On Thursday, the debate had much more spirit. It was
opened by Mr. Bentinck, who expressed the longing for Australia which he felt for the first time on hearing that in that colony there were no Liberals or Conservatives ; — he assumed that thee,: must still be the good old Whigs and Tories over whose disappear- ance here he is always mourning. Mr. Bernal Osborne followed, in a very able and amusing speech on his own electioneering ex- periences as illustrative of the necessity for secret voting. He had paid £85 to secure what is called " a hearing" on nomination- days, and had found his supporters, retained for that very pur- pose, so noisy that nothing could be heard. He was very strongly in favour both of the abolition of the nomination 44 Saturn- alia," and of charging the expenses of elections on the county and municipality. As it is, fortunes are spent in " flooding " a constituency with money, and then the honourable " Seeder " is made a baronet or sent to " another place." Mr. Osborne men- tioned that he had been charged in his last election expellees £10 10s. for two sets of teeth, and on, inquiring if the expense was legal, his adviser said certainly, as it was for men who had got their teeth knocked out in his service, and were quite willing to get the new sets knocked out also,—certainly a singular and suspicious election item, suggestive of some political den- tist's agency,—artifioial teeth not being precisely the weakness of the class of Irishmen who mostly brandish the shillelagh.
