prove, and to name the members and the patrons.

The fecond fpecies of patronage cannot be fhewn with equal accuracy, though it is felt with equal force.

Your petitioners are convinced, that in addition to the one hundred and fifty-feven honourable members above mentioned, one hundred and fifty more, making in the whole three hundred and feven, are returned to your honourable house, not by the collective voice of those whom they appear to reprefent, but by the recommendation of feventy powerful individuals, added to the eighty-four before mentioned, and making the total number of patrons altogether only one hundred and fifty-four, who return a decided majority of your honourable house.

If your honourable house will accept as evidence the common report and general belief of the counties, cities, and boroughs, which return the members alluded to,' your petitioners are ready to name them, and to prove the fact; or if the members in queftion can be made parties to the inquiry, your petitioners will name them, and be governed by the teftimony which they themselves fhall publicly give. But if neither of thefe proofs be thought confiftent with the proceedings of your honourable houfe, then your petitioners can only affert their belief of the fact, which they hereby do in the most folemn manner, and on the most deliberate conviction.

Your petitioners entreat your honourable houfe to believe that, in complaining of this fpecies of influence, it is not their intention or defire to decry or to condemn

that juft and natural attachment which they, who are enabled by their fortune, and inclined by their difpofition, to apply great means to honourable and benevolent ends, will always infure to themselves. What your petitioners complain of is, that property, whether well or ill employed, has equal power; that the prefent fyftem of reprefentation gives to it a degree of weight which renders it independent of character; which enables it to excite fear as well as to procure respect, and which confines the choice of electors within the ranks of opulence, because, though it cannot make riches the fole object of their affection and confidence, it can and does throw obftacles, almost infurmountable, in the way of every man who is not rich, and thereby fecures to a felect few the capability of becoming candidates themfelves, or fupporting the pretenfions of others. Of this your petitioners complain loudly, becaufe they conceive it to be highly unjuft, that, while the language of the law requires from a candidate no greater eftate, as a qualification, than a few hundreds pounds per annum, the operation of the law fhould difqualify every man whose rental is not extended to thousands; and that, at the fame time that the legiflature appears to give the electors a choice from amongst those who poffefs a moderate and independent competence, it thould virtually compel them to choose from amongst those who themselves abound in wealth, or are fupported by the wealth of others.

Your petitioners are the more alarmed at the progress of private patronage, because it is rapidly

leading

leading to confequences which menace the very existence of the conftitution.

At the commencement of every feffion of parliament, your honourable house, acting up to the laudable jealoufy of your predeceffors, and fpeaking the pure, conftitutional language of a British houfe of commons, refolve, as appears by your journals, "That no peer of this realm hath any right to give his vote in the election of any member to ferve in parliament;" and also, "That it is a high infringement upon the liberties and privileges of the commons of Great Britain, for any lord of parliament,

or

any lord-lieutenant of any county, to concern themselves in the elections of members to ferve for the commons in parliament."

Your petitioners inform your honourable house, and are ready to prove it at your bar, that they have the most reasonable grounds to fufpect that no lefs than one hundred and fifty of your honourable members owe their elections entirely to the interference of peers; and your petitioners are prepared to fhew by legal evidence, that forty peers, in defiance of your refolutions, have poffeffed themfelves of fo many burgage tenures, and obtained fuch an abfolute and uncontrouled command in very many small boroughs in the kingdom, as to be enabled by their own pofitive authority to return eighty-one of your honourable members.

Your petitioners will, however, urge this grievance of the interference of peers in elections no farther, because they are satisfied that it is unneceffary. Numbers of your

honourable members must individually have known the fact, but collectively your honourable houfe has undoubtedly been a ftranger to it. It is now brought before you by thofe who tender evidence of the truth of what they affert, and they conceive it would be improper in them to afk that by petition, which must be looked for as the certain refult of your own honourable attachment to your own liberties and privileges.

Your petitioners have thus laid before your honourable houfe, what the mischiefs are which arise from the present ftate of the reprefentation, and what they conceive to be the grounds of those mischiefs, and therefore pray to have removed.

They now humbly beg leave to offer their reafons, why they are anxious that fome remedy should be immediately applied.

Your petitioners truft they may be allowed to ftate, becaufe they are ready to prove, that feats in your honourable house are fought for at a most extravagant and increafing rate of expence.

What can have fo much augmented the ambition to fit in your honourable house, your petitioners do not prefume accurately to have diícovered, but the means taken by candidates to obtain, and by electors to beftow that honour, evidently appear to have been increafing in a progreffive degree of fraud and corruption. Your petitioners are induced to make this affertion by the legislature having found it neceffary, during the laft and prefent reigns, fo much to fwell the ftatute book with laws for the prevention of those offences.

As

As far as conjecture can lead your petitioners, they muft fuppofe, that the increasing national debt, and the confequent increase of influence, are the causes of the increased eagerness of individuals to become members of the house of commons, and of their indif. ference as to the means used to gratify their fpeculations. To prove that they do not ftate this wantonly, or without fubftantial grounds, they humbly beg to call your attention to the following table, all the vouchers for which are to be found in the journals of your honourable house, or in different acts of parliament.

It is upon this evidence of the increafe of taxes, establishments, and influence, and the increase of laws found neceffary to repel the increafing attacks upon the purity and freedom of elections, that your petitioners conceive it high time to inquire into the premifes.

Your petitioners are confident that in what they have stated, they are fupported by the evidence of facts, and they truft that, in conveying thofe facts to your honourable house, they have not been betrayed into the language of reproach or disrespect. Anxious to preferve in its purity a conftitution they love and admire, they have thought it their duty to lay before you, not general fpeculations deduced from theoretical opinions, but pofitive truths fufceptible of direct proof, and if in the performance of this talk, they have been obliged to call

your attention to affertions which you have not been accustomed to hear, and which they lament that they are compelled to make, they intreat the indulgence of your honourable house.

Your petitioners will only further trefpafs upon your time, while they recapitulate the objects of their prayer, which are,

That your honourable house will be pleafed to take fuch measures, as to your wifdom may feem meet, to remove the evils ariling from the unequal manner in which the different parts of the kingdom are admitted to participate in the reprefentation.

To correct the partial diftribution of the elective franchise, which commits the choice of reprefentatives to felect bodies of men of fuch limited numbers as renders them an eafy prey to the artful, or a ready purchase to the wealthy.

To regulate the right of voting upon an uniform and equitable principle.

And finally to fhorten the dur ation of parliaments, and by removing the caufes of that confufion, litigation and expence, with which they are at this day conducted, to render frequent and new elections, what our ancestors at the revolution afferted them to be, the means of a happy union and good agreement between the king and people.

And your petitioners fhall ever pray.

At

William III.

ceeded

1

At the death of The public revenue had queen Anne

The peace establish

increased to about

6,000,000

ment had increased to about

2,000,000

At the death of {The public revenue had George I.

increafed to about

6,800,000

The peace eftablifhment had increased to about

2,600,000

{{

At the death off The public revenue had George II.

The peace eftablishment had increased

increased to about

8,600,000.

to about

2,800,000