able to consider the Bill, might operate as a disfranchisement of freeholders instead of securing their votes. The Bill, he understood, had been introduced into the other House early in the session; it had remained there till that time, and had been discussed in exceedingly thin Houses, the House having been once if not oftener counted out. He appealed therefore to their lordships, whether under such circumstances it became their dignity to proceed to agitate the Bill, and endeavour to pass it in that session. Much of it, he believed, might be founded in wisdom and in sound policy; but there were clauses in it which required the facts upon which they proceeded to be well established before it became their lordships to admit them. He therefore thought it his duty to move, "That the Bill be committed that day three months."

(who had a right to vote) were omitted: namely, all freeholders who had purchased their estates free of land tax; that is, those whose land tax was paid out of the estate of some other person. Such were the absurdities of the laws now existing, that at the last general election it was discovered that upwards of one half of the voters were then actually disfranchised. The duplicates of the land tax, which ought to have been signed and sealed by three commissioners, had been signed only by two, some only by one, and others not at all. There were in the existing laws many other informalities very prejudicial to the freeholders. He next stated, that in a particular election, an express had been sent post haste to town to an eminent counsel to know what was to be done; the counsel very ingeniously advised (as he had been informed) to do an act directly in the teeth of the act of parliament in order to get over this difficulty, and to give those voters the prima facie appearance of good votes. This was done, and no person making objection, it succeeded. But any one man in the said county petitioning the House of Commons, would (under Mr. Grenville's Bill, and before that committee) have disfranchised one half of the freeholders of that county, on account of the obscurity of the Act of the 20th of the King. The present laws were highly injurious to the Clergy, as freeholders; and a man of 10,000l. a year might be disfranchised by the existing statutes. Therefore that Bill, the bill of the House of Commons, was not a disfranchising bill, but a bill to restore to the freeholders of England, the rights of which, by the folly and rashness of former parliaments, they had been unjustly deprived.

Earl Stanhope entered at large into the abuses and imperfections of the present laws relative to elections, and stated the objects of the Bill. Would the no!le lord declare, that he thought it right that the great expense of contested elections should continue; expenses so enormous, that contested elections had ruined some of the first families in the kingdom, and obliged the heads of those families to quit their native country and turn vagrants on the continent? Ought laws which countenanced proceedings so ruinous, to continue a moment longer on the statute-book? He stated instances of the immoderate costs of a county election, and said that he had been assured by the late sir Charles Turner, that a relation of his stood three contested elections for the county of York, the bills for which to that one individual for the said three elections cost upwards of 100,000, and that he (sir Charles) was all that money the poorer. His lord--Another great object of the Bill was ship stated the Gloucester election as another instance of immense charge. The noble lord had complained of disfranchisement. He begged leave to assure him, that there was no disfranchisement by the Bill. The noble lord was so ignorant upon the subject on which he had made a speech, that he did not know that thousands and tens of thousands of the voters of this kingdom were at that hour actually disfranchised by the laws relative to the land-tax assessment, and by Mr. Powys's Act of the 20th of the present King; that copyholders (who had no right to vote) were included in the landtax assessments; and that freeholders

to support Mr. Grenville's Bill. He observed that the Gloucestershire committee had sitten for three or four months, and the Bedfordshire committee, between two and three months. It had been almost impossible to make a ballot for the Buckinghamshire petition; the reason was, the mem bers would not submit to such a drudgery. If at a general election there should be ten or fifteen petitions from large counties, there would be an end to that most excellent Bill of Mr. Grenville, unless some such plan as that proposed by the present Bill, were adopted. In the Gloucestershire committee no less than 1,500 votes had been contested.

scent, marriage or promotion to a benefice in the church, could, upon registering, vote directly. 4. No man could lose his right by another man's neglect, this was a fundamental principle of justice, but was nevertheless totally disregarded by the existing laws, for there it did not depend upon its being the man's own fault that he was disfranchised; he might be deprived of his franchise by the neglect of others, as in case of the informalities in regard to the assessment to the land tax already stated by him. 5. The necessity of enrolment on the register occurred but once in a man's life; and the whole trouble it occasioned, was to go to the registerkeeper within the parish to be enrolled. Freeholders living at a distance might, according to the Bill, enroll by attestation without travelling to the parish. 6. There was to be a register in each parish, and for each parish; and consequently it would be near those who were acquainted with the estate; and it could not be expected that any man would have the impudence to come and vote for an estate, stating it to be in a particular parish, when so many persons could confront him, and prove that there was no such estate in the parish in question. 7. The poll-books were also to be divided into parishes, which would be correspondent with the registers. 8. A new principle, and which (addressing himself earnestly to the three bishops present), his lordship said, must recommend itself particularly to those whose imme

His lordship stated, that in his opinion that thing called a scrutiny was, of all things in nature, the most preposterously absurd-excepting only the reverse, under the present system, hamely, a returning officer, making a return upon the face of a fraudulent poll, without a scrutiny, the returning officer not being able when he takes the poll to distinguish for want of a register, which were good votes, and which bad. His lordship enumerated the absurdities of a scrutiny in the following order: 1st, If continued beyond the day of the return of the writ, a member might be kept for a year or two years out of the House. 2d, If not so continued, then the return would be made upon an unfinished scrutiny, which was palpably absurd. 3d, If the returning officer scrutinized only votes on one side, and had not time before the return day of the writ to scrutinize the votes on the other side, the return would be made on a sided scrutiny. 4th, That by the Attorney General's Bill of the last year, the votes were to be alternately scrutinized one by one on each side. Suppose of the 1,500 contested votes in the case of the Gloucestershire election, fifty or sixty had by this alternate scrutiny been struck off on cach side, and the scrutiny were to close for want of time; then the return would be made just the same as if there had been no scrutiny, and had been made on the face of the poll. All this was not only simply absurd, but a complicated dilemma of absurdities. The whole system must therefore be al-diate duty it was to take care of our relitered; that was the object of this excellent Bill, and it was proposed to be done by a register of county votes.

The Earl here entered into the principles of his Bill, which he stated to be nine in number: 1. According to the Bill, no man could hereafter vote for any property which had not been registered for at least twelve months. This would prevent any man's coming on a sudden on the day of election, and stating himself to possess a freehold, never heard of before. The register would prove whether the claim of the person tendering his vote, was so far just, that the freehold really existed, and had been registered twelve months. 2. No man having purchased his freehold estate with a view to vote, could vote unless he had been for twelve months enrolled on the register, as the holder of the freehold he came to vote for. 3. A man's coming to the possession of a registered freehold estate by devise, de

gion, viz. that a false oath should not be taken. It was the single instance where the true principle of preventing perjury had been adopted. He explained this, by stating, that on account of the circumstances and the oath being so well considered, it must be followed by certain and immediate detection. He asked, why was the principle capable of preventing perjury? For this plain reason, by the form and words of the first part of the oath, the voter was to swear that his name was enrolled on a book that was present; second, that he was the identical John Smith enregistered; and third, that he was in possession of the said enrolled property. Let their lordships think a moment upon these allegations. Would any man, the most hardened villain upon earth, venture, in the first place, to swear that his name was entered on a register that was present, if upon turning over a leaf or two, it could be immediately seen and known

that no such name was enrolled? Would he, in the next place, personate John Smith, before many individuals to whom the face and figure of the real John Smith were familiar? And in the last place, would he swear that he was in possession of property which the register-keeper of the parish must know to be in the possession of another, person? 9. And not the least important and essential principle of the Bill was, that returning officers should no longer be judicial, but merely official and ministerial. This would put a stop to corruption and fraudulent returns.

Having stated these nine principles, his lordship said that the Bill ought undoubtedly to go to a committee; and he begged the House to recollect, that that was the question, and not that the Bill should pass. In the committee they would be able to discuss its principles and provisions, and to see whether it deserved to pass or not; but to reject it without a single reason assigned, and without discussion, would be an instance of unutterable indecency. He reminded their lordships, that this was the second time the Bill had passed the Commons, and that some respect was due to it, if it were merely on that account. With regard to the thinness of the Houses it had been debated in, the Houses had not always been thin; above 120 had, at one time, divided upon | it, and of the whole 558 members, there had been but 20 against it in any one division last year, and 22 this session, while it had been supported by the best and ablest men on both sides the House.

The Marquis of Carmarthen felt it his duty to vote against the motion. It surely was the duty of their lordships to pay due attention to every bill which came before them, without regard to the particular period of the session at which it was submitted to their consideration; and if the subject was extremely important, the more necessary was it undoubtedly that it should engage their lordships immediate attention. That the object which the present Bill professed to aim at obtaining, was most important and desirable, was admitted on all hands. Would their lordships, then, refuse to go into a committee, in order to examine how far the Bill was likely to answer its purpose? With regard to the argument, that a bill's coming from the other House, upon the privileges of which House its clauses and its principles solely turned, was no reason why it should not be examined; undoubtedly it was not. It was

clearly their lordships duty to examine and discuss every bill on every subject which came before them; but then surely the authority of the Commons in respect to a bill immediately concerning themselves, ought to have some weight with their lordships; and unless some flagrant absurdity was discoverable in a bill so circumstanced, it would be at least entitled to their lordships consideration.

The House divided on lord Sydney's motion: Contents, 4; Not-contents, 11. The Bill was then ordered to be committed. The Contents were lord Sydney, and the bishops of Bangor, Bristol, and Lincoln.

July 5. On the order of the day for the third reading of the Bill,

The Bishop of Bangor remarked, that he had voted against this Bill in every stage of it, and had hitherto objected to it, because oaths were made use of as the sanction, when a pecuniary penalty secured obedience to such a law. The bishop said, that the present general inadvertency to the obligation of an oath was much to be lamented; and it would become their lordships seriously to consider, whether the requiring of oaths so frequently, and oftentimes in cases wherein a better substitute might be easily provided, had not contributed more than any other circumstance to lessen that reverence for oaths which the Legislature ought by every possible way to keep up. Were there no other objection but this, the House would be fully justified in throwing out the Bill; but there were many other. The commissioners of the land-tax were to be principally employed in the execution of this Bill; and as it would involve them in`a great deal of trouble and expense, it was not to be expected that they would take much pains about it. As this Bill proposed to repeal all the laws now in being, which relate to the election of county members, the kingdom would be in a strange situation if it should pass into a law, since, as such an act as this would never be carried into execution, we should, strictly speaking, have no established rules to go by in that important part of our constitution, the election of the county members. As the commissioners of the landtax would not put themselves to the trouble of executing such an act, which gave them no allowance, or their charges on the road, &c. so if they were disposed to execute it, they would not be able to effect

their purpose, as the Bill was so complicated, that the commissioners, who were generally plain country gentlemen, would not be able to understand it. The bishop then entered into an examination of several of the clauses, for the purpose of proving, that if the Bill passed into a law, great inconveniences would follow; and as there was not time now to make the necessary amendments, that was a strong reason for postponing it to another season. He should therefore move," That the Bill be rejected."

! The Earl of Hopetoun said, that the frequent use of oaths had been attended with bad consequences; but he did not think that a bill of this kind could be carried into execution without an oath, and he should not therefore agree to leave out that part of the Bill. With respect to the other objections, he allowed they had weight, but not sufficient to throw out such a bill, which was only a bill of experiment.

tioned, be carried into execution, the consequence would be, that we should have a repeal of all the election laws, and this act in force, which would not be executed; or, in other words, we should have no one law or regulation for our conduct in this important part of our constitution. Their lordships divided on the motion that the Bill be rejected: Contents, 17; Proxies, 21: Total, 38. Not-contents, 12; Proxies, 3: Total, 15.

Debate in the Commons on the King's Message relative to the Crown Lands.] June 16. The Chancellor of the Exchequer presented the following Message from his Majesty:

"GEORGE R.

"His Majesty, being desirous that an inquiry should be made into the state and condition of the woods, forests, and land revenues, belonging to the Crown, in order that the same may be rendered as beneficial and as productive as possible, recommends it to the House of Commons to take this object into their consideration, and to make such provision thereupon, as they shall judge to be most for the public benefit."

The Earl of Sandwich said, that he had had as much experience as any man in election matters, as far as a peer could interfere, and he never yet found any inconvenience from the present system, and would on no account countenance the innovations which this Bill would make. He had read with surprise that June 19. Mr. Pitt having moved the paragraph in the Bill, which makes the order of the day for taking the said Messheriff only ministerial, and deprives him sage into consideration, stated the great of his judicial authority. A sheriff, who importance of the subject, and how highly is a man of sense and candour, is certainly worthy it was of the attention of the Legisvery useful in rejecting improper votes, lature, whether it was considered in its and by such means preventing double probable consequence of increasing the returns, which must always be the case, revenue, or contributing to improve and when men are admitted to vote indiscri- extend the state of agriculture and popuminately. He adverted to that part of lation. He should not, for the present, the Bill which sets aside a scrutiny. A suggest any specific measure for carrying scrutiny was a matter of right, and arose this object into execution, whether by naturally out of this business: and it would still holding them in the hands of the be a most extraordinary stretch of power Crown and applying regulations for their to deny the unsuccessful candidate that better administration, or by putting them privilege. He entirely agreed with the up to sale. But whichever mode was right reverend prelate, that if this Bill ultimately adopted, it would necessarily passed into a law, it would never be exe- require considerable time before it could cuted, as the commissioners of the land be brought to perfection. In the former tax, who are enjoined to execute, would case, a part only could be at first taken probably give themselves no concern into hand, and that for experiment, which about it: and if they did make an attempt might be found for some time ineffectual, towards carrying it into execution, they and be necessarily altered and amended; would certainly fail, as it was not their and in the case of a sale, the whole could province to construe long and intricate not be brought to market at once, because acts of parliament, nor were they able to that might not only be a means of defeatdo it. As this Act repealed all the presenting in a great measure the intention of the laws relating to county elections, and as it plan, but be also productive of much pri would never, for the reasons above men- vate inconvenience to individuals, and to