AN IRISH ELECTION PETITION.
MEE selection of a representative for a metropolitan borough is said to rest with a caucus and an attorney. This proud prerogative of freedom, which is in England confined to monster constituencies, is happily enjoyed in Ireland by small boroughs as well, with this felicitous alteration, that for the attorney is substituted an attorney's clerk. This is an improvement, because while there ia 40 less of intrigae and finesse, a director of electioneering operations is thus obtained who possesses a boldness and originality of conception, a spirit and a dash, to which the purely professional mind can rarely attain. A bril- liant instance of this sort of leadership has recently been unfolded for the public admiration. In February last, there was an election for the borough of Lisburn, in which a Mr. Barbour was victorious. A. petition against his return was presented by the Conservatives, which has since been withdrawn by a document at once signed and repudiated by the petitioners ; and the General Committee of Elections has, consequently, had to consider the circumstances under which their signature was obtained. The hero of the comedy is " Misther " Alexander M'Cann. Born and bred in Lisburn, he carries, or has the reputation of carrying, loaded revolvers in his pocket, and has for twenty-two years served the Crown Solicitor for the county of Antrim. Such a gentleman natur- ally took a strong interest in the election, and when the cause he espoused was defeated, was equally naturally desirous that there should be a petition against the return, and that ho should be employed to get up evidence in its favour. Accordingly, on the 9th of March, a public meetinc•a took place at Bannister's " publichouse or rather hotel ;" Mr. Moore, a Dublin attorney, attended with a petition in his pocket ready drawn ; a resolution in its favour was drawn up and signed by the persons present ; and the petition itself was signed on behalf of the meeting by Moses Bullick and William John Knox. We regret to say that the widest difference exists between the parties con- cerned as to the relations which this proceeding created between them. Misther M'Cann is clearly of opinion that it was he who employed Mr. Moore, that he was the real petitioner, and that Bullick and Knox were his puppets. Mr. Moore, on the other hand, considers that they were the puppets of the meeting, which retained him, and Mr. M'Cann to act under his directions. In pursuance of this view, Moore drew up a withdrawal of the petition, to which on the day following M'Cann obtained the signatures of the petitioners. They deny that they at all understood what they were doing ; but Mr. Moore's account of the matter is that he had ex- plained to the meeting that the object was to make it in- dependent of the petitioners, and that the withdrawal was not to be acted on without a resolution of the same body which signed that in favour of the petition. Moore then returned to Dublin, and M'Cann set himself to procure evi- dence.
But, alas ! the Conservatives of Lisburn do not seem to have appreciated that gentleman's exertions. "They refused to take the slightest interest in the petition." So, on the 24th of March, he went to Knox, and, according to his own account, expressed himself in the following beautiful lan- guage :—" Now, Mr. Knox, here is a document ; it is another withdrawal of this petition against Mr. Barbour. I think the time has come when that gentleman should get no further annoyance; and, since the Conservatives of Lisburn take no interest in the matter whatever, and since I have suffered so much personal loss and inconvenience, and made so many enemies, I think the time has come when I should cease that course, and let Mr. Barbour remain in Parliament, as he ought to do." Knox, however, and his wife altogether repudiate this account, and another witness declared, that as to his "serious loss," he did not believe one bit of it. This sceptic, however, it must be admitted, was also an attorney's clerk. To return, however, to Mrs. Knox, whose account of the interview between M'Cann and her husbanl is very pictur- esque. "He came in and said that he had had a letter from Mr. Moore that morning, stating that he wanted further evidence, and he threw a lot of papers on the table and said, 'William, put your name to that,' and showed him where to write his name. It was momentary ; he put it into- his breast-pocket again." Then the hero unhappily began. to bran.. He was bid yesterday 5,000/. to withiraw the petition, and hewould learn Mr. Barbour to tamper with his principles, and would get his handwriting, and show some bribery, and. get him four years' imprisonment. Finally, he expressed an intention of "showing the Conservatives what he was." In this at least, he has kept his word.
lIe next went to Bullick, who says that he was induced to sign the paper in the same way, having no idea that it was a withdrawal, but believing it to be a document neces- sary to procure further evidence. M'Cann by this time, was intent on nothing less than sending poor Mr. Barbour to the Tower, but, it must be admitted, that Bullick when charged with having signed the petition "the worse for drink," only repudiated the soft impeachment "on that occasion," while to an imputation of having cried, he iudi&-.
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nantly replied, that he never cried, "he was not a man full of tears, or anything of the sort."
This Cato of doubtful sobriety, as well as his co-petitioner, seems to have felt a prompt suspicion of the great M'Cann. Very shortly after that worthy's departure they rushed together, they took counsel, they determined to save Mr. Barbour from the Tower, and they went to their attorney. From him, as they say, they first conceived the idea that they might have signed a withdrawal, and whether this be true or not, a couple of hours later Bullick certainly knew it, for he called the document by that name in an interview which he had with the father of the sitting member to warn him against M'Cann's machinations.
That evening they pursued M'Cann to Belfast, accompanied by their attorney's clerk, named Segrave. They demanded the document. After a little shuffling he admitted that he had it about him, and having got rid for the time of Segrave, pro- duced and read it. Bullick and Knox were little the wiser, and he refused to let it out of his bands. The tearless Bullick even drew his knife to cut away his signature from the document, but the dread of the revolvers restrained him, and the petitioners returned to Lisburn no wiser than they were before. That same night there was a Conservative meeting at the " publichouse, or rather hotel," and a document was drawn up by Segrave, in which the petitioners disclaimed the withdrawal, and informed the Speaker that if anything purporting to be such a document was presented to the House, they utterly renounced the same, and any intention on their parts to relinquish the petition.
Mr. M'Cann's account of this interview at Belfast was of the same flowery description as that which he gave of the previous conversations with the petitioners separately in the morning ; but they were corroborated in every instance, and he was not ; and he was, moreover, compelled to admit that he had never received an offer of 5,000/. from Mr. Barbour, or any other offer, for the withdrawal of the petition, while lie had "written stating that he had." On the other hand, it is im- possible to believe the petitioners were quite so ignorant of the nature of the withdrawals they signed as they represented themselves to be; and Bullick, at least, shared Mr. M'Cann's habit of figuring himself as proof against the temptation of large sums of money, which, fortunately, had never been offered him. There can, however, be little doubt that the withdrawal was improvidently signed, and that the petitioners had no intention that the petition should be prosecuted or abandoned at the option of M'Cann. The disclaimer was forwarded to Moore, and by him to his Parliamentary agent, who lodged it with the Speaker's secretary on the 26th March.
The conduct of Moore and the petitioners is now a little strange. For some reason or another they seem to have been reluctant to break with M'Cann. Moore's letter to him, dated the 25th of March, complains of his conduct in the very mildest terms, and though the writer adds that he shall expect the paper to be given up to him on his arrival in Lisburn, neither he nor the petitioners took any further trouble about the matter. M'Cann retained the withdrawal till the 15th of April, and then delivered it to the Speaker, with a letter, in which he speaks of himself as "the person who caused the petition to be presented against the return" of Mr. Barbour. But, great as was his genius, he forgot that it was necessary to send notice of the withdrawal to the sitting member, and perhaps the liability to this sort of error may be regarded as some sort of diminution from the dash which characterizes the attorney's clerk. At all events, where a cautious policy is preferred, it is better to employ the attorney.
In these circumstances the award of the Committee could not be doubtful. Even supposing that the petitioners knew what they were signing on the 24th March, it is clear that within a few hours they demanded it back, thst they signed a formal disclaimer the same evening, that Moore, the Parlia- mentary agent, made a further demand for its return on their behalf, that all this was well known to M'Cann, and that, all this notwithstanding, he made use of the withdrawal. The Committee, therefore, declared it to be Void, and the Lisburn petition is to be prosecuted. It is impossible not to anticipate a good deal of amusement from its proceedings, and, above all, we hope it will reveal the reasons why M'Cann held the withdrawal for nearly three weeks before he used it, and what, after he had held it so long, launched the fatal missive at last. Can it have been pure, disinterested com- passion for Mr. Barbour, or even pure indignation at the selfish motives which Mr. M'Cann read in the inmost souls of the Lisburn Conservatives ? There is something mys- teriously Irish about the whole affair, and our own conclusion
is that the last Lisburn election seems to require "'more light, more light."
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