28 JUNE 1834, Page 11

THE LORDS AND THE ELECTION PURIFICATION BILLS.

WE call the attention of the country to the extraordinary political farce now acting in the House of Lords, on the subject of the notorious cor- ruption of the footrest constituencies of Warwick, Liverpool, Stafford, and Hertford. Bills were sent up from the Commons two months since. The Peers directed the reprint of the evidence, but they seem to treat it as a dead letter ; inasmuch as they rehear the whole, and make no use or reference to the Commons Reports, except to establish self-contradiction of witnesses. The first and only bill yet taken up by the Lords, is the Warwick Bill. T his important measure has only passed through one stage—the formality of a first reading ; and after the lapse of eight weeks, since the commencement of the evidence at the bar, their Lordships appear only to have devoted the fraction of twenty-two days to the inquiry, and in actual time barelyfryty hours In this period, by the printed summary of evidence before us, it appears that their Lordships have examined neatly one hundred witnesses; that fifty persons are more or less tainted with bribery, as givers or takers ; and that the bribers were, among others, members of the Corporation, and Committee-men in the interest of Sir CHARLES GREVILLE. Up- wards of thirty publicans have been examined, who kept open houses for treating during the whole election, before and after the teste of the writ; a great proportion of the treating being after the arrival of the writ, and including the last day of the poll. The gross amount of this corrupt expenditure is already proved, on one side, to have ex- ceeded 40001., besides the cost of bribery, and various other species of rank corruption. The three principal bribers have absconded, and avoided their Lordships' summonses ; and it has been proved that nearly twenty sham suits—known under the term of "discovery ac- tions "—have been collusively brought by the bribers against one another and their fellow-corruptionists. Yet still their Lordships' con- scientious scruples are not satisfied ! Only half the inquiry has beets completed ; and the bill seems to be in a lingering consumption, and likely to die a natural death by the premature close of the session. We have attended several days, and rarely seen a popular Peer on- the Ministerial side ; except Lord DURHAM, Lord. RADNOR, Lord Met- GRATE, and the Bishop of HEREFORD (if indeed the Bishop ought to be counted). On the Opposition side sits Lord WYNFORD (his nephew, Mr. KNAPP, being the junior counsel against the bill), Lord • LYND- HURST, the Duke Of CUMBERLAND, the Duke of WELLINGTON, and some ten or twenty Tory Lords. Front the commencement of the in- quiry, Lord WYNEORD (who occasionally sits as judge in the absence of the Lord Chancellor), has ingeniously mustered every legul and pos- sible objection to evidence in favour of this measure of local reform; oc- casionally avowing the most intense anxiety to detect corruption !

Such is the judicial exhibition in this extraordinary tribtmal, and such

the disposition to destroy some of the most impoi tent results of Reform. If such bre the state and prospects of one bill, what are the hopes of the

country for Liverpool, Stafford, and Hertford? Stafford will doubt- less be disfranchised, because it unluckily possesses no noble patron, and is therefore adopted by that eccentric Reformer Lord EtLetirottouou. Bid we again declare the whole anomalous procedure in the House of Peers to be ridiculous.