ST. LUKE'S AND ST. STEPHEN'S.
Posterity will scratch his head when he meets with the subjoined passages whilst studying the Parliamentary intelligence in an ancient file of the Times. Mr. C. Berkeley, moving the House into Committee on the Expenses of Elections' Bill, said
"It was now a Bill merely to prevent the use of bands, bell-ringing, and colours at elections."
After some remarks by Mr. Cowper against the Bill,
"Colonel Sibthorpe then rose to move, in pursuance of notice, that the Bill be deferred for three months. He said he had read the Bill carefully over, and he thought he had designated it as it deserved, when on a former occasion he had called it a mean, low, dirty bill. (Laughter.) It was a dangerous and delusive measure; it was a trap set for unwary men, who might suddenly find themselves to have been guilty of an offence which they had no intention of committing ... It restricted the liberty of the subject...."
However, the House went into Committee on the Bill; and the Colonel took the opportunity of renewing his protest against it: declaring that
"He would oppose the Bill in every stage, for he regarded it as a disgraceful, mean, dirty, shabby measure."
After the odd remark had been made by Mr. F. Scully, that
"With regard to the carrying of flags and banners, he had no doubt that in England such services were frequently made the means of corruption,"
The report proceeds to state that
"Sir J. Graham thought the best course would be to give up this Bill, and proceed as soon as possible with the next order on the paper, the Lunatics' Care and Treatment Bill."
Proceed with the next Bill—the Lunatics' Care and Treatment Bill? How the next Bill? A Bill on the showing of which it appears that certain poor creatures were in the habit of going about trumpeting, drumming, bell-ringing, carrying flags—enacting such fooleries as these—on the solemn occasion of electing a Member of Parliament; of contributing a philosopher to the Collective Wisdom; a Bill in reference to unfortunates corruptible by means of flags and banners: how, a rational Posterity will ask, could this have been a previous Bill to the other? Must not what was called the next Bill have been, in fact, merely the next clause of the same Bill; a general measure relating to the care and treatment of lunatics?
Colonel Sibthorpe's denunciations of the proposed enactment will not, perhaps, tend very much to prevent Posterity from taking this view of the case.
