ship had moved that the
house should go into committee on the bill, the Earl of Carnarvon moved,
as an amendment, that evidence should now be taken at the bar of the
house in support of the allegations of the several petitions. After a
long debate on this counter-motion, which was strenuously opposed by
the ministers and their party, the house determined in its favour by a
majority of one hundred and twenty-four to fifty-four.

Evidence was now heard at the bar, which occupied the house from the
5th to the 8th of August. Witnesses were examined in relation to about
thirty boroughs; and the evidence went to show that the commissioners
had acted like attorneys employed to get up a case, and with but little
prudence, since they chiefly derived their information from partizans
of their own opinions. The evidence having been finished, the house
went into committee on the bill on the 12th of August, when the Duke
of Newcastle proposed the rejection of the bill, by moving that the
committee should be taken that day'six months. He did not, however,
press his motion to a division, the conservative peers having resolved
to pass the bill, in so far as they thought it might do good, after
stripping it of those provisions which seemed to be most operative for
evil. Lord Lyndhurst proposed the first alteration; He moved a clause
preserving to all freemen, to every person who might be a freeman but
for this measure, and to their widows and children, or the husband
of their daughters or widows, the same rights in the property of the
boroughs as would have belonged to them by its laws and customs if this
act had not been passed. He did not refer, he said, to general corporate
property, but to individual and specific rights of property enjoyed by
freemen in many boroughs--rights of commons and others. Lord Melbourne
opposed the motion. He would not be disinclined, he said, to consider
a proposal for extending the period during which these rights should be
preserved further than it was now fixed by the bill; but he could
not consent to preserve in perpetuity rights which he believed to be
prejudicial both to the freemen themselves and to the whole community.
The Earls of Haddington and Ripon supported the amendment, while
Lords Plunkett and Brougham, and the Marquis of Lansdowne opposed it,
contending that the rights to which the bill put an end were not rights
of property. On a division the amendment was carried by one hundred
and thirty