deed he might be apprehensive of it, for so long as a man would vote, the poll should remain open. The oaths were very annoying to the ministerial parties; and Mr. Canning had charged him (Dr. Crompton) with casting a libellous reflection on the freemen by administering those oaths; but the fact was, that the bribery oath restrained many men from voting who had been corrupted-and the law had made these oaths the bulwark of the purity of election. The oath of supremacy he had not proposed, as he knew the liberality of the Liverpool people too well to imagine that they wished the houest Catholic to be prevented from voting. The other oaths were consonant to the spirit of our good old English laws; but Mr. Canning had been in France, in the Netherlands, and at Lisbon, and had imbibed notions of antipathy to the principles of our virtuous forefathers. In a few days he (Dr. C.) should go to Lancaster to oppose Mr. Blackburne's and Lord Stanley's elec tion, and should leave Mr. John Wood to receive the Liverpool votes in his name, until he returned. Mr. JOHN WOOD then spoke as follows: Gentlemen, After the allusion which has just been made to me by my worthy friend Dr. Cromptou, it becomes my duty to ratify the assurance he has just given you, that if no more efficient proxy can be found, during his unavoidable absence at Lancaster, I shall deem it an honour to stand at his bar, and . to receive on his behalf, your unsolicited, your unperjured votes; and I sincerely hope we may have to congratulate him at his return, on the flourishing state of the poll. Former contests for the representation of this Borough, have with few honourable exceptions, been rather trials of the length of the purses, than of the soundness of the political principles of the candidates; and had such been the case on the present occasion, I should have looked on with indifference, or rather with regret to see men professing liberal and enlightened sentiments, appealing to the worst passions of the electors, and affecting to justify the baseness of the means by the excellence of the end in view. With a new reign, I congratulate you, Gentlemen, that a new æra has commenced in the history of your elections. Those "wholesome statutes," which, as was so justly remarked by Judge Blackstone "require nothing to complete their efficacy against Bribery and Corruption, but integrity and resolution to put them in strict execution," have been revived, and have already been productive of effects so salutary, that I trust they will never be dispensed with at future elections. As the chosen champion of your rights is present, it would ill become me to express all that I feel in his favour; but thus much I may be permitted to remark, that the sterling worth which has so highly endeared him to his friends, in the intercourse of private life, is the surest foundation for correctness of political principle, the firmest guarantee for political integrity. He loves his family, but he shews it, not as Mr. Canning, by quartering any of his relatives, like paupers, on the public, but by setting them a good example, both as a man, and as a subject. He too loves his king; but he best shows his loyalty not by placing the King, as is done in Mr. Canning's placard, above the constitution, but by considering him as an essential and component part of it. He evinces his loyalty not by a blind subservience to the minister of the day, nor by a servile acquiescence in established abuses, but by his efforts to make his sovereign acquainted with the true condition of his subjects; to free him from the thraldom in which he is held by a rapacious oligarchy; and to establish his throne on the affections of a free and happy people. With the eloquent judge, before quoted, he holds it to be "his especial duty, as a good subject, and good Englishman, to reverence the King, but to guard against corrupt or servile influence from those to whom his authority is entrusted, to be loyal, yet free; obedient and yet independent." That he loves his country, I need not remind you; for his political life has been a continued series of struggles for the restoration of her liberties-adopting as his political creed, that "taxation without representation is tyranny;" that every one who is bound to obey the laws has a right to be present, either personally or by deputy, at the making of them; he has been the constant and declared enemy of that system which has surrendered the lives, and property, and liberties, of the many, to the keeping of the few-which says to the people, you have nothing to do with the laws but to obey them, nothing to do with the taxes but to pay them. He well knows that Englishmen can have no indemnity for the past, no security for the future,—that no king can be great, no minister honest, unless the people are restored to their due weight in the constitution, by a fair, full, and free representation in the Common's house of parliament. That he respects his fellow-townsmen, cannot be a matter of doubt to those whom I now address; but had any proof been wanting, it is abundantly supplied by the splendid example he is now setting, and by his strenuous exertions to rescue Liverpool from the disgrace which has so long and so justly attached to the conduct of its elections. Nor should I have deemed it necessary to allude to this new instance of his devotion to the public good, and more particularly of his anxiety for the honour of Liverpool, had not this very circumstance been made the ground of a heavy charge against him by his Right Honourable opponent. You must be well aware that sophistry and delusion are the characteristics of Mr. Canning's harangues; in them he conbats phantoms of his own creation; he makes the giants first, and then he slays them. Thus in his speech of last night, he assumed as the foundation of his argument, that the freedom. of this borough is vested in so numerous and respectable a a body of men, that it is as insulting to the burgesses, as it is contrary to the experience of the past, to imagine for a moment that they are capable of being corrupted by bribes, or influenced by threats. And he concluded by insinuating, that Dr. Crompton ought never to be forgiven, for the affront he offered to the town, by insisting on the administration of the oaths. Let him establish the facts, and we will admit his inferences. But, Gentlemen, is there among you a single individual who can seriously suppose Mr. Canning to be so little aware of the actual state of the freemen of Liverpool, as not to know, that compared with its population, they are so few in numbers, and generally speaking, in such humble circumstances of life, as to be peculiarly liable to be influencced by bribes, and still more to be intimidated by the threats of their employers. If Mr. Canning be yet ignorant of these facts, some of you may suspect that he is wilfully so; But I am sure all of you will agree with me that it is high time he be made acquainted with them. A few hours before he made his speech, four bribery tickets signed "William Myers," had been publicly read on the hustings; and yet with that modest assurance so peculiarly his own, he asserted his solemn belief, that here, there neither existed the inclination to corrupt, nor the capacity of being corrupted. And in whose presence, Gentlemen, was this his creed repeated: on one side stood that strenuous advocate of purity of election, Mr. Bolton; on the other, his pious friend Mr. Gladstone, of Lancaster-election notorietyreturned only two days before for the rotten borough of Woodstock, a place at which he is a total stranger, and where he was probably only known as the former correspondent of Lord Liverpool, or more probably still, as a recent correspondent of the Duke of Marlborough. Let Mr. Canning send for those worthy associates of his, Oliver, and Castles, and Reynolds, and the rest of that precious fraternity of hired spies, and inercenary instigators to sedition, with whom his name ought always to be united, and instruct them to recounoitre the town, and for once, if possible, to disclose to him the real truth; his incredulity will vanish, and he cannot then plead ignorance that his former returns have been procured by the basest corruption; nor will the cause of his present priority on the poll be any longer a mystery. His affected ignorance of the conduct of Liverpool elections, is only equal to his declared belief, that the state of the country justified the Manchester massacre, and that it has been tranquillized by the unconstitutional proceedings of the last session of Parliament. To conclude, I would entreat you to recollect, that much as the Dr. has your cause at heart, that it is in your own hands; and that if the electors still unpolled will do their duty, success is certain. But whatever be the eveut of this election, I trust that good principles have been established, which all the efforts of power can never eradicate; that a general enthusiasm for liberty has been excited, which all the ale of corruption can never extinguish. Mr. EGERTON SMITH then addressed the meeting; and alluded to something which had been said by Dr. Crompton, about an attempt made to intimidate Mr. John Harvey on the hustings, or to prevail upon him to depart from the system of conducting the election, which had been resolved upon by the friends of the Doctor. Mr. S. proceeded as follows: Gentlemen,-You have heard of this attempt to influence our good friend Mr. Harvey; and you will all agree with me, that they, who ventured upon such an experiment, mistook their man. Mr. Harvey is a gentleman every way worthy of the honest, manly cause he has espoused upon this occasion; but what will you say, Gentlemen, of a report I have just heard, and which, you will please to observe, I give merely as a rumour. It is whispered, Gentlemen, that overtures were about to be made, to seduce from his allegiance, your inflexible champion, Dr. Crompton, by the opposite party, who, as the condition for withdrawing from this contest, would have ordered at his brewery all the free drink required at the next election. [4 general laugh; during which Dr. Crompton exclaimed "No, no! Gentlemen: it is all a joke." But they could not hear him, and mistook his energetic action for a confirmation of the report.] Mr. Smith then proceeded as follows. Gentlemen, our opponents affect to be very merry upon our frivolous and vexatious opposition, as they are pleased to term it; and say, amongst other things, that we have for our candidates a banker, but have no cash; and a brewer, but have no free drink. Now this is the very feature of our present election which I admire; and I deelare sincerely, that if the banker. (who, bye the bye, neither is, nor ever was, a candidate,) should issue his notes out on this occasion, or if our brewer should set his taps a going, I, for one, should, from that moment, withdraw from the committee. This committee, as it is now constituted, is as unique as the singular contest in which we are engaged. We have amongst us a lawyer, who refuses a fee; a mercer, who objects to ribbons; a printer, who opposes expensive placards; a sailmaker, who objects to canvass; and, extraordinary as it may appear, we have an honest corn-merchant, who mortally detests the corn bill. If the great body of the freemen were as disinterested and incorruptible as this committee, the Right Hon. Placeman would have to look out for another place, as he would have no chance of being returned for this borough. On Saturday the election recommenced; at the close of the poll, the numbers stood thus: Canning. 767 708 234 99 In the evening the procession accompanying Dr. Crompton was again very great, filling, in a solid mass, the whole length of Lord street. On arriving in Clayton square, the numerous colours were furled, and Dr. CROMPTON addressed the meeting. Mr. Canning, he said, had not been on the hustings that day-he was very unwell-and had, on the preceeding day, asked him (Dr. C.) for advice, gratis. He asked Mr. Canning if he was well in mental respects had he not something gnawing his conscience he thought him sick at heart, and not very sound at head. Mr. Canning ceased to ask for advice in that quarter; and being now confined to the house, he was represented on the hustings by Mr. Gladstone, the pious member for Woodstock,-like whom, he hoped Mr. Canning would repent, and build churches for atonement of his misdeeds. He was an unhappy man, and indeed he would be an extraordinary being if he could be otherwise. They all recollected his betrayal of Lord Castlereagh, and then his shooting at him; and indeed his propensity for du |