A correspondent of the Chronicle suggests an ingenious plan for
vir- tually abolishing the Grenville Act, and thereby defeating the " Spottis- woode Conspiracy." By the Act 9th George IV. it is deolared, "that if the name of any Member against whose return a petition sloe! be then depending shall be drawn, the name shall be set aside, and not entered in the list of names drawn" to serve on an Election Committee. Now if petitions are presented against all the Members, none will be qualified to serve. Therefore the plan is, to get up petitions against all, without delay. The expcnse according to a circular letter issued
by the authors of the project, will not exceed or :31. for each petition.
It strikes us that the scheme may be defeated in the following man- ner. Suppose time whole number of petitions were presented within the prescribed period after the meeting of Parliament, certain days most be appointed for the election-ballot on each. Suppose that the House agreed that there should be a ballot each day on which Parlia- ment met until the whole were disposed of (there would be four or five hundred petitions, stretching through a pretty long session.) The first petitions would fall to thc gmund from the want of a tribunal to try them, and the Members petitioned against would be free ; the number of Members so released would increase daily, till at length there would be a sufficient number to form a Committee—and then there would be an end of the scheme. This objection rests on the assumption that the petition could not be considered pending after the unsuccessful attempt to procure a Committee. But, at any rate, Parliament might, and probably would, pass a short bill to repeal so much of the Gren- ville Act as disqualifies Members petitioned against from serving on an Election Committee.
Admiring the boldness and ingenuity of the proposal, we suspect that, after all, the safest and surest way of defeating the Tories would be to get up counter-petitions against 'Tory Members (there are said to be severity of them) whose seats have been obtained by undue means.
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