rogation was about to take place, it was enacted that the writ should not be issued, until after that prorogation had expired." He proposed to extend this principle to the dissolution of Parliament. There evidently was considerable analogy between the two cases; and it had been held, that, where an impeachment was prosecuting, a dissolution of Parliament did not affect the proceeding more than a prorogation.

Lord Castlereagh, without objecting to the principle of the Bill, suggested some difficulties which would occur in its passage through the Houses. He had traced the progress of the Shaftsbury bill through the House of Lords, and he found that a message was sent to the House of Commons, requiring that all the information which had been laid before the House, and which induced the House to pass the bill, should be submitted to their Lordships. On the consideration of the evidence in that case, the bill was agreed to. Now, the proceedings of the Committee on the Grampound election were more grave and serious than those connected with the Shaftsbury case; and they must be aware, that if they sent this bill up to the other House, their Lordships would demand all the information on which it was founded.

Mr Wynn, however, strongly supported the bill, observing, The noble lord (Castlereagh) said he would consider this question, if it came before a new Parliament, whether an election of members did or did not take place in these boroughs, as exactly in its present state, and that Parliament, under these circumstances, might still exercise the same plenitude of power as it now could with respect to them; but the noble lord must feel how strong the argument would be against such a proceeding: after a general

VOL. XIII. PART 1.

election had taken place, and no corruption, in the course of that election, was proved against those boroughs, they might continue as corrupt as ever. But they would take very good care, on such an occasion, to keep their corruption completely out of sight.

When, however, on the 21st February, the second reading of the bill was moved, it was opposed even by several whig members. Mr Calcraft could not give it his support, because he thought it would be something like imposing upon the country, to hold out to it any expectation that the House of Commons was in earnest. It was too much to expect that the House of Lords would not throw out the bill for withholding the writ in four cases, when in regard to one only, Barnstaple, it had any information or evidence before it. With regard to Grampound, Penryn, or Camelford, it had not a tittle of information. An address to the throne, praying that writs might not be directed to the boroughs enumerated, was the true parliamentary course of proceeding. To this Mr Wynn replied: If the House should address the Throne for such a purpose, it would be a recognition of the right of the Crown at any time to suspend the sending of writs to any county or borough. Mr Marryat argued : As to the danger of allowing the writs to be re-directed to places like Penryn or Camelford, he could not discover any: half the voters of Grampound were now suffering in gaol, and two members were also enduring the heavy punishment of the law for corrupt practices. Surely, then, they would now, if ever, take warning, and not repeat their offences: and if he were called upon to point out boroughs in the kingdom where the elective franchise would be exercised with the

c

greatest purity, he should point out the very places enumerated in the bill before the House.

Mr Brougham, considering the extreme importance of such a measure as the disfranchisement of four boroughs, thought that it ought to be deliberated upon more calmly, and upon fuller evidence. It might be right, or it might be wrong, to disfranchise, when they should be more prepared, and when evidence respecting the four boroughs should be before them; but when they were not prepared for the disfranchisement, he asked, was it right to deprive those boroughs at the dissolution, pro hac vice, of their elective franchise? He had no such sanguine expectations as Mr Marryat as to the amendment of the offending boroughs. At the same time, in justice to his own feelings, and to his observation of feelings out of doors, as well as in that House, he would say, that some exertion of the elemency of the House ought to be extended to a person whose punishment might be just, but was not very lenient. Two years' imprisonment at their instance was not a lenient punishment upon one of their members. Oh, he was not a member-he meant then Sir Manasseh Lopez. With this person he had had no acquaintance, he knew not his face, and he was not disposed to say he had not been guilty of corruption; but, however culpable he might have been, and however correct his conviction, their separating without doing something to shew that there was on their part no impediment to the extension of royal clemency, he thought would be too hard and too severe. He was 68 years of age. Two years' imprisonment was a most severe punishment upon such a person for an offence, which he would not palliate it was an offence, grave and serious, against morality, against the consti

tution of the country, against the pri vileges of that House, but it could not be said to be extremely rare.

Mr Scarlett, entertaining, as he was well known to entertain, the highest respect for his learned friend's opinion, could not agree with him in his view of this question. The offence was one, not only against morality and law, but it was a corruption of the very source of all that was dear to us as our rights and privileges. Sir James Mackintosh also argued for the bill, remarking, If they called upon the Lords to unite with them in disfranchising those boroughs, without hearing and examining evidence for themselves, they would be guilty of an invasion of their constitutional liberties. But they did not so by this bill; they only called upon the other branches of the legislature to give faith and credit to them, that the investigation, in the state it was now before them, would afford sufficiently strong evidence, in their opinion, to justify the suspension of writs, till final measures could be deliberately adopted.

The measure not being opposed by Lord Castlereagh, who admitted that there was a prima facie case against these boroughs, passed through the House of Commons without a vote. When, however, it appeared in the Lords, a petition was presented from one of the boroughs to be heard by counsel against it. As the delay attending such an arrangement would be fatal to a bill which must pass immediately or never, Lord Carnarvon strongly opposed it: If their Lordships did not pass the bill, their decision would be a condemnation of the practice of suspending writs, which had been followed by the House of Commons for half a century. No injustice would be done to the electors of these boroughs by passing the bill. They would only con

tinue until the meeting of Parliament in the same situation in which the House of Commons had placed them, and in which, had it not been for the dissolution, they must have remained until the decision of the great question at issue took place. It was impossible to look back upon the proceedings of the House of Commons without feeling the warmest approbation of the measures taken by that House to extirpate a system of corruption which disgraced the representation of the country. A young nobleman, actuated by those principles which distinguished his family, and did honour to the name of Russell, had been active in his endeavours to remove this stain from the constitution. He brought in a bill to transfer the franchise of one of these convicted boroughs to Leeds. When this was proposed, one minister of the Crown hailed the measure with his approbation, and the other ministers in the House of Commons gave the bill their silent assent. What then must be the feelings of the country when it should appear that the ministers of the Crown in the House of Lords put their chilling negative on the measure? Were it to happen that all the ministers of the Crown in the Commons supported the present bill, and that all the ministers in the House of Lords opposed it, the contrast would be singular. It was only proposed to hold these boroughs to bail for a period not exceeding 53 days.

Lord Liverpool expressed an opinion equally decided on the opposite side. If a case of corrupt practices was made out against a particular borough, he thought it would constitute a fair subject of inquiry in Parliament how it ought to be dealt with, and whether it ought not to be deprived of privileges which it had abused. But the question now be.

fore the House was very different. It was whether the House should disfranchise a borough not proved to be corrupt, or suspend its rights without inquiry and without evidence. The case of Shaftsbury was not at all analogous to what was now proposed to be done. The House of Commons in that case suspended the writ during a prorogation. The House of Commons might be right or wrong, and their Lordships should not surrender their right of inquiry.

The Lord Chancellor argued with equal force against a bill, which required their Lordships' consent to a measure that would suspend the rights of the boroughs in question, without inquiry or evidence. Counsel ought to be heard, and the House ought not to agree to the bill without investigation. Their Lordships had been called upon to consult the feelings and interests of the public by passing this measure; but they would best consult their interests by attending to the claims of justice. If they did justice to their country, their country would ultimately do justice to them. The House of Commons did not decide on the question of depriving a single member of his seat without examining evidence upon oath; but here boroughs were to be disfranchised (or at least were to have their rights suspended) without any evidence at all. Evidence could not now be heard at their Lordships' bar; but he would not consent to suspend the rights of the subject on any thing short of evidence upon oath.

The determination to hear counsel rendered it, as the Chancellor admitted, impossible to go through with the bill during this session; so that, on the motion of Lord Lauderdale, it was disposed of by an adjournment of a fortnight.

On the 28th February, Parliament was dissolved by commission, in con

sequence of his Majesty's indisposition. The Chancellor read the King's speech, of which the following is the only important paragraph:

"We are commanded to inform you, that in taking leave of the present Parliament his Majesty cannot refrain from conveying to you his warmest assurances of the sense which his Majesty entertains of the important services which you have rendered the country. Deeply as his Majesty lamented that designs and practices such as those which you have been recently called upon to repress should have existed in this free and happy country, he cannot sufficiently

commend the prudence and firmness with which you directed your attention to the means of counteracting them. If any doubt had remained as to the nature of those principles by which the peace and happiness of the nation were so seriously menaced, or of the excesses to which they were likely to lead, the flagrant and sanguinary conspiracy which has lately been detected must open the eyes of the most incredulous, and must vindicate to the whole world the justice and expediency of those measures to which you judged it necessary to resort, in defence of the laws and constitution of the kingdom."

THE month of March and part of April were occupied by the elections, which were carried on throughout the kingdom with eager activity, though without that excess of violence which had marked some scenes in the former election. The result produced a Parliament not differing materially in its general character from the one which preceded. A small addition of numbers was supposed to have been gained by the party opposed to ministers.

The new Parliament held its first sitting on the 21st April. The business on this day was confined to taking the oaths, and in the House of Commons to the re-election of a Speaker. This last proceeding gave occasion to very warm testimonies in favour of the ability, integrity, and strict regard to the constitutional privileges of Parliament with which the functions of that high office had been performed by the individual (Sir C. M. Sutton) who now held it. -Sir W. Scott observed: It could

not be denied that, composed as this House was of gentlemen selected from the various component parts of society in the united kingdom, many were to be found in it, whose talents, acquirements, and general merits, would afford a fair prospect of a successful discharge of the arduous duties of Speaker. Here, however, it was fortunately not necessary to hazard any speculation, however promising: past services, and tried and demonstrable abilities-abilities not confined to the mere discharge of what might be termed the dry duties of the office-had commanded not merely the approbation, but the admiration, of every member who had witnessed their employment. Mr Holme Sumner added: When it was recollected that the education of that right hon. gentleman had been directed to the laws of his country, and to the principles of its inestimable constitution, that alone formed a high claim to the suffrages of the House; but after it had been seen in how short a time after he had