions, and on the provisions of which the present measure was entirely framed. Commissioners having been appointed, at the request of the House, to inquire into the existence of corrupt practices, it would be impossible to disregard their Reports without giving rise to the impression in the country that it was not in earnest in its endeavour to secure purity of election. Indeed, it would be a mere farce to appoint such Commissions at all, unless some action were to be taken upon the Reports which they furnished. As to the particular Commissions to whose Reports he was now about to invite attention, he must observe that the House was no less indebted to them than to previous Commissions; for, although he was aware that some sneers had been indulged in at their expense, although it had been said that they were composed of men of no eminence at the Bar, but of mere Quarter Sessions' barristers, he could state that they had been presided over respectively by two of Her Majesty's Counsel and by a learned Serjeant, each of whom was well known in Westminster Hall, and each of whom was among the leaders of his circuit; while, with regard to the junior members of the Commissions, he could inform the House that they were all, without exception, men of ability, and men either eminent or rising to eminence in their profession. With those few words he would pass by remarks which did not show either correct information or good taste on the part of those by whom they had been made. The Reports of those Commissions were very valuable documents, and contained a great mass of information, which had been arrived at with great difficulty and after enormous labour, proving that the Commissioners were determined to penetrate through all the shams and disguises which it was sought to impose upon them, and to arrive at the real truth. It was, indeed, he believed, mainly on account of the thoroughness of their inquiries and the comprehensive nature of their Reports that they had incurred a good deal of odium in those boroughs which were now not unnaturally inclined to struggle to prolong their corrupt existence. He would, without further comment, call the attention of the House to the Reports of the Bridgwater and Beverley Commissions. That of the Bridgwater Commission went a long way back. The Commissioners said— But, even so, we have obtained quite enough evidence to justify us in reporting to your Majesty that there is much reason to believe that in Bridgwater, within the present century at least"—they do not go beyond that—"no election has ever taken place except under the influence of practices which, not only by the Lex Parliaments, but by the common and statute law for the time being in force, were corrupt and criminal practices, and lawfully punishable as such. Whether in those good old times to which the hon. Member for Leicester (Mr. P. A. Taylor) had invited attention, when Members of Parliament were paid by their constituents, there were pure elections at Bridgwater was matter of antiquarian interest. It was enough to say that a pure election in that borough within the memory of any man now living was a thing unknown. The Commissioners gave a short summary of the various elections which had been held there since 1832, and the history was not very interesting, inasmuch as it was somewhat monotonous, disclosing, as it did, one unvaried system of bribery and corruption. The Report went on to say— It is always three-fourths, at least, of the actual constituency who are said to be hopelessly addicted to the taking or seeking of bribes, and who show by their conduct that the imputation is well deserved; while, of the remainder, a very large part, perhaps by far the largest, are addicted to the giving or offering or negotiating of bribes. He would now come to the last election but one—the election of 1866—when there was a single-handed fight between two gentlemen whose names he did not think it necessary to mention. In that contest one of those gentleman had spent £6,000, the other upwards of £5,000, while the expenses returned through the election agents were only somewhat about £300 or £400 each. He should pass in the next place to the last election, and undoubtedly what had been alleged by some of the inhabitants of Bridgwater was true—that there had been loss actual bribery at that than at previous elections. That such had been the case, however, had arisen from an exceptional state of circumstances. One of the parties—the Conservative—determined not to bribe, a resolution which did them great honour, and which enabled them to do that which they had not been in a position to do for some time before—to petition with clean hands and expose the corrupt practices on the other side. On that side also the bribery had not been so great at the last election as on previous ones, but it had been sufficient to win the election; as much treasure was expended as was sufficient to produce the required result, the rest they kept in their pockets. They got down from London, made up in bales or in packages, 1,500 sovereigns, and arranged for 1,500 more to be put down by the other candidate; but there having been no corruption on the part of the Conservatives, there were a great many voters who were not to be bought, because they were not wanted, and the price of the article somewhat declined owing to the demand not being so great as usual. The consequence was that not more than £500 was, he believed, actually expended, the rest being sent back to London. He would now read to the House a short extract from the Report of the Commissioners. They said— We think it not out of place to state for your Majesty's information that we considered it a part of our duty to inquire of those persons whom we considered best qualified to judge how far in their opinion the extension of the franchise under the last Reform Act had operated towards the purification of the borough. We regret to state that in answer we were told that whereas before 1868 the number of voters was about 600, of whom 50 at most would take no part in corrupt practices, at the present time at least two-thirds of the new voters were of a class who are always amenable to money considerations, and that the old voters remained much as they were before. Mr. Barham, indeed, than whom no one was more qualified to judge, stated that when he came into the town on the morning of the election he saw hundreds of the new voters standing about in the cattle market like cattle themselves, waiting for the highest bidder. Out of the number of voters bribed for Messrs. Kinglake and Vanderbyl, 34 were members of the Conservative Working Men's Association, and the entire number of them had actually promised their votes to Messrs. Westropp and Gray— Those men, it appeared, had added the offence of desertion to that of bribery. We cannot, therefore, say that with the extension of the suffrage there is any improvement in the moral condition of the borough. The inhabitants of Bridgwater in their Petition endeavoured to set up a case of "improvement" in consequence of the extension of the suffrage; but the plea was one which could not, in his opinion, be admitted. It was too much to expect that a few new voters, who were at the same time old inhabitants of the borough, and who had been brought up with the idea that the franchise was a right which might be bought and sold, would have their preconceived notions on the subject suddenly altered by the conferring of electoral privileges. The Commissioners were, therefore, in his view of the matter, perfectly justified in saying that the extension of the franchise made no good case for the borough, and such as he had mentioned were the grounds on which they recommended that it should be disfranchised. He next came to the case of Beverley, and he thought it right to observe that in any remarks which he might deem it to be his duty to make on the character of that borough, he should carefully avoid saying anything which might be regarded as in the slightest degree to prejudice the criminal trials in connection with it which were now pending. The House was aware that there were two kinds of liability of a Member for the acts of his agents—the one a civil liability involving the loss of his seat, the other a criminal liability subjecting him to a prosecution, and to be established by a different class of evidence. Sir Henry Edwards had already been visited with the former liability by the decision of a Judge; whether the latter liability should be established against him it would be highly improper in him to assume. But, be that as it might, the case against the borough itself remained the same. The Beverley Commissioners did not go so far back as those of Bridgwater—into remote antiquity; but they went back, nevertheless, he believed sufficiently far, and he would read a short extract from their Report, which showed the character of the borough pretty clearly. They said— We found that in all the elections from 1841 to 1868, inclusive, with the exception of the by-election of 1854, in which the borough manifested but little interest, bribery, and other corrupt, practices prevailed; in some, extensively, openly, and systematically, and in others in various disguises and under different pretexts, such as payments for colourable services and moneys given to out-voters as travelling expenses; but at every election a considerable portion of the constituency expected or received a money consideration for their votes in some shape or another. From the statements of witnesses well acquainted with the electoral statistics of the borough, and with the political conduct and ways of thinking of different sections of the electors, we find that out of a constituency of something over 1,100, at the date of the 'Representation of the People Act, 1867,' about 800 were open to bribery and other corrupt influences, there being in the constituency a body of about 300 without political principles, or political likings or dislikings of any kind, locally known as 'rolling stock,' and about 250 others on either side, who, if money were going, expected to be paid, and would not vote unless they were paid, or received some assurance that they would be paid after the election. They appear to claim the usual money payment for a vote as a right from the candidate of their own colour, and only look upon it as a bribe when they accept it from the candidate of a different colour. The calculations we have made in respect of the sums admitted to have been expended by the candidates in various ways in the elections of August, 1857, 1859, 1860, and 1865, and the number of votes polled respectively on their behalf, suggest and support the inference that not less than two-thirds of those who voted at each of these elections had either received or been promised money for their vote. He would next quote an authority which he thought would have some weight with hon. Gentlemen opposite. It was that of Sir James Walker—a Conservative gentleman of very high character—whose son was a candidate, he thought, at the election of 1865. Sir James Walker said— The system of corruption and bribery at Beverley bad been going on time out of mind, and to an extent that it was impossible to arrest or counteract. Such, then, was the general character of the borough. But within the last ten years or more the system of corruption had been organized at Beverley in a very peculiar manner, the two principal agents by which it was organized being—the one Mr. Wreghitt, a draper in the town, who had acted as agent for Sir Henry Edwards, and the other a. Mr. Cronhelm, the clerk and cashier of Sir Henry Edwards. Mr. Wreghitt appeared to be an electioneering genius; he reduced into shape what might be called the chaotic elements of Beverley corruption, and formed it into one harmonious system; his powers of organization were altogether irreproachable. Attempts had been made from time to time by the Liberal party to counteract Mr. Wreghitt and bribe against him. The Liberals acted with great vigour and spent a good deal of money; but their efforts had been desultory, ill-conceived, and clumsy; and their authors proved no match for the more artistic corruption of Mr. Wreghitt. He might here mention that Mr. Wreghitt and Mr. Cronhelm—the latter of whom supplied the former with the money necessary for his operations—had the presence of mind, just before the Commission sat, to destroy all documents and papers which could throw any light upon election matters, and they did so by the advice of a gentleman in London, than whom, he was bound to say, no person was better qualified to form an opinion on a question of that kind. The Commissioners described the manner in which Mr. Wreghitt went to work, and it was really very curious and interesting. They said— There was also in Beverley a body called the 'Working Men's Conservative Association,' that had been instituted under the auspices of Mr. Glover, and consisted principally of freemen; and in accordance with the arrangement between Major Edwards and Wreghitt, previously mentioned, this association was in a short time brought under Wreghitt's influence and control. He was appointed chairman, and contributed to its funds from moneys he had received for general election purposes. Immediate action was also taken, in pursuance of the same arrangement, to eject the Liberals from the Town Council and replace them with Conservatives; and with that view it became a settled plan of action between Major Edwards, Wreghitt, and the candidates for the Town Council, that at every municipal contest Wreghitt should supply the funds that might be deemed necessary to secure their return; and, accordingly, the practice of purchasing votes at these elections became general and systematic. The result of that constant expenditure manifested itself in the fact that, from 1859 to 1869, the supporters and partizans of Sir Henry Edwards obtained and exercised an almost absolute control and mastery in the public and municipal affairs of Beverley. The freemen of Beverley, by some old gift, possessed a certain light of depasturing their cattle, and certain pasture-masters were appointed by the Town Council; and those pasture-masters distributed the pasturage to the freemen, and in order, therefore, to obtain the freemen it was desirable to secure the pasture-masters. The Commissioners said— A similar line of action was pursued at the annual elections of pasture-masters; but with respect to them Wreghitt's use of the funds at his disposal brought about earlier and more decisive results, for in 1860 all the pasture-masters were Conservatives, and the only change that took place in the constitution of that body from 1860 to 1869 consisted in the removal of some of the more moderate, and the substitution of others who had been more active and unreserved in their manifestations of partizanships. But the operations of Mr. Wreghitt did not end there. There was a certain Beverley Iron and Waggon Company (Limited), which, by the genius of Mr. Wreghitt, was converted into an electioneering agent. The Commissioners summed up the result of Mr. Wreghitt's masterly operations in this way— Sir Henry Edwards and Mr. Sykes entered into the contest of July, 1865, under the most favourable auspices. The institutions of the borough had, to a great extent, been brought under Wreghitt's influence; he had succeeded, by the means taken to extend and strengthen the Conservative interest in the borough, in establishing the personal and political ascendancy of Sir Henry Edwards. Magistrates and aldermen, town councillors and pasture-masters, bankers and tradesmen, were working with Wreghitt, and for the same ends. He had been unceasingly labouring for eight years to extend and widen the sources of corruption throughout the borough, and prevent freedom of choice in all the local elections. The Committee of the Working Men's Conservative Association were his nominees and helpers; and, as subsequent events showed, the manager, the secretary, and the foremen of the different departments of the Iron and Waggon Company, as well as the labourers employed under them, became either recipients or dispensers of the moneys that came through him. Men in highly respectable positions as tradesmen owed their seats in the Town Council to the moneys he had provided; all the pasture-masters were in the same condition of dependence. A more complete description of a series of successful electioneering manœuvres was probably never presented to the House. He now came to the election of 1865. On that the Commissioners said— Above 1,100 voters were polled at that election; and, considering the moneys expended in bribery on either side, and the rate at which the voters were paid, we have come to the conclusion that not less than 800 of those who voted had accepted bribes from one side or the other, some from both. The learned Judge who tried the Beverley Election Petition and the Commissioners also came to the unhesitating conclusion that at the municipal election money was given to many for what was called "the double event"—that was for both the municipal and the Parliamentary contest, between which a few days intervened. And where the municipal election was made a party contest, a voter naturally would not change his colour at the ensuing Parliamentary election, provided always that some stronger temptation was not offered to him by the other side. Thus, in the opinion of the Commissioners, the corruption at the municipal election was not only prior to, but intended to influence the voters at the Parliamentary election. The Commissioners reported to this effect, that at the municipal election—at which the votes were comparatively cheap, or about £1 per head—a Mr. Norfolk spent the sum of £800, and it was very remarkable that he got that sum, or a large part of it, from a certain bank in Beverley at which he had no credit. He also appeared to have expended about £150 that he had received from Mr. Wreghitt, who again had received it from Mr. Cronhelm. The Commissioners had come to the conclusion, from the money spent and other circumstances, that at the late election about 1,000 or 1,100 persons were bribed; and he regretted to say that a great many of these persons were new voters, for he was afraid there was no reason to suppose the new voters in Beverley were less corrupt than their brethren at Bridgwater. It had been urged that as only 327 voters had been scheduled as having been bribed—that was to say, 327 had been actually found out—therefore Beverley ought to be allowed to remain a Parliamentary borough. As he was informed, the Commissioners went on calling witness after witness until they got the names of those 327; and when they had reached that point there they stopped, although they might have gone on accumulating similar evidence if they had liked. He would conclude his observations on this part of the case by reading the following paragraph from the Report of the Commissioners:— The municipal contest, in which bribery had been so undisguisedly and extensively practised, was treated as a prelude to the Parliamentary election, if not as a part of it; and the bribes were given, and in many cases received, as an earnest of what was to come. But we experienced great difficulty in discriminating, in individual instances, between those who took bribes for the municipal election only, and those who, to use a local phrase, took them for the 'double event.' The large extension of the franchise under 'The Representation of the People Act, 1867,' made the municipal roll nearly identical with the Parliamentary register, within the limits of the municipal boundary; so that it was reduced almost to a certainty that the man who voted under the influence of a bribe in the council choosing would also have a vote in the election of Members of Parliament. These were the two cases which he had to lay before the House—the cases of two boroughs whose characters he believed had been tolerably well known to most hon. Members for a very long time, boroughs in which learned Judges had reported that corrupt practices extensively prevailed, their Reports having been confirmed by Commissions which had instituted more complete inquiries. He ventured to think that these boroughs were scarcely, if at all, inferior in corruption to any of those boroughs which were formerly disfranchised. It was, indeed, stated that in Totnes every man was bribed; but the House had dealt with other cases in which there had been a "rolling stock" of 200 or 300 voters who could take £1 from one side, £2 from the other side, and would sometimes vote according to their consciences after all. The House had invariably dealt with boroughs of which these things were reported in the way in which it was proposed to deal with these boroughs; and he, therefore, moved that the Bill be now read a second time.

Motion made, and Question proposed, "That the Bill be now read a second time."—(Mr. Attorney General.)

MR. NEVILLE-GRENVILLE

said, that early in the evening he presented a Petition from Bridgwater praying that the House would pause before it resorted to the extreme measure which would be dealt out by the passing of this bloodthirsty Bill, and he trusted that, as a country gentleman, living in the neighbourhood of Bridgwater, but not representing the division of the county in which it was situate, he should be allowed to express his opinion that Bridgwater, notwithstanding all that the Attorney General had said about it, was not as black as it was painted. He would remind the House that this was the first time since the reign of Edward I. that Bridgwater had not had two representatives of its own to stand up for it in this House. He would not go so far back into the history of the borough of Bridgwater as the Attorney General had done; but he would go so far as to say that from 1832 to 1868 Bridgwater had deserved all that the hon. and learned Gentleman had said of it, and for one he would not have opposed its being scheduled with Yarmouth, Totnes, and other boroughs in the Reform Act. But, bad and corrupt as the borough might have been, we were not content with the Bill of 1832, and were in hopes that the measures of 1868 would have a beneficial effect upon the constituencies of the country. It had the effect of doubling the constituency of Bridgwater, and, as regarded the last election, instead of its being reported that extensive corruption prevailed, only 3 per cent, of the constituency was proved to have been bribed. In order to obtain the names of the 57 men who were scheduled as having been bribed at the last election, Bridgwater had to submit to a searching inquiry; and, notwithstanding that the learned Gentlemen whom the Attorney General depicted in such glowing terms devoted 47 days to the inquiry, and asked 47,500 questions, at the expense of the ratepayers of Bridgwater, they were able to discover only 57 voters who had been bribed. In their Report the Commissioners said, We regret to state that in answer we were told that whereas before 1868 the number of voters was about 600, of whom 50 at most would take no part in corrupt practices, at the present time at least two-thirds of the new voters were of a class who are always amenable to money considerations, and that the old voters remained much as they were before. Mr. Barham, indeed, than whom no one was more qualified to judge, stated that, when he came into the town on the morning of the election, he saw hundreds of the now voters standing about in the cattle market, like cattle themselves, waiting for the highest bidder. Upon what authority did the Commissioners make the statement that the new voters belonged to a class always amenable to money? To say so was a reflection upon the House for passing the Reform Bill of 1868. The Commissioners ought to have given a marginal reference to the evidence on which they founded this assertion. Upon what ground did Mr. Barham make the statement imputed to him, which was merely an opinion of his own? At a contested election were there not always men loitering about without any idea of taking bribes? There was no evidence to prove that two-thirds of the voters of Bridgwater could be bribed. Notwithstanding the magnitude of the Blue Book containing the evidence, which no hon. Member could have waded through, there were many questions put by the Commissioners which were conspicuous by their absence. Not only were the Commissioners Judges and jury and counsel for the prosecution, but they were often Court jesters, and the remarks they made were such as no constituency ought to be exposed to. One witness was asked by the Chairman whether Mr. Kinglake was as long winded in his style of speaking, and as long coming to the point, as he was in his writing. Mr. Trevor, the Conservative agent, was asked whether he had been offered the dignity of knighthood for his party services like Sir Something Drake. A baker named Bowring, was asked whether he was any relative of Sir John Bowring. Another witness was told he appeared to be a kind of monarch of all he surveyed—a remark which called forth a remonstrance. At the close of his examination Mr. Westropp was told he had better go and see to his old woman. A gentleman named Kitch was asked—"Is your name John Ketch or John Kitch?" Another person was told that they would not waste any more time upon such a fellow, to which he replied that he was no fellow; but he was lucky enough to escape the fate of Mr. Simmons, who was fined £50 for a similar reply, to which there had been a similar provocation. He feared that the House agreed with the Attorney General in his blood-thirsty notions respecting these two boroughs, and he regretted it; but he hoped that the House would postpone dealing with the cases until the Motions of the right hon. and learned Member for Newcastle (Mr. Headlam) and the hon. Member for York (Mr. J. Lowther) wore disposed of, and until pending trials in Yorkshire, which might be influenced by the determination of the House, had been held. He certainly did not see any necessity for hurry; he did not see any prospect of an immediate Dissolution; and both the Government and the Opposition had too much to do without participating in a general scramble for the four seats that would be at the disposal of Parliament if this Bill passed. He hoped, therefore, the measure would be postponed until hon. Members had had more time to consider the Reports of the Commissioners, the evidence upon which they had based their conclusions, and the manner in which that evidence was obtained, before it condemned places that had sent Members to this House from the earliest time.

COLONEL STUART KNOX

said, the Attorney General, although he took credit for having said nothing on the introduction of the Bill, pledged himself on that occasion to deal with the two boroughs separately in different clauses, and yet both were disfranchised together by the 1st clause of this Bill. The hon. and learned Gentleman had taken trouble to throw dirt upon the pasture-masters and others of Beverley; but it was fair that men who had been scheduled by the Commissioners should have fair trials, and he did not think that would be possible if this Bill were passed before the trials were heard. If the Bill passed, how could Sir Henry Edwards have a fair trial, for it would appear that he had been convicted by Parliament before he had been put on his trial before a jury of his countrymen. He trusted the Government would see the justice of postponing the Bill until after the trial in Yorkshire, and he would therefore move, as an Amendment, that the Bill be postponed for three months.

Amendment proposed, to leave out the word "now," and at the end of the Question to add the words "upon this day three months."—(Colonel Stuart Knox.)

Question proposed, "That the word 'now' stand part of the Question."

MR. NORWOOD

said, he concurred in thinking that it would have been better if the Bill before the House had been divided into two parts, for he thought that the cases of Bridgwater and Beveley stood on distinct grounds. The Attorney General, in his voluminous Bill of indictment against the two boroughs, laid great stress on the fact that actual bribery had occurred at the last election for Bridgwater. Nothing of the kind, however, was alleged by the Commissioners who inquired into the affairs of the borough of Beverley. He did not mean to deny that on former occasions open bribery had been practised, but he maintained that there was not an iota of evidence in the Report of the Commissioners to the effect that bribery was practised there in 1868. What the Commissioners alleged was that there was bribery at the municipal election which occurred before the Parliamentary election, but there was no evidence in the Report of the Commissioners showing a connection between the bribery on one occasion and the vote on the other. ["Oh, oh!"] The Commissioners stated that there was great reason to believe that the payments made during the municipal election were made with the view of influencing the Parliamentary election, but there was no proof bearing out that view; and when, upon a Bill of a penal character like the present, hon. Members were called on to act as judges, they ought to weigh with judicial calmness the evidence on which their verdict was asked. In 1867 a Reform Bill was passed which had the effect of doubling the constituency of Beverley. The number of elec- tors had been about 1,000, but, in 1868, the constituency increased to 2,100. Now, he maintained that the argument of the Attorney General as to the former iniquities of the borough ought not to weigh with the House, because a new constituency was now being dealt with. The hon. Gentleman opposite (Mr. Neville Grenville) had said that the inquiry with respect to Bridgwater was most severe, and certainly he (Mr. Norwood) thought that much had been done by the Commissioners that ought not to have been done, and that their zeal sometimes outran their discretion. In like manner the Commission at Beverley was most severe, and what was the result? About 1,900 electors recorded their votes, and only 327, after all the scrutiny of the Commissioners, were scheduled. The bribery alleged occurred entirely at the municipal election, but there were 677 Parliamentary voters who were not municipal voters, and many Parliamentary voters who had votes for the municipal election did not take the trouble to record them. Whatever the past iniquities of Beverley might have been, he thought he had made out a case showing that at the last election there had not been gross systematic bribery, nor, indeed, was there any proof of bribery at all at the Parliamentary election. It was not his wish to palliate the horrid system of bribery, but he again impressed on hon. Members that they were now asked to disfranchise a large number of the new electors to whom the franchise was given in 1867. There was one argument he would address to the right hon. Gentleman at the head of the Government, at whose hands they were to obtain the Ballot. That measure was to render bribery impossible; and so, if the Government had granted the Ballot some years ago, Beverley never would have sinned afterwards, even at the municipal election, and there would have been no occasion for the present Bill. He repeated that the cases of Bridgwater and Beverley were distinct; and he thought a proper example might have been made of both boroughs without pushing matters to such an extremity as was proposed by the present Bill. He must say a word with regard to Sir Henry Edwards, a gentleman who sat on the opposite side of the House to that where he himself sat. That gentleman was going to be tried for bribery, and was thus threatened with pains and penalties. His case was to have been tried at the last Assizes for Yorkshire, and it was no fault of his that it was not then tried. He had attended before the I Commissioners for the sake of exculpating himself; but the Commissioners declined to hear his evidence, remarking that his case was too severe, and that he must be prosecuted. But by the 3rd clause of the present Bill he would, in consequence of being scheduled in the Report of the Commissioners, be treated as guilty of bribery before his trial came on.

MR. BEOADLEY

said, that he was a voter both for the municipal and Parliamentary elections at Beverley. The Commissioners themselves said that no bribery or illegal payment or conduct whatever took place at the last Parliamentary election; but that there were payments made at the municipal election which had operated upon the Parliamentary election which, took place 15 days after. He submitted that the Commissioners had failed to connect the municipal with the Parliamentary election; and he asked the Attorney General whether, having sifted the evidence before the Commissioners with his accustomed acuteness, he could say that the connection between the two elections had been made out. Many of the municipal voters, 157 in number, had received bribes, and they voted at the municipal election as they were bribed—for the Conservatives; but at the Parliamentary election everyone of those 157 men voted the other way. He therefore maintained the connection between the two elections had not been proved; and it was exceedingly hard that such severe measures should be taken without its being established beyond all dispute that the municipal election did influence the Parliamentary election.

MR. WEST

said, he was not going to say a word about Bridgwater, except that all must regret the manner in which the inquiry there was conducted; but he could not help saying that the lion. Member for Hull (Mr. Norwood) had fallen into an error when he said that there was no evidence of any bribery having taken place at the last Parliamentary election for Beverley. Mr. Baron Martin, a very experienced Judge, in his Report, stated that he was perfectly satisfied on the whole evidence that more than 800 Parliamentary electors were bribed; and from what several witnesses stated there could be no doubt many were bribed for the Parliamentary election as well as for the municipal election. No witnesses were called to contradict that; and the only excuse alleged for the bribery was that the Liberal party were doing the same.

MR. CLAY

said, he quite agreed with his hon. Friend and Colleague (Mr. Norwood) that there was something hard, if not unfair, in tying together in one indictment Beverley and Bridgwater. It was bare justice to Sir Henry Edwards. These matters were really questions of degree. Perhaps there were few boroughs wholly pure. No doubt the Attorney General would say that his own borough (Plymouth) was entirely so. [A laugh.] If his assertion were too broad it must, at least, be generally allowed that a very large number of the boroughs of England were open, more or less, to charges of that kind, and the question was, whether their delinquency was so great as to justify Parliament in entirely extinguishing them. He entirely denied what the Attorney General had told him elsewhere—that Bridgwater and Beverley were six of one and a half-dozen of the other. The first part of his indictment was that for 70 years no pure election could be traced in Bridgwater; but that was certainly not the case in Beverley. The Commissioners only went back to 1841, but why? Because they had evidence before them that before then the elections at Beverley were pure. He had himself at that election the honour of being a candidate, and he pledged his character as a gentleman and a Member of that House that he did not spend one sixpence, give one glass of beer, or employ a solicitor. His opponent, for many years a Member of that House, Sir James Weir Hogg, had assured him that his election did not cost him £20. Beverley at that time was a Conservative borough. The constituency at that time was 1,000, and of that number he, a stranger in the borough, with no local interest, and without availing himself of any expenditure to influence the electors, had polled nearly 400 votes. He stood on purity principles and lost, and that result was simply an expression of the balance of political opinion in Beverley. No doubt the elections for Beverley of late years had been greatly influenced by corrupt proceedings; he said so in spite of his own experience of the place, which was a happy one. He meant to say that Beverley was anything but a very corrupt borough. Was it so corrupt as to be tied up with Bridgwater? He was sorry for Bridgwater, but was it right to tie up the two boroughs in the same category? He would say nothing further on the question of justice to Sir Henry Edwards; but he would make this suggestion with respect not only to these two boroughs, but all against which a charge of corrupt proceedings might be brought at the last election, and where many of the electors were new—it was clear, at least, they were not old offenders; and as they had already had a severe punishment and grave apprehension as to the consequences of their fault, they might, at least, have more hope for them in future if they were now visited with measures of less severity.

SIR FREDERICK W. HEYGATE

said, he had received a memorial from a former constituent of his for presentation to the House, hoping the Bill might not pass. The gentleman, had gone from the county he represented to Beverley, and he thought it extremely hard that he should have to suffer for the misdeeds of others. His friend knew nothing of any party in the borough. He (Sir Frederick W. Heygate) thought the case of these two boroughs a very hard one. What would the country say of the course they were now taking in selecting them and passing so severe a measure against them when they passed over others, perhaps deserving equal condemnation? Let them take the famous borough of Youghal, where £6,000 had been spent, and the largest sum given per head that had ever been expended on any constituency. It was impossible that corruption could be more flagrant; yet what was done in that case? Why was Sir Henry Edwards to be prejudiced? How could he receive a fair trial if this Bill were passed? Why was not a general measure rather brought in by the Government?

MR. STAVELEY HILL

said, he would remind his hon. and learned Friend the Attorney General that the Judge before whom the Beverley Elec- tion Petition was tried in the most solemn manner acquitted Sir Henry Edwards of bribery, and that afterwards, when he appeared before the Commissioners and sought to be examined, they would not take his evidence, and refused to hear him, saying that they had sufficient evidence against him already, and meant to report him. Accordingly, as the case stood, upon the only occasion when Sir Henry Edwards was heard in his own defence he was acquitted; and when his back was turned, and no opportunity of defending himself was afforded, he was found guilty of bribery. Was it fair, under such circumstances, to retain his name in a Schedule? Ought he to be found guilty by Act of Parliament while waiting his trial publicly for a criminal offence?

THE ATTORNEY GENERAL

said, that what he promised upon a former occasion had been somewhat misunderstood; his undertaking had been to separate the case of the Norwich voters from the cases of Bridgwater and Beverley, not to put those two boroughs into separate Bills. At the same time the two cases were different; and, whether in separate Bills or in separate clauses, it would be competent for any hon. Member to move the omission of either name if he thought it ought to be omitted. The debate had been commenced by the hon. Member for Somersetshire (Mr. Neville Grenville), who said that Bridgwater, where only 50 voters had been shown to be bribed, was not nearly as corrupt as Beverley, where 327 cases were established, and he accordingly objected to the boroughs being classed together. The hon. Members for Hull (Mr. Norwood and Mr. Clay) seemed to think that the duty was cast upon them of defending Beverley—a duty apparently somewhat painful to their feelings, and which they had discharged with courage but not with entire success, for one hon. Member spoke of the past iniquities of the borough, and the other admitted that the borough was very corrupt. Both, however, argued that it was not quite as corrupt as Bridgwater. His hon. Friend the Member for Hull who spoke last (Mr. Clay) testified, indeed, that at one election for Beverley one of the candidates was pure—[Mr. CLAY: All four]. It was a good deal to answer for four candidates, and his hon. Friend might be satisfied with answering for himself. But, at all events, that certainly must have been, the last pure election for Beverley; and whether it was the first he need not now inquire. One hon. Member (Mr. Broadley) had contended, with some confidence, that there was no direct evidence whatever to connect the municipal with Parliamentary bribery; but on that point his hon. Friend was altogether in error. A paragragh from the Deport of Baron Martin had been read by the hon. Member for Ipswich (Mr. West), setting forth that 800 men were, in fact, bribed for the Parliamentary election, though the money was given at the municipal election; and in the evidence given before the Commissioners—which he had carefully gone through—there were 15 or 16 cases in which the voters said distinctly that the money given at the municipal election was given for the "double event." In answer to the question which had been directly addressed to him, he would say that, in his opinion, the Report of the Commissioners was well founded, and that he should have come to the same conclusion himself. In all these cases it must be borne in mind that there was a certain amount of sham and imposture; bribes were seldom given openly; there was usually some pretext; money was given apparently for something but really for something else. And it could readily be imagined that where a municipal election came just before a Parliamentary election, money would not be given in distinct terms for both events, though such an understanding might perfectly well exist, and according to several witnesses did actually exist at the last election. It had been said that the passing of this Bill might prejudice the case of Sir Henry Edwards; but the hon. and learned Gentleman the Member for Coventry (Mr. Staveley Hill) did not seem to appreciate the effect of his own argument. The learned Judge reported that no bribery had been proved against Sir Henry Edwards; but he also reported that the borough was corrupt. The two things were quite distinct and quite compatible, and for the purposes of this discussion he had assumed that Sir Henry Edwards was not guilty. The Schedule was no evidence of any kind against Sir Henry Edwards; his name was included with that of other persons, having reference to transactions in bygone years, and it was impossible to place him in any different position from the rest. In the trial, however, that Schedule would not be evidence in any way against Sir Henry Edwards. An lion. Baronet (Sir Frederick Heygate) had stated that the House would not raise itself in public estimation by pick-out out two boroughs for the purpose of disfranchising them. These boroughs, however, were not selected arbitrarily. These were the only cases in which Commissioners had reported that the constituencies were extensively tainted by corrupt practices. It might well be that some other boroughs deserved to be placed in a similar category; but they tad not yet been convicted, and it formed no reason for declining to pass sentence upon a prisoner who was already convicted that there were others equally deserving of trial and punishment. And when the cases of Sudbury and St. Albans wore talked of, he could not help thinking that the House had acted rightly with regard to them, and that the country had a very good riddance of both those boroughs. In following the precedent which was sot in those cases, and in dealing upon similar principles with Bridgwater and Beverley, the House, he believed, would be adopting a course which would meet with the approbation of the country.

Question put, and agreed to.

Main Question put, and agreed to.

Bill read a second time, and committed for Monday next.