the serious injury it will do me. It is nothing connected
with the election, and it was only known to Mr. Bell
lately through me." After a consultation in whispers,
the commissioners asked whether Edwards's object was
"to obtain a pecuniary advantage, or only to retain the
influence he had in the borough." He admitted that
the inducement was greater than money: "it was the
interest of some one belonging to me"—"an interest
founded upon words that fell." Being further pressed,
he said, the "words" fell from Mr. Coppock,
but he declined to say what they were.—Mr. Coppock,
the well-known election agent, was examined at great
length. He said that his profession led him very much
in connexion with Parliamentary matters, and had done
for fifteen or sixteen years past, and, in fact, since
shortly after Sir R. Peel's celebrated speech of
"Register! register!" In 1835 an association was
formed by the Liberal party, comprising between 700
and 800 of the leading members of Parliament and
others; and shortly alter it was established without
any solicitation on his part, he was appointed secretary.
The society was called the Reform Association; and its
object was to attend to the registration throughout the
country, and to help the Liberal cause generally. That
led him into communication with almost every borough
and county in England; and from that time to this, he
had been, without hardly knowing how, brought into
connexion with the Liberal party whenever any
vacancies occurred. He had constantly watched them,
and knew most places in England; and if instead of
going through the St. Alban's register, as Mr. Edwards
had done, he (witness) were to take whole boroughs,
beginning at Abingdon and going on to Stafford, and to
point out every member who had bought his seat, he
could easily make out quite as extraordinary a list. He
did not say that to gain applause, but to show what the
system was; and no man had a greater horror of it than
he had. He detailed his interviews and negotiations
with Mr. Bell, Mr. Brace, Mr. Edwards, and others, on
the subject of Mr. Bell's standing for St. Alban's, until
Mr. Bell agreed to come forward on the understanding
that the expense would be £2500, with the probability
that there would be no contest. In the meantime Mr.
Coppock had found St. Alban's in the market, through
three different channels. Mr. Simpson was one; Mr.
Edwards (who was acting with himself) was another;
and there was a third party, the heads of which were
Mr. Webster, Mr. Bowen, and Mr. Blanks. Mr.
Coppock thought he could avoid a contest more safely
if he could reconcile Simpson and Edwards. He tried
to do it, and used every means in his power to prevent
their clashing; and he prevented for more than a week
Mr. Bell's announcement, simply from a desire to prevent
a contest. He found out at last that it was ineffectual,
and that the third party were determined to have a man.
He heard of their going from one person to another.
He knew almost everybody in these proceedings. He
heard of the visits to Alderman Carden—of the
negotiations with him, and that £1500 was his limit—
that he did not like £2500. He heard of other people
in the same way, word being brought to him; and
Edwards was pressing him on the other hand to let him
have Mr. Bell out directly. At that time there was no
other candidate absolutely announced. But the other
party were in negotiation with Alderman Carden,
because there had been different meetings at the AVhite
Hart and other places, on the 23rd of November; and
he (Coppock) had a document to show that the third
party were every way desirous of getting a candidate
without regard to politics, but simply to expenditure—
that somebody to bribe or bleed had always been the
object of this third party—that there were many
respectable men certainly who knew no more of the things
that were practised than in other places, but that the
great majority of the voters were always bought or sold
without regard to principle. Mr. Bell having made an
arrangement with him (Coppock) that £2500 should be
the ultimatum, with a chance of no contest, in which
even the expense would be reduced materially, it was
agreed that the money should be supplied. A difficulty
arose about where the money was to go. Coppock
never saw one farthing of it; he only knew that it came
ready for transmission to his office. It was delivered in
his outer office in sealed packets, and done up in brown
paper, and sent to St. Alban's. He knew nothing of
who they came from—he only knew what they were.
He never opened them. In these cases inquiries are never
made into particulars. In all transactions of this sort,
in every borough with which he had been connected in
his life, he had nothing to do with the arrangement of
the money or the disposition of it, or anything else
of that kind. He merely passed the money—he
obtained none of it; he derived no advantage, except
what was political, and never saw anything of it in any
shape. The money went to St. Alban's—he believed
£2500 went down some way or other, and a contest was
got up by a party whose only object in getting it up was
to cause an expenditure of money, and the character of
whose object was as well known and notorious as that
the majority of the voters are bought and sold; and the
result was that Mr. Bell was returned, the majority
having voted for him which Mr. Edwards had named.
Mr. Coppock underwent a searching examination in respect
to the inducement stated by Edwards, to have been
held out to him by Mr. Coppock, and which had made
him disregard pecuniary emolument; but nothing was
elicited, except that Coppock might have held out hopes
in a general way, that something would be done for
him by the liberal party in remuneration for his services.
—Among the other witnesses was Mr. Richard Low,
solicitor, of St. Alban's, the agent of Sir Richard
Carden, who gave evidence that he had paid about
£530 for bills on account of the election: besides that
amount, there are still some small sums due; and Mr.
Low's own bill, and the expenses of Sir Richard
Carden's London agent, were not included. No bribery
took place, but Mr. Low was "afraid that Conservatives
are as open to a bribe as the other party"; and he
certainly liimself took the precaution not to make his
payments for "services" till after the petition was
settled, as recriminatory charges might have been
"unfairly made" by the other side on a scrutiny.—
Among other proofs of the universal corruption, Mr.
Low stated, as a thing of course, that the police were
bribed by Mr. Bell's party; so that Sir Richard Carden
had to pay men to act in their stead, and protect his
voters and partisans, and his band and flags.—Mr.
Blagg, the Town-Clerk, explained the position of the
"Third Party;" in the borough; a party who had no
political creed, but were anxious for a contest on all
occasions, for the sake of "expected advantages"; who
divided their votes, or voted alternately with the
opposite party, to preserve the balance. Mr. Blagg
stated, that "experience had led him to the belief that
the new voters introduced by the Reform Bill are more
venal than the old voters;" and of the three denominations
of voters at St. Alban's, he thinks the "freemen
are the purest."— Alderman Sir Richard Carden gave
evidence of his having been invited by a deputation to
stand on the purity principle, and really thought they
were immaculate; but he had already parted with £900
before his expenses were all paid, and had become
convinced of the universal venality prevailing at St.
Alban's.—Mr. Edwards and Mr. Low were examined
respecting the various elections at St. Alban's prior to
that by which Mr. Bell became the sitting member.
The results of their depositions were—that on the
Liberal side about £19,000 has been spent in the cost
of elections since 1832, and on the Conservative side
about £15,250

A deputation waited upon Lord Palmerston on the
18th, at the Foreign Office, to present Addresses from
the inhabitants of Finsbury and Islington, congratulating
his lordship on the aid he rendered the Sultan of Turkey
in effecting the liberation of Kossuth. The Finsbury
address tendered to his lordship the hearty thanks of
the meeting for his "patriotic and humane conduct (in
defiance of frequent and atrocious threats from Christian
potentates) towards the illustrious patriot and exile,
Louis Kossuth, by demanding his release from the
hands of those odious and detestable assassins who
sought his destruction." The Marylebone address was
to the same effect. Both had been unanimously agreed
to at great public meetings. Lord Palmerston, in
reply, said he felt greatly flattered by this expression of
opinion on the part of so large a number of his fellow-