§ SIR WILFRID LAWSONasked the Secretary of State for the Home Department, Whether the magistrates of Oxford did, on April 26th 1881, sanction the transfer of a beerhouse licence to Stephen Peedell, who, on the 10th of July 1880, was sentenced to four months' imprisonment for bribery committed at the last Oxford Parliamentary Election; and, if this be the ease, whether such crime, conviction, and sentence does not disqualify him from holding a licence for the sale of drink?
§ SIR WILLIAM HARCOURT, in reply, said, that, as to the second part of the Question, the disqualification which the hon. Member for Carlisle (Sir Wilfrid Lawson) had in his mind did not arise upon a conviction for misdemeanour, but on a conviction for felony; therefore, the action of the magistrates in granting the licence was not absolutely illegal. If, however, the hon. Member wished his (Sir William Harcourt's) opinion as to whether it was an exercise of wise discretion on the part of the magistrates to grant the licence to a man who had just come out of prison, he would say it was not. If he wanted to know what the view of Her Majesty's Government was on the connection between public-houses and electoral corruption, he would find it in the provision of the Bill introduced that Session by his hon. and learned Friend the Attorney General.