all they had heard at their bar, and con- | be productive of such consequences. The trary to the evidentia rei? only attempt that had been made to reply to the learned gentleman had been by his Majesty's Solicitor-general, who, as the learned gentleman had stated clearly and unanswerably that the writ carried on the face of it its object and its end, had said, that the writ had a third, as well as the former two orders to the sheriff. It not only directed him to choose a person at such a place to serve in parliament by such a time, but to take care that the person returned had the majority of legal votes at the election. Mr. Fox ridiculed this argument, and contended that it was equally weak and absurd. Having expressed this with some warmth, Mr. Fox mentioned the advertisement in the newspapers relative to the bad votes stated to have been discovered in the parishes of St. Margaret and St. John, and argued upon that publication as a publication carrying upon the face of it sufficient evidence of the fallacious pretences that had been urged for carrying on the scrutiny. He also mentioned that there were but nine days more for a petition to be presented to carry the election to be tried by a tribunal competent to investigate it, and give an honest and just judgment; a tribunal, the members of which were themselves bound to He answered some parts of the Master decide upon their oaths, and upon evidence of the Rolls and of Mr. Bearcroft's argudelivered upon oath. He said, the consi- ments; and he took notice of what had deration of the expense alone excepted, been said by Mr. Bastard early in the dehe heartily wished for a petition, were it bate, who had expressed his wishes, that an only that such dark and injurious insinua- act were the means resorted to, rather than tions as the hon. and learned gentleman a motion to rescind. Mr. Fox said, the had suggested, might be for ever wiped reason why he did not take that method away, and their truth or falsehood demon-was, his extreme difficulty what sort of strated beyond all contradiction. With regard to what had been said in the course of the debate, as to the law puzzling the plain sense of the argument, and leaving him an ample field to enter upon, he declared the reverse appeared to him to be the case; his learned friends had argued the whole of the law and of the constitution and common sense of the question so fully, that they had scarcely left him any thing to say. One learned gentleman in particular (Mr. Scott) had entered into the whole of the case with a soundness of argument, and a depth and a closeness of reasoning, that perhaps had scarcely been equalled in the discussion of any topic within those walls, that turned at all on the statute and common law, on the analogy of writs, and the sort of legal references that had been made in the course of the debate: so well and so ably indeed had that learned gentleman argued it, that nothing like an answer had been offered to any one of his appeals to his brethren of the long robe, or any one of his doctrines. In truth, he was convinced, it was out of the power of ingenuity itself to overthrow the positions laid down by that learned gentleman, to whom he would offer no apology for any allusion he might have made to him on a former day, since having drawn forth so masterly and instructive a speech, he considered himself as peculiarly happy in having been able to say any thing that had the good fortune to [VOL. XXV.] bill to frame for the purpose, and the risk that must necessarily be run as to the getting such a bill through the three estates. If a declaratory bill were brought in, it would be liable to every objection to which the present motion was liable; and if he were to bring in an enacting bill, perhaps it would be said by the first law authorities in the other House, (lord Thurlow for instance) "Why do you send your useless bills here? To what end cram your statute books with acts of parliament, pronouncing that to be law, which every body knows is law already." This, he thought, as it had been said on one occasion already, might be said again; and he was sure, it could not be said on any occasion more truly, than if he were to bring in an enacting bill of the nature in question, and that House were to pass it, and send it to the Lords. Mr. Fox paid lord Thurlow great compliments on his abilities, and said, there was also in the other House a professional peer, venerable for his years, venerable for his learning, his talents, and his integrity; he meant his Majesty's chief justice of the court of King's-bench, whose opinions, he believed, were the same as his own upon the subject, though he did not speak from any secret communication, He rested his belief that they were so, from the noble and learned lord, who was many years since a practical lawyer, having at that time uniformly acted upon the same ideas. Mr. Fox concluded with an earnest [K] recommendation to the House, to do away the errors they had committed, and reprobated the idea of its being derogatory of their honour to confess their mistake. Mr. Pilt declared, that he had given the minutest attention to every thing that had fallen on either side of the House, and particularly to the right hon. gentle man, not with any hopes of finding a new light thrown either on the legality or expediency of the question, but because he had been desirous to discover how far the ingenuity of gentlemen would go in giving an apparent diversity to arguments which had already been so repeatedly handled in every shape that invention and subtlety could possibly give them; in aid to all the authorities which had already been adduced, the right hon. gentleman had resorted to new authorities of his own creation, those of the lord chancellor and the chief justice of the King's-bench. Gentlemen, no doubt, must have at first imagined that the right hon. gentleman had come to the House armed with the express opinions of those great luminaries of the law, by the confidence with which he had used the sanction of their names to enforce his argument; but after availing himself for about a quarter of an hour of the credit which he assumed on the supposition of their opinions, he had at last thrown off his borrowed ornaments, and confessed, that in the supposed opinions of those great men he had been only gratifying his imagination in contemplating in them, as in a mirror, his own conceptions. He wondered, that with regard to the latter of those noble and learned personages, who had been so long ago as the right hon. gentleman had mentioned, a practical lawyer, it had not been observed, that he was a practical lawyer just about the period of the scrutiny on the contest for Westminster between Trentham and Vandeput, and at that very time in a high department under government. He wished the right hon, gentleman had not forgot to refer to another authority an authority, which, while true dignity of character, unbounded information, abilities of unparalleled magnitude, and an integrity on which no party had ever attempted to fix a stain, should continue to be respected, would ever be an object of the love, the gratitude, and the admiration of England: the authority to which he alluded, was that of a noble lord, who had formerly been chief justice of the court of common pleas, and afterwards chancellor of England, and who, he was happy and proud to say, was now at the head of his Majesty's councils. He presumed it would not be contended as probable, that that noble lord was of the same opinion of the right hon. gentleman, or, no doubt, he would also have availed himself of the strength which the supposed accession of his opinion would have given his motion. Another authority had been offered, and it was an authority to which he paid as great a degree of respect as the right hon. gentleman possibly could-the resolutions of the city of York. This authority was not, like the others, merely imaginary; and he rejoiced it was not so, as it was decidedly in his (Mr. Pitt's) favour; for so far from desiring the House to correct the abuse complained of, in the manner in which they were by this motion pressed to do; the object of those resolutions was nothing more than an exact type of what had already been declared by so many of his friends, to be the proper and necessary remedy, and which it was, and had been ever since the abuse had arisen, his resolution to apply. With respect to the animadversions which had been levelled against his learned friend the Attorney-general, they were such as he was sure could make no impression on himself, or the House. The learned gentleman (setting aside the consideration to which he was intitled from abilities, that he would venture to say were not surpassed in his profession) might well expect that some degree of credit was due to the high office he filled, especially on a question of this nature, where it was not in issue, merely whether the conduct complained of was on a close and deep investigation contrary to the abstruse and more difficult point of law; but whether it was so manifest and so gross a violation of plain, avowed, and important principles, as must have proceeded from intentional corruption, or unpardonable error, which could alone justify the measure now demanded; a measure of so delicate a nature, that it certainly ought never to be resorted to on light and frivolous grounds; a measure that called upon the House in express terms to avow their own repeated resolutions formed on the most mature deliberation, and the most patient debate and discussion, to be the offspring either of wilful dishonesty, or of the most disgraceful ignorance. For his own part, however he might have altered his sentiments, in respect to the expediency of the resolutions which the House was now called upon to rescind, he had by no means departed from his firm persuasion of the legality of those resolutions. The House had been warned against adopting legal analogies as the ground on which they were to decide the present question; positive precedents were insisted on as the only documents that could support the legality of the scrutiny. He argued, that the doctrines of the gentlemen on the other side of the House, went to establish the necessity of a returning officer's sacrificing the substance to the exigency of the writ. It would ill become him, the avowed advocate for a pure representation of the people, and it would tend very little towards procuring for him the confidence of the public towards his professions on that subject, were he by any means whatever to contribute to the increase of the many defects which were at present so justly complained of in the constitution of parliament; and surely there could be no greater abuse than that of compelling a returning officer to make a return of members who were not elected by a majority of legal votes; yet this must be the case in many popular elections, if the returning officer, on a fair suggestion and rational belief of improper practices on the poll, had not the power of examining by a more regular and accurate mode than the nature of such an election, according to the usual method of conducting them, was capable of affording. he had given, he was ready to affirm, that it might lawfully be summoned in forty days. With regard to the argument drawn from the clause in the Act of Union, that fifty days were positively prescribed, as the shortest time, that clause did not apply; the object of that clause was merely local, temporary, and partial, for it related only to the kingdom of Scotland, to the members for Scotland, and to the first parliament that should meet for the united kingdoms; it enacted, that it might be lawful for her Majesty, at any time, to call the then parliament of England, and also to issue writs for the election of the Scotch members, to meet in that parlia ment, but that there should be fifty days allowed between the issuing of the writs and the assembling of the parliament: the usual term was thus prolonged, in order to afford leisure for the confusion, consequent on the new arrangement then taking place, to subside. Still, however, he would concede to the right hon. gentleman, the difference between forty and fifty days, and take it at fifty; in this concession he lost nothing, for all he wanted was a principle, which he would find in either case, namely, that by absolute and positive statute, the very thing is allowed which the gentlemen on the other side complain against as contrary to all law, common sense, justice, or precedent, the continuation of an election or scrutiny, after the meeting of parliament, and consequently after the return of the writ. For if the parliament might meet in fifty days, and the election for London be deferred for fifty-two, then it was evident, that the principle was sufficiently established, as in a case of this nature two days were as strong as two hundred. He should be happy to hear any of the learned gentlemen on the other side attempt an answer to this. The right hon. gentleman had disputed the calculation of the master of the rolls, of the time allowed to the sheriffs of London to make their return, by the statute of 13 Geo. 2, in order to overturn the argument of analogy, which had been drawn by that gentleman, who, though he had given the assistance of his opinion, he was sorry to inform the House, would But if he should not be allowed the benot be able, from a domestic misfor-nefit of a legal analogy with this Act for the tune, to give his vote upon the question. city of London, by the candour of those genThat calculation, however, of his learned tlemen, he would at least satisfy them with friend he would venture to adhere to, as a precedent. The case of Trentham and he knew it to be strictly accurate. By Vandeput was that precedent. To prove that statute, the time allowed to the she- this precedent fully adequate to the case, riffs was fifty-two days; now, the only he would lay down an alternative-' either question, with regard to the time for sum- a scrutiny is or it is not a part of an elecmoning a parliament, was, whether it was tion.' If it be a part of an election, then forty or fifty days; this, the right hon, the election cannot be said to be finished gentleman had well imagined, was at the while the scrutiny continues, and not time of the dissolution of the late parlia- being finished, no members can be chosen, ment a subject of consideration with mi- because the event and termination of an nisters, and from that consideration which election must be the choice of members; " in this part of the alternative the right hon. gentleman had nothing to complain of, because the scrutiny not being determined, the election of course was not finished, and the election not being finished, he certainly could not have been chosen by an imperfect and unfinished election. The other part of the alternative put the right hon. gentleman into a worse situation, because it overturned the whole of his objections to the analogy between the late scrutiny for Westminster and the former one; for if he contended that a scrutiny was not a part of an election, then did the House of Commons do, in that instance, exactly what they have done now; for they sent the candidates back to a scrutiny, after the day on which the writ was returnable; a day which, though not ascertained in the writ by name, had been sufficiently identified by description, namely, the 14th day after the conclusion of the election. Now, this day being thus ascertained from the conclusion of the election, brought the two cases in spirit exactly to the same point, stripping them of that distinction which it was so much the object of the gentlemen opposite him to establish; namely, the day being expressly named in the one, and only described in the other. The right hon. gentleman had shewn so great a soreness on this subject of scrutinies, that, perhaps, it might embarrass him to be asked how it came, that he himself, within three or four weeks of the time appointed for the return of the writ, threatened to demand a scrutiny?' This question, as he never wished to lead any man into an embarrassment, out of which he did not wish to extricate him, he would endeavour to answer in some degree, and having already presented the gentleman in the last head of his argument with two, he would here give him three divisions of that question. The right hon. gentleman, then, had one or the other of the three following objects in view: first, he either thought that the subject of the scrutiny was of so simple a nature, that he hoped to see it decided in his favour in so short a time as the remainder of that appointed for the return of the writ; and certainly if to the right hon. gentleman, who knew so much of the business, it appeared to promise so speedy an issue, the House were not much to blame in hoping that an end might be put to it in a period not much longer. If this was not his reason, perhaps it was, that he then believed a scrutiny might legally be carried on after the strict exigency of the writ demanded a return; in that also the House could not be to blame; for, finally, if neither of these were his reasons and his intentions, they must have been this:-that he was conscious that he had no right, and therefore proposed a scrutiny, in order that that scrutiny not being completed against the return of the writ, the high bailiff must have made such a return, as on the grounds of the scrutiny not being completed, would necessarily pave the way to a fresh election; of these three motives, he observed, that two only were in any degree excusable; and in case of either of those two excusable motives, the House stood qualified on the principles of the right hon. gentleman himself. With respect to those authorities, which, he said, of all others should be most earnestly sought after by the House, namely, statutes, he should say a little, because gentlemen opposite had seemed to rely so much on them, in matters to which, in his opinion, they had no relation. Here he went into the argument which the Attorney-general had introduced on the necessary difference which must have arisen in the conducting of elections, from the changes which had taken place in the nominal value of property, and from other circumstances which had crept in with it. From hence he argued, that the Acts of Henry the 6th and 8th did not attach to the present question, inasmuch as, so far from an instance similar to the present being then in the contemplation of the legislature, the very seeds from whence this instance sprung, had hardly been sown; for scrutinies, or the necessity of them as they were now understood, were then not only unnecessary and absurd, but absolutely unknown and inconceivable. The right hon. gentleman had another ground of uneasiness, on the subject of the irregularity of the form, by which he had been seated in that House, as member for Westminster, because the precept was not originally annexed to the sheriff's writ, on its return to the Crownoffice. What, then, had the member for Westminster so soon forgot the concerns of the member for Kirkwall? Did he forget, that in the precept which returned that member, there was the very same irregularity that was here complained of? But in that instance the right hon. gentleman had to blame himself and his friends alone; nor did he see any other person liable to censure on the present occasion. He should be glad to know what was the object of the right hon. gentleman in this motion, other than to entrap the House into a measure that would fix an indelible stain upon them, the very proposing of which was an insult, if not to the honour and integrity, at least to their understanding? Why, it must be to obliterate all recollection of the transaction, so that it should not afford a single document, to tell to the world that it ever existed. If this was his object, he must go farther than the present motion would lead him; he must erase from their Journals the petition of the electors of Westminster, unless he thought, perhaps, that the reproaches, with which it was qualified in some measure, might compensate for its poisonous tell-tale qualities; he must remove from the table that heap of unfounded and unsupported assertions, which he triumphantly alluded to, as a body of solid, substantial, and irrefragable proof; he must storm the Crown-office, for those parchments, which he knew not how properly to describe, but as a heap of corruption and inconsistency, but which heap of corruption he himself sent there. There was one argument used by a learned gentleman who spoke early in the debate, why that resolution should be erased from the Journals, for which he begged to return him his sincere thanks, because it applied with all the force it had, to the contrary side of the question. The learned gentleman said, it ought to be erased, because the House passed it in their judicial capacity. He congratulated the gentlemen of the bar on this new principle, which was thus to be introduced into the jurisprudence of the country. What! erase a judicial resolution! A man must have a very vague idea of the law indeed, if he imagined that such a proceeding could agree with any of its principles. No. Every decree, judgment, order, or decision of any court of justice must always remain on the records of the court, right or wrong; there it must remain on its own merits, to be followed and imitated, if it were right; to be avoided, if wrong; but always to shew what the idea of the court was at the time it was made. Great emphasis had been laid by each side of the House on two cases; one was, that by the precedent of that scrutiny, the returning officers of this kingdom had a power, on the slightest suggestion, or without any suggestion at all, to withhold their returns, or to make ineffectual returns, similar to that of the high bailiff, and thus prevent the meeting of parlia ment at all. On the contrary, it had been put from this side of the House, that if they overturned the right of the officer, to whom the writ or precept was directed, to satisfy himself by a more cool investigation than could possibly be had during the poll, that then that House, by a parity of argument, might be filled with such raggamuffins as should, by assembling men like themselves at the place of poll, obtain a fraudulent majority. He should not attempt a comparison between the two misfortunes; but he would only say, that of two such extreme cases, the last was as likely to happen as the first. The right hon. gentleman had threatened the House, that if it refused to comply with his motion, it would only be postponing their disgrace, for he would never rest satisfied, until by perseverance he should have at last accomplished that desirable object. That period of triumph, he was happy to find, the right hon. gentleman did not think at present to be near at hand, for he had left himself an interval of one, or two, or perhaps more years, for his successive efforts. Nor should he be surprised, if the endeavours of the right hon. gentleman should at length be crowned with success, for, together with his knowledge of his great ability, and the pertinacious industry with which that ability was sure to be supported, on every occasion that called forth his interests, his passions, or his party attachments, he was besides prepared to expect, that there might possibly be a House of Commons under the influence of the right hon. gentleman, which would act on different principles, and with different views to those, which formed the motives and the objects of the present House of Commons; and he should be happy to find, that in such a contingency, he might have nothing more dangerous to complain of, than a vote of disapprobation of him and his friends; such a House of Commons had already been seen, and, perhaps, might be seen again; and he would in that case be willing to compound on the part of his country, that he alone, or even the very respectable body of his friends, which at this day formed a majority in his favour, might be the victims of .the pride and ambition of the right hon. gentleman. But that the present House should ever suffer themselves to be imposed on so far, as to sign their own condemnation, on the unfounded suggestions |