TOPICS OF THE DAY.
CARLTON CLUB DOINGS : THE REGISTRATION.
FROM the Country newspapers we learn that the Tories are and have been more active even than last year in raising objections tO
Liberal voters on the register. Their agents, the agents of the Carlton Club, are busy everywhere, not only in ferreting out really doubtful votes, but in objecting to such as are unquestionably
good, when they imagine that it will be impossible from absence, or inconvenient from other causes, for the party assailed to defend his :.!ebt to the franchise, or probable that he may forget. Tile procedt!re of the Tories is systematic. They make out a list of persons to be objected to—some of them selected, many taken at haphazard ; and manufacture large quantities of blank notices, which they put in the hands of parties acting in concert with them, to serve on the persons whose names are inserted in the list. For instance, we happen to have seen two notices of objection served on one gentleman, a Member of Parliament and the owner of a freehold estate in Middlesex, whose name has been on the register since 1832 : he has given in no new claim on which a doubt might have been fastened, and his qualification is unques- tionable : but then it was supposed he might have left town, and would neglect to defend his vote in the Barristers' Court; and on this chance the experiment is made. One of these notices is signed " Charles Francis Adey ; place of abode, No. 6, Stone Buildings, Lincoln's Inn :" the other is signed " Richard Ed- ward Arden; place of abode, 18, Red Lion Square." But—mark this — though purporting to come from different persons, the filling-up of both these notices is in the same handwriting; thus betraying their common origin, the workshop of the Carlton Club.
This is the way the Tories go about their business. They must be counteracted by increased vigilance on the part of the Liberals. No person must give up his vote without defence, on the supposi- tion that there is some flaw in his claim : the chance is, that when the day of trial arrives, the objecter will have nothing to say to him. In the instance alluded to, the gentleman to whom the notices from "Charles Francis Adey " and " Richard Edward Arden " have been sent, has an undoubted right to the franchise, and will maintain it in defiance of the impudent objection. There is not much time for action Letween the present hour and Tuesday night; but what there is may be well employed. Let the Reform- ers take a leaf out of the Tory book ; and though we do not recom- mend them to urge groundless and merely vexatious objections, let them scrutinize the lists for doubtful voters, and call upon all such to make good their title to the suffrage. It is the especial duty of the Reform Association to attend to this.
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