freehold from his ancestors. He remarked:--"The lease which his
grace possessed of this crown-land gave him a right to deal with it
as any other possessions during that period; and in dealing with the
property of the crown as with his own, it was obvious that he committed
no breach of privilege. Now the petitioners entirely confined themselves
to the crown possessions held by the noble duke, praying that a lease of
them might in future be refused to him. They did not even refer to his
other property, with regard to which he had dealt precisely in the same
manner. It was plain therefore that if, in the management of his own
private possessions, he had committed no breach of privilege, he had
committed none by dealings in a similar manner with the property of the
crown. He would not say that the Duke of Newcastle did not dispossess
these tenants; but, without entering into the question, he would say
that superior to the privileges of that house were other considerations,
to which they were bound in duty and conscience to defer, namely,
the rights of property. Here was no allegation that menaces had
been employed; there was only the fact that seven tenants had been
dispossessed. Now, if they were to control the rights of property,
under the idea that those rights had been exercised in controlling
an election, a precedent would be set which would be not merely
inconvenient, but positively dangerous; for nothing could be more
dangerous than to say, they would not suffer any tenant to be
dispossessed who had voted in opposition to his landlord's wishes. It
was in vain that honourable gentlemen exclaimed against the influence
which any peer derived from the possession of property: there was no
difference between that, and the influence which any other great
landed proprietor enjoyed; nor could any species of reform exclude such
influence. Property, he contended, should always have an influence
in that house, no matter whether it was in the hands of peers or
commoners." The motion for referring the petition to a select committee
was negatived by a majority of one hundred and ninety-four against
sixty-one.

MR. O'CONNELL'S BILL FOR REFORM BY UNIVERSAL SUFFRAGE AND VOTE BY
BALLOT, ETC.

Of all the various plans for altering the representation, whether
suggested by an honest desire to obviate the necessity of sweeping
innovations, or springing from the designs of restless demagogues, there
were none against which so littl