LORD BROUGHAMsaid, he would press on Her Majesty's Government the necessity of their attempting to devise some measure for checking bribery and corruption at Parliamentary elections. He believed that one of the benefits of the Bill which he had that evening been bringing under their Lordships' consideration, and under which parties themselves to a suit or a Parliamentary inquiry could be subjected to a rigid examination—he believed that one of the benefits of the Bill would be to promote the purification of our electoral system. And if that purification should be longer delayed, they might depend upon it that, besides the injurious effects of those practices on the morals of the people, and the character of the country and of Parliament, they would end in making men lean to those opinions of which he wished to say nothing upon that occasion, but which were extensively entertained in foreign countries'—he meant opinions which involved a distrust gene- 1383 rally of the Parliamentary or representative system.
§ House adjourned till To-morrow.