The proceedings of the Election Committees have constituted a severe
commentary on the existing system. The Ipswich election has been declared void ; the Members have be pronounced guilty of bribery ; and the borough, like that of Sudbury, is threatened with disfranchisement. Say, in the House of Com- mons, that some of its Members are returned by foul means, and Members cry " Oh !" or " Order!" or they laugh, or they say that the system "works well." Candidates make no sort of ob- jection to the means by which they walk into the House ; but let them be detected in the fact of having been returned by the prac- tices of thieves and vagabonds, and the sensitive assembly is scan- dalized at its own pollution : it ejects the exposed Members with contumely ; blots the peccant constituency — peccant because detected—from the list of the electorate; and reposes on the ful- ness of its virtue, perfectly content to have its majorities in voting
the condign sentence swelled by undetected bribers and unchal- lenged corrupters.
The Southampton Committee has managed to drag the House into a scrape. A witness, one WREN, refused to answer a question, because, he said, the reply would criminate himself: but the House and its Committees are not bound by rules of ordinary law-courts, and Mr. Speaker was instructed to tell the man that he must criminate himself if the Committee pleased. Next night, another recusant was brought before the House_, one of its own Members ; whose objection to answer was, not that it would criminate himself, but that it would be a breach of confi- dence. The House learned from the Law-officer of the Crown that the plea would not avail in law-courts' and it directed Mr. Speaker to tell the honourable Member that he must not pay any regard to the dictates of private honour as opposed to the dictates of the honourable Committee. When that dignified resolve was communicated to the Member, and be sat down without saying any thing, the House " laughed consumedly " ; it enjoyed its own hobble, like a passenger who has wandered into a cal de sac. . A new delinquent was sent before the House by the same Com- mittee on Thursday, WILLIAM Rouse Mansorr; who had disobeyed the Speaker's summons. He had forgotten all about the summons, and had sent the papers, which it told him to bring, to a Captain WARD; who in turn forgot all about receiving them. This was a direct offence against the authority of the House itself, aggravated by the witness's unconcerned way of excusing the omission; yet the House was by no means unanimous in condemning him. As She witness was a Tory witness, the Opposition very clearly per- ceived that he had intentionally disregarded the Speaker, and that he ought to be punished; While the Ministerialists doubted whether the man had offended at all ; and; in the search for loopholes to creep out at, the Solicitor-General discovered one in the very stun- mous of attendance—it was issued in 1841, and be questioned its validity in 1842! In his zeal for the Tory witness, the Conserva- tive Law-officer of the Crown became counsel for the prisoner at the bar, and set his ingenuity to work to find out technical flaws in the indictment. There were some exceptions to the general par- tiality ; and the most remarkable were Sir ROBERT PEEL and Lord STARLET, who, taking the case on its merits, agreed to Mr. RED- motor's modified motion, that the witness should simply be de- tamed in the custody of the Sergeant-at-Arms and produced be- fore the Committee whenever required : and ;hat was the plan adopted by the House. Afterwards, the Committee waived their right to make Josue WREN criminate himself and JOHN WILLIS FLEMING commit a breach of confidence. How will they screw the lost papers out of
WILLIAM ROUSE MABSON
These proceedings are hardly to be admitted as signs that Sir ROBERT PEEL'S and Lord JOHN RUSSELL'S plan for disguising the old Election Committees " works well."
