mitted on the poll, who did not first make out and certify his qualifications. There was, he faid, one point in this bufinefs, on whirl. be had not completely made up his mind; which was, the duty of the High Bailif not being exactly attended to. He was not fure but the Sheriff fhould have made a return of Members, though he was far from thinking that the numbers on his book should direct him in his return (as was the cafe in Scotland) but the majority of legal numbers. And befide, if the Bailiff was now fundus officio, as the gentlemen on the other fide contended, why fhould they pray for his ftill making a return. under a writ which was now defunct with him; therefore it was a queftion, whether the proper mode might not be to order a new election, though perhaps the late candidates, in prudence, might decline a repetition of the trouble and expence they experienced in the late election. Sir James Erskine, in a speech of confiderable length, went over the whole ground of the cafe, and thewed that the conduct of the High Bailiff, if fuffered in the prefent inftance to pats without that degree of centure which fo flagrant a violation of duty juftly deferved, went virtually to the entire fubverfion of the very ufe and exiftence of Parliament; and he, as a Member of that House, could not fit filent in his place, and fuffer the prefent Parliament (of which he confidered himfelf an unworthy member) to be branded with that mark of infamy and difgrace which pofterity would moft certainly attach upon it, if the queftion now before them fhould be negatived: He therefore wifhed the Houfe to understand, that he rofe to enter his protest against fuch a negative.

Mr. Powis next rofe, and with fome degree of warmth expreffed his entire difapprobation of the conduct of that Houfe, fhould they rafhly attempt to negative the queftion then before them; for they would thereby eftablish a precedent, which nei ther the ftatute nor the common law ever intended thould be laid down. The learned Gentleman on the other fide of the Houfe faid much about oaths; it would have been as well if they had the goodness to tell the Houfe that the returning officer was by law obliged to take an oath previous to his acting in that capacity, the nature of which, in his opinion, was, that he, the returning officer, should return fuch perfons as fhould appear to have a majority of legal vores tendered to, and accepted by him on the

poll. It was a pofition clearly evident that the returning officer was by law, and by the tenor of the writ to him directed, obliged to return those two who had a majority of votes on the poll; he fhould therefore with that the Houfe would not rafhly pafs fuch a vote this night, (which they moft undoubtedly would if they negatived the prefent motion) as perhaps they should hereafter wish to counteract, The people at large moft undoubtedly would be roufed at fuch conduct, for neither ufage nor law, ftatute, or common, afforded a precedent of fuch a nature.

Mr. Hardinge followed by Mr. Powys in a fpeech of confiderable length. He adverted to feveral arguments that were made ufe of by the counfel pleading at the bar on the behalf of the petitioners. He remarked that one of the learned counfel had made ufe of an expreffion quoted from the late Earl of Chatham, which was that reprefentation was the very bafis of taxation; he was forry to say experience furnished him with an excep. tion; for how did we lofe America, but by endeavouring to lighten our burthens at home, by not impofing fuch taxes on the people, as neceffity and the exigency of the times required. There we unfor tunately loft one hundred millions of money, and several hundred thousand fouls. All this, he faid, was the unfortunate confequence of not paying that attention which fo important a bufinefs neceffarily required. He obferved, that the quef tion then before the House had roufed the indignation of gentlemen on the other fide to rather an unusual degree of warmth. He was exceedingly forry indeed to have it in his power to say fo; but he confeffed he could not help remarking fuch a conduct. As it was not his intention to become the champion of any man, or party of men whatsoever, he would therefore declare it as his opinion, that it would be better to declare the whole of the late election a nullity, and give the candidates an opportunity of trying who was the most injured or aggrieved by the circumstances attending the queftion then before them. This he declared to be his opinion, even as a lawver; however, he fhould not take upon himself the liberty of laving down any rule for the Houfe to follow. It refted with them to do as in their wifdom they fhould think expedient; he only gave his opinion, and wifhed the Houfe to underftand it only as fuch. He concluded with a handfome apology to the House for

tref

trefpaffing fo long upon their pa

tience.

After several other members had fpoke, the Speaker was proceeding to put the queftion, when

Mr. Fox rofe. He began with claiming a right as a party to be heard laft in the debate of the day, and obferved, that the Westminster election was not his caufe, but the cause of the electors of Great Britain in general, and of his conftituents in particular; as far as regarded himfelf, the cafe had been fufficiently argued by the very able, eloquent and learned counfel at the bar, and fufficiently fupported and illuftrated by the unanfwerable arguments of thofe gentlemen, who who had done themfelves fo much honour, as well as done him fo much fervice, by the convincing reafons they had advanced, and the ftriking manner in which they had fhewn, that the Houfe could not, confiftently with its own dignity, confiftently with decency, confiftently with impartiality, and confiftently with juftice, do otherwise than adopt the motion that had been propofed by his right hon. friend. But as the caufe was not fo much his caufe as an individual, as it was the caufe of his country and the conftitution, he fhould be loft to every fenfe of feeling, loft to every recollection of the gratitude he owed to his conftituents and to the people of England, and forgetful of all that he fought to hold moft in his memory, if he did not exert every little ability he was poffeffed of, and employ the whole of the small stock of his talents, in endeavouring to give the caufe every benefit and every fupport that it could poffibly derive from any effort he could make, to render it more obvious, and to imprefs the true ftate of it more forcibly on the minds of the Houfe. After this exordium, Mr. Fox proceeded to animadvert on the evidence that had been heard at the bar, but first of all, he defired the Houfe to take notice, that although it had been attempted by one of the witnesses to be proved, that a large number of per-, fons had polled for him, who either could not be found, or who had no votes, yet that, in fact, it had not been established, that any one bad vote had been received for him. The perfons who had been at firft afferted to have been bad votes for him, were stated to be of two defcriptions, viz. perfons who either could not be found at all in the streets in which they faid they lived, or perfons who were reported by the agents of Sir Cecil Wray, to have

been lodgers and not housekeepers. Between these two defcriptions, there was an evident and ftrong diftinction. The former, were the fact true as Sir Cecil Wray's agents had afferted, and no fuch perfons really to be found, might fairly be deemed bad votes. The other defcrip tion ought not to have been fo pronounc→ ed, because their cafe implicated a queftion of law, to be hereafter difcuffed. A great deal of ftrefs had he observed been laid in the courfe of the debates as well as during a former difcuffion, upon a perfon's having come to poll for him, and when queftioned by the Deputy Bai liff as to his refidence, &c. being confufed and not able to give a very clear account of himfelf or his qualification. This had been used as a ground of triumph by his enemies, and much exultation had been difplayed in confequence. But fo illfounded were thefe unworthy feelings that he folemnly protefted he should feel himself happy, if the merits of his cafe refted altogether and folely on the validity and competency of that fingle vote, it fo happening, that a better vote, a vote more really unquestionable, and a vote upon a clearer title had not been given in the courfe of the election. That a poor fimple voter, coming to exercife his franchife, fhould be difconcerted at the queftions that were put to him by Mr. Grojan at the place of the poll, was not a matter of much wonder, efpecially, when it was confidered, that the Deputy Bailiff, to whom he alluded, was not the most abashed of all men in the execution of his publick duty, nor the most remarkable for his mildnefs or the civility with which he exercised the functions of his office. The very identical voter who had been fo difconcerted, when afterwards calmly examined by himfelf, could and had given a very good account of himself; he repeated it, therefore, that he heartily wifhed the whole of his cafe refted on the vali dity of that vote. Mr. Fox went through other parts of the evidence, combating fuch as appeared to bear hard upon him, and maintaining, that when the whole was difpaffionately examined, it would be found, that no portion of it amounted to a proof, that the High Bailiff had reafonable ground of doubt on his own mind. fufficient to juftify him as a confcientious man in granting a fcrutiny. He next came to the fecond head of his argument, viz. the confideration how far the ftatutes in being, countenanced the conduct of the High Bailiff; under this head

he

he examined the acts of the 10th and 11th of William, the act of George the Second relative to the oath of returning officers, and the 23d of Henry VI. He went through all that had been faid relative to the first of these ftatutes, and candidly admitted that he had been wrong in fuppofing a popular action would lie againft the High Bailiff upon that act. He alfo difcuffed the fecond with great acutenefs, replying to all that had been faid upon it by the other fide of the Houfe, by way of argument in defence of the conduct of the High Bailiff, and when he came to the third, the 23d of Henry VI, he infifted upon it, that there were claufes in that statute which directly, plainly and incontrovertibly went to the fupport of his caufe and in proof that the High Bailiff had acted in direct defiance of the written law of the land. Having difcuffed this head, he proceeded to the third, viz. an enquiry how far the conduct of the High Bailiff was warranted by precedent, and reconcileable to the practice and ufage of Parliament; under this head he quoted moft of the cafes upon the journals, that had any reference or similitude to his own, and contended that there was no cafe di rectly in point. The nearest to it was the cafe of the Oxfordshire election, where the mayor, being a friend of the candidates, had made a double return. This cafe, he faid, was an evident proof that even the most avowedly partial returning officer had not thought himself at liberty, or ventured to attempt the continuing a fcrutiny after the day on which the writ was returnable to the clerk of the crown. After dwelling for fome time on this head, and difplaying a confiderable fhare of parliamentary knowledge, he came at length to that which he confeffed he felt to be the most difficult part of his fub'ject, viz. the legal analogy of the conduct of the High Bailiff, a matter to which, not having been profeffionally bred, he was the leaft competent to speak of any of the various matters, he had ftated as the principal points to which he fhould call the attention of the Houfe. He entered, however, pretty fully into the difcuffion of the legal analogy, and plainly evinced a fufficiently competent acquaintance with this view of his fubject. The laft head he took into his confideration, was the expediency of the Houfe's ordering the ferutiny to be continued; and fuch conduct, he endeavoured to fhew, would be a direct fubverfion of the rights of election, inasmuch as it would take away

thofe rights from the people, their conftitutional conftituents, and veft them in that Houfe, making the House the electors inftead of the elected. This pofition he illuftrated by a variety of clear and cogent reafons; and after innumerable arguments, founded on the cafe, viz. that there had been nothing adduced in evidence to justify the High Bailiff in granting a fcrutiny: that his having appointed a fcrutiny to commence ten days after the writ was fpent and extinct, and confequently ten days after his own power, as a returning officer, was at an end, was neither warranted by the ftatutes, by the practice and ufage of Parliament, nor by any one precedent whatsoever. He declared, that in his opinion the High Bailiff ought, as the motion stated, to be directed to make his return in like manner, as he was bound to have made it, on the 18th day of May, but if the Houfe thought otherwife, he contended, that they ought to direct a new writ to be iffued, and by no means to order the High Bailiff to continue the fcrutiny. He deprecated any order like the last mentioned. A fcrutiny at the lowest computation, he said, would coft eighteen thousand pounds, and he profeffed himself ill able to bear fuch an expence, or indeed to fuftain any part of it. Hard as the iffuing of a new writ would be upon him, he earnestly prayed that if the Houfe were determined to adopt one of the two alternatives, viz. the either iffuing a new writ, or directing the High Bailiff to continue the fcrutiny, that they would not, from a falfe tenderness prefer the latter. If a new writ were to be iffued, he affured the Chancellor of the Exchequer that he would be a fuitor to him to emplore the gift of one of the Chiltern Hundreds, in order that he might vacate his feat for Kirkwall, and once more rifque his pretenfions to a feat in Parliament, by trufting implicitly to the flattering partiality of the electors of Weftminster, who had stood forth fo nobly in his fupport, and by their fuffrages, had given the lie, as it were, to the calumnies fo induftrioufly circulated to his prejudice throughout the kingdom. The electors of Wettminster had evinced their conviction that he had not deferted thofe principles, which had first entitled him to their favourable opinion. Those principles he had not in the fmalleft degree abandoned; thofe principles he never would defert fo much, neither would he defert the conftitution fo much as to give his confent to any bill that should be

brought

brought in to regulate the future elections for Westminster, which did not in its preamble exprefsly declare, that it was the established law of the land, that no returning officer could appoint, or continue a fcrutiny, after the expiration of the time of the duration of the writ, under which he derived his authority as a returning officer. This, he thought, it neceflary to fay in the most exprefs terms, as a learned gentleman had intimated his readiness to fupport a bill for the purpofe of enacting a new law with regard to the regulation of the Weftminster elections in future, and he added, that if the Houfe in the prefent cafe determined that the fcrutiny fhould go on, and then, by way of preventing a repetition of a fimilar injury to any other individual for the future, proceeded immediately to make a new law, they would by fuch conduct be guilty of the moft grofs and unexampled injuftice. In the courfe of his fpeech, Mr. Fox took notice of what had fallen from Lord Mulgrave, who had faid, that the election for Weftminfter was almoft confidered as a naval honour, from the alteration of the times; and it was now generally understood that Great Britain was virtually reprefented within thofe walls, each reprefentative being confidered not merely as a local reprefentative of a particular county, city, or borough, but as a reprefentative of the people at large. This was, he said, an odd doctrine to come from that fide of the Houfe; it had been generally held as a great evil, that there was too much virtual and too little real reprefentation within those walls. Indeed the great neceffity for a parliamentary reform arofe from this circumftance principally, and as he had no doubt of the fincerity of the right hon. Chancellor of the Exchequer, in his repeated profeffions of zeal and attachment to a parliameutary reform, he predicted, that he fhould fee him upon his legs ftrenuously urging this argument whenever the fubject of a reform of the reprefentation fhould be brought forward. With regard to the election for Weftminster being a naval honour, he did not believe the electors of Westminster would very much thank the noble Lord for what he had faid on that fcore, because it amounted to telling thofe electors, that they were wholly indifferent whether they were reprefented or not, and were ideots enough to give up their rights to a fhare in the reprefentation of the kingdom, for the gratification of the empty vanity of having

Lord Rodney, Lord Hood, or fome other gallant officer, for their nominal reprefentative. Such arguments as these were now for the first time heard from the mouths of thofe, who ought to argue in a manner directly oppofite. He remembered at least, that these arguments had ever hitherto been the arguments used to the Weftminster electors, in order to perfuade them not to choose an officer, necellarily out of England, for their reprefentative. They had been the arguments ufed againft Lord Hood at the laft elestion by Sir Cecil Wray, who, from his utter deteftation of all coalitions, had now joined that very Lord Hood against him! Mr. Fox enlarged upon this point for fome time, and replied to other parts of Lord Mulgrave's fpeech. He alfo took notice of feveral parts of the speech of the Lord Advocate of Scotland, and faid, he had fhewn that the part of Scotland, a borough in which had done him the honour to choose him for its reprefentative, was the only part of the kingdom that he could have had a chance for, becaufe if the event of that day was as he feared it would be, an order to the High Bailiff to go on with the fcrutiny, it would open a door to a perpetual repetition of fuch practices as had prevailed against him in Weftminster. Returning officers would be inftructed by thofe they favoured, not to make a double return, and not to make a falfe return, because both of thofe returns could be foon amended, and fet to rights by a committee under Mr. Grenville's bill, but to make that curfed return, called an historical return, (as it had been well termed by his noble friend) and thus keep an individual, obnoxious to a certain defcription of men, out of Parliament, by putting it out of his power, either to fubmit his cafe to the confideration of that competent jurifdiction, inftituted by Mr. Grenville's bill, or to bring his action against the returning officer in the courts below, and thus leave him loaded with grievances, loaded with expence, but altogether without remedy. He obferved that a icarned gentleman had faid, from the panegyricks beftowed on Mr. Grenville's bill, he fufpected a snake in the grafs, and that thofe who were loudeft in its praife, were leaft its friends. To this charge he could only fay, that from the time of the paffing of that bill, he had feen fo many falutary confequences derived from it, that he highly approv ed of it, and the principal reafon why he fo highly approved it, was because it in a

great